Why are we so good at editing ourselves into the hero of our own story?

I think that we are hardwired for story.

We're in this bigger one.

So I think that everybody does that on some level, and then I think in our culture, plus the proclivity of our fallen flesh, we wanna make ourselves the hero of that story.

You know, it's a, it, it's a funny thing when you, uh, like, read biblical passages that maybe you grew up, if you grew up in church, studying, and we just instantly, we make ourselves the hero of those stories [laughs] too.

You know, we read David and Goliath, and we're not, like, the scared Israelites in the tents.

We're David, you know? [laughs] And you're like, "Well, actually, in the story, Jesus is the greater David."

Yeah [laughs]

Well, hey, good morning and welcome.

Menlo, so glad that you're here.

We are beginning our ministry year around here, and we've been talking about what it means to reclaim the way of Jesus in your life.

Not just more knowledge, but more reflection about whether or not our daily decisions parallel the way of Jesus.

If you are joining us at one of our Bay Area campuses, welcome, welcome, welcome.

in San Mateo, Mountain View, Menlo Park, Saratoga on a Labor Day weekend.

you know pressure's off start small yeah I like that All right, so last week, we talked about becoming an undivided follower in our series, What Is a Follower of the Way? And I think, why does unhurried friend come next? What starts to break relationally when a divided life becomes a hurried life? What happens there?

Yeah, I think that if you're living a divided life, you will almost certainly have to live a hurried life because you're spinning all these plates in all these different places.

And oftentimes you are spinning those plates as a different version of yourself.

And so it's not just like you're showing up to school or you're showing up to work or you're showing up to that key relationship.

It's like you in the version of you that's going to find approval in that person shows up to work or you in the version of you that will find approval at church or approval in that friendship or approval in that neighbor relationship.

And I think that level of division just means that your internal RPMs of adaptation are going so high at a speed they shouldn't have to.

And so that's true, I think, if you're living a divided life.

How should I understand something like

Well, good morning, everybody, and welcome back.

So glad that you are here.

Thanks for giving us part of your weekend to be able to hopefully get a chance to catch your breath.

Last week, we had a chance to begin this vision series at all of our campuses.

And if you're joining us at one of our Bay Area campuses, so glad.

you are here and this idea of reclaiming the way of Jesus is not just some sort of esoteric idea we want to give you practical ways to think about that and actually do something with it we're reclaiming the way of Jesus back in our lives from pressures and priorities that actually took it from us whether we knew it or not you don't reclaim something that you just misplaced you reclaim something that has been taken from from you.

Could you give us just a glimpse, a 30,000-foot glimpse? What are we trying to recover in each of those spaces between worship, table, focus, and work?

Yeah, well, I mentioned a couple of them this weekend.

I talked about the need to reclaim a space of gathered worship.

I didn't use this word, but really the sense of embodiment.

What does it mean for me to go from being a spectator to a contributor, to really participate? It means that gathered worship is not something that I do as a last resort or something that I do if all the stars align or something.

Really, I think for many people, whether we like it or not, it's like, if I have nothing better to do, then I will come and spectate as opposed to, no, this is like a big rock part of our schedule.

We're going to make different choices so that we can prioritize being present, interacting with people, showing up on time so that I can experience the entire gathering together and then committing in my heart, in my mind, in my life, maybe in my family to How am I going to live this out? And so I think those were some of the things we talked about.

So if we were to take that and maybe try to make it applicable to perhaps an audit of this week, maybe something with evaluating our calendar, our money, our speech, our relationships, how could that begin? And what would real growth look like throughout this process?

Well, good morning, Menlo Church, and welcome to Vision Weekend.

So glad that you're here across all of our campuses.

It's easy in our moment where there are a lot of people sort of claiming to speak for Jesus, and we're going to get a chance to hear from somebody that spent really maybe the most time with him, uh, way longer than any of the disciples.

Uh, I think it's going to be really fruitful for us.

Now as we get started, something I've noticed, uh, it's kind of hard to pin down when you're not from Silicon Valley or California, um, but the days now in this time of the year, they start to get shorter and emails get longer, and they come in faster.

And, uh, like somebody will send me a calendar invite, and it's like, "Hey, here's the calendar invite for September," and I'm like, "Isn't it still May?" And summer just like goes, right? And, uh, I grew up in the Midwest, and in the Midwest, uh, because winter keeps you inside, it's like mandatory.

When we started this series seven weeks ago, what did you hope would happen in our church?

I mean, I think somebody asked me a couple weeks ago, they were like, have you basically just been doing like the basics of Christianity series using world religions to show the contrast? And I was like, you caught me.

Like that is for sure a primary focus of what we wanted this summer to be.

Every week we did this contrast of these metaphors.

And if you put all of those together from thermostat to relationship, if you added all those on the gospel side of the ledger together, you're going to get hopefully a somewhat systematic view of the components of the gospel.

I also wanted to communicate it in a way that wasn't like sort of punching down to other religions, but that was communicated in an intellectually honest sort of steel manning the case for another faith.

And so it meant that, you know, when we covered Islam, we didn't cover the worst versions of it.

What's the difference between access and belonging? Bro, I mean

Well, good morning, Menlo Church, and welcome.

Welcome to those of you in Mountain View, here in Menlo Park, Saratoga, San Mateo, those of you joining us online.

You did it.

You made it through a long summer series.

This is our very last message in the series.

And so if you haven't been at every one of them today, I'm just giving you credit because you're at the last one.

What did you see happening in that room? How did you see that play out and really what stayed with you from that day?

Yeah, well, I mean, I think there's a lot of differences between a tragic death of someone that's young and something that feels more in the seasons of life you expect from someone that's older.

Someone that's older, for the most part, the service is smaller.

A lot of times they've outlived a whole bunch of their friends.

And so there's just less people coming to the funeral.

And the people that are coming, there is sort of...

Yeah, I would say like they're looking at each other.

What do you hope happens in those moments for people if they practice this?

Well, good morning, Menlo Church, and welcome back.

So glad that you are with us.

You are enduring so well through a very long summer series, uh, where we are taking a look at a bunch of other different faiths and worldviews and trying to contrast them in a respectful way, uh, to what a, a version of historic biblical Christianity looks like.

And, uh, today's is gonna be, uh, a pretty heavy one, uh, so I'm really glad you're here for it.

I hope it's helpful to you.

I've heard great stories from people, uh, where this series has opened up their minds or their hearts or even great conversations, and I think that today is gonna be one of those.

But before we get into the message, I'm curious, you did listen to Brett's message on Buddhism, my message on Mormonism, and I was just curious, what stood out to you having other voices carry the series? Did either week sharpen or change anything for the way you approached this one?

Yeah, so I mean...

Every series gets built out.

We have content built in a lot of ways almost a year in advance.

This series was built a little more recently than that.

Summer series can kind of change a little bit.

And then you have the structure that you want to build for each particular week.

What are some of the tolls we're paying in those spaces?

Well, good morning, Menlo Church.

Welcome back to our series, Let's Be Honest.

And a special thanks to Brett and Matt for continuing these conversations over the last couple weeks, conversations around Buddhism and last week, Mormonism.

And I would highly recommend if you missed those, you can go back and check them out online.

I've been away the last couple weeks.

That's what I did.

Right.

Jesus having to die on, on my behalf, I'm not voting for that.

That sounds...

But I'm not God, you know? And, uh, the Keller line that I always bring up in these conversations is, "If the w- if the God that you worship never disagrees with you, you may not be worshiping the God of the Bible, you may be worshiping an idealized version of yourself." So that's like one stream.

And then the other stream, uh, like from the angry side, you spoke with tenderness about the man on your panel and the weight that he carries, and I don't wanna minimize that, but there are Christians being killed for the name of Jesus right now in Nigeria and other places around the world, and they didn't get a single sentence in your message.

You told us that Muslims who convert are often shunned or worse, and then we moved on.

I just think that I wanted their weight to matter to you as much as his did.

Um, why was it important for us to hear that and to sit with that, uh, on Sunday?

Well, good morning, Menlo Church.

Welcome.

So glad that you are here for the second week in our series.

Before we dive in, I want to just kind of remind you that we're spending the next several weeks looking at various religions.

And we're not trying to say they're all the same because they're not.

They don't even claim to be.

Hmm.

Um, and I also think that, like, we're in a moment where Judaism as a religion is so confusing because we also have, uh, Israel as a modern nation state and sort of what's all in turmoil in any given moment, um, as it relates to that, and the United States', uh, uh, alliance with them and to current decisions, and does that mean that all Jewish people align to that? And then, you know, we got into this spectrum where you have people who are Orthodox Jews on one side who are still eating kosher and dressing differently, and then on the other side you have people who are just, uh, ethnically or even just culturally Jewish, uh, who have no adherence to any of the religious practices of Judaism, and then there's a spectrum in between.

So it's such an interesting, uh, it's such an interesting faith structure, uh, because of the history that it has had.

[laughs]

Uh, the, the slightly more nuanced answer is that Jesus calls us to live out the law of love, uh, where he would say, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself." He sort of summarizes it later in the New Testament when he says, uh, "You should love your neighbor as I have loved you." Um, and so it all sort of gets truncated, and the idea is that the moral law goes from something we do to get to know God, and instead becomes something we do because God got to know us.

So instead of something that we, like, use as a ladder to climb up to him, it's a ladder he climbed down to get to us, and it doesn't, it doesn't free us of doing any of that.

But by the grace of God, the power of the Holy Spirit, the slow redemptive work that he's doing in us, um, I actually aspire to live in greater and greater compliance, uh, to the perfect will of God made manifest in the moral law.