Sermon Tone Analysis

Leaving Christianity

And so I am profoundly thankful that all over the world, there are thousands of people coming to faith in Christ.

And we celebrate that, but at the same time, it's also important to notice that there are some Christians that are deciding to not be Christians anymore.

While there are so many people that are converting to Christ, there are some that we could say are deconverting away from Christ.

And I'm not trying to make a theological statement of whether, whether they said, whether they did not say, what I'm saying is, there are people that unfortunately today, for any number of reasons, are saying, "I'm choosing not to follow Jesus".

And as a pastor and as a dad, and as a person who loves so many people, this hits really, really close to home.

And I'll try to explain without being too emotional, but we have six kids and people say, "You must love kids".

And I say, "I do," but I love their Mama.

And we have six kids, if you know what I'm saying.

And we were home-educating our kids back before you had to do it.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, everybody had to, we did it back when it was weird.

We did it back in the old days when you had to make your own butter, if you know what I'm saying.

We did it back then.

And some people say this at work, just so you know, that every one of my children, all six, every single one of 'em, all six graduated at the top of their class.

It's a homeschool joke, but, nevertheless, they grew up with some of the best friends.

I mean, I love these kids like my own.

Some of 'em call me dad and they had this broad community and then our kids got involved in switch and made friends outside the homeschool community and in private schools and in public schools.

And so there's all these kids that have grown up in my home, around my family.

And many of them are faithfully serving Jesus today, but for some of them, somewhere along the way, they had questions and couldn't find the answers.

They had hurts, like many of us do, and some of them faced some very real spiritual doubts.

So rather than pursuing a growing relationship with Jesus, there were a few of these kids that I love so much, that are choosing to walk away from the faith.

And I wanna talk about that today very directly.

The title of today's message is "Leaving Christianity".

Father, we ask and pray today that by the power of Your Holy Spirit, in the same way that You draw people when we lift up Jesus, we pray that we would represent Him in all that we do.

And because of Your goodness, through Your church, people would follow Your Son and lives would be changed.

We pray this in Jesus' Name.

And everybody said... Amen.

Amen.

If we talk about people walking away from the faith, instead of shaming them or blaming them, I wanna talk about taking a little responsibility in the places that maybe we should.

And today I wanna ask you to be open-minded and just consider how some of us as Christians might be getting things wrong, and perhaps with the help of God, how some of us can do things even better.

And we're gonna look today at a very complicated guy that I love in the Bible, because I'm complicated at times, his name is Peter.

And we're gonna look in Matthew 14, at a very powerful story, when Peter faced some doubts, as he did often in his life.

If you don't know the context, Matthew 14, the disciples are out on a boat and Jesus walked up on water.

If you could imagine this, the disciples, they're freaking out.

They're going, "Oh my gosh, is it a ghost"?

And Jesus's like, "No, it's just Me".

It's Jesus walking out on water, and if you read the story in the gospel, verse 28, Peter cries out, "Lord, if it's You, tell me to come to You on the water".

And Jesus said, "It's Me.

Come".

And Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus.

Now, let me give you a little spoiler alert.

If you don't know what happens, Peter actually walked on water.

Then, Peter sank into the water.

And sometimes people criticize and go, "Oh, like he has such little faith".

I'm like, "Come on, guys.

He is the only one that got out of the boat and had the courage to walk on water".

Can we give some love to Peter?

That's cool.

In the same way he had the faith to follow Jesus, we're gonna watch him struggle in his faith, just like some of those who are bolded up one time and then struggle in our faith at others.

Scripture says he's walking on water but when he saw the wind, he was afraid and he began to sink and he cried out, "Lord, save me!

And immediately Jesus reached out His hand and caught him.

You of little faith," Jesus said, "why did you doubt"?

I love that question.

Why did you doubt?

Can we have the courage today to take off the spiritual facade and get a little bit real here?

I'm curious today at all of our church locations and those of you online.

How many of you have had spiritual doubts?

Would you raise your hand?

Lift 'em up for a moment.

Type it in the chat, if you want to, in the comment section, "I've had spiritual doubts".

Just type it in there.

And I wanna take a moment and say thank you, for your honesty.

Thank you.

Because there are some faith communities where people wouldn't have the courage to be that honest.

Because they might feel afraid of being shamed or look down on or cast out because they don't have enough faith.

I wanna give you my agenda today and I'm just gonna be real upfront.

My goal, it is not an easy goal.

I'm gonna talk to two different groups of people.

It's hard enough to talk to one.

I'm gonna try to talk to two.

The first group I wanna talk to directly, is those of you that are currently having some faith doubts.

And this is not unusual, most great believers do.

And I wanna remind you that your doubts don't disqualify your faith.

Just because you're doubting now, it doesn't mean you're not a believer, and real faith isn't the absence of doubts.

Real faith pushes through the doubts to even a deeper faith.

So I wanna talk to those of you that may have some unsettledness in your spiritual life right now.

And then I wanna talk to the rest of you, and those would be those who are ready to help others through their doubts.

And I hope that this is you.

Instead of being the type of people that look down at others and go, "Oh, they must not have really been a Christian," or, "Oh, they must have sin in their life," instead of having that kind of stupid, negative, hateful, judgmental attitude, we wanna be posture to show the love, the grace of God, to help those who may be struggling, 'cause you may be struggling one day and you probably struggled somewhere in the past.

So to both groups of people, to those who perhaps are struggling or wanna help someone who is struggling, I wanna remind you that doubt is not the enemy of faith.

What is doubt?

Doubt is often an invitation to a deeper faith.

I hope you hear this.

I hope you feel it.

That just because you doubt, it doesn't mean you're losing faith.

Doubt can be an invitation to pursue Jesus, to grow even into a deeper faith.

And Jesus asked the question, "Peter, why do you doubt"?

Why do you doubt?

So if you do have some spiritual doubts occasionally, let me ask you this: why?

Why? It's really interesting to dissect and discern your doubts.

Why would you doubt?

Can I be honest with you again this week?

I told you last week about a moment of doubt.

That's easy.

I wanna tell you today about a season of doubt.

Not a moment, but a season.

And Amy remembers it well.

We were just married and I left a business job making, it was a lot of money back then, for a ministry job making not much money at all, paying my own seminary.

Working full time in ministry, driving once a week to go to seminary.