← The Wake-Up Call
The Wake-Up Call
The Measuring Stick of Transformational Growth
00:21:00
If Jesus is agape love and Jesus is in me, I am agape love.
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Foreign. Friends of Jesus and friends of mine. It is Thursday, March 26th, in the year of our Lord 2026. I'm John David Walt and this is your wake up call. So whether you're in the pre dawn hours in your home, some of you are still grabbing that cough of cup, first cup of second, first cup, second cup of coffee. And you're, you're sitting upright in the bed. Others of you are sitting in the back seat of a minivan on the way to school. You're in all sorts of places and stations. But we're all doing the same thing together. We're waking up to Jesus today. He's just gently kind of saying, let's go, it's time to get up. We've got good to do today and I'm excited to be here with you. I'm honored to get to share this space every day with you. And I just want to keep encouraging you to invite new friends to join us. We. We're on a mission. We're on a mission. It's the journey of awakening. I say it's the awakening is the journey of love from Jesus to a person, through a person, to a person, through a person, to a person. And it keeps on going. That's how it came to us. And he comes through us to others. So there's no substitute. You know, we don't do mass gimmick marketing at the Wake Up Call. It's through, it's to a person. It's through a person. We try to find ways to encourage people, but you are the sowers. And again we're getting ready to embark on this Easter season on the Wake Up Call. It's on the letter to The Ephesians starts April 6th. And I'd love for you to grab. I think we're doing the buy one. So one. If you buy one of our Wake Up Call. I call it a workbook. I'm not sure what to call it. It's really a party book. It's got all the entries in it. It has the journal space, wide margins, lots of space every entry. It's got weekly discussion meetings set up. It's going to have a video every week of a little teaching from me to help a group get started and going and talking and praying and learning. There's just. It's full of, of blessing these things are. And if you'll get one, we'll send you another one. You can share that one with a friend. Anyway, thanks for bearing with me here. I like to try to get straight into It. Sometimes I know I can say too many things and you're like, come on, can we get to the point? We're up to meet with Jesus, not to hear about what's next week or next month. Thanks for just bearing with me. That's what I appreciate. So here we go. Wake up, sleeper. Rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you. And we're praying. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Today's entry is entitled the Measuring Stick of Transformational Growth, and Our text is First Corinthians 13, verses 4 through 8. Here now. The Word of the Lord. Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud. It does not dishonor others. It is not self seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails the Word of the Lord. Now consider this. Though it is unclear exactly what the Beatles meant when they said that all we need is love, they were exactly right. And to be sure, definitions matter. For love has come to mean so many things that it means nothing definitively at all. We must peer behind the translated English word love to see the word chosen for our text in the original Greek language. The Greek word hiding behind the translated English word love, appearing or referenced some 21 times in this chapter of only 13 verses, is agape. Or as C.S. lewis would say it, agape. It means, in short, divine love. We are talking about the love of God. Now back to the question. Transformational question number one. Are you growing? My impulse was to measure myself against this marker of divine love. So I created a measuring stick of sorts. First, I took the text that we read today and I inserted a blank everywhere the word love was written or referenced. Blank is patient. Blank is kind. Blank does not envy. Blank does not boast. Blank is not proud. Blank does not dishonor others. Blank is not self seeking. Blank is not easily angered. Blank keeps no record of wrong. You get my point now. Second, I wrote my name in each of the blanks and then I read the paragraph aloud to see if I could pass the straight face test. I learned that in law school. It's called the straight face test. Can you stand in front of the judge and make this argument while keeping a straight face. Then it hit me. I was doing it all wrong. I was attempting to measure my performance against a divine standard. Here's the example. John David is patient. John David is kind. John David does not envy. John David does not boast. John David is not proud. John David does not dishonor others. John David is not self seeking. John David is not easily angered. You see, John David always protects, always trusts. John David always hopes. John David always perseveres. I was trying to. You see, right now if you're. You're listening, but if you're watching you, you're seeing. I can't keep a straight face even reading that out loud. Okay, you get my point. But I was doing it all wrong. I was attempting to measure my performance against a divine standard. So you see, the Christian life is not about my performance, but Jesus presence and power. So I added another step. In each of the blanks I had made, I entered another name. Any guesses as to whose name? Jesus is patient. Jesus is kind. Jesus does not envy. Jesus does not boast. Jesus is not proud. Jesus does not dishonor others. Jesus is not self seeking. Jesus is not easily angered. Jesus keeps no record of wrongs. Jesus does not delight in evil. But Jesus rejoices with the truth. Jesus always protects. Jesus always trusts. Jesus always hopes. Jesus always perseveres. Jesus never fails. Now cue our adapted Declaration of Colossians 1:27. You where you put your name in there first. You remember Maxi. The secret is simply this. John David. The secret is simply this. Christ in you. Yes, Christ in you.
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Bringing with him the hope of all
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the glorious things to come. And if Jesus is agape love and Jesus is in me, I am agape love. Jesus is the performer, the worker, the doer. I am the participant, the follower, the friend. He is the revelation. I am the responder. My life now becomes a studied participation in his life. An empowered improvisation of his craft and infused reception and profused demonstration of his love. Golly man, that's. This is the truth, gang. This.
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This is the gospel.
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My life now becomes a studied participation in his life. An empowered improvisation of his craft. An infused recept and profused demonstration of his love. The secret is Jesus in me. In you. That's why the awakening is the journey of love from Jesus to a person through a person, to a person through a person. I gotta stop. Let's pray. Our Father, thank youk for your Son, Jesus. Lord Jesus, your life is the vision of love. We want to behold this Vision in broad expanse and super up close. How wide and how high and how deep and how long. We want to become this kind of love. So come, Holy Spirit, and reveal it and unveil it in and through us, praying in Jesus name today. Amen. This is the.
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This is it, gang.
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This is why we came. Journal prompts. Can you remember I. I said, interestingly, I said, our life becomes a studied participation in his life. Here's a way to get at that. Can you remember a Jesus story for each of the dynamics of love listed in First Corinthians 13? Can you find one if you can't remember one? There's just so many situations. You know, he's. He's sitting down by the woman by the well. He's. He's there with the woman caught in adultery. He's. He's going up to, to Zacchaeus up in the tree. He. He's talking to a Roman centurion. There's so many situations that demonstrate those dynamics of love. And, and this is what I mean by studied participation. We're just getting down on the ground. That's why we did that gospel series, so we could just get down on the ground every day and say, jesus, show me how you do it. Show me what you mean here. Show me what you were thinking about. How did you come up with that? Because that's how he wants to do the very things he did, he wants to do keep doing even greater things, he said, in us, through us. All right, we're going to sing today. We're going to pick back up on our. I loved our little medley we had going yesterday. I may reverse the songs, but we're going to go to 502. Come ye sinners poor and needy. And then we're going to sing the second verse on that one. And then we're going to go back to 1:21. Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus and we're going to sing the second verse on that one. So.
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Sound good?
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Dad's not here today. I know. I'm hearing about it. You're like, where is he? What happened?
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Bring him back.
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He's coming back. So let's, let's sing 502, verse 2. 121, verse 2.
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Come ye thirsty Come and welcome God's free bounty Glorify true belief and true repentance Every grace that brings you nigh I will arise and go to Jesus he will embrace me in his arms in the arms of my dear Savior oh, there are 10,000 charms o 121 o the deep, deep love of Jesus Spread his praise from shore to shore how he loveth ever loveth changeth never, nevermore how he watches o' er his loved ones Died to call them all his own how for them he intercedeth Watcheth o' er them from the throne Again I will arise and go to Jesus he will embrace me in his arms in the arms of my dear Savior oh, there are 10,000 charms this is a medley, guys. We're creating a medley together.
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I bet it's never been done, these two songs in tandem like that. And there's a. There's a third little chorus that. Why don't we just tack it on here? Maybe you know the words.
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I love you, Lord, and I lift my voice to worship you O my soul, rejoice. Take joy, my king, in what you hear. And may it be a sweet, sweet sound in your ear.
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Well, remember, if Jesus is agape love, and we know that he is, and Jesus is in you and me, then you are agape love and I imagape love. We just got to rise up into it. That's. That's what discipleship means. That's what transformation means. Not trying harder to do more, to be better. That's self improvement. But waking up, rising up, shining out. That's Jesus in us is learning to participate with his presence, his very personhood, by the power of the Holy Spirit in and through our lives. All right, it's gonna be a good Thursday. We're going out there with those seed thoughts. I've got my seeds. You get your seeds. For the awakening of. I'm J.D. walt, and I'll see you on the field.