The Power of Honor

00:00 - Speaker 1 To think about honor, like it's really hard to be honoring somebody and get offended by that person, right, because you're seeing their value despite so, if your heart and your focus is this person is loved and valued by God, and they can see the vilest thing, and I'll just be like, okay, God loves you, you know, and so I love you, and that anchors our attitude and it anchors our relationships with people. We become unoffendable. Imagine being unoffendable. Imagine being unoffendable. 00:26 - Speaker 2 Welcome to the CityLight Church podcast. Thanks for joining us today as we look into God's Word and discover the hope and truth that he has for us. If you want to connect with City Light Church, feel free to visit us at citylightnyc.com. That's citylightNYC.com. Pastor Bojan Jancic and his team believe that the power of the Holy Spirit is already working in our hearts and minds. As you listen to today's teaching, remember that you are deeply loved by God, that you are surrounded by His grace and that he has a real hope and a future for you. Well, I want all of you to put your hands together for my brother and my friend, our guest minister for the day. He's actually one of our own. His name is Bryan Anderson. 01:14 - Speaker 1 Thank you, let's sting testing. We are live. Hello, second Service. I'd like to just start by opening in prayer for what's going on in the world right now, in Iran, if you just bow your heads with me, lord Jesus. We ask for your peace in the Middle East, lord, in Iran, israel and United States, as the US has gotten involved. Father, we ask for your wisdom and your grace to be upon our leaders, president Trump and all the military leaders. Father, that you would give them wisdom in this season like never before. And, father, we pray that the church would be a source of hope in this time. Lord Jesus, as our neighbors and friends look for answers and sense fear. Father, that we would be a voice of hope and a voice of peace in the midst of turmoil. In the name of Jesus, we pray Amen. 02:20 Well, it's good to be speaking here again. I've got an exciting message. Well, it's good to be speaking here again. I've got an exciting message, although, you know, on the face of it, it's one of these topics that you know, I don't think many of us understand knight, you know, in shining armor, getting like knighted or something like that. But I'm speaking today about honor and how the Bible views honor. And honor is really based in God's value for each human, and he's expressed that value by sending his own son and shedding his blood to set us free from sin. And so we see that from the father's very heart he values us so highly, so highly that he would send his own son to die for us. And so the blood of Jesus gives us a sense of the value of humanity to God, and the Bible teaches us that we also should value our fellow man, and we should value them so highly that they sense and experience the love of God through our lives. And so we get to participate and cooperate in the love of God to people. And it's a pretty awesome thing. 03:40 I remember when I first came to City Light. I was a backsliding Christian for 13 years and I felt so distant from the Lord, but something was drawing and calling me to come and get some spirituality in my life, and I remember walking into a service in the East Village, sitting down in the back of that church and experiencing the love of God. It woke me out of a deep sleep spiritually. It woke me up to the fact that I had a father in heaven who loved me, who had a purpose and a calling for my life. And so much was spoken in experiencing God's love that I can't, even today, even put into words. I just knew he loved me and I knew I was forgiven and I knew he had a plan and a purpose for my life. And so, sitting in the back of that church, my life was forever changed in this church. And then people began in this church to disciple me and mentor me and encourage me in my faith, and my connection to this church has let me stand here today a total miracle. 04:42 I shouldn't be alive. I should have overdosed, I should have been in depression. I remember going to a doctor one time and getting depression medication to try to not feel my pain, and it didn't work. And so then I tried drugs and alcohol for years and that only numbed it, because every time I'd get sober the reality of the world would come crashing in again, and then I'd have to kind of go dive back in. I'd been through two divorces, I was estranged from my son and my life was a total mess until Jesus Christ started putting it back together. And you all are a part of that testimony and a part of the testimony of me coming to the Lord. And then, a few months later, my then girlfriend, now wife, coming to the Lord. Heidi, can you say hi? We've got a beautiful five-month-old baby, a three-year-old downstairs, a 12-year-old who's not with us this weekend, and they all love the Lord and it's just been a miracle to see what the Lord has done in our family. 05:47 So I want to thank and bless and honor this church, the leaders of this church, pastor Bo, pastor Mo, for their steady hand, their love, their service, saying the tough things that we don't want to hear sometimes, watching over us, watching over our growth and development. And, like Pastor Mo said, I'm homegrown in this church. So if you don't like the product, talk to management, but praise God, it's all I can do. If I'm asked to do something in this church, my attitude is yes every single time. I don't care what it is that you ask me to do. I'm gonna say yes every single time. I owe such a debt of gratitude to this church. Praise God, all right, so let's get into it. 06:41 What is honor? Honor is to value or esteem, to treat with reverence, deference, respect, because of the intrinsic value In scripture it sometimes is used to mean to listen to or to pay attention to Honor is first a condition of the heart, but then it's demonstrated by our actions and our words. Sometimes in scripture it even means to give money to. So who does God call us to honor? I'm gonna go to 1 Peter 2.17. Honor all people. Okay, that's a pretty straightforward one. Um, you know, I started wrestling with the concept of honor when I had a, a business partnership that went south and I I reached an impasse where I thought the the new business I'd left, a big law firm with a very stable salary I was launching out into a new entrepreneurial venture and suddenly what seemed like this great, lucrative thing was turning belly up and I found myself in all kinds of turmoil emotionally. 07:56 I was about a year into my new walk with the Lord, still pretty young in my faith, and so my first instinct was to be defensive and to start trying to protect myself. So I threatened and I lashed out and I tried all these different things and nothing was working. The partnership wasn't going the way I hoped it would, and I can't get into details because the Lord's taught me to honor the people that I got into a fight with. But I went to the Lord and I felt the Lord say honor people and trust me. And that didn't seem like a good solution because I didn't see a path forward with the partnership. And then I also didn't know what it meant to honor people. So I said, okay, lord, what does it mean to honor people? And I knew one scripture about honoring your mother and your father, and that was the only honor scripture I knew. But I knew it came with a promise that it would go well with you in the land and that you'll live a long life. I said, okay, so that sounds good. Honor seems to have favor and grace attached to it. Let me try it. 09:05 So I started by just changing my words. I stopped speaking insult and criticism and gossip about these people and started speaking grace. In fact, as I started speaking, my heart started changing and I started recognizing, I started realizing that I actually was experiencing love for the very people I was in a fight with and that I was having a actually was experiencing love for the very people I was in a fight with and that I was having a disagreement with. And then the Lord started to show me that he had put them in my life to open a door for me and, just like a mother and father goes before you and to make a way for you. They were gonna make a way for me into the business world that I had no inroads to. New York is a predominantly Jewish real estate world and I'm not Jewish and I'm an outsider, and these guys were giving me an intro to all of these relationships inside of that community and my perspective completely changed and I started to speak highly of them, especially when they weren't around. 09:57 I started talking to people about how they made a way for me. They opened doors for me and I began to bless them with my words and I noticed a shift completely in my relationship with them. It was spiritual because there was nothing new. No new facts had emerged, but suddenly we were just starting to get along and suddenly I was experiencing favor and grace in a place where it was just strife and bitterness and I felt twisted up inside and angry all the time. And so I started realizing and having a revelation of the power of honor. I said where else is this in the scripture? Is there something besides the parent verse that talks to us about honor? And then, sure enough, there's a whole bunch of scriptures. I'm going to try not to cover as many as I tried to get to in the first service, because that was a lot, but I'm gonna try to pick out the key ones. I'm still learning, pastor Mo, so got the training wheels on. Still, let's go to Matthew 13, 54. 11:01 I think this lays out the principle pretty well. When he had come to his own country, he taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished and said where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works? Is this not the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary, and his brother James, joseph, simon and Judas and his sisters? Are they not all here with us? Where, then, did this man get all these things? So they were offended at him. I just want to stop here for a second. They recognized that he had wisdom and mighty works, but they were offended with him. 11:37 It's a weird verse. He goes on to say the weird people, I should say, because they didn't embrace the gift on his life, they rejected the gift on his life. They rejected the ministry he was bringing to them because he was common to them, he was known to them, they knew his upbringing, they knew where he came from, they knew his pedigree. Maybe he didn't go to Harvard. Maybe he wasn't from the upper crust? Maybe people who do the things that he did are supposed to come from a different walk of life? For whatever reason, they dishonored him and Jesus said to them a prophet is not without honor except in his own country and in his own house. Next verse Now he did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief. 12:19 So we see Jesus speaking about honor and we see that Jesus says a prophet is not with honor except in his own house. So he's tying their unbelief to dishonor and the implication is, had they honored him, they would have seen many mighty works. Their dishonor stopped what God wanted to do. Their dishonor broke the flow of the spirit into their lives. And it makes me ask the question how often do we do that right? I mean, if Jesus Christ experienced that and they saw his mighty works but still kept him at an arm's distance because it didn't match what they were expecting to see, how often do we block the favor and the grace that God wants to bring into our lives because we dishonor the person through whom it's supposed to come, we dishonor the messenger and we discount their value? The Lord doesn't discount anyone's value. In fact, he shed his blood for all humanity, and so we're supposed to honor all people. And if we would posture our hearts with honor, we could receive from anybody, and God could use anybody in the body of Christ, even unbelievers in the business sense, like I was speaking about a moment ago, to open doors for us if we would be willing to honor and to bless instead of to hold onto grudges, to hold onto offense or to treat as common. 13:41 Let's look at what does a culture say about honor. You know we have such a skewed view of honor. Honor is not about us. It's about blessing others. It's about valuing others. Our culture uses honor like this. It says you need to defend her honor, right, you gotta get violent. Our culture says you disrespected me. I need to defend my honor, so I've gotta get violent to makerespected me. I need to defend my honor, so I've got to get violent to make you respect me. Honor is not something that you can demand. It's something that you're supposed to give. So honor is outward focused. Jesus demonstrated the greatest honor we could ever receive by shedding his own blood for us, and so he left us as an example of how we are to honor all people. Honor doesn't look to the politics, it doesn't look to the sin in someone's life. It doesn't look to their status, their beauty, their intellect, their race. It just looks at the fact that they are a human being with tremendous value to God. 14:41 Go to Psalm 8, if you would, psalm chapter 8. So let's flip forward to the. I don't have the verse here. But you crown him with glory and honor. So this is talking about humanity. And and the psalmist is writing and saying what is man that you are mindful of him? You've made him a little lower than the angels. You crowned him with glory and honor. So the Lord created us with honor. He created us with value. We were supposed to be the object of his affection. Sin separated us from that and caused a chasm between us. But he never stopped loving and cherishing us. He never stopped valuing us, and so our there it is. You have crowned him with glory. You made him a little lower than the angels and crowned him with glory and honor Psalm 8.5. 15:44 So our job as Christians is to reflect Jesus, and he showed, paid the ultimate price by shedding his blood for us, and we're supposed to reflect that same honor. So when we're talking to people, when we're ministering to people, boy, the spirit of God shows up. When you honor them, when you start to value them and see them as special to God, that he shed his blood for that person that's in front of you. It doesn't matter what they're protesting, it doesn't matter what kind of sin they're in, it doesn't matter how they've treated you. When you return good for evil, when you return honor for dishonor, when someone insults you and you honor them instead and you bless them and you love them and you say you have value, the spirit of God shows up because he's trying to reach that person. He wants them to experience his love, and so the Lord is turning us into ministers of reconciliation that see people with the value of Jesus and see people through the eyes of the blood of Jesus, instead of the way we tend to look at people, which is their failings, their shortcomings. 16:56 The Bible teaches us to honor many different things. It teaches us to honor family and marriage, two of the things that society dishonors the most. And there's promises that come with it. There's a promise of honoring your parents. Notice how it doesn't say honor your good parents, just says parents. Why is that Like? Why would God want us to honor people who don't deserve honor. I mean, it's just a reflection of his heart, right? 17:27 The Bible says that while we were still sinners, christ died for us, and so honor is never about you deserve my respect. It's I'm giving it to you even though you don't, because Jesus gave me his life even when I didn't deserve it. So we're just reflecting what we received. So honor is something you do wanna wrestle with, because you need to get dishonor out of your life, you need to get criticism out of your life, you need to deal with offense in your life if you're gonna let the love of Jesus flow through you, to you and through you. And a lot of times we have a hard time with honor because we have a hard time with receiving God's love and we're receiving his grace and recognizing that we are sinners saved by grace, and it's because of the grace and honor on our lives that we can give that freely away. We're self-critical, we're unforgiving of our own failings, and so we're critical of others and we think somehow, by controlling and demanding that we're gonna get our way. And the Lord is actually calling us to honor and trust and let go and watch what he does. 18:33 So he made it really easy. Like, imagine if he had said honor this category of person, don't honor this category, but sometimes, once in a while, do, and you'd be kind of like running this like matrix, okay, you know, and everybody would get it wrong, right? He just said I'm gonna make it easy, honor everyone and leave the details to me. I'm gonna flow through you and bring grace and favor into the situations where you minister and honor, and so, wow, that takes the burden off, doesn't it? All I have to do is love people and honor people, and then the Holy Spirit shows up and then he supercharges my natural abilities with his grace and his favor so that I can minister to people. So that's all I've got to do. I've got to get my heart aligned with God's heart for people. 19:16 If I want to see change in my world, if I want to see change in my family, change in my neighborhood, change in my community, change in my business, I need to honor the person on that phone call that is driving me crazy, that's offending me. I need to honor that person at work who's managing me the wrong way. I need to honor that person who's on the other side of the political aisle from me and begin to reflect that with my words and with my actions and then just watch what the Holy Spirit does. It's really exciting, guys. Once you get this, it's like this is something that's more caught than taught. I think you have to get, you sort of have to just get an aha moment with it. I hope some of you are getting it right now. Just, lord, I want to, just I want to simplify my treatment of people to honor and love. 19:59 Okay, and sometimes a lot of times in the church we talk about forgiveness being unconditional, but then, when it comes to things like honor, we pick and choose, and there's a reason why the scripture gives us different measures because it shows us where we're blocking the Lord, where we're blocking the Holy Spirit. Like you may kind of have the forgiveness thing down, like I don't think I hold the grudge anymore, but why, you know? But but you're not letting the full life of God through you because flow through you, because you haven't learned to honor the extra step. Then you know after okay, I forgave the person, now I'm going to honor that person, I'm going to put them, I'm going to, I'm going to see them with value. And when you see someone with value with the eyes of Jesus. You can't help but prophesy. You can't help but speak to their value and call out who they are. You can't help. 20:43 But you know I'm not talking about some weird thing. I'm talking about calling out the life of God in them, calling out the purposes of God over their life, calling out the value that he deposited in them from the beginning of time. The Bible says that he predestined us for good works, that we should walk in them, every single one of us, and so when we value someone, we start to call that out of you. Look, I see in you this thing of honor or that thing of honor. I see in you a love for people. I see in you an ingenuity. I see in you a creativity. I see in you this thing of honor, and God loves you and God wants to use that and God sees that God values you. So we're supposed to be ministers of the very love of Jesus that we've received in our lives. 21:31 And in a time like this, where there's so much political turmoil, so much division, so much arguing, we can honor people without agreeing with them. You don't have to have the same politics at all. In fact, we're called not to agree with sin. But that doesn't mean we stop honoring people and loving people. And so when we keep that honor and that love first, we can speak to people calmly. I get these conversations in business all the time where people are trying to get me into offense. They're trying to prod and poke me in a negotiation to be offended, and then you lose your control, you lose your ration and you sort of just lash out. Then you've lost the battle. But when you can stay in honor, when you can stay in love, it keeps your head cool, calm, collected and you can have a conversation. And the entire time you're thinking you know Jesus loves this person. You know how dare I insult them? Jesus died for this person how dare I lord it over them or abuse them in some way? 22:30 So we need to recover that awe of our salvation, that wonder of the love that we've been showed in Jesus, and show that to others. So honor for family and marriage there's favor there too. The Bible says that he who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord. So you always see this connection honor and favor. So we all want more honor and favor in our life. We always sorry. We want more favor and grace in our lives. We need more favor and grace in our lives To do the things that God's called us to do. We can't do them without his favor and without his grace. 23:14 Honor keeps us in a position, our hearts in a position, where we're aligned with the things of God and we're cooperating with his moving. Without the honor and the love of God in our lives, we step out of alignment and we block some of the flow of his grace and power in our lives. All right. Honor for authority. Ooh, this is a tough one. Our culture teaches us to question authority. Ooh, this is a tough one. Our culture teaches us to question authority. The Bible teaches us to honor authority and again, it's not about the authority being perfect. It talks about ungodly authority being honoring of ungodly authority. We can have an honoring heart towards ungodly authority and not follow everything that ungodly authority. We can have an honoring heart towards ungodly authority and not follow everything that ungodly authority tells us to do. 24:02 There's lots of examples of honorable disobedience in the Bible. Shadrach, meshach and Abednego ended up in a furnace for not bowing the knee to what the edict was, which was to worship other gods, but they didn't lose their, they didn't stop, they didn't dishonor the king. Daniel ended up in a lion's den and still honored the king. He said oh, king lived forever. When he was pulled out of the lion's den, he still maintained his honor of the king and his respect, even while being mistreated. And when we do that, we show that we are a different world, because the people don't respond that way. Jesus was a radical because he didn't respond the way that they were expecting him to respond. He didn't defend himself when he was mocked and beaten, he took it. He knew where he was headed and he knew what it was for. But he set an example for us that we don't lash out when we're mistreated and wronged. Instead, we honor and we love. And as we do that, the love of God flows through our lives and we sense a fear of the Lord for people in our relationship with people. That we treat people with honor, as a holy thing and not as a common thing thing. 25:21 There's honor for the overlooked. So often in our society it's all about the celebrity, it's all about the one with the biggest intellect, the best looks, the most money. Those are the people that we honor as a society. That's not what the Bible teaches at all. In fact, jesus on multiple occasions said don't prevent the children from coming to me. And why were the disciples doing that? Because children were not as important right, but to Jesus they were. They had the same value. And so he would bring them in and say the kingdom of heaven is of such as these, and he would honor and he called it out for the disciples. If you wanna be such as these, and he would honor and he called it out for the disciples if you want to be great, you've got to be the servant of all. You've got to honor all right, even the little ones, even those little, you know, poopy, diaper children that we have. You know, our children are to be given honor. They are precious to Jesus and he shed his blood for them just as much as for us. And we as a society often dishonor and categorize people instead of realizing that Jesus honors all my father is. 26:41 We had a joke at our house growing up that my dad would go to the grocery store which was like five minutes away for eggs or milk real quick, and he'd come back two hours later Because he was such a social person that he'd get caught up in conversations. But the thing with my father that I love about him so much is he really reflects the heart of God because he takes the time for Every single person. It wouldn't matter if it was a former student he was a school teacher for a while. It wouldn't matter if it was somebody in the shopping aisle he just met that wanted a conversation. He could tell that they were lonely. He would take the time. And everywhere you go with my father he gets stuck in conversations. But people love him because they feel seen and heard by him. 27:26 As you remember, one of the translations of honor has a connotation of to listen to, and what would happen is if we were that type of honoring to people that we see in our daily lives our coworkers, our bosses, our friends, our neighbors that we take the time. You know New York City puts the value of schedule way above taking the time for people, especially people, you know, that aren't of the same socioeconomic class as us or aren't in our lives. We avoid eye contact, we avoid connection in the city because we don't have the time. And Jesus had the time, you know, and I see that reflected in how my father would interact with people growing up. He always took the time, you know, and I see that reflected in how my father would interact with people growing up. He always took the time and it didn't matter. There was nothing in it for him, you know, he was just. He wanted to show the love of Jesus. It's powerful guys. 28:24 There's a generational honor that I believe the Lord wants to restore to the church. You see it in Luke 1.17, when John the Baptist was a fulfillment of the prophecy in Malachi of turning the hearts of the fathers to the sons and the sons to the fathers. I believe the Lord wants to bring an honor back that's intergenerational. God is the God of Abraham, isaac and Jacob. He's a God of generations and it's always been a cultural norm, at least in the United States, for one generation to reject the prior generation, for sons to reject the ways of their fathers, and that's not the heart of God. God wants one generation building on the next generation so that our faith builds and, yes, the Lord may reveal a new thing, bring new revival, want some old things to end, but we do it with honor and we include the generation before us as we raise up and we care for the next generation that's coming up and we don't just make fun of their jargon and their ways. You know, I've felt this thing about parenting recently, where I feel like the Lord has been teaching me to not laugh too much at my children, because they do a lot of funny things. But I don't want them to feel self-conscious by laughing at them all the time and by not taking them seriously. I want to just talk to them, even when they're saying the most ridiculous things, and make them feel heard and valued, because I want them to always feel included in conversation and I want them to feel that we're really seeing them and not just seeing them as a joke. And I think you know, intergenerationally in the church we need to be that way. You know, we need to make the effort to understand the culture that's not like ours. We need to make the effort to understand the next generation or the older generation and value the wisdom, value the zeal that we offer each other and really see the church united generationally. 30:26 Special honor, a special honor for church leaders. The Bible talks about double honor for elders. First Timothy 5.17 says that we are to count worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in word and doctrine. So the Bible also says that the people who are leaders of the church watch over our souls, which is an incredible passage, because I didn't know we needed that right. Like Christianity in America is so individualistic that I thought it was just a relationship with God. It's not. It's a relationship with God and his people. And if you don't have a relationship with his people, you won't very long have a relationship with God. 31:12 And the thing about deception is when you step out of fellowship. The first time you step out of fellowship and this is what happened to me before. I had my 13-year backsliding when you first step out of fellowship, guess what happens? Nothing. It feels like nothing happened. You have more free time, the weekends are free. Oh, I'm going to take up a new hobby. I'm not going to church anymore. I still love God, but I feel fine and I feel free and nothing's missing. The problem is, jesus said that if you build your life on his teachings, you're building it on solid rock, and if you ignore his teachings, you're building it on sand. And when storms of life come, your house will crumble and fall if you don't follow his teachings. 32:01 And the Bible is very clear that our faith is to be walked out in relationship with other believers and deep covenant relationship, not fickle, flaky see you once a weekend, maybe for a few minutes relationships. It's vital to our faith, it can't be stressed enough. And our church leaders watch over our souls to protect us. We're often likened in scripture to sheep who need a shepherd or a protector. And there's a spiritual power there. There's a spiritual authority there to watch over and protect. Do leaders sometimes make mistakes? Yeah, are there scandals in churches? Yes, that doesn't change the gospel, that doesn't change the Bible. And we are called to stay in fellowship. We're called to move through the storms of life, be that house built on the rock and stay in fellowship and stay connected with people and not stop honoring what the Lord says is honorable, amen. 33:02 So some things that honor does. It's an act of surrender and trust in the Lord. It's a matter of the heart, a reflection of God's heart for us. While we were still sinners, christ died for us. It's unconditional as a heart posture. It recognizes and values authority while not missing the overlook. So it's top down and bottom up. It notices the unnoticed but also respects authority. It's beautiful. 33:30 Actually, honor is others-focused rather than self-focused. It embraces authority, and authority figures in our life. It acts towards people as unto the Lord. It requires trust in the Lord. It rebuffs and repels offense. So you think about honor like it's really hard to be honoring somebody and get offended by that person, right, because you're seeing their value despite. So, if your heart and your focus is this person is loved and valued by God, and they can say the vilest thing and I'll just be like, okay, god loves you, you know, and so I love you, and that anchors our attitude and it anchors our relationships with people. We become unoffendable. Imagine being unoffendable. I'm still working on it. 34:25 Honor requires forgiveness and love. Honor is the surest way to develop godly character. If you live in honor towards people and you're unoffendable boy, that's pretty good character. Okay, because Jesus said we're to turn the other cheek and that's one of the hardest things to do. It doesn't make us weak, it makes us stronger. To be in the face of offense and honor and bless and return good for evil, that's the hardest thing to do. Punching back is the instinctive thing to do. Lashing out is the instinctive thing to do. 34:59 Have you ever noticed when you get done gossiping about people, you feel dirty? Have you ever tried, like blessing people when they're not around, talking highly of them. It's the opposite. It feels amazing. You know, boy, pastor Mo, he is so anointed, he's had such an influence in my life, man, I don't know where I'd be without him. You know those types of things. Imagine if that got back to him. You know, imagine if somebody said yo, Bryan was talking about you the other day and he said you know, you really blessed him. Now, now, like three or four people got blessed in that chain. And see, so we need to start. We need to start seasoning our language with more and more of that, building people up, reminding ourselves and others of all the people who've played a role in our development. 35:54 There's a special honor for the body of Christ. In fact, if you go to 1 Corinthians 12, there's a very interesting sequence of scriptures that I'm still spending a lot of time with. Paul is talking about communion and he's talking about properly honoring the body of Christ, and then he shifts into an analogy of the body of Christ being believers that are interconnected with each other. And it's such a beautiful thing because he's going from talking about communion, where we take the body and blood of Christ and we honor what he's done. And then he says you are the body of Christ, and he's talking about being discerning of the body of Christ, being respectful of the body of Christ, and by doing so he's elevating in our eyes how important the church body is. 36:46 He goes on to talk about how each part of the body is interconnected with each other and that we receive what we need from other people. And he says that you know, in Ephesians he said each person is given a grace, a measure of grace from Christ. And again in 1 Corinthians 12, verse 7, he said that the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all. So Paul is showing that the value of the body of Christ is that when you're connected to the body of Christ, you get what you need spiritually, but you also receive from heaven gifts to give to other people in the body of Christ. So the whole spiritual gifts chapter which is sandwiched between him talking about communion, then the body of Christ and then the love of God, is intended to say all the stuff you get from heaven is to bless others. The only actual. There's one spiritual gift. That's for building ourselves up and that's the gift of tongues. Everything else is to give away. 37:47 So if you're not connected in a relationship, you're not experiencing any of the life flow of Jesus through your life. Relationships is where all of that happens. So there's a whole part of your faith that hasn't even started yet until you're in relationship with other believers, and so you have to get rooted and grounded in a church and vulnerable relationships where the life of God can flow through you All of the gifts of the Spirit. And so you have to get rooted and grounded in a church and vulnerable relationships where the life of God can flow through you. All of the gifts of the Spirit. Are God so honoring and blessing relationships in the church that he supercharges and blesses you to give more away to others? Imagine that I mean God is so affirming and blessing and calling us into relationship that he calls us an interconnected body where every single part is necessary. We can't live without any part of the body. We need all the parts and every part has value. And as you connect, he's going to supercharge your love and your grace towards others with gifts to give away to those people. And then he talks about honor in that same chapter, chapter 12. He says that the parts that we often overlook are deserving of more honor, and so he's calling us to actually surround the weaker parts of the body with honor. What does that look like? 39:01 So we had some people over for a barbecue the other day. We're all sitting around eating. We had the little kids out. They were running around kind of in a circle and all the adults were just mesmerized with the kids. They were like these kids are so cute, they're amazing. I said. I know, except for sometimes they're not. And they were the life of the party. We were completely focused on their every word, their every little joke, their every little funny nuance. And that's what Paul's talking about, about giving greater honor to the weakest among us. 39:40 None of the adults in that circle were saying well, what about me? I want some attention. You know, we were just fixated on the kids as the natural weakest among us that needed the most attention and love, and that's the way the body of Christ is supposed to be. We have a new believer who comes in and doesn't know anything about anything. That's okay. There's a bunch of us who are going to surround you and help you and love you, to walk out the things of God, and we're all going to do our part. There's no cliques in the body of Christ. There's no. Hey, this is my little group over here, this is my little group over there. That's not what God's called us to. I mean, it's okay to have your group of friends, that's totally fine, but we are supposed to be looking out for the weakest among us and surrounding them with love and letting the gifts of God flow through us. 40:19 I think sometimes in the charismatic church, because we go to a conference or something, we say I want more spiritual gifts in my life but we have no relationship, connection to anybody. So there's no point Like the spiritual gifts are to flow in covenant relationship with the body of Christ, to the church that we're planted in and committed to and that we're willing to go through the hard times with. You know, some of us are one offense away from leaving the church or one wrong conversation away, and the Lord wants to change all of that. He wants to say make a decision, plant your feet and stay, and only then can I start to develop in you the character that I want to develop in your life. He's going to use conflict with people sometimes to develop your character. He's going to use being misunderstood sometimes, to develop your character. He's going to use human relationship and friction that happens there to develop you into who he wants you to be. 41:09 But if you abort the process all the time, you'll never grow up in the Lord. You'll always go to a new church where they feed you a little bit and you feel fat and you never use it and you wonder why don't I flow in the gifts of the Spirit? Why don't I have this call on my life? Well, you've never understood the value of the body of Christ. You never plugged in. And Paul's giving us a roadmap right here. He's saying you belong to a body. You plug in and then you start to bless through relationships and the Lord will give you the favor and the grace on your life. 41:38 Now remember the honor that Paul's talking about for the weaker members in the body. What does honor do? Honor puts a draw on the anointing in people's life. So we saw that in that first scripture about Jesus could not do many mighty works because of the unbelief, the offense, and there was no draw, there was no honor. So when we honor people in our midst, we start to receive things from them that are on their life that we need. The Bible says that every part of the body is necessary. So we put a draw on that and we begin to learn things from each other through the spirit. 42:14 So you know, if you want to maximize your growth in Christ, you know, invest in relationship and honor your brother and sister in Christ and you'll begin to draw out a spiritual anointing from them. You'll be able to draw out the gifts that are on their life. We all have them, nobody is exempt. We all have gifts in our life that the Lord is trying to activate and wants to pull out of us through the honoring culture that he's developing. This church has it, this church, and all I'm trying to do is elevate it so we're more aware of it and more focused on it. 42:50 The reason I'm standing here today is because this church has it. This church has got it like in spades, and if you're newer to this church, plug into this church, because the relationships it might seem like a mundane thing. Again, we need to honor that thing and value that thing and the life of God will start to flow. It doesn't matter who. Start with the person that you're closest to, start with a life group, start with some connection and just start investing and being faithful with those few relationships and watch what God does in your life. It's not gonna be this big flashy thing all of a sudden, but you're gonna start to feel the life of God flowing through you and to you as you connect with people, flowing through you and to you as you connect with people, and remember we're called to honor and lift up our brothers and sisters and as we do, we're actually pulling them into their destiny in God. We're pulling the anointing of God out of them, and so that's why I think the Bible says to surround with the weaker members with greater honor, because we're pulling them out of a place of weakness into strength in Jesus. 43:48 So, Father, as the worship team comes up, father, we just, we bless you, lord. We want to be a church who understands honor, father. We wanna be a church who blesses and honors our brothers and sisters. Father, forgive us for treating as common the things that you call holy Father. Forgive us for treating as common the things that you call holy Father. Forgive us for treating as mundane the things of the spirit. Father, the things of your body. 44:16 Father, cause us to have a new awe and appreciation for your church. Cause us to have a new awe and appreciation for the power of honor, father, that we might participate in the life of Jesus, we might participate in the ministry of the cross to the world around us, father, and let us start, in this church, by building each other up. Father, as your word says, we are to outdo each other with honor. In Romans, father, we are to outdo each other with honor. So let this church be a church that speaks life, that speaks life in front of people and behind their backs. Father, let this be a church where criticism is rarely heard or never heard. Father, let this be a church where we surround the weakest among us that they may grow in the strength and the knowledge of the Lord In Jesus' mighty name, amen. 45:00 - Speaker 2 This is the CityLight Church podcast. If you've missed any part of today's message or if you would like to find out more about Pastor Bojan Jancic and CityLight Church, visit us at citylightnyc.com. That's citylightnyc.com. Feel free to visit us online or in person anytime. We would love to connect with you. We pray that you have been encouraged today, that you have been reminded how much God loves you. Pray that you have been encouraged today, that you have been reminded how much God loves you and that you are surrounded by grace. Thank you for listening. Make sure that you subscribe to CityLight Church Podcast wherever you find your favorite podcasts worldwide.