Again, I want to welcome you guys and just say thanks for being here tonight at Resonate
Church.
I don't think I get to say this often enough, but I think that I'm always just thankful
for you guys being able to come here, being able to put in your schedule just the rhythm
of worship and being able to sing to God, being able to hear the scriptures preached
and being able to connect with other people as well.
And so I'm glad you're here.
My name is Keith.
I'm lead pastor here at Resonate Church.
And tonight as you see, it's a little bit stripped down.
It's kind of the essentials and what we're going to be talking about tonight, hopefully
is kind of in alignment with you, what you see and have experienced so far.
And I'm always thankful while it's fun to have the base hitting, you know, and your
liver, liver quivering, you know, and stuff like that.
It's also nice to know that the Holy Spirit does not need subwoofers to move in our hearts.
And so it's a beautiful thing to, to experienced.
I don't know if you've ever had the experience of one of those moments that they call it
deja vu, but maybe you've, you've kind of had this moment where you've, you've experienced
something and kind of as you experience, there's this idea, there's this feeling in
your gut that you've had this experience before.
You know, I don't know if you've had that.
It's kind of a freaky thing.
I've had that a few times where I could just know that there's been some other time that
I've experienced this thing and it's just kind of this weird moment.
I remember another time a few years ago where I was taking out the trash and, and I was
taking out the trash and I was just like, I've experienced this before and I came back
and, and I told my wife, I was like, I had this like thing that, that like I was putting
the bag in the trash can, I was like, I've had this exact thought before and she was
like, we've lived here for years, Keith, every week.
You have that same thought, you know, I don't know if that's you.
If you've had this moment or not, it's kind of this crazy thing, but, but as we've been
going through this series, real truth at the right time, really what we're doing is going
back and the people who are sharing with you, teaching out of Scripture, going back to some
of the primary things that have changed their lives as a part of Scripture and kind of stories
that go back to that.
And for me, I've, you know, in the last six years, I've preached 210 times roughly in
Resonate Church and, and through that, you've probably heard a lot of these things.
And so this might be a deja vu moment for us to be able to experience this.
However, I've never preached this before with a beard.
So that's the new thing that you get tonight.
And so maybe that'll change everything up.
Nice.
So these are those moments.
It's not, here's, here's what I want to do.
I want to shift gears really quick and kind of go deep on you.
And I want to ask this question, if you have your loop, if that made it into your program,
if you pull that out, have something to write on it, because I want to ask you a question.
And if you have something, I want you to write this down.
I want to ask the question.
If you don't have anything, just ponder this in your mind, begin to think about this.
But I really want to probe this question.
Who are you?
Who are you?
And I really want to make it as vague and ambiguous as that question, because I want
you to respond to that.
If you have a piece of paper, if you have the loop there, you can begin to write down that
on that blank side that's for you to take notes on.
That's opposite of all the announcements that are on there, but you can kind of just begin
to write down what it is.
If someone were to ask that question, who are you?
How would you respond to that?
What's the first thing that comes to your mind?
Don't think too hard.
Who are you?
You might start off with your name.
You might start off with characteristics about you.
Things you do, relationships that you're in, things that define your life.
Who are you?
I'll let that just kind of begin to kind of work its way into your heart.
Again, I really want to go simple tonight.
I really want to kind of narrow this down.
I want us to kind of focus on the essentials.
blank stage, open hearts, who are you?
The thing is, this is all going back to this idea of identity.
One of the things is your pastor is that they say pastors have basically one sermon.
They package that all around different ways, right?
I think for me, it all goes back to identity and for us to understand our identity because
that affects so much in our lives.
When we begin to think about the way we process our relationships, the way we process our
vocation, the way we process our purpose, the way we process happiness, our hobbies,
all of these things often relate back to answering the question somewhere connected to our identity.
Somewhere connected to this idea that we are somebody and who is that?
And it's a lot of itself discovery.
We do things to figure out who we are.
We respond to the world in terms of the lens that we see ourselves.
And so I know that this gets really deep and I know that that makes some of you who are
not very introspective, a little nervous as we get into this.
But I think this is where it begins to help us to have clarity in our lives.
And the thing that I want to bring to us is immense amount of clarity in a confusing world
in a world that sometimes we struggle to know what security looks like, what our relationships
look like.
Really having clarity in a few areas of our life is really the lifesaver.
And one of those is the identity by which we live our lives by and in terms of my life,
in terms of what I want to give you, in terms of what has changed my life.
This is one of these things.
This is my last time to talk to you.
And so I saved this time for my last time to be able to communicate this idea.
And really what it goes back down to is this idea of who I am and what does it mean to
be a follower of Christ?
So for those of you here in this room that would say I'm a follower of Christ, the orientation
of my worldview is through the lens that there is a God and that the Bible is correct and
that I have given my life to God through Jesus.
And so this being a follower of Christ, what does that tangibly mean?
And then how does that align with who I am?
That's a significant, significant question for us to answer.
And really when we begin to get down to this, whether we know it or not, sometimes ambiguity
creates a kind of discord in our life and we go to the list that begins to define what
does it mean to be a follower of Christ and how does that relate to who I am?
And so tonight I want to get into one of those lists.
I want to get into that and I want to unpack this to be able to help us to understand how
we answer the question, who am I and how that identity fundamentally affects every single
thing in our life.
To that I want to go to Galatians 5.
Galatians 5 is Paul's writing to this church.
In Galatians 5, he talks about what it means for people to walk in the Spirit.
So the Spirit empowers us to know and live in Jesus Christ.
So being a follower of Christ is empowered by this Holy Spirit.
Jesus said, it's better that I go and so I can give you the Spirit and so there's not
just one of me, but there are thousands of me who are walking this earth.
But what does it mean to be Jesus with flesh on?
For us to live in the Spirit, to walk in the Spirit and how does that really affect our
identity?
And so when we begin to get into this, this list begins to connect with all of this.
And so this begins to help us to hopefully begin to put some parameters around this.
So if you go to this, it says in verse 16 of Galatians 5, but I say walk by the Spirit
and you will not satisfy or gratify the desires of the flesh.
For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit and the desires of the Spirit are against
the flesh, for they are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things that you
want to do.
But if you're led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
Now the works of the flesh are evident and here's where we begin to get into list.
We begin to get into things, sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity,
strife, jealousy, fits of rage, rabble, race, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness,
orgies, and things like these.
He's basically saying I could name a lot of stuff that is outside of the Spirit, but I'll
just leave you with this list and tell you that I could go on and on.
And it says like this, I warn you as I warned you before that those who do such things will
not inherit the kingdom of God, but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience,
kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control against these things.
There is no law.
So in this, what we begin to see are things that we basically begin to kind of orient our
view of what it means to be a follower of Christ.
And so we begin to say these are the don'ts, these are the do's.
As Josh introduced earlier in the summer, this is the gospel of don't and the gospel
of do, and really this gospel of don't and gospel of do begins to put these two different
pictures up and we begin to orient our understanding of what it means to be a follower of Christ,
what it means for us to be an identified follower of Christ up against oftentimes these lists.
And here's what happens when we begin to do that, it really becomes black and white.
I am not to do these things and I am to do these things.
And that judges and gives me this acceptance before God.
How much of this side that I do versus how much of this side that I do?
Can I be characterized as deceitful or can I be characterized as patient?
And what happens is in this, what we have created is a false gospel.
This false gospel always leads us to an understanding of really a bondage kind of gospel that always
leads us into bondage.
And the problem is oftentimes this can appear very spiritual and it can really pierce our
identities as we become followers of Christ identified in this way with these kind of
lists that are dictating our actions.
And what happens is we can get into bondage by this false gospel but believe that we are
following in a significant way after Jesus Christ.
Because this is what Jesus said, this is what following Him looks like, this is what living
by the Spirit looks like.
So I don't do those things because you say I won't inherit the kingdom of God but I do
these things because this is what walking by the Spirit looks like, right?
However, one of the most significant things in my life was a grammar lesson in terms of
this verse.
And so when I began to unpack this, when I began to see this, see my life had been formatted
by this understanding of who I am based upon this formula.
Belief plus obedience equals acceptance.
Belief plus obedience equals acceptance.
And really when I look at this list and really that's what it kind of looks like.
So I believe and I obey and therefore I am accepted, I walk by the Spirit.
However, this is a false gospel.
And I think this false gospel has woven itself into many of our identities so deeply that
we believe that we're living as a follower of Christ and yet this false gospel is actually
putting us in bondage.
And so we live and I don't know if you've ever had this like experience that you're doing
all that you can that you're desiring that you've believed in Jesus.
And the Holy Spirit is mentioning so you have these desires to do the right thing and yet
still you don't do the right thing.
And yet still there's this bondage that you feel and you feel stuck.
You beat yourself up and you're not living in freedom, you're not living in grace and
though you can sing about it, it is not present in your life and your identity is upon a false
gospel.
And this is what a much of my life has been lived out until I understood the relationship
between the grammar and the syntax of one of these verses.
See what you have to understand is all of this fruit is not this separate fruit of these
lists that you say I can do this, I'm not doing this, I'm not doing this.
This fruit is interrelated.
You see what you have is a singular noun, a singular verb and a plural predicate.
So let's look at this that the fruit of the spirit is right.
So I don't want to get all geeky on here, but you know, if you begin to think through
that, that doesn't make great grammar, right, but it's terrific theology.
So what we begin to see is that it's not the fruits of the spirit are, but the fruit singular
of the spirit is, and it gives a list of things here.
And this is crucial why you need to understand this, because when you begin to understand
this in this terminology, you begin to not live in this false gospel, but you begin to
live in the true gospel of grace, because what we begin to see is what this looks like
when we begin to have a new idea that belief equals acceptance, right, from the very beginning
that you don't work for your acceptance, you work from your acceptance.
And this begins to take that list and begins to completely take it into our identity in
the way that we understand ourselves in a completely different way.
So when we begin to see this, we begin to see that these fruits are inseparable.
And when we begin to look at this list, oftentimes I think that what we begin to do is this,
we begin to see where we measure up.
I don't do these things, but I do these things.
And so when we begin to see this, we can look at this and say, well, you know, I look at
this and I've got the faithfulness thing.
I've got that down, but I think I need to work a little bit on the patience thing, right?
And so I need to pray for patience in my life.
I haven't heard this week, someone say this, and I think it's just so ingrained.
This person has been a Christian for years and years and years.
And I realized that this theology is still permeating the church, that we begin to see
these things as I'm doing pretty well at faithfulness, but not so well in patience or self-control.
I'm not doing very well at that, but man, I am gentle.
And what we begin to mistake is the fruit of the spirit for the fruit of our personalities.
And so what you begin to see is in all of this, these are traits when we begin to walk
by the spirit, all of these fruits are manifested in our life.
Everything, all these traits are the fruit singular of the spirit.
And so we begin to miss the point.
And so we might see people that say, oh, I know this person that has this trait of patience,
but again, that's a personality trait, not a spiritual trait.
That's a personality fruit, not a spiritual fruit.
And so faithfulness, this is confidence, this is assurance, this is conviction.
There's someone that speaks their mind and some of you are like that.
Some of you, you have that, but if it is a spiritual fruit, here's what it'll also be
accompanied with.
It'll also be accompanied with gentleness.
So that it's not just a personality thing that, yeah, I'm happy to speak my mind to
say all these things, but I'm also not very gentle either.
When we see the fruit of the spirit, it's not, we need to work on one side of this thing.
That is not how this works.
What we begin to see is the fruit of the spirit is always fully integrated together.
And now some of our personalities, you know, there might be some of you that, man, you
are gentle.
You are kind.
You are, you're sweet, but, but when we begin to look at this, this is not accompanied by
moments of courage in your life either.
That when they go together, truth and love always collide when you are walking in step
with the spirit.
And so what happens is we begin to see this and we begin to work through this.
We begin to measure our spirituality based upon our ability to handle those traits, to
be able to do those traits and oftentimes what we do is we mistake the spirit moving
in our lives for personality fruit in our lives.
And so what we begin to see is our identity as a follower of Christ based upon a few things
that we do well.
You know, so there's nine of these.
And if you do three, you know, that's at 33%, you know, I can play in the majors, you know,
that's good enough.
So I can, I can, I can look at this and I can begin to say, yeah, the spirit is transformative
in my life because I'm a gentle person, because I'm a patient person.
But what doesn't happen there is there's not this courageousness.
There's not this truthfulness.
And when you begin to put all these together, what you begin to see is it has to go together.
And so when we begin to think about this, there's people that can be one or the other.
But when we begin to see this spiritual fruit in our life, what it is, is not just simply
the way our personality is woven together.
But it's the actual transformation of our character.
And when we begin to look at that, we take that list in a completely different way.
No longer is that measuring our identity as a follower of Christ.
That in its holistic understanding, it's in its entirety.
We begin to take that and say, this is what happens when the spirit begins to work in
your life.
Timothy Keller said, we don't see our maturity by our strengths.
He says this, you're only as mature as your weakest trait.
You're only as mature as your weakest trait.
So when we think about what it means to actually follow Christ and the maturity of what it
means to walk in Him, you're only as mature.
So the way to measure your spiritual maturity is to look at your weakest trait on the list.
Now that's not great news for many of us.
But what it does is it casts us headlong, not into reliance upon our personality to
be accepted before Jesus, but the reliance upon grace given to us to be accepted by Jesus
Christ.
And this list completely doesn't say this is what makes you acceptable or not.
You're already accepted by Christ.
This is the determination.
This is the litmus test.
This is the definition of what it means to see God transform our lives.
And so that thing that I'm not great at, what I know when I'm walking in the spirit is that
thing begins to have movement in there.
That where I used to be with that, I know they're no longer, but this requires something
significant in our lives.
And Paul goes on, it says, against such things, there is no law, the very end of that list.
Now Paul's using that one in a rhetorical way for emphasis.
But two, as we begin to see this all put together, it goes back to Romans eight, one, he begins
to say, this is not about the law.
He's tying this back to a very key understanding for us that you can't legislate this thing.
It is an internal thing.
You can't just say, I am going to make this list, and that makes me acceptable into the
law.
That makes me acceptable to God.
So this performance-based acceptance is not the way that you cannot legislate fruit, in
other words.
You can't just put laws together and create this fruit in its entirety because then, again,
we go back to personality fruit, not spiritual fruit.
The law cannot change the heart.
When there's commands, when there's these things that you must do this, here's the thing,
that does not change our heart, that merely has behavior modification.
And what happens is for us, we begin to lose ourself when we begin to just say, this is
what I'm going to do.
I'm just going to try harder in this, and I'm just going to try to white-knuckle my way
into this idea that the law can do behavior modification, but it cannot do character transformation.
And so to do this, this thing requires something else of us.
We cannot just look at this list and just say, I need to try harder to do these things.
I'm not as patient as I need to be, so I need to be more patient.
So I need to figure out how I modify my behavior to be more patient, to have more self-control,
to be more gentle, whatever it is that's on that list that's not necessarily the best
trait.
There's another way, and here's the true gospel.
You see, let me introduce this, that fruits, the fruits of our lives, all of those things
are not really about those things.
They're about something else.
Your patience is not really about your patience, that your gentleness is not really about your
gentleness.
When it becomes a part of the work of the Spirit in your life, fruits are really about roots.
Roots equal roots.
Now we begin to think about this, kind of this idea of a tree.
I want you to kind of think and kind of give a mental picture of having this entire tree,
and if we were just to cut it right down the center, all the way down so you could see
the entirety of what is above ground, what is below ground, what you see as an organism
that is somehow, in part of its scene, if you think about a fruit tree, there's part
of it.
And I don't know if you've been out picking cherries.
We discovered the tookie cherry farm this year, and we have eaten cherries and cherries.
There's like stains on my kid's face.
Everything has a cherry stain, and the bathroom has a constant rotation through it.
So this is just what this is like, if you've ever eaten too many cherries, you know what
I'm talking about.
So in this, there's these cherry trees, and they're amazing.
Was that too much information?
That was a beard talking, that wasn't me.
Then above, you know, below the ground, you have this entire root structure.
And so if you were to cut that off, if you were to cut that tree down, you wouldn't think
at all that that would continue to produce cherries, and yet what happens in this behavior
modification thing is that we ignore the roots, and we just try to focus on the fruits.
That we ignore what it comes from, and just say, I'm just going to try to make something
else.
I'm going to try to pop out this fruit in some kind of way.
But the reality is the fruits of your life are always determined by the roots in your
life.
I think we have that up there.
The fruits of your life are always determined by the roots of your life.
You need to seal that, you need to write that down, you need to write it on your palm, because
this is a significant principle for you to understand in your life, that you should never
expect fruit-wise, which you've never invested into root-wise.
And whatever is coming out fruit-wise is always going back to what is happening root-wise.
See, you don't do anything fruit-wise that is not connected to your root system.
So whatever your root system is wrapped around, you will bear that fruit.
Now some of that fruit is stress.
Some of that fruit is confusion.
Some of that fruit is a lack of faithfulness, lack of patience.
Next step on that other list, because your roots have been latched onto something that
is not bearing the kind of fruit, but your roots and your fruit are always tied together.
And so for us, as we're trying to help give pictures that connect back to this thing,
when we're saying, what is our fruits looks like?
It always has to go back to saying, what is our root system like?
What is this like?
Is it deep?
Is it wide?
I remember once I was in college and I had to go on an errand to the neighboring town
and while that happened, kind of this little tornado went through my college town and I
came back and there was all these trees that were down.
And there's two really different kind of trees that were blown down in two different types
of ways.
One of them were the oaks.
And the oaks came up and you saw the entire root system.
They would just pull up the earth.
And so they were down and you just saw this huge hole and you saw all these roots just
sticking up because these oaks would just kind of spread out these wide roots and they
would pull up.
But you would look at a pine tree and oftentimes these pine trees would just be snapped over
because they're different root system.
Oaks spread out those roots.
The pines would really drive this deep tap root.
And so when the pressure came against it, it would just snap, but the roots wouldn't
move.
It wouldn't move.
And so in all that, we have to say this is all connected, that what happens in the visible
part of our life is always connected to the root of the invisibility of our life.
And this, if the fruits are completely tied to the roots, then we need to ask, what are
we rooted into?
In verse 24, Paul goes on and says this, and those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified
the flesh with his passions and desires.
See he goes on and he's helping us to understand what is going on here.
He's helping us to say, you need to see how this is all together.
The fruits, they're always tied to this.
And if they're not tied to the roots, then it's just this behavior modification.
But here's what you need to understand.
The roots have got to be tied into a significant relationship.
And that significant relationship is the identifier of your life.
And that is this relationship between you and Christ as that you are in Christ, in
Colossians.
He says, this is the great mystery.
Us, you in Christ, in Christ in you.
And when we begin to tie that together, this is the significant part of the identity.
So who you are.
This is you belong to Christ.
And you need to get this because here's the thing, you are loved and accepted by God.
And you're loved and accepted by God as he accepts and loves his own son.
And I think that many of us still have this idea of trying to check off the list and this
is what makes us acceptable.
And so in terms of who we are, in terms of our identity, it's still in this performance
kind of vein.
And how we know this is sometimes if we were to think back to, if you're praying to God,
what expression is God's face towards you when you pray to him?
Is it indifferent?
Is it frowning?
Is it disappointed when you pray?
What is God's posture towards you?
Because you've got to understand that belief equals acceptance.
When you believe in Jesus Christ and His work on the cross is the payment for your sin,
your sins past, present, and future are completely wiped away from God's knowledge.
God is beaming at you, smiling.
God doesn't see your sin.
And so it's like this.
It's like if my kid comes to me and tells me, hey, Dad, I just need to confess to you.
I took gum out of my mouth and I put it under the seat of our car.
I just, I'm sorry.
But see what happened is that happened a while back, that happened a month ago.
Two weeks ago we took that car to the junkyard.
And so my posture towards my son who says, I'm so sorry, I put this piece of gum into
this car that we took to the junkyard.
It makes no sense for my heart to be frustrated at my son, right?
Now I might say thank you and I forgive you and that was obviously wrong because in principle
it was, but in the reality, in the functional part of this relationship, that transgression
has no current bearing upon my relationship with Him because it has no current consequence.
See Jesus bore the consequence of your sin and its separation from God.
And so our connection with God is that we belong in Christ and our belonging in Christ,
this is where we work from our acceptance, not for our acceptance.
And so when we begin to see this, what we begin to understand is that we are accepted
fully and completely by God.
John Bunyan, people that used to come to John Bunyan said, if you continue to tell people
that they are completely accepted by God, they'll do whatever they want.
And John Bunyan said back to them, if I tell people how accepted they are before Christ,
they'll do whatever He wants because we begin to work out of our acceptance, not from our
acceptance.
And so here's what happens.
It says to put to death that part of the flesh.
And here's what happens.
That flesh is that part of us that wants to be God, that the gospel begins to change us
from the inside out.
And so that begins to mean that from under the law, when we were under the law, it means
our performance and say, this is what makes me acceptable before God.
And our flesh is still trying to do that.
And He's saying, crucify that.
You must understand that you are accepted before God.
So crucify that part of you who is trying to be its own God and trying to measure up
to being approved and to being accepted by God.
This flesh is the part of you that is trying to work for God's smile.
The flesh is that part of you that is trying to work for God's approval.
And so what happens is that flesh takes your job and it tries to make this your primary
significance.
It will take your relationships and make them your identity and meaning.
It will take your sex and make it the only way that you really feel approved.
It will take working out and it makes it feel like this is the only time that you have control.
It'll take your hobby and it'll make it feel like this is the only time that you're really
alive.
The flesh, what the flesh is using something other than Jesus to fulfill those things.
If that is what is bringing our identity, is that are defining our identity, making
us happy, bringing us joy, then it's not functioning as it needs to.
And so we go to another part of Scripture Colossians 2, 6, and 7, Paul says this, Therefore, with
this understanding of all of this together, this is a different thing, but it means the
same.
As you have received Christ Jesus, the Lord, as you understand your identity with Him,
so walk in Him.
And so this is where this identity thing gets really important for us.
So where we have been in the flesh trying to win approval, where we've been trying to
make it right, where we've been trying to say, this is what it has to look like for me to
feel good about myself.
This is the identity.
When this becomes the primary part of your life, when you see yourself through the lens
of Jesus Christ, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him, established in the faith
just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving, roots and fruits, being rooted in the identity
of Jesus Christ as the primary understanding of who you are.
So your roots must cling and wrap around and be nourished by your understanding of Jesus
Christ and your identity in Jesus Christ.
The only way for fruit to happen, the only way for you to avoid this false gospel of
performance based acceptance is for you to have your identity, the roots of who you are
wrapped up, clinging to Jesus Christ as your identity, that you belong in Him and He is
in you.
That's rooted.
So when we begin to think through this, I want to talk through this in terms of looking
forward, telling stories about what I want to happen.
See, when I begin to think about telling my kids, I want you to be a good person.
I could say, I want you to be a good person or you're going to get in trouble.
That's law.
I want you to be a good person because if you do, you'll feel really good about yourself.
That's pride.
I want you to be a good person because it's just the right thing to do.
It's moral obligation.
The gospel says, tell my kids, you are not a good person.
There is only one good person and you are not Him.
However, you are fully accepted by God.
And that's your identity.
To be able to tell my kids, you're not a good person, flies in the face of much of what
we've seen, we see popular psychology in terms of raising our kids and parenting.
But if we tell our kids the truth in that they are inherently not good people, but they
are fully accepted by the blood of Jesus Christ, this is how you become a good person.
Not because of what you do, but because of what Christ has done for you.
All of a sudden what we've removed is the weight of becoming a good person and being
acceptable because you have been accepted first by Jesus Christ.
And when we put our roots into that, when we begin to think about, this is what I want
to teach my kids, let me go to some of the conversations I want to have, some root moments.
And so I begin to think about my little girl, care, she's five, but one day she'll be 12.
And I think about, what if we're going shopping?
So we're going shopping for clothes, and she's a 12-year-old, and she began to have this
worldview, and my goal in her life is the same goal that I have in your life is to help
you to establish roots that lead to spiritual fruits that are based upon the identity and
forming the identity of Christ in your life.
And so we go and we shop for clothes as a 12-year-old girl and her dad.
And we're shopping, and she picks out stuff.
And I begin to think about what she's holding up.
And I think about that moment where I might not approve of what she holds up.
I begin to ask, okay, why do you think that you want to wear this?
Dad, this is just what people wear.
Come on.
Okay, well, why do you think that people want to wear that?
I don't know, dad.
It looks cool, and boys notice when girls dress like this.
Well, why do you want to wear it?
So if you didn't dress like that, how would you feel?
However, God notices you whether boys do or not.
You don't have to dress in a certain way.
You don't have to act in a certain way.
Think about little moments like this.
And here's what I hope, is that years later is that identity of those roots are grounded
in my daughter.
And we have this kind of conversation.
She comes home from the date.
Seriously, dad, I don't get guys.
So we're on this date, and it's all cool and everything.
But then he just starts this long talk, and he's talking about taking it to the next level,
and he's talking about getting serious.
And he thought that, he says, I think that we'd make a really good couple.
I think we'd make a great couple.
And to be honest, wouldn't this be so much fun if we dated, since both of our friends
are in a relationship too, and we could double date, and we could have those kind of fun
things together?
And I say, so what did you say when he said that?
So she says, well, I ask him, what are your intentions?
What did he do then?
I ask.
Well, he just kind of stared at me for a few seconds and said, well, like I said, my intentions
are to date you.
Then I asked, well, what was your reply to that?
She says, well, then I said, well, I think that I'd like just to be friends until your
intentions are more than just dating.
And I sit there, and I think, good luck, guys.
This girl's rooted.
She's got an identity, and your woo won't work if that's all you have.
I think of a kid who comes into my office, and let's call him Joe.
Joe's really fixated, he's in the second semester of his freshman year, and he's fixated upon
success.
And he's not really plugged into community, but he really wants the acceptance.
He really wants to be engaged in this.
He thinks it'll be great if he kind of plugs in to resonate church.
And so he tries to plug in, and when he graduates, the offers line up, but somehow
Joe heard some of these things, and he came into college, and there's this huge hole in
his life.
There's this huge identity, and so everything was fixated upon being successful on getting
the right job, on getting the right internships, on making sure he set all this, but something
happened while he was in resonate church.
And at the end, when he graduates, the corporations line up.
He's very successful in what he's done in college.
And he has multiple offers.
He has offers for more money than he ever thought that he would make.
But somehow in this, his identity wasn't rooted in the fact that if I make a lot of money
or I have this position, and that fills that, somehow those roots began to be wrapped around
his identity in Christ.
And so he can without regret say no to those things, and he moves to a college town on the
West Coast, gets a job at a much smaller firm, making much less money so that he can help
a church plant in that town, because he has freedom from thinking that he had to win his
acceptance and who he was in his identity through money, through success.
I think of my boys, I think about that conversation I'm going to have with my son when they get
cut from the sports team, or don't make what they want to make in terms of that.
And it's that moment that every human comes face to face with, and you realize your best
isn't good enough.
And so I imagine going into one of my boys' room, just found out that he's been cut from
this sports team.
And I go into his room and say, hey, are you doing okay?
Yeah, dad, fine.
And I keep going, and I say, no, really.
I really want to know what you're thinking.
He says, I'm thinking about changing the tire on my bike.
No, no, come on.
I mean about getting cut from the team.
Dad, I said it was fine.
Hey, I know this can't be easy for you.
And I just want to be here, I say to him.
And so then, so tell me, come on.
So what's up?
What's going on?
He says, seriously, dad, now you're getting weird about this.
It's really not a big deal.
Remember all those times you told me about how our performance doesn't make us who we
are, that Jesus defines who we are?
I said, well, yeah.
He said, well, I'll listen to you.
Now when you told me the Astros are the greatest baseball team ever to play in the American
and national leagues, I did not listen to that, dad.
That's just you being a Texan.
And then I tell him to pack his things and move out.
We're not going to talk about the Astros that way.
House rules.
Think about these moments.
That's roots.
Good luck, sports team.
Good luck, boys.
Good luck, Boeing.
Good luck, Facebook.
Good luck, friend group.
Good luck, photography.
Good luck, GPA.
Good luck, weight room.
Good luck, alcohol.
Good luck, bank accounts.
All of these things are replaced when our hearts begin to have the identity of Jesus
Christ rooted in them.
And I can't tell my kids this.
I can't tell my church this until I deal with this myself, until I understand what this
looks like.
And for me, this process happened all throughout high school.
See, I was the most average human that there is, and I hated it.
I was just a little bit above average in every sport that I played, and so I created something
to change that.
I looked around and surveyed all of the sports and decided if I can't be the best, I'll go
where the fewest people play the sport, and so compared to the video, I'll be awesome.
So I became a golfer.
I practiced and practiced.
I hit balls until my hands bled.
I read magazines late into the night.
I played every single day in high school, and I began to become better and better, and
I hoped and had my sights set upon college, and so that summer before I headed off to
college, I went and kind of said, who will let me play college golf?
Who will give me a scholarship?
And everyone said, not me.
You're not good enough.
And my little world crumbled because my identity was rooted not in Jesus Christ.
My identity was rooted in being better at something than other people, and when I realized
I didn't have a future in that, there was a crisis in my heart, and I realized that
I had a false gospel.
And since that moment, as I entered my freshman year with nothing on my plate saying, I'm
just another average human, that's when the grace of God said, my identity is in you.
You're accepted because of me.
Stop trying, Keith.
For us, there are no lack of identities here today.
What there is is a lack of identities who are found in Christ.
Each and every one of you have something that you have an identity in.
Who have you been told that you are?
The kid with the great GPA, the kid that's good at sports, the guy who's successful at
work, the pretty one, the not so pretty one.
We all have these things, and they can either be Teflon or Velcro in our hearts.
We can cling to them and say, oh, that's another part of my identity, or we can say there's
a singular identity, and that is Jesus Christ.
I belong in him, and the only hope of us being able to say that's a list of things is for
us to be able to say, I'm found in Christ alone.
So tonight, I think that there's many of us that need to lay down false identities for
our future, that there's false identities that creep into my heart.
There are things that I want to weave into the lives of my children.
There are things that I want to say, this is what rooted looks like and resonate.
My desire is that you are rooted people.
And so when all of these things come around to you and try to define you, they're Teflon
because the gospel has captured your heart.
You need no other identity than Jesus Christ, being found in him, being fully accepted,
having no holes to be filled by your hobby, by substances, by relationships, by work,
by awards, by being seen, recognized, all of those things are false and fleeting hopes
that you will continue to manufacture in your life, and you will feed something that will
completely need fed over and over and you will spend the bulk of your life being robbed
of your joy because Jesus is not at the root of your life.
My hopes are like the hopes of my daughter and my sons that they'll say, it's just not
a deal.
I'm already accepted that you won't have to learn the hard way over and over when you
come to the end of that thing that you're great at and realize that identity wasn't
as significant as you hoped it would be, only in Christ.
Tonight as we take communion, I pray that there's a exchange of identity that goes on,
that you begin to process, that you have a conversation with someone.
I know this is a really deep thing that begins to say these are the false identities that
are tempted by.
These are the things that creep into my life.
This is where I tend to not believe that I'm accepted by Christ and I'm accepted because
of this thing.
Your joy hangs in the balance of this.
I want you to be joyful people.
The radiance of the gospel shown in your face because you're not having to work.
Because the list is not what judges you.
Not what gives you pride, but you're found in Christ alone.
Let me pray for us.
God, I ask that as we go forward from here, that you would just overwhelm our hearts and
the things that we have put our identities in, Lord, that you would deal harshly with
us because it affects everything.
Lord, that you would completely reach into our lives.
Let us not be people who are avoiding.
Let us be courageous tonight as we think about this.
Lord, I just pray that as people are processing this, Lord, that they would just have boldness
and not courage to be able to be honest.
Lord, I pray that spouses will have conversations, that friends will ask questions and that we
would walk in freedom and we would walk in the spirit.
I ask all of this in your holy name.
