Church life lessons from the Trail Bryant Martin

Good morning, everyone. It's a real blessing to be with the brothers and sisters at Chamber Christian Fellowship. I bring you greetings from the church back in State College, Fathers of Jesus Congregation, and I'm thankful for brothers and sisters that are back there praying for me here this morning and supporting us being here.

Also, it is good to have my nephew Vincent here. There he is. Okay, that's the inside joke. Vincent is my nephew and his new wife. It's a real blessing to have you here with us this morning.

Church life lessons from the trail.

A little over a week and a half ago, it might be two weeks now or more, two and a half weeks. My family and I were at the homeschool convention in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, called CHAP. Maybe some of you were there.

And we sat in on the keynote talk on Friday morning by a passionate lady who cared a lot about her Christianity, her form of it, and then seeing men and women, fathers and mothers teaching their children. But before she spoke, there was something interesting that happened, and that is they played like a five-minute video of a man in the Navy in his white uniform, dressed very sharply, talking about how he has chosen, he and his wife have chosen to homeschool their family.

And he went on to talk about too how homeschooling really is a way to equip your children to fulfill the mission of the Navy, of the U.S. Army. That is ordered around three words. He said, "Honor, courage, and commitment."

It was an appealing promo.

And of course, there were the pictures, as you see right here, of ships and Navy SEALs and action. It stood out.

And then follow up that promo with this lady who was very passionate about homeschooling and a passion about the United States and the issues that our country is facing. And she was talking about how we are in a spiritual battle. And she wanted to quote there in Ephesians. She said, "We don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but we wrestle against principalities and powers, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places." And she was on top of the spiritual battle. And then she said, "Here's what you need to do. You need to get out and vote.

We need to get the right people in the right places to change this country around." And I kind of looked sideways at my children thinking, "I wonder if they're going to catch this irony." I looked over and there were a couple of sideways glances, little snorts, saying, "Yes."

They caught it.

But nonetheless, so appealing, even appealed to me. And then you go through the homeschool convention and of course, there's the big booth with the Navy looking for recruits. They have something to offer and they want you to think that the characteristics that they're looking for are honor, courage, and commitment.

And in our prayer time here this morning, we talked about how there's a lot of unrest in our world. And just last night or yesterday afternoon, while we were about our business, there was a number of B-2 or stealth bombers, these big, huge, razor-sharp planes that I think they're about 162 feet wide and like 60 feet long and weigh like 158,000 pounds, were flying over Iran and dropping their big bombs that drew away in the ground and they blew up some nuclear facilities there. So the U.S. now is officially in the war.

It's sobering times, but it's times when our emotions are stirred, whether it's fear, and I can understand that. And it can also be patriotism as well. So it's quite the time that we are in.

But we know as kingdom people that this is not our place to be. This is not our nation. We're part of a great nation that expands the world. No geopolitical boundaries in our nation, brothers and sisters. And we know that in Iran right now, there is a church that is growing and expanding.

And recently, a couple in our church got to lead a couple to Christ, Iranians to Christ. So God is at work. The Navy doesn't tell you that a lot of veterans today, about 25% of veterans have PTSD and other mental health issues. It looks bright and sharp and flashy there, that Navy guy saying his thing, but we know that behind the scenes is a very actually ugly picture. But we get to be part of a nation where Jesus is King.

A nation that operates in upside-down ways, where it's not power over, but it's serving up as we follow our King. Yes, hard. Yes, sacrifice. But it takes honor. It takes courage. And it takes commitment. And this morning, I'm here to tell you that the church is God's plan A. There is no plan B. And I love this quote by John D. Martin.

I know that I'm kind of singing to the choir here, but I just had to put this quote in as I thought about what are we called to do today.

Jesus wants a society of redeemed people to show the world what the whole world would look like if everyone obeyed the King. And I think that's a quote, that's a vision that we should really be thinking about every day as a Christ follower.

Am I part of a society? Am I part of a church that is exemplifying a different way to the world, an alternative way to live here?

So this morning, we're going to talk about the Church of Jesus Christ.

And there's a couple of verses. You can actually turn in your Bibles with me. Let's just open our Bibles up just for a short time here. And I would take a thing of water, which actually I have one. Wonderful. Open up to Ephesians 3:19 through 22. Ephesians is just packed. One of the brothers from our church is preaching a series through Ephesians. And wow, what a book.

And here, Paul is helping us understand, helping us see that there is a cause much greater than these earthly kingdoms. There is the bride of Christ that we get to be part of. So Ephesians 3, we're just going to read several verses here, 19 through 22.

Actually, let's back up to 14. So Ephesians 3:14 through 21. I'm not sure how I got my wording there or my numbers, but 14. For this reason, I bow my knee to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he will grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you may be rooted and grounded in love, and may be able to comprehend with all the saints the width, the depth, the length and the depth and the height to know the love of Christ, which passes all understanding.

That passes knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.

And if you back up there in Ephesians 3, back to verse 10, we see another verse here. This is what the church is: to the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church to who? To the principalities and powers in heavenly places. And I agree with that lady that we are in a spiritual warfare. I agree that there are principalities and powers that are fanning the flames of war, the demons of war.

And I believe that as a church, as people of God, we're called to combat these things. But how do we do that? How do we do that? 1 Peter 2:8. But you are—I'm sorry, 1 Peter 2:9. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Did you get that? That we as the church, as this holy nation, the kingdom of Jesus, get to proclaim his excellencies.

What a calling. And I'm sure you're just like me. In many ways, we feel very incapable. We're just humans. But God, he's filling us with his Spirit. He's giving us so many graces that we can together be faithful. The grace of just gathering this morning, the grace of communion, the grace of his word, the grace of his Holy Spirit is at work. And so we can do that. We can be those by God's grace. We can proclaim the excellence of him who's called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light. And so how are we as a church to live in this world? We have so much brokenness around us. If you just look at the last 10 years, from 2015 to 2025, there have been just tectonic shifts in our world.

And so many times we just forget about it. And especially those in Carson's age, 15 and on up, you don't remember how it was before. You were 5, 10 years ago.

But so many changes. The internet went from on top of the desk into our hands and into our pocket. And now they say that those growing up, like Gen Z, also the millennial generation, by the time they're like 30, they've spent like 30,000 hours on social media.

We've seen the biggest movement in the last 10 years of refugees out of the Middle East, moving west, moving into Europe and on into our parts of the world. Just unbelievable wars and brokenness there. The stability that was seemingly gained in the last 50 years of the 20th century has been totally upended in the first 25 years of the 21st century.

We're seeing things happen that nobody imagined would happen at Y2K, at 2000. We were moving into a time of everyone's going to love each other. Not happening. And we stand at a moment in history right now where that is so obvious.

Wars and rumors of wars, broken families.

40 million, about approximately 20% of the population has anxiety disorders. And even just in the United States, just thinking about it from a moral perspective, 10 years ago, 70% of people were against same-sex marriage and 30% for it. And now in 2025, we have 70% for it and 30% against it.

So not only in physical ways, not only in geopolitical and global ways is our world changing, but also morally it is changing. And so how will we live in our day?

I love this quote by Rabbi Jonathan Sack. I came across it in John Mark Comer's book, Live No Lies. And John Mark Comer is trying to understand too this crazy world that we live in and what does it mean to be a faithful disciple of Jesus.

And he quotes this Jewish writer and he says, "If we want to learn how to be faithful to the ways of God, we need to look at these minority groups that have just existed for thousands of years." And of course, Jewish people were one of those. And see, how did they live? How did they pass on their faith? And here this rabbi says this, "To be a creative minority," which I love that idea.

As followers of Jesus, we need to be creative. In the book To Change the World, James Hunter says, he says the evangelicals in the West have totally lost their imagination. The only way they can comprehend change in the world is by putting Trump in office.

They've lost their imagination. And here he's saying, "Okay, we need to be a creative minority." It's not easy because it involves maintaining a strong link with the outside world while staying true to your faith, seeking not merely to keep the sacred flame burning, but also to transform the larger society in which you are a part.

This is, as Jews can testify, a demanding and risk-laden choice. Isn't that exciting? That we have a deep desire to be faithful to the ways of Jesus, to God's word, to his principles. I know in this church there's that deep desire. We don't want to compromise. We want to be unapologetically kingdom Christian. We want to unapologetically say Jesus is our king.

But yet, we also want to go to live in the world and not be of the world. And to me, that's the most exciting thing. It's this amazing tension.

So how are we going to live in our world? Let's go ahead and move along here. So looking at Hebrews 10, this really famous verse. I think Hebrews 10:24 and 25, we should be coming back to this verse all the time. We believe we live in the end times and we see wars and rumors of wars.

And so the writer of Hebrews says this to us, "Let us consider how we may spur one another on towards love and good deeds." Or as the King James says, "Provoke each other love and to good works." Actually, I like that one. I think this is the ESV here. Not giving up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another in all the more as you see the day approaching.

And so we're going to look at five points, five lessons that I learned recently when all the men boys at Followers of Jesus Church did a camping trip. One year, our church does a camp out, kind of like you all do when you go to Penn Valley, two nights, three days, two nights deal. And then the next year, the off year, the sisters and the ladies and girls go do a two-day, one-night thing. And the men go do a two-day, one-night thing. And this week or this year, the brothers in charge of it said, "We're going to really work you guys out.

We're going to go up to the wilderness of Pennsylvania, to the Hammer Sleigh Wilderness Area. And we're going to hike five miles back in on like a category five trail, which or category four or five. Five is like the worst trail there is.

We're going to hike back in there five miles and we're going to camp back there for the night and then come back out the next day." And these boys are along and Chandler is four years old. He was along. He had a backpack too.

Not as much weight as his dad's, but he had a backpack. And so here we are, Monday morning, two weeks ago, getting ready to head out two days. We're having a huddle here and Hector was in charge and he was laying out the ground rules of how this is all going to work.

And so we were all excited here. We knew it was supposed to rain, so it turned to be quite adventure. So we're going to look at five points here, five lessons from the trail, five church life lessons from the trail that I thought of as we headed out. So number one, what do men think of when they want to go camping?

Bacon.

Eating, right? All right. So Saturday evening, boys were like, "Dad, we got to go shopping. We're leaving Monday." And so we went shopping and food. Lynelle had already went shopping and got food, but we need to get more food.

And then, of course, it's funny, we saw two other men and their boys shopping Saturday evening, getting their stuff. And so we had tons of food, way too much food. But it got packed back in there. And so we ate together often on the trail going back in. We had breaks. We would stop. Boy, the snacks were coming right out. Everyone was hungry. Everyone was working hard. And we ate together.

Okay? So I believe, I am very convinced that to be a creative minority, our churches need to eat together.

And of course, you all know the verses that we could go to Acts 2, we could go to Acts 4. And what was really funny is the Sunday before we left in our public reading of scripture, we were in Acts 4 at the end. And it talks about how they had all things in common.

And I commented later like, "Boy, I'm glad we just read that." Because I'm not an avid hiker. I don't know what to take on my trip. Now, my boys do, but I sure don't. And I was thankful to have there were men on that, my boys and other men on that trip at hike who had hiked before and had a little more foresight than I did or way more better prepared. So we had all things in common, right?

Very much an important part of the idea of dining together. And so let's just think a little bit about that in scripture. As somebody has said, if you read the Gospels, you just see that Jesus just ate his way through the Gospels, many, many meals. Or as another person has said, Jesus went on a gigantic camping trip with his disciples for those three years of ministry, right? The three and the twelve. Okay?

And they were together a lot. It was very relational. There were many campfires, many meals. And of course, Luke wraps up with that epic story there of the Emmaus Road and him sitting down with those two disciples. And he broke the bread and their eyes were open.

To be seated at a table is to be human. Dining food are the great equalizers. And everyone does that. And every culture has a culture around eating together. It's to be human.

A table is a place where Christ can be embodied in the world through blessing, breaking, giving, and nourishment. We know in our world today, there's many families who don't dine together. That's a rarity for families to get at the table together and dine together. And we see that in our culture in state college with even college students in our home. And you see that here, I'm sure, in Chambersburg. That has been lost. Families don't dine together. And we know that families who dine together stay together. That's just a huge part of family life, of those relational times around the table where lots of conversation can happen, exhortation can happen, that relationship grows. And it's the same way in the church, brothers and sisters.

We need to be looking for opportunities to dine together, to eat together as the family of God. And this can happen in small groups. This can happen in your home. This can happen with fellowship meals. And it just takes a lot of work. For us to have that much food and to eat that often on that trip was a lot of work, especially for the young guys.

Because we said, "Okay, we're going to break this crew up into three groups. The fast guys, the middle guys, and the slow guys." Don't ask me where I was in that list. But the fast guys, they got to carry all the food. We loaded them up.

Slowed them down a little bit, but they still beat us way in.

So food, it took sacrifice. It took work. It took planning. And it's the same way for our churches, for us to have a meal, have people into our homes. It takes work. It takes sacrifice. It takes planning. And the early church, beyond the apostolic church, the early church was known for their hospitality.

Just recently, I was telling somebody that in our little area where we live, our neighbors hardly ever have company. And I feel like there's always an extra vehicle or two in our driveway and there's way too many children screaming in the backyard. At least some of the neighbors think that. And there's always stuff happening. And that's just normal life. We're just, as kingdom people, we're just used to hosting. It's a tremendous gift that we've been given by our heritage. We're just used to that. We're used to that, having people in our homes.

And the early church was known for that. Actually, what's fascinating about the early church is it was spread across this huge geographical area with all these different people groups. And in those times, xenophobia was more a thing than even in our day. Like when you came walking into a village, you were from 500 miles away from a different language, a different people group. They're like, "Stranger danger.

Who's this guy here?" And that was just who they were. But if he was a Christian and was able to connect with that church, they would welcome him in. There wasn't an Airbnb registered down the road. You welcome them into your home and they'd live with you. "This is my brother. This is my sister. We be the family of God." And people noticed that. Neighbors noticed this hospitality, this philia xenoth, which is the love of strangers. They noticed that. Hospitality is philia xenoth. They noticed that and it stood out. It was a strange way these Christians lived, the welcoming strangers in their home. So let's be people who eat together often.

All right. We're going to keep moving along here. Number two, worship together often. Worship together often. Right here on the right, on the left side, we have a brother from our church. This is in the morning. He's sharing from the word of God, some thoughts for us. What in the world is that stump in the middle or that log in the middle?

Why is that there? We'll get to that shortly. On the right, my son Keani, he's holding a snail, I think. It was amazing what these little children found on the trail in there. Always stopping, picking up something. We'll get to that. Okay? Worship together often. If you are raised with Christ, if then you were raised with Christ, seek those things who are above. Where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God, set your mind on things above and not on things on the earth.

If you are raised with Christ, if you have experienced resurrection as Jesus had, which was such an amazing thought, the apostles and the early church, they ordered themselves around the resurrection. Sunday was a day of celebration. As I understand, and Brother David could correct me here, this makes me a little nervous talking about the early church in front of you brothers, but they didn't kneel on Sunday.

If you prayed, you stood because it was a celebration. Why? Why on Sunday? Somebody, why? Why do we gather on Sunday? What is the service today?

Jesus is risen. Jesus is risen. It is a celebration of the resurrection. We need to build that deep into our DNA. That's why we gather on the first day of the week is to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus.

And communion, as you do it here, a weekly communion is such a beautiful way to help build that habitus into our body of thanksgiving, of remembering, of acknowledging the risen Jesus. So worship together often. Come together around the risen Lord and help ourselves, if Jesus has risen, to set our minds up there where he is.

Our work in this world is resurrection work. And Brian Zant says it's so beautiful. Christianity in its proper form is a transcendent beauty. The story of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection is not only the greatest story ever told, it is the most beautiful story ever told.

Life, death, and resurrection, the most beautiful story leads people to worship around you. And Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 14:26, he says this, "When you come together, each of you have a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation.

Let all things be done with edification." So Paul is envisioning not a big group of spectators, but a group of participants, people who are engaged in the service, people who are thinking about, "How can I serve here today? How can I help?"

Not spectators, but participants. Not a few actors on a stage, but people who are involved. Okay. Let's look at that middle picture there. Why do you think I have that middle picture on? I'm looking at my son Keani to see if he remembers that log.

By the way, we crossed many logs. And the trail was this narrow on the side of a hill. It was pretty arduous. But Keani pointed this log out to him, getting ready to crawl over, he goes, "Hey, look, Dad, it looks like a..." Anybody want to guess what that looks like?

A face. It's a nose there, has eyes, everything that creepiest looking face somebody ever saw. But he's like, "Look, it's looking like a face." I was like, "Oh, that's neat. Neat." And then pretty soon he's like, "Hey, look at the snail. Oh, that's neat.

Hey, Dad, look how blue the sky is. Look, boy, it's like blue. And the leaves are green." And it was just this Keani and other children, young boys there. They were helping us do what? What were they helping us do?

Worship. Worship. They were helping us worship. And really, as Christ followers, we should be helping people around us worship. Heather Holman in this book right here lays it out. She talks about this as Christians, it's really important that we help people marvel. And this is actually a very healthy human thing to do. And some people do this a lot and others do it less. And she's challenging us as Christians in this book, The Six Conversations. She's saying that we need people who lead people to marvel.

And that's what these little boys are doing. I mean, after a while I was like, "Okay. We're not going to stop and look at any more slugs and snails. We got to get back there. It's going to rain tonight. We got to get back and get set up."

But they were just being children, just having a great time. "Look at this. Look at that." All right. So Heather says this in this book, The Six Conversations. She says, "The missing element in conversational closeness involves a beautiful concept, awe. In my literature research at both the University of Virginia and the University of Michigan, I center my inquiries of literature around the notion of awe and, more specifically, sublime experiences.

Awe involves marveling at something sacred, vast, supernatural, mysterious, and so beautiful you feel overcome by the thing you're thinking about or experiencing." 18th-century philosopher Edmund Burke observed, "Observed. More recently, psychologists identify awe as a powerful emotional state of wonderment and mystery and moving people toward a feeling of being more interconnected." Okay? So as you are in awe together as a group, you become more interconnected. In a research study in which psychologists interviewed participants on their experience of awe, they identified key themes: connection with the universe, connection with the divine, and connection with all living things.

The researchers discussed how the experience of awe brings people in touch with elements of being that are not typically considered in routine daily activities, which allow for personal growth and awareness and meaning. We'll stop there. So when we lead people in worship, it brings human connection. And as followers of Jesus, we should be those that are doing that just in our daily lives, is helping people worship.

In the book, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church, Alan Kreider says this, "Scholars have noted in bewilderment that the early Christians did not spend a lot of time praying for the conversion of outsiders. Instead, energized by the power of God that they experienced in worship, many of them lived interesting lives."

And the rumors got out. Christian worship was a place of empowerment. And people were like, "I want to be part of that. I want to experience that life that you're experiencing. I want to be in that place where the rich and the poor are together, where the outsiders, the strangers are being welcomed in. Wow. That's beautiful." So worship together often, brothers and sisters, is how we become that creative minority in our world today. We better keep moving along here.

All right. Number three. And I did not look at my clock when I walked up here. Kevin, what time did I walk up here? Or what time do you typically shut down? Quarter to 12. Quarter to 12? All right. We can definitely do that. So number three here is wrestle together often.

Now, I'll share some experiences here of why I put this here. I had to be a little bit it wasn't something that came to mind necessarily as we did this hike. So you have two guys sitting on a little seesaw, carrying on here. There were a fire, which looks kind of crazy. They're having fun, having a good time. On the right here, one of our guys, his shoe went bad. And so, "Hey, we had to stop. You can't go very far with that. There was an issue in our pack." And we all stopped and we got the duct tape out and created an amazing-looking shoe there that was able to get us out. So wrestle together often.

Remember the famous words about the church that Hebrew writer gave to us that says, "We are to provoke each other to love and to good works." And we're going to look at two things on this wrestle idea. One is the idea of spiritual warfare.

There are many challenges that we face as followers of Jesus. In the last six months in our congregation, we've come through one very significant battle that was a really intense time for the whole congregation due to a sister's mental health journey.

And so there was a decision that we had to make in this time. Are we going to retreat? Are we going to go into the closet and lick our wounds? Are we going to be bowed down with shame or frustration or anger? These were all definitely parts of it. But through the work of the group together and through the influence of brothers and sisters who care about spiritual warfare, the cry was raised, "Now is the time to get together. Now is the time to wrestle together. Now is the time to support each other." And so out of that came a prayer meeting that happened every evening at 8 o'clock for a week or two. Sometimes it would go for two hours.

There was prayer, confession, sharing. And it just became a place where we could share the things that we were facing. It became a safe place. It became a powerful place, an anointed place. We would read through a psalm. We would sing together. We would pray together, pray for the person, pray for the family, pray for ourselves. We wrestled together in that spiritual warfare.

It was a powerful time. And I'm so thankful to see the gifts that came out. I wasn't the one leading that prayer group. It was a brother who cared about prayer, who's often maybe more behind the scenes, but he stepped forward and just led in a beautiful way. We need to wrestle together often. We need to deal with the tough things, with the hard things. We need to work together with what is facing us. Leslie Newbigan says, "The secular society is not a neutral area in which we can project the Christian message. It is an area already occupied by other gods. We have a battle on our hands. We are dealing with principalities and powers."

And so that is all around us. We have to wrestle together in prayer with the corporate group. And it's such an opportunity to do that. The next, I want to look at conflict. Hector Treuer in his soon-to-be-published book called Unholy War: How Conflict Could Save Your Church, he says this. Just listen.

And the subtitle is, "Trust Isn't Built in the Good Times." So we're looking at wrestling together. We looked at spiritual warfare. Now we're looking at conflict. Is conflict terrible, always bad, or can conflict be embraced? You don't really know how much someone trusts you until you disagree, until you correct them, until you ask a hard question or say something that doesn't land quite right.

In that moment, they'll either lean in or lean out. If they lean in, you've got something wrong. If they lean out, you've got a performance. And the performance is over. This is why the churches that avoid conflict never develop real trust, because no one ever gets a chance to be real. Everything is kept on a low, simmer, safe, shallow, sterilized. It feels peaceful until someone bleeds.

You build trust by walking through the mess with people. You build it by not disappearing when things get awkward. You build it by being slow to speak, quick to listen, even quicker to say, "Hey, I didn't handle that right."

Trust doesn't grow through perfection. It grows through consistency, through humility, through a dozen tiny awkward conversations that prove, "I'm still here. I still care. I'm not giving up." Do you want a healthy church? Start rewarding honesty instead of charisma. Start trusting the people who are willing to wrestle with truth, not just the ones who keep the mood light and the emails short.

Polite churches are the scariest kind. On the surface, they seem lovely. People are friendly. Everything's organized. The coffee's decent. No one gets too emotional. No one raises their voice. And no one ever, ever has a public disagreement. You might think, "Wow, that's a peaceful place." But underneath, there's usually tension nobody knows how to name: suspicion, quiet loyalty tests, unspoken rules about who's allowed to say what. And eventually, it all comes out sideways. The issue isn't that people are mean. It's just that people are scared. They've been trained to believe conflict is dangerous instead of redemptive. And so they keep quiet, play nice, and trust dies in silence.

The longer you wait to address a conflict, the more room it has to mutate. It grows limbs. It picks up extra baggage. It gathers supporting characters who weren't even there for the original offense but now have opinions. It's like trying to kill a wasp nest with a pool noodle: too little, too late, too dramatic. You want your church to thrive? You've got to treat early conflict like a relational fire drill. Deal with it early. Deal with it directly. And don't wait for the building to be engulfed. And please, don't spiritualize your delay by saying, "We'll just wait on the Lord."

Trust isn't built once and done. It's a muscle. And if you don't use it by having those hard conversations, by staying in relationships through disagreement, it atrophies. And when the next crisis hits, that muscle won't hold. So flex it. Build it. Test it. Prove it. Let your church become the kind of place where people expect honesty and trust it when it comes. Because when the day of blood and feathers arrives, and it will, your church will be ready. Not perfect, but real.

So wrestle together often. Engage in conflict. Engage in spiritual warfare, but do it in a way that's according to Scripture, that's according to the ways that Jesus would do it. All right. Next point. Team together often. Work together often.

And so here, on the right, on the left here, sorry, we were almost about a half a mile from getting out on the way back. And it was all uphill. I think we had to climb about 500 feet from where we were five miles. But about 100 feet was in the last half mile. And you were tired. And all these young guys, little boys, were getting tired. And so the fast ones had went out ahead, dropped their packs, and they came back to help us. And right here, Keani is being hauled out by a strong young man.

Working together. What a blessing to have those guys come and help us out. My face looks kind of stressed there too. But if I showed you my whole face, it would look a lot worse. And then in the middle, we're moving a big log to the fire pit, working together.

And on the right, we have these young boys just going at that log together, working together. Paul tells us to bear one of the burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it. If one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

When you think about teaming together and you think about the Amish, what do you think of? And right away, a lot of us think of barn raisings, right? I mean, you all grew up in the world. But if you said Amish to you, you'd say, "Oh, yeah, those guys do these awesome barn raisings."

Teamwork, right? They're known for that. And isn't that special? I mean, there's unfortunately things that people know about Amish. I mean, I can talk to whatever Saudi guy, whatever country you want to talk about on the face of the earth, they come from the Sowers. They know who the Amish are. They've watched a movie, or they think they know who the Amish are.

Okay? But a lot of people know about the barn raising, that teamwork that stands out. So team together often. Helen Keller said, "Alone we can do so little. Together we can do so much." And as I look at our church, as I look at your church and other churches where there's people, where there's men who are mature, who have a growth mindset, all right, who are looking around saying, "Hey, what gifts do we have here? How can we put them to work? How can we get them in the right places?"

Men who are casting a vision, older men who are challenging the young men to go beyond. It's there that there comes a synergistic effect. It's such a beautiful reality. And I think so many times we're just scratching the surface of what our churches could do. If we're willing to be humble, if we were willing to just put down our pride and work together in whatever role it might be, the outcome can be incredible. And we've seen that. And we are seeing that. And I love seeing small churches working together. And you can have an outsized influence with a very small group that is driven and that is humble and working together.

Last point. Celebrate together often. So we are finally out there on the right. We are celebrating. I came out. I dropped that pack. I was like, "I never want to see that pack again."

The problem was going in, it was dry. That night, it poured rain. And now my tent is wet. My boys, "Hey, let's go swimming." Now we have wet swimming trunks and towels. So my pack out was heavier than the pack in. It was all uphill.

What a joy to celebrate together. We stopped by an ice cream stand on the way back. We celebrated. It was such a good time. And for the young children, it was just so much fun to be together. They were celebrating ice cream cones. For the rest of us older men, we were celebrating that too. But there was kind of this unspoken thing of like, "We're celebrating because we are brothers in Christ. We have our disagreements. We think differently in ways. But we're still together as brothers. We're still working together." So the older you get, as you celebrate these times together, it means more just because of the experience that you've had in the past and the reality of the present.

So return and give thanks. Celebrate. We see Paul as a man who just poured out his life giving thanks. And of course, on Sundays, we get to experience a Eucharist, which is a time of thanksgiving. And so we're nurturing that in our churches every Sunday, celebrating together that Jesus is risen and that we've been adopted in His family through His shed blood, through conversion and baptism into His church.

And also, learn to enjoy the journey. So for me, hiking for five miles for four, four and a half hours, I find myself really getting bored. If I go somewhere, I drive typically, and I get there. Get there. I like to make it happen. And it's like, "Okay, we're only a mile into it? You're kidding me. We have three more miles to go on this trail?

I want to get there now. I want to get in there and get everything set up." There's a great quote right here. "The man who loves walking will walk farther than the man who loves the destination."

Is that true? The man who loves walking will walk farther than the man who loves the destination. And I want to tell you, I believe that's true.

Let's put it another way. The man who loves his idea of community or his big vision of community way out there will—okay, so I said the man who loves his people he's walking with and is willing to just go with the ebbs and flows of church life and just loving the moment, loving the people regardless, he will go much farther than the man who has this utopian view of what his idea of community would look like. Right?

Absolutely. We know that to be true. We have to—it's great to have a vision. That's very important. But yet, we have to come under the current realities around us and just learn to have fun. Learn to enjoy it. Learn to make a blast out of it. I enjoyed some of the lighthearted jokes here this morning. And it's great. That's really important that we do that. Let's not take ourselves so seriously sometimes, right? Lighten up a little bit. Have fun. Make it fun for everyone. All right. Celebrate together often. And then finally, in Revelation 5 and 7 Revelation, we see this amazing celebration that will go on for eternity. "Then I saw another angel descending from the east, having to steal the living God.

And he cried out with a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was granted to harm the earth and sea. And after this, I looked and behold a great multitude, which no one could number of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands, crying out with a loud voice, saying, 'Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.'

All the angels stood around the throne and the elders and the four living creatures and fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, 'Amen. Blessing and glory and wisdom, thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever.'" So celebrate now is a harbinger of the celebration to come.

And so in wrap-up, we need to press into the ways of the kingdom. I just gave five small points here. There could be many more. We need to press into that. We need to embrace the sacrifice that comes with making that happen. And finally, Leslie Newbigan said, "We must live in the kingdom of God in such a way that it provokes questions for which the gospel is the answer."

So as we live out this peculiar way of life, as we live it out in our communities, people are going to say, "Tell me more." And we get to say, "The gospel is the answer." So press on. Adam Nauer Judson said this, "In spite of sorrow, loss, or pain, our course will be onward still. We sow on Burma's barren plains. We reap on Zion's hill." And so God bless you here in Shamansburg as you press into the kingdom.