You guys good? Hey, would you do me a favor, Lincoln Road? Would you help me welcome in all of our campuses right now? What is up y'all? Man, I am so excited to be hanging out with you guys today.
If we haven't had the pleasure of meeting yet, my name's Blake. I'm part of the team here at Venture, and if it's your first time joining us, a special welcome to you. You picked one of my favorite seasons in the world to come to church. Happy summer, everybody. If we're officially in summer June one, there's something happening this afternoon that I'm gonna just give a little, like, just short thing and then we're gonna move on.
Okay? To the top. That's all I gotta say. That's all I gotta say, people to the top. No, I'm excited about summer.
This the thing I love the most about Summer, quite honestly, is that it's too hot for mosquitoes. Thank you Lord. Um, like I'll deal with 110 degree heat if I know that at four 30 those suckers aren't coming for me, I will deal with that. Now, I, I love the summertime and what this series brings about. Has anybody been on a vacation yet?
Anybody done a vacation? Gone on a trip? Anybody like coming back from one? Anyone got one planned? Awesome.
Rock and roll. I've learned recently over, you know, having, we got a 6-year-old and a 2-year-old that there's no such thing as vacations with kids. There's only trips you take a trip with children. So if anybody has already been on a trip and you're returning, you've made it to church, congratulations. The prayer team will be down front for you, uh, at the end of the experience.
Now, I love summer. We, because it just sparks family. Like you talk about family during the summertime, everybody's got memories of what you did as a kid in summer, and that's why I love that this series has been centering in around families experiencing what does it look like and learning together. I think the past two messages, Craig and Kyle, have done an amazing job of unpacking what does it look like to live in a godly family, to seek being a godly family and then breaking those generational patterns. Come on, somebody.
Did anybody, was anybody blessed by last week's message? Learning about what does it look like to break generational patterns? Wow. I'm excited for next week too. You're gonna hear from Jeff Clark as he talks about what does it look like to leave a legacy in family.
So excited about that. Today though, what I wanna do is I wanna talk to all of us for just a few minutes. 'Cause maybe you've been coming to this family series saying, Blake, this has not been the series for me. My family is jacked up. I'm full of crazy.
I don't have a family. This whole nuclear family thing, which I think is such a funny word that is called a nuclear family, right? Like you got mom, dad, brother, sister. That hardly exists anymore in our culture, friends. But today, who I wanna talk to are the people that are from non-nuclear families, from the people that maybe you said my family was a little bit crazy growing up, or I didn't, I never knew much of my family and I've been yearning for family.
So sitting here over the past two weeks, learning what does it look like to be a godly family? I would just like a family. Well, today, friends, I want to invite you into one of the biggest promises of God. And the promise is this, when you trust Jesus, when you pursue him with your whole life, the answer is welcome to the family. There is a family waiting for you.
And that family is called the church. It's a spiritual family of people who don't have it all put together. I certainly don't. As we walk together and we chase Jesus together. So what I want us to do is I want us to look and mark chapter three.
It's a crazy story. It's a really short one. But see how, even if you feel like you don't have a family, even if you feel like your family's messed up, there's a promise and a gift to you. So let's go ahead and read in Mark chapter three is dropping us in the middle of some tension, though I love stories where Jesus like just throws everything on its head. This starts in verse 31.
It says this, then Jesus', mother and brothers arrived standing outside. They sent someone in to call him. A crowd was sitting around him and they told him, Hey, uh, Jesus, your mother and your brothers, your family is outside looking for you. And Jesus said, who are my mother and my brothers? And he looked out at those seated in the circle around him and said, here are my mother and my brothers.
Whoever does God's will is my brother and my sister and my mother. This is a promise that Jesus gives and he turns everything in on his head. And I just, I'm so encouraged by this, I'm encouraged by it because I was a product, I was a recipient of this promise that Jesus gives for his spiritual family. I grew up in an amazing church, y'all. I love it.
It was like one of those, you know, I I was in Jones County, all my Jones County folk and grew up kind of right there on the line between Calhoun and, and Collins and kind of Highway 84 West area and the church that I was a part of over there, it was such a gift because I grew up with people that loved me well, and they, they, they brought me up. I was just a little knuck, knuckleheaded kid running around, just kind of going crazy. But there were people in my life that were dedicated to helping me know Jesus. Now, that didn't come without its fair share of problems though, I'll tell you. And I was chief amongst them.
I will go ahead and be honest and tell you, there was a time when I was like seven or eight years old. You, you know this, you remember this. In that particular age, seven to 10, you're just looking for the wrong thing to do. It's just what you do. I was in this age and at a Sunday school teacher, her name was Ms.
Karen. She was amazing. She was so sweet. It just so happened that she looked a lot like my mama. And so there was this one Sunday that, it was after Sunday night church.
And I was running the pews, like me and my buddies, we used to zoom through the pews as fast as we could. They were made of hardwood. So we always had like cut heads and stuff, but we would run through the pews. And I already just remember sitting there, and this is 7-year-old Blake, remember this 7-year-old Blake's mind saying, well, there's my mama. She's standing behind me.
I think I'm gonna go and run up to her as fast as I can and slap her on the behind. And so I did. So only to discover that it wasn't my mama, it was my Sunday school teacher, Ms. Karen. And I ran up to her with my hand and just went as hard as I could.
And she turned around and the whole church knew. You thought that Jesus had come back in that moment. And she looked at back and said, well, and I said, that is not my mom. And what did I do? 7-year-old Blake runs to the back of the auditorium and sits down in Christ, goes, I was embarrassed.
I was, I I didn't know what else to do. I was, I was so scared. I was like, man, what, what have I done? And this is why I love the church, because Ms. Karen, she comes up to little, little Blake and she kneels down.
She says, Blake, are you okay? And I said, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so embarrassed. I can't believe that I, I, I don't know what I was thinking.
And she put her hand on my shoulder and she said, Blake, it's okay. I forgive you. And I said, I thought you were my mama. I thought, and she said, I'm not your mama. She said, but I'm one of your church mamas and you got a lot of church mamas and a lot of church daddies around you that love you no matter what you do.
That story right there, that moment changed everything for me. When I recognized that God had given me a family that was so much bigger than what I thought my family was, and he had brought me in to this family of people that no matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried to earn it, or no matter what I could do, that there was people in my life that loved me regardless. This is the story that Jesus brings in Mark chapter three. It's a, it's a moment of tension because Jesus has been coming in, he's been elevating his ministry. He's going into all of these towns and these places.
He's healing people. He's casting out demons. We're seeing things happen that they haven't seen before. And so people are starting to follow. But on the same side of it, Jesus is also saying other stuff.
He's saying stuff like, I'm going to die and rise again. Well, that's enough to activate his family's mind because in this family's opinion, he's got to come on back. And so the family goes to Jesus in Mark three and they're on the outside of the house. And Jesus is like doing his thing. He's teaching, he's healing, he's being Jesus and his family knock on it and is like, Hey, will you go get him?
Because, uh, well he needs to come back with us. He's not fitting the mold. And in this moment, Jesus uses this to help us to see that the church isn't just something that's built on shared DNA, but on shared devotion. So I want us to see three marks of a spiritual family that Jesus brings us to in the story. The first one is this is that proximity isn't the same thing as priority.
In this story, you see two different groups. The first group is sitting at the feet of Jesus. They're soaking up everywhere. They're taking it all in. They're like, man, this guy has words of life.
And I don't care what I have to do, how crowded this room has to be. I have to be at his feet. I need to be listening. That's the proximity group. But there's another group, it's his family standing on the outside of the house and they believe that they have priority.
We're Jesus' family, we're his blood, we're his DNA. And in that day and age, in that culture, when you think about family, the unit was a lot tighter than what we see today. So we think about family is there's an expectation that Jesus is supposed to come and fit right in the family mold and do what we do. He's not supposed to be out there teaching, saying all these crazy things, healing people. We need him to come back and get back to the carpentry business.
We need him to come back and to be where the family is supposed to be. Do what the family is supposed to be doing. Look again at Mark 30, 31 and 32, as Jesus' mother and his brothers arrived and standing outside, they sent one, sent someone to call him in. They didn't even go to him. They sent a proxy and they said, Hey, go tell Jesus your mother and your brothers are outside and they are looking for you.
You see, Jesus' family arrives, but they stay on the outside. They don't come in. They're, they're not apart. They don't take him outta his word. They don't receive the promise.
Instead, they want to sit on their built in privilege. They wanna sit on their status, their access and their expectation. But we see that Jesus is re-entering what family means here. Not just about DNA, but about presence, but about being at his feet, about the proximity to the king. Have you ever felt maybe in your life that you're the one on the outside?
Do you ever feel like you're the one that's kind of skirting the edges on the fringes while everybody else is getting the good welcome? Everybody else is getting the, the high praise. Everyone else is getting the, the cream of the conversation. Everybody else is on the inside. Can I tell you that Jesus isn't prioritizing people based off where they come from, thank you Lord.
But he draws close to those who draw near to him. This is the start and the foundation of what it means to be in the family of God. Jesus takes the people on the fringes. He takes the people that are on the margins. He takes the people that are on the outside and he brings them together.
He draws them together. I love what James four eight says. It says, come near to God and he will come near to you and the church friends hear me. Presence matters so much more than pedigree. It doesn't matter how many, how many pieces of paper you got hanging up on your wall.
It doesn't matter if you can say the books of the Bible forward and backward. It doesn't matter if you know the most theology have the most doctrine. You can say every Greek word from here to kingdom come. It does not matter what your pedigree is. The only thing that matters is are you drawing close to Jesus?
And if you're drawing close, then you are in proximity to the king and welcome to the family. That's what we're doing here. We're not growing in just our knowledge. We're not just growing in how good we are. Here's the truth.
None of us can ever be good enough to be connected to the king. But because he came to us, he says, those who draw near to me, I'm gonna draw near to you. What a promise. What a promise that the only prerequisite for the presence of the creator of the universe is saying, I'm gonna put myself at his feet. That's something his family wouldn't do.
They wanted to stay on the outside. My challenge to you, friend is this step in, come to the feet of the king, come to Jesus, draw near to him and he will draw near to you. That's the space that God begins to write something new. This idea of the church was topsy-turvy. It's not a, this is not a common thing up until this point when Jesus is uniting everybody together underneath his presence.
There were different clans, there were different identities, there were different formations of families all the way around. And you were a part of this group and this group and this group and this group. But you didn't come together. Jesus redefines everything, switches it on his head and says, no, we're all unified in my presence. See, proximity isn't just the whole kitten caboodle when it comes to church family.
There's, there's more to do. We see the second thing that Jesus does that he brings us in by asking a question. We see that it's participation that redefines your people. It's no longer just about, Hey, what group are you a part of? Or what do you like?
What are your interests? Who's your family? That's not what defines us anymore, but it's participation. Look at what Jesus asks in verse 33. It's a really simple question in Mark 3 33.
He says, who are my mother and my brothers? He asks, that's so funny to me because his family's literally on my other side of the door. They could hear him. And I could just imagine his mama putting his hand. Her hands be like, what is he saying?
Who is my mother? He knows me. I can imagine how that would've gone in my family. You can only think there was a, there was a old, uh, comedian, I saw this the other day. The comedian is like, um, uh, he, he was talking about family conversations and he was saying this, southerners have a really good way of making like a lot of words.
One words. And so don't think you're gonna was a word in my family by my grandmother. Don't think you're gonna go over there and do that thing. Don't think you're gonna go over there and and, and cause a stir. My grandmother would say that all the time.
I would imagine that if my grandmother would've been there when Jesus was there saying, who don't think you're gonna question who your family is? Don't think you're gonna do that. That's how it would've gone. But Jesus asked the question, Jesus doesn't do anything on accident. He asks the question intentionally because in doing so, he's challenging cultural assumptions.
He's challenging. What does it mean to be family? And he's redefining it. It's the participation in what's happening. And so there's this, there's this amazing chapter of Scripture that I love.
It's Romans chapter 12, when we see Jesus redefine what people we belong to, what family is he brings us and begins the church. And Paul carries this theme on in Romans chapter 12. And I wanna, I wanna read just a little bit, starting in verse four. It's a vision for what the church is supposed to be when it comes to life. Verse four says, for just as each one of us has one body with many members or many body parts and these members don't all have the same function.
So in Christ we though we are many, we form one body and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts according to the grace given to us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith. If it's serving, then serve. If it's teaching, then teach.
If it's to encourage, then give encouragement. If it's giving, then give generously. If it's to lead, do it diligently. If it's to show mercy, do it cheerfully. Here we see in this one verse I, I love Romans 12 'cause it's kinda like the marks of living in community where the body of Paul is giving us a blueprint of what it's supposed to look like to be in the kingdom of God, to be in this spiritual family.
He says, Hey, hey, you have gifts now that you're here and you're drawing close to Jesus and you've given your life over to him. Now the Holy Spirit has given you gifts that are unique to you. That's something that only you can do. And if you are going to serve and be a part and be in the spiritual family, one thing you've gotta recognize is that yes, you belong to God and you belong to God and I belong to God. But it's not just that.
It's I belong to you and you to me and me to Him and Him to her. And we belong in one body together. And so we need you. We need your gifts, we need your energy. We need your passion.
We need your prayer friends, we need people who stand in the gap, praying for our church, praying for our cities, praying for our communities. That is a gift. And it's not just a wayward gift. It is a central gift of our church family. We need what you have to offer.
It all boils down to participation. Every part matters. Every gift given in the body makes the body stronger. But do you notice this? Because of all the unique gifts and all the different things that you have to offer and you story and my story and all of our stories coming together could be really, really easy.
Could it not to start saying, well, they're different from me. They don't like the same things I do. They don't go to the same places I go. They don't. They don't hang out on weekends.
It's the same places I do. They don't, uh, they don't raise their families the same way that I do. But can I tell you the thing that brings us all together? It's not our preferences, but it's Jesus. He unites us.
He brings us together. And in this body as we all have many members, there is one head and one head alone. And it's king Jesus. That's how we're have able to have unity, not uniformity. There's a key difference there, but it's all about participation.
So he gives us the list of examples that, uh, of gifts that we can see serving and teaching, encouraging, giving. He says, all of these are things that you can use. But then he goes on in chapter 12 and he talks about the posture of our hearts. What are his our heart's posture supposed to be when it comes to living in this family? And I love what he says.
He, he talks about how we're supposed to have sincere love for one another, honor and devotion, holding tight to the good things, to the things that unite us. Holding fast to those, choosing the kind of love that's not based on mood or convenience. Hello somebody. But it's based on sacrificial love for the family. It's rooted in mutual sacrifice.
This is what a mature spiritual family looks like. Friends, are we perfect? Is our church perfect? Not by any means we don't always get this right, but the thing that unites us in the midst of that, even when we're not perfect, even when we don't always get it right, is that we are deeply connected in pursuing Jesus together and participating in the work that he's doing here in our church. That's what brings the spiritual family together.
And it's what allows us to have people come in for the first time and say, I don't know about this Jesus stuff. I don't know about this church stuff, but I'm still trying to figure it out. When the body is working together, when the spiritual family was saying, that's okay, this is a place where you can belong before you believe you can be a part of the goodness and the riches of our family. I love what Nick Gumbel, he was the starter and the founder of what's called alpha and Alpha is this incredible program that goes all across the world and teaches people what it looks like to to be a part of the Jesus family. And this is what he said.
He says, you can belong before you believe. And once you belong, belief starts to grow. I I believe fully in the four gospels, Matthew, mark, Luke, and John are a testimony of Jesus. And I believe that there is one that is strong as well. And it's the testimony of the church of the Living God.
When the church is acting together, serving together, participating in the mission together, the people that come in, and maybe this is you today. Maybe you're here just exploring when you experience the power. I can't tell you how many stories I've heard of people saying, I came to venture and I was loved so much. People gave so much of their time to know me. They remembered my name the second time that I walked through the door.
I can't believe that there are people who would care about me this much and not know me. And our answer to that is it's because there is someone who cared about me when I had no care for him. And because of that grace, because of that mercy, this family releases into our cities and our communities through our participation and belonging becomes the soil where faith can take root. Somebody's faith is taking root today because of your participation in the mission of God. That's the power of the church family.
But it doesn't just stop there. You ask the questions like, that's good. I wanna belong Blake. I wanna have a spiritual family. But to what end?
Why are we doing all of this? And at least to the last thing Jesus says, and we see that pursuit is the path to belonging. It's pursuit. This is what we're striving after here. This is what we're going for.
Look again in Mark 3 34 and 35, he says this. He says, then he looked at those seated in a circle around him after his family said, Hey, come with us. And he was like, here are my mother and my brothers essentially saying Here is my family. Whoever does God's will is my brother and my sister and my mother belonging to God's family, belonging to the church. The ultimate goal of that is pursuing Jesus with everything you've got and not alone with the church family, with us together, serving, giving a very easy way to do this.
If you're looking for a way to jump in and begin to participate, to start up that pursuit is by being a part of the men's and women's group this week. They kick off this Wednesday, you can be a part of it. Maybe say, Blake, I feel isolated. Good, I've got a solution that's called men's and women's groups. Go be a part of one.
Meet people. Maybe for somebody you're challenged today is simply this. On your way out the door today, at the end of the experience, shake hands with one person, tell them your name, be known. It's in this participation and is in this pursuit is where we start to see the deepest things, the powerful things of the church come to life. It's where we start to recognize that the church is never about earning your place.
It's never about fitting in. It's never about molding yourself to look the part so that you act right and that you get dressed up and you have everything. No, no, no, no. That's not the church. That's a system.
That's religion. You can toss that out with the bathwater. No, what the church of the living God is. It's people saying because of Jesus, because of what he's done in my life and because how He has changed me. Now I want you to know the same Jesus that I know and I'm going to love you with everything that I've got and you are going to serve and you are going to serve and y'all are gonna come around and love me and hold my arms up and then I'm gonna come around and I'm gonna hold your arms up when you are down.
And no matter what you face, no matter what you go through, because of King Jesus and him in us, we raise the banner high in our cities and say, love is what brings us together. Unity for the king of kings pursuit of Jesus. So if there's one thing that I wanted to break us of today is to know this, that this spiritual family, even though it's not perfect, the church is not a prize for the polished. It is a home for the hungry. You hungry for Jesus, you want more of him.
Are you asking yourself the question, do I have to look the right part? No. Put that to the side and say, do you, do you just want him? Do you just want Jesus? Nothing else will do.
You've tried everything else. You've tried joining that group. You've tried hanging out with that. You've tried leaning into the addiction instead of running away from men and you have tried every single thing in your life and nothing works. When you pursue Jesus, you start to see a hunger build in you like you've never known.
I want more of him, more of you Jesus. More of your life in my life, more of your way in my way. Now the church doesn't always get that right. There was a time 150 so years ago where there were just as many churches that were walking the wrong path saying the wrong things as they were saying the right things. And there was, this is the time of abolition and and slavery.
And there were just as many churches that were using the Bible to justify a terrible, tragic thing. And so people were starting to recognize, they were starting to say, well, the church has lost its moral authority. The church has lost its ability to leave. The church has lost its ability to understand right from wrong. There was a preacher at the time, his name's Henry Ward Beecher, and he says this, he says, well, you have to see that the church is not a gallery for the exhibition of imminent Christians.
I love the way he says that. No, it is a school for the education of the imperfect ones. Friends, we're not perfect. We mess up a lot, but that's why we are here. Not in spite of it, but because of it.
Why do we come on Sundays? Why do we get in-house churches? Why do we join a men's and women's group? Is because we're not perfect and we don't have it all put together. But we believe that there is one who does, and we're united under his banner and we pursue him.
The church has the ability to change your life, not because of our own strength or what we have to offer, but because of the one we serve. Growing up, man, there was a, I told you guys about the church family I grew up in. I'm so thankful for them. If you know a little bit about my story, you know that when I was a baby, my mom and I were living in Florida and she went through a pretty terrible divorce. She had to move back to Laurel, where we're from and to Jones County.
And in that time and in that culture, it was really easy to walk around with a scarlet letter, a big a big D on your chest, divorce, broken, not worth it. She didn't fit in any of the models and it looked like destiny was this, that she was just gonna be a divorced mom with a single kid trying to make ends meet and struggling to raise her boy who was pretty hardheaded, if I must say so myself. I probably should have been shot up on the backside of a sonic. But in that first year of her being back, one of her old friends from high school and then college said, Hey, why don't you come to church with me? And she did.
My mom never remarried, but I grew up with more dads and more moms than I knew what to do with. I had people like Miss Garrin that loved me and people that take me up and said, Hey, this is the right way to do things. This is the wrong way. And there was never a time that those doors, that church weren't open, that I wasn't in them. And there were people in that church every single year that loved me and because of them, it's, that's the place.
Salem Heights Baptist Church, where I gave my life to Christ, where I surrendered a full-time ministry and my life forever changed. If you're lonely friend, there's a family for you here. If you're hesitant, if you feel like you don't have it all figured out, you don't have to. There is a family here for you. Doesn't have to look perfect.
But there are people in these rows, in these KXP rooms that are raising kids, that are raising families that even you don't know the impact that you are making. And for the church that's here, you've been coming to church for years and you've been sitting in this room for years. Here's a challenge to you. You don't know the impact that you're making. KXP leader.
You don't know that the next revivalist of their generation isn't in that room right now. You don't know that the next high five that you give on the guest services team is to a person that came to church today as a last resort because it was their last day. We don't know the impact on this side of eternity that is being made by this church, but I can tell you what that there are Blakes, there are young kids, there are families, there are single moms that are here today that are raising their families in the name of Jesus because of the Church of the Living God saying, yes, I'm pursuing. I'm participating, and I am in the presence of the king. That's the challenge today.
Friends, if you need a family, welcome home, step forward, take a seat and lean in. My only challenge is this, give it all you got. Give It all you got for the sake of your family, for the sake of the people around you, for the sake of our city. Today, we have an opportunity to respond and There's a lot of different ways that you can do that. Maybe for you, you need to come and receive prayer.
We have our prayer team that's gonna be available at all of our campuses. Maybe you wanna come and take communion to remember the person and the work of Jesus and what we are unified by. We're unified by his death and his resurrection. Or maybe you wanna come to the crosses. We have crosses at all of our campuses.
You can come and you can write something down if as a way of leaving and saying, God, I, this was my old story and now I want to live in a new way. Whatever that is for you, I'm gonna invite everybody at all of our campuses. Would you stand up with me? I'm gonna take a moment to stand and pray. We're gonna invite you to sing.
We're gonna sing a song called Simple Kingdom. I love it. This kingdom is simple. It's you and it's me living in unity, not always getting it right, but pursuing him. I wanna pray and then you respond as the Lord leads.
Father, what a gift this day is to be with your people. The gift of your church is, it's unbelievable that there are people from so many different walks of life, so many backgrounds, so many different, distinct, unique ways of being that you bring us all together in cities, all across South Mississippi, watching online, even right now, building a body and then globally, that there is a body of Christ that lifting high the name of Jesus. What a what? Astounding thing. Father, I pray that today that you would allow us to take root in our hearts.
What are places in that family and for the lonely today? Lord, for the hurting, for the broken Father, I pray that they would feel in their spirit, you are whispering to them that this is a place for them to, this is a place for all of us because it's not about what we have to offer, but about what you've already given. We thank you, Jesus, we honor you. It's in your name we pray. Amen.