Transcription
Good morning, friends. Will you stand with me as I call us to worship today? Now, each Sunday we begin with a call to worship. This is simply an opportunity for us together to declare our intent to God, to turn our focus from wherever it's been and whatever it's been on to Him and Him alone. So, read along with me; your parts will be on the screen.
When we come together, each of us has something to bring. We are present to You, Lord, all that we have. When we come together, we bring a song of praise. You alone are worthy, Lord. When we come together, we bring a word of encouragement. We bring our words to build up and strengthen Your church. When we come together, we are together in the unity of the Spirit. We are the temples of the Spirit of the living God.
As we gather today, we hunger for more of You, Lord Jesus. We welcome Your presence; overwhelm us with Your love. We welcome You today. Holy Spirit, come. Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit, come. Amen. Let's worship. [Music]
Let's pray together. Jesus, we acknowledge You in this space. You are Lord of all; You are the King on the throne. Jesus, You are worthy of all glory and honor and praise. And today it's like coming to our senses again, and I even sense there's many that You're waking up out of a slumber. You're awakening us to the reality that Jesus is Lord, that Jesus, You are present, that You're at work in us. And something happens when we gather like this, as Your temple of the Holy Spirit. When we come together in this gathering, in agreement, in alignment with King Jesus, there's healing; there's peace over anxiety; there's reorientation that we would see reality as heaven sees reality, that Jesus, You're back from the dead, and anything is possible. So we just declare that God, You, through the power of Jesus, through the life of Jesus, You do renew our strength. You will mount us up on wings like eagles, Jesus, because You rose from the dead. We believe now that You have all authority in heaven and earth, and we, as Your body, You as the head, we follow You. We follow You today. We get in alignment with Your mental maps of reality, and we say that Jesus is Lord, Jesus is good, and Jesus, You're here. So we welcome You, all that You want to say, all that You want to do. After Your prayer, Jesus, we say, not our will but Yours be done. We surrender to You, King Jesus today. If you're in agreement with that, would you say Amen? Amen.
Hey, Bridgetown Church, how are you? You're okay? Really, really good to see you. And for friends gathering with us online at home, welcome. Our vision and our dream is to see God's kingdom come in Portland as it is in heaven. And what that means is that right now in heaven, Jesus' good and perfect will is done. People there, the the the beings there, the angels, the elders around the throne, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all in agreement, and Jesus' will is done perfectly in heaven. But on earth, it's not like that yet, is it? There's brokenness. We sense it in our own lives and our families and our neighborhoods, in our city and in our world. And we believe that the mission of the church, and of Bridgetown Church, is to partner with the living God. It's an amazing reality. God could have done this, this restoration project Himself, but He invites us in to partner with the living God, to work together to see His kingdom come, to see all that's not in agreement and alignment with King Jesus. And there's a lot that's not. And God invites us into that story, as a church, as friends, to partner with the living God to see Jesus' kingdom come. And that's what we're about. And we do that through worship, in a context like that. We do this in in our Bridgetown communities, gathering around a table together, and then we do it as we go to the margins of the city and serve in acts of justice and mercy, empowered by the Holy Spirit. That's why we exist. And wherever you're at and learning about Jesus and following Him, we just want you to know you're welcome here. We want you to know who we are, and we want you to know that wherever you're at on that journey, some of you may be in Alpha, asking questions; that's awesome. You're welcome here as long as it takes, whatever that journey's like. We're honored that you're here. For those of you uh gathering with us online at home, we, when you are ready, we believe the church is an embodied people. There's something about being together physically, even with masks, is better than at home, am I right? So we just want to welcome you back when you're ready. Uh, we would love to see you here in this space, and we believe we're family. So right now we're going to take a moment to greet one another. Greet those around you. Kids off to your classes. Everyone else, say hello to those around you. Hey again, welcome to Bridgetown. Go ahead and grab a seat, please. And when you sit down, if there's any empty seats near you, could you scoot into the middle? And there are some empty seats up here in this front, I believe. We just want to make sure everybody has a seat.
Hey, this is our moment to pause for generosity. There's a few different ways you can give. You can give online through an app called Pushpay, or upstairs at the info table, you can drop cash or check as well. And this is a moment when we get to highlight some of our justice partners. And if you don't know, this is my good friend Lance. You guys say hi, Lance. Hey guys. Hey. If you don't know uh Lance, he's on staff at BPM, which is Because People Matter, and Lance uh came into the Bridgetown family through Alpha, through baptism, recently married. And if you don't know Lance's whole story, you are a testimony, I believe, of first fruits of what God is doing in our community, how He's bringing healing through you, and now you're bringing that to others, even in your full-time vocation. So tell us, what is BPM for those who don't know?
Oh yeah, thank you, Gerald. Um, BPM, the best way I can describe is we're a people development organization. Um, we are really good at creating relational environments that provide opportunities for three things: mobilization, that's mobilization of volunteers, relief, humanitarian relief, and development. And we just, we believe that love—our mission statement is loving people because people matter—yeah, and we believe that love is the medicine and the cure to pretty much all the problems in the world today. And and one of the super clear examples of this is during the pandemic, we were doing lunch drops. Many of you participated in that, bringing lunches, and then those went to the BPM team, particularly around Burnside Old Town, where then they were distributed to the houseless. And then once things kind of settled in with the new normal of the pandemic in 2020, we then took our youth and went out and served those uh, and it was powerful. It was one, it was a life-changing moment for myself, for my daughter, as we went out there and saw Jesus with those on the furthest margins of our city. And so we're just grateful for how you brought that partnership to us, Lance. Um, anything else that we need to know about BPM, or things that would be helpful to share?
Um, well, we've got a bunch of programs, I think. Um, the the biggest one that most people know us for uh is Night Strike, yeah. Um, that's 47 weeks out of the year, Thursday night, we are under the Burnside Bridge for 10 years now. And um, most people think Night Strike gets its own thing, but we actually have other programs too. Yeah, we have B-Town Kids, which uh serves um at-risk youth out around the city. Uh, during the summer we create these kind of Saturday fun events where kids get to come out, we just love on them, and then we carry that through the holidays where we provide a Thanksgiving meal and an experience for them, and then toys at Christmas. We also do an internship program, Lifescape Internships, which is kind of my story. It's basically coming alongside guys that are coming out of a treatment program, just loving on them in that next phase of their life. And then we have a Beyond the Bridge program, which is actually our newest endeavor, and that's where we're going deeper and we're actually serving our friends under the bridge, beyond the bridge, and really developing them into overcoming whatever life hurdles that they're trying to, you know, get into housing.
Yeah, amazing. Um, a lot of great stuff. We're so um just honored to be in partnership with you, Lance, and the BPM team. Our youth families and you'll be here at the info desk if people want to chat to Lance after the gathering. He'll be upstairs. And also this week we are asking all of our communities, and even if you're not in a community, that as we're talking about being empowered by the Spirit and on mission, we want to live that out this week. So we're going to have sign-ups to go out and do works of justice and mercy. Some of that is with BPM. There's a sign-up link online right there. You can you can see we're trying to get out this week and get all of our community just out there and to see what God's doing in the margin. So Lance, thank you so much. A couple other things before uh we get into the scriptures. Also, if you are new to the church, we are going to do just a welcome to Bridgetown after the 11th, so that will be about 12:45. If you want to go get coffee and come back up in the hospitality room, just a space for you to meet some of our staff, to tell you who we are, answer any of your questions. And then, as usual, there's a lot more happening in the life of the church. You can sign up for an email called The Weekly that will tell you everything that's happening. It's an it'll go into your inbox as an email Thursday afternoons. If you haven't signed up for that, please do. And we're going to get into the scriptures. If you don't have a Bible, raise your hand. And in this practice we are remembering that at the moment of Pentecost when the Spirit came, people from all different languages heard the gospel message in their original language. So we're having fun hearing from those within our Bridgetown church family read the scripture in their language and then read it in English. So would you uh join with me to welcome our friend Joy up here to read? [Applause]
My name is Joy Mulumba, and I'm from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and I would like to ask you all to stand for the reading of the scripture. We'll be reading from Micah chapter six, verse six to eight. I write first in English, and then I'll read in Swahili.
Today we watch. Shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before Him? We brought offerings with calves in Your home. Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams with ten thousand rivers of olive oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? Your own moral. What is good and what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.
The Swahili version: [Swahili]
This is the word of the Lord. Now, before I get to today's introduction, I I just don't want to quickly rush past the fact—I don't feel like there's a proper celebration—that we heard from Lance, a story of someone that came to faith in Alpha within this church and is now leading a justice and mercy ministry in our city as a forerunner for this congregation. That's pretty good, right? That's pretty good. And I'm I'm with Gerald, just saying more of that, please. I think that's the first of many of those kinds of stories. Uh, so we're in this teaching series, Demonstrating the Gospel, where we have been looking at the person of the Holy Spirit, and we've gone on this journey from a familiar stranger to being introduced to the Spirit through these three dominant metaphors that we read throughout the biblical story. And today we kind of shift from looking primarily about at who the Spirit is to what the Spirit does. And we're going to look at a few different expressions. You're going to get to hear from some different teachers in the next few weeks as we do that, but we want to start here, that the Spirit empowers the works of justice and mercy. And it's important that we start there because sometimes we make the false assumption that when the Holy Spirit empowers a community, it means more fun worship gatherings, which it does. I think I mean I I tend to have more fun at worship gatherings where the full gifts and ministry of the Holy Spirit are present, but it first and foremost just simply means that we begin to resemble the ministry of Jesus more completely. And the ministry of Jesus primarily takes place, if you read the Gospels, not in the gathered time of worship, but out on the streets as we go about our day-to-day lives, empowered by the Holy Spirit. And so today we're going to get to hear from Christine Kane. So come on out here, Christine.
Christine. Yeah, welcome. So excited. You're—I can tell you're so excited. Christine is the author of a whole bunch of books. I think six of them. Yeah, six of them. This is her latest book, How Did I Get Here? Uh, it's upstairs in our bookstore if you want to grab a copy. It's also all over the internet where you buy everything else, if you'd like to grab a copy there as well. She's the founder of an organization called A21, that's an anti-human trafficking organization working specifically among refugee populations. Also uh founded an organization called Propel, which empowers uh and develops leadership in young women, releasing them into their calling. Such a beautiful work. But as always when we have someone come in here, it's not really their resume we're that impressed with. So it's an impressive resume; well done. We invite folks in because we want an impartation from the Spirit, and there's something within Christine's story that goes something like this: I was empowered by the Spirit of God, and that sent me to the least of these, to those that Jesus seems to be spending time with. And it's such a longing in my heart that we might be a church that resembles Jesus, that we get empowered by the Spirit that empowered Jesus and then sent to the places that Jesus was sent to, and then we reap a sort of harvest like Jesus reaped. And so that's what we're after, and that's why we've invited Christine because there's a part of her her story that we longed to see be a part of our story. So Christine, let me pray for you, and then I'll get out of your way now.
Lord, we thank You for Christine. Thank You that You're writing such a beautiful story in her life. We marvel at Your grace, God, as it as we behold it in Lance and in Joy and in Christine and and in ourselves. Jesus, You are so good, and Your Holy Spirit does not come to fill the qualified. You just simply outrun our failings at every turn and write stories through us that we could never write in ourselves. And so we thank You for Christine that she comes in uh standing on the platform of a life of saying yes to You, Jesus. And we ask now that if she opens the scriptures for us that she would give us more than insights but an impartation of of her spirit into our spirit. So come, Holy Spirit, we ask that You would do what only You can do, and we expect it in Jesus' name. We pray. Amen. Amen. Amen.
I am so honored to be with you guys today and um the live stream. I it's just kind of like Bridgetown's everywhere, which is, you know, I am um I I think I almost basically invited myself back um after the last time because I thought if I invite myself back enough um it I'll just be part of the team, which is I love this church. I love this house. I love the mantle that is on this place, and I love this series. Uh, you all have um an amazing pastor and an amazing teacher. I I was talking to um Tyler, and I said, you know, I'm a Pentecostal, and I think this is the best teaching on the Holy Spirit that I've ever heard, and I'm like 55. I've been listening to this stuff for a really, really long time. And so I I do want you all to uh catch up because I'm basically just jumping on as a part of this series, and it is such a strong holistic series. Tyler alluded to it that, you know, I loved even week one when we talked about a familiar stranger. The Holy Spirit is not a force to be captured but a person to know um and to be known by. I thought that alone we could go forever. Um, in week two we went to presence, water, and I love that whole looking at the the Spirit through the metaphor of water. This line—and you're gonna hear me come back to this all the time—but I want to put it in the context of what we've been hearing from your pastor so that you can see I'm just kind of the next step of that, but that line: because the powerfully healed become powerful healers. I thought, y'all, that's a book. And then um, you know, we talked about Tyler talked about um the person, the the breath, and of course, you know, every Pentecostal bone in me was jumping up and down right then as we were talking about having divine breath in our lungs. And I mean, I was running laps in my kitchen as I was listening to that. And by the time we got to the dove last week um when we you know we have been anointed with the same Spirit as Jesus to continue the full ministry of Jesus, I'm just going to be the practical example of what has been preached over the last few weeks. And um I do want to recommend—I'm going to dive in—that you listen to Tyler's message from April the 11th, 2021. And everyone on the live stream, and it's entitled A Community of Justice, Mercy, and Peace in a Culture of Social Darwinism. I mean, even his titles are cool. And so you just go, okay. But um I think that's—I'm not gonna revisit all of that because that lays the the foundation, and I couldn't even touch that theologically how he's explained it all, but I'm going to give you all hope that if God can use me, God can use anybody on the earth. And um it doesn't matter; your history does not need to define your destiny, and that no failure is fatal or final, that God can raise you up and do exceedingly abundantly above and beyond anything that you could ever ask, hope, or think. And we, you know, I love the text in Micah. Um, we we went there today, Micah chapter 6, verse 8. Now I'm going to teach you Australian, but this church is familiar with Australian accents, and so um I'm—Micah, you say Maker, but it's Micah—um, and the the one verse that we'll focus on here, showing you immortal, what is good and what does the Lord require of you? Why I love this verse is because it really doesn't matter; you you have to work really hard to make this say just what it doesn't say um because it's just it sums it all up so effectively: to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. The Lord's like, this is what I require. I mean, of course, the the prophets and the leaders in in Israel um Micah was prophesying, saying, you know, you're mistreating people economically, you are not acting justly; in fact, you're exploiting people, you're taking their land. And there was very much like today, there was exploitation, and the prophet is telling the leaders and the priests, this this is not okay. And okay, we want to get back in the good books with God; what do we do? And and what kind of offering do we give Him? And how much do we give Him? And like, do we even sacrifice? We'll do whatever, God, just tell us what You want us to do so that we can be in right relationship with You, and we'll do it. And they're looking for something awesome, and God's like, let me just put it simply for you: I just want you to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. That's it. That's that's as complicated as it gets.
You know, my husband and I oversee churches in um Sofia, Bulgaria, in Thessaloniki, Greece, and in Warsaw, Poland. And we were going and visited our church called Zoe Church in Warsaw, Poland, and because I was I was there, you know, we frequently go. Um, I went and visited the concentration camp at Auschwitz because it was, you know, less than an hour away from where our church is in Warsaw. Now I'm an English major; my my degree is in English and economic history, and specifically German economic history. And so I had studied so much about World War II and especially about the Holocaust, and and that that horror, that that that extermination, that genocide, it just has always been very, very, very close to my heart in terms of it just so moved me. So this was the first time I'd gone to different concentration camps all around Europe. We have A21 in 16 countries around in the world, and so we're—that's why my husband's not here with me today—we just kind of do laps of the globe. And and I was um really wanting to go to Auschwitz, and I I was not even prepared for what I saw. And I thought I was. I'd been to other camps. And I remember walking around and just even walking through the gate and then walking around, and I I came to the ovens, and I literally, literally just fell to the ground, and I was sobbing, almost in a fetal position, and just imagining the depravity of humanity, how we could get to a place where we could we could literally do this to other human beings. And I was crying so hard, and I was saying to God out loud, if anything like this ever happens in our lifetime, Lord, I I I don't want to be silent; I I don't want to ignore this. And I had remembered reading a paper, and then Erwin Lutzer, in his book When a Nation Forgets God, actually quoted this eyewitness account that that I had read. And this is the eyewitness account of someone that was living in Germany during this time. He said this: I lived in Germany during the Nazi Holocaust. I consider myself a Christian. We heard stories of what was happening to Jews, but we tried to distance ourselves from it because what could we do to stop it? A railroad track ran behind our small church, and each Sunday morning we could hear the whistle in the distance and then the wheels coming over the tracks. We became disturbed when we heard the cries coming from the train as it passed by. We realized that it was carrying Jews like cattle in the cars. Week after week the whistle would blow. We dreaded to hear the sound of those wheels because we knew that we would hear the cries of the Jews on route to a death camp. The screams tormented us. We knew the time the train was coming, and when we heard the whistle blow we began to sing hymns. By the time the train came past our church we were singing at the top of our voices. If we heard the screams, we sang more loudly so we could hear the screams no more. And then the eyewitness shared with Pastor Lutzer: Although the years have passed, I still hear the train whistle in my sleep. God forgive me; forgive all of us who called ourselves Christians and yet did nothing to intervene.
We hear that and think, wow, this happened in Germany, and this was during World War II, and man, if we heard the screams of those Jewish people on the way to extermination camps, we would have done something. But I wonder in our own cities all around the world whether so often on Sunday mornings or in our worship gatherings that there are screams of people just outside our doors. And I wonder if our worship is a way to drown out the screams of people or a way to prepare us to better reach the lost and the hurting and the marginalized and the poor in our community. It's so subtle; it's so subtle. And you know that it really is one or the other by very simple litmus test: if what we do in here on Sunday does not impact everyone else's Monday out.
There, then, we're no different to the people that just sing hymns louder to drown out the cries of the world around us. But if our singing in here on Sunday compels and propels us into a lost and a broken world to do acts of justice and mercy, and goodness and kindness, then we know that what we're doing in here really is impacting and making a difference in what is going on out there. You know, after reading that story, I thought of the words of Amos in Amos 5, verses 21-24, in the Message translation. Eugene Peterson just translated this perfectly; I can't stand your religious meetings; I'm fed up with your conferences and conventions; I want nothing to do with your religion projects, your pretentious slogans and goals; I'm sick of your fundraising schemes and your public relations and image making; I've had all I can take of your noisy ego music. When was the last time you sang to me? Do you know what I want? I want justice, oceans of it; I want fairness, rivers of it; that's what I want; that's all I want.
Now, it seems the prophet Amos and Micah are resounding the same theme from God, and God's saying, "I'm not making this very complicated. I want you to make a difference in the world around you; to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God." And we need every one of those three aspects in order to do what I believe we've been put on this earth to do. It's interesting someone like me would be reading that passage from Amos, because it seems like my life is conferences and public, uh, gatherings and songs. And you're like, "Well, Chris, did you read that yourself?"
In 2006, I was invited to speak at a women's conference in Thessaloniki, Greece. Now, I'm Greek. If you've seen "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," that is my big fat Greek life, 100%. And um, I was, I, so I was so fired up. I've been to Greece numerous times, but this is the first time that I got to speak in Thessaloniki. And of course, I'm feeling like Paul and the Book of Thessalonians, and I'm like, so excited, and I'm going to go to Jason's house, and you know, nothing great really has happened since the Apostle Paul's been there, so I thought we are going to have revival. I was so fired up. So I get to the little airport; it's a tiny little regional airport, if you've ever been up to Thessaloniki. And um, as I'm standing there, I'm just standing, I was waiting for my bags; tiny little baggage claim. And as I'm standing there waiting for my bags, I'm seeing all of these posters, and because I can read and speak Greek, I could understand what the posters were saying. They were just like, "Missing, missing, missing, missing." I mean, dozens of women and children. And as I'm standing there, I'm thinking, "Why is there so many missing children in Northern Greece, in this part of the world?" I just could not work this out, and it just was, there was so many, it so grabbed my attention, so disturbed me. And I looked at their ages, and as I was looking around and I was 40 at the time, and I had just had my second child, Sophia. Can I just tell you that when you're 40 and you pop out a kid, you are not looking to start anything new. I'm just letting you know. I was probably thinking like, "I want to go to Santorini, you know, have a holiday, get a purple heart." I was not looking for anything. But as I'm looking, I'm, I'm going across these children, and I see this child, and she was about the age of my older daughter, but her name was Sofia. And this is when I could tell you that the seed of something was planted in my heart. I went from looking at someone else's missing child to seeing what could have been my own daughter. And you see, when you look, you can look away, but when you see, you can never unsee. And at that moment, I was so disturbed and hormonal and everything because I just had a baby, and I'm like, looking, and I was thinking of that mother, and I was thinking of that child. And I went to the hotel where I was preparing my message, and as the Lord would have it, as He always does, I was preparing a message out of the Gospel of Luke on the parable of the Good Samaritan. So I'm in my hotel room, and I called my friend who, at the time, was the deputy director of UNICEF, and I was telling her about all, as she was working in Copenhagen, about all of this that was going on, all of these posters that I saw, and I said, "You know what is this?" And she went on to say, "Christine, these are the alleged victims of human trafficking," to which I said—now I want you to know this is as recently as 2006—"What do you mean human trafficking? There is no slavery on the earth today. I mean, we've had the Emancipation Proclamation Act, we've had the Freedom from Slavery Act. I mean, what are you talking about?" And it was then that I went on to find out that there were more slaves on the earth today than there have ever been in the history of humanity—over 40 million on the earth today—and it's the fastest-growing crime worldwide; faster, like it's faster than the trafficking of armaments or the trafficking of drugs, is the trafficking of the only thing created in the image of God, which is people.
And so I'm now in my hotel room; I begin to prepare a, terribly, message out of Luke. And you're very familiar with this scripture; we all, if you've been a Christian for three and a half minutes, or you've just been around, everyone has heard the Good Samaritan, even if you don't really know what it means. But in Luke chapter 10, verse 25, "And behold, a lawyer stood up and put him to the test, 'Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?' He said, 'What is written in the law? How do you read it?' And he answered, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, or your soul, or your strength, all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.' And he said to him, 'You've answered correctly; do this and you'll live.' But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, 'And who is my neighbor?' Jesus replied, 'A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho; he fell among robbers who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. And when he saw him, he passed on by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. When he saw him, he had compassion. The other two saw him and crossed on by; all three saw, only one had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine, and he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, saying, 'Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.' Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?' He said, 'The one who showed him mercy.' Act justly, love mercy, walk humbly. And Jesus said to him, 'Go and do likewise.'"
I'm in my hotel room preparing this, and in my heart—not anything out loud, but in my heart—as I'm preparing, I'm showing you this is how the Holy Spirit works, and it's through the words of God on this page; I'm sensing in my heart, "Christine, you think you're the Samaritan in this story, don't you?" At which, out loud in my hotel room—because I talk to God out loud often; people think I'm talking to myself, but I am talking to the Lord—I said, "Yes, Lord, I am the Samaritan," because at this time, my husband and I and our kids were traveling. I want you to get this: we live on the road, like 300 hotel nights a year on the road, and we were like, just doing laps of the globe; that's what we kind of do; help build the church all around the world. And so I'm going, "Yes, Lord," and I was particularly feeling like a Samaritan because, I mean, at 40, another baby, Australia is a really long way from Greece, and you know that's a long trip, and I'm thinking like, "We're out there on the mission field; we're doing what God's called us to do," and I just, in my heart, felt the Holy Spirit say, "No, no, Christine, you are more like the Levite and the priest than you are the Samaritan," because you see those women and children, you saw those posters, and you were thinking someone else will do something; you saw them as an interruption to your ministry rather than the object of your ministry; like the Levite and the priest, you were so busy going to your next Christian conference and your next church event and your next thing that you think you don't have time to go and cross the street because you're on your way to your next religious activity. The only difference between the Samaritan and the Levite and the priest: all three were busy, all three were on their way somewhere; there's only one of the three had compassion. And my church confuses compassion with sympathy. We think because we cry at a sad video, or we cry at a sad story that someone says about some unjust situation on the earth, we think that's compassion. But compassion is never compassion until you roll up your sleeves and cross your street and give of your own time and give of your own talent and give of your own treasure, and until it touches you. He put him on his own donkey; he gave out of his own finances; he went out of his own way to be able to help this man. And what my church lacks is compassion; we have sympathy, a degree of empathy, but not true compassion, like Jesus had. All of the miracles of Jesus that we see were preceded by compassion; splagchnizomai—that word in Greek is from your gut, on the inside. And what we actually have, especially in light of the pandemic and all of the suffering over the last five years, we've got a massive issue of compassion fatigue in the church. You know, in our work with 821, we, we have, we really look after our aftercare workers and our frontline workers in, in all of our freedom centers around the world, because the turnover rate of aftercare workers is huge. The reason we got the Mother Teresa Award for humanitarian work, part of it was because we had only a 2% turnover rate in our aftercare workers because we put so much time into looking after those on the front lines. But you see, when you're empowered by the Holy Spirit of God, you don't need to have compassion fatigue. We heard it prophetically in the worship today: "Those that wait," Isaiah the prophet said, "Those that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength." People say, "Chris, how are you still at 55, full of the Spirit of God, full of the life of God, involved in justice work on the front lines? Why are you not bitter? Why are you not burnt out? Why are you not anti-church? Why are you not angry at this point?" Because those that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up on wings like eagles; they shall run, and guess what, at 55, not grow weary; they shall walk, and guess what, at 55, not faint. I think an evidence that you truly are walking with the Spirit of God is that this thing just gets better and better—not easier and easier, not less suffering—just better, because you know Him more. That's why you've got to walk humbly as you do the work of justice, as you love mercy. The challenge with this generation is we so love the works of justice, but if we do not love mercy and walk humbly with our God, we're not going to make it. You cannot make this, you cannot do this, and sustain this without the empowerment of the Spirit of God.
So I'm sitting there and I'm like, "Okay, so now I am the Samaritan, and now I'm, I'm the Levite and the priest, and I want to be the Samaritan," and so I'm like, "Lord, but how can I do this?" Because then, when, when something drops in your heart, and it could be doing something right here in our city, you're like, you start suddenly think, "But I can't do this." All of our excuses come in, and I remember standing there in Greece; I'm like, "But God, I'm 40. But God, I live in Australia; that's like really far. But God, the church is so embryonic in this region of the world; how are we going to be able to, to, you know, garner strength and support to do this? But God, there are no laws that are against human trafficking in this part of the world; there is so much corruption in the government and so much corruption in the system. But God, this is like Russian and Albanian mafia, and they kill people. You know, we have all our butts. But God, I don't have a spare 10 million bucks to start this. But God, where else can I fit it in? I'm already on the road 300 days; where am I going to fit this in? But God, I don't have the education for this." And we start our long list of "but Gods," and we all do it. But, "But God, I can't, I can't do that on Monday night, or I can't do that on Thursday night. But God, I've got this. But God, I don't have this. But God, I don't have that." And it sounds so pious, so holy, but really the root of that is pride, because what we are saying is that my limitations are bigger than God's supernatural ability to do something in and through my life. "But God" sounds a bit like Moses in Exodus chapter 3, verse 11. Remember when the Lord said to him, "Hey, I'm going to set my people free from Egypt," and Moses turned around says, "But God, I cannot speak," and God's like, "Man, that was going to be the deal breaker and the parting of the Red Sea right there; that was it." I don't know how I'm going to part that Red Sea because you're not eloquent. That's how we, we do it, as if somehow me on my best day could actually help God; as if somehow I, uh, no matter what gift or talent or skill or ability that I've got, somehow is that going to help God, or is God simply wanting to use me as a vessel and His power to flow through me, which will be bigger than anything I could ever do. And so I realized that when it comes to the work of justice, some of us really need a budectomy. And um, if you look that up, it comes right before colonoscopy; it's right there; it's a bartectomy; that's what we need in the body; we need to get our big butts out of the way, because we place limitations on ourselves that God never placed. We, we, we think we can't do things, and perhaps that's true in the natural, but we are empowered by the Spirit of God not to live natural lives, but to live supernatural lives; it's just that it outworks itself in a very natural way. The Holy Spirit didn't fall so that we could entertain one another in church, but to equip and empower one another to get out of the four walls and make a difference on the outside, in the world; that the world would go, "Surely there's a God; surely there's a God," because you couldn't do that in your own natural strength; you couldn't be full of compassion and it's not running out. I sit in meetings all the time with the UN, with the Red Cross, and I'm, I think they're waiting for me, "Is she going to like implode?" And who would have thought by then that God would build it to what it is today? And yet everything that I thought in my life disqualified me from doing anything significant is the very thing that God used.
You know, I think I told you when I was here last time that I'm the kid that was raised in Sydney, Australia, the daughter of Greek immigrants. My, in 1914, when there was a genocide and an ethnic cleansing of all the Orthodox Christians in Anatolia, in Turkey, my grandparents had to flee, and that's how they ended up in Alexandria, Greece. And then in the late 50s, when King Farouk was overthrown, and then all of the Christian Orthodox, all the Orthodox Christians were, again, they had to sign over all of their property to the government, and then my mother, my father, their parents had to flee from Alexandria, in Egypt, and come to Australia; that's how my parents ended up there. And so there was a story of displacement and loss, and so we grew up as Greek in a very, very Australian culture. I know, certainly, I think I, so I empathize with those on the margins is because I, I've always been that. I was the kid that never fitted in; I was the kid that grew up in the poorest zip code in our state, in government housing, because that's where the immigrants went. I didn't speak English until I was five, so ridiculed because of my accent and ridiculed because I didn't quite fit in. I was the victim of sexual abuse for 12 years. Do you know how that messes you up? I was so full of shame, so full of unforgiveness, so full of bitterness, so broken, so confused about my gender identity, so confused about life, so, so broke; you would never have looked at me and thought she could do anything. And then when I was 33 years old, I got a phone call from my brother George, who was 35 at the time, to tell me that he got a letter from the government that said that he was adopted. He was crying, and I thought he was joking. You know, when you're growing up, you always laugh at your siblings and you say, "You're adopted; we are not related," you know, you say that, but when they actually tell you they are, it changes everything. I remember going to my mother's house because my brother said, "I'm going to go and confront Mum." I walked in, and my brother was giving my mother this piece of paper from the government, and my mom starts crying and she said, "I'm so sorry." All of the adoption laws in Australia, there were closed adoptions 35 years ago; George, we never thought you would find out. George was crying, and my mom was crying. I went to the kitchen to make some food because I'm a Greek girl, so you think baklava solves life, the universe, and everything, or moussaka. And so I'm in there, and my mother came in 10 minutes later and she said, "Cristina, since we're telling the truth today, do you want to know the whole truth?" So two weeks before my 33rd birthday is where I found out I was adopted too, and the three of us children came from three different biological parents and were raised for 35 years thinking we were all biologically related. Do you know how shocking it is to find out you're not who you thought you were at 33? That day, every fact that I thought to be true about my life changed; my name, my hair, everything changed. And still to this day, I don't know, I don't know the circumstances surrounding my conception; I don't know if I was the result of a one-night stand, or an ongoing adulterous affair, or, or whether it was a rape. But although I don't know the facts, there's a force on the planet much higher than the facts, and it's called the truth of the Word of God. And Ephesians 2 verse 10 doesn't say that I'm the workmanship of a rape or an adulterous affair; it says that we are His workmanship, and that we've been recreated in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared beforehand, where in eternity that we should walk them out where here on earth. And I would be a good case to save the enemy; when I was still in my mother's womb wanted to steal, kill, and destroy my life. When that didn't work, when I was three years old, he made someone walk into my room, and you know the word abuse means to use an object for a purpose for which it was never designed, and for 12 years I was used for a purpose for which God never designed me. But no demon in hell, no person on earth can stop or thwart the plan or the purpose of God for your life because of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ on the cross; the blood set me free, and a resurrected Savior came and then filled me with His Holy Spirit; same Spirit that raised Jesus Christ from the dead lives on the inside of me. Therefore, I do not have to be a product of my past; I can be a brand new creation in Christ Jesus, and I can step into the fullness of the good works that He prepared for me to do from before the beginning of time. And then it would be just like God to take every ounce of that brokenness and say, "Christine, not only am I going to rescue you, but I'm going to now use you to turn around and open up those prison doors for those that are bound." Chris, not only am I gonna, over a process of time and, and the word and therapy and groups and all of the things that go with that, are you gonna find healing from your brokenness of the abuse that you encountered, but then, Chris, I'm gonna use you to help others find that healing and find that wholeness. My own birth certificate has not got a name on it; it's just got a number: number 2508 of 1966. There is no name on my birth certificate; it says, "Child's name: unnamed." Do you know if I was not born in Australia, but if I was born in Romania or Albania or Greece or any of the countries where we rescue children from today, I could be any one of those kids; I could have been in an orphanage, just unnamed and just a number, and a trafficker doing what they do just come in and say, "That's my niece; that's my nephew; I'll look after that baby," or whatever it might be. So there's only one degree of separation between me and the very people that God is allowing me to serve today. And what could have wiped me out and what could have been an excuse to say, "Well, you know what, look at my part because of my past, I can do nothing," because of my past I can do so much because of my past and the work of the Holy Spirit in me, and then through me in a lost and a broken world; it gives it at least meaning, if nothing else; it doesn't make it okay, but it gives it meaning and purpose. And so many of us simply are waiting for everything to be ordered internally first and then say, "I'm going to step out and do something," but there is no perfect time, as you go, God die; it's just cross the street. And somewhere in that process, I look back now, all of these years later and say, "Look what the Lord has done; look what the Lord's done." I don't mean just what He's done in and through A21, which is remarkable, but in me as I've served others; the healing that I have found, the purpose that I have found, the hope that I have found, the joy that I have found. So of you cannot go in looking for it; you'll find neurosis; you've got to go out; so much of what we're looking for will come out of our serving others on the earth and doing acts of justice and mercy. But you've got to walk so close with God because if you don't walk with God, you don't throw away evangelism and mission for social justice; the two sides are the same coin. And we're living in a day, in an hour where people think all it will do is burn you out when you go out and try to, to make things right in your own strength, because we live in a very, very fallen and broken world, and we do not war against flesh and blood, but powers and principalities, and this stuff is not a joke. You see why are the...
Burnout rates are like they are because people don't know what we're taking on. But by the grace of God, 19 cities and 16 countries later, God has been amazing. But let me just say we've got to walk humbly with God, as we act justly and love mercy. Because if we are not walking with God, this would not be happening. And so much of what we're seeing on the earth today, and so much of the pain and the suffering—and we're going, man, there's been such an awakening, and people are out there doing works of justice. Why are we still in this mess? Because if you do not put Jesus in the midst of it, in your heart at least, then we're just dealing with fallen and broken people and fallen and broken systems. So walking humbly with God and waiting upon the Lord is a crucial component of what the Lord instructed us. He didn't say just go out there and do justice, or just go stay in here and love mercy, or just sit in the corner and just be with me. All of them go together. And when you put all of those components together, then not only are you constantly being refreshed and renewed and restored, but then you have Holy Spirit power to continue the work out there.
And so you know, when we started a 21—uh, I remember—I mean, the Lord did a whole lot of miracles. And again, you go, how did it start that way? Anything starts—I didn't know what to do. I knew I had a mouth and I had the ear of a lot of the church. I knew nothing. So I thought, okay, well, I could just open my mouth and start talking about it. And then we—I met a lawyer in Greece, and I thought, okay, well, we need to change laws because at the moment trafficking's not illegal. So you'll do like—I mean, I love it—desperation and need are really great motivators for activation. It's like you're desperate. Anyone, can you breathe? Okay, let's go and do something. And so it was like, okay, I've got a lawyer. And then there was a young guy from a Bible school; he's Danish, speaks Danish, English, and spoke no Greek, and he was 23. So we thought, you're perfect, you're perfect to leave this. I could tell you story after story like that today. That guy is our global operations officer and has had three presidential awards, does TED Talks around the world. But I'm telling you, he was 23. He didn't even speak Greek, and we sort of like just dumped him in there and go, well, let's just start, let's just start. Find a need and meet it; it just starts.
And so through all of that, the Lord did a whole lot of stuff, gave His favor with law enforcement. I mean, you've got to do this holistically with the government, with different agencies on the ground. And I remember going up—very early days—and there was a—um—there were 14 girls in there, and I mean it's like going to the U.N. because it's just, you know, all different languages, all got interpreters. And I'm sitting there, and one girl from North Africa was telling me how she had been trafficked to Greece in a shipping container. I couldn't believe it. Her and 60 girls were put in a shipping container, and they opened the container in Istanbul. So you've got to know, at this point, they've handed over their passports, they've handed over their papers, they don't know where they are, they don't know what country they're in, they don't understand the language. And the traffickers, when they open the shipping container, 30 of the 60 girls in that container had died because the oxygen system had broken down. And so then the traffickers, in law enforcement uniforms, come in, take the girls, put them in apartments, and were raping them several times a day with very little food. So, of course, they're not trusting anyone; they've got no language; they think it's police doing this because they've got law enforcement uniforms on—to the point of breaking them down. Then they put the girls in a little rubber raft to take them across to sell them into brothels in Athens. Greece is called the parking lot of human trafficking for all of Europe.
And in the midst of all of that, the Greek Coast Guard was coming by, so so they wouldn't get caught with the girls, they threw the girls overboard. Of course, these are girls from North Africa that they'd never been near the ocean; they were out from villages. So 25 of those girls drowned. And by the time the raid was done in the brothel and the girls came to our freedom center, there were five. I remember, as she's telling me this story, I'm thinking, if I was not listening to this myself, if I'm not sitting here at the Saloniki listening to—I would not believe this. In the midst of that, she's interrupted—this girl from Russia, thick accent, spoke some Greek because you have to learn it to survive in the brothel—she says to me, "Why are you here?" in Greek. So I begin to tell her about my whole journey and my whole past and how I ended up there. And then we got into the love of God and the grace of God and my encounter with Jesus and what Jesus had done. I mean, it was it was the whole nine yards. And I remember, as I'm talking, she yells at me at one point, she goes, "Stop, stop talking!" And then she just looked at me; she said, "If what you are telling me about your God is true, then why didn't you come sooner?"
People often ask me, Chris, how do you keep going? And I've got to tell you, there's not a day that goes by that I don't think of that phrase: Christine, if this is all true about your God, the stuff that you're singing about, this—why, why are we not going sooner? Do you remember if you ever saw the film Schindler's List? They were trying to give him that award, and and he's suddenly realizing, I could have done so much more. And he's like, this ring could have been 10 more people, this car could have been a hundred more people. And I had that moment—I call this my Schindler's moment—I'm sitting in there, and it was like my life flashed before me, and I'm thinking, when I stand before the Lord, what is more important? What is more important than doing what He's called us to do on this earth—to act justly in a very unjust world, to step over and cross the street to the poor and the marginalized? Which does more for us in so many ways—practically for them, but spiritually, it'll change you. So much of what we're looking for is found there, and we keep running to more light, thinking it's got to be here, and then we get frustrated, and we end up walking away and deconstructing because it's like you didn't deliver. And it's like, um, I told you to go out there so that you could use some of this.
You know, I remember when—um—let me just—I want to show you two pictures because this is—I could have started with this, and everyone would have got so excited because we all love the big story. But the big story only ever happens when you cross the street and when you've got no idea what's going to happen, and it's going to reorder your whole life, and it's going to mess up your week because what you used to—watch TV or go with your friends—now you're going to go and volunteer at that place. Well, it just messes things up; it's not comfortable, and it's not convenient. And I think there's a direct correlation between our willingness to be interrupted and inconvenienced in the Holy Spirit moving through our lives—direct correlation. We don't even have to need to pray anymore as the church; we just need to cross the street. But we're not willing to be interrupted or inconvenienced. The Levite and the priest would, because their life was so safe and comfortable. We weren't willing to take risks, and we prefer our safety as if Jesus Christ came from heaven to earth, tied on a cross and rose again so that I could be comfortable. That is not what He came for. He came to make us dangerous to the kingdom of darkness by being the light of Christ and lust in a broken world. You know, it would be just like God, I—I need to wrap up these two things. I want to show you that I think I've got these—can you see? This is what we would—now we just got—a 21 was given six Tony Awards and eight awards from the Cannes Film Festival for this whole program called Can You See Me? So this—I think this is probably at Heathrow. You go to airports all around the world and this country, and we have these whole campaigns in different languages—uh, relevant ones for South America, relevant ones for Asia, others for in Africa, others in all of Europe. Remember when I was standing at the baggage claim? I didn't know what to do. And the one thing that I determined when we started this, we would not disempower anyone by just making them feel like I'm not doing enough, and they're not giving them tools to say we could do something. And so these—at baggage claims all around the world—we run different national hotlines in different countries. You could be standing there, and we're teaching people how to identify potential victims of trafficking in plain sight so that they can actually do something. And there are numbers to call and things to do. What I—I want you to see is that God—I stood at a baggage claim not knowing what to do, and today, by God's grace, hundreds of millions of people around the world are being empowered to know what to do. They're in train stations; they're on billboards; they're in bus stations. And then also there's containers. Remember the shipping—yeah, these are just different ones you'll see. And then if we go—these shipping containers—the Syrian refugee crisis was the biggest refugee, you know, crisis since World War II—um—and it would be just like God, I was so disturbed by that container story that we—45 minutes from Thessaloniki, Greece—85 of all of the refugees crossed to go into Macedonia, so that was only 45 minutes from our office. So we built—rebuilt this whole area where every refugee came through, and then we put shipping containers with showers and taps and just to dignify people, to give them access to water, and then put warnings of how to—because because the most trafficked people, the most—those that are most vulnerable to trafficking are refugees because nobody's looking for them, nobody's looking for them. And so this was just warning signs and what to do. But what I'm saying is the Holy Spirit would take and redeem everything—containers, standing at a carousel. And I could tell you story after story after story. I'm hoping that all of those refugees, at least if nothing else, they'll say the Christians were on the border. Maybe they'll say, I was hungry, and they gave me something to eat; I was thirsty, and they gave me something to drink; I was a stranger, and they invited me in; I needed clothes, and they clothed me; I was sick, and they looked after me; I was in prison, and they visited me. That's what my prayer was for everyone that got to wash their hands in that container.
So let me just end with this: You and I—so much of our frustration and sometimes so much of this lack of impact that we feel is because we just keep putting more light in the light. My daughter Sophia, when she was a little girl, she was three; she was obsessed with flashlights, and she was particularly obsessed with Barbie as well. And back then, if you said to Sophia, "Sophia, do you have Jesus in your heart?" she would say, "No, Mommy, Daddy said we're not allowed to have boys, so I have Barbie in my heart and Jesus in my tummy." We've got her theology a little bit worked out better now, but you know, that was then. And she was obsessed. And I was here preaching in America at the time; I was living in Australia; I wasn't living here. And um, she really wanted a flashlight. And then the joy—when you're an Australian, one of the biggest tourist attractions in America for us is like Walmart because like we have nowhere in Australia that you can go at two in the morning and buy like breakfast cereal, underwear, and a gun. Like, what is that? What kind of country is that? It's like so bizarre. And so I was—I finished preaching late, and then Sophia's like, you know, "Mummy, can I get a flashlight?" So I thought, let's go to Walmart. You know, I'm taking pictures and posting it, and all the Americans are like, "What are you on?" And all the Australians are like, "Man, I'm so jealous, I'm so jealous." Okay, so—um—I got Sophia this flashlight, and I put the batteries in, and I was—I was standing ready to pay for our purchase, and Sophia was down the end of the counter. And as I was paying, she was flicking on this flashlight, just—but she was so frustrated because I don't know if you've ever been in Walmart, but the lighting is interesting; it—it's like kind of like got those fluorescent lights; it's so bright. So Sophia could not see her light because it was so bright. And I'll never forget it, as she's standing there, she yells out at me as a little three-year-old, and she said, "Mommy, can we please go and find some darkness?" And when she said that, I froze—literally. I thought, out of the mouth of babes. See, sometimes we've forgotten that the purpose of the light is not to keep lighting the light, but to take the light that we come in here and to take the light of Christ that dwells in us into a lost and a broken world. We've become scared of the very world we're called to reach, but greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world. God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of love and of power and a sound mind. And it's time for us to go into all of the world to take the light of Christ. He says, "You don't get a light and you don't hide it under a bushel, but you put that light up that people—what might—what see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven." Church, we've been hiding it; we've got to get that light out so that people would see our good works at Bridgetown. And what is the result of that? That they would glorify—we talk about the glory of God, and we're missing one major aspect of how God is glorified. God is glorified when people see our good works done in His name for His glory. I've stood before people in Qatar and Saudi Arabia. I can't tell you the doors that A21 is open, and it all started because when I was in our youth ministry in 1989, I started a community-based youth center in the Hills area of Sydney, Australia, that's still there today because I thought, what's the point of going to youth every Saturday night if we're not making a difference for the kids that are dying in the parks on Saturday night while we're singing songs? Our church is known for our songs all around the world, but I don't know that they would have reached that if we weren't willing to cross the street in our local community and to help at-risk and marginalized youth. People say, Chris, how are you doing what you're doing in A21 today? Because in 1989 to 1996, I ran a community-based center that was the outreach arm of our youth ministry that nobody knows about, but God was training and equipping and preparing me for the thing that He'd already prepared for me. If I didn't cross the street in my local community in Sydney, Australia, I doubt that I'd be crossing oceans today for the glory of God. In Jesus' name, amen. Let's—let's stand together and respond. Just invite you—if you're—if you're willing—just to open up your hands in this posture of receiving to pray this ancient prayer with me: Come, Holy Spirit. Could we pray that together? Come, Holy Spirit. Now what we do each week is—is we simply give God the opportunity to allow all that was good to fall away, and and that which was just the still small voice of His Spirit speaking personally to me and to you to rise to the surface. So as Chris was teaching, I was sitting there furiously jotting down—uh—not notes for myself, but what are those invitations to our community today? And there's three things in particular that I want to hold before you, and then I'm going to invite you to receive some ministry. The first—um—is, you know, she spoke of the voice of the accuser, that many times we buy into some version of this well-rehearsed lie that I've got to sort my stuff out, and then I can become useful to Him in the lives of others. And I simply want to remind you that we're wounded healers. Remember wounded healers? We go wearing our wounds, and that is actually what qualifies us to serve in His kingdom. We sang earlier this morning, "When He shall come in trumpet sound, O may I then in Him be found, dressed in His righteousness alone, faultless stand before the throne." If you know this Jesus, you're dressed in His righteousness, and His righteousness looks like wounds that have been healed by wounds. And so you're qualified and sent. For some of you today, it's just going to be a simple confession, just that, "Lord, I've been trying to get my whole inner world sorted out before I touched the outer world around me, but I want to go wounded." Secondly, uh, Chris mentioned compassion fatigue, and we have been asking week after week, "Fill me with Your Holy Spirit," and I wonder if today some of you are just saying, "Fill me with the compassion of Jesus," which is one and the same thing. "Lord, fill me with the compassion of Jesus," compassion that does not just stir in my inner being in an inspiring moment, it doesn't just resonate in my soul, but it actually moves my body—compassion that involves me in the mess first and then the redemption in the end, my own redemption by meeting the other and by his or hers or theirs or Portland's. And then finally, I want to invite some of you just to respond by saying yes to proximity because justice and mercy in the way of Jesus is never abstract; it's never an idea; it's personal; it's relational; it involves a name and a face and a story. And so I just want to invite some of you today—the invitation is to say yes to living in proximity to need, to getting close enough that need takes on a first name—that poster in that airport baggage claim that said Sophia—at that moment a problem or a government issue or a humanitarian cause took on a name—that's proximity. But proximity also comes with the cost. It costs you your convenience or your time or your comfort; it costs some no to something or some things. And so I want to invite you to count the cost and to say yes to the cost of proximity in your life as it's made up today. So if you would just close your eyes with me—it helps me give my attention to the Lord—open up your hands [Music] for some of you it's a confession; for some of you it's, "Fill me with the compassion of Jesus"; and for some of you it's a yes to proximity. So I'm going to invite you simply to come forward to say yes to Jesus. We come and we worship at the front of the room simply as a way to move our bodies in conjunction with God's action. This is to just the honest acknowledgement of the fact that I've been stirred inwardly many times that never resulted in action. So I'm going to join the inner stirring in my soul to action this morning in this room so that it might become action in my actual life far beyond this room. So—uh—for some, if you just want to say, "Uh, God, fill me with the compassion of Jesus today, right now," would you just come forward? [Music] Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. If you're counting the cost of proximity and saying, "You know what, justice and mercy cannot be an abstract concept for me; it has to become personal; it has to become relational," if God's speaking that, do you just come forward now just to open up your hands? [Music] And if that's you, if you're saying yes to proximity today, would you just come forward? You don't have to share your story with us, details about that; it's simply a way for you to say yes to Jesus. Thank you. And then lastly, for some of you today, just needs to be this confession that, "Man, Lord, I've been trying to get my own stuff sorted out before I joined Your mission, but I want to go from here wounded." If that's you, would you come forward now, just opening your hands to receive His forgiveness? We've talked about seeing others; would you come forward that you might be seen by Him? Yeah. So our prayer ministry team is going to make their way through; they're just going to lay a hand of blessing on what is obvious that God is doing in your lives in this room right now. If you want to engage them in specific prayer, you totally can, but otherwise we'll just allow you to remain in the place of worship, and we will simply pray blessing over what God's up to in your life. So I thank you—You're at work, Lord. Thank you that Your Spirit is moving in this place. We join that now with blessing; we declare praise, and we ask that the sweetest worship to You today would come in the days that follow this one in our ordinary lives and the places that they take us and on the streets of our city. Make us people that cross the street, in Jesus' name. [Music] So just before I send you out with this benediction, I just want to give a couple of really important—uh—invitations. So the first is that, as you know, we are a community of practice, which means the main event is not the Sunday worship gathering; the main event happens around the table midweek as we actually take the word and put it into practice in community. And so this week when we gather in communities, we won't be gathering around the table in homes, but all of our communities will be serving in various justice and mercy partners throughout our city together. That's our practice this week, and that's because Jesus promises to be found in the marginalized. He says, "This is a place you can encounter Me." So in the same way that we have maybe learned what it means to encounter Him in gathering like this, maybe even in gathering community around our table, we want to learn what it means to encounter Him in the eyes of the poor. And so that's where we'll find ourselves this week. So if you're in community, talk to your community leader; you'll be getting information from them about where you're serving this week. If you're not in community, there's a web address—we can throw that up on the screen one more time—to be awesome where you can visit to learn about our justice and mercy partners and sign up to serve as an individual. And I just want to say this: If you consider Bridgetown your church home, would you begin this week with this simple practice—serve the city in one way once a month? [Music] Pick one of these partners, make your own project, whatever it means, but everyone—the president of a marketing agency or the single mom of 12—can give one time a month. So can you—can you serve the city one way once a month? Can you find a way to work that into your time so that we can become a missional sort of people together? And then also just want to remind you—welcome to Bridgetown. Well, thank you, Christian—welcome to Bridgetown is happening after the 11 a.m. gathering. So if you want to hang around—and that's just like a half hour—to learn more about who we are as a church, what it means to get involved and connect with a few folks. But if you now open up your hands in a posture of receiving, I'm going to send you in the power of the Spirit by this benediction: May you go out in God's power and be filled with the Holy Spirit to love your neighbor, to abide in God's presence, and to walk in the hope of the kingdom. Go in peace to love and serve the Lord. You.