Message regarding 9/11 and Vineyard Church 9/11/2001 is a day that those of us who experienced it will never forget.  On this, the nineteenth 9/11 since that day, I’d like us to pause and remember what changed and how those changes are still affecting us today.

What we do know is that on 9/11, we gained a new appreciation for first responders.  It is hard to imagine the amount of courage and resolve it took for first responders to rush toward the scene of the twin towers in New York City, climbing up the stairs of those collapsing buildings, or running to the damage and fire at the Pentagon.  But, first responders do it every day.  Going toward danger, going toward pain, stepping toward, in order to save or rescue.  We have hundreds of first responders in our church today.  These brave men and women consistently step toward whatever need is there and bring healing, rescue, safety, and protection.  Lord, bless all of them, may they be full of Your Spirit, empowered by You, and led by You.  Protect them as they protect us.  Provide for their families.  Lord, there are so many times that our first responders face danger and have to decide at the moment how to navigate that decision.  Please fill them with Your Spirit and lead them – in Jesus’ name, Amen!

What else changed from 9/11?  I believe it was an important shift in the way we associated beliefs with protests, arguments, discussion, and behavior towards one another.  The work of Satan was merely in showing how a radicalized religious zealot could kill innocent people.  At a deeper level, it opened up an avenue of hatred for those who don’t agree.  The hatred that leads to violence.  So, over time and the subsequent nineteen years, we have multiple cultural branches that have their own belief systems that all lead to actual hatred of the “other”  This new sub-cultural hatred takes form online, in person, and in groups.  There is very little room currently to have open, civilized, disagreement, and discussion because so many sub-cultural groups have developed belief systems that eliminate the human value of someone who disagrees with them.  To disagree with a certain sub-culture is to no longer be considered an actual human being with value.  In addition to that, almost all of these sub-cultures have belief systems that are rooted in a view of the World that says truth is relative.  “My truth is valid because of my offense, or my group’s offense, or my group’s identity”  “Your truth is invalid because you clearly identify with this other group, which makes your truth wrong…”  Because the World is devolving (not evolving) into one that does not recognize that there is actual truth, it is going to move in this direction naturally.  Relative truth is an oxymoron, like Jumbo Shrimp.

The good news of the Gospel is that while all of us are sinners who can no more save ourselves than the worst of any of our “enemies”, God, in His great mercy, has provided a way for all of us to be adopted into His family AND empower us to live the life He has planned for us.  It is His work and not ours.  He reconciles us not to a sub-culture with relative truth, but to the only Source of absolute truth – Himself!  When we believe that He is the truth and we believe the truth of the Gospel, then we can experience salvation.  So, then we now have this ministry of reconciliation that each person is called to.  Why?  Because each one of us who have believed in Jesus has been delivered from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of God.  Since that is His work, and it is the life of Jesus in us from here forward, we can now live for those that God wants to reconcile to Himself.  Think about it – YOU – YOU – YOU are now commissioned as a God-ordained First Responder.  It is WE who are called to run into the brokenness of the World, into the danger of pain and discord, into the places where people are spiritually dying, to bring healing, rescue, safety, and protection.  It is US, The Church in Kansas City, and the entire Church at large that need to put our gear on and go against the flow of those running out.  We are called to go in.  Not on our own, but with the Holy Spirit.  Read the second half of 2nd Corinthians 5 and see about this calling to be ambassadors of this ministry of reconciliation.

To go in, we must have a few things:  We must be in a trusted community – Jesus never even sent people out alone, they went together.  Take someone with you, pray, and go in.  We also need to be in a community where we can learn and begin to believe the truth.  Not just our relative truth, which many people have, but the core truth of the Gospel.  We need to be a church where that kind of equipping can happen.  Encourage one another, build one another up, pray for one another, love one another, confess your sins one to another, just to name a few of the “one another” passages in scripture.  God has called us to a unique mission – to reach those who are away from him, with the message that there is real hope, real truth, and real freedom – in Jesus, then to make disciples of them and teach them to in turn become ambassadors of God’s reconciliation to the sphere of their own worlds.

My prayer for every person associated with Vineyard is that they would get a vision of how God has worked already to set them free, and how they can now, in faith, walk with Him back into the fire.  Taking the healing of the Holy Spirit to the brokenness around.  Let’s go on that mission together.  Begin today, on your knees – asking God to give your heart enlightenment of His work on your behalf, and trust to follow His lead.  Then, step out and find someone to relate with, and to go with.  Begin to “one another” each other.  See where God leads.  The adventure begins now.