JOIN A TEAM!

Sunday Recap: August 21, 2022
Pastor Nate Levering

What a Sunday! Church, it was so fun to plan the whole day with YOU in mind. For months, our team continued to ask: What does our church family need? How do they feel most connected? What matters to them? And piece by piece, we absolutely loved spending that time together. From the wee morning hours as the Worship team practiced and prayed over you all, to the tri-tip served lake side, we sure hope you felt every ounce of love because you sure are loved.

We hope you caught the sermon on Sunday (watch here). From Genesis, the very beginning, we hear God's call to serve. The heartbeat of Join A Team Sunday is to RECONNECT as a church body around the hope and promise of Jesus' goodness as we choose to serve. I think about Nate Milnik's message last week and now think of serving much like a response to our faith. What do you see serving to be?

My parents live in the South Bay Area and started a non-profit, using horses to aid in the rehabilitation of veterans, persons with disabilities and various other groups. The program runs primarily on volunteers. After all these years, I am still blessed by those who step in to help serve alongside my parents knowing I cannot be there. Their stories of why they chose to help vary, from needing a personal connection, to having always loved horses, having had a family member serve in the Armed Forces, or simply needing to get out of the house to change up their work-from-home routine. Whatever their reasons, it is never lost on me when they share just how much they receive from serving. And serving at the ranch isn't always glorious. Many times, it's scooping manure. So how is it that when we serve, it is us who are also blessed?

Mark 10:45 tells us, "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many". Something incredibly and miraculously, wildly different about the God we serve is that it was He first, who led by serving. The heart of God is so kind and generous that He could consider us. I believe it's that heart, that by grace, we are filled when we serve Him. For Pastor Nate, he was struck suddenly aware of the shift to become the kind of person who desired to lean in to what God wanted for him in serving after going to the movies for free in college. (You'll have to listen). For myself, I was also in college. I was given the opportunity to serve in Peru on a missions trip with the church I attended in San Jose with a group of fellow college students. This trip was filled with work projects around and for an orphanage in Pucallpa, about an hour and a half from Lima. I knew we'd be painting. I knew we'd be leading a Vacation Bible School program. I knew we'd adventure and laugh and cry and feel the burden for God's people. What I didn't know was that the orphanage mothers needed help with a baby and for whatever reasons they had, they chose me to hold and care for this precious baby girl, Sylah. What I also didn't know was that while I struggled feeling helpless as part of the team, while instead of painting some days, I'd be sitting there holding Sylah, God was humbling me.
"Who are you here to serve, Em? Your pride or me?". 
By the time we were done and ready to head home, I was ready to adopt this girl. Sometimes, from what I've learned along the way, leaning in to where God has you may come at a cost to your pride but if you are willing, He can also offer you the most rewarding gifts in return.

Luke 12:48 says, "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked". Pastor Nate dove into this idea that there are two ways we serve, generally and specifically. Generally for him, he has his Bibles, is open and willing and surrounds himself with like-minded people. The question then becomes, have we done so much that we forget what to do with what we have or what we've done? Specifically, are we now being challenged to lean in and learn that God cares about the specifics of where we are and how we serve?

In his reference to the call of Joshua from the Old Testament,

"But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15),

Pastor Nate continues to charge the congregation with the motive of doing all we can in the name of Jesus and to be willing to then do it. What would it look like to put aside our own dreams and chase Him? What would you have to let go of? For me, it's too often my pride, but each time I lay that down, God deepens my faith in Him to which I am forever and always grateful.

Proverbs 11:25 says this, "Whoever brings blessing will be enriched, and one who waters will himself be watered". Church, lean in with us, to exactly where God has you for the purpose He has you there. And let's celebrate it, amen? Amen!

Below are a couple of photos we snagged from Join A Team Sunday!