Is Ambition Sin? | Theocast

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Hi, this is John, and today on Theocast, we're going to tell you to stop being ambitious. We're going to actually prove to you from Scripture that ambition is a sin, and it's infiltrated not only the

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Christian life through the American dream, but also the church and even pastors. We hope you enjoy the conversation, and in the unfiltered, we're going to explain how church planning and ambition actually are counterintuitive, and it actually destroys churches and church planners.

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We hope you enjoy. A simple way for you to help support Theocast and join their information is by shopping at Amazon.

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That's right, everything that you purchase there, they will take a percentage of it and donate it to our ministry.

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All you have to do is go to smile .amazon .com and then search for Theocast, Inc.,

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and choose us as the supporting donation. To learn more about this and other ways of supporting us, you can go to theocast .org

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slash give. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

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Our hosts today are John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reform Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina, and myself,

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Jimmy Buehler, pastor of Christ Community Church here in beautiful Willmar, Minnesota.

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Gentlemen, it is good to be back on the mic. It's been too long. How are you guys doing? Too long.

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Good. You ain't lying. You ain't lying. I'm not lying. If I'm lying, I'm crying. No, it's good. Hey, so I've got an important story.

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You know, Theocast, we try and be as helpful as possible, and not only do we want to bring you important theology and cultural thoughts of the day, but we're also going to give you just life hacks, life tips.

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And here's my life hack, my life tip for you. Don't let rodents live in your car, not in it or underneath it, because I just learned today that rodents had some squirrels crawl up into my van and start eating on the, apparently, their soy -covered wires,

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I'm not sure why, soy -based wires. And they ate them, which then messed up the connection between the computer and my transmission, which my van wouldn't drive.

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Anyways, $2 ,600 later, that is the most expensive squirrel that's going to be killed here very soon.

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Very soon. Yeah. I mean. So, anyways. Here's the life hack, by the way. John, I feel your pain. Here's the life hack.

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Here's the life hack. Apparently, mice and squirrels do not like the smell of peppermint.

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Like multiple people have told me this in websites, so I'm about to spray my car down with peppermint oil.

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I don't know if it'll work. There are worse smells. I'll let you know. Yeah. Yeah. Probably. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, praise God it's peppermint oil and not like rotting garbage.

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Yeah. Because that would be. Something else. No, John, I feel your pain. Yeah, rotting garbage would deter rats.

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Yeah. That's right. Last, last summer, we had a similar phenomena in our van where our air conditioner was not, it was, it was not blowing out cold air and it was not pushing out air at the, at the rate or speed that we needed it to.

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Come to find out after $3 ,000 of dinking around with the van, a mouse had built a nest in our engine and it was blocking airflow.

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Oh, I know. See, rodents. Not lying. I ain't even lying. He ain't even lying, folks.

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That's right. He ain't even lying. Hey, why is James crying? It's the curse. Because he just got.

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Because he just got back down. Got a rat's nest. Wow. Ratted on.

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Ratted on. Ratted on. So anyway, I don't have. So I want to talk about. I want to talk about something serious.

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Yeah. Do it. I want to talk about something serious. Like for real. It's a heavy week. Do it.

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Heavy week. Because last Sunday was the last like live legitimate football game that will be played until like late

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August. It's real in my world, man. You know, my wife is. You know what season it is, man. It's golf season.

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My wife is actually quite happy about that reality. But I. Right. I'm always a little bit sad.

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I'm like, man. Oh, and I mean, there are others. There are other sports, you know, that that can fill the time. But and it's nothing quite like football.

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So at least to me. Yeah. So it's a. It's, you know, one of those times where there's a season for everything.

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And now is not the season for football, apparently. So. Hey, can I just go back and play the 1998

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Sony College football game? Isn't that just as. I mean, one could.

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One could do that, John. But it's not quite the same. Well, just think.

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Think how average. Think how average your Sunday afternoons are going to be from now on. That's right. Just how average they are.

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Yeah. Hey, did you think the 49ers ever had a chance? No, I thought it would be a good game.

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I'm sort of glad Kansas City won. Really? But no, I agree. My my my

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Sunday afternoons are going to be relatively ordinary. I probably shouldn't be too ambitious with. Oh.

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Plans for Sunday afternoons moving forward. Doom. Doom. Doom.

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Should you be ambitious at all? Yeah, that's right. Well, speaking of John, I'm sure you're going to tell everybody. Yeah. Why don't you?

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Why don't you fill in the airwaves? What are we talking about today? Well, as Theocast always likes to do, we like to take things that we hold dear, that motivate us, that we feel that make us important, that make us acceptable in the eyes of God or in the eyes of the culture or other

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Christians. And we like to gently pull them out of your hands and then drop them in the middle of the road and let people drive all over them.

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Well, maybe not like that. Maybe not quite that. Certainly a way to say that. We are talking about ambition today, and this is definitely something that has been turning over in my mind.

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I know all three of us. This is a conversation we've had in the past and just interacting with the culture and understanding how it is that Christians should view their life.

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And we felt like this is a little bit more of a pointed conversation to what the three of us have been hinting at over the last few episodes as it relates to the

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Christian and their relationship to the church and then their relationship to their family and then their relationship to the community that is around them.

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So we're going to talk about the Christian and ambition. And I'm not going to bury the lead.

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I'm going to go ahead and just say it up front, and then the three of us will help explain what we mean by this.

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We three hold that the concept that America presents to humanity, this idea of the ambitious person, is actually contrary not only to Scripture, but very contrary to the gospel.

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And we would say that actually we're going to argue that Scripture would call someone who is ambitious sinful.

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Now, I already know, and you guys have already heard this when you present this to people, all of these things are going off in people's brains, right?

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And are you saying the opposite? I can hear the Twitterverse imploding right now.

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People on various social media platforms are jumping off the figurative rooftops. That's right.

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Because they assume the opposite of ambition is laziness, which is not what we mean.

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So, gentlemen, that's the setup. First of all, when we say ambition is sinful and the opposite of that is not laziness, explain what

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I mean by that. And then number two, we will then get into what is it about the concept of ambition?

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We probably need to clarify what we mean by that. The concept of ambition, and why do we think it's sinful?

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I can take a swing at that. JP, if you don't mind. Yeah, go for it, brother. No, when

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I hear you use that phraseology, John, something that comes to mind, at least the first phrase that comes to my mind is this whole idea that we are, the waters that we swim in here in the

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United States is this idea of self -sufficiency, pull oneself up by your bootstraps, get your act together.

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You have a dream, go chase it, go accomplish, go complete it.

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And not that, don't hear what we're not saying. We're not saying that having goals or having dreams or having ambitions, those things are necessarily wrong in and of themselves.

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But I think rather, perhaps the eye we're trying to poke, the thing that we're trying to kind of deconstruct here a little bit this afternoon, is this whole idea that we need to make something of ourselves, that the goal of our life, the goal of the

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Christian is to make yourself special, to be a head above the rest, to have all of these ambitions, and so often the pitfalls that come with that.

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And I don't want to begin to address all of those because I want to share the love. So, JP, do you want to jump on that and add a little bit?

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Yeah, I'll jump on that, Jimmy. It's important for us to know historically even, so even outside of the scriptural witness, that it's only been in very recent history that the notion of somebody being ambitious would have been viewed as a good thing.

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I mean, even historically speaking, ambition has been viewed as a negative thing. And that's not unique to Christianity, though.

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I think as we're going to unpack today, the Christian perspective, the biblical perspective, is that ambition is sin.

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Because wrapped up in what we mean by ambition is, certainly as Jimmy articulated, a very innate, intense desire to make something of yourself, to become great, to become known.

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And honestly, it's often for selfish gain. It is because I'm trying to become something great for my own sake.

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And yeah, indirectly other people might benefit, but really what this is about is making a name for myself and accomplishing great things that I will be remembered for, et cetera.

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And that's really what we want to, I think, drive this down on a wedge on, is that perspective that is inherently self -absorbed when we talk about ambition.

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And that's obviously a problem when it comes to what Scripture teaches us about how we are not only to live before God, but to live with one another in the church and in the community.

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Yeah, I think some helpful examples here of what we're trying to get at, and just to add on to what Justin just said, is the person who, and we've all said it, we see someone who works hard, who is dedicated, who puts in more effort, who puts in more time.

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And what they are trying to show is that if I'm going to get ahead in life, get ahead of everyone else, when we say get ahead in life,

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I'm going to have to do more than anyone else is willing to do. And I'm going to have to, if I'm going to reach my goals of whatever it is, and some people, it is fame, it's money, it is a position, an area.

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And what we're getting at, what you normally label that person as is what? Oh boy, man, they're ambitious.

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You're connecting it with their sacrifice is connected to their goal.

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I know, JP, you wanted to add something. Just one other thing, ambition as it's historically been defined, and as we are going to define it today, is grounded in love of self.

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And as opposed to love of neighbor and love of others, which is what we are called to.

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So that's a really important distinction for the listener to understand. We're not saying that to work hard is bad.

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We're not saying that to be driven is bad. We're not saying that to have a good work ethic and be responsible and all those things, and to be a quote unquote go -getter are bad.

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Of course, we're not saying that. But the issue is one of the heart and where this is coming from.

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So that's really at the heart of the matter to use that language figuratively. Right.

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It's about self -success for the sake of self. A great example of this is the

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American workforce. You have, depending on, I've worked in some large areas.

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I've worked in a large hospital. I worked for Stanford Hospital for several years. I worked for Apple for several years. So I had these areas where you have these multiple hierarchies.

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And I worked myself up in the hospital. I worked myself up in seminary in Apple, working in a retail store as a manager.

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And ambition looks like this. I will step on, backbite, and basically turn on anybody

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I need to, to get to the next level, to get to where I want to be, to get where I need to be.

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And unfortunately, the people who are the most successful, the hierarchies look down and say, we want ambitious people.

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Because ambitious people get stuff done. They work harder, they work longer, and often they're mean and nasty.

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And what's hard about this is that when you look at the heart of a Christian and what's been called of a

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Christian, we aren't told not to succeed. We aren't told to work for the promotion.

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We aren't told to not expand. But we don't ever do it at the exception of someone else.

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And as a matter of fact, to show you what the opposite is, the opposite of ambition is a servant attitude.

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It's one who's willing to do what's best and right and loving for those around them. And they put themselves second before they put themselves first.

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And this is what's so counterintuitive. Because the American dream is all about your dream. What you want to accomplish with your ambition, with your goals in mind, and whatever it is.

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And I'm going to step on some toes here. But I see this. You can see this in marriage, you can see this in child rearing, to where your family, your children, even your spouse, your marriage becomes second and will suffer because it's getting in the way of your ambition or your dream or your goal.

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I'll just throw that out there and let you guys comment on that. Jimmy, go ahead. Yeah, that's important to note,

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John. We talked about this a little bit at our men's group at our church.

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This idea of we can take these words like ambition or drive or whatever it may be, and you begin to whitewash them.

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Where you make them look good and you justify them to the world outside of you of my drive and my ambition and the things that I want to accomplish.

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It doesn't matter who I step on. It doesn't matter who I sin against. It doesn't matter what compromises

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I have to make personally against my own integrity. As long as I can get that end goal accomplished.

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Here's the thing. When is it ever going to be enough? When are you going to...

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I was just speaking about this last week to our church, preaching through First Corinthians, where in First Corinthians 7,

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Paul begins to even lay out this idea of contentment. If I could just have this relationship figured out in this way, if I could just have this figured out in this way, or if I could just be this and not this, then

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I would be content. In reality, there's always this perpetual, the grass is always greener just beyond my own horizon that I have to go and reach.

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I think one of you wanted to jump in there, so I'll pass the ball. I have a number of thoughts.

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I'm not going to give them all to everybody at once, so don't worry about that. Just a couple of things that I want to jump on here for a minute.

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It's interesting to me in the church, how we will often try to baptize ambition.

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We'll talk about all these things like, for the sake of Christ, I'm doing this almost in Jesus' name, where for the sake of Jesus, I'm going to do

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X, Y, and Z, and anybody that is a hindrance there is more or less almost in the way of what

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God plans to do with me and through me for other people and all this. Just a brief word about the marriage piece.

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John, you mentioned this. For all the dudes out there listening to this who are married, and if any of you guys especially are aspiring to ministry, you need to own and embrace the fact that God has given you your wife not to hinder you, but to guide you.

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I can't tell you how many times you hear dudes talk about ministry and goals and things they want to accomplish for the sake of Jesus, and they'll talk about their wives as though they are the great millstone around their necks that's hindering them from being able to accomplish all these things for the kingdom of God.

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It's absolutely ridiculous. It's like, brother, you need to pump the brakes and calm down for a moment and realize that you have been called to love your wife and love your family, and those things in no way are a hindrance to what you would do for the

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Lord. This just is a demonstration. That's more of an anecdotal example of how absurd we can be in the church.

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That whole zealous, I have to do these things for God, is really what we're driving at here.

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It's from hell. It's not from Christ. Go ahead, John. It's definitely a pressure within our culture.

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There's a push for the type A, ambitious, go get it done, be that person, be the entrepreneur.

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I have an entrepreneurial spirit at heart, and I know I can get around people who don't. I can feel this intimidation of the real

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American is the one who starts his own company. The real American is the one who won't work for the man, who goes out and makes himself a millionaire.

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What's your goal? Why don't you want to work for yourself? What do you mean you want to be a factory worker? What do you mean you're okay with your job making $50 ,000 a year?

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Why don't you want to make $500 ,000? What's wrong with you if you're not trying to expand yourself?

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My wife and I were talking about this. The pressure on women is unbelievable. It is unbelievable.

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My wife is a stay -at -home mom. She has a master's in nursing, and she is a brilliant nurse.

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She's taken a break for the last seven years to help raise our children. She said that in this conversation, when she was talking with some of the women about this in a recent women's bio study, there was this massive sigh of relief because every woman there said, yes, we feel it.

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We're supposed to have some side hustle. What's our next dream? Are we going to try and write a book? Are we going to try and write a blog?

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There's this pressure to make something out of yourself more than wife, mom, neighbor, and church member.

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You have to make yourself more than what that is. We are excited to announce that we have a new free e -book available at our website called

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Faith vs. Faithfulness, A Primer on Rest. We, the hosts, put this together to explain the difference between emphasizing one's faith in Christ versus emphasizing one's faithfulness to Christ, and how one leads to rest and how the other often to a lack of assurance.

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You can get this at theocast .org slash primer. If you've been encouraged by what you've been hearing at Theocast, we'd ask you to help partner with us.

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You can do that by going to our website, Theocast .org. We hope that you enjoy the rest of the conversation.

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Yeah. Yeah, I'm glad that, Justin, you brought up this idea of ambition in the church world.

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And, you know, since serving in churches since 2011 and just being around a lot of different church ministry contexts, ambition and drive and just high success, goal -oriented, you know, all these sorts of random metrics that we use to what marks a successful church.

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Just being inundated with those for so much of my ministry career. And we almost have this averse attitude that we must resist anything that appears boring or ordinary or not flashy.

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And frankly, I mean, you could just get on any church website, probably in your area.

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And they probably have some sort of video where it's high energy music and it's pump up and there's always like a bouncy house or something because that just screams relevancy for church, where it's like they show these big, grand worship settings and lights and things like that.

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Because if we're not, and how many times have you guys heard this even in the church planting world?

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If you're not growing, you're dying. You know, and I just,

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I mean, being on the front end of church planting things, how many times people have asked me, oh, you're church planting.

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You must be really ambitious or you must have a lot of drive. And frankly, this is a conversation that my wife and I have.

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I'm actually just a lot more laid back as a person. And I certainly pray to the

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Lord that I am not planting a church and we are not planting a church with these core families because I have a lot of drive and ambition because that is actually one of the fastest ways to destroy people is planting a church with all of you if that's the drive.

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Yeah, I mean, God help Christ Community Church if we're planting this church because Jimmy Bueller is full of ambition.

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Because often ambition, and we're using that again in a negative sense. What that means is you're just going to burn through volunteers.

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You're going to burn through people. You're going to burn through relationships because the goal is always this nebulous bigger, better, flashier rather than ordinary pointing people to Jesus relational, probably slow, not flashy oriented ministry.

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Yeah. So truth in advertising for all of us as fallen human beings and Adam, there's always going to be mixed motivations in everything that we do.

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Everything's tainted with sin. We're not saying that anybody's ever going to be able to do anything from a perfect heart posture where you're not motivated in any way for your own renown or your own gain or anything like that.

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It's not what we're saying. But I just wanted to turn us to scripture and think about how Jesus interacts with his disciples.

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So if we're going to talk about being great and making something of ourselves and being a big deal and all this kind of stuff in Jesus name, friend,

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I think Jesus would take issue with you because I can think of two scenarios off the top of my head in the gospel accounts where Jesus is interacting with his disciples over things like this.

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One is when he has sent the disciples out to preach and they come back to him and they're all excited about all of these things that they did in his name.

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Like, Lord, you won't believe it. All this stuff was happening when we were preaching and doing what you sent us out to do. And he tells them, do not rejoice in those things, but rejoice in the fact that your names are written in heaven.

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He immediately cuts their legs out from under them and is like, you have missed the point. You need not get geeked up over all these great things that you have supposedly done in my name.

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You should be ecstatic about the fact that you have been adopted as a child of God and that your name is written in heaven.

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That's an incredibly instructive piece for all of us. The second one is at multiple points in the gospels, the disciples argue amongst themselves about who's the greatest and who's going to have the primary places in terms of seating next to Jesus in his kingdom and all this stuff.

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And every time that that happens, Jesus immediately pivots it on them. He usually brings a child into their midst and starts to talk to them about what the kingdom of God is really like, how the last shall be first and the first shall be last.

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And those who will be great in my kingdom are servants of other people, just like I came not to be served but to serve and give my life as a ransom for many.

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And so Jesus is against ambition and he's describing it today.

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John, please jump in. Jimmy, I just want to jump on that and jump over to Paul. And Paul says that, as pointed as you possibly can make it in Philippians chapter 2 verse 3, he says, do nothing from, and I'm glad he clarifies ambition.

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He says, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit.

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Or conceit, right? And then it's not just don't do this. It's not, hey, don't do this.

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Paul says the opposite of this, don't count others more significant than yourself.

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Well, Paul, how do you count someone more significant than you? Well, he explains, let each of you look not only to his own interest but also to the interest of others.

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So when you think about your energy and what is it you're putting your time and effort into, it goes back to the two commands, right?

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Love God, love your neighbor. Your energy is spent in making sure that you're caring for, and that doesn't mean church only.

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Because when you're at your work, you need to be caring for and loving and sharing the gospel truth.

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You may not be able to share it in word yet, but you can share it in deed because Jesus says you are the salt and light of the world.

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So the way that you, with your words and with your kindness towards the interest of others, not stepping on them for your own advantage, not using them for your own advantage, that doesn't mean you can't start your own company.

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You can't increase your job, become the CEO. None of that. It doesn't mean that. It just says don't do it at the expense of others, but do it while loving others.

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Yeah, there's something that we've been walking through just in the New Testament class that I teach with sophomore high school students where we talk about the hiddenness of Jesus.

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And so often in the gospel accounts, what you see is Jesus does this miraculous work, and then what does he do?

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He gets up and out of there. He doesn't want to. He just kind of escapes and he goes to a desolate place.

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Or he tells them, don't tell anybody what I've done. Yeah, exactly right. Because he has a mission to accomplish.

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Very true. And one of the things we've been talking about as a class is just the hiddenness of the

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Christian life where over and over again, one of the things you see in Paul's letters is he instructs them.

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He says, hey, pray for those around you. Pray for your government leaders and pray for your life.

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And what an incredible backwards and upside down thing that we have been taught where it's we want to be bigger and better and more successful and more driven where one of the things that you see, and even what you were talking about,

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Justin, where Jesus turns to those disciples and says, are you ready to be baptized like I've been baptized?

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And how many of them thought, yeah, how many of them have been baptized and have thought, well, I saw him go in the water.

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I think I can do that. What is Christ talking about? Are you ready to be crucified and tortured and beaten like I am going to be?

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And the answer is a resounding no. No, no. I just see this so much as a plague on Christians and just a culture of churches where this drive and ambition and this desire just to grow and be big for growth and bigness sake.

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It's so often at the expense of relationships and unity and joy and a

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Christ centeredness within the body because, again, the end goal is just this nebulous growth worldly metric that we just have to be big and we have to get our name out there and our fame out there and people need to know us for this and that and whatever else.

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What does Paul say? I've decided to know nothing among you except Christ and Him crucified.

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That's a hidden life right there. That's right. In this whole conversation,

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I think we might be remiss if we don't bring up the theological concepts of theology of the cross versus theology of glory because inevitably the ambitious perspective is one that is a theology of glory.

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It's one of advancement. It's one of betterment. It's one of I'm going to be something. I'm going to be strong, not weak.

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I'm going to be great, not small. In reality, what the

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Bible teaches all of us is that before God, we in fact are very weak and we are quite small and we are not going to be great and we are not going to be strong until the resurrection ultimately.

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The whole deal here is that the Christian life we talk about all the time is it's identity forward.

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Our identity is that we are in Christ Jesus. Our names have been written in the Lamb's Book of Life. That's the starting place.

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Then the goal of the believer as we relate to God is to walk before God in humility and gratitude.

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I'm thinking of Micah 6 where we have the great commandment and the second that's like it.

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From the prophet to the people of Israel, the Lord has told you what He requires. It's that you love justice, you do justice, you love kindness, and you walk humbly before your

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God. The whole walk humbly before your God with a heart full of gratitude flies in the face of this whole ambition thing where I'm going to become big and great and do something.

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I am going to do something and I'm going to be something before God. We all have this innate desire to prove our worth and our merit even before the

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Lord as though these things that we're going to do, He's going to look down and He's really going to be pleased with me if I do

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A, B, or C. We at Theocast just want to come in from the top turnbuckle and blow that nonsense up.

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We want to wrestle that stupidity from people's hands, seriously. You will not be great.

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You will not be strong this side of heaven. We can boast all the more when

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He is sufficient. Paul admits he's one of the weakest men that he knows not only sinfully but just in general.

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He talks about even asking God to help him with his weakness and Jesus says no.

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Then Paul quotes Jesus saying my grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect not in your ambition.

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Sometimes we have these famous people who are really strong personalities and we're all excited about them coming to Christ and they're going to be such a great witness for Christ.

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I look at that and I go, God can use a pauper and God can use a president but it's always

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God. This is why we're told that it's impossible to please

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Him without faith. If your faith is in your ambition, if I work really hard and I accomplish all of this,

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I will do much for God. I hear people say, if I have this business then

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I can make a lot of money for God. You could. I pray that they go out and make a lot of money because I know that they will absolutely do that.

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They already are generous. They don't make a lot of money now. That's how I know they'll be generous because they're generous now.

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I always tell someone, if you're not generous now, listen,

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I want to be very clear here. If somebody can increase their impact or somehow increase their reach, we are trying to do this in our churches.

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We are trying to increase our reach not so we can make a name for ourselves. We want more people to find rest in Christ and enjoy the glories of Christ.

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I would say this is true of Theocast. We would love if the Lord wills and this is what

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He wants. Our ambition is that more people are able to hear and read what we have to say so that more people find rest in Christ.

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We actually do what we can. I would not say that you can't be upon the mic on Theocast and be ambitious because you're going to be disappointed very quickly.

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There's not a lot of benefit for these guys. I take up their time.

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We have made tens and tens of dollars. I take up their time and money. I take their time and money because that's what it requires to do this.

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My point of it is that I am not against people growing ministries and growing opportunities.

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If you can then turn those for the absolute purpose of helping people, by all means

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I pray God blesses those and that they expand. We're getting at a heart issue, not an action issue.

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I think two people can do the same thing. One is on each side in an assembly line and one is ambitious and one is loving.

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One is purely going to do whatever it takes to get out of the assembly line. The other one is going to do through love and kindness in the interest of others.

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I wanted to jump in John really quickly. You were referencing Paul's language about himself. He'll often refer to himself as the chief of sinners and Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom

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I'm the foremost and all that. I don't think the Apostle Paul is using that as some sort of rhetorical flourish.

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I think he's sincere in his own estimation of himself which is partly what we're driving at.

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If we think highly of ourselves or what we're going to accomplish, we are headed in a bad direction.

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Just to piggyback briefly to John on what you were talking about with growth and all. Growth is not bad.

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Don't hear what we're not saying as Jimmy often will say. We're three guys pastoring churches and we're praying for growth.

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Not just numerical growth but growth in health and all kinds of things and growth in love and unity and all the rest.

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It's one of the great joys of my life sincerely when people come into our church context and they sit under the teaching and they get to know people and they look at you and they have that moment where it's starting to click and they're like, oh my gosh,

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I never knew this existed. This kind of joy and peace and safety that I now know

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I have in Jesus has changed my life. That's why we're in ministry. Do I hope we're pursuing a new facility and all kinds of things that's much bigger than the one we're meeting in now and all these kinds of things.

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Is that for a bad purpose? I trust not. I trust it's for a good reason because we're trying to impact more people here in the city and I pray the

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Lord blesses it so that more people like you said John come to know the sufficiency of Christ and the rest and the peace and the joy that brings.

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And it's amazing what it does in a group of people who know they're safe and secure and take their eyes off of themselves and their own ambition and their own performance.

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They will love the heck out of each other. And why would we not want people to be a part of that?

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I've talked to both of you about this so I know that you both have these experiences. You and Jimmy, I guess about a year now you guys have been working with your core families.

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Is that right? About a year. That's right, man. Wow, that's crazy.

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Time clicks by. Yeah, it does. We all in our churches, as soon as I start talking this, their faces are going to start coming before your eyes and before your mind.

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These people who no one ever sees them, no one ever hears them, no one even knows what they do.

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That's right. They are the quiet servants who do absolutely everything.

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They think of it beforehand. They prep of it. They are just those people in the background that they don't really want anybody to know because that's not why they do it.

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And they're not even that people like, well, I don't want anybody to know this. They do this because they just love people and they want to help.

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That's why they're there. That's why they're there. Those are the heroes in the church. Yeah, they are.

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But on contrast of that, we say heroes are those people that have the missionary biographies. And I'm like, look, those are necessary people and that's great.

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But they aren't the heroes. Yeah, the heroes are the people that serve faithfully in the mundane and do all the things that nobody would ever notice unless they weren't done.

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And then everything starts falling apart. And they never ask for any recognition.

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They're just happy to be there and happy to serve. And, oh man, people like that are phenomenal for pastors and for the local church.

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And I will just say, those people within my church, and frankly,

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I think all the people in my church are like this right now. But those are the people that when they have a concern or a critique, those are the people that I'm going to listen to.

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And those are the people that my time gets devoted to because I see them so faithfully. And our core families have just been so wonderful over the past six months and just supporting me and my wife and our church and doing something that's just kind of rather scary.

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In a lot of ways in church planting, when you set out to plant a church as core families, you almost put your reputation on the line because we have within us, and I'd really love to talk about this a little bit more in the

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Unfiltered or our members podcast because when you go out, it's scary, man. You're putting together a church.

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You're putting together bylaws. You're putting together systems and structures and people and relationships and things like that.

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And in so many ways, because of all the nonsense and hoopla around the evangelical church planting world, there is so much pressure.

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And you put a lot of your name and reputation on the line because we have all of these unrealistic expectations about church planting.

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If you're not growing, you're dying. And if you haven't doubled by this amount or if you're not financially sustainable by this year, you might as well.

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And it's just a bunch of whatever. But our core families and our church have just been so wonderful in faithfully serving behind the scenes.

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And I love when we have people that walk through our doors and the first thing that they compliment has nothing to do with me as the pastor, but it's something that they see in our body.

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And I'm like, all right, I think we're doing this right. That they are, you know, we've had a newer couple begin coming very regularly.

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And, you know, he just said, we just love the community here and the safety here and the openness here and the relationships here.

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And I'm like, I mean, I just love that none of those had anything to do with me because, like,

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I could get hit by a bus, but this church will go on because of the faithful love and service of those saints. Well, I'll tell you this.

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I know this for a fact because I sat down with every single one of Jimmy's church members before we launched them.

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The compliment that they did give Jimmy was that, oh yeah, he shepherds us. And if that's what someone says about a pastor,

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I'm in. I'm in on that. So, hey, JP, one last thing.

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I think you had something and then I'm going to give us something to think about as we go into the membership. Nothing pointed.

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I'm ready to jump over to the member section and talk more about the church planning piece. But I agree. I will say this much that I think you know, this is not directly related to our topic,

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I don't guess, but it's related to something Jimmy said. You know that things are going well in a church when people come and visit and their reaction is not so much about the lead pastor or even the preaching, though that matters, of course, but they're like, man,

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I just, I felt loved. I felt welcomed. I felt safe. When people say those things, then you know that you're on the right track because the people of the church have bought into the culture and understand it.

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They get the gospel. They're looking to Christ and they are eager to welcome other weary saints and weary pilgrims into the fellowship.

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It's a really sweet thing to see. Well, just one of the connections that I wanted to make and unfortunately we did run out of time here is contrasting ambition with the gospel.

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What happens just to, we will leave this and I know that we can expand this more when we get into the membership section, but the gospel tells you that it doesn't matter what you accomplish in this life.

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If you are the thief on the cross and you die after confession, you are just as precious and special to the

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Father as the Apostle Paul. You're just as legitimate. That's right.

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I know our brains say no, John, not really. Listen, Paul accomplished what he did because of the power of the

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Spirit and because God regenerated his heart. Let's give praise where praise is due.

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What makes someone legit is the fact that they have trusted Christ. For real.

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It's not what you've done in Jesus' name. It's have you trusted the Son? If you have, then you're legit.

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That's right. A couple of books, I would say that I know that all three of us have read these and I would say that these books have formulated these thoughts for us.

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First of all, we've mentioned this book before, Ordinary by Michael Horton. Brilliant book. Super helpful.

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Almost the whole book would be another way of rephrasing that. David Zoll's book on secularity has a chapter in there on busyness and your identity.

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Very much hitting at the heart of this. Also, Chad Bird's book

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Upside Down Spirituality has multiple chapters that speak to this. If you want to dive into that more, pick one of those up and you will be directed to the gospel in doing that.

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We are going to go ahead and continue. I know that there's a couple of thoughts that you guys have. We have a premium podcast.

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We have a premium podcast. This is how we fund Theocast and how we continue to grow it. It also gives us the opportunity to speak more pointedly, give the footnotes and the nerdiness of our thoughts for the next 20 -30 minutes over in our membership podcast.

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You can go to our website and sign up for a free trial for that if you'd like. Thank you for listening and we will see you next week.