Starting Over | Rock Solid Week 3

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- Welcome to Crossroads.

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Today, we're talking about something that's

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pressing on a lot of people's minds and, no, it's

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not who is People's sexiest man alive this year,

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although honestly, Paul Rudd deserved it, right?

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I mean, he really does.

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- Hey, look at us.

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-Look at us. Who would have thought.

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- Not me.

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- That's not it.

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I'm talking about deconstruction.

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What is it? What does it mean? Is it good? Is it necessary?

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What do we do with it?

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Well, today our senior pastor, my mentor,

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Brian Tome, is going to address all of it.

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Let's get started right now.

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- This is good here. Hee-Haw, Hee-Haw, Hee-Haw.

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Oh, man, yeah, I'm playing with Legos and you're not.

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Legos are really pretty amazing.

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They just keep getting better and better and better.

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And actually, it's a metaphor that we're using today

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because when someone brings Legos into their life,

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they want to build something; they

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don't want to take something down.

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Today, many, many people as it relates

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to faith are not trying to build

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faith, we're instead trying to

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deconstruct my faith, take my faith down.

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Several years ago in Spain, an elderly

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parishioner noticed that the fresco of Jesus in

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her church was degrading, that the plaster,

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that the colors were on it had flaked off.

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And she decided to take things into her own hands.

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The original look like this.

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And it had degraded to look like this.

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And then after her attempt to make a

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true Jesus painting, it became this.

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Yeah, Jesus in Planet of the Apes.

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It didn't quite work very well for her.

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See her intentions were in the right place, but what ended up

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happening is that picture of Jesus

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got worse and worse and worse.

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I believe people have the greatest of intentions

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when we look at our faith to deconstruct our faith.

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It's the process of questioning why we believe what we believe.

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It's the process of eliminating certain things

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from our life to not believe them anymore.

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It's a process of putting all kinds of

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doubts on classical Christian teachings.

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And I think that our heart's in the right way because

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we just want to know and believe what is right.

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And if things aren't working well, maybe

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the things that I believed are not right.

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This is what happens in our world today.

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And instead, what we're doing is

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we're just taking apart our life.

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We're pulling it down. We're deconstructing.

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We're destroying our life.

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We're bolting things onto it

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that probably shouldn't be there.

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Like, I don't know that the Space

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Shuttle needs to be where this is.

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And I certainly don't know that a little

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dragon needs to be in the top of London Bridge.

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But we have this amalgamation of

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things that just don't make sense.

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And this is part of what we do with our life.

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We just kind of bolt things on and we

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take this off if we don't like that.

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And the church should be a place where we can learn and we can

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challenge ourselves and we can be

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pushed and we can also be understood.

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Today for the rest of our time, that's what I want to do.

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I want to challenge you a little bit.

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I want to push on you a little bit.

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We all can be in our echo chambers,

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and the internet is one large,

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huge echo chamber of cynicism towards

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faith and toward historic faith.

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And the church can be an echo chamber too where people just

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block out voices that are challenging

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to them, a challenge to us.

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And and I want to challenge all of us a little bit today

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because my goal today is to help you grow spiritually.

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That's what I want for you.

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And here are some main reasons why

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people deconstruct their faith.

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One is terrible teaching.

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We got taught things about Jesus a long time

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ago that were terrible, that were just awful.

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We got taught things that were only maybe

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aligned to a specific political party, and so

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we believed and we thought that politics

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equals Jesus or politics equals Christianity.

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That's a horrible teaching.

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There's awful things that have been taught in the

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name of Jesus that sane, rational people eventually

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are going to come to recognize, "Wait a minute.

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Wait a minute. If that is Jesus, I don't want that."

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But it isn't because Jesus is wrong.

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It's because we got terrible teaching connecting to Him.

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You know, if your life is going to be

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built to last, you have to learn what to

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believe, what not to believe, and to

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cling to a few things very, very tightly.

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My theology, my beliefs are like a house.

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It's like a sparsely held house.

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I have a lot of beliefs, but I have very,

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very few things that are nailed down.

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Sometimes I go into a room that I thought I had my

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understanding and belief on this with everything

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and the furniture is like Poltergeist, the old

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movie Poltergeist, is flying all over the room.

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[sound effect]

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Going all over the place.

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And the problem is things have changed.

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And the problem also is I might have

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put too much furniture in that room.

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The less furniture, the less core beliefs I can

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have, but have it nailed down and stable, the better.

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Some of us have had a terrible teaching.

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Another reason is a lot of us deconstruct

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because we've had church trauma.

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Now again, we don't say these things.

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We don't say it was my church trauma that

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causes me to abandon the Christian faith.

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We don't say it's our church trauma that

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cause of me to not believe in Jesus.

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We generally can't connect those things up,

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but for many people, it has been church trauma.

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I know somebody who was part of a youth

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group in high school or junior high, and she

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got sexually abused inside the sanctuary of

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that church during her youth group night.

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Now that creates a level of sexual and emotional

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and spiritual abuse and baggage

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that makes it very, very, very difficult to ever be

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in church or hears somebody say something

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who is in a position of leadership in a church

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and not have a sense of cynicism about it.

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The Big C. Church, the Capital C Church or the Small

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C Church local churches has failed a lot of people.

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But the institution isn't the same

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thing as the person of Jesus Himself.

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Another reason why we deconstruct our

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faith is there's there's too much going on.

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Our faith has become too complicated.

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It's like this is exactly what

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you have to believe about baptism.

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This is exactly what we have to

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believe about women in leadership.

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This is exactly what we have to believe about the Rapture.

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This is exactly what we have to believe about the end times.

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This is exactly what you have to believe about that.

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It's just exactly how you have to educate your kids.

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Exactly how to have the discipline them.

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It's all this stuff and it's the layering

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on of more and more and more and more.

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And before you know it, we suffocate.

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Is the Earth 6,000 literal years old

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and created and six literal days?

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I don't think so.

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You may think so, and that's okay for you to think so.

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Maybe you're right and I'm wrong, but I'll tell

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you one thing, if you do think that and you

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have kids, it is not a good idea to make that

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idea of Creation to be central to their faith.

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People like St. Augustine long before Darwin ever came along

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believed that those days don't have to be literal 24 hour days.

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To give people the sense that this is right up

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there with the Resurrection and the death of

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Christ, it's just as important, you're creating

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a suffocating system that people will rebel from.

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Hey, if you're a giver at Crossroads, if you're a tither,

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you give 10% of your income to the church, thank you so much.

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It is so good to be in ministry with you.

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No matter where you are financially

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with Crossroads, I've got

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to clue you into something, we're what's called a nonprofit.

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That means you don't get any profit. We don't.

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We operate on very, very thin margins.

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Year end giving for nonprofits is always critical, and I want

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to make an ask of you to be extra generous to your church.

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We're your church digitally here and we're excited that

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you're part of our church and that you are making us stronger.

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We need to finish this year strong.

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We want to do things like start a campus in Dayton, Ohio.

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We want to do things like beef up your ability

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to connect with us in a church digitally.

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There's some piece of technology we want to do

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that we don't have the resources for right now.

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But if we all come together and we take this

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seriously and keep honoring God with our finances,

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we can finish the year strong and have more money

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to do the things that God is asking us to do.

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So you can do that by going to crossroads.net/give.

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Whatever you do, whatever you don't

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do, thanks for being part of the team.

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People deconstruct their faith because

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there's just too much attached to it.

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There's too much going on.

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And another reason we do is because we have a desire to sin.

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Now, again, no one will ever say

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this, but many people leave the

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faith because the faith won't let

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them do something they want to do.

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A couple of years ago, years ago an unknown pastor,

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previously unknown, became very, very well known.

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He had his moment in Twitter fame

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because he denounced his faith.

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He was an evangelical pastor and he denounced his faith,

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and people just lit up all over the place with it.

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What they didn't know at the time is this wasn't

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because he was having new problems with the faith.

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It's because he had been disciplined by the board

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of his church for having an extramarital affair.

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His problem wasn't with the tenets of Jesus.

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His problem was he couldn't live life the way Jesus told

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him not to live, so therefore he decided to eliminate it.

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A similar thing happened not too long ago with Joshua Harris.

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He wrote the runaway bestseller that

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evangelical kids read in the '90s

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called I Kissed Dating Goodbye, and

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he basically kissed his faith goodbye.

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And it came on the heels of him seeking divorce,

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which he didn't have biblical grounds for.

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As many people leave the faith and

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they'll say, well, it's because this

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thing I couldn't believe any longer or

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this thing I couldn't do any longer.

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It's also because God wouldn't allow me

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to do this, and I would rather do this and

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not have God than be over here and be in

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the faith that aligns itself with God.

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There's another category for those

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who deconstruct, it's the one

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I call is it's I don't like my life, or my life isn't working.

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This is by folks who, again, we don't -- I believe

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it's the best of hearts and best of intentions

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that people deconstruct and people walk away

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from beliefs and walk away from their faith.

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I really don't think that anyone has a vendetta to be

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angry at God and a vendetta to make other people doubt.

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I just think this is the sort of background

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software that's happening and we don't pick up on.

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And for many of us, we've grown up with a

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belief that if we did all the right things,

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if we kept all the morals,

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if we did all the spiritual disciplines,

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then we would have a life that we wanted.

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And now we get to an age we say, "I don't like my life.

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I don't like the choices I've had to get me here.

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I don't feel like I've had the appropriate

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financial breaks that somebody should

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have had who who kept their nose clean

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morally and spiritually like I have.

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I'm not seeing traction.

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I'm not getting married. I thought I would get married.

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I thought I'd have kids or I thought I would

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have kids that were healthy or I thought this.

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And we just don't like our life.

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And so we look at our life, we think, "I thought

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I was living the way God wanted me to do it,

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And this is the awful life.

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So obviously the things that God was supposed to

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do for me, He hasn't done for me, He hasn't held

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up my end of the bargain or His end of the bargain,

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therefore, I'm going to deconstruct my faith.

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Now, Jesus had an interaction once with

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somebody who was deconstructing his beliefs,

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or at least he was open to deconstructing his beliefs,

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and he had a little bit of a challenge with.

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I'm going to read it for you, it comes

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a book of John 3:1 and following.

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It says this:

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And Jesus answered him --

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Well, actually, before I tell you what Jesus said to him.

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Nicodemus, a very well-known Jewish leader,

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teacher, ruler, and he comes to Him at night,

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probably because he wants to make sure he's not seen

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because it could be seen like he's questioning his faith

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or opening himself to ideas

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that other people think he shouldn't be open to.

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So Nicodemus comes at night.

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This is the beginning of Nick at Night.

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It's Nick at Night. Get it? Nick at Night.

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And here's what Jesus says him, verse three:

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"Truly, truly, I say to you,

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unless one is born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God."

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Nicodemus said to Him, "How can a man be born when he is old?

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Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?"

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Jesus says to Nicodemus, you have to start all over.

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You have to be born again.

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This is a very crazy phrase that a lot of people

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in America get very, very uncomfortable with.

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I'm not sure why we get uncomfortable with it,

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but we get very comfortable with it.

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Maybe it's because there are a bunch of weird people

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who used to talk about being born again.

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Maybe that's one of the reasons

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why we're uncomfortable about it.

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Maybe we're uncomfortable about the phrase born again

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for the same reason that Nicodemus is,

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because Nicodemus hears that he hears,

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"You have to start all over again, all over again."

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All the things that you've learned,

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all the things that you've done,

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all these things that are important, they're fine,

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but you have to start all over again.

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Be born again.

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Many people have a hard time coming into the faith

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and embracing God because it would mean

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something new for my life I'm not ready to do.

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I'm okay to eliminate things from my life.

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I'm OK to take down things from my life,

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tear things from my life,

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but to add something in my life,

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that would be really difficult.

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What's the last thing new that you did?

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Most of us when we graduate college,

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or if you don't go to college, it was high school,

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most of us haven't tried anything new since then.

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We only did something new before because we were forced to it.

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When's the last time you got a new friendship

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with somebody who wasn't at work?

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When's the last time you had a new hobby?

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When's the last time you went to a new place for a vacation?

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When's the last time you took on a new core discipline,

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a new core spiritual discipline?

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Very, very few of us do.

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And Nicodemus isn't sure that he wants to do this.

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So he plays along with the metaphor and says,

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"How am I going to crawl back up inside of my mother's womb?

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How can I be reborn again?"

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It's like I can't get up inside my mom's birth canal.

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I wouldn't fit up there right now.

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He's just recognizing, admitting that

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this is an uncomfortable thing for him.

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Here's what Jesus says:

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In order for us to thrive spiritually,

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two things have to happen.

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One, we have to be born,

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I believe that's what it means to be born of water,

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because all of us when we were born

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there was a breaking of water in our mother's womb.

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So you've got to be born physically.

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And the second thing to thrive spiritually

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is you have to be born spiritually.

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There is something spiritual that has to happen to us

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that's outside of ourselves that comes into ourselves

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that makes us new people.

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That gets us on the right path.

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Hey, if you're deconstructing, great,

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you're in the right place. I'm glad you're here.

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But understand we're not going to help you deconstruct

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or if we do, we're only going to do it

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to the point where you now can start to build,

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where you can now to start to put things

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back into your life, because that's what God wants.

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He wants you to be thriving and have a life that works.

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And for that to work, you and I are going

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to have to start to eliminate certain things

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that we articulate that sound really spiritual

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and really good, but they're just not true.

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They're the kind of things,

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if you believe them and you put them into practice,

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you will have to deconstruct them later

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or your life will just not work.

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This isn't political commentary today.

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This is spiritual formation.

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According the Barna Organization,

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67% of churchgoing Christians believe quote:

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Enjoying yourself is the highest goal of life.

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I like to enjoy myself.

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Enjoying myself is not the highest goal of life.

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Jesus in the Bible never says the highest goal of life

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is to enjoy ourselves.

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67% of them, let me tell you what, if 67% of them believe

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that, when your life doesn't work, what are you going to do?

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You're going to have to

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deconstruct or destroy your faith

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because Jesus tells us to pick up our cross and follow Him.

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It doesn't tell us to just enjoy our life.

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Another poll showed that 84% of the total

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population in America believe this is true.

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91% affirmed the statement that to

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find yourself, look within yourself.

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When you have a faith that's based

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on inside of yourself, you have faith

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that at some point is going to have

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to be deconstructed and destroyed.

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When I graduated from high school

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outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,

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I wanted to do what some of the other people did,

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we all wanted to find ourselves.

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I need to find myself.

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And I don't know what it was about living

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in Pittsburgh in the early 1980s, we all

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thought that to find yourself you had to

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take this epic road trip out to California.

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Why? Find yourself.

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Someone told me, and I'll just quote them.

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They said, "Well, what if you find an A-hole?

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Not exactly what they said, but this is church.

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What if you find an A-hole?

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I chose to never make that trip

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because I didn't want to find that.

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And also, I couldn't figure out how to do it.

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But the the mystique, the romance of taking a trip

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where I find what's inside of myself

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and who I already am.

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If I only find myself, then I'll really find God.

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This is the path for existential meaning today.

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All the truth and the answers are inside of yourself.

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Years ago, my first trip to India, we were doing

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a trip to explore how to do aftercare for the girls

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that we had rescued out of the sex slave industry in India.

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And one of the homes we visited to

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we were able to sit it on.

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An outside speaker came in and brought a bunch of drums

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and we all had drums

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and people were banging on the drums

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and this speaker was leading all the girls

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and us through this really cool thing.

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It was cool to bang drums and get your frustrations out.

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And all of us were in beat.

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It was really, really cool.

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It was all good until we started to talk.

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They said to these girls, "All the we have,

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everything that we need is inside of ourselves."

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I remember looking around at these girls

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as they said everything we need is inside ourselves.

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I remember looking at their face

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and their faces were like this.

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They were buying it at all.

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Tell you what, once you've been in slavery,

00:20:22

sex slavery, and the only way you got out of slavery

00:20:25

is somebody from outside came inside and rescued you,

00:20:29

you realize you didn't have the resources.

00:20:31

This is what Jesus saying.

00:20:32

He says the Spirit is blowing.

00:20:35

You must be born again.

00:20:36

You have to be born of the water and of the Spirit.

00:20:39

The Spirit has to come into your life from outside

00:20:41

because you and I don't have the resources.

00:20:44

What he said was spiritually enlightened,

00:20:47

it sounds like today, but was actually insensitive.

00:20:49

It was elitist and it was out of touch with their reality.

00:20:53

And this is the thinking that

00:20:55

persists in American culture today.

00:20:56

We say things like, "You be you."

00:20:59

In other words, everything you need is inside of yourself.

00:21:02

You just be the best version of yourself.

00:21:06

Or hey to thyself be true.

00:21:08

Which is not Jesus who said that.

00:21:11

That's Shakespeare who said it,

00:21:13

to be more specific, it's the character Polonius

00:21:19

who said it that Shakespeare created.

00:21:21

And this Polonius, if you know anything about it,

00:21:23

he was an utter bore.

00:21:25

NoSweatShakespeare.com says this, it says,

00:21:28

"Coming from Polonius, this advice to be true to oneself

00:21:31

is pompous, hypocritical, and empty.

00:21:34

And it is a tribute to Shakespeare

00:21:36

that he can produce a speech that is quoted for 400 years

00:21:39

as definitive wisdom about human behavior,

00:21:42

although it comes from a character

00:21:45

who was a disreputable and hypocritical empty weasel."

00:21:50

Jesus never tells us to be true to ourselves.

00:21:53

If He did then He wouldn't be a Savior.

00:21:54

Saviors come and do for us what we can't do

00:21:56

for ourselves because we can't do it ourselves.

00:21:59

He comes from outside and He invites us to receive

00:22:02

Him, not only a Savior, but to receive Him as Lord.

00:22:06

When I'm deconstructing and when I'm taking things away,

00:22:10

I'm playing Lord, I'm playing Savior of my own life,

00:22:13

which might be understandable if I've had people in

00:22:17

spiritual authority who have hurt me and have abused me.

00:22:21

But that's on them, they are bad people

00:22:23

who did you an awful disservice.

00:22:25

That's not Jesus, nor is it the historic Christian faith.

00:22:31

I found a story recently, people in

00:22:33

our community in Dayton, Ohio, who

00:22:35

actually had deconstructed their life

00:22:38

and marriage and then reconstructed it.

00:22:40

Let's see it.

00:22:42

- I'm Sarah.

00:22:43

- I'm Dan's Swizler and we go to Crossroads Dayton.

00:22:46

So at the end of 2014 we lost

00:22:48

my mom, my dad, and my brother unexpectedly.

00:22:52

We had been married about a year

00:22:54

and God was obviously with us at that time,

00:22:56

but we weren't actively pursuing God

00:22:59

or following Jesus by any means.

00:23:02

- And it was just hard putting one foot in

00:23:04

front of the other every day and just waking up

00:23:07

and get through the day and go to sleep and

00:23:09

wake up and get through the day and go to sleep.

00:23:12

We were just surviving.

00:23:13

We weren't living, we were just surviving.

00:23:15

- To the average person they we looked like we did well.

00:23:19

We got through it, but eventually

00:23:21

led to our separation and our divorce.

00:23:24

- I felt like a shell of a human,

00:23:26

like there was nothing left in me.

00:23:31

- We weren't there for each other, we weren't --

00:23:34

Our faith wasn't there.

00:23:36

We didn't do the things we needed to do for each other.

00:23:39

- Right.

00:23:41

I never stopped praying that God would soften his heart

00:23:48

and that he wouldn't be angry at me anymore.

00:23:54

- I'm dealing with the divorce, still the deaths,

00:23:57

and some depression, probably,

00:23:59

but I knew something was missing in my life

00:24:02

after we were divorced.

00:24:03

I mean, even before we got divorced.

00:24:05

One day I was at the gym where I lived

00:24:08

and I met a guy, I talked to him a couple of times

00:24:10

while we were there, just in passing, just small talk.

00:24:12

And it turned out it was Andy Ryder,

00:24:15

my friend, Pastor at Crossroads Dayton.

00:24:18

And I knew instantly that I needed God in my life.

00:24:21

I've always believed, even though I've never followed.

00:24:24

It led me to want to go to Crossroads.

00:24:25

It was this exact time also

00:24:27

where Sarah reached out to me.

00:24:30

We reconnected and we actually went to Crossroads together.

00:24:34

I loved having her back in my life.

00:24:35

I liked where my life was heading with God.

00:24:38

It was that Man Camp that, I still remember,

00:24:42

where Pastor Tome was talking.

00:24:45

And he -- I'll paraphrased because

00:24:47

I will not do it justice, "If

00:24:48

you're in a relationship, go home,

00:24:50

ask her to marry you or break up."

00:24:53

Definitely did not want to break up with my ex-wife,

00:24:56

so she picked me up in Cincinnati

00:24:59

after we got done with Man Camp

00:25:01

I asked her to marry me again on the way home from.

00:25:06

- All of these things that happened,

00:25:07

these bad things that happen when we were divorced,

00:25:11

they were all necessary.

00:25:15

It's terrible to think about it that way,

00:25:17

but they were all necessary things that needed

00:25:20

to happen to us to get us to where we are today.

00:25:24

- Since I began following God,

00:25:28

things have been tremendous.

00:25:29

And it's not just about the countless --

00:25:37

It's not just about the countless blessings,

00:25:39

because even if those aren't there.

00:25:44

- Going to church together,

00:25:45

being together with God and our marriage,

00:25:51

it's so much better this time.

00:25:57

- Man, I love that line.

00:25:59

Very true for many of us.

00:26:01

Wake up. Get through the day. Go to sleep.

00:26:05

Wake up, get through the day, go to sleep.

00:26:09

Wake up, get through the day, go to sleep.

00:26:12

As I said, they become a shell of themselves.

00:26:16

When we're drawn to deconstruct, it's because

00:26:19

we feel like we're a shell of ourselves.

00:26:21

We feel like we're stuck.

00:26:23

We feel like life isn't working.

00:26:25

We feel like things are just overwhelming me.

00:26:30

And there is a place for eliminating

00:26:31

certain beliefs from our life that are bad beliefs.

00:26:34

There's a place for eliminating maybe

00:26:38

parts of this Christian subculture that

00:26:40

are not healthy and are not helpful.

00:26:42

But we've got to get on the birth side.

00:26:44

We've got to get on the rebirth side.

00:26:46

We've got to get on the new life side.

00:26:48

We've got to get on the building side.

00:26:50

That's who Jesus is.

00:26:52

That's what He has been doing for millennia

00:26:55

and in millions and millions of people.

00:26:58

Don't listen to only the disgruntled Americans

00:27:01

who have not had their brand of American Christianity

00:27:04

work out for them the way that they wanted.

00:27:07

Don't listen to them.

00:27:08

Listen to the greats and the people right now

00:27:11

all over the world who maybe don't have a great life,

00:27:14

may have a very persecuted life,

00:27:15

but there is a deep abiding presence of Jesus

00:27:19

through the Holy Spirit because that's who He is.

00:27:22

That's what he does.

00:27:23

You do that, you'll be on rock solid ground.

00:27:27

God, I thank You for being true,

00:27:29

being real, and being clear.

00:27:32

We choose to build our life on You. Amen.

00:27:35

- Thanks, Brian.

00:27:36

Hey, listen, I know deconstruction is hard

00:27:39

to be introduced through,

00:27:40

and it's even harder if you're going through it.

00:27:42

If you have any questions about deconstruction

00:27:44

or really anything else, I want you to email me

00:27:46

at Kyle.Ranson@Crossroads.net.

00:27:49

We're in this series called Rock Solid.

00:27:51

It's really following up on our church wide Journey.

00:27:53

If you're interested in volunteering with us,

00:27:56

that Journey was about how do you serve?

00:27:58

How do you get in the game with church?

00:28:00

Not just watch church, but be the church.

00:28:02

You can go to online crossroads.net/volunteer.

00:28:06

And along with all of that,

00:28:07

if you're interested in getting baptized,

00:28:09

if you want to take that step towards following God,

00:28:11

you can go to online.crossroads.net/baptism.

00:28:14

We would love to be part of your step forward

00:28:17

into a life of following Christ signified through baptism.

00:28:20

Thanks. We'll see you next week.

00:28:23

- I've always had a relationship with God.

00:28:24

I've always loved God and always believed in God.

00:28:28

I just kind of went astray for a little bit.

00:28:37

It was actually last year around the time that I met the

00:28:40

church, I was going through a really difficult time, just with

00:28:44

everything going on in the world,

00:28:46

politics, all that good stuff,

00:28:48

you know, COVID hitting and I was just in a really dark place.

00:28:52

And there were some things happening with

00:28:55

friends and family and just a lot of controversy.

00:28:58

And I one day was just thinking

00:29:00

like, "This is not me, like, I'm

00:29:02

living for the world and not for

00:29:04

Jesus or what I should be living for."

00:29:07

And so I just -- I picked up my Bible,

00:29:09

and I haven't put it down since.

00:29:12

Like I said, we do everything online with the church

00:29:15

that we have found so far, and it's just been amazing.

00:29:19

And so my life has just completely changed.

00:29:23

My name is Kayla, and today I'm going to be baptized.

00:29:26

- My name is Marcus Lyles.

00:29:28

I'm getting baptized today.

00:29:29

- My name is Breland and I'm getting baptized.

00:29:32

- My name is Jacoby and today I'm getting baptized.

00:29:35

- My name is Marcus and today I'm getting baptized.

00:29:38

- Well, when we first started Crossroads,

00:29:42

like I said, or my wife said,

00:29:44

we were introduced by her aunt and we got the link.

00:29:47

And we were basically hooked ever since.

00:29:50

I mean, the personalities were great

00:29:52

and they broke it down and broke things down to us

00:29:54

in a way that we could understand it.

00:29:57

And it just really kept me in my Bible

00:30:02

and kept me focused on the important things in life.

00:30:07

And like I said, I used to stray a lot.

00:30:10

I couldn't stay focused on that.

00:30:12

But now I realize that's the most important thing.

00:30:17

- I personally have always wanted to be baptized,

00:30:19

I just like I said, I've never really had the opportunity.

00:30:24

And at the time, I kind of felt like since I wasn't

00:30:26

a part of a church, I didn't -- even though I wanted

00:30:29

to, I didn't want to just reach out to any random, you

00:30:32

know, church or stranger and ask them to baptize me.

00:30:34

So I, one, like I said, we feel like family.

00:30:38

We feel like this is home.

00:30:40

And I felt so comfortable asking you guys.

00:30:43

But really, as a family, we've talked about it

00:30:46

just we've all been saved by the Holy Spirit.

00:30:50

We've all, but this is like the next step,

00:30:53

like, this is the next thing that we need to do

00:30:55

to just feel complete in our walk with Jesus.

00:30:58

So here we are.

00:31:00

- It means everything. It means everything to me.

00:31:02

I mean, having that bond with God and Jesus rest of my life

00:31:07

and devoting my life to Him fully and ceremoniously.

00:31:15

It's very important to me,

00:31:17

and I've been wanting to do it ever since I was a child

00:31:20

- Because we talked with each of them about

00:31:23

like what this means.

00:31:24

And they are old enough at this point that

00:31:30

they understood, they knew what they were doing.

00:31:32

They wanted to do this.

00:31:34

- Just to wipe all the sins away

00:31:38

that from the past means a lot.

00:31:43

- It's amazing.

00:31:44

- We explained to them what it meant to be baptized.

00:31:49

And you could tell it was in their heart to get baptized.

00:31:53

You know what I mean?

00:31:54

Like, they wanted it just as much as we did.

00:31:57

And just to see that it just made me proud as a father,

00:32:01

you know, and I'm sure her as a wife,

00:32:05

that we're doing a good job teaching them.

00:32:06

- Yes.

00:32:09

- I feel enlightened.

00:32:10

- Yes. That is like the perfect word.

00:32:13

- I feel enlightened.

00:32:15

- Like --

00:32:16

- It's hard to describe.

00:32:19

- It's so hard to put into words.

00:32:21

- It's a feeling.

00:32:22

- I feel just like a new person.

00:32:23

- Right. Exactly.

00:32:26

- And it was a long time coming and I'm just so happy.

00:32:30

- Absolutely.

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