Selfish Vs Selfless

If you think right now about your neighbors, so whether you’re in an apartment, you’re in a house, can you name, you don’t need to raise your hand yet. The neighbor that is straight across from you both to the side, the ones diagonal, the ones behind you. Like if you did a full circle about around wherever you live, how do you can name every single neighbor that touches your house? Show of hands. Alright, about half, half. I cannot, I, I know about half of them, but, but the others I, I wave to, and at some point we’ve shook hands, but I don’t remember their name. How many of you have ever had a neighbor, whether it’s right now, maybe you’ve got one this moment that as soon as I say it, you’re like, yep, it’s that, that person. Or at some point you have had a neighbor that you did not get along with.

You don’t need to raise your hands on that one, by the way. It’s just, just for you. You ever had a neighbor that you just, for whatever reason, you were frustrated with each other, you got on each other’s nerves, you had that neighbor that, that maybe pushed the boundary of what they were supposed to do, kind of the expectations that we all have on being a friendly neighbor and they didn’t do it. Well. I want to share a story about two neighbors that did not get along very well. This is to tell about two guys their names were Lyman Cutler and Charles Griffin. Now, to understand the context of this story, you need to go back a little bit in the United States history. Uh, Lyman Cutler was an American, and Charles Griffin was, uh, from Britain. He was Irishman. That was from Great Britain, and they lived on the San Juan Island together.

But the reason it was a little bit tricky, uh, was because for a long time at this point in US history, uh, the United States of America and Britain had been fighting with each other. So obviously you go back to the American Revolution, that was a pretty big fight with each other. But then the war of 1812 was a fight with each other. And then coming out of that, they were trying to figure out, okay, hey, that what we now know is Canada, that’s Britain’s, and then below that, that’s the United States of America. And the hardest thing that they had to figure out was where do we draw that line that determines what is yours and what is ours? And so that came and the Oregon Treaty on June 15th, 1846. And that treaty said this, that that line that denoted what was the United States of America and what was Great Britain, that line would be along the 49th parallel of North latitude to the middle of the channel, which separates the continent from Vancouver Island. Uh, now I wanna show you a picture that’s right by Vancouver Island, a map of the area. So here’s Vancouver Island, here is Washington, now, uh, the United States of America. So you had this line that went straight across and then it cut down right here. And it says that that line goes through the middle of the straight. Now. Now, the problem back then is that lines weren’t all that accurate. And the people that that wrote up this treaty, they were in

London and they were in on the East Coast. And so the map that they were looking at did not really specify all this stuff. And so based off of the language in the map, the Britains who were on this side, they believed that what the treaty indicated is that the line was that red line, Hey, all these islands are yours because this is the middle of that straight, of course. What are the Americans belief? They said, well, no, the line is actually on this side of the strait. That’s what it’s talking about. And all these islands are ours. And then there were some people that said, well, actually we think it just goes right down the middle and it’ll be even. And so because they didn’t decide, what they kinda mutually agreed upon is we will just both cohabitate the islands until we figure it out later on.

So, so the conflict we’re talking about happens on San Juan Island. So you have an American who has a farm and he’s primarily growing potatoes. And then you have an Irishman who’s also a farmer, but he has sheep and he has pigs. And one of the irishman’s pigs keeps on going over to the American’s potatoes and eating the potatoes. So these are two neighbors that are not getting along very well. They’ve had some conversations, they’ve had some conflicts, but the pig keeps eating the potatoes. So what do you think the American does to the pig in true American fashion? He shoots the pig, maybe had some bacon.

All of a sudden there’s huge conflict. Uh, the Irishman comes over and says, what happened to my pig? And, and this supposedly is the exact conversation that they had, Cutler, the American says to Griffin, who owns the pig? Your pig? It was eating my potatoes. And Griffin’s response was, this, it is up to you to keep your potatoes out of my pig is your fault. And so now the conflict starts to boil over. And what color says to Griffin is he says, here, I will give you $10 for your pig. We’ll call it even that would be the equivalent of about $350 today. And he says, no, my pig is worth a hundred dollars, which would be the equivalent to about $3,500 today, which is significantly more than the pig was worth. And he said, well, I will not pay that. And so Griffin goes back to the British and says, I need you to arrest this guy.

He, he murdered my pig. And so the the British start to come. And, and so Cutler goes to the Americans and he says, the British are coming. The British are coming. They’re gonna arrest me. And so the Americans respond by sending the Ninth Infantry to show up outside of his house and say, you are not arresting this American. And so what did the British Jews response? They sent some of their military. They say, Hey, there’s a military now invading the San Juan Islands. We better send some of our military to go show up. The Americans hear about it. What do the Americans do? They send the USS Massachusetts a warship to go into the canal right outside the San Juan Island and say, who’s playing around now? So what did the British do? They send three warships and 2,500 soldiers. It wasn’t until four months later that finally word of this conflict gets all the way back to London and all the way back to, to the United States.

And, and they hear what’s going on and they say, wait, wait, time out. Are you meaning to tell me that we are about to go to war over a pig? I said, calm down, but, but here’s factual US history that in 1859, the United States almost went to war over a pig, a pig. Have you ever had conflict that escalated and escalated and escalated to where at some point you look back and you say, how did this even start? How did we get to where we are? Why, what causes the conflict that we have? Oh, what’s the reason that we have dumb fights and arguments? Well, scripture tells us in James chapter four, cer in verse one, this is the brother of Jesus. This is what he writes, what causes corals and what causes fights among you? So, so he poses that question, what is the reason that we have quarrels and fights?

Then he gives the answer. Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you, you desire and you do not have. So you murder, you covet and you cannot obtain. So you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passion. And what’s he saying? He’s saying, why does conflict exist? The short answer is this, that all conflict exists because someone is being selfish. Someone in every conflict is elevating themselves up their own needs, their own desires above someone else. That person doesn’t like it. And in turn, oftentimes they raise their needs. There is selfishness above the other person. In conflict happens, happens in my house every single day. If you’ve got kids, you know what I’m talking about. There’s conflict over all kinds of stuff.

There’s this phrase that oftentimes gets said in my house that maybe, maybe your house has never had this phrase uttered, but but ours, it’s a, it’s a literal everyday occurrence. Someone says the phrase that’s not fair and that’s not fair is always one sided. And so if someone’s saying that’s not fair, it’s because their sibling has been watching a TV show and they don’t want to watch that TV show. They want to watch their TV show. And then you say, okay, we’re turning screens off. And they say, that’s not fair. I didn’t get mine. Or they’re arguing because they say, well, they had an Oreo and I would like to eat an Oreo also. That’s not fair. Now, nevermind the fact that they chose to eat ice cream instead of the Oreo. It was their choice. Now, in their mind, it’s not fair. I want that.

Sometimes it’s even sillier than that. Sometimes they’re sitting in my spot on the couch. It’s not fair. You say you don’t have a spot on the couch. You don’t own a couch. I do. Me and mom own a couch. Every time you’re sitting in a spot, you’re spending my spot, not your spot. But, but why does that conflict stir and stir and stir? Because selfishness, the, the, the the natural human just response to everything is to elevate me, elevate my, elevate myself, elevate I, and and don’t you think we live in a culture that seems to be doing more and more and more of that. In 1942, CS Lewis writes the screw tape letters. And in that he describes hell. This is what he says. He says, hell is a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance and resentment.

Now, do you think that that describes 1942 better or 2024? This, this idea of everyone living the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance and resentment when, when they poll teenagers right now about future job occupations? You know what the number one job that teenagers want to be when they grow up an influencer, depending upon what study and report you look at, up to 86% of kids want to be an influencer when they grow up. Now, we live in a culture and, and some of it’s accidental. Some of it’s, this is what just comes with the technology. But because of the internet and because of social media, there’s, there’s this idea of, well, you gotta build your brand. You gotta build your followers and you’re gotta build your crowd because that’s how you have influence. And then you can leverage that influence for other things. And so we can get so caught up into that, that our culture says elevate self, elevate self.

We look around and everyone seems so selfish, and yet what Jesus teaches is completely opposite to that. It’s completely counterintuitive of how we feel naturally wired to, to put my selfishness first and elevate my selfishness above everybody else’s. Jesus gives us the opposite. Uh, look what he says in Matthew 1624. Jesus tells his disciples, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. He’s creating this completely upside down kingdom. It’s the opposite of what normative behavior looks like. The world says live for self. And Jesus says, deny self. Now look how this plays out. In Mark chapter 10, Jesus is talking to his disciples and he’s talking about how the world around them functions. And this is what he says. Jesus called to them and said to them, you know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles Lord it over them.

And they’re great ones, exercise authority over them. So, so pause. ’cause he’s just saying, this is the way the world works, is the rulers in the first century, they lorded their authority over the people, beneath them with the expectation of, I’m more important than you, therefore you need to serve me. And now you gotta understand that the disciples that they were following the Messiah and they were both right and wrong. They were right, that Jesus would be the Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament, but they were wrong in their interpretation of who they thought he was gonna be. They thought he was about to be the king. And so because they thought he was about to be like King David and overthrow the world and overthrow Rome and sit on a throne, in their mind they’re like, we’re gonna be really important. We’re the the 12 closest people to Jesus.

And when he’s king, we’re, we’re gonna be rulers over all kinds of people and all kinds of different things. And so they, there’s a part of human nature that they’re looking at rulers at the time. They’re thinking, I’m gonna, I’m gonna be just like that. I’m gonna have the same luxuries and the same lifestyle that they have. And then Jesus says what he says, but hey, yeah, the way that it works right now is that the rulers rule over and make everybody beneath them, serve them. He says, but it shall not be so among you, but whoever would be great among you must be your servant. And whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the son of man, he’s talking about himself in the Old Testament that prophesies the Messiah refers to that title, the son of man. So he is talking about himself.

He says, even the son of man, even himself came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. He said, Jesus says, Hey, yeah, I get that. This is the way that the world works. You get in charge, you get to be important. And because you’re important, everybody else bows down and serves you. But he says, in my kingdom, that’s not gonna be the way that it is. He said, in my kingdom, the greatest in my kingdom serve the least in my kingdom. And then he points to himself and he says, because that’s exactly who I am, that I have come not to be served, but instead to serve and to give his life up as a ransom for many. He, he’s saying, just as I’m gonna give my life up, I’m the same way I’m calling you to give your life up. What do you think you’re giving your life up for right now? Like if somebody else

On the outside came and did an audit of your life, audit of my life where, where somebody, let’s say somebody from the first century that they just watched a videotape of the last week of your life, the last seven days, maybe the last month of your life, and they just took notes and they watched everywhere that you went. They heard every conversation that you had. They saw every action they saw everywhere that you spent your money. If they were to answer the question, what is this person living for? What do you think the answer would be? And Jesus is saying, here’s the temptation that we can end up living lives that look the exact same as culture around us, that we’re living for the same things that everybody else is. And he says, in my kingdom, your life should look different. If you’ve got a Bible turn with me to John.

We’re gonna be in chapter 15. We’re gonna look at a whole section of verses together. And so I encourage you, if you’ve got a Bible turn there, if you don’t, if you’ve got the Cherry Hills mobile app, everything that is ever on a screen, those notes are always in the, the app on the the app notes page. And then you can also follow along on the screen as well. John chapter 15, starting in verse one. This is what it says. This whole section is red, which means Jesus is talking and Jesus says, I am the true vine. And my father is the vine dresser. Every branch of me that does not bear fruit, he takes away. And every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes that it may be more fruitful. Already you are clean because the word that I’ve spoken to you abide in me and I in you as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine.

Neither can you unless you abide in me. I’m the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit for apart from me. You can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask yourself you wish and it will be done for you. Verse A by this, my father is glorified Now. Now pause for a second. ’cause I think some of the language oftentimes for the first century gets lost to us. Uh, and in this particular passage, Jesus is using this metaphor for an agrarian culture. And the first century, they would’ve been very familiar with planting and growing and reaping and harvesting, but it’s probably something that most of us in this room are not familiar with. The closest I am is that in 2020, like right when Covid started, uh, we decided to grow a garden. Anybody else grow a covid garden in 2020? Alright, a handful of us. And so our kids didn’t have school. And so my wife was like, I, I’m filling extra stuff into the day. And so we’re going to do a garden together. And so I, I buy the, the big cedar thing and it’s, it’s raised bed and gotta

Put the whole thing together. And then you gotta, you gotta put the plastic on the bottom and then you gotta poke holes in the mesh. Then you’re filling it with dirt. And so it’s it’s hours of work to just get the thing ready. And then the kids who help for about two minutes of the building of it, now that it’s done, they’re excited to come out and they take the seeds and they push the seeds down into the dirt and then they water it that first time. And my kids day one, they’re like, I will water it every day. I’m so excited to grow tomatoes and peppers and stuff that they didn’t actually like to eat in the first place, but they were like, I’m so excited to watch it grow. And day one, they watered that thing. And day two, they water that thing.

Day three, they had to be reminded to water that thing. By day four, my wife was watering that thing. Then eventually little little sprouts came up, just little tiny sprouts came up and they ran out. They were excited. Look, it’s growing. It’s alive. Look what’s happened. And then they stared at it and they said, how come it’s not growing anymore? I said, well, you can’t watch it grow. You gotta come back tomorrow and the next day and the next week. And they got bored and they stopped watering it. And, and my wife, for the most part watered it. And then it were some fruit, but a lot of death. That’s what happened in our garden. But, but here’s the thing about our garden. It didn’t affect our life. Like we weren’t walking out and saying the tomatoes died. We’re gonna starve tonight like we’re done for like our tomatoes died.

And guess what we did? We went to king. So it was not, didn’t change our lifestyle whatsoever, but but in the context of this passage, he’s talking to people that live off the land that, that when the crops die, if if the crop doesn’t bear fruit, you suffer the consequences from. And and so he’s saying that using this metaphor that that is rich to them, that that a vine that doesn’t have fruit is worthless. He’s saying that, Hey, listen, if you are a Christian, if you are a follower after me, if you are in my kingdom and you’re not bearing fruit, you’re not accomplishing your purpose. And then in verse eight, he says, by this, my father’s glorified. Now if you’re a Christian, if you are a follower of Jesus in the room, then this should be one of your priorities in life. This is what it means to be a Christian.

That, that I am living my life in such a way that my thoughts, my words, my actions should bring glory to God the Father by how I live. How do I do that? Well, he, Jesus is about to give us the answer. He says by this, my father is glorified, that you bear much fruit. And so prove to be my disciples. Verse nine, as the father has loved me, so have I loved you, abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love. Just as I have kept my father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full. It’s a fascinating phrase that he says. He said, now I I’m teaching you these things where I want you to, to live this life of sacrifice, of selflessness, of love for the world around you.

And it’s not just for the people around you, it’s also for you. It’s also for us that you might have the joy of God and, and feel that joy in what you’re doing. It’s interesting when they do studies on altruism, studies on serving other people, using our time, using our money to serve others and not ourselves. Here’s what they find, that if you are altruistic with your time, money, talents, that your blood pressure goes down, that you have higher overall life satisfaction and you have more friends, like studies continually have found that to be true. And and here’s the other fascinating thing about the study. If someone sets up to accomplish those three things, so if someone says, Hey, I want my blood pressure to go down, I want more friends, I want higher life satisfaction. So I’m gonna go start serving people in order to get those things, that doesn’t work.

So if the motivation is selfish, even though the behavior is selfless, if the motivation is wrong, the benefits do not exist. What they’re finding in studies 2000 years later is exactly what Jesus said right here. Jesus said, you wanna have joy. You wanna have the fullness that this life has to offer. The lie of this culture in this world is that the way you find joy is for other people serving you. And Jesus says, no, actually the fullness of life, the joy that comes in knowing me comes best by you serving others. And then he gets very specific in what that looks like. Verse 12, this is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends. If you do what I command, no longer do I call you servants for the servant does not know what the master is doing.

But I have called you friends for all that I’ve heard from my father. I have made known to you, you did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide so that whatever you ask the father in my name, he may give it to you. In verse 17, he says, these things I command you so that you will love one another. Jesus says, I’m not telling you this as your master telling you as a slave. Now again, that’s something that gets lost in our culture, but in Rome there were more slaves than there were Roman citizens. It was a part of just their natural order of things. Slave had to do whatever the master said. And Jesus says, I’m not asking you as a master, I’m asking you as your friend that you’re doing this, not out of compulsion of it because you have to, but because you love me and because you want to see Jesus did something radical in the first century that we all benefit from 2000 years later.

Like in our culture, there’s a lot of normative phrases that we throw around. Uh, so people, even non-Christians, just people like to say, well, that God is love and that everybody has value and that we should love everyone, that we should accept people. That, that all of that comes from the teachings of Jesus. That before that, in human history, that was not the case. Uh, before Jesus in human history, the Greek and the Roman gods, they were not loving gods. They constantly fought with each other. They constantly fought with mankind. It was very much a, Hey, if I get bored, I’m just gonna start throwing lightning bolts down there on you. Do whatever I want. And the normative idea of theology in the first century, what, what most people just believe to be true was that if God loved you, then he blessed you with good stuff.

So if you were a good person, you got what you deserved. So if you were a good person, you would end up being healthy and wealthy and powerful. But in the opposite side, in the first century, they believed that if you’re not a good person, that you will end up poor. You’ll end up dirty, you’ll, you’ll end up marginalized and you’ll end up with disease and sickness. And so that was the normative behavior in the first century. That’s why your religious people, your holy people stayed away from poor people and sick people. They said, well, they are unholy. They’re getting what they deserve. And then what does Jesus do? Jesus walks into the scene and for the most part, he ignores the healthy, powerful, wealthy crowd. And he hangs out with the crowd over here. He does something that up until this point in human history was not a teaching and did not exist.

And that is that he says that each person has value and each person has dignity, and it’s independent. That value is independent of what they’ve done for somebody else. And so the Pharisees at the time, the holy people, they’re looking at Jesus. They’re like, wait, what is he doing? He’s hanging out with the poor people. He’s hanging out with the dirty people. He’s hanging out with the sinners, the tax collectors, the prostitutes. He’s hanging out with the disabled and the sick. And Jesus does it intentionally because he said, no, no, no, they have equal value in the kingdom of God. Now here’s an important distinction to understand. And Jesus is not affirming sin. He was hanging out with all kinds of sinners. Never does he affirm sin. Never does he validate the sin in their life. But here’s what we get backwards so often inside a church that that we have this idea that people need to change before they can meet Jesus.

But that’s not how it works, is it? The gospel says you change because you encounter Jesus not before you encounter Jesus. And so Jesus said, I’m gonna love and accept everyone. He doesn’t affirm their sin. But yeah, absolutely, you can clap for that. He says they’re gonna love and accept everyone. And if we’re gonna be a church that lives out life the way that Jesus has called us to live, the what we should we look like, we should be a church that loves and accepts everyone that walks into our doors regardless of their background or regardless of their challenges, regardless of what sin they’re currently existing in right now, that they should feel loved and accepted. There’s a distinction between affirming sin, but we should love and accept everyone. If you just take a pause and step back from our country and human history, and you look at the world around us and you just hear so many people say so many things, but I think most Christians would say that, that at one point we had these biblical moral values in our, our country as a whole.

If we’re not post-Christian, we’re pretty close to post-Christian, if not heading that direction. Most people don’t value the Bible the way that people did 75 years ago. And so you look in our culture and you say, well, how do I fight that back? How do I argue? How do I debate? What, what are the things that we need to do? And here’s the thing, if we go back to the first century, we have a really easy blueprint to follow in the first century. The Christians, they start wrestling with the words of Jesus. That Jesus is saying, Hey, I don’t want you to be selfish. Instead, I want you to be selfless. And so they start wrestling with that. And they look at the world around them. In the first century, it was illegal to be a Christian. They were being persecuted, they were being tortured, they were being killed.

And yet they read the words of Jesus. And they said, we need to live lives of love willingly laying ourselves down in the side for other people. One of the amazing things that they did is, is they started adopting kids in, in the first century, there was a practice called exposure. And exposure for most of human history was a normative thing that people did. Exposure was if you had a child that you did not want, you could just leave the child outside, expose them to the elements, and that child would die. Oftentimes, they’d leave him by a river. Now, for most of human history, if if there was a child that was born with anything wrong with it, uh, then exposure was the normative practice. Hey, leave the child outside. But in Rome in the first century, it was one step worse than that. It wasn’t just exposing someone that that just, oh, hey, I I don’t like this.

And so they were just exposing any kid that they didn’t want. Look what it says. This is from, uh, academic paper about Rome and talking about exposure. They say this economic infant side on the other hand, is generally believed to have survived all through Roman history and the practice known as exposure. By exposure, I mean on the contrary, a system recognized by law and society under which it was possible from man of wealth in standing to order his legitimate children to be abandoned, presumably to die simply because he had enough already or for some other reason, did not care to accept the responsibility for their rearing. And so the common practice in the first century of Rome was that if you have a baby and maybe you just didn’t want a baby, maybe what often happens, if it was a female and they wanted a male, they’d say, okay, well we’re gonna get rid of this one.

Maybe this couldn’t afford to have another baby. They would just take the child and they would take it by river and they would just lay it down and they would leave it there to die. And so Christians in the first century, they’re reading the words of Jesus and they say, how do we respond to this? And so what do they do? And they start picking up every baby and they start bringing ’em into their own homes. That that what we know of as orphanages today. If you trace the roots of where did the idea of an orphanage come from? It came all the way back to Christians in the first and the second century, taking in children that had been left to die. And they took in every child, they said, Hey, hey, child with disabilities or, or defects, Hey, they are valuable in God’s eyes and so therefore we are going to adopt them.

And so they started living these lives that the world around them hated everything about them. And yet they took notes of their love and their actions. Julian was the emperor of Rome. Hated Christians, tortured Christians, killed Christians. And yet this is what he writes in 360 ab. He says, these impious galleons, that was the term they used to describe Christians. Jesus was from Galilee. And so oftentimes, uh, in Rome, they would call the Christians the Gs. He says, the impious gleans not only feed their own, but ours also welcoming them with their love. They attract them as children are attracted with cakes. What a beautiful picture he’s saying. People are flocking towards Christianity just like a child is attracted to a cake. Why?

’cause their actions, because of their love. He goes on to say this, well, while the pagan priests neglect the poor, the hated gleans devote themselves to works of charity and by a display of false compassion, have established and given effect to the pernicious errors, such practices common among them and causes contempt for our gods. He said, Hey, I, I don’t buy all their compassion. I think it’s all fake. But because our priests, our religions don’t have any of that, people keep flocking towards Christianity. Christianity which was outlawed in Rome, becomes the dominant religion in Rome. How they didn’t fight a battle. They didn’t pick up a sword. They didn’t wage a war. They didn’t win it through debate or through fighting or through conflict. How did they win it? They won it by being selfless, by showing extraordinary love to the world and the people around them. So dominant

Was Christianity in Rome by the time that Julian died, that that these two words are the dying words of Julian, the Kti Galilee. It’s Latin means to conquer the end of his life. He looks back and he says, the Christians have conquered Rome. Now. Now imagine you’re the emperor of Rome and you’ve been fighting for your borders, the invading you command the most powerful army in the world, the Imperial Legion. And he says, I fought all these fights and yet I’ve lost Rome to the Christians who fought at, from within. And yet they never fought. They transformed the world because the world looked at their life and they said, man, they’ve got joy. They’re selfless. Uh, they’re adding human dignity and value to everybody around them. And the world took note. And they said, I want that. Oh, cherry Hills Community church, the capital C Church in the United States of America.

What could happen? What could happen in our nation, in our community if we could start living out who Jesus calls us to be, just like they did in the first century, that we become a place that when the broken and the marginalized and the hurting, when they walk through these doors, they encounter joy and they feel loved and they feel accepted. And would that not change the world? We know it would ’cause. That’s how Jesus has done it over and over and over again. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, when we just, and we thank you that you call us to something more than the culture around us, that we live in a culture that is so focused on self. And yet all the studies show that people are less happy, more substance abuse, more challenges, more struggle. So in, in the midst of so much brokenness, help us to be a church.

Help us to be a community. Help us to be Christians who live out what you’ve called us to live out that, that our salvation is not because of what we have done. It’s because of what you have done on the cross. We serve a risen Lord. And so Lord, help us knowing that it’s not what we have done that gives us worth. It’s what you have done. God, help us to have that mindset as we encounter the people around us. God, that we love people towards you when they encounter you, that it changes everything. Help us to be a church that loves selflessly. It’s the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen. I.