Becoming Who You Already Are

Automatically transcribed — lightly cleaned for readability. Wording is the preacher’s own.

Let's take a brief moment and say where prayer Pastor Luke is going to come up and bring us the next message from the Book of Acts. Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, for the gift of your word to us and pray, Lord, now for its fulfillment in our lives and our hearts. Thank you for Pastor Luke. I pray, Lord, your blessing on him. A blessing, Lord, to bring clarity and wisdom as he delivers the word faithfully to us. In Jesus' name, amen.

Yep, there we go. All right, user error. Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Luke. I'm one of the pastors here at Conduit. And today I want to start off by talking about a question that I think you were most likely asked around the age of six. I know that's around the age that I was asked it, and it's a question that you've spent your entire life trying to answer. And it is, what do you want to be when you grow up? Right? Like we find this like, we think it's fun to ask kids, you know, when they're little, we're like, what do you want to be when you grow up? And if you're anything like me, my answer, I think, was something like a private detective, because I was watching tons of like, I don't know, P.I. Movies as a six year old for some reason. Or Batman, or like a firefighter, you know, we have these ideas of like the things that we want to be when we grow up. And as time goes on, that question begins to morph from kind of a fun, you know, circle time carpet time question to a very serious one.

I remember being in my early 20s, late teens and being like, gosh, what do I want to be when I grow up? And really, it's a question not so much of what are we going to do with our time, but what are we going to find meaning and purpose in our life, right? It's a question that sits with us at the end of a day, we're at the end of a season, and we're just like, am I doing the things that I want to be doing? Am I doing the things I'm supposed to be doing? Is this all there is? Is this what my life is meant to be about? These are important questions, and our theme for the year this year has been formation. Formation is this way of talking about the idea that we're all being formed into some way. We can say it this way. We're all being formed into someone. The question is who, right? You and I are not the same person that we were once upon a time. I'm not the same person I was a couple of years ago, and in a couple of years, I won't be the same that I am today.

We're all being formed by something. That's what that book that we just talked about, You Are What You Love, really gets at is what is forming you. How is what you love changing and transforming you into a person? And it is a question of just who am I becoming? Who am I slowly being morphed into? And is it a person I want to be more like, or is it not? When I was thinking about trying to kind of answer this question and this idea of just thinking about how do we determine who we are and what something is, I was reminded of a show. I remember, I don't know why this is such a core memory of mine. I remember being like young, I don't know, like 10, 8, something like that, and it being like a rainy Saturday day and I'm not able to go outside. And I just remember turning on like PBS and watching this old house for some reason. I just now I own this old house. But anyways, I remember watching this old house and not really understanding anything that was going on in that show,

But finding it interesting anyways. And they had a section of that show that they always did. And it was this part of the show where they brought out an object and they had to guess what it was. Sometimes it was an old tool or really obscure thing. And they're just like, what is it? And everybody would stand around this table and look at this object and they'd be like, oh, well, obviously, these are skis for dogs. You know, they would come up with just these out of bounds, completely wild guesses as to what the thing was because nobody had the answer, right? I actually have an example for us. I found something online that I was like, I saw that I was like, I have no idea what that is. So let's go ahead and throw that up on the screen. So this is this kind of like sort of straight metal edge. It's got a little bit of like some inch markers on it and kind of this strange looking kind of tubular handle type thing. Does anybody here seeing this is like, oh, I know what that is. No, meaning great.

I was like, oh, you guys are all going to know and I didn't know. So this next image, though, is going to is going to bring some clarity. So let's throw that up. OK, so that's a knife, a bread knife, and it's a attachment that you add to a bread knife so that when you go to cut your homemade bread, you don't make doorstop wedges like I do. Right. You cut it nice and even and straight. Doesn't end up kind of all whopper jawed, which is what happens to me. Right. So there's something about as soon as we realize what that thing is, we see what it's meant to be doing its purpose, what it is becomes clear. Right. What we have here is that our identity, the identity of something, identity of ourselves is tied to some degree to our purpose. It's not entirely synced, but there is some relation between the things that we do and who we are. It's why we ask that question to kids. What do you want to be when you grow up? We're asking them a question of what do you want to do? What's your purpose?

And it fundamentally ends up shaping something of how we understand ourselves. We could talk about it this way. Our identity tells us who we are and our purpose tells us what we are meant to do. Right. These are the questions that we wrestle with is like, who who am I? What and what am I supposed to be doing with this relatively short life? These are the things that we ask ourselves and we struggle with and we can find a couple of different ways to try and answer that question. And some of the ways that I think that we tend to answer this question is one, I think we embark on this journey of self discovery. We're we're Americans and we are highly influenced by the story of the West and the individual who goes out on the road to find themselves. This is kind of the story we tell kind of young people who are getting out of high school and into college. We're like, go away, go travel, see the world, go do a thing, try and find yourself out there. And it's kind of this journey of self discovery and trying to pull some sort of meaning and identity that's inside of here somehow out.

Another way we could try and answer this question is we could chase milestones. We could say, OK, in order to find out who I'm supposed to be and to find meaning in my life, I ought to chase certain milestones. I ought to go to get an education or get a job and have a kid and get a house with a white picket fence and a dog. You know, we find things that were like, OK, these are the things, the milestones we ought to chase in life in order to try and answer these questions. But the thing is, is no matter how much you chase those milestones, you still are still left with this ache, this question of like, is this really all there is? There is a there was an author, he was named as Victor Frankl. He survived the Holocaust and he, out of part of his reflections from the Holocaust and things, he wrote a book called Man's Search for Meaning. And he was saying and he's reflecting on the world and people think that, well, if we could just get everyone to live a good quality of life, if everybody could just kind of have all that they need, their needs taken care of, they would be happy.

They would be fulfilled. But then he kind of sound and he said this following quote, he said, people are increasingly having the means to live, but no meaning to live for. People increasingly have, well, people increasingly have more access to knowledge and capabilities. We have smartphones and smart robots inside of our pockets and we have all of these things. We have the means to live. We do not need or want very much. But we still lack the meaning to live for. And I think that is a great diagnosis of the age that we find ourselves in. I think we end up spending our lives kind of playing that this old house, what is it game with ourselves? We're just like, oh, well, maybe if I throw myself over here, I'll figure out what my purpose and my identity is. And maybe if I do this and maybe if I do that. But the question I have for us and the question I think we intend to answer today is does God have a calling and an identity for you? Is there rather than me having to come up and find this out there or generated outside of my own being? Is there something I can receive?

Is there something from God that tells me about who I am and what I meant to be doing with this life? And our story today in Acts chapter 13, I think, is going to give us an illustration, is going to show us a little bit about Saul and his life and his purpose and calling and identity. Now, Saul, we've heard about him several times over the book of Acts. We've been slowly going through the book of Acts, the story of the early church and how it was formed. And when Saul first showed up on the scene, he wasn't the good guy. He was the bad guy. He was mentioned during the scene of Stephen's stoning. Stephen was the first martyr of the church. He spoke the gospel to those that didn't want to listen. He was dragged out of the city and thrown and he was had stones thrown on him until he died. And Saul was there and he was holding the cloaks. He was like, oh, here, let me take your cloak so that you can get a better swing of that rock at him.

And he was approving of what was happening. The next time we see Saul mentioned, Saul is running around and he's going from town to town breathing murder, breathing violence against those who followed Jesus. He's like, I'm arresting and persecuting the church. And then he is suddenly he is encountered by Jesus. The resurrected Christ Jesus shows up, meets him on the road to Damascus and says, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And he is blinded and then he has this radical encounter with Jesus and he's given a mission. He said he's going to his life is about to change. And he begins to recognize that Jesus truly is the Messiah. Ananias, a faithful Christian who was called to go and minister to Saul when he was blind, was given this description. This is what Jesus had to say about Saul's life. If I look in Acts, chapter nine, verse 15 through 16, we see this description about Paul. The Lord said to Ananias, said go for he, Saul, is my chosen instrument. Saul is my chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles, before kings and the children of Israel.

For I will show him how much, excuse me, I will show him how much he is to suffer for my name. And so this is what he is called to do. We see that he's given this kind of like threefold like mission field. Says he's going to carry my name to who? To the Jews, to the Gentiles and even before kings. And then in addition to that, he's also going to suffer for my name. He's giving this purpose and he's chosen to do this. This is kind of his mission, his identity of sorts is being given here. And so we could say that Saul is chosen to carry the name of Jesus and to be transformed in the name of Jesus. Saul's going to carry the name of Jesus before all the people. And as he does that, he's going to suffer. As he does that, he's going to be changed. Who he thinks he is and who he has set himself to be is fundamentally going to change and grow. And it's not going to be, his life's not going to play out the way that he once thought it was going to.

And as Saul has kind of been in the story, we're going to pick up in Acts chapter 13, which is where we find himself today. And Saul has been a part of the church and he's faithfully worshiping and he's up in the church in Antioch where there are prophets and teachers. And he's with someone Barnabas and Simon and Lucius and there's all these people there. And as they're worshiping, see what it says in verse two. While they were worshiping the Lord and they were fasting, the Holy Spirit said, set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work which I have called them. Then after feasting and praying, they laid on their hands on them and sent them off. So Saul is set apart again and it's this time where the Holy Spirit leads the church and says, you need to set Saul and Barnabas apart. These two men, it's time for them to go on mission. It's time for them to go do the thing that I said Saul was going to do. Carry my name before the Jews, the Gentiles and the rulers.

And so he was set apart to go and to do this. Now we're going to do a little bit of a geography lesson. So any of you who like geography, you're going to love this. I'm a map nerd, so I'm going to have some fun. But we have here, right? Well, first off, you have in your Bibles, probably a lot of Bibles have in the back of them, they have maps. I don't know if you know that or not, but they have maps in the back of them, kind of like this. And they are labeled a whole bunch of different things. But one of the types of maps that are in the back there are often what's labeled Paul's first, second, and third missionary journey. So if you have a Bible and you would like to, you can turn to the back to one of your maps and find that one. If you don't have a Bible or if you don't have a Bible that you can read and easily understand, or you would like something with a little bit more study helps, Pastor Cameron is holding two Bibles back there. We have a whole stack of Bibles back there

For new believers and for study Bibles. And if you have a Bible and you're like, you know what, I can't understand this one, please grab one of those for free and take that and have that and read that. We'd love for you to have a Bible. If you don't have one, we make those Bibles back there available for anyone to have those. So those should have maps, resources and study guides in them. So what we have here up on the screen is we have a map of the Middle East. We can see over here, we've got Jerusalem, which is where Jesus and much of his ministry was. And then we have Antioch up here. That's where Saul and Barnabas are currently at. They're in Antioch, just a little east out of what is modern day Turkey. And you can see Greece and Rome. So this is where they're at. This is where the story is starting. And in the book of Acts, there's often all these different places described, but as we kind of read the Bible, we can kind of gloss over them because we're like, where is that? You know, that's not near Oklahoma, so I don't really know where it's at.

But we're kind of following along here. And so the story as they begin to travel is we see that they leave Antioch where they start. Oops. They leave Antioch where they start. They go down to Seleucia. They cross the Mediterranean over to the island of Cyprus, and they end up at Salamis. That's where the story picks up. So after they leave the church of Antioch, they're traveling, they're preaching the gospel, and that's where they finally land. And that's where they pick up. They begin to preach the gospel in that place. They're preaching it to Jews. And there is this official, there's this ruler who hears about it and is like, oh, I want to hear this gospel. I want to hear what this Jesus is all about. And he invites them, he invites Saul and Barnabas to come teach him. Notice that this is one of the three people that Jesus said Saul was going to give the gospel to Jews, Gentiles, and rulers. He's immediately, he's going to a proconsul. But before he gets there, they encounter what is called the man named Bar Jesus. When they had gone through the whole island as far as Paphos, they came upon a certain magician, a Jewish false prophet named Bar Jesus. Now you might be like, okay,

Well, who's Bar Jesus? Is he related to Jesus? He's not. Jesus is, to us, you know, Jesus is a unique name, but in that time, Jesus would have been a pretty common name. You know, it's like the name John. And Jesus is, and so what Bar means, that Bar Jesus means son of Jesus. So this would be this person who his name or part of his name, maybe his last name was son of Jesus. His father was named Jesus, maybe his father's name. So that's kind of who he is. He's this magician, not the first time we've seen a magician in the book of Acts. And see what it continues on in verse seven. He was with the proconsul, right? The proconsul, the ruler Sergius Peleus, the man of intelligence who summoned Barnabas and Saul and sought to hear the word of God. But Eliamis, the magician, so what we've got here, it's a little confusing, but Bar Jesus and Eliamis are the same person. And Eliamis the magician, for that's what the meaning of his name is. It's a little confusing phrase to understand or to translate here into English. But it seems to say that his name has some meaning or some relation to the fact that he can see into the

Future or that he has foresight. And he's there and then he opposed them. So you get this picture or this idea, I can imagine it in my mind as Saul and Barnabas come in, they're interacting with the proconsul, the ruler, and he's there, this official, and he's hearing the teaching, he's hearing the gospel. And then over on his side, you kind of get this idea of this magician kind of just whispering into his ear. You're my Lord of the Rings fans out there, right? We're in the hall of Rohan, right? And Wormtongue is leaning over the king's shoulder and whispering into him, don't trust these people. What they're saying is false. This counselor, he's speaking into the ruler and he's speaking truth and he's opposing Saul and Barnabas. And then it is in this moment, this next verse is a massive verse for Saul. We see what happens next. But Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked at him intently and then notice what he said. He said, "And you are the son of the devil. You, enemy of all righteousness, full of deceit and villainy,

Will you not stop in making the crooked the paths of the Lord?" So he turns to this man named Bar-Jesus, son of Jesus, and he says, "Oh no, you're not son of Jesus, you're son of the devil. You're spewing lies and you're opposing truth. You're making crooked the path of those that are seeking the Lord." And then he says this, he says, "And behold, the hand of the Lord is upon you and you will be blind and unable to see the sun for a time." And immediately mist and darkness fell upon him. And he went about seeking people to lead him by the hand, the man whose name related to the fact that he could see and foretell is now blind. And in the pro-consul, he sees what's happened and he believed. And he saw what had occurred for he was astonished at the teaching of the Lord. So Saul and Barnabas here speaking before this pro-consul, Saul's immediately beginning to fulfill the purpose that the Lord has called him to. And there's this really important verse I want to take a moment to talk about because I think it gets misheard or misread. And that's verse nine here. Who here has heard or maybe thought

That I had for quite a while that Jesus changed Saul's name to Paul. That at some point Jesus was like, "Saul, your name's not Saul anymore, it's Paul." Anybody? Okay, okay, good. Because I was afraid I was the only person who thought that at some point. So it's understandable, right? Because right here we're like, "Oh, Saul, he's now going to be called Paul." Okay, why? Like did Jesus tell him that at some point? And that's kind of the way that it gets talked and it gets repeated sometimes in Sunday schools and things like that. But if we read this passage carefully, it doesn't say that his name is changed. It says that he was also called. So Saul, who was also called Paul. And then from this point on, the rest of the story, it doesn't call him Saul anymore, it calls him Paul, which is the name that we know him by. When we read the book of Romans and all the rest of the New Testament, much portions of it, he wrote. And it says Paul, it's the same person. Now, what's kind of confusing to us here is because Saul and Paul are both in English,

But these are two different, that's the same name in two different languages essentially. Saul being a Hebrew name, Paul being a Greek name. And so Saul, who was a Hebrew, who was a Jew and Israelite, he went by Saul all the time. But he was also a Roman citizen, which becomes an important part of his story later as we go through the book of Acts. But his parents somehow gained Roman citizenship. And so he was given a Roman name. And so he would have gone by Paul in certain contexts. Me, right? Most of you know me as Luke, but my legal name is Lucas. And there have been times and seasons and places and contexts where I've gone not by Luke, but I've gone by Lucas. And so here, what we're seeing is not that Saul's name actually literally changes. He's had both of these names, probably most of his life. What's happening here is that he's changing who he goes by. He's saying, I'm not going to be called my Hebrew name as much anymore. I'm going to be called by my Greek name. Why? Because Paul is beginning to minister to the Greeks. He's

Beginning to minister to the Gentiles. Saul, who was a Jew, who was a religious leader, who did all of the things of the Pharisees, would have took very much pride in being a Jew and had very much prejudice against anyone who was a Gentile, is saying, I'm going to be called by my sort of my Gentile name, by my Greek name, as I minister to them. And this is a moment where Paul sort of steps into that mission, because Paul could have just continued to,

You know, ignore the Gentiles and just say, no, I'm going to only reach out and serve the Jews, but that's not what he does. So in this story, he kind of moves on. So after that's kind of happened, he moves on and our story progresses. He's here in Paphos. He's down here where the story happened. And then they're going to sail across the Mediterranean again, probably stop up here and then go to Perga. And then they're going to travel all the way up here to Antioch. Now, it's a different Antioch. It's the Antioch that's up here. And that's where the next part of the story is going. Now you kind of see like this to us doesn't maybe seem like a large distance, but in a time before cars and airplanes and motorized boats, this could have taken months, right? As we're describing Paul's journey, it doesn't really tell us how long he spent at each of these places. His whole journey could have lasted anywhere from most of the year to a couple of years. We don't really exactly know how long this whole journey took, because he's stopping at each of these places and doing ministry preaching the gospel. So he's up there at this

Other Antioch and he's there and he's preaching to the Jews. He's going to the synagogue, the worship place of the Israelites, and he's preaching the gospel and he meets kind of two different responses there. One response is people being like, "This is amazing. You've got to tell us more about this." And then others are saying, "Be quiet." They want to silence him because he's gaining popularity and people are listening to him more than they would be listening to him. And they are trying to silence him and persecute him. And when that begins to happen,

They find that they're in a place. He says this in response. He says he's going to have to change his ways. He says, "Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly to those that were opposing them, saying, 'It was necessary for the Word of God to be spoken first to you, since you thrusted aside and judged yourself unworthy of eternal life. Behold, we are turning to the Gentiles. For so the Lord has commanded us, saying, 'I made you a light for the Gentiles that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.'" Saul, Paul, a Jew, is preaching to other Jews and they are rejecting him. A thing that probably breaks his heart, but he's saying, "I came here first to preach to you guys, but God, Jesus has called me to preach to the Gentiles, not his people, not the people he would normally spend time with. Actually, the type of people he would avoid spending time with." And so Saul is being faithful and he's turning and he's going to begin to preach more and more to the Gentiles. He leaves that place because of the persecution. He leaves Antioch. He travels

Down to Iconium. He does some preaching there and then he travels down to Lystra. And that's where he's at. And while he's doing that, he's preaching the gospel the whole time. He's telling Gentiles about the gospel. But what happens is he begins to gather a crowd, not of fans, but of haters, of people who are persecuting him. Notice what it says in verse 19 through 20.

Wait, that's the wrong verse. I am in Acts 14, 19 through 20. Acts 14, 19. Notice what it says here. It says, "But the Jews came from Antioch and Iconium." So he's in Lystra, but the Jews from Antioch and Iconium have essentially followed him down to Lystra. And having persuaded the crowds, they stoned Paul and they dragged him out of the city, supposing he was dead. Paul, who at the beginning of this story when he was introduced to us, was what? He was approving of a stoning. He was approving of a stoning of a Christian. But now he's the one whose body is being pelted with stones and left for dead outside the city. That's a radical reversal of where he started. Where he started, he was once persecuting the church. Now he is being persecuted and being left for dead. But when the disciples gathered around him, he rose up and he did something that I wouldn't do. He entered back into the city and on the next day, he and Barnabas went on to the next city, Derby. And so they go on,

He picks up and he's just like, "Well, let's just keep going. I don't know about you. If a lot of people pelted me with stones and thought I was dead, I don't know that I would want to keep doing what I was just doing." But he's like, "No, we're just going to keep on going." So he goes on to the city of Derby. And then the verses continue to say what he does next. "When they had preached the gospel to that city, he made many disciples in any way. He returned to Lystra. He returned to Iconium and the Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples and encouraging them to continue in the faith, saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. And when they had appointed elders for them in every church with the prayer and fasting, they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed." So they wrap up their journey. He goes down to Derby after having been persecuted and stoned. Then he just travels back to Lystra, back to Iconium where the people are that stoned him. He goes back to Antioch,

Visits Perga again, and then he sails back to Antioch where he started. And that's his first missionary journey. That's his travels. And like I said, we don't know exactly how long that took, but it took some time. And what we see here is that Saul changes. He starts out as a persecutor, and then by the end of the story, he's much more like the people he was persecuting. We start when we first introduced him. Stephen is stoned. At the end of the story, Paul is stoned. And so what we see is that Saul, Paul, his identity is tied to his purpose. He begins to change and go by a different name because he's like, "I've got a purpose and my name is going to reflect that. My identity is going to reflect that." And then he goes about and he proclaims Christ. And he talks about how there is suffering and how there is transformation we had. And then he carries that. And Paul is a model for us because remember where we started? The question I asked is, does Christ, does God have an identity and a calling for you? And I think he does. I think we too, you are chosen

To carry the name of Jesus and to be transformed in the name of Jesus. That's what every Christian is called to do is we're chosen. We've been called to carry the name of Jesus, to preach who he is, to tell about him wherever we go. And as we do that, we find that we are transformed by Jesus. We'll talk a little bit more about that. And I want to show you what I mean. If we were to turn in our Bibles out of the book of Acts towards the back and go towards 1 Peter, we'll find a passage that I think is important for us to talk about. 1 Peter chapter 2.

9 through 10. It says this. It says, "But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession." What's it saying? You're chosen. You're a royal priesthood. You're set apart. That's how Saul was described. And that's how Christians, the church is being described. That you may proclaim, here's the purpose. Why are you being set apart? Why are you given the identity? So that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, now you have received mercy. We're given an identity and we're given a purpose. We're God's chosen people, a holy priesthood. We're set apart. Why are we given that identity? What's the purpose? The purpose is to proclaim Christ, to proclaim the excellencies of him who called us out of darkness and into light. The Westminster Shorter Catechism, which is a theological tool for learning and studying theology, has a question. One of the first questions is this. It says, "What's the chief end of man? What is the goal of mankind? What is the

Purpose of man?" And the answer to that question is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. The goal of mankind, what we ought to be doing is to glorify him, make much of him. That's our purpose. And we ought to do that by enjoying him. And we're just like, okay, well, what does that look like? What does it look like to glorify God? What does it look like to proclaim the excellencies of Jesus? Does that mean I have to be a preacher? What does it look like? I think the primary way that it looks like is this. God changes you into a display of who he is. He changes who you are into a display of who he is. God wants to transform who you are from the inside out. You know what the word Christian means? It's got the word Christ in it. It's little Christ. We're supposed to be little Jesuses. Supposed to be imitators of Jesus. And so what we see here is we see that Stephen, if we remember the story of Stephen, Stephen looks a lot like Jesus. He was preaching in the gospel and healing people. And then when he was stoned, he said the same words that Christ

Said. He said, "Lord, forgive them for they know not what they do." Paul, he becomes more and more like Jesus. He's saying his conversation when he talks with the Israelites, his fellow Jews, he says things that sound awful like what Jesus said to them. "Have come here, but you are rejecting me, and so I will go to the Gentiles." We are to become more like Christ. That's how we proclaim God. That's how we glorify God. Here at Conduit, we say that we want to, what, live like Jesus, love like Jesus, and serve like Jesus. That's what we're all about. You want to know what we're chasing after is we want to become people who live like Jesus. Our lives are transformed to be in his character. We love other people around us, both our enemies and our friends. Like Jesus would have us love them and we want to serve. We want to be self-sacrificial. We want to give generously and abundantly. That's what it looks like to serve and to become like Jesus. And you're like, "Okay, Luke, but I have a hard time doing that. I have a hard time doing that."

Does anybody else? Right? It's hard to wake up every day and to love people like Jesus.

How do we make that happen inside of our hearts? How do we become people who look more like Jesus? Because I'm trying awful hard and it seems pretty difficult. There's this study that was done on individuals who drove black taxis. Has anybody ever been to England, London? It's a cool place. I got to go last couple of years ago. Two years. I don't know. Time flies. I've been and they don't have yellow taxis. They have these black taxis, right? They're kind of cool if you get to ride in one of them. But they did a study on individuals who had to become cavies in these taxis, cabby tax drivers. And in order to become a taxi driver

To drive a black taxi, you had to pass this test called the knowledge. And what the knowledge is, is a test or a knowledge of all of the streets in London. Every single street. I think it's over

26, 000 streets that they have to commit to memory so that when someone gets in their car and says, oh, I need to go to the corner of this and this, they can immediately compute in their head faster than Google can pull it down where to go. And this usually takes someone if they're going to try and achieve this to pass the knowledge. It takes them three to four years of study before they can usually pass this test. And scientists and people who are doing this study wanted to figure out what would happening in the minds of those who managed to pass this test. So they scan the brains of everybody at the beginning. They scanned at the end of those who passed the test, those who failed the test and those that quit. And then people who just didn't even study at all. And they wanted to see if there was anything observably different about the brains of the people who went through this process to become a taxi driver. And what they found is that the individuals who studied the knowledge studied all 26, 000 streets and passed the test is that their brains, part of the brain

That was responsible for visual and spatial thinking literally grew. It got bigger. Other parts of the brain shrunk and that part of the brain got bigger. And they found that there was more gray matter in that part of their brain. And in the people who didn't pass the test, the people who quit, their brains stayed exactly the same. How did this kind of happen, right? They were studying, they had their eyes fixed on something. And as they were looking at it, and as they were studying it over and over again, as they rehearsed it, it literally began to change their physiology. It changed something about the way they thought. It changed who they were. I want to want you to join me in 2 Corinthians chapter 3 verse 18.

It says in 2 Corinthians chapter 3 verse 18 says, and we all with unveiled face are what beholding we're looking at the glory of the Lord being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord, who is the spirit. Just as those cabbies studied and looked intensely at the knowledge. So as we study and we look intently at Christ, as we constantly lift our eyes from our circumstances and look at Jesus as we behold his glory. We're what? We're being transformed. We're being changed. Something inside of us is changing. The more we look at Christ, the more we behold Christ, the more we look towards him, the more we are slowly becoming more and more like him. And that is the point. That's the goal. We're meant to begin to see things and see the world, not through our eyes, but through the eyes of Christ. Over time, we begin to act not the way my nature would have me, the way my flesh would have me act, but the way that Christ would have me, the way the spirit is leading me. These are things that

Begin to change and transform inside of our hearts. It said this way in Romans chapter 12 verse 2, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind and that by testing you may discern what the will of God is, that good and acceptable and perfect will, right? Do not be conformed. That's where we're all at. We all start in a place of being conformed. The world wants you to think and act and see things in a certain way. It wants you to be busy. It wants you to be fast. It wants you to be hurried. It wants you to be selfish, but we need to be transformed by what, how are we transformed by the renewal of our mind. As we look to Christ, as we begin to see the world through the lens of scripture, through the lens of the Holy Spirit, through the way Christ would have us be in the world, we are transformed and we begin to do God's will. We begin to operate differently than we were before and all of this, all of that's done through grace, right? I could tell you this whole story and you could be like, okay, Luke, that just means I got to go home and I got to try harder.

But the cabbies didn't like, they didn't like sit there and get in front of the mirror each morning and stare into the mirror and go, all right, brain, get bigger, right? They didn't do that. They didn't like try and like make that happen. They just were simply faithful to show up in obedience. They're saying, well, I'm going to fix my attention. I'm going to fix my eyes on the important thing and I'm going to focus on that. And as I do that, I will be transformed. I will eventually get to where I'm going. And we don't, we don't step into our purpose and our identity. We don't become more like Jesus and we don't become people who carry the name of Jesus because we earn it. This is important and we're going to talk a lot more about this next week, but you do not earn your position as a chosen son or daughter of Christ, right? It doesn't matter how many times you show up here to church, you're no more deserving of the grace that God has given you than the first day you were here. And that's also an encouraging word. If this is your first time here or you've hardly been to church in your life, God's going to love you as much now as he

Will later. He has made all of himself available to you now. God's grace is what we are, is what we live by, is what we are sustained by. Paul did not become an apostle because he was an awesome dude. He was persecuting people. He was committing violence against the church. And Jesus said, "I'm going to do something in you that's glorious, not because you deserve it, but because I'm amazing." And what does he do? He knocks Saul off of his feet and says, "You're going to change your life. Your life's going to be radically different. You're going to suffer for my name and you're going to carry my name across the known world." And I think that some of you are here and I think God is trying to knock some of you off of your feet, perhaps trying to wake you up, say, "Hey, I've got something more for you. I've got a purpose that I'm calling you to." Maybe that's a change in career. Maybe that's a change in focus, a change in time. Maybe it's just simply to be exactly where you are, but to be more conscious of how you can carry the name of Jesus where you find yourself. We need people. We don't need more preachers.

We need more people who just simply in conversation and life to life speak the name of Jesus. We need people who are willing to say, "God's doing something in my life. Can I tell you about it?" Hey, that's really a tough thing that you're going through. Can I spend some time praying for you? Just simple acts of faith that feel maybe a little risky to us can have eternal consequences.

For us, I think probably I have here is a prayer for us this week, prayer that two friends of mine taught me. I don't know exactly where it's from, but it's a prayer that I think we could stand to pray more often, a prayer for God to lead us, a prayer for God to be present in our minds. It goes like this. Christ, beyond my mind. Christ, beyond my heart. Christ, beyond my lips. Lord, be inhabiting my mind. Help me think and see this place and this world and this situation as you would have me see it. Christ, beyond my heart. Be forming my emotions. Be helping me to love like you love. And in Christ, beyond my lips, help me to speak of you. Help me to have the courage and the words to proclaim who you are. Help me to speak truth and love. Help me to invite those who are far from you to be nearer to you. I think that's a prayer that we could all pray. And I think as we do that, I think we will find that we step more and more into our calling to bear the name of Jesus and to be transformed by the name of Jesus. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, Lord, you have called us by grace and you've called us by name. Lord, everyone in this room is invited to know you and to know your love, to know your forgiveness. And Lord, today I think that you're probably trying to get some people's attention. Lord, I pray that we would not hear the accusations of the devil, that we would not listen to the lies that are being whispered into our ears that keep us from responding to the gospel. Lord, you died for us and forgave us all of our sins. You've cleansed us of all of our brokenness. You've called us to be sons and daughters. You've given us a new name, a new identity and a new purpose. Lord, today I ask that you would draw us out of darkness and call us to live in the light. Lord, we pray that you would move in power among us, that you would help us to be a church of people who proclaim you with our lips and our lives. Help us to be bold. Help us to be confident. Lord, rid us of fear. God, I pray that we would glorify you in all that we say and do.

In Jesus name we pray. Amen.