Being a Good Neighbor - Ephesians 4:1-6

The other day, I was scrolling through YouTube and ran across a video that a realtor had put out about Kansas City, like, if you're planning to move to Kansas City type video, and it was highlighting all the various Mikey, you may understand realtors and how that works being one yourself. It was highlighting all the major neighborhoods and areas of Kansas City, and he was just going through the history of how this neighborhood started and where it was. And he was kind of saying, hey, this used to be a really good place to be, and property values were good, and it's kind of on the decline right now for certain reasons. And here's this neighborhood, and it's starting to be built, and it's starting to grow, and the property values are being maintained, and things are moving in that direction. It was just really intriguing. I've lived in Kansas City, almost 20 years. And so just trying to figure out all the neighborhoods. neighborhoods are interesting things, right? Because we can build houses. I mean, Luke Owen does that. He's built a neighborhood. We can say there's a neighborhood, just the houses in area, and then we can say like, are we really neighbors, though? Or is it just a group of houses that are in the same location that last night when we came back from Parkville from the fireworks display? My wife and I, we always like to just drive through the city, and see how many neighborhoods are trying to burn all their houses down with fireworks. I love fireworks. They could just, you know, as long as they're not burning my house down. And so we were driving back through our neighborhood, which has an HOA. So homeowners association. How many of you have an HOA in your neighborhood? And you can love them, you can hate them. They're there for a purpose, right? It's like we're trying to maintain property values. HOA says don't shoot off fireworks and no one listened. Um, to that. We were driving back through the neighborhood and just, you know, a bunch of houses shooting off fireworks way larger than they should. But I thought, man, I love my neighborhood. Most days, my wife and I take a walk around the neighborhood. We know a lot of our neighbors. We have this HOA, which is there to kind of maintain property values. Here are the standards that we expect, if you live in this neighborhood, that you're going to maintain. Fences like this, yards need to be cut, and at times those can be headaches, but they're there for a purpose, right? If you move in, you kind of sign the thing that says, hey, I'll maintain my HOA standards. I imagine all of you, if you don't have an HOA, you've been somewhere in life where you thought, I'm part of a thing, and I have to maintain the standards of that thing. Paul's going to talk to us in Ephesians chapter 4 today about maintaining the standards of our neighborhood, the church, that maintaining the unity that we have in Christ. If you have your Bibles, turn to Ephesians chapter 4. As you're doing that, a little background. If you're new with us this week, we've been working through Ephesians. Ephesians was written by Paul while he was in prison in Rome to a group of predominantly Gentiles. Paul was Jewish. He was writing to mostly Gentiles in Ephesus, a Roman city. And he's in prison. And the 1st 3 chapters of the book, Paul's laying out kind of the facts, the way things are, about the Ephesians and who they are in Jesus. They've been blessed by Christ. They've been adopted by God. They've received God's spirit. They've been empowered by him. And that the Gentiles, and the Jewish people who have followed Christ are now united into one new person. There was this division between the 2 groups, the Jewish people, having the Old Testament that God was working through to redeem the world. He's done that in Christ now, and now Jew and Gentile are together, and Paul's writing them to tell them these are the facts. And then he switches in chapter 4 in chapters 4 to 6. He's saying, given this is the way the world is, here's how we should live in that world. And so he switches from kind of telling us how things are to telling us how we should be in light of that. And so for the next several weeks, we're going to be working through all that Paul's telling us to do. Today, I want us to see that Paul is calling us to be a good neighbor. The main idea of my message is very simple. It's this. As Jesus' followers, we must strive to maintain the unity and peace of his neighborhood. As Jesus' followers, we must strive to maintain the unity and peace of his neighborhood, which is the church. If you have your Bibles, look with me at the 1st 3 verses of chapter 4 and see that we are called to be a good neighbor. It says, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. With all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit, in the bond of peace. What is Paul saying? Paul starts with 1st saying he's a prisoner for the Lord. Again, Paul was in prison in Rome for having preached to the Gentiles, and he's writing to them, and he says, I'm a prisoner for the Lord. He means this in 2 ways. Primarily he's saying that when I became a follower of Christ, I became his prisoner. He gets to tell me what to do, but he's also saying, because I'm a prisoner of Christ, I'm in prison, an actual prison for being his prisoner. And he's writing to the Ephesians, to have unity, between the Jews and the Gentiles, the division that existed in their culture, in Christ. He says, I, a prisoner, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. Paul likes this language of walk. Quite often he'll use it. And what he means by that. It's just the normal kind of everyday lifestyle. So when he says, like, I urge you to walk in a manner. He's just saying your daily life needs to be this. So it's the way we live our life. When someone 1st becomes a Christian, They walk like an infant. Well, you can see all over north on church, by the way. In between services, watch where you're walking. We have a lot of like new walkers who are trying to figure out how to do this thing. And you can watch them. They stumble around, they fall. They don't have it quite figured out yet. I was watching one of our new parents, our kids about a year old now. And he just came walking in, holding his dad's finger. I was like, that's pretty normal. Walk right there. Then he let go of his dad's finger, put his hands behind his back and was just walking down the hall. This is amazing. This little one year old's got it figured out, that you can just see, this is the normal walk. The more we get used to it, the more it's our normal gait, the normal way we're supposed to walk. That doesn't mean we can't fall, that all of us have fallen. We've all been walking and tripped on something and found ourselves on the ground, but that's not our normal way of walking. So Paul's saying, I urge you to walk, to live your life. Just the normal gate of your life, the normal rhythm of your life, how, in a manner, worthy of the calling to which you have been called. He says, I urge you. This use of the word urge means to exhort. kind of like what a coach does for his team. Paul's not on the outside complaining about the Ephesians. He's not saying, look, I'm not part of your group. I'm not part of your thing, but let me tell you what's wrong with you guys. He's a part of them. He's the coach who's urging his players to live up to their potential to represent the team the way that he knows they can. He says, I'm urging you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. Paul has spoken in Ephesians already, that God calls us. That when you read the Bible, It's not a story of humans trying to find God. That's not how it works. It's a story of God reaching out to us to bring us back. And so God calls us when someone shares the gospel. When Paul went to Ephesus, he said, hey, guys, Jesus died on a cross. God loves you. He rose from the dead. death's been defeated, sin's been defeated. You should come to Jesus. He's calling them to come home. And he says, you need to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you were called, which was to come, follow Jesus. And so he says, you need to do this in a manner that's worthy of your calling. We all get this. I mean, an HOA has standards to maintain so that the property values can stay high. But there's other professions, right? Like, if you go to a hospital, doctors and nurses have standards that they are expected to maintain. You would not want to go to a hospital where they just said, look, doctors, nurses, you can do whatever you want. Just, you know, who chaos? We don't need to maintain, you know, sanitary conditions. We don't need to sterilize anything. We expect doctors and nurses, police officers to maintain the standards that are set. We expect athletes on a team to maintain the standards of the team. It would be shocking. If we were to say, we can follow Christ and not worry about the standards that Christ sets for us. As if like, hey, I'm going to follow you, but I'm not going to kind of keep up with how you want me to live or anything. This is not a shocking statement by Paul. He says, you need to walk in a manner that's worthy of Jesus, who has called you to himself. And then he gives the characteristics of what that looks like. What does it look like to be a good neighbor? He's saying, you need to be a good neighbor in God's neighborhood, which is the church. And then he gives us those characteristics. These characteristics, by the way, aren't kind of individual things you can work on. They're all interconnected. So everything's needed. It's like an engine. That when you put all the pieces together, then it runs. You can pull it apart and examine it, but you have to see all the pieces together for it to make sense of what's going on. Paul says, here are the characteristics of how I want you to be a good neighbor. Look what he says. With all humility. and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit, in the bond of peace. Again, all of these are related to how we interact with each other. That Christianity following Christ is not kind of an individual event. If I had my way, like if I could kind of choose where I would live, it would be out and kind of as far away from just a group of people as possible. Maybe some of you the same way. Give me a bunch of land, no one's around me. I'll drive into town and meet all of you people, but then I can get out to my land. I want to live that monk existence. Christian life's not that way. It's meant to be lived together. And the attributes of a good neighbor are about how we interact with each other. What we do with each other. And each of these, by the way, are characteristics of God himself. So Paul's not calling us to behave in a way that's different than God. He's just saying, hey, you need to be a neighbor the way God is. Look what he says. He says, with humility. The idea of humility is thinking of others is more important than ourselves. In Philippians chapter 2. Another letter that Paul wrote while he was in prison. He's told the Philippians, I need you to have this mind among yourselves. I need you all to think this way, like Jesus. who considered others more important than himself, who left heaven and came to earth, became human, grew up, and died on a cross for our sins. He says, think like that. Be like that with each other. Be humble. In 1st century Ephesus. Humility was not a virtue that they would have cultivated. We fake it for granted that being humble is a good thing. Because we've grown up as a culture under Christian teaching. Now, our culture as a whole has rejected that Christian teaching, but the kind of infrastructure of that teaching is still there. They said no to the god of it, but they still want to maintain humility. We're seeing that fade away though. And we're looking more and more like 1st century Ephesus, which was, people were told, you need to make as big a deal of yourself as possible. Build up your brand, build up your status. Let everyone know how important you are and then have them serve you. That was a standard way of thinking. And that was a virtue. You could listen to philosophers. And they would be saying, this is how you should live. Paul shows up and says, no, no, no, we need to be humble and consider others as more important. Think of your neighbor and think, I need to care about my neighbor. I need to be concerned about my neighbor. Put their needs above my own. I need to be humble. He says, we also need to be gentle. Gentleness is not weakness, by the way. Those are 2 very different things. Jesus says, he is gentle and lowly in heart. God himself humbled himself to save us. God, when he came, showed his gentleness. Gentleness is dealing with those who are weaker than us in a way that doesn't harm them. He says, I need you to be gentle and how you interact with each other. Humble as you care for others, gentle as you interact. Patient. We need to be humble and gentleness with patience. God is patient in our rebellion. If we pause for just a moment and thank God, how much have you put up with from me? How much have you put up with my not walking right? Not that I just tripped over something that I didn't see, but there are times in my life when I go, you know what? I just going to throw myself on the ground and intentionally not walk the way you want. And you're patient with me. Peter, one of Jesus' apostles writing a letter to people said, some people are saying God's just slow. He's not going to judge. He's forgotten about us. And he says, no, no, no, you misunderstand. God is so patient that he hasn't kind of had final judgment yet. He's wanting more and more people to come to repentance. He says, be patient. We all want that from others, right? When we're having a hard day. Things are difficult, and we're not living right. We was like, just be patient with me. Just give me a little bit of time. Just give me a room to breathe. We want people to be patient with us. Paul says, be patient with each other. And then look what he says, bearing with one another in love, bearing, with one another. That's enduring each other, putting up with each other. Last night. I went to bed around probably 1130, you know, to the sound of fireworks going off in my neighborhood. I woke up to some of the HOA Facebook page discussions about people's dogs having a hard time last night and struggling. There is a point though, right? We go, okay, I gotta bear with it. It's a 250th, you know, birthday of the nation who's going to let the fireworks go off the, and I like them, so they could fire off all night. I'd be happy. I'm a fan, but I know there's some people going, okay, I got to endure you tonight. I got to put up with you. We can be honest about that. We don't have to pretend at church that everything is always wonderful, and no one ever gets on my nerves, and I don't have a beef with anybody. You know what? We get on each other's nerves sometimes. If you're married for any length of time, right? At some point, you're gonna get on each other's nerves. You are. If you have kids, kids, you're going to get on your parents' nerves, parents are going to get on your kids' nerves. Neighbors, get on each other's nerves, and you go, okay, bearing with one another. And Paul says this, in love. And that's the key. An HOA in my neighborhood is there for this simple reason. We don't have to love each other. We set a set of rules up that says keep your yard cut, keep your fence maintained, Here's, you know, don't shoot our fireworks past 10 p.m. We didn't know no one listened to that one. But the HOA is there because we recognize humans are scoundrels. And you're not going to just on your own. do the right thing. So we said, here's an HOA, you're gonna sign it, and there's punishments if you don't. Paul says the reason we're to be a good neighbor, all of our behaviors, patience, humility, gentleness, is in love. I bear with you, because I love you, you bear with me, because we love each other. We are called to be a good neighbor, not with an HOA contract. It says, sign this because I don't trust you. It's to say we love each other. Love is the thing that is connecting all of this. And God is love. John, another one of Jesus' disciples in the 1st letter that he wrote, said this. anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love. Later on, he says, we love God because he 1st loved us. So this in love that binds us to being good neighbors, that connects us, that motivates us, what Paul says, I'm urging you to walk in this way with humility and patience, bearing with one another. In love is because God is connecting us. Then you can see in verse 3 what he says. eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, eager. This is not a begrudging thing. Paul says we should be eager to maintain the unity of the spirit. That is the unity that the Spirit gives us. When I moved into my neighborhood 6 or 7 years ago, the neighborhood was already there. I didn't build that neighborhood. I didn't create that neighborhood. I moved into it. There was already a neighborhood there. of us built God's church. We move into it. We move into this neighborhood called God's Church. And the unity of that church is already established. that the spirit is the bond of our unity, that we are in Christ, Christ's spirit indwells his followers, and the unity is given. Paul says, we've been given unity, we must be eager to maintain it. So we don't create the unity. God does that, but we have to maintain it. That means we can break it. He says, we maintain this unity in the bond of peace. And peace isn't just the absence of kind of hostility. Peace in scripture is when everything's the way it should be. You could be at home right and go, well, the home's, we have peace right now. We're not fighting. But it's not peaceful. Paul's talking about this sense of peace, and it's the bond of peace. The word bond in the original language could be like a ligament. So it's holding things together. So your knee has ligaments in it. And if you blow out your ligaments, you're not gonna walk right. Paul saying, we can blow out our peace. And we're not going to walk right. He said, we need to be eager to maintain this. Unity the spirit's given us in the bond of peace. Peace is what connects us together. And again, it's not just we're not fighting. We've decided not to talk anymore, so we're not fighting, so there's peace. Two enemies who have decided, let's just not interact. It's this peacefulness. that comes together when everything is the way it should be. And he says, we need to maintain that. We can lose it. Churches all the time. lose the bond of peace. as they cease to endure each other, to be patient with each other, to be humble with each other, in our brokenness, in our stumbling, when we cease to walk in a manner that's worthy, when we're not following Paul's commands here. But Paul doesn't just land there with kind of, here's what to do. He goes on in verses 4 to 6 to show us that the triune God unites his neighborhood. that our unity is found in who God is. Look what he says. There is one body. And one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all, and in all. One, one, one, one, one. 7 ones is what he says here. There's one body. And by that, he's talking about the body of Christ. says, when we become a follower of Christ, we join Christ. And Paul uses this metaphor that the church is Christ's body. And God puts his body together in the way he wants. So here at Northland Church, he's called us together. If you're a member here, to say, be a part of this body in this location, and he's gifted each of us different ways to serve him. Paul says in that metaphor, when one part of the body suffers, the whole body suffers. I had this morning, several people came into our prayer time. We pray at 7.30. Over the last several days. I just run into a lot of people who hurt themselves recently, strained backs, hurt knees, all sorts of injuries, and they realize once one part of your body hurts, the rest of your body is affected by it, it feels it. But when one part of your body is to celebrate. When maybe your hair has done up well that day. Mine's never had that problem. You can celebrate, and the whole body benefits from it. This is the one body. We are all one in Christ. One spirit. It's God's spirit that is uniting us. If you look back in Ephesians chapter 2, verses 19 to 22, Paul says, look, the Jews and the Gentiles, we've all been connected. and that the Spirit is now building us into the place where God dwells. We're being built into that. We haven't arrived. It's not finished. We're not perfect. We're going to make mistakes. That's why we have to be gentle and humble and patient. We have to put up with each other. But there's one spirit that's uniting us. We've been called to one hope. It's the hope that we have in Christ, of God's inheritance that he's going to give us. We see that we have one Lord. In Ephesus. If you're walking the streets, you would have heard regularly repeated from soldiers, and politicians, and just the average man on the street. Caesar is Lord. Caesar was the head of the Roman Empire. Caesar is Lord. That would have been a statement everybody heard. Paul showed up, and he said, Jesus is Lord. It's why Paul got beat up a lot. His statement was radically revolutionary. He was challenging, not just some religious ideas, kind of that you can go, oh, he has a different religious view. He was challenging the entire authority of the Roman Empire and Caesar himself when he says, Jesus is Lord. You can have no higher authority in your life if you're a follower of Christ than Christ, who is God. that your country can't have more allegiance than Jesus. Your family can't have more allegiance than Jesus. Your husband, your wife, your kids, your parents can't have more allegiance than Jesus. There is one Lord that unites all of us. Northland church is united, not because we live in Kansas City, not because we live in the United States, but because we follow Christ. One Lord, one faith. That is the truth of who Jesus is. We don't get to make up Jesus. We don't get to create our own personal Jesus, kind of to our whims, that we open the Bible, and this is who Jesus is. We say, God, show me who you are and then conform me, change me. to recognize you, don't let me change you to fit who I want to be. One Lord, one faith, one baptism. Baptism is the outward way that we show people we're his follower. When Jesus left this earth, he said to his disciples, go and make disciples of all people, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In the 8 o'clock service, we had a baptism. Baptism, when we put someone under water, it is a moment of kind of publicly professing the faith in Christ swearing allegiance to him, saying, hey guys, I'm moving into the neighborhood. I'm choosing God's neighborhood. Now, everyone who gets in this water, God's already called them. God's already been working in their life to bring them, but the person is then confessing of who they are. And it's this uniting symbol. All the believers in Ephesus would have been baptized, and they would have recognized, hey, we're in this together. We've all moved into the same neighborhood that is in Christ. And then one God and Father of all. In Ephesus, there were a lot of gods, small G. All over the place, you could see them. And many of the followers who had accepted Christ, they're one Lord now would have probably been worshiping someone else, maybe multiple gods and goddesses prior to that. And he says, look, there's one God. It's not multiple gods. There's only one. And he's the father of all those who have accepted Christ. Now, God's created every human being. But when Paul uses the word father, he's talking about this relationship, this family relationship, of those that have been brought into God's family, been adopted as his children, in his son Jesus. There is one God and Father of all, so we all have the same dad as followers of Christ, and he is overall, he's authoritative over us, and he's through all and in all. Everything about the unity that Paul wants is established by God. We are called to maintain it. Again, the main idea of this message was this. As Jesus' followers, we must strive. This is the work we have to do to maintain the unity and peace of his neighborhood. He's given us that unity and peace. So how do we do that? Three things I want you to see. One is marvel at God and his neighborhood. That far too often, I think, we can go about the things of God without stopping to just be amazed at who God is. and say, God, show me yourselves, open my eyes so I can see you for who you are. Maybe if you're awake and the sun's coming up and you see a beautiful sunrise. And you think, that is so amazing. Pause and go, God, you're amazing. The sunrise is beautiful, but you created that. The sunset is beautiful, but God, you created that. This landscape I'm looking at is beautiful, but you created that. That's just to marvel at God and his greatness. Open his word and as you're reading, say, God, show me yourself. I don't want to just read this to say I read it for the day. Yes, there are some days. Quite honestly, you go, I don't want to read today. Read anyway. You don't have to just feel like it to do it. And then as your reading, say, God, open my eyes. Let me marvel at you. Let me just be amazed at who you are. And let me be amazed at your neighborhood. Let me be amazed at the people you've called together here at Northland Church. Now, there are neighborhoods all over North Kansas City right now meeting and worshiping God. that are all over the country, all over the world. You're in this neighborhood. This local congregation. There's a place to say, God, I want to be thankful for my neighborhood. Is it perfect? Nope. You'll never find any neighborhood that's perfect. You know why? Because you live in that neighborhood. And I live in that neighborhood. Humans live in that neighborhood. There'll always be problems. That's why we bear with each other. That's why we have to be humble and gentle. But there is a place to say, God, what's good about the neighborhood you've called together, Northland Church, Marvel, at God and his neighborhood. Just remember that. Be thankful for that. Second, it's very simple. Be a good neighbor. That's not complicated, right? In like your daily life in the neighborhood you live in, when you drive back there today, be a good neighbor. That's, you know, that's Mr. Rogers stuff from when we were little kids. Just be a good neighbor. That's hard to do, though, right? Because people get on our nerves. Right, Josh? We get on each other's nerves. That's okay. We get it. Bear with each other. Now, how do we be a good neighbor. I think first, we need to get to know our neighbors. We live in a culture in a time. And again, I'm an introvert. And so I am pulled to this, which is, I'm going to drive to my house. I got a little button in my car that opens my garage door, and then I get in, and I can push that button before you even get out of the car, and it just closes behind me. It's like, I'm at home. I don't have to worry about any of these people in my neighborhood. Don't let church be that way. You can walk through the doors, you can sit down, you can hear a sermon, you can leave, and not get to know your neighbors. We know in our neighborhoods, the ones we live in, we need to get to know our neighbors. Because if there's an issue, we say, I know you. We're friends. We know each other. But here at church, we have to get to know our neighbors because it's our family. But that takes work, that takes effort. You got to let your garage door stay open sometimes. You got to go sit out on the driveway. I got to hang out when they're doing stuff, you know, when they're shooting off fireworks, you need to go out and just watch and enjoy. We do all sorts of things at Northland. events like Abide and Fords, men's ministry, women's ministry. All sorts of events to say, hey, come hang out. But I would encourage you. Find people you already know say, come over to my house, like, and have a meal. Let's spend time together that's not church sanction, so to speak. Just get to know your neighbors. As you do that. You need to work to keep your house and your yard in order. Right? If you're going to be a good neighbor, you got to cut the grass, you got to trim the bushes, you got to keep your house painted. You gotta make some repairs, you gotta make some improvements. These are just the spiritual disciplines of the Christian life. You need to be in the Bible reading it. You need to be praying. You need to be sharing your faith with others. You need to be forgiving. This is the personal spiritual disciplines of what it means to be a follower of Christ. That's you working on your own house. But if that's all you did was say, hey, I'm going to make my house really good, but I don't care about my neighbors, you've missed what being a good neighbor is. You know, everyone in there would go, I don't mind, Josh. I mean, he doesn't his house is nice. I just don't know them at all. Paul's talking about knowing each other and connecting with each other. And he says, when you're being a good neighbor, you wanna keep your eye open from neighbors that maybe need some help. We had 2 years ago, one of our neighbors, husband had passed away. She was an older lady, and it snowed pretty bad. And all the driveways were plowed. And we looked over and said, oh, her driveway's not been plowed. This was one of those snows that my little, you know, electric snow below wasn't going to work. So I called one of our church and we're like, I called Richard. Richard was riding around with his snowball. I said, Richard, can you come over here? with this massive gas powered snowblower? And just took care of this thing. She was unable to do it and took care of it. There's a place where we can say, hey, how do we help our neighbors? I'm keeping my eye open for you if you're struggling if you need help and saying, I want to help. You're keeping your eye open for me to say, hey, how can we help? Again, we don't have an HOA. The HOA is there in a neighborhood because we don't trust each other. We don't love each other. I just need you to comply so that my property values stay high and yours do too. But the church isn't that way. It's in love, which means we're always looking out for the other, trying to care for each other. Burying with each other, putting up with each other. And third, marvel at God in his neighborhood, be a good neighbor. And if you're here and you've never accepted Christ, know this, God wants you to move into his neighborhood. For God so loved the world that he sent his only son. So that whoever believes in him wouldn't perish, but have everlasting life would get to live in God's neighborhood. God loves you. God cares for you. He created you. He wants you to come home to him. He wants you to worship him, which is what you were created for, and he wants to surround you with believers of his, broken, flawed believers that you're going to have to be patient with, and humble with, and gentle with, and they're going to need to be that way with you, but God loves you. And he wants you to come home. In a little bit, our worship teams are going to come and lead us in a song. And if you want to talk about what it means to move into God's neighborhood, to follow Christ. Willie Hunter, one of our pastors is going to be in the corner right here in the back, just a prayer corner. You can go talk to him. If you want to pray about something, You can go back there and pray with him, and he will be more than willing to share with you and pray with you. Look, the reason we strive to be good neighbors isn't so that we can move into the neighborhood. It's not that, hey, if I'm good enough, I can move into this neighborhood. It's really good neighborhood. It's not it. Jesus has already done that work for us. And he's called us into this neighborhood, and we have then called to be humble and gentle and patient to bear with one another because God, the Father, called us to himself. God the son died and made it possible for us to be with him, and God, the Spirit unites us together. It is God who calls us to his neighborhood. And so every act of humility you show every time you are gentle with someone. Every time you bear with someone, in love, you are displaying God himself to that person. You are living out God's calling in your life so that we can live worthy as the neighbors as the family that he's called us to be. Will you join me in prayer? Father, we love you. And we thank you for your son, for his death and resurrection. Father, you've called us to Northland Church to this neighborhood of your followers. And Father, help us to walk in a manner worthy of that calling. Father, to show your love that you have for us. to those around us. to help us to bear with each other. in times when we are cross and with each other, but Father also to bear with each other in our sufferings and in our pain and the times that we are hurting. Father, help us to be humble and gentle and kind, to reflect your character to those around us. Father, you would be glorified, that you would be lifted up, let's marvel at your beauty. It's in the name of your son, we pray. Amen.