Sunday message · Love Your Neighbor series
Listen to the message
Message Summary
Continuing the Love Your Neighbor series, Pastor Phillip Santillan turns to Mark 3:13–15. Knowing his congregation well, he is confident most genuinely want God to use them, yet a gap opens between desire and action: feeling inadequate, not knowing where to start, being too busy or afraid of messing up. Without hype, guilt or a new program, he offers something biblical and doable.
Jesus went up a mountain and summoned those he wanted, and they came. He takes the initiative, and as one scholar notes, he did not choose the twelve for their faith or talent; what they shared was a willingness to obey. Discipleship begins with Jesus calling ordinary people. He appointed them to be with him and then to be sent out to preach. The twelve had a unique role, but the pattern of formation before mission applies to every disciple. Presence is not the mission but the doorway to it. Phil recalls Pentecostal Sunday nights spent tarrying before the Lord that rarely led to mission, while others reduce discipleship to knowledge and arguments; yet mission without Jesus’ presence is a solo expedition.
Many feel pressure to have all the answers, or fear that bringing up Jesus will get awkward or turn friends into projects. First Peter 3 calls believers to be ready to give a reason for their hope with gentleness and respect, which assumes people will notice something in our lives and ask. That is not social media debating but a life that puts hope on display and uses words when the door opens. Phil shares apologist Wes Huff’s observation that ordinary Christians often shape their friends more than experts do, because people who never read the Gospels are reading us. Jesus’ call to be salt and light (Matthew 5:13–16) is proximity language: salt only works in the food.
Hugh Halter’s book Flesh, which shaped Phil in the church’s early years, describes incarnational living: presence builds a reputation that leads to conversation and eventually transformation. Leading someone to faith is the goal, but it cannot be the hidden motive of a friendship. Halter, whom Phil calls a chronic introvert, suggests inviting the Holy Spirit to interrupt your day. Loving your neighbor is not adding something new but seeing everyday rhythms with new eyes. “Most of your mission field already has your name in their phone book,” Phil says. A short video traces how one person’s faithfulness can ripple through friendships to people she will never meet.
Phil closes with three steps: build rhythms of being with Jesus, choose one relationship, and prayerfully take one step, ready to share the hope within. One day, he says, we will not wish for more emails or even more good deeds; we will remember people. The main thing is not what we did for God but that we knew him, and then helped others know him. “With Jesus, then sent,” he says. He urges listeners not to hurry but not to delay, and prays that God would bring a name and a face to mind.
