Tic Tac Toe

Jim Clements · Tidal Church Moncton · September 18, 2022 · The Social Distance series

Jim Clements centres on the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37 and challenges us to know and love the people in our everyday neighbourhoods. A simple tic-tac-toe chart helps us notice those around us, since loving people comes first and God takes care of the rest.

More from Jim Clements · The The Social Distance series

Topics: Love, Relationships, Mission & Outreach

Transcript

[0:00] Well, good morning. I've been, this is a, just so you know, the topic today is a sweet spot for me. I love what I'm about to share with you, and hopefully it resonates with you also. When I think of my life, I think a four spiritual, kind of, foundation or fundamentals that I look at when I think about how I want to live my life. The first one that I think about is that I want to make sure that I'm studying God's Word. I then want to make sure that I'm seeking God, whether that's through worship, through prayer, through small groups, that I'm seeking after Him. Then I want to make sure I'm serving others. And then finally, I want to make sure that I'm sharing life with others, because it's important. See, a lot of times when I went through life, I thought, like, man, I got a house. Like, man, look at my house. I got a house. I got a car. I got this. I got that. I have all these different belongings, and then God taught me really quickly that I don't own any of it.

[1:02] That it's all His, including me. So it's not just earthly possessions, it's me on earth that He also owns, and the way He taught me that was when we were living in Iowa. We were getting ready to move to New York. God was placing a new call on our life. We put our house up for sale, just like everybody kind of does. And it wasn't selling. And I was like, all right, now what are we going to do? I got no house to take my stuff and put into another house. And God says, you're to leave it. I won't come up. We're gonna leave it. And He goes, you're gonna leave it. And so we left Iowa with a house full. The only thing we took was our clothes. Our kids took some of their toys, and He provided for temporary housing for us to live in while whatever was happening with our house in Iowa.

[1:57] And then He brought this young lady to our hearts named Jessica. And Jessica, she was 35. She had a horrific situation happened early on in her marriage, within five years of her marriage, that led to that marriage ending, and she was an incredible young lady that God wanted to do something in her life. But she was living at her parents' home, and it was a struggle, and He said, "You're gonna let Jessica live in your house." And I said, "Okay." And I called up Jessica. "Hey, Jessica, here's the deal. I know you want to get out of your mom's, you want to explore what God's got for you next, and Gisèle and I want to offer our home for you to live in. I see, you don't need to bring anything but your personal belongings. The house is fully furnished. Everything's there. Just ask that you keep the lawn mowed. If it goes long enough, keep the driveway snow blowed, and for the realtor to bring people to see the house for it to sell."

[2:51] And she was like, ecstatic, and she went into the house. A few months went by, and Jessica calls, and she said, "Hey, would you mind if I held a young adults small group in your house?" And I was like, "Yeah, no, it's okay. Just make sure it's kind of ready to show and all that kind of stuff if the realtor brings somebody by." And she said, "Oh yeah, no problem." So she started a small group of young adults in our house. Few months went by. And she met a young man named Scott. And they began a relationship, and months went by, my house still isn't sold, and then Jessica calls Gisèle, line. She's all excited. And she says, "Scott and I are gonna get married. God has done an incredible healing in my life, and I think this is the next step for me." And she said, "So I'm probably going to be leaving your house fairly shortly," and I was like, "No problem. All right, just let us know." Meanwhile, we're in New York, and I just want to say, we're living in temporary housing, and poor Gisèle, like, she puts up with so much for me. I refuse to bring the dishes from our house. I'm like, I'm eating off disposable stuff, because there's no way this is going to be a permanent thing. No way.

[4:02] Well, I had offered disposable stuff for a lot of months, I can tell you, and probably not good environmentally when I think back about it, but, and so then all of a sudden God says, "You need to pick someone else to sell your house." And so we reached out to another family that had experiences. "So we're gonna take it off the market. Would you like to sell our house?" And she goes, "Well, I want to take a realty fee for it." She goes, "What if your house sells, you pay for myself, my husband to go to mission trip to Mexico?" I'm like, I knew what that was. And that's a great deal for me. I'm making money, right, or saving money. Jessica and Scott get married, the house gets listed on for sale by owner. Seven days later, my house sold after one year of letting God use it. Whatever we have is not ours. And Jessica is now a lead pastor at a campus in a church in Michigan. See, when we allow God to work through us, it's not our stuff.

[5:02] It's His, and we, even ourselves, and it's amazing. You see, as that house sat for a year. But He taught me it's about serving others. It's about sharing life. And to focus today, we're going to talk about serving. See, the things I listed at the top is not going to make God love you anymore than He already does. It's going to make you love God more in your life, and what you do, that's what those things will do. What if God's goal for us isn't to make a bunch of happy Christians just going through life? And because I like to think there's a greater purpose after learning that lesson. What if God wants to use you to reach other people? I know we talk about all that, but what's a tangible way, when we think about that, because a lot of us struggle.

[5:53] I'll admit, a lot of us struggle. Just go, "How do I share that faith? How do I do that? What's the way? I feel so uncomfortable." Well, today, let's consider your ministry, the ministry, not the ministries of the church, not the ministries amongst and Wesleyan. But your mission field, your ministry, done by you, done by me, done by families, done by friend groups, done by small groups, done by whatever group you can get together. What is the ministry that God has been laying on your heart and calling you to do? How does God want you to use you to display God's love to the world? It's in our mission statement, and to others. How is it He wants to use you?

[6:40] Jesus called us the salt of the earth and light of the world in Matthew 5 to bring grace and truth and unconditional love and forgiveness by building relationships. When we think about salt, salt preserves. You've heard a lot of messages on it. Salt makes things taste better. Too much of it can make things taste bad. It also, if you live in the North, it removes hazards when they spread it on the road, right? It gets rid of the ice that's there. But light illuminates. Light directs. When you think of signs at night, when the light hits it, it directs. And light removes darkness. And I heard this somewhere, and I don't remember where, and if you find out you can email me, text me, or whatever, and tell me. But like, I got to realizing when I heard this that darkness doesn't exist as darkness.

[7:31] Darkness only exists because of the absence of light. So think about that. It only allows for darkness. Because it's the absolute light. So, but we give it this word, darkness. There's light and there should be non-light. So where God exists, there's light; where God doesn't exist, there's no light. So darkness in itself doesn't have its own being. It's just the absence of light within it. And I can tell you that I have seen a lot of great examples of people serving other people, sharing life with other people. But I've also seen some pretty bad examples. And I want to encourage you today that if you see something like what I'm about to share with you, I give you full authority to end it.

[8:23] And I didn't at the time, but I would again if I seen it. We were in a restaurant, and I'll protect the restaurant. It's not here. How's that? So I've got to learn, it's not here. It's not anybody on the staff. Not anybody. I know we were in a restaurant and we watched a family next to us pray over their meal, give thanks. You can hear when they prayed, it wasn't quiet. And they profess to be believers by that example that I would have saw. I'd have no idea otherwise, and I will tell you that in the food service industry, the schedule that everybody hates to work on, if you're into food service industry, is Sunday afternoon. And where I've been, it's been Sunday afternoon because they know church people come to eat. And church people don't treat them well or tip well.

[9:13] And so they try to get off that schedule. When this meal ended for the couple, the family next to us, I watched him take the time to take the plastic menu that was displaying something or whatever. It was, ask for a full glass of water. Drop a penny in the full glass of water, put the plastic menu over it, turn it over on the table, and pull the plastic menu up from underneath, and leave a full glass of water with a one-cent tip on the table. I am telling you, that is not how God wants us to be seen as light. He wants us to be more than just that. It's not about us. It's a poor display. We must live our lives as salt and earth and light, because you never know who's watching.

[10:06] You never know who's watching, and as much as social media is as big as it is. You never know who's videotaping you to post it on social media. So our witness is being looked at more and more. We are God's fellow workers and God's co-workers. We collaborate with God to accomplish His purposes here on earth. That's what God calls us to do, is for us to be those co-laborers. Philip Yancey says history is the story of God giving away power. See, God invites us to be in partnership with Him as we give our lives to Him. We are saying, God, I am yours to do with what You will. We're not saying, God, I am yours to come to church on Sunday or to pray. All those things go with it, but we are His to do with what we will. In the Old Testament, God used to be kept in His presence rested within buildings or tents.

[11:05] But Jesus changed that. And 1 Corinthians 6:19, the apostle Paul said we are God's temple where the Holy Spirit lives. See, God lives in us. Jesus shines through us, and as God loves us, we must love others, and we'll see lives change. That's why our mission statement says what it says. We believe that wholeheartedly. That's who we are as a church. Jesus changed all that for us. Remember when we were young and children, we would sing out, This Little Light of Mine. I'm gonna let it shine, right? And I think as we get older, we kind of go, This Little Light of Mine. I might let it shine, right?

[11:51] It's not optional. We shine as we serve because we follow the man who displayed for us and defined what love is, and that's Jesus. Jesus showed us beyond any doubt what love is, and He tells the parable of the Good Samaritan, reaching out to someone who is different, might even been an enemy, in Luke 10:25 through 37. If you let me read it to you, just in case those have not heard it. On one occasion, an expert of the law stood to test Jesus. Teacher, He asked, what must I do to inherit eternal life? I've said this before, I love Jesus. Jesus would be like a good executive pastor because He asked lots of questions, and that's what I do. I'm not Jesus, but He asked lots of questions. What is written in the law? He replied, How do you read it?

[12:43] Jesus said, He answered, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength and all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. You've answered correctly, Jesus replied. Do this, and you will live. But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, And who is my neighbor? In reply, Jesus said, A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite came and went, and he came to the place where he saw him, and he passed by the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came to where the man was, and when he saw him, he took pity on him.

[13:33] He went to him, bandaged his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day, he took two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. Look after him, he said, and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have. Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers? The expert of the law replied, The one who had mercy on him. Jesus told him, Go and do likewise. Well, the truth in the story's determining who your neighbor is. It depends more on you than on them. More on your actions than their location.

[14:20] Neighborhoods, or wherever you're at. When I got to reading this, I think about my neighborhood. We tend to define things by location. We think, our house is here. I live in a certain neighborhood. That is true. But when you're at work, that is your neighborhood. When you're at sports and leisure, that is your neighborhood. When you're in the grocery store, that is your neighborhood. Everywhere that you are, you are representing God because we have surrendered ourselves to Him, and an expectation is for us to always be showing love to everybody all the time. So your neighborhood is those surrounding you at any given moment. When we think of the priests that walked by, I mean, you would think of all people, he'd stop.

[15:07] Maybe he was too busy. Maybe he had a meeting to get to. Maybe he was afraid. But you know what? He was there, and he did nothing. The temple assistant walked by and took a look and did nothing, and maybe he was afraid, too, but he did see the need. And he did nothing. This Samaritan felt pity. But he didn't stop there. He acted, and he displayed love. He felt the need. See, it's not enough to be. It's not enough to see, and it's not enough to feel. We have to love. We must love. Love is an action word. We must do something when we see a need.

[15:53] There are some things. They're just some things you don't need to pray about. And loving someone else is not something you need to pray about. What you need to pray about is God to create opportunities for you to love someone else. Because we're all called to love each other and to love our neighbors everywhere we are. In case you don't believe me what we're supposed to do, let's look at verse 37 again. Jesus said, "Now go and do likewise." God wants everyone to love their neighbors. Here's a little story for you. And I hope, and this happens quite a bit, but it's a little funny. This is a story about everybody, somebody, anybody, and nobody.

[16:45] There was an important job to be done, and everybody was asked to do it. Everybody was sure that somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that because it was everybody's job. Everybody thought anybody could do it, but nobody realized that everyone wouldn't do it. And it ended up that everybody blamed somebody when nobody did what anybody could have done. Right? There's some truth in there. But when I hear that little chuckle like that, that's not from the belly chuckle. That's like a chuckle that's like, yeah, I've been there, either on one end or the other of it, right? We've got to make sure that when we love, we love well.

[17:32] If you think you're too important, if you think you're too busy, Galatians 6:3 says this: if you think you're too important to help someone, you're only fooling yourself. You're not that important. Don't argue with me. That's Scripture. Right? Don't send me any emails later on. That's just Scripture. We're not that important, but I will say probably a lot of us don't think that. A lot of us don't think, well, I'm too important to do that. But I will say a lot of us think that we're too busy. We're too busy to love God. We're too busy to love others, and our busyness entraps us, believe it or not. We fill our schedule with stuff. The busyness of life just traps us. It holds us. My parents used to say when I was little, they say, if the devil can't make you bad, he'll make you busy.

[18:22] And I was like, boy, they were right. The devil can't make you bad, he'll make you busy. John Ortberg says that hurry is a great enemy for you following Jesus. Hurry is an inward condition in which you so frantically, you're so frantic and preoccupied that you're not able to receive love, and you're not able to give love, because you're so hurry. When asked to do something, we may respond as you hear, "Let me see if I'm free to do that." "Let me see if I can schedule that in." Serving others' needs needs to be our passion, because when we're serving someone's needs, that's God using us to meet those needs of somebody.

[19:12] See, when I feel, when I sense God is telling me to do something, I do it because there's probably somebody that's on their hands and knees praying, reaching out to Him for Him to come through in an incredible way. And if we don't answer the prompting that God gives us to serve others and to love others and to share life together, we're missing out on the opportunity for God to show up in a real way in someone's life. We can't just let it pass by. We say all the time in church, we're the hands and feet of Jesus. Right? We say it all the time, but we need to act that out every time. Our schedules will hold us prisoners. You can be free from your schedule. You can be free from busy. You can be free from whatever is making you hurry. But the chances are you're gonna have to cut some stuff out of your schedule.

[20:09] And I would say the majority of us, it's not going to be bad things we cut out, because we like to think everything we're doing is good. It's going to be some good stuff we're gonna have to cut out. There's going to be legitimately sitting down and going, "All right, I want to leave room for God to work in my life. God, I want You to create opportunities in my life to serve other people. What would You have me remove or eliminate from my life?" I love this book. I keep an extra copy. Just when a time seems fitting. It's written by Jim Collins. It's called Good to Great. And if there's anything I've taken from this book, Jim says in there, the enemy of great is good. We can do a lot of good things.

[20:57] But my God is not about good things. The God I serve, the God that you serve, is about great things. Right, He's about great things. He doesn't just show up and go, "That's pretty good." Right? I say in my prayers, I go, "God, I want to be amazed today." Like, don't let me ever get complacent. When I go, "God is so good," I want God to be great. I want to look at things and go, "I have no idea why that happened other than God." I want to be able to say if God doesn't show up, it's not gonna happen. I want to be amazed by what He does each and every day. My God's not a good God. My God's a great God, and that's the God I want to serve each and every day, both as a church and as individuals.

[21:45] We need to eliminate hurry. Jesus was busy, but He was busy doing the right things. He was busy making a difference for the kingdom. He wasn't just busy to be busy. What would we eliminate from our schedule? The Samaritan story also stirs up who are the people in our neighborhood. And every time I say that, I'm gonna show my age here, I just can't help but think of the Sesame Street song, right? Right, who's there with me? Come on, who are the people in your neighborhood? Right? That's all I'm gonna say this time. So it's just any, you know, it's who are the people in your neighborhood? And I will tell you, you're gonna think I'm nuts. But I mean, I want to own my neighborhood, right? God placed me where we live.

[22:33] God places me wherever I am to make a difference in the lives of the people that are surrounding me, because He put me there. And if I had the time, I would tell you the story about how we came to be in the house. Around, like, it is crazy. How God showed up, but I will tell you this: that when we did buy it, I had poor Mike take his cell phone. We were around, who's right here? Hey, Mike, I have poor Mike take his cell phone. I said, "I want you to go next door." We're on FaceTime, and he goes, "What?" "I want you to go next door, walk across, down to the house, knock on the door, and we want to meet our neighbors."

[23:18] Poor Mike. He's like, "Why are we hiring this lunatic?" Right? That's all I could think he was thinking, and he does it. Mike walks across the lawn. He goes down to the door, bangs on the door. Linda comes to the door, and Mike goes, "Hey, I thought your new neighbors that bought the house next door, on FaceTime here, and they just want to say hi." Right. "Hey, we're Jim and Gisèle, right?" It's crazy, but man, we want to know who our neighbors are. And we later found out from Mike and Linda, when the house went up for sale, they were so concerned that it was going to become something else or who was going to move in. They didn't know, and little did we know that little hello on FaceTime began a relationship that still continues today. Because I want to own my neighborhood. I can tell you everything about the people that live all around me. We've invested in Ron and Kathy and Mike and Linda and Olivia and Leona. They are just precious, precious people.

[24:16] How do we love our neighbors when we don't even know them, when we haven't taken the time? I'm going to give you an easy example. It's a game. We all know tic-tac-toe. You've all seen this. I'm going to give you one free space, and that's right in the middle. That's your house. That's your cubicle. That's the place you stand in the hockey arena or sports field. That's you in whatever neighborhood God's got you in. What I want to challenge you to do is to identify the people that are in the empty squares around you. I want you to be intentional about, in the homes that surround you, the workplace. I want you to actually, when you go home, to take a piece of paper out and make this diagram and write your name into dead center.

[25:09] And then I want you to fill in the names around you. If you live in a subdivision, it's the three houses across the street, the two houses on each side of you, and the three houses behind you. If you live on a dead-end road, you've got to make a big thick tic-tac-toe chart and figure out where they're at. Right? Workplace, in a cubicle, the cubicles next to you, behind you, two offices. You get the point. You don't need to lay it out. This is what God's calling us to do. It's simple. He's got you wherever you are for His purpose. I know you've been thinking, look at me, I'm important. I've got this office. Now, you know what the office is only good if you're working on the two offices or next to you, behind you, from you, whatever, because that's why He put you there. You don't want God to bypass using you when you've had the opportunity to share in the lives of other people. So I want you to put the tic-tac-toe diagram into place.

[26:00] Three letters that help people. When you're loving them, is, "I see you." Don't we just all want that? Don't we just want that feeling when someone loves us? That we've been seen. And that's what you're doing by doing this. If you're telling them, "I see you, I see you, and you matter." And you think about, "I am so not doing this." Yes, you are. Because it's not going to be me, track you all down. I'm not gonna stand at the door when you come back next Sunday, "Let me see your tic-tac-toe chart, pull it out." I will tell you this though, I did tell the staff that. So you think we're just telling you? The staff has the same tic-tac-toe chart, and I told them this Tuesday. I want to see their tic-tac-toe chart.

[26:53] Because we can't ask you to do something we're not willing to do ourselves. Because there's too many people at that going through A day 18, we have to love people, and every opportunity we get to love them, we get to extend that love to the We sat in a restaurant one time, and a girl came to service, and we could tell she was a... We ask everybody that serves us, "What's your name?" By the way, if you do that, like, overseas, they think you're telling the manager or something, or they're in trouble. So just be careful how you do that if you travel. But, "What's your name?" I want to call them by their name. They have a name. And every time they come back, you go, "Thank you, Susie. Thank you, Scott. Thank you, whoever." When they bring in stuff, and we had a conversation with her, and she was having a terrible day.

[27:40] She brings the appetizers that we were having. She sits down at the booth we're at. She's sharing with us what her hurt and pain is in a restaurant. God can do things no matter where it is, and her manager, assistant manager, never came over and said, "Boo." No one else came by that booth the whole time that she was there, because God just created a circle and just protected it. Instead, if you're willing to step out and love, here, I'm gonna protect that love so it can happen, and you need to be that bold, that when God calls you to serve somebody, you're just gonna say, "Here am I. Use me." And you've got to be willing to do that in every part of your life, because it is not all about you. It's all about the person He's asking you to love, and to love only the way that He can love through you, each day. He's asking you to do that.

[28:38] Some tangible ways you can do that, like I did with poor Mike. We're still friends. You can invite them over to your house. You can go to their house and do something. You can get to know them by just tapping on their door, giving them some cookies, "What's your contact info?" When they're saying, you know, "What if you ever get in a crisis or a pinch and you need someone to do something right away, or your way in, my contact information is in here, just text me," and you share that information with them. I used to one out of the New York. I had a really nice snow blower, and on my day off, I prayed for snow on my day off. You know why? So I could go all the way up the road with my snow blower, and that's what I did. I went all the way to the current, up the corner, snow blow the whole sidewalk, shovel the fire hydrants. I didn't ask for anybody to look for me. I just love them, my neighbors.

[29:27] We'll just call it love. Gisèle is part of a community theater group here, and we look for ways to connect with our community beyond the church. And she's just deep in the theatrics, and she loves that stuff, and so, but when each show kind of ends after the weeks that it runs, they kind of have a cast get-together, a cast party. And Gisèle said, "Do you think we could have the cast party at our house?" Absolutely, without a doubt. And if you've seen our house, it's 40 people that come in. We're going to look like the commercial when they're all in the pool, all out of the pool. There's no room to swim. It's a tiny little house, but you know what? I'm not missing an opportunity to have 40 people come to my house.

[30:18] I'm not gonna miss it. And God provided a way, man. I remember standing outside. There was people, they stayed overnight too. There was tents in the yard. There's hammocks hanging from the trees in our house. We cooked breakfast the next morning. Gisèle made pizza breakfast. If you never had that, you can ask her how to make that, and I'm telling you, it was an incredible opportunity to do nothing but love people. See, it's not your job to fix them. It's not your job to even ask them to church. It's just your job to love them. That's all I'm asking. That's all God's asking us to do. They are not projects. People are not projects. We're called to love them. And when the opportunity presents itself, then we can share more.

[31:03] Because I can tell you this because I've done this. I've not built relationships before, and then I go, "Hey, how would you like to come to church Sunday?" No. Well, now I'm at a deficit. Right, if I build the relationship and God presents an opportunity, and they can say, "You know what? We have this series we're doing at church right now, and probably be great for you to come, but I understand if you're not, come to church in a while, but I just want you to know that I'd love to, free to come to church. We go with the lunch after." See, and they go, "No, I still got a relationship." Because the church wasn't the first thing. The relationship and the loved them was the first thing. What can one person do? What can one family do? What can one household do? What can one church do if I look at our church?

[31:49] And if I estimate, I didn't go through, look, and there's 400 households represented in this church. And that X in the center represents 400 households. That means that's eight other households around that X times 400. That's 3,200 households when it all comes down to it. 400 households would impact 3,200 other homes. If you follow through on this, if the average home has three people in it, that's 9,600 people that get impacted by love. It's simple. It's not as hard as you think it is. God wants to do this, and He'll give you the power to do it. God's plan for the advancement of His kingdom depends on His relationship with His people, our relationship with God and how we see our relationship with God.

[32:41] Is how the kingdom is going to be impacted. Henry Blackaby says, His people in relationship with other people is the way that it will grow. What are your neighborhoods? Who are the people in your neighborhood? Who do you need to see you from that standpoint? I'm telling you, there's a lot of people depending on you, and they don't know it. I'm just asking you to love. I'm just asking you to love in a simple way. Bake something, say hello. We've had situations in our life. Gisèle and I, we've been blessed to have some relationships we've built.

[33:27] In our house in New York, we just love the people next door to us. We found out when her dad died, we went to the funeral. We weren't invited, but we went to the funeral. It made the biggest impact on her that you would ever, you wouldn't even think of, to the point that months later now, we're standing between our yards, praying for her and her family in our yards. And I will tell you today, her husband reached out to us a few months ago when he knew we were coming to Western New York. They were non-church-going. Faith was really small at the time, and he said, "I just want you to know I'm going to that church you were at, and I'm in a men's small group." I'm telling you, love people. God will take care of the rest.

[34:14] In October we have a chance for you to do that. We're not going to program some big event for you to come and join, because what I believe is that you can reach your neighborhood. You can reach your friend group. You can reach your coworkers better than I can, and better than any of the staff can. I don't live where you live. I don't work where you work. I don't go the path that you go. You can do it. I have full confidence in you that you can do it. And God's love it, and so I can't do it for you. And so for us to do a big thing and say, "Come and support what the church is doing." No. I want you to do it. I want you to serve and love people, and then ask us if you need support.

[35:01] Because there's no one that loves the people or should be loving the people in your neighborhoods more than you do. And this coming October in Thanksgiving, you'll have an opportunity to do that as believers in Christ through Love Atlantic. And Love Atlantic is just followers of Christ loving other people. Just take a look at this video. Here at Tidal, and lately we talk about the difference that God's love makes in us, but it doesn't stop there. It's God's love in us that then goes out to the world, which is why we are so looking forward to the Love Atlantic week that's coming up, October 2nd to the 9th. It's a movement of churches all across this region as we bring practical expressions of God's love into our communities. So we want you to start thinking right now about who you can show God's love to in your world. Are there maybe some people in your neighborhood? Is there a coworker, a friend, or a family member that you can go and show a practical expression of God's love to? And then think, who can you bring along for the ride? Is there people from your small group? Are there some of your other family members, or maybe some of your friends that you can invite so that they can experience what it's like to bring God's love to the people around us?

[36:15] This is the mission that we are called to as a church, and this is what we're called to do every single day. And so this is our invitation to you this October. Just only in our small group, we're in New York, somebody happened to notice in their neighborhood, one of our small group leaders, that a house across the street, which has always been immaculate in landscaping and everything, that this summer when it came, and of this year, not this year, but the year I'm talking about, the yard wasn't done as nice. There was nothing done. And a couple that lived next to that house walked across the street and asked, "Hey, we've just noticed. Is there anything I can help with?"

[37:00] To find out that the dad had left, and now she was a single mom who didn't work but now had to go find a job and couldn't get things done. So it's a small group. We said, "Let's do it. Let's just love her." And so we put our money together and we went and got mulch and plants and everything, and, like, I mostly kill anything I plant, so I'm not really the best, but I can shovel mulch. And we went and loved on her. She's a follower of Christ today, not because of the mulch or plants but because of love. And a lot of times we get tied up thinking, I've got to, like, introduce him to Christ, lead him to Christ, and then, like, plant them going forward, and that's not true.

[37:49] That can happen. But when you love someone, what God is calling you to, love someone, you only need to be one of three things, and He'll reveal that to you. You're either a planter where you're loving and sharing the Word, or you're a farmer where you're cultivating and putting more love on so that faith grows in their life, or you're a harvester that gets to invite them into the family as a whole. Sometimes we put pressure, thinking you've got to be the planter, farmer, and harvester, and I'm telling you, you don't have to be. Can you be, God direct you? Yes. But you're going to be one of those three as you love the people in your neighborhood.

[38:39] They're counting on you. I'm counting on you. But God's counting on you more than anything, because they need you and you need them, and you need to express the love of God. Let's pray. Father, I thank You for all those that You even trusted us with, because that's what You've done when You've placed this in our homes, apartments, wherever we may be living, when You've placed us in our jobs, when we're walking down an aisle of a store. May we see that as our neighborhood. May we know that this is where God has placed me now. God, create an opportunity for me. Create a way for me to love somebody that to them will not make any sense. It's truth.

[39:28] It's grace and truth, unconditional love. So Father, for everyone that's in this room and everyone that's online this morning, I pray that as they pray for opportunities to share love, that there will be an abundance of outflow from those that say, "We follow You." "Now use me here, Lord, here am I." May that be their prayer. Here am I. And we'll give You the glory for everything that You do. In Your name we pray. Amen.