Sharing Your Hope

Well, I want to add my good morning to Mark's good morning. How's everybody doing? Are you glad you're in church today? Because I am. My name's René. I'm another one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church, and I'm very excited for a variety of reasons today. First of all, it is Pentecost Sunday, which is when we celebrate the actual birthday of the Christian church.

Pentecost was the moment in Acts 2 about 2,000 years ago when the Holy Spirit descends and Peter preaches, and 3,000 people become new believers just like that, and a movement is born. Check this out. Somebody said, excuse me, so today we celebrate the birth of this 2,000-year-old, two-billion-strong, messed-up, blessed-up revolutionary movement of justice and love we call the church. She is not perfect. Many grave sins have been committed, but still, The Church of Jesus Christ remains a great agency of blessing to the world, starting schools and hospitals, feeding the hungry, caring for the poor, inspiring great art, healing broken families, and above all, proclaiming today as it did on that first day in Jerusalem, the stunning good news of salvation in and through Jesus Christ.

Amen? That's what we're all about. And this morning, you're going to get a little taste of how what I just read has been happening here at Twin Lakes Church.

If you're new to TLC, if you're just a visitor, I think you picked a great weekend because you will see the DNA of TLC this weekend for a variety of reasons. For one thing, today, we break ground on the Hope Center. Finally, it's happening. So exciting. We've been looking forward to this. If you don't know what this is, this is going to be a new home for all of our outreach ministries, like our food pantry, our recovery groups, our mental health support groups, our classes for adults with special needs, grief support, divorce care, adult education, and much more.

So here's what we're going to do. After this service, we invite you to go on over to the site where the Hope Center will be built, right over there, surrounded by construction walls. They're open this morning, and we have a bunch of these little flags and sharpies. And what you can do is you can write, and if people are hogging the sharpies, just whip out your own pen. You can write on these flags, and here's the point: the name of someone that you pray will be impacted by one of the ministries in that building. I mean, there's dozens of ministries that will take place there. Everything I just mentioned, plus men's Bible studies, women's Bible studies, and a lot more.

Do you have somebody that you hope and pray sober? Or do you know an adult with special needs that you would love to invite to that class? Whoever it is, write down their name because this is not about a building. This is about the lives that are going to be transformed through the ministries in that building. And then plant that flag in the ground on that site. What we're going to do is we're going to collect those flags, and they will go into the foundation of that building. We've done this with every one of these buildings because we want to pray that lives are going to be truly transformed. Yeah, are you excited about that? You can give God glory. We're stoked about that. And then we're going to have a time of prayer. You're going to meet some of the people we can pray for, the people leading construction on the project. And then, and this is most important of all, we're going to have burritos.

So come on out to that. It's going to be a ton of fun. Also, if you're new to all this thing and you're like, what even is the Hope Center? You can pick up a brochure about the Hope Center, find out how you can pledge to the project, and you can also download it if you're joining us on the live stream at tlc.org/hope. Then following Father's Day, in two weeks, we're going to be starting a brand new series that we call Unstuck. We all have habits, sins, addictions that we kind of feel stuck in sometimes, character flaws even, anger or something else.

How can you get unstuck? We're going to look at the biblical foundations of the 12 steps of recovery. I have found those personally to be so crucial to my own spiritual growth. I've been waiting for years to find the right time for this series. A friend of mine, John Ortberg, who's a well-known author, just published a book on this topic. He calls it Steps. We're going to have him in the middle of this series as a guest speaker. This is going to be a great way for you to learn how to grow, for you to find a framework for even to share your faith, for you to invite people to this new series. I'm very, very excited about this. That starts in two weeks.

Now, let's wrap up our series, Hope Rising. For seven weeks following Easter, we've been talking about the crisis of hopelessness in our cultural moment right now, and how we have hope in Jesus Christ and how crucial hope is. And today, what I want to talk about is how you can share hope. You can spread hope.

But I want to start with a question. Show of hands, if you have ever visited the South or the Bible Belt, has anybody ever been down there? Oh, good. Most of you have. So occasionally, I get invited to preach at churches in the Bible Belt. In fact, while Dave Drovecki is here next weekend on Father's Day, I'll be preaching, please pray for me, in Branson, Missouri, which is kind of the buckle of the... I know, everybody's like, oh, Branson. Yeah, it's a little different there culturally. For one thing, every single church there has a church sign, like without exception, at least one church sign, maybe more.

And I think church signs started as, let's just tell people where our church… when our church services are meeting, but they have developed into a way to tell jokes. And sometimes they're funny, but sometimes, in my opinion, they could come across maybe as a little passive-aggressive as a witnessing tool like these. The fact that there is a highway to hell and only a stairway to heaven says a lot about anticipated traffic patterns. Just saying. And I love the way they summarize the message of the Bible like what part of thou shalt not don't you understand? How about this one: you think it's hot here? Revelation 20:15—you just look up the lake of fire, my friend. How about this one? Choose the bread of life or you're toast. Or this, I find your lack of faith disturbing. Because Darth Vader is the person you want to quote when it comes to evangelism. Like, yes, Lord Vader, I believe.

How about this one? Whoever stole our AC units, keep one. It's hot where you're going. And you got to make the choice clear sometimes. Eternity. Smoking or non-smoking? There you go. I just got one more. I mean, a lot of these were, you know, Baptist churches and so on. But even the mild-mannered Presbyterians there can send mixed messages. How about this? Presbyterian church parking: public welcome, except during church functions. No one from the public is welcome during our secret rituals.

I mean, they're funny, but some of these might confirm sort of the worst things people imagine might be true of church, right? All those people are judgmental, and they're holier than thou. That's fire and brimstone. But why bring this up? Well, we're in this series on hope, right? And we put together this free book on hope. It's got 30 daily devotional readings on hope with scripture, with stats on hope, stories about hope. If you haven't picked one up yet, you can grab a free copy out in the lobby. You can share this with friends, but we've been talking about how we have hope in Jesus Christ. For seven weeks, we've been soaking in hope and now it's time to learn how to share that hope.

Here is the big idea today that I want you to leave with. You are an agent of hope. You are an agent of hope. That is your calling, like from God, as we will see in Scripture. In fact, just so that you remember this, let's all say out loud, I am an agent of hope. Say it with me. I am an agent of hope as you share the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. But, and here's the tension. How do you share your hope in Jesus Christ without coming across, well, like some of those church signs, right? Even with your best intentions.

I'll never forget visiting a large church down in Texas, and I love Texans. Lori's whole family lives in Texas right now, almost 100% of them. So don't email me; you hate Texans. I don't hate Texans. I love them. But after the service, a woman just makes a beeline before me, before I can talk to anybody else. I'm a new person there at the church. She doesn't know me. And she says, you must be new. And I know not everybody in Texas talks like that, but she did talk like that. And so I looked at her and I said, yep, trying to blend in, sound Texan. Yep. Yep, ma'am, I am. And without another word, like where are you from? Where are you visiting from? What's your name? She whips out a little pamphlet. And she says, I'd like to share with you that the Bible says Jesus Christ came to save us from sin.

And I thought I'd spare her some time. I said, that is great. I actually believe that too. In fact, I'm up, and she looks at me and says, uh-huh, and she goes right on with her spiel. And when she takes a breath, I try to force a word in edgewise right at my first chance. You know, I'm already a Christian, and she cuts me off. Well, bless your heart. Now, you are on this side of the chasm, living a life without God, but if you receive Jesus Christ, you'll cross this bridge and live over on this side. I could not deter her. And finally, this is true. I prayed to receive Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior just to get her to stop. So she had a notch in her belt, and I don't think she ever asked me her name. After I did that, she just walked away.

Now, if you're a Christian and you've ever felt intimidated by the very idea of talking to people about Jesus, or if you've ever felt like sharing your faith means coming across like her or coming across like one of these signs, you are going to be so set free by the passage that we look at today. You're going to just love this. This is one of my favorite all-time passages in the Bible, and I know I say that almost every weekend, but this really, really is. And so I'd love for us to read this out loud together.

Let me hear you.

But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Now pause there for just a second. What Peter's saying is, do not let anyone or anything else be the boss of your life but Jesus Christ. Make Jesus Christ your Lord and Master. And then what does he say? Pardon me. Let me hear you say this. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. Wow, don't you love that? Right there in those two verses, Peter gives you four keys to spreading hope.

And you can jot these down in the little half sheet sermon notes that you got in the middle of the annual report that you were handed when you came in. I could subtitle this, How to Share Your Faith Without Driving Other People Crazy, without being more of a weirdo than you have to be, right? So how can I share my help? What does Peter recommend? Very simple. First, you need to make sure you have the right aim. The right aim. What's the right aim? Did you notice he says, always be prepared to share the reason for the complaints that you have about how the world is going to hell in a handbasket? No. Always be prepared to share the reason for the rules that you keep, and everybody else ought to be keeping those rules too? No. How about for the politics that you have? Definitely no. He says, always be prepared to share the reason for the hope that you have. Everyone say hope. Hope. My aim in my conversations with people about Jesus is to share my hope, to be positive, to be hopeful.

Okay, but some of you are still thinking, well, but does that mean I have to be a theology expert? Do I have to memorize some spiel? I don't know the Bible very well. I don't know the answers to all of the questions. That's why there's point two: have personal answers, personal answers. Peter says, always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. It's your hope. They're your answers. You.

Let me tell you a story. Last time I taught on this passage, a week later, I talked to a young mom in our church. In the intervening days, she had gone to a baby shower over in the Central Valley for her niece. Her niece was very young, had lived a kind of a party life, and now was expecting a baby and was planning to raise it as a young single mom. And my friend said, Renee, it was the strangest vibe at the baby shower.

And I want you to try to picture the scene as she described it to me. She said, my niece had two groups of people there. On the one side were her young, party-life friends, college-age young women, and on the other side, her older super-religious family. Can you already feel the tension? She said her young friends just ignored the seriousness of her situation. They were drinking, and they were giving crazy, inappropriate shower gifts, and completely ignoring the elephant in the room, which was the seriousness of this young woman's pregnancy. And she said, on the other hand, the other relatives, the religious ones, were sitting there with their lips pursed in disapproval, not having any fun, and seemed to be judging this young, unwed, expectant mother and her friends.

And she said then, get this, in the middle of one of the rowdy, crazy party games, one of the fundamentalist relatives, an older woman, stood up and said, I think we need to pray. Needle scratch. Everybody looks at her. And she says this religious relative starts to give a legalistic lecture in stern Christianese disguised as a prayer. You've heard these kinds of prayers before. Lord, help my niece and her friends realize the wages of sin, and so on. In Jesus' name, amen. Very awkward silence in the room.

So what happens next? Well, my friend says, Renee, I had gone through a stage in my life, not many years before, where I behaved a lot like this young girl. And so I walked up to my niece in the middle of that awkwardness. And she said, I cupped her face in my hands. And I said to her, I just want you to know that in your heavenly father's eyes, you are a bright, shining pearl. You are his beloved daughter. God loves you so much. And he wants to give you good and not evil, prosperity and not harm, joy and peace and abundant life. You are his beloved daughter. Just call on him, and he's right there for you.

And her niece just starts weeping. And all her young friends, who a moment before had been pretending they were just party girls, are kind of wiping away tears like this, and somebody puts the music back on. But a few minutes later, she told me, they all came up, all the friend group and her niece came up in a corner of the room to my friend from TLC, and they asked her to tell them more. And she told them her own story of going through something similar. They were riveted to her as she shared with them her hope that she found in Jesus Christ. Now, why were they suddenly willing to listen to her? Why did they ask her, tell us more? Simple. She was sharing hope, and she was sharing her hope, her story, the hope she found as a young woman.

You share the hope you have found. So to share hope, have the right aim, giving hope. And as I look around the room today, man, I see so many people that I know do this. You're so, so good at this, so good at this. What a blessing to be in ministry together with so many of you that are doing this. You're doing this at the food pantry. You're doing this in the women's jail. You're doing this all over. You're doing this in our grief share ministry, sharing your story, sharing your hope. You have personal answers. And then Peter says, third, make sure you have respectful attitudes. Respectful attitudes.

He says, but do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience. Now you might go, yeah, that's right, we need to be gentle and respectful. Just put this in historical context. Last weekend we talked about the people Peter is writing to. You might remember 15 times in the book of 1 Peter—this which is a letter to these Christians—he writes about how they are suffering, and they're not just suffering because, you know, they have cancer or some disease that was nobody's fault. They're suffering because the Roman government is like kicking them in the teeth. They are losing their jobs. Some of them are being, you know, ultimately killed under Nero and other Caesars. And it's in that context to those people who are slandering them and attacking them, he says, oh yeah, be gentle and respectful to them. It's unbelievable, right? But, you know, there's no recorded incident of Christians in that first 250 years of persecution on and off under the Roman government ever attacking the Romans.

They followed what Scripture said. They were gentle and respectful, even to those people. And what happened within 250 years? The dominant faith in the Roman Empire became Christianity with no aggression. I think we could learn a lesson from that. So often in our culture, communication—and this is true for everybody—it's being increasingly modeled by hyper-aggressive types. So here's the question: how do I know my attitude is right? Simple question. Ask, do I love them? Can I look at the person I'm talking to and say, I don't see them as my enemy. I really love them. So I can be gentle and respectful. I respect them. I honor them. I love them.

Now, before point four, I want to go back to a phrase you might have seen that I skipped. Always be prepared to give an answer. How are you always prepared? Here's one way you could do this. This is what I try to do. I imagine people asking me in different situations things like, why are you a Christian? Why do you even go to church? Why are you a pastor? How did you know you were supposed to be a pastor? How do you know God exists, right? I imagine these conversations. I imagine having that conversation at Loft Coffee, when I'm getting a cup of coffee and somebody from the community asks me that question. Do you know how many times that has actually happened at Loft? More times than I can count.

How come you're a pastor? How come you're a Christian? How do you believe all this? Why does your church help the poor, whatever? All kinds of questions that I imagine having short answers to. And people will ask you the question too. You ask people, how was your weekend? Your neighbor, somebody at work, at school, they say, blah, blah, blah, blah. How was your weekend? You mentioned we did this and that. I went to church. It was cool. Oh, you go to church? How come you go to church? What church? Imagine the conversation and imagine your answer, your hopeful, personal, respectful, gentle answer.

One of the things I often share is that while I was a pastor up at South Lake Tahoe, I turned into one of those hyper-legalistic super judgmental Christians, and I had the scales fall from my eyes one day when I read Galatians 3:3, which says, Are you so foolish, having begun with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal through human effort? And I thought that's exactly what I'm doing. And I had to relearn that salvation is by grace, not by works. That's my story. And so that's the story that I share. What's your story? Think of your own 60-second response because somebody's going to ask some question like that. But a warning.

So far we've talked about tone and content. But there is something much more important than tone and content. The Bible talks about this over and over and over again, and if you miss the fourth point, you'll miss really the whole reason that we're here as believers in Jesus. Point number four is this: don't miss this—loving actions, loving actions. You know Jesus said they'll know you are Christians by your love, and Peter says earlier in 1 Peter, live such good lives among the pagans that though they accuse you of doing wrong—and what he means here is Christians were being reported to the Roman authorities. Like, yeah, you need to arrest that guy; he's a Christian. You know, though they accuse you of doing it, they're getting you arrested. They may see your good deeds and glorify God the day he visits us. Loving actions.

I was talking to a friend of mine who was doing food distribution at a Watsonville church. This church is doing this. They don't yet have a spot in their church for their food distribution. By the way, what we're now building is the Hope Center. It started underneath one of our stairwells here at Twin Lakes Church. Somebody, not one of the pastors, somebody else had the idea for a food ministry, and we had about this much storage under one of our staircases, and the Lord has just blessed us. So this church is now where we were then, and they don't have any space for the food distribution yet. And so the way they do it is they pull up a truck, and they open up the back of a truck with food they got from Second Harvest and they start distributing their food there at their church.

So they opened up the back of the truck, and a seven-year-old girl comes running out of a car that was parked along the road. And she says, you're not going to believe this. You're not going to believe this. You're not going to believe this. My mommy and me were just praying in our car, and we were praying, God, we have no idea where our next meal is going to come from. And when we said amen and opened our eyes, your truck pulled up. And our friend looked into the car, and the mom was holding her head in her hands, just weeping for joy. They went over there, talked to her. That woman had just lost her job, just used the last of her money to pay her mortgage, had zero money left for food for her and her seven-year-old daughter.

Now, do you think that answer prayer raised that little girl's hope level just a little bit? You think that's gonna be a memory that's going to cement her faith in Jesus Christ? I know from my old personal experience as a child, it absolutely will be. And that is one of the motivating forces behind that Hope Center building. And I just want you to know, all these things we've been talking about, this is how you are a Hope agent here at Twin Lakes Church.

Look at this annual report that you guys got when you came in. So once a year, we do an annual meeting right here at church, and God's just blessing in so many ways. But sometimes I feel like, why am I only telling the people who come to the annual meeting about this? I should share this with the whole church because I think you'll get stoked about the amazing things that God is doing. I mentioned this is Pentecost Sunday when the Holy Spirit descended and so many people were added to the church. To me, it feels like we have some of that spirit here as God has just been blessing with amazing increase.

So what I want you to do is just give God the glory. He has done great things. I'm just gonna read that up until the staple, just like halfway through, exactly. And you can read the rest of it on your own, just some of the highlights. Look at that page that says church growth. We've experienced in the last year a 20% increase in weekend attendance. Now, let's put some numbers behind this. That means 530 new people are here in church every single weekend. That means in this room right now about 200 of you. And so we welcome you. It's so exciting to have so many new people. It's awesome. I mean, a 350% increase in the middle schoolers attending church on the weekends. It's amazing.

And these are real people. So I dropped some hope stories into this report. Look at Lorena Rubio's. She says, I actually stopped believing and became an atheist for a long time. I went through a lot of suffering, some of it due to my own bad decisions, yet I now know I can die to that old person and be resurrected into a positive, loving person because of Jesus Christ. I feel very safe having Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. Doesn't that just give you goosebumps to read stories like this? I mean, over 8,000 people in 10 Christmas services, that's 33% more than the year before. And again, these are real people on the next page, like Crystal, who said, I have done so much healing in this church, felt so much love from this community. God bless you. She's feeling love from you.

I now realize my faith is not about my goodness, but the goodness of Jesus Christ saving me and growing me. And Crystal and Lorena were just two of just 178 people baptized last year. Give God the glory for that. That's the most I've ever experienced as a pastor. It's so exciting. Look at this hope story. This is a cool one. Eric was baptized in Capitola, and he said, I tried to baptize myself in the sink in my prison cell. And I'm now being baptized today publicly the right way because I want to announce to the world that I choose to leave my old life and follow Jesus. Praise God for that.

And by the way, I just want to say to everybody who's joining us on the live stream, if you have been or are currently incarcerated, you have a home here, and we welcome you here at Twin Lakes Church. But we talked about loving actions. Look at the page that says giving hope. This is just the tip of the iceberg, but we had over 27,000 people served at People's Pantry. Now look at this. That's a 25% increase in one year. The need for food, and this is going to go up, I believe this next year, even more than that. As you know, this church is very generous towards Second Harvest, and again, real lives being transformed. Let me just read you one more hope story that's on the next page. Look at Melissa's: three years ago I would have said I was an atheist. I laughed at the idea of going to church, but life took a downward turn. My husband and I were headed for divorce.

And look at this. As I reached out to friends for support. Two stood out for their kindness. They both come to TLC. Can I say that last line again? Two stood out for their kindness. I'm just so grateful to hear that. And they both come to TLC. And so in my moment of despair, it wasn't their—they were how she was an atheist, and it wasn't their rational arguments, which are important, that convinced her to try Twin Lakes Church. It was their what? Their kindness. That's what opened the door. I asked if I could go with them to church, and the rest is history.

TLC taught me Jesus saved, and now I know what that means. God has breathed new life into me, my husband, our marriage, and our family in ways I never thought possible. We love Jesus. We love each other. We love ourselves, and we love TLC. Well, can we just give God glory again for this? I'm so grateful to be a part of this. Now, listen, God is doing so many amazing things. The big picture is we're just in a time of amazing growth as a church, and I want to thank you so much for your support. We talk about tlc.org/give is a great way to connect with us that way. You can set up regular recurring automatic giving that way. That's a very big help to the church.

But a couple of things I want you to know. We don't receive funds from some denomination or some big organization. This congregation supports this congregation, and that's it. So we really appreciate this. None of our pastors do unless you tell us why. Here's the way, and this is not the way every church does it, and they're not wrong. They have to each know their own situation, but here's the way I viscerally approach this. I am called to be the pastor of everyone and to treat everyone the same. And so I know human nature, and I do not want to even be subliminally aware of dollar signs above your heads, right? Like somebody's sick and in the hospital. Well, that's a one dollar sign person. Oh, that's a three dollar sign person. I better pay attention to them. No way. Giving to TLC is between you and God and our Swiss bank-like level of secrecy business office.

And I just appreciate your prayerful support so much. So are you feeling why I wanted to show you this annual report, or at least part of it? Because part of building up hope in your own life is knowing that you are a part of something bigger than you. When every time you pick up your phone and you look at the news apps, and all of it is going to increase your despair level and freak out level, right? But you remember, no, I'm a part of something positive. I'm a part of something bringing hope to the world. And you wonder sometimes, what can I do about the state of the world? Well, we can do this. We can do what we are called to do as Christians: being agents of hope to the world. And you are.

You are a part of everything I've been sharing because you're a part of Twin Lakes Church. And when we all are agents of hope, then hope is what keeps rising. You know, we started out with church signs. If we summarized our church's message and put it on a sign, what would the sign read in front of Twin Lakes Church? It's hot where you're going. What part of thou shalt not, don't you wonder? You think it's hot here? Or would it say, there is hope?

Let's pray together. Would you bow your head with me? Lord, help us to be your agents of hope to the world, to reflect your character. May we radiate the spirit of Pentecost to the world because we found our hope in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, and it's in his name that we pray. Amen.