250: Counterfeit Christianity — What is Counterfeit Christianity?

Adam Cook (0:00): Welcome to the Messy Walk podcast with pastor Adam Cook, where our goal is to have a genuine and authentic conversation about the Christian faith journey and what a messy walk with Jesus really looks like. Make sure to follow us for future episodes that will be posted regularly each Wednesday. We hope you enjoy this episode.

Steph (0:19): Hey. Welcome to the Messy Walk podcast. I'm your host, Steph here, pastor Adam.

Unknown Speaker (0:23): Hey. Hey. Hey.

Unknown Speaker (0:24): Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey.

Unknown Speaker (0:24): Hey. Hey.

Steph (0:27): Guys, we're at the very end of the series, counterfeit Christianity.

Unknown Speaker (0:31): Yes.

Steph (0:31): Crazy. And, so this is episode six.

Unknown Speaker (0:34): Doesn't it feel like we just did this, like, yesterday?

Unknown Speaker (0:37): Uh-huh.

Unknown Speaker (0:37): And we're already done.

Unknown Speaker (0:38): Yeah. It was fast.

Unknown Speaker (0:40): Yeah. This is number six. Uh-huh. We have done, well, you you can go ahead and say your numbers first. Number episode

Unknown Speaker (0:45): Oh, this is episode two fifty.

Unknown Speaker (0:46): Number six of it. And I that didn't really have a title. Right? Like, the title of the series is counterfeit Christianity, and the title of this episode is also counterfeit Christianity. So I don't know.

Unknown Speaker (0:56): It's just a little summation thing that I wanna do because I thought it was a good way to end it. So here's what we talked through first. We talked through counterfeit grace. We talked through counterfeit worship. Really good episode.

Unknown Speaker (1:06): Yeah. We talked about counterfeit humility.

Unknown Speaker (1:09): Like that one.

Unknown Speaker (1:09): Community. Right? Counterfeit community, I really liked as well. And then last episode is my favorite so far, counterfeit repentance. That's just something I've been thinking about and talking about for a long time, so it's a cool to do episode on that one.

Unknown Speaker (1:22): If missed you one, go back and take a look at that. I really, really, really

Unknown Speaker (1:24): like that

Unknown Speaker (1:25): one. Basically, what we said was repentance is the number one tool we have in our toolbox, and you don't want to you don't wanna fall for the counterfeit version of that. It's too it's too important to our faith. And then today, I just thought about wanting to end this by stepping back and sort of answering this bigger question of what is counterfeit Christianity. Right?

Unknown Speaker (1:50): Because we've talked about these different pieces of it, right? So, counterfeit Christianity has elements of counterfeit grace and counterfeit repentance and counterfeit community and counterfeit worship and all those things but what is it really What what does it really mean in general? And I think that the most dangerous form of deception isn't something that's obviously evil. It's something that looks almost true. Right?

Unknown Speaker (2:18): And that's what I think is happening with counterfeit Christianity. It's not something that in our American culture, it's not something that appears just blatantly evil. It kinda looks like it's kinda true. Like, it's close enough to fool people. It's close enough to feel familiar.

Unknown Speaker (2:35): It's close enough to sound biblical, but it's different enough to actually lead people away from Jesus instead of to Jesus. And I think that what we are experiencing is a lot of counterfeit Christianity that seems okay on the surface, but really is just slightly off course that leads people away from Jesus. There's this there's this, this rule that people that that are in airplanes, pilots have. I can't remember the name of the rule, but it has something to do with a particular degree. Anyway, here's the principle of it.

Unknown Speaker (3:10): Is that if you are just a degree off, right? After a short distance of time, you are very, very far off. Right? So it can at the beginning, it can appear like, think about if you got on the if you got on a plane right now and it was supposed to land you in Atlanta. Right?

Unknown Speaker (3:29): So let's say we're we're going to Raleigh Durham Airport right now. We're getting on a plane. We're going to Atlanta. That's like a really short flight, forty five minute flight. If that plane is one degree off, you are landing in another state.

Unknown Speaker (3:42): Right? Not in Atlanta at all. You're you're popping up somewhere very, very different than where you're supposed to go. Just from being just a little bit off track. Right?

Unknown Speaker (3:50): And so I think that's the danger that we have with with this counterfeit version of what it means to follow Jesus now in our culture is that it's close enough where it seems okay and it's alright and it sounds okay. But over any sort of distance of time, you end up missing Jesus. That's counterfeit Christianity, and that's that's been Satan's strategy from the beginning. Right? His strategy has always been a distortion of the truth.

Unknown Speaker (4:17): Right? Mixing some truth in with some lies and keeping it enough truth to feel believable. If you trace back to the initial temptation of Eve and then therefore Adam, if you if you look back to the beginning of this where we what we get in our Bible, right, is is the introduction of this and where sin ends up happening. Is you see that he just mixes the truth. Like, it's not that he he doesn't even lie to her.

Unknown Speaker (4:45): He just says, are you sure? This is his first words. Right? He says, are you sure that god said that? You know what I mean?

Unknown Speaker (4:52): So it's just a little distortion of the truth. And then that of course leads to sin. I mean, it's just it's bad, but it's just a little bit of this has been his strategy all along. So his strategy is not gonna be to make to make this counterfeit version of Christianity in America seem evil. Right?

Unknown Speaker (5:10): It's going to be to make it seem very close and similar to what it ought to be, but actually be far enough to where you actually miss Jesus. That's the whole point. So it feels believable, but it's not really. That's what we see a a lot around us today. Modern Christianity often looks remarkably Christian on the surface.

Unknown Speaker (5:29): It's got the language. It's got the songs. It's got the conferences, the bible verses, right, the podcasts, and the merch, and all the social media posts that people share. But the question isn't, does it look Christian? The question is, does it lead people to Jesus?

Unknown Speaker (5:45): Right? If it's not leading people to Jesus, then it's not really Christian. And those two things are not always the same thing. Like, something can look Christian and not really be centered on Jesus. Here's the great danger that we have.

Unknown Speaker (6:01): We've become incredibly good at creating Christian environments, Real good at doing this. Mhmm. Matter of fact, we we call a lot of things churches that are really just Christian environments. Jesus never commanded us to make church attendees in a Christian environment. Right?

Unknown Speaker (6:21): He commanded us to make disciples. So what's the difference in a Christian attendee in a Christian environment and an actual disciple? Well, the disciple is somebody who follows him, not the Christian movement. Right? Not the pastor, not the speaker.

Unknown Speaker (6:37): You know? There a disciple is someone who follows him. A disciple is somebody who surrenders to Jesus, not just gives their money to whatever Christian agency and organization is asking for it. It's somebody who surrenders to him. It's somebody who's actually becoming like Jesus, not becoming like some pastor or or inspirational speaker or podcaster or somebody who writes some Christian books that you like.

Unknown Speaker (7:03): Right? It's actually becoming like him. And I think that the danger is I feel this a lot. The danger is is that our we're participating in counter counterfeit Christianity when we are helping people to become more like us or to become more surrendered to our church instead of more surrender to Jesus and more like Jesus. You know what I'm saying?

Unknown Speaker (7:23): Yeah. Like, we man, this is a hard one. Right? Because we still do these things, and I think they're important. But, like, we brand our churches so much to where people are following and surrender to the brand of this church, not necessarily to Jesus.

Unknown Speaker (7:41): You know

Unknown Speaker (7:42): I mean? Does that make sense?

Unknown Speaker (7:43): Like, the aesthetic.

Unknown Speaker (7:44): Yeah. Yeah. It's a it's a fear I have that what I'm making is is I'm making good union church people, but I'm not making good disciples of Jesus. Right? Like, it's not about the name above our door.

Unknown Speaker (7:57): It's about the name above all names. So it doesn't really matter how sold out you are to your own individual church if you're not being sold out to Jesus. Right? It this counterfeit Christianity that we've created in America primarily, right, it's everywhere, but America's like the Mecca of it, is that we have we've got our churches branded so well. We've got these polished, preacher speakers.

Unknown Speaker (8:23): We've got our social media firing where people share those things. They're tagging and branding and all this stuff. And there there it seems real Christian, but is it leading people to actually leading them to Jesus, or is it just making them good Christians to that particular church? Good church goers, good church attendees. Right?

Unknown Speaker (8:43): Like, he he's he's not he's not called us to and he didn't die for us to make some cool Christian environments. Slap the name church on them and then get a bunch of people to attend them or sell out to those churches, right? The end goal is not to take all the next steps that your church leads you to. Right? The end goal is for you to become like Jesus.

Unknown Speaker (9:06): He is coming back to not a bunch of branded churches. He's coming looking back for coming back looking for a purified bride. Right? Like Like sold out to Christ. We look like him.

Unknown Speaker (9:19): We act like him. We smell like him. You you know what I mean? Like, we think like him. That's the goal and this counterfeit version of stuff is us creating these Christian cultures that on the surface seem real good.

Unknown Speaker (9:35): Right? They they just seem really good but they're just a degree or so off. And if you push that all the way from now until we stand in front of Jesus, we are leading churches that are leading people to put their faith in their pastor or their faith in their church instead of their faith in Jesus. And when we get to the end of that, just like with that airplane, we get to the end of it, we're gonna be off course. And there's gonna be a bunch of people who miss Jesus because they bought this counterfeit Christianity, but we sold it to them.

Unknown Speaker (10:06): Right? And we we we were too focused on getting people to follow us than we were getting people to follow Jesus. You know what I mean? Like Mhmm. Like, one of the one of the reasons that you and I do not look at the numbers on this podcast is because I don't want us to create people who follow the Messy Walk podcast.

Unknown Speaker (10:27): Like, that's not the goal.

Unknown Speaker (10:29): You know

Unknown Speaker (10:29): what I mean? Like

Unknown Speaker (10:29): I feel that.

Unknown Speaker (10:30): Like, if we get to the end of this thing, we get to heaven and we realize we're like, okay. Jesus is like, man, y'all do good with this podcast. You had I don't even know if he cares, but let's just say he did. You had you had thousands of people listening, but only two of them actually followed me. All the rest of them were just kinda liked what y'all said and liked listening to Christian stuff while they were on their, when they're on their treadmill.

Unknown Speaker (10:52): Right? They liked absorb you know, they liked consuming Christian podcasts, and they thought your voice was good, and they liked the point that you made, but it didn't really lead anybody to me. Right? That is scary. I guess one of the reasons why I'm not we don't look at the numbers.

Unknown Speaker (11:03): You know? Because the goal is is to help people follow Jesus, not to help them follow us. Yep. And the dangerous part is is we create like, I'm saying churches, but it's all kinds of stuff. We create these these things.

Unknown Speaker (11:14): Like, we make we start making like, pay attention to your Christian influencers. You'll see this. Right? Pay attention to the people that you look at. We we we create this stuff, and we get people to follow it, And we increase those followers.

Unknown Speaker (11:28): We increase those followers. We increase those followers. And is the goal at the end of the day to generate revenue and create followers, or is the goal for people to come to Jesus? You know? Now anybody who creates that stuff is gonna go, oh, no.

Unknown Speaker (11:41): The goal is for people to follow Jesus. But it just so happens that we end up with all these followers and all the stuff I call BS on that. I don't think it's true.

Steph (11:48): Right.

Unknown Speaker (11:48): I think that it's very, very easily easy to create a platform. And then once it starts to kinda build, you begin to be very particular about protecting that platform.

Unknown Speaker (11:59): Mhmm.

Unknown Speaker (12:00): Right? And so you do things, say things, do things differently that don't really lead people to Jesus, but keep your platform going. Right? And you're you're you're you're getting your kudos and your pats on the back, not from people following Jesus more, but from how many followers you've got and how much money it's making, how many people are listening, that kind of crap. You know what I mean?

Unknown Speaker (12:17): And and that happens in churches too. I mean, that's that's been the number one enemy of the modern church movement in America. The number one enemy has been, are we trying to get people in seats? Are we trying to create attendees? Are we trying to get people to follow Jesus?

Unknown Speaker (12:35): And so we would do all these things and avoid all these topics and all kinds of stuff to keep butts in seats, right, so that we can so that we don't destroy what we have built. Right? And now it's not about Jesus anymore. You know what I'm saying? Like that's the danger.

Unknown Speaker (12:51): Right? See, when you first start the church, I know this because I live this. When you first begin the church, you don't care about none of that crap. You know why you don't care about it? Because you don't have it.

Unknown Speaker (13:00): Right? Like you take risks. You don't care because you ain't got nothing to lose. Like, when we started the church, you were there, Steph. You started the church with us.

Unknown Speaker (13:06): We didn't have nothing. We borrowed chairs from the fire department who about every six weeks would take them back. Right? Mhmm. The first thing we ever bought as a church with money was chairs.

Unknown Speaker (13:19): Right? We didn't have nothing. So we'd take risks. We do things because all we cared about was putting people to Jesus. But see, when things grow, right, and you start to get more established and you have things, you have buildings, you have stuff, you have people, now you end up taking less risk with the gospel because you are more guarded about not losing what you have.

Unknown Speaker (13:38): Right? And that's the danger of counterfeit Christianity is that is it is it more focused on making attendees than making actual disciples. Right? Because Jesus has commanded us to make disciples. Not people who follow us, people who follow him.

Unknown Speaker (13:55): Not people who are surrendered to us in our church, but people who are surrendered to him. Right? That's the goal. John the Baptist, we talked about this in the last episode, but he's the best example of this. Dude has this monstrous following.

Unknown Speaker (14:07): Right? And his following is based on him telling people about Jesus. And then Jesus shows up. And guess what everybody does? They leave him and they follow Jesus.

Unknown Speaker (14:17): And John is like, good. Right? Like, he loses his whole following, and he's like, good. That's what's supposed to happen. Right?

Unknown Speaker (14:24): Because we're supposed to be making disciples of Christ, not disciples of us or disciples of our church. That's the danger. Counterfeit Christianity often removes one thing. Right? And this is what gets us off track.

Unknown Speaker (14:39): Surrender. It it wants Jesus as savior but not lord. Right? This is how you know if you've bought into a fake version of of Christianity that's not real. Is you want Jesus to save you from all the mess that you've done and all your sins and save you from hell.

Unknown Speaker (14:56): Like, you want a spot in heaven. Don't know nobody who don't wanna go to heaven, but you don't want him as lord. You want him as savior, but you don't want him as lord. Everybody wants him as savior. Right?

Unknown Speaker (15:06): That's not that's not what it means to be a Christ follower and a disciple. Right? It it you don't have surrender there. Right? So if he is savior, then he's also lord and I'm surrendering myself to him.

Unknown Speaker (15:19): Like, it wants comforter but not king. Like, we wanna be comforted by Jesus, but we don't be ruled by Jesus. Right? We want the helper. We want this awesome helper from Jesus who helps everybody and loves everybody, but we don't want his authority.

Unknown Speaker (15:35): Right? We want we want the good stuff he says and does. We want the heaven ticket, but we don't want him to be the one who gets to say what we do and what we don't do, what we think and what we don't think, what we say and what we don't say. You know what I'm saying? Like, counterfeit Christianity removes that one big piece, which is surrender.

Unknown Speaker (15:53): And the ad you cannot have real Christianity. You can't have real following of Jesus without surrendering your life to him, not just as savior and helper and comforter, but as lord, as king. Right? As god almighty. That that's how you know it's it's counterfeit because it's it doesn't include surrender.

Unknown Speaker (16:18): One reason counterfeit Christianity thrives is because people naturally prefer a Jesus who agrees with them. Right? A Jesus who supports their politics. You can you can take the sayings of Jesus, and you can support any political party you wanna support. Right?

Unknown Speaker (16:34): You can you can change it around and twist it around enough to where it's enough truth in it, but it's got some lies in it just like Satan does, and you can support it. You give me, you can give me ten minute. I hate both political parties. I don't like none of them. Right?

Unknown Speaker (16:46): Like, all this stuff drives me crazy in America. But if you give me ten minutes, I could give you a biblical basis for democracy and for for democratic, people, and I could give you the biblical basis for republican people. I mean, very easily. Right? You can do this.

Unknown Speaker (17:01): I mean, you realize that there were Christians who did this with Hitler. Right? There were Christians who took the Bible and used it to back up Hitler and his political agenda. Right? You can there were there were tons of Christians in the South in America who used their Christianity and their bible to back up continual slavery.

Unknown Speaker (17:22): Right? Terrible. And then there were Christians after that who used their bibles to back up all the political rhetoric rhetoric around Jim Crow and people not having civil rights and all these things. I mean, you can you can take the Bible and distort it towards any political view you want. And that's the that's what keeps this counterfeit Christianity thriving is because people want a Jesus that actually agrees with them.

Unknown Speaker (17:44): Right? Yeah. Supports their politics. One who supports their preferences. One who supports their lifestyle choices or their worldview.

Unknown Speaker (17:53): Right? And we can distort Jesus into any of those things. But following Jesus is not inviting him onto your team. It's surrendering to his kingdom. Right?

Unknown Speaker (18:02): It's not getting Jesus on your side of all things. Right? Like, man, this is great quote. I'm trying to remember who who's the pastor who said it. Oh my gosh.

Unknown Speaker (18:11): I can see his face right now, and I can't remember him. Oh, man. I'm gonna I'm gonna steal his words. But, oh, well. I can't remember him right now.

Unknown Speaker (18:19): He said Jesus did not come to take sides. He came to take over. He didn't come to take sides. He came to take over the whole thing. Right?

Unknown Speaker (18:31): He didn't come to help bolster your lifestyle choices or your political involvement or your own preferences. He came to take over the whole thing. And that is the part of counterfeit Christianity that is so stinking dangerous. Right? It removes the surrender to actually to Jesus.

Unknown Speaker (18:50): Right? So we end up getting people to surrender to other things and not fully to that. And then we distort who Jesus is. We can bring him on our team instead of going, no, no. I'm dead.

Unknown Speaker (19:04): All that was with me is dead with Christ. I am risen and new with Christ. And so it's his kingdom, his way, his say. And I I wanna take my worldview, right, which we all have. Right?

Unknown Speaker (19:16): And and there's nothing wrong with your worldviews. They all come from the deep parts of your childhood, what you experienced, where you grew up at, all these things. Right? But all of our worldviews, everybody's worldview is supposed to be put into submission to Jesus and his worldview. Right?

Unknown Speaker (19:32): Because his it's his world. Right? So his worldview is the only world the view that matters. Right? And so we wanna take ours and it be consistently submitted to him.

Unknown Speaker (19:42): Right? Surrender. Right? That's the piece that's missing. We counterfeit Christianity, surrender.

Unknown Speaker (19:46): We wanna surrender that all stuff to him. So I wanna take I want to take my political views of 2026 America, and I wanna submit them to king Jesus. You know what I mean? Continually. Not just let me figure out how Jesus can be on my team with this, how I'm right, but I wanna give them to him.

Unknown Speaker (20:04): Right? Following Jesus isn't inviting him on to your team. It is you surrendering fully to his kingdom. This is a very scary verse we're about to read then we'll wrap this episode up. Matthew seven twenty one to 23.

Unknown Speaker (20:18): This is a really good section of scripture. And he's talking about fruit here, and then he leads into this chunk right here. This is 21 through 23. Is that what it is?

Unknown Speaker (20:31): Yes.

Unknown Speaker (20:31): Yeah. Matthew seven twenty one through 23. Watch this.

Steph (20:34): Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles? Then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers.

Unknown Speaker (20:56): K. This this is a scary verse. So those people he just referenced, first off, they're using the phrase lord, lord. Right? And and they are like varsity level, air quote, Christians.

Unknown Speaker (21:09): Like, they are prophesying in his name. He doesn't say anything negative about what they're prophesying. Right? And they are, what does it say, casting out demons or healing? Right.

Unknown Speaker (21:18): Like like, this vars that's varsity level stuff. I don't care what church you go to. You show me a Christian who is prophesying correctly and who's casting out demons, varsity, son. They are serious. They are seasoned.

Unknown Speaker (21:30): And yet he says he's going to look at them and say, I never knew you. Right? Depart from me. Because what does he say at the very go back to the beginning of it, Steph. He says the very the first couple lines.

Steph (21:44): Not everyone who says to me, lord, lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my father.

Unknown Speaker (21:49): Perfect. So the only ones are the ones that do the will of my father. Mhmm. Right? In other words, are surrendered to the will of god completely, not their own will, not their own thing.

Unknown Speaker (22:01): Right? He's talking about the folks that get into heaven are not just gonna be people who are like, I believe in Jesus. I follow Jesus. I've done some cool Jesus stuff. I'm on the varsity level team.

Unknown Speaker (22:09): I'm on the prayer team at church. I'm doing all this stuff. Right? It's those who are willing to submit surrender, that's our word, surrender their will to the will of Jesus. That's what it means to be a disciple.

Unknown Speaker (22:22): And that's what real Christianity is. Real Christianity is Jesus Christ is king of everything and everyone and every thought and every word. And we are living in constant repentance of how we don't do that and constant submission to him in in him doing those things through us. Right? That that is what real Christianity is.

Unknown Speaker (22:44): And counterfeit Christianity is just a little off track where it says a lot of good Christian stuff, teaches a lot of bible, gets a lot of people in church or listening to their podcast or whatever it may be. But in the end, it's gonna be god saying, I never really knew you because you didn't submit your will to the father. Right? Religious activity is not the same thing as knowing Jesus. That's what he just said in that verse.

Unknown Speaker (23:12): Church attendance is not the same thing as knowing Jesus. Bible knowledge is not the same thing as knowing Jesus. What the church has got to get back to, especially in America, is making actual disciples of Jesus, not disciples of the church or disciples of the pastor. There's too many people who what your Christianity really looks like is you follow a person or a church or a platform, but not really follow Jesus. Right?

Unknown Speaker (23:47): And that's scary. I I like to tell my people all the time. If you follow me, ultimately, if you follow me, it'll lead you to hell. Right? Like, don't follow me.

Unknown Speaker (23:56): Follow Jesus. And that is what real Christianity is. Right? So I felt like I needed to wrap this whole thing up by just talking about, you know, that this is not something that's just rooted in you being a good member of your church. Right?

Unknown Speaker (24:15): Church membership, we do it. We just brought it back recently. Church membership joining a particular local congregation and membership is not really biblical. Like, there's nothing wrong with it unless it is where your real membership lies. Right?

Unknown Speaker (24:34): Like, becoming a member of Christ's church is because you have surrendered to him as the head of that church. You know what I mean? Not just your local iteration of church. And that is a dangerous road we walk down in church leadership is, are we getting people to follow us and attend our church and follow our church? Or are we getting people to follow Jesus?

Unknown Speaker (24:59): Anyway, I thought this was a really good series. I really like talking through this stuff. This is stuff I'm thinking about all the time now. You know, if you ask me this stuff years ago, I don't I don't know if I would have thought about any of this. Right?

Unknown Speaker (25:12): But now I think the longer that I'm more seasoned I become and the longer I lead and the longer I see the church in the lens of the end times, the more I am con convicted and convinced to lead the church to Jesus and to hell with whatever else happens with our little local church. You know what I'm saying?

Unknown Speaker (25:34): Like Yes.

Unknown Speaker (25:35): Like, let's let's get people to Christ. And if that means they follow Christ and they leave us to go somewhere else, praise god. And and if they're if we are we're getting people to follow Christ and that means our our pews or our chairs aren't as full, praise god. Right? You know I mean?

Unknown Speaker (25:50): Because we're still leading people to Jesus. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So, anyway, I just feel very convicted about this whole thing lately which is why I wanted to do this whole series to begin with because I think the the church in lots of ways is just a back to our illustration from the beginning, just a little off track. And in the moment, it doesn't matter.

Unknown Speaker (26:11): But down the road, it really matters. And I think that pastors and church leaders, those who've been called to be shepherds are going to that's what Jesus is talking about when he means that we're gonna be held in a different level of accountability is because when it gets to the end, I think there's a lot of people whose blood is going to be on our hands. That we've led them the wrong way. We've created really good followers of us and not followers of Jesus. And it's scary, and it keeps me up at night.

Unknown Speaker (26:41): You know? It's the same thing. I I think of it a lot when I think about raising my kids. I'm not trying to raise my kids to be kids who do exactly what I say. Right?

Unknown Speaker (26:57): Like, that's not the end goal at the end of the day. I'm not trying to create little mini Adam and Valarys.

Unknown Speaker (27:03): Mhmm.

Unknown Speaker (27:03): Right? That's not the goal. What we're trying to do when we raise our children is we're trying to create independent, strong, godly adults. Right? And the same thing is true in being a a spiritual father or mother.

Unknown Speaker (27:16): It's not to create little pieces of us, little versions of us. It's to create, them being disciples of Jesus and what they're supposed to look like in Christ. You know? So, anyway, I lose a lot of sleep over this because I it scares me. It worries me.

Unknown Speaker (27:30): Right? I definitely don't wanna beat them people that was in Matthew seven in that verse.

Unknown Speaker (27:34): Yeah. Me either.

Unknown Speaker (27:35): And I don't wanna look at it and be like I don't wanna be like the opposite of John the Baptist. Right? Mhmm. Like, if Jesus showed up tomorrow and everybody was like, bye, Adam. We're following him.

Unknown Speaker (27:46): Would I lose my mind and cry because I just lost my people and my platform and my church? Or would I be like, home run? Right? That's what's supposed to happen. Like, that's what John the Baptist does, and I'd really like to be like that.

Unknown Speaker (27:56): Yeah. So you gotta not hold tightly. If you're in a leadership position of any sort, you can't hold tightly to what you think is yours or the way it's supposed to be. You have to hold that very open handedly and loosely because we want people to follow Jesus ultimately, not us. You know?

Unknown Speaker (28:13): So anyway.

Steph (28:16): Well, it's a great series.

Unknown Speaker (28:17): Good series. Yep. Good series. My favorite episode is probably still the last one.

Unknown Speaker (28:21): The repentance.

Unknown Speaker (28:21): Yeah. Two forty nine. Mhmm. But, yeah, I like this one too. This one was just stuff I didn't know where to put it, so I thought we would just end with it here.

Steph (28:30): Yeah. Well, guys, we hope you, really, really took something from this. Yep. And don't be afraid to share it, with anyone that you feel like could benefit from it.

Unknown Speaker (28:39): Sure.

Steph (28:40): And, of course, we'll let y'all know when we figure out the next series.

Unknown Speaker (28:45): Which we have no clue about. We will figure it out before next week because we have to record next week.

Unknown Speaker (28:50): As y'all know. So just you'll hear this later. We'll find out next week. We'll find out. Have a great one.

Unknown Speaker (29:01): See you later.

Adam Cook (29:03): Thank you for joining us on the Messy Walk podcast with pastor Adam Cook. Make sure to follow us for future episodes that will be posted regularly each Wednesday. Have a good day.