Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I thought it'd be
really beautiful for Savannah
especially as many of ourcollege students are moving on
to share just a benediction forthe college students, an
exhortation, and the rest of usto listen in, because the
beautiful thing about Jesus ishe is trying to foster a heart
that stays young with Him.
Our God is much younger than weare.
(00:20):
Oftentimes it's us who grow oldand calloused in our ways, and
God is ever young.
And so, as we listen in, asthose of us who aren't college
students, let us feel the HolySpirit just piercing us and
inviting us into his life.
I'm going to pray over Savannahas she opens the word for us,
and let us gather around whatGod has to say to us today.
(00:41):
God, I bless you for Savannahand for Landon.
Lord, they have been pure giftto this community and I pray
that, lord, even now you aredrawing them into the next
season of their life, ofministry for you and with you,
god.
But now we have the opportunity, lord, as we're here in this
place, to be expectant for whatyou might say to us, to what
(01:02):
your spirit has for us, and so,god, would you give us ears that
are waiting to hear, and wouldyou bless Savannah's words, as
she brings just a sliver of herlife with you to bear on this
community.
Lord, we know your word doesnot return void, and it's that
truth, that promise, that wehold on to here this morning.
So, lord, meet us here in thepower of your word and the
(01:25):
beauty of your name.
We pray these things in thename of the Father and the Son
and the Holy Spirit.
We pray Amen.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Amen.
I'm going to invite ourscripture reader up.
Katie, who is one of ourgraduating seniors and a very,
very dear friend of mine, willbe reading in Romans 12, 1
through 2, if you want to flipin your Bibles or scroll in your
phones Romans 12, 1 through 2.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Therefore, I urge you
, brothers and sisters, in view
of God's mercy, to offer yourbodies as a living sacrifice,
holy and pleasing to God.
This is your true and properworship.
Do not conform to the patternof this world, but be
transformed by the renewing ofyour mind.
(02:17):
Then you will be able to testand approve what God's will is
his good, pleasing and perfectwill.
Thanks be to God.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Two weeks ago,
ecclesia College celebrated our
annual failure party.
Every year I invite all of thecollege students to Matt and
Kim's backyard to tell them howproud I am for failing at
something.
I get balloons and signs and acake that says happy failure on
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it, which this year the cakecalligraphy person misspelled
failure and then tried to fix itand then just didn't finish the
word, which couldn't have beenmore perfect.
And to greet everyone to theparty of the year, I get the
loudest kazoos I can possiblyfind and I, alongside whoever
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else is around, blow our kazoosand cheer and hug students as
they walk up to the backyardgate, utterly embarrassed and
confused, as we yell Happyfailure, well done.
And I watch as student afterstudent walks past, most of them
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looking like they wish theycould crawl inside themselves
and disappear because to havefailure celebrated feels wrong,
like perhaps it's the closestthing to heresy that I could be
teaching them.
I think one of the bestexamples of this is from one of
my favorite discussion from thisyear's party, where some
students started imitating theirparents' reaction to the party.
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I couldn't help but laugh asthey reenacted their parents'
concern and confusion about aparty dedicated to failure from
a church.
One student even said shedidn't tell her parents about it
because she knew they would sostrongly disagree with the
premise of the party.
She found it easier not to sayanything at all and, to be
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honest, I find it equallyentertaining, and I am both
proud that I threw a churchparty that students didn't tell
their parents about and, to befair, I get it.
Despite the growing body of datathat shows that embracing and
even celebrating failure leadsto greater innovation,
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productivity and, ultimately,long-term success, the look of
skepticism that surfaces everyyear when I announce the failure
party never grows old.
I cannot tell you what it'slike doing announcements up here
, as I watch everyone's smilingfaces turn to a mix of disbelief
and mild concern, as if somehowI might have lost my mind.
(05:09):
The truth is, when I host thisevent, I know I'm not just
throwing a quirky party orsimply saying that God loves you
despite your flaws.
Instead, the truth of thematter is, every time I throw
the failure party, I know that Iam challenging a core belief
here in Princeton head on, andthat belief typically goes
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something like this If I doeverything right, then things
will go according to God's plan,and if I've failed, I must have
done something wrong.
And so, while fun andlighthearted, the failure party
is truly an invitation totangible recognition of the
worldview that many of us haveinternalized that being good,
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lovable and faithful isreflected in our success,
accolades and busyness.
We do the failure party notjust to show that this is
unhelpful, but that it isn'tbiblical.
Put simply, I'm asking studentsto confront the possibility
that one of the foundationalbeliefs they've built their
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entire lives around is not onlywrong, it's keeping them from
experiencing the fullness ofJesus' grace.
And the reason I do this and Iknow that I've preached on this
many times is because I'vewatched over and over again how
the framework of values thatdefine Princeton University for
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better and for worse, becomedeeply intertwined with people's
beliefs about who God is.
Over the last two years, I havewatched as student after
student, in genuine earnestness,comes to me wracked with
anxiety, guilt, confusion, angeror a mix of all of them, as
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they tell me that they feel likethey are doing everything right
and yet somehow they are stillplagued by burnout, exhaustion,
fear, loneliness, and before Ican even respond, most of them
jump straight into their seriesof qualifiers.
I know I should be reading myBible more.
I know that I should be prayingmore.
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I know I've been reading myBible more.
I know that I should be prayingmore.
I know I've been late to churchrecently.
I know that I should come tothings more consistently, and so
on, and so on, and so on, as ifthey have to cover every base
of confession before I can sayanything.
And in this, what I've learnedto ask is just one simple
question that seems to bring tothe surface every false belief
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we might hold about God When'sthe last time you took a day off
?
Now, if you ask any of mycollege students who have spent
more than five minutes with me,they'll confirm that I talk
about the Sabbath more thananything else Since starting
this job.
I genuinely cannot think of aweek that has gone by where I
haven't brought it up to atleast one person.
(08:08):
It's become such an ongoingjoke that one of the most
constant refrains in thisministry has been if God can
take a day off, so can you.
And while I love to poke funbecause I think humor is the
spoonful of sugar that helpshard truth go down, I know that
encouraging people to take aSabbath goes against every
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principle of maximization,efficiency and productivity that
they've built their livesaround.
Just the other day, I sent apodcast episode to a college
student who I knew would havebrilliant and wonderful things
to say in response, and when herand I sat down to talk about it
, she ended up confessing thatshe'd listened to it on double
speed which is not something Iknew you could do while getting
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ready in the morning and thensent me all of her thoughts in a
voice memo so that she didn'thave to stop and write down
anything.
And naturally I made funendless fun of her for her
absolute perfection of timemaximization, because, even
though it was genuinely aninconsequential act, I think it
gets to the core of how many ofus orient our lives.
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I think it's fair to say thatmost of us here not all, but
most believe to some degree thenarrative that the outcome of
our actions is one of the bestindications of whether we're
living a good life or not.
What I mean by that is most ofus genuinely look to the success
of whether we're living a goodlife or not.
What I mean by that is most ofus genuinely look to the success
of what we do to gauge whetheror not.
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We're getting things right.
What this looks like, and whatmany of us would probably agree
with, is the idea that goodgrades are a reflection of hard
work.
So if you're working hardenough, you'll have good grades.
Anyone in engineering will tellyou that that is a lie.
Another version of this couldbe raising good kids is a
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reflection of good parenting.
So if you parent well enough,your kids will turn out good.
Or even the most insidiousversion of this God blesses
those who are faithful, so ifI'm faithful enough, he will
bless me.
And you fill in the blank withwhat you think those blessings
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are.
And just to be clear, I'm nottrying to say that we shouldn't
work hard and not to abandonyour kids or anything like that,
especially not on Mother's Day.
Instead, what I'm trying tobring to the surface is that
many of us, without maybe evenrealizing it, believe in a
paradigm that tells us that whatwe produce is the best
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indication of whether or not weare good and loved by God.
And, like any worldview, youdon't have to go far in the
Bible to find verses thatsupports it Matthew 7, 18-20, or
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perhaps look to James 2, 26,.
For as the body without thespirit is dead, so faith without
works is dead.
Or even just look at the entirebook of Proverbs, which seems
to be making one consistentpromise do good things and good
things will happen.
Do bad things and bad thingswill happen on the surface.
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If you look at these passages,it seems obvious that the Bible
is explicit in teaching that theoutcomes of our actions reflect
what God thinks about them, andso it follows from this that if
the outcome is bad, it meansthat you've probably not worked
hard enough or not yet smartenough or not disciplined enough
or not good enough yet yetsmart enough or not disciplined
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enough or not good enough yet,and so the work is ultimately on
you to do less of certainthings and more of others, and
wait until the outcome isdifferent.
What happens, though, is whenit feels like your entire life
sits under the weight ofconstantly doing things and
never feel like you've ever doneenough.
It becomes harder and harder toignore the quiet, nagging voice
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that questions whether or notthis God is really all that good
.
The problem with this view,however, is that the Bible also
gives us the book of Job.
Now, if you're not familiarwith this story, job is
described as blameless, uprightand God-fearing.
He's wealthy, with a largefamily, he has a lot of
livestock and he's described bythe Bible as the greatest of all
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of the people of the East.
And so the story begins with thescene where Satan goes before
God, arguing that Job onlyhonors God because of Job's
prosperity and protection.
Consequently, and for reasonswidely debated, god permits
Satan to test Job, and so, oneby one, messengers bring news of
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disaster.
Thieves steal Job's oxen andcamels, fire from heaven
consumes his sheep, a windcollapses the house where all of
his children were feasting,killing them all.
His body is wracked with boils,and after this, three friends
come to see him and they becomedistraught at the sight of their
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friend.
It says Job 2,.
When they raised their eyesfrom afar and did not recognize
them, they lifted their voicesand wept, and each one tore his
robe and sprinkled dust on hishead toward heaven.
After this week of silence,together Job and his friends
have a theological exchange,trying to make sense of Job's
sudden, inexplicable suffering.
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And if you read it closely,you'll begin to see that Job's
friends are putting forthreasons for Job's suffering.
That reflects an interpretationof the wisdom of Proverbs,
specifically that bad thingshappen to bad people.
It begins with his friendAliphaz, who puts forth that Job
has sinned and is beingdisciplined by God.
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And he insists on this despiteJob desperately saying that he
has not sinned.
Adding insult to injury, hisfriends Bildad and Zophar push
Job to repent, arguing that theoutcome of Job's life must be
the product of his own sin.
I mean, as it says in Proverbs3.33, the Lord's curse is on the
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house of the wicked, but heblesses the house of the
righteous.
If that's the wisdom of God, itwould seem undeniable that Job
must have done somethinghorrible to elicit God's curse
over his life.
And yet, despite thechastisement of his friends, job
desperately and honestlyinsists that he has committed no
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sin.
The Bible says that he wasblameless and thus warranted no
discipline.
And in the midst of his friends'insistence, job turns to them
and says in chapter 16, I haveheard all of this before.
What miserable comforters youare.
Won't you ever stop blowing hotair?
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What makes you keep on talking?
I could say the same things ifyou were in my place.
I could spout off criticism orshake my head at you, but if you
were me, I would encourage you,I would try to take away your
grief.
Instead, I suffer if I defendmyself, and I suffer no less if
I refuse to speak.
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I think the lesson is here thatthe next time someone starts
throwing out Bible verses at you, feel free to quote this
section of Job in response.
I'm kidding, but I do find itutterly hilarious the idea of
next time someone tells me whereGod closes a door, he opens a
window and looking at them andsaying what a miserable
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comforter you are.
I'm not saying it's my pastoralrecommendation, just that it's
biblical.
In all seriousness, though,this moment is shocking because
it's Job's rejection of hisfriend's explicit and widely
held, religiously supportedbelief about who God is.
(16:17):
And yet in this, the Bible andits brilliance once again takes
something that seems soobviously true and inverts the
whole paradigm, revealing whoGod truly is against the
backdrop of who he's assumed tobe.
In this case, what it lookslike here is that we're given
two texts that were meant to beread together yet seem to be
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full of contradictions.
On the surface, it seems thatJob obliterates every piece of
wisdom put forth in Proverbs,and yet the book of Proverbs is
unequivocal that theseprinciples are worth living by,
and so we're left in the tensionof not being able to make sense
of how these two paradigms fittogether, and unfortunately it's
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not a question that the textneatly answers.
If you've ever read the end ofJob, it's a striking and
somewhat infuriating end to thestory.
After chapters of risingtension and unresolved debate,
the whole thing is interruptedby God himself.
But instead of answering asingle one of Job's questions,
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god responds instead with aseries of his own question after
question, revealing hisvastness, mystery and authority.
Initially, upon reading, it canseem like an insufficient and
uncompelling response by thequestions raised by the text.
And yet somehow, in the midstof encountering God, job is
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utterly transformed and moved,giving only a short response to
God's presence.
He says this line in hisresponse, and I think it's one
of the most beautiful thingswritten in scripture my ears had
heard of you, but now my eyeshave seen you, and the story
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ends with God restoring backmultiple times over what had
been lost.
Now you might be askingyourself, after all of this,
what is the point?
And the book for that isEcclesiastes.
We know who reads their Bible,because that is a very funny
Bible joke.
If you have not yet readEcclesiastes, go and read it and
you will laugh out loud inhindsight, but for this morning
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in particular, there are threethings that I want to emphasize
about the story of Job.
That it teaches us are threethings that I want to emphasize
about the story of Job that itteaches us.
First, we can havewell-intentioned but wrong
beliefs about God.
Second, what we believe aboutGod is essential.
And third, a changed belief istransformative.
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A short word on age To begin.
We can all havewell-intentioned but wrong
beliefs about God.
As I mentioned earlier, one ofthe most striking things about
the book of Job is the way thatJob's friends put forth a
theology that almost perfectlymirrors the book of Proverbs.
And yet, despite thenever-ending ambiguity of the
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book of Job, it does make onething clear the men who seem to
be so confident in their viewsabout God were the ones that God
himself rebukes for theirfoolishness.
If you doubt me, look at verses42, 7 through 9.
And what I find soextraordinary about this and
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humbling is that this forces usto examine areas where our
theology has been moreinfluenced by our worldview than
the other way around.
And it's hard, because oftenthe things that get intertwined
with our beliefs are things thatare actually really good, like
a strong work, ethic, ambitionor love of community, and we can
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often find genuine examples inthe biblical text that makes it
really seem like we're pursuingand embodying Christian
teachings.
And so the point here, what Ireally want to get at, is that
following Jesus doesn't meanthat you can't be diligent or
passionate or motivated.
Rather, the question isexamining where those principles
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, where those values in yourlives are not fully yet under
the authority of Jesus Christand are inhibiting you from
experiencing his grace.
Put simply, an example of thisis that if we mistake Christian
culture for Christ himself, werisk becoming like Job's friends
, earnestly pursuing God, yetmissing him because our loyalty
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was more to our views aboutJesus than to Jesus himself.
Second, what we believe aboutGod is essential to our faith.
One of the greatest and mostpoignant tensions in this text
is the meeting of who God reallyis with who he is expected to
be, and the reason why thestakes are so high in this
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tension is because what youbelieve about God is essentially
important for how you orientyour life.
The reality is our vision ofGod.
Whether or not we realize itdrives how we live.
Our view of him shapes ourexpectations, our relationships,
our fears and our hopes.
It means that, whether wepicture God as a distant judge,
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a cosmic force or a present andloving father, these images
direct the choices we make andthe way we respond to the world
around us.
Put simply, the reality is whowe believe God to be, forms the
foundation from which we act.
As AW Tozer puts it, what comesinto our minds when we think
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about God is the most importantthing about us.
Or, put simply by DallasWillard, everyone's practical
theology vitally affects thecourse of his or her life.
Lastly, a changed belief istransformative.
I think that one of the mostpoignant lines in scripture, as
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I said, is Job's simplestatement that my ears had heard
of you, but now my eyes haveseen you.
In the beginning of the story,we meet a Job who believes that
God gives good things to thosewho are good.
But, like we read in chapter 16, job realizes that he can no
longer simplify God into thisparadigm.
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Instead, his experiences forcehim to face a reality that he
couldn't account for, and indoing so, job encounters God.
It's this moment thattransforms Job, as God begins to
reveal who he really is, movingJob from a place in which he
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thought about God, to a place ofbeing in actual relationship
with God.
This change shifts Job's entireorientation to the reality
around him, taking his wrestlingand his questioning and turning
it into peace.
What we see happen in the textthat is captured so profoundly
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in Job's one line, is that, inencountering God, job's
situation doesn't change, butrather Job himself is changed,
and this change shifts hisentire experience of reality.
It's this transformation ofbelief that leads Job to see the
world in a way that wasunavailable to him before,
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leading him to reinterpret andreexamine both the world around
him and his experiences throughGod's mercy, in a way that was
beyond his own understanding.
Put simply, in letting go ofwho Job thought God was, job was
able to be formed by who Godtruly is, changing his whole
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perspective and relationship tothe world.
Now, at this point, I realizethat using Job as the focus of a
benediction or a blessingsermon might seem a little odd,
and so I want to clarify thereason why I've spent all of
this time up until this pointhoning in on these lessons.
It's because I think that theybest set the context for why
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I've chosen Romans 12 as mybenediction for the college
ministry.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I thinkit's fair to say that sometimes,
when reading some of Paul'smost famous lines, we can
unwittingly breeze past theheart of the message without
getting past the surface.
However, the lessons that Job'slife teach us can bring out the
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themes that I think Romans 12is getting at Specifically.
I think Romans 12 is going somuch further than simply stating
that we should avoid sin.
Instead, it seems that Paul isputting forth a view of
formation that requires ouractive participation in the
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invitations of Jesus.
Look back at the text with meRomans 12, 1-2.
Therefore, I urge you, brothersand sisters, in view of God's
mercy, to offer your bodies asof a living sacrifice, holy and
pleasing to God.
This is your true and properworship.
Do not conform to the patternof this world, but be
(25:16):
transformed by the renewing ofyour mind.
Then you will be able to testand approve what God's perfect
will is his good, pleasing andperfect will.
If we look at the structure ofthe text, there are two things
that Paul says turn us intopeople who know God's will,
offering our bodies a sacrificeand being transformed by the
renewing of our minds.
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And while a wonderful promise,I think it can sometimes feel
hard to see how these two thingswould make us into someone who
knows and enacts God's will.
The number one question I getin every college meeting I have
ever had is yes, great, but whatdo I do?
Tell me how.
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There's a feeling that inavoiding sin and going to church
on Sunday, there is stillsomething missing.
We are still left with lots ofquestions about who God is and
what he wants us to do with ourlives and how I'm supposed to
follow him faithfully.
This is why I think Paul isgoing so much further in the
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invitation that he's puttingforth.
When we think about giving ourbodies in worship, paul is
relying on the truth that how wespend our time forms the basis
of who we are.
This means that if your lifelooks the same as the people
around you, if you attach yourworth to your performance, if
you only ever put work in frontof other relationships, if
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you're constantly busy, whateverversion of it is for you, you
will only ever end upexperiencing the inevitable
limitations of what those valuesoffer you.
By contrast, paul invites us toreorient our whole lives around
practicing the ways of Jesus.
It's an invitation to a radicalrestructuring of our priorities
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, values and beliefs in waysthat will not only transform us
but also act as an invitation tothe culture around us.
Now, if you've ever tried this,you know that reorienting your
life brings to the surfacehabits and beliefs that you
might not have realized were atodds with your faith.
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Most of you have probablyexperienced the challenge of
reading scripture every day,only to find the busyness of the
morning more demanding than theslowness that the text requires
, or the constant distraction wehear in our minds as we try to
pray, or maybe even the anxietythat comes up when taking a
Sabbath because of the pressureit puts on our view of
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self-worth, when taking aSabbath because of the pressure
it puts on our view ofself-worth.
If we attempt to live assacrifices, not only keeping our
bodies out of sin, butintentionally orienting our time
and giving our attention toJesus, we will begin to realize
that there are aspects of ourlives and our beliefs that Jesus
is asking us to give up for thepurpose of transforming us and
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reorienting us to the worldthrough his love, like Job.
If we believe some version ofthe paradigm that tells us that
the outcome of our actions isthe best indication of God's
favor over us, then we willorient our lives doing things in
worship without evernecessarily encountering God in
worship.
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It's for this reason that Paultells us to be transformed by
the renewing of our minds,because he understood that what
we believe and think about Godis essentially formative in the
ways that we orient our livesaround him.
It's this premise, this beliefthat what we believe is
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essentially important, is thepremise that I want to use to
begin offering my benediction tothe college ministry, which has
truly been one of the greatestprivileges of my life.
So, if I can many of you aresitting in on a sacred moment I
would like to speak to mycollege students directly.
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When I was asked to plant thisministry two years ago, I came
in with a deep conviction thatthe most important part, one of
the most important parts of youwas your mind.
My desire for all of you as Ihave prayed for you and met with
you, laughed with you andgrieved with you was that in
your time in Princeton, thischurch would serve as a
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testimony to the fact that whatyou believe is essential to your
faith and that the pursuit ofyour questions and your beliefs
is a worthwhile pursuit is aworthwhile pursuit.
I've intentionally tried toirritate you all in my
relentless asking of questionsand challenges to your paradigms
, because my deepest desire forall of you was that you would
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know in the quietest and deepestplaces in your soul that you
are loved by God.
As I invite the worship team upto pray, I'm going to pray a
prayer of blessing over you,inspired by the words of Paul.
When I pray these words over you, my prayer is that when you
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think of giving your body inworship, when you think about
imitating the life of Jesus, youthink of one in which Christ
laughed with his friends,pursued the truth, asked others
endless questions.
It's a life in which he restedand sat in people's home over a
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meal.
I pray that you look to thecross and, with utter trust that
Christ followed the Father withgive up control in your own
lives where Christ is callingyou.
I pray that, as you wrestlethrough formation, that you are
bold in letting go of the oldbeliefs that you have and that
you find joy and peace inChrist's redemption and what you
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once believed.
I pray that each one of youwill experience Job's praise
that once only his ears hadheard of God, but now his eyes
had seen.
And when you move from here.
My prayer is that you will be acompletely different person
than the one you came in, as Ipray that you become confident
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in discerning God's will,pursuing Christ alongside others
with the full humility andgrace that comes with knowing
that you are the beloved ofChrist.
Every week, I stand up here andI pray that God would make
Ecclesia a church that pours outonto the streets of Princeton,
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calling his people back to him.
And now I hand this prayer offto you.
As you reorient your lives, asyou are transformed, you will be
the hands and feet of Jesus inthis place, you will be the
thing telling people that theyare the beloved of God.
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And so, while this particularseason of this ministry ends and
I am honored to hand it off toyou it seems fitting that the
verse that was the cornerstoneof the last two years be the
blessing that I give to all ofyou.
Therefore, I urge you, brothersand sisters, in view of God's
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mercy, to offer your bodies as aliving sacrifice, holy and
pleasing to God.
This is your true and properworship.
Do not conform to the patternof this world, but be
transformed by the renewing ofyour mind.
Then you will be able to testand approve what God's will is,
(33:05):
his good, pleasing and perfectwill.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
You know we don't
often think of Jesus' last words
on the cross as a benediction.
We can see the agony in thewords.
We puzzle over what some ofthem mean, but when you look at
Jesus' last words before hebreathes his last breath, what
we see is that, colored in allthe hues of death and suffering
and abandonment, is truly God'sdeepest blessing to the world.
(33:45):
And one of those last wordsthat Jesus prays is Father, into
your hands, I commend my spiritWith Jesus' last breath.
He invites us into truehumanity, which is entrusting
ourselves fully to the hands ofGod.
And Jesus invites us into thiskind of life that tells us the
(34:08):
truth in a world full of scriptsthat tell us we have to build a
life for ourselves, that we'reonly as important as that which
we can achieve as other peoplesee us.
Jesus says I give all of thisto you as pure free gift, and
all you have to do is join meand say I trust you, god.
And so, as Savannah has invitedus into, the way that we see,
(34:33):
god is fundamental to who we are, and maybe you didn't know that
until you walked into this roomtoday, and so we want to invite
you to just consider a couplethings.
First of all, if you've neverreceived the invitation to this
life, that is not a life that isthe product of your hands or
your achievements, but it's aproduct of the gift and the
grace of God we want to inviteyou to receive that here today.
Second of all, as Savannah sobeautifully outlined for us,
(34:58):
there is purpose, there ismeaning.
If you haven't considered thatGod has a will for your life,
that he's inviting you to stepinto, to participate with him in
his redemption of all thingsand allow God to meet you here,
I'm going to invite you to stand.
We pray welcome Holy Spirit.
God, we acknowledge yourpresence here.
(35:19):
God, would you help us to seethe beauty of your Son, god,
lifted high, given for us.
Jesus, lord, we welcome yourpresence as we worship.
Be with us.
We pray, amen.
(35:40):
Friends, we're going to respondin worship through song for
just a few moments.