March 29, 2025 • 24 mins
We explore how the feeling of not belonging in church affects believers and why Christ's original mission was about radical inclusion, not creating more barriers.
• Churches often segregate along racial, socioeconomic, worship style, and theological lines
• Many people feel adrift without mentorship because they don't remind church leaders of themselves
• Christ's harshest criticism was for those who used religious law to create social hierarchies
• The disciples themselves represent our imperfections - they were jealous, doubtful, and weak in faith
• No human has the power to determine your salvation or acceptance by God
• Jesus specifically came for those who need him most - the outcast, struggling and imperfect
• Building a community for those who feel excluded from traditional church settings
Share in the comments what makes you feel like you don't belong in church, and let's create a space where everyone is welcome regardless of background or struggles.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
part of what's assumed in you going to church
is that somehow you belong there, somehow you feel comfortable,
or you're looking around andseeing your own people, and
sometimes it's something as kindof basic as people that look
(00:21):
like you or people that driveyour kind of cars or live in a
neighborhood like yours, and inmy mind that's a little
unfortunate because I would hateto think that that's the best
we can do is have, like, thechurch divided, based on
socioeconomic along those lines.
(00:44):
Based on socioeconomic alongthose lines.
But it can be more subtle thanthat.
You can go to a church wherepeople they worship a certain
way, they say certain things,they use certain phrases.
There are some churches thatare very sedate and everybody's
kind of quiet and kind of saystheir prayers very quietly and
(01:05):
kind of under their breath.
And then there are churcheslike I grew up being a member
where you get a Black Baptistchurch that is loud and it's
expressive and people aregetting caught up in the spirit,
right Like we're singing, we'restomping, people are speaking
in tongues, some folks are justfalling out on the floor.
(01:28):
It's kind of like anything goesand despite what you may think
about whether those arelegitimate displays of worship.
The fact is that there aredifferent things that we all
grow to be comfortable with,things that we, when we imagine
(01:52):
the environment we want to be inhere, are some kind of
guardrails that make us feellike we belong there.
Because, let's face it, most ofus don't want to kind of stick
out like a sore thumb.
Right, we want to be welcome.
We don't want people giving usthe side eye and like what the
(02:12):
hell's up with this dude?
One of the reasons why thisguilt-free faith channel exists
is because of my own struggleswith finding a place to fit in
the Christian church, becausefor me, as I grew up, we tried a
(02:32):
number of different churches inan effort to find out where we
would fit, and so we triedvirtually every denomination.
But part of the issue wasbecause we were an interracial
family, a black and white family.
Part of the reason was becausemy mom had come from the kind of
(02:54):
a more conservative Catholicworship group or demographic,
and my dad had grown up kind ofmore in the local Black Baptist
church, and so, of course, formy sister and I, who are
interracial, it wasn't clear,oftentimes like where we would
(03:15):
belong Now.
Granted, I mean, you may livein a place that's so diverse
that this isn't a real issue.
But for many places or manycities, as they say, sunday
church hour is the mostsegregated hour in America and
wow, like, what a statement thatreally is relative to how
(03:40):
Christ was going about town totown, swinging open the door of
welcome, of generosity, andessentially doing away with a
lot of the barriers that wereerected by God.
Like in the Old Testament, thisNew Testament was to be
inclusive and a lot of peopledidn't like that.
(04:03):
There were a lot of people whowere extremely aggressive
regarding upholding that andthen there were just a lot of
people who you know background,that had never built that type
of bridge before.
(04:30):
So one of the things I want tosay about this because obviously
I could talk about this for avery long time and perhaps I
will you have to leave in thecomments what questions or
comments you have about notfitting in the Christian church
and that, like I said, thatcould be race, that could be
(04:53):
class, that could be education,that could be neighborhood, it
could be politics, it could beeven down to what are the very
specific things one church ordenomination believes versus
another one.
Some people are really focusedon that.
(05:13):
Some people might call thatnitpicky.
Other people may call thatreally central to what they
believe faith is about.
What they believe faith isabout.
But one thing I want to assureyou of is that if you feel like
you're alone somehow in yourpursuit of God, you're not alone
(05:36):
at all.
There are so many people who arejust adrift.
No one's taking them undertheir wing.
They don't have like a clearpath to mentorship, right,
because they don't really.
It's not clear, at least rightoff the bat, how they belong.
(05:58):
Oftentimes people take youunder their wing because they
see something in you thatreminds them of themselves, and
so what happens to the personwho doesn't have those
characteristics that remindthose church elders or deacons
or whomever Bible study leadersof themselves?
(06:20):
You really can get kind of lostand left out.
Fortunately for me, after many,many years of drifting about and
not finding my place, I didfind a mentor who was a close
friend of the family, who, ofcourse, having known me from
(06:45):
birth, understood a lot about meand where I was coming from and
could see things in me that hecould relate to, things that he
wanted to nurture, and just kindof was in a, partly just
because of the relationship withmy family, was willing to make
that investment in somebody thatyou know a lot of people in the
(07:07):
church would not have made.
I'm not an easy Christian toinvest in.
I have a lot of faith issues.
I have a lot of cynicism.
You know I've spent a lot oftime in and out of God's.
I don't want to say his goodgraces, because I think part of
(07:28):
what he's trying to tell us isthat we're never out of his good
graces.
But for us, when we don't feelfull of faith or when we don't
feel like we're believers orwe're not doing the things and
checking the boxes, we feel outof favor.
We feel like we're on theoutside looking in, and I don't
(07:50):
want you to feel like that.
This is the day for that to end.
And what do I mean by end?
I don't mean like that.
You'll never feel that or neverexperience that, but what's
going to end today is this kindof pit that you may feel of I'm
(08:16):
never going to belong.
I'm never going to findsomebody that will accept me
like into the Christian family,somebody that will accept me
into the Christian family.
I'm never going to find peoplethat will unconditionally take
me where I'm at, whether I'm anatheist, whether I'm a wild
gunslinging sinner, whether I'ma drug addict, a thief.
(08:38):
Look, there are people, peoplelike myself and other people
that this channel is going togather into the group, who are
in your exact same circumstanceand, like I said, as one of
those people, I know that Godcan provide a space for you,
(09:10):
just like as I'm kind oflearning what my space is.
So what I'm envisioning forthis channel is that you and I,
we're creating a space for oneanother, a special space, a
special arrangement where peoplethat are outcast, people that
(09:36):
don't they don't have aconvenient label that they can
just, you know, write here's myname tag, I'm so-and-so, I'm
Christian, I'm this, I'm this,I'm this.
Oh, okay, yeah, have a seathere.
We know where you belong.
Like, if you don't have a nametag.
(10:05):
Or you assure you that a lot ofpeople that Christ ran into were
and they were lost, and theyweren't even expecting you know,
a Messiah to come along.
They weren't expectingsomething dramatic, to come
(10:27):
along and intervene and showthem that kind of love and
forgiveness.
So think how, you know, caughtoff guard, those people were
People that had never benefitedfrom the acceptance not only of
Jews or Christians, but evenlike within their own
(10:51):
communities, like the taxcollector, like the prostitute.
Nobody was reaching out to themand being like, hey, it's okay,
we accept you, we all have ourfaults and flaws, so it's all
good.
You know what I mean.
(11:12):
But we don't hear a lot aboutthat, or we kind of hear about
it, because it's somethingpeople are supposed to say.
But let's face it, man, thereare some things that are
acceptable to say in your churchor your Bible study and there
are a lot of things that aren't.
And, depending on yourtolerance for conflict or your
(11:37):
degree of frustration or despair, you may or may not speak up in
that circumstance.
You may go home and vow neverto go to the church again
because you don't want to sufferlike that rejection and that
pain and that sense of on theoutside looking in.
(11:58):
And so for some of you, likethat might have been years ago
that you had that bad experience.
It might have been years agothat somebody side-eyed you at
church or questioned yourbelonging or criticized your
(12:21):
faith or your view your faith oryour view and that can cripple
you in terms of yourrelationship with God, because
we have a tendency tointernalize that.
We have a tendency to think, ohwell, they must be kind of
(12:43):
speaking on God's behalf.
If all these good church peoplearen't accepting me and rolling
out the red carpet for me,maybe that's a sign that I
really don't belong in thechurch.
Not only do I not belong inthis building, but I just don't
belong in the Christian family,or whatever they want to call it
.
And what I want to say to youis like let's just kind of nip
(13:08):
that in the bud right now,because any type of prejudice
like that, any type ofdiscrimination, any kind of that
intolerance, that's not fromGod.
Man, that's just not.
That's not the way Christtreated people.
(13:28):
In fact, really, the onlypeople that Christ was really
furious with were the peoplethat prided themselves on
fulfilling the law.
That's when he has to go andsay hey, how dare you people set
(13:51):
yourself up at the top, like,of this social hierarchy under
the guise of you're followingthe law, you're following the
ritual, you're following, andChrist is like, that's like not
the spirit of what this is allabout.
And so Christ went around andwalked that spirit out, and that
(14:16):
included reaching out even topeople like you and me living on
the edge, living on the edge ofbelief, living on the edge of
sin, living on the edge of allkinds of failures.
What's your failure or what arepeople telling you your failure
(14:36):
is?
Is it divorce?
Is it people saying you're nota good parent?
Is it people saying you're notsuccessful, or you're some kind
of bum or a loser, or you cannever follow through with
anything?
Or maybe you're crippled byhealth situations and people are
saying why don't you get better?
(14:56):
Or why are you faking?
Or why haven't you found ananswer to this?
The rest of us are limpingalong.
Why aren't you doing that?
Maybe you feel like it's kindof more like your Christian
performance, like, oh, do I notpray enough?
Am I not praying for the rightthings?
Am I being selfish?
Should I be accepting more ofGod's love and walking without
(15:19):
guilt?
Or is this guilt thing?
What's like keeping me in line?
So, and indeed share, share inthe comments.
What's your situation?
What do you feel like you'refalling down on and what have
(15:41):
other so-called Christians toldyou in response to?
However you may be different, orhowever your challenges may be
different and separate humanjudgment, human limitations,
(16:15):
human stereotypes from whatChrist was clearly demonstrating
where he was never thrown offby what humans were saying that
he should do or shouldn't do, orhere's who he should accept or
not accept.
People were doing that all thetime.
I don't know if people realizethat.
I don't know if anyone's eversaid that to you directly.
(16:36):
Do you know?
I mean, this is biblical.
People were always trying toderail Christ from his mission.
So, yeah, even people close tohim, like even the disciples,
right In their varying ways wewon't get into those details in
(16:59):
this video but in their variousways they required some
management, they required somepushback.
Jesus had to say, hey, man, likeback off that.
Or hey, I'm not here for that,or that's not fulfilling what
(17:20):
God the Father has sent me to do.
God the Father has sent me todo.
So like, even like thedisciples, like people we look
up to and think of as surelythey're sinless and are always
on God's page, and like, no,they weren't, they weren't
sinless, they weren't always onGod's page.
(17:41):
The power of the narrative ofhaving the disciples there is
that the disciples are reallyjust representatives of us.
You had disciples that werejealous.
You had disciples that wantedto exclude people.
You had disciples that werecynical and doubting everything.
(18:02):
You had disciples that reallyjust seemed to be weak on faith
in general, even though theywere watching all these miracles
come to pass.
So, like this is, we are thosepeople, we are the disciples.
The discipleship continues, butunfortunately for people like
(18:28):
you and I, because Christ isn'tliterally here talking in our
ear or fighting our battles forus.
Just like in a literal,physical sense, fighting our
battles for us.
Just like in a literal,physical sense.
It's easy for people to circlethe wagons and chase us out of
(18:57):
town, and millions and millionsof people have been run out of
town Right by people that don'tunderstand the gospel or never
read the gospel or feel likethey're supposed to judge who
belongs in the Christian family,or here are all the steps you
need to take.
All that's there, but, believeme, that was all there in the
(19:19):
Bible too.
But the whole point of that isit doesn't matter what they say.
You're not trying to pleasethem.
Your salvation doesn't rest onwhat they think of you.
I mean they could pray for youor against you or curse you, it
makes no difference.
(19:39):
Humans like to think they havemore power than they do.
Like to think they have morepower than they do.
They really don't have anypower to remove your salvation
or somehow, like, cast you outinto the darkness.
(20:01):
So the good news I have for youtoday is you're living in this
mental or emotional or spiritualplace where you're homeless,
where you're just kind ofdrifting shelter to shelter,
(20:27):
where you feel vulnerable andconfused and nobody you trust is
reaching out their hand to you.
Or maybe people are reachingout their hand to somehow
manipulate you or abuse you ortake advantage of your whatever
you don't know or your guilt, ortake advantage of your whatever
(20:52):
you don't know or your guilt.
So we're going to just we'regoing to put an end to that man.
We are going to just continueto chop that off at the root.
And as we walk through thisprocess, you and I, we're both
(21:14):
going to feel more accepted byGod, more included, more
empowered, more defended, moresupported.
We're going to come from beinglow on the totem pole, the runt
(21:38):
of the litter.
We're going to rise up through,we're going to rise up out of
that the mud and muck of guiltand condemnation and cynicism
and exclusion, people talkingbad about us and gossip.
And, yeah, we're going toactually rise up out of that to
(21:59):
discover a greater truth, andnot just a truth like we pulled
out of our ass.
We're going to look at abiblical truth and understand
that.
Wow, this isn't my imagination.
Jesus was already demonstratingthis.
(22:23):
Jesus came for people like me,was already demonstrating this.
Jesus came for people like me.
You know, when people wouldconfront Jesus about things like
that, he would be like hey, youknow, if you don't need me,
fine, I'm coming for the peoplethat need me.
(22:44):
Why are you with the sinners?
Why are you with the—becausethey need me.
Okay, if you're, you know,perfected and sinless and
blameless and all that great,you don't need me then.
(23:23):
So, even in this modern day, Ibelieve that Christ is following
through on that mission, wherehe's coming to people like me,
jimmy, like you, and saying, hey, I'm here for you, but, god, I
suck at this, or I don't belongin this or I haven't.
But hey, man, I'm here for you,but, god, I suck at this, or I
don't belong in this or Ihaven't.
But, amen, I'm here for you.
That's the whole thing.
I am here for you.
I know you need my help.
I know you need to belong.
I know the way that I'veconstructed you.
I know what your needs are.
(23:44):
I know what your needs are andI believe Christ is encouraging
us to never give up but to justkeep pressing on until we really
(24:09):
take hold of what it means todwell in His presence and dwell
in the Spirit and have thatblessed assurance that perhaps
we've never experienced fromother human beings over the
course of our entire lives.
So you know how we do.
It's Jimmy James Johnson,guilt-free faith in your corner,
(24:34):
no matter what.
Let me know what's happeningand how I can help.
part of what's assumed in you going to church
is that somehow you belong there, somehow you feel comfortable,
or you're looking around andseeing your own people, and
sometimes it's something as kindof basic as people that look
(00:21):
like you or people that driveyour kind of cars or live in a
neighborhood like yours, and inmy mind that's a little
unfortunate because I would hateto think that that's the best
we can do is have, like, thechurch divided, based on
socioeconomic along those lines.
(00:44):
Based on socioeconomic alongthose lines.
But it can be more subtle thanthat.
You can go to a church wherepeople they worship a certain
way, they say certain things,they use certain phrases.
There are some churches thatare very sedate and everybody's
kind of quiet and kind of saystheir prayers very quietly and
(01:05):
kind of under their breath.
And then there are churcheslike I grew up being a member
where you get a Black Baptistchurch that is loud and it's
expressive and people aregetting caught up in the spirit,
right Like we're singing, we'restomping, people are speaking
in tongues, some folks are justfalling out on the floor.
(01:28):
It's kind of like anything goesand despite what you may think
about whether those arelegitimate displays of worship.
The fact is that there aredifferent things that we all
grow to be comfortable with,things that we, when we imagine
(01:52):
the environment we want to be inhere, are some kind of
guardrails that make us feellike we belong there.
Because, let's face it, most ofus don't want to kind of stick
out like a sore thumb.
Right, we want to be welcome.
We don't want people giving usthe side eye and like what the
(02:12):
hell's up with this dude?
One of the reasons why thisguilt-free faith channel exists
is because of my own struggleswith finding a place to fit in
the Christian church, becausefor me, as I grew up, we tried a
(02:32):
number of different churches inan effort to find out where we
would fit, and so we triedvirtually every denomination.
But part of the issue wasbecause we were an interracial
family, a black and white family.
Part of the reason was becausemy mom had come from the kind of
(02:54):
a more conservative Catholicworship group or demographic,
and my dad had grown up kind ofmore in the local Black Baptist
church, and so, of course, formy sister and I, who are
interracial, it wasn't clear,oftentimes like where we would
(03:15):
belong Now.
Granted, I mean, you may livein a place that's so diverse
that this isn't a real issue.
But for many places or manycities, as they say, sunday
church hour is the mostsegregated hour in America and
wow, like, what a statement thatreally is relative to how
(03:40):
Christ was going about town totown, swinging open the door of
welcome, of generosity, andessentially doing away with a
lot of the barriers that wereerected by God.
Like in the Old Testament, thisNew Testament was to be
inclusive and a lot of peopledidn't like that.
(04:03):
There were a lot of people whowere extremely aggressive
regarding upholding that andthen there were just a lot of
people who you know background,that had never built that type
of bridge before.
(04:30):
So one of the things I want tosay about this because obviously
I could talk about this for avery long time and perhaps I
will you have to leave in thecomments what questions or
comments you have about notfitting in the Christian church
and that, like I said, thatcould be race, that could be
(04:53):
class, that could be education,that could be neighborhood, it
could be politics, it could beeven down to what are the very
specific things one church ordenomination believes versus
another one.
Some people are really focusedon that.
(05:13):
Some people might call thatnitpicky.
Other people may call thatreally central to what they
believe faith is about.
What they believe faith isabout.
But one thing I want to assureyou of is that if you feel like
you're alone somehow in yourpursuit of God, you're not alone
(05:36):
at all.
There are so many people who arejust adrift.
No one's taking them undertheir wing.
They don't have like a clearpath to mentorship, right,
because they don't really.
It's not clear, at least rightoff the bat, how they belong.
(05:58):
Oftentimes people take youunder their wing because they
see something in you thatreminds them of themselves, and
so what happens to the personwho doesn't have those
characteristics that remindthose church elders or deacons
or whomever Bible study leadersof themselves?
(06:20):
You really can get kind of lostand left out.
Fortunately for me, after many,many years of drifting about and
not finding my place, I didfind a mentor who was a close
friend of the family, who, ofcourse, having known me from
(06:45):
birth, understood a lot about meand where I was coming from and
could see things in me that hecould relate to, things that he
wanted to nurture, and just kindof was in a, partly just
because of the relationship withmy family, was willing to make
that investment in somebody thatyou know a lot of people in the
(07:07):
church would not have made.
I'm not an easy Christian toinvest in.
I have a lot of faith issues.
I have a lot of cynicism.
You know I've spent a lot oftime in and out of God's.
I don't want to say his goodgraces, because I think part of
(07:28):
what he's trying to tell us isthat we're never out of his good
graces.
But for us, when we don't feelfull of faith or when we don't
feel like we're believers orwe're not doing the things and
checking the boxes, we feel outof favor.
We feel like we're on theoutside looking in, and I don't
(07:50):
want you to feel like that.
This is the day for that to end.
And what do I mean by end?
I don't mean like that.
You'll never feel that or neverexperience that, but what's
going to end today is this kindof pit that you may feel of I'm
(08:16):
never going to belong.
I'm never going to findsomebody that will accept me
like into the Christian family,somebody that will accept me
into the Christian family.
I'm never going to find peoplethat will unconditionally take
me where I'm at, whether I'm anatheist, whether I'm a wild
gunslinging sinner, whether I'ma drug addict, a thief.
(08:38):
Look, there are people, peoplelike myself and other people
that this channel is going togather into the group, who are
in your exact same circumstanceand, like I said, as one of
those people, I know that Godcan provide a space for you,
(09:10):
just like as I'm kind oflearning what my space is.
So what I'm envisioning forthis channel is that you and I,
we're creating a space for oneanother, a special space, a
special arrangement where peoplethat are outcast, people that
(09:36):
don't they don't have aconvenient label that they can
just, you know, write here's myname tag, I'm so-and-so, I'm
Christian, I'm this, I'm this,I'm this.
Oh, okay, yeah, have a seathere.
We know where you belong.
Like, if you don't have a nametag.
(10:05):
Or you assure you that a lot ofpeople that Christ ran into were
and they were lost, and theyweren't even expecting you know,
a Messiah to come along.
They weren't expectingsomething dramatic, to come
(10:27):
along and intervene and showthem that kind of love and
forgiveness.
So think how, you know, caughtoff guard, those people were
People that had never benefitedfrom the acceptance not only of
Jews or Christians, but evenlike within their own
(10:51):
communities, like the taxcollector, like the prostitute.
Nobody was reaching out to themand being like, hey, it's okay,
we accept you, we all have ourfaults and flaws, so it's all
good.
You know what I mean.
(11:12):
But we don't hear a lot aboutthat, or we kind of hear about
it, because it's somethingpeople are supposed to say.
But let's face it, man, thereare some things that are
acceptable to say in your churchor your Bible study and there
are a lot of things that aren't.
And, depending on yourtolerance for conflict or your
(11:37):
degree of frustration or despair, you may or may not speak up in
that circumstance.
You may go home and vow neverto go to the church again
because you don't want to sufferlike that rejection and that
pain and that sense of on theoutside looking in.
(11:58):
And so for some of you, likethat might have been years ago
that you had that bad experience.
It might have been years agothat somebody side-eyed you at
church or questioned yourbelonging or criticized your
(12:21):
faith or your view your faith oryour view and that can cripple
you in terms of yourrelationship with God, because
we have a tendency tointernalize that.
We have a tendency to think, ohwell, they must be kind of
(12:43):
speaking on God's behalf.
If all these good church peoplearen't accepting me and rolling
out the red carpet for me,maybe that's a sign that I
really don't belong in thechurch.
Not only do I not belong inthis building, but I just don't
belong in the Christian family,or whatever they want to call it
.
And what I want to say to youis like let's just kind of nip
(13:08):
that in the bud right now,because any type of prejudice
like that, any type ofdiscrimination, any kind of that
intolerance, that's not fromGod.
Man, that's just not.
That's not the way Christtreated people.
(13:28):
In fact, really, the onlypeople that Christ was really
furious with were the peoplethat prided themselves on
fulfilling the law.
That's when he has to go andsay hey, how dare you people set
(13:51):
yourself up at the top, like,of this social hierarchy under
the guise of you're followingthe law, you're following the
ritual, you're following, andChrist is like, that's like not
the spirit of what this is allabout.
And so Christ went around andwalked that spirit out, and that
(14:16):
included reaching out even topeople like you and me living on
the edge, living on the edge ofbelief, living on the edge of
sin, living on the edge of allkinds of failures.
What's your failure or what arepeople telling you your failure
(14:36):
is?
Is it divorce?
Is it people saying you're nota good parent?
Is it people saying you're notsuccessful, or you're some kind
of bum or a loser, or you cannever follow through with
anything?
Or maybe you're crippled byhealth situations and people are
saying why don't you get better?
(14:56):
Or why are you faking?
Or why haven't you found ananswer to this?
The rest of us are limpingalong.
Why aren't you doing that?
Maybe you feel like it's kindof more like your Christian
performance, like, oh, do I notpray enough?
Am I not praying for the rightthings?
Am I being selfish?
Should I be accepting more ofGod's love and walking without
(15:19):
guilt?
Or is this guilt thing?
What's like keeping me in line?
So, and indeed share, share inthe comments.
What's your situation?
What do you feel like you'refalling down on and what have
(15:41):
other so-called Christians toldyou in response to?
However you may be different, orhowever your challenges may be
different and separate humanjudgment, human limitations,
(16:15):
human stereotypes from whatChrist was clearly demonstrating
where he was never thrown offby what humans were saying that
he should do or shouldn't do, orhere's who he should accept or
not accept.
People were doing that all thetime.
I don't know if people realizethat.
I don't know if anyone's eversaid that to you directly.
(16:36):
Do you know?
I mean, this is biblical.
People were always trying toderail Christ from his mission.
So, yeah, even people close tohim, like even the disciples,
right In their varying ways wewon't get into those details in
(16:59):
this video but in their variousways they required some
management, they required somepushback.
Jesus had to say, hey, man, likeback off that.
Or hey, I'm not here for that,or that's not fulfilling what
(17:20):
God the Father has sent me to do.
God the Father has sent me todo.
So like, even like thedisciples, like people we look
up to and think of as surelythey're sinless and are always
on God's page, and like, no,they weren't, they weren't
sinless, they weren't always onGod's page.
(17:41):
The power of the narrative ofhaving the disciples there is
that the disciples are reallyjust representatives of us.
You had disciples that werejealous.
You had disciples that wantedto exclude people.
You had disciples that werecynical and doubting everything.
(18:02):
You had disciples that reallyjust seemed to be weak on faith
in general, even though theywere watching all these miracles
come to pass.
So, like this is, we are thosepeople, we are the disciples.
The discipleship continues, butunfortunately for people like
(18:28):
you and I, because Christ isn'tliterally here talking in our
ear or fighting our battles forus.
Just like in a literal,physical sense, fighting our
battles for us.
Just like in a literal,physical sense.
It's easy for people to circlethe wagons and chase us out of
(18:57):
town, and millions and millionsof people have been run out of
town Right by people that don'tunderstand the gospel or never
read the gospel or feel likethey're supposed to judge who
belongs in the Christian family,or here are all the steps you
need to take.
All that's there, but, believeme, that was all there in the
(19:19):
Bible too.
But the whole point of that isit doesn't matter what they say.
You're not trying to pleasethem.
Your salvation doesn't rest onwhat they think of you.
I mean they could pray for youor against you or curse you, it
makes no difference.
(19:39):
Humans like to think they havemore power than they do.
Like to think they have morepower than they do.
They really don't have anypower to remove your salvation
or somehow, like, cast you outinto the darkness.
(20:01):
So the good news I have for youtoday is you're living in this
mental or emotional or spiritualplace where you're homeless,
where you're just kind ofdrifting shelter to shelter,
(20:27):
where you feel vulnerable andconfused and nobody you trust is
reaching out their hand to you.
Or maybe people are reachingout their hand to somehow
manipulate you or abuse you ortake advantage of your whatever
you don't know or your guilt, ortake advantage of your whatever
(20:52):
you don't know or your guilt.
So we're going to just we'regoing to put an end to that man.
We are going to just continueto chop that off at the root.
And as we walk through thisprocess, you and I, we're both
(21:14):
going to feel more accepted byGod, more included, more
empowered, more defended, moresupported.
We're going to come from beinglow on the totem pole, the runt
(21:38):
of the litter.
We're going to rise up through,we're going to rise up out of
that the mud and muck of guiltand condemnation and cynicism
and exclusion, people talkingbad about us and gossip.
And, yeah, we're going toactually rise up out of that to
(21:59):
discover a greater truth, andnot just a truth like we pulled
out of our ass.
We're going to look at abiblical truth and understand
that.
Wow, this isn't my imagination.
Jesus was already demonstratingthis.
(22:23):
Jesus came for people like me,was already demonstrating this.
Jesus came for people like me.
You know, when people wouldconfront Jesus about things like
that, he would be like hey, youknow, if you don't need me,
fine, I'm coming for the peoplethat need me.
(22:44):
Why are you with the sinners?
Why are you with the—becausethey need me.
Okay, if you're, you know,perfected and sinless and
blameless and all that great,you don't need me then.
(23:23):
So, even in this modern day, Ibelieve that Christ is following
through on that mission, wherehe's coming to people like me,
jimmy, like you, and saying, hey, I'm here for you, but, god, I
suck at this, or I don't belongin this or I haven't.
But hey, man, I'm here for you,but, god, I suck at this, or I
don't belong in this or Ihaven't.
But, amen, I'm here for you.
That's the whole thing.
I am here for you.
I know you need my help.
I know you need to belong.
I know the way that I'veconstructed you.
I know what your needs are.
(23:44):
I know what your needs are andI believe Christ is encouraging
us to never give up but to justkeep pressing on until we really
(24:09):
take hold of what it means todwell in His presence and dwell
in the Spirit and have thatblessed assurance that perhaps
we've never experienced fromother human beings over the
course of our entire lives.
So you know how we do.
It's Jimmy James Johnson,guilt-free faith in your corner,
(24:34):
no matter what.
Let me know what's happeningand how I can help.
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