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Rooted in Discipleship

August 23, 2026 38:23 Cross Church Surprise

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· Discipleship is long obedience in the same direction.

· You were not saved to set, you were saved to walk.

· Here's the key, salvation isn't just a past event.

· It is true that I was saved.

· Jesus at that moment forgave me my sin

· and secured my eternity.

· But now I am being saved and you are being saved.

· You are to personally advance in your faith.

· Listen, there is something wrong in our spiritual lives

· if we look at our lives today spiritually

· and they look the same as they have for the past 20 years.

· There should be progress, there should be development,

· there should be personal advance.

· While you're turning there,

· I just need to be transparent with you.

· I have been having a really bad morning.

· The worship made it better and I'm thankful for that,

· but I woke up and it was 155 degrees

· in Waddell this morning.

· And I'm kind of getting tired of it.

· And then to make matters worse,

· I came to the church office early this morning,

· around 6.30 and I went in as I normally do

· when I come to my office and went to the Keurig,

· got my favorite blend, a real blend of coffee

· out of the Keurig K-Cup supply,

· opened up the top of the Keurig

· and somebody already this morning,

· and I'm gonna find out who this is,

· left their K-Cup in the Keurig

· and it was a pumpkin spice K-Cup.

· It's 155 degrees outside

· and you're drinking pumpkin spice coffee,

· which really is reserved for like October 15th

· through the 18th, so we can get to the Christmas blend

· that Starbucks is always way too late unpacking for us.

· So anyways, I've gotten over that.

· I'm trying to work on forgiveness of whoever that is.

· Andrew, if that was you this morning,

· I'm gonna find out.

· And we don't even, here's the deal,

· we don't even have pumpkin spice K-Cups

· in our collection.

· Somebody had to have brought it from their home

· so they could have pumpkin spice coffee

· at church this morning.

· All right, I'm done with that.

· Anyways, I wanna start with a couple of pictures

· that'll make sense to you and explain them

· and it'll make sense to you

· why I'm starting with these pictures.

· First of all, on the screen,

· I work now full time for the North American Mission Board

· and several years ago,

· the North American Mission Board had a display

· at the Southern Baptist Convention in Indianapolis, Indiana.

· Anybody know what Indianapolis is famous for?

· Yeah, yeah, race car driving.

· And so we thought it would be creative and cool

· to have a race car at the display booth.

· What we didn't realize is how mean and mad

· pastors can get when they think we spent

· a bazillion dollars on a race car for the display booth.

· What they did not know is that car

· was just the shell of a car

· with some wheels they borrowed somewhere.

· There was no engine under the hood.

· It'll make sense in a moment.

· How many of you are Ford guys?

· Remember this promotion several years ago

· built Ford tough.

· How many of you are Ford guys in the room?

· It's like you're shy,

· it's like you're ashamed to be a Ford guy.

· It's like, yeah, I admit it, I'm a Ford guy.

· I'm a Chevy guy.

· I don't know why you're lifting your hand like that

· because I always thought Ford stood for failed

· on the road dead or fix a repair daily.

· You Ford guys forgive me afterwards.

· But the point is it doesn't matter

· how nice your truck is,

· how many bells and whistles your truck has.

· What matters is what's under the hood, right?

· You can have the nicest Ford truck,

· the nicest Chevy truck.

· Don't even talk about Teslas.

· Those are not trucks, all right?

· Can we just agree on that?

· That is not a truck.

· It may be a car, a station wagon.

· I don't know, but it is not a truck.

· And so it doesn't matter what you have on the outside.

· What matters is what's on the inside.

· And those illustrations are important

· because they highlight for us a deep spiritual truth

· that I wanna drive home today.

· Here's a key thought to get us started.

· The true measure of our spiritual lives

· depends on what's under the surface.

· The root system, we'll talk about trees in just a moment.

· The root system for trees or the engine for cars.

· What's under the surface or what's under the hood

· is the real measure of a Christ follower.

· It's not the appearance of strength that matters.

· It's the source of strength.

· It's not what people see on the outside.

· It's what is actually working under the hood

· on the inside.

· And so when you reach chapter two of Colossians,

· what you see is Paul is battling false teaching

· that has been leading people astray

· in their spiritual lives.

· And there are three of them specifically

· that I wanna point out to you in chapter two.

· The first false teaching that he is battling

· is ritualism.

· He talks about it in verse 16.

· Therefore, do not let anyone judge you

· by what you eat or drink or with regard

· to a religious festival, a new moon celebration

· or a Sabbath day.

· Why?

· Because these are a shadow of the things

· that were to come.

· The reality, however, is found in Christ.

· And if we're not careful in our spiritual lives,

· we can equate ritualism with the real thing.

· We think how many times we observe communion

· and how we observe communion

· or whether we attend church on the big religious holidays

· like Christmas or Easter.

· Some of those guys are what we call

· in the business creasters.

· They only show up for Christmas and Easter.

· But we have all of these religious rituals

· and what happens is is the ritual becomes the reality.

· And then Paul addresses mysticism in verse 18.

· He says, do not let anyone who delights

· in false humility and the worship of angels

· disqualify you for the prize.

· Such a person goes into great detail

· about what he has seen in his unspiritual mind,

· puffs up with these idle notions.

· He has lost connection with the head

· from the whole body supported and held together

· by its ligaments and sinews grows

· as God calls us to grow.

· He's addressing the issue of mysticism.

· You see, by the time of Paul's writings

· of the book of Colossians,

· the Gnostics have infiltrated Colossae

· and even the church in Colossae

· and they're claiming that they have

· a deeper experience with God.

· They said they had gone further

· and knew more than others did

· and that they were able to help people

· enter a mystical experience whereby

· they would come into contact with the spirit world

· and ultimately would come into contact with God

· in even a deeper way

· than having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

· I would argue that there is a form

· of mysticism floating around churches today.

· Churches that make it more about the show

· than the sermon are flirting

· with a level of mysticism that leads people to think

· that true spirituality is all about

· the feels you get on Sunday when you worship.

· We've said forever,

· if you want a funny feeling, eat bad meatloaf.

· Somebody actually invited me over to meatloaf tonight.

· I don't know if I'm gonna go after that comment

· but feelings can be fickle

· and they can lead you astray

· and then he addresses the issue of legalism.

· The Bible says in verse 20,

· since you died with Christ

· to the basic principles of this world, why?

· As though you still belong to it,

· do you submit to its rules?

· This is legalism.

· Do not handle this and do not taste that

· and do not touch.

· These are all destined to perish with use

· because they are based on human commands and teachings.

· Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom

· with their self-imposed worship,

· their false humility

· and their harsh treatment of the body

· but they lack any value

· in restraining sensual indulgence.

· The opposite of mysticism might be legalism.

· This is the don't do this

· and don't do this crowd

· and don't do this and don't do this preaching.

· Now, I just wanna warn you

· and I think it's important you understand

· when I preach against legalism,

· I'm not preaching in favor of a license to sin

· but simply suggesting that list following

· is not the path to his glory in our lives.

· Legalism can become a plague in the Christian faith.

· Legalism turns the Christian life into misery

· instead into a glorious, wonderful blessing

· that it was intended to be.

· This past summer, there was a picture earlier,

· Pastor Andrew was talking about the internship program

· and I was here one of those Mondays for it

· and I was hanging out with the student ministry track

· and they were talking about preaching and teaching

· and they're talking about all the problems

· and all of the mischief that teenagers can get into.

· You teenagers are really,

· you really struggle with sin that we adults,

· we just don't struggle with at all.

· But I said in that track session,

· I said, you know, I think we have to really be careful

· when we're preaching to teenagers and to adults

· that we don't get into a game of don't do this

· and don't do that.

· I'm now a grandparent of six

· and so I have taken out a second mortgage on my home

· to take my grandkids to fat cats.

· If you've been, you know,

· I mean, it is stinking expensive

· and yet every time one of my grandkids says,

· Papa, can we go to fat cats?

· You know what the answer is?

· Yes, and I've taken a third and fourth job

· to pay for that habit of theirs.

· But at a arcade, most often,

· you always find a game of whack-a-mole, right?

· And they, for some strange reason,

· they like to sit there and hit those silly molds

· that come out of the ground

· and they're playing a great big game of whack-a-mole.

· If we're not careful in church,

· we can fall into the temptation

· of playing games of whack-a-mole.

· Don't do this and don't do that

· and don't do this and don't do that and don't do this.

· And yet it is far from living

· with the glory of God in our life.

· The one thing that stands above all of these isms

· is found in Colossians 1.27 when Paul says to them,

· God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles

· the glorious riches of this mystery

· which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

· Say that with me, Christ in me, the hope of glory.

· Now say it aloud, and we're not getting legalistic here,

· but I would like for you to help me.

· Say it aloud, Christ in me, the hope of glory.

· That is far superior to mysticism,

· to ritualism, and to legalism.

· And so if there is any hope of glory,

· it lies beneath the surface.

· It is the strength that is beneath.

· It is Christ in you and I which is our only hope.

· Legalism in our hope, mysticism is in our hope,

· ritualism is in our hope.

· The only hope we have of glory is Christ in us.

· And Paul's gonna say that is sufficient, that is enough.

· You don't need an addendum,

· you don't need to add on

· to a personal relationship with Christ.

· So Paul's gonna teach us to pursue,

· in verses six and seven, this strength that is beneath.

· And he challenges us to do three or four things

· in order to pursue that strength that is beneath.

· First of all, he challenges us to personally advance.

· Look at verse six.

· So then just as you receive Christ as Lord,

· continue to live in Him.

· That word continue is sometimes translated

· to walk in Him.

· Now if you're a believer today

· and you've come to a place

· where you personally accepted Jesus Christ

· as your Lord and Savior,

· every believer has a salvation story.

· And Paul says you received salvation by faith,

· now you are to continue to walk out

· and build up your salvation by that same faith.

· You see salvation isn't the finish line,

· it is the starting line.

· The word walk here or continue here

· is in the present tense in the Greek language,

· it means keep on walking.

· So this is talking about daily devotion.

· Not a one time decision that you check a box

· and you say I've done it and I'm done with it.

· Eugene Peterson has probably the greatest definition

· of discipleship I've ever read

· when he says discipleship is long obedience

· in the same direction.

· Isn't that good?

· Discipleship is long obedience in the same direction.

· You see you were not saved to set,

· you were saved to walk.

· We are not only remembered when we trusted him

· but also rely on him every single day of our lives.

· Here's the key, salvation isn't just a past event.

· It is true that I was saved.

· That is what we call justification.

· Jesus at that moment forgave me my sin

· and secured my eternity.

· But now I am being saved and you are being saved,

· that's sanctification, that's the place

· that we're all at right now

· if we've accepted Christ as our savior.

· We are growing and being sanctified into his image

· but one day I will be saved, that's glorification

· when we spend eternity with him in heaven.

· So when Paul says walk in him,

· he's saying don't stay still.

· You are to personally advance in your faith.

· Listen, there's something wrong in our spiritual lives

· if we look at our lives today spiritually

· and they look the same as they have

· for the past 20 years.

· There should be progress, there should be development,

· there should be personal advance.

· By the end of this message I'm going to introduce you

· to our official discipleship pathway

· that we're adopting this morning

· at all of our cross church locations

· and it's called a path for a reason.

· A path implies forward movement and forward momentum.

· You see, you don't go to a path to sit.

· You go on it to walk.

· Couple years ago, one of my best friends in all life,

· I met him as a college freshman

· at East Central University ECU, Easy Credit Union,

· my favorite school.

· He talked me in, I had a weak moment,

· he'd been trying to talk me into doing this

· for like four or five years

· and he talked me in on going on a hike

· of the Grand Canyon.

· Now it wasn't a big deal, I'd done that before.

· I mean, previously I'd gotten out of my car,

· I'd hike to the edge, look down,

· hike back to the car.

· It was pretty easy, I didn't think it was a problem.

· But when he said hike the Grand Canyon,

· he meant we were gonna hike

· all the way down to the bottom

· and all the way up to the top,

· about 18, 19 miles.

· That's a long trip for me and my car.

· But we were walking it.

· And they have, if you've ever done that,

· they have this wonderful trail system,

· they have these paths that you hike down

· and you hike across and you hike up.

· These paths are not designed for you to set

· in the middle of the path.

· At least that's what two or three park rangers told me.

· They are designed for you to walk on.

· And so here's the key thought here,

· you don't go to a path or trail to set,

· they are designed to walk

· and I wanna challenge you,

· don't stop where you started.

· If you came to faith in Christ, we celebrate that.

· We're gonna celebrate it in baptism,

· we did in the first service and second service.

· We're gonna celebrate the start.

· But don't stop where you started.

· There should be forward and personal advance.

· It's like in a baseball game,

· if you're a baseball guy, you know,

· you get up the plate, you get a hit.

· You don't just stand at home plate

· and say, well, I got a hit.

· Unless maybe you're Cattell Marte or somebody,

· I don't know, I'm having problems right now

· with our second baseman.

· But you go to first and then you go to second.

· Third, all the way around to home.

· And that's the picture here of personal advance.

· We are to keep going, keep moving, keep advancing.

· Secondly, he says, if we're going to be discipled

· in him, we need to properly abide.

· Look at verse seven.

· Rooted, it says, I'm gonna just stop with that.

· Rooted and built up in him.

· Paul is switching metaphors here.

· He goes from walking to planting.

· He says that you were supposed to be rooted.

· That word rooted literally means firmly fixed.

· It's a word picture that pictures a tree

· with roots that grow deep down into the soil.

· Now, there's two specific ways that we are rooted.

· Well, first of all, we are to be rooted in Christ.

· Jesus himself told us this much in John chapter 15.

· He says, I am the true vine and my father is the gardener.

· He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit

· while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes

· so it will be even more fruitful.

· You are already clean because of the word I've spoken

· to you, remain in me and I will remain in you.

· No branch can bear fruit by itself.

· It must remain or be rooted in the vine.

· Neither can you bear fruit unless you are remaining

· or being rooted in me.

· I am the vine, he says, you are the branches.

· If a man remains or is rooted in me and I in him,

· he will bear much fruit for apart from me,

· you can do nothing.

· We are to be rooted in Christ,

· not in a church program, not in your favorite preacher,

· not in your emotions or dreams, but in Christ Jesus.

· And when that happens, what the psalmist pictured

· in Psalms 1-3 becomes true in our lives.

· We are like a tree planted by rivers of water.

· The idea here is permanence, nourishment,

· because a tree can only grow as tall as its roots go deep.

· And then we are also, it's right here in the text,

· I think, we are to be rooted in community.

· Now I know you talked about this last week,

· but I can't talk about being rooted in Christ

· without also talking about the importance

· of being rooted, not rebuked, but rooted in community.

· He says that we are to be rooted and built up in him,

· in him.

· Paul again switches metaphors.

· We're not only to be rooted,

· but we're to be built up in him.

· Now I know you, like I said, you talked about it

· last week, but as a Christian,

· you cannot grow and be strong in isolation.

· You need Christian community.

· The Bible calls the church the body of Christ.

· You can't be rooted in Christ and not rooted in his body,

· the body of Christ, which is the church.

· If you want to be built up in him,

· you need the body of Christ.

· That's why Paul said in Jude, verse 20,

· but you, dear brothers,

· build yourself up in your most holy faith.

· I've been reading a really interesting book

· the last couple of weeks.

· It's by Peter Willeben.

· It's entitled The Hidden Life of Trees.

· Peter's a German forestry guy.

· I wrote this amazing book.

· It's become an international best seller.

· It was translated into English.

· It's all about the integral work of trees

· and their root and fungal system

· and how they share nourishment one with the other,

· how they procreate as a result of that,

· how they fend off pests and disease

· and how stronger trees help weaker trees.

· And you figured it out.

· I am that old that without even being in a class

· that requires me to read a book like this,

· I've been reading this book and actually enjoying it.

· I'm sorry.

· But here's a quote from the book that applies for us.

· In The Hidden Life of Trees,

· Willeben reveals that trees survive and thrive

· through an interconnected fungal network,

· the wood-wide web,

· where they share resources,

· support struggling neighbors,

· and operate as one integrated system.

· Stronger trees feed weaker ones.

· Resources flow from where they're the most needed.

· The forest resilience, catch this,

· depends on connection, not isolation.

· When I read that out, man,

· that's true of the church, isn't it?

· That's true of us as followers of Jesus.

· Our resilience depends not on isolation,

· but on connection to be rooted in Christ

· and rooted in community,

· being built up in our most holy faith.

· Thirdly, Paul challenges us to powerfully act.

· Look at verse seven.

· He goes on, rooted and built up in him,

· strengthened in the faith that as you were taught.

· Strengthened in the faith.

· I would suggest to you that we are not strengthened

· to set, but to serve.

· Why would he give you strength?

· So you could just endure one of my long sermons.

· Is that the strength you need?

· As a follower of Jesus, I think not.

· You need strength in order to be on the mission

· of Jesus Christ.

· You need strength to lead your family

· in the things of Christ.

· You need strength to make a difference in your community.

· You need strength to win your neighbors to Christ.

· Theirs is the source of strength,

· which is Christ and the reason for that strength

· that he gives us is to serve.

· That's where I think a lot of discipleship classes

· and programs and churches miss the mark

· and where I'm praying this one

· we're about to unpack for you does not.

· In that they are studying just for head knowledge,

· but not for action.

· And we want to design a path that gives you

· the knowledge, but then equips you to serve

· and equips you for a mission and leadership and action.

· I was preaching out last Sunday

· at a small rural church here in Arizona

· and they only had about 30 people,

· great group of people and got there early

· as I normally did for church

· and I struck up a conversation

· with a young 16 year old teenage boy

· who was running the slide show.

· You always want to be friends

· with a guy running the slide show, all right?

· Because they can do you damage

· or they can make you look good.

· So I was talking to the teenage boy

· running the slide show,

· just making small talk before services

· and I asked him, I said,

· so man, what grade are you in?

· And he said, I don't know.

· Like, well, that's a problem.

· Like, you don't know what grade you're in?

· And if you're doing this for your kids, fine,

· but let them know what grade they're in.

· He said, no, I don't know what grade I am.

· I'm homeschooled.

· And I said, well, how do you know when you get out?

· And I really appreciate the honesty of this young boy.

· He said, well, whenever my mom tells me.

· All right, good deal.

· Enough said, gonna leave that conversation alone

· and let that set.

· But it reminded me of Sunday school

· as a kid when I was growing up.

· How many of you grew up going to Sunday school, right?

· I grew up, a lot of you grew up going to Sunday school.

· I never knew when I was graduating from Sunday school.

· I thought after I got out of children's ministry,

· I'd be out of Sunday school.

· Then there was a youth Sunday school class

· and then after I got out of high school,

· there was a college and career Sunday school class

· and when I got out of college and career,

· I was just in career Sunday school class.

· I was in young adult Sunday school class

· and middle age Sunday school class

· and then that Sunday school class

· that all of us have to go to one day

· right before we die, right?

· That's how Sunday school felt.

· It's like, I'm never gonna graduate from this.

· It is just studying without any purpose,

· really seemingly designed behind it.

· Well, that's not what Paul's offering here.

· He's saying you need to have the knowledge,

· you need to be rooted in Christ

· so that you can be strengthened to serve

· and when you start serving,

· here's what I've noticed,

· the sweetest people in our churches

· are those that serve the Lord the most.

· You know that?

· I don't sit in Andrew's chair anymore.

· I used to sit in his chair

· and I'd get all the lovely letters

· and comments from people that have great ideas

· about how things ought to be done in church.

· It's amazing how many people

· that are not doing a single solitary thing in church

· know exactly how the church ought to run.

· It is, you'd be surprised.

· And they're always cranky about stuff.

· But I noticed a long time ago

· that the sweetest, gentlest,

· most loving people in the church

· are those that have their arms and feet

· and hands knee-deep into the work.

· They're invested, they're strengthened

· and as a result of that,

· they are prayerfully appreciative.

· Look at the last part of verse seven.

· And overflowing with thankfulness.

· True discipleship, I think,

· should make us happier and kinder people.

· H.B. Charles says gratitude is the soil

· in which joy grows.

· So with all that understood,

· I wanna take a few moments to unpack

· our new, rooted and ready discipleship pathway

· that we're going to be using all across

· all of our locations starting today.

· I want you to think about it as two sides of the same coin.

· On one side is the rooted side.

· On the other side is the ready side.

· Now we believe that on the rooted side

· there are some things that you need to know.

· Paul spends a lot of time in Colossians

· talking about the importance of knowledge.

· I'm not wanting to minimize that one bit.

· He says in verse two, my purpose is that

· you may be encouraged in heart and united in love

· so that you may have the full riches

· of complete understanding, that's knowledge.

· In order that you may know, that's knowledge,

· the mystery of God, namely in whom

· are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

· So Paul does say that there are some things

· that you need to know.

· Now across church we have three simple delivery systems

· for knowledge.

· First of all is our Sunday services.

· I don't want you to underestimate the importance

· of coming weekly and setting under the preached word

· of God that is preached systematically

· because primarily we preach through the books

· of the Bible verse by verse through books of the Bible.

· So every Sunday when you show up,

· as we did this morning, you pray through the text,

· you praise through the text, you preach through the text

· and then you go out and practice the text.

· We really believe that is foundational

· into the dispensing of knowledge.

· Now it would be one thing if you were coming to church

· that was just a topical church

· and we preached on whatever the preacher

· found out in left field on Friday afternoon.

· But our policy here is to preach through books

· of the Bible systematically.

· If you've been here long you know we've preached

· through almost every book of the New Testament.

· We've preached through first and second Kings

· and Genesis and many, many books of the Old Testament.

· We're getting ready to start a series through Job,

· that's not Job, that's Job in the Old Testament.

· We love preaching through the books of the Bible.

· And so when you come every Sunday,

· you're getting exposed to a balanced diet of God's word.

· Now if you don't come every Sunday,

· that's not our fault that you're getting malnourished

· because your nutrition isn't balanced

· because you come once every four weeks.

· Some of this is on you to track.

· The second system for delivering knowledge

· are Bible groups.

· Now we probably talked about Bible groups last week

· when you talked about community

· and enrolling in Bible groups for the fall session.

· We believe that that community, again,

· as Wilbon said, you're not supposed to be isolated.

· You're going to grow best in connection with others.

· Those Bible groups are simply the week after the sermon,

· re-engaging the same text that you just studied.

· We worked for months almost trying to figure out

· what we were going to call our group ministry here.

· And we said, well, we're not highly creative.

· We said, well, we're going to study the Bible in a group.

· Let's call them Bible groups.

· And it's amazing.

· I think we're the only church that I know of

· that calls their small group ministry Bible groups.

· And we do it for a reason,

· because you're in a group, you're studying the Bible.

· But then there's a third delivery system of knowledge

· that we want to introduce today.

· And that is our Rooted Class.

· And already, every single one of our Bible group leaders

· has gone through this this past year.

· And we're going to continue to take more people through it.

· There'll be classes opening up.

· It'll be more seminar, six-week classes,

· or however it works out on different days of the week

· where you can say, man, I want to just invest some time

· to go deeper into some spiritual disciplines

· of spiritual knowledge that will help me

· be an effective servant.

· That's the Rooted side.

· But don't mess this key thought.

· True discipleship here at Cross Church

· isn't just a class that you pass.

· It is a lifestyle that you live.

· And so that brings us to the other side of the coin,

· the Ready side.

· On the Rooted side,

· we believe there's some things you need to know.

· On the Ready side,

· we think there are some things you need to show.

· Show strength and service and a heart of love

· and appreciation, gratitude, and thankfulness.

· So this talks about your action.

· One talks about your knowledge.

· The other talks about your activity,

· your service, your action.

· Years ago, I was a young pastor at First Baptist Church

· in Miami, Oklahoma, in the extreme northeast part

· of the state.

· First Baptist Church, County Seat Town,

· 100-year-old church, and I was a 30-year-old preacher.

· And when I got there, we started trying to make changes.

· I don't like to change too many things,

· but that was a joke if you've been here very long.

· Changed everything, but we started making some changes

· and it's amazing, you know, when you're 33,

· people think all your changes are dumb.

· When you're 60, everybody thinks,

· oh, he's a wise sage.

· Same changes, just different age, all right?

· And so we started doing some stuff,

· ruffling some feathers, and people around the church

· started telling me before we do this,

· you should talk to this person or that person

· because they are really spiritually mature.

· The ironic thing is, every person they pointed out

· that were terribly mature fell in one of two categories.

· One, they were just stinkin' mean.

· Like, I don't wanna talk to that guy.

· He scares me, he's mean, or that woman, she's mean.

· Or they weren't doing anything.

· They were lazy.

· And yet they had developed the reputation in that church

· just because they'd been around there a long time.

· Is they're really spiritually mature

· even though they were mean and or lazy.

· And so, as a young 33-year-old, I decided I was gonna

· develop a definition for spiritual maturity

· that we could work off of.

· And we started, several years ago, that definition.

· I still carry it today.

· Here it is, and I want you to kinda overlay

· this on the message today.

· Spiritual maturity is determined by the degree

· to which the fruit of the spirit,

· that's love, joy, peace, kindness, self-control,

· all of those fruit of the spirit

· is exemplified in your life.

· And the gifts of the spirit

· are being exercised in your life.

· And so I built this definition,

· and I basically said, you're not spiritually mature

· if you don't have the fruit of the spirit

· and you're not exercising the gifts of the spirit.

· If you're not doing anything and or if you're mean.

· You're off the spiritual maturity spectrum, all right?

· And that's the goal of Rooted and Ready.

· To say we want you to exemplify the fruit

· of the spirit through deep knowledge in him

· and exercise the gifts of the spirit

· being rooted and now ready.

· And as you unpack this in the days ahead,

· you're gonna see in the next two sermons here

· are about being ready for mission

· and ready for leadership.

· Now there's a QR code on the screen.

· I want you to grab your phone.

· Everybody grab your phones.

· Don't pretend like you didn't bring your phone to church.

· I know you did.

· And I want you to scan this QR code

· because this will take you

· to the Rooted and Ready material.

· We've worked over in year putting this together.

· There's a forward facing element that you see

· but behind the scenes there's a operating system

· for this in which we're actually measuring

· every single one of you in our database.

· Have you been through Rooted?

· Are you ready for mission?

· We're not gonna send missionaries

· out on mission trips any longer

· just because they wanna go to some cool place.

· They need to be ready to share.

· They need to be serving in their local church.

· They need to be doing it here.

· If you're not doing it here,

· you're not gonna do it well there.

· And then our leadership track,

· ready for leadership before you get invited

· to any of the in-depth leadership stuff going on

· like apprenticeships and residencies

· and leading a ministry, there's some qualifiers.

· What we are doing today is raising the bar

· of expectation for activity in the life of our church.

· Why?

· Because we do not want you to stop where you started.

· And we are inviting you to go on a journey today,

· to get on the path, to go on a great adventure

· in which you not only, it changes your life,

· but God uses you to change the lives of hundreds

· and thousands of other people through your ministry

· as a faithful follower of Jesus Christ.

· We're about to celebrate someone who's starting today

· through baptism, but we don't want them to stop

· where they start, and neither do we want that for you.

· Let's pray together.

Part of Series

Rooted and Ready

Rooted and Ready

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More from this series

Rooted in Community

Rooted in Community

37:51

 Rooted in Worship

Rooted in Worship

39:15

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