Discipleship Through Imitation

AI Summary

In this Sermon, Mark Oshman explores the themes of joy, discipleship, and the importance of community as presented in the Book of Philippians. He emphasizes the significance of Timothy and Epaphroditus as examples of genuine concern and service, and discusses the concept of imitation in the Christian faith. Oshman also introduces the idea of 'ultra learning' in the context of spiritual growth, encouraging listeners to actively engage in their discipleship journey and honor those who exemplify Christ-like qualities.

AI Transcript

Good morning. It's good to see you all here. You all it's good to be back. I've been gone for a while. ⁓ It's good to be back in the book of Philippians. And so if you're just joining us, we're trying to work our way through it this summer. took about a five or six week break. So we'll jump back in. So we're in Philippians chapter two. We'll pick it up in verse 19. I'll read and pray and we'll continue from there. So as I read, just listen carefully. This is God's word. Philippians 2 19.

I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon so that I too may be cheered by news of you. For I have no one like him who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare, for they all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. But you know Timothy's proven worth, how as a son with a father he has served with me in the gospel. I hope therefore to send him just as soon as I see how it will go with me, and I trust in the Lord that surely I myself will come also.

I thought it necessary to send to you a papyriditis, my brother and fellow worker and fellow soldier and your messenger and minister to my need. For he has been longing for you all and has been distressed because you heard that he was ill. Indeed he was ill near to death, but God had mercy on him and not only on him, but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow. I am the more eager to send him therefore that you may rejoice at seeing him again.

and that I may be less anxious. So receive him in the Lord with all joy and honor such men. For he nearly died for the work of Christ, risking his life to complete what was lacking in your service to me. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let's pray. Father, we come to you now in the name of your Son and the power of your Spirit. We're grateful for gathering us, sustaining us, and now teaching us.

So we know not we pray that you would teach us what we are not. You'd make us what we have not you to give us. We pray in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. As I said at the beginning of the summer we began the series through the Book of Philippians. It's entitled Enjoy Jesus and that's purposeful because us as a church we exist to enjoy Jesus and make disciples. It's the key to the Christian life joy. And in these four short.

chapters, Paul puts before us joy time and time again. it's interesting because we live in a world that says joy is you accomplish your goals. You get the thing. You have success. You get everything going well for you. But Paul pushes back against that narrative and says, no, joy is separate from all that. In fact, all of that can be going very poorly in your life and you can still have joy. And he writes from a Roman prison sale ⁓ saying just that, not knowing if he's going to live to the next day.

He is incredibly joyful. So he's got something for us. And in this four short chapters, there's some bangers. There's like some really good nuggets that you can wrap your life around. can get the tattoo of these verses. Like I saw one out in the wild this last week from the book of Philippians. ⁓ because there's just some good stuff like, you know, 121. For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.

That's awesome right. He'll go on and say things like ⁓ well let me see if I see any other examples. ⁓ Yeah. Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ. So what does it look like to live a life worthy of the good news in our lives. And he begins to unpack that and he says do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit but in humility consider others more significant than yourselves. Like that's awesome.

What does that look like? How do we actually do that? Well, he says, well, look to Jesus who being in very nature, God did not consider equality with God grounds for grasping. He emptied himself and became a servant. He humbled himself even to the point of death. So we're to look to Jesus. I mean, just great stuff. Last time we saw in chapter two earlier, he says, work out your own salvation with.

fear and trembling for it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. This is amazing. We're to work out our salvation, not work for our salvation or work up our salvation, but what God has put in us in our salvation to work it out into our lives. Let it breathe. Let it impact our life and those around us, which is awesome. And again, it's one thing to know that, but,

lived that, that's a whole different thing. And then in chapter three and four, you're going to see even more very memorable verses. like I said, I saw this tattoo in chapter three, right? On this guy's, he had a huge arm. He had livings 314. I could do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And I'm like, I don't think that means what you think it means, but hey, I get it. That's a great verse. Every athlete loves that verse.

But you get it. So there's just some memorable things. And I've encouraged you to memorize this short four chapter book. It takes about 20 minutes if you do it ⁓ from memory. many of you are doing that. And I want to give a shout out to Marshall McBride. He's the first one to do it. Marshall, raise your hand, Marshall. Let's give it up. He's like, that's the last thing he wants is to be pointed to. ⁓

He sent me the voice memo of him reciting it from memory. I loved it. There was points where you were singing in it. It was awesome. ⁓ But I'll let you recite that some other time, unless you want to do it. No, you're good. Okay. But yeah, it's a very memorable, memorable passage. You know what's not memorable about the Book of Philippians, The passage we just read.

Like three minutes ago, if I was to be like, hey, in your own words, can you recite that for me? Like, oh, ah, there's something about Timothy and a path or something. I don't know. Nobody's favorite verse is in this passage. No one's getting this tattoo. It says, well, why are we even in it? Why are we looking at it? Is it a throwaway passage?

It seems on the surface that Paul is interjecting in the middle of his book of joy, a travel log. Hey, this guy's gonna go here, this guy's gonna go here, but don't worry, in chapter three, we're gonna get back in it. Is it just a throwaway passage? Well, two things convict me that it's not. In fact, I think God has something for you and for me and for us in this passage. The first one is just the general truth that,

Paul writes to Timothy, 2 Timothy 3, 16, all scriptures God breathed and useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and training in righteousness. So there's something here, but some scripture is more useful than others at different times. So do we still need this passage? Many would skip over this passage. Well, I think this passage, this little interlude that Paul interjects, he does it on purpose. There's a context for this passage. Paul, ⁓

Well, I don't want to get ahead of myself. So some of you know that I was we were traveling over the last several weeks, had some work to do in Croatia. We were doing a evangelistic English camp and I got to preach there and we we do that. We've done that for the last couple of summers now. And but it's also when we go there, we're like, should we add anything on? Should we do anything fun? And just so happens that this month I had kind of one of those.

I guess unfortunate milestone birthdays. I turned 50 this month, okay? Thank you. I'm getting mail from ARP and I'm gonna get, that's amazing when you get that mail. You're like, what? No, I don't qualify for discounts, but I do like a good lunch buffet. But, so I don't know, maybe it's appropriate. So I turned 50 and in turning 50 Jen asked me, she said, it's a big birthday. What do you wanna do for your birthday?

was like, we should do some. We're going to Croatia anyway. I wonder if there's, we could add some stuff on to the front and back. And she's like, okay, well, what do you want to do? And I said, you know, I've been trying to play tennis the last several years, but I've kind of plateaued in my skill level, which is just maybe at suck. That's where my skill level is. And so I was like, I wonder if there's like an adult tennis camp for a week in Croatia somewhere.

And every rolls her eyes, she's like, oh gosh, that's the most Mark Osman thing ever. But I was like, let me ask my friend, Chad GPT. And I was like, Chad, I'm going to be in Croatia. I need to find an adult tennis camp this week. Sure enough, found it. There's an Austrian company that was like, yeah, here's 10 options. They're at this all-inclusive resort on the island of Brac and your family can enjoy the resort and the beach. And you can go for the week.

each day for about three or four hours and play tennis. I was like, awesome, let's do it. ⁓ It was great, by the way. ⁓ It's cheaper to go there than to go to Florida, I promise you that. ⁓ And so we did and Jennifer was a sport, she did it as well. Didn't love it like I loved it, but ⁓ we enjoyed that. Then we went and did the evangelistic camp and the ministry, but there was a few more days that we had and she said, well, what else do you want to do? And I said, well,

I've been kind of on this art and architecture kick, where I just, there's some very specific pieces of art that I wanna look at, because I've been reading some things about them, and then that there's some architecture ⁓ in and around Paris that I'd like to go to, and so let's do that. So we flew to Paris and had a few days there, and my daughters love Paris, and so ⁓ that's whole different thing. ⁓ Not the art and architecture, they love the shopping, but. ⁓

We were on national French news twice for radically different reasons. I've never been on the news, but now I'm on the French news twice. ⁓ First was because there was a massive heat wave in Paris that week and ⁓ we were melting on the side of the street and the reporter and camera person came up to us and they're like, said something to us in French. We're like, sorry, we're Americans. They're like, ⁓ great, you're Americans.

We'd like to talk to you about the heat wave. What do you have to say? And we're like, it's hot. And they're like, well, how do you deal with it? What would you do in your country? So we would turn on the AC. It's a wonderful invention. You should bring it to the continent here. They don't have it. And so that made the French news. Americans want AC. And you'll hear about the other reason we made it on the news later in the message.

Yeah, I have no idea where I was going with all that. yeah, I do. Okay, so during this whole time, great trip, great trip. I gave you my own travel log, just like Paul. But during this time, I'm reading this book, it's just secular book, it's called Ultra Learning by a guy named Scott Young. And he poses the question, is it possible, well, he says it is, it's possible for humans to learn very difficult things and master them.

in a very short amount of time. Things that you would think take a long, long time, you can do it. If you have the right strategies, principles, commitment levels, you could grow very quickly in these things. So he kind of first made a name for himself when he realized that MIT puts all of their, most of their courses online. And so they have a ⁓ four year computer science degree at MIT. This is high level, high level education in our country, but they have it online. And so,

It's a four year degree. And so he took a year, went through it all, passed all their stuff. So in one year on his own, he passed all the requirements for the four year MIT degree. So that kind of got some, so he's like, well, what about other areas? Is ultra learning possible in other areas? And so he got a friend, convinced him, hey, we're gonna travel to the world.

For one year we're gonna go to four different places and learn four different languages that we do not know at all And we're gonna learn them to profis proficiency There's different levels and ways to tell how fluent you are But we're gonna reach these high high levels of fluency and when we go the only requirement is as soon as we land Zero English we can't talk to anyone in English. We can't talk to each other It's gonna be a merchant experience and so they go to Spain for three months and they learn Spanish and crush it

That's that's kind of the easy entry. If you're an English speaker, then they go to Brazil and learn Portuguese in three months. Crush it. Then they fly to China and learn Mandarin Chinese in three months. They they get to their proficiency level, not quite as good as they did before. And then they spend their last three months in Korea and learn Korean radically different. And they show, yeah, it is possible with the right strategy, the right commitment, the right principles to

master these subjects. And the book has all these cool stories about different like chess masters and people that go on Jeopardy and people that win ⁓ Scrabble competitions. One guy won a Scrabble competition in French even though he knew no French. ⁓ think about that for a moment. He was able to do it. But there's all these things. But then there's ⁓ thing going on in my head ⁓ as I'm reading this. I'm like okay. So is it possible?

as a disciple of Jesus and disciple means a follower, a student, if we're learning is it possible to apply ultra learning to our discipleship? Is it desirable? Should we do it? And I began to think about that. we know it's possible because we have some really good examples. Like, for example, new believers, they often are ultra learners. I I experienced this when I was 18 and I came to faith. Like you just

You're reading the word for the first time, you're soaking it all and drinking from a fire hose. You're in it and you grow very quickly in a short amount of time. And so we've seen it there. There are other ways that we grow very quickly as disciples sometimes. And if we were to go around the room and share our stories, one of the common threads would be crisis and suffering. There was a crisis in my life, in my health, in my relationships or finances or whatever. And in that moment,

God met me and my faith grew deeper quickly in that moment. This is a common way that we grow fast as disciples. And so it is theoretically possible. But then the question is, what about in that everyday ordinary life? Like summer 2025, Parker, Colorado, is it possible to become an ultra learner? To grow intentionally and quickly in our faith in the everyday ordinary life.

Then I thought about ⁓ the New Testament will give these like commands like, hey, make this a priority. the end, what matters is how much you know and reflect Jesus and help others to do the same. And so there's this intensity to some of the New Testament passages about taking your discipleship seriously. So, for example, in Second Timothy one, chapter versus five and six, it says this. Timothy writes on the screen.

Make every effort. So, whatever should you make? Everyone. Like, be an old children. Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self-control and self-control with steadfastness and steadfastness with godliness and godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing,

They keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But there's this like press on stack grow learn like none of us are there yet. We're all in process but there should be this forward momentum. Paul will write to Timothy in first Timothy four seven. Train yourselves. Training means like actually do some intentional things. Train yourself.

in godliness. then I thought, so it is possible, it is encouraged. And then I realized in the book Ultra Learning there is one principle that is very much present in our passage and for the Christian life. And it is the principle of imitation. To see others that are maybe further down the road in different areas than you, to watch their lives and say, I'll do the same.

See the Apostle Paul knows that to live a life worthy of the gospel, yes, we look to Jesus who is the preeminent example, but he also knows that you and I need flesh and bone, tangible and yet imperfect examples of people who are pressing hard after the Lord. And so in this passage, Paul wants us to consider imitation. And imitation is everywhere. Almost everything that you've learned in life,

You've learned through imitation. You learned to talk because you saw other humans moving their mouths and making noises and you imitated them. And eventually you made the right noises. You learned to walk the same way. Every ⁓ electrician learns as an apprentice, as an electrician. Businessmen learn from businessmen, doctors from doctors. Athletes learn from other athletes. Artists learn from other artists.

I in this book, ⁓ he points to van Gogh. And we had a day at the beginning in Amsterdam. So we went to the van Gogh Museum and van Gogh has this very distinctive style. You can kind of picture his colors and all that stuff that he produced. And though he only sold one painting in his lifetime, four times after his life, four times his paintings have been sold for the highest price of any painting in history. But van Gogh...

Van Gogh was an imitator before he was Van Gogh. That's how he learned. His favorite artist was a guy named Jean-Francois Millet, who painted this painting called The Sower. Van Gogh loved the painting. So Van Gogh got a copy of the painting, put it in his studio, and he just studied it, studied it. He repainted The Sower hundreds of times, just replicating it, learning the strokes, learning the techniques.

learning all that so that after mastering the sower, he was then able to create his own works. I this is imitation. Imitation helps us go further, faster in all areas of our life. This is true spiritually as well, right? Like, how do you learn to pray? Like no one becomes a believer, shows up at the prayer meeting and be like, I got this guys, let me show you how to do it. Now you learn by observing, watching, imitating.

Same thing with worship, right? Like if we were a charismatic church, you would probably be more charismatic. Just because you'd look around, you'd be like, ⁓ we dance, we wave banners, we run around. Like that's what you would do. But no, instead you come in here and you're like, okay, we put our hands in our pockets and we worship.

That's fine too. You know in the Czech Republic when we'd go to church you'd sit down and worship. You're like okay you know but we observe. That's that's all I'm trying to say. So imitation is a is a powerful tool that God uses for our discipleship. Not just ours but for others who imitate us as well. And this is why Paul in the middle of this passage where he's like hey live a life worthy of the gospel. Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

He says, now look at these two guys. Here's two examples of what I'm talking about. Flesh and bone, people that you know that are imitating Jesus. Look at verse 19 again. says, hope in the Lord to send Timothy to you soon so that I too may be cheered by news of you for I have no one like him who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare. Paul has written, do not look to your own interest but

to the interest of others. And now he puts before them, Timothy, here's someone that does that. Here's what a heart transformed by the gospel. Here's what it looks like when you just see it in front of you. He is genuinely concerned for your welfare. And that is transformational, that is ⁓ inspirational, but that's spirit given, right? Because the natural way, he shows what the natural way is in verse 21.

For they all seek their own interests not the interests of Jesus Christ. It's natural for us to live most of our lives seeking our own interests. That's our default posture. It takes the spirit to say actually I'm going to lift other people above myself and he says Timothy is someone who does that. So look at his life. Look how he loves. says verse 22 you know Timothy's proven worth. He has a track record.

He has some history. You know his history. You've seen him. does. He's not just serving when all eyes are on him. He's a behind the scenes guy. But you know he is constantly laying down his life for the church. That's the spirit in him. says you know his proven worth how as a son with a father he has served with me in the gospel. I hope therefore to send him just as soon as I see how it will go with me and I trust in the Lord.

that shortly I myself will come also." So I said we were on the French news twice. Well, the last day that we were in Paris, ⁓ one cathedral I wanted to go see was Sacre-Cœur, which is like on this hill looking above the city. And we paid to climb the 310 steps up to the top to get a 360 degree view. And as we walked around, we looked kind of northeast and off in the distance, we saw a fire.

You know, just the smoke going up and didn't think much of it. Didn't know that that would be very significant in our lives in just a matter of a few hours because we came down from soccer core, walked to the garden or the main train station, got in there, got our bags. And also we realized, man, it's very crowded in here. Like it's packed. What's going on? And everyone's just staring up at the, the departure board, but, no one's moving and

Then all of sudden, I'm there's no trains in the tracks. Like, where's the trains? And after a while we find out, oh, we hear there was a fire on the tracks. The tracks are destroyed. No trains are coming or going. So, uh-oh, we need to take the high-speed 200 mile per hour train from here to Amsterdam. At 200 miles per hour, it's about three hours, but we need to get to Amsterdam.

to catch our flight back home to America the next morning. And so we're like, do we do? I'm getting nervous. I'm like, okay, we got to make a plan. I don't care if we have to drive the nine hours. Let me go rent a car. I go down there. No one's there, just a sign. All the cars are gone. So they shut down for the day. I'm like, okay. ⁓ Well, maybe they'll fix the train tracks and maybe we'll still go and...

just keeps going delayed, delayed, delayed, delayed. I'm like, okay, now I don't even have a place for my family to stay in Paris. And I don't know how we're gonna get anywhere. I'm like, okay, what if we flew? What if we went and flew from Paris to Amsterdam or Paris even to America? And so I looked that up, but lo and behold, French people are doing French things and they're on strike, so they're not flying. So like, oh my gosh, okay. So I can't fly.

don't have a place to stay. I have to get to Amsterdam or it's going to be like eight thousand dollars for me to try to make my way back. I don't know what to do. We're just praying about like please Lord just let the train start again. And so now it's about 10 10 10 o'clock at night. And Jennifer just text one of our friends. They were members of our church when we were passed when I was a pastor in Okinawa Japan military. They now work for NATO. And so

She just texts her says, hey, Martha, what are you hearing on the news about this? And she looks up, gets back, she's like, it doesn't look good. But then she writes, but don't worry, we'll get you there one way or another. Like, what are you talking about? She said, hey, if the train comes, obviously get on that. It's a three hour, 200 mile per hour bullet train, but I'm coming to get you. Now, Martha suffers from chronic. ⁓

Yeah, just fatigue and illness. So it's 10 o'clock at night. She's like, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to drive. She lives two and a half hours away in Little France. So thank Pueblo, Colorado. I'm going to drive at 10 o'clock at night. I'm going to come get you. Then I'm going to drive back to my house. My husband's going to wake up and then he's going to drive the equivalent down to Santa Fe, New Mexico to get you to Amsterdam on time. And so.

We're just like blown away by this. go and get some hamburgers. I come back out and there again, Jennifer's being interviewed by the French news. And they're like, how do you feel about this as American? Well, we don't feel good. What are you going to do? We don't know. Did they tell you anything? Told us nothing. And so that was the news. Americans complaining again, but the French love complaining. So it's all good. And so.

We wait, we wait. Now we're at the train station at 1230 in the morning, which by the way, any train station in Europe at 1230 in the morning is the sketchiest place in the world at that moment. Like everyone's tweaking out and like, man, I gotta go. And so our friend Martha arrives and we are crammed in this like car with all our bags laying on top of each other. We've got a long journey ahead of us and she drives us there. Then her husband drives through the night like.

giving up all their sleep, getting us to the airport in just the right amount of time. And then he's got to drive back home. They gave up their whole sleep. we're just blown away with their love for us. And then I was just thinking, man, would I have done that? I thought, give up that? Like, I would have been like, probably not. Like, it probably wouldn't have crossed my mind. But you know what? It would now. I have the example.

our friends who are like, will consider you more important than myself. Imitation makes us more like Jesus. That's why Paul puts before them Timothy and now Epaphroditus in verse 25. He says, I thought it necessary to send you Epaphroditus. I love this. Epaphroditus, his name comes from the Greek goddess Aphrodite. So here's someone who comes from

a Gentile from a pagan background who's been radically transformed by the gospel of grace. And look at how Paul describes him. Epaphroditus, my brother. For a Jew of Jews of the tribe of Benjamin, the apostle Paul, to say Epaphroditus, he's my brother. That's what the gospel does. It makes us family members, right? And family members,

love one another. He says he's my brother, he's a fellow worker. I mean you're the apostle Paul, but Paul's like no we're all in this together. Yeah I have my role, but Epaphroditus has his role. He works and he's a fellow soldier. He understands duty and sacrifice and honor and commitment to the mission. Look at Epaphroditus. You want to see someone transformed by the gospel? See his life.

model your life after his. says, your messenger and minister to my need. Epaphroditus had been sent by the church at Philippi to travel by foot a thousand miles to Rome to give this gift from that church to Paul. Verse 26, for he has been longing for you all. This is like Timothy. He is genuinely concerned for you. This is what it looks like to have the spirit. Genuinely concerned. He's

longing for you all. Why? Because you heard that he was ill. This is amazing, right? Papyridias gets very, very sick. In fact, we saw, almost dies. And he knows that word has gotten back to his home church. And he's like genuinely concerned. I don't know about you, but when I'm sick, I'm genuinely concerned about myself. And that's about as far as it goes, right? And you know,

If my wife gets sick, I'm concerned for her and Jennifer's concerned for me. But that usually lasts for about 24 hours. And then it's like, you got to get up. Like you got to get over this. We don't have time for this, right? But he's genuinely concerned. Like when I'm sick, I'm not like, gosh, I wonder what the people at Redemption Park are going to think. I'm sick. No. But he is. He's been restored. so Paul says, indeed, he was ill near to death. So it is bad bad.

God had mercy on him and not only on him but on me also lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow. I am the more eager to send him therefore that you may rejoice at seeing him again and that I may be less anxious that I may be less anxious. Well Paul will go on and put this principle of imitation before them again in chapter three verse 17 Paul says brothers and sisters join in imitating

me and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us as followers of Jesus on some level though not perfectly all of us should be able to say to one another hey as I follow Jesus do what I do I mean that sounds bold but but but here's the deal we're going to see in a few moments many of us have gone further down different roads of discipleship than others and that's okay

We can help others follow us and vice versa. Imitate me. In verse 29 it says, well let me not get ahead of myself. I'll end with that. So let me ask you a couple questions. Do you plan on being alive in five years? I mean that's not guaranteed for any of us, but most of us would say, I think. I think I'll be alive in five years. Great, I hope you are.

So then the second question is, what's your plan? What's your plan to grow as a disciple and to help others grow as disciples? We've already seen it. You should have a plan. Maybe you have a plan. This is what I'm gonna do. This is how I'm gonna help others do it as well. If you have a plan, awesome. This isn't for you. But if you don't have a plan, maybe you're just like, well, I just assume it'll kind of happen. And maybe it will.

But let me just encourage you to have a plan. If you don't have a plan, try our plan. And our plan involves what I'll call some structured relationships. And we get this in so many other areas of our lives. We enter it into structured relationships for our growth. for example, if you have some trauma from your past, you might go into a structured relationship for a time with a therapist to kind of walk you through that thing. That's good. If you have some...

issues in your marriage, you might see a marriage counselor. If you have some issues financially, you might go and enter into a structured relationship with a financial advisor. If you want to get, if you want your kids or yourself to get better like me, I entered into a structured relationship with some tennis coaches to get better, to imitate them. Okay, so we see this in all. The same is true spiritually as well. We've got several ways.

that we invite you to lay down the tracks for you to grow as a disciple and help others grow as disciples. The first one is our gospel communities. ⁓ next month a lot of our gospel these are our small groups. They're intentionally simple. We gather in someone's home. We get to know each other. We open the word and kind of review the sermon and you can talk to each other about how bad my sermon was whatever.

That's not the point. You get to pray for one another, but really it's a context to get to be in each other's lives. You get to see some people love Jesus in ways that you aren't quite there yet and you imitate them. So if you haven't done a gospel community, let me just encourage you. Try it. It's twice a month. Just commit yourself to it. Commit yourself to it for the next year and see if you don't grow as a disciple and help others do that.

And then there's other ways, too. For example, our men's ministry on Sunday nights is going to be kicking up again as well. The life together where where these men just do life together. And I don't say this lightly in twenty five years of ministry, there is something significant happening among the men at Redemption Parker, where there's confession of sin, there's the discipleship, there's there's guys sharing burdens and there is growth that is happening here that

that is a work of the Spirit and evidence of grace. And if you haven't been a part of it, let's just invite you to that. They'll welcome you with open arms. A great way to do that is to sign up today for the men's retreat that's coming up. And again, you're like, I don't know anyone, so many guys, this is their entryway into just life together with other men at the men's retreat. You will be welcomed. You should go to this. And the same is true for

for women there there's lots of stuff coming up on the calendar there's going to be a ⁓ end of summer party. ⁓ That's one way to get to know women on August 16th there's going to be various studies and groups that will meet throughout the fall. There's also going to be a women's retreat at the same place where the men are going and so you can check that all out. This is true for our youth. ⁓ The youth volunteers do awesome and Pastor Ryan one of our elders is going to pour into our youth and youth middle schoolers high schoolers I mean.

On so many different levels, this is true. If you want to really catalyze your faith, go on our Worldview Missions Immersion Trip to Armenia and see what God is doing among the nations. You'll spend a week with other people. So talk to ⁓ Brad Dugas about that. They're going in October, so time to go. But all that to say is that there's opportunities to imitate one another. But we aren't just to imitate one another. In verse 29, Paul concludes it this way.

So receive Epaphroditus and Timothy in the Lord with all joy and honor such men and women. Honor them. says be actively looking at how different people follow Jesus. And when you see it, encourage them. Hey, here's what I see in you. When I think of patience, you have patience. When I think of

love for neighbors and the nations. This is what I see in you. And so on the back of your bulletin, if you didn't get one, get one on the way out. I listed all these different virtues and roles and responsibilities that ⁓ we all could grow in. And as I wrote down each one of these things like hospitality, generosity, gratitude, simplicity, mercy, gentleness, self-control, or things like care for widows, orphans, the poor, the oppressed, encouragement, honor.

love for the as I wrote down each one of them. God just. Encouraged me deeply because he brought different people in this faith family to my mind like this person does that well that person's excelling in that these people open like it was it was a great encouragement to me. So as you look through these things if there's any names that come to mind maybe maybe just write them down and then do what Paul says honor them.

Send him a text or say, Hey, I just want to know when I think of joy, I thought of you. Because you have joy when I think of integrity, I thought of you when I when I think of a servant heart, I thought of you. That will tremendously encourage that person. But also it'll be reminder. Hey, you should probably spend some more time with that person or this person or that person, because none of us have arrived, but all of us have something to offer. Amen.

Amen. Let me pray for us to that end.