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Amen. Um, well, first off, I just want to say thank you to uh to Jeremy and to Josh and to Wes teaching for the last three weeks. Uh, if you haven't heard yet, um, we just had our fourth baby, so I was on paternity leave. And so uh yeah, thank you. Really excited. My house just went from the chaos of three boys to now even more chaos because we've got a little girl who we have to protect from the chaos of the three boys. So it went from crazy to it feels like kind of another elevated level of crazy, and things are definitely ramping up in the Brosser household, although we're sleeping pretty decent. I think that's how my wife would answer that question as well. I don't know. You could talk to her after, but don't crowd her because she hates it when lots of people talk to her at the same time. So uh the reason I tell you that, the reason I say my house is getting a little bit crazy is because in our passage today, we're gonna look at how Jesus' ministry is getting a little bit more crowded and a little bit more crazy as well. We're in a summer teaching series called Disciple, looking at what the scriptures say about being a disciple of Jesus. And uh I had this pastor on my heart to share with y'all this morning. So you can look down at Mark chapter three, starting in verse seven. Here's what it says it says, And Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea, and a great crowd followed from Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem and Idumeah, and from beyond the Jordan, and from around Tyre and Sidon. And when the great crowd heard all that he was doing, they came to him, and he told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, lest they crush him, for he had healed many, and that all uh so all who had diseases pressed around him to touch him. And wherever the unclean spirit saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, You are the Son of God. And he strictly ordered them not to make him known. So at this point, it's still pretty early on in Jesus' public ministry, but uh his ministry is gaining a lot of momentum and traction. And at this point, any city he goes to, the crowds show up from all over. When it lists all these cities that they came from Galilee, Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, beyond the Jordan, Tire Sidon. This is a region of over a hundred square miles. And it says that people came from all of these towns, over a hundred miles traveling by foot. By the way, they didn't have iPhones with Find My Location. They weren't just like, Where's Jesus? Always right there. So imagine traveling like a hundred miles by foot just to try to see this Jesus guy because they'd heard stories of his miracles, they'd heard his teachings, and they were like, we want to see this for ourselves in first person. And so people traveled from all over to see Jesus. And in this particular moment, the crowd had gotten so chaotic and it was so big that Jesus told his disciples to put together an emergency exit plan. They were like, he was like, You need to get the boat ready to go. It literally says, lest they crush him. Like I've been in a lot of crowds, but I've never thought I was gonna die from people crushing me. Jesus knew he had to go to the cross. He knew he couldn't be trampled to death by the crowd, so he told his disciples, hey, we need a boat so we can escape when it gets a little bit too crazy. So he just had this another crazy day of ministry, healing people, praying for people. And as is a custom in the life of Jesus, after a long day of ministry, Jesus decided he needed to get away from the crowds and go up onto the mountain. So look what it says in verse 13. It says, And he went up on the mountain and called to him those whom he desired, and they came to him. So here we see this radical scene change. It goes from the chaos and the hustle and the bustle of the crowds and the city. And at the end of that day, Jesus says, We got to move away from that. And Jesus went up into the mountain and he called the 12 disciples to come with him. And this is really important. One aspect of discipleship that we have to understand to grow in your discipleship to Jesus, there is this movement and this trajectory from moving away from the crowds and moving to the place of the mountains. And for some of you, maybe that's actually you like going on the mountains, but it doesn't have to be that. It's just the place where you're away from the crowds where you have that personal connection with Jesus. And the reality is there is this certain excitement with being a part of the crowd. Everybody loves crowds and loves concerts. And don't get me wrong, Sunday mornings are great. It's great to see a crowded room of people coming who want to hear the Bible and who are wanting to grow in the relationship with Jesus. But really, discipleship happens when you move away from the crowds and when you get to that place where you're getting to spend personal time with Jesus alone. And so I want to just encourage and challenge you this morning. If your only encounter with Jesus is on a Sunday morning in the midst of the crowd right here, you are only hitting a small fraction of what God wants to do in your life. Now, yes, keep coming. I hope you keep coming. I hope you keep going to church. I hope you keep coming to Bible studies. But the reality is the whole point of starting in the crowd is that we might move from that place to being just a face in the crowd to the place where we're getting face to face with Jesus and where you are pursuing a personal relationship with Jesus, where you hear Jesus like he did with the disciples, calling you away from the crowds to come and meet with him so that you might grow in your discipleship. The truth is wherever the Spirit of God is moving, there will always be a crowd. But the greatest work that God will ever do in your life will always happen outside of the crowds. And so I want to just simply encourage you in that today. And for you to maybe just look at your life and look at your rhythms and look at your routine and to ask you, where are the places that you encounter Jesus the most? Where is the place and the time where you're actually feeling like you're really growing deeper in your intimacy with Christ? And if it's only on Sunday, I just want to encourage you. God has so much more for you than that. You don't have to wait for the next Bible study to get a revelation of what God wants to do in your life. You can open the Bible by yourself and encounter the person of Jesus. You don't have to wait for the next prayer meeting to have somebody pray over you to get breakthrough in your life. You can go into the secret place of prayer, and God hears your prayers as you pour your heart out before him. And so this is what Jesus did with his disciples at this time. And I believe that this is what Jesus wants to do with us as his disciples today, to continue to get away into that secret place that we might encounter the presence of Jesus. Amen. So notice he calls them away from the crowds into the mountain. But the question is, why did he call them there? Why did Jesus call them to the mountains? Well, was it because these disciples, was it because he loved them more than the rest of the crowds? Was it because they had some sort of spiritual superiority and they were greater and he had a bigger plan for them than anybody else? The reality is the reason Jesus called them to come to the mountains is one specific reason. And I want you to see it for yourself. Look at verse 13 again. And when he went up on the mountain and called to him, those whom he desired, they came to him. The reason Jesus called these disciples out of the crowds to come and get alone with them is one specific thing. He desired them. The reason Jesus called them is because Jesus desired them. And the reason that Jesus has called you is because Jesus desires you. They were normal people with normal deficiencies and normal temptations, just like any one of us. But Jesus called them because he desired them. This was the sovereign choice that God made based off of his will and his own desires. As Jesus said in John 15, verse 16, you did not choose me, but I chose you. Why did he choose them? Because he desired them. Why did he choose you and call you? Because he desired you. Paul the apostle says it this way in Ephesians 2, verse 4 and 5. God being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, he made us alive together with Christ. By grace, you have been saved. Isn't that amazing? What why did why did God call you? Why does God love you? Because he desires you. And this is such a beautiful reality. If you, if God did not initiate the relationship with you, you would have never initiated a relationship with God. If God did not call you first, you would have never called out to God. If God did not have a desire in his heart to know you, you would never have a desire in your heart to know him. And so at the center and the heart of what it means to be a disciple, we're talking this whole summer about what does it mean to be a disciple? I would boil it down to this. To be a disciple is to be desired. That is your chief and fundamental and primary identity. A disciple of Christ is somebody who is desired by Christ. Now, here's the thing: if I was to go around this room, and I won't because I actually don't, I'd be scared to know what everybody's deepest desires are, but if you were to go around this room, I was to say, every person right now, tell me what is the deepest desire in your heart. And if you were to do that with every single person, you know, what is the deepest desire in your heart? Obviously, we would have an infinite amount of different responses. But if any person at any point in human history were to ask God, God, what do you desire? That answer would never change. The answer of what God desires would always be the exact same thing. He desires us. He desires you. He desires a relationship. He desires intimacy. And while our desires change, God's desires do not. His primary desire for every person throughout history is that they might know him, that he might know them, that he might pursue them, that they might pursue him. God's desire is for you. And this is really, really important to get because to be desired is one of the core longings of the human heart. There's not a single person in this room. If I was to ask, do you want to be desired? There's not a single person here who go, No, I don't really care. I don't want anyone to ever love me. I don't really care. It wouldn't affect me. Like, no, every single human heart yearns for this. To be desired, to be loved, to be known, to be pursued. Every human heart longs for this. But so often, as you know, well, just as I do, so often we try to fill that longing for being desired by looking to other people. We try to become more desirable so that people will desire us. And you all know how that works. Eventually, you're gonna hit a spot with that person where you don't feel as desired as you think you should be. And the reality is, even a lot of people in this room here today, some of the deepest wounds you have, and some of those deep wounds you still still carry with you today, are from experiences and times where you did not feel desired. Maybe it was the absent father. You grew up in a house and you never knew your dad. And and you've always wrestled with that. Why did he not desire me? Why was he not there for me? Why didn't he love me? Why didn't he want to get to know me? The absent father teaches us that to believe the lie that were not desirable. For some of you, maybe it was just an emotionally disconnected or emotionally not present mother. You're like, yeah, she was there, but I didn't feel like she desired me. I didn't feel like she wanted to draw out my longings and my desires and actually get to know me. And that leaves us again feeling like, am I really desirable? Maybe for some of you it was the divorce that you went through. You made this commitment, you made this covenant to love this person for better or worse, richer or poorer, to death to be part. And maybe it just didn't go that way for you. Maybe they left, and maybe you know the reason they left, or maybe you don't know the reason that they left, but they left you after making a covenant, and you've you've had you've had this whole now feeling like, why was I not desirable enough? Why why why couldn't we make this work? Or maybe it wasn't even a spouse, maybe it was just a boyfriend, or maybe it was a girlfriend, and you thought things were going good, and maybe they broke up with you, or maybe they cheated on you, and even that there's this wound of like, why didn't they desire me? And some of you you still carry those wounds with you here today. Maybe it's the loneliness you feel even though you are married. You're like, my spouse didn't leave me, but I'm I I'm living with my spouse and I feel uh I feel lonely still. I don't feel desired, I don't feel pursued, I don't feel seen, and and you carry with that, you carry that and you wrestle with that. Maybe it's the repeated rejection you've experienced from people that you thought cared about you, friends or family members, on and on the list goes. And all of these experiences just reinforce the lie that maybe you've believed to be true, which is you are not desirable. You are not lovable, you are not good enough, you will never be good enough. And all of these experiences the enemy can use to plant that lie, and we actually begin to believe it's true. You begin to look at yourself and go, Wow, there is nothing good about me. Wow, I'm I'm not lovable. And not only do they hate me and leave me, but now I'm starting to hate myself. And all these experiences just reinforce that. And if you're here this morning, maybe you feel that way. Maybe you feel if you're honest, maybe you've tried to bury that undesirableness that you feel, but maybe as it's coming to the surface, you realize, no, I actually still do feel that way. What I want to let you know is that God does not feel that way about you. Though other people may feel that way. God does not feel that way about you. And if you keep trying to make yourself more desirable, and if you keep trying to fill that void through, well, I just want these people to like me and these people to desire me, and for these people to pursue me, and these people to see me, nobody will ever be able to do that perfectly. And you will never know the truth about God, how God feels until you actually go to Him first. Jesus said, I've called these people to come away with me because I have desired them. I I want you to know that today, that your value and your worth is not defined by what other people didn't see in you. Your value and your worth is not defined by the way that you were devalued or mistreated. It is rooted in the reality that Jesus desires you. Like God desires you. God sees you and is pursuing you and knows you. And that is fundamentally what it means to be a disciple of Christ. And that is our identity as disciples. We are desired by God. Like, how amazing is that? Think about that. Like, think of how you think you're busy. Think about how busy God is and how many things he has to do. And yet he desires you. Like he wants you to come and get away with him, he wants to spend time with you. That is absolutely radical. And so I just want to encourage you here today. If if there's experiences and things in your life that have that you've been holding on to, whereby you've believed a lie that you're not desirable and you're not lovable and you're not good enough. I want to just simply encourage you this morning to bring those things to the foot of the cross. I want to invite you this morning to bring those things to Jesus. And I want you to share with them this is how I feel about myself. I feel undesirable. This is how I feel about myself. I feel unlovable. This is how I feel about myself. I don't like myself. I want you to bring those to Jesus and actually tell him those things. And then I want to challenge you to do this to sit and be still and to ask Jesus the question: what do you think about me? Here's what I think about me. Here's what other people think about me, here's what others have said about me. But God, what do you say about me? And if you'll sit and if you'll actually allow the Holy Spirit to speak over your life, the ministry of the Holy Spirit is to bring to remembrance all that Jesus said and did. And here's one thing that Jesus said and did. He said, I've called these disciples because I desire them. And I believe the Holy Spirit wants to speak that and already is speaking that right now over people in this room today. He is saying to you this morning, you are desired. He is saying to you this morning, you are loved. He is saying to you this morning, you are seen. And my prayer for you is that that voice, the voice of the Holy Spirit, would begin to drown out the lie that you've believed, that you've heard from other people, or that you've told yourself over and over and over again. So I challenge you this morning. Respond by bringing those things in your life that make you feel undesirable. Respond by bringing them to Jesus. Get away from the crowds, go and be alone with Jesus and allow him to speak this into your life personally. That you are desired. Amen. Now notice what happens at the end of verse 13. He went up to the mountain and he called to him those whom he desired. And here's the key, notice, and they came to him. And they came to him. So why did he call them? Why does he call you? Because he desired them and because he desires you. But just because God desires something doesn't mean that it's gonna happen. There is a response on our part. So he called them. Hey guys, I want you to come and get away from the crowd and come to the mountain with me and be alone because I desire you. But it says, and they came to him. And I think that the reason a lot of people don't know how much God actually desires them is they hear that call, but they don't respond to the call. God is pursuing you and God is speaking to you, and he's saying, I want to speak this over you. I want you to know how loved you are, I want you to know what I've done for you. I want you to know the plans I have for you, but we keep burying it and we keep running from it. You will never know how desired you are by God until you respond and actually walk in obedience. So Jesus pursues, Jesus calls, Jesus desires, but the mark of a true disciple is that we we actually respond. We respond and we come to Him just like they did. And so that's the invitation this morning. The invitation is have have you been responding? Are you responding to the call to come to the feet of Jesus and sit so that he may speak into your life the truth about your reality and the truth about your identity and who you actually are? Have you responded to the call of Jesus? And by responding to the call of Jesus, I don't just mean yes, I did that when I gave my life to Jesus 10, 20, 30 years ago. This is something every day. Like response, Jesus is continuing to call us. And so our response is continual. God, I'm coming back again to let you speak over me what is true. I'm coming back again to remind myself of who you say I am rather than who I want to be. And so this is something I want to just challenge you in this morning to bring yourself completely to the foot of Jesus, to respond to that call so that your desires might come into alignment with what he desires. The truth is, I God desires me way more than I even desire him. But as I come into his presence and see how much he desires me and how much he loves me, guess what happens? My desires actually start to change. How many of you all experienced that? I'm sure you have. You're like, man, I used to desire these things, and then I got in the presence of Jesus, and now I don't. Like nothing can compare with Jesus. And so your desires become conformed into his as we come into his presence. Amen. So Jesus calls these disciples away from the crowd. He said, I want you to come be alone with me because I desire you. God desires us, but there's a response on our end. We have to choose whether we're actually going to come and be with him in the secret place. And then notice what happens next in verse 14 and 15. It says this and he appointed twelve, whom he also named apostles, so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons. So the pattern is this he called them. Why did he call them? Because he desired them. But what did he call them to? That's the big question here. What is it that Jesus is calling his disciples to? Because you might be familiar with this. This is not the first time Jesus has called his disciples. These are already the 12 disciples. The first time he called them, you all remember we taught on this like a month and a half ago. First time he called them, they were out fishing. And he said, Hey, come and follow me. That was the first call. The first call was, I want you to come and follow me. But here, the call is not follow me, I want you to see it for yourself in verse 14. Notice, he appointed the 12 so that they might be with him. So the first call was, I want you to follow me. And now the call was I want you to be with me. It says he called them so that they might be with him. And this is really important to get that again, God's calling on your life is not a one and done. It's not, oh yeah, I remember when he called me. No, he's continuing to call you. I remember when he said, Come and follow me. That's great, but now he's calling you into deeper, he deeper waters. He's calling you to come and be with him. And so he continues to call us so that we might continue to respond in our pursuit of him. And so this is what I would call the purpose of discipleship. As we're talking about what it means to be a disciple, the purpose of discipleship is summed up in this one phrase right here. So that they might be with him. God calls us because he desires us, but what he calls us to first and foremost is this he calls us to be with him. That is the whole purpose of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, is just to be with Jesus. Now, when he called the first 12 disciples, they they knew and understood this because any rabbi calling followers in the first century, they knew. This is a 24-7 thing. Like they left their jobs, they left their families. They literally would live with this rabbi 24-7 and walk with them and talk with them and eat with them and sleep together and all of that. It was a full life commitment. So there's this cultural gap because in our culture today, the reality is we have lost this idea. When we think of being a discipleship, when we think of discipleship and being a disciple, a lot of us think, okay, yeah, that's what I do when I have extra time. Yeah, that's what I do when I go to church on Sunday mornings. That's what I do when I go to the discipleship ministry or the women's ministry or the small group ministry or whatever it might be. So in our culture, we've lost this idea that to be a disciple means the primary purpose is you just are with that person 24-7. And so being a disciple means the priority and the purpose of your life in every single season. Again, it's very simple. It's just this to be with Jesus. The thing he has called you to, and the thing that he wants for you the most more than anything, is just to be with him. And so what this means, which is really important, is this discipleship is relational above anything else. Discipleship is a who more than it is a what. And that's that that's a paradigm shift because most of us when we think of discipleship and growing as a disciple, we usually focus on the what. We go, okay, I'm a disciple, I'm a follower of Jesus. What am I supposed to do? What does God want me to do? What am I gonna do today? What are all the things? What is the list? Okay, going to church today, I gotta do that. Gotta read the Bible today, gotta do that, gotta pray today, gotta do that. And I'm not saying any of those things are bad, but those are all the what. And if you start with the what and you skip the who that discipleship is a person, it's being with him. That's where burnout happens. And I've seen this happen in so many people's lives who it looked like they had a firm foundation. Looks like, oh, they're going to church and going through the motions and reading the Bible and praying, but they missed the who. It became about religiosity, it became about duty, it became about checking the boxes rather than the primary purpose of being a disciple is just be with Jesus. He called them to be with him. And so I point that out to say it can be so easy, even as Christians, to lose sight of the main point. The main point and the reason Jesus has called you and what he has called you to is himself. He's called you to be with him. And the the reality is, as you all know this, a relationship is built on. The foundation of any healthy relationship is what? You just like being with that person. Like if you're here today and you're married, I'm guessing the reason you married that person, at least a huge part, is you like being with them. Like if you didn't like being with them, you probably wouldn't have married them, right? And maybe some of you are here today and you're not married. And let me tell you this the reason you're not married is because you haven't found a person who you want to be with 24-7, and there's nothing wrong with that. Like if you're single, don't just well, that person looks good. No, you're gonna be with that person every moment for the rest of your life. So praise God, you still are single. If don't like again, again, I'm just telling you, don't rush that because you're gonna be with them for the rest of your life. The reason your friends are your friends and you hang out with the people that you hang out with, I'm guessing it's you kind of like to be with them, like you enjoy being around them. And again, that's that's fundamental to any relationship. You enjoy being in their presence. And again, it's the same thing in our relationship with Jesus. The foundation of discipleship and being a discipleship of Jesus, being a disciple of Jesus is this it is that we are just being with Jesus. It's not the to-do list, it's not the check the box list, it's just we're being with him. We like being in his presence, we like talking to him, we like hearing from him, we like learning about him. It is being with Jesus, as the psalmist David said in Psalm 73, 25. He said, Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. That's all it is. It's just, God, I just I want to be with you. I want to spend time with you. I want to be in your presence where there is fullness of joy. That is the heart of discipleship. It is relational at the core. And by the way, that's the whole story of the Bible, Genesis to Revelation, it's about relationship. Adam and Eve ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The relationship with God was severed. What does God do? He shows up and says, Where are you? What was he doing? He wanted that relationship restored. Like the whole Bible, that's what it's about. And so again, Jesus is not inviting you into religion. Jesus is not inviting you into some tradition. Jesus is not inviting you into a particular denomination, he's inviting you into a relationship with the living God, with God Himself. So if you get that right, if you're like, man, this is it, just being with Jesus. You are gonna be light years ahead of somebody who's been a Christian for 20 years and trying to check all the boxes. Just being with Jesus. That is the foundation and the purpose of discipleship. And so I just simply want to ask you this morning, because I know I can even get caught up in this mindset. Has your discipleship become more about the doing than the being? Like, well, what is your relationship with Jesus? What is it built on? Is it, well, here's all the things I do for him? And if if that's it, like just that's good, I guess, but start with just just being with him. Just just being in his presence. Just pouring out your hardware, just talking with him. Like, start, start there. Because if we jump to the doing and we miss the being, we're gonna we're gonna have our discipleship stunted severely. And so what God wants for you is just make space for him in your everyday life. And I want to just ask you that like how much how what does this look like for you, being with Jesus? What does it look like? Maybe you're like, man, my life is crazy. It's start work at 6 a.m. or gotta get up at 5 a.m. for the kids or it's like, hey, well, just be with him in your car ride. Just have a five-minute conversation where you're just being with him and you're listening to him, you're pouring out your heart to him. Or maybe it's just like at night where that's maybe that's your time that works. Just be with him and be in the word and chat with him and pour out your heart. It looks different for every person in different seasons, but to be a disciple, the the primary thing we are called to is this to be with him. And the reason he's called us to that is simply because he desires us, which is so beautiful. Amen. So that is the purpose of discipleship, to be with him. But there's a pattern. The pattern of discipleship, notice exactly what happens next in verse 14. Notice, and he appointed the 12 so that they might be with him, and notice, and he might send them out to preach. So here's the pattern of discipleship. The pattern is first and foremost, it's just about being with Jesus. It's about cultivating that relationship with Jesus, away from the crowds, just you and Jesus growing in that deep intimacy. But it doesn't just stay there. Because if God wanted to stay there, we would all just be monks. Like it would be like, sweet, let's just build a monastery, let's sell the building here, let's build a monster, and we're all gonna move in and just live up there in isolation forever. But that's not what God wants for his people. After being with him, notice it says, and he sent them out that they might preach. So that's the pattern of discipleship. What God does in your life as you be with him is meant to spill out into the lives of other people as well. That's why it says he sent them out to preach. So we come into the presence of God, but then we are sent out, and we yes, we take God's presence with us wherever we go, but we're sent out to go and preach. Now, that word preach, for some of you like, well, what does that mean? I hear sent them out to preach, and I'm like, well, I don't really get up on stages with microphones and talk to a bunch of people, and that's what you think of as preaching. Or I don't want to be that weird dude with the sign on the corner with the bullhorn, like yelling at everybody that nobody actually wants to hear what he has to say. Like, we think of that as preaching. But the the word preach, it actually means to publicly announce or to tell good news. That's all preach means. Preach doesn't mean get a microphone or get a megaphone, like it's literally just to share good news. And so this is the way that it looks. This is the pattern. As you get into the secret place and as you go and be with Jesus, guess what? God begins to do a work in your heart. His desire for you is spilled over, and you have a deeper desire for him, and God begins to transform your life. And then as you get sent out back into your normal everyday life, which we all have. You got to pay the bills, you gotta go to work, you gotta go to school, you got like all those things. He says, then as you go out, you bring what God is doing in your life and you share that good news with other people. Every single disciple is called to be a herald of the good news. You don't have to be a pastor, you don't have to have a theology degree, you don't have to know perfect, like systematic theology, just to share the good news of what God is doing in your life. As Paul said in Romans 1.16, I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, the Jew first and also to the Greek. And so this is the pattern. We be with Jesus, and then we are sent out to go and spread the good news of Jesus. And so I just simply want to challenge you and encourage you to look at your life and say, what are the platforms that God has given you in your life where you could just simply share this good news? What are the relationships that God has already brought you into that you could share the good news of what God is doing in your life? Again, it's not as complicated as we make it out to be. Like there's there's there's no systematic way it's supposed to work. It's just, again, we talked about this a month ago. As you are going, go and make disciples. The Great Commission literally means as you are going, just make disciples. Like as you're going about your life, just share the good news, share what God's doing in your life, share what he's doing, and steward well the opportunities that he's given you. So that is the again, that is the priority of discipleship is be with him. The pattern of discipleship is we be with him, and then we are sent out to go and preach the good news. And so that that that is the kind of the pattern we see there. But I want to close with this. I want to close verse 16 through 19. Look at how this passage ends. It says, and he appointed the twelve, Simon to whom he gave the name Peter, James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James, to whom he gave the name Boanerges, that is, sons of thunder, Andrew and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James, the son of Alpheus, and Thaddeus, and Simon the zealot, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him. Okay, so here's what we're seeing in this passage. We are called by Jesus. Why does he call us? Because he desires us. We are called, we are desired. And then we are, we, we are, we are sent. He sends them out. Go and preach the gospel. But what we see here in these final few verses is this we are not only called, we are not only desired, we are not only sent, but we are changed. We are changed. As you come into the presence of God, as you make the priority just to be with him, guess what happens? Your life will be changed. And we know that because when you read this list of the 12 disciples who Jesus is here making into apostles, I'm sure you've heard this before in church culture, but these are the strangest dudes ever. Like if you're assembling the eight team to go out and change the world, these are not the dudes who most people would pick. Peter, y'all know the track record, he denied Jesus. He actually rebuked Jesus to his face. Peter fell asleep when he was supposed to be praying in the garden, and then he chopped off a dude's ear who Jesus had to clean up the mess and go heal the dude's ear later. Like, it's like that. Why'd you pick that dude to be on your team, right? I love James and John, obviously, the sons of thunder. These dudes had a really violent temper. When some town rejected Jesus, they're like, Do you want us to call down fire and burn them all? Let's just send hell down to them right now. And Jesus is like, no, why do you want to do that? Like, what are you thinking, right? So these dudes, like, they they didn't have the best track record even in their time with Jesus. But guess what? As they continued to make the priority of their discipleship just being with Jesus, you see in the lives of all 12 of the apostles, they were radically changed. One day at a time, one opportunity at a time, one yes at a time, as Jesus continued to call them deeper. This is amazing that Jesus changed and transformed each and every one of these men's lives. So much so that Peter was the one who Jesus said, On your profession, Peter, uh, you are the rock, and I will build my church upon this, and the gates of hell will not prevail. That John became actually the apostle of love, that each one of these men that they had a moment where as they continued to just say, you know what, the priority of my life is just be with Jesus. It was that process of daily showing up, daily responding, daily saying yes as Jesus called them deeper, that their lives were changed and transformed. And so when you come to Jesus, you you come as you are. You come with all your sin, you come with all your brokenness, you come with all your failures, all your flaws. But as you come to Jesus and you get in the presence of Jesus, he will begin to change you and he will begin to transform you. And the desires in your heart will be changed as you are conformed into the image of Christ. And so my question for you is simply this number one is have you come to Jesus? Have you responded to that call to come to Jesus? Jesus desires you, he wants a relationship with you, he is calling you, and he showed how much he loves you, by the way, on the cross. The cross was the greatest demonstration of Jesus' love for you in that while we were yet sinners, while we were enemies of God, is what Ephesians says, Christ died for us. Have you responded to that call? And then if you have, the question is: are you continuing to respond to that call? Are you continuing to come and sit at the feet of Jesus? Are you continuing to find your identity, not in what other people say about you or what you think of yourself? Are you continuing to allow what Jesus says of you to be the one thing that defines you? And if you will continue to do that daily, you will continue to be changed and transformed into the disciple and the person that God wants you to be. Amen. Amen. Let's pray. Jesus, thank you so much for your word. Thank you that we get a glimpse here of your heart and we see in your heart, God, that for whatever reason, God, this is still hard for me to understand, that you actually desire us. You desire us. For each person in this room, God, the chief desire of your heart is that you want them. You wanna, you, you wanna know them, and you want them to know you, you want to know their heart, and you want them to know your heart. And God, I just pray for each person in this room today, if we leave with nothing else, God, that we would leave with this, knowing God, you desire us, you love us, you see us, and you care for us. And God, for anybody in here who's been wrestling with that, they feel undesired or undesirable, maybe from a pattern in their life, maybe from a past experience, maybe something that happened recently, and they're still wrestling with the hurt of that. God, I pray today we would bring that to your feet and we'd say, God, this is how I see myself. This is how those people see me, but God, how do you see me? And I pray that today, God, what you say to be true, that we would begin to trust that as our ultimate reality and our true identity. And God, thank you that the call to be a disciple isn't a big to-do list, isn't all the boxes we have to check off, isn't religiosity, it's just relational. It's just being you and being around you and being with you and in everything we do and in everywhere we go, that we really, that we that we recognize you're with us and you want to be with us and you want to be a part of it. So God, help us to live into that reality. Just as we're as we're going about our normal day-to-day life, that we would just invite you into it and say, Jesus, help me just to be aware of your presence today. Help my ears and my heart and my eyes to be open to opportunities where you might want me to share what you're doing in my life with somebody or to pray to somebody or to help somebody or whatever it might be. But God, thank you first and foremost that what you want for us is just a relationship. And thank you that you made that possible through giving your life on the cross so that we could have new life in you. And so I pray for each person, even as we go out, God, thank you that we've been able to come and gather with the body and gather in your presence. But as we're sent out, God, as we go out, would you continue to use us to bring more people into your kingdom? Would you continue to help us to have eyes to see people the way that you see people? That we would love people the way that you love people, and that through the work you're doing in us, God, it would spill over into our community and we would see so many more people come to know and love and trust in Jesus. We thank you ahead of time, God, for what you're gonna do. Bless each person today as they go out, and we pray this all in Jesus' name. Everyone said, Amen.