Do You Want To Be Led - Luke Kennedy

Ps Luke Kennedy is back to continue our series " A Spirit Led Life ". It is a blessing to have Ps Luke back home from Asia, bring an encouraging message on correction, humility and growth.

Ps Luke teaches from Proverbs 9:8 & Mark 10:17

We pray you’re blessed by this message. We’d love to see you in person, our services are every Sunday at 10am—see you there.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Good morning, good morning. We're gonna share from the scriptures together. Hope everyone's doing well. We've been sharing through a lot through around the concept of being led by the Spirit of God. If you are new to church or new around this area, we just really believe that God leads people. And his desire to communicate with you and to lead you into a good place is so much more than your desire to be led. God loves you so much, he wants to lead you. And if you will lean into that, uh I believe your life will be blessed. So today I want to talk to you about a question, and that question is: are you actually able to be led? Do you want to be led? Um, I think the answer is yes, but I don't know for me, yes, but I also have a few of my own things that I've got going on that I would like God to cooperate with. Whoever's seen the Karate Kid, one of the classic movies, uh generational movie. Um I recently showed it to my kids, they were so shocked about how the amazing it was. Mr. Miyagi introducing um my children to their Japanese heritage, Mr. Miyagi. Um, I'm not sure if that's really real or not. But Daniel, Daniel San. Daniel San is uh he's a character in the story and he wants to learn karate. He turns up to Mr. Miyagi's uh dojo, or actually his house, and and he actually puts him to work uh painting fences. You know this, you know, paint the fence, and then he teaches him to wax the cars, wax on, Dennisan, and wax ha. It's like a classic. Um if you if you uh Jen Alpha, you you don't know nothing about that. Okay, and he he says this one line I think in the movie says, I came here to learn karate, and all I'm doing is doing your chores. And then Mr. Miyagi um starts a fight with him, and suddenly he knows karate, if you've seen the movie. And I find this is interesting because it we all want to be taught until the teacher doesn't teach the way that I want to be taught. I want you to teach me, but I want you to do it in my way, in my timing, in my preferences. And God, if you would just get in line with what I want, then I would be happy to be teachable if you would teach me the things that I want. It's amazing, these funny conversations we have with God, isn't it? Like I know better than God. It's funny when you think about it. Proverbs chapter 9, verse 8, it says this do not re mo I think the um the NLT says reprove, but do not correct a scoffer. Someone who mocks um, someone who mocks good things. Someone a scoffer is someone who mocks the good path forwards. Or he will hate you. Don't correct a mocker or he will hate you. Reprove a wise man and he will love you. Give instruction to a wise man and he will still be wiser. Teach a righteous man and he will increase in learning. What kind of person loves correction? Scripture says a wise person. A fool hates correction. They don't want to be corrected. A wise person loves to be corrected. Any wise people here today? I'm like half. I'm trying to be wise if we're honest. Notice the difference between the wise person and the fool. It's not the person who needs correction because everyone needs correction, it's the response to correction that shows the wisdom. Are you able to be corrected, or do you get offended, or withdraw, or run away, or maybe choose to fight for your rights to party? What's your response to correction? Can anybody correct you? Or are you um a self-made person? Correction is actually quite difficult, I find, and I think this is the human experience. To be corrected is actually quite difficult. And it's difficult for a few reasons. One, because it can be quite personal. Maybe it's not personal to the person giving the correction, but it's personal to me if I'm on the receiving end, and it also touches the foundations of my personhood, meaning if I get my value from what I do, and then what I do is corrected, then it really shakes my foundation of who I am as a person. It's also hard because it touches my incompetency, meaning I can't do something. And that the spotlight is now on the thing that I cannot do, and that makes me feel like I'm not good enough. It's also exposing because it touches my sense of inadequacy. I just don't have what it takes, and that's exposing. Um, someone says to me, You did something wrong, but often what I hear is there's something wrong with me. We see this in the rich young ruler. This is one of my favorite stories in the Bible, not because it's a great story, but because it's so honest and true. Mark chapter 10, verse 17, it says this. And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him. This is Jesus. Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? If you're even asking this question, you're not a fool. You're not a silly person if you're asking this question. That's a deep question. How do I get eternal life? Not many people are going around asking that question. He has some sense. And Jesus told him, Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. He's testing him here to see what he knows about God and also who he thinks Jesus is in his life. Jesus saying, Do you think that I'm God in your life? Am I God? You know the commandments do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your mother and father. And his response to this is astonishing. His response is, Teacher, all these I have kept since my youth. Check. I've done those things. I don't know how many people could say that. He is actually a pretty awesome guy, it seems, or at least that's what's coming off. And Jesus looked at him and he loved him. I love this. Jesus loves this man, and he says to him, You lack one thing. Here's the correction part. All good, one little correction is go and sell everything you have and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come follow me. How many people did Jesus say, Come follow me to? Not many. About twelve. He was inviting this young man to come and be one of the twelve people who actually changed the course of history forever. What this man was giving up in what can in comparison to what Jesus was offering him was that the chasm between those two things is so great. Change the world forever. History defining life. Or hold on to your riches. That was the choice Jesus was giving him. He's rich, right? And rich means, and especially in this culture, rich means I've got options in life. That's probably where a lot of us sit here today in Australia. We've got options. Maybe sometimes you feel like you don't have options, especially if you're a student and you're and you're just smashing two-minute noodles. But the reality is you do have options in life. That's a blessing. Options is a sign of blessing. You know that, right? We are so blessed. He's rich. He's young, which means he has a future. Everything's ahead of him. He has so many things ahead. And he's also a ruler, which means he has influence. He's a social media influencer, maybe in today. He's an in he has influence over other people. People listen to him. He's got a lot of things going for him. This is the person that everyone wants to talk to at the party. They've got things going on in their life. And everything about him looks teachable. This is the key. He looks so teachable until Jesus teaches him. And then suddenly, not so teachable. The one correction, the one thing that Jesus wanted to change in his life, couldn't do it. Outward appearance is successful, open, creative, teachable, tolerant, you know, or you know, whatever virtue is currently popular. And then one correction, unteachable. There's a difference, you know, between being agreeable and being teachable. Some of us have like an agreeable personality. Anyone here like that? You've got an agreeable person, which means you like some of you putting up your hand, it's definitely not true. I know you. Um agreeable personality means I will like nod along with you, I'm like empathetic with you. Uh when we when you're sharing your your opinion about the world, I'm like leaning into it. And even when you're like giving suggestions, we're like, yeah, yeah, that sounds so great. Like that's amazing. But there's a difference between that and teachable. Teachable means I'm actually going to do something about it. Teachable means I'm actually going to receive correction and make changes in my life. I don't want to have just an agreeable personality, I want to be teachable. One thing that you lack. The word disciple means, literally means learner. Learner. If you want to be a disciple of Jesus, and I pray that's why you're here that you want to be, that the main prerequisite is that you have an attitude of being a learner. The moment that I graduate being a learner or being teachable, that is the moment that I stop being a disciple. So we've probably here we've got some cultural Christians, or not in this room, of course, not in this room, but we've got some cultural Christians or people who give mental assent to Jesus, understand things about God, but have no intention of allowing that to come in and change the way that I actually live my life. That's called cultural Christianity. It's actually the most difficult environment to share the gospel. Because people have enough of Jesus to be inoculated to the power of that to change their lives. And that is not what we're trying to build here. We we the simple mission statement of our church is to make Jesus' ways our ways together. Not in my imagination or in my mind, but in reality in my life, that Jesus' ways become my ways of living, of thinking, of speaking, of doing. And like you, I have so far to go on that vision. Do you really want to be led? I hear young people say, I want to be mentored. And I think there's a real lack of mentoring just in our generation. That's it's it's it's really true and it's necessary. But I think you gotta be careful though that what you don't mean is I want affirmation, I want opportunity. Yes, that's mentoring, but also part of it is also giving you feedback. Um, there's a lot of bosses in this room, by the way. There's a lot of people here who run companies, and that will say a collective amen with me in your heart. Um, that person who is able to take on feedback and be corrected is such a joy to work with. And those who cannot take feedback is like it's it's it's painful. And one of the ways that you can stand out in your generation is to become resilient to feedback. Resilient, meaning I get feedback, ooh, hurts, and I bounce back and get better. If you can do that, you will stand out so much in this generation. Because that is not what the culture is teaching you to do. It's quiet in here now. This is not even the this is not even the most challenging part yet. Okay. Um, there is a limiting mindset that I see a lot with young people, and this limiting mindset is I'm doing my best. If my best is not good enough, I'm out. It's a very limiting mindset because what it assumes is this is as good as I can get. It's not a growth mindset where it says, a growth mindset is I can grow. I can get better, I can do better, I can get stronger, more confident, more skilled, I can actually grow. That's a growth mindset. A limiting mindset is this is all I've got. If you don't accept me, then I'm out. That is a very limiting mindset. And I would encourage you, maybe at the heart of that is some insecurity, but what it's really communicating is I'm not teachable. That's not who you want to be. Jesus inviting you to come and be teachable and to actually grow. Your best is actually a moving target, you know that, right? Your best is getting better all the time. Um let me talk to you about a posture, then what it takes to be teachable, and that is humility. A posture of humility in a culture of offense. We are living consistently in a culture today that is teaching you that being offended is good. That's like celebrated to be offended about lots of things. Like it's a normal state to be offended. I'm offended about so many things, and that's actually celebrated. It's almost like a litmus test of what are you what are you offended about? Tell me, and if we have the same list of offenses, then we can be friends. This is not the Christian life, this is not the life that Jesus is inviting us into. Offense is not a blessing to you. Offense is the lit, the literal word for offense in the Bible is like a snare that you put out for animals when you trap animals to kill them. That's the word. You will get trapped into it. Have you ever seen an animal that's trying to pull away and it's trapped, its leg is stuck and it's waiting to be killed? That's the picture of offense in the scripture. Offense is not to be celebrated. Offenses will come. Jesus said this offenses will come. This is the human experience, it's gonna happen. I will offend you. I'm I'm not trying to, I'm sorry. Even people with the best of intentions will offend you, but your response to offense says so much about your potential, it speaks so much to your future. Not everyone who corrects you is toxic, not everyone who disagrees with you is unsafe. You can actually even learn from people that you disagree with. This humility. Humility is this ability to bring down my defenses. I'm not like, I'm not like ready to fight. I'm ready to defend. Humility can bring down the offenses because I'm secure in who I am. I don't need to prove something to you. I know I'm loved by God. I know that I'm part of the family of God. I don't need um the the approval, the praises of people because I'm living for the praises of God. So therefore, I can engage people in a healthy way because I'm humble. Isn't that wonderful to talk to a humble person? Every time I spend, I was I was just in an alpha conference in KL um just this last week. Well, I was in here last weekend, and I'm always amazed at spending time with people in the alpha world, how humble they are. Every time I come away from it, I'm like so challenged personally about, oh yeah, that's what humble looks like. It's not timid, it's certainly not timid because some of the most bold leaders I've ever seen, but also so humble about themselves. No defenses, no needing to defend. Just here I am. So interested in you because I don't need to defend myself. It's humility. It's so attractive, so countercultural. What a beautiful thing. Okay, so forgiveness becomes a secret weapon of the Christian, forgiveness. It's like a suit, it forgiveness is a superpower. I see so many stupid things online these days, mostly from Christians, and and some of them are actually like um unforgiveness is bad. Like unforgiveness is good. And I'm like, have you lost your mind? Have you actually read the words of Jesus? The one dying on the cross being murdered and saying, Father, forgive them for they don't know what they do? Do you know who we're following? Jesus. I'm so glad that Jesus doesn't think like that towards me. His forgiveness towards me is so great. How then can I take that forgiveness and then withhold it from others? How could I do that? Forgiveness is a superpower. And maybe some of the answer to so many of the problems we have in the world today. Honestly, for me personally, a lot of this comes from my personal Bible reading and listening to God. Where every day sitting before God, reading a little bit of scripture and allowing God to correct my heart. And he does it so gently. God is so kind to me. Is God kind to you? Because he's so kind to me. Every day, God's like correcting me, but it's so kind, and he's so gracious and so patient with me over and over and over and over. It does something to my heart. How then can I not show that same grace to others? I see this a lot in um parenting. Um I think this is really helpful if we want to raise young adults who are able to get over a fence quickly. It starts with children, right? I um have um this is not a parenting seminar, but I'll just share about our family. We expect our children to get over offenses really quickly. We expect that. Um a significant part of parenting is helping your children right-size their problems, meaning to children, every problem is like the world's biggest problem, but it's not. And part of my role is to help them contextualize their problems. This is a big problem, this is not a big problem, and some most of the time it's my response to these things that teaches them how big this problem really is. So if I have a meltdown every time my children's behavior is not perfect, then I'm showing them that perfection is the goal and every problem is a major meltdown problem in their life. Um over time, my response helps them to learn how to deal with this. But we really need a model of forgiveness in our families, and we've tried to do this. If you ask my children what are Kennedys about, they will tell you first thing they would tell you is Kennedys are good forgiveness. We forgive everyone every day. I don't have there's no one in the world today that I don't forgive. Is that easy? No, it's not easy. But that's a commitment that I've made to live in freedom today. Free. I will live free from unforgiveness. The poison of unforgiveness will not come through my veins every day. Now I do have to choose daily to forgive, but I do choose to forgive. It's a discipline. And over um so we need this. Okay. Um, so say like when when our children were little, we would go into a restaurant, and my son Hugo, he had this thing of like screaming in the restaurant. Horrendous. For everyone else who's in the restaurant, he would scream. What we would do is I would I would I would say, um, you need to stop screaming, or we'll go outside and talk about it. Continue screaming. Okay, I'll pick you up. We walk outside. We go and find a nice place outside. There's no meltdown. I'm still the same. I'm the same person there, the same person here. Sit him down. And now I'm going to explain to him while the screaming and the throwing food and the meltdowns in the restaurant is unacceptable behavior. That doesn't work, and we don't do that in our family. And I will explain to him again, maybe for the maybe for the 20th time, why that behavior is not going to work. Okay? And I will explain to him the consequences if he continues, if he continues to choose to do that behavior. And then very quickly, he's going to say sorry. This happened so many times. This is like a hundred-time story, okay? He says, sorry, Daddy. Okay, amazing. I give you a hug, I tell you, I love you, you're amazing. That behavior, just let's leave it outside here. But you are amazing. Let's go back inside and have fun. Come, pick up the baby, come back inside, sit down. And my expectation is now come back to joy. Laughing, happy, celebrating. My attitude to him has not changed. I'm not like cross now, and he's got to work his way back to getting me back on side. It's none of that. It's that is finished now, and now we're gonna move forwards in a happy time with our family celebrating and having great behavior. Does this make sense? I had to do that probably a hundred times. Do you know how frustrating that is? But if you will maintain your composure and continually do that, what it does, it does a few things at once. One, it it teaches children appropriate behavior, and that is important because to understand situational awareness, it is important for a whole bunch of reasons. It also teaches them that their performance is separate to their being. I love you, there's not a problem with you. That behavior needs change. And what it also teaches them is there's an expectation of bouncing back very quickly from correction. Meaning correction is finished, and now we move on to good things. And this is what so many young people are not getting. So when they first get a job and their boss corrects them, they aren't able to bounce back quickly and say, the correction is finished, now let's get back to good work. And if we can help people do this, it will really help them get self-confidence. Because what I've seen is if we teach if we allow our children to be really selfish, they grow up to be really selfish. And selfish people don't have friends. They don't have good friends, or maybe they have the wrong friends, they don't have great opportunities, they don't have joy, they don't experience life to the fullest. So we I'm trying to set our children up to be ready for a great life to come. Now they're not perfect, they're not perfect, and it's please don't think my children are pastors because they're not, they're just children. Um and people, uh what I found if you're in a leadership role, people don't expect your children to be perfect. They do expect you to parent your children, though. That's what they expect. And that is good. And by doing that, we are creating a healthy environment that is a model. And I'm saying this because lots of parents come and ask me about this kind of stuff, like wrestling with their children about how to bring healthy correction. Is this okay, everyone? Are we okay? Same, let me just talk to the spouses then. I know a lot of people here are not married, so please just put this in your back pocket. Um take it or leave it. But if you're married, can your spouse correct you? I think again, there's a culture that we've bought into where your spouse can't correct you. If if my spouse cannot correct, I have a wife, okay. I'll say wife. Um not correct me, uh here's what you'll find is the further you go in leadership, the less people will tell you the truth. Your spouse will tell you the truth if you give them the permission and the power to actually tell you the truth. And the way that you do that is by listening. Listen to your spouse. Remember when you got married? Remember when you stood up on that altar and you were like, we are in this together? You know, we are just like, it's us against the world, baby. Let's go. The person who loves me more than anyone else in the whole world is my wife. Why on earth would I not listen to her? There's no question about if she cares for me. There's no question if she wants the best for me. Why on earth would I not listen to her when she's trying to help me and say there's a blind spot in your life, you're not seeing it, but this is hurting you. I remember as a young pastor, my wife saying things to me. I was in Japanese culture, she's Japanese. Um, we were youngly married, we were I was 22 years old, we were leading a church full of young people, and I was making plenty of mistakes. And my wife would say to me, Luke, I know this is your intention, but it's not coming across like that. It's coming across like this, and you're not seeing it. And I had to suck it up and say, you know what? I think I think you're right. I think you're right. Oh, how painful. What a blessing. What a blessing. If you're married today, I would encourage you to see your spouse as an absolute treasure from God. Treasure who is so committed to you fulfilling your destiny in God. What a treasure to have a spouse who loves you and will correct you when you're going off the rails. What a blessing. We've got one single person saying amen. Married people, help me out here a little bit. Amen. Listen to your spouse, man. I think some guys, and I I get this, is you've gone so far in marriage and you've stopped listening to your spouse, and therefore your spouse has stopped telling you things because you don't listen. And I tell you, you're a fool. You're a fool because you've cut off a lifeline to your destiny. Your spouse cares about you more than anyone. Listen to your spouse. This is I think this is better preaching than you guys are responding, to be honest. Um, listen to them. When I when I listen, I'm telling my wife I'm serious. Like, actually, I want you to speak up. And it's so helpful. Okay. And let me just say one last quick word to the person who's giving the correction, okay? Because some of you are loving this because you love giving correction. You're like all about I'm gonna correct everyone. You're like have the gift of correcting other people. Calm down a little bit. You want to be life-giving in your correction. Life-giving in your correction. Um, not all life, not all correction is life-giving. Um, some people use truth as a weapon to beat people down. Don't do that. If you're a natural corrector, I want you to really become relentlessly committed to becoming a black belt at encouragement. If you could become the greatest encourager to your family or those around you, it will open up so many doors for you to have a voice into their life of correction. The power, you've heard, you know this first. The power of life and death are in the tongue. If if my spouse was only eating no food, only eating my words, would they be like anorexic or would they be like just so big and healthy? You know what I'm saying? You're tracking with this slightly wonky image? If your words were feeding your spouse, how would they be looking? This is I feel so challenged by this. Holy Spirit, challenge me. Encourage, encourage. Power of life and death is in the tongue. So here's here's um, let me finish with this. You can grow if you'll be open to being taught. Here's the test for you, I think, is will you just like accept correction or will you lean into it? Will you maybe even ask for it? Is there any blind spots that I'm not seeing, guys? Can someone help me? Can someone speak into my life? I'm open, I'm ready to learn. You're surrounded by people here that love you, surrounded by people here who are wise. Is there anyone in this church who could correct you? Or would you be offended and run away? Because if you will be corrected and stay the distance, you will get blessed by God. It just will happen. So I'd love to pray for you, okay? Um can we pray together? Maybe the team won't want to come and help me and pray with me because we're gonna do a little bit of prayer in a moment. And I'm gonna ask you to respond. Have some things on my heart to respond to, okay? So maybe for some of us here, the response is um I need some humility. I need God to do a work of humility in my heart because I've stopped listening. I've stopped like being open. Maybe I've become defensive, where I need to let down those defenses and actually let God come in and do work in my life. Maybe God is the one who is actually trying to correct me, but I'm not that open to it. And if you're just honest about it, but you want to be open to it, invite God to come in and say, God, come change my heart. Soften my heart. I also thought as I was praying for this, I feel like there's maybe someone here and you're really struggling with loneliness, and God would like to speak to you about it. If you're really struggling with loneliness, and and you've been maybe believing some very specific lies from the devil around you not fitting in anywhere, and God would love to speak to you about it. If that's your, I would love you to respond to God. I also felt maybe there's some person, and maybe even more than one person here, and you are struggling with something deeply personal, maybe even around your sexuality or abuse, and you're not sure if this Christian stuff here can work for you. But Jesus would love to come in and walk with you and be a light in your life and graciously walk you through your struggle and your tension in your life right now. If that's kind of like speaks to you, um, I would just love a chance to pray for you, okay? Any of those things. Could you just reach out your hands to him? Let's pray. God, come, Holy Spirit. Give you thanks, God. God, come and change my heart. Come and change our hearts, God. We're responsive to you. Come in and do the deep work of humility in our hearts. Pray even for people here that they would just feel the weight of the defenses that you've been carrying just just fade away, just melt away. The defensiveness, the protecting yourself. And I pray, God, that your love would just come and wash over people's lives today. Those here struggling with um loneliness, God, I pray that you would come and show them how much you love them, that their belonging is not based on the performance, but it's based on how much you love them. Pray they would receive that today. And those who are deeply struggling on the inside, wrestling on the inside. Thank you, God, for coming and shining a light on people's deepest areas of their life. Maybe you have like received um or or just have had abuse happen to you, and it's actually just really hard to just open yourself up to God or to other people. So I just want to invite the Holy Spirit to come and just love you right where you're at. Love you, bring healing into your life, and just ask God, God, would you come and heal my broken heart? Would you come and help me to trust you? Would you come and help me to open my heart to you? Holy Spirit, come. Grace and forgiveness pouring over people's lives today. It's not gonna end here. This is just the beginning, but I pray that today would be a beginning of finding freedom for people here today. In Jesus' name. Amen. If you would if you would like prayer, um, our our team is going to be here. We'd love to pray for you. Okay, if you would like some prayer. Sometimes you just need someone to stand with you and pray with you, and that really helps. So we're here. We'd love to pray with you. It's a real honor to pray with you. It's not a burden, it's a blessing to pray with you. Okay, I'm happy to pray for every single person. I love praying for people. We're happy to be here praying, okay? Um, thank you so much for all that you're doing. Um, we love this church. Feel free to um sit. We're gonna keep playing. We're gonna pray. You if you're in the team who are gonna come and pray with us, have an amazing week. God bless you. Um, if you want prayer, please come forward. Otherwise, we'll see you back here for baptisms and dedications next week.