"A Quiet Resistance: Beyond the Status Quo" by Bryant Martin

The one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

Welcome you all to Strength to Strength. Our vision is to inspire flourishing communities of faithful Jesus followers around the world. And it's a lovely day here in Pittsburgh, and according to Saher, over in the Netherlands, it's going to be a great day too, because he's lived more of it than we have. But so great to have you all on here.

And yeah, looking forward to what Brother Brian has to share on his talk about being a quiet resistance, be a part of changing the world. So anyhow, I don't think I need to introduce Brian to you all, but just in case, he lives in State College, Pennsylvania, Central Pennsylvania, right in the middle of the state, and is the owner of Sewers Harvest Café.

And he is someone that I know that knows everybody. So it's great to know Brian, and he's a great brother and great friend, and looking forward to what you have to say here for us, brother. Why don't we start with a word of prayer?

Father, we thank you for this beautiful new morning. Thank you for your blessings on this blessings of safety and a night of rest. And I just pray, Lord, that you would bless this talk and as we gather here in this way and as what's recorded, Father, just pray that you would, yeah, inspire us to be the change that you want to see in the world, taking it from the brokenness that we see around us. And we long for your kingdom to come and your will to be done. And Lord, sometimes we wonder how that can happen. And I just pray that you would help us to think well about this and to maybe inspire us with new visions and new ideas and be able to do your work in this world.

I pray for Brother Brian, help him to give him clarity of thought and to be able to present his thoughts and ideas clearly. And I just pray for your spirit's direction here. May you be glorified in Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen. So after the talk, we'll have a time for Q&A, and so you can think about some questions to pose to Brian as he shares. So anyhow, thank you, Brian. You can take it from here. Thank you, Brother Wendell. And it's a blessing to be here among brothers through this Saturday morning, twice a month meeting. The last five years, it's been my circle of brotherhood has grown, and that's such a blessing. And I was just talking about how a brother on this call here, before our call, I was talking with a brother on this call, but before we started recording, I was talking with Joel and telling him that through his wife, we got introduced to a local Penn State professor who wrote this book, The Six Conversations.

And otherwise, that wouldn't have happened. And I'll be referring to that book later on in my talk this morning. Surprise, surprise. All right. So good to be here with you. And may God be glorified through this talk. And if I say anything error or whatever, please feel free to point it out at the end in the Q&A or reach out to me directly. Definitely want to submit this before God and before his people, this talk. So I gave this talk several months ago at the Reach Conference. They'd asked me to share a message kind of around kind of hospitality, specifically addressed towards youth. So I hope it's not too simple here this morning for you all.

And I'm honored to share it here this morning. As the title says, A Quiet Resistance Beyond the Status Quo. And they asked me to share this talk kind of in mind with our café and kind of our work there the last 10 years, and also in light of a new ministry or a new initiative that we have, and it's called Extend Cafés. So I have a little introduction here at the beginning to this idea. And so my mission has become to help people create peaceful spaces to cultivate conversations that change the world.

We attempt, Lynelle and I, we attempt to do that in our home and through our business, Sewers Harvest. And recently, along with several other cafés, we started a new business called Extend Cafés, which is an alliance of cafés whose mission is to inspire and equip new café initiatives.

We believe that there are a lot of people who would love to make a living operating a café business while embracing the vision of seeing their space nurturing, connecting conversations. So let's go ahead and get into our talk, A Quiet Resistance Beyond the Status Quo.

On March 11, 2011, a series of events by the devastating 9.0 earthquake in Japan caused one of the worst nuclear accidents the world has ever seen. The tsunami that followed the earthquake knocked out the coaling system at Fukushima Nuclear Plant, making it the toughest and most difficult crisis for Japan since World War II.

Some 80,000 people were forced to evacuate from a vast swath of land around the reactor as engineers battled radiation leaks, hydrogen explosions, and overheating fuel rods. And they had no idea when, if ever, they could return to their home that had been their families for generations and to their communities and their businesses.

As things got worse, radiation spread well outside the mandatory evacuation zone, nestling in hotspots and contaminating the ground, which was largely an agricultural region. Excessive radiation levels were also found in beef, vegetables, and milk and seawater and the water in the area. But the response by the government to this disaster was very slow. However, Abe, a Japanese entrepreneur, in a valiant effort to lift the spirits of the area residents, as well as enlighten the impact of the radiation, began growing and distributing sunflowers. He and his volunteers grew around 200,000 sunflowers and distributed millions of seeds, resulting in around 8 million sunflowers growing in and around Fukushima. But why sunflowers?

Sunflowers can extract nuclear metals from deep in the soil, whereby purifying the ground. Sunflowers were used as an experiment near Chernobyl after the 1986 nuclear accident that happened there. And so it was believed they were effective in doing that. However, as Abe was buying seeds, growing sunflowers, and motivating hundreds of volunteers to get out and plant them, Japanese scientists were carrying out tests to see whether these sunflowers could actually remove contaminants from the soil.

But Abe, true to his character, decided not to wait for the results of the tests, believing that by taking action, he could help battered local towns shake off a sense of stagnation and give them hope for the future by doing something about this ominous crisis. It was a tangible way to combat the invisible radioactive snowstorm.

His plan worked. Soon, there were cheerful fields of sunflowers tucked between the deep green hills and lush forests. The soil was purified, and people were finding hope and strength to press on.

In times of need, we don't rise to the challenge. We fall to the level of our preparation. And in this case, Chernobyl, Abe, he fell to the level of his love for his people and his area. What would you have done in that situation?

We live in times of desperate need. There's nuclear problems all around us. There's Fukushimas all around us on every side, and they come rushing at us. And my fear of all these issues, all these Fukushimas.

For example, just this morning, I read a little bit about the serious famine and humanitarian need in Sudan, and I felt hopeless. What can I do here to help that problem there?

And in a sense, you have to almost harden your heart, it feels like. It's so you feel so hopeless. What can you do? And there's just so many of these needs all around us. And I'm scared that what I did there this morning, as I felt hopeless, that that can become a habit and harden us to look away when there are needs that we can help with, when there are needs right in our local community. And so the heart of my message this morning, this idea of being a quiet resistance, going on the status quo, is to inspire all of us to first be the hands and feet of Jesus right around us, and that there's many ways to do that, many small ways, but yet powerful ways to do that.

So thinking about some of the more of the issues of our day, there's unreached people groups, there's immigrants, there's wars and famines and destructions from these types of things. There's broken families, there's rampant sexual brokenness, addiction on every hand. There's urban areas with no kingdom witness.

And the list can go on and on. And some of these are just really recent things. There's incredible loneliness from the addiction to technology and all the isolation that that brings, the individualism of our world, the hedonism, the love for pleasure. And in the last 15 years, we've seen tectonic shifts in a world from 2010 to 2025. Just imagine that some of you listening maybe weren't even were born around that time. I think especially the youth that I gave this talk to, some of them may have been three, five years old in 2010.

But incredible changes, tectonic changes. One of those is with the internet. The internet went from being on a screen, on a big old computer screen that was big, to really into our hands and then into our pockets. And now we have a type of death that's called doom scrolling.

So the average teenager will spend around 30,000 hours on social media by the time they're 30,000 hours. And of course, the results of this is anxiety and extreme loneliness and on and on and on. Of course, there's been huge morality shifts in our world, tectonic shifts in that.

Just in 2015, 10 years ago, 70% of Americans were against same-sex marriage, 30 for it. And that has totally switched, 70 for it, 30% against it, approximately, just 10 years' time. And that's huge. And of course, there's been the whole gender dysphoria issues.

Really, the essence of what it means to be human is under attack in 2025. Just yesterday, I'm sorry, last week, I read a short little article about an interview with Mark Zuckerberg, the owner or the guy who started Facebook. And he said that humans need about 15 friends on average. And he said the average American only has three.

And so what is Facebook's solution to that? Well, it's in they're creating these AI friends for these lonely people. The point is the essence of what it means to be human is under attack like never before. Artificial intelligent friends, unbelievable. But hey, people are rising to the challenge, okay, in their broken, devious ways.

What are we going to do? Are we going to be Chernobyl, Abe, and step up to the challenge? Or are we going to retreat and move back? The enemy is stealing our time, killing our relationships, and destroying our peace. Jesus said, "The thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy. I have come that they may have life and that they may have it to the fullest." The answer for our day is Jesus.

But what does that look like in our day? How can we live that out? So we're definitely in a spiritual warfare. And so how will we respond to these needs? And there's many ways, many wrong ways, many right ways, many beautiful ways.

Of course, we could, there's always the different narratives around us to get out and get into the political arena or do something, get involved with a tech company that helps solve these problems. You can do this. You can stand with, you see little icons that people put out on social media. I stand with whoever. Put whatever you want there.

It's called virtue singling or grandstanding. We could also retreat, build the wall higher, make our tables shorter. Or are we going to be Abe and step forward and quietly get to work, inspire others to help with solutions, with answers in quiet ways, not waiting on somebody to tell us to step forward with initiative?

So I have three mindsets that we're going to look at here: subversive loyalty, unreasonable generosity, patient love. But first, before we go to those mindsets, I want to address a foundational principle or help create a framework for our world or a lens to look at our world. Without a framework for us to operate inside, mindsets fall limp. We get analysis paralysis.

But with a vision, the people don't perish. We have a purpose. We have a plan. And so my little framework here is what I call our story or the importance of a story. And I'm just going to share my screen here. So Brother Finney shared this in one of his last talks here on Strength to Strength. I believe it was called looking at the story of Axe. It's on the sacred roots, looking at the story of Axe and how Axe is our story.

And so he shared this. If you want to go listen to that, he unpacks a little bit more. But the idea, the story and narrative form us in ways that are different than a list of commands. It goes to the heart. It goes to the root. And therefore becomes a very powerful informative device. It is said that at the core of every individual is a story.

That is why a clear story, a clear framework is so essential for our day. It's life-changing. It's motivating. It comes out deep inside of us and helps us respond to the issues of our world. I would love to know the story behind Abe. I don't know that much about him.

What drove him? It would be really fun to look into. But we need our story. So if you want to change someone, change their story. There's a great quote. "A vision without a task is but a dream. A task without a vision is but drudgery. A vision and a task is the hope of the world." And so the idea of getting people that story deep in them that gives them vision, gives them purpose, and then out of that we live. And here's a little quick little story. A couple of years ago, a number of years ago, we had some bird feeders on our back deck at the last house we lived. And my children struggled to keep birdseed in those feeders.

It was a drudgery. It just wasn't their interest. And we struggled with making it happen. And so my wife's wife got some bird books. And the children began to look through bird books and start being interested in birding. And pretty soon, they were recognizing the different birds that were at our bird feeder and became a hobby, became a passion. And pretty soon, they were thinking, "Hey, we are birders." And so out of that, that became their story. And so out of that then was their identity. Now they're birders. And so what do birders do? Well, birders love birds. We take care of birds. We feed the birds. And soon, they were caring about making that happen.

And the bird feeders were full. So that became their story that we are birders. It's a real it was just so neat to see that happen. Reflecting on that, like, wow, what other ways could I do that for my children to help them to buy into a story? And so I want to quickly just share with us, make an attempt to put a framework for our story, our basic Christian story. And that is that God desires a people, a society, and that God desires to be with his people. I think that could be captured the storyline of Scripture. If you look at it, he desires a people, and he desires to be with his people.

You see that in the Garden of Eden. We see that with his children of Israel, right with them. They're in the desert wanderings in the land of Israel. They're in the temple. He was with his people. And of course, through Jesus and into the church with the Holy Spirit, God is with his people.

And then the way that works out is that we become his people, and we become his nation. We become his society. We say, "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." We seek first God's kingdom and his righteousness. And we see that story there in Acts. We see the apostles living out that story. Acts ends with that beautiful story of Paul. They're preaching the kingdom of God, preaching that there is a nation, there is a new king.

It's the good news. It's the gospel of the kingdom. And Paul is preaching that. And that needs to become our story. As Finney so well laid out when he was talking about this graph, is that Acts, just as that was the story that Jesus and his kingdom and his church was the story of the apostles and what they died for, the same thing it should be our story today. 1 Peter 2:9 says, "But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own special people that you may proclaim the praises of him who's called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light." So as God's people who are continuing that story of Acts and living that out, it brings identity.

We are his citizens. It brings convictions to love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength. It brings values, ethics, a way of living. And then finally, it brings action, word, and deed. And that should be our story. Daniel Stuart Luke says this. He said, "The gospel of Jesus Christ is not a gospel of escape, a nugget of insider information that gets the believer off the hook while the world burns in the rearview mirror." And so that story is for here right now.

It's not for some future time. It's for right now. And so if that is our story, that is going to impact how we live in our world today. But the sad reality is that so many of us have lost our story.

We've lost our vision. And where there's no vision, people perish. And so consider, maybe forget everything I've said here today. But think about what is your story? What is your purpose in life? Who are you ordering your life after?

Do you think of yourself as a farmer, as a doctor, or an investor? Do you think of yourself as the funniest guy in the group, or a good volleyball player, or a farmer? I don't know. What do you think of yourself as? Consider yourself. What is the story that you're living in your heart? If we can have the right story, I believe that can impact the world. It's the hope of the world. I have this quote laying right here. I'm sorry, on my wall right here. "For every thousand people hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root." And so as we think about our own hearts, the hearts of our children, our community, our church community, our sacred community, as we think about those that we interact with in our secular community, let's be thinking about how can we empower them to be part of the biblical story.

All right. So let's go ahead and move on into our three mindsets here. So number one is subversive loyalty. Choosing what is right even when it's not trending. Okay? Standing firm in your beliefs even when everyone else is following the crowd. The idea of subversive actually could be called rebel.

All right? It's somebody who is not willing to follow the status quo. There's this great quote. I don't have it here that I love. And I'll probably mess it up, but I'm going to say it because I think it just applies. The idea of the quote goes like this: "All progress relies on the unreasonable man because he's not following reasonable men. He's declaring that there's a better way." No, there's a better way. And he looks so unreasonable. He looks so crazy to the crowd.

Just think about how the church got started. Hey, those men are drunk. There's something wrong with those men.

And so it's subversive loyalty or rebel or rebellion. Wow. Can those even be? Can those titles even apply to the Christian? Subversive means to corrupt by an undermining of morals, allegiances, or faith. So this isn't typically a title that we're looking for. But I do believe as we look at the Christians through the centuries, through the millenniums, they were labeled often with that. And we'll get into that right shortly. But I want to share a little story here that just happened to me yesterday.

And I share the story cautiously because I don't want to make it look like I'm some great person. I think any one of us here would have responded in much the same way. But I want to share it because it's actually a cultural moment that we're in. And many of us are being faced with this. And that's the engagement of the Catholic Church. At Seward, over the last number of years, we've been engaging a lot with a Catholic student society. And while there's many things that I respect about them, there's some huge differences. And we need to remember that. And so I got a text from one of the ones who moved on from State College.

He graduated and he's gone. But we still interact through text. And we're back and forth, some debating. He and I had many conversations about God's kingdom and how that applies to us today and how the Catholic Church has lost those understandings of non-resistance or enemy love and so many other things. But he texted me. He goes, "Hey," he said, "we're so excited about our new pope, Robert."

His name is Robert, but his pope name is Pope Leo XIV, I believe. And he said, "We're so excited about that." He said, "Pray for him." He said, "Pray for him as the beloved Son of God."

And I looked at that. And he had a son is uppercase, beloved Son of God. And I thought to myself, there is only one Son of God. There is only one. And that is Jesus.

And this man, this Robert Provost, I believe his last name is, is not the Son of God. And so we interacted with someone. I said, "Thank you for reaching out." I said, "I will," and I ended up saying, "I will pray for Robert just as I pray for you, as I pray for anyone else."

And in that time, I was being subversive. I was saying, "My loyalty is to King Jesus. And there's nobody else that can take his place." And so there's a lot of fervor right now in Catholicism because of this. And so I went to it was a reminder. I talked about it with my family at the table because we interact with these guys. And we show respect to them in many ways because of who they are. I believe some of these are sincere Christians. But we need to remember that they are part of a system that is anti-Christ.

When they look at their pope as beloved, uppercase, Son of God, it is an anti-Christ system. All right. Let's keep moving along. So think of this subversive loyalty, kind of drawing a quick little line through scripture here. We see Jesus right at the beginning of his ministry rejecting the devil's offer of the kingdoms of the world and their glory and refusing to worship Satan, refusing to worship him and saying, "It is written. It is written." And I think that there's some scripture verses I can take to West that say, "It is written.

Jesus is king. And there's nobody else." And by the way, scripture prophesies about this coming person who will attempt to stand in that place of Jesus. So we need to hold to our story needs to be, "It is written." Here in the New Testament, this is our story.

And we look at Peter and the apostles saying, "We ought to obey God rather than men." It rings down through the ages. The early church advancement of the gospel to the Gentiles, they were undermining allegiances. Just think of the church at Philippi, Rome away from Rome.

And Paul went in there preaching this political message of Jesus as king. All right? And out of that grew this beautiful little church that Paul writes to then years later in the book of Philippians. Just go read that book. I mean, it's amazing, right? So there was this and also pretty soon coming into then the early church. I mean, that was the apostolic church. And then into the early church, in the first couple hundred years, first hundred years of the church, the Roman Empire soon began to realize, "Hey, wait a minute. This group that's called Christians is not Judaism. These guys are out to convert everyone."

And of course, the Gentiles are coming in. And then all of a sudden, now the Christians are a threat. They're not this quiet little Jewish sect that goes to the synagogue on Saturdays. No, these guys are on the move. They are preaching a different nation, a different way of life, a different society. And so they got labeled as subversive.

Think of 500 years ago, three radical young men chose believers' baptism, cutting themselves off from the state church, the Catholic Church.

And through that radical step, began a movement where thousands of people were killed. They were called the fence row preachers. No fancy cathedrals here, folks. All right? No fancy aesthetics other than the beauty of creation for their cathedral.

And the gospel got advanced in amazing ways. So we're thinking of subversive loyalty as part of the mindset of living out the framework, our story as God's people, as God's nation on earth, and what that should look like.

Brothers and sisters, in our day, there are so many different narratives coming at us. And some sound so good. Like when I'm surrounded, I found these Catholic young men, they're reading Augustine. They're looking at history, church history. They don't go back any further than Augustine, though, which I'm having lots of fun introducing them to the first couple hundred years of the church.

But they have a sense of a formation that's Christian. And we appreciate that. And we honor that. But is becoming Catholic, coming under the papal system where their pope they refer to as the one who's hearing from God as the Son of God? No. That's of darkness. And so there's many narratives coming at us as angels of light. But actually, they're demons of darkness. And they're coming for our allegiance. So let's stand like Daniel with others and stare down the lions singing with others.

Dare to have a purpose firm. Dare to make it known. And so the worship of Jesus is I'm sorry. This is actually a quote by Stanley Harwass. He says this, "To worship Jesus is itself a politics, a politics that subverts the status quo.

It's not earthly. It's not power. It's not partisan politics. It is the society of Jesus, the nation of Jesus that we're bringing to earth. It is a piece of the home turf that we're bringing to foreign soil. That is our story. And that radically affects every way we live as ambassadors, as citizens of heaven." And so as we live our story, as we say that there's no king but Jesus, we can then show forth a genuine, authentic loyalty, a rebel loyalty to the way of Jesus. And so that's my number one mindset. My first point is moving to number two, unreasonable generosity.

Or you can think about extramal living or extramal giving. And whenever we think generosity, we tend to think money so quickly. But I just see that as a fruit of our lives, of a fruit of a mindset of unreasonable generosity. It might be money. It better be some. It better be money. It better include money.

But that's not the only thing. Sometimes that can be our little scapegoat. It can be our little excuse. Just give some money to the situation. Just send some money to wherever. No, it means so much more than that. And this is a huge point. We could spend a lot of time on this one. But we need to keep moving. So I have two subpoints here. Remember, the first is a creation.

This idea of creating. The issue of our day is consuming.

And maybe strength of strength is buying into it is contributing to the issue by putting out content.

But we can consume all day. We can consume all day. And I think there's obviously parameters and there's moderation, all these things. So may God give us wisdom on how to do that. But my point here is we need to become creators.

And especially with a creation, I'm thinking of creating a portal to heaven and escape. A place that looks like heaven, a place that smells like heaven, a place that tastes like heaven, a place that sounds like heaven, and a place that feels like heaven.

Of course, we're never going to bring heaven to earth perfectly. But I believe we can do it credibly. As people come into our homes, and my first suggestion, of course, is homes. Our homes, we need to look at that as that is a central place to bring heaven to earth. Absolutely. And we do that. I see so many people doing that in such beautiful ways. It challenges me and my life and my wife and I and our home, how we can be that kingdom embassy through our home. It's maybe easy sometimes to look outside your home and do other things.

Maybe sometimes we need to look at our allegiances and our hearts and where we are drawn to and make sure are our orders ordered properly. But my biggest point here for under a creation is oftentimes when we think about outreach or ministry or think about investing our time, we tend to think about a segment of time. Or on Sunday, we will go do this. We will go sing somewhere. We will go do this. But I want to challenge us. And of course, I was dressing youth when I gave this talk is that actually one of the biggest ways that we can show this generosity or this extramal living is in business. Business puts us out among people in very genuine ways, in very reciprocal ways.

Nobody feels like a project in a business transaction. There's a win-win. I'm making some money. You're getting what you want. It's very level. And it's very expected. And so it gives us a very genuine or a very contextualized way to get to know people. And I think I believe that as we need to really think hard about business and how we can use it as a way to create a portal to heaven, as a way to bring God's values to bear there. There's many opportunities to go the extramal in business, to show them that it's not about the almighty dollar here, to show them integrity in your values.

Martin Luther says this. I have a quote by him here. I came across it a number of years ago. And I loved it. And I have it here. It says, "The Christian shoemaker does his duty not by putting little crosses on shoes, but by making good shoes because God is interested in good craftsmanship." And so a Christian business is a place where we bring excellence to the table. We bring a good product, good value for that one who is purchasing that from us. And so my argument is that business is a place where people can quickly put down their walls because they do this everywhere.

And then as we build those relationships, as we build that trust over a long period of time, we get to the place where people say, "Hey, I've seen you operate this way for many years. Why? Why do you do this? How do you find the strength to do this?" Whether it's your customer or your workers, maybe is one of the biggest ways is through your workforce. You can really create that place of escape. And actually, recently, Barnables has done a major study on business. And it's some recent information that they put out. And they said that people in the 2025, people show more trust in businesses than the church.

Small business owners are trusted nine times more than faith leaders of churches and missions and institutions. And also, I'm sorry, I twisted that around. Small business owners are trusted twice as likely, twice as likely as faith leaders of churches and missions and institutions, and nine times more than the members of Congress. So two times more than churches and institutions and nine times more than Congress.

You can look it up on Barnables. So also, it was put out on Faith Entrepreneur website. So I found that really interesting. So in 2025, in this time and place, and maybe has always been, I think if you look at the early church, actually the patient firm of the early church book that we refer to here talks about one of the ways that the early church advanced is just through business. It was nothing fancy. It was just moving into another area and starting a business there and living their lives. And that was one of the ways they advanced the kingdom. And so there's been a lot of work done in the area of business. And I don't have time to get into all that here.

But instead of quickly thinking we need to go be missionaries somewhere else, let's really consider first business. How can we use business as a way to advance God's kingdom? Because it's a way that we can so quickly or it's very contextualized. It's very much there's a lot of reciprocity there. There's back and forth. You take care of me. I'll take care of you. And through that, I believe authentic relationships can be built more quickly. Recently, one of our customers, I overheard them talking about their experience at Sewers. And he said that Sewers is an escape. And I thought, that's so interesting because our cafe is not perfect. It's in a basement space in a strip mall.

It's got drop ceiling eight and a half feet off the floor. It's nothing fancy at all. But he said that he can come there with his friends and visit. There's no TV running. There's no music. It's a place of peace. And he said they can come there and have conversations, and it feels safe. And I said, well, praise the Lord.

So there's lots of opportunities for us in our businesses to create those welcoming places. Whether you are a contractor at a person's house, I believe there's many opportunities there to create that where you're showing them respect and honor. And so it can be a very diverse field. But let's just consider that. How can we make places of escape or a place where heaven meets earth in our businesses?

All right. So we're under this idea of unreasonable generosity, offering more, going the extramal. My last point here on this point is a conversation. And Heather Holman says that nobody can resist a generous question. And something that any teacher knows that it's not the answer that enlightens, but it's the question.

And sometimes as we engage with people, we want to make statements. We want to declare things, say things. But let's question that urge. Let's work from a point of more curiosity of questions and allow them to share. And then I've found that as you do that, people then will say, "Well, what do you think?" And it becomes a 1 Peter 3:15 situation where they say, "Really, when they asked," Peter says there, "when they ask if the hope is within you, tell them, but do it with meekness and with fear." And so they're asking us a question. So if we can, as a follower of Jesus, we should be emulating that to those around us, not being so quick to make statements, to make judgments, but to be curious.

And so she lays out four frameworks for a generous conversation. And you have to get the book. There's much information there. It's a short book, actually, but it's packed from a biblical framework of how to have good conversations.

But she lays out four points: be curious, believe the best, express concern, share your life. And I found those four things to really help me as I interact with people to remember that. Be curious, believe the best, innocent till proven guilty is always quickly to jump to conclusions on people, express concern, and share your life. And I was just telling my boys last evening about an accident I had when I was 20 where I had my jaw broken in five places. And I was wired up for six weeks. And I couldn't talk much, which I'm sure was quite a trial for me.

And as I was telling my boys about that, I remembered that there was a gentleman who stopped by to visit me almost every day just to see how I was doing. And that really touched me then. But now, as I look back, I know how busy life is as an adult. And I was like, "That guy was making some serious sacrifices to come see me almost every day.

Express concern, show concern, bear you one of the burdens and suffer the law of Christ." And I've seen people. There's a gentleman I know. I got to know at Sewers who's an atheist. And he knows how to express concern to me. If there's something going on in my life, we meet occasionally. And we have a lot of great conversations. We're very honest with where we disagree with each other. But he's somebody who knows how to show concern for you when you're going through a hard time or a challenge. And it stood out to me. What about us as Christians? Are we showing concern? Obviously, we can't show concern to the whole world. But there's several people around us that we could reach out to them, problem-solve with them, pray with them, follow up later, say, "Hey, how's it going?"

So be curious, believe the best, express concern, and share your life, a generous conversation. So again, we could talk a long time under this idea of unreasonable generosity. May God give us wisdom to know how to live it out in our lives, the second mal living. All right. Point three, last point here.

Patient endless or patient love is this mindset. You could say endless love. In a world that wants everything now, we should show love that lasts, that grows, and that forgives.

Endless love, patient love is about being in it for the long haul even when it's hard. And as I thought about this point of showing love, this patient love to others, I'm a person who's very impatient. Quickly, I can get impatient. I want to move on. I want to see results.

I want to see as a leader, I like to, if there's problems, figure it out. But I've come to realize that, and if problems keep showing up, you get frustrated. Why? Why does it happen? But as I've gotten older, I've come to realize that there's just a lot of chaos in life. You can't get around it. And so my first point under patient love is embrace chaos.

Realize that life is never going to be perfect. Life is never going to be there's always something that is going to be wrong around us. Simon Sinek has this great quote, and I love it. It's challenged me as I think about my life and my interactions, whether it's with neighbors who

think our family has a good bit of chaos or whatever. And you want to just remove all these things. You want to just get life perfect. And Simon Sinek says this. He said, "An excessive drive for order interrupts a beautiful chaos needed for creativity to thrive. An excessive drive for order interrupts a beautiful chaos needed for creativity to thrive." And so sometimes in that, oftentimes in that chaos, especially as Christians, we can move into that, not with just an aggressive drive to fix it, but help find opportunities to make it right or to help others solve these issues.

It's only in a problem that you can help find that there's an opportunity or you can go above and beyond. If there's an issue in business where a guest or a customer is not happy, well, that's an opportunity to serve them and fix it and make it right. So really, it's in our problems. It's in the chaos of our world that we can help people see that there's answers, that there can be beauty here, and that problems and chaos make us creative. We figure things out. How do you there's 110 ways to solve this. There's some people who only have one tool in their toolbox. It's a hammer, right? Everything's a nail. Bam. That's an excessive drive for order.

But there's many tools that we can bring to the table to help solve this situation. So embrace chaos and really discipleship. As you think of the sermon, not sermon of the mount, but as you think of the Great Commission there in Matthew 28 to go into all the world, baptizing, teaching them the all things of Scripture.

Now, I see when I was younger, I was naive. That sounds amazing, right? And it is amazing. But when you do that, you're inviting chaos into your life. You're inviting challenges into your life. You're inviting things that are way bigger than you into your life. But that's okay.

We just need to learn how to manage it to be a disciple of Jesus, to teach other people to follow the way of Jesus will be chaotic. And so Romans 12 verses 10 through 16, I just love these verses. I love Romans 12. There's so much packed in there. But these verses here says, "Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another, not lagging in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer, distributing to the needs of the saints, giving to hospitality.

Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. Be of the same mind to one another. Do not set your mind on high things, but associate with the humble. Be not wise in your own opinion."

And so in the challenges, in the chaos of life, we embrace those opportunities. We've been with hope, with a gleam in our eyes. Here's an opportunity to not push it away and just shut it down and just try to solve everything right away, but to help work together others to understand why.

Why is this happening? And to look as an opportunity to bring heaven to earth. And then my next point, my last point here under patient love is the idea of the long game. We need to be living in our communities, living our lives with the long game in mind, with the idea of becoming native, contextualizing ourself into the local community as much in a way that honors them and shows them that we care about them. Learn who the movers and shakers are in your community. Learn about who that 80-year-old man is around the corner that we've gotten to know here, who's lived here for 60 years. And the neighborhood looks at him as the mayor of our little village here on the edge of State College.

Figure out who the troublemakers are. For us, we found out quickly when we moved here with seven children, a small property, and several neighbors who don't like chaos.

We had to figure out how to live with them and befriend them. And that's been an opportunity. It was a problem and it's an opportunity. And slowly, we're seeing things shift, and we're thankful for that.

So the long game has the understanding that God told Jeremiah, "Build houses and dwell in them, plant gardens and eat their fruit. Take wives and beget sons and daughters and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands so they may bear sons and daughters, that you may be increased there and not be diminished. And seek the peace of the city where I've caused you to be carried away captive and pray to the Lord for it, for in peace you will have peace."

When you come into a when you have the idea of the long game, you work in a different way than somebody who is on a short-term mission. We're in a long-term mission. So have patience, find joy in the journey, and look for ways to seek the peace of the city. And I was recently in the country of Indonesia visiting there, a Bible translation team. And the one brother there who is very practical, he's actually running a cattle operation. That's how they're there.