Discipling is the Only Way Forward

Sermon Summary

On Vision Sunday, we looked at discipleship as the central calling of the Christian life and the church. Rather than treating discipleship as a program or an optional pathway, this message argues that discipling people is the only way forward in God’s kingdom.

Using the Lord’s Prayer as a framework for direction, the sermon connects four ideas that shape a healthy Christian life: family, clarity, identity, and calling. Growth happens in spiritual family. Confidence comes through clarity from God’s Word. Identity is shaped as we live under Christ’s authority. And calling emerges as we follow Jesus more closely.

At the center of it all is Jesus Himself. Before we talk about what we are called to do, we must look at how Jesus lived and ministered. His primary investment was not crowds, programs, or religious systems—but people.

Jesus’ Pattern: Personal Investment

A major focus of the sermon is how Jesus discipled people personally.

Although Jesus preached to crowds, performed miracles, and confronted religious leaders, the majority of His time—roughly ninety percent—was spent with a small group of ordinary people. These were not impressive leaders. They were simply people Jesus chose to walk with.

Jesus often spoke in parables to the crowds but explained their meaning privately to His disciples. This shows that discipling people was not a side activity—it was central to His mission.

That focus becomes explicit in Jesus’ final command.

The Calling of Discipleship (Matthew 28:19–20)

Jesus’ final instruction to His followers was clear:

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations… teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”

The primary directive is not simply to teach information, start organizations, or gather crowds. The command is to make disciples.

Teaching someone information is one thing. Teaching someone to obey is another. Discipleship requires proximity, modeling, patience, and shared life. Just as a trade like welding can’t be learned only through explanation, following Jesus can’t be learned only through information transfer. It requires walking together, practicing obedience, and learning by example.

Discipling People Means Digging Deep

Discipleship is difficult because it goes deep.

The sermon uses the image of digging a hole: at first the work is easy, but as you go deeper the ground becomes more compacted and the effort increases. Jesus spent three years with His disciples, and even then they misunderstood Him, failed Him, and eventually abandoned Him.

Investing in people is messy. It reveals weakness, immaturity, and resistance. But value is only found beneath the surface. Gold, oil, and precious resources are never found lying on the ground—they are found deep below, and they come at a cost.

Jesus dug deep into people’s lives. He calls His followers to do the same.

Discipleship Is the Only Way Forward

The sermon makes a clear claim: discipling people is the highest purpose of both the church and the Christian life.

Churches can be tempted to focus on things that feel successful—attendance, activity, nostalgia, or comfort. But the calling of the church is not to run services people enjoy. It is to be a spiritual family equipped to serve sacrificially with God’s Word and our testimony.

This calling extends to every believer, not just leaders or missionaries.

Identity and Calling (2 Timothy 2:1–2)

Paul’s words to Timothy highlight four generations of discipleship:

What you heard from me… entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.

Calling often feels heavy before it feels clear. Timothy likely felt unqualified, young, and unsure—yet Paul calls him forward anyway.

That weight is not meant to discourage. It is meant to shape identity.

As the sermon explains, identity grows as we:

• Discover how we are made to fulfill our calling
• Discipline ourselves to grow and change
• Walk into everyday spaces with intentionality toward people

Our hope is not in our competence, but in the power of God working in the lives of people, just as Jesus demonstrated.

Vision for 2026 — Your Next Step

The sermon closes with a concrete vision: to see an average of 26 people participating in Leader Lab in 2026.

Leader Lab exists to help people:

• Find clarity
• Discover identity
• Step into calling

Discipleship is not abstract. It moves forward through intentional next steps.

Scripture References

• Matthew 28:19–20
• 2 Timothy 2:1–2

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Finding your family first. We discussed this a few weeks ago, and we said that we need to find our family because it is families that grow people. The Lord has ordained spiritual families to grow people, not programs, not podcasts. Those things are great, but they don't grow you. They just give you more information. Sometimes they give you more anxiety. Sometimes they just give you a lot of tips and tricks, but they're not really helping you figure things out because you need a spiritual family to do that. And then families grow people as they love first. So without a spiritual family, it's kind of like running in quicksand. Last week we discussed finding clarity because clarity brings confidence. When you are clear on something, you know you're doing it the right way, you're doing it in an acceptable way, however you want to phrase that. You're not dealing with all the murkiness

of maybe this is it, maybe this isn't, maybe should I do this, should I not. That creates a lot of confusion, a lot of hesitation, and it quickly removes your confidence. And we talked about how clarity is bringing confidence as you listen to and you act on God's word. Right? We are not just figuring it out as we go along. We are reading and studying God's word. We are listening, it says that, we looked at this last week, that scripture, all scripture is God-breathed. And so when we talk about listening to God, we're talking about opening His word and we're talking about letting the God of the universe, our creator, the one who knows our life forward and backward, we're allowing Him to breathe on us, to breathe life into us. And we do that, that process is achieved as we are reading, we're listening to God's word and we are acting upon what we're doing, okay?

Again, we talked a lot about that last week. If you're interested in that, you can listen to our podcast. Today, we're gonna cover the last two. We're gonna do Find Your Identity and Find Your Calling. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna begin actually with Find Your Calling and then we're gonna work backward from there. And you'll see why a little bit later, it's gonna make a little bit more sense. But if we're gonna do anything, we're gonna find your calling, if we're gonna talk about calling at all, we must begin with Jesus, amen? That's who we're following, okay? It's not some other version, there's no layers on top of it. We're literally looking at Jesus's life and we're following Him, we're doing what Jesus did. And we can do no more or no less than Jesus Himself. Christianity is not some invention or some extrapolation upon what Jesus did. It's not, as Christians, we can flip open to Mark,

the Book of Mark, the Gospel of Mark, we can flip open to Mark and say, okay, what's Jesus doing? Okay, let's do that. We're following Jesus. And so we're gonna see our calling clearly in Jesus's life and ministry. I'm gonna be referring to a lot of things that are common knowledge in Jesus's life and ministry. If I refer to something that you aren't sure of or that you have never heard before or anything like that, I'd be more than happy to talk afterward, but I'm gonna be flying through a little bit. These aren't major details, these are pretty big things that Jesus did. And so just, you're gonna have to go with it this morning, I can't prove it all. But we can talk about Jesus's life and ministry. The thing to know about Jesus's ministry is that he invests personally. Jesus invests personally, that he discipled people. He discipled people. Okay? We call them the disciples, capital D, right?

That's how we refer to them, it's fine. It's how Scripture refers to them. Or, and then later, the apostles, that's kind of a long story. But we give them these titles, and that's fine for identification purposes. We need to know it's the specific 12 guys, okay? But that wasn't some honorific, that wasn't some title they walked around with. It was literally people that Jesus chose.

That's it. It just happened to be the first 12, okay? It happened to be the 12 that he was investing most of his time in, okay? So these are, the disciples aren't superhuman. The disciples aren't some other type of person. The disciples aren't somehow like 50 levels above you. You're down here, the disciples are way up here. That's not the testimony of Scripture. In fact, the testimony of Scripture is almost the opposite. The disciples were, they didn't really know a whole lot about what was going on. Jesus spent, talking about investing personally, Jesus spent roughly 90% of his time with the disciples. Now that's weird, because we're gonna, whenever we read kind of Mark or something like that, we're getting the highlights of like him preaching to the crowds, or, you know,

separating loaves and fish, or performing miracles, or doing something, kind of with the crowds. But when you look at the life of Jesus, he's just spending time day after day, after day, after day, with these disciples. So he preached, he taught, he performed miracles, he rebuked the crooked religious establishment, but he did all those things with his disciples. It wasn't like he told the disciples, hey, hang on guys, I gotta go over here in this village and heal a bunch of people, and rebuke some Pharisees. Okay, I'll be right back. He takes them with him. They go with him, he does them with the disciples. In fact, when you look at like Mark four, Matthew 13, a couple of other places, Jesus is very content to preach parables, which are kind of like coded stories, okay, they're mysteries, they're allegories, metaphors, whatever you wanna call them. He would preach these parables,

and whenever he preached the parables to the crowds, a lot of the crowds wouldn't understand, they wouldn't get it, and Jesus wouldn't explain it to the crowds. Who'd he explain it to? The disciples. He pulls the disciples aside, he goes, this is what I mean by all that. But it's kind of a funny thing, right? Then why say the parables to the crowds? What's that about? Well, that's a whole other sermon, but it is a fact.

Mark four, Matthew 13, there's a couple other places, Matthew 25, he does it too, where Jesus is telling parables, and the people that are hearing the parables, most of the people that are hearing the parables do not get it. But Jesus takes the time to explain the parable in detail with his disciples, because that's who he's concentrating on. And it's not that the crowds were a nuisance, or even that they were unimportant, it's just to say that the largest part of Jesus' ministry and his mission was discipling people. One reason we know this is because of what he leaves them with. So let's go to Matthew chapter 28, verses 19 and 20. Just to set this up very quickly, a lot of people call this the Great Commission, and they do that because this is the last thing that Jesus is telling his disciples

before he ascends, basically. And he's helping them kind of understand what their mission is. And here's what he tells them. He says, go therefore and make disciples of all nations. It doesn't say go therefore and perform a bunch of miracles. It doesn't say go therefore and preach, or go therefore and teach, or go therefore. He says, go therefore and make disciples. Now, if you've heard me preach on this before, I will say this, this is a clunky English translation, because we don't make disciples like we make cookies. Okay, I don't like sculpt a disciple like that. It's just a weird, to me, it's a weird thing to say make disciples. It's really just a verb, to disciple. Go and disciple all nations, okay? That's really, I think, a better reading than that. I understand why it's there, it's fine. I don't need my own version of the Bible.

It's a clunky English translation, I'll just say that. It's a little clunky. Jesus' prime directive is not to preach to crowds. His prime directive is not to teach, or even to start churches, or to send missionaries. That's not Jesus' prime directive, because that's not what he says here. What he says here is just go and disciple people. Why? Because when you're discipling people, the rest of that follows. When you're discipling people, preaching happens. When you're discipling people, teaching happens. When you're discipling people, churches are getting started. When you're discipling people, missionaries are sent out. It is ground zero, it is the irreducible part of being a Christian, is discipling people. You can get busy with any other thing, but if you are not busy with this, all the other things you're busy with will fizzle out. They will come to not much, if anything at all.

His prime directive is go and disciple, people, and when he commissions his disciples to disciple others, he says to baptize them. I'll read the rest of it. Go therefore and disciple all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and Son of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, and behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.

And so when he says go and disciple others, he extrapolates on that. They're gonna baptize them in the name of the Father, Son of the Holy Spirit, right? So this is like allegiance to the triune God. And he says also, verse 20, teaching them to observe or obey or follow all that I have commanded you. Now teaching someone is one thing. If you're gonna teach somebody something, you need a classroom, right? You need information transfer if you are going to teach someone something, right? However, teaching someone to obey is different.

Teaching somebody something, that's just, I can teach you about how coffee is made, okay? I can do that. I used to be a barista. That's a weird party trick, but I can do it. It's super interesting to me and not very many other people, so I will spare all of you that. I can teach you that because I know that information and I can share that information with you in a somewhat non-boring context, okay? That's just information transfer. That's all that is. If I'm going to, if I'm gonna teach you to observe something, that is going to require something different of me. It's not just knowing information and communicating it in a compelling fashion. If I'm going to teach you to obey something, it is gonna be different than that. Let me give you an example. Let's just say I'm a welder by trade, okay? Let's just say I weld things with a welding torch. I put metal together, okay?

That's what welding is. I can teach someone all the information of welding and after I explain all the technicalities, all the details to them, I'm just talking at them. I'm just communicating information to them. This is what welding is. This is what welding is like and if after that I hand them a welding torch and say okay, go to town, they won't know what to do.

They won't know. In fact, no serious welder would ever do that. They're not gonna do that. Those of you who are tradesmen understand this. If you just put somebody on a job and you just explain a few things but you never show them how to do it, they're going to be terrible at it. You're gonna have an accident on the job site, okay? So you know exactly what I'm talking about. I would not put a welding torch in somebody's hands after I've just explained it to them. On the other hand, if I wanna teach someone to actually weld, I'm going to quickly need to put a welding torch in their hand and I'm going to demonstrate with them how to weld. We're gonna start with simple exercises. We're gonna go to something more complex. They're gonna learn principles but they're gonna do it, they're gonna learn those principles as they're welding. It's not like you learn everything

and then you start welding and then you get good at it. It's that you learn a little bit weld, learn a little bit weld, learn a little bit weld. That's how that works. And that's just with welding. It's playing guitar, it's any other kind of trade with your hands and it's also discipling. It's the same with discipling somebody. If I'm discipling somebody, I'm not gonna simply give them information.

It's silly. It doesn't work. It's also not what Jesus did. Even if it wasn't silly, it's still not what Jesus did. What did Jesus do? He walked with them. He talked about life. He had these occasions where he would just be looking and going by the temple and he would say something about the temple. He'd go by the treasury, say something about the treasury. They'd be in a field where they're picking heads of grain and he would talk about the Sabbath. He would do these things as they were going along together, as they were doing ministry together. He would challenge them in the middle of this. This little nugget in the story of feeding the 5,000, Jesus famously feeds 5,000 people. But what happens before he feeds the 5,000?

The disciples come to him and say, all these people are hungry. We should send them home. And Jesus says to his disciples, you feed them, feed them. And the disciples kind of look at each other like, does he know we don't have food? Does he know what's going on? Why is Jesus telling his disciples to feed them? Why do that? Is he playing head games with them? Is he trying to destroy their confidence? What's he doing? He's pushing them to understand that ministry in these real life contexts where you actually have to feed people that God wants to provide in the middle of that. But if they're not in the middle of trying to feed people, that lesson is lost on the disciples. If they're not in the middle of like, seeing somebody who's sick and who is demon possessed and can't be healed and they're frustrated, there's no substitute for that process of trying to do something spiritually, being frustrated,

going to Jesus, him helping you out and you learning in that process. There's no substitute for that. No sermon can help you with that. No Bible study. I don't care if you know Greek and Hebrew. It doesn't matter. It's not gonna help you. Because you need to put your hands on it. If you are doing this, like Jesus was sharing his life with these people. If we're gonna disciple people, they're gonna need to see us share our testimony. They're gonna need to see us share the gospel with people. They're gonna need to see us care for people. They're gonna need to see us lead our families. They're gonna see us make difficult decisions. They're gonna see us do our job. All these things matter. It's not just how I act whenever I'm in a church building.

They're gonna need to see me do all those things. If we're discipling people, they're gonna need to see us do all these things and more and fail at it and say we're sorry and look stupid. I hope I've made it sound super enticing this morning. And if it's not enticing enough, here we go. This is the real, whoa, it's the crown jewel here. Disciples people, and this is what we learned from Jesus, it means digging deep. Disciples people means digging deep. Like I said, Jesus didn't just discuss things, religious things with the disciples. He invested personally. They're talking about a lot of things. But the reason I use this metaphor in particular, digging deep, I use this metaphor for investing in people is two reasons. Number one, digging deep gets harder as you go. I don't know if you've ever dug a hole with a shovel.

If you've dug a hole with a shovel, raise your hand. We got most here, most of you have done this. If you've ever dug a hole with a shovel, you know that that first dig, boy, that first dig's fun, right? Get it in the ground, get that leverage going. You're like, oh yeah, this hole's gonna be great. This is gonna take me 10 minutes. What's that last one like? Oh, 45 minutes later, you're hating life. You're way sweatier than you thought you were gonna be. This hole that was supposed to take you just 10 minutes is now somehow taking you 45 and you're only halfway done. It's fun at the beginning because you have leverage and the ground isn't compacted. And you get to see this instant gratification of grass turning into dirt. Oh, hole there, no hole there a second ago. Okay, you got some gratification, that's good. But in the end, in the last few digs, it's an absolute slog.

It makes you question the intelligence you had at the beginning of trying to dig this hole, right? It makes you wonder why you ever picked up a shovel in the first place because you will work twice as hard for half the dirt. And in your last few, you're gonna work twice as hard for a tenth of the dirt. It's gonna be difficult. Why? You've lost your leverage.

The ground is more compacted. You've hit obstacles. Maybe you've hit straight into rocks. Maybe you clipped an electric wire. Hopefully you didn't. Hopefully you call. Call before you dig, guys. Call before you dig. A little PSA for you. The point is you don't know what's under there. You start digging deep. It gets complicated. Jesus spent the better part of three years with 12 guys, one of whom betrayed him for money, the other 11 betrayed him for free when they abandoned him during his arrest. I mean, at least Judas got some money out of it. I don't know, it's just weird, right? Everybody betrays him. Three years, everybody leaves him. Nobody's with him at the end. Anybody on the cross with him? Nope. Anybody making a public appearance? Nope. Peter's denying him in front of people. Why? Because he wants to live. Peter doesn't wanna be associated with Jesus, and so he denies him three times

that the reason he doesn't wanna be associated is because he's trying to not die. Jesus is the perfect son of God. And after three years, better part of three years with 12 guys, you read about, I mean, look, I don't even have to color it. Like, read the Gospels and see how dumb these guys are. And I don't mean to be disparaging. I mean, I'm just ignorant, an actual technical definition of dumb, right? I don't mean they kinda just don't know what they're doing or they're whatever. I mean, they don't get it. Not at all. At the end, and I wish I could show you this, you can look it up later, it's fine, in Acts chapter one. In Acts chapter one, Jesus is about to ascend, and the disciples are talking to him, and in Acts one, six, they ask him this really, kind of, this question that kind of displays all of their ignorance. They say, okay, Jesus, is now the time you're going to take over Rome by force?

Now? We're going now? We're taking over Rome now? And Jesus is like, no, no, no. Nobody knows the time or the place. Don't, you know, don't worry about all that. I'm about to be ascended into heaven, and here's what you need to do. And it's nothing about taking over Rome by force, okay? It's nothing about governmental coups. It's nothing about solving particular problems in poverty or in wealth disparity, or it's not about removing oppression. It's not about fixing government. It's not about any of that. It's saying, look, you're gonna receive power when I leave, bye. That's it. It's not this thing where, it's not this thing where Jesus is somehow giving them some program of how everything's gonna be great after that. The disciples do not get it. The disciples do not understand what is happening. And whenever we look at what's happening with the disciples, look, at least we can,

at least we can commiserate with them. At least we can understand what they're going through, because many times in my life, your life, sure you've gone through this, you're just looking at your life, you're looking around, you're like, I don't get it. What's this supposed to be adding up to? What's this big pothole here? What's this big ravine, this thing that I now need to cross on a high wire? What's that about? Why am I being blocked at every turn? What's going on? We know this from Jesus' ministry, but we also know this because we know people. When you are just getting to know somebody, it's fun at first.

It's fun at first, think like first date. First dates are fun, usually. Sometimes they're weird. Most of the time they're fun, because you're just kinda getting to know somebody. It's fine, just making a new friend even. It's just kinda fun, it's kinda getting to know somebody. It's great. It takes a little bit more time and effort though to really get to know somebody, doesn't it? You don't really know somebody after the first time meeting them, of course not. Hopefully, nobody thinks that. If you do, I'm sorry to let you down so publicly. But it takes time, it takes effort. It takes usually a lot more craziness for you to understand what's happening with somebody else in their life. When you see, I don't know, you get to know somebody and then you understand, oh, their life is way more messy than I thought. This isn't just a little, this is not gonna take a little bit of time and effort.

This is going to be a slog. We're starting to dig deep. I'm losing leverage. I'm working twice as hard and getting a tenth of the dirt out. We're not seeing anything change. We're not seeing anything move. What's happening, what's wrong? What am I doing wrong? Do I need to change my shovel, my approach on the shovel? What's happening, how do I fix whatever is going on? Investing in a person is messy, it's difficult. It tests your resolve at every turn and it usually covers you in mud.

Just like digging a deep hole. And all that's just the first week. Then you really get to know them. Investing in people, and look, you and I are no different. If somebody wants to get to know us, it's not like, we're probably a picnic the first couple times you meet us. But then when you really get to know somebody, it's not a picnic anymore. It's work, it's hard. You ever notice at a wedding, when they're doing vows, that all those vows sound terrible?

We talk about the worst thing that can happen. Why? Why don't we talk about the worst thing that happens? It's supposed to be, it's really happy moment. We're talking about, well, because people that have been married before, they've been married a long time, they're saying, hey, the vows they're taking there should be a little bit more realistic. Because now I'm 25 years into a marriage, and I know what it takes to get here, and it's a lot more than whatever they got. The promise they need to make then, and some of you, you've been married a long time, you know what I'm talking about. Can I have an amen? Okay, there it is. You talk about what's happening, you talk about what's worse. You talk about the worst. Sickness.

You talk about death, until death do us part. Why are we talking about death at a wedding? Because getting to know people's messy. You must go deep, and it gets harder as you go. Okay, so hopefully I have made this sound. Super enticing. Let me, I'm kidding, but let me tell you what is enticing, right? You must go deep to get anything of value. You must go deep to get anything of value. Let me ask you, where's gold? Where's oil? Where are other precious metals, gems? Where are they? They're on the ground? Do you step on a few coming in here? You got them in your front yard? I mean, you pray and you got it in your front yard, but you don't. You don't have, is it inside your couch? You just gotta dig a little bit for it? No, no, where is it? It's deep, it's deep in the ground. It's deeper than anybody, most anybody wants to dig. It's deep in there, deep in the cold, dark earth.

What does it cost to get those things? Okay, it costs millions. It costs people time, energy. People gotta build an oil rig in the Gulf. They stick, I don't know how many tons of metal in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico just to get oil out. You think they're making money on that? Oh yeah, yeah, they're making money on it. They're spending a lot, but they're making a lot. It's because they know the secret. They know to be able to go deep enough, you gotta be able to spend the money on the front end. You gotta put in the work, you gotta train the people, you gotta make sure everybody's safe, you gotta do all that so that you can get the oil. And when you get the oil, it's all worth it. And then some. It's probably worth triple what you put into it. You must go deep to get something of value. It's not just laying on the ground and it ain't cheap, but it's 100% worth it.

It's probably 300% worth it. Finding your calling, when we say find your calling, what we mean is that we are following Jesus as he invests personally, we invest personally. As he digs deep, we pick up a shovel. Following Jesus doesn't mean we sit down next to him because he digs really hard and he eats an apple. It means that we pick up a shovel and that we are digging with him. And that the deeper we go, the harder it is that Jesus is right there saying like, yes, we wanna do this with you. Yes, yes, let's find what's down here. Yes, let's invest, let's dig. Yes, it's messy. Yes, there's like all these obstacles. Yeah, we might even hit an electrical wire every once in a while and things short out and go crazy for a little bit. Yes, but it is worth it. 300% as Jesus is loving people sacrificially, so do we.

So as you dig, even whenever he gets hard, remember this, here's our hope. Here's our hope. Our hope is in the power of God working in the lives of people. If you're taking notes, that's your note. Our hope is in the power of God working in the lives of people. Our hope isn't that we have a cool enough church service so that people will somehow be wowed into the kingdom. That's not what we do. That's a pretty losing game, by the way, just from experience, I can tell you that. Our hope is only in the power of God working in the lives of people. And the only way we see that happen is if we dig. This is what Jesus demonstrated and this is what Jesus calls us to do. When he says disciple people, he means pick up a shovel and start digging, start investing. It gets hard, dig more. You're tired, pray for strength. Let's go. This is not something we casually do once a week.

Christianity, follow me, Jesus, doesn't just happen on a Sunday. It's difficult work. It tests your resolve. Disciples people is the only way forward in God's kingdom. It is irreducible. We can do all these other spiritual things, but if we're not doing this, we've lost the plot. Disciples people is the only way forward in God's kingdom. It is our highest purpose as a church.

Look, as a church, internally, externally, all these things, we got pressure to do the Christmas cantata. We got pressure to do the sweet event with all the free things and it looks really great. Nothing's wrong with those things. Nothing's wrong with those things. Those things are fine, but if all we're doing is putting on spiritual things so that we feel good or so that people are placated or that we're satisfying some kind of religious nostalgia because that's what it was like whenever you grew up, then we've lost the plot. The pressure to do all of these things is immense. The pressure to do all these things is immense because it keeps people happy.

Let me say that one more time, just in case you missed it. Doing all of these religious things, all of these, even fun things, like big parties, all these things, like doing these things, there is an immense pressure to do these things because it can keep people happy and happy people come back to a church. Happy people keep giving money. Happy people keep kids coming in, right? Sounds great, doesn't it? It's not. Because our calling as a church is not to be a church service where people come back to.

It's not. And look, I don't hate that you guys are here, okay? Just saying. I'm not saying run. I am saying let's be clear on what we're doing and why we're doing it. Okay, we're not here to be a church service that people come back to. That's not what we do. We're family, guys. We're spiritual family. Our calling is to be a spiritual family that is equipped to sacrificially serve people with God's word, by his power, with our testimony as we are digging deep. That's our calling. And not just our calling as a church. It's not just our highest purpose as a church. It's our highest purpose in life. And I say this because this is where some of you are gonna tap the brakes.

When I say find your family, you're like, okay, yeah, I found my family getting plugged into a home group. Super excited, by the way, home groups start this week. Just in case you're wondering what to do with your week this week. Home groups start this week. So I say find your family like, pastor, got my family. Find my family, we're on that. I say find clarity. You can serve on a mission team. You can go through a gospel course, right? And maybe you're a member, right? You're like, hey, I found clarity. Okay, all right, pastor, I found. My family found clarity, I'm good. When I say find your identity, that seems pretty optional. And when I say find your calling, that's whenever something in you says, who do you think I am? A missionary? The reason we began with find your calling this morning is because of the pull that you're calling, the pull that it has, it fuels your desire

to find your identity. I wanna look at one quick passage here, 2 Timothy 2, 1 and 2. 2 Timothy 2, 1 and 2 says this, it says, you then my child be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, in trust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. I want you to notice, there are four generations in these two verses, okay? So you, this is Timothy, by the way, Timothy's receiving this letter from Paul. So you then my child be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And here we go, and what you have heard from me, there's two generations right there. What you Timothy have heard from me, Paul. Okay, so we got Paul and Timothy. What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, in trust to faithful men. That's the third generation, faithful people, right? So Paul sent it to Timothy,

and he's telling Timothy in trust this to faithful people who will be able to teach others also. Fourth generation, in that one verse, in 2 Timothy 2, 2, four generations in that one verse. Now that's cool, but I want you to consider this. And this, that's a whole other sermon. I'm not even gonna preach that this morning. I wanted to consider Timothy's perspective as he's hearing these words.

Could it be that he was thinking, you want me to do what now? You want me to entrust what you've given me to other people, Paul, I'm not you. I'm Timothy, I'm not Paul. If it, why don't you come down, Paul? Why don't you come and entrust these things to faithful men who are gonna teach other people also? Timothy might have had a point. Timothy was probably like 19 at this point. He's a young guy. He's pastoring a church in Ephesus. This is the occasion that he gets this letter in. Ephesus, as we know, was a completely bonkers church. There were people, there was weird things happening in Ephesus, okay? Ephesus was a crazy, that's like, what happens in Ephesus stays in Ephesus, okay? That's kind of what was happening in Ephesus. And he is pastoring, Timothy, 19 year old Timothy, right, is pastoring a church in Ephesus. And he's gonna have to tell people older than him,

hey, these are the things that you need to know. You need to lock this stuff in and you need to be able to teach it to other people also. You don't think Timothy had the thought of like, maybe I'm under qualified for this. Maybe I don't know what I need to do. All right, do, am I, am I sure that I have what it takes to actually do this? Am I, is this my time to lead already? Like Paul, why don't you, I mean, I think that's actually a really good argument that Timothy could make to Paul, it's like, hey, are you busy? Can you come to Ephesus? Because it's right there, I mean, it's like, we're not, you know, the known world at that point was not some huge place, come on, man, come on, just swing by Ephesus and entrust these to faithful men. When we say, find your identity, what we mean is that you need to begin to feel the weight of the calling that you have. As a Christian, as somebody who claims

to follow Jesus Christ, you automatically have a calling on your life. I believe I've demonstrated that quite clearly this morning. You have a calling that you need to find. You have a calling that you need to enact, that you need to start to move onto. But you're never going to get there if you don't know how God made you, if you don't know your identity in Christ, you can't figure those things out. So what happens is you feel, you begin to feel the weight of your calling and then that helps you find your identity, the weight of your calling.

When you look at the life and ministry of Jesus, Jesus is discussing leadership with his disciples long before they're leading, long before they're leading. This is like year one stuff, he's talking about leadership with them. When you begin to feel the calling of discipling people, I remember, so this is just personal testimony time here, when I began to feel that calling of discipling people, I had all those questions come up like, who am I? I hadn't been to seminary, I hadn't been to nothing, I hadn't done all these things. I was just in love with the Lord, I just loved the Lord. And all of a sudden, I'm like, oh wait, I have this whole calling that needs to be fulfilled. I have this whole thing that I need to do that's going to cost me things, that's going to be difficult, that's going to be, I'm going to be able to have to raise conversation topics that point to the Lord,

like I'm going to have to share my testimony, I need to know what my testimony is, right? All these questions are just kind of popping up. And I'm reading this book by this guy, his name's Erwin McManus, he's actually a pastor in Los Angeles now, but he wrote a book a long time ago, called An Unstoppable Force, a great little book. I'm unsure of myself, I happened to go to a conference where Erwin Raphael McManus was speaking at that conference, and he has this little table where people can go by and just talk to him, and I got my book signed, I have an unstoppable force signed by Erwin Raphael McManus, man, come on. But in that, I will never forget this till I'm dead. Even then, I'm going to remember it in heaven. I went into Erwin Raphael McManus, and I just, look, I'm honest to a fault, if you don't know me that well, just I'm honest to a fault, okay, I say things I shouldn't say,

and sometimes it's terrible for me, and sometimes it's terrible for you, and I'm not trying to pick, okay, it just is. But I, I don't know how I came off, but I went to Erwin McManus, and I said, hey, listen, I've read your book, I really like it, I really do feel like, I have this kind of call to disciple people, I had this call to share my testimony, but I'm really afraid, like when I go up to people, I'm really afraid to say, like what I need to say, I don't really know how to start, but even though I know some tips and tricks, I'm afraid, and he, he probably wouldn't remember this at all, maybe he does, maybe he tells this story too, I don't know, I'm the unknown guy though, he definitely didn't get my name. He just said to me, in all the love he could,

it sounds like you don't love people enough, okay? Yeah, probably right. He just said it just so like pastorally, so calmly, so matter of fact, and he wasn't trying to, like he wasn't sticking to landing, he didn't flip the bat, he just said it. And man, like I said, I'll never forget it, and he was 100% right. It's because I was so stuck on myself, I was so stuck in my own insecurity, like what do I do next, how will it make me look, what kind of impression am I leading, blah, blah, blah, it was just about me, and I didn't feel the weight of that calling, it didn't, the weight of that calling wasn't about loving people, it was about doing the next thing religiously. Let the calling weigh on you. Sarah, I just wanna leave you with these three things. I wanna leave you with like let the weight of your calling motivate you to do these things, okay? So let it motivate you, number one,

let the weight of your calling, let it crush you, let it just, let it fall upon you, look at the whole thing, tell the Lord that you're nervous about it, tell the Lord you're not sure, tell the Lord you don't even know if you love people that much, tell him, he already knows, talk to him about it, let that motivate you to discover how you're made to fulfill your calling. Not everybody is made the same way, that might be a shock to some of you, but we're all very different from one another, okay? We had different perspectives and proclivities to use, to help you figure out how you're different. Our church uses something called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, MBTI, okay? It's nothing magical, it's personality psychology, it's fine, right? Like we don't endorse all of it, it's just really helpful to understand how you're different than a lot of other people, okay?

There's 16 personality types, no, there's nothing, again, there's nothing crazy magical about that, it's just a way for you to understand your own proclivities, your own perspectives, things that you're usually good at, things that you usually end up doing, and you can begin to figure out how your identity informs your calling. A lot of times what happens is, people grow up in a church, and the only people they see leading are people on a stage. So they think they have to be either a worship leader or a preacher. And nine times out of 10, they're bad at both, right? This is not some like,

nobody's dying to get into my job, okay? Like nobody's like, oh please. Usually people aren't good at it. And that's okay, most people shouldn't be good at any job. Right, jobs can be specialized, it's fine. But your identity is a big part of your calling. You're like, oh I don't like to speak in front of people, I don't like to be on stage. Fine, the Lord's not calling you to do that, probably. The Lord didn't call me to be a middle linebacker in the NFL, okay? He didn't, I swear, I promise. Part of the way I know that is because like my shoulders are skinny, okay? Like I'm not gonna be able to put that much weight on, okay, I can't read defenses, I don't have lateral movement, okay, I can't do the cheetah right there, I can't figure that out. There's nothing wrong with that, I know it's funny, but like think about how you're made and then think about what you're trying to do spiritually

and you need to have some kind of synergy with that going on. You need to understand how you're made and to not be somebody that you're not, but to be somebody that God has made you to be. It doesn't mean you don't grow past that, it means though that you understand where you are. Nothing wrong with being sober about your identity. Let the weight of your calling motivate you to fulfill, to discover how you're made, to find your identity, fulfill your calling. Second one, let it motivate you to discipline yourself to work toward your calling. Any calling requires work.

This is digging, this is the shovel work, this is the spade work. And some of that digging will actually require you to change. Let the Lord lead, but let your calling motivate it. Lastly, let the weight of your calling motivate you to walk into places with the intent to disciple people. Look, some of you just got real tight when I said all of that sentence, okay? I understand it's intimidating to walk into your workplace or like maybe a place that you frequent a lot of times, maybe like a meetup space. It's intimidating, right? And then you'll be like, ah, how am I gonna save all these people?

What do I, is it like a big tent revival? How do I, what's next here? Do I just, do I walk somebody cold and say, do you know the Lord? Do you know what happened if you die right now? Look, that's not what I mean. I don't mean to do that. Here's what I mean. I mean that you are finding your identity, how you're made. You understand that how you're made is gonna require things of you that you need discipline for. And you also understand that if you are never around, lost people, you will never learn how to disciple people. So I'm not saying you gotta know the whole game plan, but I am saying you gotta get on the field. Some of you are functionally insulated from a world that is lost, dying, and going to hell. You never interact with those people. And you never try. And you got your excuses, you got your things, you got like, oh, it's my prior commitments, it's my kids, it's my, it's,

I will simply tell you, again, this is just an old saw for me now. You are busy with what you wanna be busy with. Don't tell me you're busy. I'm busy too, we're all busy. You're not more busy than other people. You think you are, but you're not. Walk into places with the intent to disciple people. Begin to pray for specific people that you see on a regular basis who you know don't know the Lord. And just begin to pray for them. Just begin to pray for the Lord to work in them that you could take a step toward that direction. And it's all in remembering, look, all of this, right, as you're efforting, this is effort, this is digging. But remember, remember, your hope is in the power of God working in the lives of people. I'm not telling you you gotta dig on your own. I'm telling you Jesus is already digging, so join him.

That lost person that you know at work, Jesus is already digging. He's already there. The Spirit's already convicting. The Lord wants to use you. Pick up a shovel, because discipling people is the only way forward for our church. As you begin to wrestling with that calling, I want you to consider this as a next step, our vision for 2026. We wanna see an average of 26 people in LeaderLab. LeaderLab is something that's coming up, we're gonna announce it here in a second, so I won't make that go longer. But I will tell you that LeaderLab is a way for you to begin to find your identity. It's a way for you to begin to think about, like how has the Lord called me to lead? Who am I in Christ? Like, what's my personality type? How do I leverage that for the kingdom? How do I do that in leading other people? And you might say, I'm not a leader. I'm only 19 years old. How am I gonna pastor these people?

I'm not deacon material, I'm not pastor material. I don't know the first thing about church work. I don't know. I'm not asking you to. I'm asking you to get on the field. This is our vision for 2026, in part because we understand if we're gonna grow as a church, we need to pray the prayer that Jesus tells us to pray to ask for more workers, ask for more workers in the fields, right? The harvest is here and it's plentiful. We need more workers. As a church, our commitment is to help you dig, to help you dig smarter, to help you hear stories of other people digging and how difficult it is and you can pray for them and they can pray for you. This is not easy work, but this is work we can do together. This is the work that a church should do together. So let's do it, let's pray. Lord, we know that you are working now.

We know that you are in the middle of, you're in the middle of healing someone right now. You're in the middle of calling somebody to yourself. You're in the middle of convicting someone of sin so they can find repentance. You're in the middle of doing all those things and it's the work that you call us to. It's the work that you call us to join in or help us to not be weary in doing good.

Help us to remember that our hope is simply in you working, not in our own expertise, not in how many skins we got on the wall, not how many years of service we have. Lord, help us to understand that that calling is fresh. It's today. Help us to pick up shovels. Help us to work together as a church to disciple people as the only way forward, as the only way to see your kingdom come, your will be done in Burleson as it is in heaven. Help us to do that together as a family.

It's your name that we pray, amen. Amen.