Made for Connection | Sunday, April 18, 2021

Hey everybody, welcome to our online service here at Cross Connection. Make sure you invite somebody and send them the link below. Now, let's head over to worship.

Heavenly Father, we come before You, God, just so grateful, Lord, that we can even come before You. We can speak Your name, and we can direct our attention to You. Our minds have so much to be grateful for. As these songs say, Lord, we call on You for help in our time of need. We call upon You for strength, Lord, in our struggles. So God, in this time of worship, would You bless us? Would You come near, as You promised that if we draw near to You, You will draw near to us? Lord, bless our time now, in Jesus' name. Amen.

Let's praise. We need no other hiding place; our hope is safe within Your name. This we know, this we know. You promised never to forsake us. You will sustain us. This we know, this we know.

Rise! Your shackles are no more, for Jesus Christ has broken every chain. All of the heavens and the earth announce the fullness of Your Word.

This we know, and every enemy will flee as we declare Your victory. This we know. I will call upon the Lord.

Rise, your shackles are no more, for Jesus Christ has broken everything. I will call upon the Lord, who alone is strong enough to save. Rise, your shackles are no more, for Jesus Christ has broken every chain.

Jesus' name will break every stronghold. Freedom is ours when we call His name. Yes, Jesus' name is above every other. All hail the power of Jesus' name! Jesus' name will break every stronghold. Freedom is ours when we call His name. Yes, Jesus' name is above every other. All hail the power of Jesus' name!

And I will call upon the Lord, for He alone is strong enough to save. Your shackles are no more, for Jesus Christ has broken every chain. Oh yes, I will call upon the Lord, who is strong enough to save. Your shackles are no more, for Jesus Christ has broken every chain.

Welcome, and thanks for tuning in to Cross Connection Church today. I'm Pastor Garrett, and here at Cross Connection Church, we're all about living life in connection with God, one another, and the world through Jesus Christ.

Part of the way we live life in connection with God is through prayer. So, when you're at home, whether you're on the couch or in bed, wherever you are right now, we want to be praying with and for you. There is an easy resource for you called prayer.lifeinconnection.com. Right there on our website, you can submit your prayer requests to us and know that our pastoral team and our prayer team are praying with and for you as soon as you send that in.

We really do want to be connecting with you in this way because our God is so great; He answers our prayers. He hears every single one of them, and we see God answer so many prayers here at Cross Connection Church. So, if you have any needs, any prayer needs this week, please don't hesitate to go to prayer.lifeinconnection.com. Let us know what's going on and how we can be praying for you.

With that, our mission this week is the Nazareth Evangelical College. We're going to be asking you, as our church, to be praying for them. We've been...

We have partnered with the Nazareth Evangelical College for years. As the name states, they are in Nazareth, Israel, the hometown of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Their mission is to raise up church leaders in the faith, specifically with the idea of planting churches all over Israel and in the Middle East. They are doing quite an amazing work there, but please be praying for them. They are still facing the same challenges with the COVID-19 pandemic as we are here. Pray for their leadership and all of the students who are being ministered to and learning all of the different things required to plant churches and to be evangelical Christians in Israel.

This week, when you think about them, please remember to pray for the Nazareth Evangelical College. If you came prepared to give today, there are a couple of different ways you can do that online. First, you can go to give.lifeinconnection.com, which is a simple portal right on our website where you can give directly. Second, you can text the number on your phone, 84321, and send any amount that way; it will walk you through all the necessary steps. Third, you can simply mail in your tithe this week to our church address: 1675 Seven Oaks Road, Escondido, California.

With that, let's go ahead and worship the Lord with our giving. This song will take us back to Pastor Anthony. God bless you all, and let's worship our great and amazing God.

The weapon may be formed, but it won't prosper. When the darkness falls, it won't breathe, because the God I serve knows only how to triumph. My God will never fail. I'm going to see a victory; I'm going to see a victory, for the Bible belongs to you. I'm going to see a victory.

I'm going to see a victory, for the battle belongs to You, Lord. There is power in the mighty name of Jesus. Every war He wages, He will win. I'm not backing down from any giants; I know how this story ends.

I'm going to see a victory. I'm going to see a victory, for the battle belongs to You, Lord. I'm going to see Your victory.

You take what the enemy meant for evil and You turn it for good. You turn it for good. You take what the enemy meant for evil.

And You turn it for goodness. You turn it for good. A victory! I'm gonna see a victory, for the battle belongs to You, Lord. I'm gonna see a victory.

Oh yes, You do! You take what the enemy meant for evil and You turn it for good. Yes, Lord God, we believe these truths. Lord God, we have the victory; we fight from victory.

Or God, You never fail us. You never have, and You never will. God, we just thank You again for this time. Bless our time and Your word now, in Jesus' name. Amen.

I'm spiritual but not religious. Have you ever had anyone say that to you? The spiritual but not religious crowd is on the rise in Western culture, especially here in the United States. Many of those who identify as spiritual but not religious were formerly both religious and spiritual. They generally identify as more liberal or moderate in their political perspective, and they are more likely to be a Baby Boomer, born between 1946 and 1964, or a Gen Xer, born between 1964 and 1979.

You may be asking, what exactly does it mean to be spiritual but not religious? That is really a good question. For the most part, those who refer to themselves as spiritual but not religious consider themselves to be spiritual, but they say that their religious faith is not very important in their life, or it is no longer important in their life. The spiritual but not religious feel that there is something bigger. They believe in transcendence—the existence of something or the experience of something that is beyond material or physical reality.

While they might believe in transcendent realities, they have checked out of organized religion. They are no longer affiliated with a church or a religious or faith group, but they believe that there is something more to the universe, something more to life, and potentially that there is an afterlife. According to a 2017 poll, the spiritual but not religious crowd said that they believe in the possibility of there being something more to reality than pure matter. However, 93 percent haven't been to a religious service in the past six months. That was in 2017. Imagine what those numbers would probably be like now after 13 months of shutdowns and church closures.

As of June 2020, just ten weeks into the shutdowns here in the United States, the same research group that studied the spiritual but not religious crowd in 2017, called Barna Research, found that nearly half of American churchgoers—48 percent—had not engaged with their church online in the previous four Sundays. Think about that: after only ten weeks off, 48 percent of churchgoers were effectively no longer connected to a church.

Researchers suggest that to develop a new pattern or habit in your life, it only takes 42 days, or six weeks. Many people habituated themselves into no longer going to church. That segment of people who were no longer connected with their church in any substantial way after ten weeks in June of 2020 might now identify themselves as religiously unaffiliated. Researchers on this topic refer to that group as the "nuns," spelled N-O-N-E-S. This is a rising group of people in the United States that has been showing up in many demographic studies, where they identify themselves as not religiously affiliated. They are often referred to as the "nuns," or this same group may refer to themselves as spiritual but not religious.

You may have seen reported in the news just a few weeks ago that the Gallup polling agency found, as of March 29th of this year, that United States church membership fell below the majority for the first time in their research. According to the study, church membership among adults in America had dropped to 47 percent in 2020. Twenty years prior, in the year 2000, that same poll was conducted, and they found that 70 percent of adults in the United States were attending a church and were connected to regular church attendance. That is a phenomenal drop in 20 years, going from 70 percent to 47 percent.

I would suggest to you that many of those adults who no longer attend church...

Longer go to church; they probably still believe in something transcendent. They still might even say that they believe in God. Perhaps they would say that they believe many good things about Jesus. They are the nuns; they are the spiritual but not religious.

I bring all of this up this morning for this very important point: human beings are born believers. Unlike what some social scientists try to sell us, we are born with an innate religious orientation. We're not born atheists; we're not born unbelievers. We are not, as many people would say, socialized into faith or belief in God. Cognitive anthropology and psychology continue to show in their research that we are inclined, as human beings, to believe in God.

Why is that? Because, as I said, we are born believers. The wise King Solomon of Israel, 3,000 years ago, observed this very thing in his book, Ecclesiastes. He observed that God created all of us with an awareness of the eternal. That is, every one of us is born with an awareness that there is something beyond space and time, and that reality is placed in our hearts. He said it like this in Ecclesiastes chapter 3, verse 11: "God has made everything beautiful in its time; also, He has put eternity in their hearts." The "their" in that passage is us. God has made everything beautiful in its time, and He has put eternity in our hearts.

Currently, we are returning to a familiar theme for those who call Cross Connection Church their home church. We are talking about our purpose and mission as a church. What is our vision as a gathering of Christians? Well, if you are a part of this church and have followed along with Cross Connection for any length of time, you know very clearly that our vision here at Cross Connection is life in connection with God, one another, and the world through Jesus. I talked a little bit about this last week. I talk about this frequently, and our other pastors on staff talk about it all the time as well. Our vision is life in connection with God, one another, and the world through Jesus.

This point that we are born believers is an important aspect of our vision. We were created by God to live in connection with Him. Genesis chapter 1 reveals this as we open to the very first book of the Bible and the very first chapter.

In Genesis chapter 1, beginning at verse 1, we read these familiar words: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." The earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep. The Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.

Moving down to verse 26, we read, "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.'" So God created man in His own image; in the image of God, He created him. Male and female, He created them.

From the very beginning, God created all things and made man, male and female, in His image and likeness. Notice in the verse, which theologically speaking is an essential verse, that God says, "Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness." Who is God speaking to in this passage when He says, "Let us make man in our image and in our likeness"?

Virtually all scholars and theologians agree this is a conversation within what we call the Trinity, something referred to as the Godhead. The doctrine of the Trinity is perhaps one of the most difficult doctrines of theology to grasp and even to explain. Unfortunately for you, or perhaps maybe fortunately for you, I'm not going to spend my time today unpacking or explaining the doctrine of the Trinity. I'm simply going to say that when theologians talk about God, the triune God, they talk about...

A perfect communion or a perfect community of three in one, God is one God. We have been studying through the book of Deuteronomy, and in Deuteronomy 6, we read those words: "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength." So, the Lord our God is one Lord. God is one, and yet God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, united together as one God.

Now, again, this is a challenging thing to wrap your mind around and to explain. You could be worthy of a pardon if you have a difficult time fully understanding the nature of God. However, as I said, it's not my aim today to spend a lot of time on this topic; there will be time for that at another time. God is a perfect communion or community, and when He created man, male and female, He created us in His image and likeness. He created us to be one with Him.

God's desire is that we would be united as one with Him. We were created by God to live in connection with Him, and we'll look a bit more at this creation in God's image and likeness next time. Not only were we created for life in connection with God, but we were made to be united in connection with one another as well. This is why, in making us in His image and likeness, He made man and woman for the purpose that the two—man and woman—would be united; they would be joined together as one flesh. Two individuals would become one flesh, united together under a covenant, the covenant of marriage.

This becomes really important as you study through the Scriptures because you're going to see that this idea of divided or separated individuals united together in a covenant relationship shows up quite a bit in the Scriptures, not just in marriage. This is what happens in marriage, but this is also what happens in salvation. We'll get more on that as we go through these studies about life and connection. We were created by God to live in connection with God, but there's a problem.

Weren't familiar with this concept or with this story? You kind of had to expect that there would be a but in this whole thing. God created us to live life in perfect communion with Him, in the same way that there is perfect connection and perfect communion within the Trinity: Father, Son, and Spirit.

I hope that you've read some of the Bible, and I hope that you have at least read the first book of the Bible or at least the first few chapters of the first book. Genesis chapters 1 and 2 tell us the story of creation, and Genesis 3 gives us the very important next major event after creation, which I believe is the answer for all of us as to why there is evil, brokenness, division, suffering, and death in the world.

I think a lot of people wrestle with this. In fact, I was listening to a conversation this last week with a Catholic bishop and an atheist talking about this exact thing. The atheist was basically saying that his biggest issue with the idea of God, the Bible, and Christianity is this issue of suffering and pain. So, we all wrestle with this.

In Genesis chapter 2, as God was creating, He made a garden, a garden called Eden. As He did, we read this back in Genesis chapter 2, beginning at verse 15: "Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, 'Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat; for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.'"

Then, in Genesis chapter 3, we read these words, beginning at verse 1: "Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, 'Has God indeed said, "You shall not eat of every tree in the garden?"' The woman said to the serpent, 'We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, "You shall not eat, nor shall you touch it, lest you die."' Then the serpent said to the woman, 'You will not surely die, for God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good.'"

And evil. So, when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made for themselves coverings.

Our disobedience to God's command brought evil, brokenness, division, suffering, and death into the world, along with many other horrible things, such as disease. All the fallenness of creation is bound up in this fall. Here in Genesis chapter 3, God created us to live life in connection with Him. We were made for perfect communion and community with God, in oneness with Him. But sin—our missing the mark of righteousness by our disobedience—broke the connection. Sin has brought division, separation, and death. Death is the ultimate separation.

Later in the Bible, especially when you get to the very last book, we read about the second death, which is eternal separation from God and from all that is good. All of this is the result of sin and disobedience. In the New Testament, we see the progression of this sin and its effect on humanity when we read these words from the Apostle Paul in the book of Romans, chapter 5, at verse 12. Paul says there in Romans 5:12, "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men because all sinned."

At the end of Genesis 3, after God spoke to Adam, the first man, and his wife Eve about the curse that would befall them because of sin, Adam and Eve were sent out of the garden. They were disconnected from God.

Now, at the beginning of this talk, I said that the spiritual but not religious crowd believes in something transcendent. I also mentioned that cognitive anthropologists and psychologists continue to show this is true in their research. We are inclined to believe in God, and we are born believers. This harkens back to this text in Genesis.

Chapter 3 discusses how we were created for connection with God, a connection that we lost because of sin. We can't help but long for it. C.S. Lewis, the author of "The Chronicles of Narnia," wrote a non-fiction book that is one of my favorites, called "Mere Christianity." On page 136 of "Mere Christianity," Lewis writes these words: "Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim; well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire; well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."

You have a desire to live life in connection with something transcendent, with God, in perfect communion, harmony, and oneness with Him. Why do you have that desire? Why does every human in every culture default toward religious or spiritual expression? It is because we were made for it.

However, how do we attain this connection? The spiritual but not religious crowd is seeking transcendent experiences, but they are not religious. They are those who have rejected the church and Christianity, separating themselves from any affiliation with a faith group.

Why have they rejected Christianity or the church? Some of them will say things like, "The church didn't provide adequate answers for my deep questions." They might feel that the church hurt them, or that someone within the church or a Christian hurt them. They may believe that Christians have promulgated hate against certain groups of people. They might have witnessed scandalous and horrible things done by individuals within the institution of the church. They could feel that the church didn't actually fulfill its purpose as intended by God; it didn't provide people with that connection to transcendence.

Maybe none of those things are true, or maybe all of them are true. These are some of the reasons that the spiritual but not religious crowd has given for why they have given up on institutional Christianity.

Church or Christianity, the spiritual but not religious crowd is still seeking transcendence. They try to find it in nature, in physical betterment—think CrossFit or physical mastery, think sport, meditation, yoga, or martial arts. They attempt to experience transcendence through breathing exercises, psychedelics, and psychoactive hallucinogenics. This is happening more and more in our culture. People try to achieve it through fasting, strange diets, or any number of physical activities.

Understand that none of this is new; it is just the rebranding of the same old things that people have done for millennia to try to recapture a connection with the divine, with God, with transcendence. Each of these activities is fundamentally religious. They may not take place in basilicas, cathedrals, churches, or temples, but they are completely religious activities. They are not sacred; they are non-religious religions. However, non-religious religions are cheap substitutes for true communion with God. None of these things will suffice.

They might bring someone a feeling of transcendence, an experience of something bigger than themselves. For example, someone standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon or jumping out of an airplane and doing the wingsuit thing may feel that they have come in contact with something greater than themselves. While these experiences might evoke a sense of transcendence, they will never satisfy humanity's desire for true communion with God. They cannot restore that connection or bring reconciliation.

So, that begs the question: how can we repair this breach? I hate to do this to you, but to answer that question, you're going to have to join us next time. I don't have time to jump into it now because it's quite a big explanation. Make sure you tune in with us next week as we consider these things. We were created for connection with God, but that connection was broken as a result of sin and disobedience. We desire and long to reconnect with God, with something divine. How can we make that a reality? Well, that's where we're going next week, so make sure you join us next Sunday.

Father God, I pray that you would give...

Us, a deep desire, longing, and yearning in our hearts to connect with You. We already have that, but would You amplify that? I know that these videos are watched by people who are a part of our church, but they are sent to many other people who are not connected to Cross Connection or not connected to any church.

I pray, God, that whoever this video finds, whoever watches this, that You would use it to draw them to a place where they are desiring to connect with You. Lord, You said if we seek, we will find; if we knock, the door will be opened to us; and if we ask, it will be given to us. So, Lord, I pray that You'd stir in our hearts to be those who are seeking, asking, and knocking.

If we're looking for true connection to the vine, to that which is divine, then we're only going to find it in You because You are the only true God. So, God, would You place that longing in people's hearts that they would seek for You and that they would find in You the satisfaction of these things. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

You go before I know that You've even come back and You call it my victory. You go before I know that You've even gone to win my way. Your love becomes my grace, and all I did was break, and all I did was worship.

And all I did was bow down. All I did was stay still. You have saved me; so much better this way.

Hallelujah, great Defender! So much better Your way. You know before I do where my heart can seek to find Your truth, Your mercy.

And all I did was praise. All I did was. You have saved me; so much better this way. So much better.

Hallelujah, my Defender!

You reintroduced me to your life. You picked up all my pieces and put me back together. You are the defender of my heart. You introduced me to your love, and when I thought I lost myself, you knew. You picked up all my pieces and put me back together. You are the defender of my heart.

You have saved me. It is so much better this way—so much better your way. All I did was praise, and all I did was say still.

Father God, we thank You for the opportunity that we've had today to worship You and to study the Scriptures. We pray that You would cause these things from Your Word to be in our hearts and that they would stir up faith and a desire to seek after You. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by Your Word. So, Lord, would You do a work in all of those who hear this, whether they already believe in You or not? Draw people to Yourself, we pray in Jesus' name.

And now may the Lord bless and keep you. May He make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May He lift up His countenance upon you and give you His peace. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of His Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen. Holy Spirit, be with you all. Amen.