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If you've been around North Place long at all, you know that we have a deep passion to reach people for Jesus. We say just one more a lot around here. Nothing excites us more than seeing somebody's life changed by the power of the gospel. And over the last 18 months, we've baptized more people than in the previous five years combined. And our current expansion projects at every campus and all the things that we're trying to do is just the reality of us trying to steward what God is doing. But here's the thing we're not just passionate about reaching people, we want to build them. We long to see people grow, we long to see families grow into all that God has called them to be. When Jesus gave us the great commission in Matthew 28, he told us to go into all the world, that go command, and then second, make disciples of all nations. The go command is the reach. And then the make disciples is the build. So we go to the neighborhoods and the nations to reach, and then we build by building up families, building up kids, building up disciples, helping people become who God designed them to be. That's what this mattering, the quest for meaning series is all about. And here's the good news it didn't matter how old you are, how young you are, or how new or long you have been on the journey of following Jesus or what situation you find yourself in, regardless of that, you can grow spiritually. And if you miss the first couple weeks of this series and you're thinking, well, I'm kind of late to the party. No, no, it's not too late at all. Today is really day one of the journey. The last two weeks have been introductory material to the concept of mattering today, and all throughout this week is when our groups will actually launch and they're meeting for the next six weeks. They'll gather in homes and coffee shops and in people's workplaces and gyms and college dorm rooms so we can learn how to apply these principles to our lives. Now, here's what we've been telling everybody attend the series. There's a lot you can't control in life, but you can control your own growth and development. So commit to be in church every Sunday through this series. Get a guide. Number two, they're all available out in the lobby of every campus today. It's this whole eight weeks. It's a devotional guide, a small group guide, and then third, join a group. You can still connect with the group in the lobby today. We had group connect last week, but we'll have a scaled back version in the lobby today for you to talk to somebody about joining a group. Or you can go to northplacechurch.com forward slash mattering. All things mattering are at that landing page. There are links there to join a group. Um, there are opportunities there to see the previous sermons each week will be added, so you can go back and watch the sermons and my starter conversations that help get small groups going. All of those starter conversations are there as well. Really cool and encouraging for me to see is that we have more groups available and more places than ever in the history of our church, and a lot of them have filled up over the last few weeks, but we still have about 90 groups with space in them for you, and those people are willing to and ready to welcome you. So find a group, get in one, and let's grow together. Pastor and author Eugene Peterson, he's known because he wrote uh the message paraphrase of the Bible and a lot of other great books. He is now in heaven, but he said something that really gets to the heart of today's conversation. He wrote this I am busy because I am vain. I want to appear important, significant. What better way than to be busy? The incredible hours, the crowded schedule, and the heavy demands on my time are proof to myself and all who will notice that I am important. The illusion our culture sells is that significance is something you accumulate. You build a resume, you fill your calendar, you get the promotion, the platform, the recognition, you prove to yourself and to everyone watching that you matter because you're busy, or you matter because you're successful. But here's the problem: you can win at every bit of that and still lay awake at night wondering if your life really means anything. What our hearts are actually longing for isn't success, it's significance, the felt sense that our life is more than a nameless grain of sand on the beach of history, that being alive, our existence actually matters. Last fall, Texas AM's College of Arts and Sciences published an article titled The Scientific Study of Meaningful Existence. And here's a quote from that article. While purpose provides a goal to achieve, mattering is more about feeling that you are significant to people and the world. Sometimes referred to as existential mattering or interpersonal mattering, this means that your personal experience feels valuable to the world or in your personal connections. Without feelings of mattering, the opposite may creep in feelings of insignificance. These thoughts and feelings can lead to depression and antisocial behavior. You can't have a conversation about mattering without talking about significance. And today is going to set us on a healthy search to find the right kind of significance. There's a pattern that runs throughout the scriptures. God consistently establishes identity before he hands out responsibility. Adam is made in God's image before he is given a garden to tend. Israel is called God's treasured possession before she ever receives the law. Gideon is called mighty warrior before he ever stepped foot on a battlefield. Jesus is declared the beloved Son of God, in whom the Father is well pleased at his baptism before a single miracle or any public ministry. Peter is renamed the rock long before he demonstrates the faithfulness that that name would come to represent. Being comes before doing. Do I matter? And according to God's word, absolutely. And when your identity is secure, your contribution to the world stops coming from a place of striving and starts coming from a place of freedom. And here's why that matters so much. A person who's still trying to establish their worth can't really invest much of themselves and other people. And when they actually do, it's like a job for them because they're doing it in order to get paid something back. Only a person whose worth is already settled can give away of themselves without needing something in return. You see, God doesn't save you from something, he frees you for someone. Not for something, he frees you for someone. You are saved to serve somebody. This was exactly what Jesus was talking about in Matthew 5. He he represents this same order that we're talking about before he ever tells his followers what to do. And it comes first. Then two verses later in verse 16, he says, Let your light shine before others. That is your assignment that comes second. Now we're gonna come back to that, but notice right at the start today, because this is what I'm wanting you to see about yourself. Jesus, if you're one of his followers, he calls you light, the light of the world. Light can't force anything to grow, it creates the environment that makes growth possible. You are the light of the world, but you can't force spiritual growth in anybody's life around you. Your life can create the environment that makes it possible for others to grow, like light, but you can't make it happen. So if identity comes first, what does making a contribution to the world and those around me actually look like once my identity in Christ is settled? Once I get that security of my worth and my value, what is me making a contribution to others, adding value to them, actually look like? It's probably not what your instincts tell you. Our instincts tell us to fix people, diagnose problems, apply the right tool, solve, move, do things, kind of like a good mechanic. Mechanics work through their control and their expertise. And the better mechanic you are and the better tools you have, the more things you can fix and repair. But followers of Jesus are not called to be spiritual mechanics. The call of Jesus on our lives looks more like that of a gardener than it does a mechanic. You see, a gardener can't fix or manufacture life. A gardener creates the conditions where life can flourish and then trusts God to do the part that only God can do. You can't command a seed to grow, but you can prepare the soil. You can remove what's choking it out. You can water it, you can protect it, you can give it access to light, but the actual mystery of the growth that belongs to someone else. But being a gardener is not a lesser call than being a fixer. It's actually the harder call. Anybody can try to force or manipulate an outcome. It takes something deeper to create the environment for life change and then trust God with the results. Several years ago, I was working on my doctorate and I read an article in Fast Company magazine where Peter Singh uses this Gardner mechanic analogy to talk to leaders. And ever since I read that article years ago, I've been studying what the Bible has to say about the theology of cultivation. It isn't just a nice metaphor, it's woven in the scriptures from Genesis all the way into the New Testament letters. I mean, think about this. One of the very first assignments God ever gives a human being is to cultivate a garden. And make note of this, people get this wrong. This is before sin ever entered the picture. People fail to understand that meaningful work, contributing to the world, cultivating, was part of Eden before the fall. Work was not a result of sin. This was a part of the perfect design of God before sin ever came into the world. The toil and thorns come later, but work, contribution, cultivation were all a part of God's original design. The Hebrew makes this richer than our English translations let on. God places Adam in the garden, and here was his assignment, Genesis 2.15, to work it and take care of it. The word for work it here in the Hebrew is a bod, and it's the ordinary word for labor. But don't miss this. It's also the exact same word the Old Testament uses for worship. In the Hebrew way of thinking, there was never this clean line between tending a field and serving or worshiping God. It is the same verb. Your work is an act of worship. The word take care of it in this, you are to work it and take care of it. Take care of it in the Hebrew is shamar, and it means to keep, to guard, to watch over. It's this image of hedging something around with thorns to protect it from being eaten or attacked. So the very first job description God writes for a human being is to tend and guard a garden. Cultivate it. Tend it, guard it, not build it, not fix it, not try to force it to produce. Just tend and guard. And that assignment looks more like a humble gardener creating environments and cultivating an atmosphere than an expert mechanic with the right tools trying to fix something. Listen to the way Jesus says this in Mark 4 when he speaks of the farmer. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself, the soil produces grain. The farmer does not know how. The farmer in the parable genuinely doesn't fully understand what's happening inside the seed under the ground. And notice this Jesus does not see that as a problem, he sees that as the arrangement. A mechanic who doesn't know how an engine works is a bad mechanic. A gardener who doesn't know how a seed works is just a gardener. He's not trying to fix anything, he's tending to and cultivating life. You can't fix something that is alive. You have to tend it and protect it and nourish it and cultivate it by making the environment conducive for growth. Parents, listen to this. Team leaders listen to this, coaches listen to this, teachers listen to this. If you're in a relationship with anybody, you're trying to love into a relationship with the Lord, listen to this. Paul says the exact same thing in reference to his own life in ministry. In 1 Corinthians 3, verse 6. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who makes things grow. Paul and Apollos, two of the most fruitful lives in church history, and yet Paul's own summary of their contribution is that neither one of us made anything grow. One of us planted, the other watered, God made it grow. It wasn't that their work didn't matter, it did. But somebody else's growth was never in their job description. Planting was, watering was, cultivating was, creating the right environment was, but the part everybody actually wants credit for that belongs to God entirely. He is the one that makes people grow spiritually. And the imagery goes a layer even deeper than that. We tend to picture ourselves as the gardener, in essence, we are, but but scripture uses that imagery first for God. Jesus says in John 15, 1, I am the true vine, and my father is the gardener. Look, I don't ever want to bore you with the original language stuff, but this stuff is incredible. Listen, the Greek word here in John 15 for gardener is georgos, which means literally means earthworker. God is the earthworker. But I want you to notice what Paul does with that word later on. Paul uses the exact same root word, referring back to what Jesus said in John 15. In 1 Corinthians 3 9, he writes, you are God's field. And when he says field, he's using gay or the same root, but he changes the word just enough to reflect this truth. God is the earthworker, you are the earth, he works. Which means when you cultivate people, instead of trying to manage them or fix them, you're not just adopting a wiser leadership style. You're doing to others exactly what God has been doing in you your whole life. It's the theology of cultivation, and it should be practiced by anybody in relationship with other people, parents, spouses, bosses and employers, pastors, small group leaders, any believer sharing their faith with anybody else. But don't make the mistake and think that cultivation is an easier path. It's not. Matter of fact, it's expensive and costly. There's a cost to cultivation, and you just look at nature, how God created it, and it shows in nature what's happening spiritually when you're cultivating. A commercial grape grower will cut away roughly 90% of last year's growth from a healthy, productive vine. It's called pruning. It's costly but necessary. That's not a diseased vine, but every single year that happens to the good vines. Fruit trees take years before they give you anything at all. A fig tree will take three to four years. An olive tree, if it was a grafted olive tree, will not give you an olive for at least four years. If you planted a seed, it could take up to 12 years. A standard apple tree doesn't bear fruit until year six, and it doesn't bear well until year ten. Here's the point cultivation runs on a timetable you don't control. We have to remember this, especially if we're living with a spouse who isn't a believer, or we have kids that are running from God, or in basically any relationship, cultivating someone else's spiritual growth and maturation runs on a timetable you don't control. And that's exactly what Paul was saying to the Corinthian church in the passage we just read. Paul said, I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. Three different roles. Paul takes the responsibility for his faithfulness, but he refuses to take responsibility for the outcome. That's the posture of a cultivator. The pressure's off. I remember feeling this in uh my one of my favorite classes I took as a freshman in college. Uh, one of my favorite would become my favorite professor, I'm still in relationship with today. Dr. Watson taught personal evangelism, and I remember as a kid, you know, just feeling this pressure to reach people, you know, we're gonna try to close the deal and get them to say the sinner's prayer and all that. And my just I want I want people to go to heaven and feel this pressure. And and Dr. Watson started off the semester with that old adage there is a God and you are not him. You know? And then he broke it down this way: when it comes to reaching people and discipling people, here's the reality: there are two jobs. Your job is to go and give opportunity. God's job is to seek and save. You can't save anybody, you can't regenerate and transform anybody's heart. Your job is to go and give opportunity. That's all you can do, that's all you're supposed to do. The transformation, the drawing their heart, that's the Holy Spirit's job. The transformation, that's God's job. You go and give opportunity. God's job is to seek and save. And I remember when that finally got into me, which is what I'm trying to get into you today, it set me free and allowed me to use my time, my gifts, and my talent to do what only I could do, so then God could do what only he could do. But most of us wear ourselves out because we blur those roles. Parents do it with their children, leaders do it with their teams, friends do it with the friends who won't change, no matter what you say. We start believing that if we say the perfect thing, we do the right thing, we apply enough pressure, we have one more conversation that we can manufacture somebody's change. We can manufacture somebody's growth. You can't. Your job is faithfulness to God. Growth belongs to God. You may plant something today, an encouraging word, a moment of attention, an honest conversation where somebody actually opens up for the first time ever. You may do all of that, but never see the fruit from that in your lifetime. That doesn't mean nothing is happening. Because some of the most important work a gardener does happens underground and out of sight. Now let me bring you back to that Matthew 5 passage, kind of the theme passage of this whole series, and show you what Jesus has to say about light and how important it is to this conversation. Matthew verse 14 and 16. You are the light of the world, a town on a hill cannot be hidden in the same way. Let your light shine. This is what you're supposed to do, your assignment, that they may see your good works or good deeds, and notice what the purpose is. So that they will glorify your father, which is in heaven. Light does not exist for itself. By nature, it affects everything around it, it reveals what was hidden, it gives direction, it creates warmth. And in the natural world, light is what makes growth possible in the first place. So when a father Of Jesus walks into a home, a workplace, a classroom, a friendship, because Christ is being expressed through their life, the light of the world, something becomes more possible in that environment and in that relationship. Hope becomes more possible, courage becomes more possible, honesty becomes more possible, healing becomes more possible. And notice where Jesus says the attention is ultimately supposed to land. When you, as the light of the world, let your light shine on others by showing them your good deeds. What ultimately happens? The glory goes to the Father. You shine your light so they will glorify him. Light is doing its job when it helps someone see something beyond itself. We're not trying to become impressive people. We're trying to become illuminating people. The goal of light was never attention, it's illumination. But let me warn you with this. There are two ways we can get this wrong. For the last three weeks, in one way or another, we talked about what Jesus has to say about this, sociologists, therapists, scientists. And they all keep pointing back, if you want your life to feel like it matters, if you want to experience feelings of significance, then first you got to know your value, but then you got to do one thing. You got to do something else. You have from that place of security, you got to make a contribution. You got to add value to other people. But if we're not careful, here are the two big dangers. The first danger, value without contribution. If your whole strategy for feeling significant is trying to collect affirmation, you're gonna need to constantly have a fresh supply because affirmation dissolves, and with it, so will your feelings of significance. Psychologist Alan Prelinski puts it bluntly. He says, too little worth results in high rates of depression around the world. Too much worth results in unprecedented levels of narcissism. And he calls it a me culture, a life organized entirely around feeling valued with no obligation attached to add anything back. This kind of life doesn't produce mattering, it produces a person with the wrong motives. If somebody in this situation actually does anything beyond themselves, it's usually for PR, it's image management. They're not really serving anybody, they're using others to feed their own need for validation. That is the appearance of adding value without making a real contribution. The second danger is contributing or contribution without security. This happens a lot in church, happens a lot in other nonprofit serving environments, volunteer organizations. People serves faithfully for years. Nobody would ever call them a taker. But underneath the serving is a quiet, unexamined engine. They're feeling this. If I stop being useful, I'm not sure what I am. They're not serving out of the overflow of a secure identity. Their service is more like an audition. They're trying to prove something. And if the affirmation doesn't come, if the public recognition doesn't come, they often develop a martyr's complex. I did all this and nobody noticed me. Sure, being acknowledged for a job well done feeds any of our souls. But if your primary motivation for serving is to get some kind of recognition or payback, that never ends well. Most serving situations are always going to take more than they give you back when it comes to public affirmation. So that account will never get balanced. And that's why these folks who serve from a place of insecure identity, inevitably, they burn out, often end up bitter. They can't take a break, they can't take a Sabbath, because their identity and worth is connected to what they do. So they overwork and they overcommit until it breaks them. Secure people can Sabbath. Secure people can step away and know the world isn't gonna fall apart when they're not around. Now let me point you to one more example from the life of Jesus. There's a moment on the last night of his life where John records something about this moment in a really unusual way. Before John tells us what Jesus did, he tells us what Jesus knew. Listen to this. John 13, verse 3. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power. He knew, okay, but what did he know? He knew that God had put all things under his power and that he had come from God and was returning to God. That's what he knew. So, verse 4, because he knew that, so he got up from the mill, took off his outer clothing, wrapped a towel around his waist, and we know what he did. He serves. He starts washing the feet of these carpenter and fishermen, these disciples. The hinge word in this whole verse is in verse 4. So. He knew this. It didn't say, buddy got up, it didn't say, even though he knew this and got up, he said, so. Because he knew this, he got up because he knew where he had come from, because he knew where he was going, because he knew what already belonged to him. There was a security, a knowing. He picked up the towel and he washed the feet of men who were that very evening arguing about which one of them was going to be the greatest in the kingdom, one of who would betray him before morning. Jesus knew his authority, he knew his identity, he knew his destiny, so he served. The security wasn't intention with the serving, his secure identity is what produced the serving. Notice what he does with the knowing, with the knowledge. An insecure person would have used the knowledge of that power to lift themselves up. Jesus uses it to lay something down. Only somebody that is completely certain of where they stand can afford to take the lowest place in the room. And that's today's message in an image. You don't wash feet to find out who you are, you wash feet because you already know. You know, and from that place of security, you are securing your value so you can go serve and add value to others. You see, our default is consume. Consume content, consume attention, consume affirmation, consume other people's energy, and none of it, no matter how much of it you get, is ever going to produce in you the feeling that your life matters. The feeling of significance only shows up on the other side of you making meaningful contribution into the lives of other people. You already have significance that you didn't earn. It was settled the moment God saved you and said, now you are my light in the world. So the invitation this week is to stop spending your energy trying to prove something that's already been decided and let that settleness change how you show up in the ordinary relationships in your life tomorrow. I mean, one of the beautiful things about these letters I shared a moment ago in stewardship from these kids that went on this trip, it's over and over again. They said, I went in, didn't I? I don't know, where's my usefulness? God, how? And in the moment they they took what God had done for them and started giving it away to other people, they came back and said, I know who I am. My life's gonna matter. I found purpose, I know what I'm doing when I get home because they understood their identity, but they had an opportunity to give it away, and all of a sudden they felt like they mattered. There were feelings of significance and usefulness and meaning. Here's what I challenge you to wrestle with today. Two questions. Where can I bring light today? I'm the I'm the light of the world as a follower of Jesus, so where can I bring his light today? Not how do I get noticed today, not what do I need today, but where can I bring light? That's cultivation. That's what it means to let your light shine before others, and that's how you experience significance. It is expressed through contribution to somebody else's life. And number two, what becomes possible in the lives of other people because I was there. You don't you don't change anybody. You just you can't seek and say, that's God's job. You, me, our job, we leave this place, go and give opportunity, create environments, cultivate atmospheres in our homes, our offices, our classrooms, the sideline, our relationships, the coffee group we meet with, we go, we just create environments. We're just there cultivating atmospheres. We plant, we water, we're faithful, and we let God give the increase. We do our part and then trust God to do his part. Look, you I know I know people often make light of this, but you really have an incredible opportunity here. Our groups launched this week, and groups it's iron-sharpening iron. This is the one place this can actually get practiced because you can't cultivate anybody else's life from a distance. You gotta get involved, you gotta connect. You heard the people in the video earlier talking about I was hesitant, I didn't know anybody, one young ladies, I wasn't even a believer. But when you take the risk and you get close, you can be cultivated and then you can make a contribution in other people's lives, and that's how God designed it. He moves in that in ways we don't even understand. It's supernatural. Would you stand with me across the room today? And I want to ask our prayer team if they would to come and make themselves available today to serve you across our campus family. Look, we're here to pray with you about anything. Um I know there are burdens here in the church in a real, real uh heavy way. I just kind of give you a glimpse into the bittersweetness of uh walking with people. I got a text on Friday from um somebody uh texting me and saying, Pastor, the scans are free, the cancer's gone. Just praise, praise, praise. That literally wasn't 30 seconds later. Another text, unrelated, another family, the biopsy came back malignant. Please pray. Just this pull from thank you, Lord, to uh heaviness, just the tension we live every day with people. Some are in the highest highs, some are in the lowest lows, and God is with you in the mountain and he's gonna walk with you in the valley. And if you need somebody to help you today to pray with you, this this is how we can make a meaningful contribution to your life, help bear your burdens. We're here to pray with you. Father, will you bless them and keep them? Will you make your face shine down upon them? Would you be gracious to them? Would you turn your countenance, their direction today? And would you give them peace in Jesus' name? Amen. These altars are open.