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Have any one of you had a bite of one of these this week? You know what they are,
right? Honeycrisp apple. The honeycrisp apple was cultivated at the University of Minnesota. It
was patented in 1988 and released to the public in 1991.
A bit of a honeycrisp apple is a slice of heaven. Jesus taught us to bear fruit. If I was
going to be a piece of fruit I would love to be a honeycrisp apple. I want to be full and
developed and help others experience joy.
Its interesting that it takes eight years for an apple tree to go from a seed to a fully
developed tree where its bearing fruit. If I started a seed today I wouldnt enjoy fruit until 2022.
For eight years the tree is unfinished. Its always developing, but its not bearing fruit
You and I are like this. Were developing, but were unfinished. We want to bear fruit.
In fact Jesus taught his followers that one of their missions was to bear fruit. And we want to
bear fruit today. How do we do that?
Do we accept where we are in our life and just accept that we will always be unfininshed;
does that mean well never move forward? Do we accept the fact that well never be perfect on
this side of heaven, so we just stop trying to move forward? Do we just ignore the reality that
were unfinished? How do we relate to a world thats so unfininshed?
These are the questions were looking at in this four week sermon series called
Unfinished. The AIM of this series is to go deeper on our journey with Christ so that we can
bear fruit even while were unfininshed. This is a sermon aimed at our heart. We want our heart
to grow in a spiritual way. I just shared some questions that are framing this series. These
questions can be summed up in one question.
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How do I bear fruit while being unfinished?

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In your bulletin is a place to take notes. I would encourage you to write down this
question. How do I bear fruit while being unfinished?
Each Sunday we will participate in a ritual right after the sermon called Reflection Time.
The purpose of Reflection Time is to reflect on where we are and reflect on how to go deeper
with Christ. We will have four stations set upa healing station, an art station, a writing station
and a prayer station. You cant do all four stations. Pick one or maybe two that interest you. If
you want you can stay in your seat. We started this last week and a few folks shared that we
didnt have enough time. This week well have eight minutes during Reflection Time.
Last week I talked about the Big Mess. Each of us has a big mess and it prevents us from
bearing fruit. Even though we have a big mess we can simultaneously bear fruit. We can do that
when we acknowledge our big mess, and let God move through it.
Another Big Mess that prevents us from bearing fruit is more controversial. Not
everyone is going to agree with me on this. Are you ready for a controversial statement? Its a
Big Mess
The image of perfection that we sometimes project can prevent us from bearing fruit.
Not all of us live try to project this image all of the time. When the image we project
doesnt match the reality of our lives then were set up for a big fall. This is very true in the
suburbs.
A story.
Shortly after Hannah was born, Amy, Hannah and I lived in Rochester we moved to a
new home. We got to know some neighbors who lived near us. They were both good-looking,
beautiful people. Lets call them Frank and Cindy. I didnt see Frank a lot. He traveled during

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the week and was around on the weekends. When I told Frank I was a pastor he made it clear to
me he wasnt interested in God. He would go on Christmas Eve and Easter, but that was it.
Frank had a beautiful lawn. He worked on it a lot. Ive never been able to keep a
beautiful lawn without paying a lawn service. I wasnt paying for a lawn service at the time, so
my lawn looked poor compared to his.
Frank had a high paying job. He traveled all over the country. He was making a lot of
money, and he had a cabin. Im a pastor. Pastors are paid okay, and you pay me okay, but
compared to Frank? The only cabin that Amy & I have is when we go stay at our parents house
for a weekend.
Frank has three beautiful sons. I remember seeing a family picture inside their house of
Frank and Cindy and their three sons. They were beautiful. They were like the all-American
perfect family.
Exceptone day we had heard that Franks son had gone to Rehab. I was surprised by
this. Frank never talked to me about it. We saw Franks son driving around the neighborhood. I
thought everything was fine. I would say hi to Franks son.
One summer weekend Frank and Cindy went to their summer cabin. Cindy asked Amy if
she would look out for their house. The day after they left Amy got a call from Cindy. They had
a fight with their son and had left for the cabin without him. They were worried that he was
doing drugs in the house with his friends. Would we go over to the house to check on it.
Ohthis was more the normal, Is your garage door closed checking on our neighbor.
They wanted us to go inside of their house to see if their son was doing drugs with other guys.
Okay. Another neighborwho knew Franks sonand I went over to the house. His son was
there. We talked. He admitted that he had a fight with his parents and had done drugs. He

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wanted to go up to the cabin with his parents, but he had no gas in his car. I told him I would get
him some gas. I drove him to the gas station and filled up his gas tank.
After that happened we were likewow, reality didnt fit the image.
Think with me how often we receive images of how our life should be. The images are
of perfection. Were called to have the perfect house and the perfect lawn, and the perfectly
shoveled driveway, and we wear the perfect clothes and have the perfect job and we have the
perfect amount of money and we have the perfect health and we have the perfect kids and
everything is perfect and we will live happily ever after like a wonderful Disney movie. Those
are the images that bombard us all of the time.
Without even knowing it we can live into these images. Think with me when we talk to
people what are we trying to communicate? Do we try to communicate how everything is going
great and were living into this image of perfection. And maybe things are going great. But if
theyre notdo we share that. Do we ignore reality? Or do we live by this image?
I dont know about you, but I find that many of us have these voices inside of our heads
that never let us be comfortable. Im not talking about a voice of a person suffering from
schizophrenia. What Im talking about is a voice or an impression or maybe its the voice of
someone important to us that is almost living in our head who lets know that we can always do
better.
The voice of the impression or the something else lets us know in a negative way that
were not perfect.
Even worse we can project this image of perfection onto God and project this image of
perfection onto how God looks at us.
Look at the Scripture that Heather read:

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Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Matthew 5:48

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Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your

minds, so that you may discern what is the will of Godwhat is good and acceptable and
perfect. Romans 12:2
What does this mean? Does this mean that God expects us to be perfect?
These are some challenging Bible verses. Its important for me that we know how to
interpret Bible verses like this. Let me give you some tips on how to read something that
challenges us.
Two tips. The first tip is to read the context. Read what happens before the verse and
what happens after the verse. Lets take Matthew. This verse comes from a section that started
in verse 43.
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You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your
enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you
may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good,
and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you,
what reward do you have?
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Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers
and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be
perfect, therefore, as you heavenly Father is perfect. Matthew 5:43-48
This is even more challenging.
This section comes from the Sermon on the Mount. Its the first sermon Jesus gave to his
followers. In the sermon Jesus was sharing a vision for the world. These are our aspirations.
These are our dreams. In a way we could say that these are our lifetime projects. Dont just love
the people you like, love the people you dont like. We might not have enemies, but if we do
were called to love them. Thats the aspiration.
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The first tip is to read the context.

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The second tip is to apply a verse through the lens of love. Jesus was very clear that the
most important teaching in the Scriptures are love God with all you heart and soul and min and
love your neighbor as you love yourself. This is the message of the Bible. Its almost like we
put on glasses when we read the Bible. The glasses are this message of love. What we read has
to filter through this lens.
When we come across a confusing verse in the Bible what do we do?
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1. Read the context of the verse
2. Apply the verse to the overarching lens of love.
Lets get practical. The question of the day is, How do I let go this image of
perfection?

Let me share two takeaways. The first takeaway is this:

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1. Our role model for loving is Jesus. Our task is four words. Love as Jesus

loves.
Were not going to wait eight years like a honeycrisp apple to develop into a person who
is fully developed. Im not going to wait until 2022 to start loving people. Im going to love
today. The person who I want to model my life after in this love is Jesus Christ. I want to be
like him in love.
So we imitate Jesus. A while ago there was a WWJD movement. We wore bracelets and
put WWJD all over. Remember what WWJD stood for, What would Jesus do? That is pretty
good.
I would like to start a LLJL movement. Love like Jesus loved. What if we approached
every situation with a LLJL perspective.

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Last week we had seven people go through our Disciples at Chain of Lakes process.
Yay, God! Were going to receive them publically in worship in three weeks. What is even
more encouraging is we have five more people who couldnt come. Yay, God!
I shared with them six gifts that Jesus shared with us These are gifts that are given to us
just because we are alive. We dont earn them, and we dont deserve them. We are given these
gifts because we are human. One of the gifts is a role model for our lives. LLJL.
Its so simplebut certainly challenging to live outthat we might ignore this message
My challenge to you is could we this week focus on being a LLJL disciple? We want to
do it every week, but lets really focus on it this week. Write down LLJL on your bulletin. Keep
it in front of you. Put it on your Facebook page. Put it on your refrigerator. If youre like me
you need to be reminded because we have thousands of messages coming to us every day.
The second takeaway is this:
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Claim your Big messes and dont be embarrassed to share them with others.

I think that if Frank & Cindy had claimed their imperfections instead of living by a
suburban image they would have had more success with their family.
I dont at all assume that its easy to claim our imperfections and then actually share
them. I also know that its tremendously freeing to be able to say, this is who I am. I know
that I mess up and Im sorry I mess up.
I understand that we might be afraid to share our imperfections with others. The reality is
that some other people might not like us. But you know what. If I cant be myself with a group
of people. Then Im with the wrong group of people.

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Im pretty sure that this group of people called Chain of Lakes will accept you where you
are on your journey no matter what has happened in your life. Its one of our Core Values. To
be authentic means we are real about ourselves. We dont live by an image of perfection.
One final story. A long time ago I was reading a book called, Blue Like Jazz. I
remember I had some worries about money at the time. The book was written by Don Miller.
He shared a story about when he was worried about money. He was going to a church that was
encouraging him to tithe even when he had no money. One day he had like seven dollars. He
wanted to buy an extension cord with a timer on it. He needed the extension cord, but he didnt
need the timer. He told this story to one of his friends. One of his friends got on his case. There
are children starving in India and youre worried about an extension cord with a timer.
The guy was a bit hard on Don for buying an timer on his extension cord. But as I read
this story I realized that my worries about money were laughable. I didnt have to worry about
having a house, or a car, or food. I had all of these first world luxuries and I was still worried
about money.
As I was thinking about this I realized that I was an idiot.
I had a close pastor friend in town whose name was Chuck. We prayed together every
week. I told him this story. He just giggled. He knew that he was an idiot too. We started the
idiot club. Do you know the qualification for being in the idiot club? You had to proclaim
loudly that you were an idiot. Thats what we did.
Our pastors met in a coffee shop every week. When we were together I would often
yelland you know how I can get loud when I get excitedthat I was an idiot. Here were the
pastors in townat least Chuck and Iwho were proclaiming loudly in the coffee shop that we
were idiots.

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It got to be such a deal that I had people come up to me with a concerned look in their
eye and tell me that I wasnt an idiot. They were worried about my self-esteem.
The bottom line to this. I felt so much freedom when I claimed that I was an idiot. I
didnt have to pretend to be someone I wasnt.
The task I think is to claim who we are. And trust that we are accepted.
When we claim who we are we live with a freedom. We dont have to live with the
weight of others expectations. We do our best at loving like Jesus loved. Thats when we can
bear fruit.
What images would you like to let go of?
What voices would you like to nudge out of your head?
How can you love like Jesus loved this week?