Good morning and welcome to our brand new series entitled Breakout, becoming all that God has created you to be change is mandatory, but growth is optional and while you might be feeling stuck at home right now it's my prayer that you might be able to break out and become all that God has created you to be over the next several weeks. We are going to give you practical lessons for you to grow in your faith each weekend is going to contain two components online and offline online. You're gonna watch messages and hear music and see resources. But then offline we want to take those resources and have discussions with friends and family members. As I've said for years, watching a sermon is a lot like buying paint at home depot. It feels good in the moment, but nothing's gonna change at home until you take it home and apply it this morning's message is entitled finding your spiritual pathway. You see the first step to becoming all that God has created you to be, is recognizing that you are unique and different, No difference, not a bad thing, it's just a part of life. You see when I got married, I quickly learned that my wife and I are very different people but at work, I've learned that my coworkers and I are very different people. Even when I get together with friends and family members, I noticed that they respond and act differently to different situations than I do. I'll take my kiddos for example, my kids are very different. Just last week I took them all hiking and they all enjoyed it a little bit differently? You see Jackson, my oldest, he is my competitive adventurer and so on the hike, he spent the time trying to get to eat spot first and he wanted to win. Now carter is my creative funny guy, so he was making his laugh throughout the way and he wanted to know when we were going to find food and he wanted to build things with rocks. Then last Chloe Chloe is my loving musician, we would be randomly walking throughout our hike and she would just turn to me and go, dad, I love you, can we snuggle? Yeah, it's definitely a daddy's girl and I'm worried for my future as she's got me wrapped around her little finger, but as we were walking and I'm carrying her on my shoulder, she would just out of the blues to start singing songs on the top of her lungs. Now the same activity A hike was experienced differently by all three of my kids, why do I bring this up? I bring this up because I love my kids, but in order to connect with my kids, I have to connect with them at different levels in different ways at different times. Now, a few months back, I started taking the same concept of being different into spirituality and at the same time I started asking myself how is it that people connect to God? I found this life giving and life changing book entitled sacred pathways by Gary thomas. He wrote a book centered around this question. When do you feel closest to God? When compiling his answers as well as looking throughout history, he noticed that different people had different spiritual pathways and temperaments just as people have different personality temperaments. So too do they have different pathways in which they connect to God? How do you define a spiritual pathway? It's really your preferred way to connect with God. You see God wants to connect with each of his Children, but he's wired you uniquely. When I was starting off in ministry, I've been a pastor for about 15 years. I used to hear stories about pastors who got up at 4:00 AM and prayed for 3-4 hours almost every day. And when I would hear those stories I was impressed, I had high respect for these people and I also felt not worthy see, I would see the disciplines and practices of other people and then I would fall into the comparison trap and think man, that's just not me, I try to pray for a long period of time and I struggle, sometimes I struggle sitting in silence and maybe some of you can relate and so I found myself walking through this christian life trying to be a pastor feeling like I didn't measure up when I came across this book recently I realized that people have been wired uniquely and differently and that you can connect to God in your preferred pathway. Here's what I want you to recognize today is that everyone has a preferred pathway to God everyone and I mean everyone has a preferred pathway to God. Now I'm gonna talk about seven different pathways, there's even a few more, but sometimes you can combine a couple of these together, but I want you to understand a couple of things. First, we do not want to have a cookie cutter Christianity. Being a christian is about being a child of God and becoming who he has called you to be, not about following a set of rules and behaving exactly from one thing to the next, you're also not called to be a storm trooper and to be a clone of the next christian down the road, but instead how can God work in your life so that you can have a flourishing relationship with God and an impact for God's kingdom and relationship with God's people. So let's take a look at these seven different pathways, how different people connect to God. The first spiritual pathway is called activism, it's defined as loving God through confronting wrong or injustice. If you think throughout history, someone who might exemplify this is martin Luther king and modern days, when you think of pastors in America, maybe someone that represents, this might be someone like a Francis chan someone who every time he speaks it's convicting to the soul and you feel like you should be doing something. People who connect to God through activism. See something on tv or on the news and they feel like they have to act, they have to do something. These are the people that sometimes make us who are not activists feel guilty for things but we thank God for activists because it's with activists that change happens and things get done. We find activists throughout scripture through different people. For example, Esther confronted the king and ultimately saved the people of Israel or also think of Joshua And Joshua 19, he receives encouragement from God to be strong and courageous for he is with him always. Now how did Joshua respond? Let's check out verse 10 and 11 and Joshua commanded the officers of the people passed through the midst of the camp and command the people prepare your provisions for within three days you are to pass over this Jordan and to go in and take possession of the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess. I almost picture this as a Braveheart or gladiator or patriot type speech where Joshua went in and rallied the troops and said let's take the land that God has promised us. These are the heartbeats of activists. Another pathway in which people connect to God is contemplation. Contemplation is loving God through solitude prayer and meditation. These are the people that get away and just thrive in connecting with God. It's not that they're getting away from people, it's rather they're coming to a place of connecting with God on a deep level. These are the people that get up early to pray and can pray for an extended periods of time. Sometimes contemplated people speak more slowly. Have you ever been in a conversation with someone and you kind of wish that they would hurry up, You might not be this contemplated person. See contemplated people never seem to be in a hurry in history. A guy by the name of ST Benedict wrote really what was seen as a rule of life, You see early saints and pastors and even monks would walk slowly and talk slowly and savor each and every moment because it's in those moments that they would connect with God in today's pastoral culture. If you're interested in contemplation, I wanna encourage you to check out a new book by john Mark Kummer entitled the ruthless elimination of hurry in scripture, we see different people in different periods of time pausing to connect with God, even with life around them, seems to be moving fast. For example, Mary and Luke chapter 10, really, when Martha, her sister was running around getting the house prepped for the disciples and jesus mary sat at the feet of jesus and jesus even commended her for it. These are the heartbeats and the passion behind contemplated people, they resonate with verses like found in psalms Psalm 46 10 says be still and know that I am God I will be exalted among the nations and I will be exalted in the earth. Some of you, when you see that word be still, you push back right away others you hear the words be still and you think to yourself, yes, this is what I've been longing for. This is what I've been waiting for. That is the heartbeat of a contemplated person. Another pathway to connect with God is through nature. Those who connect to God through nature are those that love God through experiencing creation. This doesn't necessarily mean that you love camping, but rather when you see a sunset or you are up in the mountains or you're at the ocean, you just stand in awe of God in history. We see people like Jonathan Edwards. The early american pastor, he wrote a letter that was entitled the language and lessons of nature in modern times. You might think of christians like bear grylls who has his own tv show teaching people how to survive in nature and he loves being out in the wilderness with hardly anything at all. Even if you don't love camping. I bet people who are naturalists love to send pictures of sunsets and others to their friends and if you don't resonate with a naturalist, you're like, okay, it's a sunset, it's a mountain, it's a tree, I get it. What's next we find in scripture versus like psalm 19 verse one, the heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. If you resonate with God through nature, you're going to resonate with verses like this one. Now a 4th spiritual pathway is seen through intellect and those who connect with God through intellect. Our loving God through pursuing knowledge. These are the people like C. S. Lewis who didn't come to faith until later in life and ended up writing many, many books like mere Christianity and even turned christian apologetics into stories like the Chronicles of Narnia, but really he was saved through understanding God in his mind. If you connect with God through intellect, you love to search out the question why you don't trust when people just share facts, you want to see the sources and you want to know the details and you want to know how things are put together. One indication that you might connect with God through intellect is that you buy books more than you do music. A modern pastor that practices the spiritual pathway of intellect is timothy Keller. He routinely puts out books and teaches about God through a logical progression. He deconstructs a worldly worldview and then through logic and reason. He builds up the christian and biblical worldview so that people can understand and even use in arguments with debates with other people. Now in scripture. If you connect with God through intellect, you might connect with romans. Chapter 12 verse two, where paul writes, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. That by testing, you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. So this idea of transformation happens when your mind is renewed with scripture. If you connect with God in this way, you might enjoy studying the bible as well as looking at commentaries to see what scholars and other people talk about. The bible. The next spiritual pathway is described as the relationship pathway. People connect with God through the relationship pathway. Our loving God through connecting with others. These are the people that are really struggling right now in quarantine, they love to do things together. It doesn't necessarily matter what you're doing, it just has to be together. These are the friends that rally the group to go out and do stuff. These are the friends that do special notes, whether through phone call text or maybe even through the mail throughout history and even modern times. I think of people like bob Gough bob Gough is also described as an activist, but in this case he's really focuses in on relationships because his book Love does is all about loving everybody and including everybody into their friendship and relationship circle. For a while, bob Gough placed his office in the center of Disneyland, he said he posted office hours and he said anyone can meet with me, they just have to come to Disneyland to do so. In scripture, we see people connecting through relationships like the early church found in Acts chapter two where they met together daily and we see people like Barnabas who was the first person to accept paul into the ministry of the church. And then we have verses like hebrews chapter 10 verse 24 and 25. Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near people who love the relationship pathway, love to encourage others and love to meet together and to spur one another on to good works. The next spiritual pathway is described as the service pathway. These are people who are loving God through serving others. Probably one of the best examples of someone who lives out of the service spiritual pathway is Mother Teresa, her life is defined by humble serving acts. These are people that don't necessarily love large crowds. They don't necessarily even rally around a large church gathering, but these are the people that deliver meals to people when those are hurting These are the people that Love one on 1 connection, they love to go deep, they love to be practical. These are the people that tend to go more into foster care or even the medical field as a profession, because they can make a practical and tangible difference in someone's life, rather than sitting down and studying the bible for hours, a person who loves the service pathway would like to make a tangible difference in the life of an individual. So while you might not go to this person to understand what a passage means in greek, when you have a need, this is the person that shows up to your door with a meal or tools or the ability to love on you in tangible ways In scripture, we see that Jesus himself loved to serve and Mark Chapter 10 verse 45, it says for even the son of man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. Now, jesus reflects all seven of the pathways that we're talking about, but I highlighted in the service one because oftentimes people who love to serve, get overlooked because they're not a showy, sometimes they don't even like the stage or the limelight, they just want to help someone and they want to connect on a personal level. So it's encouraging to know that jesus himself served his disciples through washing feet and ultimately giving his life to benefit your life and mine. The final pathway can be described as worship. This means that people who love worship our loving God through artistic expression. Sometimes these people are the easiest to spot in a church service because they are raising their hands shouting out amen even if the people around them are not moving. They have their eyes closed and they are singing with reckless abandon because for them this is how they connect to God. This is a good thing because when you put a handful of worship filled spirit filled people in a room, it can change a large gathering. This is the person who's probably texting you the new Spotify link of the brand new worship song that came out as the naturalist will send you a picture of a sunset. They're gonna send you a youtube video and he's like, man, you've got to watch this video. Isn't it amazing? These are the people that put a song on repeat in their car and can listen to it 100 times and maybe it's not music. Maybe it's poetry or art, whatever it is, it is an expression of God's love and creation and they see colors and textures and even the wording and lyrics matter for those who worship God in this way. This picture, your favorite band musically maybe Hillsong or elevation worship or an artist of some kind chances are they have at least a little bit of this worship pathway inside of them because they believe that they have been created to create music or art or to show the love of God in creative ways in the bible. We find that King David was this way he wrote a large section of the psalms, including psalm 1 47 verse one praise the Lord for it is good to sing praises to our God for it is pleasant and a song of praise and is fitting people who connect to God through worship, understand that it's all about heart and feeling and experience and for those who don't resonate with God in this way. Sometimes we can look at people and go, man, I just something seems off. But those who love worship can look at people who are not connected to God in that way. And they say, what are you doing? Has God not moved? You see, let's take a look at these seven pathways, activism, contemplation, nature, intellect, relationships, service and worship. Which one are you? You see online on our website right now, we have an online assessment that when this message is done, I want you to take, you can take a video format where you watch the video and write down your answers or you can actually take one online on your phone or smart device. Either way you like to take the test, we want you to take this test and then discuss what you find out about yourselves with your friends and family members. For me, can you guess just knowing who I am? Can you guess What are my top three out of these seven? Well, number one was intellect and it's not saying that I'm a smarty pants or anything, it's just that I love to study the word of God. I buy way more books than I do cds or download music. In fact, sometimes I nerd out on audiobooks because I read a study one time that if you listen to an audiobook twice the speed that your brain will adjust. And so then it's like you get twice the book and half the time. And I know that seems really nerdy for some, but for those that connect with me in this intellect world, you love studying the bible and scripture and what people have to say about things. And so that's me and I also have a little bit of activists in me, which is really why I was called to start the church activists love to change things. They're bold, risk takers. But let me tell you really the surprise for me in the study when I took this assessment that you can take as soon as this video is over and that is my second highest was not activism. It was actually nature. Now this surprised me because I don't camp at all. I'm not a camper. I'm not good outdoors. But as I started thinking back, I was called the plant the church when I was out in nature. I receive answers to prayer when I'm out in nature. The favorite part of vacations for me is to find a place with a view. Whether it's a mountain top or the ocean. I love the view. And so when I started putting this together, my spiritual life changed in recent months. What I started doing is every week I would study the word of God and then I would go for prayer, walks in nature in the desert behind my house. And when I combine those two things, my faith has been renewed and I'm growing more in recent months than in previous years combined. So what I want to encourage you to do is to find the top two or three ways that you connect with God and then use that in your relationships While I scored high in these, my wife, when she took the test, she scored high in service and that makes sense as a nurse and, and as a mom and just as a friend, she loves to do practical things that help people on a one on one basis. If I sit here and tell her about what I learned about. Greek in the scripture, she doesn't really seem to care. But when they say, hey, we're going to make a difference and help this family, She jumps right in and she's the first one to respond. But then her second score was nature. And so that is one where now we go for walks together and we take trips together and it's when we find places of beauty and God's creation that our relationship grows as well. I'm curious to find out that when you take this assessment and maybe your sibling or your spouse or your significant other or whoever is involved in your life, find out where they score on this as well and you might get greater insight into their life. And so here's what I want you to do today. Number one, I want you to discover your spiritual pathway as soon as you get done, watching this message, visit our website or we'll place the link in the comments of this video as well and take the spiritual pathway assessment, find out how you are naturally wired to connect with God, and then secondly, I want you to discuss this with friends and family. Next week we're going to take a deeper dive into these seven pathways and talk about the strengths, the weaknesses and the temptations, people with those particular pathways struggle with. But this week I want you to take that first step of becoming who God has called you to be, by discovering your spiritual pathway. If you've been walking through life and feeling like you don't fit in as a christian, I want you to know that it's okay to be different. God has wired you uniquely to connect with him and to love and to serve others. So take that spiritual assessment today and then have that discussion with friends and family and you might learn a little bit about yourself and grow closer to God, let's pray Dear Heavenly Father, we know that everyone has a preferred pathway to God God I lift up these different pathways, whether someone's an activist, God, may they call be called the change our society God. If someone is contemplated, may they be the prayer warriors for our ministries and to connect with you on an emotional level God, for those who connect through nature, may they remind us that you are a big God sustaining us through this crisis right now, God, for those who connect with you through intellect, may they dive deeply into your word and into apologetics, to defend the faith and to evangelize the lost God for those who connect through relationships, we praise you and thank you for those that established true community in our lives. God, for those who connect through service. We thank you for the practical and tangible ways that people make a difference in our lives and last God, we thank you for those who connect through worship through artistic expression. These are the people that inspire us each and every day. However, people are wired, I pray that we can lean into how you've created and called us to be and then we grow closer to you each and every day, it's in your son's name, we pray Amen, we love you, God loves you, discover your spiritual pathway, Remember that, write it down and we'll continue our conversation next week