Holy Discontent - Unity

Preliminaries

Good morning, brothers. I want to first offer a special thanks to Pastor Danny for the privilege to share a challenge from God’s word.

I’d like to ask you to turn your Bibles to John 17. While you’re doing that let me start by assuring you of two things:

(1) This is going to be somewhat of an uncomfortable challenge from Scripture. Not because it’s an unfamiliar call (in fact it is very familiar) but because whether we know it or not or whether we acknowledge it or not, we too often have a hand in obstructing this call’s fulfillment.

The other thing I want to assure you of is

(2) This talk will not exceed its allotted time because I wouldn’t dare accept the calling of standing between a 100 man and their lunch. I’ve preached enough to know the

Introduction: Defining Holy Discontent

In the talk that ignited this series, Pastor Bill Hybels asked the question, “What Proceeds Vision?” What comes before it?

What is that moment of bubbling angst? That Fed Up Moment? That proceeds a leader launching off in his God-sized, God-centered Vision?

Bill Hybels calls it The Popeye moment? (I’m sure you guys have discussed it by now…)

Popeye: “That’s all I stands! I can’t stands no more!”

Hybels said “it was probably something like that that first prompted us to get off of our backside and move towards the achieving of something great with our lives.”

Bill Hybel defines this particular stirring as something that not only frustrates you but frustrates HEAVEN AND EARTH! God’s heart and the human heart being aligned perfectly.

Awakening My Holy Discontent

Approximately 8 years ago, I was sitting in a church in Tallulah, LA preaching routinely to an audience of about 20 when I spent about a month preaching through what is known as the High Priestly Prayer of John 17.

I probably had read through John 17 a million times before but for some reason it resonated differently this particular time.

It was more potent; more powerful; more life-altering for me. And it got in my bones in a way that I could not shake it loose.

You’re familiar with this prayer, brothers. It moves from (1) Jesus praying for himself and his relationship with the Father (John 17:1-5) to (2) Jesus praying for His disciples and their relationship with Him and the Father (John 17:6-19) to (3) Jesus finally praying for all the disciples who would come later in the future and their relationship with each other, with Him and the Father, and with the World (John 17:20-24).

In particular, it was what He said about us in verses 20-23 that drew me in during this season...

John 17:20–23 ESV

20 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.

Jesus is praying for us. Jesus is praying for US. Black Christians and White Christians, Asian Christians and Latino Christians, and a few things LEAPED OFF THE PAGE.

HE PRAYS FOR OUR ONENESS TO ONE ANOTHER

John 17:21 ESV

21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

May they be genuinely truly completely and wholly ONE. One thing that we often talk about at City Light is the depth of oneness. Oneness isn’t about COEXISTENCE.

It extends deeper than going to the same church building.

Judas hung with Jesus and the other disciples for three years. He was with them. He was in their presence and yet was never one with them!

A married couple can live in the same house for 20 years and in year 21 divorce with the words, “I felt like I no longer knew him/her”! Why? Simple, they coexisted in the same house while their oneness slowly eroded away under the currents and tides of conflict and apathy.

Many of our efforts to connect multiculturally and multiethnically in church starts and ends with getting people in the same space together without asking the difficult questions of how can we become ONE together!

We must move past coexistence to oneness...

HE PRAYS FOR OUR ONENESS WITH HIM and THE FATHER

John 17:21 ESV

21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

The ONENESS JESUS IS PRAYING FOR US carries a depth that exceeds common interests. Common politics, Common Music, Common Style, and Common Opinions. What’s supernatural about that? You have that at the country music awards! You have that at the BET music awards! You have that at a Mississippi State or Ole Miss football game. You have that at the Republican Convention. You have that at the Democratic Convention. None of that oneness has the capacity to point to an unseen God.

What makes our ONENESS Special is that it is ONENESS built and established in an unseen God. Not seen preferences, seen styles, heard opinions, and heard music.

And it is because of where the ONENESS is established that we have ability to embrace each other despite all the differences in the other areas.

Here is where one

HOW ON EARTH DOES THAT LOOK? AND HOW DOES IT HAPPEN?

HE DECLARES THAT OUR ONENESS HAS BEEN PROPERLY EQUIPPED

22 I have given them the glory you have given me, so that they may be one as we are one.

We have given them our very glory that they may be one...The great freer and deliver of the God’s enslaved people Moses once asked the Lord to show him His glory and the Lord responded to Moses:

"I will cause all My goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim the name Yahweh before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion."

Jesus declaration that he has given us his glory is his way of saying that I have showered them with my goodness, my grace, my compassion. I have given them my very self and my very Spirit. They have everything they need for the mission of oneness.

HE DECLARES THAT OUR ONENESS IS A TOOL FOR MISSIONS

23 I am in them and you are in me, so that they may be made completely one, that the world may know you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me.

After years of feeling dissatisfied with the divide, I begin to desire the unity…

You can’t just simply be dissatisfied with the negative, you have to begin to crave the positive.

After years of moving in and out of the spaces but never feeling like I was a true part of them, I begin to ask what it would look like if walk into a space where everybody wasn’t like me, but they still accepted my true authentic self.

What would it look like if my dinner conversation never changed no matter what color Christian I invited home. Could we love each other enough to lean into to our differences and misunderstandings rather than label, ostracize, and otherize!

Multicultural Church Experience can often feel like this great potluck…

We love you! We want you hear! We think you’re so fantastic but can you please put your dish to the side?

What would it look like if the church became this new potluck where all these different dishes were accepted by all not because they were familiar cuisines, but rather they were blessed by the Lord Jesus Christ and therefore suitable for intake and enjoyment.

After years of hanging my head in shame whenever people would ask me, how can a people who say they love Jesus so much not want to have fellowship with people that say they love Jesus? I begin to desire and pray for the Lord to make His name known through the unity of His people. To make our oneness, His witness to the world!

It was this passage that stoked the flames in Candi and I that were there stirring all of our lives….

PREPARING FOR HOLY DISCONTENT

Like Pastor Hybels explains in his talk, what happens in those moments of stirring, angst, and discontent, as God is birthing out vision in you is that you begin to replay all the ways that he has prepared you to step out on that vision

Here is why God wired me like this…

For example: I’ve always been a cultural transformer...at a lot of birthday parties, sports teams, and sleepovers, I was guaranteed to be the only one in the group with a Jheri Curl and you guys know why, but I also was very comfortable in a space with all black people because I would leave my all white school groups early on in elementary and head to my mother’s all black beauty shop and so my life from a very young age was lived in two different worlds. Learning the cultural distinctives of both.

I’ve always had to learn how to exists in two different worlds...to have two different shades of Brian that I could flex between depending on the environment and place that I was in.

Here is why God has placed my life on the trajectory that He did...

This is why I went to the schools that I did...

Illustration: Burned Popcorn

This was in part why I had the sister and the father that I did...who both courageously loved Jesus as they suffered in their earthly bodies and ultimately died…

He was teaching me that my service to Him wasn’t necessarily about my comfort more than it was about His glory! And so their examples are what begin to push me beyond just simply what felt right...singing the songs I liked, hanging with the people I had the most in common with, talking only about the things that all the people in the room agreed with me on…

The trajectory God placed me on allowed me to grow increasingly comfortable being uncomfortable for His glory and fame and because of His love and Spirit.

Here is why I married the woman that I married…

There’s not many women that you know that can rock an afro while rocking out to some martina mcbride!

But my beautiful wife can!

She’s the only woman I know that loves Ron Isley and Al Green about as much as she loves Michael McDonald and Reba McEntire.

As a matter of fact, as we introduce more black gospel elements into our worship experience on Sunday mornings at City Light, I’m not nearly as nervous about the 60+% of my white brothers and sisters being able to embrace and follow as much as I am my own WIFE :-D

All of this was God preparing me to not just stand in Holy Discontent over the subliminal segregation of the church but to lean into it and say Lord with your help and strength, I want to step into it and be apart of the change that you are doing.

MOVING FROM HOLY DISCONTENT

It was out of all of this that the Lord birthed City Light Church. A church that exists to shine the light of Christ in our city through the transformed lives of His people.

We are a church that is intentionally discussing/desiring multiethnic/multicultural composition?

(1) Why because Jesus prayed for it!

(2) He is magnified before the world through it

(3) It was deliberate acts of division and violence that created the divisions we have. So when division is deliberate. How much more so should be reconciliation

(4) No act of love has ever been fulfilled through passivity...painful, uncomfortable effort is where love flourishes.

What do we value?

Christ-Centeredness: Doing Everything in a Way That Reflects Christ is King

Compassionate Conviction: Speaking Jesus’ words in Jesus’ way

Universal Unity: Pursuing the Unity in Christ that transcends all barriers

Resilient Realness: Building Authentic Relationships with Gospel Endurance

Emptying Empowerment: Sacrificing POWER (People, Position, Privilege, Pedagogy, & Possessions) for the empowerment of others.

Dedicated Disciple-Making: Living Life Making Followers of Jesus Christ

What does it mean for you?

This is Jesus prayer. So this is God’s vision for His church. Lean into it.

This is Jesus’ challenge. Will we love our brothers and sisters whom we see everyday?

This is the possibility. We could truly be that generation...We seem so far away right now, but the calm of the storm is normally preceded by its darkest hours. The church has an opportunity to lean into this in a unique way and show the world Jesus Christ in a way that this country has never seen him displayed!