Serving

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. So we are halfway through, I don't know if you know that, with our 40 day challenge, the red letter challenge. Have any of you ever done one of those challenges? Anybody do the ice bucket challenge? You did? Yeah! Woo! It's a one shot deal, I think, right? You do it, you're done, you don't do it again. Anybody ever do the polar bear challenge? Anybody ever do that one? Bill did that? You jump into the ice cold lake on January 1st in northern Minnesota, and you hope you don't freeze in place. This one's a little different, if you haven't noticed. Because I think this one can be much more productive in your life, and much more significant. But it's not one of these one shot deals, you just do it, and it's over. Even as shocking as that is. First of all, we're 40 days, as we're looking at. So we're on day 20 today, and this red letter challenge, and it's really a challenge that Jesus gave to his disciples, and to all of us, to not only just hear the word that he speaks, but to put it into practice. And that's what we're trying to do here. Because that's been the challenge, what we've noticed, I think, is across American Christianity, let alone the world, but in American Christianity, a lot of people hear his words, they study his words, they talk about his words, they dissect his words, they analyze his words, they memorize his words, but so many times we just don't even put them into practice. Like I said, it's like reading a book about swimming, learning all the statistics about swimming, learning the strokes, learning all the technical issues with swimming and never jumping into the pool. Or I think the illustration in the red letter challenge workbook is you tell your son to clean his room, and he gets together with his friends and talks about what that would look like. It's what happens at our house, you know. They probably text back and forth, my parents said I should clean my room, what do you think? Well, maybe that would be good, you know, but never get around to it. So we're trying to do that. And much of what Jesus has said in all that he said, the red letters in the Gospels, if you kind of study them and kind of categorize them as best as you can, because they kind of burst any categories, we said they kind of land into five practices, and we're kind of halfway through that list today. And the five practices are, first of all, being, and then forgiving, serving, giving, and going. And we've already talked about being and forgiving, and now today we're talking about serving. Now, there's an order why we've gone in this order as well, because it's kind of a logical order. I don't know if you realize this. It's kind of a logical order, because first you need to know who you are being in Christ. When you are being in Christ, when you're abiding in him, when you understand who you are, you know you have a good, good father, and you are the one who is loved, forgiven, wanted. You know what your identity is. You don't have to worry about that, question that. You already have that given. You are wrapped in the precious blood of Jesus Christ. You are covered. You are righteous in his sight. So you learn, by God's grace, who you are because of Jesus. And then the forgiving part is just about as important. If not, it is what God has done for you, and how you have been forgiven, that there is no sin too great that Jesus has not taken care of already, and he gives that to you freely. And so then you are more than willing to forgive others. And then today we're coming to serving. And that's kind of the gospel order, by the way. And we see this again and again in the scripture. First, Jesus said, freely you have received, freely give. Okay? You've received now, you pass it on. Or elsewhere he said in John, a new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, not just that, but just as I have loved you. Okay, so that's the order again. That's the gospel order. You forgive as you've been forgiven. You love as you have been loved. And today we'll find out you serve as you have been served. So we're going to look at one instance, and we're going to kind of walk through this passage. It's in Mark chapter 10. And by the way, if you want to, and you're new with us, or you haven't done it yet, you can find a Bible app called the YouVersion of the Holy Bible, and you can download that app. And when you tap on the button More at the bottom, and you go to Events, if you've got your location information on, it'll pop up. And all the notes for this sermon are right there already. Isn't that great? And you can type in some notes if you want and add to that. But we're going to be in Mark chapter 10. And this is what happened on the way to Jerusalem. So we're reading Mark 10.32. They were on their way up to Jerusalem with Jesus leading the way, and the disciples were astonished whil...