National Community Church Audio Podcast

Dr. Mark Batterson continues our Win The Day Series with Habit #6! Time is measured in MINUTES, but life is measured in MOMENTS. You don’t FIND TIME, you have to MAKE TIME. How? For starters, curse the barren fig trees. These are the things that waste time, waste energy. How do you curse the barren fig tree? You establish boundaries and establish priorities. If managing minutes is a science, then managing moments is an art form. It’s recognizing teachable moments and making the most of them. It’s accumulating experiences, rather than possessions.

How you do ANYTHING is how you’ll do EVERYTHING. The good news? If you do little things like they’re big things, God will do big things like they’re little things. The key is kaizen—an uncompromising commitment to continual improvement. It starts with a growth mindset, and there is no finish line. You keep setting stretch goals until the day you die!

There are weeks when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen. This felt like one of those weeks. This weekend we hold space—we catch our breath and collect our thoughts after a difficult week in Washington, DC. We are here for such a time. We are here for such a place as this. We stand in the gap as peace makers, grace givers, and tone setters. We believe God for racial reconciliation and political healing. We remind ourselves of who we are, where we are, and why we are as a church.

If you want to change your life, you have to change your story. You can’t just flip the calendar, you have to FLIP THE SCRIPT. It’s the first of seven habits in Win The Day, and it’s a high leverage habit. In the science of cybernetics, there are two kinds of change. First-order change is behavioral—it’s doing something more or less. First-order change can facilitate a quick-fix, but second-order change passes the test of time. Second-order change is conceptual—it’s mind over matter. At the end of the day, your explanations are more important than your experiences. Long story short? The best story wins!

When Jesus was born into the world, He didn’t just bring hope with Him. He WAS and IS hope and is a revelation to every person that encounters Him. To one, a revelation of hope brought confirmation, to another joy, to another redemption. He was the fulfillment of prophecies of old. He was the embodiment of comfort in the now. But what we found in the incarnation is that He is a God who reveals His presence in any and all circumstances. We believe that He still reveals hope today – even in the midst of a year like 2020!God’s revelation often comes in different ways through different vessels, so this weekend we thought it was appropriate to share a tag team message. As our Campus Pastors all speak to a unique dimension of hope, we pray that God would enlighten our hearts to see our world, our neighborhood, ourselves as He sees...with eyes of eternal hope.

Pastor Joshua Symonette continues our advent series with a celebration of Hope! Hope is a powerful force that can propel us forward like a canon or a rocket. But there are times when our hope fades or takes a hit. It is usually in the "in-between" times or in the middle of our current reality and our anticipated reality. In Matthew 2, the Magi, who are on their way to find baby Jesus, give us an example of the celebration of hope and what it looks like to pursue with only a revelation and no evidence.

Hope had and has been at the core of Jewish faith for its entirety of existence: hoping for freedom from slavery, hoping for justice, hoping for peace, hoping for a savior. When Christ came, heaven touched earth in a new and profound way. God’s glory was being shown, not by splitting a sea, with a pillar of fire, or by the glowing face of Moses. God’s glory was embodied in the small and breakable form of the human life of Jesus. Jesus is our hope. He is THE hope. When the shepherds found Christ, they couldn’t help but proclaim hope to the world around them. The Magi’s natural reaction was to celebrate hope in the presence of Christ. And all who came across Jesus’ path were confronted with a revelation of hope. During this series, we want to light a candle to the profound gift of hope that we find in Christ.

You can get an A for EFFORT. You can get an A for TRUTH. Are you getting an A for LOVE? Many decades after the Ephesians receive a letter from the Apostle Paul, the Apostle John calls them back to their FIRST LOVE. How? One, REMEMBER. Two, REPENT. Three, DO WHAT YOU DID AT FIRST.

Ephesians 6 is a message Paul gives the Ephesians to wear the full armor of God, every piece. From warrior to a wrestler, their context was fighting for life or death. Dr. Foth imparts to us the same hope Paul gave back then reminding us to not duck or run away but to stand firm and fight the good fight. We are not going down no matter the situation because we have a destination.

There are 59 one another statements in the New Testament. Two of the most significant are found in Ephesians 5—SUBMIT to one another and SING to one another. When practiced in two-part harmony, marriage turns into a melody. Marriage is an ICON—an earthly representation of this eternal reality called the Trinity. You have to make sure the ICON doesn’t become an IDOL. That puts an impossible burden to bear on your spouse because you’re asking them to do for you what ONLY CHRIST CAN. But with Christ at the center, marriage mirrors the diversity and unity of the Trinity.

It takes moral courage to STAND AGAINST what is WRONG and STAND FOR what is RIGHT. It takes moral courage to SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER, to SPEAK THE TRUTH IN LOVE. Living not by lies is refusing to bow to cultural idols or ideologies if they don’t pass the TRUTH TEST. It’s living according to your biblical convictions even if it’s COUNTERCULTURE. It’s RISKING YOUR REPUTATION for what you know is GOOD and RIGHT and TRUE. It’s DISAGREEING FREELY yet LOVING REGARDLESS. It’s a conscience taken captive by the Word of God and Spirit of God.

From the very beginning of our lives, we learn and grow from imitating others. The question over time becomes WHAT and WHO should we imitate? When you find faith in Christ, you are given both an identity as a child of God and a calling to imitate God (Ephesians 5:1). Identity and action are interlinked. Things like love and purity and sacrifice are virtues that we should strive to imitate. But that only happens when we know who we are. What you believe about yourself determines how you live your life! Our passage today gives both guidance in who we are as well as what we should do. We are love, we are light, we are God’s children. You can’t control anyone else’s action, but when you live out God’s light, you shine brightness into darkness. We hope and pray that as a church community we are people that don’t stand by complaining, but instead go out and hang a street light to provide warmth and direction for those around us. Join us we talk about what it looks like to imitate God.

The disintegration of civilization is caused by the deterioration of what British historian Arnold Toynbee called the CREATIVE MINORITY. The church is the creative minority, as well as a moral minority. It must swim upstream and go against the grain. Then—and only then—can it catalyze revivals, reformations, and renaissances. The key to this creative minority? Unity in diversity. That is what results in spiritual maturity. That is what nets this BELOVED COMMUNITY we call the church. In the words of NCCer David Grizzle, “Unity among DISSIMILAR people serves the purpose of being INDISPUTABLE PROOF that God is in the house!” Let’s not settle for the façade of UNIFORMITY. Let’s strive for biblical unity!

Whether it’s racial tension or political polarization, cancel culture or social media shaming, navigating this cultural moment feels like a high wire act. How do we stay balanced? How do we stay positive? How do we shift the atmosphere? The Apostle Paul shares four cardinal virtues that guide our cultural engagement—humility, gentleness, patience, and tolerance. When we practice those principles, heaven invades earth. Instead of politicizing, we theologize the world around us.

Power has been a pursuit of humanity since the inception of our existence. And our world is in a constant state of drama as a result of the pursuit to possess power. Paul, the apostle and theologian, writes to a group of Christians in a place called Ephesus. Power is one of themes in this letter, which is an encouragement and a reminder of who has ultimate power and how we can access it. It is only that ultimate power, at work in us, in partnership with Christ, that can do far more than we could ever imagine. That is the opportunity that Paul is reminding us of and praying for on behalf of the church in Ephesus.

“TO SEE FOREVER” is the title of this week’s message. We explore the Apostle Paul’s thoughts as he hits the PAUSE button in his letter to his friends in Ephesus, now western Turkey. He reflects on his IDENTITY, DESTINY, and AUTHORITY from a vantage that is his alone.

The Bible is full of plot twists and turns- a Hebrew baby raised in the house of Pharaoh delivers the Hebrews from Egypt, the shepherd with the sling defies the Philistine, the baby in the manger is God in human form, the crucified Jesus walks out of a tomb. But Jesus had one more plot twist up his sleeve-- the inclusion of the Gentiles into the promises and the blessing given to Abraham. God is not just at work to merge two worlds-- heaven and earth. He is also at work to merge two peoples-- the Jew and the Gentile-- into one family of God. The destiny of heaven on earth is dependent on the development of this new community. It will require deep awareness of the reconciling work of Jesus on the cross, a relentless pursuit of peace and unity, and a passionate commitment to demonstrating the character, ways, and mission of God to the world.

So many of us find ourselves stuck. Stuck in routine. Stuck in frustration. Stuck in systems that hold us down. Stuck in destructive patterns. Stuck in sin that tangles us up. It almost seems impossible to escape. But do you know that God works best in the impossible? Ephesians 2:1-10 speaks to our journey in Christ. It take us on a journey from who we were, to who we are, to who we can become. We go from our destruction, to God’s grace, to God’s purpose for us. Do you know that God’s grace can overcome sin, satan, and every structure? His grace catapults us to faith. His faith fills us to understand who we are. We are God’s workmanship, His masterpiece, his work of art. And it’s when we know who we are that we can understand where we are going. We go from identity to destiny. And in Christ, and through God’s Spirit, we can lean in to understand what it means to fully live!

You are not the mistakes you’ve made. You are not the labels people have put on you. You are who God says you are—nothing less, nothing else. You are BLESSED with every spiritual blessing in Christ. You are CHOSEN before the beginning of time. You are BLAMELESS in the eyes of God. You are ADOPTED by the Heavenly Father. You are REDEEMED by the blood of Christ. You are SEALED by the Holy Spirit, and you are STAMPED with the image of God.