This Is What We’re Made For | Francis Chan

You guys, I'm so happy. Okay, I could hardly sleep last night. Okay, last night was one of the most fun nights of my life. Like, it was crazy. Like, I didn't want it to end. And so, like, I couldn't even sleep. And I wake up and I'm like buzzing like did that really happen?

Okay. I went to Stockton. Exciting, huh? No, but I was in Stockton. It was my high school reunion. Okay. 40year high school reunion. Class of 1985, Lincoln High. And I I had no idea it was going to be that awesome. like you know just showing up and there were probably 60 70 of the graduates and the moment you see each one of them you just run and you hug and you're like no way Mike Leland you know Ed Robinson you know Eddie Whitaker yeah you know like grade school just it was like crazy.

It was just this party where I'm going, I don't want to say. And I was grinning like ear to ear for four to five hours just like, you know, just laughing, talking about old times. I mean, wasn't I just like smiling the whole night? I was just crazy.

And uh um it had to be weird, you know, for and everyone of course is like, "Yeah, you won. You got the hottest wife." And uh and everyone was going up to Lisa. I'm like, "I know you." I'm like, "Shut up. Don't even try that." You know, it was so much fun.

It was hilarious cuz like, you know, Lisa goes up to this one girl and she goes, "You were probably the popular girl, huh?" The girl's like, "Yes, she was." I mean, she just nailed it and and it was just I I can't even explain how much fun that was.

Um, just to walk in a room with people that you spent your whole these were my first friends on earth. You remember like I was rejected as a little kid and then third fourth grade we moved to California and these were some of my first friends that I met in fourth grade.

You know, this kid Todd Landon was there. And I'm like, "Dude, that was the first party I ever went to that I was ever invited to as a 10-year-old kid was your slumber party." And he's like, "Ah, I almost brought pictures of that." And I'm like, you know, exchange numbers and he's, you know, going to send it to me and everything. and he's now come to the Lord and he was sharing his testimony with me and saying I couldn't believe when I'm listening to messages online and I'm like that can't be the same Francis Chan you know at my slumber party you know like that type of stuff I can't even Here's what it felt like and this is why this morning I'm like why did I love it so much and I'm like it was a taste of heaven This is what heaven's going to be like.

People that you loved, you know, that you hadn't seen in in forever and they fell in love with Jesus and you fell in love with Jesus and and now you you reconnect. But it's not like last night where I'm like, I need a day with every one of you guys.

I I need to just get you alone away from this party and I want to hear about your whole life and you. You also. you also and you also you like it felt like I get it. This is what heaven's going to be like. This party that doesn't have to end with these people that you have these relationships with and connections with that you live life with.

And the other thing that I realized why I loved it so much. Okay, no one is on their phones. No one even thought about getting on their phone. Um because we were that generation way before cell phones. We were dialing like this to call each other, you know, in our landlines and everything else.

You can only go so far. You got one phone in the house. You got three channels on TV. But we were just all laughing and talking about how all of our kids will never get to experience what we experienced. We're just saying we have way more fun than our kids will ever have because look at this one.

It's just so lame compared to the 80s. The 80s is as close to heaven as you will ever get. You got to understand my whole life turned around in the 80s. I fell in love with Jesus in the 80s. I my I I I I was so lost.

And this little Filipino kid took me to his youth group and I fell in love with Jesus and we became best friends. And Ken Alonso is here, my best friend from 40 years ago from high school who brought me to the youth group. Oh my gosh. We went our separate ways and you know and then and then like you know I was in Seattle I was going to speak and I knew Ken lived there and I'm like man can you come to this thing that I'm speaking at and and he and his wife Yuki fell in love with Jesus at that gathering and said can we fly to San Francisco?

Can you baptize me? 35 years after high school. I've been praying for this guy for 35 years and he gives his life and I get to baptize him and he flew out and we went to the reunion last night and it's just like God, what the heck? This is life.

This is so good, man. and we spent every day together just laughing every class together and now to hear you just in love with Jesus and we just spend all forever. I mean, it's just the way things circle back together. I can't even explain it, you know, when I got home and, you know, Ellie was watching our kids and she's like, "How was it?"

And I'm just thinking, I can't explain to some 20year-old kid what it feels like to reconnect after 40 years, the group from the 80s. You just cannot. You can watch a movie about it. You'll never understand it. But I was thinking, man, does it have to end with the 80s?

You know, I was just thinking, God, you're like a redeemer. Like I just want to throw my phone away, my computer away, and just know people again, and laugh with people again. And I I promise you, life was better. Some of you guys, it you don't even get it. before cell phones, before internet, like, and we just laughed with each other and we came up with just stupid things to do.

Just stupid things. I remember one time when we were in junior college at Delta Junior College in Stockton, um we had this uh biology class, human biology class together and you had to go home and because we were going to do these tests on our urine and so you come back the next day with, you know, a little jar of your pee and uh it just for school, for class and um and And Ken and I, we decide, I'm like, "Hey, tomorrow in class, fill your jar with apple juice."

Okay. And uh in the middle of class, you know, we're all doing our experiments in our lab in college. And uh Ken's there, you know, dipping these different things in his apple juice, but no one knows. And I'm like, "Kenny, I'll give you a hundred bucks if you drink that thing."

And he's like, "No, no." And I pull a hundred bucks out of my pocket and I just put it on the table and everyone's gathered around now, you know, and it's like he's like, "No, no." I'm like, "Hundred bucks." He's like, "Okay." They just downs the whole thing.

The whole class is screaming, you know? I mean, it was like that was life, man. This was the 80s. This was the best. It was the best of times. And we're just just going from person to person laughing and I'm going, God, I want to recapture this. We don't have to live like the rest of the world. this it just it I I tasted what it feels like to be human again and not trying to connect with a thousand people at once on a computer and not have a waiting list a queue in your pocket and just to laugh again cuz this is all we did. you know, just sit in class, laugh, ditch class, laugh, do the stupid things.

And it was just story after story after story. I mean, I really did not want it to end. I mean, I'm going to try to contact what we're put together and like I'll pay you. I just do this every year, you know, like this was too good. But then as I'm praying for the church and even for my own kids, I remember when you turned what was it 16 or 18 when we were talking about high school? 16.

Yeah. And she goes, "Wow, you did all of that?" I go, "Yes." Cuz that's how we lived back then. And our best times, you guys, are when we really know each other, spend time together. That's why our church is committed to meeting in homes, building relationships. I mean, becoming family, cuz there's no replacement for this.

This is what God made us to do. And we got to get past this busyness and craziness. And I don't have any time for you except a quick text, you know, once a month or what. That's just that's not what God made us for. because there is so much life in his commands.

He says,"I want you to love each other deeply the way that I loved you." You know the passage that Al was reading when and just talking about Jesus, he says, "Having loved them, he loved them till the end." And Jesus, even at the last supper, is saying, "I have longed to have this time with you."

Because he loved these guys. He spent days, years with these guys. He traveled with these guys. He laughed with them. He wept with them. We don't do that anymore. And we need to do these things. We need to have memories. man, this is what our church is supposed to be about.

And it it's a little bit sad that I have to go to a high school reunion to feel these emotions to that extreme. But I'm saying it just gave me vision for like I'm not going to end my life staring at a screen. Um because God has more for us.

Even as we take of communion, it's like I want to abide in you. I want to fellowship with you. I want to be in you. And I want to coin ania with your body, your blood. This is the God who created us. We're celebrating father, son, holy spirit, perfectly one.

And he says, I made you in my image. Okay, that's why I loved it. I'm like, this is what we're made for, to be one with each other and one with him. It's not for shallow relationship. There's an emptiness. Gosh, I just I'm just blown away that God could teach me so much by reconnecting with friends I would play with at 10 years old and go, "That was life.

That's what God created us for." And so even this property, my prayer is that this becomes that type of refuge where we don't come here as a bunch of individuals just staring at a screen in the company of one another, but that we really know each other and love each other.

I mean, I'm looking at those old friends and I go, "Man, I would do anything for these guys." and as different ones came up to me and started sharing their testimonies. I mean, it's public high school as Lincoln High, and they were nowhere with the Lord back then.

And they're coming up to me and just telling me what God's done in their lives um over the last few years. I mean, it is just like I'm just embracing them, telling you have no idea how happy I am. I love you and we're going to spend eternity together and it's just it's just perfect.

It's just perfect. Um there's a a passage we've been reading First John this week as a church. I hope you've been continuing in the Bible reading. But uh 1 John chapter 2, there's this verse in verse 20. He says, "You have been anointed by the Holy One and you all have knowledge.

I write to you not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it and know lies of the truth." But he talks about this anointing. We've been anointed by the Holy Spirit. See, like I shared something happened to me during those high school years where I I can't explain it, but something mysterious happened to me in that youth group and to where I could never leave him.

I could never walk away from him. And it was so fun to just share that story with so many of my friends who didn't know. I go, "Man, I thought you knew." Like my whole life turned around during that time. And I had this experience with God and it just keeps getting better.

Like he answers all my prayers and he does. And they're like, "What?" I go, "Yes." I go, I'm literally I promise you I'm the happiest guy right now in this whole group. I'm I might be the happiest guy on earth. I It's just everything that God has done in my life.

The fact that I pray to him and he answers me, I'm telling you, it's insane. It is so good. And just to be able to share, but why? Because not because I was a great person. I was a mess. I was so lost, but God anointed me with his Holy Spirit and I couldn't walk away.

There's this anointing by the Holy One. Go to the next verse. Who is a liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ. This is the Antichrist. He who denies the father and the son. No one who denies the son has the father. Whoever confesses the son has the father also.

Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the son and in the father. He says, "Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you." Some of you young people, man, I'm just telling you, I heard something in high school and I've never let go of it.

And I've been abiding in that. And I'm abiding in it more now than ever. This is something that happens to you and you just live in it. Some people walk away, you know, I share all these great stories, but then they're sad stories, you know, I see, you know, from last night, I see this list of people who died, you know, from my class.

I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I used to play soccer with that guy. Oh my gosh, that's the first girl I ever kissed." You know, she's gone. Sorry, honey. I did kiss another girl in seventh grade. It was weird, but um you know, you you kiss better. Um it just you're going through this list and you're just it's just this tragedy of different people and then you meet some people that clearly still don't know God and you know and I got their numbers and try to connect with them.

I might even go on Facebook for the first time in my life just to reconnect with all these people cuz the burden for them. But I'm just telling you guys, those who are young, what you've heard from the beginning, let it stick with you. This is true. This leads to life.

And I see it. I see it. After, you know, being 57 years old, those who followed this book and found this book, there was a light in their eyes. there was just a difference, you know, and you know, even like that couple Todd and whatever her name was.

Uh um she's like, "I like them." I go, "Well, he just found Jesus a few years ago. That's why, you know, like he's just they're on fire." And you can just see like life life in different people because they've come to know Jesus. Go ahead and go to the next verse.

This is the promise that he made to us, eternal life. I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you. But the anointing that you receive from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything and is true and is no lie, just as it has taught you, abide in him.

See, he says this, abide, and he doesn't mean you don't need anyone to teach you. and that the Bible's clear that there are teachers that he's gifted the church with. Those who have been coming on Tuesday nights, you know, it has been awesome. We have received some of the greatest teaching from the word of God.

And it that that's not what this is referring to. He's talking about when the Holy Spirit abides in you, you're not going to listen to these false teachers. There's something in you that knows truth. Now the Holy Spirit where you hear certain things and he says and you'll just know you know what that is off.

I know this book. I've read this book but beyond that even his spirit his anointing is in me. So when people say no no you need to go to this teaching you need to. No I don't really need to. I've received. I don't need anyone to really teach me.

I can open this book and study it and know truth. The Holy Spirit enlightens us. That's why we have you in this book every day. Read it. You don't need me there. You have the Holy Spirit with you there. Now, there are teachers in the church that have come alongside to bless you even more.

But here's the thing. When I was reading that, I was like, gosh, that's right. When I fell in love with Jesus, no one had to beg me to read this book. No one had to beg me to get rid of my sin. I mean, it took a while to get rid of some sins, trust me.

Um, college was not fun. And but the desire was there. Every time I'd fall into sin, I'd be like, "Oh, this isn't who I want to be. This is not who I want to be. I hated I hated my sin and I kept going back and oh, this is not who I want to be.

But there was something inside that wouldn't let me go. Like I'm going to change you. And I'm like, please do. And there's this growth and there's this change. Why? Because there's this anointing. And this is what I get concerned about sometimes with church is if there's nothing going on inside of you.

If you did not receive this anointing, your whole life will be church people bugging you, trying to get you to follow him. Please read the book. Please fellowship. Please walk away from this sin. And there's nothing here pulling you towards that. I'm just thanking God. This is what happened to me.

You anointed me with your spirit. When I said, "I believe your son died on the cross for me. And I want you to come in and be the Lord of my life." He really listened to me and put his spirit in me. and I've been loving him these 40 years and I want that for all of you.

I just want you all to taste of it. If you feel like it's just pressure and even the words that I'm saying, they're just words to you rather than the inside of you stirring going, I know exactly what you're talking about cuz I feel it. He came in and he made me a slave to what's right.

And it took me a while, but now I love his commands and I want it and I love this book and no one has to force me and no one can deceive me because I know the truth and he always brings me back. That's why Kenny and I when we're driving back from the reunion just going, "Now something happened to us in high school.

Yeah, you did some wandering and whatever, but I don't know.