Come on, that's our prayer. Jesus, make me more and more like You. Jesus, You are a different way. Jesus, You are a better way and Jesus, You are the way of life. And You call each one of us by name to come and follow You, to pick up our cross, deny ourselves, and find the life that You offer in Jesus' name. May we have the faith and the hope and the love to move forward into the freedom that You offer us. God, we thank You for this journey, one simple next step at a time. Oh, God, make me more like You. Make our church more like You. Make our families more like You. Make our city more like You. May Your kingdom come and Your will be done starting from my heart to the ends of this earth, in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. Why don't you go ahead and grab your seat. Whatever campus or service you're at today, I am so glad you are here with us. And I love that last song that we just sung. Our team has been working hard on writing that, just based on what God's been doing in the here and now in our church. You see, we’ve been in this year-long series called A Different Way. And all we're doing is talking about doing the things that Jesus did, so we can do the things that Jesus did. It’s that if we wanna do what He did on-the-spot, in the moment, we have to first do what He did behind-the-scenes. That if we want His life, we have to take on His lifestyle. And so we've been talking about the things that Jesus did, like He just lived without fear. And He had no anxiety. And He was peaceful. And He was full of joy. And He was free. He was deeply connected to God. He loved others well. He didn't get caught up in the circumstances or situations of life. And we look at Jesus’ life and it's the kind of life we all want. It's the kind of life we're all pursuing. We just don't know how to find it. And until we realize that if we want to do the things that Jesus did, we have to first back up and do the things that Jesus did, like the way He practiced and lived; His lifestyle. Things like fasting, and prayer, and Scripture, and meditation, and generosity, and service, and community, and all these things that He practiced day in and day out in His life that allowed Him to do the things that He really wanted to do. And so we've been talking about this. We've been just talking about like, what does it mean to be a disciple?

Asking big questions like, who are you becoming? And who do you want to become? And who are you a disciple of? And what is the direction of your life? And what's the vision for your life? We've been asking these big questions, wrestling through these big concepts. And today we finish up Season 2 of this Different Way series. See, we've simply broken this series, this year-long series, which wasn't intended to be, but that's what it's becoming, into just different seasons like your favorite TV show. And so the first season we talked all about, what does it mean to be a disciple? What is this life that Jesus invites us to? What does it look like to really follow Jesus? And then we're finishing up today's Season 2, where we started looking at some of those practices that Jesus invites us to take on, to train ourselves to be godly. And we were supposed to get through, honestly, all 12 of them, and we got through 3: Scripture, Meditation, and Celebration. Now, here's what I want you to hear, and you keep hearing me say this throughout this year is, we are not in a hurry. We have nowhere to get, we have someone to become. So I'm not trying to get somewhere; I'm trying to become someone. And I'm trying to help you become who God has called you to be. And so we're not really in a hurry; we're willing to go at the pace of God. And if you've been in our church for a long time, we just have this little cultural phrase we use just called "follow the cloud." So we're just a church that follows the cloud. When God set the people of God free, the Israelites from Egypt, He led them to the Promised Land through a cloud, it was His presence. And when it moved, they moved. And when it stopped, they stopped. And where it went, they went. And what it did, they did. They just followed the cloud, and it brought them to the fullness of life that God offered them. And so we just say we follow the cloud. Wherever God is going, whatever God is doing, whatever pace God is taking, we're willing to arrange our lives to make that the centerpiece of who we are as a church.

And so we've slowed down, and I think what God has wanted us to grab in Season 2 is that we must become people who love His Word. That if I want to do the things that Jesus did, I have to first think like Jesus thought. And I will never think like Jesus thought if I don't learn to love God's Word for myself. And I love what God did in Season 2 of A Different Way. See, like I've loved it. You might be like, “Um, not so much.” I loved it. I love what we're talking about. I love what we're discovering. I love the revelation God is showing us. I love the repentance that's happening. Like, this is the life that I want to live like, I loved Season 2 and what God is doing and saying in my life and who I am trying to become. And I loved so much of the goodness of God that I saw, all in your life. You see, whether you realize it or not, He who began the good work in you is faithful to complete it. And we're working out our salvation with some fear and some trembling. And it's God who is working inside of us to will and act according to His desires, and His purposes, and His calling in our life. Like God is at work and I'm watching revelation and repentance happen in people as they're rising up to a new reality with a clear vision of who they want to become and a new understanding of what it actually looks like to be a disciple of Jesus. And to be a church that says, “Hey, we just want to see His kingdom come. And His will be done in everything we do when we're gathered together and when we're scattered out in the world.” And if you made me give you a summary verse for Season 2, I would just present this to you as kind of the summary verse. I think this captures so much of what we've been talking about for the last couple months. And it just says this. "So let what I'm saying sink deeply into your hearts and souls. Do whatever it takes to remember what I'm telling you. Tie a reminder on your hand or put a reminder on your forehead, where you'll see it all the time, and on the doorpost where you cross the threshold, or on the city gate. Teach these things to your children. Talk about them when you're sitting together in your home and when you're walking together down the road. Make them the last thing you talk about before you go to bed and the first thing you talk about the next morning. So that as long as there is sky above the earth, you and your children will enjoy the good life awaiting you in the land the Lord has promised you." I think that is a great verse to summarize Season 2, of Scripture and Meditation and Celebration. Three practices that the Lord is inviting us into that we would be people who love value His Word. 

And so today we're wrapping up Season 2. And here's what I want to invite you to do. I want to invite you to grab your journals. Hopefully you have your Different Way journals. If you got one with us at the beginning of the series and you've been using it all the way along, taking notes, that was the point so that it could all be self-contained. And if you didn't get one, we'd love to get you one. We've got some more on order. But here's what I want to do for the next about five minutes. I'm just going to invite you to read back through the notes you took during Season 2. Not Season 1, but Season 2 that started with Scripture. I just want to give you five minutes to just read through your notes. And if you didn't bring your journal, or you're new with us today and you're like, "I haven't taken any notes," on the QR code on the seat-back in front of you, you can use your phone and scan it. And we've created a Season 2 recap for you. And I want to give you just five minutes to just look at your notes of what God has been saying to us, because what is the point of taking notes if you never reread them? And maybe a better question to ask is, if you never take notes, how are you going to remember what God has been saying to you? Because here's a great question, if I just asked you this. What did God teach us two weeks ago? Can you remember? I preached it and I probably can't remember it. So what did God teach us six weeks ago? I don't remember. So that's why I write it down. So I can remember what God says, because we want to consider carefully what we hear, because how we use what God is saying to us determines what we will keep hearing in the future. And so you can use the QR code for a season recap, if you don't have one, but hopefully you have your journal. Let me give you about five minutes. Just re-read through what has God been saying to you over the course of Season 2, A Different Way. God speaks to you because He loves you. And sometimes when you just stop and look at all the things He's been saying, it reminds you how much you're loved. That God, Yahweh, Jesus, the One who has life in and of Himself has decided to speak to you, that you might have relationship with Him. Be healed and be free. And have revelation on hidden things that might be mysterious. But He wants to show them to you so you can walk them out. Don't be hearers of the word, be doers of the word. Which means we have to steward that which He says to our lives and value it because we value Him.

That was less than five minutes looking through your notes. For some of you that probably felt really long and for others of you, you felt like, "I read like one page of week one." So it's just a good reminder that this is A Different Way. Rearranging our life, and our time even together as a church, together around Jesus and His practices, because we are not interested in entertainment, we're going for transformation. And transformation requires slowing down and going back to that which matters. That which God has said, that which God has said, that which I need to master so that I can become free, because I'm tired of this world mastering me. And so here's what I want to invite you to do, you flip to a blank page. And if you don't have a journal, you can just grab your phone. Try to keep it on silent. But if you could just open up a brand new note page. And just maybe at the top of it, you can just write you know Season 2 Recap Questions. And I'm just going to walk you through five questions that I want to give you an opportunity to just process with the Holy Spirit as we wrap up Season 2. And so Holy Spirit, I just ask for You to keep speaking. We don't have to ask for You to come, because You're here. We don't even have to ask for You to speak, because we know You already are, but help us hear. And help us sort through our own thoughts, and our own confusion, and our own disorientation. Help us be focused, just process these with You. First question for you is just simply this. How is my understanding of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus been changing? How is my understanding of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus been changing? How are you changing your thought process on what it actually looks like to follow Jesus? What it means to call yourself the people of God? What it actually means to say you're a believer? How has your mind been changing? Jesus keeps expanding our own definition of what being His disciple looks like. Keep leaning into how He wants to open up that box that we've put following Him in.

Second question for you is, how have I been re-arranging my life around Jesus and His practices? How have I been rearranging my life around Jesus and His practices? We've said that's kind of the key word in a sense of this series, arrange and re-arrange, order and re-order. How is your life arranged differently today than it was at the beginning of Season 2? And when you hear the word rearrange, I think some of us think like rearrange our furniture. You keep the same amount of furniture in the room and you just shuffle it around and then you buy another chair from IKEA and try to shove it in an already crammed living room. When we're using the word rearrange, we're saying, what do you need to get rid of so that you have space for that which God wants to do? You can't keep adding things into an already over-full life. So what would it look like and how have you been re-arranging? And if you haven't, then maybe the question you answer is just, why haven't I rearranged anything yet? If we learn practices to become godly, but never practice them, they don't help us. So really easy answers for this one would be like, "I changed what I listened to." "I've changed what's on my phone." "I changed how I do my mornings or my evenings to arrange my life around Jesus." And just think about this. If you had a baby for the first time and you brought that baby to your home, your entire life would be re-arranged and there would be evidence of that baby in every room of the house – cribs, changing tables, diapers, wipes, toys, bouncies, car seats – every room there would be evidence that your life has been re-arranged around that baby. Is there any evidence in your life that you're re-arranging your life around Jesus?

Third question is, if repentance starts where excuses end, where is God inviting me to stop making excuses and simply repent? If repentance starts where excuses end, where is God inviting me to stop making excuses and simply repent? In other words, where are you making excuses about why you can't follow Jesus? And just need to own it. Because you can't repent, change my mind, change my direction. If I won't take responsibility, respond according to the ability that He's given me with the revelation He has now shown me. Like, where are you just like, I just straight up, I'm just making an excuse here. I just say I'm too tired, but that's an excuse. I just say I don't have enough time, that's just an excuse. Like, where do you just need to own that? Holy Spirit, come help us. Repentance is such a gift from God. It brings refreshment, breakthrough. We want to be people who are quick to repent so we can live with a renewed mind that we might see God's will right in front of us. That one is an important question for you. I would wrestle on that one this week. Where is it an excuse, when God's inviting you to repent? Because your boss, and spouse, and your child, and your parent, and your work, and your circumstances, and situations, and your health, and your finances, and the government can’t keep you from becoming who God has called you to be in Jesus' name. So don't make excuses. Choose to repent, to become who He has called you to be because the kingdom is at hand. 

Fourth question is, what is my Season 2 summary statement? What is my Season 2 of A Different Way summary statement? If you had to boil up this entire series season, like just this last, however many weeks this has been, in one statement, what would it be? In other words, if I came and talked to you in the atrium right after service and said, "Hey, just tell me, just, what's God been doing in your life? What's the Holy Spirit been saying to you over these last six, seven, eight weeks?" What would that be? This forces you to actually have to think deeply about a deep thing and consolidate it into one statement. I don't -- not a paragraph, just what's your summary statement in one sentence you could tell me. What God's been doing in Season 2 of A Different Way in your life? When you're flipping through Netflix and you get to Season 2 of your favorite show, the subtitle is like the summary statement of that season. This is like the subtitle of this season and we did it for Season 1. Mine was life-changing for me. And I want to help you by the time we get to the end of Season 4, have a summary statement for each season, so you can remember what the Holy Spirit is doing in your life. Because He loves you and He is forming you into His image and His likeness. And there is a subtitle for this Season 2 of A Different Way that you can't forget. So write it down, highlight it and don't lose it, because when we get to like, November, I'm probably going to ask you, what was your Season 1, and your Season 2, and your Season 3? When we do Season 4, you're like, "Oh my gosh." Yeah. Think of who you're going to be by then.

Okay. Last question. What is my practice plan for the summer? Every week I've given you a practice plan for all of Season 2 and most of Season 1. Today is your opportunity to create your own practice plan for the summer. It might be using things that we've done. For example, it might be to engage the Bible reading plan, or just-- the three practices of Scripture, Meditation, and Celebration. It might be to memorize and meditate on a new passage. Because you did Psalm 23 and you did it so well. You might want to do like our staff is doing Psalm 103:1-13. Join us in that, if you want or pick your own. Maybe it's to celebrate the specific goodness of God for 30 minutes each week. You set aside time to actually pay attention and call attention to His goodness. Maybe for some of you, it's just to come to church every week. That would be like hardcore training in your life. The way that it's currently arranged, that's incredible. Do, do that. Maybe it's re-listening to all of Season 1 and Season 2, because it's easy to forget like, what is your practice plan? We're training ourselves to be godly. And here's the deal, we can't run the marathon yet, but we've all gotten past walking to our mailbox. We've got to maybe like a three-mile run. And if you don't practice over the summer, you're going to lose all of that endurance that you've built up. So what's your practice plan? Because we're going to start our 60 Day summer series like we always do and we're going to take a break from A Different Way. I know some of you, you need a breath. You're saturated with it. We got it, we're coming up for some air, but what is your practice plan? Because if you just like check out of all this and then come in August and I'm coming back in hot. And I'm saying, "We're going to 10 miles, baby." And you can't walk to the mailbox anymore. We're going to have a challenge. You're going to have a challenge because I'm going to 10 miles, so I'm trying to make sure you don't settle, in all seriousness. 

Just like, what's one thing. What's one thing and wherever you are on your journey, Holy Spirit, come on, show us. Give us one practice plan that we should be able to say when somebody says, how are you practicing your faith this summer? How are you training to be godly this summer? You should be able to say that. It's not really complicated, it's not really hard and it's not really subjective. It's very objective. I am going to... fill in the blank. I don't even need to get to five miles, but I can't lose my three miles. I can't lose it. I can't lose it because it's too important to who I'm becoming. So I refuse to lose it because I'm not going back to zero to start over again because my wife, and my children, and this world needs me to become a person of love. So I'm not giving this ground up. That might mean I'm going to give up some of the worldly things that I would have done this summer, some of my own time, catch it. I'm preaching to you while you're doing this point. So I'm trying to help you. It's worth it. One thing, don't look at that list and think you got to do all this. You don't have to do anything on that list. I don't care. Just what's your practice plan? We did three practices, Scripture, Meditation, Celebration, just pick something. Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit, You're the great trainer anyways, train us. Give us a plan. And this is called taking responsibility for your journey because you have to be able to be like, even if no one gives me one, I have to learn to do it. This is me teaching you how to like, come up with your own practice plan. See, here's what I want to say. Some of you, some of you might feel like, as we've gone through this and as we're going through, you might feel like, man, it's striving, it's performance, it's hard, it's making me do things I don't want to do, I'm earning. I have to do all this stuff and it's just getting so overwhelming. I just want to like, stop you with all that to be like, listen, this isn't about doing something for God. All of this is opening yourself up so you can just receive His grace to become who He has called you to be. John 15:5, Jesus says, "I am the vine, you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit. But apart from me, you can do nothing." The spiritual practices help us remain in Him. They help you be aware of Him. They help you be focused on Him. They help you rest in Him. They help you rely upon Him. They help you stay open to Him so that He can flow through your life and effortlessly and naturally bear fruit the character of Jesus. This isn't striving, struggling, earning, performing, you don't have to do any of this stuff. I told you that in Season 1. You don't have to do any of these things. But these things open me up so that God's grace can flow into my life and can change me from the inside out.

And what I want to remind you is that your spirit longs to do these things. The Spirit within you actually has a desire to please God, to follow God, to obey God. And that Spirit that is within you is stronger than that flesh that longs against you. And the kingdom within you longs to obey God more than the world around you and the world that might even be still inside of you longs to rebel against God. So we got to keep reminding ourselves, stop saying, "This is so hard, this is so hard, this is so hard." No, you have a new nature, you're a new creation. You have been re-created to live an entirely different reality. This is now the normal way of life. A Different Way is the normal way for the people of the kingdom. And so all I've been trying to do, is lift up your head to say, it is hard to go against the grain and live like the world as the people of God. It is easy and light to go with the way of Jesus as His people. Season 2, you did it. It's a great season. Season 3 is going to be amazing, summer is going to be great. God is moving. Let's keep becoming the people He's called us to be. And so I want to finish all of this up with communion because it's a reminder of who we are. And so at all our campuses, our teams are going to come and they're going to start passing out the elements of communion. And this is for anyone and everyone who has put their faith in Jesus. And if you're here and you haven't done that yet, when it gets to you, we would just ask that you would pass it along because by taking it, what you're saying is, I'm a disciple of Jesus. I live a different way. I've been included in Christ. And I'm a new creation and communion reminds me that there is a calling that I'm now called to live by. I want to live a life worthy of my calling in Jesus' name. In fact, this is why Jesus says, "Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I'll give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." The way of Jesus is easy and light. It doesn't feel like that to us a lot of times because we've been trained to live like the world. And your training is stronger than your will. So even though you desire to follow God, you've been trained to live like the world. So to live like God feels hard and heavy, feels burdensome and confusing. It feels disorienting and unreachable because we have been trained to live like the world. And so we're in process of retraining ourselves to be godly. To take the way that is easy with a burden that is light. We're doing what we can do now, so we can do what we want to do later. We're doing the things that Jesus did, so we can do the things that Jesus did. And communion reminds us that Jesus already did everything that ever has been or ever will be required from me. Communion reminds me that I've been included in Christ and there is a new reality of which I live by called the kingdom of Heaven. Communion reminds me that He is the vine and I'm the branch, and if I'm severed from Him, I have no life, no fruit. You can do nothing. But if I rest in Him and remain in Him and rely on Him, I will bear much fruit in Jesus' name. Jesus is a different way, he is a better way and he is the way of life. 

And as we finish Season 2, all I want to say to you at the end of this whole thing of this, this part of the journey is man, God loves you so much that He wants to not only include you in Him, He wants to help you become like Him, because He shows us what it's like to be human, what it's like to be alive, and what it's like to be free in relationship with God. You see on the night the Lord Jesus was betrayed, He took the bread, and He gave thanks, and He broke it. And He said, "This is my body, which is broken for you. As often as you do this, do this in remembrance of me." In other words, He says, "Remember who I am and what I've done and what you are now included in." Can we receive the life of Christ together? And in the same way, after the supper, He took the cup and He said, "This is my blood, which will be poured out for you. The blood of the new covenant, a new deal, a new arrangement between you and me. And as often as you do this, do this in remembrance of me. Remember that I was poured out so that you could be poured into." So that you don't have to live defeated and discouraged, weary, burdened in this broken world. But that you could be healed and made whole, have rest for your souls and walk in a way that is easy and light in Jesus' name. Let's receive His life together. So Jesus, You are the different way. And we choose to follow by faith. In Your name we pray. Amen.