- Amen, well, good morning. Good morning, Rockpoint Church, my name is Seth Fagerland, I'm one of the pastors here on staff. Many people have greeted you, I want to greet you as well. I'm glad that you're here. If you're newer with us, let us know that you are connecting with us. If you're online right now or you're down in the warehouse or you're here in this space, let us know that you're connecting with us. You could stop by the Next Moves out in the gathering area. Otherwise, if you're online, there's someone right there ready to talk with you this morning. But as we seek to multiply disciples in a healthy church, I'm so glad that you are here in the midst of this day, and this time, and in this place. And as we continue in worship, would you pray with me as we open up God's Word? Lord, thank you for this morning. Thank you for who you are and who we are in you. And Lord, what makes this time special is not us or this building, but it's you. Because you promised that anytime your people gathered to meet with you, that you would be there in a special way. So now, Jesus, now may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts and minds be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. It's in your name we pray, amen. Amen, well as Ryan said, we will be in Acts chapter six. You can start turning there in your Bibles, if you haven't already. It's page 914 in the chair rack ahead of you. If you want to join us there, we'll get there in just a moment. But last week, Pastor Roy, after our Christmas and our new year's brought us back into our series on the Book of Acts, which we've called "Witness." Our God, who is a missionary God, is advancing His story, His gospel, the good news all over the world. And He's doing it through His people. And last week we got introduced to a new character, a guy named Stephen, which I have a younger brother whose name is Stephan, and I thought, "Man, I get to prove that it should be Stephan, 'cause that's what it looks like." But I looked it up and it's actually Stephen, so sorry, my little brother here, Stephan, you're out, man. No, I'm just kidding, it's good. Stephen, we'll see more about Stephen in the Book of Acts today, but before we get there, let's again remember the trajectory of what is going on. You've seen this image before, but I want to show it in case you missed last week. The Book of Acts starts with Acts 1:8, where Jesus says, "But you," which as my Texas family would say, y'all, as you all plural, "when the Holy Spirit comes on you, you will receive power and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." That's the trajectory of what is going on. But even after we saw that, persecution came from outside the church and there was hypocrisy inside the church. And even as Roy talked about last week, there was this cultural conflict. It says this, it says, "And every day in the temple and house to house they did not cease teaching and preaching that the Christ is Jesus. And the Word of God continued to increase, And the number of disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem." Multiplying disciples. Disciples, those obedient to the faith, connected to the Word of God increasing, connected to the teaching and preaching of the gospel that the Christ, the Messiah is Jesus. And yet you and I struggle to feel like we belong to this, right? Sometimes we read this like a history book of how the church all began and there's characters and there's events in here like, "Aw man, that was Bible times, that's not my life." I'm sure many of us have many Bibles in our homes, and we struggle with fully connecting this. And I want to pause here before we enter this passage, and we'll come back to Acts six in just a moment, but I want to flesh this out a little bit more. You see, I love working with teenagers, and I love asking this question, whether it be just five teenagers in a living room or a smaller group, or even a group in a setting like this is to ask this question, what is the difference between a Christian and a disciple? And then I break them into even smaller groups and I give them pieces of paper and I give them pens. I say, "All right, go at it." And sometimes just giving young people a mission, they're like, "Yeah, let's do the best list ever." And then they're making all this stuff, and they have no problem creating this list. When they describe a Christian it's things like someone who has accepted Jesus into their heart, they have faith, they go to church, but they're not super serious about their faith. So their Christian list, sometimes it's kind of small. But a disciple, oh my goodness. It's like a super Christian. This is someone who reads their Bible every day and they're praying all the time and they're telling everyone about Jesus. Literally, the phrase that we say sometimes, they are on fire for God. And they make these two lists. And it's a fun conversation, and I push them and I push them and their lists get longer and longer and their conversation, they're talking, they're going back and forth. But eventually at some point one of the students would say, "Wait, there isn't a difference between a Christian and a disciple." You're right. Yes, there's a place for maturity. The Bible talks a lot about maturity, immaturity as it relates to this relationship with God and growing with Jesus. But to create this distinction between an entry level base package Christian and this super elite disciple is a false dichotomy. Why is this an important question? Again, you and I struggle to feel like we belong to this. We feel like as we read these Bibles and it lists the disciples that, "Oh, that doesn't describe me." And we struggle with feeling like that is us. And this dichotomy, because we tend to have this dichotomy, just like these young people, between a Christian and a disciple, whereas the Bible never differentiates them. Have you noticed the word Christian hasn't even showed up yet in the Book of Acts? It's not a term that doesn't get created until much later. And it's actually used by those outside the church, and they use it kind of in a derogatory way. They're making fun of the church people inside. But now, listen, I'm not trying to upset anybody, all right? If you love the word Christian, I'm not trying to remove it from our vocabulary or anything like that. But what I'm trying to get at is this, that we struggle with this dichotomy, we struggle with believing at the end of the day that, because we are performance, merit-based driven people, we believe that there is this entry level thing known as just a Christian. And we believe then that there is this super serious, the few, the proud, the disciples, right? One of the elites, that God, if you're one of those people that God is somehow more impressed with you or somehow God loves you more if your lives look like this, but guess what? Our lives don't always look like that, do they? And so then what? If we have this dichotomy, consciously or even subconsciously, we don't feel like we measure up. We feel disqualified, we feel less than. We feel like God is disappointed in us. "Well, I must not be a disciple then, so I'm just gonna stay back. I'll be a Christian and stay in my lane." I believe that this false dichotomy is still a struggle in the church today. And I can hear it pop up all the time. If I get in a conversation with a group of Christians, eventually I hear these phrases. "Well, you know, I don't read my Bible like I should. I don't pray like I should. I don't tell people about Jesus like I should." And in those comments, what is being revealed is that there is this bar that God set, this super elite, hardcore disciple bar upon which all of us are measured, and none of us feel like we measure up to. An elder at my last church once told me, actually I was like a brand new pastor, I was still struggling with even having the word pastor in front of my name, on a title, on a door in the church. He said, "Seth, I believe every Sunday morning 95% of the people who walk through those doors are struggling, feel like they're struggling in the Christian life." And if that is you and you think, "Well, I must not be a disciple because I'm not one of these super elites, then I must be less than, I must be just a Christian," and with that mindset you become a spectator in the stands, watching from a distance instead of a player in the game, on the field. Now my friends, being a disciple is a struggle. It is a journey. It is three steps forward, it is two steps back. It is formation. It is time. It is peaks, it is valleys. It is a relationship, it is not a status. It is not a title. Listen, every Christian is a disciple. If I've been confusing up to this point, let me repeat that again so you don't get me wrong this morning. Every Christian is a disciple of Jesus. And even if you trusted Jesus as your Lord and Savior this very morning and somehow you're either tuning in or you ended up in this space or in the space below in the warehouse, if that's you, or if you are young at heart and you, that moment when you trusted Jesus was many years ago and now you are empty nested or even retired, it doesn't matter who you are in the timing of that process, it is always an invitation to follow Jesus together. So why am I taking the time to share all this? Again, because I had a sense as we open up the Book of Acts and we look at this character Stephen that we struggle with sometimes that this is even describing us or that we even belong to what it's talking about. But I also believe as we look at this, this little snapshot this morning, that we get a glimpse again of the life that God invites us into as disciples, as witnesses for Jesus today. That Acts 1:8 still applies to you and to me today. So yes, you, y'all, plural, does describe the group in the Book of Acts. But because of the authority of God's Word and because it is living and active, Acts 1:8 applies to you and to me this morning. That you individually are witnesses for Jesus in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. So let's look at that invitation for us to be disciples. Here at Rockpoint, we've laid this pathway out. You see it every single Sunday. I don't know if you even realize it. It's part of the videos, you guys are coming in as we're beginning of our time together it starts, it's the know, grow, go. We try to make it so you can memorize it and remember it. Know, it starts with knowing and trusting Jesus because of His grace. It's not saying all the right answers, it's not passing the Jesus test, it's trust. Every relationship is based on trust. And when you come to know Jesus as your Lord and your Savior, you trust Him because of His grace. Well, from that place, from that relationship, yes, we do grow, and it is that journey that I just described. It's ups, it's downs, but you grow to become more like Jesus in life and word in every area of your life, not just the church part of your life, not just a Bible study or a life group part of your life, but every part of your life. And when we do that, we go and we help others do the same. We do that with others. So based on this definition of disciple making, I believe we will see in the life of Stephen in the Book of Acts this morning how to apply this to our own life, that he fell in love with Jesus, that he grew to be more like Jesus in every area of his life, and that he did it with others. And so for you and me, for us to know, grow, go as disciples of Jesus, we too need to fall in love with Jesus in our characters. We need to grow to become more like Jesus in our relational spheres of influence. And we need to do it with others in our witness, to those who are drawn to it, and even to those who are opposed to it. So now back to Acts six, picking up in verse eight. It says, "And Stephen, full of grace and power was doing great wonders and signs among the people." So Stephen, okay, we got introduced to him earlier in Acts chapter six, so we saw last week. Very briefly, in case you missed it, there was an issue that was going on inside the church between the Hellenistic Jews, or the Greek-speaking Jews, and the Hebrew Jews, or the Aramaic-speaking Jews over the distribution of food. And the leaders, the apostle of the church said, verse three, "Select seven men whose character is well-respected, whose lives are evidence of being full or overflowing of the Holy Spirit and of wisdom." Now, Stephen is one of these guys that got selected to help run this food resource initiative. Now, we are not told his age. We don't know how old Stephen is. And we're not even told where he's from, although we get a hint that he is one of this group of the Hellenistic Jews because of the group that was used to help distribute this to the group, the people. And we'll see more about that in just a second why I think that. Well, verse eight says that Stephen was full of grace and power, and it says he was doing great wonders and signs among the people. Wait, I thought he was just in charge of a food program. Here we see a glimpse of the kingdom of Jesus mentality and even reality. There's nothing too low for a person who is in love with Jesus and wants to share that wherever they are and whatever they're doing. Now, we're not even told what these great signs and wonders were. Again, in the Book of Acts, there are these special manifestations of the Spirit that was giving authority in the validity to the church. And here's what I love, I love the end result. Anytime it mentions those things happening, what was the end result? People were believing in Jesus. It was never about the miracles. It was never about the specific manifestations of whatever it was that they did. The end result was people says, "I believe in Jesus." I love that, I love that part of that. And then later, verse 10, we see Stephen, they couldn't withstand them in their debates. So not only what he said, but how he said it. So the first thing we see about being a disciple is one who falls in love with Jesus in your character. Someone who falls in love with Jesus in your character. Verse eight described him as full of grace and power. What an incredible way to describe someone. He was full of these things. How do you know when something is full? I mean, some of you guys came in with your coffee cup and man, you know when something's full when you're like, "Ahh, it's all over me!" Whatever spills out. The definition is full of when it cannot hold anything else inside, it overflows to those around it. So what was overflowing or what was spilling out of the life of Stephen? Grace, power, and we'll come back to these in just a second. But his character, good repute, full of the Spirit, wisdom, grace, power, that was who he was, which is what characters all about. You see, character is who you are when no one is looking. Or another way to say it, character is who you are in all circumstances among all people. You don't change who you are. It's just who you are is who you are. So some of you may be asking, "Seth, what does your character have to do with falling in love with Jesus?" Well, if your character is who you are, who you truly are, not what you perform, not what you can make look good for a while, who you really are, then I would say, who you are is what you love. Who you are is what you love. Now, I may have lost the majority of guys listening earlier when I said to fall in love with Jesus. There's sometimes this thing in a guy's brain, they hear love and they kind of shut down for a second. Guys, come back to me, all right? Because listen, what you love, it's what you fight for. It's what you protect. It's your mission, it's your goal, it's your prize. It's what you and your team and your band of brothers go after at all costs. It's what you get hurt in the playoffs going after the championship. It's what you're willing to sacrifice for. That is what you really love. See, men, you will love something, it's just getting expressed in ways you don't even realize. And for men and women, our character, who we are is what we love. Jesus said it this way, He said, "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Where your treasure is, the thing that you think is most valuable, that's where your heart is at. That's what you dream about, that's what you think about. That's what you make plans and say, "I want that and I'm gonna go after it." That is the thing that you love. Now, Stephen's character, who he was, was because he fell in love with Jesus. Okay, good repute, full of the Spirit, wisdom, grace, power. It oozed out of him, it overflowed to those around him. And those character traits were not about his morality or about him being a good person. Those only came from the life of Jesus inside of him. And this was not weakness. Stephen had a power inside of him, but it was power for the sake of love. For the sake of love. Now, we could spend the time to try to unpack each of those character traits, and I encourage you to do so in a life group or with a group of friends this week, but you're gonna see how each and every one of those can only come from a source outside of yourself, from Jesus Himself. So question, how does your character get formed? How does your character get formed? Well, your character, who you become, comes from two things, your attention and your awareness. Your attention and your awareness. In his book, "The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry," John Mark Comer writes, "Attention leads to awareness. All the contemplatives agree. The mystics point out that what's missing is awareness, meaning the chronic problem of human beings' felt experience of distant from God, God isn't usually the culprit. God is omnipresent, there is no place that God is not, and no time He isn't present either. Our awareness of God is the problem, and it's acute. So many people live without a sense of God's presence throughout the day." What you give your attention to is the person you become. What you give your attention to is the person that you become. To truly become aware of something, it's leaning in and giving it your full attention. That is what shapes you. And that is how your character gets formed. And that is why I said earlier, what you love, whatever you love, that is what is most important to you. And if that's the thing that's most important to you, you're thinking about it, you're dreaming about it. You're taking action steps to go after it. That is why those are the things that shape who you are. So as disciples of Jesus, first and foremost, we turn our attention and our awareness to Jesus, to fall more in love with Him in every area of our lives. Then in that He transforms our character. So how do we do that? How do we fall more in love with Jesus? You can't just make yourself fall in love with somebody. Well, let me ask you this question, how do you know when somebody loves you? And we can have the whole conversation around the five love languages. Those are great categories or definitions to help us to get a grasp on this. The quality time, words of affirmation, acts of service, meaningful touch, and receiving gifts. Those are all ways that love gets both expressed and received. Now, let me ask you this question, is God made in your image or are you made in His? Fall in love with Jesus in the way that you are wired to love. Start there, start there. Back to Acts 6:9, it says that, "Some of those who belonged to the synagogue of the Freedmen, as it was called, and of the Cyrenians and the Alexandrians and those from Cilicia and Asia, rose up and disputed with Stephen. But they could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he was speaking." Okay, now we have some new characters involved, and let's see where they were from. It describes them from Cyrene, which is down here in modern day Libya, Alexandria, Egypt area. Cilicia is up here in the bottom corner and then Asia Minor, and I don't know why they circled Italy there, but hey. And sorry for the retro map. It looks like a 1990's Nintendo graphics. But there weren't too many maps of Acts chapter six that I could find. So not only this is where they're from, but who are these guys? Here's another map, if it helps you ease you eyes a little bit from craziness. We need to ask the question, if these guys were these Hellenistic Jews from the other places of the Roman empire, we've got to ask the question, what are these Jews doing in these other parts of the Roman empire anyway? And this is where history does help us understand biblical events, and we can reference that. Well, the Freedmen, it says they were from the synagogue of the Freedmen. The term Freedmen is a term for the former slaves and their descendants. So at one point they were slaves and then they eventually got their freedom, but it could have been second, third, fourth generation or even way later. So in the first century, in specifically 63 BC, roughly a hundred years before these events, the Roman General Pompei conquered Jerusalem. And whenever a conquering power back in the day obviously took over, they made a statement of not only, "Hey, we won," but then they did something else. He took a bunch of Jews from Jerusalem. He brought a bunch of them back to Rome. But in that he also then dispersed Jews all over the Roman empire. It was a statement that said, "We won, you lost, and now you need to become like us." He was trying to force them to become Greek in who they were. So that's how these Jews, eventually they got their freedom, but now they are all over the map. And now they're Greek speaking, but yet they are still trying to follow after God as expressed in the Old Testament. So what are they doing in Jerusalem? Why did they make this pilgrimage all the way? Oh, I did the wrong button again. All right, why did they make this big, long trek to get down to Jerusalem? It's expensive, it's hard. Very few can make that kind of trip. Well, they could have been on a pilgrimage. They could have been on a study thing. It could have been one of the festivals, although Luke the author of Acts does not tell us it was one of the festival times. But all that to say is they end up in Jerusalem for whatever reason, so you need to imagine, these were very devout people. They were very serious about their faith. So why are they talking to Stephen? That's our question. Why aren't they talking to Peter or John or the other apostles that are it seems the guys at the very top of this whole movement? Again, we're not told where Stephen is from, but his selection to the role as a Hellenistic Jew, I believe that Stephen was Greek speaking, and in that he was connecting with these guys who were from the synagogue of the Freedmen because they were like him, they spoke Greek, they came from a place outside of Jerusalem and Judea. And here's where we see the second major point of disciple-making in the life of Stephen and it's this, grow to become more like Jesus in your relational sphere of influence, in your RSI. Because of who Stephen uniquely was, where he was from, where he naturally connected, he was able to grow to be more like Jesus in his RSI. Okay, what is your RSI? All right, fun little just drawing map. RSI, or your relational sphere of influence, is basically every part of your life. Your home, your friends, your neighbors, where you work, if you go to a church, if you like food. We all like food. I'm guessing some of you are regulars somewhere. Everyone knows your name. You had "Cheers" back in the day, right? You have your hobbies, you have the things that you just love to do. And some of you have very expensive hobbies. And there's people you've done it with for a very long time. Or even the vacation together. You have your ongoing learning, in the 21st century, we do have our life also on the internet, the social media world and our online presence. So literally you could place every hour of every day of every week into these categories. So why is it called relational? Because every one of these categories is connected to people. Even if you are the most extreme introvert of all introverts, you are connected to people in these different areas of your life. These are the people that you naturally connect with on a day-to-day basis on who you are, how you're wired, and the relationships that you have. So why is this part of being a disciple? We already talked about we struggle with even feeling like we're disciples or that we're even qualified. 'Cause we could look at this and say, "Yeah, that's my life," and we don't even realize the relationships and the connections that God has already put in your life because of who He made you to be. Let me tell a story. I was a youth pastor down in Northern Chicagoland, northern suburbs, and in the summertime we would go downtown and we would go to this conference called SIMP. It was at Moody Bible Institute, which is right down in there. And went to SIMPs, and it stood for Students Equipped to Minister to Their Peers. It was a great conference, it was a great week. What happened is students would receive training during the morning on apologetics and on things OF like why they can be confident to believe what they believe. And they would also get training on how do you actually then talk to somebody? How do you have spiritual conversations and not just be like, "Oh, look at the weather," and "Hey, the Bears are bad again," or whatever. Get past the superficial conversation of things and get to things that really matter. And then we would go out and have them talk to strangers out and about throughout the city of Chicago. It was awesome because you saw young people whose hearts were good, but take a big step of faith to go do this, right? Well, in order to do this, what we had to do, we realized we had to like mix up the groups so that there were different groups from other, 'cause if you're with your buddy, "Are you gonna do this?", "No, I'm not gonna do this." But if you're with someone you don't even know, you're like, "Hey, you gonna do this?," "Yeah, let's try it." "All right," and they're willing to take a step of faith. And we also realized we needed to split up the super talkative ones and the not so talkative ones. They needed to balance each other out. 'Cause the talkative one needed to learn how to be quiet sometimes and a super quiet one needed to learn how to step out and talk. Okay, I'll never forget one of the groups that I was in charge of. They weren't even from my group, but it was a group that I was kind of overseeing. Two girls, let's call the first one Becky. Now, Becky was super talkative. I mean, she had a problem with talking too much. Becky could talk to a tree and be totally fine. That's Becky, she was older, she was a little more confident, but she was very, she had been to SIMP before. The other girl, let's call her Lucy, and Lucy was painfully quiet. I mean, painfully quiet. And she was younger, she was only 14 at the time. And they got paired up, Becky and Lucy. So we're going out, we're going to these different places. I got some fun stories and all that kind of thing. And we end up going to this park, and there's this older gentleman sitting by himself on a park bench, and I told Becky and Lucy, I'm like... So Becky and Lucy, and of course, naturally, Becky is the one who first tries to talk to this gentleman. So she goes up there and does her thing in her introduction and guy doesn't even look at her. And Becky, again, nothing against Becky, Becky was great, she has a huge heart, Becky not even fazed. She tries again, try to re-engage this guy in conversation and see if she can connect with him. He kind of acknowledges her and almost physically turns away from her, like, "Please go away," kind of thing. Just by his body posture. And at this point, Lucy is like melting in the background. She's so uncomfortable. But Becky, man, she wanted to try a third time. And she's like, "I'm gonna talk to this guy." So she tries again to talk to this older gentleman. And at that point, the gentleman turns to Becky, and with a very thick accent, but broken English said, "No English." And I wished I could have caught this moment on camera, picture, video, whatever. Because back here then Lucy's eyes get about this big. And she steps forward, about knocks Becky over. And she busts out in fluent French. And she sits down and talks with this old man for 45 minutes on this park bench. Poor Becky didn't know what to do. She's like, "Now it's my turn to be quiet." She kind of backs up, but she also, in this training, she realized, "I need to start praying right now for this conversation." It was awesome. Well, later we come back all together and we talk about the conversations that we had. It turns out Lucy, who was 14 at the time, had been professionally trained in French since she was six years old, eight years of French. And she says this, "I've always struggled to believe that God had a plan for me or that He could ever use me. And in no way did I ever dream that God would ever use my French. But I realized today that God uniquely made me who I am and placed me in the perfect place today so that I could share the love of Jesus with that man." Amen, amen. I don't know your RSI, but you do. I don't know who exactly uniquely who God made you to be, but you do. You know, you have a hunch of who you are, where you are, and the things you just love doing. Those are the very people who God has uniquely made you to overflow the love of Jesus to in your RSI. There are no accidents in God's kingdom. Well, back to Acts chapter six, we need to finish up this passage. What happened to Stephen? Well, it says, "Then they secretly instigated men who said, 'We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God,' and they stirred up the people and the elders and the scribes. They came upon him, seized him, and brought them before the council. And they set up false witnesses who said, 'This man never ceases to speak words against this holy place and the law, for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses delivered to us.'" This kind of sounds a little familiar, doesn't it? As disciples of Jesus, when we fall in love with Jesus, when we grow to become more like Him in every area of our lives, yes, many people will be drawn to it. We've seen this in the Book of Acts. Thousands have come to believe in Jesus at this point. But the third thing we see as a disciple, when we fall in love with Jesus, we share that as our witness to others, some will be drawn to it, some will be opposed to it. We live a new life, there's a new way. The rule and reign of Jesus is our lives. There's this new power in town we saw in my last message in Acts chapter five. Some will be drawn to this, also longing for that new life, a new life free from fear and secure in love. And yet others will hate it, why? Because it challenges them. This wasn't about winning a debate. This was threatening their worldview, what they thought was real, what they thought it meant to be a good person, and therefore what it meant to be blessed was challenging what they believed. But notice the opposition that Stephen received. It was the exact same opposition that came against Jesus. It was the same process, same accusation. They had to find false witnesses. And even in a few weeks from now, we're gonna see how this all ends for Stephen, but they lied. Jesus never said He was gonna destroy the temple. He said, "If you destroy the temple," and He was referring to Himself. And He also said, "I didn't come to abolish the law, I came to fulfill the law and every promise that God has ever made." But when Jesus died on the cross, yes, the curtain in the temple that separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple was torn from the top all the way to the bottom. So yeah, Jesus did change the customs. There is a new way to have a relationship with God. And it was through Him. And God's plan for where He dwells, where He lives and how this world will experience Him isn't through a building at a place, it's through people. That's what He wanted to do. That's what Jesus said, "By this the world will know that you are my disciples, by your love for one another." So what do we do with this passage? You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you and you will be witnesses, disciples for Jesus. When we fall in love with Jesus in our character, with our attention and our awareness, which also then leads to our actions, when we grow to become more like Jesus in our relational sphere of influence, where we naturally are, but where we also love to be, but also as we grow as witnesses for Jesus, both those who are drawn to it, and even those who oppose it, and in their opposition, listen, let it be to Jesus and not to you. Well, verse 15 says this, as we close this up, it says, "And gazing at him, all who sat in the council saw that his face was like the face of an angel." Now, I've never seen a glowing face before. And in fact, this was pretty rare in the Bible. Only shows up two other places. Moses, some of you might remember that one. And even Jesus Himself when He was transfigured. Those are the only times that they said that someone's face was like the face of an angel. So I've not seen a glowing face, but I've seen men and women whose lives are remarkably different, who have a power inside of them that just doesn't make sense. They have a life, there's a source that they have that you're drawn to and you're just wondering, "What is it about you?" And yeah, they go through the ups and downs of this life. They have their great moments. They have some really hard moments. But yet you're still drawn to what you sense or see coming out of their life. When we fall in love with Jesus, we become a lot like Him. When we allow our lives to truly fall in love with Jesus, we become a lot like Him. Let's pray. Jesus, we thank you as you've been a part of this time, even before we woke up this morning. And God, who you are and what you came not only to do, but what you are continuing to do, you are advancing your kingdom. And here we are 2,000 years later, and I confess as one who has felt like he is struggling with the Christian life and confess that at times I struggle with seeing myself as a disciple. Lord, you are still telling your story through your people. And to those online, to those in the warehouse, to those in this space, God, you know everyone who is here and who you made them to be and what is going on in their lives and where they are each and every day and the people that they come into contact with. There are no accidents in your kingdom. So Jesus, help us to receive your power through your Holy Spirit as we are witness for you where we live, where we work, where we play, and to the ends of the earth. It's in your name we pray, amen.