What Produces Good Church Life - Kevin Brechbill

Lesson Transcript

I thought I'd share a message that I try to share, um, I don't know, every year, every other year. So it's, uh, I think it's a really, really important thing, a really important reminder. And so, what produces good church life? And, um, it's amazing how easy it is to forget what produces good church life. And, um, something that I think is easily forgotten in being a Christian, and especially in living, uh, being a part of giving, uh, producing good church life, is this, uh, this concept: our life is not our own.

I don't think we actually—it's difficult for us to actually understand the value of that, that our life is not our own. That's just like an ongoing understanding and expansion of what that means in every area of life. Like you, you start as a child, and you grow up, and you learn that your life is not your own if you want to be a Christian. When you get married, that expands; when you have children, that expands; in church life, it expands. Um, and it's just an ongoing, uh, ongoing expansion of what that means.

Um, but there are ways that we can focus in on and help us understand what helps us to produce good church life in the—in this concept of our life is not our own. So I like quotes. I'm a little bit weird that way, but—and this is a very common quote. It's said in many different ways, but words tell a story, and actions reveal the truth. Now, when I think of words that tell a story, my question is, what is—what are the words? What are the story that you're telling?

Because the story you're telling will be the actions that you live, hopefully. I think deep down in, that's how it works. The story you tell yourself is the story your children pick up on, the story your friends pick up on, and it's—it's who you—it's what you actually do. I know there's times we're tempted to tell one story and live another, um, and I think that that happens, um, and the more we can align that up. But the story we really tell ourselves, I think, is often the story we actually live out.

So just some thoughts about, um, words that—that the story that we tell ourselves. Um, something that I—I like to think about is we—we need to hear the story that we're telling ourselves. Um, you know, I often think about this: people don't change unless they either hear themselves or see themselves. It's—it's—it's almost impossible to change. If someone comes to me and says, "You're doing this and this, you should change," if you can't see it, like, you can't change.

And so learning to see ourselves and hear what we say is really important. And it's interesting that the Bible actually talks about that we're to examine ourselves before communion. And I think this is a way—I think we should learn to live, make this a way of life, learning to examine ourselves. And when I examine myself, I often think about, what am I not hearing, and what am I not seeing? Because that's usually, uh, the difficulty.

If we can hear ourselves and if we can see ourselves, that's the beginning of change and being able to align ourselves, um, to what we need to align ourselves in. So actions reveal the truth. And I think it's simply true that, um, the actions you live simply reveal the truth of who you are. Like it's—it is you; that is who you are.

Um, you know, it's interesting that that people will do things, and they'll do terrible things, and they'll say, "Well, that's not who we are." It's like, "Well, you just did it." Like, you know. So in our day and age, we have this trouble that our—our actions fall way below our words, and we can speak good words, and we can tell us a good story, but our actions fall below it.

What I find interesting is when you read the story of the Martyrs' Mirror, you read the early Christians, their reputation that their—what their actions went before them. Like their actions were almost greater than their words. Their—their what they did and how they lived went—went greater than their words. So I think we today we have a—we need to—we have some work to do to balance that out and to change it. And I think doing that is learning how to hear ourselves and to see ourselves.

In John 1:3-18, it says, "Little children, let us not love in word or in talk, but in deed and in truth." Okay. It's not saying that we don't—our words aren't right, but it's saying we need to have both. That need—that—that will—that is who we are. Words tell a story. And here at CCF, this is, um, kind of our vision. We embody the church's return to the storied Christian faith as a witness to the world. That's the story that we tell ourselves, or one of the stories. That's what—that's who we want to become.

So that's our vision. That's words. Okay. This morning, what I want to talk about is—is another aspect of words and words and actions. And it's—it's core—our core virtues. And, you know, there's lots of virtues that the scriptures talk about. Um, but I think it's important that each church, each person has a core set of virtues that you live by. And I was thinking since—since we started our church, what has been the five more—most, uh, concentrated or effort put into our church? Like what has made our church?

Um, what are those core virtues? We can add to or take away. But as I was—I was—I was thinking about it, I came up with five core virtues that I think have—have helped us become the people that we are. It's not limited to that. It's a start. Okay. Does a church—does a church need core virtues to be sustainable? It's a question I have. If so, what would you suppose those core virtues need to be? What are the five core virtues that you would pick as to make a church sustainable long-term?

Is there a difference between a start—a church as a startup church and a church that wants to stay a long time? Is there—is there a difference as to how you would start the virtues? And I was—and I was thinking about virtues. Um, I was thinking about this. I think it's easy for us to pursue greatness in place of faithfulness. Like we want to be great. We want to have—do great things for God, but we don't—we miss what it takes to be faithful.

And I believe if we're a group of people that understand how to implement virtues into our—our life and our church life, it's a focus on faithfulness. And if God—that's the path to greatness. In Matthew 25:1, it says this: "His master said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful servant.'" Now, listen to this. You're all familiar with it. "You've been faithful over a little. I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master." He didn't get in because he pursued greatness.

He got in because he pursued faithfulness over little. And he accomplished it. He—he—he—he did what he was asked. In Luke, it says a similar idea. "Well done, good servant, because you've been faithful in a very little. You shall have authority over ten cities." Jalie's always not sure if she wants to be over ten cities. I kind of think it'd be fun. Um, but you don't get over ten cities unless you focus on what is fa—on the things that are faithful. You have to do it daily.

The Bible actually talks a lot about this idea of faithfulness in the small things or daily things. I'd like to, uh, emphasize as well. In Corinthians, it says, "Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful." If you want someone to help you, if you want to be a helper of God, your value is being faithful. Your value isn't chasing greatness. You're—you're kind of worthless in God's kingdom. You chase the wrong things. I think being faithful is how we respond each day.

It's how we feel towards one another. How we live and respond each day impacts everyone. I think it's easy for us to miscalculate how—how you live each day and how that impacts your whole church community. Think about the things that—that—that impress you about someone that impacts you. Like I remember, um, Justin's mother, uh, Virginia. Um, you know, she's been—I've known her since I was 18. And I wasn't in their house that much. I don't know. I remember maybe three or four times in my life I was in their house.

But Marvin and Virginia represented faithfulness. Okay. They were always there. Okay. They were a part of my—my church spiritual structure. They were—they were kind of—I never went to Virginia and got any advice from her that I can think of. But she impacted me by her faithfulness. And that's what we do with one another. And some are more than that. But like, it's powerful. God is looking for those kind of people. So the first one I chose, um, is probably not a surprise, is mutual submission.

Now, now submission sometimes gives this—gives this weird feeling to people. And I want to try to, uh, bring that forward and make that actually an—an empowering understanding. When you—when we think of—I've always liked when we talk about preferring one another. It's the idea of we prefer our brother and sister over us. So it's actually an action that we set back. We step back. We put them forward. That's what mutual submission means. It's me stepping back. My life is not my own. You prefer your brother. Okay.

That concept impacts majorly around us. We hear, or I should say, I think Christians need, when we think of church life, we prioritize unity over individualism by practicing mutual honor and respect. Extending forgiveness quickly, it preserves peace and strengthens fellowship. Submitting is one of these small things that of being faithful that leads to greatness. But God looks at it. Are we faithful? I think so many people and so many Christians walk away from this. It's too hard.

It's too hard to under this idea that our life is not our own. It's too much to ask. People are annoying. Like really annoying. And they haven't even done anything bad yet. They're just annoying. It's not worth it. Like today, we're so hypersensitized that we'll walk from an annoying person. And I get it. There's different levels of that. So being a Christian is recognizing our life is not our own. It's one of—it's a very important thing to lay down.

You know, it is kind of something I always kind of find humorous is when you see somebody, you see a young man who is very arrogant. You see a young lady who has a lot of vanity, or you see an old man, a woman that's just grumbling, complaining. The humor I always find in it is they have a lot to lay down. There's a lot going on. You know what I'm saying? And it's true. Like it's funny, but it's terrible. It's—it's—it's, uh, but when you start that, you start to know what it means to lay your life down.

All the arrogance and vanity becomes less and less. It's—it's—it's much easier to do. You know, and I was thinking about this too. When we think of mutual submission, I have no idea what God's going to do with this, but we have a lot of individualistic Christians running around today doing great things for God. But they can't get along in a church. No one's right. No one's good enough. None of that happens. They can't submit. They can't unite. Something's not right. There's always something wrong.

Is God going to use them? It's up to him. Like I have no idea. But they're so limited to what they actually can do. It's all these individual people. Think of of church life. If we can unite together, think of United Nations in the world. Not United Nations, but a United Nation in the world. A—a—a nation that's united. How small or great they are depends on their unity, not on their size. It's the same way in the kingdom of God. That's what God wants. He's looking for people to be united.

And without mutual submission, it's impossible to do that. It's just impossible. I already read this, but, um, it's the idea of preferring one another. We prioritize unity over individualism by practicing mutual honor and extending forgiveness quickly to preserve peace and strengthen fellowship. Our life is not our own. The next one I have is forgive. To forgive quickly. The first time I had an experience of what I—I think unforgiveness feels like.

When you live in a state of unforgiveness, um, one of my first times I had this happen to me was, I think it was 1995, if I remember right. I was running a truck going up the interstate. And all of a sudden, my pickup truck just went, and it was, I went down to like 25 miles an hour and I could go, but I pushed the gas and it's like nothing would happen. The brake would work. I could stop. And so I obviously got off the road, pulled on the road and figured it out.

And I'd put it, put it in gear and it would go in gear. And you push the gas and you could half fill it gas, but there was no power. And I remember calling Jalie's dad and he was like, "Oh, your transmission's on the way out. That's called limp mode. It'll be enough to get you here." Unforgiveness is, is it puts you in this limp mode. Like you're in gear, but you're worthless. You can't get on the road and you can't get off the road. Like you're, you're, you're a danger zone.

But when you forgive, it releases you out of that limp mode. And, and I think learning to forgive quickly is a process. Like you have different levels of that, but it's a choice. It doesn't have to be a process. It doesn't have to be complicated. I think we've turned unforgiveness or forgiveness into this massive, long, drawn-out, complicated affairs. And it goes back to our, maybe it's just humans. Um, it feels like our, our society is impacted that we, we turn everything into scaling things.

Um, so I think it's really important to understand that forgiveness needs to be a way of life for us. And I would look at forgiveness as that we need to turn it into our currency among ourselves. When you look at the world, let me read a couple of verses first. The Bible actually has a lot to say about forgiveness and what it, or unforgiveness and what it turns into. In Ephesians, it says, "There's slander that comes from bitterness, wrath, and anger.

Clamor and slander be put away from among you with all malice." Like it's nasty stuff. Jealousy. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, don't boast and be false to the truth. Curses. Romans talks about curses. The mouth is full of curses and bitterness. That's nasty. Marriage relationships and colossians. It talks about husbands were to love our wives and not be bitter against them. Always have tried to figure out why that verse is in there.

Like what makes that, what makes husbands be tempted to be bitter against their wives? Like what's in us that triggers that? Wait for that answer later. Spiritual bondage. In Acts, it talks about, "For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity." Unforgiveness leads to deep, deep things that is difficult. In Proverbs, it talks about each heart knows its bitterness and no one else can share its joy. It's deep and personal. It's hidden. I don't know if any bitterness is hidden.

And this even gets worse. In Hebrews, it starts to expand this thing. "Looking diligently, lest any man fail of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness spring up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled." This thing starts to spread like a cancer. It all started with you just being unforgiving. And then now, now, now it heads into, it creates roots. Unresolved anger, unresolved unforgiveness, unresolved resentment leads to roots of bitterness. And it not only defiles you, it starts to defile others.

And I think, I think it's because how it defiles others is you start to puke on everybody. You just puke and puke and puke. And it's hard to stay away from that or not be affected by it. I don't know if there's another reason. Is there anyone I could think of? You, it goes to show the power of your impact on the people around you. You impact your children, your family, your, like your, your church family. It starts to impact when this root of bitterness starts to, starts to spread.

So the call here is that we're to be vigilant against unforgiveness, but vigilant for forgiveness and to make it, to make it. That's why we're to learn to forgive quickly. It needs to be a currency, a way of life of, uh, uh, uh, among us. And I want to think about, I want us to learn to think about that. So think about the world. They're full of resentment and anger and bitterness. And it leads to all these roots of bitterness. We have people killing each other, beating each other up, war.

It's all a result of that. God comes along and says, "Forgiveness needs to be a currency among, among us." And that removes that. I actually don't think forgiveness is limited to Christians. I think anyone can forgive. We have a free will. It's not limited to Christians. I've seen people that I don't think would call themselves Christian forgive. I think being a Christian makes it easier. I think when you pray and you ask God, I think it can help you through the difficult things. But anyone can forgive. It's free.

That's what I'm saying. It doesn't have to be hard or impossible. Forgiveness needs to be the currency for peace and unity among us. It's a beautiful thing. Forgiveness does not need, is not necessarily some, uh, is not necessarily something evil that must be done because everyone else is just complicated. Like it's not, it's not this thing that, that, oh, we, we have to do it. It's a necessary evil. It should be the other way. It should be a privilege to forgive.

Like we, we should look at it as this is how we are united. This is how we put down all those barriers and all those difficulties that we find ourselves in. That's why I call it a currency. Current forgiveness needs to be a currency that we freely give back and forth among ourselves. We're all going to need it. We're all annoying and worse, probably. And the beautiful thing about forgiveness is it opens up your heart to be able to receive.

And the other thing about the beautiful thing about forgiveness is when you learn to live that way, people that are annoying are less annoying. It's really nice. It's a good experience. The third one is to be merciful. And the reason I think this is so vital is it's a little bit hard for me to pick which word would be, uh, the best. But being merciful, I want to expand that to this. The measure we give is the measure we will receive. And I think that's important. Mercifulness, being merciful, is that concept.

And I think it happens in all areas of life. And I'll read a couple of verses here to show you. It says, "Therefore, be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful." So he's telling you that's the standard. Then it says, "Judge not, and you shall not be judged." That's pretty amazing. "Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned." That's extending mercy. "Forgive, and you will be forgiven." So there it flips on it. If we don't, if we live in unforgiveness, we won't be forgiven. That's pretty terrifying.

But mercy allows us to, um, understand that. "Give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be put into your bosom." Isn't that amazing? If you give, it's giving away. It'll be given to you. And that's not, I don't think that means dollars. I mean, it might, but don't think that's the point there.

And then the last one is, "For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you." And that's why I think mercifulness is so important that we learn to live in this understanding to be merciful. How we measure it out to people is how it'll be measured back to us. And that should make us hesitate and really understand this thing for our, for church life. And to have a, our one of our core virtues is to be merciful because of understanding how you measure it out, it'll be measured back to you.

I don't think, I don't think we've recognized that enough. I don't think I do. You can be hard on yourselves. Be careful how you judge others. Judge yourself hard all day long. In fact, the Bible asks you to examine yourself before communion. It's very important. The fourth one is patience. I think we're, is this idea to persist in hope and patience. Let us then be imitators of his patience. So that's what God tells us. That's his standard.

I think as we live our life, our church life, our godly life, whatever it is, practicing patience is one of the virtues that'll actually get us there. There's a lot that happens in patience. There's diligence, there's steadfastness, there's a willingness to continue. You don't get discouraged. You're patient. You're solid. I preached a message a while back on it, and I just pulled some verses out of that. I'm just going to read quickly. I called it the advantage of patience.

In Luke, it says, "Now the God of," I'm sorry, Romans, "the God of patience and consolation grant you to be like-minded one toward another according to Christ Jesus, the God of patience." So if we claim to serve God, then we have to be people of that's patient. But in all things, approving ourselves as the ministers of God in much patience, in afflictions and necessities and in distress. Truly, the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience. So they saw the signs of the apostle.

It was done in patience. Gentleness, carefulness. I think there's a lot that goes into that. The last one I have is hospitality. I think this is where it's a very powerful thing to have among us as Christians. In 1 Peter, it says, "We're to show hospitality to one another without grumbling." I find that curious. Like I thought showing hospitality would be fun. Like, but is showing hospitality, are we tempted to grumble? Apparently.

In Romans, it says, "Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show how to show hospitality." So we're to show hospitality among us. It's a way of creating a community. In Hebrews, it tells us we're to show hospitality to strangers. So now we're stepping outside of our community. We're to show it to strangers. And Hebrews tells us, "Don't neglect to show hospitality to strangers." In Titus, it says that an elder needs to be hospitable, lover of good, self-controlled and upright. Our life is not our own.

And when we show hospitality, it's one of those things that it's not our own. It takes work, it takes money, it takes time to show hospitality. But we need to do it, think about it in two ways. Building a community of the, show hospitality among the saints to one another. It's building a community so that people can see something to come into. And then also to strangers, to people we don't know or people that come through the door or whatever. Meet him, like do it as much as you can.

The two things that I think that we can learn about hospitality is the scriptures teach us to practice hospitality regularly. And I think the impact, the church impact that we can see, it creates community. It opens hearts to newcomers and reflects God's welcome. It's a very powerful thing. So our core virtues that I've seen us use over the last 10 years, I think have, have held us in well. Um, we've, we've done well with it, but it's, it's something that'll never go away.

And if we can, if we need to add to this, it's perfectly fine. But I don't like to give 30, 30 virtues. It's hard to remember. If we remember the things that, that, that are important that kind of come around to us over and over, submission, forgiveness, merciful, patience, hospitality, it, it happens like every week among us. It's, it's a money. Now, the beautiful thing about this, if we learn to live out these core virtues, I think this is the result. Trust is not necessarily, in my mind, a virtue. It's a result.

But if we live right, we become a trustworthy people and a trustworthy person. Collectively, if we, we cultivate, oh, I'll get to this one next. We cultivate honest, accountable relationships where character grows and servanthood thrives while avoiding dogmatism and remaining open to correction through shared discipleship. It's a little bit of a bigger picture, but I think the beautiful thing, like it's amazing to me how many times I talk to people and one of their complaints is they can't trust.

They can't trust the church. They can't trust people. And there's this weird thing about trust. You know, I can't trust. I think it's a result somewhere in unforgiveness. There's a connection there. Um, I remember, I think it was David said years ago, hurt people are better people. I would say people that can't trust is in a similar category. They have to learn to forgive in order to be able to, to trust. You become trustworthy if you become the right person, and then you can give that trust to others.

I encourage us to pursue faithfulness rather than greatness. There's no workshop or course that you can attend and can come out the person God's looking for. You have to develop these core virtues every day. Be faithful in practicing the daily habits and disciplines that will lead you to the person God wants you to be. If we're not faithful in the small things, God will not use us. I personally believe that God uses the exceptional faithful people for great things. Mission accomplished.

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