Tools for the Task // Above All Else // Rodney Hobbs

You're listening to a message from Stonegate Church. For more information about Stonegate and additional audio resources, please visit Stonegate Church. So imagine you have a painful problem. And the painful problem is you have a tooth that has to come out. That's never a good moment in our life.

I don't want to lose a tooth, right? But that tooth has to come out. You've got a problem. That tooth has to come out of your mouth. And you go to the dentist and you get into the dental office, and he agrees that tooth has to come out.

And he's like, it's no problem. We can get that tooth rattle now. But you're curious, so you're like, well, how are you gonna do that? And he's like, well, we've actually got some new ways. We're doing that now.

And you're like, well, what's the new way we're doing it? And he opens up the cabinet and he pulls out this massive jackhammer. And he's like, okay, here's how we're gonna do it. We're gonna. We're gonna get this thing in there, and you're not gonna believe it.

Teeth just start flying out of your mouth when we do it. It's gon to do this. You would be like, in that moment, I got to get a new dentist. That dentist is no longer my dentist. It's not going to work.

Why is it not going to work? Because it is the wrong tool for the task. Or we could say it in a positive way. Every task needs the right tools. We all know that.

If you've ever tried to do a task but just have the wrong tools to do it, it complicates everything. Every task. No. Needs the right tools. Here, church is our task.

Proverbs 4, verse 23. Above all else, keep your heart for everything you do flows from it. That is the task above all else. Like, this is the thing at the top of the list. Or you could think of it as the center of the list.

This is what we're doing all the time. Above all else, keep your heart for everything you do flows from it. Keep your heart. That's the command. That is the task.

And that's not like a new year resolution. It's not a thing that we kind of have a spasm of activity or a spurt of activity. No, this is a whole life resolution. If you are a follower of Jesus, this is your lifelong until you meet Jesus face to face. Task, it is keeping your heart, it is guarding against sin, cultivating godliness.

Every single day, your heart is either moving toward Jesus or away from Jesus. Every single day that's happening, one or the other, there is no such thing as a neutral day. It's moving toward or it's moving away from, drifting away from Jesus and keeping your heart is that ongoing work of our heart moving toward, making sure our heart is intentionally moving toward Jesus, that our heart is staying alive to Jesus, that we're wide awake to the things that matter most in our life. That is the work, that is the task. This is what keeping the heart is.

But that task of heart keeping needs the right tools. And so this is what we have been in the middle of over the last week and now this week of trying to be really clear on what are the tools that God has given us for the task of keeping our heart. Like, if we want our heart to be kept, what tools do we need? And so last week, Jimmy covered the first tool. Here's the first tool you need for the task of heart keeping.

It is God's word. Jimmy did a great job on that last week. If the task is keeping your heart, he was very clear. There is no replacing that tool. You've got to have the word of God in your life if you want to keep your heart.

As the psalmist says in Psalm 19, the law of the Lord is perfect and it's actually doing some things. The law of the Lord is perfect. And what does that perfect law do? Reviving the soul and the precepts of the Lord are right. And what are those precepts do?

Rejoicing the heart. The Bible is a heart keeping book. It is a gift that God has given you so that you then could keep your heart with it. So we open up the Bible, we God's people, we open up the Bible and we read the Word. This is where we find those precious promises from God that nourish the soul of his followers.

We open up the Bible, we read the Word, we meditate on the Word, we think it out. What is that sentence saying? What is that verse saying? What is that chapter saying? We think it out.

What is it that God's communicating to his people here? And then we think it in. What do I need to confess in light of that? What do I need to see about Jesus in light of that? What do I need to believe in light of that?

We think it out and we think it in. That's meditation. And then we pray the word, right? This is the number one tool that God has given you for the task of keeping your heart. It's God's word.

And here is the second tool that God has given us for this task of keeping our heart. It is God's people. If you're going to keep your heart, you need God's word and God's people. God has designed a tool for you to keep your heart. And that that tool is God's church, God's people.

And that's what I want to think through with you today. Let's take it in two parts. Here is part one, the task of heart keeping. So that's our whole life objective. We want to keep our heart.

We want to make sure it's moving toward God. And that task cannot be done alone. It cannot be done alone. The Bible makes clear that Christianity is a team sport. It's not an individual sport.

It's not just a you only sport. It is a team sport. From the opening pages of the Bible. The Bible is looking at you and trying to convince you of the truth of that. So think about Genesis 1 and 2.

In Genesis 1 we have the creation of everything. And it's got this poetic rhythm to it. And here's how the rhythm works. God does some creative work. Then God looks over that creative work and he pronounces something over it.

He looks at that creative work and he says, it is good. That's the rhythm. He. He does that creative work. He looks at his work and then he pronounces it is good over it.

Then you get to day six and he sort of ramps up the rhetoric a little bit. A little bit. He makes our first parents, Adam and Eve. And then he looks over what he has made. But this time he says, and it is very good.

Then you get to Genesis 2. And Genesis 2 is a zoomed in account of creation. It's really zooming in on the creation of our first parents, Adam and Eve. And in Genesis 2, God creates Adam and creates Adam first. And then God looks out over what he has made.

And for the very first time, we sort of hear a minor chord in the music of the Bible. For the first time we hear A and it's not good. This is Genesis 2:18. The Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone. That poetic rhythm gets broken up.

It is not good that man should be alone. So God looks over his perfect creation, but he finds one thing that he does not like, and that is man being by himself. Commentators are quick to point out in Genesis 2:18 that that phrase not good is emphatic. So it's not saying, here's something in creation. And it's lacking good.

No, it's actually on the negative. It's emphatic. It's saying, no, this is bad. It's not just that it's lacking something, it's that this is actually a bad thing. It is not good that man should be alone.

Now why is that true? That could be a whole set of sermons in itself. But let me just give you a couple of reasons of why the Bible would say that. That it's not good for man to be alone. Here's one reason.

It's because you can't see by yourself. You can't see by yourself. You can see some things, Every one of us can see some things, but no one in here can see everything about God, about other people, or about your own life and your own heart. You can see some things, but no one can see everything. We call those things that we can't see in our life a blind spot.

And by definition a blind spot is a spot in our life that we can't see. We don't have the ability, we just can't get the view over to see those spaces in our life. C.S. lewis, he wrote a paragraph that I often talk about whenever we're talking about blind spots in our life. And let me just read this to you.

He says it this way. He says, and you see how all the plans you have ever made have always shipwrecked on that fatal flaw. So he says, just think about the plans you've come up with in your life, the things you've wanted to do and how it's always run up against the rocks of and wrecked upon those rocks of that person's problems over there. So he says, it's that person's incurable jealousy or that person's laziness or their touchiness or their muddle headedness or their bossiness or their ill temper or their changeableness. Then he goes on to say, this is the next step in wisdom to realize that you also are just that sort of person.

You also have a fatal flaw in your character. So it's not just them, but it's you. You have a fatal flaw in your character. All the hopes and plans of others have again and again shipwrecked on your character, just as your hopes and plans have shipwrecked on theirs. He says it's no good passing this over with some vague admission such as of course I know I have my faults.

He says, no, it's important to realize there really is some fatal flaw in you. Something which gives others Just the same feeling despair which their flaws give you. Now listen to what he says next. And it is almost certainly something you don't know about. That fatal flaw in you.

It's almost certainly something you don't know about. He goes on to say, just like what the advertisements call halitosis or bad breath, which everyone notices except the person who has it. So everybody's like grabbing for a piece of gum right now. And then he goes on to say, even the faults you do know, you don't know fully. And this is true.

You've got blind spots. I've got blind spots. And here's the work of keeping the heart. The task is in keeping the heart. If you're going to do that, you have to actually know your heart.

But knowing your heart, the Bible is clear. This is what CS Lewis is reiterating here. The work of knowing your heart is not a one person job. That's a whole communal job. It's like a 10 person, 20 person job.

You need other people to know your heart fully. This is why Genesis 2:18 says it's not good that man should be alone because you can't see by yourself. The second reason it says that is because you aren't safe by yourself. You aren't safe by yourself. We talked about this a couple of weeks ago.

We are never more than three minutes away from wrecking our life. We're all uniquely gifted at doing these things, uniquely capable of doing these things. We're never more than three minutes away from wrecking our life. Think about how the Bible, the story of it, is carried along. It is carried along by what we might even refer to as like biblical heroes in the little H sense.

So you've got your Abrahams and your Moses and your David's and your Peter. We've got these people in the Bible. But here's the truth about Abraham, Moses, David and Peter. Every one of those guys experienced wreckage, a lot of ruin and a lot of wreckage from their sin in their life. Now what is the Bible trying to show us with those little H heroes all experiencing the wreckage?

Here's what it's trying to show us. That the people who wreck their life are not just the worst of us, but the very best of us. No one is immune from these things. You are not immune from these things. This is why Peter warns us in 1st Peter 5:8.

Be sober minded, be watchful for your adversary. The devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.

Just watch National Geographic. Who does the lion go for first that person that's alone or that animal that's alone, you alone is the wrong tool for the task of keeping your heart. You alone are not up to the task because it's not an individual sport. It's more than a one person job. It actually takes a team to do it.

So Genesis 2:18 warns us, it is not good that man should be alone. The task cannot be done alone because the task requires God's people. It requires people like you need people in your life to do this task. And here's the great news. God has given you the tool that you need for the task because he has given you the church.

He's given you a local church. Now think about the storyline of the Bible. Even before there was the sin of our first parents in Genesis 3, God had a plan. And God's plan was a rescue plan. His plan was to fix what sin had broken and to straighten out what sin had been.

His plan was to save not just a person, but a people. And then those people that he would save, he's going to gather them into local churches so that they would do life together. That has been God's plans from day one. I'm going to save a people. Those people are going to assemble and gather in local churches, just like Stonegate, just like First Baptist, Midlothian, just like Midlothian Bible Church and the various churches around here that God's people would gather together, these redeemed rescue people in churches just like that.

This is why when you read the Bible, you're going to find that the Scriptures have no concept. It just. It would never occur to anyone in the Bible that a Christian would live a life disconnected from a local church. There's just not a framework to even think about that in the Bible. Because the assumption in the Bible is every Christian is going to have their life tethered to a local church.

Now let me just pause here for a moment because our culture works really hard to convince you otherwise. We live in what you might call an individualistic culture. And that culture is not neutral. That culture is doing things. It's teaching you things.

It's working very hard to disciple you in how it sees the world. And this is one of the ways that our individualistic culture disciples Christians. It convinces Christians that here is how you do life with Jesus. It's you and it's Jesus. The church is optional.

God's people are optional. Really. The only thing you need to do life well, to do this life of keeping your heart well. The only thing you need is you and Jesus. And it's done a very good job in discipling us like this.

There are a lot of Christians who see that work of heart keeping in a very private way. The church is optional. God's people are optional. All I really need is me and the Lord. So I'll do it like this.

Here's how I'll do the work of keeping my heart. I'll read my Bible alone, all by myself. I'll pray all alone, by myself. I'll fast all alone and by myself. I'll practice silence and solitude all alone, by myself.

This is how we think about it. And let me be clear. A life of faith is very personal. But what our culture convinces people of Christians of is that it's private. It's just a me and Jesus thing.

But the Scriptures work really, really hard to convince you otherwise. All of the spiritual habits that you and I practice, that sharpen our desires for Jesus, that deepen our desires for Jesus, they are meant to be practiced alongside God's people inside of a church. That's where all those personal disciplines are meant to be practiced. Matthew Bingham, he says it this way in his book A Heart Aflame for God. He says participation in the local church is not one more discipline, but rather the vital context in which all of those disciplines are lived out.

So we do our Bible reading inside the context of the local church. We do all of our praying inside the context of the local church with God's people. This is where all of those personal disciplines are meant to be lived out. A friend of mine, he likes to say it this way. He says, saying, I need Jesus, but not the church.

And that is what our culture is going to try to convince you of. This is how it's making disciples. This is what it's teaching us. Saying I need Jesus, but not the church is to say, I need Jesus, but not everything Jesus says I need. And our culture is working really hard to convince us that we need Jesus, but not everything Jesus says we need.

Now let me use some imagery to try to push back on that cultural narrative and what our culture, individualistic culture, is discipling us and convincing us to believe. Think for a moment of the biblical metaphor of the church as the body of Christ. So think about that metaphor. So the church as the body of Christ, sees Jesus as the head of the church. And now we all are parts of the body.

We're hands and we're feet and we're legs and we're arms and all the different parts of the body and part of what that Imagery is trying to convince us of that. You, as one part of the body, actually need the rest of the body, right? So just imagine for a moment that you're a hand, right? You've got the gift of service. We have a lot of those people around here.

Our church would not be what it is apart from hands that make things happen, that serve around Stonegate. But imagine you're the hand and you decide, you know, I don't actually need the rest of the body. So you decide what you're going to do is you're going to take a knife and you're going to sever that hand from the body. You're going to cut yourself free from the body. What happens to that hand if it's cut off the body?

Nothing good. Nothing good, right? That hand's about to fall on the floor and it is about to wither and die. That's what's gonna happen when you cut that hand out of the body. Why?

Because a hand can't survive on its own. A hand actually needs a wrist and an arm and the torso and the rest of a body to do what a hand does, right? That's one of the points that metaphor is trying to make, that as one part of the body, you need the rest of the body. Or we might say it this way. You will never be all that God has created you to be apart from a whole body.

You will never keep your heart in the way that God wants you to keep your heart apart from a whole body. A hand cannot be healthy. A hand cannot be whole. A hand cannot do all that it's designed to do apart from a whole body. Friend, it is not good that man should be alone.

So God has designed a tool for you, a tool for this heart keeping task. And that tool is his people, his gathered church, a local church. That is what he has given you. Now let me give you a few ways that a church, a local church helps you in the task of heart keeping. Let me give you a few ways.

Here's the first. How does a local church help you in the work of keeping your heart? Here's the first thing it does. It gives you a place for protection. It gives you a place for your protection.

Hebrews 13:17 goes like this. Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls. As those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. So the author of Hebrews in this verse has something to say to every Christian and every Christian pastor, he's addressing both of those two groups of people.

So to every Christian he is giving a command. The command is obey your leaders and submit to them. Now in our culture that just hates any authority in our life, that is a command that we need to stop and pause over and to see, to feel that for a second. Obey your leaders and submit to them. Now that is not a command.

That is saying that. The author of Hebrews is not saying to you, you need to like look at every group of pastors out there and submit to every group of pastors at every church out there. It's not that. He's just saying you need to find a group of pastors. Every Christian needs to find a group of pastors that they will put their life under their authority.

Every Christian should do that. And let me just say this to you, my hope is that Stonegate for you. We would to have you here, but if it's not this church, I just want to look at you and say you should find a group of pastors somewhere, a local church somewhere, and then put your life under the authority of those pastors there. Now why is that? Why is that so important answer for your protection, to help you in the work of heart keeping.

That's why you need it. So he says this to pastors. Obey your leaders and submit to them. Now why would he say that every Christian should do that? Because here's the job of a pastor.

For they are keeping watch over your souls as those who will have to give an account. So now the author of Hebrews, he's addressing Christian pastors. He's defining what faithfulness in pastoring is. And here's how he defines faithful Christian pastoring. It is a pastor keeping watch over the flock they have been entrusted.

That's, that's one way to talk about what it means to be a faithful pastor. He's clarifying here that one day every pastor will be held accountable to that work. They're going to stand before Jesus and how they have stood watch over the flock that he has entrusted to them. So why should, should we all submit our life to a group of leaders, get ourselves under their authority? Because Jesus is saying that is a tool for the task of heart keeping.

Because when you do that now you get to live happily under the protection of people who are keeping watch over your soul, helping you keep your heart. I looked at our elders a few weeks ago and I said to them, I said, I just want you to know I have no intention of ever getting my life out from under your authority. I just want to say this to you, that I have every intention of living happily under your authority for my protection, for my good. I just want to be under the authority of people. Every single Christian needs to have our life underneath a group of pastors, pastors who are keeping watch over our soul.

Right? It's a place of protection for you. The church is the right tool for that task of heart keeping. It's a place for your protection. So maybe your next step is I need to formalize church membership.

Here's what that means when you formalize it. It means that you are formally saying, hey, there's a lot of pastors in this area. But I'm not putting my life under all these pastors authority. I'm going to put them under the pastors here, under this church, under these pastors, I'm going to submit my life to this crew of people. So that's one side of it.

And the other side is when pastors look at people and say, okay, we then will formally take responsibility before the Lord. For you, we now receive a sense of sacred stewardship now that one day we're going to be held accountable for how we are watching over your life, how we are helping you keep your heart. That's what church membership is. Maybe that's a next step for you. You've been around here for a long time, but you've never taken that step.

Well, this would be your moment to do that, to formalize that commitment. So maybe that's your next step. Why the local church? Because it's a place for your protection. Here's the second reason how it helps you keep your heart.

It is the place to serve others. A place to serve others. If you think about what it means to keep your heart, here would be another way to say, is you doing everything you can to become more like Jesus? That's keeping our heart. We're trying to keep our heart alive to Jesus.

We're doing everything we can to become more like Jesus in our life. And if the goal is to become more like Jesus in the life of a follower of Jesus, which it is, then we should ask the question, well, what is Jesus like? And here's one of the things the Bible shows us about Jesus. Mark 10:45. For even the Son of Man came not to be or to serve.

I'm sorry, not to be served, but to serve. And to give his life as a ransom for many. This is who Jesus is and what Jesus is like. He came as a servant. He came to serve not to be served.

Most of the time when important people show up in a room, they want to make sure that room knows they're important. That's how most important people show up. But that's not how Jesus showed up. When Jesus showed up. Paul says in Philippians 2 that he took on the form of a servant.

When Jesus showed up, he did not flex his strength, but he embraced humility, a low life. That is how Jesus showed up. If you were to sort of crack open the heart of Jesus and look all the way down at the bottom of his heart, here's what you would find at the bottom of Jesus heart you would find a heart beating with a humble, others oriented love. A love that is moving him over and over and over again to gladly give his life away for your good. That's what you find deep down in the heart of Jesus.

That's what we hold up every week. That dying love of Jesus. That, that love of Jesus is what we sing about, it's what we preach about. That love of Jesus that that moved him not only to live for us, but to die as our ransom for us. That's the love that every week we are staring at and gazing at.

And for those that Jesus has ransomed, those that he has served, those that he has saved. He then gathers into local churches so that we can become like Jesus as we serve one another. This is one reason God has given you the church so that you could become like him. As you look around this room and these people and figure out how do I meet the needs in this room, how do I serve those people, how do I grow in that humble others oriented love that as Paul says in Philippians 2, that doesn't just obsess about my own interest but is looking to the interest of others. How do I grow in that love?

This church is one way that God has given you to grow in that humble others oriented love to become more like Jesus in this way. So maybe that's the next step for you. Maybe your next step is to get into some serve team around Stonegate where you can begin to give your life away as you meet the needs of other people. Where you can begin to see past the needs of your own little life all the way out to God and the needs of other people. This is one gift that God gives us in a local church.

It's a place to serve. So maybe that's your next step, is to move towards serving. Somewhere around Somegate this morning, there's hundreds and hundreds of people serving you this morning they're Giving their life away to make this awesome for you. And part of what the church is inviting you into is for you to come into that, for you to start giving your life away to make it amazing for others. So the church gives us a place for protection, a place to serve others.

And how does the church help us in this heart keeping work? It does so by giving us a place to enjoy community. A place to enjoy community. God did not just command you to keep your heart. God has given you a community of people called the church to keep it in.

God has given you a people, a church. Every Sunday morning when I come to church, I am every single week I'm awed by two things, just freshly amazed by two things. The first thing is I can't believe anyone shows up. I'm like, God, this is, how is this our life? I mean, you've done so much over the years.

How is this, how has this happened? Oh, God. And so I just. Every week I'm amazed at that anybody shows up. And then the second thing I'm amazed at is who shows up.

The who of this. When I look around and I'm just hanging with the people of Stonegate, here is what I'm constantly bumping into. Precious saints who love Jesus, Mature, godly, wise, amazing saints. That is what I'm constantly bumping into and friend. Jesus lived, he died, he busted out of the grave to first give you God and to secondly give you these people.

Can I just say that again to you? Jesus lived, he died and he rose from the dead. Just look around this room for a second. To give you these people, to give you community, a church to do your life in, to keep your heart in. He's given you these people.

Now Hebrews, the author of Hebrews tells us why we need people. Hebrews chapter 3, verses 12 and 13. Tell us why. Why do you need a church community? Here's why.

He says, take care, brothers, take care, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it's called a day, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. So the author of Hebrews is really reiterating Proverbs 4:23. He's just telling us again what the task is. He's using the phrase, take care, brothers and sisters.

He could have said it this way. Keep your heart, guard your heart. Take care. He's saying, keep your heart alive to Jesus. Keep your heart vibrant in Jesus Keep your heart moving toward Jesus.

And he shows us that that task of keeping your heart, it's got a lot of enemies. He defines some of those enemies here. He says, here's an enemy, that evil that remains in you, remaining sin in you. It is an enemy to that task of heart keeping. Every day that enemy of sin is trying to break into the castle of your heart and just wreak havoc everywhere in you.

And so he says, there is an enemy, that sin that's still in you, and that sin that's still in you. Here's what it's causing you to be prone to do. When it breaks into the castle, it's going to be prone to causing unbelief in your life. When sin breaks in, it's going to create hardness in your heart. When sin breaks in, it's going to cause you to believe the lies, the deceitful lies that sin wants to sell you.

You're all going to be prone to that. He says, now what does the author of Hebrews say that God gives us then to fight against these enemies? What is the provision, the gift that God has given you so that you could take care, so that you could keep your heart even when you're surround by all of these enemies trying to destroy your heart? What is the provision? Would you just again look around this room?

Just maybe to the left and right, just around you, up and down the rows. Friends, that is what God has given you. Those people sitting beside you in this room, in your church, that is what God has given you so that you could take care, so that you could keep your heart. It's you being known by these people, encouraged by these people, loved by these people, pointed to Jesus by these people, exhorted every single day, while it's called today by these people, that is how God wants you to keep your heart. You need these people, community to do that heart keeping work.

I was just thinking last night of the church that I grew up in. I grew up in a small town in Oklahoma. The church was a couple hundred people. And I just think about those faithful Sunday school teachers, my faithful student guy, my faithful pastor back then, all these faithful people that God put in that church. And can I just tell you what kept my heart in those teenage years?

Those precious saints. And I was thinking about where I kind of cut my teeth in ministry. I'm 22 years old, I moved to Texas, I'm hired in a student ministry just right up the road in Mansfield. And I think back to that church. Man, I didn't know what I just had no idea what I was doing.

I was learning. Everything was new. I was just learning ministry and life and ministry and this all, all the things. And I made so many mistakes. One time I almost burned down a church portable.

I mean I just. All the things. And I look back on the precious saints in that church, they were so patient with me, so encouraging along the way, giving me great feedback and like help speaking the truth in love, allowing me to speak the truth in love to them. Just precious saints. I would not be where I am today apart from those people.

And then I'm thinking about Stonegate and the precious saints that make up our church in the last 16 years of life with this church family. And I just would not be where I am today apart from the precious saints who make up this church. Friends, this is God's provision for you. This is God's care of you. If you want to keep your heart, this is the tool that God wants to use.

It's community in your life, the precious saints around you. And let me be clear, enjoying community is not about you going to church periodically. Enjoying community is about your life being tethered to a church intertwined with the church. Like you're known by a group of people. You know them, they speak the truth in love to you.

You speak the truth in love to them. It's tethering your life, connecting your life, intertwining your life within a people. That's what it means to enjoy community. Now that leads to the question, well, how do we do that around here? Answer, we do that first and foremost in community groups.

So for some of us, this is the next step. Today we've got to move our life toward this tool, this provision that God makes for us toward community to get community groups. Here's the thing about coming on Sundays. It's a great step, but it's just not the last step. If you come week in, week out on Sundays.

Here is the problem. You can be here without anyone really knowing you. And that is not what a church is designed to be for you. God has not designed a church to be a place where you come but nobody knows you. It's designed to be a place where you come and you are known by people.

And that knowing work happens not just here, but in community groups. So this is why community groups is a vital step for every single person around Stonegate. It is a key part of you keeping your heart. If you say, I want to keep my heart but you're not in community, then you don't really want to keep your heart very well. It is one of the gifts that God has given you to do that heart keeping work.

And we're trying to make this really easy on you. If this is your next step, here's the good news. Next week we start another round of Enjoy. And here's the best way to think about enjoy. It is the first step for anyone who is new to Stonegate.

So if you've started coming to Stonegate in the last maybe 18 to 24 months, it is for you. If you're new to Stonegate or you're not yet in a community group, enjoy is for you. It's going to meet the next 10 weeks. You could think of it as a 10 week group experience. And here's what it's designed to do.

It's designed to help you become more like Jesus. So it's got a discipleship component trying to help you grow in Christ likeness for you to keep your heart. And it's designed to help you build community. So by the time you finish those 10 weeks, you're going to be in community, inside of a group now you're going to be moving toward a team to serve on. You're going to be moving toward membership, all of those things.

So it really is a great first step for anyone who is new or not yet in community. Okay, let me close here. One day, Dwight Moody was in a conversation with a friend. And this friend was trying to convince him. Dwight Moody was a pastor, trying to convince him that he could be a Christian.

He could be a growing, healthy Christian. Like in our language this morning, we would say he was trying to convince Dwight Moody that he could keep his heart. He could do all of this stuff, flourishing as a Christian while at the same time not being connected to a church. And after he finished his spiel, Dwight Moody leaned forward in his chair. He picked up a poker and pulled out a red hot piece of coal from the fire.

Takes it out of the fire and he sets it on a stone right beside the fireplace. And both men together watched that red hot piece of coal quickly dim and cool. And after watching it grow cold, the man said back, Mr. Moody, you have made your point.

Church. To keep your heart burning brightly for Jesus, you have to keep your heart in the fire of God's church. You need the fire. That's what keeps your heart burning brightly for Jesus.

Proverbs 4, My son, be attentive to my words, incline your ear to my sayings. Let them not escape from your sight. Keep them within your heart, for they are life to those who find them and healing to all their flesh.

So above all else, keep your heart for everything you do flows from it. Would you bow with me?

We're going to give you just a few minutes here to respond to the Lord. And this would be a good time to take that card and just set it on your lap in front of you and ask the Lord, what is the next step I need to take? If you just want a simple way of thinking about discipleship in your life, here's a simple way of thinking about it. It's taking the next step with Jesus. Whatever that next step is, it's just saying yes again to the next step with Jesus.

And what is your next step?

For some of us, it is coming to Christ for the first time. It is saying no to our sin as we throw our life upon the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and saying, jesus, save me. That is our next step. And if that's you, friend, call out to the Lord right now where you are. He stands so ready to rescue you and then bring you into this family called the church to give you the gift gift of his people.

But that starts with you coming to Christ. And if you are in Christ, what is your next step? To make sure your life is tethered to community.

To make sure you have the right tool out for the task of keeping your heart, the church, God's people. What is that next step? Maybe it's membership, maybe it's towards serving. If you're not in a community group, it is toward that community group. God's provision for you to help keep your heart and friend, whatever that step is, go with God today.

Father, thank you for your word. And Father, thank you for your people. Thank you for your church. God, thank you for the provision of these people, this place in that work of keeping our heart. God, would you give us the grace we need?

And it's in the good name of Jesus that we ask it. Amen.