HOW TO LIVE A POWERFUL LIFE

[0:00] for your steadfast love and for your faithfulness. God, thank you that you who breathed life into our lungs and who created the universe, that you are here in the room with us today.

[0:12] And though we cannot see you this morning, we long to see your face. So Lord, would you illuminate your word for us? Would you speak through me, your servant, to all of us, including me, that each one of us, including myself, would grow in our vision of who you are, our awe of you, our love of you, even our fear of you, our joy that is found in you, that we might come to know you more deeply, more intimately, and more completely.

[0:35] In Jesus' name, amen. Please be seated. I grew up on the west coast of Canada in Vancouver, British Columbia, with so many stories of my grandpa, Grandpa Sam.

[0:50] Grandpa Sam, we were told by my dad, was a bodybuilder extraordinaire. The feats that he would do as a young man, and you wouldn't believe me if I told you them, but I believe that they're true.

[1:02] He also was a classical musician, and a jazz saxophone artist, and he was quite a renaissance man. He painted oil canvas paintings, and just did so much, and generated so many stories.

[1:13] He had a personality larger than life, and a temper that could flare up, and so there was endless, hilarious stories to us young Gilmans in my family. My dad would take care of us on Tuesday nights as my mom would go Israeli folk dancing, and so we'd often ask my dad for more Grandpa Sam stories.

[1:29] By the time I was a young teen, I knew so much about my Grandpa Sam, but I had never met him, because we lived in Vancouver, and he lived in Montreal. I come from a very plentiful family, so to fly out to Montreal was always something that was just too costly for us.

[1:43] But then when I was 13, my family took that trip and went to Montreal. We were on a way to Israel, but we'd stopped in Montreal, and so we got to spend the afternoon with Grandpa, Grandpa Sam. And that afternoon, just a few hours with Grandpa Sam were so precious to us.

[1:56] We'd heard so much about him, we knew so much about him, but finally we got to know him. That afternoon, we didn't get any more stories about Grandpa Sam, and any of the stories he told us we'd already heard before, but there was something so precious and tender about getting to spend time in real life with Grandpa Sam.

[2:12] Just a few weeks later, Grandpa Sam passed away. And as we grieved, as we missed him, we also were comforted by the fact that we got to actually know Grandpa Sam. If he had died just a few weeks earlier, and we had never met him, we could have only ever said we knew a lot about Grandpa Sam.

[2:29] We couldn't have said we actually knew him. But there was something so precious about those few hours. And what is it about knowing, the difference between knowing about someone, knowing them, what is so precious about those few hours we got to spend with Grandpa Sam, even if we didn't gain any more information about him?

[2:46] It's because each one of us understands instinctively that there's something so much more real and intimate and precious having met someone, encountered them, to be able to say you know them, rather than that you just know about them.

[3:00] And I share the story with you this morning, not because I think that you particularly care about my personal life or my relatives or anything like that, but to illustrate for you, for all of us, that we all understand that there's this distinction between knowing about someone and knowing someone.

[3:17] And this isn't only important when it comes to the relationships we have with our friends or our relatives, but even more importantly when it comes to actually knowing God. If you're in church this morning, I am assuming that you know something about God, that you know something about Jesus.

[3:30] But it is of insurmountable importance that we don't just know about God, but that we actually know him. So if you turn in your Bibles to Philippians chapter 3, verse 10, that is what we'll be looking at this morning.

[3:44] And if you can all join me in reading this, half sentence, that would be great. Verse 10, Philippians chapter 3. Believe the words are on the screen. Say it aloud with me. That I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share his sufferings becoming like him in his death.

[4:01] That I may know him. Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 7 tells a story of how at the end of time many will come before him and many will say, Lord, Lord, and then recount all these things that they did in Jesus' name.

[4:17] These are people who clearly believe that Jesus is Lord and they're people who've done great ministry and service in the church and in society. And Jesus' response, devastatingly so to them, will be, get away, depart from me.

[4:30] I never knew you. It's of insurmountable importance that we don't just know about Jesus. Those people know a lot about Jesus, but they don't know him. Why is this so important for us today, specifically in the 21st century?

[4:43] Well, throughout the history of the church, throughout the past 2,000 years, there has always been these various heresies, this wrong thinking about God and life that creep into the church.

[4:53] And it seems like there's different wrong theologies, different heresies that will creep in in different periods. In the past 100 years, one of the main heresies that have crept into good churches in North America is one that I can illustrate for you best as told by a pastor and author, David Platt.

[5:12] He shares how it is very normal for someone today, say you have a young man, let's just call him Kyle, and he comes up to a pastor, we'll call him Pastor David, comes up to Pastor David and he says, you know, I'm not a church guy, I haven't grown up in the church, but I have this fear of dying and going to hell.

[5:28] And I don't want that. What should I do? And the pastor, Pastor David, would say something like, well, would you close your eyes and repeat after me? So Kyle closes his eyes by kind of peering through his eyes a little bit so he can see what the pastor is doing.

[5:42] And the pastor would say something like, dear Jesus. So Kyle looks around, keeps his eyes closed and says, dear Jesus. The pastor says something like, I know that I'm a sinner. So Kyle says, I know that I'm a sinner.

[5:54] And he leads him in the sinner's prayer asking Jesus to be his Savior and his Lord. And then Kyle looks up after saying amen and the pastor would look at him and say, Kyle, you're born again.

[6:05] You don't need to fear hell anymore. And that's a very common, a common phenomenon in the past hundred years in North America. And to some extent, even though we might not say that that is the fullness of what it means to be a Christian, a lot of us have encountered that in our own lives.

[6:20] But in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 7, Jesus is very clear that we need to not just be people who have said a prayer or know about Jesus, but we actually need to come to know him.

[6:31] There's so much more than just saying a prayer. As David Platt says, the Gospel is not an invitation to say a prayer. It's a summons to lay down our life.

[6:42] The Gospel isn't an invitation to just say a prayer. If that's what it is, then Christianity is simply like some type of superstition where basically the sinner's prayer is an incantation that you say that lets you in the club.

[6:53] But it's not like that. No, instead, instead it's more like how every one of us is born. We come into the world with a throne in our hearts. And who sits on that throne is who's in charge of your life.

[7:06] Who is the one that you're living your life in deference to and in awe of and making your decisions based upon. And every one of us is born with ourselves as the king on the throne of our hearts.

[7:17] We're the one, even as little kids. When we don't get away, we're just crying and we're screaming and we're being quite brutish. And so many of us become more polite as we grow up, but we're still making decisions based on the same grid.

[7:32] But for us to actually come to know God is when we say, we come to God and we say, both with our prayers as with our life, God, would you please save me for myself?

[7:42] I don't want to be the king of my life anymore. I don't want to be the one in charge. Would you save me for myself? Would you forgive me for my sin? And would you be the king of my life? And it's not just something we say with words.

[7:54] It's something that we're looking to God with our life. Another way to illustrate this for you is found in a true story in the Gospel of Luke in chapter 13 where you have a woman who is, she has a crippling spirit which means she's bent over like this and she's been like that for 18 years.

[8:11] She's been like that for 18 years and so that means for 18 years she hasn't seen the faces of any of her friends or family. She hasn't seen the sun. She hasn't seen any of that. She's bound like this. And when I think of this woman, it reminds me of a girl that came up to me at church on Wednesday, a service that Church of Messiah does along with a few other churches at the University of Ottawa.

[8:30] One evening after preaching, this girl came up to me and said, Daniel, I heard you talking about the Gospel and about our need for Jesus, but I know you're right, but for the past six months I've been running from God, I've been running from church and I'm afraid that if I surrender my life to God again that He's going to ruin my freedom and my fun.

[8:51] And as she spoke to me, I saw the tension in her face. You've ever seen someone's face where the skin on their face is so taut, like it's so tight, you can see that they're stressed. I talked to her about the past six months and I heard that even though she's been living a wild and crazy life that she really thinks is freedom and fun that she really is so miserable.

[9:09] There's such chaos in her life and she doesn't really have freedom and fun. And she's like this woman who, this woman, she's bent down like this for 18 years and all this woman can see is her own legs, her own body.

[9:22] That's all she can see. And I spent some time this past year when I was preparing for a message for Church on Wednesday, I spent some time in the self-help section of chapters reading through some of the books, actually a number of the books, some more intimately than others.

[9:34] And all these self-help books that are so popular today, it's a big section of chapters indicating a lot of people read those books. And all these books, and you can go online and watch all these TED Talks as well about how to do the same, it's all about gaining control and mastery of your own life.

[9:51] It's about getting in touch with your deep and natural desires and learning how to get those things, your dreams and your goals for yourself. In other words, it's doing the same that this girl at Church on Wednesday was saying she's been trying to do for six months, trying to make yourself the king of your life, trying to put yourself on the throne of your own heart.

[10:10] But trying to get obsessing over the learning to get in touch with your own desires and how to gain control of your life is really just being like this woman that all you can see is yourself. And you might imagine that would be freedom, you might imagine that would be fun, but really it's binding and it's crippling.

[10:25] And even the pleasures that you're able to get for yourself, there's such uncertainty as to whether or not you can keep those things for yourself, and so no matter how much riches and wealth you can get, you're still miserable. I've seen this when I've been working at Parliament Hill for the past seven years and I've had the privilege of having a few garden parties at the Prime Minister's house.

[10:43] I've gotten to meet not only the Prime Minister but other Cabinet Ministers, these Canadians who are some of the most powerful, most prestigious, in some cases, the most rich Canadians. They have so many of the things that you and I would only ever dream of, the popularity, the riches, wealth, the comfort, the pleasures.

[11:01] In addition to all of that at Parliament Hill, there's receptions everywhere you go. So it's pretty much unlimited alcohol and delicious food. These people have so many, have all the things that this young woman at church on Wednesday was dreaming about getting for herself.

[11:15] Yeah, as I have had conversations with these powerful people, I see in the eyes of so many such misery, such uncertainty. They're not happy people. They're not happy. They certainly don't have joy.

[11:27] They are just like this woman, bent like this for 18 years. But then after 18 years like that, this woman hears of Jesus. She hears these stories about him.

[11:38] And she thinks, I don't just want to know about Jesus, I want to encounter Jesus. I want him to heal me and to free me. And so she comes to Jesus and she cries out to him. And Jesus heals her.

[11:49] And for the first time in 18 years, this woman goes from being bent down like this where all she can see is herself. And she stands up. And for the first time in 18 years, she sees the faces of people around her.

[12:00] She sees the heaven, and she sees the sky. And she sees Jesus face to face. She encounters God and she worships God. She's heard about Jesus.

[12:11] She knows about Jesus. But now she knows Jesus. And in that, she's found her healing and her freedom. And that is the same for you and for me. The scriptures teach us that every single one of us, until we come to know God, even if we know a lot about him, until we come to know God, we're like this woman.

[12:30] And we're spiritually dead. We're like zombies. We might be awake. We might be going around doing stuff. But until we come to know God, it's like we're spiritually dead. But as God takes his rightful places on the throne of our hearts, as we surrender to him, both through prayer as well as through our lives, coming to know God, we encounter him.

[12:50] And so my passion for sharing this message with you, as with this young woman at Church on Wednesday, is both because I want you to truly be saved from hell.

[13:03] And as long as we're living life like this, whether you're a cabinet minister or a student at the University of Ottawa or you're here today, as long as you're living a life where you are the king of your life, then what awaits you after death is hell.

[13:18] But the good news is that Jesus came, that we might come and become reconciled to God and find life in him and be saved from hell. But it's so much more than that.

[13:30] My passion for sharing this message with you today is not simply that if anyone is here who simply knows about God but doesn't know him, that you'd be saved from hell. But it's so much more than that. It's as we come to know God, not only are we saved from hell, but so much more than that.

[13:43] We come into a personal, thriving, intimate relationship with the very one who created desire, who created pleasure, who created life itself, who created life itself.

[13:54] And so my burden for sharing this with you is that, is not simply that coming to know God, becoming truly born again is not simply the best life, but it's the only life.

[14:06] Until you come to know God, not just know about him, but until you come to know God, you are, you're living, you're not even truly living, you're spiritually dead. And you might get, like some of these cabinet ministers I've met, you might get, accumulate for yourself wealth and popularity and all these things, but none of it satisfies.

[14:23] The only thing that can satisfy our hearts in the deepest places of our life is God himself. Not just knowing about him, but knowing him. And so as I thought how to put together, how to express the joy and the beauty and the certainty and the life that is a life that knows God, not just knows about him.

[14:44] I was trying to put it into words and I thought of this YouTube video I wanted to share with you. I think that this pastor does an even better job than I can ever do. So we're going to take three minutes and watch him talk about the beauty of knowing God and Jesus being our king.

[15:00] The Bible says my king is the king of the Jews. He's the king of Israel. He's the king of righteousness. He's the king of the ages. He's the king of heaven.

[15:12] He's the king of glory. He's the king of kings and he's the lord of lords. That's my king. I wonder, do you know him? My king is a sovereign king.

[15:25] No means of measure can define his limitless love. He's enduringly strong. He's entirely sincere. He's eternally steadfast.

[15:37] He's immortally graceful. He's empirically powerful. He's impartially merciful. Do you know him? He's the greatest phenomenon that has ever crossed the horizon of this world.

[15:51] He's God's son. He's a sinner's savior. He's the centerpiece of civilization. He's unparalleled. He's unprecedented. He is the loftiest idea in literature.

[16:05] He's the highest personality in philosophy. He's the fundamental doctrine of truth theology. He's the only one qualified to be an all-sufficient savior.

[16:17] I wonder if you know him today. He supplies strength for the weak. He's available for the tempted and the tried. He sympathizes and he saves.

[16:28] He strengthens and sustains. He guards and he guides. He heals the sick. He cleanses the lepers. He forgives sinners.

[16:39] He discharges debtors. He delivers the captive. He defends the feeble. He blesses the young. He serves the unfortunate. He regards the age.

[16:51] He rewards the diligent and he purifies the meek. I wonder if you know him. He's a key to knowledge. He's a well-trained of wisdom.

[17:02] He's a doorway of deliverance. He's a pathway of peace. He's a roadway of righteousness. He's a highway of holiness. He's a gateway of glory.

[17:14] Do you know him? Well, his life is massless. His goodness is limitless. His mercy is everlasting. His love never changes.

[17:25] His word is enough. His grace is sufficient. His reign is righteous. And a yoke is easy. And his burden is lighter.

[17:36] I wish I could describe him for yet he's indescribable. He's incomprehensible. He's invincible. He's irresistible. Well, you can't get him out of your mind.

[17:49] You see, you can't get him off of your head. You can't outlive him and you can't live without him. Well, the Pharisees couldn't stand him. When they found out they couldn't stop him.

[18:02] Pilots couldn't find any fault in him. Terrors couldn't kill him. Death couldn't handle him. And the rage couldn't hold him. Yeah! That's my king!

[18:15] That's my king! Amen! Amen! Amen! Proverbs 4.18 says that the path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day.

[18:31] That truly, when it talks about shining ever brighter till the full light of day, it's not talking about the path of the righteous being a path necessarily of wealth or of comfort. But it's saying that no matter what life throws at you, no matter what comes down the pipe, that if you are someone who doesn't just know a boat, but you know him, then you are, that is your path.

[18:47] You have the path of the righteous. And it truly is a path that is growing ever in its awe and its joy, the sense of meaning and purpose and life everlasting. Jesus says in John chapter 17 that eternal life is this, that you know God.

[19:03] Eternal life is not just about being saved from hell, though that's part of it, but that forever, beyond death, as well as today, that you know God. There's a passage that gripped me the other day.

[19:14] I was reading, I'm reading through the Gospel of John and so it was a few weeks ago now because I just finished the Gospel of John, but a few weeks ago I was reading in the Bible John chapter 5. Jesus is standing before these men who know so much about God.

[19:26] They know the scriptures so well, they long for eternal life so much that these men actually write parts of the Bible in little boxes and tie that to their heads so the Bible is always on their forehead and they write the parts, beautiful parts of the Bible and they put it on the doorposts of their house so that whenever they walk through any door of their house, not just into the house but through their house, on every door frame they will be reminded of the scriptures and they're people who actually have the scriptures memorized more than any one of us including Pastor George, St. and Claire.

[19:54] These people long, they long for eternal life and Jesus is standing before them. Jesus in the body, he's right there standing before them and he says to them, he looks and says one of the most devastating things, one of the most haunting things that is anywhere in the scripture and he says to them that you search the scriptures because you believe that in them you have eternal life but then he says but basically he who is eternal life, he who the scriptures speak is standing before you.

[20:22] I hope that image haunts us today and for the rest of our lives. That haunting image brings healing to us as it grips our heart and leads us to pray saying God, don't let me be one who simply knows about you but let me be someone who knows you.

[20:41] That's a haunting image. They know the Bible so well. They know so much about God but they do not know him. And one of the fears that grips my heart in a good way is the concern that not only would I never be someone that simply knows about God but that my knowing of God, that those encounters with God would never ever be something just of the past.

[21:06] I think in some ways more haunting than an image of those men who have never known God but know so much about him is an image that comes home for some of us that we've had some amazing encounters with God in the past.

[21:18] There's been times where we really spend real quality time with God. We've encountered the living God and yet it's simply something of the past. May we ever be people who are praying and longing to come to know God deeper and deeper today.

[21:35] These words that Paul writes in Philippians chapter 3, that I may know him. In some ways, we think that this might be a prayer for non-believers, non-Christians, those who are spiritually dead to pray, God, I want to know you.

[21:49] But the Apostle Paul is saying this as the ultimate prayer of his life and he is someone who knows God so well, so much better than a lot of us, probably any of us, know God. He knew God so well. You see that still the ultimate longing of his heart is, God, I want to know you.

[22:04] And the letter he's writing, this letter of Philippians, he's writing to the most mature and godly church. Every one of Paul's letters includes some type of rebuke, in many cases, a lot of rebukes about a lot of very important things.

[22:17] But in this letter of Philippians to the church in Philippi, Paul only has good things, encouragement to say. I mean, rebuke is a good thing to say too, but in this case, it's only positive encouragement. And so he's writing to someone who knows God so well to a city where they know God so well and he's saying that this ultimate prayer for them is, God, I want to know you.

[22:36] And so I want to encourage you, however well you know God, even if you feel you know him so well, to not grow satisfied with where you're at, but to continue to ask God to bring you into a deeper relationship with him.

[22:49] And so one way to make this your own is to pray a prayer like this. Dear God, may I never be satisfied with only knowing about you. Would you grow in me an ever-increasing desire to know and be known by you?

[23:01] Dear God, may I never be satisfied with only knowing about you. Would you grow in me an ever-increasing desire to know you and be known by you? I encourage you to make this your own prayer.

[23:15] That's not where the verse ends, and so let's read it again together. Philippians 3, verse 10. That I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.

[23:29] So part of what it means to know Jesus is that you share in the power of his resurrection. The power of the resurrection is the power that brought Jesus from the dead to life again.

[23:40] It's the power that we know one day for anyone who knows God, who is looking to Jesus as a savior and as our king, that each one of us knows that it's that power that will one day raise us back from the dead and we'll be with God on the earth forever.

[23:55] And it's that power that breathes life into our lungs spiritually and makes us people who don't just know about God, but actually know him. It's that power that when this woman was bound over like this for 18 years that strained her out and allowed her not only to be healed, but to know God.

[24:12] It's that power of resurrection. The power over death. Power over failure to breathe life into that which has failed, decayed, or died. One of the best ways that I can illustrate this for us this morning is from a movie I watched this past year called Edge of Tomorrow.

[24:29] In this film, this soldier, played by Tom Cruise, he's not really a soldier, but he's sent into battle as a soldier. And so he starts off very afraid. But something has happened to him early in the film, not to ruin it for you, but to ruin it for you.

[24:41] Something happens to him where every time he dies, he gets rebooted. So he gets to start the day again. And so this soldier gets to, they're fighting a ferocious battle of robot alien things.

[24:54] And so all these other soldiers are getting just absolutely dusted. But he keeps getting rebooted and gets to keep on with the fight. So as the film goes on, he becomes this ultimate soldier.

[25:05] Not simply because he gets amazing training, but because he's no longer afraid of the enemy in any way. He's not afraid of death at all. And so he's able to just walk right past the bullets, just do his thing, and be this incredible, courageous, ferocious soldier.

[25:19] And when you're not afraid of what's coming at you, you can live life all in. And I'm part of a ministry where we live among the poor a few blocks from here in Lower Town. And sometimes in the summer, the kids love to have water fights.

[25:30] I know as a kid, like I used to, you're trying to not get hit by the water. But there was some point in my life a couple years ago where I realized, like, what can water do? If you're honest. And so the kids would be shooting their water guns at me.

[25:42] And I'm not afraid of water, so I'll just walk right up to the kids, and they're getting me wet. I'm not afraid of the water. So I become this ultimate water fighting soldier. And I want to have a massive bucket, and these kids get absolutely drenched.

[25:54] It's a good thing I have a good relationship with their parents. When you're not afraid of what is coming at you, you're able to live life boldly and all in. I know what it's like to not live that way.

[26:04] As a young teen and as a kid, I was so gripped by the fear of failure that I couldn't do anything in life that required risk. I could never have come up and sit in front of people and preach with them.

[26:16] Like, I couldn't have been done. I would just, I'd be so afraid I'd fail. Actually, I'd arrive at church and I'd go into the washroom and I'd just hide in the stall until the service started so I wouldn't have to interact with anybody. Then I'd come into the service and when the service ended, I'd slip out back into the washroom, hiding there so I wouldn't have any need to interact with people and maybe say something stupid.

[26:37] I was so afraid. But then as the reality of God came into my life, as I encountered the power of the resurrection and realized that as a Christian, you're able to fail. You're able to fall flat on your face knowing that the power of the resurrection really flows in your veins as sons and daughters of the Most High King.

[26:56] That fear of failure began to slip away. You see, like with Abraham, Abraham had this call in his life to be a blessing to the nations through his descendants.

[27:08] But his descendant, his son, God called him to put to death. How is Abraham going to obey God? His very calling, his ministry is on the line. But the scriptures are clear that Abraham had such confidence in God in his faithfulness and in his power for resurrection that he is able to obey God and take his son and he actually gets ready to sacrifice his son's life.

[27:31] Then God comes through for him. But Abraham knew that he's able to risk, risk big time because of God's power of resurrection. So I want to encourage us today to live in that power, to live in that power of the resurrection, to be able to be people who can risk, who can live boldly because that is part of what it means to know God, to live the adventure of life with him, alive in him.

[27:56] And there's a scene in Edge of Tomorrow where Tom Cruise, the person he's playing, where he loses the ability to get rebooted, to keep on living after he's killed.

[28:07] And so as a result, this guy who's this amazing soldier, so inspiring, all of a sudden becomes very timid again. And he's hiding so much and he can't really fight the enemy because he has to be preserving his own self. And as long as we're in that situation where self-preservation is our greatest priority, we're not able to live like the way it was made to be lived.

[28:24] You and I both know that. But Tom Cruise would be a fool if he wasn't trying to preserve himself because truly if a bullet went through his chest, he'd be destroyed forever. And I share this with you not to simply ruin the film for you, but also because if any one of us here simply knows a lot about God but we don't know him, if Jesus is not our savior and our king, then we have every reason to be afraid.

[28:50] We have every reason to never risk. We have every reason to try to stay alive for as long as possible because this is as good as it gets and it's not very good. If we simply are people who are church people but we're not actually children of God, then we have every reason to fear, to be haunted by that fear.

[29:10] But the good news is there's no reason to stay in that place. We need to be honest with where we're at but I encourage you if you're someone that has not surrendered your life to Jesus, if he is not your king, if you're not looking to him to save you, then I plead with you this morning, do that.

[29:26] Cry out to him. Cry out to him that he would save you and that you would not just know about him but that you would know him. But I think most of us are better illustrated by one other scene in the film which is that there's a good portion of the movie where Tom Cruise has that power of being rebooted but he doesn't know it.

[29:47] So you know as someone watching the movie that if a bullet goes through him he's going to be able to keep on fighting and he's able to keep on thriving but he doesn't know it. And so he's living that timid, unable to risk, unable to fulfill his calling kind of way but you know that he really can just go and live all in.

[30:07] And as you watch that, I can't help but think that's how so many of us live. We know God. We have his power flowing through our veins. If we were to fail, if we were to risk and go wrong, we know that he can breathe new life into that very calling, into our very lives.

[30:24] And yet we're living life as if we don't even know him. It's the confidence and the power of the resurrection that famously led Jim Elliot, a young man, younger than me, to leave his comfortable home in North America and go down to Ecuador and be a missionary among some of the most deadly people on planet Earth.

[30:41] It was a tribe where they're always killing each other, cannibals. No one has grandparents because no one lives that long. They're always killing each other. And he and some of his young friends, all these guys in their young 20s, went down there to bring the gospel.

[30:53] They brought the gospel. They were killed. They were cannibalized. But even in their death, we saw the power of the resurrection in two ways. One, Jim Elliot knew that even if he was to be killed by these cannibals, that that would not be the end of his life, that God would bring him back from the dead at the end of time and he'd spend forever with God.

[31:14] You see that bold, that gutsy confidence in him. But he also knew that even if their mission failed, that God could breathe new life into it. And I had the privilege a few years ago of meeting the very man that killed Jim and his friends.

[31:26] And this man and the entire people group of these cannibals are no longer cannibals. They know God. These people now have grandparents. He's a grandparent to the children of Jim Elliot because they don't have a grandpa.

[31:40] He's now their grandfather. We've seen the power of the resurrection breathe life into a mission that failed. For a lot of us, living in the power of the resurrection is not going to mean going to another part of the world.

[31:53] But it might mean speaking up in the classroom or at work about the goodness of a life with God. It might mean sacrificing some of our selfish dreams for a greater dream that God gives us.

[32:06] I just want to encourage you this morning, if there is a burden that God has given you, if there is a dream that God has given you, if there is something that you know is the right thing to do but you're afraid of doing it for fear of failure, that because of the power of the resurrection, if you know God, to go for it, to live life boldly, risky, live life all in because we know that God is faithful and he is power over death.

[32:31] Truly he is power over death. There is something that you and I have that is so much more than what Tom Cruise in Edge of Tomorrow had in that Tom Cruise simply had the power of being rebooted but you and I actually share in the power of the resurrection.

[32:45] So in this movie, even though he gets rebooted and can live life pretty confidently, death is still such a key ingredient and all of that. Death still has kind of mastery over him. But because of Jesus' resurrection, in his death, defeating death, and then even more so through his resurrection, as 1 Corinthians 15 says, Paul writes, he says, O death, where is your sting?

[33:09] O death, where is your victory? For truly, Jesus, life, has victory over death. And so you and I can live a life not only being rebooted, but you and I can live a life in the confidence that death is no longer in charge.

[33:24] Death no longer has the final word. The final word in our life will never be failure or death or decay, but is life, is resurrection, is Jesus.

[33:35] He has the final word. And so truly in him we can live a life that's all in, boldly and risky. You can make this your own by living it out and it's part of that by praying these words.

[33:46] Dear God, help me to live boldly, able to risk, confident in the power that raised Jesus from the dead. Dear God, help me to live boldly, able to risk, confident in the power that raised Jesus from the dead.

[34:04] I want to encourage you this morning, if you feel, if you see any part of your life that's not living in that boldness that comes from the power that raised Jesus from the dead, to make these words your own.

[34:15] The slides, these prayers will be put up on the website on Monday and encourage you to pray these words. But that's not all. Would you say this verse again with me? Philippians 3.10 That I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share his sufferings becoming like him in his death.

[34:35] I feel like me when I was reading through this preparing for the message I saw that I may know him and that filled me with such joy and just pumped me up and then I read and may share in his power the power of the resurrection and get even more stoked.

[34:47] Come on. I can live life boldly and confidently. And then we read and may share his sufferings becoming like him in his death. I would have been more pumped if it had said sharing his sufferings becoming like him in his death and then said and the power of the resurrection because I'd look at like okay so if I die with him I also live with him as it says also in the Bible.

[35:11] But instead it says this positive thing sharing the power of the resurrection and then a seemingly more negative thing and sharing his sufferings and death. But I believe that Paul wrote it this way for a very specific reason and that is that there is a certain type of suffering that only those who have shared in the power of the resurrection have come to life in God get to experience.

[35:36] Earlier in Philippians Paul writes that it is a gift to believe in God and to suffer with him. That it is a gift to both believe in God and share in his suffering with him. And that doesn't make a lot of sense to us because sharing and suffering tends not to be something we think of as a gift but Paul sees it as a gift.

[35:55] Why is that? Well we know that our God is a God of compassion. We know through through the through Jesus coming into the brokenness and the pain and the death of the human condition taking all of that upon himself on the cross.

[36:11] That our God is a God that cares for the lost cares for the broken cares for the marginalized those who are hurting and suffering. He's a compassionate God but the word compassion passion means to suffer and C-O-M is a prefix that means with.

[36:28] The word compassion means to suffer with those who are suffering. That's what it means to be compassionate. God doesn't just have pity on us he has compassion for us. So if we're people who are going to join God in the work and the ministry that God is doing bringing light to the darkness and life to the dead healing to the broken then we're joining him in being compassionate people which necessitates that we're suffering with those who are suffering that we're sharing in their pain.

[36:57] When I was a little kid I was about five years old I think I a bunch of my friends dads did a take your child to work day so all my little friends all went off with their dads to work and for whatever reason my dad he's an amazing dad didn't wasn't part of that program and so I remember just selfishly going to my room I was feeling really bad for myself and I sat on my bed come from a big family so it was a bunk bed a lot of siblings so I sat on my bed and I just prayed something like we just learned the Lord's Prayer as a family so I was sitting on my bed and I said God if you're my Heavenly Father can you have a take your child to work day and I prayed the prayer just because I wanted to go to work with somebody I didn't want to be left out but in a very real way just a few weeks later my church was doing work in one of the poorest the poorest area in all of Canada in East Hastings Vancouver and I got to go with my family and be part of what they were doing and there was some sense that day where I realized as we went to care for the poor like that

[37:57] I knew that God was answering that prayer even in a small way that I was going to work with my Heavenly Father that He was caring for the poor and I was getting to join Him in that and as I've grown up in my life it's meant getting to work among victims of human trafficking helping people find freedom from actual slave traffickers in my life it's meant being a light at Parliament Hill where I get to be with some of the richest most comfortable powerful people yet they're miserable and we try to get to share the truth and the hope we have in Jesus with them it's been amazing in everyone's life it's going to look like different things but in every person who knows God in every one of our lives it's going to mean something it's going to mean joining God some way in the work He's doing bringing light into the darkness and so as Paul writes about sharing and suffering I don't think he's simply telling us I don't think he's simply telling us that knowing God is worth suffering for it's as if he's saying it's not simply that he's saying knowing God is such a treasure and if the ticket to know God is suffering then it's worth paying that ticket so you can know Him

[39:05] He's actually so so captured he's so captivated by the joy and the meaning and the gift of knowing God that if suffering is our getting to go to work with God then he's pumped up for it the reason you have a take your child to work day isn't so that your child can be exposed to some job prospect in the future but so that your child can get to know you because as we spend time with people and see what they do and go to their workplace we get to know a whole dimension to who they are it's a whole other dimension of who they are is what they do for work and the work that our Heavenly Father is doing is the most purpose driven hope filled life giving work imaginable and so I want to encourage you to pray that prayer that I prayed as a little kid that I still pray to this day still to this day I pray God would you take me to work with you when I get up in the morning I'm like God I want to join you in the ministry you're doing bringing light to the darkness bringing light to those who are dead

[40:06] I want to encourage you to pray that prayer you may not say like I did as a five year old but maybe it would sound more like this the words are on the slide dear God thank you that you suffer with those who are suffering may I join you in suffering for the gospel that I may know you more completely dear God thank you that you suffer with those who are suffering may I join you in suffering for the gospel that I may know you more completely truly there's no greater joy there's no greater life life itself comes as we come to know God, as we share the power of the resurrection, and as we join God in being compassionate people together with God. Would you join me in praying? Heavenly Father, thank you that you are a God who has not abandoned us to the darkness and the brokenness of the human condition. God, thank you that you haven't simply called us to be people who study you and know a lot about you, but you've called us to know you in the deepest, most intimate parts of our life, in every part of our life. God, thank you for Jesus. We long to know you, and so I pray that you would grow in us an ever-increasing desire to know you, and that you would bring us into that deeper and more personal relationship with you day after day after day for the rest of our lives, and that you would give us the joy of getting to help bring that to others. In Jesus' name,

[41:36] Amen.