Do All People Matter? Jesus' Prayer and Our Mission

God is aggressively anti sin. He is. God is aggressively anti sin. He's aggressively anti sin because he is pro sinner. He's pro sinner. In other words, God hates your sin because he loves you. He wants you to thrive. He wants you to have the most joy possible, and he knows that sin is robbing you of that. And so God is aggressively anti sin. Now, is where some Christians have gotten off track. In rightly wanting to be as aggressively anti sin as God is, they've also allowed themselves to become anti sinner. [00:36:59] (55 seconds)  #AntiSinProSinner

Jesus does not pray for their removal, but for protection and perseverance. In other words, Jesus doesn't want his disciples to run away when things get tough. He wants them to put their trust in him in the toughness. He wants them to experience God's power in difficulty. You see, guys, God's love doesn't always remove difficulty from our lives. God's love sustains us through the difficulty in our lives. [00:23:36] (33 seconds)  #SustainedInDifficulty

Being a Jesus follower in this hurting, broken, anti God world is going to be tough. Anybody that tells you that putting your faith in Jesus and following him is gonna give you a life of wealth, of health, and and giving you give you your best life now is selling you a bag of lies. Jesus didn't believe that and Jesus never said that. He said, man, it is gonna be tough to follow me in this world. But the whole point of the prayer is this, that in the midst of the difficulties of this world, in the midst of the toughness that we endure here, God is empowering us. [00:22:40] (39 seconds)  #ToughFaithGodEmpowers

Our power in this tough world comes from the God produced unity that we have with each other. And in a world that's so incredibly divided, the unity of this crazy diverse church should shine so brightly that people come running to it, flying to it like moths to the light on your lanai. I mean, people should come just streaming in here because there's something so beautiful, inexplicably beautiful here that they're just like, how is this possible? You see, church is not about attending, sitting in the same direction as strangers or people you're upset with. It's about you and me being so beautifully united around Jesus that it changes the world. [00:25:31] (42 seconds)  #UnityThatAttracts

Just look at how he prays before he goes to the cross. Look at his act of going for the to the cross. Look at his desire for us to be empowered through the difficulty. Look at how he fights for people's joy. Look at how he sends his friends out to reach more people. Do all people matter to God? Yes. Absolutely. All people matter to God. Do all people matter to you? If this is the God we follow, we cannot merely say that all people matter. We must prove it. Because God didn't just say that all people matter. [00:45:04] (45 seconds)  #ProveAllPeopleMatter

sharing the truth doesn't rise up from a place of love and wanting people to experience more joy than they ever dreamed possible. For them, sharing truth rises up from a desire to win an argument. It rises up from a desire to prove a point. It rises up from a desire to put people in their place or protect a way of life or to be seen as holy. And all of those starting place inevitably communicate that there's no real love for the person. There's only love for what's right. And church, that is not our God. [00:37:56] (41 seconds)  #LoveNotArgument

Right now, Jesus is praying for you. He's praying for you. Does he care about all people? Absolutely. You are not overlooked by God. You are known. You are seen. You are prayed for. Does God care about all people? Absolutely, he does. He wants a relationship with you. He's praying for you right now. [00:20:51] (26 seconds)  #JesusPraysForYou

And that is gonna happen to you if you are one of his. He is gonna transform you through his word because that's how he does it. That's how he does it. That's how Jesus prayed he would do it. He sanctifies us. He transforms us by his word. We are people of the book. We believe God's word. We study God's word. We seek to live out God's word. So here's the point. Do all people matter to God? Absolutely they do because he refuses to leave us the same. He refuses to leave us the same. [00:32:58] (39 seconds)  #TransformedByTheWord