Ready To Receive God’s Word

So listen, I'm ready to preach God's word. Are you ready to receive it today? The year was 2010, and we were living in Houston at the time. Our family of six, and uh, we had a lot of help. You know, we had um the the boys in 2010 were like uh 10 and 7 years old, and uh the big boys, Ethan and Elliot, and then the twins, uh they were almost three, and uh we had a lot of help because you know when you have a lot of kids, you need a lot of help. Listen, when you have one kid, you need a lot of help. And uh so when kids begin to multiply, help, the need for help multiplies. And so we had some help, and we had one of our dear uh students, uh, her name was Sarah, and Sarah would come on Sunday morning and get the kids ready as Arshana and I would go on to early service. We had three services in Houston, so we'd be at the early service, and then Sarah would bring the kids for the second and third service. And uh, she was a huge help to us, and she would watch the kids when we had special events. And you know, we were not only a large family, but we're a busy family, lots of activity. And so on this particular occasion in 2010, Urshan and I had to be at an event, a church event, staff event, and so we were downtown Houston, and we left Sarah, who was just 16 years old with all four boys, uh, with a mission of Elliot's baseball game at the park nearby. And we left this 16-year-old, this sweet little 16-year-old, our 2003 uh GMC Yukon XL. Because when you have a lot of kids, you can't have a small car. So we had this massive vehicle, and uh she would load them up, and she was great, she was incredible, and she would take them. Now there's a little problem, and I don't know if you've ever experienced buying a used car. Uh, because when you have a lot of kids, you don't always get to buy a new car. You know I'm talking truth. And so we bought we had a used vehicle, and when it came, it only came with one key. The problem is not only did it only come with one key, but the key was one of those old-fashioned keys. It's not like the button keys that we have now, it was like an old-fashioned key, and it goes on a key ring, but the little part that holds it to the key ring was broken. So you had to be real careful and not lose the key off the key ring when you were taking it out of your pocket or putting it in your purse or whatever the case may be. Anyway, to make a long story short, short, true story, we're at this event having a good time, and we get a call. And it's Sarah, and she says, I don't know how to tell you this, but I cannot find the key to the truck. And we're like, What do you mean? She's like, Well, I got everybody to the game. I ran Elliot first to the field, and then I came back and got the twins. And somehow in all of that process, I can't find the key. The key is falling off the key ring. Well, it's our only key, Sarah. What have we what are we doing when we lose the only key? And so she had to call in reinforcements to get everybody home because it was starting to get dark. And we left that event and drove straight to the field and had some of our youth meet us, and we started walking the fields. We walked the entire parking lot, we talked, we walked everywhere. You could not get into the car, like you couldn't open it up, and we're just wondering, like, why God, we lost this key. And we're like, we gotta find the key, and there everybody's getting tired. And I'm like, you can't be tired because we gotta find the key. Like, what are we gonna do? We gotta figure it out. So search harder. And I was like, listen, y'all, there was a couple of young people, and I was like, y'all are gonna have to dump that trash out, that big trash container, and look in there, maybe it got thrown in there, and man, we looked for hours, and then finally, one of our young people was like, you know what? I think if we could get in this truck, I think maybe the key's in the truck, and we're like, no, no, not possible. And we got into the truck. They they had a little Texas way to get into a truck. You don't do that around here because you probably get shot, so maybe opposite. But they got into the truck, and uh, sure enough, the key had fallen out underneath one of the twins' seats and was lodged under there. And and uh we spent six hours looking for it and finally found it. It's the year, it's the year that I learned the only way the lost is found is if you decide to never give up looking for it until you find it. Why don't you turn your neighbor and just say, it's time to get to looking? And then turn to the other, no, the other you've been ignoring all service and say, I can't stop and I won't stop. Can't stop and won't stop. Let's dive right in. Psalm 139, verse 7. It says, Is there any place I can go to avoid your spirit? To be out of your sight. If I climb to the sky, you're there. If I go underground, you're there. If I flew on the morning's wings to the far western horizon, you find me. In a minute, you're already there waiting. Then I said to myself, Oh, he even sees me in the dark. At night I'm immersed in the light. It's a fact. Darkness isn't dark to you, and night and day, darkness and light, they're all the same to you. This is David speaking. And David's making this declaration that no matter where we go, God is there. Not only is God there, uh, but God is looking for us. He sees us where we are. In fact, many times He, because God is not restricted by time, he beats us to the spot. And so I want to just invest in a little bit of time that there is no altitude too high and no valley too low, no distance too great for the eyes of the Lord to ever stop looking for you. He'll look for you constantly. God looks. You might think that God only shows up in the highlands, in the high places. In fact, I was thinking about as we were singing today, that passage of scripture in Psalms that says, uh, we look to the hills. Where does where does our help come from? And I say this often because you need to know the understanding. In the day, David was not saying, My help comes from the hills. The hills is where all of uh the worldly culture would go for their answers. The they would go for the sick, the people who could predict things and the people who looked at the stars and the people who had ideas about how it might go. That's where they they went to the hills. David says, I'm looking past the hills. I'm not looking to the hills where my help comes from. My help comes from the Lord. So we may get the idea that God only shows up in the highlands. But God is not only attracted to the worship moments, although he is a keeper of his word, the Bible says that he inhabits the place where people praise him. God is not only attracted to the winning seasons, like most Cub fans. So God inhabits the place, yes, where people praise him, but God is near the brokenhearted. And that should be something that encourages you today, because you often think God only shows up in these moments. Come on, it could it could only be the blood. I'm just running in place because I'm like, I want to run into that presence, God. I'm running to keep up with these young adults and young people, but I'm actually running to say, I want to run into God's presence. Because he doesn't have it the place where people praise him. But he also is near the brokenhearted. And when you feel like you can't get to God's presence through worship when you're broken, I'm gonna tell you he's still there. He's looking for you. No matter where you are today, God is looking for you, his eye is on you. He says in Matthew, Jesus says, consider the lilies and consider the flowers and consider the birds of the air. And if he cares for all of them, that old line of the song, his eye is on the sparrow, so I know he must care for me. Have you ever lost something? Maybe like we did that key, and at first you lose it. Maybe you left your phone at a restaurant or a store, and at first you get away and you're like, it's it's you don't know you've lost it, so you're pretty calm, and then you start realizing you've you don't have it with you, and then that calmness turns into a little bit of anxiety, and then that anxiety turns into sheer panic, and then you're like racing back in and you're a madman. I I could have told a hundred stories this morning of losing something and trying to find it, because something happens when you lose something and you're on the path to find it, it becomes very personal, and and there's almost no kind of like common ground to stand on and think with any kind of you know, like normal thoughts. You're just your brain's just racing of all the terrible things about it, about the lost thing. You see, that's why we're gonna do this series today and kicking off this series running to Mother's Day is because this series is not really what's lost, it's not about what we've lost or who is lost. This series is about who is looking. And I'm gonna tell you today, church, God looks. God looks. Let's look at the scripture in Matthew or in Luke chapter 15. Now, the tax collectors and the sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus, which is gonna produce some tension. But the Pharisees and the teachers, those would be the real religious people of the law, muttered, This man welcomes sinners and eats with them. The tension is not just that the sinners were near, the tension was that Jesus pursued and welcomed these people. And that's what caused these religious people to be angry because they felt like their goodness and their properness and their understanding of the law meant they would be have exclusive rights to him. But he said, I didn't come for the one that is whole, I came for the one who is hurting. So let's keep reading. So Jesus told them this parable. And in this series, we're gonna look all through the parables. There's three in this chapter 15 of the book of Luke. And he says, This suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn't he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home, and then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, Rejoice with me, I have found my lost sheep. I tell you in the same way, there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who do not need to repent. Can I just tell you, in terms of the vision of free church, that Sunday is for the one? A lot of us in this room would be in the group of the 99. And God bless you and thank God for you. And I'm so glad you're here today, but today is only for the one. And you know why you can celebrate that? It's because one day you were the one. You were the one that needed God to look for you and to find you and to deliver you and to fill you with his presence. You were the one. And so the reason why we gather and we serve and we worship and we serve on the dream team is because we want to help other people experience what we experienced when we were the one. We're here to help people know God on Sunday. But Jesus stirred the crowd by pursuing and welcoming the one. When we look at all of these parables through these next few weeks, you know, even in your in your physical Bible, some Bibles will have titles over the story that you're reading. And it's interesting to me that the stories that are listed in the printed version, one says the lost sheep. And then the next parable is going to be the lost coin. And then the next parable is going to be the lost son. That's how the Bible, as the writers begin to write and translate and put it into verse and chapters so that we could follow along. That's how they divide it. That's how they identify the stories. But the story is not about what was lost, it is about who is looking. So I would say to you, we should retitle these parables. No longer is it the lost sheep, but it is the searching shepherd. No longer is it the lost coin, but it's the diligent woman. No longer the lost son, but the patient father. Because no matter where you are, and no matter what journey you're on, and how far away you feel, God is always looking for you. You see, Jesus in these parables, and the word parable, when you break it down, is to a story alongside a truth. And so Jesus is telling these parables, and he's not just telling something new that we only find in the New Testament, he's actually revealing the very character and behavior of God that wherever you are, he will look for you. Let me show you. In the garden, God looked for the broken. You can read the scriptures, it's in Genesis 3 and 9. But remember after Adam and Eve sinned and they had partaken of the fruit from the tree, and then they realized that they were sinful, and so they began to hide. And God says, God comes into the garden looking for them and says, Adam, where are you? He came looking for the broken, he came walking and calling. And when he asked a question that day, he was not asking for information, he knew where Adam was, but he was initiating restoration. You see, God looks for you even when your failure makes you want to hide. In the wilderness, God looked for the outcast. In Genesis 16, we can read about Hagar. And Hagar was mistreated and ran away from Abraham and Sarah, and she was neglected and used and cast out and sitting in the wilderness alone. And the Bible says the angel of the Lord found her. And she, after this conversation and this promise given over Hagar, that she would be taken care of and well looked after. Hagar's the one who described God for the first time as Elroy, the God who sees. Because let me tell you this, church, before you ever saw God, God saw you. Then God looks at the Red Sea, God looked for the trapped. Remember the children of Israel, they're leaving Egypt, and on the journey, they get as far as the Red Sea, and then they're trapped between the Red Sea and the Egyptian army. And they start to panic. And God says, It's no big deal. I'm watching. And he took a cloud and a fire and he moved it between the Egyptian army and the Israelites. And then he opened up the Red Sea. See, listen to this. God doesn't just look for you when you're lost, He's looking for you when you feel trapped. How about this? God looked through the prophets, God looked for the scattered. In the book of Ezekiel, God says this, I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. God wasn't delegating the search, he was declaring, I will search for my people. I will search for the one who is scattered. I could keep going. I could tell you that God looked through Jesus. Jesus says himself, I've come to what? Seek and to save. I could keep going. Jesus looked at people. He looked at Zacchaeus when he was up in the tree. He looked at the woman at the well. He looked at the woman who was caught in adultery. He looked after Peter after he denied him and he looked at him and said, You're going to be okay. I've prayed for you that after you do fall, you'll return. And guess what? Jesus, when he arose, he said, Go tell the others and Simon Peter that I'm alive. Because God's looking for you. Because we that look, that look wasn't a look of condemnation, it was a look of compassion and conviction. Let me tell you this: you need to know this. If you feel lost, you've already been located by God. If you feel like you're disappearing, God's already discovered you. If you feel like you are no one, no what no one notices you, I'm going to tell you, heaven marked your movement before you even started drifting. Why? Because we serve a God who does not stand at the door, but he goes into the wilderness and he refuses to stop looking until he's found you. Let me make it simple this morning. I think today I'm preaching to two groups of people. Two groups of people. The first group is the group of the one. You've drifted. You've disconnected. You feel distant from God. No one ever wakes up on a morning and says, you know what, today I'm gonna drift from God. I'm gonna, I'm just gonna let go of my faith a little bit and just drift. It just happens. It happens through getting busy, being distracted, stress, things make get in our way. We we we we we find ourselves making decisions that we didn't plan on making because life comes at us. And so we drifted and we feel after that drifting, you feel alone. Well, let me just tell you this if you are a part of the one, God's looking for you. The other one, the other group would be the group of the 99. You're right here where you should be on a Sunday morning, worshiping, serving, declaring, leading. I'm just gonna tell you, well, God looks for the one, God wants to look through the 99. So when David, and I'll close with this, when David said, if I go high, you're there, and when he said, if I go low, you're there, he was really declaring God doesn't just exist everywhere, but he is actively looking everywhere. So here's the question that we're gonna wrestle with today. Here's the activation point for this first message of this new series. And I want you to get your phone out, and this is gonna be an all-participation activation point. Grab your phone and just tap that label near you or in the chair behind you, and it's just a simple connect form. And you say, Well, PC, I've been going to free church for a long time. I don't need to connect. Yeah, yes, you do, because we're gonna activate some things over the next few weeks together. So we're all gonna do this together. If you're a first-time guest, listen, we're not gonna bother you, bug you. We're gonna send you a note and tell you how thankful we are that you came and we'd love to invite you back again. But listen, we just want you to grab that connect form real quick and just fill it out quickly. And it's gonna ask you, it's gonna ask you this question. It's gonna ask you this question. What group are you in today? Are you in are you in the 99? Are you one of those in the 99? And if so, God wants to look through you. And I want you as part of the 99 to consider who is your one. Who is your one over the next five weeks that you can pray for, reach out to, and invite to a service from now until Mother's Day. Because listen. You are a part of the 99, but you have a responsibility for the one. And so who is that? If you're a part of the 99, just mark that and just be thinking. Even in your notes, you should write down that name and begin to pray for them and think. How how can I maybe I need to grab coffee with them? Maybe I need to maybe I need to just reach out and check in on them. And maybe they need to know I'm praying for them. And then maybe I'm gonna invite them to a Sunday service. And then maybe you're you would say you're in the group of the one. You're in the group of the one. You feel distant, you feel that you've drifted, you feel away, you feel like on the journey you're on. You just need one step, you need to take one step closer. Can I just encourage you? God knows exactly where you're at. And God's looking for you. Not because he wants to judge you, not because he wants to point a finger at you and tell you all the ways that you didn't follow through with your first commitment, not because he's thinking, oh, this time I'm really gonna show him. No, God's looking for you because he's a keeper of his promise. And it's his very character that no one should perish, but that everyone would have everlasting life. And he's a keeper of his promise that when one steps away, he knows immediately and he begins searching. And whatever it takes, turn the trash bin upside down, break into a vehicle, find the couch and flip it upside down. Whatever it takes, he's gonna find the one, he's gonna find you. But I just want to encourage you, you need to be found. You need to want to be found. When I play hide and seek with my kids when they were younger, they weren't very good at hiding, and often they would not really want to be patient and wait long enough for me to begin searching for them. They would they would actually spoil it before I could start searching. But then when it was my turn, how many know I could have hidden so they would never find me? But that's not the point of the game. The point of the game is to be found, and so I would purposely hide in a spot where my foot would be showing or my hand would be showing or my head would be just over the couch, so they would know where to find me. And what God is doing is he's like, listen, I'm trying to find you. Can you just be willing to be found? Be willing to be found, and and look what he does when he finds the one. He picks the one up and he carries the one back to the 99. He doesn't, there's no walk of shame, there's no, you have to retrace all your steps. He picks you up and he carries you, and he gets you back, and I want you to see what he does. He calls everybody and he says, It's time to celebrate. Yeah, but we found the one, and the one is worth celebrating. And don't you know that all of heaven, every time one person is found, all of heaven stops and throws the greatest party. We sometimes we give a golf clap, Master's Weekend, we give a golf clap. Oh, somebody raised their hand, somebody prayed that prayer for the first time. And all of heaven is losing their mind. You want to know why? Because heaven knows the value of the one that's created. All of the angels, they are made to worship, it's their job. 24-7, around the throne, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. Holy is the Lord who was, who is, and is it is to come. They don't get a choice, but they understand the value of the created one who decides to worship. There's something about the song of the redeemed, and all of heaven knows it. And so heaven stops and celebrates. Heaven stops and celebrates you. You feel like you've drifted, you're wandering, you're lost, no one notices, no one cares. Heaven does. We do. And today, you found the spot to be found. I'm gonna pray with everyone in this room. The unique thing is we're all on a journey from where we are to where God wants us. And every person in this room is taking a step today. So why don't you take a step with us? And that first step is to be found. It's just reaching up to the one who's been looking for you so that he can pick you up and carry you and retrieve you from your dark spot, your lonely spot, and bring you back in to the family he created you to be a part of. You ready? Let's all pray this prayer together. Dear Jesus, thank you for loving me, for dying on a cross, for my sins, for knowing exactly where I would be in this moment. Today, I choose to be found. I choose to turn from my own way to follow you, Jesus. Be my Lord and Savior in Jesus' name. Amen. Come on, church, let's stand. Come on, let's celebrate.