HOT GIRLS RUN THE WORLD

The air feels alive, a mix of vintage glamor and untamed rebellion, as if every shadow hides a story begging to be told. It’s a scene of fleeting moments and eternal promises, a soundtrack of longing carried by the breeze. There’s beauty in the chaos, a poetry only a few know how to hear.

captured by Mitchell Royel in the Fashion District and we're listening to "Shivers" by Rachel Platten.

Movement One: We Did Not Come to Fight

Let me tell you why we're here tonight. And when I say we, I mean it — I'm not standing above you on this thing. I'm standing with you. I'm one of us.

We didn't come to sneer at anybody. We didn't come to draw lines in the sand and dare the world to cross them. We didn't come to win an argument — and honestly, brothers, let's be real, we've lost enough of those already.

We came because something is stirring. Something ancient and holy is waking up inside the human heart, and it has a name. Its name is Love. And its face is Jesus.

There's a lie floating around out there that says the church exists to be against people. That we gather to point fingers and guard our little fortress against a world we've decided to hate. But that's not the gospel. That was never the gospel. And we — we — should know better by now.

Hear me, brothers. The mission of Jesus was never spite. It was never a culture war. Jesus didn't climb a hill and die on a cross so we could feel superior to the people who don't think like us.

He died because He loved them. He died because He loved us.

"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another" (John 13:34).

That's the whole thing. That's the assignment. Not conquest. Love.

So if any of us came here tonight looking for someone to blame, this isn't that night. But if some part of us is tired of the noise and hungry for something real — lean in. Because I believe God is doing something beautiful, and beauty is not our enemy.

Movement Two: Made in the Image of the Beautiful

Let's go all the way back to the beginning.

Before the pain. Before the shouting. Before the world learned how to hurt itself — and before any of us learned how to hurt ourselves.

"So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them" (Genesis 1:27).

Do we understand what that means? It means the first thing ever said about us was that we look like God. Not our failures. Not our reputations. Not the worst things we've ever done. The first word over our lives was image-bearer.

Every woman in this room carries the fingerprint of the Creator. Every man in this room was breathed into by the same God who lit the stars. That's not poetry somebody made up. That's Genesis.

And here's what the world forgot — and honestly, what some of us forgot too: beauty isn't shameful. Joy isn't a sin. Femininity isn't dangerous, and masculinity isn't a disease. When these things are rooted in love and holiness, they reflect the wild creativity of the God who made oceans and sunsets and human laughter.

Somewhere along the way, we got confused. We started thinking that to honor God, we had to be gray. Dull. Afraid of anything that shines. And some of us overcorrected in the other direction, which — brothers, we'll get to that in a minute.

"Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come" (Proverbs 31:25).

That's a woman who knows who she is. And the question for us is: are we the kind of men who recognize that? The Bible isn't afraid of love. There's an entire book in there — Song of Solomon — where two people delight in each other with tenderness, desire, and covenant devotion. "I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine" (Song of Solomon 6:3). God wrote that. God kept that in the book.

Because love, real love, is holy ground. And it's time we treated it that way.

Movement Three: The Boy, The Magazine, and the Grace That Found Him Anyway

Alright. I need to tell you a story. And I'm going to ask that we all stay in our seats, because some of us are going to feel personally targeted. In the best way.

There was a boy. Thirteen years old. Good kid from a good home — went to church on Sundays, knew all the right answers in youth group, probably raised his hand during worship. Good kid.

And under his bed, behind a shoebox of baseball cards and a broken flashlight — there was a Playboy magazine.

Now look, we know how it got there. It didn't exactly arrive by mail addressed to him. Some older kid, somewhere, passed it along the way these things always get passed along — like contraband, like treasure, like the most dangerous thing any of them had ever touched, which at thirteen, it kind of was.

He'd had it for three weeks. Three weeks of hoping his dad wouldn't decide that was the day he deep-cleaned his room. Three weeks of that specific brand of guilt that thirteen-year-old boys carry — heavy, confusing, and completely unspoken.

And then one Tuesday afternoon, his dad walked in.

Now brothers — brothers — I want you to feel the weight of that moment. The shoebox had shifted. The flashlight had rolled. And there it was.

His dad stood there. Looked at it. Looked at him.

The boy did what any reasonable thirteen-year-old would do: he briefly considered whether faking a medical emergency was an option.

It was not.

Here's where the story could go one of two ways. And we all know both versions, don't we? We've lived both versions — either in that moment, or in the moments that came after it. The version where shame becomes a wall. Where the thing gets buried deeper, never spoken of, never healed, just packed down under layers of performance and pretending until one day it comes out sideways at forty-three.

But that's not what happened.

His dad sat down on the edge of the bed. And he didn't yell. He didn't shame. He didn't give the boy a look that said you are broken beyond repair. He looked at his son — really looked at him — and he said something that cut through every bit of the noise.

He said, "I was your age once. And I want you to understand something. That —" he pointed at the magazine — "that's not what a woman is. And you, son, are better than that."

Then he talked to him. Really talked. About what it means to see a woman as a person made in the image of God. About love that is patient and covenant and costs something. About the difference between consuming and honoring.

That boy didn't forget that conversation. Not when he was sixteen, not when he was twenty-two, not when he stood at an altar years later across from a woman who had no idea about the Tuesday afternoon that quietly shaped the man she was marrying.

Now why do we tell this story?

Because we are all that boy. Every single one of us, in one way or another, has had the thing under the bed. The secret. The struggle we carried in silence because we didn't think the church was safe enough to hold it. Because we were taught that being a Christian man meant performing strength — not actually finding it.

And the gospel, brothers — our gospel — says there is grace that sits down on the edge of the bed.

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud... It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres" (1 Corinthians 13:4-7).

Real love is not merely passion. Real love is the kind that tells a thirteen-year-old boy the truth — not to crush him, but to call him higher. That's what the Father does for us. That's what Christ did on the cross.

The world mocked Him. The world ridiculed His devotion. And He stayed. He stayed all the way to the end, because His love was a covenant and He would not quit on us.

Movement Four: A Word to Us — The Brothers

Now let's talk to each other.
No performance.
No posturing.
Just us.

We've been handed a broken definition of what it means to be a man. The world told us power is domination. It told us love is conquest. It told us tenderness is weakness and the strong man is the one who takes.

That's a lie. And it has wrecked generations of us.

We know this because we've seen it. In our fathers, maybe. In ourselves, if we're honest. In the way we sometimes enter a room trying to win it rather than serve it.

Here's the truth. The strongest man who ever lived got down on His knees and washed the feet of the men who were about to abandon Him. The most powerful being in the universe made Himself a servant. "For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve" (Mark 10:45).

That's our model. That's our calling. And honestly? That's the most countercultural thing we can do right now.

Brothers, to honor a woman is not to control her. It's to protect her dignity. It's to see the image of God in her and refuse to let anyone — including ourselves — reduce her to anything less. It's to be safe. To be steady. To be the kind of men whose presence makes the people around us feel more valued, not more afraid.

Let's be men of integrity. Men whose courage shows up as gentleness. Men whose faith shows up as faithfulness. Let's build homes where women flourish. Let's build a church where families grow strong. Let's build a community where love is holy and joyful and unashamed.

If we want renewal — and we do, we do want renewal — it has to start with us. Not with pointing at the world. With looking in the mirror.

Let it begin here.
Let it begin with us.

Movement Five: For All People — Everyone Gets a Seat

But let's not walk out of here thinking this is only for the insiders.

Because Jesus loves all people. All of them. Regardless of background. Regardless of belief. Regardless of how far they think they've wandered — or what's been under their bed.

"For God so loved the world..." (John 3:16). Not part of it. The whole thing.

Jesus didn't come to sneer at the broken. He came to save them. He touched the ones nobody else would touch. He ate with the outcasts. He looked at the people the religious crowd had written off, and He called them beloved.

So when we celebrate beauty and renewal in this community, we are not doing it against anyone. We're not doing it to spite the culture. We're doing it because we've tasted something good and we want everyone to have a seat at this table.

The love we've found is not a weapon. It's an invitation.

"By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:35).

The world will not know we belong to Jesus by how loud we argue. They'll know by how deeply we love. So let's be loud about that.

Movement Six: The Call

So here's where we land — together.

There is a God who made us in His image and called us beautiful before we did a single thing to earn it.

There is a grace that sits down on the edge of the bed, looks us in the eye, and tells us we are worth more than our worst moment.

There is a love strong enough to endure ridicule, patient enough to wait through the awkward years, faithful enough to stay all the way to the cross and beyond.

There is a call on us — the brothers — to lay down the counterfeit and pick up the real thing: servant strength, honor, tenderness, courage.

And there is an invitation stretched wide enough to include every single person, no exceptions, because that's how big the heart of Jesus is.

For what is fractured can be made whole. What is mocked can be redeemed. What the world gave up on, God is still writing a story about.

Christ loves all. Christ calls all. And in Him, the thing we buried under the bed can become the thing that sets us free.

Brothers — let's go be that love in the world.

Amen.

-Pastor Mitchell Royel