(This transcript was generated by AI. Apologies for any inacuracies)

My name is Jared Walls.

I'm the student's pastor.

I have the privilege and the honor of talking to our teens every Wednesday, where we try to teach them how to shine.

To go be a light into a dark world.

And today, we're gonna talk about how you get there, what gives you the light to shine into a dark world.

Hold on, let me get my stuff real quick.

My number one fear in life is public speaking.

God's got a sense of humor.

But I'm so grateful that Kim and Clay allowed me to do this.

I'm glad that Clay called me on Thursday to let me know I was preaching today.

But I promise that if you have lunch plates, it's good.

I'm not gonna go real long.

My attention span is about 20 minutes.

I'm a student's pastor, let's remember that.

But God's got a sense of humor.

And it's funny, because I hope that you leave here encouraged.

But can y'all hear me in the back?

Last service, they said they couldn't quite hear me in the back.

Everybody just raise your hand, go like this, go like that.

All right, good, good, very good.

Anybody got anybody in their life, my wife calls them sandpaper people, people that just irritate you, people that bug you.

Some of y'all ain't saying nothing because you're sitting beside them. 37 years.

Man, that mic's hot. 50 something.

See, when you get to 50 something, you don't even care anymore.

You just say what you're gonna say.

Ain't nothing wrong with it.

John was that for me.

John, the apostle John, irritated me, drove me crazy.

I didn't even like to read the gospel of John, which was kind of funny because it's my wife's favorite gospel.

And the reason why is because he seemed so conceited.

Jesus loves you, we get it.

Like you say it every three lines, I'm the one that Jesus loved.

We get it, you were the first one to the tomb.

We get it, we understand.

Until I took the pastor position in students, God's got a sense of humor.

He didn't let me preach from any other gospel for six months.

Nothing but John, that's all we preached out of.

But it was about halfway through it that something hit me that I got it.

John gets it.

No, John gets it, that he is loved.

That it's not this blanket statement over all of humanity.

It is, it's for everybody.

But he understood that the love that God had for him was incredibly personal.

It was his, God loved him.

Touch your neighbor, say God loves you.

God loves you.

So he gets it.

So many times, especially if you've done this, this Christian walk thing for a while, I've done it for a little bit, I'm fluent in Christianese.

I've been to seminary, I know how to say the thanks.

Except for, you know, I'm standing in front of people and I freak out a little bit.

But sometimes we get focused on how much we love God and all the things that we can do for him.

And that's a good thing.

But don't lose the focus on how much he loves you.

How important and specific that is to your relationship with him.

How important love is.

First Corinthians, if you have your Bibles with you, turn to First Corinthians 13, verses one through three.

Paul's talking to the church at Corinth and he's telling them in essence, keep the main thing the main thing.

My grandpa used to say, don't worry about the horse going blind, load the cart.

I had no idea what that meant for a long, long time.

I'm not 100% I know now, I just have a better idea of it.

Don't worry about so much stuff.

Keep the main thing the main thing.

So he says here, if I speak in tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I'm only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.

If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge.

And if I have faith that can move mountains, but don't have love, I am nothing.

If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

It's such a profound statement that he makes in that book.

Some of y'all are looking at me funny, like what's the point here?

It loves the point.

Sometimes we get focused on things that are good works for God, but we lose the relational side of it.

We lose the importance of it.

Some of us haven't missed a Sunday of church in 14 years.

Some of us got a perfect attendance record, raise your hand.

Some of us in our Bible app, our streak is like a thousand days, 2000 days.

I haven't missed a day with my Lord.

Those are good things.

I'm not speaking against any one of them.

Some of us are in four or five life groups.

Some of us are so busy working for the kingdom that sometimes we forget to sit down with our father.

And we forget just to talk to him and remember how little we are, but how big he is.

We forget to think about how much he loves me.

How much he loves me.

Some of us have been doing this for a little while, and we're just trying to do it right, like me, right?

And I didn't come to Valorous as a pastor.

I didn't come to Valorous as a believer.

I didn't come to Valorous fresh out of hell, smelling like smoke, I was still in it.

I was still in it, I came as a sinner.

But this place showed me something I'd never seen before.

They showed me love.

They showed me that I was somebody, that this wasn't just a museum full of righteous people, but it was a hospital.

It was a place where people like me could come and we could start to breathe again, and we could get a fresh down load, and we could be treated like we were somebody because God loved me, just like he loves you.

And so we start to do this little dance sometimes.

Like, anybody grew up in the country, raise your hand, I'm country.

I'm from West Virginia, not like Anthony Browning, West Virginia, but like other West Virginia.

And I joke about him.

That's one of my very best friends in the whole world right there.

He's got me into some good stuff, he's got me into some weird stuff too.

But he has this saying that stuck with me, and it's become kind of my mantra, I'm not sure how you say that, over the last three years.

We gonna make it, Jesus loves us.

Because I'm gonna tell you, I've been through some stuff.

And I bet every one of you have.

Because as soon as you step out in faith, it's like, man, there's some stuff coming real fast, real fast down the hatch.

But we gonna make it, Jesus loves us.

We gonna make it, he's bigger, he's taller, he's more than my circumstance.

We gonna make it, not because I'm strong, but because I'm loved by a living God.

So I wanna thank you for that.

I never did thank you for it, but I thank you for it now.

We gonna make it, Jesus loves us.

Touch your neighbor, say, Jesus loves you.

I know it's getting awkward now.

I'm gonna keep on doing it.

Imagine how your kids feel.

But I'm country.

So we started to walk through life, trying not to sin, like we're walking through a cow field.

You just try not to step in a patty.

Y'all are funny, it's funny, because sometimes you're walking and you just start talking for a second and, that's it.

We're so worried about doing the right things and going in the right direction and showing people what they should see about God that we miss the whole point that what we should reflect, because that's what we're made to do, right?

We were made to reflect.

We should reflect God.

And if we reflect him, we'll reflect love to a dark world, to a place that's so loveless.

If you ever was open to Romans 8, 38, 39, this is so significant.

It was so significant to me, because I don't know about you, but I was a filthy rag.

I was broken.

I won't tell you my whole story.

I don't want to turn this into a testimonial, but it wasn't good.

And I danced a little funny in the front row sometimes, and I get a little overexcited.

My wife said, I clap too loud, but you don't know what he did for me.

You don't know what he did for me.

You don't know where he took me from.

You don't know how many tears it took to get here.

And now you guys trust me to talk to your kids.

And it's the greatest joy of my life.

It really is. 90% of the time, I don't know who's teaching who, but I'm pretty sure it's them teaching me.

Even if it is just weird words that don't make any sense.

I have to watch YouTube just to figure out what you said.

It's like a different language.

It's crazy.

It's like, are you speaking in tongues right now?

No, this is us.

I don't know what that means.

But this was so important to me.

Romans 8, 38 through 39, Paul says, am I doing that thing?

Am I too close to the speaker?

Okay.

For I am convinced, convinced, that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

It means I can't mess it up.

I can't jack this thing up.

My grandpa used to say I could tear up an anvil.

I didn't know what that means either.

He said a lot of stuff.

I can't mess it up.

You mean that while I was that, you loved me.

And you mean that when I mess up again tomorrow, you'll still love me.

Are you telling me that there's nothing I can do to make you love me anymore, just like there was no sin that could ever make you love me any less?

You love me like that.

And so now that ought to help us as the church just to walk a little bit different.

But sometimes because we haven't sat down in that relationship, we haven't sat down on that side of it for so long, we look kind of gloomy when we walk out.

We don't have the joy that we should have.

We don't have that level of excitement, that little pep in your step like you ought to have.

Don't get too close to the speakers though.

Make that sound.

Because we've missed out on that.

Or sometimes it's the circumstances of life.

Anybody in here gone through some hard stuff?

Maybe you're going through it right now.

I don't know who it is.

Maybe you hurt.

Maybe you're going through grief.

Maybe you lost somebody that was so important to you.

And it is so hard for you to fathom that a good God that loves you would let that happen.

Why them?

Why me, God?

Or maybe you're lonely.

Maybe you're a single mother.

Maybe you're a single father and you're lonely.

And your God is saying to you, baby, why are you walking around like you're all alone?

Maybe you're married.

Can I tell you that sometimes married people are the most lonely people in the world?

And God's saying, baby, why are you walking around out here like you're all alone?

Because let me tell you something about him.

You ain't never been alone.

You ain't been alone for a nanosecond of your life.

When you were going through that thing and that thing and this thing and the other thing, he was right there with you.

You might not have been able to feel him.

You might not have been able to see him, but he was in front of you.

He was on this side.

And he was behind you just like he is today.

And when you face the next giant, he'll be there too.

And when you face the next hardship, because baby, they're coming.

Maybe you're on a mountaintop right now.

That's good.

I don't want to discourage you.

Enjoy the mountaintops.

Sometimes you're not going through a hard thing because you did something wrong, but because you're doing something right.

And if I can tell you anything, if you ain't having a head-on collision with Satan every day, you better check your feet and watch who you're walking with.

Better lock it up and lock horns with him every day.

I don't know about me, but I really resonate with that part of the epistles where Paul says, I don't do what I want to do and I want to do what I don't do.

And it's such a battle.

And the battle, I'm not battling against people.

I'm not battling against flesh and blood.

The battle's in me.

I'm battling myself.

Maybe you're walking around with guilt, with shame.

I got quiet there.

Maybe God's forgiven you of some things, or maybe God forgave them of some things and you can't quite forgive them yet, or maybe worse, you can't quite forgive you yet, no matter how many times you look at him on the cross and you know that he died for you and you know that, what is it that he says about your sins?

He says there, as far as the East is from the, he's cast into a sea of forgiveness.

What did he say?

A perfect love keeps no record of wrongdoings.

He wiped it clean.

He doesn't remember it.

Stop walking around with those rocks in your backpack.

They have you off balance.

Sit down in his love.

The great thing about your backpack is you can empty it.

Yeah, I know you're looking at me funny right now.

I use this analogy a lot with students.

Every time I pick that shame back up, I get a little heavier.

Every time I pick my guilt back up, I get a little heavier.

Until now, all it takes is a, I'll start to lean a little bit.

But I can just dump it out again.

See, I can go back to this cross over and over again.

I can go back to it every day if I need to.

I can go back to it 10 times a day if I need to.

And I can unload my backpack and I can get a fresh download.

He said, give me your yoke and take mine.

Mine is light and easy to bear.

But why?

Why me?

Because he loves you.

And he doesn't love you for anything that you offer him.

There's nothing you give him, but you were created for it.

I'm gonna tell you something that's really special to my heart.

And it was a download just a few weeks ago.

The reason that you were created, now you've been told your whole life in church that you were created to glorify God, right?

And that's not wrong.

That's not wrong.

I'm not coming against that.

What you were really created for, because God didn't need to put something on the earth to let him know that he was cool.

He didn't need to put something here to let people know that I'm awesome.

He knows he's awesome every day.

You were put here to be the object of his love and adoration.

That's why you were made.

See, all the other things, God just spoke them into existence, but for you, baby, he got his hands dirty.

He got down off the throne and put some things together with his hands.

And he said, this one's mine, this one.

And when he looks at all the rest of his creation all over the world, when he looks at a bird, he don't see him, he sees his creation.

When he looks at another animal, a dog, whatever, he don't see him, he sees his creation.

But when he looks at you, he sees himself.

He sees a reflection of him, because he loves you like that, loves you enough to step into every single storm of your life, the good days, the bad days.

And sometimes we get distracted.

Anybody in here ever get distracted?

I get distracted by God for God.

I'm like, all right, I got this.

My wife's got her life group on Tuesday, and then I gotta be there on Wednesday, but I got a staff meeting on Tuesday morning, and it starts to all kind of pile up every now and then.

And it's funny, because I heard this pastor, and I'm not gonna quote, I can't remember who it is, so I can't quite quote him, so I'll paraphrase.

He's like, one of my frustrations is with my kids.

Anybody here got kids?

Anybody here got teenagers?

You know what I'm saying?

Help me, Jesus.

I got a 13-year-old who has selective hearing syndrome.

Yeah.

See, we have stairs in our house, and it's weird, because I'll be, her brother, he hears me all the time.

His room is just on the other side of the hall, but I'm standing at the stairs, Shailen.

Shailen.

Shailen.

Shailen.

Shailen.

It's funny.

Door don't open.

I start popping popcorn, and phew, it's like a bullet coming down the ceiling.

I've never met anybody that loves popcorn like her.

What's worse is when they're right in front of you.

Shailen.

Shailen.

I'm looking at you.

I know you see me.

Shailen.

Shailen.

What really frustrates me is when she ain't responding to me because she's distracted by the thing I gave her.

That phone that she didn't buy.

That iPad that she didn't buy.

I tell you, God feels like that sometimes, too.

Baby.

Baby.

Baby.

And here we are, distracted with the thing he gave us.

He gave you the career.

He gave you the marriage.

He gave you that ministry.

He gave you every good thing that you have, and you're distracted by it, and you ain't spend any time with him, and all he wants is you to have a cup of coffee.

He just wants you to come and sit down with him.

Just a few minutes.

Let me talk to you, okay?

Because you need me.

And you're gonna need me tomorrow morning.

You're gonna need me the day after that.

You're gonna need me the day after that.

Because I love you.

Not because you offer me anything.

Just because I love you, and who I made you to be.

First John 3, 1.

Here we get to John.

Lots and lots of glorious John.

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God.

Children of God.

And that is what we are.

The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

So we, the church, this place, the place that's not a building, sometimes it's a tent.

And I'm gonna say, I've been so unbelievably encouraged by y'all over these past couple months, because I really worry, because we were used to a really nice spot, and I was worried that coming into a tent, some of y'all would stop coming.

Not Valerius, not these people.

No, they'll worship him in a cornfield.

Come on, somebody.

I'll worship him in the back of Walmart.

Walmart needs Jesus more than anybody.

Did I say that out loud?

I did, didn't I?

I'll worship him.

Why?

Because while I was still a sinner, Christ died for me.

Not after I got better, not after I ran through that water, not after I devoted my whole life to him.

No, while I still sucked, while I was still a filthy rag, he died for me.

Sow that, everybody say sow that.

Sow that.

It's funny, Occlai's been doing that for years, and I can't even read through the book.

Every sow that is there, and I'm like, sow that, sow that.

And there's always something cool after it.

It is, it's a call to action.

Sow that, sow that.

So that we, the church, could go out and be a shining light.

So that we could be a city on a hill, a candle on a lampstand, but sometimes we don't act like that.

Sometimes we get stuck in some things.

Sometimes we get division between us.

And can I tell you, there's enough division in the world without us helping it, but I'm gonna tell you, there's no Republican, there's no Democrat, there's no politician that's gonna save this country.

Okay, it's just love.

There's no divisive characteristic between what race you are, what color you are, what class you're in, what you drive, what you don't drive, where you live, where you don't live, whether you say roll tide or go dogs, that's gonna save you or save this country.

It is love.

See, there was this really, really special guy back in the 60s, and he said this really, really special thing.

Tell me if you know what I'm talking about.

He said, hate can't drive out hate.

Only love can do that.

Darkness can't drive out darkness.

Only light can do that.

Now, he changed the world, and he didn't change the world as a politician.

He changed the world as a Baptist preacher, and the world ain't never been the same.

So we, the church, our job is to go out there and show people what love really looks like.

Unconditional love, the kind of love you can't mess up, the kind of love that's not based on anything you do for me or anything you could possibly offer me, the kind of love that is based on just you being you because it was enough for him, so that's enough for me.

A kind of love that changes the way that I look at people, and I start to look at you like you're a child of God like me, and you probably got some issues, look a lot like my issues, but I bet we can come together, and I bet we can help each other.

You know what I'm talking about?

I bet we can come together, and I bet if I start praying over you and you start praying over me, God will hear your prayer and hear mine too.

And where two or more gather, there I am.

I don't need to be in a room full of a million.

Sometimes I might just catch you in the parking lot of Subway and I can see you need some prayer.

What if we did that?

What if we, as the church, walked out and we looked for the places everywhere, not that we could point out the darkness in the world, plenty of people are doing that, but if we could be the light that shines into those dark places, that says, hey, I've been where you are, let me take you to him.

Come on, no, no, you don't know love like this.

You might've known some love before, but you ain't never seen love like this.

You ain't never felt love.

You ain't never even smelled love like this.

Come, let me show you what he did for me.

Because if he did it for me, he can do it for you.

He can do it for you too.

This is how God showed his love among us.

This is 1 John 4, 9 through 11.

It's the last thing I wrote down.

This is how God showed his love among us.

He sent his one and only son into the world that we might live.

Everybody say live.

Through him.

This is love.

Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Right before we get to that cross, right before he took on everything that was mine, we get this snap, this picture.

He's standing on the stage with Pilate.

And you know, sandpaper people that I was talking about, this is one of my sandpaper people.

Because there was a guy there who was terrible.

He was a murderer.

He led an insurrection.

He was awful.

He did everything that deserved that cross.

And Pilate asked the Jews, who do you want?

On this festival, this day, we always release one to you.

Who do you want?

What do they say?

Give us Barabbas.

Not Jesus.

Not the guy who had walked the country, who had fed the thousands, who had made the lame walk in the blind sea, who had peeled the lepers, who had raised the dead.

Not him, give us Barabbas.

And I was so mad at him.

How could you choose them?

How could you choose Barabbas?

Until I realized who Barabbas was.

That's me.

I'm Barabbas.

So that cross, it was mine.

Those nails, they were mine.

Every blow that he took that made his body bloody and unrecognizable was mine.

And there he is, over and over again saying, baby, give it to me.

I don't want to.

I don't want to anymore because I know I'm going to screw up again.

I know I'll hurt you again.

And he says, give it to me.

It's mine.

I'll take this.

You live.

You live.

And so he walked down those steps into freedom, just like I did.

And here I stand before you today because he gave me that opportunity to walk on, to go do what he'd asked of me, which was one simple thing and nothing that I hadn't been shown directly from him.

He told me to love, to love you and call you my brother, to love you and call you my sister and to act like you mattered like that.

That's like we were just one big family of believers and that together we might be a beacon of hope into this ugly world.

And I hope that this week and the weeks after that and the weeks after that, you'll have a little different pep in your step, that you'll remember no matter what, I got love.

Jesus loves me.

This I know for the Bible tells me so.

I'm a little one.

You're a little one.

Jesus says, bring the little ones to me.

Let me pray for you.

Father, thank you so much for this day.

Thank you for this beautiful weather.

Thank you for all these people that came to hear about you, Lord.

Just ask that hearts be changed, that there's one here today that doesn't know you, that they would put their love, their hope and their trust in you, God, that they would join with one of these other believers out of their prayer tent and let us pray with them and encourage them, God, that they would get involved in the church so that they might gather with the believers to be encouraged week after week.

If there's one here, Lord, that does know you, but just need a little refresher, God has asked that you would pour your love out on them and let it be so thick in their life they can't escape it, God.

We love you.

We praise you.

And all God's children said, amen.

Amen.