01.02.26 - City AM - David MacGregor

♪ Jesus said no light I come away ♪ Welcome. You're listening to The Grace Vinyar Church Podcast. ♪ Light I come away ♪ Well, it's great to be back, and we've got a theme for the year, and the theme for this year is Jesus. Can't go wrong with that, can you? Jesus is the theme. And last year, at the end of last year, us pastors got together, we went away for a retreat, and we do this at least a couple of times of the year, and we just wait on God, and we say, "Lord, what are you up to? What are you wanting to do? Where are you moving? We want to know where to put the sails up. We want to put the sails where the Holy Spirit is breathing." You know, one of the wrong ways to lead a church is to come up with flash ideas and ask God to bless those ideas. The right way to do it is to say, "Lord, what are you doing? How can we catch the way that you're on?" So we regularly do that. We actually gather as leaders every week and see God, but we take these retreats a couple of times a year. And when we met together at the end of the year, we were praying and we were worshiping, and during one of the worship services, I got this very strong impression, and a diagram will come up and show what I saw. I just saw this very big word, Jesus, and huge letters, and hundreds of arrows pointing from every direction as if everything points towards Jesus. And I felt as though God said, "I want Jesus to be the focus." You know, sometimes our faith becomes so complicated and we add so many things. And there's so many good things that we can get caught up in, but sometimes they can be a distraction to the person of Jesus. You know, even in our faith, you know, it's great to read the Bible and it's great to pray, and it's important to attend church and go to a life group and to give and evangelize and help the poor and support missions. All those things are good biblical things, but you can do all those things without knowing Jesus. You can do all those things without being close to Jesus. And so if you are going to cut everything out and just go back to one thing, that thing would be Jesus. If you were going to boil all of our faith down, if you were going to come to just one thing that we couldn't do without, that thing would be the person of Jesus. You know, it's interesting for me there's so much going on in the world and there's so much activity in the media, isn't there? And on all the social media and TikTok and YouTube and all the other things, there's just stuff going on everywhere. And there are so many Christians involved on one side or the other and they're filling up the internet sphere with stuff. And some of the stuff's good and I think some of the stuff's not so good. Some of the stuff I look at and I think I wonder if you people even know Jesus because some of the things that are done in the name of Jesus are not really the heart of Jesus, but even in our own country as well. And we can get involved in crusades, we can get involved in these, you know, we can get heated up, we can become keyboard warriors, but there's a danger that we actually get away from the person of Jesus. And sometimes I see the heart of people look all themselves Jesus and I think I don't even know if you know him because if you knew him, you wouldn't behave like that, you wouldn't speak like that, you wouldn't treat other people like that. You know, there is such a danger we can get so involved in what we think is Christianity or the mission of God that we actually lose Jesus along the way. We can actually be fighting these big battles and realise they're not actually God's battles. Wouldn't it be terrible if you lived your whole life going along to church, even grace for your church, would it be sad if you went along and you've been fighting these battles and you've been working so hard and you've been thinking that you've been doing God's work and you stand before him and he said to you, you were misguided. What you were doing was in the wrong direction. Well, Jesus actually said that to the Pharisees. To me, it's the scariest verse in the whole Bible, Matthew 7 verses 21 to 23. Jesus said to the crowd around him, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven." Many people say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evil doers.' Now this is scary because what it's saying is that on judgment day there's going to be a lot of people that are going to come and expect to get in. They're people who go to church, they're part of the Christian culture, they're doing lots of good stuff. I mean, it's talking about people that are involved in quite a high level of ministry. They're doing deliverance, casting out evil spirits, they're performing miracles and everybody will look at them and say, 'Wow, what a godly person.' But Jesus sees right into the heart and he will say, 'Get away from me, you evil doers. Why?' This is the key, but Jesus says, 'I never knew you. I didn't know you. You were doing all this stuff, but I don't even know who you are. I don't know you.' And it's interesting that word 'know' that Greek word is the word 'gonosco' and it means intimacy. It means to be an intimate friend. It's often used between a husband and wife in a spouse situation. It's that deep friendship, that deep knowing, deeper than ordinary friendships. And this is what Jesus is saying here, I'm expecting the people that are going to get in are people that I know really well. We have a deep and intimate friendship. It's not just about all the stuff you do, even if the stuff is impressive. I want to know you. A man came to Jesus one day and he said, 'Lord, there's a zillion laws.' This is my paraphrase version here. There's a zillion laws and lots of things that we are supposed to do, but if we boil it all down to one thing, what would that one thing be? What is the most important? If we're just going to focus on one thing, what would you have us focus on? In Jesus said in Matthew 22, 37 to 39, Jesus replied, 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment and the second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself.' And in another place he says, 'If you just do these things, all the other laws will be fulfilled because if you just love God with all your hearts, soul, mind and strength, if you just focus your life on loving Jesus, then you will end up by doing all the things that I want you to do.' So that's it. God wants us to know. He wants us to love him with all of our hearts. So if you were going to focus your life on one thing, it would be knowing and loving God more than anything. I want to ask you, do you love God more than anything? Is Jesus the centre of your life? Don't worry if he's not because our lives are taken up, learning how to do that. So don't panic. Maybe the first you've thought about this, but God does want us to have Jesus at the centre and if he's not, we've got the opportunity to put him there. Let me show you this diagram that I came up with about what God is wanting us to be like. Imagine that these are the passions of our lives and you know we've got family, we've got our friends, we've got the passions, their things like our hobbies and sport and the things that we just love to do, holidays, all these things are wonderful, good things, very important things. There's our work which is an important thing, our careers, the things, the ways that we want to change the world. But what is that the centre of your life? What is the greatest passion? What is the thing that you absolutely love the most? The Bible tells us that central thing has got to be Jesus. All the other things are good and fine, but if they come into that central place, our life is spiritually out of order. And the purpose of the Christian life is to learn how to put Jesus into the centre and make him the deepest love of our lives, the most important part of our lives. We hear Christians saying all the time and we sing Jesus's Lord, you've heard that saying before, Jesus is Lord. What does it mean? It means that Jesus is the boss, it means that Jesus is the master, it means that we live to serve him. And so if Jesus is not the boss, if he's not the master, if he's not the most important thing then he's not your Lord. Hudson Taylor, the famous missionary to China once said, Jesus is either Lord of all or he's not Lord at all. The one who's the Lord is the one that's in charge of everything, the one that we put in the centre of our lives. If he's not in the centre of your life then he's not your Lord. When we become Christians, our lives should totally change. There should be just a total complete change in our lives. All of us have seen over the years people who become fanatical Christians. One moment they're off doing worldly things, they come and meet Jesus and their lives change radically. And sometimes they go a bit crazy, don't they? In the old days people would smash all their records or CDs and they would burn books and they would do wild stuff and they'd put Jesus stickers everywhere and tell people they needed to turn or burn and all this sort of stuff. You know, wear the t-shirts, sometimes they become a bit of a pain with how full on they were. But you know what, it's actually not bad to be a little in that direction. Because the opposite thing is sometimes people become Christians and nothing changes at all. Their language doesn't change, their integrity doesn't change, they're still flirtatious, they still, it's as if nothing has happened. They're exactly the same as they were before. And you've got to ask the question, has anything happened? Just putting up your hand in an alter court, even just walking forward, even saying you're a Christian doesn't mean anything unless Jesus comes to the centre and your life actually changes. And I want to challenge you today, are you a Sunday Christian or an everyday Christian? Are you the same every day of the week? See, we can come along to church and we can say bless your bro and we can raise our hands and worship and we can go through all the motions, we can be a Christian on Sunday, but what do we like on Monday? Do we go back to our swearing? Do we go back to our bad jokes? Do we want to be one of the boys or one of the girls? Does our drinking sort of go a little bit overboard and we become something different? Because that's not Christianity. A number of years ago a woman said to me that her husband was regularly going out to nightclubs and she said, you know, he wants to go out and dance. She said the thing that worries me is that he takes off his ring before he goes, takes off his wedding ring. She said, do you think I should be worried? I said, I think you should be very worried. That's not a good sign. But you see, in his head, what he was doing is when I'm at home with my wedding ring on, I'm a very committed husband. But when I go out and take my ring off, I'm a free man. I can do whatever I want. And we can be horrified with that, but we can be the same as Christians. When I come to church, when I've got my Bible in my hand, when I'm praising the Lord, I'm there with you, Lord, I'm your most trusted servant. But the next day, what do we like? With the way that we live, the way we think, the things that we watch, the things we do. See, Jesus does not want to be a little tack on to your life. He doesn't want to be your Sunday Lord. He's either Lord of everything or he's not Lord at all. I often think of our lives being like a house. Imagine your life is like a house. There'll be an illustration that comes up. That's you. That's your life. And for some people becoming a Christian, having Jesus come is like tacking something on the side, like a sleep out. You know? You've still got your life still exactly the same way as it was, but we've added something nice onto the side. It's attached. And so people come along and your house is exactly the same as it was. Everything goes along just as normal. But people say, "Oh, I've got this, I've got this, I've got this new addition." Do you want to come and have a look? This is my Christianity. It's over here on the side. Come and have a look. It's just a bit small and you know, not big enough to swing a cat, but here is my Christianity over here. Jesus does not want to be your sleep out. What Jesus does, and I'll show you the next picture, he comes along, he takes over the whole house. He fills the house with his presence. It's still you, but it becomes a you, you don't even recognise. Because people come into the house and they say, "What the heck has happened here? Oh my goodness, everything's different." I mean, it's still a sort of like I can recognise it. It's still a same house, but oh my goodness, this sort of like joy that has never been, like everything sort of changed, everything's being rearranged and, "Oh my goodness, this is just different." Friends, that's what it means to be a Christian. Jesus just comes and he just fills your whole life. And that's what it means to be a Christian. And God doesn't settle for anything less than that. He wants to come and he just wants to take over everything. You know, it's very sad, but you can live in the Christian culture and not be a Christian. You can come along to church, you can wear the t-shirt, you can put stickers on your car, you can go along to life group, you can be very generous, you can look after the poor and still not be a Christian. You can be a pastor and not be a Christian. You can be a Bible university lecturer and not be a Christian. You can know the Bible backwards, forwards, sideways and upside down and not be a Christian. You can read the Bible for a living. You can teach the Bible and not be a Christian. If you don't know Jesus. You know, it's interesting, Jesus brought this up with the Pharisees. They were the teachers of the Lord, they were the ones that knew the Bible better than anybody else. They spent their whole lives studying it and the average Pharisee would have memorized all of the Bible that they knew of the time. The first five books of the Bible, they would have known every single part by memory and some of the teachings of famous rabbis over the years, they would have memorized those as well and they spent their whole days discussing what the Bible meant. Jesus came and talked to them and he said, "You guys are a million miles off. You don't even know God to the most educated people of the time." Listen to what he says in John chapter 5 verses 37. This is to the most religious people of the time. Now these weren't just people that knew the Bible. They tried to follow it as much as they possibly could and this is what he said. "You have never heard his voice. You've never seen his form nor does his word dwell in you for you do not believe the one he sent." You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life, these are the Scriptures that testify about me yet you refuse to come to me and have life. The Scriptures have got to lead you to a person. They've got to lead you to Jesus otherwise they're not worth anything. The Scripture is there to lead us to Jesus. You know, knowing the Bible doesn't save you but knowing the author does. How do we get to heaven? How do we do what God wants? Well, if you go out and ask people on the streets, they'll tell you all sorts of answers. Out on the streets, they'll probably say, "It's good works." You heard that before? Well, I'm sure I'll get into heaven. I do lots of good things. I help old ladies across the street. I'm kind to people. You know, I make my wife a cup of coffee in the morning. I'm sure I'll just boot in. Good works. Religious people, Christian people will often say, "Oh, well, it's to do with getting saved." You know, I get saved and that's all I need to do. Just get saved and bang them off to heaven. Getting saved. Is that right? I think the correct thing is, is actually this, this next one. Jesus wants us to know Him. When we know Him, we get saved and as a result of that, we do good works. The Bible says we will be judged on our good works but we have to get saved and as a result of getting saved, the fruit of our life is the way that we live. So there's many, many verses that Jesus says, "He's going to judge us because of our good works." So people get confused. Are we saved by grace, by grace through faith? Or are we saved by works? Well, actually, we're saved by grace through faith. That leads to good works. So it's actually both. But the key thing is, we've got to get to know Jesus. You don't get saved without Jesus, you know, anyway, it only comes through getting to know Jesus by having a relationship with Jesus. When we know Jesus, He is the one that will save us. I want to show you this diagram that I've come up with and this diagram here is how we relate to Jesus. It's basically trying to ask yourself where you are in your relationship with Jesus. You know, there are people around in them maybe some here today that are completely unaware of Jesus. Don't even sort of really, really know Him much and it's wonderful that you've come here today if you're on that category. There'll be some here that know about Jesus. I hear He's a good guy and He does good things and I want to get to know about Him. That's great. It's wonderful you're here today. There are people who are acquainted with Jesus. You know, I've been in prayer meetings. I sort of felt something and I may have heard God speak once or twice, but I'm just sort of getting to know Him a bit and that's great good that you're here too. There are people who are friends of God. You know, I'd consider myself a friend. You know, we're building up our friendship. But how many of us have intimacy with God? How many of us have good no-sco, deep, intimate friendship with God? Friends, I want to tell you, this is the aim of our lives. It doesn't matter where you are. I don't want to freak anyone out today. Think, oh my goodness, I'm in one of the outer circles. Good to recognise it, but the aim is how do we get here and the mission for this year that I want to help us with this, how do we become intimate with Jesus? How do we get to know Him so well and love Him so much and spend time in His presence that you can say, you know what, Jesus and I, we are very close. We love each other and I hear His voice and as I'm going, it's not just in my quiet time, but as I'm walking around or driving around or talking to people, I just hear Him nudge me because I've got to know Him so well. Friends, that's the aim of what we want to coach everybody in this year. Wouldn't it be amazing if we could get everybody from these outer circles and say, this is the aim for this year, we want to have intimacy with Jesus and this is where He wants to be with us as well. He wants to be intimate with us. You know, I want to challenge men especially today because I think it's hard for men to actually talk about their relationship with God. In this country, I believe that we've got a crisis of not having as many spiritual men as we should have. I think there's a lot of quite spiritual women and we do have wonderful spiritual men in our congregations here, but as a whole, if we're going to do a count, I reckon that we have a serious spiritual problem in New Zealand, of not having enough spiritual men, that really deeply love Jesus and are not afraid to talk about. And that's one of the keys. Are you ashamed to talk about Jesus? If somebody says to you, oh, I hear that you go to church, what's that about? It's very easy to sort of tip into, oh, you know, church does good work and, you know, we look after the poor and we've got this wonderful group called Kairos and, you know, and we tell things to people that make us look good. But how would it be to say to your workmates, you know what, I got touched by this person called Jesus years ago and he has completely changed my life. And I spend time with him every day and he talks to me and I just absolutely love him. I love Jesus. How many guys would have the courage to do that? My dad, who was a pastor, often used to say it's very hard to get people to actually mention the name of Jesus. We don't mind talking about God, we don't mind talking about the big fallor in the sky or the man upstairs or, you know, even father, you know. But is it hard to actually say the name of Jesus? The name of Jesus actually really stands out in a conversation. And you can be branded as being a bit of a fanatic or one of those God-botherers or, you know, one of those happy clappies or born-agains or whatever. And those things hold us back, oh, I don't want to be branded like that. So I don't want to, I don't want to indicate that I'm too much into this whole thing. But we can get into the danger of denying Jesus or being ashamed of Jesus. And you know what my desire is that we would have a church full of men especially. I think we've got lots of women, we need more, but I think we need a church full of men that don't mind talking about Jesus and growing in love for Jesus and talking about their passion that they have for Jesus. And I want to challenge every man especially, but every person could that be an aim for you that you're not ashamed to talk about Jesus? It's not funny that we guys care so much about what other people think. I remember I grew up in a very conservative church and, you know, we didn't raise our hands in church or anything and as God started moving on my heart and I started to become more passionate about him, God started talking to me about being more demonstrative in my faith. And I found it really, really hard to do. I was so self-conscious about what other people thought. And basically it's just a spirit of pride and fear of man. Now one of the things that God challenged me to, you know, I could see the people are really passionate that often raised their hands, not that there's anything magical or even necessarily spiritual about raising your hands, but God spoke to me and said, "I'd love you to raise your hands and worship and be unashamed of letting people know that you worship me." Man, I found that hard. And so at first, you know, in this little church, little charismatic church I went to, I'd sort of like put my hands a little bit here. I'll stand up so you can see on the camera. I'd just put my hands sort of like this, so nobody would know, "Yes, Lord, I just give my life to You, Lord, all of it." You know, going crazy in God, you know, wild, wild Pentecostal. And then, you know, God would sort of challenge me. Can you raise your hands a little bit higher? It was like I had sort of concrete tied to my hands. I just so didn't want to do it, but I knew that it was an obedience thing. God was saying, "You really ashamed of me?" Like, "You're in a church for even sake." You know, you're not at work. You're not, you know, at a rugby game. You know, I was probably if I was at a rugby game, it wouldn't look out of place, would it? Yeah, you know. And so slowly, I would lift my hands and it was just sort of, it was so hard. I remember the first time I put my hand up, I quickly pulled it down again because this, this pride thing that's there. And God didn't really come. I mean, you can wish a God without putting hands in there. You can wish a God without doing, you know, anything demonstra, but God was challenging me and saying, "Are you ashamed of me?" Really in a church, you find it embarrassing to put your hands up. You know, for some people coming up the front of an article would be a thing that they would never, ever, ever do. And again, there's nothing magical about coming up the front. But what is the reason you would never come? Is it because you're proud? Is it because you fear what other people think? You know, it's interesting to see like, "What is your God?" And sometimes our God can be what other people think. Our God can be my image. Somebody said to me afterwards, you know, for most people, the thing that should be in the center of that thing is self. You know, I really care what people think. I care, you know, that they don't see me as a fanatic. I don't want my friends to know that I come along to this place where people put up their hands. It's dangerous sort of territory, you know, about not being ashamed of Jesus. And so the challenges could we start to lift our hands. I don't mean, you know, literally lift our hands, but in our hearts, actually not care what people think and be prepared to actually show that we do love Jesus. Maybe even talk about it in different places. I want to close by talking about some heroes. This man here is called Bruce Huff. And some of you may know Sam Harvey. He was one of our pastors at Beach Campus for a while. That's his granddad. And he was a lovely old man. He got into, I think, his 90s before he passed away. And he just loved Jesus. In fact, if you ever mentioned, just said the word Jesus done, he would just burst into tears. Tears would just stream down his face. And you could sort of almost do it sort of, you know, for a little bit of fun. You watch this, you know. Because just the word Jesus reminded of him of the relationship that he had with Jesus. And it would just bring so much emotion and tears to his eyes. Oh, I just love Jesus so much. I remember being with him and I said to Les my wife, I said, oh my goodness, that's the way I want to end up. I want to become somebody like that that the word Jesus just brings tears to my eyes. Because I know him so well. I've got this incredible relationship with him. We're just so close. The name just brings tears to my eyes. And I've grown up around lots of older people who are like that. That as they get older, as they get closer to Jesus, they just become more and more and more in love with him. And that's what's supposed to happen in our lives. That process is called sanctification or transformation. That the more we walk this road, the more in love we become, Jesus becomes more in the centre and that we just lift him. I talk to elderly people quite a bit now, people who have people of the faith. And they quite genuinely say, I just can't wait to die. Excuse me? I just want to see Jesus. It's not that they don't want to stay around. They're not necessarily in pain or in ill-elf, but they get so excited about dying. Because I've had this relationship with Jesus. I know him so well. I love him so much. I'm just excited. You know, I wake up one lady said to me, I wake up and I think, oh, I'm here again. I'm not with Jesus. And she said, I'm disappointed every morning that I wake up because I just want to wake up and I just want to see Jesus. Isn't that a wonderful way to be? I was sorting through some of my mum's stuff and I found this picture. My heart melted. This is a couple called the Sharplains. We were in a church in Pukecoa, a Presbyterian church and this lovely couple, Anakin Mirtle Sharplin. They'd got converted later on. When they got converted, they couldn't stop talking about Jesus. They just, even if you were saved, they would try and convert you again. You go around to their place from meal and they'll just tell you story after story about Jesus. They'll tell you about their prayers. They'll just ooze Jesus. And they just love Jesus so much. And when Alex passed away, we called his wife, Auntie Mirtle, she was sort of like a granny to us and she just talked about Jesus, the whole time you couldn't shut her up. She would say, oh, Jesus is so kind to me and he's so good to me. You know, how's your arthritis? Oh, Jesus is looking after that. I'm thanking him and it's a bit sore, but Jesus is walking through with me and all she ever talked about was Jesus. And she had so much joy. I won't tell more stories, but I want to tell you, I thought of this last person, last night I said to Liz, let's find a photo. And this is my, this is my wife's grandmother, Mary Miller. She grew up in the Salvation Army and that little fella there that looks like Spock next to her is me, actually, as an 18-year-old. And I think it was when I first met her. There's actually a lovely story about how Liz and I met. Actually, this woman was such a godly woman. She recognized how wonderful I was and recommended me as a husband to Liz. So she must have been incredibly godly, isn't she? Just kidding. I will tell you the story one week soon. But anyway, I was going down to Wellington to get a job in radio and mum organised me to go and stay with the millers and both of them were lovely, but Mrs. Miller just loved Jesus. Her Bible was out and had scrolls all over it and she just talked about Jesus the whole time. I went and stayed a few times and she would take me by the hamster, come and see my garden. She loved to garden. And she would say, look, Jesus and I are growing this garden together. And look at the carrots. I asked Jesus for more carrots this year and look what he's done. And the cabbages, look at these. You know, we didn't have a good crop last year, but I just prayed to Jesus and look, I said, Lord, I need some more water in this area. Look what Jesus has done. And it was just a very simple but beautiful relationship with Jesus. And even later on, she had a stroke and she couldn't speak in the end, but she would write, saliva coming down and lips, Jesus loves you, she would say. And remember her writing, she could, her and her husband sort of was so frail and I remember her saying, would you like to come and stay with us for a night? We'll look after you and I thought, oh, this dear couple, they can barely look after themselves and their heart is just this one of generosity. Friends, I want to end up like that. I want to end up just loving Jesus so passionately that it just oozes out of me. And so when I get old, I'm sort of saying, Lord, I just can't wait to see you. Isn't that what we all want? Shouldn't that be the center of all of our lives? And so in the next few weeks, I want to talk about how we get there, but I want to just very briefly say just a few little things about how we put Jesus in the center of our lives and I'm going to open it up a little bit in coming weeks. The first thing is how do we make Jesus the Passion of our lives? Number one, make a decision that Jesus will be the Passion of your life. Decide. That's what I want to do. I want to bring him into that center circle. Number two, ask the Holy Spirit to help you. You cannot do it by yourself. Holy Spirit, please help me to make Jesus the Passion of my life. Number three, prioritize spending time with Jesus every day. Don't go crazy and say I'm going to spend two hours every day because you'll never do it. You'll fall asleep after 10 minutes, you know? Even say five minutes, just a little bit is better than nothing. Just prioritize. I'm going to spend a bit of time getting to know Jesus, but you'll never get to know Him if you don't take the time. Number four, find others who'll go on the journey with you. If you're in a life group where you've got some friends around, why don't you say, hey, let's make this the priority together. Let's help each other. You know, I love it when people do marathons. I don't do marathons, as you can see. But people who do marathons, they do it in teams. They train together and they encourage each other and they say, you know, I've lost this amount of weight and I've, you know, run up this hell and I've done an extra minute or I've done it, you know, a minute shorter or whatever. You know, they're encouraging each other and we need to encourage each other with coming to know Jesus. It's a team sport, you know, coming to be passionate about Jesus. So find a team to help you. And number five, and I'll get into this more next week, commit to a number of weekly habits that will help you to get close to Jesus. There's lots of things that you can do which we will unpack in the couple weeks. But our mission this year and all the things we do is to bring Jesus to the centre. Not that we haven't wanted to do that in past years, but we want to help everybody to fall madly, passionately in love with Jesus. Wouldn't it be wonderful if people who heard about us from anywhere in the world and they said, oh, grace, vineyard, gee, that's the place where they really love Jesus, isn't it? Or you can't walk in that place without, you know, all the guys coming up and saying, don't you just love Jesus and having Jesus ooze out of their lives? Wouldn't that be a, oh, some of you think, oh, gee, I'm leaving this church, but wouldn't there be a wonderful thing to aim for?