Good morning. You guys, let me try that again. That was mediocre at best. Good morning everyone. All right, I'm, I am John Lynch and I am so delighted to be here to be anywhere. I mean, he, you guys, I've been speaking like this week, I will speak to a conference on my computer screen. It's just so wrong. So, and to be here in this place. Wow, I have this is, this is what I wanted church to be like all along. This is could not be more cool, very, very cool. What you guys are doing, John's down with his son, down in Mexico and uh building homes and it's an, we've, we've talked for a long time about having me come. So I'm so grateful. Um the public service announcement. Um I just wrote this on my worst day. Uh and it's, it's a journey into grace, into redemption and, and I, I'm so proud of it and I just want to tell you, you cannot successfully navigate the Christian life without this book. I, I mean, I'm, I'm just telling you you, yy, yes, probably you'll get to heaven. But when you get there, you'll have an obstructed view and uh one piece of pie will be all you get at meal time and, and I could be wrong. But why would you take the chance? Get the book even if you don't want it? I don't care, man. I'm jacked up doing this. This is super fun. OK. Let me first bring up the first slide. This is a picture of the church. The objective is not to build communities appearing to have sin under control. The objective is to nurture a place where people can stop faking that they have sin under control where they can come out of hiding and let others into their sin and their failure. And there sin loses power and we can be healed, trusting Christ's redemption and forgiveness and repentance. It is messy but utterly healthy and those who live in it, they become free and as they learn to receive love, they sin less guys. This, this is for this generation, for this community, what you guys are beautifully wanting to live out and are living out and it's kind of where I'm going in this message. Um Let me tell you my story before I get into the theology. Um I, I grew up in southern California, up like California and I had a great childhood for the most part, just a, just a great childhood living in that land playing baseball till, till dark. And then we moved to Phoenix Arizona here uh over on the west side and, and life got very, very good for me. I became a very good baseball pitcher. I made the Allstate team uh back in, I would have been 71 back in the dead ball era. Um But I made the Allstate team. I was the student body president and I had the homecoming queen as my girlfriend, life was very good for John Lynch. Right then uh and then I went to Arizona State to continue my baseball and um I blew out my arm and uh this is a sad part of the story. Uh my girlfriend, the homecoming queen left me for a better picture. I mean, I don't, I don't blame her. Honestly, the guy had a slider that went right off the table. I mean, I, I was attracted to him. I, I mean it but, but something in what happened there to have someone know you so well and go away. It, it did something in me. Uh The word shame, guilt says you've done something wrong. Shame says there's something uniquely and irreparably wrong with who you are no matter what you do, it's never going to change. And so I started walking with a limb and I did things I never thought I would do. I was a jock, I was a baseball player. I was a II I, that's what I did. I, I maybe had one beer in, in front of a, my friend's mom that a and suddenly I did everything that I said I would never do. I walked away from the straight life, uh, in terms of just wrong relationships outside of marriage, I did every kind of drug I could get my hands on to. I, I just got a 60 ragtop VW and just rode around the country. Just trying. I was looking for God and I didn't know it. I waited tables all up and down the coast in restaurants until people get to know me. And then I'd leave. I ended up in Tucson and IIII I reached to the high career uh destination of sprain numbers on Curves people's houses and I would give my plasma so I could get more dope. One day I had the idea, I was like, I had the idea I should go into teaching what here kids come, follow me. Yeah. But I did, I went back to Arizona State. I got my degree in uh secondary ed and teaching for English and drama. And the first play that I cast was a Woody Allen play and unbeknownst to me, I cast most of the kids in the play were young life. Kids do do, do, do, do. And they would talk to me about Jesus after rehearsal. Now, if it was you, I wouldn't let you. I was an atheist. My dad was a mensah atheist and I, I had nothing. No, no, no way. Are you going to talk to me about God, but they were kids. So I let him and then a chain of events, someone got me a Keith Green album and for the first time I, I heard Christian music that didn't sound like skating music. And then, and then someone gave me Bob Dylan's slow train coming. I'm thinking if Bob Dylan's become a believer, the boat door is going to close here in a hurry and I, and then someone gave me, uh right, right around Christmas time December 18th, someone gave me CS Lewis's the great divorce. And I all these things, I started reading the Bible and all these things converged December 23rd, 1979. I was going out to run and instead I went down to my knees and said, Jesus, I don't know what to do, but I know that I want you come into my heart, whatever that means. I do believe you're the son of God and I do believe that you, you died and rose. If I was the only person on the planet, I don't know how to say this. I'm messing it all up. Please be my God. I don't know what else to do. And if you won't have me, I don't know where I'll go. And in that moment, he came into my heart and I became a new creature and I gotta tell you, I don't know what it was like because I did acid and stuff. I think he felt like he had to make a, a real big deal. So he, he iii I felt stuff like I've never felt before. I felt like electric. Like I like, like I could go into a mall and I could say to a guy across the store, hey, you sir there. Yes. Fall on your needs and trust Jesus and the guy would go. All right. It was incredible. And I started reading the Bible. I went down and I, I got a Bible, I got a Black Bible. I knew to be official. It had to be a Black Bible. And uh uh I went down to the bookstore and got one and I started reading it through stuff. I'd never read. I, I just, I didn't know. And the first time I would go through this, this was all during Christmas break. So I was reading like 1112 hours a day and I'm, I'm underlining the first time I go through. The second time I go through, I'm making circles around it. And third time through, I'm, I'm writing yay God in the columns and the fourth time through, I'm, I've got fireworks exploding and, and someone said to me, John, um, you read so much, you are so into this, you know, you want to go, there's a place that they have called seminary. You got the wrong guy. Um, I've got dope resins still in my fingers and, and uh these guys, I know them they got the corduroy coats with the elbow patches and it's, it's not my crowd. And he said, no, no, no, just give it a try. God's doing a whole new thing. And so I did, I put in an application and, um, it said all these things. Tell us about your Christian service. Um, none, tell us about your influences in the Christian life who has influenced you. Uh, nobody, I once saw the movie Heidi, I had nothing. I had, I had absolutely nothing. And, and I, I wrote in there, I said I don't have any money. I have the retirement for my teaching and that's all I would have. But I really want to study your word and who you are, who God is. And they let me in. They must have really been in hard times, but they let me in and I went to seminary. I drove out to California in another VW that was paving the, the streets with the oil that was dripping out from the bottom. And I went to seminar and I got my masters of Divinity graduated Capita of Salon and I learned the original languages. And a strange thing happened. All I wanted to do you guys when I became a believer, I, I thought the end was going to come once I trusted Jesus, that's how self centered I was OK, John's in and now, and, and when he didn't, I, that's all I wanted to do is get on a bicycle and ride across the country to different coffee shops and tell people about Jesus. And now I knew the orig original languages and now I was supposed to be a, a pastor, a religious man, clergy, a man of the cloth and uh and, and something happened to me, this guy who came to Christ alive and free and clean and fearless without pretense. Four years later, I walked out of seminary with the appearance of Godliness, preparing for ministry. I found myself trying to appear pastoral wise together. Godly pretending to like things I didn't and not like things I still did. I was afraid to admit struggles in my marriage. I was afraid to talk about wrong thoughts and feelings that I still had. I didn't know you guys, I didn't know anything about a community like what we put up on the screen a moment ago, I was trying to do it by myself. All of us are awakening to the pain of realizing I can't control my world stuck with unresolved issues whose symptoms I'm trying to fix or without the help of anybody else. And the answer that a community like that has, is this what if there was a place so safe that the worst of me could be known? And I would discover that I would be loved more, not less in the telling of it. I didn't know that yet. See, see throughout scripture. Here's, here's the the one commandment. John 1334 he says I'm going to give you a new commandment. Sorry, I know I'm not supposed to do that in the pandemic. Um A new commandment I give to you that you love one another, even as I've loved you that you love each other. It's not the 11th command. It's a whole new order command for the first time. Someone can obey a command and not rebel. I have a new heart. You have a new heart. And so this is it. He says, I'm gonna give you the way. In fact, it's not even really a command. It's what you want to do because the most real you, once you put your hope in Jesus at your core, you're not self centered, it's your core. You want to love, you want to love with everything that's in you. So it's not a command. It's like saying, eat more chocolate. All right. I said, it'll help the team. OK? And then, and then Paul comes along in the epistles and he makes this incredible statement. He ties it together with what Jesus said in uh Galatians 62. He says, bear one another's burdens. And when you do that, you will fulfill the law of Christ. He says, I want you for the rest of your life. This is your deal. Now bear one another's burdens, love one another. And, and when you do that, you'll fulfill that one law that you talked about back there, eat more chocolate bear, one another's burdens. Literally when you see them hurting, when you see them failing, when you see them out of control, when you see them confused and freaked out by this light, even though you don't have all the answers, stand with them, get under and lift you, you can mess up on a bunch of stuff, but that's what I want you to do. How do I do it? How do I do it when I'm a, a person who has so much issues on my own. This is this, I can't believe this verses in the Bible. It promises so much and it gives so much. Uh I if you'd put up Romans 614 for just a second look what it says. This is how we do. This. Sin will not be master over you because you're not under law anymore. You're under grace. Sin will not be mastered over you because you're not no longer up there under buckup is or moralism or striving or putting your best foot forward or was bluffing or trying to hide. Sin will not be master of you because you are under grace. Grace 100 and 22 times in the New Testament. You can't say it except for in Scottish at age. For this is the manner in which God speaks grace and, and there's a tragedy in that verse too. The inverse is also true. Um Sin will be master over you. If you are under law, if you try to perform, if you try to fake it, if you try to do your own willpower, if you try to somehow do enough to make him happy to the sins gonna eat you alive. Grace, grace. It is the absolute and unforced favor gained by Christ's death and resurrection allowing God to be completely forced and endlessly in love with us. Apart from anything, we have to prove grace is an actual realm, a way of life in which we no longer strive for acceptance. We mature and heal and we are released into His intentions by trusting this, that Jesus and all of his power is fused into us. Now creating an entirely new person, Christ in me on my worst day. Uh uh grace. I because I know the rap grace is not to free us from obeying the heart of God. Grace is the nutrient rich soil that the seeds of truth drop into. So they're not choked by the self condemnation of failure instead, no longer afraid of God's disgust. We can obey God from the heart rather than from compliance. And we grow into a beautiful healthy tree, giving shade and safety to others grace. It's all over scripture. It's like for a while, there was a, there was a scales on our eyes and we couldn't see it. Second Timothy 21, my son, you'll be strong and you would expect, expect him to say, in the willpower and striving. He said, you'll be strong in the grace. That's in Christ Jesus acts 2032. I commend you to God into the word of His grace, which alone is able to build you up. Let us draw near Romans 52 with confidence to the throne of grace that we might receive mercy and find grace to help us in our times of need. In the tight times, the hard times, the passages that we can't get through the stuck times, the pandemic times, the chronic times things that feel like they will never make sense again. He says, as grace is for we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom we've obtained our introduction into this grace in which we stand grace. It ignites the power of my new identity in Christ. Grace neutralizes sin's power by freeing me from the law. No, the law. How do I explain it? Here's the law. I'm walking along on the sidewalk and there's a beautiful park next to me. And then I see a sign that says, don't walk on the grass and I look at the sun, I'm thinking, well, I wasn't going to, but I will now I will spend the rest of my days just writing out the lynched name in dead grass. That's what the law does. It makes a rebel out of us. And Jesus came and said, I will take and I will complete the law so you don't have to play that game anymore. It takes that power. Great Grace trades in my anemic strength for his power. New me. Grace trades away the weariness of bluffing adequacy. Grace destroys abandonment and rejection and condemnation. Grace says you are accepted and loved and enjoyed always. Grace says he's never disgusted or angry with you. Grace pours the blood of Jesus over every single offense. Grace puts a robe of Christ's righteousness on me and in me, grace says to the exact Je Jesus talking to the exact degree that my father loves me. So also I love you. Is that crazy talk? How can that be? I mean, question his taste, but don't question his character, Jesus saying to the exact extent that my father loves me and I'm thinking that's some significant love. So also I love you in June and you and you and way way back in the corner you. That's a great. Grace says there's a role of Christ's righteousness on me. Grace says I'll never give up on you. I'll never grow tired of you. Grace says you're a new creation, a categorical, new creature. Your whole life is over and it's shame has no claims on you anymore. Grace says my love has no gradations, no matter what you do. I cannot love you more and I will not love you less. Grace allows me a blamelessness that can allow me to receive criticism and correction without it defining me. Long time ago when I was just learning these truths of identity in Christ, I wrote a piece, I call it The New Testament Gamble. I put, I put it in the book. Um Because now I had kids, Caleb was 10 and Amy was eight and Carly was two and it had to hold up. It was ok if it didn't hold up for me, but it had to hold up for them. Is this true? And so I wrote a piece from God's vantage point saying what if I tell them who they are? What if I take away any in any element of condemnation or judgment or rejection? But if I tell them that I love them, I'm not that I'll always love them, that I can't love them more than I love them right now and I love them right now, no matter what they've done as much as I love my only son that there's nothing they can do to make my love go away. What if I told them they were righteous with my righteousness right now? What if I told them they could stop beating themselves up? They could stop being so formal and stiff and weird and jumpy around me. What if I told him that I was absolutely crazy about them? What if I told them if they ran to the ends of the earth and did the most unthinkable horrible things when they came back? I would receive them with tears and a party. What if I told them, I don't keep a log of past defenses of how little they pray or made promises that they don't keep. What if I told them they don't have to be owned by men's religious traditions or traditions. What if I told them if I'm their savior, they're going to heaven no matter what. It's a done deal. What if I told them that they had a new nature that they were saints, not save sinners who should buck up and be better. Now, after all, he's done for you, what if I told them I actually live in them now that I've put my love and power and nature inside them at their disposal. What if I told them they didn't ever, ever have to put on a mask that it is absolutely perfect to be exactly who they are at this moment. What if they do that? They don't have to look over their shoulder for fear. If things get too good, the other shoe is going to drop. What if for all those who have put even feeble hope in me? What if they knew that I will never, ever, ever, ever, no, never, ever, ever use the word punish in relation to them. What if they were convinced that bad circumstances are not my way of even in the score for taking advantage of me? What if they knew the basis of our friendship? Is not how little they sin but on how, how much they let me love them. What if they had permission to stop trying to impress me in any way? What if I told them they could hurt my heart? But I try to never hurt those. What if I told him? I kind of like Eric Clapton's music too. That the these and thos have always confused me. What if I told them? I never really was that fond of the Christmas handbell. Deal with the white gloves. What if I, I told them they could open their eyes when they pray and still go to heaven. What if I told them? It was not about their self ever but allowing me to live my life through them? That's, that's the New Testament gamble. And we, the guinea pig test by trusting Christ in us. Will it make us less interested in him or will it free us and try to receive his love with all of our heart? That's a gamble. That's the gamble. Bad religion hurts a lot of people this frees them this gospel. I don't even call it the gospel of grace. It's just the gospel. Well, I stumbled into an environment of grace. Um I came to wow them with my preaching and they loved and endured me and patiently, the environment pulled me back from a doctrine of performance, buck up epistemology and replaced it with new identity and grace and love. And joy, no condemnation and freedom and trust and safety and vulnerability and playfulness. That theological shift has over time allowed me to no longer hide. It's allowed me to trust others with me to accept that God's never ashamed of what's really true about me presently to rest in my new identity and the spirit's power to grow me up from the inside out to cultivate authentic vulnerable friendships and relationships. So what if we courageously began to nurture such kind of grace based environments where godliness is not based on appearance or how many wrong things you do not do where we applaud exposure and don't reject those who are failing where the environment is safe enough for me to try out my faith instead of bluffing it where the goal is not that anything gets fixed but that nothing ever has to be hidden where we learn how to love rather than attempting to manage our stuff. Well, I um I'm in answer to such a question because over time, this old chameleon has learned these truths. I've learned acceptance and humility and trust. I've learned heartfelt obedience over compliance. I'm able to work harder and grace than by any other motivation. I've worked through horribly hard stuff without having to run. I've learned to trust the power of this new life in me. I am no longer hidden. I don't wear a mask. I'm able to offer freedom for others to not hide. I'm able to offer others to Jesus are no longer trying to impress you with the appearance of godliness that train has left the station and I didn't get on it. So what if I was real? You don't know who I am? Really? I mean, I'm just a talker dude up here that somebody invited. So what if I was real? What if you really, what if I let you know me? I mean, not completely but not just transparent, appearing with no intention of letting anyone help but really know. What, what if I let that be true in my life? What if I let people know me with the intention of them standing with me and filling the cracks. Uh But see, uh see, see, there you go. I remember old girlfriends. They got to know me really well and they left and Jesus says, kid, um I already know everything I've seen everything that you're going to show me that's messed up. And there are some things you, you just need to know down the road that are weird that you do and I already know and I'm not going to leave. I love you so much. I love you as much as any other human being on this planet and I can't love you any more than I do and I will never love you less and I'll be your safety in your exposure. OK? So uh what if I tell you the truth about me? Uh Some of these hopefully are a little funny and some of them are very serious. What if I told you that I really didn't relate to or enjoy most of the Christian music that was available the 1st 15 years of my faith it did. It all sounded like skating music. He here was one of the hits songs that we sang. Uh, when I was new in my faith. I've got oil in my Ford. Keep Me trucking for the Lord. I've got oil in my Ford. Amen. Hallelujah. I think people actually left Jesus because of that song. I just couldn't relate. It was too weird to me. It was too funky. And what if you knew that I really do like Tom Waits and Amos Lee and Bruce Coburn and Justin Vernon and Jason Isabel and Mindy Smith and John Hyatt and Bob Dylan and Ellis Paul and David Ramirez and Foy Vance and JJ Gray and Moro and Pat Metheny and Lauren Dale. And that really old group occasion guys named Little Fee. Oh, what if you knew that? Um, I get really uncomfortable in Christian bookstores. They're so quiet. I, I wanna run around, pull my pants up like that and just say, hey, hey, hey, everybody, we win. Remember what if you knew that? I, hm. Stacy always says perhaps you could leave this one out. Uh What if you knew that I, uh I would rather visit the hand lotion boutiques with my wife than Home Depot with the guys. I'm just joking out to the, um, and what if you knew that I am fragile and I'm not strong in ruling, um, my gift is mercy. But if you knew that I don't pray as much or maybe the way that you think I should, what if you knew, um, what if you knew that? Sometimes I, I'm faithless with incredible fear. What if you knew that, um, Stacy says that I can hurt her and make her feel stupid? So what if you knew that? What if you knew that at parties in the communities that I help starve, I can feel alone and sometimes not want to be there. And what if you knew that I have neuropathy and sometimes the, the burning pain gets so bad that I, I wanna abandon all my commitments and just go to heaven. I call out and say, please God. What if you knew that? That was true about me? What if you knew that in fifth grade? I got violated really badly violated and I carried it all the way through my teens and twenties and thirties. In fact, we wrote the book True Face and I still had never told anyone that's how strong shame is. I never told anyone because I was afraid you'd leave me or I'd lose my seat at the table or that you'd pity me. So, um what if I told you all those things? Would I be less Godly ho hold it. I used to think so, but the Godly are those who believe God, period. The Godly are those who believe God period? Not those who just keep from doing enough wrong things. The Godly are those who trust him with them? Another question would, would others find me less calmly? Just the opposite has been my experience. I have been trusted by so many because I've been vulnerable with them. So they feel the permission to be vulnerable with me. And so the chameleon who spent a lifetime pretending he was someone else so that he would be accepted and loved is gradually learning to believe that he is loved and accepted fully and like the velveteen rabbit, he's becoming real. No. Let me say one last thing. Um Here's what the deal for the longest time. I thought Jesus when I first came to know him, he was right here. But then I started messing up the things I wanna do. I don't do the things I do. I don't want to oh Romans seven. And, and gradually I thought Jesus went around my sin on the other side and as my mound of sin kept getting bigger, I didn't seem to be able to fix it. And so Jesus, after a while, I just couldn't see him anymore. Like the haze of this pussy sin mound. Just it's like he was on the other side. I imagine that he was over there with his arms folded, saying to himself, I had so much hope for that kid. He has let me down so many times I don't want to hear it. And I might say to him, I'm uh I love, look, this, this sin, I'm gonna get it fixed. You watch you and, and when I do, we're gonna get closer. You're gonna get closer and closer and closer. But nobody tells me that there's nothing I can do to fix that mound and truckloads more of it are brought in each day. But instead, what if the shed blood of Jesus Christ was this strong that for anybody who's put his hope in him, he's never been over on that other side. Instead, he walks all the way around and he comes up to within like uh 18 inches of my face and he smiles that smile that no other human commit. And he says, I know. And then, then he grabbed me and pulled me into a bear hug so tight. So I wanna first, I want to say no, no, no, you don't deserve stop. You've got the wrong person, but he keeps holding me so tight and I keep fighting it and then, and I don't want to fight it. I've waited all my life for this. I just want him to hold me like this forever. And he keeps whispering. I know kid and I'm not ashamed, I'm not disgusted. I love you so much. I'm, I'm crazy about you. Keeps whispering those things to me. I know. I know. No, I know. And he keeps holding me until he's absolutely convinced that I believe in. And then, and only, then does he start to release his grip and then only so much so that he can put his arm around me so that he and I can look at my stuff together, not over there, but here I, every time I say these things, I imagine him, Jesus, his arm around me looking at my sin. I imagine him saying, well, my, my, my, don't you ever sleep? And then he would say I got you and we've got this. I'm not ashamed yet. I love you so much. So this is, this is grace and this is your Jesus. This is my Jesus. This is the one that I showed up for on December 23rd, 1979 and he is here for you. I don't care. He doesn't care what you've done. He just wants a way in. We want you to let him love you, not perform for him. And the payoff is you'll learn to love more and you'll sin less. This is not religious consolation. This is yours as the B comes up, let me just pray this Father God. Um What is this? That before the world began? You prepared to have this guy come out of nowhere. Speak to this beautiful community. Father, would you let us have that breakthrough. If we've seen God as an angry God as a God who's never satisfied, who's disgusted? Would you break through to that heart right now? And I ask it in the strong name of Jesus Christ. Amen.