Fixed vs. Growth Mindset - 06.14.26 - Kyle Morris

The sermon uses the contrast between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset to show that, with Jesus, no person, situation, relationship, sin pattern, or mission field is beyond transformation. In Acts 9, Saul’s story moves from violent opposition to bold witness, reminding us that what looks final to us is never final to God. The message highlights how Saul’s preparation, opposition, and eventual acceptance through Barnabas all point to the power of the Gospel to change anyone and anything. Peter’s healing of Aeneas and the raising of Tabitha further show that Jesus breaks into situations that seem completely fixed, bringing healing, life, and faith. The sermon centers on Acts 9:31, calling Revive to be a church that walks in both the fear of the Lord and the comfort of the Holy Spirit, pursuing holiness while encouraging and championing one another. In the end, the invitation is to reject fixed mindsets, believe Jesus is still saving, healing, restoring, and transforming, and come alongside someone this week with the encouragement of the Spirit. 

Find out more about us at revivearvada.org

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Students at the Colorado School of Minds and just really have given their lives to this ministry. Yeah. And so I just wanted to take a moment to introduce them and let them share first and foremost just a little bit about what you're doing right now and maybe some of the impact that you see God doing in the midst of it.

SPEAKER_02 0:18

Yeah, before I answer your question of what we do, I'll give a little bit of context. So I want you all to imagine just for a moment, what would your life be like if you never met a follower of Jesus and never had a chance to hear the gospel? I don't even like to think about it for a couple of seconds, but this is the experience of about 300 3.5 billion people all over the world right now. They have the same questions and desires that we do, longing for a relationship with God, but they don't have access to the good news of what he has done for them. But God's desire is that all will be saved. And so he's brought a million international students to the United States and they're coming from these parts of the world that have the least access to the good news of Jesus' love. About 50% of world leaders today were international students. But unfortunately, about 75% of international students coming to the United States never even get the opportunity to set foot in an American home. And it's not because they don't want to, but we have the opportunity here to change that, to show and share the love of Jesus with our international friends. So with global friends, we meet the physical, social, emotional, and spiritual needs of international students while they're here in the United States, and we equip them for the rest of their lives to make an impact.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Talk a little bit about some of your own experience with international students and what you see God doing in the midst of that.

unknown 2:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:11

We see students coming here to the United States. Oftentimes God is already working in their lives and they're saying, please show me who Jesus is. I need to know who he is. We have students who are coming here, they will say, you know, I even grew up going to church from where I come from, but I never heard about what Jesus did for me. And I was a slave. But now I'm his friend. They come here and they say, I I didn't come here for a PhD. God brought me here so I could hear this message and bring it back to my home country.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

They've never heard of him. But this good news is not just good news to those who don't know him. It's good news to those of us who already believe. And we've had the opportunity to uh build this relationship with a student from a very unreachable place, uh just through simple things getting together, sharing a meal together, uh playing board games, whatever. And this student um he began sharing about his life and his struggles and how he's going to all these different churches and he's volunteering here and he's volunteering there, and he's just tired, he's trying to keep up on his PhD work at the same time. And he says, I feel like God is just mad at me because I'm doing all these things, but I keep messing up. And I look at him and I say, Do you know how God sees you right now? He looks at you and he sees the righteousness of Christ. And that's not because you're volunteering, that's not because you're working hard at all these things. It's because of what Jesus did for you. And he says, I really needed to hear that. I think I needed to hear that today. And so yeah, this this news that's good for the unbeliever, it's good for the believer too.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

That's good. We have we have an opportunity as Revived Church to come alongside the work that you guys are doing uh with this ministry endeavor uh to open up homes and to invite international students to dinner or whatnot. Can you share a little bit about the opportunity, how people can get involved?

unknown 4:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:23

We're starting something called the Global Families Initiative, and you can be part of it. Whether you are single, married, low income, high income, kids, no kids, um you can be part of this. So we will match an international student who wants to be connected to an American friend, to you. And our only ask is so simple. Reach out to them once a month to spend time with them. You can invite them into what you already do. So maybe it's having dinner at your house or going grocery shopping or taking a hike, going and getting coffee, you name it. You can come up with even better ideas. And so our only ask is that you cultivate a friendship with an international student. Your life will change for the better, and the student's life will also be impacted.

SPEAKER_00 5:11

Well, that's awesome. We appreciate the work that you guys do and also the invitation to join you. So, Revive, let's pray uh for Will and Ingrid, but also this opportunity that we have as a church. Father, we thank you so much for the work that you're doing through Will and Ingrid. And it is amazing each week uh to see um how you are moving in and through them and how you're just reaching people uh with your love. And I just pray for Revive Church. God, would you show us and show our people here what it looks like to come alongside Will and Ingrid to get involved and to here on U.S. soil be able to touch the lives of people who will likely at some point leave and return to places. And God, the power of them being able to leave here and take the gospel uh to the ends of the earth, Lord, is just uh it's amazing to think about. And so we just pray for uh friendships to form and uh bonds to be made and for there just to be awesome times of fellowship and community. In Jesus' name. Amen. Oh, thank you, Jack. Anyone have one of these rulers at home? Or anyone you had one of these rulers at home? Uh we have seven kids who are all, well, maybe not the youngest yet. We have six kids right now who are actively tracking their growth. And so uh on their birthday, particularly, they come down the stairs and they assume when they're young that when they have a birthday that they're automatically gonna grow. And so Erica's a little bit older than me, so on her birthday, they would assume that she's gonna come down the stairs, and this year she's gonna be taller than me. Because if you're older than someone, you're definitely taller than them, right? Every few months, one of my kiddos comes down the stairs and they step up to the ruler, chin really high, maybe a little bit of tippy toes, just hoping that they have grown. Um, and they have this mindset that every time they do this, they're gonna move the pencil mark. And the pencil mark with this many kids is starting to get busy up here. Uh, there's not too many other places to write. Um, for me, I don't stand by the ruler anymore wondering if I've grown. Like I've reached my maximum height, which is six feet tall. Maybe if I have a really generous, kind of thick soled shoe, maybe six one. Uh, but my height is pretty much fixed at this point. In fact, from what I've heard, my height at some point will begin to go the other direction. But my kids are different. My kids, each one of them expect growth. And if you've seen my oldest son lately, you know that dude is growing. I mean, we are looking eye to eye at this point. He's back on the camera. He is growing, his shoe size is growing, my grocery bill is growing. My son's baseball coaches, they they keep telling them that they need to eat more. And I'm like, I don't think that that is humanly possible. I don't think that they can eat more, and to be honest, I'm not sure that I can afford to feed them more than what I'm already feeding them. But that's the season they're in. My kids are in this season where they are growing and they expect to grow every time they step up to the ruler. They are looking for the evidence that change is happening. That's a simple way of thinking about the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. My wife introduced me to this terminology a few years ago. I think I've shared it with you before, but as a reminder, a fixed mindset says things like this it is what it is. This is who I am, this is who they are, this is how it will always be, this is how this person will always be. But a growth mindset says that change is possible. Growth is possible, transformation is possible. Here's what a fixed mindset can look like when it's applied to the relationships in our lives or situations. With someone's past, we might say something like, They've always been that way, they'll never change, I know what they did, and so I can never see them any differently. This is actually what people were tempted to do with Saul. They knew his past so clearly that they struggled to believe that he had actually been transformed. We can look at ourselves with a fixed mindset. I'll always struggle with this, I've always been an anxious person, I'll always be an anxious person, my mom is anxious, her mom was anxious, of course I'm gonna be anxious. I'll never be spiritually mature, I'll never be the kind of person that God could use. You see, sometimes we're even confident in a growth mindset for someone else, but not for ourselves. We do this with sin patterns and addictions. This is just who I am. I've tried to quit smoking before and it didn't work, so I'm not gonna try again. I'll never be free from this or that. Now, a fixed mindset actually can sound authentic, but underneath, here's what it is it's actually unbelief in Jesus that He can change us. Now, when it comes to our height, a fixed mindset is appropriate. At some point, your height is your height. But when it comes to the power of God in our lives and the power and the transforming of grace in the lives of others, we should never settle into a fixed mindset. And so this morning we're gonna talk about this text in Acts chapter 9, and we're gonna talk about the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset, and we're gonna step into this passage full of faith. Will you join me in stepping into this passage full of faith? Because there are many of us in this room, we live with this fixed mindset. We live with a pessimistic attitude that always sees the glass half empty. And I think what God wants to do with us in this moment is he wants us to lift our chin and to look up and to believe finally that things can be different, that Jesus can break into any situation and turn it around. Let's pray. Father, this morning, as we open up your word, uh my words uh without your spirit are just meaningless and powerless. But Holy Spirit, where you speak, God, would we be quick to obey? Would we be quick to believe? Would we be quick to have faith that you are the God of turnaround in our lives, but also in the lives of others? And so this morning, it might be that we need to give ourselves compassion. It might need be that we need to give others in our life compassion and grace to believe that you are working. That maybe we can't see it on a day-to-day basis, but you are working. We thank you for your word, Lord. We pray that this morning it wouldn't return empty or void. We thank you that it promises to produce something in our lives. Would we be people of wisdom who don't just know your word, but would obey your word? For that is where true wisdom begins. In Jesus' name. Amen. If you have a Bible, I want to invite you to turn to Acts chapter 9. If we've learned anything so far in the book of Acts, I hope that we have learned that with Jesus Christ nothing is impossible. People, problems, relationships, Jesus can turn anything and anyone around. Here's what I want to do this morning. We're gonna look at the rest of Acts chapter 9, and I want us to see the growth mindset that pervades this chapter. And in the middle of this chapter, where there is this growth mindset to believe that Jesus can turn anything and everyone around, there's also an example within this chapter of a fixed mindset. And so this morning we're gonna look at this chapter, and the point of this chapter is not to look at the miracles at the end and to think that those kind of miracles or normative for today. God is the God of miracles, he can do anything he wants, but that's not the point of what we're going to be talking about today. The point of what we're gonna talk about today is that Jesus can change anyone and anything. Acts chapter 9, we're gonna begin in verse 19. For some days he, being Saul, was with the disciples at Damascus, and immediately he proclaimed Jesus in the synagogue, saying, He is the Son of God. And all who heard him were amazed and said, Is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem of those who called upon his name? And has he not come here for this purpose, to bring them bound before the chief priests? But Saul increased all the more in strength and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ. When many days had passed, the Jews plotted to kill him, but their plot became known to Saul. They were watching the gates day and night in order to kill him. But his disciples took him by night and let him down through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a basket. And when he had come to Jerusalem, he attempted to join the disciples, and they were all afraid of him, for they did not believe that he was a disciple. But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles, and declared to them how on the road he had seen the Lord who spoke to him, and at how Damascus he had preached boldly in the name of Jesus. So he went in and out among them at Jerusalem, preaching boldly the name of the Lord, and he spoke and disputed against the Hellenists, but they were seeking to kill him. And when the brothers learned this, they brought him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus. So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up, and walking in the fear of the Lord and the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied. Now we're kind of getting to the not middle of Acts, but we're beginning to see some transitions in the book of Acts. Acts 8, if you remember, really opens up with this one-liner that says that Saul, the same guy who encountered the presence of Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus, who was blinded by the presence of Jesus Christ, that same Saul approved the execution of Stephen, who was a prominent leader in the early church. And then we are told that this same Saul goes on a madman rampage of pulling men and women out of their homes and arresting them. Who knows what happened to their children? And the situation at this point in Acts chapter 8, it looks bleak. And if I'm an early church member, my pessimistic side would have set in. I would have been thinking, it's the end of the church as we know it. All right, a few Gen Xers in the house repping the REM. I would be thinking the end of the church is near, that Saul, this madman, is ending this movement. But by the middle of Acts chapter 9, Jesus shows up radically and turns the situation around. What looks fixed before turns into a growth explosion. It's a literal 180-degree turn. Saul changes in this moment from the enemy of the church to the great advocate of the church. And we're told by Luke that after he regained his sight, after three days of praying and fasting and being blind in Damascus, after Ananias came and laid his hands on Saul, and Saul regained his sight and regained his strength, that he immediately went into the synagogues and preached that Jesus was the Son of God. In other words, he was saying Jesus is God. I mean, you talk about a growth mindset. Saul traveling to arrest Christians 150 miles away from Jerusalem to bring them back, to walk them back in chains. This same Saul is now transformed, and he is doing the very thing that Jesus told the disciples that they would do when they were empowered by the Holy Spirit. Acts 1, 8, you will be my witnesses in Judea and Samaria and the ends of the earth to be a witness of the gospel. I mean, this is a total and complete shift in the story. Look back at verse 31. We'll come back to this verse at the end of the message, but look at what's happening in verse 31. You talk about a turnaround. You talk about Jesus breaking into a situation and changing anything. You talk about something that looks impossible that is now growing. So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied. So the church goes from the fear of extinction to thriving. There was peace. That means there was external relief. It was strengthened, it was built up and it was multiplied. You talk about a turnaround. Now I want to pause here just for a moment. I want to look at the timeline of what's happening in this story because it can seem very confusing. If you just read these 12 verses and tried to build out a timeline, it looks like Saul was blinded, then he regained his sight, then he preached in Damascus, and then he went to Jerusalem to start preaching there. But that's not the case. Somewhere in these few verses, we are told in the book of Galatians that Saul actually went to Arabia. And he went to Arabia for three years. And during that time in Arabia, he grew in wisdom. During that time in Arabia for three years, here's what I believe Saul did. I believe that he sat with the presence of the Holy Spirit and he took all that he knew about his Jewish heritage and he began to tie neat little threads from his Jewish heritage to Jesus the Messiah. And so here's a timeline of what I think probably is going on in this text. Saul receives his conversion experience on the road to Damascus. Immediately after the word, Luke tells us that he went into the synagogues in Damascus. He began preaching, but then after that, he went to Arabia for three years, and then he returned to Damascus. He preached there for longer, and then ultimately he went to Jerusalem and he began to preach there. Why does this matter? First, it speaks to the preparation that Paul that Saul experienced. There was a season of Saul being with the Lord and having his calling clarified. There was a season where he was able to put all of this together so that when he walked into the synagogues, it said that he walked in equipped to prove to them that Jesus was the Christ. Not just to tell them about his experience. His experience on the Damascus Road was important. Your experience, my experience of Jesus Christ personally in my life, how he saved me and radically transformed me is important. Your story is important. But we also have to be able to think logically and rationally and help people understand from an apologetic perspective why Jesus Christ is the Messiah. And so Saul was able to do that. He was in a season of training. He spent three years preparing. I don't know if you know this, but Moses he spent 40 years as a shepherd, as an unknown shepherd, before he was ever sent to Egypt to bring the people out of captivity. David was anointed the king of Israel when he was 16 years old. Did you know that? When he was 16, he was anointed as king. He was not appointed as the king of Israel until he was 30 years old. You see, God was doing something in Saul's life. He was doing something in Moses' life. He was doing something in David's life. He was using their unique circumstances, which I'm sure to them at the moment, as a shepherd, as a shepherd, it looked fixed. And what God was doing, he was preparing them for what was ahead. I would bet when Moses killed the Egyptian man and he fled to Midian, I would get guess that he resigned himself to believing this is it for me. This is the rest. Of my life. Now, hear me if you're in a waiting season. Some of you are in a waiting season right now. Some of you, um, God has spoken to you, and He has put dreams and thoughts and calling in your life, and you're in the season of waiting, and you're in the season of training, and what God is doing for you and in you in this season is He is preparing you for what is to come. And in your mind, if you're not careful, you might look at where you are and you might think this is a fixed situation. And in reality, what the Lord is doing is He's using and approaching this season of your life as a way to train you, as a way to prepare you for what He has ahead. Second thing that I think we see in this timeline is that God's plan will often come with great opposition. I mean, think about for Saul, he has this blinding light experience where he literally is in the presence of God. And right after that, his first few days as a believer, people are out to kill him. There's plots against him. There's people who are literally actively trying to end his life. And yet, in the process of the waiting and the process of the suffering, he is growing in his strength, he is growing in his faith, so much so that what we find out in the rest of his ministry is that God will continue to use great suffering in Saul's life, to continue to see the word of God preached and spread until his eventual execution in Rome. And so we see in Saul's life what we see really throughout the rest of God's word, and that is that God will often use the desert seasons of our suffering to form us and to be to being a tool for his witness. So after Saul spent three years in Arabia, he went to Jerusalem to continue preaching the gospel. Look back at verse 26. And when he, Saul, had come to Jerusalem, he attempted to join the disciples, and they were all afraid of him, for they did not believe that he was a disciple. I've been stuck on this verse and the verse after this all week, because I'm trying to think about this through Saul's perspective. After years of training, after years of preparation, Saul comes to Jerusalem. By now, the word of his conversion, the disciples, the apostles, everyone would have heard about this. Everyone would have heard that on the way to Damascus to arrest Christians, Saul had this encounter with Jesus, and then Saul spent three days fasting and praying, and then Saul entered into the synagogues and began preaching the gospel, and then Saul went out to Arabia and was trained for three years. And so if I'm the early church, I think I'm waiting for Saul's return with a great reception. And yet we find out in this text that most people didn't believe that Saul had actually encountered Jesus Christ. Why? A fixed mindset, a limiting belief. Think about this. The disciples believed in the transforming of the gospel in their own lives, but they put a ceiling on God's grace. God can change this person, but God can't change that person. Saul was the ceiling. Saul can't change. I don't know if you've experienced this. I have. Not every person in your life is going to believe and receive what God is doing in your life. I'm certain that many, if not most of the people in my life in 2003, when I accepted Jesus Christ, weren't very, very skeptical, if not disbelieving, that my life had been transformed. Many of you can relate to this. Some of you in this room right now, even from your own family, family members, you're in the middle of this right now. You're watching God do something in your life, and the people that you would have hoped that would have been clapping on the sidelines, high-fiving you, hugging you, they are the ones that are filled with the most doubt and the most disbelief of what God is doing in you. Listen, if you're a Christian in this room, this type of thinking toward people is antithetical to the gospel. The gospel says that God's grace can change anyone and anything. And if we as Christians, if we approach people with a fixed mindset, what we're doing is we're actually practicing, we're practicing a form of atheism. It's atheistic to believe that if there is a powerful, supernatural, transforming God, to believe that, and to believe that he can't break into any situation. That's functional atheism. Jesus can change anyone and anything. And so this should invite us to sit back and go, am I putting a limited belief on someone? Am I putting a limited belief on God that he could change or transform someone or something? But look at verse 27. But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles and declared to them how on the road he had seen the Lord who spoke to him, and how at Damascus he had preached boldly in the name of Jesus. Now we're walking through the book of Acts. Do you remember the first time that we were introduced to this character, Barnabas? Anyone remember that? But Barnabas, if you remember, he was the guy who sold a piece of his personal property and he donated all of the proceeds to the early church. Check this out. Barnabas, his actual name means son of encouragement. See, Barnabas, he was not an apostle. We don't know that he ever met Jesus, but in this moment, he steps in and he changes the trajectory, not just of this situation, but he changes the trajectory of the entire early church. While the disciples in Jerusalem have a fixed mindset of Saul and who he is, their minds are made up. Barnabas, he comes alongside Saul and he encourages the leaders in Jerusalem to accept him. You see, Barnabas, he sees Saul through the lens of grace. Barnabas believes in the power of the gospel. He believes Jesus can transform a person. He comes alongside Saul, encourages him, and actually helps the church receive the evidence of this change.

unknown 28:32

Right?

SPEAKER_00 28:33

This is the kind of people, this is the kind of people that you need and I need around us. People who believe in grace. People who believe that the gospel really can change, really can transform someone. The gospel that really can take someone who doesn't even want to live and put life in them. People who don't reduce others to their worst moment or their past or their patterns or their failures, but have the faith to believe that Jesus is still at work. You see, at Revive, we want to be this kind of church. We want to see people changed and transformed. We're seeing people changed and transformed. We don't want to look at people or situations or addictions or families or marriages or prodigals or struggles and wounds and say, this is just how it's always been and it always will be this way. I learned this truth real time this week. I didn't see it coming. This week we received a letter addressed to Revive Church from a man who is incarcerated in North Carolina. And we were shocked to receive it. Sometimes we'll get a letter from someone who is in prison who knows someone at Revived Church and is reaching out for prayer or reaching out for help. But when I when I saw this letter that was addressed to Revived Church, and the inmate was writing from North Carolina, it immediately piqued my interest. And I don't know this inmate's story, but based on the content of the letter, it looks like he will be in prison for a while. In so many ways, his future is fixed. But his letter, if you read it, it is filled with faith and hope and growth and transformation for the people that he's praying for. You see, he took the time to look up our church. I have no idea how he is connected to Revive Church. I don't know if this was just a random thing that he came across. I have no idea. I don't know if the same letter that he handwrote to us, he handwrote to 50 other churches across the United States. I have no idea. But I can tell you what, that as I read this letter and as he was asking for our church to pray over an initiative that they're doing in the prison, and the initiative is they're inviting inmates to literally scribe the Bible, to copy the Bible word for word, as a way of getting the inmates more regularly in the Word. And then he ended the letter. Check this out. He ended the letter by handwriting 75 names of people that he is praying for. 75 names. When's the last time you pulled out your journal and you wrote 75 names of people that you know who are without saving faith in Jesus Christ, and you prayed for them and you asked others to pray for them? Never would be my answer. And I looked at this and I thought to myself, oh my goodness, wow, in prison, in a fixed cell with a fixed schedule. Everything is fixed in this man's life, and yet he's living with faith and he's living with belief that his prayers and the prayers of this random church in Arvada, Colorado, could somehow change the situation of these 75 people who he's asking for prayer. We see one man, Barnabas, stepped into the gap, came alongside Saul in the church, and the church was impacted forever. And we see the immediate results in the church peace, growth, multiplication. Not just in the church in Jerusalem, but Jesus was changing lives everywhere. Taking things that look fixed and transforming them. And so the camera, Luke has had the camera on Saul for the last couple chapters. And here in this moment, at the end of chapter 9, he pans the camera from Saul back to Peter. In the next couple chapters, Peter is going to be the focus of the book of Acts. But what Luke is doing in this moment, he's talking about people being transformed, not just in the people that were surrounding Saul, but also in the people that were surrounding Peter. Look at verse 32. Now, as Peter went here and there among them all, he came down also to the saints who lived in Lida. There he found a man named Aeneas, bedwritten for eight years, who was paralyzed. And Peter said to him, Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you. Rise and make your bed. And immediately he rose. And all the residents of Lida and Sharon saw him, and they turned to the Lord. Now there was in Joppa a disciple named Tabitha, which translated means Dorcas. She was full of good works and acts of charity. In those days she became ill and died, and when they had washed her, they laid her in an upper room. Since Lida was near Joppa, the disciples, hearing that Peter was there, sent two men to him, urging him, Please come to us without delay. So Peter rose and went with them, and when he arrived, they took him to the upper room. All the widows stood beside him, weeping and showing tunics and other garments that Dorcas made while she was with them. But Peter put them all outside and knelt down and prayed, and turning to the body, he said, Tabitha, arise. And she opened her eyes, and when she saw Peter, she sat up, and he gave her his hand and raised her up. Then calling the saints and widows, he presented her alive. And it became known throughout all Joppa, and many believed in the Lord, and he stayed in Joppa for many days with one Simon, a tanner. So the gospel from this moment is about to go to the Gentiles. We'll look a little bit more at this text next week as a setup for Acts chapter 10. But I want you to see what Luke is doing in connecting these two narratives to the one that he has just told. Luke is telling stories of Jesus turning around situations that look impossible. Jesus breaking into situations that, from a human perspective, they look fixed. And changing everything. First Peter goes down to Lyda, northwest of Jerusalem, he searches for a man named Aeneas who was paralyzed. Talk about a fixed situation. And in verse 34, he says to him Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you, and Jesus breaks into the drama of this man's life, this man who had been paralyzed, and he transforms the situation. And he heals him. And not only does he heal them, but Luke tells us that all of the residents of Lida and Sharon turn to the Lord. All of them. The whole population. Not some of them turn to the Lord, not a few of them turned to the Lord. He literally says, all of them. That is nuts. Then in verse 39, Peter goes from Lida down the coast to the Mediterranean, down the coast of the Mediterranean Sea to Joppa, where a disciple named Tabitha has just died. I mean, you can't get any more fixed than being dead. And yet in verse 40, Peter asks for all the people to leave the room, and then he prayed for Tabitha in the name of Jesus Christ, and Tabitha was raised to life, and the word of this miracle spreads, and more and more people put their faith in Jesus Christ. Acts 9 is filled with situations that look fixed. The church being persecuted, Saul on his way to arrest Christians, Aeneas being paralyzed for eight years, Tabitha is dead. Humanly speaking, all of these situations are fixed realities, but not with Jesus. Saul is rescued and saved. Aeneas gets up and walks, and Tabitha is raised to life. You see, Jesus, he's never limited by what looks final to us. And we want to be a kind of people who believe that change can always happen, that Jesus Christ and his grace can interrupt any situation. We want to believe that Jesus still saves and heals and restores and raises and transforms. Now I want you to go back as a way of taking this message and hopefully bringing some application as we walk out of this space together. I want you to go back to verse 31. Verse 31, this is where I want to double double down and maybe double-click this morning. Because verse 31 tells us the kind of environment, the kind of culture where these kinds of things happen. And I think for our church, this is a cultural moment. It's one thing to read about these stories and to say, that's awesome, Jesus can do anything. Jesus can break into the impossible. See, right in the middle of Acts, Luke gives us a picture of what the church looked like when all of this was happening. Look back at Acts chapter 9, verse 31. So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And listen, and walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied. So we see the cool things that are happening, right? There's peace within the church. The church is being built up, and the church is being strengthened, and the church is multiplying. And then right there in the middle, Luke mentions a couple of cultural things that were defining of the church at this time. And those are the two things that I want us to focus on this morning. The fear of the Lord and the comfort of the Spirit. The fear of the Lord and the comfort of the Spirit. Now, when you look at those things, those things do not look like they go together. Fear and comfort seem antithetical. They seem like opposites. And so let's start with the fear of the Lord. What does that mean? Well, in one sense, the fear of the Lord is to understand that God is amazing, that God is to, we are to stand in awe of Him. I mean, the church at this point, they're standing awe of God. They're watching Saul be transformed, be radically changed. They're watching this man who had been paralyzed now walk, they're watching this woman who was literally dead be raised to life. And so there's something about seeing God move in that way where it should put a person in awe. And so there's an aspect of the fear of the Lord that just causes us to step back and go, oh my goodness, God. The magnitude of who you are, especially compared to us. Now, there's another aspect of the fear of the Lord that I don't think we talk about as much in church that is so important. And I think the early church got this. And I think part of the reason why they got this is because after Barnabas came and gave that money, there were two people, Ananias and Sapphira, who pretended like they gave the money, and what happened? They died. See, there's an aspect of the fear of the Lord, is not just standing back and going, God, you're awesome. It's actually a culture that is defined by pursuing the holiness of God. Fearing the Lord does not just mean, does not mean that we are afraid of God in the sense that we are scared to come near him, but it does mean that we have an accurate view of his perfection and his holiness. Let me give you an example of this. If you were to encounter, and some of you have, if you were to encounter a bear while walking through the Colorado Mountains, it would instill a healthy fear in you, right? Some of you, this has happened to you. I know one story in the room where this happened to somebody. That would instill a healthy fear in you. You would not in that moment just kind of casually walk past the bear and try to wave and get his attention. You wouldn't try to start a game of hide-and-seek with the bear or see if you could climb higher in a tree than the bear could climb. No, you have a healthy fear of that bear. And so in that moment, you would take measures to make sure that your movement was appropriate. That is a good fear. That is a healthy fear. It's the kind of fear that guess what? That can preserve your life. I'm afraid that we in the church have become too comfortable with our sin. That we have become too casual with our sin. That we don't realize the nature of God. And hear me say this before I say what I'm about to say. Yes, absolutely. Because of Jesus Christ, we have been brought near to God and we are near to him without fear. We will never be separated from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. But when we understand and when we have a healthy fear of the Lord in reverence and in awe of who he is, that should drive us more toward holiness, not less. When we see ourselves for who we are, when we realize, when we have that mirror moment of realizing that we are worse than we think we are as human beings, but more loved by God than we could ever imagine. That should drive us more toward holiness, more reverence, more careful and cautious living in order to honor this holy God who has brought us near despite our sin. This matters, church. I believe that Jesus wants to do more in our lives. I believe he wants to do more in this church. He wants us to change and he wants us to grow. And a huge part of that is walking in a healthy fear of the Lord. So what does this look like? What does a church walking in the fear of the Lord look like? It looks like this morning. I'm just gonna be honest. Josh in the back, he's our he's our sound guy today, actually, a lighting guy. I just came up to him and I was like, man, I'm just if I'm honest this morning, I'm I'm preaching out of the place of being filled with the Spurs in the finals. Knicks fans, God's grace on you. I'm filled with being enamored with the Spurs. I'm filled with being enamored that the World Cup is in the United States. And so this moment with our lighting guy, I had to say, man, I don't feel like right now I've honored my time this week. And so as he prayed for me, a 20-something guy, as he prayed for me, his prayer was Would you be with Pastor Kyle? Would you help him to see the worldliness in that? Would you help him to see that those things are fading? Would you rightly subordinate those things to who you are? You know what he could have said? Oh man, that's all right. Sad about a week. But he didn't excuse it in me. Uh a church that is filled with the fear of the Lord, we don't excuse one another's sin. We don't excuse one another's distraction. We don't excuse one another's faults. No, what do we do? In grace and mercy, we bring one another before the throne of God, but we bring each other before the throne of God, pushing each other toward holiness, not excusing sin. Not excusing our lack of holiness. You see, the fear of the Lord, when it drives each of us individually and collectively to live intentionally and mindfully, to honor the presence of God with our thoughts and our actions, that's what it means to live in the fear of the Lord. What about the comfort of the Holy Spirit? What does that mean? The word Luke uses here for comfort. In your Bible, it might be encouragement, is the Greek word paraclete. And this word paraclete is in the Bible, sometimes the the English translators, they're trying to give an English word to a Greek word, and they really struggle because that Greek word is so full of life and it's so nuanced, and they're trying to put one word in the place where you actually need like 20 words. And so the best word that they can come up with here is encouragement or comfort. You see, this is the best way to describe what the Holy Spirit is in our life. The best way to describe the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer is that the Holy Spirit comes alongside the believer. This is why Jesus said, Hey, it's better for me to go so that the Spirit can come because I'm gonna walk beside you, but there's moments as a human being where I'm gonna go to bed or I'm gonna go over here and go over there. I'm not gonna always be with you, but I'm leaving so that I can send my very spirit who will walk in you and with you and will never leave you. This week I attended a leadership conference, and the speaker was talking about how all of us need people in our lives that will champion us. And this is a paraphrase of what she said, but she said this: a champion is someone who vigorously supports, defends, and advocates for a person. As soon as that definition went up on the screen, I thought, that's it. This is what it means to walk in the comfort of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit comes to us as God's greatest gift through Jesus' death and resurrection to champion us, to send someone who comes alongside us and shows us the areas where we need encouragement, where we need support, where we're not walking in the fear of the Lord. And sometimes the Holy Spirit, He comes alongside us, could alongside us and He brings conviction like He did through my friend Josh this morning. The best thing that Josh could have done this morning was not to say, Oh, that's all right. The best thing that he could have done this morning is to come alongside me and to say, hey, that stuff's passing away. Don't get too enarmed, don't look too long at the shiny stuff that's leaving. And what he did in that moment is he came alongside me, encouraged me, and then the Holy Spirit in me gave witness to what he was saying. You see, the Holy Spirit, he comes alongside us for all different kinds of reasons. Sometimes to convict us of sin, sometimes he comes alongside us in our suffering to remind us that God loves us, that the suffering that we're experiencing right now is not final, that God is working even in it and through it. Sometimes the Holy Spirit comes alongside us in the moment of our doubt, in the moment of our erratic, irrational thinking, where we've convinced ourselves that this is gonna happen or this is gonna happen, and sometimes the Spirit of God just comes in and just quiets us. So these two phrases belong together: comfort and fear. The fear of the Lord keeps the church from becoming casual and proud and shallow and self-reliant. The comfort of the spirit keeps the church from becoming fearful or harsh or discouraged or hopeless. And so a church that's walking in the comfort of the encouragement of the spirit is filled with people encouraging one another. I love the example, Barnabas, in this chapter. He comes alongside Saul and he champions him even in the face of criticism. Second Corinthians 1, 3 and 4 says, Praise to be God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. So we've been given the alongside presence of the Holy Spirit. We've been given the paraclete, the one who comes alongside and encourages us, the one who comes alongside us and convicts us, the one who comes alongside us and reminds us of God's love, the one who comes alongside us and says, I'm with you, I will never forsake you, I will never leave you. Yes, we've been given that, and guess what? We have been given the comfort of the Holy Spirit to be a comfort to those around us. Starting here in this room, to the person sitting on your left, to the person sitting on your right, to the person sitting behind you, to the person sitting in front of you. What if we were filled with a church that every Sunday morning we showed up not just to receive, but what if we showed up to give? What if every person in this room said, Hey, when I walk in the door, I'm gonna walk up to someone and I'm gonna engage with that person, I'm gonna come alongside that person, I'm gonna tell that person what I see in them. Or I know that person is hurting, I'm gonna come alongside, I'm gonna lay a hand on that person, I'm gonna pray for that person. What if we could be a church that walked in the fear of the Lord and the comfort of the spirit? And we are, but I want to encourage us let's keep being a church that walks in the fear of the Lord and the comfort of the spirit. Father, this morning, thank you for your word. As we respond to your message.