We're going to jump right into the Bible study. Today we're giving Pastor Peter a break from the leading worship part so you guys get double dose. Well, I want to start off by doing it again of linking everything that we've been learning again. I've been doing it every time that I've been teaching just so that all that we are doing in terms of the outflow of how important the church and all that kind of stuff is flowing from the right place.

So walk with me here in the review and we'll put a bunch of blanks. Now we learned that God is absolutely holy. So we must have an accurately high view of God. And remember I made it a kind of emphasis to say that just to say that, "Hey, we're going to have a high view of God," as in we're just going to try to elevate him, I felt like was not enough because the reality, what is true and real is that God actually is exalted.

And so we appropriately want to see him that way. And then number two, we must have a corresponding high view of his word. Think of it, it is really inconsistent when people regularly hold up their Bible and say, "This is the word of God, word of God, word of God." And yet in terms of treating this, the scriptures and how they approach it, it is very far from reverential.

It's very far from actually obedient. So correspondingly, they have to be at high view of the word. So Pastor Peter went at length about interpreting accurately. So we have to have a corresponding high view of the word. And then we have to make sure that we interpret the scriptures accurately.

That if we're not seeking to arrive at the intended meaning of the passage, then all you have is conjecture, opinion, and this and that. But what's more, we obviously have to apply accurately by making sure that we go through the right process of, "This is what the scripture says by exegesis." And only then do you ask historical theology, you know, systematic and then, or systematic historical and philosophical, right?

So the whole idea there is, in terms of even the way that you're going to now place it into your life, that also has to be accurate as well. Then we must have a high view of his church. And we've been talking about that now for several weeks. Firstly, we have to cherish the church as Christ does.

Sorry I don't have the projection on there, but I'm going to repeat those blanks a couple times so you guys can follow along, okay? You have to cherish the church as Christ does. What's more, we have to recognize God's delegated authority in the church. We did last week this idea of authority culturally.

Again, not for every single person, but especially here in the US, culturally, it stands in opposition to what's normal, right? But there's this question of, is there biblical delegated authority within the church? And absolutely, absolutely. Today, as we go down this flow of reviewing all that we've covered, we've covered these core doctrines that really stand as pillars for the church.

But today is going to be more of like a coaching and an inspiring and like a, "Ah, guys, let's do it," kind of day, okay? Because there's a sense in which we can talk about, again, this view of God. We can talk about view of his word. We talk about all his importance.

And up to that point, guess what? There's a sense in which it can remain theoretical, right? It can remain theoretical. And so today we're going to be challenged to hear this admonition that we must align ourselves to his purposes then, right? Whatever God is doing then through his word, whatever God is doing then through his church, we need to align ourselves with his purposes, okay?

It's not enough to say the one thing, well, first of all, it's definitely not enough and absolutely wrong to have a misconstrued view of what God is doing so that the major problem in this day and age has been that people have been making the church what they want it to be.

And people have been making the Bible say what they want it to say, right? And so the admonition that I'm saying is, if we're going to go down this line of saying, well, God is holy and that's accurately what we see him as, then you need to submit to his will.

If God's word is God's word and you have a high view of it, then you need to submit to his word. If God's church is cherished and it has authority, then we need to function underneath that as well. And so the whole challenge today is going to be there is a responsibility on us as members to buy into God's purposes and have a sense, this is my purpose, right?

So that's what we're going to be talking about today. And by way of kind of intro to say that, I mean, having a purpose statement for your life is really important. If you've taken any business classes or even if you just read articles about like successful businesses or even just successful projects, they'll always say, number one is set the right goal, right?

Have a mission statement. And the reason why is because a mission statement pretty much explains why you exist. It just answers the question like, what is this all for? And I think that's really pertinent to us because we live in a generation where people are all searching for that kind of purpose.

People are always questioning for what reason am I here? Everybody does that at one point or another. So was it without a mission statement, we're absolutely lost and without aim. And what we're going to see is that regularly God has been very vocal about his purposes for mankind, his purposes for specific people, his purposes for nation, his purposes for collective body, right?

And so what we're going to do right now, and I hope this doesn't become too boring for you guys, but we're going to do one of those like follow the trail, okay? Follow the trail of different characters to see God's purposes for them. First we start off with Abraham.

So please turn your Bibles to Genesis chapter 12. And we're going to be flipping obviously just a bunch of passages in the Old Testament and kind of, you know, again, following a theme. That famous passage you guys are probably well versed in, it says, "Now the Lord said to Abraham, 'Go forth from your country and from your relatives and from your father's house to the land which I will show you and I will make you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great and so you shall be a blessing.

And I will bless those who bless you and the one who curses you I will curse and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.'" Now you can read that in two different perspectives. You can read that in one perspective of trying to figure out like, oh, who is that, you know, the child or who's the nation?

What's the land and what's this blessing supposed to be? And what you're doing is dissecting. The other perspective you can take is a broad scope. What is God doing? Right? And look at what he's saying when he says, you know, he's talking about like, "Go forth from your country, from your relatives," and he says, "the land which I will show you, I will make you, I will bless you, I will bless you." And the whole repeated theme of that is God doing a mighty work calling Abraham.

Right? So within that we have some of the blanks for you there. Obviously the promises is the land. Okay? This is just for your blinks. We have the land, a great nation, and blessing. Those three things you guys should have categorically in your head. If you guys were here when Pastor Aaron was teaching through Genesis, which was an awesome series, he like drained that into our heads.

Like, because every week he, you know, reviewed that with us. But it was great because as he explained it, those things by which God was desiring to give and what God had purposed actually built a framework of how to understand the Old Testament. That was the meta-narrative by which we started to understand why.

Why was this happening? Why was that happening? And why are some of the stories even there? And so all I'm saying is it's important for us to recognize that there is a purpose of God by which he's working and building towards as he calls specific people. So what's more, we think about even Moses, right?

Moses has a purpose, a mission so to speak. And Moses in Exodus chapter three, he is called, he says, "Therefore come now, I will send you to Pharaoh so that you may bring my people, the sons of Israel, out of Egypt." The blank there is deliverance. God, in using Moses to draw his people, made that elaborate drama to make sure that the grandeur of his deliverance would be known throughout the generations, right?

That it would not only simply be like, "Oh, it happened," but it would be something rehearsed. It would be something memorized and it would be something reviewed so that the generations to come would recognize that God is a God of deliverance. Okay? So what's more, if you turn your Bibles to Exodus chapter 25, verse one through nine, okay, God is working through Moses and he has these various purposes.

Okay. Exodus chapter 25, verses one through nine. And then he says, "Then the Lord spoke to Moses saying, 'Tell the sons of Israel to raise a contribution for me. From every man whose heart moves him, you shall raise my contribution. This is the contribution which you are to raise from them.

Gold, silver, and bronze, blue, purple, and scarlet material, fine linen, go hair, ram skin dyed red, porpoise skins, acacia wood, oil for lighting, spices for the anointing of oil, and for the fragrant incense. Onyx stones and setting stones for the ephod and for the breast piece. Let them construct a sanctuary for me that I may dwell among them.

According to all that I am going to show you as the pattern of the tabernacle and the pattern of all its furniture, just so you shall construct it.'" Okay? And this is a really interesting passage because in God describing to Moses what he is going to do, he describes his intent, right?

He says that, right there in verse 8, "Let them construct what a sanctuary for me, for what that I may dwell among them." If you missed that theme, if you missed that concept, what is God doing here? The rest of Exodus feels really bone dry. It almost feels like you are picking up Ikea manual and just reading it for fun, right?

And then you are just going to think, man, the Bible is super hard to read. How many of you guys have read through Exodus and started realizing, my goodness, half the book. Exodus is 40 chapters, but starting from chapter 25, the huge chunk of it is, this is what the clothes look like, this is what the altar looks like, this is what the lamp stand looks like, this is what the nation looks like, this is what the, you know what I'm saying?

But here is the question, why? What is God doing? In his purpose, he desires to dwell with them. So all the details and all the specifics that he is putting into, the measurement, and even the color, now all of a sudden has its place, right? And what's more, he describes how not only is he going to be doing this, he is going to use the people to contribute to do this.

So many of the chapters talks about, you know, skilled craftsmen, and then obviously you have that little episode with the golden calf and God is like, oh my goodness, right when I'm purposing, right when I'm intending to build this sanctuary so that I might dwell with you, this is what you do.

Pretty intense stuff. My point being again though is, we want to have a perspective as we read the scriptures of asking the question, what is God's purpose? What is God's aim and goal? What's more, I want to ask you a question here, okay? With the priests of Leviticus, I'm going to ask you this question because I covered it week two, which was already a while ago, but just to refresh our memory, I made a big point about Leviticus chapter 16, okay?

Who remembers what was the intent, what was the purpose of Leviticus chapter 16? I'll give you a hint, okay? In the New Testament, Jesus is described as three things. It's one of them. Give you another hint. My first son's middle name is this word I'm looking for. Then Dan was like, that's not a hint.

Okay? Remember that when God through the priests, all of a sudden in the book of Leviticus, start to give all these restrictions and all this kind of stuff, you might have been thinking, oh my gosh, right? All God is doing is restricting man from coming to him. But I made the case that yes, it is a restriction because the reality is you can't.

But the purpose of establishing a priest and establishing a sacrifice was to show you the way, right? In chapter 16 of Leviticus, it made it very clear. He said, I'm giving you a way. The book of Leviticus, the purpose of it is to show them that there is going to be a way to God.

Why? Because currently you don't have one. Currently right now, there's nothing for you. You're separate from God and you dare not approach him for you shall die. That's reality. The book of Leviticus is a grace. That law is a grace given to them to give them a way to worship, to give them a way to approach.

What's God's purpose in that? Right? See if you missed that, all of a sudden, Leviticus chapter 19, the book of Leviticus becomes random laws, stuff that you just put aside as a bunch of ceremony. So it's ceremonial stuff. You just put it away, right? But that's not the case.

There's a purpose in which God is working. What is God doing? Here's a little bit of a lengthier passage. Please turn your Bible to 2 Samuel chapter 7. Please turn your Bible to 2 Samuel chapter 7. And this is in relation to King David. 2 Samuel 7 is known as the Davidic covenant passage.

I'm going to read you a little bit of a lengthy section, okay? This is what he says in verse 4 through 17. He says, "But in the same night, the word of the Lord came to Nathan, saying, 'Go and say to my servant David, 'Thus says the Lord, you are the one who should build me a house ...'" Sorry.

"'Are you the one who should build me a house to dwell in? For I have not dwelt in a house since the day I brought the sons of Israel from Egypt, even to this day. But I have been moving about in a tent, even a tabernacle. Wherever I have gone with all the sons of Israel, did I speak a word with one of the tribes of Israel, which I command to shepherd my people Israel, saying, 'Why have you not built me a house of cedar?' Now therefore thus you shall say to my servant David, 'Thus says the Lord of hosts, 'I took you from the pastor from following the sheep to be ruler over my people Israel.

I have been with you wherever you have gone, and I have cut off all your enemies from before you. I will make you a great name, like the names of the great men who are on the earth. I will also appoint a place for my people Israel, and will plant them, that they may live in their own place, and not be disturbed again.

Nor will the lewkid afflict them any more as formerly, even from the day that I commanded judges to be over my people Israel, and I will give you rest from all your enemies. The Lord also declares to you that the Lord will make a house for you. When your days are complete, and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your descendant after you, who will come from you, and I will establish his kingdom.

He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever." And I'm just going to stop there, okay? When you read these passages, you just get, I don't know if you get the same sense, but you just get a repetition of, "I will do this, I will do this, and this is what I'm going to do," right?

And essentially, as you read these passages, what you realize is God has been working, God has been active, and he is accomplishing his purposes. Whether it looks like it or appears like it in your eyes or not, it's happening. What must we do? We have to align ourselves with the purposes of God.

Should any of these people say, "But I want to, how come I don't get to, but I so eagerly wanted to?" You know what I'm saying? Then all of a sudden, even if whatever you desire seemed to be good in your eyes, now it becomes at odds with God.

Well, just to kind of fill in a couple more, all these significant individuals had a calling, a very specific calling, right, from God that was revealed very explicitly. Now I'm not going to say that each and every single one of us has a calling explicitly like this, but there is a calling for us.

There absolutely is. Now just kind of going down the line here, Ezra, he was commissioned with bringing reform, right? Bringing the wave of people back, putting away the idols. He reprimanded everybody for their cross marriages with idolatrous people. Nehemiah had the mission to rebuild the wall, right, to start rebuilding.

The prophets had a mission. All these significant individuals had a mission. Now, if you notice in your packet, I have a thing called common falling condition. Common falling condition. That's not originated from me. This guy named Brian Chappell, he wrote a book called Christ-Centered Preaching and I stole it.

I call it the CFC and it just makes sense. Whenever you see a kind of common phenomenon where we have this condition, you just call it this common falling condition where there is a sense, I believe, in this generation of an incredible frustration. I don't know if you agree with me or not, or I don't know if you personally struggle with that right now.

There is a frustration in the heart of mankind in this generation and that frustration, I believe, comes from a sense of purposeless living. I believe there is a reason why that purpose-driven life phenomenon happened. Why millions and millions of people read a book where many pastors previous to him said the exact same thing, but they soaked it up.

Why? Because there was a big, big vacancy of a sense of purpose in their lives. And I think, even if I look at my life, sometimes I get so myopic that I look at my table, my lot in life, and I start to ask this question like, "Why? What is this?

What for?" So I just want to share a little bit of a story here, or I just want to share a little bit of examples. I think there are times, let's say even starting from young age, like high school, high school students are striving for stuff, whether it be first experiences of going to dances or whatever, or high school students are looking for that acceptance letter from their college.

I'm going to be honest with you, I think I've shared this story with you guys many times, but I as a high school student had my heart set on going to UCSD. For those of you guys who went there, consider yourselves blessed, okay? When I got my little small rejection letter, I was so sad I cried.

I started crying and my parents were like, "What is it?" I did one of those like, "We don't want to talk about it," and just like went to my room. Did you know that I appealed four times? And by the fourth one, they wrote me back and said, "Please stop.

We're not accepting your appeal letters." And then at my church where I got saved, we had one of these farewell banquets for the seniors and stuff, and then I was like, "No farewell. I don't want to go to this stupid party." I was so bummed because I had my hopes set on that acceptance letter.

But what happens? You know exactly what happens. After that, you get embittered and then you're just like, "Whatever," and you give up. So I remember when I came to UCI, I didn't go to SPOP. SPOP is the orientation week. I didn't go to the dorms and check it out.

I didn't even register for my classes. Once I got to UCI, actually James Hong might have helped me register for classes because I didn't do it. I was so devastated. I was just like, "Whatever. I don't care." That happens even in high school. And then collegians, there's a sense in which sometimes when they're studying and when they're trying to pick certain majors, maybe they bomb their first exam, whatever it may be, all of a sudden disappointment leads to being jaded and leads to a sense of like, "Why?" And then there are people who are working.

Even if you have a decent job, it's repetitive. And then you start asking, "Why?" Just for the fact, not because it's hard, not because it's demeaning, but it's because it's repetitive and because it's mundane. And then you start asking the question, "Why? Is this it? Isn't there more?" And I have people ask me regularly, "When I think of Christian life, sometimes I don't get very excited here.

What is that supposed to look like? It looks really dry." As a matter of fact, I don't know. It just seems so uninspiring. There's got to be more. So I don't know if maybe some of you guys can relate to all of that, but I think in this generation, there are so many people who struggle with that.

Why? Did you know that if you look up psychiatric studies of how many people are depressed in this generation, it is above the generation of World War I? Which is baffling. That the number of people who say they have clinical depression exceeds those individuals during the time of World War I.

Why? Because I think people wrestle with this idea of there is absolutely no purpose for that. My own personal struggle with that. I remember when I first became Christian, the very first song that I learned was, I'm not going to sing it, but the words go, "Here I am, nothing much to give.

Here I am, asking for the privilege to be used by you. Use me, dear Lord, use me, dear Lord." It was a simple song, three chords, and I learned it and I sang it again and again and again. And it came from when I first got saved, I wanted to be used.

But what was really interesting is after graduating college, I was a philosophy major, completely useless. And then I worked for a year and a half, and I did really odd jobs. And then I decided I want to go to seminary because I want to be used. I went through four years of seminary and then finished.

Now I was still really active at church. Whoa, the light. I was still doing a bunch of stuff, right? But there was still this question of, where do I fit? There was a question of, what's my role? There was a question of, I don't even know what my gifts are.

I'm going to be honest with you, I don't know what my gifts are in terms of what am I really good at. Maybe I can do this, maybe I can do that. I feel like I can do this, but I don't even know what is a tangible gift I should be doing right now.

So in all those questions, guess what? I started feeling a sense of that, like, what do I do? What is this all for? And I remember asking this question, God, what do I get to do? And then I remember feeling incredibly rebuked because as I studied the scriptures, I didn't hear a, well, what you get to do is, right?

Well, actually, let me put it this way. The questions that I was asking, it's not necessarily wrong, but the heart behind it could be very dangerous because although God's answer might be the same, the questions are entirely different. What do I mean by that? There are times because of our hearts, the common fallen condition.

How many of you guys have ever sat in your wardrobe, maybe in front of your closet and you sit there and you're like, oh, I've got nothing to wear. Your clothes are like falling off. Everything's like so packed. You can't even squeeze your shirt in, but you're like, oh, I've got nothing to wear.

Right? What we mean is there's nothing there I want to wear. Right? And it's just like my kids. We've got that little train table that we got from their cousins and then they're all playing. They're playing with each other. And then obviously the older one, he's stronger and bigger.

So it's like, I don't want to play with that. And he grabs it. And my little one's sitting there like, and then his table is all like empty on his side. And then he looks at me, I've got nothing, you know? And I'm like, just turn around. You have like a four by four Ikea shelf with all these toys, you know?

But of course, when you look at in front of them, what do you have? Nothing. What do I get to play with? When you have so much more on a larger perspective, I wondered at that moment, I got, felt so rebuked because I'm sitting here asking, what's my role?

What's my gift? What do you have planned for me? When God's probably sitting there asking me, did you notice what I was doing? Did you notice what I was working towards? Right? Did you know how I, you know, have you been paying attention to what I've been building? Did you have eyes like Ezra to see there's like broken wall?

Did you have eyes like Nehemiah to see there's idolatry over there? Have you been paying attention to my plans? And then I felt this weight of rebuke because you study the scriptures and Jesus Christ is saying over and over again, here in the New Testament, all the things that we went through, choosing a chosen nation and a people who will be blessed, that is in Christ, the church through Moses, the deliverance, through Moses, the tabernacle of the spirit of God dwells.

That's the church, the building of the temple, so to speak. This is the church. And Jesus Christ has been saying in this generation, I will build my church. And that's when I started to feel this like burden on my soul. Like God is telling me, build his church. And that's why I'm all about building the local church.

Because in a moment of kind of feeling lost, in a moment of feeling like I don't know my niche in life, I really felt from the scriptures that God was saying that in this time he is truly building a body of people, which I am to help build. Let's look at some of these passages.

Okay. Matthew chapter 16, verses 13 through 20. Matthew chapter 16, verse 13 through 20. Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked the disciples, who do people say that the Son of Man is? And they said, some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.

He said to them, but who do you say that I am? And Simon Peter replied, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered him, blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.

And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on it shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on it shall be loosed in heaven.

Think about that. Who revealed that truth to Peter? God. So who's at work? God. Who is going to build this church? Christ. And what is God doing? He is giving such authority to the church. What's more, Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14, 12, so also you, since you are zealous for spiritual gifts, seek to abound for the edification of the church.

In the New Testament, God is establishing the church. And so, if you are feeling a sense of, I don't know, Christian life in the OC, so lame. I feel like maybe you're looking at the wrong plate. You're looking at the wrong table. Maybe your eyes were focused in on like, I wanted Christian life in OC to maybe look like this.

And since you see a gaping hole there, you're like, man, this is lame. Let us today, I want to encourage us, again, today is kind of like, let's get inspired to broaden our perspective and ask, what is God doing here, right now, in OC, in your life? And what visions and purposes of God can you attach yourself to?

Not simply to say, God, what's my niche going to be, right? And I want to be able to do something that I can look back and say, wow, look at the way God used me. No. What is God doing by which you can align yourselves and get behind that and serve those purposes?

That's the question. Because God is doing much. You look at all the things that the scripture is said in Ephesians, the passage in 2, chapter 2, verse 19 to 20, that's the one that talks about this, that in Christ, yes, he is the chief cornerstone and we are being the structure joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.

In him, you also are being built up together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. First Peter, chapter 2, verse 4 through 5, as you come to him, a living stone rejected by man, but in the sight of God chosen and precious. You yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Did God expect you to have a mundane, I don't quote unquote lame kind of life in this generation? No. He actually expects us to be responsible, active, productive, contributing, offering up spiritual sacrifices. There's so much. There's so much. So you guys can look up those passages in your own time, but right now what we're going to do is we've given the big picture.

The big picture is there are purposes of God for the church that we need to buy into. The smaller things and the details we're going to do now. So therefore, therefore, and we're just going to do like a machine gun style, machine gun style application, kind of envisioning what we can be doing.

This is also going to be review, review of our membership covenant. So number one, if we believe that the spirit of God dwells not in 314A4 Airway Avenue, building A, but the dwelling of God is the church, the people, the dwelling of God is in your heart through faith, right?

Then the first thing we need to do is make sure that we're building this church the appropriate way and that you're contributing to the building up of the strength of this church by solidifying your faith. The blank there is solidifying your faith. What do I mean by that? It is your responsibility to examine your faith and solidify it by which if you have any question, am I really saved?

That's for you to examine. If you have any doubt, man, I grew up in the Christian church and then I've been telling people I've been Christian since I was a baby, but I can't really pinpoint a time when I repented. That's something you need to deal with. If you feel like, you know, right now there are days, not just days, but weeks and not just weeks, but months, I have no desire for God.

Where am I? That's for you to discern, right? Because truthfully speaking, the leaders and the people around you, they can't tell you, "No, you're a Christian." Why? They can't look into your heart. They can't, I actually don't ever really tell people, "Don't you ever doubt and don't you ever worry because you're a Christian." Because I don't know their heart.

What I do typically is ask them questions. Do you feel conviction? Remorse? So I ask questions. So maybe you can, and again, that's your responsibility to search for what kind of questions should I ask to solidify my faith? Now the church has a responsibility. We practice membership, so there is in a sense a door.

But that door is crossed by confession and that confession is yours to make. For you to examine your faith to the degree that you will have a definitive conclusion, a definitive conclusion towards confession, "I believe it. I believe it. I trust it. I am saved by the grace of God." That's your responsibility, right?

That's not in the power of another person to tell you. So number one was this idea that you have to have a definitive conclusion. Do you have that? And that's for your responsibility. And so therefore, we have as our membership covenant number one, which is, oh sorry, this motion means that you guys would say it, who remembers, we should put that on the quiz too.

List the 10 commitments of, you know, just kidding. The BCC quiz is pretty intense already. I confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. And that's something we have people sign off on as their commitment. Isn't that weird? It's a commitment of faith. It's a commitment of solidifying that confession.

I have my confession in the name of Jesus Christ. So I have a little section for ideas. Take 30 seconds to jot down some ideas of how this is something that you can apply to build a church. That's interesting. I'm asking you to take the concept of solidifying, as in making sure that you have the assurance of salvation and use that by way of building the church.

What is this idea? What's that idea? It doesn't have to be so linearly connected, like this is how we build it. But ideas. Just jot it down real fast. And I'll help you with some. You know, maybe if you don't have the capacity, you know, maybe you're a newer Christian and you can't verbally express the gospel, starting to memorize that, rehearse it, right?

Maybe not just because someone asked you, but reviewing your testimony to see if there have been clear actual experience of being converted in Christ. Idea of asking certain questions. Maybe even if you've been a long time Christian and one of our college students comes to you and says, "I just came from this youth group and we've never really heard the gospel, so to speak, the gospel proper, but I know I'm a pretty good, like I know I'm a Christian because I believe, but like, how do I know?" Do you know how to answer that?

So learning how to guide somebody through like an assurance of their conversion. So these are all things that you can be doing because then you're going to be equipped to build a church. There are more, but you guys can, you know, jot those ideas down. Okay. I'm going to have to probably go faster because we're going to be here for a long night.

Okay. Number two, it's your responsibility to build a church by continuing to learn and renew your mind. Okay. So continuing to learn and renew your mind. You being a theologian actually builds the church. You studying the scriptures diligently and meditating upon it is building the church. What's more, when we have services, because these are the main avenues of our gathering, right?

When we have the preaching of the word of God, my question to you would be, are you getting the most out of the sermons and the lessons? Are you an active listener? Are you sitting back, enjoying the lesson and saying, "That felt pretty good," and leaving? Or are you actively listening, trying to retain and trying to apply?

Are you basically taking the inductive methodology that you use to when you do your own Bible study and apply it to your own listing of the scriptures whenever you hear it? Do you realize that this actually continues to build the church as we all collectively learn together? Right? And what's more, I ask the question of, are you continuing to renew your mind?

Because honestly speaking, the church, I don't know if you guys see it, but I see it a lot with the collegians. Okay. I see it a lot with the collegians because I feel like, my goodness, every year we're going to have to deal with this. I'm teaching this lesson on Friday with the collegians.

I went over one of the lessons, immediately one of the students came up and was like, "I still don't get it. Why the church? Like, if I want to not come, why do I have to?" And it feels very, what, legalistic. I'm like, "Okay, we're going to have to go through this every time, every year, because the massive generation of people that are coming up don't have a base foundation of like, this is the role of the church in their Christian lives." Even when it comes to what's pure and what's impure, what's acceptable for a Christian and what's not acceptable.

That line, obviously we don't draw like crystal clear in the cement or whatever, but those lines have to be drawn. But do you realize that this generation, this church is also under attack? The muddying of those lines so that you can't say any of that stuff. And I see it readily in the collegians.

I see it in the, especially in the young group. So I just want to ask the question of, is your mind being renewed? And again, we have a membership covenant that says, "I confess that the Bible is an inerrant word of God and has ultimate authority over my life." So what am I doing here?

Is that I'm presenting to you our membership commitments. In one perspective, it's just simply your commitment to the church. In another perspective, these are various things that you can commit to so that you can be a healthy member, a healthy Christian. And these are many of the things that you can be devoting your time to.

Do we expect every Christian to be a studious individual? Yes. Even if you're a super slow reader, even if you don't normally read books, yes, you should. You should read the scriptures. You should be reading topical books on church, topical books on current issues. Now I'm not saying that you have to be at a certain level.

You don't all have to be like somebody else, but you should all be readily growing. Take a moment to jot down. If you personally have not been renewing your mind to the scriptures, if you personally have been really inactive and deficient in learning and gaining perspective and answering some of the pertinent questions, how can you address that?

Because that's your responsibility. And the perspective that we want to instill in everybody again is, as you grow in that kind of theology, the conviction from the Bible, that contributes to the health of the church because your health, whether you get swayed left and right, is the health of the church.

Your personal conviction is going to contribute to the collective whole. So write down some ideas. Maybe you guys have never tackled that gigantic, grudum, systematic theology. Now we don't all have to go through it by the end of the year or whatever, but we recommend it. Why? Because it's going to give you a base.

Is every single thing in that book correct and right? You have to test it against scripture. Right? Okay, so anyway, ideas, write it down. How do we have tangible ideas? Reading plans, journals, recommended books. We're going to try to establish a library. Okay? I'm not going to go through all 10, but I'm going to kind of lump the next couple.

Next, build a church by fervently praying. Okay? It is your responsibility to build this church by praying your heart out. Here's an interesting idea that I have. I want to say to you guys is this, oh, wait a minute. Do I have blanks? Aw, there's supposed to be blanks.

Okay. All right. Well, build a church, that's interesting how that worked, by fervently praying. Okay? Here's a passage in Ephesians chapter six. Praying always with all prayers and supplication in the spirit. Praying always should be enough, but redundantly, he says, pray always with every kind of prayer and supplications too.

You know? For what? And watch with all perseverance, supplications for the saints and for me that utterance may be given to me that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel. Okay? It's really interesting. I don't know if you guys have ever heard it, but I have heard people say something like, you know, there was a large portion where I thought like the vast majority of needs in the church were met.

You know? We are thankful that many people do serve at our church. But number one, no, not all the needs at the church are met. Do you feel like all the needs of the church are met? But number two, even if you feel like, yeah, but where is there a tangible place for me to serve?

Okay? I'm just going to get real specific. Someone said, there's nothing tangible to serve except cleaning and snacks. I don't want to do either. My thing is this, is like, what if we just asked you, the biggest need we have is for you to just pray? You know?