Living as Citizens of Heaven - Lukas Nakos (San Clemente)

Morning family. I am pressing my stopwatch. There we go. So, as Andrew said, it's our last Sunday here as a family for a while. We are heading up to Canada, at least until December, maybe longer, and we're excited for that. I'm going to start driving on Wednesday and see a couple of places as I drive up, and then the family will fly over when I get there. So, I'm so excited to see you, but sad that this will be the last Sunday for a while, but I hope to see you again soon. And so, I just wanted to start with that. The second thing is, I just wanted to say, also, this week, as Andrew said, has been a sad week with Charlie Kirk being assassinated, or rather, with Charlie Kirk graduating to the presence of our Lord. And I just wanted to also just honor him, as a man who worked hard to tell as many other people as he could about his Savior Jesus, and to try to win people through talking to them over to his side. And I wanted to just honor him for that. And I think, you know, the world needs more people like Charlie Kirk, people who are willing to stand up for what they believe, who are unashamed, who are willing to actually go the extra mile and be rejected and be hated even as he was. And to bring other people over to our side. That's an important thing. The Apostle Paul said in Acts 20, 24, "I consider my life worth nothing to me, my only aim being to finish the race and complete the task that Lord Jesus has given me, the task of testifying to the good news of God's grace." And that's the task that the Lord has given to all of us, not just to Charlie. And so, my preach today is not going to be a very long one, I don't think, but it's going to be along those lines. Along the lines of living our lives in a way that counts, because we never know how much longer we have. And so, we must make the most of every opportunity that we get. For the last 12 days, I was in a country that I never planned to go to, to be fair, I never planned to go to Mexico, and I was there for three weeks previously. But I was for the last 12 days in a country called Al Salvador. Anyone heard of that before? In Central America. And maybe we can just put up a photo. This is kind of a little collage of photos taken of myself and my daughter Nathania. You can see her there in the middle and in a number of the photos, and she was surfing in the World Surfing Championships in Al Salvador. She was surfing for one of the countries of our citizenship, right? In South Africa, you know, we get these dogs that kind of run around on the pavement. And you can't really tell this is an old-sacian, is it a Labrador? Because it's kind of got no marks, or whatever. And we call them canardlees, right? And it's because you canardly tell. And it's similar with our family. We're kind of canardlees, right? Because I was born in Zimbabwe and my dad was Greek, but we also British, and it got South African citizenship, and now we're moving here. But one of our citizenship that we have is Greek. I have a passport, which means I can speak Greek. Were there no interpretations? And so Nathania was picked for the Greek team to surf in these World Surfing Games. And you can see us all there. This is kind of all there. The supporting, the coach, the manager, the mum and dads of the team that was surfing for Greece. And what we did is we, it was, nobody was questioning what we were when we were there. Because every day, I packed a whole bag, I had kind of, you know, one shirt for every day. I came home with almost all of them unused. Because the first night when we were there, the team manager said, we are the blue storm. And wherever we go, you will wear these Greek shirts and Greek caps and et cetera, carry the Greek flags. You gave each one of us a Greek flag. And we, as you can see, we were the Greek storm, everywhere. No one was confused about who we were or why we were there. And it's very interesting because it's just like that with us and Jesus. Because Jesus picks us, some of us, even for the first time this morning, in worship, to be on his team. And when he saves us, we become citizens of heaven. Members of his team. In Philippians chapter three, the Bible says that, but our citizenship is in heaven. And you know, we arrived back from our Salvador saturday night or Friday night. And we arrived at about quarter to midnight. And we were walking with a whole lot of other people from different planes from all over the world. And we walked into LAX. Who else loves LAX? No one. Can I let you into a secret? No, do I. But we were walking there and there was a big gentleman there, you know, with a kind of US immigration service. And he said, American citizens this way, you know, and we were traveling myself in Nathaniel and Sierra Leeper, a chair and Janet's daughter. And so Sierra was like, bye guys. And we were like, and she went straight through this beautiful, well lit, you know, US citizens. Welcome home. Welcome home. She's like, thank you. Thank you. And I was kind of like, you know, and I said, non-citizens that way. Myself and Nathaniel kind of, you know, and there was a whole filled with queues going backwards and forwards. And we were standing waiting for immigration. Imagine that day when we arrive home like Charlie did just this week. Do we want to be where it says, citizens? Welcome home. Or do we want to go to the very long line? But actually, even though I might technically be Greek or British or South African or trying to be American, we don't actually belong here to a particular country or to a tribe or a club or an affiliation anymore. We are not first Greek or South African or British or conservative or liberal. But we belong first to Jesus. Jesus said in John 17, he was describing us and he says, for they, those people who believe in me, for they are not of this world anymore than I am of this world. And so like me and Nathaniel on our 12-day short trip to El Salvador, when we went there, we were only planning to go for 12 days. We only planned for a short trip. I had a little north face bag and my shiftboard bag. And we went there only for a short time. And in the same way, we are here. On this earth, as we were reminded this week, for a very short time. Charlie was here for 31 years and look at the impact that he made. And while we're here for the short time, Jesus gives us a very specific mission. And he told us that in Matthew 28 verse 18, Jesus said, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations." In Mark 16, 15, he says, "The different ways is go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole of creation." And in John 20, 21, Jesus says, "Just as the Father has sent me, even so, I am sending you." He has sent us with a mission for a short while while we're here. But the problem that I have, and maybe it's just me, have you seen that children's cartoon and they say squirrels? And there's like a. I know I'm on mission squirrel. We get distracted. I get distracted. You know, we're not primarily, we weren't primarily in our Salvador for tourism or for enjoying the surfing or for seeing beautiful jungle and central American or for enjoying the continual sauna that it was. And yet one of the Greek surfers asked the manager that they had gone out of the competition early and said, "Can I go early in the morning with the Greek van, the bus, you know, and go to one of these famous waves I'd love to surf at the manager and said, "Sure." And so this Greek surfer went and took the van and went off to surf, but all of us knew we had to be at the competition by 2 p.m. for the next heat, for the people that were still in. And this young lady took the bus, went and was having such a ball, she completely forgot about the competition. And so there were 11 of us standing there at the hotel waiting to go to the heat with the poor guy that was surfing in the heat and everyone's looking at, you know, because she had disappeared with the bus. Now thankfully it wasn't too far away and we managed to walk there and get there about five minutes before they had to paddle in. But the lesson from baddies is that we are not here predominantly for tourism or for fun or for school or work or job or career or for retirement. But we are here for the mission that Jesus has given us. In 2 Timothy 2 verse 4, the Apostle Paul says, "No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits because his aim is to please the one who enlisted him." And so why do we have to stay focused on the mission? And the answer is because we are only in our Salvador for 12 days. Like Charlie we have a flight home soon. And we need to get the work that Jesus has called us to do done before the boarding call. And so while we're here, we need to be like that Greek team. We need to be different to everyone else. Do you know we had a war crime? And our war crime was Zita Eladara. Do you know what that means? It means up the mighty Greece. Shall we order it together? I'm just kidding. But after the Zita Eladara, the whole team was shot "A-u-a-u-a-u-a-u." Right? Which in Greek is cool? Yeah, it's not so cool. But whenever one of the competitors came out, everyone would huddled down and the competitor would shot Zita Eladara and they would go, "A-u-a-u-a-u." And the commentators were like, "Okay, we're struggling to speak over the microphones because we can hear the Greek team again." And everybody knew these were the crazy Greek people. But does everybody know that you are one of those crazy Christian people? You see, Jesus described that we're supposed to be on the one hand like salt. And we're supposed to bring the taste and the flavor and the preserving power of God and His presence to those that we touch every day. In another way, Jesus said, "Guys, you're supposed to be like lighthousees on a dark night shining His light through your daily life." Do you know? I had the opportunity to speak to the lady who was the Greek manager on the last day that we were there. And myself and another friend on the team, his name is George, we were in the room where we were and she came to the door and knocked. And she said, "Come in." And she said, "I'm sorry to interrupt, but I need to tell you to something." And I said, "Sure." She said, "You know, I've been on many of these surfing trips and competitions and I've been observing you." And I can see that the two of you love God. I'm like, "Wow." And she said, "I don't know why, but I feel like I need to share something about my life with you." And she sat down on the bed there and she started to tell us about her life and her family and some of the challenges that she was going through. And we got the opportunity to share about Jesus with her and to lay hands on her and to pray for her. And can I tell you something? It was only because we were being salt and light during the week before that she felt that she could come and talk to us and open up and be impacted. And so the question is, are we being different enough in our culture and in our context? You know, being different means not conforming. It means not being the same as everyone around us. I thought about wearing my Greek shirt and my Greek cap to church this morning, but then I thought, "Actually, you know, it's just going to be distracting." Otherwise, I would have. But it would have been obvious. And we met. We were all standing there. The whole team in our blues, right, with our flags and everything. And a young man came up on the beach to us. And he was carrying his surfboard and he was wearing board shorts, no shirt. If I looked like he did, I also wouldn't wear a shirt. But I wore a shirt the whole time. And we kind of said, "Hello." And some of the Greek people were like, "Hello." You know, the way they do. And he started speaking to us in Greek. Like, "Wow, hello. Nice to see you. It's wonderful to see Greek people here." And he's talking to us in Greek and we were like, "She's telling us." "No, she's telling us." And we were talking. And he was saying, "Yes, I'm Greek too." But he wasn't wearing a blue shirt. And he wasn't wearing a blue cap or carrying a Greek flag. You see, he was happy to associate with us, but he didn't want to show. Because I think he didn't want to shout, "Oh, oh, oh, oh." And the other side of it is, in our Greek team wearing the Greek cap and shirt and carrying the flag were two people. One was Sierra Leeper, a wonderful supporter for Nathaniel. You know, even the photographers in the world surfing games kept on taking photos of her as though she was in the Greek team because she was wearing all the Greek stuff. And then they tried to tag her on Instagram and they couldn't find her on the team. Do you know why? She wasn't registered as a Greek. She doesn't have a Greek passport, but she looked Greek. And the other person was the coach, the Greek coach. And he is from Peru. So he's Peruvian, but he's the Greek coach and he's carrying the flag and all the people from Peru are coming past and talking to him in Spanish and he's speaking back to them in Spanish. And we all, they're like, you know, and sometimes we want to be like that Greek surfer. We want to be part of, we want to be Greek, but we don't associate with the people who are Greek or the people of God or stand out because we are embarrassed. And sometimes we can find ourselves with the people of God, but we ourselves actually don't know him personally. And the problem with that is when everyone starts speaking Greek, it gets difficult if you're not really Greek. You know, Jesus calls us to live out of the citizenship that we are. And so in order to be Christians, to live as Christians properly, we need to be first full with the Spirit, be full of the Lord so that we can live out the mission that He's given us. And so I'm going to close with a few tips on how to be the best Greek you can be. Are you ready? Practically, how can we live out as citizens of heaven until the boarding gate is called? The first one is spend time with the team. You know when we got there that the Greek manager said, right guys, this is not a holiday, this is a job and she was talking to the dads. She was saying, I want you to be at every team meeting. Whenever there's a surfer, we need to split you between two waves and you need to be there holding the flag. This is your flag. This is your. We were with them 24/7 for 12 days. Sometimes it was great. I'm someone who likes my space and I got none of it for 12 days. But you know, I got to know those people and I got to sing that song and I got to. And even with everyone going home now on that WhatsApp group, I feel like I've got new family. And the thing is, we need to be part of the people of God. We need to participate. We need to serve open our homes, invest our time in the team. The second thing is, diet. Andrew asked me, did you lose weight? I wish I lost weight. But I can tell you when we got there, the coach said to them, guys, there for the next 12 days, no sugar. The only thing you eat is proteins and good carbohydrates because you need to surf to your best. And sometimes we want to be on the team, but we don't want to eat what the team is eating. And so we need to have a good diet. And our diet looks like time in the world of God, time and prayer, time in fellowship, community, time in worship like we had this morning, where we just lay everything down until we find his face. And like Charlie Cook advised people, put your phone and social media away, go and spend time with somebody and get to know them relationally. The third thing is having good disciplines and habits. And so there were a number of the teams and I know this because I was trying to sleep after 10 o'clock at night. But with 61 countries represented there and a lot of young people, they would go and they would be dancing and singing and partying. And so I had a wonderful noise-canceling earphones that helped me to go to sleep. But our team wasn't allowed to go partying and drinking. And enjoying, there were disciplines and habits because we had to be up early in the morning, 5 a.m. to go for the first training, surf each day. And in the same way, Colossians chapter 3 describes what the disciplines are that we need to have. And Andrew was talking about this. Jesus came and he died on the cross to buy us the freedom from these things. And it says this, it says, put to death therefore whatever belongs to your earthly nature. And it lists a whole lot of things. And it says, you used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must rid yourself of all these things. And it's almost like there's an urgency that if we're going to be part of the team, we need to put down the things and the habits that we shouldn't, where or we shouldn't do. And then the last thing is where the team uniform. Colossians 3 says, "Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with these others and forgive one another if any of you has any grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love which binds them all together in perfect unity." So the message today is, we should live out our heavenly citizenship because we don't have much time to do it in. And we have a very important mission that the Lord has given us. Amen?