 That don't get you wound up in church, I don't know what will. Hey, good morning. How's everybody doing? It's good to see everybody last weekend. I was here on video, but I was actually in Kentucky at our radiant church in Brandonburg, Kentucky. And I just want to give you guys a great report. They are just now celebrating two years old as a church. They had 632 people in church on Sunday and over 60 decisions to make Jesus the Lord of their lives in two services. So they're doing phenomenal. They wanted to say hello to all of you. They're a radiant family in Kalamazoo. And then again, I'm just going to reiterate, Easter is coming up in a couple weeks. Everybody ready for Easter? And here's what I need. I need a lot of the 11 a.m. service folk to say I will be a missionary to either the 830 or the 1230. Now, my faith tells me 1230 might be a better fit for the 11 a.m. How many of you today with every head up and every eye looking around will say, Pastor, I will consider coming to the 1230 or the 830 a.m. service to make room for other people who will all come at the 1030 service. Raise your hand if you'll consider it prayerfully with an angelic visitation, you may make that move. Thank you. I really appreciate that. That will be helpful. Last year, just to give you an idea on Easter, between our two campuses, we had 7,000 people come to church and we had about 300 people who couldn't fit into the sanctuary in the middle service. So that's probably going to happen again. That's a good thing, but we need everybody's help to make that make it work. So if you have your Bibles with you this morning, open them up to Colossians chapter 2. And by the way, if you have your Bible, raise your hand. Raise your hand if you brought a Bible to church. Awesome. I'm so proud of you. Raise your hand if your Bible is on your phone or your smart, intellectual, technological device. Raise your hand. I'm so proud of you. How many of you have a Bible, but it's at home and now you wish you had brought it? Raise your hand. I am so proud of you. I'm just proud of all of you. All right. Colossians chapter 2, we're looking at verses number 6 through 8. And here's what it says. It says, As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith. As you have been taught abounding in it with thanksgiving, beware lest anyone cheat you or take you captive through philosophy and empty deceit according to the traditions of men and according to the basic principles of the world and not according to Christ. This is part three of our series entitled Flourish. For those of you who may be new and joining us, Flourish, the idea of Flourish is that God has created an environment for everything in which he's created to flourish. God's an environmentalist. So for the birds of the air, he created the air. For the fish, he created the water. For the plants, he created the soil. And for Christians, he created the house of God, the church. The church is a spiritual soil, a spiritual environment. And when we plant our lives in the soil of the church, as it says in Psalm chapter 92, the righteous who are planted in the house of the Lord will flourish. They'll be fruitful. Even in old age, they'll be green and fruitful. In other words, your life at its apex of its purpose and meaning will be measured and determined by the soil you've planted your life in. And the environment that God's created for all of us to flourish as Christians, as children of God, is in the house of God. It's the local church. And today is part one of two parts. This week and next week, the title of the message is Roots, Shoots, and Fruits. Everybody practice that with me. Say Roots, Shoots, and there you go. That was really weak, but we're going to try it one more time. Ready? Say Roots, say Shoots, and Fruits. And this morning, actually, I was going to preach part one of this this week, but actually I've reversed the order, and I'm going to talk about something that I really felt was on the heart of the Lord to share first, because I think it's an issue that if we deal with this issue head on, it will really help us do what I'm going to talk about next week, which is about discovering how God has wired you spiritually and gifted you and what you have to offer and what God has deposited on the inside of you to make the church healthy and whole and fruitful. But this morning, we're zeroing in on these words that the Apostle Paul talked about, about being rooted and being planted or being rooted and, as it says here, built up in Him. We're going to be talking about the fact that God desires each and every one of us to not just become a believer in Jesus, but to actually get rooted and built up in Him. And what does that look like? See, I believe with all of my heart that God has a design for your life. I believe that my life, your life, the eight billion other people on the planet, that God created them for a purpose even before they took their first breath. And obviously, that purpose starts with making Jesus the Lord of their lives. That's how we have this relationship with our God, with our Creator. But after that, God also has a design for what we do with our lives. And his design for your life, as they're going to put up here on the screen, is that God wants you to flourish as a child of God in the way that we do that is by planting deep roots, by growing tall shoots, so that we can produce good fruit. God wants us to put deep roots down. And when we talk about deep roots, we're talking about putting deep roots down into our relationship with God, deep roots into God's Word, because what we put our roots in is what we draw from. And here's what I fear. I fear that you and I living as North American, 21st century, Western thinking Christians, that we maybe only skim the surface of biblical truth, because many of the illustrations that God uses to teach us kingdom principles are agricultural in nature. And we're not agricultural, are we? I mean, in Jesus' day, 80% of the people were farmers. You and I, maybe 1% of us are farmers. You know, I can pretty much kill anything that's green. Some people have a green thumb. I can kill green carpet. I mean, it's, and so we don't always understand agricultural principles in our world. And in American culture, here's what we're used to. We're used to, if you ask your kids, your children, when they're small, like we used to, where do you get your food from? Most of your kids will say, the grocery store. They don't understand that before it ever hits the shelves of the produce section of Myers, it starts as a seed that has to go into the ground that needs to be watered, that needs sunlight and that over a period of time below the surface, it's putting roots down into the soil so that it can grow. And then it puts forth a shoot and it goes through seasons of maturity. And ultimately it puts its branches out in the right season and it produces flowers, blossoms that then produce fruit. And then a farmer comes along, takes the fruit, sells it to the grocery store and it's on the shelves for you. Now, we're used to, I want to buy something in a box, add water to it, hit 30 seconds on the microwave, stir it, and I've got a gourmet meal. See, we want instant gourmet and we don't realize that most of the things that we take for granted that are instant really were created or formed in a process that takes a lot longer and a lot more work than what we're used to. And can I just tell you something? God is a God of process. God's a God of process and what starts as a decision in our life to follow Jesus sets us on a journey of a process. You are not going to be a spiritual giant in 24 hours. I wish it were so. I mean, one of my favorite movies of all time is The Matrix. Anybody seen that movie? I mean, Keanu Reeves, it's an old movie, but it's kind of futuristic, but he's sitting on this chair and he says, I need to teach you some things. And he's like, I want to teach you kung fu. He's like, I don't know kung fu. And he goes, oh, that's no problem. He plugs them in and downloads a program and he's like, I know kung fu. How many would love that? Wouldn't that be awesome if you could just be like download, put a USB port into your head and all of a sudden go, man, I wish I knew the Bible. Oh, that's all right. You can know the Bible. Take a USB port, plug it in. All of a sudden you're just like, you're quoting the Bible like Alexander Scorby in a British accent in King James English. In the beginning, gold created the heavens and the earth and the earth was without form and void. I mean, wouldn't that just be awesome? But doesn't happen that way. Wouldn't it be nice if you could put a USB port in your head and all of a sudden you're spiritually mature and you treat people nice all the time? How many have somebody you'd like to slip that USB port into? But it doesn't happen instant. It happens in a process. And the process is much like an agricultural process. We have to have the seed planted into our hearts, but we have to put roots down. And that's what Paul say. I want you to get rooted. I want you to get rooted. I want you to spend more time in God's presence, more time in God's word, more time with God's people. Because listen, there's two environments that you need in order for you to flourish, in order for you to get deep roots, grow tall shoots, and ultimately produce fruit. You need two things. Number one, you need God's house and God's word and God's people. You need these two things, His word and His people, because His word is the truth, but you need people that teach you. And it's not always the guy up on the stage who's teaching you. A lot of times the teaching is the interaction that we have throughout life, our relationships. That's where we learn the most. It's these two arenas that we need so that we can produce fruit. That's ultimately God's goal for your life, is that you would be fruitful. Jesus said in John chapter 15 to His disciples, you didn't choose me, I chose you so that you might go and bear fruit and that your fruit would remain. In other words, Jesus said, I picked you for one purpose so that I could send you and that as you go, you would be fruitful in the process. Now listen, we've got to realize God is a God of process and you and I therefore need to be people of process, giving ourselves to the process, which means we need to spend, we need to realize that there's a maturing process that we need to be a part of, we need to be around God's people, we need to be in God's house, we need to be in God's word, and we need to welcome God's presence in our life. And you do that enough and you begin to grow and mature and develop and become more like Jesus. And when you become more like Jesus, then you begin to act more like Jesus and that's the fruit. You begin to do the works of God. You begin to think like God. You begin to treat people like God. How many know that our world would be a different place? There were just more people acting like Jesus. But just as much as God has a design for your life, the enemy has a design for your life to keep you from getting rooted and established in the faith. Now listen to me, this is where the rubber hits the road. As much as God has a design for your life, the enemy has a counter design and here's his design. Satan's design for your life is to get a root of bitterness growing inside of you so that you never get rooted and grow in Jesus in the church. He wants to get a root of bitterness growing inside of you before God's word ever begins to take root on the inside of you and you begin to grow in his word, in your relationship with him, and in your relationship with others. He wants to get you bitter. He wants to get you offended. And right now I see that on a massive scale. A lot of people are writing articles about how Christians are leaving the church and saying, I've got a relationship with God but I don't need the church. Listen, let me tell you something. I get that because if you've been alive for any length of time and gone to church more than once, odds are you've probably been offended. If you think you're gonna get through life without being offended, you need to go live in a cave some place because your first interaction with a human being is going to result in offense. You're going to get offended. Anybody ever been offended in this place, raise your hand right now. Somebody right now is offended. I'm even asking you if you've ever been offended. I can't believe he'd ask me if I raised my hand in church. I'm not that kind of Christian. So you just got offended. We get offended. And what we're seeing, what everybody's talking about, articles are being written, I believe it's actually, we're seeing the physical manifestation of a demonic strategy against what Jesus is building in the earth in these last days, which is a victorious unified spirit-empowered mission-driven church. And his strategy is to get Christians offended because if you get offended, there's the seed of offense produces a root of bitterness that then produces bad fruit and it isolates and it dislocates us from the rest of the body and then we're ineffective. And we're seeing it. People are talking about it's like younger people are offended at the church. They don't want to go there. People are offended at the politics of the church. People are offended at the hypocrisy within the church. Can I just tell you that Jesus never promised to build a perfect church, but he did promise to build a perfecting church. It's because the way that God builds a perfect, spotless, wrinkleless church is we learn how to not be offended. The greatest tactic that the enemy has against your life is offense. And we've all been offended. I've been offended. I pastor 4,000 people. I get offended on a regular basis. I do. It's like not you guys. I mean you guys are all wonderful. None of you have ever offended me. I love all of you. You're here on time change weekend. It's like I'm there pastor. It's like you guys are navy seals. You're here. It's all those people that are sleeping in and watching the live stream right now. Hi everybody. I'm offended at you. Not really. I love you. So glad you're tuning in. Not really. Okay, so we all get offended. We get offended. Sometimes we get offended for the wrong reasons. Sometimes we justly have been injured by other people. It doesn't matter why we get offended. The reality is that we do. And it's what we do with offense. And if we allow the enemy to get a seed of offense to take root in us, that root then becomes bitterness. It's interesting that the Bible has a lot to say actually about offense. Because a lot of times here's what happens. When we get offended, we don't call it offense. Well, that person really irritated me. I'm not offended. I'm just irritated. No, you're offended. I really don't like that message. A message really rubbed me the wrong way. No, you're offended. It's not an issue of whether you get offended. It's what you do when you are offended. That makes all the difference in the world. Because you need to understand the essence of offense. Jesus actually talked about offense several different times. Matthew 18, Jesus said this. He says, woe to the world because of offenses. Offenses must come. One translation says it's inevitable that offenses will happen. So think about that. Woe to the world because offenses happen. The Bible talks a lot about offenses. It says that a brother who's offended is harder to win back than a walled city. The power of offense. And the reason why it's so powerful is because of what offense really is. Some translations of the Bible use the word temptation. They say, woe to the world because of temptations. It's kind of there, but it's not the best translation. Other Bible translations say woe to you because of offenses. But the real word for offenses is actually interesting. And it's why I have this animal trap here. It's because the word offense is actually related to an animal trap. This is actually used to catch a fairly large animal like a raccoon or a possum. If anybody ever walked out to your garbage bin, popped open the lid, and there's a possum staring at you going, it's not a pleasant thing or a raccoon or whatever. That's when you call guys with this. Say, I've got a pest that needs to be captured. So how this works is obviously you have the trap and you're trying to lure the prey into the cage. And a buddy of mine who does this says he uses marshmallows. He sets marshmallows so that the possum or the raccoon will come in. And there is this mechanism on the back that is a trap. So as soon as pressure is applied to this, when they step on it to get the bait, the door shuts. And now you have a captive. Now this trigger mechanism right there, that as soon as pressure is applied to it, and the animal actually takes the bait off of it and it triggers that door to shut, is actually a Greek word called scandalon. And the way that the Bible translates scandalon is offense. So the word offense means a trigger that has been baited by the enemy. So that if you take the bait, if you enter into offense and you take the bait, a trigger mechanism happens that actually makes you what Colossians 2 says is a captive. Beware lest anyone take you captive or cheat you through philosophies, human way of thinking worldly perspectives. So when we get offended, literally what happens is, if we're not careful, if we don't deal with offense properly, we become captives and we get trapped. The actual word there of being taken captive, better translated means to kidnap someone, to take someone captive for the purpose of trafficking them. How many have ever heard of human trafficking? It's one of the big issues of a global society with the speed of transportation and open borders that we have is that we have a huge human trafficking issue in our world. There are more slaves right now alive on planet earth than at any other time in human history. And a very large portion of them are sex slaves that have been promised. Here's what happens. Eastern Europe is a big one. By the way, Radiant Church, we support a ministry called A21. That sole purpose is to help women in sex trafficking be set free and then to bring them out and to disciple them in the love of God and help them get free. And so you guys do that on a monthly basis, whether you know that or not. But a lot of times what happens is they'll lure a vulnerable woman or man or young man and with the promise of a better future, they say, you know what? If you leave Estonia and you come over here into the Czech Republic, we've got a job for you. And so bring your passport. We're going to give you a job in the hotel industry or in acting or something like this. So they leave home with their family behind and they come there. As soon as they get off of the plane or off of the train, they immediately take their passport and they imprison them and then they threaten them and they manipulate them in order to control them and they turn them into servants, whether it's work slaves or even sex trafficking. And they always hold something over their head by which they won't try and escape. And they've become captivated by someone who has the intent of trafficking them for their own purposes. Can I tell you that Satan is the ultimate human trafficker? And he loves to traffic Christians. And here's why. Because just as much as you as a fruitful, flourishing Christian are the greatest expression to a lost and dying world of the goodness of God. An offended Christian is the absolute best anti-witnessing tool that Satan has in the world today to cause other unbelievers who might be considering Jesus Christ as the way the truth in the life. If they look at our lives and we're full of bitterness and we're isolated and we're dislocated from the rest of the church and we're bitter on the inside and it's coming out in our actions, it's coming out in our hypocrisy, it's coming out in our lack of spiritual maturity, then a lot of people look at us and say, if that's Christianity, I won't have any part of it. And it's because we've been taken captive. And the way we get taken captive is we've taken the bait of Satan and we've allowed ourselves to trigger the scandal on in our life and become captivated by offense. Now can I just tell you, a lot of us, it doesn't just have to be in relationship to just a friend to get offended. That's typical. The arena is where we get offended, our twofold. Number one, we get offended in relationships with one another and we get offended in relationship with God. The very two environments that I said at the very beginning that we need in order to flourish, we need people and we need God. We need the word of God and we need people are the very environments that we most often get offended. Do you know that a lot of us get offended at God? We may not say it, but we get offended because sometimes God's word is very difficult. Has anybody figured that out? This is hard. This is hard sometimes. Forgive your enemies. Who wants to forgive that? I'd rather blow them up. Forgive them. Pray for those who spitefully use you. You mean I'm not supposed to blast off on them on social media in a passive aggressive way without mentioning their names but describing them? What's up with that? You know what though? That's human tradition. That's the ways of the world. That's the way the world reacts because the world's offended. Do you know the world's offended at the cross? Galatians 5 says that the very message of the cross itself is an offense. It's an offense. You tell them because listen, the message of the cross is not just that Jesus died for the sins of the world. The counterpart of that is you're the reason Jesus had to go to the cross. For some people that offends them. For some people it offends them that they actually need God. They need a savior. They call it a crutch. But then we get offended at God's word. Do you know that even Jesus' disciples got offended at him? John chapter 6 verse 61 it says, or in 60 and 61 it says, many of his disciples when they heard what he had to say they said to him, this is a hard saying. Who can understand it? And then Jesus knew in himself that his disciples complained about this. He said to them, does this offend you? Can I be brutally honest as your pastor? There's times where I'm studying the scriptures and I've spent my life studying the Bible. There's times where I read it and I'm still offended. I'm like, God, that makes no sense. If I were God I would not have written that. God's not looking for my advice by the way. And the Bible would be a much different book and the world would be a much different world if I was God. You should all be grateful I am not God. But there are times where I actually stumble. I get tripped up on things that I read. It's like, okay God you're a healer. I believe you heal. Explain to me why that person that I prayed for didn't get healed. You know what God, I'm a little offended by this. If you love the whole world and your son gave his life so that anyone who calls upon the name of the Lord should be saved. Why isn't everybody saved? Those things hurt me. They hurt my heart. And it's in moments of misunderstanding whether it's with God or other people that we are most likely to be offended. It's when we don't have all the information. It's when we don't know why. It's when our expectations have not been met. It's not just with God. It's even in church. This is why people, this is where the enemy comes in and says, oh God wants you to flourish in the house of God. So I got to do everything I can get you out of the house of God because you're ineffective. You're going to make it into heaven. You're just never going to fulfill your purpose because you're not connected to the rest of the body of Christ in a meaningful way. And there's something that God has put on the inside of you that's atomic and nuclear that if you ever get plugged into the local church on a grand scale, I'm telling you what the church would thrive. The world would look different. Needs would be met. So how do I keep this individual or these group of people out of the house of God? Well, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to get them massively offended. And if I get them massively offended, they'll be sidelined over here and it happens all the time. I don't like church because I don't like organizations. I don't like the music. Why do we have to sing the same verse over and over and over again? Why can't we sing a new verse? Until you get the last verse memorized and actually doing it, we're not going to sing a new verse. And sometimes we need to sing it over and over so that it gets into our heart and we ruminate on it over and over and over again. Why do we have to have drums and electric guitars? How come we can't be holy and have a pipe organ in church? Like all respectful Christians. Do you know that when pipe organs were introduced into the church the first time, they were called the instrument and the organ of Satan. But you do it enough, now everybody's like, Almighty fortresses. But that's holy. There will come a day 200 years from now at the Lurch of Terry when somebody gets up on stage with an electric guitar like I like, and they're going to go, that is so old fashioned. Why can't we have hoverboard worship? Musicians shooting all over the room on hoverboards and holograms of the pastor and all kinds of other people all over the place and we're going to be, and then there will come a day when that's old fashioned. But we get offended at silly stuff like that. Well, I don't understand the decision. Why did we choose this carpet? How come we don't have pews and not churches? Why do we have to have pastors and leaders? How come this person talks this much? How come we only sing this much? And why is it, it's like, the enemy uses all kinds of stuff to get people offended at the church, to get people that offended at one another, to get people offended at God. And all the while here's what he's doing. He's putting marshmallows going, come on in here, my little pretty. And then bam! And then you get taken captive and he's like, another one bites the dust. That guy's going to be ineffective. He's cheated. That's what the Bible says, cheated and not able to grow and not able to mature. Turn with me over in your Bibles if you would to Hebrews chapter 12. I'll show you what happens when a fence occurs. Here's what happens below the surface. It's kind of like that agricultural picture. If you plant a seed, just like Pastor John said earlier, you don't dig it up every two days to see what's going on underneath. You distrust what's happening. But most of the time we think about the positive spiritual side, but we negate the negative spiritual side of what happens to us as well. Because listen, the word of God is a seed planted into the soil of your heart. When it's watered and it's nurtured, it will ultimately produce the fruits of righteousness. But a fence is also a seed. And look what it produces under the surface. Hebrews 12 verse 12, it says, Therefore, lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees and make straight paths for your feet so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. Strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God. Look at this, that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble and by it many become defiled. That no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau who sold his birthright for a single meal. For you know that afterwards, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected for he found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears. Here's what we know from this, is this, that offense is a seed planted by hell in critical moments of our lives for the express purpose of producing bitterness. It's a seed planted by hell at critical moments of our life. Most of the time those critical moments when we get offended are what spiritually the Bible refers to as darkness. It's in dark times of our life. Jesus said this in Matthew 13 when he was teaching on the parable of the seed in the sower. He's talking about the seed being the word of God and God being a farmer who's planted seed in the living translation it says Matthew 13 verse 25, but at night as the workers slept his enemy came and he didn't plant a seed of wheat but he planted tears or weeds. Notice when the enemy does it, the enemy does it at night. Why? Because at night we're not looking for it. At night it's hard to see. At night it's hard to have perception and when we're in a moment we're either because of our pride or because of becoming a victim to someone else's actions. We're in a state where we can't see properly. We don't understand. We don't perceive properly. It's a night. It's a critical moment. It's a tipping point of our lives. That's when the seeds of offense get planted into the soil of our heart and that's when we're most vulnerable to becoming bitter. And I'll tell you what, there's nothing worse than a bitter Christian. It's bad enough to just be human and bitter, but to be a Christian is bitter. It's just so painful because here's what happens when you get bitter. When you get bitter, you get dislocated. You get isolated and your heart grows hard. It's what the writer of Hebrew says. He says make sure. He's talking about relationships. He says make sure. Strive for peace with everybody, but he says make sure that those parts of the body, those joints, don't get dislocated, but make sure that they get healed. Do you know that when it comes to the church the way that Jesus described or that Paul describes under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of how God sees and how he builds the church as he calls it a body? We're all members of a body, but a body is held together by joints. Ephesians 4 says that the body of Christ grows when every part of the body is doing its share. And it's healthy when every part is providing what only it can provide, when every joint is connected at the right place. See it's you're a member, somebody else is a member where we meet is called joints. And when our interactions and our relationships and our differences and our humanness begin to rub against each other and move in opposite ways, sometimes there's a sprain or a dislocation that happens. And if you've ever dislocated something in your body how many know you better get it healed quick because otherwise infection sets in, swelling sets in, and it can actually set that way. When I was in sixth grade I broke my knuckle on my hand and it was one of the most painful things I've ever done. It looked like my knuckle was back here on my wrist and so my whole hand swelled up and my knuckle was back here. My stepdad was kind of old school. He's just like, oh, he just bruised it really bad. Ain't no problem. My finger was down here. It was like my whole finger got jammed in. It was terrible. I think I broke my hand and he's like, ah, you're good. I couldn't play basketball that year because I couldn't dribble. I couldn't shoot. And it didn't get better. Eventually I had to go to the doctor and he's like, oh man, this is jammed and sprained really bad. You really probably should have had, you know, should have come in here weeks earlier. And it took twice as long to heal because it wasn't addressed early on. And that's what he's saying is, look, be careful that there's, when there are these moments in the body of Christ where offense happens that we don't get dislocated because when you get dislocated it hurts. And then you walk around with a limp on it. If you've ever sprained an ankle, you walk around it. You try not to put pressure on it. Has anybody ever sprained an ankle before raise your hand? Athletes in the room. Look at everybody has, right? My basketball coach and my small Bible college that I played in, I sprained both of my ankles in the same practice like came down from a rebound and had my shoes laced up and both my ankles rolled and you could hear a pop. My coach is like, you'll be good. He says, come tomorrow. So my ankles were like huge. And he says, well, here's what we're going to do. He says, when you go back to your room, get a five gallon bucket, fill it up with ice and water and put your feet in five minutes in, two minutes out, five minutes in, two minutes out. And I'm like, oh yeah, great. I've put ice on my ankles before. He's like, no, you need ice buckets. So I go back to my room. It's the most painful thing I've ever done in my life was to put, I thought to sprain her, but putting your ankles into the bucket of ice was like, it just, it kills. I couldn't take it. And my roommate, he's just dumb. He's like, it ain't that bad. I'm like, I dare you, Kyle, put your head in this thing. I bet you five bucks. You won't put your head in this thing for a minute. I'll do it. So he had this big old pumpkin size noggin. He put that thing down into the bucket and 30 seconds later he came up vomiting all over because his brain was shutting down from the ice. It's like, you obviously did not take biology class. So I'd go to practice and my coach would ice bucket, electric shock therapy onto it, and then he would tape it, put a Suido lace up brace on an air cast, and then I wore Reebok pumps and I waddled down the floor like this and then ice buckets. Eventually I had to just stop playing because pounding on sprained ankles like that makes it worse. Do you know that if our hearts are offended, it causes us to be dislocated from the body? Listen, there are so many of us that are just dislocated. We might even be in the church, but it is dislocated because there's been an injury. There's been a wound. Somebody's hurt you. A pastor's hurt you. A system has hurt you. Maybe you believed one of the philosophies that Paul's talking about here. Don't be cheated by philosophies, empty philosophies. One of the philosophies that's running rampant right now is, I can be a Christian and I don't have to go to church. You can be a Christian and make it to heaven, but you will never fulfill your purpose on earth because you need the rest of the body of Christ. There are a lot of people who believe that and they're walking around dislocated in sprain and I get it because we've all been hurt. We've all been hurt. There's this pastor. His name is Paul Young-ee Cho. He's the pastor of the largest church in the world. I want you to picture this. 750,000 members. Picture that. I mean, three quarters of a million members in Seoul, Korea. He was asked one time at a conference, Pastor Cho, I heard that you pray four hours every day. How did you get to that spiritual precipice? I love his answer. He said, I don't pray four hours a day because I'm spiritual. I pray four hours a day because I hate so many people. I hate them because you're going to get offended. Somebody's going to step on you. You're going to have an opportunity. Listen, the enemy has set bait for you. In your relationship with God, in your relationship with others, and in your relationship with the church. He wants to keep you isolated in a trap where you can't do any damage. He never wants the gifts and the callings of God on the inside of you to ever flourish in the house of God. He doesn't want you to flourish in relationships. There's going to be triggers that you are going to be tempted to take the bait and set the trap and become captives. But the one thing that you and I as Christians have to be exceedingly good at is two things. Two things that are most important to follow Jesus. Number one is believe, and number two is forgive. Believe so that our heart doesn't become hard. Believe the best in each other. Believe in the power of forgiveness because let me tell you something about forgiveness. There's one door to your heart to forgiveness. One door. And that door has to be open for you to receive forgiveness. But it also has to be open for you to give forgiveness. And if you shut the door and say, I refuse to forgive, you shut the door not only on the forgiveness that you have to offer, but you've also slammed the door in your ability to receive forgiveness. That's why the Bible says 23 different times forgive one another. Bear with one another. Forgive one another. Bear with one another. We have to be good at forgiving in order to be set free from the root of bitterness. Lest it grows deep roots on the inside of us and takes us over. And then we begin to defile other people. Impact, influence other people negatively. And then believe. We have to be able to believe God. God, I don't want a Hebrews 3 hard heart where I don't enter into the promises of God because of my evil heart of unbelief. He says, today if you hear his voice, listen to it. Today, if you read his word, believe. Trust and believe. Believe God. God, I may not understand your word. I may not understand what you were doing in this season of my life. I may not understand why you allowed me to go through this painful circumstance in my life. Because like you, there's been things in my life where I look back and say, God, where were you? And I was tempted to get offended. God, why did you let this happen to me? God, why does your word say one thing on my experience tells me something else? I've got a decision when that happens. Am I going to get offended at God or am I going to believe? Believe even when I don't understand. Believe that he's good even when I don't have all the answers. Believe that his word is true no matter what other people say. Believe in the potential that God has put on inside of people that offend me. Believe, listen, they may not be who they're going to be yet, but God ultimately knows where he's taking them. And maybe I'm part of the process for them. Maybe they're part of my process. Maybe they're the chisel that God, the master artist is using to chisel away the spare granite in order to reveal the masterpiece that he's created me locked up in this block of marble. Got to be good at believing and forgiving. Stand up with me all over this room if you would. Our responsibility, church, is this. Proverbs 4 says, guard your hearts with all diligence. Guard your heart. Tend the garden of your heart because out of it flows the issues of life. Out of it springs forth the fruit of your life. Guard it. Guard it from offense. Guard it from bitterness. Guard it from unbelief because you were designed to flourish. You were designed to do one thing, to go and to bear fruit. You were designed for legacy that your fruit would remain. You were designed to reflect the nature of your God. We can't do that when we're trapped. We're held captive and we're cheated. I want you to bow your heads with me all over the room if you would in a moment in a position, a posture of prayer. Because I believe with all my heart that our good and our gracious Father stepped into the room this morning. And when he steps into the room he's always got an agenda. Jesus told us in Luke 4, the spirit of the Lord is upon me and has anointed me to set captives free. This morning God is here to set captives free. The first step in being set free is believing in Jesus. Jesus said whoever believes in me will be free. He who the Son sets free is free indeed. And I believe that some of us in this room, our relationship with God, maybe you've never had, you've never received Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. Ask them to come into your life. Forgive your sins. Sit on the throne of your heart and said, I belong to you now. You've been carrying around your guilt, your shame, your sin, trying to fix yourself. And all you need to do is surrender and believe that Jesus is Savior, that he's Lord of your life. Some of us in this room, we've prayed that prayer before, but maybe because of offense, maybe because of pride, we've walked away from God. We've walked away and become like the prodigal Son that's living for ourselves, out in the world, doing our own thing. And now we're waking up in the pig pen and realizing I've made a mess of my life and I need to get back. I need a new beginning, a fresh start. God, would you ever forgive me? Would you ever receive me back? And today, he's here to say, yes, if you'll come home, I'll give you a new heart, a new beginning. You can start following me all over again. You're not right with God, but today you can be right. This morning with nobody looking around in this room, if that's you today, either one, you've never made Jesus Lord of your life and you want to today. You want to become a Christian, a follower of Jesus. You want to be forgiven and know that your sins are forgiven and heaven's your home. Or you're a prodigal and you've walked away, but today you know you need to come home and get your life right with God all over the room. Either one of those are you. You know you're not right with God, but you say, I want to today. Won't you just raise your hand? We're going to pray together. Just raise it right now. Yes, yes, yes. I see the hand. Thank you. Appreciate your honesty. I see your hand all the way in the back there. Keep it up. I see your hand. God bless you. Yes, sir. All the way in the back there. To my left, if you've not raised it, come on. There's a young person in this room right now. You're 19, 20 years old, a young man, and you've got a history of being in the church, but your heart was injured by some things that you saw and it's been bitter. And today the Lord wants you to know he's here specifically into my left in this section to set you free. If you'll step out, God says to you, he will heal your heart and reactivate the purpose and the calling of God on your life. If that's you, I want you to just raise your hand. Come on. It's time to get your life right with God. I see your hand. God bless you. Thank you. Here's what I want us to do right now. I want us all to just bow our heads and out loud, I want us to say this prayer as a confession before Jesus. Say this with me. Say, Heavenly Father, I come in Jesus' name and I believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that he died on the cross to pay my sin's price, and he was raised from the dead, victorious over sin, victorious over hell, and victorious over the grave. Jesus, come into my heart. Be the King of my life. Be my Savior. Wash my heart clean. Give me a new beginning. From this day forward, I turn my back on my past. I turn my back on my old path, and today I choose to follow you. Thank you for loving me and accepting me and forgiving me in Jesus' name. Amen. If you just prayed that prayer, welcome to the family of God. You're a brand new creation.