On this 13th Sunday after Pentecost, Aug. 18th, 2024, Rev. Matt Sapp, focuses on the growing call of God after having recently baptized five new believers. He begins by reflecting on the call of Isaiah, a vivid and poetic description of experiencing God's presence. He then turns to Matthew chapter 4, where Jesus calls His first disciples, encouraging everyone to bring their Bibles to church for a deeper engagement with the scripture.
Matt also introduces the 48-hour challenge, encouraging our congregation to spend 48 hours on Sundays with us over the next year, dedicating time to worship and Bible study. This commitment is not just for personal growth but also to enhance the shared experience of worship for everyone.
Chapters
(00:00) Welcome and Introduction
(01:04) Recap of Previous Sermons
(02:25) The Call of the First Disciples
(04:12) The 48-Hour Challenge
(07:08) The Journey of Discipleship
(09:09) The Story of Max Planck and His Driver
(12:28) The Call to Excellence in Discipleship
(17:33) Striving Together in Faith
(20:01) Closing Prayer and Benediction
Matthew 4:18-22
As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. "Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will send you out to fish for people." At once they left their nets and followed him. Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.
Central is proud to be a place
- where all generations worship, grow, and serve together.
- where women and men have equal opportunities for leadership.
- where traditional worship is engaged with excellence.
- and where diverse approaches to Christian faith and theology all find themselves at home under the lordship of Christ.
Want to learn more about Central? Visit our website at centralbaptistnewnan.org or give us a call at 770-683-0610.
[00:00:01]
Caroline Moore:
Good morning and welcome to worship. We are glad that each of you has come to worship with us this morning. If you happen to be visiting with us, we would love for you to take a moment and fill out the visitor's card located in the pew rack in front of you. Fill it out and drop it in the offering plate as it is passed later in the service. So we can get to know you better, as we welcome you to Central. Each week, we gather to praise a loving God, who helps us to see the growing call in each of our lives. I pray that as we worship in the presence of God this hour, we will listen to what God is speaking to each of our lives.
Come, let us worship God together.
[00:01:04] Matt Sapp:
2 weeks ago, as we wrapped up our summer series on the Sermon on the Mount, we talked about doing the will of God. Last week, as we introduced our 48 hour challenge and don't worry if that doesn't mean anything to you yet, we'll talk about it more today. Last week, as we introduced our 48 hour challenge, we talked about the shared experience of God. This week, as we have baptized 5 new believers, we're talking about the growing call of God. Already in worship, we've read the call of Isaiah. In Isaiah chapter 6, they're some of my favorite work most favorite words in all of scripture. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord high and lifted up and seated on a throne. It's poetic, isn't it? And the description of what it's like to have an individual experience of the presence of God is so vivid you can almost feel that presence growing around you as you read the words.
Growing around Isaiah in a way that crowds out his vision and his awareness of everything else. Smoke filling the temple. The doorposts shaking. The hem of God's robe spreading to fill the entire room. That's the call of Isaiah. In Matthew chapter 4, we get a 4 verse account of the call of the first disciples. I invite you to open your bibles with me, please, to Matthew chapter 4. And by the way, if you've gotten out of the habit of bringing your bibles to church with you, let me encourage you to start doing it. I know we print the scriptures on the back of the worship guide for you, but I still want you to bring your bibles to church. It's nice to open your bible and see the scripture and its context, all the surrounding verses where it falls inside a book. And most of your bibles, if they're like mine, have footnotes and sidebar explainers and all kinds of extra resources to help us engage with scripture even as we're sitting here in the sanctuary during worship. So bring your Bibles with you, please, to worship if you can. This is Matthew chapter 4.
I'll begin reading with the 18th verse. As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw 2 brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake for they were fishermen. Come follow me, Jesus said, and I will send you out to fish for people. At once, they left their nets and followed him. Going on from there, he saw 2 other brothers, James, son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father, Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.
The word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. I told you I wanted you to bring your bible so that we could read out of them together but I also really want you to start bringing your bibles to worship because in just a few weeks, I'm going to give you something you can stick inside of them and bring back to church with you week after week for the next year. It's a bookmark that looks like this, 48 hours. The 48 hour challenge that we're going to engage in as a congregation starts Sunday, September 8th. So you've got a few weeks to get ready for it. But this is what it is. We want you to spend at least 48 hours on Sundays with us over the course of the next calendar year. Between September 2024 and September 2025, 48 hours on Sunday. Now I told you guys last week, we're not asking you to spend 48 hours a week with us.
We're not asking you to spend 48 hours a month with us. We're asking you to spend 48 hours a year with us, 2 hours each for 24 Sundays next year. 1 hour in worship and 1 hour in bible study. Some of you will spend 50 Sundays with us next year. But some of you will spend 40 or 35. And for y'all, this challenge won't be any big deal at all. The challenge for you will be to see how quickly you can hit our milestone. But we want you all to make a commitment and maybe an increased commitment to be here at least that much. Because we believe that it's good for you and we know that your presence is good for your friends and fellow church members.
Their experience at church, the people sitting next to you right now, their experience at church is improved by your presence. Your friends and neighbors have a better experience in worship and bible study when you're sitting next to them. I promise you. So your presence is something that you do for yourselves and that you do for each other. Here's what we're aiming to do on Sundays, why we believe your presence is so important. We talked about this some last week as we looked at the central place that the tabernacle grew to hold in the life of the Hebrew people.
We gather at central on Sundays first to set apart sacred space, this physical sacred space that we set apart in our community, but sacred space in your calendars, in your time and in your lives as well. For the shared ritual of worship, rituals like baptism, which we celebrated this morning, and to build relationships with one another through shared experience here in this sanctuary as we discern the will of God together. We think that regularly setting apart some sacred space in your life to build relationships with other Christians through shared experience is one of the very best things you can do for yourself and for your family. We really really believe that. All of us ministers here at Central do so the 48 hour challenge. You'll keep hearing more about it and you'll be covered up in bookmarks in just a few weeks to help you track.
Jesus calls the 4 disciples in Matthew chapter 4. Every time we baptize new believers at Central, just like we did up here this morning, I tell them that their decision to follow Christ is a first step, not a last step. That it's the beginning of a journey, not the end of one. I tell them that discipleship is a lifelong process. We will continue to grow in faith and maturity and knowledge and understanding as we walk this journey with one another for the rest of our lives. We ask these folks to make that commitment for life. And what is true for 5 new believers this morning and what is true for each of us on our journeys of discipleship was true for those very first disciples too, Peter and Andrew and James and John.
As near as we can tell from scripture, the 4 of them had almost no idea at all who Jesus was when he called them to follow. Jesus was from Nazareth. These 4 were from these little towns scattered along the Sea of Galilee, at least 20 miles away. Jesus, we don't think, hadn't been in Galilee all that long preaching and teaching before he calls these 4 to follow them. But but there just had to have been something about him, I guess. Maybe there was something about their old lives, the current lives they were living that was somehow empty and unfulfilling. Why do any of us make the decision to follow Jesus? Right? I don't know. So Peter and Andrew and James and John left their nets, we're told in Matthew chapter 4, right in the middle of a workday. They left their nets to follow Jesus.
Would it be for a day or a week or a month or the summer? I doubt they knew. They may have just thought that they were skipping out early from work that day. The only thing we know for sure is that these 4 didn't know nearly as much about Jesus on the day they chose to follow him as they did at the end of their lives. There's a famous story about Nobel prize winning physicist, Max Planck and his his driver. After winning the Nobel Prize for Physics, the the German physicist embarked on a speaking tour. Doctor Planck is the originator of quantum theory, one of the fathers of modern physics. In 1918, he won the Nobel And for the next year or so, he traveled all over Germany giving talks and lectures at universities and town halls. And he took one person with him on all of his travels, an assistant who accompanied him everywhere he went, a driver.
In the car, as they were driving from place to place, the professor would pull out his presentation notes much like my preaching notes and review them in the back seat of the car and the chauffeur would hear him. And then once they were to where they were going, the driver would sit in the back of the auditorium as the celebrated professor gave his presentations until after a while the driver knew the professor's presentation almost as well as doctor Plank did. As doctor Planck was getting close to the end of his speaking tour, the driver said just kinda jokingly one day in the car, you know, I bet I could give this speech almost as well as you do by now. He of course was only joking but the professor thought the idea was rather entertaining and surprisingly he said, I bet you could. We should try it.
So at the next stop on the tour, the Nobel prize winning professor took off his coat and tie and traded them with his chauffeur and the professor wore the chauffeur's cap. The chauffeur stood on stage before the assembled crowd and he delivered a perfect about the presentation but of course the chauffeur couldn't answer it. He wasn't a physicist himself and he didn't know what to do. But thinking quickly on his feet, the driver said, that question is so easy, I'm gonna let my chauffeur answer it. And he pointed to doctor Plank in the chauffeur's cap at the back of the room. Doctor Plank answered the question. The chauffeur on stage said, we're sadly out of time. And they got off stage and out of town as fast as they could.
Discipleship at the beginning is like that. At first, we're just trying to learn to repeat the things we've heard over and over and over again. Love your neighbor. Do unto others. For god so loved the world. Faith, hope and love. Blessed are the peacemakers. For unto you is born this day a savior. Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here. He is risen. We come to church week after week, year after year, hear these things over and over again until we've heard them so many times. We know them inside and out. We can repeat them. We can even share them with an air of authority and a veneer of understanding.
But all it takes is one question from the audience. Right? And the ruse is up. That's what this 48 hour emphasis is about. If we are to grow in our discipleship beyond the level of a driver repeating the lecture notes of the professor, if we're going to develop depth and insight and knowledge and understanding, it takes some time. A few years into following Jesus for himself, Peter, in scripture, gave that famous confession that is the model confession that we ask our baptismal candidates to affirm every time we baptize someone right before we dunk them under the water. Jesus asked Peter very directly one day, who do you say that I am? Peter famously responds, you are the Christ, the son of the living God.
This morning, right before we baptized 5 new believers, I asked every single one of them to affirm that Jesus is the Christ. Peter's faith in the moment in scripture is real, but Peter's just repeating what he's heard. Later in scripture, those of you who are bible scholars in the room will remember that it only takes one question in one tough moment. It's basically the same question repeated. Do you know who Jesus is? And Peter's house of cards comes crashing down. He goes from Jesus is the Christ to I have no idea who you're talking about. But by the end of the new testament, at the end of their lives, Peter and John, those 2 guys from Matthew chapter 4, are writing some of the most important instructions in all of the new testament. By the end of the lives, they're experts.
They're writing out of their own experience, passing on to the next generation the kind of wisdom that only a lifetime of careful discipleship can bring. They're no longer misunderstanding and incomplete and hesitant in their faith. That's the picture of Peter, James and John throughout the gospels. Hesitant, misunderstanding, incomplete, asking for things and about things they don't understand just like we do all the time. That's who they are at first to. But by the end of the new testament, the chauffeurs have become the experts themselves. They've become excellent in their discipleship.
The call to discipleship is a call to excellence. And that's what we see in scripture, disciples who grow toward excellence. Peter and John, sure, but but Paul as well. Paul writes eloquently over and over and over again in his letters about becoming excellent in the faith, James, the brother of Jesus, does too. Because anything less than the pursuit of excellence in our discipleship fails to adequately reflect the character of God. That's why we're called toward excellence. Brad Stolberg, author, columnist, writing in the New York Times last week about the Olympics, says this.
He says, excellence is not perfection. It's a deeply satisfying process of becoming the best person you can be. Excellence is not perfection. It's a deeply satisfying process of becoming the best person you can be. Let's say this differently. Discipleship is not perfection. It's a deeply satisfying process of becoming the best person you can be. Brad Stohlberg continues in his article, you pursue goals that challenge you. You put forth an honest effort. Endure highs, lows and everything in between and gain respect for yourself and others in the process as you pursue that Olympic dream, he's saying. That's life. Isn't it?
That's discipleship. Put forth an honest effort. Endure the highs and lows and everything in between, by the way, and do it together. That's the journey that we're on. Here's my favorite part about that New York Times article about the Olympics. In some instances, Stahlberg writes, excellence also calls for competing as in the Olympic games. A word he says derived from the Latin, com which means together and peterre which means to strive. True excellence, he says, comes in the turn from striving against towards striving together. It's why so many times the first thing you saw on your TVs at the end of a race at the Olympics, 1 on the track or maybe 1 in the pool, the very first thing you saw at the end of a race was competitors embracing one another.
Arms outstretched across the lane lines in the water of the pool or arm in arm on the track while still doubled over from the all out effort of the race. Because excellence in competition isn't found in striving against one another. It's found in striving together and in the camaraderie of the shared effort. The growing call of god in our lives is a call to that. Discipleship is a striving together. This is how Brad Stohlberg ends his article. He says, over the past decade, I've reviewed hundreds of studies and interviewed dozens of elite performers in all kinds of, athletic and professional fields. He says, I found the top indicators of people's lasting success and satisfaction come down to how they answered these 5 questions.
Did they give their pursuit their all? Did they live in alignment with their values? Were they patient and present? Did they embrace their own vulnerability? And did they build meaningful relationships along the way? Those are some great questions as we think about discipleship this morning. As as we seek to move beyond the chauffeur who has memorized the professor's speech. We are here to strive together. To give the pursuit of discipleship our all. To live together in alignment with our shared values, to be patient and present in the process. 48 hours. Right?
To embrace our own vulnerability and to build meaningful relationships along the way. And all of us, by the way, on this journey of discipleship are just beginners. Absolute neophytes. Chauffeurs masquerading as professors. Barely scratching the surface on the journey. True excellence in discipleship comes in the turn from striving against towards striving together. And as we strive together, as we experience the growing call of God together as the people of Central Baptist Church, all the power all the power in our striving is in the sharing.
In me being here with you and in you being here with me, can you imagine one person striving alone at the Olympics with no one to embrace at the end of the 100 meters? No one to reach out to across the lane lines in the pool. All the power. all the power is in the sharing. The real magic of our faith happens when we do it together. Let's pray together. Heavenly father, we're grateful for your presence in our lives, your presence in this room. We're grateful for your presence in this congregation. As we travel on this journey of discipleship together, remind us that you are present with us, knitting us together into relationship that makes all the difference in our Teach us to be present to one another in all the ways you call us to be. We offer our whole selves to you in Jesus name.
Amen. Bow with me please for benediction. Depart now in peace and as as you go, may the god who makes all things holy and whole make you holy and whole, Put you together spirit, soul, and body, and keep you fit for the coming of our master, Jesus Christ. In whose name we pray. Amen.
Good morning and welcome to worship. We are glad that each of you has come to worship with us this morning. If you happen to be visiting with us, we would love for you to take a moment and fill out the visitor's card located in the pew rack in front of you. Fill it out and drop it in the offering plate as it is passed later in the service. So we can get to know you better, as we welcome you to Central. Each week, we gather to praise a loving God, who helps us to see the growing call in each of our lives. I pray that as we worship in the presence of God this hour, we will listen to what God is speaking to each of our lives.
Come, let us worship God together.
[00:01:04] Matt Sapp:
2 weeks ago, as we wrapped up our summer series on the Sermon on the Mount, we talked about doing the will of God. Last week, as we introduced our 48 hour challenge and don't worry if that doesn't mean anything to you yet, we'll talk about it more today. Last week, as we introduced our 48 hour challenge, we talked about the shared experience of God. This week, as we have baptized 5 new believers, we're talking about the growing call of God. Already in worship, we've read the call of Isaiah. In Isaiah chapter 6, they're some of my favorite work most favorite words in all of scripture. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord high and lifted up and seated on a throne. It's poetic, isn't it? And the description of what it's like to have an individual experience of the presence of God is so vivid you can almost feel that presence growing around you as you read the words.
Growing around Isaiah in a way that crowds out his vision and his awareness of everything else. Smoke filling the temple. The doorposts shaking. The hem of God's robe spreading to fill the entire room. That's the call of Isaiah. In Matthew chapter 4, we get a 4 verse account of the call of the first disciples. I invite you to open your bibles with me, please, to Matthew chapter 4. And by the way, if you've gotten out of the habit of bringing your bibles to church with you, let me encourage you to start doing it. I know we print the scriptures on the back of the worship guide for you, but I still want you to bring your bibles to church. It's nice to open your bible and see the scripture and its context, all the surrounding verses where it falls inside a book. And most of your bibles, if they're like mine, have footnotes and sidebar explainers and all kinds of extra resources to help us engage with scripture even as we're sitting here in the sanctuary during worship. So bring your Bibles with you, please, to worship if you can. This is Matthew chapter 4.
I'll begin reading with the 18th verse. As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw 2 brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake for they were fishermen. Come follow me, Jesus said, and I will send you out to fish for people. At once, they left their nets and followed him. Going on from there, he saw 2 other brothers, James, son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father, Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.
The word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. I told you I wanted you to bring your bible so that we could read out of them together but I also really want you to start bringing your bibles to worship because in just a few weeks, I'm going to give you something you can stick inside of them and bring back to church with you week after week for the next year. It's a bookmark that looks like this, 48 hours. The 48 hour challenge that we're going to engage in as a congregation starts Sunday, September 8th. So you've got a few weeks to get ready for it. But this is what it is. We want you to spend at least 48 hours on Sundays with us over the course of the next calendar year. Between September 2024 and September 2025, 48 hours on Sunday. Now I told you guys last week, we're not asking you to spend 48 hours a week with us.
We're not asking you to spend 48 hours a month with us. We're asking you to spend 48 hours a year with us, 2 hours each for 24 Sundays next year. 1 hour in worship and 1 hour in bible study. Some of you will spend 50 Sundays with us next year. But some of you will spend 40 or 35. And for y'all, this challenge won't be any big deal at all. The challenge for you will be to see how quickly you can hit our milestone. But we want you all to make a commitment and maybe an increased commitment to be here at least that much. Because we believe that it's good for you and we know that your presence is good for your friends and fellow church members.
Their experience at church, the people sitting next to you right now, their experience at church is improved by your presence. Your friends and neighbors have a better experience in worship and bible study when you're sitting next to them. I promise you. So your presence is something that you do for yourselves and that you do for each other. Here's what we're aiming to do on Sundays, why we believe your presence is so important. We talked about this some last week as we looked at the central place that the tabernacle grew to hold in the life of the Hebrew people.
We gather at central on Sundays first to set apart sacred space, this physical sacred space that we set apart in our community, but sacred space in your calendars, in your time and in your lives as well. For the shared ritual of worship, rituals like baptism, which we celebrated this morning, and to build relationships with one another through shared experience here in this sanctuary as we discern the will of God together. We think that regularly setting apart some sacred space in your life to build relationships with other Christians through shared experience is one of the very best things you can do for yourself and for your family. We really really believe that. All of us ministers here at Central do so the 48 hour challenge. You'll keep hearing more about it and you'll be covered up in bookmarks in just a few weeks to help you track.
Jesus calls the 4 disciples in Matthew chapter 4. Every time we baptize new believers at Central, just like we did up here this morning, I tell them that their decision to follow Christ is a first step, not a last step. That it's the beginning of a journey, not the end of one. I tell them that discipleship is a lifelong process. We will continue to grow in faith and maturity and knowledge and understanding as we walk this journey with one another for the rest of our lives. We ask these folks to make that commitment for life. And what is true for 5 new believers this morning and what is true for each of us on our journeys of discipleship was true for those very first disciples too, Peter and Andrew and James and John.
As near as we can tell from scripture, the 4 of them had almost no idea at all who Jesus was when he called them to follow. Jesus was from Nazareth. These 4 were from these little towns scattered along the Sea of Galilee, at least 20 miles away. Jesus, we don't think, hadn't been in Galilee all that long preaching and teaching before he calls these 4 to follow them. But but there just had to have been something about him, I guess. Maybe there was something about their old lives, the current lives they were living that was somehow empty and unfulfilling. Why do any of us make the decision to follow Jesus? Right? I don't know. So Peter and Andrew and James and John left their nets, we're told in Matthew chapter 4, right in the middle of a workday. They left their nets to follow Jesus.
Would it be for a day or a week or a month or the summer? I doubt they knew. They may have just thought that they were skipping out early from work that day. The only thing we know for sure is that these 4 didn't know nearly as much about Jesus on the day they chose to follow him as they did at the end of their lives. There's a famous story about Nobel prize winning physicist, Max Planck and his his driver. After winning the Nobel Prize for Physics, the the German physicist embarked on a speaking tour. Doctor Planck is the originator of quantum theory, one of the fathers of modern physics. In 1918, he won the Nobel And for the next year or so, he traveled all over Germany giving talks and lectures at universities and town halls. And he took one person with him on all of his travels, an assistant who accompanied him everywhere he went, a driver.
In the car, as they were driving from place to place, the professor would pull out his presentation notes much like my preaching notes and review them in the back seat of the car and the chauffeur would hear him. And then once they were to where they were going, the driver would sit in the back of the auditorium as the celebrated professor gave his presentations until after a while the driver knew the professor's presentation almost as well as doctor Plank did. As doctor Planck was getting close to the end of his speaking tour, the driver said just kinda jokingly one day in the car, you know, I bet I could give this speech almost as well as you do by now. He of course was only joking but the professor thought the idea was rather entertaining and surprisingly he said, I bet you could. We should try it.
So at the next stop on the tour, the Nobel prize winning professor took off his coat and tie and traded them with his chauffeur and the professor wore the chauffeur's cap. The chauffeur stood on stage before the assembled crowd and he delivered a perfect about the presentation but of course the chauffeur couldn't answer it. He wasn't a physicist himself and he didn't know what to do. But thinking quickly on his feet, the driver said, that question is so easy, I'm gonna let my chauffeur answer it. And he pointed to doctor Plank in the chauffeur's cap at the back of the room. Doctor Plank answered the question. The chauffeur on stage said, we're sadly out of time. And they got off stage and out of town as fast as they could.
Discipleship at the beginning is like that. At first, we're just trying to learn to repeat the things we've heard over and over and over again. Love your neighbor. Do unto others. For god so loved the world. Faith, hope and love. Blessed are the peacemakers. For unto you is born this day a savior. Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here. He is risen. We come to church week after week, year after year, hear these things over and over again until we've heard them so many times. We know them inside and out. We can repeat them. We can even share them with an air of authority and a veneer of understanding.
But all it takes is one question from the audience. Right? And the ruse is up. That's what this 48 hour emphasis is about. If we are to grow in our discipleship beyond the level of a driver repeating the lecture notes of the professor, if we're going to develop depth and insight and knowledge and understanding, it takes some time. A few years into following Jesus for himself, Peter, in scripture, gave that famous confession that is the model confession that we ask our baptismal candidates to affirm every time we baptize someone right before we dunk them under the water. Jesus asked Peter very directly one day, who do you say that I am? Peter famously responds, you are the Christ, the son of the living God.
This morning, right before we baptized 5 new believers, I asked every single one of them to affirm that Jesus is the Christ. Peter's faith in the moment in scripture is real, but Peter's just repeating what he's heard. Later in scripture, those of you who are bible scholars in the room will remember that it only takes one question in one tough moment. It's basically the same question repeated. Do you know who Jesus is? And Peter's house of cards comes crashing down. He goes from Jesus is the Christ to I have no idea who you're talking about. But by the end of the new testament, at the end of their lives, Peter and John, those 2 guys from Matthew chapter 4, are writing some of the most important instructions in all of the new testament. By the end of the lives, they're experts.
They're writing out of their own experience, passing on to the next generation the kind of wisdom that only a lifetime of careful discipleship can bring. They're no longer misunderstanding and incomplete and hesitant in their faith. That's the picture of Peter, James and John throughout the gospels. Hesitant, misunderstanding, incomplete, asking for things and about things they don't understand just like we do all the time. That's who they are at first to. But by the end of the new testament, the chauffeurs have become the experts themselves. They've become excellent in their discipleship.
The call to discipleship is a call to excellence. And that's what we see in scripture, disciples who grow toward excellence. Peter and John, sure, but but Paul as well. Paul writes eloquently over and over and over again in his letters about becoming excellent in the faith, James, the brother of Jesus, does too. Because anything less than the pursuit of excellence in our discipleship fails to adequately reflect the character of God. That's why we're called toward excellence. Brad Stolberg, author, columnist, writing in the New York Times last week about the Olympics, says this.
He says, excellence is not perfection. It's a deeply satisfying process of becoming the best person you can be. Excellence is not perfection. It's a deeply satisfying process of becoming the best person you can be. Let's say this differently. Discipleship is not perfection. It's a deeply satisfying process of becoming the best person you can be. Brad Stohlberg continues in his article, you pursue goals that challenge you. You put forth an honest effort. Endure highs, lows and everything in between and gain respect for yourself and others in the process as you pursue that Olympic dream, he's saying. That's life. Isn't it?
That's discipleship. Put forth an honest effort. Endure the highs and lows and everything in between, by the way, and do it together. That's the journey that we're on. Here's my favorite part about that New York Times article about the Olympics. In some instances, Stahlberg writes, excellence also calls for competing as in the Olympic games. A word he says derived from the Latin, com which means together and peterre which means to strive. True excellence, he says, comes in the turn from striving against towards striving together. It's why so many times the first thing you saw on your TVs at the end of a race at the Olympics, 1 on the track or maybe 1 in the pool, the very first thing you saw at the end of a race was competitors embracing one another.
Arms outstretched across the lane lines in the water of the pool or arm in arm on the track while still doubled over from the all out effort of the race. Because excellence in competition isn't found in striving against one another. It's found in striving together and in the camaraderie of the shared effort. The growing call of god in our lives is a call to that. Discipleship is a striving together. This is how Brad Stohlberg ends his article. He says, over the past decade, I've reviewed hundreds of studies and interviewed dozens of elite performers in all kinds of, athletic and professional fields. He says, I found the top indicators of people's lasting success and satisfaction come down to how they answered these 5 questions.
Did they give their pursuit their all? Did they live in alignment with their values? Were they patient and present? Did they embrace their own vulnerability? And did they build meaningful relationships along the way? Those are some great questions as we think about discipleship this morning. As as we seek to move beyond the chauffeur who has memorized the professor's speech. We are here to strive together. To give the pursuit of discipleship our all. To live together in alignment with our shared values, to be patient and present in the process. 48 hours. Right?
To embrace our own vulnerability and to build meaningful relationships along the way. And all of us, by the way, on this journey of discipleship are just beginners. Absolute neophytes. Chauffeurs masquerading as professors. Barely scratching the surface on the journey. True excellence in discipleship comes in the turn from striving against towards striving together. And as we strive together, as we experience the growing call of God together as the people of Central Baptist Church, all the power all the power in our striving is in the sharing.
In me being here with you and in you being here with me, can you imagine one person striving alone at the Olympics with no one to embrace at the end of the 100 meters? No one to reach out to across the lane lines in the pool. All the power. all the power is in the sharing. The real magic of our faith happens when we do it together. Let's pray together. Heavenly father, we're grateful for your presence in our lives, your presence in this room. We're grateful for your presence in this congregation. As we travel on this journey of discipleship together, remind us that you are present with us, knitting us together into relationship that makes all the difference in our Teach us to be present to one another in all the ways you call us to be. We offer our whole selves to you in Jesus name.
Amen. Bow with me please for benediction. Depart now in peace and as as you go, may the god who makes all things holy and whole make you holy and whole, Put you together spirit, soul, and body, and keep you fit for the coming of our master, Jesus Christ. In whose name we pray. Amen.
