Hot Seat Model Part 1

We ask that as we wrestle with difficult things, and as we talk about life and just enjoy one another's company and eat together, we ask that you would be present and that you would help us to push aside the things that are false and to hang onto the things that are true and a particular Holy spirit.

I ask that as we speak to one another, we wouldn't hold against each other the way things are said, but that we would be listening carefully for truth and for the compassion that that is in all of us through you. And so I ask all of that in your name. Jesus. Amen. Um, all right . So tonight , uh, Juhi I had slides that I totally forgot to put in. I just put, I just told you in my brain , uh, I do have a quicker , um, they're right on the desktop.

So while she's talking about that , uh, in October, I think it's the second to last week of October, we're going to have something, we call a belonging service , um , and in a belonging service, what we do is two things. One, we have a yearly renewal of our membership. So there's a covenant that will go out next week and you can read it over for a month. And that covenant is for people who say, Hey, this is the church that I want to be at this year.

And I'm willing to agree to submit to the leaders here, to take what the leaders have offered off of my stuff. It's all explained there. It's not very complicated. Um, but you get an opportunity to sign that, but we do one other thing in our belonging service, because we understand that not everybody's in the same place in their walk with God, or even if they believe that Jesus is real, but they feel, you might feel like this is your community.

You just don't know if you belong as a covenant person. There's somebody who's going to say, Hey, I believe in Jesus and his death and resurrection and all that and want to be here, but I do belong here. And so we kind of have a community-wide art project that we do, and everybody brings a piece of that art project. And it's a way of saying here, I symbolically belong to this community. They're the people I want to hang out with for a year.

So last year , um , we did these , the alphabet, that's all along the back wall here, people designed letters. I hope that everybody's , uh , letter got there. I know now you're all on the side, crank in your head. If your letter somehow didn't make it in there. Um, talk to me and Steve, and we'll try to get your letter in a new poster.

It's a diagram now , um, before I, we're going to talk about for four weeks, something that I put together over the last seven years called the hot seat model. Now, before you freak out, if you're new, we don't put people on a warm, fiery seat and ask them questions or anything like that. So don't worry. It's just, they kind of got that name. Maybe I'll explain how it got the name later, but we're going to talk about it for the next four weeks.

Because if you were part of one of our Pilton groups, which is our men and women, Bible studies, you get an opportunity to try to practice this model that helps us develop more intimate relationship with each other and helps us understand the gospel and how it applies to our life. So people have said to me over and over again, Eric, you need to teach on this to everybody. Not everybody goes to Pilgrim group and not everybody gets to hear you talk about it.

So I decided to take four weeks and teach on it. So that's what we're going to go through. So my encouragement to you is don't miss the next four weeks. All right , do not miss the , for next four weeks. And if you have to miss it's online and you should listen to it now, as I've said previously, you probably should listen to all of them at least two more times, because you don't remember anything that

And, and there , I think there are things that God has been speaking into our life as a community. So we started off this year with the statement that's been around our community for awhile , that the village is about healing, the city one person at a time. So if anybody ever asks you, what's the village about, we're not healing the city one person at a time. And so we, the year looking at how Jesus heals people, how he engages people and how those people respond.

And so, because we, what we wanted to do is if we're going to be disciples and we're going to be people who are receiving healing, it'd be good to see how Jesus does it and how people interact with them . It's a good way of beginning to understand healing the city, one person at a time, we moved from that to another phrase after we kind of left the whole process of seeing what Jesus does.

And then we talk about, okay, the way that Jesus heals people and the way he's called us to do that is to bless people. Okay? And the way we said blessing was is to bless someone. You have to see them, you have to know them. So you've got to see them. You have to recognize them as human. You have to know them, right? You have to actually listen to their story. And then the third part of blessing is calling them out, right?

Speaking words of encouragement, speaking words, that help bring out what Jesus is doing in their life. So we have those two things. Then we moved into acts, right? And the big picture in acts was, well, we realized that to start a church, to start a new movement of followers of Jesus, you can't do it on your own. You need, the Holy spirit is very evident that you need the Holy spirit.

And so what kind of developed was this picture that I talked about, which was how the Holy spirit comes in you to transform you and how the Holy spirit comes on you to do the works that he's called you to do. Right? And so I gave you a picture. This is not my own picture. It's a very old one. Um , but let me tell it to you. The picture kind of goes like this. If you're a little imagination with a little girl and you've come to a crosswalk that you need to cross and you're with your father, okay.

Father grabs your hand. And when the light turns, you begin to walk, he takes you across. Now. I don't know if you've ever noticed this as a little person. Those of you are little, those of you are little. Maybe you remember this when you're trying to keep up with dad and your feet are little, and you're walking across the crosswalk, you got to focus or you're going to get dragged because he's moving. And this is the way that the Holy spirit comes in us to transform us. Right?

The father holds our hand and begins to walk us and we have to stay focused on what the spirit is doing to see those transformations happen. Now, the second part of that picture that kind of came out of acts was imagine yourself as a little girl at that crosswalk, you need the cross, it, there are cars coming everywhere. And the father or your father picks you up and hugs you and begins to walk across the crosswalk. And you bury your head in your father's shoulder.

You don't care about the cars cause dad's big and dad's got control and he's going to get across . And that's what it's like to have the Holy come on you to do the works that he's laid out for you. He's laid out for the apostles for all of us. And so the idea was is that we have to be conscious of what the spirit is doing in us.

And then as we face things that are difficult, as we hope things and other people's lives, the prayer that we have to be continually asking for his Holy spirit, come on me and give me a big hug so I can do what I need to do. And so my hope was that the prayer of our community, as we minister to one another and outside of our community would be that God would hug us. That the spirit of God would continually hug . Yes. So that we could bless other people.

So we moved out of ax and we moved into Titus and we began to look at Titus. And the, the illustration that came out of Titus was my stupid bunnies . Right. And I'm going to use the word stupid. Okay. They are cute lion haired bunnies. Right. And they don't do anything. Okay . And now Jacob, you can raise your hand over here. You still have that bunny. Jacob has the bunny. That's awesome. Not like my line hair monies . He tried to pawn it off on me.

I really would like it, but I already have too . But if you want a really nice bunny that will interact with you, Jacob's got a bunny for you. Right. He still got a bunny for them. Okay, good. Not like my bunnies, but the thing that's good about my bunnies early, their sous bunnies , um , little girls and little boys come over and they want to hold the bunnies and they put the bunnies in their lap and they begin to pet them.

And they , they, those bunnies are like little pieces of China and they'll sit there and they'll pet them and they think they're the cutest things in the world. And they're precious.

And the message that came out of Titus that Paul was trying to tell Titus was if you're going to plant a church in a really hard place, if you're going to care for people, you have to keep your eyes on the gospel on the story of Jesus's life and his death and his resurrection and what he did in his, in his ministry that has to become so precious to you that it becomes a reflexive response, right. That you just love the gospel so much that it just oozes out of you.

Okay. And so the call, I think that that Jesus has to ask, this was go to your first love. The thing that that's going to drive you into holiness and godliness is beginning to focus on the gospel in a way that a five-year-old focuses on my little bunnies , right there , crashes that they're , they're obsessed with it. The world stops time freezes and they love those little bunnies. So that's where we come.

When we come to this crazy model called the Hotsy model, and you can see it this diagram , um , and I need to explain it to you. And here's the thing I'm going to go really slow through this model , um, in order for you to understand it. And I will say, this is a little terrifying to me and exciting because I invented this and I don't invent a lot of things. So this is my little baby and I invented a long time ago and it's had a big impact on people's lives.

And it's had a big impact on my life and helping me understand the choices I make . So I'd like to kind of explain how it all works

He says, come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest, take my yoke upon you and learn from me for, I am gentle and humble in heart. And you will find rest for your souls, which by the way comes out of Jeremiah six, we sing

So what Jesus is saying here to the people is that you were oppressed by a heavy yoke and burden of the rabbi of these rabbis. But if you come to me, my yoke and my burden is light.

And as I read this text, what I began to imagine was that we come in most of our choices to this little, what I would call poker table and at the poker table is Satan Jesus. And you, and we're always called to make a choice as to who we're going to follow. Now, the reason I kind of came up with this is as I work with people, if you guys , and with many other people, what I realized is that people say, I didn't make a choice to feel this way. I didn't make a choice.

I, what I realized is most of us are unaware of the majority of the choices we make. And so I thought if we could slow things down in people's lives, we could go back and examine the choice. We could help them understand the two teachings that are being told to them. Okay , now don't freak out. If you're somebody who doesn't even believe in Jesus. And you're like, Oh my gosh, now the guy's talking about Satan. This is freaking me out. Um, it's okay. This model will actually help you.

It won't help you completely if you cast out Satan, because here's the thing, it's not just Satan thing you can imagine is the person who overthinks, but you can imagine the thing, the , the, the teachings and the kind of a whole picture of things that we have to wear as a burden as people is Satan. And what he says is society and what it says and is ourselves. And the things that we say to ourselves and the lies that we tell and the burdens that we offer ourselves.

Now, I'm going to go with Satan. And here's why I want to talk a little bit to you. Um , out of Colossians chapter one, verse 13, you don't have to turn there, but Paul writes to the Colossians and in verse 13 of chapter one, he says this for he. And he speaking about God has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the son. He loves in whom we have redemption and forgiveness of sins. So here's the reality for most of us, even if we're followers of Jesus.

Well, if we are followers of Jesus, here's the reality. We exist in a nation of darkness and Jesus has rescued us. But the real, the reality is, is that we had to get new passports. We had to learn a new kind of history for the nation. And so we come to most of the decisions that we have in life. We are very familiar with all the rules and regulations of the enemy and of society and them ourself. We know them really, really well.

So when we get to a table like this, when we come to a decision we have to make in life, we end up very familiar with Satan's conversation, with our conversation , with the world's conversation,

So Colossians chapter three, verse eight says, but now you must rid yourself of all such things as these anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips, do not lie to each other. Since you have taken off your old self, the burdens of rabbi Satan, your old self With its practices and put on the new self rabbi, Jesus, which is being renewed in the knowledge and the image of its creator.

Here, there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised barbarian Scalian slave or free, but Christ is all an in-office . So the message of Jesus as a rabbi is that there's a flattening, right? That's of people. There's an equaling of people.

Therefore, as God's chosen people, Holy and dearly loved clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humanity, humility, gentleness, and patience, bear with each other and forgive whatever grievance you may have against one another forgive as the Lord forgave you and over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. Since as members of one body, you were called to peace and be thankful.

So she starts combing your hair. And she puts you in a starchy shirt and starchy pants with penny loafers that hurt your feet and then makes you go to church in North Carolina where it's hot and sweaty. All right, hypothetically speaking, this is what actually putting on the gospel feels like it's super foreign, even when you become a citizen. All right.

So this whole process, what we call the table of decision or the Hotsy model ends up a lot of times here in this conversation, but we have to get there. And so this week, and next week we're going to get there. All right. So we have to talk about the beginning, the problem right now, here's the thing you heard me say that our church is about heating the city one person at a time. Well, there's, there's an assumption there. That means you are broken.

That means I am broken if you were here at church tonight. And you're like, I got everything together. I'm perfect. I have no pain. And life is great. Then you should leave now because the church is not a place for you. And honestly, none of you can say that because if you were to get up now and walk out, you're lying. Okay? Because you live in this world and I live in this world and I know I'm messed up and I know you're messed up. I know this to be true. Right.

So we're coming here and we do have problems right now. What I have noticed in people in general, when we come to church, when we interact with each other, when , when someone says, how are you doing? We often have a reflexive response of everything's fine. Everything's good. It's all right. Right. We tend to not divulge a lot in that first conversation.

Even when we try to be honest about what's going on in our life, what we find is it's actually really difficult to talk about our problem, right? Even in a general way, we can be struggling with just , you know , depression. We could be struggling with the way our kids are acting with our spouses with kind of our own bodies. I mean, we can go down the list.

You know, we all know there's just a lot of different stuff we can be struggling with, but trying to articulate that is difficult, but there's also one, another reason why that's difficult. And so I would like to quickly turn to Genesis because man, the Bible was awesome. You do not need anything other than the Bible to kind of look at people in relationship and kind of understand things. So in Genesis chapter three, this crazy thing happened. God creates man and woman.

He sticks them in the garden and he says, don't eat of the tree of knowledge, good and evil. And they say, well, that looks very delicious. Um , I leaked that. And so they do, they disobeyed. And when they disobey , um, Jesus or God comes looking for them, verse nine of chapter, three of Genesis, it says, but the Lord called to the man, where are you? And in verse 10, it describes the plight of man.

And the thing that you and I struggle with all the time, the man answers, I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked. So I hit , right. This is what you and I do in life. So when we come here and the reason it's very difficult for us to articulate what's going on in our life is that we're afraid of something called rejection and exposure. Right?

We're afraid that if we actually tell the truth or even give any little opening to the truth about how we're really doing in life or just the thing that while he might be struggling with that will be exposed, that people will find out that we're not what we've been portraying or we'll be rejected because will , will . What we believe about ourselves will be come out to be true.

Now here's the interesting thing about this is it's actually the opposite to the reason that you and I actually have a hard time saying, I genuinely feel excited is that if someone asks us why, and we tell them we still might be rejected because they're like, well, that's not that interesting, right? That there's, there is an opportunity, even when things are good, there's an opportunity to be rejected.

And so we have a hard time make things , things like I feel so instead we say, Oh, it's going okay. Or yeah . You know, things are all right. Or yeah , the weather has got me down, you know, like we , we don't have, and it's become so natural to many of us. So even when we go to a group of men and women sit with them and they're like, okay, how's life going? We're like, Oh, I don't know. So part of understanding yourself, the first thing is just to begin to learn, to say, I feel alright .

I feel sad because my, this , or I feel like I can never get it right. Or I feel like, and put a descriptor word on it. Okay. This will begin. The process is to learn, to say, I feel, and then offer a little bit of detail. It doesn't have to be big. It's going to be level. But to learn, to say I'm feeling something, all right, I'm feeling sad. I'm feeling ambivalent and feeling.

There are lots of different feelings though, on Google and typed in I'm feeling and think about all the definitions and say, okay, I could say that next time someone asks me, right. Part of it's practicing.

You can say, well, give me an example of great. Show me, tell me how great it turned out when w what were things, when were they great. Okay. Because events define everything and it's really hard. And here's the thing in life. You and I are. So given the talking in generalities, I don't know how many times I've sat with people in this community, outside this community. And I say, how are you doing? I'm trying to help you.

And we're trying to think through things in life and everything is a generality. You will not talk about specifics. Because when we talk about an event, we have to actually sit and experience what happened at some level in the retelling. Okay? So what I'd like to do is just read a couple of events out of scripture to show you kind of how this might work. So, one of my favorite events happens in Luke chapter nine, verse 51. And this is if you want this, this is a experience for James and John.

And you could probably process them through the hot seat model, and they might learn something. Um, but it starts in verse 51 of Luke chapter nine, verse 51, verse 31 . Here's what happens as the time approached for him. This is Jesus to be taken up to heaven. Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. And he sent messengers on a head who went into Samaritan village to get things ready for him. But the people there did not welcome him because he was headed for Jerusalem.

When the disciples, James and John saw this, they asked Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them? But Jesus turned to rebuke them. And they went to another village. Now, after this experience, if you said, Hey, James and John, how are you doing? This is not so good. The Samaritans rejected us. And Jesus rebuked us, right? We're not doing good. And our event is the Samaritans rejected us and Jesus repute this, right? They have an event. They have an experience.

They have a problem. We don't get to know about everything in it . But see, we all have these. And they happened to us over and over again. And they lead to that table of decision, right? And the choice that we're going to make, either follow the way of Jesus or to follow the way of the enemy. Let me give you another one. That's heartbreaking in Luke chapter 22,

He said a little later, someone else saw him and said, you also are one of them, man. I am not. Peter replied about an hour later. Another asserted, certainly this fellow was with him for he is a Galilean Peter replied, man. I don't know what you're talking about. Just as he was speaking the rooster Crow , the Lord, this is important. Turn to look straight at Peter. So they're sitting together while this is all happening. Then Peter remembered the word.

The Lord had spoken to him before the rooster crows. Today, you will disown me three times and he went outside and wept bitterly. Now someone asked Peter, how are you doing Peter cuts at all? Things are hard, man, right? But here's a moment. There's an event. Peter wadded with chemicals. Peter's like, he feels a certain way. This event defines who he is, how he feels about himself, all those kinds of things.

Okay. So part of what we have to do is we have to learn to locate the events in our life that are actually affecting our general mood, right? So you might wake up in the morning and if you feel suppressed, the question you have to ask yourself is what event in my life that precipitated this, where I feel this, where this started, right? Because events affect the way we think about things, right?

Okay. This model is designed to help us deal with some of that and help each other, offer healing of the gospel to one another. But I'm to leave you hanging tonight, and I'm gonna ask you to do me a favor. I'm going to give you an assignment. What I want you to do is to take this idea of event or problem and event. And I want you to begin to analyze your life as you go through it this week. And I want you to ask yourself just how am I feeling? How do I feel today?

And what events in my life illustrate that? Okay. So if I'm feeling really good, what event illustrated that, that good feeling that I have, or if I'm not feeling so great, if I'm what event illustrates that. Okay,

And then you just kind of go in this loop and things are frustrating for you and depressing. And you're really not holding onto the truth of the gospel, and you're not able to offer any kind of healing to one another and you're not able to accept it. Okay. So what time is it? We have time. Six Oh five. All right . Now I know many of you have, some of you have taught this model. Some of you know it pretty well, others of you, it's pretty new to you. Um, I'm going to open it for questions.

You may ask me a question and I might just say, I'm not gonna answer that right now. Okay. So don't, don't, this might be your event where you feel rejected by the pastor. We can deal with that. Yes. Ma'am

how are you doing out of maybe not necessarily trying to process through that. Hey, well , what kind of event ? Like , tell me about a lot of ,

Let's pray father, thank you for this community and their willingness to , uh , join me in my adventure and this little model of, of learning to, to follow you. And I just ask that as I teach this that you would encourage and strengthen us and give us wisdom and ask all that in your name. Jesus. Amen.