Find Your Place

Good morning. Good to see you all here today. School starts tomorrow.

All right. Yeah. I’m Eric Chamberlain, one of the pastors here at Shepherd’s Gate.

I’m looking forward to talking with you. If you are here for the first time, I’d love to meet you afterwards. We also have a welcome table if you’re here for the first time.

We have a gift for you too, so that’s great. Visit the welcome table. I want to welcome those who are watching online this morning as well.

I’m really excited to jump into the series. We’re in a four-week series, our discipleship series here at Shepherd’s Gate. We’ve been waiting to unveil this for a while.

Find your people, your place, and your purpose. Really simple, and we’ve been diving into what those mean each week. The first week, Pastor Tim spoke and gave us an overview of the whole process.

What it means to be a disciple, why being a disciple is important, what the Bible talks about discipleship. So that was our first week. Last week, we did a little tag team preaching, Tim and I, and we really introduced you to the idea of finding your people who bring you to Jesus.

Remember the story last week from the paralytic? The healing of the paralytic and his friends bringing him down through the roof, leading him to Jesus, and Jesus saw the faith of his friends and the power of faith you have in the lives of others and others in you, and how important it is to have that community of people who bring you to Jesus. That’s so important. And so we introduced our new format of small groups as well.

We’ll talk more about that later. Today, it’s find your place. Find your place to grow in your faith.

Find your place to grow in your faith. We want Shepherd’s Gate to be the place where you grow in your faith. The question is, what does that mean? Well, we’re going to talk about that today.

I got two main points to my outline today. To grow as a disciple of Jesus, as a follower of Jesus, there’s two things you need. You need to be in the right position, and you need to be connected to the power.

I want you to say position and power. Okay, that’s our outline for today, okay? So let’s get into position, what I mean by this. How many of you, if you’re a little weird like me, have ordered plants through the mail, like bare root plants through the mail? Anybody? There’s a few of you, I know you’re out there.

You can order them in the winter, any time of the year. This is what they look like when they come to you. It’s a little shocking because you’re like, wait a minute, what is this? This is a dead stick, what is this? It looks like a stick, and it’s got a little root ball, and you soak it in water, and you put it in the soil in the pot, right? And it’s good to go.

So I did that this past, around Christmas time, I had a couple plants. I got a fig, I think it was a dwarf fig tree, and a dwarf cherry tree, right? I think that’s what they were. Well, we didn’t know, because you can’t tell by looking at the stick.

So we get these around Christmas time. Okay, and a couple things happened. First, we have a basset hound, and so the basset hound was like, hey, look, Daddy brought a stick in the house for me.

So we had to keep Duchess shooing off the tops of the sticks. And then I also was like, wow, they look a little bit dry, so I watered it, and I watered it some more, and I watered it some more, and more water. And then eventually we had developed two large civilizations of gnats in both pots.

And thousands of gnats came all over the house. And you ever try to get rid of gnats once they start multiplying? It’s very difficult. So it was awful, it was awful.

We bought all these things you plug in the wall that captures the gnats. We tried some stuff you put in a bowl, and just trying to figure it out, you know? Well, eventually I was like, okay, forget this. Why don’t I just take the plants and just throw them out? So I just took them outside, put the pots, put them out by the bushes, and figured I’ll just deal with it later.

I’ll throw them out later. It was toward the end of winter, and I was like, let’s just get them out of the house. So we get them out there, they’re dead.

And so this past week, I go by to look at them. Lo and behold, they’re growing without any of my involvement at all. It’s all about the position.

That’s what God was teaching me this week. Your position is so important. Your physical position and your spiritual position is so important to grow as a disciple of Jesus.

Let me explain this to you. I wanna go to a passage you probably have heard of. How many have heard of the parable of the sower? Very famous parable by Jesus.

Very famous parable by Jesus. You find it in the Gospel of Matthew, Gospel of Mark, and the Gospel of Luke. And it’s all about this story Jesus tells about a man sowing, not needle and thread sowing, but sowing seed.

Picture this guy with a bag of seed. He’s out there sowing seed on his field. And the seeds fall in four different positions.

These are four different positions where the seeds fall. On the hardened path where he’s walking, on a rocky ground where there’s a bunch of rocks, among thorns and weeds, and on some good soil. So Jesus explains the seed in this story represents the Word of God, and the soil represents you, our hearts.

So I got a little picture for you. Thanks to AI, we have a little picture here. Jesus there is the sower.

He’s sowing the Word of God onto our hearts. See him there? There’s four different hearts there. There’s the hardened heart, there’s the shallow heart, there’s the distracted heart, and there’s the receiving heart.

So your spiritual position is also important. So your physical position’s important because guess what? You actually have to get out of bed and come to church. Although apparently now you can just lay in bed with a laptop and you can just watch church now.

I don’t think it’s as good as coming to church, right? Encourage the people who are watching. Tell them, come to church. Come to church.

Okay, good. If you can. Some people can’t.

That’s fine. So your position’s important. You have to actually take the Bible off the shelf and you have to literally open it up, and then you have to literally look at it and read it for it to do anything, right? You have to put your remote control down, get in your car and drive to a small group to actually experience community.

So physical position’s important, and your spiritual position is also important too. You gotta have an open heart to what God wants to teach you, to what God wants to reveal to you, a humble, open heart, a receiving heart. So there’s a little bit about the parable of the sower position.

To grow as a disciple, you have to be in the right position. Physical, spiritual. You also have to connect to the power.

Now, we’re gonna do a little bit of a inventory this morning, okay? You ready? You probably didn’t know you were gonna do math this morning. I’m gonna have you do some math. You ready? How many, anybody fail math in school? There’s a couple of you here.

Yeah, a couple of you. Okay. You’ll be fine.

It’s just addition, okay? I’m gonna go through all the different smart devices we have in our house. I want you to add up. You’re gonna keep adding.

You’re gonna have a tally of total amounts. Okay, you ready? So let’s start. Ready? You can use your fingers if you want.

First, start with how many smart TV, every TV’s a smart TV now, but how many TVs do you have in your house? Okay. Now, let’s add to that desktop computers. Well, no, we have one.

One? Now, let’s go to laptop computers. Now, you have to add in school or work laptops if they’re ever at home. Okay? What have we got? I’m looking at my wife.

Okay, it’s eight, sorry. Okay, now let’s add iPads. I’m out of fingers.

iPads, okay? Keep it in your head, okay? Add iPads. I want you to also add smart readers. If you have a Kindles or those kind of things.

I want you to add smart watches. I want you to add smart rings. Smart glasses.

Smart vacuums. A little robot vacuum. If you have one of those Chinese robots that do your dishes, add one of those in.

Alexa, any of those little AI listeners. Okay, add those in. What else am I missing? Did we do smart? Smart phones.

How’d I miss that one? Add your smart phones in. Did we do iPads yet? Okay, what do you got? What do you got numbers wise? 19, how many are over 20? Yeah, okay, you start thinking about that. It’s crazy how many we have, right? Isn’t it amazing? I think Skynet is here.

I think it’s here, I don’t know. Listen, what’s the most important part of all these devices? I’m gonna say the power cord. How many of you have a device from like 10 to 15 years ago and you no longer have the power cord? Anybody ever thrown out or donated or gotten rid of something that you lost the power cord? They don’t make the power cord the same anymore, right? They changed the power cord to make you keep buying devices, right? The power cord, without the power to your phone, what good is it? Any of these devices, if you don’t have power and you can’t charge it up, you can’t use it, it’s not gonna fulfill its purpose.

The power cord, you gotta connect to the power. It’s the same as Christians. We’ve gotta connect to the power.

What is the power in our Christian life as a disciple? It is the gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news, the good word about Jesus, which is all throughout the Bible. One of my favorite verses I memorized as a teenager, how many high schoolers we have here today? You’re in high school, let’s see your hand. High school, are you memorizing Bible verses yet? Start to memorize some Bible verses.

Here’s one for you. Romans 1, 16, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for the salvation of those who believe. What is the power of God for your salvation, for your discipleship? It’s in the gospel.

What is the gospel? It’s the good news, the good word about Jesus, which is found throughout the whole scriptures. The word of God, that is our power cord. The word of God.

We gotta open it up, we gotta read it, we gotta meditate it, we gotta study it. That’s the power cord. Now I wanna share with you that Jesus spoke about this.

It’s a famous passage in the Bible. It’s usually titled the vine and branches. Okay, it’s found in John chapter 15.

This is Jesus telling this analogy about a vine and branches. Or think of like a tree trunk and branches. Think of like, you can think of an apple tree or a grapevine.

Jesus says this, he says, abide in me and I in you. And then he says, as a branch cannot bear fruit unless it abides in the vine, or the branch abides in the trunk, neither can you unless you abide in me. You’re the branch, Jesus is the vine.

You have to abide in Jesus and Jesus in you. Be connected to the vine. The actual, let me read one more, some more verses here.

He says, I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit. For apart from me, what can you do? Nothing, nothing.

You got no power cord? There’s nothing you can do. If anyone does not abide in me, he’s thrown away like a branch and withers. And the branches are gathered and thrown into the fire.

What’s the word that Jesus uses five times that we’ve read so far? Abide, abide. Now some translations use the word remain. The Greek word is meno, everybody say meno.

Meno means to remain steadfastly connected. That’s what it means, to remain steadfastly connected. Jesus says, remain connected to me and make sure I’m connected to you.

I’m in you. I have a graphic here, so another help AI has, good for something. This will give you the verse here.

Comparative workflow from both sides here. So abiding in Jesus, this side, abiding in Jesus and Jesus in you, what’s the result? Bare fruit, right? You live up to your potential. Your purpose is being lived out.

And what happens if you’re not abiding in Jesus? Kindle, yes, kindle it, that’s right. But here’s the question, how do we abide in Jesus? What does it mean for me to abide in Jesus and for Jesus to abide in me? How does that work and what does that mean? Actually, if you keep reading this chapter, Jesus actually explains himself. A lot of times when Jesus tells these stories and parables, if you keep reading, he’ll actually tell you what he’s trying to say.

And he does here in John 15. Look at what he says here. He says, if you abide in me, how does he explain this? He says, my words abiding in you.

That’s how you abide in Jesus. It’s his words abiding in you. He says, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you.

It even affects your prayer life. By this, my Father is glorified. It affects who you glorify, whether yourself or whether God.

That you bear much fruit and prove to be what? My disciples. This is a discipleship passage here. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you.

Abide in my love. He goes on, he says, if you keep my commandments, well, where are those found? In the word of God. These are also his words.

He says, if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love. Just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you and your joy may be full.

Jesus is explaining what abiding is. Abiding is his words abiding in you. Even his commandments, his words of peace, his words of hope, all the promises of God, the promises of baptism we heard today.

See, the Bible is the power cord to your Christian life, the following Jesus. Being his disciple. It affects your behaviors.

Keeping the Bible in you, keeping his words in you affects your behaviors, it affects your prayer, your prayer life. Right, God? He even said it. I’ll give you whatever you ask.

If you’re abiding in my words, my words are abiding in you, then we’re on the same page here. That’s what God’s saying, so whatever you ask is gonna be my will. It affects who you glorify, whether you glorify yourself, praise yourself, or you praise him.

And it affects your experience of God’s love and God’s joy in your life. This is really important. You wanna experience more of God’s love and God’s joy, his words need to be in you.

His words need to be in you. This is what we mean by find your place. We want Shepherd’s Gate to be your place where this happens, okay? That’s our job, that’s the job of the church, right? We wanna make sure you have the opportunity for his words to be in you and for you to be in him.

That’s what we mean by find your place. So how do you find your place to grow in your faith here at Shepherd’s Gate? That’s the big question today, how do you find that? So I’m gonna give you, I’m gonna go over four different areas here at Shepherd’s Gate. One of them’s brand new, so we’ll get to that.

Let me just go over some things that you probably already know. Obviously, you’re here today, right? You are in worship, you get to hear the word of God today. You came today, you got out of bed, you turned off Netflix and you came here and you’re hearing the word of God.

So our worship services, we actually, a lot of our songs we sing are from the scriptures too. So you’re singing the word of God, you’re hearing the word of God on Sunday morning. I wanna mention this, we have a lot of programs and ministries and programs here at Shepherd’s Gate that you’re probably involved in.

But I just wanna kinda go over them a little bit and I want you to know that, you saw some tables out there, I had asked those who were involved in these ministries and programs to be out there to answer any questions you have if you wanna get involved and know more about what’s happening in their areas. So things like our kids department, obviously you can talk to Reggie every day, she’s always out here every day, every service. And they’re working with our kids, teaching them the Bible right now.

We also have our student ministry that does some work on Sunday morning and a lot of it on Wednesday night. They’re gonna have a table out there. And that’s fifth grade to 12th grade, just in case you didn’t know.

Our student ministry is fifth grade to 12th grade. We also have our care ministry. They usually have all their support groups here on Tuesday night.

If you’ve never been to care, how many have been to a care before, care ministry? It’s an amazing opportunity. Some are more support groups, some are more classes where you learn some things and some tools you can use in your life and in relationships. It’s a great opportunity, it’s free dinner.

That’s every Tuesday night, Venus is amazing. And we encourage you to get involved there as well. We also have a lot of adult ministries that happen here.

There’s lots of things that go on here besides just activities and physical and social activities. We actually have some ministries here too that try to put together Bible studies and retreats and nights out and social time to get to know each other and fellowship together. We’ve got young adults.

We’ve recently started a young adult group. So if you’re anywhere between that 18 to 29 age group, they meet on Monday nights here. We have a men’s group.

We have a men’s Bible study that meets on Monday nights here. And as you saw, we’re having a retreat coming up. I wanna encourage the men here to sign up for that.

We’re actually joining three other churches, Emmanuel, St. Peter and Trinity. And it’s gonna be, it’s only an hour away. I’m actually, I can’t go the whole weekend, so I’m gonna go up Saturday.

You can actually register for just Saturday or you can register for the whole Friday to Sunday. But I wanna encourage you to sign up for that. And I’m looking forward to that and hope to see you there for that.

Our women’s ministry, you saw the mixer they’re having coming up. They’re gonna be out there answering any questions you have about all the, they have a bunch of activities coming up. We have a married couples date night out happening here with a Christian comedian that’s coming up this fall.

We have a lot of seniors activities and programs going on here too. Go out there after the service and you can talk with all them out there about what’s happening. It’s amazing what we have going on here at Shepherds Gate.

As we mentioned last week, we unveiled this to you small groups. Our small groups do three things. This is what we’re trying to gather around, three things.

Fellowship, intercession, which means like praying for each other. So fellowship, encouraging each other, getting to know each other. Intercession, praying for each other.

And third, the truth of the gospel, the truth of the Bible, fit, fits well, doesn’t it? That’s what the small groups are about. And we’ve decided to make it a little easier for you to join a small group. It’s not a lifelong commitment, it’s just seasonal.

So we’re gonna do a fall session, a winter session and a spring session. We’re actually putting groups together right now. We had a lot of people sign up last week.

We’re putting in groups together right now. You can still sign up and be part of a group. It’s just 10 weeks.

You meet two or three times a month for 10 weeks. You may find your people and you just keep meeting. If you don’t find your people, then you have an out.

You have an exact out. You can get out of there and try it again next time. So it’s a great opportunity for our small groups that are rolling out September 20th.

Please sign up. You can do that on our apps. Now, are you ready? I’ve been asked about this particular thing for a long time, but I need a drum roll.

Can we do the Pantlake drum roll? That sounds great, doesn’t it? Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you SG University. I’ll pay you later. People have asked me so many times, why don’t we have Bible study on Sunday morning for adults? I’m like, well, you know, it used to happen, but you know, COVID and you always blame COVID for everything.

So I’ve been working on it and we decided, you know what, we’re not just gonna, we’re gonna have a university. We’re gonna have courses of different levels. What if somebody doesn’t know how to read their Bible? What if they never opened up the Bible to read it? What if they don’t know anything about a Bible? Well, there should be a class for them.

What about somebody who says, man, I just, I wanna really, I wanna study Book of Revelation. Okay, well, maybe we have a class for you, or maybe you wanna study Lutheran doctrine, or maybe I just wanna know how to share my faith, or maybe you just wanna talk, study all the Bible verses that are talking about discipleship, or maybe you just wanna learn how to pray better. So there’s all kinds of different levels here, foundation courses, intermediate courses, and advanced courses.

We’re gonna start rolling these out on Sunday morning to start with, it’ll be 10.30 to 12, so you can come to the 9 a.m. service and then go to a class. You just gotta get up early, that’s all. So that’s a great way, so we’re, this is gonna start in September.

You’ll start seeing these classes. You can actually sign up for some of them right now, all about the Bible and basic beliefs of the Christian faith of the two, and explore, basically the first four are already done and are gonna be rolling out this fall, and then we’ll be adding the others throughout the year. We’re developing those courses right now.

So I just want you to know that Shepherd’s Gate is gonna be your place to grow in your faith, and part of that is studying, meditating, reading, getting God’s word, the words of Jesus in you. That’s what you need. That’s what we need to grow in the faith.

Jesus said it, that’s how he abides in us, and we in him. Your position is important. You gotta physically be here for that, but also come with an open heart, your spiritual position, and connect to the power which is the word of God.

I want to close with a couple verses of the word of God that zero in right on this point, okay? So I want to close with this. Romans chapter 10, verse 17. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing through what? Christ.

You might say, Pastor Eric, I want to grow in my faith. I don’t know how much faith I have. Maybe you struggle with faith and doubt, and you’re still in that journey of figuring that out, and the best way you can grow in your faith is through hearing the word of God.

So being here is important. Coming to the other things is important. You can even open it up on your own and read it yourself, too, or listen to it on tape, or listen to a podcast.

You’ve gotta get the word of God in your head, right? We all know it, but we gotta do it, and position and power, it’s important, because faith comes by hearing the word of God. That’s how you get faith in you. There’s no other way around it.

You can’t get, there’s only one power cord, and this is the power cord. I want to close with this, Acts chapter 20. Paul says, now I commend you, I commend you to God and to his word of grace.

What is his word of grace? It’s the word of the unconditional love of God for you. It’s the word of his forgiveness of your sins. It’s the word about what he accomplished on the cross for you.

It’s the word that you don’t have to, you can’t earn it, you can try, but you can’t earn it yourself, because it’s a free gift of God. That’s the message of the entire Bible in a nutshell. In a nutshell, the word of his grace.

Paul says, I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, because that’s the only way you’re gonna grow. Because this is able to build you up, to grow you, and to give you an inheritance, an eternal promise, an inheritance as his child among all the saints. Amen? This is what it’s all about right here, folks.

It’s very clear, we just gotta, we gotta connect to the power, and we gotta put ourselves in the right position. Everything else is laid out for you at Shepherd’s Gate. It can be your place to grow in your faith.

The next step is yours. Let’s pray together. Lord, we know this.

I mean, it’s not really new information, but there’s a little bit of a journey between knowing and actually doing and being. So we’re asking you, God, through your Holy Spirit, inspire us, guide us, direct us. We wanna grow as your disciple.

We wanna be faithful to you. We wanna know you and love you more, because we know that that’s where our joy, our hope, our peace come from, and we need your help to do it. We need your word.

We need your people around us. We surrender it all to you, God. Guide us and direct us and lead us in your word of grace.

We pray in your name, Jesus. Amen.