Christian-ish: Part 4

Christian-ish: Part 4

Exodus 34:6-7, Isaiah 55:8-9, Psalm 63:1, 3, 6-8

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

We are really just praying that this series has been good for you, it's been good for us as pastors, and by good I mean I hope and pray that God is using it to reveal things to you, reveal areas of your life that might need to be surrendered over to Him and that we could be made more like Him. So that's what I mean. I hope the series has been good for you, I hope it's been challenging in the best of ways.

So I want to start off by telling you a quick story about myself. When I was in junior high, I transferred from one very, very small private school to a bigger private school, and it felt huge to me. I was very nervous, but it felt like going, I hadn't been to public school and it felt like I was going to this big thing. One because I got to take a bus for the first time in my life, I got to take a bus to school and I was like, this is legit, I'm now going to a legit school, I'm riding a bus, this is awesome. And the other thing that I loved was that they had vending machines. I'd never had a vending machine at my school before, and then I was like, man, every day I get the opportunity to buy whatever I want. And there were two, there was one for drinks, one for snacks, and I just thought, man, I've made it, this is the best. And I remember, so you guys maybe know then, having the good of that, of being able to buy whatever I want, but also you have these experiences where you put in your money, 50 cents, 75 cents, you put in your snack, whatever you want, and then you wait for the little thing to turn and it to come out towards you and to fall down. You also know sometimes when that doesn't happen. And the thing turns and it just stops, or it's like nothing happens, you're just sitting there feeling robbed, you're like, what just, what? Where's my food? Where, I just put in money? This is the worst. And for a junior high student, that can be like, that's the end of the day. I'm ready to go home. This was what I was looking forward to, and now I get nothing.

I share all that. Because sometimes we treat our relationship with God as if he were a vending machine. We put in what we think is good, something good from us, what he wants, expecting something in return, something like blessings, provision, whatever it is. And so maybe it's like, hey, God, I've been attending church, or I've been praying, I've been doing my devotional time, I've been tithing, acts of service, and we come to expect this transactional faith. Okay, God, here's my payment. Now please answer my prayer. Bless me. Give me what I want. It's like we're ordering from God, right? We do all those things, and we're like, all right, God, C12, more money, please. Or B2, can I get that new job? Or if you're a student, and I know because I've prayed these prayers of students, like D7, can help me pass that test. I haven't studied, but God, I was going to church all this month, so I think this should equal an A. Now, say what may seem obvious at this point, that God doesn't work this way.

This is not how faith is. It's not some kind of contract. We may not realize it, but we may be living with a cause and effect faith. If I do my part, God has to do His. Maybe you've thought this in the inverse situation, when something bad happens, and you're going through a struggle, and you're like, God, is this because I broke my side of the contract? Is it because I didn't go to church this Sunday, and now I'm dealing with this? Or is it because I haven't been praying to you? That's still a cause and effect relationship with God. And we think, oh, God's holding me to that thing where I let him down, and so now He's not blessing me anymore. We can live with a faith where we are the ones in focus. We are the ones in charge. And really, we think we're on equal standing with God. I do my part, and equally across the way, He does His part. Subconsciously, we can have these thoughts that when that doesn't happen, when God doesn't show up or answer the prayer that we prayed, we can think, God has failed me. I'm disappointed by God. God let me down because He didn't do this, this, and this. And when we voice that out loud, it sounds maybe a bit obnoxious, outlandish, but maybe it's also ringing true for some of us. To be like, oh, you know what, I have prayed that, or I have thought that before. In our faith, we need to recognize that, one, we are not equal with God. And two, if we don't understand what's happening or why something isn't happening, that's for us to find out for what God is doing. Not to be disappointed in God because He didn't do what we deemed best, what we deemed necessary, what we deemed right. If we don't address this and we leave this kind of faith unchecked, it can lead to us feeling betrayed by God, frustrated by God, hurt by God.

And we want to expose this lie today, a lie that keeps us from real faith, that this false faith, a transactional faith, is dangerous. It's an incomplete faith because it leaves us with an inflated view of ourselves, and it distorts how we view God. We lower Him down to be on our level. And after enough disappointment and hurt and frustration, the danger is that people will, with that entitled view of their selves, will just walk away from God. God hasn't been doing what I want. This isn't worth it anymore. This faith that I bought into, that I invested in, that I thought I was doing all these things, I'm not getting out of it what I deserve, what I'm entitled to. And people can just walk away from the faith. So we've got to be careful and vigilant to cultivate and grow a biblical faith in God. So I want to look today at God's Word to see how faith in God, our relationship with God, what it was intended to look like. If you guys would pray with me one more time as we continue in our service. Gracious Father, since our whole salvation depends on true understanding of Your Holy Word, grant that our hearts, freed from worldly affairs, may hear and understand Your Holy Word with all diligence and faith, so that we may rightly discern Your gracious will, cherish it, and live by it with all earnestness, to Your praise and honor through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

That was a prayer by a theologian called Martin Bueser who wrote that. And I love it, and I wanted to pray it today with all of you because it emphasizes that to better understand God and to have a true faith in Him, we need God. We don't come up with that on our own and just say, "God, I'll figure out my side, you do Your side." No, we need God to do our part too. And we need to understand His Word to understand Him and to have a true faith. So let's look at the Bible. When we look at the Bible, we have a bunch of... Life Church has given us a bunch of definitions, and I think they're helpful.

So I wanna share with us today true biblical faith. Do we have a definition for true biblical faith? It's about giving or about knowing and loving God for who He is, not just what He does. There it is. Knowing and loving God for who He is, not just what He does. We're gonna get to who He is in a little bit, but that's so important. I think so often we just do it for what He does. And sometimes that's how we come to faith, we've seen God work, we've seen what He can do, and so that draws us in, and that's good, but we can't stay there. That's drawing a sense that we get to know Him, and we fall in love with Him, and we get, "God, I love you for who you are, not just what you do." We have our Christian-ish definition, right, having a half-hearted faith, wearing the label of Christianity without truly following Jesus. This is what we're hitting week after week of, "We do not want to be Christian-ish." Those who are Christian-ish often embrace and live with a transactional faith, which is a distorted belief that turns our relationship with God into a contract, believing that if we do our part, God is obligated to do His. I just want to just look at that, read that again, and take a moment to see if that's where you're at in your faith right now. Distorted belief that turns our relationship with God into a contract, believing that if we do our part, God has to do His. And I don't want to heap shame on you if you're looking at this definition and you're realizing that you've been living with a transactional faith, because I want to say, I've struggled with this too, I still do at times, and we are not alone. If you're in this room and you're saying, "Yes, this is a struggle of mine. I tend to think that God ought to do something. I expect Him to do something." You are not alone. We are not alone. Throughout history, there have been many with transactional faith problems, and actually we have a lot of examples in the Bible of people who have expected something of God.

So I just want to take a moment to go through some of these biblical examples. Exodus 16, 3 talks about this moment where Israel has been freed from Egypt. They were in slavery, right? I want to emphasize how bad they were in slavery. It was terrible. They were playing with God, crying out to God, "Rescue us." God rescues them, and they're out in the desert. Desert is hard. It's very hard. They're free, but they're in the desert. And they say to God, "If only we had died by the Lord's hand in Egypt, there we sat around pots of meat and ate food all we wanted. But you have brought us out," talking to God, "into the desert to starve this entire assembly to death." So you can get the tone of this obligation. They feel like, "God, we followed you out here." And He told them, "I'm bringing you to a place. You're on the way. You're in the journey. You're not there yet. I'm bringing you there." And they were already like, "You know what? Bring us back to slavery. This is terrible. God, you're not meeting. You're not meeting." Transactional faith.

If we go later on in the Bible in Jonah, the story of Jonah is God calls Jonah to go preach to a city, Nineveh. Nineveh is one of the worst cities on earth, absolutely terrible. And Jonah's like, "I don't get this mission. God, I think I know you. I don't understand this." He doesn't want to go, and he fights it. But then God says, "Look, I'm going to have you preach, and if they don't do, then if they don't repent, I'm going to destroy it. If they do repent, but if they repent, I'm not going to destroy them. I'm going to forgive them. If not, I'm going to destroy them." And Jonah's like, "Great. You might destroy them. I'm in." Shows a lot about Jonah's heart there. Not a great moment for the prophet. He goes. He preaches. One of the worst messages ever, because it's just like, "God's about to come." And miraculously, they believe. They're like, "Oh, my goodness. Really?" That really messes with Jonah. And he says in chapter 4, verse 1 through 3, he says, "After God forgave, Jonah says, 'This is very wrong.' And he became angry. He prayed to God, 'Isn't this what I said, Lord? While I was still at home, I tried to foretell this. I knew that you were a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger, abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, God, take my life away, for it is better for me to die.'" So he has this very weird moment. He's very petty. He's just like, "God, I can't stand this. Just take me now. I'd rather I die than see these people be forgiven." Again, that's like wild from Jonah. But he has these expectations, and God didn't meet them.

Think of the story in the New Testament of Lazarus. And Lazarus is sick, and Jesus gets word. Jesus and Lazarus are very tight, and Jesus gets word. But it takes three days for Jesus to get there, and in that time, Lazarus has died. And Martha, in John 11 21, says, "Lord," Martha said to Jesus, "if you had been there, my brother would not have died." Now we look at Martha, and we praise her for the faith that she had, that she knew what Jesus could do. But we also hear an underlying tone of, "I kind of expected you to be here, Jesus. I kind of thought you would have done something to make his death not happen." Last one, prodigal son. You guys are maybe familiar with the story of the prodigal son. His father has two sons. The youngest one wants his inheritance now, and that is a terrible situation. We hear that today, and we're like, "Okay." He just wants a forward on his, an advance on his inheritance. In that time, it was saying, "Dad, I wish you were dead. I want my money now." Father gives it to him. He goes and takes his money and spends it on all the worldly pleasures, wastes it away, and ends up living with the pigs. And he sits there, and he has a moment of clarity. He says, "My life would have been better even just as a servant at my father's house than to stay here and live with the pigs." So he goes back, and before he can even get a word out, his father runs to him, hugs him, forgives him, and says, "I'm so glad that you are home." That's the story that we're very familiar with. What is often forgotten is that there was an older brother who stayed with the father the whole time, and he doesn't like that this happened. He sees the rejoicing of the younger son over the younger son. And he says in Luke 15:29, he answered his father, "Look, all these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. You never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you killed the fattened calf for him." I mean, that's some heavy fighting words from that older brother who is saying, "This is not fair, Dad. I've been here loyal to you this entire time, and I got nothing." Well, really, he got the blessing of living in his father's house the whole time, but he doesn't think it's fair.

And in all these examples, Old Testament to New Testament, is a thought that I bet that we have had, which is when something happens not aligned with what we think should have happened or what God should have done, is the thought, "God, I thought we had a deal. What's up? What are you doing?" Maybe some of you are having that conversation with God about something in your life right now. And it's not uncommon, even for those who have been walking with God for years, that the more we seek Him, the more we obey Him, the more we serve Him, to expect a little preferential treatment. Right? We're all sitting there like, "Yeah, yeah, totally. Like the more years I put in with God, the more blessing I should get from God." We treat it like a punch card from a coffee shop, like, "God, look at all these 10 things I've done. Look at all the longevity I've done. And now I would like to redeem it for an answered prayer of just a blank check pretty much, whatever I want, God. But look, look at the 10 holes. All done. I've been here long enough with you." And that thought isn't always overtly loud in our minds or our hearts, the fact that we are viewing our relationship with God as a contract or transactional. It can start really small. It can start with just a feeling of hope. Like, "God, I've been walking with you for a long time now or for a while, or I've kind of given this area of my life over to you. I hope that this blesses me in some way." And I don't think that's wrong. But that hope can grow into expectation.

And then what once was a subtle thought now has roots and can be a part of our theology and how we live out our faith. We do this and this for God because I expect God is going to do something that I want down the road. And just like that, we have an unhealthy and dangerous theology that we live by. If we serve God, He owes us. Maybe you've had prayers like this recently. "God, why didn't you answer my prayer, God? I asked for this and I've been doing really good. I'm going to church every Sunday and tithing." Maybe you prayed a prayer. "God, I raised my kids right. They went to church. They went to youth group. Why did they walk away from you?" Maybe it's, "God, I've been tithing. I've been worshiping you with my money. Why am I still paycheck to paycheck? Why am I still struggling to make ends meet?" Maybe it's, "God, I've remained pure. I'm living in a way that honors you with my body and my relationships. Why am I not married yet?" Whatever your prayers have been, can you hear the underlying expectations that we have on God in those prayers? Can you recognize the tone of entitlements that we have towards God? And let me be clear. I'm not saying that we shouldn't expect for God to answer. That we can know. God does hear us and He will respond. It's just when we put God in a corner and say, "You can only do one thing. God, this is exactly what I need you to do. And if you don't do it, well, now we got problems." And again, when I say that out loud, I don't think it's something that we would say, "Yeah, yeah, that's how I view God." But the way we pray can definitely say, "That's how we view God, is we expect one thing. It's the thing that I want. And if God doesn't give it to me, I'm throwing a fit. Sounds like my toddler.”

We can have that kind of faith. You see, true faith is not contractual. It is relational. It's about knowing and loving God for who He is, not just what He does. Got this prayer from Life.Church and I think it's really helpful for us. And maybe this is the prayer that's going to help us this week with our transactional faith. It says, "God, help me to know you and love you, not just for what you do, but for who you are." Again, we can love God for what He does. We should love God for what He does, but that can't be the only thing. Because there will be times when we just don't see God necessarily. There'll be days where it's like, "God, I haven't really seen what you're doing." And that doesn't mean that our love can dry up. We need to know who He is. God, help me to know you and to love you, not just for what you do, but for who you are. It's a simple prayer, but man, it can have such a huge impact on our faith. True faith is less about us and more about God. This doesn't come naturally to us. It means we have to be intentional, just as John the Baptist, when he said, "He must become greater, I must become less." That's John 3:30. John the Baptist is realizing the role that he's going to have to become less so that Jesus can become more. Maybe the phrase that you've heard is, "God must increase and I must decrease." Sometimes we hear that and we think, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know that I need to have more of God in my life." We forget the important aspect that we must decrease. We just think, "Oh, God just increased in my life. I need more of God.”

We forget the part that we need to become less in our lives and God needs to become more. So one of the differences between a biblical faith and a transactional faith that treats a relationship with God like a contract. A contract focuses on what we get out of it. We are at the center of our relationship with God and it has a way of making us feel like we are on equal standing with God. It's not true. Pastor Lauren just preached a couple of weeks ago on covenantal relationship with God, speaking about unconditional promises and conditional blessings. So I want to reiterate, God loves us no matter what. That is true. No matter how we're living, whether we're following him or we're not, he loves us and he blesses our obedience. We don't obey for the blessing. That's a twisted motivation, right? See how easy it is to corrupt our relationship with God? All of a sudden we can just have a rotten motivation in our heart to say, "Oh, there's blessing? I want that." And all of a sudden now we are at the center and we are looking to like, "Gimme, gimme, gimme. God, I will do this. I will obey because I'm getting something out of it." And you may be wondering, "Okay, being blessed by God upon my obedience, that seems transactional, contractual." And I would say it's not. It's less that it's more covenantal and relational. We are blessed in our obedience to God because obedience means walking with him.

And I've said this last week, I'll say it again. He is the greatest gift in life. He is the greatest blessing. And when we walk with him and live the way that he intended us to live, there is blessing in that. We are experiencing a life the way that it's meant to. That in itself is a blessing. I think understanding that and the way that that blessing means, we think of it as like, "Oh, if I walk with him, I'm gonna get stuff. I'm gonna get more money. I'm gonna have a healthy life. I'm gonna get whatever I want." No, the blessing of walking with God is that he's with us. He is the blessing. And understanding that helps us to break down this transactional and kind of see how it's not a true faith and how true faith is more relational. Another point that helps us is a contract is transactional, temporary, and enforceable by law. A covenant is relational, eternal, and sustained by love. A contract in its essence is transactional. It's based upon protecting yourself. It exists because by default, there's a level of mistrust between the two parties. And you're just trying to shore up for anything that could happen. And we leave room for the fact that something could go wrong.

So I'll give you an example. Contract with rental homes, right? Neither side know each other. You have the people who own the home or the property manager, and you have the tenant. The rental manager owner is responsible to provide a livable space up to certain standards. You have the renter who agrees to pay a certain price and keep it at certain standards, and they drop a contract so that both parties begin a transactional relationship, agreement. But the reality is that it's temporary, it's transactional, and it can be enforced by law. Let me give you an example of a relational agreement that's very different. Growing up, we had, in a church that my family went to, we had this one family who was on the... Fallen hard times, and they were kind of... People in the church were opening up their homes for their whole family to stay with them for, you know, just as you get back on your feet, come live with us. So my parents were very gracious, and they invited this family in and their kids. It was not rent. It was just a relational thing sustained by love. It wasn't eternal. They didn't stay with us forever. But you see the difference. Think of your relationship with friends. You don't enter a friendship with a contract. If you do... It was weird. I don't know. I've never seen that before. But you don't have a paper, and you're like, "Hey, we're both gonna sign this, and we're agreeing to a certain amount of hours that we must spend with each other every week." There's no court you go to to be like, "They did not go to my birthday dinner, and I want to end it. This is the break of our contract." There's no official that you have to go to to say, "Hey, by the way, we're no longer friends. I need to make sure that everyone knows." It doesn't exist.

It's a different kind of relationship. Think of your relationship with God. It should be more like that, right? As a friendship. It's relational, it's eternal, and it's sustained by love. God loves us with a relational, unconditional, covenantal love for eternity. Even when we don't hold up our end, when we fail, when we turn away from God, or like we talked about last week, when we start pursuing idols, He still loves us. He holds onto us and upholds the covenant. And Timothy 2 says, "If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot disown Himself." I love that. I love that it's saying that we are going to fail. There are moments where we will not exercise any faith in God, and He doesn't respond in kind. No, He still loves us and holds onto us because it's an unconditional, covenantal, relational relationship. I share this today because knowing this, again, can help free us from the thought of a false faith. The transactional faith knowing that God loves us, and that we should love Him, not just for what He does, but for who He is. Now, I want to get to who He is, because I said this last week, if we better understood God, we'd be more likely to follow Him and keep Him in the number one chair.

But I really want to spend a little bit of today with who He is. We have to understand who He is. That point is just missed if you're like, "Great, I got to love Him for who He is." I don't know who He is. Who is God? Well, I love this question. I love pointing to one passage in Scripture to answer who God is. It's a story of Moses on the mountain. Moses, at this time, had never seen God. He's heard from God, the burning bush, and the voice that came from the burning bush, and he's seen God work some incredible miracles. He's seen the evidence of God. He's seen God as He's led the Israelite people in the pillar of fire by day, or cloud by day and fire by night, leading the people through the wilderness. And they're out in the wilderness, and God is doing His thing where He's like, "All right, they're all gathered. Moses, come up to the top of the mountain. I'm going to give you some instruction as the leader to help Israel be a nation, to be my nation." So Moses goes up to the mountain. It's just him and God. And Moses, after some conversation, is like, "God, can I see you?" And it seems like a simple request, but it's Moses' way of saying, "I just want to know you more. I've heard you. I've heard your voice. I've seen evidence of you, and you in the form of fire and cloud. But can I see you?" And God says, "No." He's like, "Nope, you can't." And we say, "Oh, God, why don't you just..." Because God says, "You would die. If I were to show you my full glory, you can't handle it. It's too much for you." But he says to Moses, "Why don't you hide yourself in the cleft of the mountain? And I'm going to pass by really quick." I don't know what that looks like. I just think I would love to have seen and be there for this moment. But he's trying to meet Moses where he's at, right? He's like, "I can't show you everything, but let me just pass by really quick.”

If you ever want to read this, this is Exodus 33 and 34, the end of 33 into 34. So he's hiding in the cleft and Exodus 34, 6 through 7 says, "And he passed in front of Moses proclaiming, 'The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin, that he does not leave the guilty unpunished. He punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents of the third and fourth generation.'" Moses wanted to know who God was, and God in his way answered and said, "This is who I am." Oh, can we bring that back? "Compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, forgiving wickedness and rebellion and sin, and just." This is, by the way, the most quoted scripture by scripture. What I mean by that is throughout scripture, they constantly reference us. We just read this in Jonah. Jonah was like, "I knew you were this God, and I didn't like it.”

But he's saying all these great things that God says about himself. This is who God is. He's introducing himself to Moses. He said, "You want to know me? Here's who I am." And this is why God has given us his word. All of your Bible, all of this points to who God is. You want to know who God is? This is, I would say, start here. This is a great place to start. But you read all of scripture, you're going to find out more and more about God. It's to help us know who he is and to fall in love with him and say, "Great. Now that I know you more and I want to know you more, God, let me go to your word and find out who you are." If you were to read in order, scripture, you learn, oh, you start at the beginning, "Oh, God, I'm going to learn. God is a creator. He created everything." You read through Israel, "Oh, God is a rescuer. He rescued his people." You go through the prophets and you learn, "Oh, God is more powerful than any other God, anything else in the world." You read through David and Solomon, you say, "Oh, God is the King of Kings. Even the best kings of David and Solomon, they pale in comparison to God. Oh, I learned that he's just. I learned that he is a prophet and priest. I learned that God gives himself through Jesus to his people, that he loves us and he never fails and his words are true and that he is the only way to heaven and that he is above all else.”

You read scripture, you learn that and so much more about who God is. And when we learn who God is, we then learn who we are. In light of him, we understand better our position. And the words from Isaiah ring all the more true. Isaiah 55:8-9 says, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither your ways are my ways," declares the Lord. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." Oh, this is humbling. We're talking about praying and not getting what we want. And God says this, "Look, you don't get it and that's okay. I'm doing things. I am at work, but I'm up here and you don't see everything that's up here and it's not meant for you to." We need to remember this. We are not on equal ground with God and our relationship with him is not transactional. And as we covered last week, as we know this more and we live in this truth, trusting God every moment of every day, our relationship with God becomes less transactional and more relational.

David is someone in the Bible who embodies this covenantal relationship with God. He repeatedly writes in the Psalms a line that we now sing at times, "God, you are my God." And he doesn't treat God like a vending machine. "God, you are my God. I need your prayers. I need your blessing. I need your provision." No, he writes, Psalm 63:1, "You are my God. You God are my God and earnestly I seek you. I thirst for you. My whole being longs for you in dry and parched land where there is no water because your love is better than life. My lips will glorify you. On my bed I remember you. I think of you through the watches of the night because you are my help. I sing in the shadow of your wings. I cling to you, your right hand upholds me." This is a man who knows and lives in the truth, who has tasted and seen the goodness of God and understands that God is the best thing there is. Better than his own provision and blessing is the person of God himself who is with us. It really highlights how our relationship with God should be, not transactional, but deeply intimate and personal and relational. So how do we know? How do we know if we have a transactional faith with God? Well, I got a couple of questions.

And again, like last week, I just encourage you to don't get defensive. You're not answering out loud. This is between you and God. So the first question is, "Do I follow God because of what he does for me or because of who he is?" All right, starting off soft there. Number two, "Do I still trust God when he doesn't answer my prayer the way I wanted or do I feel betrayed?" Okay, now we're getting real. Have you ever felt betrayed by God? Probably yes. And do we still trust him even when we don't get what we want? Number three, "Do I serve God because I love him or because I'm hoping for something in return?" All right, that last one hits hard. There are times. I find myself serving in a way that I'm like, "God, I really hope there's something good at the end of this. I really hope that I get something." And it's, man, that's not the best faith. That's not what God... That's not what the Bible says a faith should look like. But that, I know it's real. From experience, I know it's real that we can be disappointed, frustrated, and feel betrayed by God. I was having a conversation this week with a pastor. We were commiserating on the reality that woven throughout our Western evangelical theology and church practices is a transactional faith. It's everywhere. There's this hope, this wrong hope and motivation that we get something out of it. That's not what the Bible says. Now let me say, we do have good moments. Our hearts can be in the right place. We can love God genuinely and sincerely and worship him with all that we have. That exists, and I know that many of you are in that. That's great, and praise God for that. But it's hard because literally the very next moment you could be struggling with, "God, all right, do I get something now?" That thought just creeps in so easily. And maybe you pray, "God, why haven't you answered my prayers? Why didn't I get that new job? Why hasn't my family member experienced healing yet? Why haven't you fixed my marriage yet? Why am I still struggling to put food on the table?" We're wanting God to do something for us. We're disappointed in unmet expectations. We're feeling frustrated, hurt, or even betrayed. And we ask those questions to God, and we say, "God, why haven't you?" And church, I don't have that answer. I do not know why God hasn't answered your prayer in the way that you wanted besides to say God hears you, he loves you, and his ways are higher than ours. We may not understand, but that doesn't mean that he isn't walking with you. Doesn't mean that he doesn't feel everything that you're feeling. He's hurting alongside you. We just may not know what he's up to.

But I want to encourage you and to warn you, if you're following God just to have your prayers answered, you're missing God's heart. And you're missing the relationship that you could be having with him. Your relationship with him isn't what it needs to be. It's like in Luke 6, when the disciples are following Jesus right after he's fed the 5,000, and that whole crowd follows him. And Jesus turns at a certain point and says, "You guys are just following me for more food. That's all you really want, is more miracle food. You don't know that I'm the Messiah. You don't believe in me." We don't want to be like those disciples. We want to be true disciples abiding in him because we love him and we know him. Yes, we see what he does, but even when we don't, we know who he is. God is not a tool to use, not a means to an end. He's a king that we worship with all of our lives. We do this because God loves us and he is the very best thing there is.

Let's pray. God, thank you for your word, for your truth. And God, we need you. And I pray that you would forgive us for moments where we have a transactional faith, where we come to you and you know our hearts. You can see right through us and know that really we're just wanting something selfishly. God, thank you for the patience and the compassion that you have with us in those moments. God, I pray that you would help grow in us a faith that is true, that is based on who you are. Help us to know you more. And as we fall more in love with you and worship you, God, I pray that we would experience the blessing of walking with you in your presence and we would just come to appreciate your presence in our life. So God, we pray that simple prayer. God, I pray that we would know you and love you not just for what you do, but for who you are. May that be true in our lives today. Amen.

Christian-ish: Part 3

Christian-ish: Part 3

Exodus 34:14, 20:5, DeutERONOMY 4:24

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

I've got another easy question for you, if you are a follower of Jesus, what should or who should come first in your life? Don't overthink it. Say it out loud, who is it? Yeah, God, Jesus, great, perfect, good job. Sunday School answer for the win. Yes, who should come first in our lives? It should be God. Jesus says in Matthew 6:33, “Seek first the kingdom of God." He also says in Matthew 22, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.” In that verse, he's actually quoting from the Old Testament, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength.” And so we know that as believers, as people who have a relationship with God, God should come first. The sad reality is he often doesn't. We make the claim that he is, but the way we live our lives does not reflect that Jesus is number one. What are some other categories in our lives that are important? You guys can see the shout it out. What are some other things in life? Family, yes, good job. Yeah, anything else? Health, yeah, money we need. Yes, good. These are all good things. Yeah, very important.

I have a demonstration to help us with seeing this behind the magical door are things that, thank you, perfect. Alrighty then. I don't know if you can all see this. I'm bringing out chairs. If you cannot see, I'm bringing the thank you, sir. All right. We have here all sorts of different chairs. Maybe you know where I'm going with this. Let's imagine your life full of all your different priorities, all the aspects that you have are different chairs in your life. In real life, you probably have 10, 15, 20 different things that you're balancing, that you're prioritizing. I don't have room for 10 or 15, 20 different chairs. We're going to go with the four that I have right here. You have to prioritize your chairs with the importance. Chair number one, obviously, be the most important above everything else. Chair number two, very important, just not as important, and so on and so forth. If you're a father of Jesus, you guys don't fail me now. You guys are good. Who should go in chair number one? Yes, Jesus. Okay, it was a little weaker. Don't lose conviction now. We're only five minutes in. Like, God, Jesus. Okay, yes, God should be number one. And then if you're a believer, if you're a Christian... Oh, yeah, there we go. Yes, more chairs, five chairs. If you're a follower of Jesus, what should go in chair number two? Yeah, I think good. I think family is a good number two. And we could keep going, but you guys get the point. We'll stop there, and let's process together. If this is... I picked the biggest, nicest chair, right? This is the God, number one God chair. Is this a reflection of most... Okay, don't answer this one out loud. Self-reflection time, answer inside your head. Is this a reflection of most of your lives, that God is number one? And when I ask that, I mean not with what you intend, not with where your heart would be, but if you were to take an honest look at your life in the 24-hour day, day after day, week after week, is this a reflection of your life, that God is number one?

I can't speak for you, but I see in a lot of people, even in my own life, there is often something else that takes the number one seat in my life. One of the common things that I think takes the first chair is your job. Using just time alone, how much you have to work, it's a majority of your life. Your career takes up a lot of time. You come home, and with whatever energy you have left, you then try to be with family or do whatever else it is you're doing. But if you have kids, maybe you're interacting with your kids, and maybe, if we're honest, we're a little bit short because we're just exhausted and tired. Hopefully you have a healthy marriage, but maybe there's stress there and it's under duress. Do you have to pay bills? You got all these other things, projects that you have to do? You have to work hard to have a nice life, however you define that. You got to have money to, someone said that earlier, you got to have money to survive, but on top of that, to do anything casual at all, you still have to have money to do that. Maybe you have hobbies that are important, that you're passionate about, that you enjoy. You got to have money to do those. So maybe that's something like CrossFit or video games or watercoloring or competitive speed puzzling. That's a thing. And it's real, and I'm interested, so I'm looking for a partner and would love... Talk to me afterwards. And if we were to go in order, maybe it's job, and then it's family, and then it's hobbies, and then at the end is maybe God. Maybe. I think some weeks he's left out of the priority list altogether. What happens in our lives is we say God is first, but our actions say something different.

And so we're continuing our Christian-ish series, and today we're talking about a faith that puts God second. Or you could fill in third, fourth, fifth, just anything but where he should be. I want you guys to go ahead and pray with me one more time. God, thank you again for our chance to be together today. And I pray that through the preaching of your word, God, that you would, through your spirit, speak to each of us where we need to be realigned, where our hearts need to be brought to the right place. And God, I pray that we would be willing, that we'd be open, that we would not be defensive of how we're living our life, but we would allow for your spirit to work in us, to transform us, to make us more like you. God, I pray that you'd give us clear eyes to see how we are living our lives right now. And if there is room to improve, to grow closer to you, to shed some things that are not good, God, I pray that you would give us the strength to do that. So be with us right now, and again, speak through your word, God. We pray this in your name. Amen. So we have, we're in our Christian-ish, and Christian-ish is having a half-hearted faith, wearing the label of Christianity, without truly following Jesus. And one of the most common qualities of someone who is Christian-ish is that they have a faith that puts God second. Pastor Craig Groeschel says that a faith that puts God second reflects a divided heart, where God is first in your words, but not in your life. We have the heart, we have the intention, we have the desire to honor God, to live for God, to please God with everything that we have. And you might know that, you might say to yourself, "I know that Jesus gave his life for me, I want to live for him.”

But then you start to live your life, you go about your day, your job, your school, your family, and so quickly, Jesus gets dropped down the priority list. Did you know that the Bible has a term for when this happens? The Bible calls putting anything ahead of God "idolatry." It's a heavy word. It's an old school word, we don't use idolatry a lot, but it's idolatry. And I believe that idolatry is a common struggle that all Christians face. If you look at the Old Testament, it is like as soon as Adam and Eve fall in the garden, and through Israel, all the way till Jesus comes, idolatry is just a reoccurring thing. They just continue to struggle with it over and over and over again. And it has not gone away. We don't necessarily use it in our everyday language amongst each other, even as Christians, but it's still prevalent today. Let me show you some verses where God addresses idolatry. Exodus 23 says, "You shall have no other gods before me." This is the first commandment, if you know your 10 commandments. And so he's saying that there shouldn't be anything higher than him. Nothing. He's not just talking about other gods, it says other gods, but in that, if we were to unpack that, that would just mean anything that is in the place of God. Nothing should be higher than God in your life. We also see in the New Testament, 1 John 5:21 says, "Dear children, keep yourselves from idols." So this is thousands of years later of people having a relationship with God, and they're still struggling, and the need is still there for it to be said, "Keep yourselves away from idols. Do not put anything in the place of God.”

Now we hear idol today, and what do we think of? Maybe you think of a little wooden trinket, or like a statue of some sort, of something. Maybe you think of the biblical examples of like the golden calf. And to be sure, those are definitely idols. Maybe you think of idols in relation to other gods, and you think, "Well, we don't really have other gods here. That's a third world country thing. We don't have other gods here." Quick story, there was a missionary from another country that came to do the tours of America to speak to different churches, and someone brought that up of like, "What is it like to live with other gods? We don't have that here." And he said, "Oh, you do. You have other gods here. Consumerism, you have money." And he named all these things that we struggle with. We just don't view them as they're not embodied in some little thing that someone bows down to. But they are incensed in the place of God, and we worship them with our lives. Idolatry, according to God's word, isn't just bowing down to an idol. Idolatry is putting anything before God. Anything. Even good things. God is clear in his word. He wants to be first in our lives. If we look at it from his perspective, this makes sense. He is the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the Creator, the Sustainer of all. And if he is who he says he is, then he deserves to be first, right? If we look at it from our perspective, that's a big ask from God to be number one. We could say, "God, don't you know how much I have going on? All the good things that I'm trying to do?" Like we already covered, we have a lot going on in our lives. We have a lot of priorities to balance. We have a routine. We have work. We have dreams and passions, things that we have to pay for. And that's why it's so common that many Christians agree in word and in theory, and I believe that they're genuine, that they want to put God first, but their lives just don't reflect it.

So we might ask, "Why is God being so demanding? Why does God want to be first? Couldn't he just be happy with simply being in my life?" Now, again, when we say that out loud, we start to feel some of the conviction of like, "Oh, that's not great. God shouldn't just be satisfied with being a part of my life." So why does God want to be first? Well, simply put, God is a jealous God. Now how many of you have heard that or when you read that in Scripture, it just doesn't settle well with you. God is a jealous God. That was me growing up. I grew up in the church. I grew up reading the Bible, and I was always taught, "I cannot be jealous. Jealousy is not good." And so I didn't get, "Why can God be jealous and I can't be jealous?" And I was jealous of God being like, "Oh, you can be jealous." When we look at Scripture, it's very clear. God is a jealous God. Exodus 34:14 says, "Do not worship any other God." We know that. God wants to be first. "For the Lord, whose name is jealous, is a jealous God." Oh, okay. That's referencing Exodus 20, again, the Ten Commandments, and he says, "You shall not bow down to them or worship them," talking about other gods, "For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God." This is where God is introducing himself to the Israelites. He's rescued them, but he hasn't had a lot of interaction with them. He's just rescued them. He sustained them. But then on the mountain, when Moses goes up, he gets to explain himself, and he gives himself to the nation by giving them these commandments and says, "This is who I am. This is how I want you to be in light of who I am." And he's saying, "I am a jealous God." Deuteronomy 4:24 says, "For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God." That adds a little bit more to the picture of God, consuming fire. That kind of gives us the idea that he's never satisfied. He wants more and more of us.

Scripture is very clear. God is a jealous God. So why does God get to be jealous? I'm going to nerd out for a second. I'm going to show you some Hebrew. Are you guys okay with that? Pastor, again, Pastor Craig Groeschel helps put this together. I think it's really helpful. I'm going to put up a Hebrew word here. It's called "kna." That's how you would say it. That's the Hebrew up top. You see that middle letter with the little dot in there? That is what the ends are. That's called a "nun." That's a Hebrew "nun." Usually when we found it, and it's regular, keep that up there for a long time. Okay. Usually when we see this word, "nun," there's no dot in the middle. Okay? Does that make sense? There's only one "n." So it would be Q-A-N-A. "Kna." In our passages that we're talking about... Let me back up. That "kna" is the word for jealous. We talk about human jealousy or the sin to be jealous. You're going to see it in that fancy thing, another fancy thing with no dot, and then another fancy thing. You're going to see "kna." Now... I'd be a terrible Hebrew teacher. This is not... Just realizing this now. Any dreams I had of being a Hebrew... They're out the window. Fancy thing, fancy thing. "Kna." So the dot in the middle represents the fact that there has been two ends. There's an extra end that's been added to "kna." And it's called an intensifier. It's meant to communicate to the reader that this is an exaggerated amount of jealousy. This is an even greater amount of jealousy. This is the most amount of jealousy possible by someone. So if you were to see it with the no dot, you're like, "All right, jealousy." You see it with the dot, you're like, "Oh my goodness, this is the most jealous that someone can be." Now what's cool is the Hebrew language, the language that God's people spoke, that "kna" that we see right here with the little dot with the two "nuns" is only used to describe God's jealousy. You will never see it in the Bible used to describe a human jealousy. It's only used for God's jealousy. So if you were to read that, you'd pick up like, "Oh my goodness, we're talking about God's jealousy right here." And it is a holy jealousy. Unlike our human jealousy, which is flawed and self-serving and speaks to insecurities, you think about the times that you're jealous. It reflects something of your heart that at the root is sinful.

When we talk about God's jealousy, it is a righteous consuming, covenant keeping jealousy that relentlessly pursues and protects his relationship with his people. It's a jealousy that is holy and pure and passionate and protective. And it comes from a place where God, who gave all of himself to you, wants you to give all of yourself back to him. Why? Because he loves you. And he wants what's best for you. And what's best for you is more of him. This gets back to living with God as the number one priority. We think of, again, Adam and Eve in the garden. And as soon as they flip that script and they put something else in the place of God, and all of sin entered the world, we realize that God intended humanity to live with him as number one. And anything else is a life that comes up short. It's a life that leads to problems and more sin and struggle. Anytime you put something, anything before him, it ends up hurting you. And it may not mean like an actual hurt that you're feeling, but you're just not living life the way that God intended. He knows this, and he wants better for you. Psalm 16:4 says, "Those who run after other gods will suffer more and more." Psalm puts it very plainly. If you continue to put something else in front of God, it will only lead to more and more pain, more and more brokenness. So if you are struggling, hurting, dissatisfied, maybe it's because something is out of place in your chairs, in your life, in your priorities. Something else is in the place of God. And maybe it's because idolatry is taking its toll on your life.

You may not have thought about it in that way before, but if you start to look at your life now with this context and with this conversation, maybe you do have an idol. You do have something in your number one chair that isn't God. If you often feel overwhelmed or anxious, if you feel a lot of tension in life, maybe you feel tension or disconnected from God. You just can't see his presence or feel his presence, or maybe from other people. Maybe there's just a distance that you can't ever seem to close with people, that you can't trust them. You can't bear your soul to them because you don't know if they're going to love you or support you. Maybe if you're lacking purpose or meaning in life right now, you might look at your chairs and say, "What's my order right now? What are my priorities?" Maybe if you find yourself spending a lot of money to fill a void in your life, or you look to different vices to avoid a numb pain, maybe you often get angry and lose your temper. Maybe you get bored and lonely, so you look at things that you shouldn't. Whatever it is you do, maybe it's an idolatry problem. I'm not saying that those things aren't bad. Those are problems that you should give to God and have God address in your life. But maybe the real problem, maybe that's just a symptom of a deeper problem, and maybe the deeper problem is idolatry. I want to reframe our minds right now to think of what is the biggest issue that we have going on in our life. Maybe the symptoms come to the surface really quick, and you're like, "Yeah, I got to work on that stuff." But I want you to push deeper and say, "Maybe below even that is something is just not where it should be." Maybe you're sitting there trying to justify whatever your thing is, whatever is in your number one chair, because it's not bad. Maybe it's not drinking or smoking or whatever that is. Maybe it's a pastime that is nice and good in theory. Maybe it's something like gaming, and you have an online community, and you're like, "I get to talk with people. I'm social. I even get to share the gospel with people." I don't know. Maybe it's your house. Maybe you put a lot of time into creating a home that is welcoming, and you want your family to enjoy it. You want other people to be there, and so you just put a lot of energy and focus into your living space. Maybe it's your image. You want to be presentable or fashionable or attractive, and so a lot of your time and life and thought and heart go into how you look. Maybe it's your kids and your family, and you give so much of your heart, your time, and mind revolving around your kids' schedules and their activities and their schoolwork and their development. And you're sitting there thinking, "I know I got some stuff, but those are good things. It's a good thing that's in the first chair." And I would agree.

Those are some of those are good things, but we have to remember anything in the place of God is an idol. It's idolatry. Even good things become idols when they take the place of God. Anything in this first chair that is not God is not where it should be. It has become more important in your life than God has, and I think we need to hear that. We need to slow down and hear that and really dwell on if that's true and what needs to happen. If anything is more important than God in your life, automatically we should say, "That's not okay, and I need to address that." So how do we know? How do you discern if things in your life have crossed that boundary into becoming an idol? Because again, maybe it's something you're good at. Maybe you have natural God-given skills, and you're exercising that. You're like, "Well, God gave me these things, God gave me this passion or this interest, so shouldn't I exercise that or use it and involve myself in it?" Or maybe it's something that you get joy from, you're passionate about. Maybe it's something good like your career. You're like, "I can't just stop working. I got to provide for my family." How do we know if something has become an idol? Well, instead of leaving it up to us to just say, "No, it's not," because again, we will. We'll just kind of like slough it off and be like, "Eh, we'll work on getting more Bible time in the morning, 10 minutes." God, you get 10 more minutes. Let's let the Holy Spirit assess our hearts and our lives and convict where necessary.

And I want to ask three questions, three idol identifier questions. And again, don't be slow to answer these. Let the Spirit answer these for you, reveal the truth for you. So first one, does this thing, whatever is in your first chair, maybe your first couple chairs, does this lead me closer to God or does it distract me from God? Again, think to yourself, whatever that is, is this activity, is this thing, is this whatever I'm giving myself to, my time, my energy, my thought life, is this bringing me closer to God or is it distracting me from God?

Number two, do I rely on this more than God for my comfort, my identity, and my worth? These are starting to get a little heavier now, a little more serious. Do I go to this thing in times when I'm hurting before I go to God? Is this something that I crave way more than I crave God? Do I find that when I am connecting with people, I cannot wait to share about this thing or should I talk endlessly about whatever that is more than my identity with God?

Number three, if God asked me to give this up, would I give it up without hesitation? Oh, that one kills. That one's hard. It's the last part, without hesitation, right? Some of us would always be like, yes, I would get there, God would help me, I would eventually give it up. But without hesitation is like, could I just do it right now and realize that God should be first and I'm just done with that thing?

So I'll share mine. And this may seem silly, and it kind of is, but my idol, one of the things that I've had in my past life, you've heard me share about some of my hobbies. It's a hobby for me, and that would be disc golf, okay? I'm already fearing the judgment. You guys can judge me, it's fine. I brought this up before, but I found it during COVID, right? I was like, oh, I want to get outside, my friend and I connected, and it was like, oh, let's get outside, let's play something in it. Just checked a lot of boxes for me. I grew up playing sports and I love competing and I could play by myself and just compete against myself. I'm just going to try to better my score next time. So I was like, oh, this is really fun. I just got hooked and I love being outside and I did the whole justification thing. I'm in God's nature. I'm spending time with God in the trees and walking around. This is so great. And there was truth to that. There were times where that was legit, but there were other times where I found myself trying to excuse why I was going out so often to be like, well, it's just more time with God. Obviously, God loves that for me and I love it for me. So God and I are both happy right now. And I played a lot. And when hard things, when I was going through challenges, I would notice that I was like, man, I just cannot wait to get out there. I want to escape. I want to go do my own thing. And before my desire was to talk to God or to pray with God to release, whatever that is, I found my identity and my worth in trying to be a good disc golf player. I was like, oh man, this is really fun when I'm good. So let's just try to be good. And I found a lot of pride. I'm like, man, I'm halfway decent. That's pretty cool. And so there were moments where I recognized in different stages where I had to give it up and it was that without hesitation that like it was not without, it was a lot of hesitation. And I realized like, man, this is a thing and it's not a good thing. Like disc golf is not evil, but this, what it has become in my life is not good. That's a more lighthearted one.

Another one that I'll share is maybe church. And I, as a pastor, I think it can be a thing. Church is obviously amazing. It's good, but church is not God. Right? And so I can, in my desires, I can find my worth. I can be putting God's second in place of church and what I do and how I care. Like all these things of the pastoral role should be second in my life compared to my relationship with God and even church, something so good as this, you guys can become first. And as great as you are, you can't be first in my life. So there's been times where we have idols and we have to, I've had to lay them down before Jesus and honestly have Jesus take them and so that he can, I can live more fully with Christ. Giving that thing up or that priority up. I haven't, I still play disc golf occasionally now, but I'm giving that up so that Christ can live more fully in me. And so in this time that I've been sharing, hopefully you have been thinking about your own life and what is God trying to reveal to you?

If God is showing you, revealing something, there's something out of place that there's an idol in your life. I want to encourage you to listen to him. Listen to the spirit and where he's trying to convict, where he's trying to show you where to change. Don't get defensive with God. It's just between you and God. You don't have to share with me or anyone else. In fact, our defensiveness is often a clue as to something that has a really strong hold in our hearts and lives. So that might be a place where you want to dig some more in your life. Say, okay, I'm getting really, I keep avoiding this one thing in my life when I think of my priorities. Why is that? Maybe it's in a place where it shouldn't be. When you realize and acknowledge and begin to understand that you're putting something before God, don't just fight the symptoms. Don't just say, all right, let's do a rearrangement of things. Also, you can't just take this thing out and just be done with it. That doesn't really work because more often than not, it'll just come back. It's like a weed. It'll just grow back in time. You have to fill that void with something else. So I would say, don't just remove the idol. Replace it with God. Put God first. Now let me ask you this question. Why haven't you done that already? If it's so easy, like let's just put God first. Just do that guys. End of sermon. Just go home. Do it. Now why haven't we put God first? Maybe because we naturally, as humans, we pursue what we want most. That's just in our nature. We want something. We will go do whatever it is to get that, involve ourselves with it. We want something. We pursue it.

So then the question becomes, why don't we want God as much as other things? If we were to want God the most, then he would be first in our lives. Why don't we? And I think, I reason that it's because we don't know how good God is. We don't know, we don't truly understand how amazing, how wonderful, how fulfilling, how incredible and loving and compassionate and kind and all the good things. We don't fully know how good God is. If we did, we'd be much more likely to keep him in our number one chair. Even then, just knowing isn't enough, knowing more information or an awareness of God's goodness isn't enough because information does not equal transformation. Just because you are informed does not mean that you will be transformed. It's helpful, it's good, but it's not everything. Just because you hear God on a Sunday does not mean that all of you are living perfectly the rest of the days of the week. You have to practice putting God first and living with him in the number one seat. When we do that, then we'll know and experience the goodness of God. Or as the psalmist says in Psalm 34, "Taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the one who takes refuge in him." It's not just knowing, it's living accordingly and living in God's goodness. It's when we live by faith with our trust in God, not because of what he can do for us, we don't do it as a transaction saying, "God, I'll live for you because I know that you're going to better my life." No, we live giving ourselves to him, again, because he gave all of who he is to us. That because without him, there is nothing good. And we are more likely to fight to keep him as the number one in our lives if we know and live in his goodness.

And that means that we have to submit to him. We have to yield to his will. That means going about every day intentionally with a heart that is aligned with his heart. And we enter every conversation, every work situation, whatever it is, you walk in and you're saying, "God, I want, help me right now. I want to live for you. I want to, as I talk with this person, help me to speak in a way that is honoring you, that is loving, that is kind. As I parent right now, as I just do something by myself, help me to do it in a way that is glorifying to you. Be with me. Invite him in to that situation." If something is distracting you from God, replace it with Jesus. And understand this, God's not trying to take something away from you as much as he's trying to give you something better himself. I think sometimes we get a little defensive, we get a little nervous because you're like, "God, I really like this thing. And I think ultimately it was from you, but I, yeah, sure, I messed it up a little bit, so don't take it away." And we get scared and then we kind of avoid it. We're like, "God, I'd just rather not. I'd rather keep my life the way it is." But if we understand it in a way that actually it's something better, again, then we're more likely to engage and say, "Yes, God, I do want that. I do want more of you." He's trying to give himself to us. Again, because he loves you, he cares about you. He's trying to give you the best thing that there is, himself. And again, this goes back to the garden in the Old Testament when Adam and Eve thought, "You know what? I think there's something better other than God, and right there is the mistake." And we would think, "Oh, guys, why'd you do that?" But we do it every day. We think this other thing is better than God. And so we need to put God first and understand and live and believe and know God is the best. He is the best. There is nothing better. He hasn't called you to be Christian-ish just by name, following Jesus when you feel like it, when it's convenient. And he isn't content to be just any one of your chairs. And we should love him for that. We should thank him that he is not content to just be in our lives. He wants to be in the right spot where he created himself to be. This chair is where God made for himself to sit in our lives. That's right relationship. That is living with God is when he is in that number one seat. We don't want to love him partially or halfway. God is a jealous God who wants all of us. And he's called us to love him with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, with all our strength. And he wants us to seek first his kingdom. So the question for you this week is, will you live each day with God first? First and foremost on your heart, your mind, your soul, will you live with all of who you are before him as a sacrifice to him? It says in Romans, live with your whole life for him. Are you ready to put God first?

Let's pray. God, we come before you Lord and we first want to just come before you with an apologetic heart. And God, we are sorry. We apologize for living a life where something else is in your place. For living and worshiping idols. Maybe they're good. Maybe they are things that are not good inherently. But God, we just acknowledge that, that we are living in a way that is not how you intended. And we also know that we can only live the way that you intended through your help, by your spirit. And so we pray that this week, today, now, as you reveal things to us that are out of place, that you would also provide the steps to take to then live with you in the number one seat. God, help us to see and know how good you are. God, I pray that for those of us who have been walking with God, I pray that you would bring those memories fresh to our mind of how good you are. That it would anchor us as we go forward. And for those who are newly following you, God, I pray that you would bring about experiences, that you would show your goodness to people. And so we both know with our head and our heart, your goodness, and we want to keep you as a priority in our life, that we would be Christians who live with you first and foremost. We need you, God. We depend on you. We want to love you with everything that we have. We pray this in your name. Amen.

Christian-ish: Part 2

Christian-ish: Part 2

1 Samuel 15:7-9, 20-22; 1 John 5:3-4

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Man, we just kicked 2026 off with a bang last week. If you were here, we came out swinging. So I hope your toes have recovered from being bruised by Pastor Chris last week. But I hate to tell you, they're probably going to get a little bruised again today. And that's the Lord, not me. So don't know what to tell you. But we are excited for this Christian-ish series. We are just really believing that God has something for all of us in this series as we learn what it looks like to be surrendered fully to God and to walk in His way rather in this Christian-ish kind of sort of way. So I'm excited for that. I do apologize in advance. We did some bedroom rearranging yesterday and had a dust allergy attack. So my breathing's a little rough today. So if I cough, I apologize. Got my water, so hopefully we'll be okay, but just wanted to give you a heads up on that. You know what? Let's pray. Let's pray as we get started. Jesus, we thank you for this time. God, I just pray that you will give me your words, give me air in my lungs. And I just pray that you will bless our time in your word as we seek to be more like your son Jesus in your name.

Have you ever found yourself tempted to kind of finagle the rules a little bit? Maybe the express check out where you're supposed to have ten items or less, but you only have like 11 or 12. It's only two more. No one's going to know. It's fine, right? So you just kind of slide on in there and hope nobody actually counts all your items. Or the onramp, like getting on the freeway, the onramp meter, maybe you take that as a suggestion rather than like a general rule of the road. Or my personal favorite, or maybe I should say struggle, is keeping my library book just a couple extra days past Tuesday because I'm so close to finishing it and I know they're not actually going to charge me until it's like really, really late. So I don't know about you, but I struggle with that one. But these are all silly examples, but you kind of get the idea that we have a way of justifying some of these small things in our lives. I mean, some of us are rule followers by nature, and some of us think rules are just dares in disguise. Right? We just want to see how far we can push the limits.

But when it comes to the Christian life, when it comes to being obedient to God, the small things matter. And so that's our focus today, is that small choices can keep us stuck in the Christian-ish lifestyle. We tell ourselves that we're a good person, we do mostly good things, sure we mess up, but we're human, it happens, but we're mostly good people. And maybe in general you do do the right thing. But you aren't fully surrendered. You're Christian-ish. If you missed last week, we defined Christian-ish as someone who has a half-hearted faith, but wears the label of Christian without truly following Jesus. It's a kind of sort of Christian, an almost Christian, an if it feels good Christian. Pastor Chris last week talked about different signs that you might be Christian-ish. And for many of us, one of those things that we struggle with is the idea of selective obedience. This is one of those things that can be small. It can be a small thing or small choices that add up over time and make us Christian-ish. Maybe we think we'll obey if it's not too hard or if it's not too inconvenient. We'll obey unless we have a better plan or unless God is asking just too much of us. Maybe we'll only obey if we're not in a hurry. Today we're defining selective obedience as the dangerous illusion that doing some of what God commands is enough when it's really disobedience in disguise. The Bible is really clear on obedience and the consequences of disobedience. We're actually going to be in 1 Samuel 15 here in a bit. If you want to turn there, it will be on the screens, but you're welcome to get there.

First, I want to look at the Bible. I want to look at the Bible as a way to give us a sense of what God commands us to do. I want to look at three verses that talk about obedience. We're going to look at some things these verses have in common. The first one is Deuteronomy 5.33. It says, "Walk in obedience to all that the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live and prosper and prolong your days in the land you will possess." Walk in obedience to all. How many is all? All that the Lord your God has commanded you. Exodus 19.5. "Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession." If you obey me fully. Job 36:11, "If they obey and serve Him, Him being God, they will spend the rest of their days in prosperity and their years in contentment." Another translation says, "If they listen and obey, they will be blessed." So two things these verses have in common. One is that God is asking for full obedience. He doesn't want half-heartedness or partial obedience. He wants full. It says, "Walk in obedience to all that the Lord your God has commanded. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, if they obey and serve Him," full and complete obedience. It matters if we're being fully obedient. The second thing that these verses have in common is that some of God's blessings are conditional. If you look back at the verses, most of them have an implied "if-then." Walk in obedience so that you may live. If you obey me fully, then out of all the nations you will be my treasured possession. If they obey, an implied "then," they will spend the rest of their days in prosperity.

Now please hear me. I am not saying that our salvation is dependent on our obedience or our actions. If you're sitting there thinking, "Is Pastor Lauren telling me I have to earn my salvation?" Absolutely not. That is bad theology. That is not what we're talking about. We're talking about two different things here. The first one is that with God, there are, I guess both of them, unconditional promises and conditional blessings. So unconditional promises, it's this idea that we are saved by grace. We are offered this gift unconditionally. It is only by the perfect work of Jesus on the cross, His death and resurrection, and His offer of salvation that we get to be free, we get to be saved from sin, put on His righteousness, and have eternity with Him. That is His unconditional promise to anyone who chooses to receive that. The conditional blessings are that when we are, out of our love for God, obedient to Him fully and completely, He will often bless that obedience, that faithfulness to Him. There is nothing we can do to earn our salvation. I want to be clear on that. But He does want to bless us. He wants to give good gifts to His kids. So there is unconditional promises and conditional blessings. It's like a parent with a child. I love my kids unconditionally. They may frustrate me, they may disobey me, they may make me mad, but I will love them no matter what. But we also have conditional blessings that if they do their homework and they do their chores, they can have a friend over or get some screen time. Those blessings are conditional based on their behavior. Another little caveat for us this morning is that I'm not talking about the prosperity gospel. This is not me saying that you fully obey, you will get everything you ever dreamed of. You will become rich and successful and have everything your little heart could desire. That is not what we're talking about here. Now the Lord does bless us with material things. That is true. But blessings can also look like being more like Jesus. A blessing could look like experiencing His presence in a more tangible way. His blessing could be being able to look at yourself in the mirror with integrity, knowing that you fully obeyed despite the hard or the circumstance or the situation. So I'm not saying that you will become rich or get to buy the new car or get the house because you fully obeyed.

But the thing is, we see being Christian-ish a lot because we think that the Christian life equals the prosperous life. We think that the Christian life, if we do it right, if we're checking all the boxes and doing all the things, that we can have a prosperous life, the American dream, that God will give us everything life. But the reality is that the Bible calls us to take up our cross daily. The cross is an instrument of torture. That's not exactly the prosperous life I was hoping for. The Bible calls us to die to ourselves and live for Christ. We're called to bear each other's burdens. That's the life that we're called to. Is there blessings in following Jesus? 100%. Do those blessings always come in the package we think they will? Nope. Often not. But that's okay. Because if we want to get out of the Christian-ish lifestyle, we must choose full obedience and understand that some blessings are conditional. Real quick, let's look at it this way. In the Bible, theologians talk about covenant theology. Now the covenant, God made the covenant as his plan to redeem mankind. And so he structured his plan around covenant. So throughout the Bible, we see covenants with Abraham, Moses, David, so on and so on. And a covenant is this divine agreement between God and mankind where ultimately, although we're supposed to keep our end of the deal, ultimately it's God who keeps the end of the deal for both of us. And he did that by putting his son on the cross. But we are now under the new covenant through Jesus. When he came and he died and rose again, we have a new covenant that we are under. And so the unconditional promise, as we said, under this new covenant is that he died and rose again and offers us salvation. But the conditional blessing is that our obedience will allow blessings to flow from God to us.

God saved us by grace and then blesses our full obedience. That's why God doesn't want partial obedience. He wants full and complete surrender. And frankly, there's a lot of partial obedience in the global church, but also specifically in the church in the West. We want the benefits of the Christian life without the sacrifice. We want the blessings without the surrender. We pick and choose what feels good to obey, what we think is right and wrong. And we just leave the rest. We compromise, we justify, we excuse, especially the small stuff. But we still call ourselves followers of Christ. And frankly, it is dangerous. It is dangerous to call yourself a Christ follower and live the Christian-ish life. So now that we've set our groundwork for understanding the importance of obedience, I want to get back to that main idea of that small things can leave us stuck in the Christian-ish lifestyle. Because the thing is, small things and small choices can seem insignificant, but they can have really big consequences.

Today we're going to look at the life of Saul in the Old Testament in a story we find in 1 Samuel 15. Now just to give you some background, Saul was the first king of Israel. And to be fair, he started out genuinely wanting to serve God. He loved God. He was humble. He wanted to obey and do what was right in the eyes of the Lord. But then one step at a time, he started choosing partial obedience. He started choosing his own desires and rationalizing his own sin, eventually leading him to listen to the demonic whispers of the enemy instead of the voice of God. It's a slippery slope. It can be just a slow fade. But if a ship or an airplane is one degree off course, they're going to end up miles away from their intended destination. So even if you think you're doing all the things, but you're one degree off course, you're not going to end up where you want to be. Saul wanted to do things his way. So we're going to look at this interesting and honestly pretty devastating story here in 1 Samuel 15. So just again, some back or some context for us. God told Saul to take his army and to go completely destroy the Amalekite people. The Amalekites were a nation that were just evil. So in God's righteous judgment, he used Saul and the army, the Israelite army, to go and completely destroy them. And he told them to destroy everything, every living thing. Man, woman, livestock, everything. But Saul had other ideas. He obeyed at first, but then he made a small choice. Then we pick up in verse 9. It says, "Saul and his men spared Agag's life. Agag was the king. They spared his life and kept the best of the sheep and goats, the cattle, the fat calves and the lambs, everything in fact that appealed to them. They destroyed only what was worthless or of poor quality.”

Saul had selective obedience. He obeyed to an extent by destroying almost the entire nation, but he kept the king alive. We see the problem with this, right? Keeping the leader of the nation alive is kind of a big deal. And they kept the livestock, which they were able to justify in their minds. Perfectly good livestock. It's food. We can trade it. We can kill it. We can use the skin. We can do whatever we need. Why kill perfectly good livestock? But it wasn't full obedience. God gave a clear command and he chose to listen to the whisper of the enemy instead of the voice of his God. And you know, that same whisper I think a lot of us are familiar with. It's the one that rationalizes and justifies and tells us it won't hurt anybody. It's not that big of a deal. No one's going to know. You deserve it. It's just this once. The whispers, the lies, if we listen to those, even in small things over and over and over again, instead of the voice of our heavenly father, we will continue to choose disobedience.

The problem with disobeying in the small choices repeatedly is that it compounds over time. And so what you allow in the moment often owns you in the future. It could be that the small choice is to have one more drink, eat one more serving of dessert even though you were full a long time ago. Look once, just a peek at that website you know is not a good idea. Read that romance novel that's pretty explicit but you heard the story is really good. Yell at your loved one again because they kind of deserved it. It's one small choice. It may not seem like a big deal but it compounds over time in what you allow in the moment often owns you in the future. So I want to ask us, where are we letting the enemy of our soul whisper into our lives? Where are you letting the enemy, letting Satan tell you these lies and whisper to you so that you are tempted to listen to his voice over the voice of your heavenly father? I encourage you to ask the Holy Spirit to reveal that to you. What areas are not surrendered to him? What things are you not being fully obedient in? And to be honest, it may not even necessarily be a sin issue but maybe you're not being obedient in something that you know God is asking you to do. Maybe you're not taking revenge but you're also not forgiving. Maybe you are trying to spend time in the word, trying to have some, you know, read your Bible or get that verse of the day but it's just a checkbox. You aren't fully surrendered to being with Jesus every day. Maybe you're not maxing out the credit cards but you're getting more and more in debt and not practicing biblical tithing or stewardship. Maybe you're not having an affair but you're getting a little too comfortable with a co-worker or a family friend. It's not full obedience. You're only going part way. It could be whatever area it is for you, it could be different for everyone in this room.

We don't all have the same struggles and honestly we don't necessarily all have the same convictions on non-sin issues but we all know what it's like to justify behavior and choose not to call our sin a sin. We aren't perfect. We're gonna mess up but we do serve a God who is. He already saved us from that sin. He has already put on Christ's righteousness onto us. That is not what is in question here. But we all have struggles. We all have these things that we try to justify and we are called to confess those things to God. I encourage you to also confess them to another person, a Bible believing person, a mentor, a pastor, a friend. We confess to God for forgiveness but we confess to people for healing. So I encourage you to do that but if nothing else confess it to God. He forgives and he restores. Ask him to help you live fully surrendered and fully obedient in that area. See Saul got called out on his disobedience later on in chapter 15. The prophet Samuel came and talked to Saul and called him out on his selective obedience and instead of confessing and asking for forgiveness Saul chose to double down. Let's look at verse 20 through 21. Saul says, "But I did obey the Lord," Saul said. We have different definitions of obedience. "But I did obey the Lord," Saul said. "I went on the mission. The Lord assigned me. I completely destroyed the Amalekites and brought back Agag their king. The soldiers took sheep and cattle from the plunder, the best of what was devoted to God in order to sacrifice them to the Lord your God at Gilgal.”

Saul does several things here. First he minimizes his own disobedience by making it seem like it was part of the plan. I completely destroyed them and I brought back their king. That was the plan all along. Then he passes the blame onto his soldiers saying they were the ones who brought the livestock back. It wasn't my decision. They did it on their own. Then he rationalizes and explains that well they're just going to use it to sacrifice to God. That's a good thing, right? And finally, he distanced himself from God by saying that the sacrifices were to the Lord your God. He doesn't say the Lord my God or our God. He says to the Lord your God talking to Samuel. When we minimize, when we pass blame, make excuses, rationalize, when we do those things it puts a wall between us and God. It puts up a barrier. We distance ourselves from Him because nobody wants to be found out. Nobody wants to be called out for their sin or their selective obedience. So we put some distance between us and God. We say I follow God but He's over there and I'm going to do my thing and we'll be fine. We choose to live in our Christian-ish world where we make the decisions and decide what we will and will not obey. But selective obedience is disobedience even in the small things. And it's going to keep us stuck in the Christian-ish lifestyle. Even if it means you're just one degree off course. It's a problem. And once again, to be abundantly clear, we're not talking about your salvation here. God is freely given by God's grace. But you can experience conditional blessings that come from your obedience. And I would say, although He blesses us for a variety of reasons, if you are not being fully obedient, you are missing out on God's blessings.

1 John 5:3-4 says, "Loving God means keeping His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. For every child of God defeats this evil world and we achieve this victory through our faith.” He's not asking too much of us. The boundaries that He's given, the commands that He's given us, they are for our good and His glory. And they are not burdensome. They are not too heavy for us to carry. And in fact, when we are obedient, we get to be active participants in defeating the evil in the world. We get to be part of the victory, which is played out through our obedience. So maybe today it's not a sin issue for you. Maybe it is. Maybe that is something you need to confess to the Lord. But maybe the problem isn't the action. The problem is the lack of action. The problem is the partial obedience and whatever it is that God is calling you to do and to obey. And we know that He's asking us to step out in faith in some area. Small, big. I imagine most of us have something that comes to mind. Maybe it's to be more vocal about your spiritual life around your non-believing friends and coworkers. Maybe it's to quit an unhealthy habit or to start a healthy one. Maybe it's simply to be in the Word more consistently, not out of obligation or to check a box, but because you want to spend time with your Heavenly Father so that His voice is louder than all the other whispers. So whatever that thing is for you, are you willing to fully surrender to it, to God? To stop playing this Christian-ish game and start walking in full obedience? So that's my question. That's my one takeaway for you today. Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal where you are choosing selective obedience and then go all in on obeying God fully in that area. He is good to gently and kindly convict and to remind us where we are struggling, to help us see where we need to press into Him, where we aren't being fully obedient, where we're choosing selective obedience. So ask Him, ask Him to reveal that to you. It may not be an audible voice, it probably won't, but He'll tell you, He'll show you and then go all in on choosing full obedience. There is goodness and there is blessing on the other side of our obedience, friends.

Pray with me. Jesus, we thank You for who You are, for Your goodness. We thank You that You make a way for us to be obedient. I just pray that You will reveal to us what it is that we are choosing to be selective obedient to. And God, help us to go all in on that. Help us to go all in on You, that we put our faith in You and that we are able to walk in freedom and victory because we are walking in full obedience. Thank You for who You are, in Your name, Amen.

Christian-ish: Part 1

Christian-ish: Part 1

Revelation 3:15-17,19-20

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

I'm so glad you're here. Happy new year. And we're excited to get going on a new series this January to kind of kick off 2026 together. And have you ever had a time or a moment where you were meeting somebody new and you guys were just hitting it off? You ever started that? You're meeting somebody brand new, you've never met them before, and you're just like, you're totally hitting off. You're jiving, things are going great. You're talking about your family. You're talking about life. And things are just going really, really well. And there's times as a pastor, I love meeting new people, but then there comes a moment that I always hate. And that's the question, what do you do for a living? And the problem is with that, is that it always gets weird. No matter what happens, it either gets Christian weird, or it gets unChristian weird. And what do I mean by that? Well, Christian weird is we're having a conversation, things are going, what do you do for a living? Oh, I'm a pastor. And then all of a sudden a switch flips inside of them, and they're like, hallelujah. Praise the Lord, brother. That is such a good word for me this morning, thank you. It just gets weird. I'm like, no, don't do that. Or it gets unChristian weird. And you tell them I'm a pastor, and they're just like, oh, cool. And then sometimes, most likely, they just usually walk away and they won't talk to me again. I will say, I have never lied, but I can't say that I haven't thought about it. I mean, that's, can I be honest with you guys this morning?

So recently I had this opportunity, I met a guy who lives here locally, and I've known him for a little bit, and we were talking, and he's not a Christian. And we were having a good conversation, and we were just talking about life, and he would say how he's a good person, and he tries not to judge people, and he tries to be generous how he can. Maybe it's someone on the street, or a family member, or a friend. And from afar, it's so funny, he loves our church. He talks to me all the time when I see him. He loves our sign on the corner. He loves the jokes. He loves our church. And we're having this conversation, and he literally turns to one of the other guys in the room, and he goes, you know what, if I go to church, I'm going to that pastor's church. He calls me pastor, it's the funniest thing, but he doesn't go to church. I invited him for Christmas candlelight service. This was a good conversation. He was totally open to it, but he did not come.

After high school, I moved to the Midwest, to Indiana for college. And if you've ever been around the Midwest, you know it's an area called the Bible Belt. And it was a culture, I would say a reverse culture shock for me to go back to Indiana after living in California, and to see so many people there in the Bible Belt that would call themselves Christians. I'd have conversations with people, and it would be great. They'd be like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm a Christian. I'm like, okay, cool. Like, where do you go to church? Well, you know, it just, my grandma took me to church back in the day, and I probably go like Christmas and Easter. You know, like the big holidays, like the big ones. And it's so funny to me that they would call themselves a spiritual person, but yet you might ask somebody in their lives of, would you say, hey, so-and-so, are they a Christian? And they might answer, I really don't know. And that's how I would probably define this term, Christian-ish.

And as we start a new year in 2026, I wanna give you a new word for your vocabulary, and that is Christian-ish. I would define it this way. Christian-ish is having a half-hearted faith, or wearing the label of Christianity without truly following Jesus. Something like Christian in name only, sort of Christian, Christian-ish. And I will say very honestly, from a pastoral perspective, to be Christian-ish is to embrace a superficial watered-down version of Christianity. It's not the real thing. You get enough of Jesus that it makes you kind of feel better, but not so much of Jesus that it changes your life. Happy New Year. Welcome to church in 2026. My heart and my goal here is to make you feel better about your faith, but I heard a professor quote once, and it said this, it says, "The role of an effective pastor is to comfort those who are afflicted, "and at the same time, afflict those who are comfortable." Ooh. My heart, my desire today, I just want you to know this, is to maybe push you a little bit into 2026, and believe that you can be closer to Jesus this year than you ever have before, and to be more effective for his kingdom than you ever have been in years past.

We're gonna be in Revelation chapter three this morning, and this early in the book, Jesus, he's giving custom messages to seven different churches, and one of these churches is the church that you may know as the church of Laodicea, and when talking to the Laodicean people, Jesus isn't pulling any punches or holding back. He's coming right at him, and he says this in Revelation chapter three, Jesus says, "I know your deeds, that they are neither cold nor hot." I know your deeds, I know your good works, and they're neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one of them. So because you are lukewarm, neither cold nor hot, I'm about to spit you out of my mouth. What you wanted to hear is coming to church this morning, right, right? You say, "I am rich, and I have acquired wealth, "and do not need a thing, but you do not realize "that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked." Jesus, a few verses later, says, "Those whom I love, "I rebuke and discipline, so be earnest and repent. "Here I am, I stand at the door and I knock. "If anyone hears my voice," Jesus says, "opens the door, "I will come in and eat with that person, "and they with me." Jesus said, "I would rather you be one or the other. "I'd rather you be cold, or I'd rather you be hot. "But the fact that you are lukewarm, I'm going to, "for a lack of a better term, vomit you up." But Jesus isn't playing. I wanna give you a little context. That's why Jesus brought this spiritual intensity to Laodicea. See, Laodicea was one of the wealthiest cities in the entire Roman Empire. And 30 years prior to this, they had a massive earthquake that ruined the city. And unlike what would be custom in that culture, where neighboring towns and families and cities would come together, Laodicea had so much wealth that they just themselves took care of their city. This is completely unheard of. They were loaded. And when they rebuilt their cities, they built extravagant coliseums, theaters, shops, markets. Think of like a modern day Las Vegas. Might as well look something like this. There's a picture I put up here. It would have been extravagant for that time and that age. Modern technology like you'd never seen. But when Jesus says, "You think this wealthy "and your self-sufficient community are," he says, "You are lukewarm.”

And this analogy would have been so striking for this city. Because even with all of their wealth and everything that they had, their biggest problem, their number one thing was they had an inadequate water supply. And so the only solution they had was to actually bring water into the city. And so I got a map here of where Laodicea is. And what they would do is up in Hierapolis, they would bring down hot spring water. And then from Colossae, they would pipe through these kind of old school aqueducts that would bring in this cool spring water from the underground. So might here be thinking about H. Hierapolis, H. hot and Colossae C. being cold. And so they would have to bring in this water. But the problem was, because these cities were so far away, by the time the water, the hot water from Hierapolis would get to the city, it would have cooled. The hot mineral spring water that had these healing capabilities wouldn't be hot anymore. And then the cold water from the underground springs in Colossae, by the time it made it through these aqueducts and this gross piping, it would arrive tepid. It would just be lukewarm. And so these people would understand when Jesus says you are lukewarm, they would very well know exactly what Jesus is talking about. Because this water, by the time it got to them, being lukewarm and going through all these minerals and sediment and all this long travel, it would be gross. It would be filled with sediment. It would be calcified and it would make people sick. Jesus is saying here that you are lukewarm. You're not hot, you're not cold. You are not serving any real purpose and that makes me sick.

See, the spiritual interpretation here for lukewarm is occasionally misunderstood. I think when Jesus says this, you're not cold, you're not hot, he was not just talking about their spiritual passion, but he was also talking about their spiritual purpose and impact because the hot water had purpose to heal and the cool water had purpose to refresh and cleanse. And Jesus is saying you are not fulfilling your purpose. May I say this humbly and with a heart to heal and a desire for hope to bring to your life, as you enter a new year looking back, you may have not fulfilled your spiritual purpose. See, God has given each and every one of you a specialized gifts. He's created you in a special certain way. Some of you are so good with people. Others of you are so other oriented. Some of you are incredibly generous towards others. Others of you know how to organize in a way that is like scientific. Others of you know how to serve in such a great way. Something about you is different. And if you didn't use that gift and the way that God gave it to you to fulfill your spiritual purpose, creating a spiritual impact to make a difference, Jesus might say to you, "You're lukewarm.”

See, there's a word here in the Greek called emeo. And this is the action that Jesus is talking about. And it's a pretty aggressive word, I'm not gonna lie. But the word emeo means to vomit, to throw up, to spew out forcefully. If any of you have ever been around a baby after you fed them, some of them are just like a ticking time bomb, right? You don't handle them too rough. You don't move them around too much. Dare say you ever lay on your back and go, "Wee!" Like this, 'cause it is going to come out. Emeo here is almost to this level of a projectile vomit, a strong visceral response. And Jesus says, "I am vomiting you out." God can't stomach comfortable Christianity. He can't. And it's not just undesirable to God, it's intolerable. Christian-ish. Suggest this half-hearted, convenient, comfortable, committing to receive the benefits of Jesus without fully surrendering to the call of Jesus. Suggest a half-hearted faith that's repugnant to God and reacts in a visceral way.

But Jesus says this in Revelation 3:17. He says, "You say I am rich." That's what the people of Laodicea would say, "I am rich." Well, today, I wanna let you know that maybe this correlation would be you have an iPhone or a smartphone. You can go on Amazon and you can shop and you can get it in two days or less. You came here in a car. From the perspective of the world and the eyes of the world, you are rich. You live in the top percentile of people on this entire planet. You are rich. You have maybe even a house for your car that you go home and you drive and you park it in. It's called a garage. You have not only a house, but a house for your car. Jesus says, "I have acquired," Jesus, that you say, "I have acquired wealth "and do not need a thing." Maybe you know somebody who doesn't need anything from God. Maybe you don't think you need anything from God. You think, "I don't need anything." Maybe you're like this guy that I continue to have these conversations with who says, "I'm just a good person. "I got it figured out. "I went to church when I was a kid. "I got my Jesus. "I'm good. "I don't need that anymore." Or maybe you're one who goes, "I got it figured out. "I don't need anybody to tell me how to live my life. "I don't need some outdated, archaic religion "to make me have to feel better about myself." Maybe you don't need anything from God, but the problem is you may feel that way until you do need something from God, until you get that medical report, or until something happens in your life. And maybe you weren't a person who prayed the day before, but it sure can tell you when you get some bad news, you turn into a praying person, right? Until your spouse leaves you and you don't know what to do, or until you have a broken relationship, maybe with a friend or child or family member, and then you feel broken and hopeless. Or maybe you're a situation where you finally got everything that you wanted. You finally got there. You got the job. You got the house. You got the six-figure income. You got the boat. You got the vocation. You got it all. And you sit there, and then you begin to realize, yeah, I might be rich in stuff, but I'm spiritually empty. I'm poor in spirit.

Revelation 3:17 continues on. It says, "And you do not realize." Don't realize. I may not realize. You do not realize. "Wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked." Have you ever been out to dinner, maybe with some friends, and you're having a good time, you're having a great conversation, and then you go to the restroom, and you look in the mirror, and all of a sudden you realize you've got food in your teeth, right? You got a little piece of meat stuck right here. Maybe you got a little bit of cilantro or pepper or something, and you're just like, "Oh my gosh. "I've got stuff in my teeth." Last year, right up here, one Sunday I led worship. It was great. It was an awesome Sunday. The band was rocking. You guys were worshiping. I didn't make any mistakes, which is impressive. I usually make mistakes every Sunday, just to let you know. I got done, I walked in the back, and what I realized, my zipper was down. I led worship up here for the whole service with my zipper down. I didn't realize. It was recently I got a haircut, and I got my beard trimmed up. I was feeling good. Life was great. I had a big meeting with some other pastors. We were having a good conversation. Was doing just awesome. I felt like a million bucks. I don't know, a new haircut, right? It can just make you feel like you're just killing it. And then I get home, and I look in the mirror, and what happened? I had these nose hairs that I felt like went all the way down to my mustache. They probably didn't go that far. But then there was like a little booger hanging in there. The whole time, I'm so focused on this up here and the sideburns and all the beard and everything. And yet the one hairs that needed to be trimmed didn't get trimmed. I didn't realize.

What if you are lukewarm and you just don't realize? What if you are not fulfilling your God-ordained purpose and you don't even realize it? You think, you know, I'm okay, I'm good. I'm a spiritual person. I believe in God and everything. I'm all right. I got my Jesus, I'm good. But you don't even realize that you're spiritually wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and you got your zipper down. You're naked. Or you got a booger hanging in your nose hairs. See, lukewarm Christian-ish faith is perhaps the greatest and ultimate form of self-deception. It's enough of Jesus to soothe your conscience with some good word and encouragement and some music every Sunday, but it's not enough to make you anew. What if you're lukewarm and you just don't even realize it? Christian-ish. How do you know if you're lukewarm?

I kind of put together five different thoughts and signs that you might be lukewarm. This isn't an exhaustive list, this isn't an end all be all, but this is kind of maybe a place to start to check our hearts. The first of which would be you might be lukewarm if you crave acceptance from people more than acceptance from God. More than trying to live a life that is pleasing to God, you actually just wanna be liked by people. You wanna fit in, you wanna be popular, want everybody to like you, you wanna be long, and that's fine, that's natural. We have that inside of us, but you end up just going along with the crowd. It's easier just to go along than to fight against, right? It's easier to go along than you have to stand out and to do something that Jesus has called you to this. Jesus says this, "Woe to you, "who everyone speaks well of you, "because if you're truly following Jesus, "you will be persecuted." That's the reality. You may be lukewarm if you're seeking acceptance of people more than acceptance from God. Number two, you may be lukewarm if you rationalize sin. If there's sin in your life, something in your life that's displeasing or dishonorable to God, but you explain it away. Hey, everybody else is doing it, so it just, is it really that big of a deal? Nobody needs to be in my business, that's me and my own business, stay out of it. I'm not hurting anybody, but God's word in Isaiah says, "Woe to those people who call good evil and evil good." You might be lukewarm, and you don't even realize it, if you rationalize or explain away your sin.

Third one, you might be lukewarm if you rarely share your faith in Christ. You say, "Oh, I'm a Christian, I believe in Jesus. "I know I'm called to be a light in this world, "but it's just not my gift. I'm just not wired like that. "I'm not very good at it. "I don't want to offend people. "I just, I'm better at other things, "so I'm gonna focus on those things, "so I just, I don't share my faith." Maybe you're so timid in your faith that you've been working with someone in your job for seven years, and they would be surprised to find out that you're a follower of Jesus. I can be convicted of this one as well. Sometimes I myself forget to invite people to church when I'm the one that is kinda doing a lot. You rarely share your faith in Christ. You don't want to offend people. You don't even realize. Number four, you might be lukewarm. You only turn to God when you need something. God is your emergency 911. He's that call when it all hits the fan. Instead of seeking Him every single day and letting His Holy Spirit guide your life, letting His Word come into your heart and build your faith, would you renew your mind? You call on Him when you're in trouble. Maybe like a tool in our toolbox that we pull out when we need it, and then when we're done with it, we put it in the drawer, we close it, and we know it's there when we can go back to it, but we only really use it or pull it out when we need it. Something that we use instead of a God that we truly honor and worship. You might be lukewarm when God is someone you call on when you need something.

The final thought, you might be lukewarm when you're not much different from this world. So you call yourself a Christian, but you talk like you're not. Maybe you gossip just like everybody else at work. Maybe it's under the guise of I'm gonna gossip because I need to pray for my brother or sister in Christ. Or maybe you cuss, I don't know. Maybe you take the Lord's name in vain. Maybe you're critical of other people. You're judgmental with your words. Maybe you're watching the same shows on Netflix and TV, shows that take God's name in vain and are horrible stuff that is just completely dishonoring to God, but you rationalize it. Maybe you're rationalizing some sexual sin and you say, it's just not that big of a deal. I'm not going that far. I'm not hurting anybody. Or maybe you're hanging out with friends and you just have a few too many to drink. Just a little tipsy, just a little buzz. I'm not like pass out drunk. Or maybe, I don't know, you're doing drugs and you know you shouldn't, but you're doing it because everybody else is doing it. You're living for the things of this world. Maybe you're living for money. You're clamoring for success for yourself. And yet at the same time, you claim Jesus is all your success. But your actions say something different. Your actions say that you love the world. What if you're lukewarm and you don't even realize it? You claim Jesus yet. You love this world. 1 John 2:15 reminds us to, "Do not love the world or anything in the world. "If anyone loves the world, "the love of the Father is not in them.”

So you may say, okay, Chris, you're obviously coming out swinging in 2026. You're not holding anything back. But I feel convicted. Is Jesus mad at me? I wanna tell you right now, and I wanna promise to you that Jesus loves you more than you can imagine. He does. He loves you way more than you can even think or fathom in your life. And when Jesus was calling out the Laodiceans as being lukewarm, he was not to shame them or to make them feel guilty. He was loving them. He was loving them. It says this in Revelation 3:19, "I correct and I discipline everyone I love. So be diligent and turn from your indifference.” Jesus is saying, I'm not angry at you. I'm not mad at you. I love you. Just as if a parent correcting a child. You're loving them. You're trying to help them. You're trying to guide them. You're not mad at them. I got some kids in the audience this morning. Where a parent is guiding them and leading them, loving them. I've been convicted by the Holy Spirit on this story myself. I heard an analogy from a, I think it was an author, a Christian author, and talks about how our heart is like rooms in our house. And I think sometimes that we're good to let like Jesus into the living room, but that's it, right? Maybe he makes it to the kitchen, heaven forbid, maybe the hall bathroom, but he ain't going in the bedroom, right? And he's really not going to the closet and he's really not going for that box that I've got deep back, deep, deep, deep back in there in my heart. I'm not opening that box for him. Newsflash, Jesus knows the box is there. That's the reality. You're not hiding anything from him. But I think there's just something about this word here, this word indifference.

The scripture is saying, Jesus is saying, "Be diligent, turn from your indifference." I find this striking because there's, I think, this one word truly captures a lot of Christian-ish people when it comes to the things of God. They're just indifferent. Take it if it helps, leave if it doesn't. Call on Jesus when you need him. Live comfortably by yourself when you don't. And so maybe you're feeling a little bit of the conviction of the Holy Spirit right now. And that's not because God has managed you. It's because God is loving you. So what do we do? What do we do this? How do we grow out of this Christian-ish life? I was there probably middle school, high school of my life. And I was in church every Sunday. I was there for Bible studies. I was there for youth group. I was there for service projects. I even went to a Christian school. And when I was around all the Christian people, I spoke all the Christian stuff. I lived a life, I said the right things. I do the Jesus stuff. But then when I was around my non-Christian friends, I was so far from Jesus, it wasn't even funny. I was living this lukewarm, hot, cold life. And God got my attention one year at youth camp. And he says, "What are you gonna do, dude? "You gotta choose one. "Either in or you're out. "I'm done with this lukewarm garbage in your life, Chris. "You gotta choose." And I remember sitting on a rock overlooking this lake, having this argument with God. And he said, "You just can't keep living like this. "Can't live over here like this "and then go do this stuff over here." I was living Christian-ish. But I had to make a decision. And God may be like me right now. He might be convicting you in his love.

So what do you gotta do? I have some good news for you this morning. And I could give you a list of 21 things for you to start today to live out of your Christian-ish and step into a Christian faith. And I think there would probably be some pretty good stuff. I talk about reading God's word daily because when you do, it changes and transforms who you are. I would say you need to pray and talk to God every single day. You need to be in Christian community and accountability. You need to get in the Word of God. You need to be in Christian community and accountability. You need to give and to trust God by faith. You need to worship. You need to be in church every single Sunday in 2026. I could give you a whole laundry list, but if you're probably like me, maybe just even a little bit, sometimes when you're given too much, you end up doing nothing at all, right? It's 2026. You're supposed to be doing all this new stuff. You're supposed to be working out, eating better. You're supposed to be going to bed on time. You're supposed to have less blue light at night. You're supposed to be doing this. You're supposed to be doing that. Eat your vegetables, right? No more sugar. Everybody's telling you to do all this stuff, and then what happens? Tomorrow. Right? So I don't wanna do that.

I wanna be honest. I wanna give you one thing today. Here's your one thing to walk away from today. Are you ready? If you wanna grow out of your Christian-ish illusion of self-deception to be truly a follower, devoted disciple of Jesus, I suggest this. Do something every day that requires faith. Do something every single day that requires you to trust in God. And take time each day. I don't know, write it down. Start a note on your phone. And start tracking. And if you miss one day, whoop-de-doo. Start the next day. And then do it again the next day. And do it the next day. Every single day, do something that requires you to put your faith in Jesus more than you did the day before. Maybe for you, it's to do what is right, even if a friend might make fun of you. Maybe it's to worship God even when you don't feel like it. That by faith, you worship Him. Maybe you need to forgive somebody. We just came through the holidays and the season of family and all the fun that comes along with that. Maybe you need to forgive somebody, ask for forgiveness. Maybe it's somebody who hurts you really deeply. Maybe it's a friend, a family member. Maybe you need to give sacrificially above a tithe. Maybe you need to tithe for the very first time, 'cause that's gonna take a whole lot of faith. Maybe you need to invite somebody to church. Maybe you need to share your faith in a way that isn't just like, hey, good to see you, bye. Gave him a little Jesus, didn't know it. Maybe you need to pray to ask God to do something impossible in your life that you're like, why do I even begin to pray this? This isn't gonna happen. Maybe you do.

Do something that requires faith. Hebrews 11:6 says, "And without faith, it is impossible to please God." Do something that requires faith. Please, God, do something every day that requires faith to put your trust in Jesus. 'Cause when you do that, you won't be Christian-ish. You can't be Christian-ish if you're doing that. You won't be lukewarm. You know what, you won't be tepid. You will be hot in your faith. Why? Because you're serving God. You're glorifying him. And when you do something that requires faith, you're depending upon God, not yourself. You're depending upon God. And suddenly you're just not concerned with the world around you and what they think. Your one concern is an audience of one. I'm glorifying God, I'm honoring God. That is what matters. You're living for his approval. Maybe you'll stop rationalizing your sin because why? You will be confessing your sins to Jesus. And Jesus says, "When you confess your sins, he being God is faithful and just to forgive you and to cleanse you from all of your unrighteousness." Be empowered by the Holy Spirit to do the will of God. Instead of hiding in your faith, you will be bold. You'll start sharing your faith with others and you won't care what they think. And they will see it. They will be lit up like a light in a dark place and they will be drawn to the savior. Mary, for the very first time, through the power of the gospel. And you don't just turn to God when you need something, but you seek him, you prioritize him. Pastor Andreas said it beautifully before, church on Sunday starts on Saturday. You don't just wake up and accidentally fall into church, right? You made a conscious decision last night or maybe earlier in the week, maybe you need to back it up a few days. You made a conscious decision to be in church today. And I think you are here for a purpose and a reason. And God has a word for your life. You design your life around him. And you know what'll happen? You won't look like the world anymore. You will be different and people will know it. Others will respect it. You are not Christian-ish. You are dead to yourself, but you are alive in Christ.

So what if you find out you got some stuff in your teeth or your zipper's down, or you might be a little bit lukewarm, and you don't even realize it, what do you do? Jesus says here in Revelation 3.20, look, I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and we'll share a meal together as friends. Jesus is knocking. You let him into your life. See this word here, this knock in the Greek, it's what they call like a perfect tense. It means it's an active, ongoing thing. Jesus is just knocking. And he's knocking. And he's knocking. He's not trying to sell you anything. Not getting you to sign up for a home warranty. He's just knocking. But in a way that is so loving and caring that says, will you just let me in? You know what's even greater is that there's only even a door there because of Jesus. And that it's only by the grace of Jesus that we can even open the door. But there's a door and Jesus is knocking. And Jesus has created and made a way for you to have a life like you never experienced it. To live life with purpose in the way that you were created. So what do you do? I'd encourage you open the door. I would encourage you to go all in. What if 2026 was the year that you stopped holding anything back? And just see what happens. Just see what happens. Just let God come into your life. Just let him have access as the story I was saying. Your home is like your heart. Have access to everything and just let him do his thing. What would that look like in your life? 'Cause I wanna be a follower of Jesus that's not gonna settle for a faith that looks the part but lacks the power. I wanna be a fully follower of Jesus, a disciple of Jesus in the everyday stuff of life. To let him come and saturate my heart and my life and transform me into the person he has created me to be. Luke Warm doesn't just grieve God, but it robs you of the life that God wants for you. He doesn't want half of your heart. He doesn't want a little bit of your heart. He doesn't want just this over here and this over here and this over here. He wants your entire heart. He wants it all. He's standing at the door, knocking. No one's gonna stop him from knocking. He's just there. The question is, will you let him in? Will you let him come in and bring full purpose and meaning and life to you so that you can experience the life that he desired and created for you? So what if you don't realize it? You might be Luke Warm. What are you gonna do? You're gonna do something every day that requires faith because without faith, it's impossible to please God. And more than anything else, what do we wanna do? We wanna please God with everything that we are and everything that we do.

Holy Spirit, I pray that you would stir God deep within us, that we would become the people that you created us to be. And right now, I wanna take a moment. I just wanna, I wanna talk to those in this room who are a Christian. You know you're a Christian. You're not just Christian-ish. You know that you're a Christian and you have maybe become a little comfortable in your life. And I wanna try to help stir you up in your faith. And I wanna challenge you that every day this week, for the next seven days, you would write something down. You would maybe put in your phone, put it somewhere. I don't know where you wanna put it. But I want you to do something that requires faith. And this is for those that you're a Christian and you don't want to become comfortable that every day this week, you're going to look for that moment at least once a day, maybe more. I don't know, but you just are gonna say, "Yes, Chris, I want you to pray for me this week "as I step out in faith." Is that you? I just want you to raise your hand 'cause I wanna pray for you this week. If you would say, "I'm gonna be one. "I wanna step out this week. "Every single day I'm gonna do something in faith." I see you guys, thank you. Yes. God, I pray for those, Jesus, that as they raise their hands, that maybe that was their first step of faith to go, "God, I don't know. "I'm trusting you. "I don't know what this looks like. "I don't know all the details of it, but I'm trusting you. "I am going to step out this week, "and I'm gonna do something every single day "that requires faith." God, I pray that you would be with us, that you would be with those who right now just raised their hands, that you would help them and give them a boldness. They would give them faith, not to live by sight, but God, to depend on you. 'Cause we know without you, we don't have anything. So God, I pray that you would stir up a boldness. You would forgive us, but when we are comfortable, you would teach us, God, to live by faith every single day.

And as we continue to pray, maybe you would say, "Chris, I'm like that guy "that you were talking about. "Maybe I've been coming to church just to be social, "or maybe just be spiritual in general. "I think it's a cool church or whatever." But you're not really walking with Jesus. You have not taken that step of faith to put your full trust and your full self in him. You hear Jesus knocking at the door, and you might've been convicted a little bit this morning, but you would say, "For the very first time, Chris, "I want to let Jesus into my life. "I want to open up the door." If you would say, "That is you, "I wanna put up a salvation prayer on our screen, "and I would encourage you to pray this prayer. "I'm gonna say it out loud. "I want you to pray in your heart, "but I want you, in this prayer, "for you are opening up the door to Jesus." And this is the prayer. It says, "Father in heaven, "I know that I've lived for myself instead of you. "I have sinned against you, "but I believe that Jesus died for my sin, "so I confess my sin, and I ask you to forgive me. "I bow to you as Lord and leader of my life. "Help me to live for you from this day forward. "In Jesus' name." If you were one who prayed that prayer, you would say for the very first time, "I want you to look up. "I wanna be able to celebrate you. "I wanna pray with you. "I wanna lift you up in Jesus' name, "because I am so excited with you "that you're leaving your Christian-ish behind, "and that you're stepping to a relationship with Jesus "for the very first time. "Jesus, we thank you for this morning. "God, I thank you sometimes even for the hard sermons. "God, as you've put this on our hearts "over a month ago, God, "that knowing that this wouldn't be the easiest thing "maybe to hear in the first week of January in 2026, "God, but it was what you wanted us to hear. "So God, I pray that as we step into faith with you, "as we leave our Christian-ish behind, "as we take a step of faith "and to do something each and every day "to trust in you a little bit more in 2026, "God, may this be the year that we go fully all in "in our faith for you, God. "God, transform us. "God, shape us. "God, give us purpose and meaning "for what you have for our life. "We thank you, Jesus. "We love you. "Amen.

Pre-Decide: Part 7

Pre-Decide: Part 7 - I AM A FINISHER

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

So we've been in this series talking about pre-decide and we're going to wrap that up this week but but first I want to kind of maybe talk to those in the room who have ever felt like giving up. You've felt like you want to give up. You got you got into a place in life maybe maybe you at one point... Oh wonderful thank you sir. Maybe at one point you had a dream or you had a goal you had a vision maybe you started with great anticipation you're all excited about you kicked it off. It was going great, but then you hit a wall. You hit resistance and then all of a sudden you found yourself in a place with little to no progress. Frustration started to set in. You felt like discouraged. You wanted to give up. Anybody ever been in a situation like that? Maybe this week. Maybe yesterday. Maybe this morning. I don't know. But maybe you found yourself in a situation where you had a relationship where you really wanted to restore it. You wanted amend it and you tried everything you could you poured energy and time and effort into it and then you found yourself with an even more broken relationship on the other side maybe you're fighting to save your marriage you're doing everything you can you're pouring everything into it but you're just running out of fight you're maybe you're believing for a miracle you have something that you have been praying about every single day for God to do in your life maybe your kids live maybe in a friendship maybe a healing a financial situation like God I need you to do something here I need a miracle you need God to help you overcome maybe an addiction and you tried and you've prayed and you believe but you have seen little to no results and you're losing hope I want to talk with those today who have ever felt in that place or maybe you're in that place today and I want to if you're gonna write something down this morning I want you to write this down when you want to give up we're gonna talk about that today. If you would pray with me. Jesus we thank you for this morning God thank you for those who are here to be able to gather with us God we pray for those who aren't able to be here but are still watching us and joining us through the awesome thing called the internet Jesus we thank you for your blessings in our lives every day and Jesus I pray that the word that you have for us today that you would make it absolutely 100% clear that we would know exactly what you want us to do you know exactly how we're supposed to take that first step today we thank you Jesus, Amen

Well we are concluding a series today and called pre decide and we've been in for five, six weeks or so. And we've been talking about this idea of our decisions. And we first started off, the first week we talked about the quality of our decisions, of your decisions, my decisions, determines the quality of our life. Problem is, we're not good decision makers, right? We try really hard and there's times where we just nail it. We knock it out of the park, we kill the decision. we're like, yeah, look at what I did right here, yes. But then other times you're like, I'm just so, just, I can't. And we just make the wrong decision. Well, our series we're focusing on the statement we've been talking about and this idea of when we're faced with a certain situation, we have pre decided to take a specific action. So when you find yourself in this place, but beforehand without emotion, with the leading of God's will on our lives and His word and prayer and focus and encouragement from our community, we have pre-decided to make this specific action when faced with this certain situation. We've had this statement, we had this circle, we handed out stickers. And if you want one of these cool circle stickers, we got some in the back on the table, we'd love for you to take one home. But we have these six things that we're focusing on. And we've been talking about how I am ready. Say it with me, I am ready. Oh, you're ready, I love it. Talking about I am consistent, I am devoted, I am generous, I am faithful, and by the will of God and His faithfulness in our lives, we will be a finisher. And that's what we're talking about today. I know one thing about the desire to finish. I'm a project guy, I love projects, I love to do things, I love to get my hands dirty, but the desire to finish, it is so easy to start, right? So easy to start, but it is so not easy to finish, right? My wife, God bless her heart, has been living in a kitchen now for over a year. She's got really awesome countertops, painted cabinets, new appliances, but no backsplash. It's just cement board. Just basically plywood on the walls. Everything else looks awesome. New sink, garbage disposal, it's beautiful. No backsplash. I am famous for starting things, but never getting to the point of finishing them.

See, this idea for us is a lot more important than I think people understand, right? Because I want to ask you a certain question, and I think you'll be able to understand, is what do you think separates average people from amazing people? What's the difference from those who are really fulfilled in life and those who are often empty, maybe those who struggle or those who succeed? I will tell you, it is not their intelligence, it's not their appearance, it's not their It's not their education. It's not who or what they know It the difference is their perseverance their perseverance Their willingness to stick to it their grit to finish their drive to preserve Persevere the refusal to quit there was this big study that was done recently that that interviewed successful people And we're talking talking a fortune 500 business leaders. We're talking successful military leaders We're talking teachers, we're talking even like spelling bee champions, like the whole spectrum of people. They did this research and all this was down to one quality that separated unsuccessful people and successful people. And it's one quality and it is this. It is grit. Grit. The definition of grit, if you don't know what word I'm talking about, is the strength of character that refuses to quit. If you follow the NFL, there's a team out of Detroit right now that is all about grit. They got into the playoffs, but not very far in the playoffs, okay? I'm just kidding. It's going against my whole sermon. But the lady who did this whole research, her name is Angela Duckworth, and she has this quote with this giant study that she did. She said, "Enthusiasm is common." You can find it everywhere. Everybody's excited about something, right? So excited for this. I can't wait for this, can't wait for this. This is happening, I'm really pumped. But endurance is rare. Endurance is extremely, extremely rare. Grit is this difference that it is not what you know or who you know, but it's your willingness to stay in the fight. Easy to start, it's hard to finish. And this is why we wrap up our whole series with this one statement we just said, it said, I am a finisher. We are pre-deciding to be finishers. And by nature, we wanna take the easy way out, right? We wanna take the simple road, the easy path. The one of least resistance, that's like boom here to there. Like I am constantly when I drive on ways with my app. Why? Because I wanna know if there's traffic, or something in the road, I want the easy way, I wanna get home as quick as I possibly can. We live in that world today.

But our big decision today that we are making when we pre-decide to be a finisher is this. It says, "When I commit, I don't quit. "I am a finisher." Say this with me, he says, "When I commit, I don't quit, I am a finisher." a finisher. And why is that? Well because us as disciples of Jesus, how do we persevere? How do we strengthen? Because the devil wants to pull us back, right? The devil wants us to quit. The devil wants us to throw off our game. So how do we strengthen ourselves so when we get to the point where we want to quit that we don't? There's this moment, I want to look at the words of Apostle Paul. And he's in prison, and he's writing this letter to basically his spiritual son Timothy. And he's in jail under the Emperor Nero, and he's basically waiting to be beheaded. And he's in a dungeon, well really more of like a sewer. So he's like underground in a sewer, and he's just waiting to be killed. And this was a really common place for these people to wait to be executed. And a lot of them honestly wouldn't even survive just being in the sewer. They would just die even before their execution. But Paul is writing this letter to his spiritual son, Timothy, with all of his emotion and everything that he has. Essentially, these are his last words. And he writes it to Timothy. We see this in 2 Timothy 4:5. He says to him, Paul, “Do not be afraid of suffering for the Lord. Work at telling others the good news and fully carry out the ministry that God has given to you.” You think I'd be here to encourage you this morning? I am, but we gotta get through some stuff first. But here's the reality. If we're gonna finish like we say we are, we're gonna likely suffer. We're likely gonna go through some hard times. And honestly, being a Christian doesn't mean that you don't have hard times. It actually means honestly the opposite, that being a Christian, a follower of Jesus, a disciple of God Almighty means that we're probably most likely absolutely going to suffer. And in other words, Paul here is trying to tell Timothy that don't be afraid. Don't be afraid, but carry out the ministry that God has given you, even if you're going to suffer. He continues on, "As for me, my life has already been poured out as an offering to God. The time of my death is near. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have remained faithful." Paul here is saying, I've been in the battle. I've not given up. I fought the good fight. I have remained faithful and I have pressed forward even in the face of suffering. Here is what is really powerful about this. And I think Paul here has finished his race. There's nothing that's gonna save him. There's nothing that's gonna rescue him. History shows us that after this point, he is beheaded, he is killed, he no longer lives here on earth, but in heaven.

And what is powerful is that it's obvious that Paul has finished his race, but you and I have not finished ours. You and I have not finished our race yet. And if you find yourself in a place of discouragement or feel like giving up, maybe God might be saying to you even today, if you're not dead, you're not done. If you're not dead, you're not done. There is more for you to do. God has more for you. I see some of you checking yourself. Am I alive in this moment right here? Yes, you are. God's got more for you to do. He still has more plans, more assignments. He's got more stuff for you to do. He's got more ministry for you to do. He's got more business for you to do. He's got more content for you to take. He's got more hope for you to share, more friendship for you to make, for more addictions to break. Turn to the person next to you and say, "God's got more for you." Come on, come on. God's got more for you. If you're not dead, you're not done. There's more for you to do. And Paul here is encouraging Timothy, I might be done, but you aren't done yet. fully finish, fully finish the work that God has started in you. But you don't get it, Pastor Chris. I'm tired. I'm tired, and not just tired, but I'm turd. I am tired, I'm tired. I know, I talked to some of you guys. Hey, how was your week? I'm tired. How you guys doing? I'm busy and I'm tired and I'm tired and I'm busy. I'm tired, I'm busy. I'm tired, I'm busy. I'm tired. A lot of us feel like there is so much to get done, right? So much still to get done. Author and speaker, David Allen has this quote I think might help encourage us today. “It's as much of the stress that people feel doesn't come from having too much to do, it comes from not finishing what they've started.” Maybe some of you have this just constant stress in your life that what you have to do isn't getting done. and that you don't know how you're gonna move forward.

If you guys would with me, just kind of have, just mentally right now, just kind of shift into this posture of prayer. I wanna read some scripture of you and ask you a question, but kind of just have this moment of posture or prayer is that I want you to set yourself up for maybe what God wants to share with you this morning in this moment today that you would be listening to him and maybe something that God is prompting you of something that you haven't finished. And I'm not talking about like, oh yeah, pastor, I haven't finished season four of that on Netflix. But like, I'm talking about something really spiritual, okay, something spiritual. Jesus says this to the church in Sardis in Revelation. He says, "I know your deeds. You have a reputation of being alive, but you're dead." Maybe you feel like that this morning. Someone would say, "Oh, you're such a good Christian, but deep down inside, you're like, I'm just not feeling it." Jesus says, "Wake up, strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have found your deeds unfinished in the sight of God." Here's the question I want to ask you. What is your unfinished business? Maybe it's a unfinished assignment. What is it more specifically though as a follower of Jesus? Maybe you once were prompted to do something, you know you were supposed to do it, you thought you were going to do it, you really wanted to go and do it, You hoped to do it, you thought about doing it, and you knew you were supposed to maybe say something, you were prompted to give something, maybe you were looking to reach out to someone. What is it that you were prompted to do? Maybe you were supposed to reach out and mend a relationship. Maybe you were supposed to step out in faith and take a step that you didn't know all that was gonna happen after that, but God said, I need you just to take this step. Maybe you were something as simple as you were supposed to go finish your degree, but you just, you haven't yet. Maybe you were supposed to start some kind of hobby or you're supposed to start join a community group. We're kicking off on Wednesday. Maybe you're supposed to start serving in the church in a way with the gifts and talents that God has given you. Maybe you were supposed to follow through with something, but you just never got there? Maybe a physical goal, a spiritual goal, maybe even to just apologize to someone, but you just never got there.

What's the unfinished business that you have in your life that God has asked you to do? What just, let that kind of sink in for a moment. What would God be saying to you? Paul has some really incredible advice And this in 2nd Corinthians, he says, “Here’s my advice It would be good for you To finish what you started a year ago church.” and Corinth got off to this great start They were doing all these amazing things and it kind of just Like all of us it just fizzles out, right? “Last year you were the first who wanted to give and you were the first to begin doing it Now you should finish what you started.” What's your Maybe you're thinking about it right now. Maybe you're like, "I don't even know what you would want me to do right now." But I think we have to answer the question of, "What if we don't do it?" What if we don't follow through? I mean, honestly, there's some things in life that we should quit. So I'm not talking about those things and we can't do everything, but each of us has something that we are called to do. Some of us have divine assignments on our lives, but we have yet to finish them. So what does it matter if we quit? Today, you are going to face an opportunity to determine who you are. You're gonna show that, let's put it this way. You are going to cast a vote for your future self in this moment, that you are going to either decide to do what you're supposed to do and cast a vote to be a finisher, or you're gonna decide not to do that, and you will then in turn cast a vote for being a non finisher.

So the question for us is, who are we? This is why it's important. You're gonna come, you're gonna face a moment in life, whether maybe some of you have faced this before, you're probably gonna face something in the near future where you're gonna have to make a tough decision. And you're gonna have to decide the kind of person you are. you are going to cast a vote into which camp of the person that you want to be. And you're gonna face something and some moment where it's gonna seem like impossible odds. It's gonna seem like everything is stacked against you. It's gonna seem like you're gonna have people and friends in your life that are gonna turn to you and say, there's no chance that this is ever gonna come through. But God is standing there saying, I want you to take this step of faith. And you're gonna have to decide, will I face this adversity? Will I overcome the greatest pillars of faith in the halls of history have faced this and chosen correctly? Was it easy? Absolutely not. Was it all fun and celebration did a confetti cannon go off when they made the right decision? No, most likely not, maybe. But they at some point had to make the tough decision. It didn't mean they didn't struggle through it, but you didn't see them quit. Just because I'm up here with the carpet, the table, and the podium doesn't mean that I have it figured out. Can I be honest with you? I wanted to quit yesterday. I did. I 1,000% wanted to quit, but then I knew that I was going to have to be here at 10 a.m. to give a sermon to myself and you guys. This sermon is so much, just as much for me as it is for you guys here today. Saturdays for some reason in our house have just been chaos. And I think it's because the devil knows that Sunday's coming, right? The devil knows Sunday's coming and he's like, I gotta knock that pastor off of his path. 'Cause if I can, then I can start messing with Spring Valley. So if you guys are thinking of Pastor Andre and myself on Saturdays, people will be praying for us. We covet your prayers, you guys are amazing. I know there's so many of you that pray for us every single day and we feel it, we feel it. But I wanted to quit yesterday. But I knew I couldn't. And I struggled through it. So you may see me struggle, but I'll tell you 100% here today, right now and forevermore, I will never quit. I will never quit.

And the apostle Paul is this incredible like superhero of the faith. He's just this stellar pillar of the early church. And he even himself struggled, but he never quit. He fought through day after day after day. And he shares what I would consider his life motto in Acts chapter 20 at the end of his life. He says, "However, I consider my life worth nothing to me. "My only aim is to finish the race "and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me, "the task of testifying to the good news of God's grace." "My only goal in life," Paul says, "is to finish the race." But there's this little phrase in there of this power-packed verse that I think some of us just kinda gloss over real quick. And it answers the question of, how could Paul finish the race? He says this right at the beginning, because he wasn't running for himself. He says, I consider my life worth nothing to me. Paul says, it's not about me. It's not about my dreams. It's not about my desires. It's not about his popularity. Paul says, "I consider my life worth nothing." And I had this thought yesterday in the midst of wanting to quit. Me wanting to quit what God has called me to do was maybe because I cared something about more than running God's race. And I think for some of us, we might find ourselves in that place. That there might be something that we care about more, whether we want to admit it or not, than God's race that he's called each and every one of us to run. And we have to really wrestle with this. And this concept of, I consider my blank worth nothing to me. What would that be? Maybe your comfort. Maybe your net worth, your opinions of others, social media follows, your personal hopes and dreams that you can only finish the race that God has called us to run when we commit to him and we don't quit. So how do we run our race? How will you and I finish? We can't run it for ourselves. We can only run it for God. And when you run it for God, the only way that you can is to take it one step at a time. So I want to encourage you this morning, take the next step. Take the next step. And here's what's even greater. You don't have to finish your race today. This is a life long journey day in, day out, week in, week out, month in, month out, year in, year out, decade in, decade out. centurion in, I don't think we'll get there but just take the next step. This is how Paul lived his life moment by moment. If you've read his story it is crazy.

When we look at the greatest example of Jesus, he lived this life. He took it one step at a time. And Jesus is on the cross right before he looks up to his heaven and basically cries out, "Into your hands, God, I commit my spirit," and he breathes his wrath. Just before that, he says, "Telestai, it is finished." finished He's saying I did everything you sent me here to do dad I'm coming home. I finished my race Jesus wasn't running for himself He was running for his father Day by day week by week month by month year by year painful moment after painful moment, he just took the next step. When they hated him, he just took the next step and loved them back. When they struck him on the cheek, he just took the next step and turned the other cheek. When he was carrying the cross up the hill, he fell down. He stood back up and took the next step. When he was hanging there on the cross and they cursed him and they mocked him and they shamed him He took another step and says father forgive them. They just don't know what they're doing From that very moment Jesus decided that he is going to always be ready He's always gonna be consistent He's always gonna be devoted. He's always gonna be generous He's always gonna be faithful, and he's always gonna be a finisher. So what are you and I gonna do? The trajectory of our life is always towards what is easy, what's convenient. And the devil's gonna want you to quit, I'll just be honest here. He's gonna want you to give up on what God has called you to start and to do. So you and I are going to have to pre-decide that no, we're not gonna do that, but that when we commit, we will not quit. When you run for God, you run one step at a time.

There's the story of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. And there's this runner sprinter by the name of Derek Redmond. And he was basically the shoe in for the 400 meter. He was gonna win it hands down. There was no other competition. There was nobody that was gonna even come close to him. It was all his, it was basically you might as well and put the gold medal on him before the gun went off. And the gun goes off and they start the race and about halfway through, he collapses to the track and he ruptures his hamstring. All the training, all the early mornings, all the late nights, all the perfect meals, all the perfect schedule, all the travel, all the meeting with coaches and doctors and trainers, everything that he had put into this moment in an instant is completely shattered. Everything is gone. The Olympic hope and dream doesn't exist anymore. And as he lays there on the track in pain and agony, his dad is there to watch him. And his dad gets up out of his seat, gets down on the track, walks up to his son, picks him up, and the two of them hobble to finish the race. Here's what I want you to get. You and I running this race don't run alone. We don't run alone. The Father is there with us every single step of the way. So when we slip up, when we fall down, when we mess up, when we don't make the right choice, God is there with us, carrying us along. It says in Philippians, "Be confident of this, "that he, being God, who began a good work in you, "will carry it to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

You never run alone. So, you may see me struggle. You may see me want to quit, but I won't quit. Because when I commit, I don't quit. I'm a finisher. And you, because you're a disciple of Jesus, and he is the ultimate finisher, he is the author and perfecter of our faith, that when he says he started it, he will finish it. 'Cause Jesus says, "When I commit, I don't quit. "I am the finisher." Pray with me. Jesus, we thank you for today. God, we are so incredibly grateful for your grace, your mercy, your hope. And so Jesus, today I pray that you would speak truth into our lives. God, that you would reveal where maybe we have unfinished business. That God, you would reveal this to us right here, right now, today, in this moment, or maybe this week, God, that you would reveal of where we need to finish. And God, I pray that you would give us the strength for us to be faithful. That every day that we would find ourselves running for you, not for ourselves, not for our own glory or our own recognition, but running for you, God. Taking that next step, even when we don't understand, even when it might not make sense, even when we don't fully understand how the race is going to finish, God, but that we would just take the next step in you and that we may at the end of our life here on earth when we see you in heaven that we ourselves may be faithful as Paul and as Jesus and as so many others before us have been so faithful to finish that race God made we to finish the race that we may be faithful to you that we may be be a finisher. Jesus, thank you for being the ultimate example of a finisher.

Pre-Decide: Part 6

Pre-Decide: Part 6 - I AM FAITHFUL

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

I wanna ask you a question real quick. as we jump in, if you had one word, it would be a goal or something to achieve in life, what would that one word, what would you choose to be that one word for you? Just one word, one word that you would do everything you can that you would want and desire for it to represent your character, maybe your nature, everything that would summarize for what you stand for in life. What would that one word be? There was a recent survey, a study done of people both in and outside of the church. And they were asked this very same question and the top three common answers that came out from this survey, the first of which, and these are all really good things. The first of which are the word that people says they wanna be successful. And I like this, I like this. I think God wants us to be successful. God makes successful people. God creates successful people and gives them opportunities. And I hope and pray that you find success in life. The second word would be influential. And this is a good word. This is another good word. And for us as Christians, this is a good word because as Jesus calls us, we're to be salt and light in the world, to push back darkness, to change things, that we are called as ambassadors to make a difference in this life for the kingdom of God. The third word was happy. I think each and every one of us deep down inside, we can really resonate with this word, right? Another term might be used here would be a blessed or a fulfilled life. But even as good as these three words are, there is what I believe one word that in God's eyes should stand above all of the rest. So that when we get to heaven, and if we live a life that pleases God, he won't say to us when we meet him face to face, "Well done, my good and successful servant." He won't say that. He won't say, "Well done, my good and influential servant." He's not gonna say, "Well done, my good and happy servant." What he will say to us, Jesus will say, "Well done, my good and faithful servant." And that there was one word that would stand above every other word I believe that we should strive to be faithful, that we should be the faithful of Christ. Turn the person next to you and say, you're looking faithful today. Looking faith, yeah, there we go. That's right, I like it, I like it. If you were to write something down this morning, I want you to write down this morning of one word that will change your life. And that's what we're gonna be talking about this morning.

Pray with me. Jesus, thank you so much for this morning. God, we pray for those who aren't able to be with us, those who are joining us online. Jesus, I pray that you would touch their hearts right now, wherever they are. God, whatever they're walking through in life right now, Jesus, you are right there beside them. They are not alone in what they are going through. And Jesus, I pray for us who are here, present, in person, Jesus, that your word would speak over our lives today, that we would, you have something specific for us, Jesus. And so I pray that you would reveal that to us and that we would not leave here the same as when we walked in those doors this morning, Jesus. Transform our hearts, transform our lives, make us into who you want us to be today, Jesus. We thank you for your love. Amen.

Today, we're gonna be talking about this idea of being faithful. And if you've been with us, we've been in this series, Predeciding, And we've been talking about our decisions and how the quality of our decisions determines our quality of life. But the reality is we're not all really good decision makers. Sometimes we get it right and that's awesome. And we're like, thank you, Jesus, I made it. And sometimes we royally mess up and we say, thank you, Jesus, you're here with us. Thank you for your grace, right? And we've had kind of this saying that we've been talking about that when faced with a particular situation, that we are by the health of God with the direction of Scripture, pre-deciding what we are going to do in that situation. We're not gonna let emotions drive us, we're not gonna get caught off guard, we're not gonna play catch up, we're not gonna be trying to figure things out on the fly, but we are pre-deciding that we are gonna take a particular action when faced in a certain situation. There's six specific things we've been talking about. And a couple of weeks ago, we handed out these stickers for you guys to take, to place different. We got a bunch of them in the back still. If you want a second one, please, second, third, please take those. You are welcome to those. Put them everywhere. Put it on a water bottle, put it in your mirror, put it in your car. I don't know, put it on your computer or wherever you see this to remember. We've been talking about these six topics. and the first of which was ready. Say, "I am ready." There we go. We talked about this, that the enemy is out there scheming, trying to get us off our game, but we have to pre-decide to be ready. We had to pre-decide to be consistent. Say, "I am." Let's go. Now you're waking up. All right, now you're getting the flow. Say it with me. "I am devoted. I am generous. I am faithful." And next week, Pastor Lauren's gonna wrap us up with I am a finisher.

Now, today, we're specifically talking about being faithful and that the reason that we are pre-deciding to be faithful is that you never accidentally, by happenstance, just fall into being a person who is consistently faithful. I'm talking about a day in, a day out, a week in, a week out, a month in, a month out, a year in, a year out, a decade in, a decade out type of faithfulness. That we will constantly be faithful, but that doesn't come without intentionality. See, the reason I think that we find this really difficult, let's call it what it is. Can we be honest this morning? Is that the trajectory of our life, we like to follow the easy path, right? We'd like to follow that path of least resistance, whatever's convenient and being faithful, like especially faithful to God is rarely easy. It's often hard, it comes with a cost, but I wanna tell you today that it is always, always, always worth it. I love these words from the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk. In Habakkuk 4:2, he says, "Look at the proud. They trust in themselves." Anybody know someone proud in your life? Don't point at them, don't make eye contact, don't elbow them, keep focus for them. We're gonna leave friends today, okay? But everybody knows somebody who's proud, right? They trust in their own wisdom. They have all the knowledge, right? They got it all figured out. They have the righteousness. They have the goodness. They got the bank account. They have the abilities. They have themselves. But what does scripture tell us? They trust in themselves and their lives are crooked. But the righteous, righteous will live in their own wisdom. by their faithfulness to God. Say that together, the faithfulness to God. Unfortunately, I'm usually in the earlier crowd and I find myself proud at times. I often think that I can do it on my own. I think that I have it figured out. I think that I'm sufficient enough, that I'm good enough, that I can do it all by myself. But if the scripture is true, we believe it to be true that being proud is not good, but that we have to be intentional to press into the righteousness of God and to live in His faithfulness.

Now this raises a question for us. What does it mean to be faithful? What does it truly mean to be faithful? How do we practically live that out? If you would have asked me probably before this week or the week before working on the sermon, I probably would have said that I would not cheat on my spouse, wouldn't cheat on my taxes, that I would be honest, I try to be a good person. And I think all of that is true. Yes, that is faithfulness. But when we look at who Jesus is, he's really intentional on how he shows faithfulness. And if you were to do a study on the life of Jesus, the moments of where he shows faithfulness, there's really three big categories that come out of looking at his life. The first of which we would see how Jesus treats people. You would see how Jesus talks about stewarding resources, and you would look to see how that you respond to God. And we look at Jesus's faithfulness, it boils down to three categories, relationships, taking care of what has been given, and how we respond to God. See, when you look at these ways that Jesus says, This is how you are faithful. We as Christ followers, following in the footsteps of Jesus in his example, we have to pre-decide three things. That we are going to pre-decide in faithfulness that every interaction is an opportunity to add value. We're gonna pre-decide that we're gonna be faithful in relationships. We're gonna talk about every resource is an opportunity to multiply. That because Jesus designed faithfulness is how we steward what He trusts to us. And that every prompting is an opportunity to obey God. Because every time Jesus talks about faithfulness, He talked about how you treat people, how you steward resources and how you respond to God. Let's dive into this first one. Every interaction is an opportunity to add value. If we are going to be faithful, we're going to have to pre-decide that every interaction with every person that we have is an opportunity to add value. So what does this mean? How do we see this played out? I think for you, whoever you come in contact with, every person you meet, Everyone that you see is an opportunity to bless, to encourage, to be generous with, to add value to their life. And we are going to pre-decide that every person is an opportunity for us to show love of God in a way that brings value and blessing to their life. And see, the reason is it isn't because we're focused on ourselves, because we are, right? We all are focused on ourselves, you and I both. And I can prove it, right? If there's a picture of eight people, you're in a group photo, you see that group photo, who are you looking at first? Yourself, right? You're looking at that photo, you're looking at yourself and you're going, okay, how do I look? Is it good? Is it bad? Is it not good? Because the reality is that you are looking at yourself. If you're blinking in it, you're thinking, oh my gosh, how embarrassing. That is completely un-postable. And anybody who does post that does not love you. Like that really, right? Like you're thinking there's no way that this can be shared. We have to immediately delete. I don't want anybody to see this. You look at you first, we all do it. And so how does that translate into adding value to people? When you interact with them, when you talk with them, what are you usually thinking? Do they like me? Is what I'm saying interesting? Did what I say just make sense? Oh no, what did I just say? I can't believe I just said that. How do I end this conversation and walk away immediately? I am so embarrassed, right? That's what's going through our mind. Each and every one of us, we're thinking, how can this be happening? And you walk away and you think about the conversation and go, okay, I shouldn't have said that. Shouldn't have said that differently. Oh man, I wish I could go back and take that back. And oh, just all this stuff.

But what if instead of saying, will they like me? Am I saying the right things? What if, because the reality is that Jesus lives in you and you have pre-decided ahead of time that every moment you have interacted with others is not focused on yourself, but that you are in this moment going to add value to others' life, that I am going to bless others with everything that I do, and I am going to focus on them. This is faithfulness. Ephesians 4:29 says, "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your nouns, but only for what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen." I love this. This is so good. To be faithful to God means that you are going to add value to others. that when you walk into a room, you are a climate change. Because when you walk into the room, if we believe what scripture says, that the Holy Spirit is on us, that we are ambassadors of Christ, we are different than the world, right? That when we walk into a room, we bring Jesus with us. And because we bring Jesus with us, the room is different. Right? So that wherever you go, whether you're in the grocery store, you're at school, you're at work, you're picking your kids up, you're at a soccer game, you're out running errands, wherever you're at the gym, I don't know where, wherever you are at, you are bringing Jesus with you. This isn't a, you come into church, you sit down, hey Jesus, what's up? How's it going? I'll see you in six days. Peace out. But that we take Jesus with us, that you are an encourager, you are a blessing. You tell the truth, even though it may hurt, but with love, cover in love, okay? But you are that, when you walk away, because of you living intentional, they are different. That they are not the same, why? Because they just had a spiritual encounter with the living God. They may have no clue what's happening. But you and I do, right? That they are not the same because in being faithful, You bring and you add value to people's lives.

When you look at Jesus and how he treated people, the words in which Jesus said were incredible. When the disciples got worried, what did Jesus say? Oh, you guys are the worst. I can't believe it. How are you worrying? You know, this world, oh, have you seen society today? It's going to hell in a hand basket. You see who's in politics, left side, right side of the aisle. I don't care. It's just all going into the, down the drain. It's just all into the pooper. It just, oh, that's it. Might as well give up. No. What does Jesus say? Jesus says, don't worry. God's got you. He loves you. Don't worry about what you're gonna eat or what you're gonna drink or what you're gonna wear or what tomorrow brings. God loves the birdies and they're taken care of. How much more does He love you? Seek first His kingdom, His righteousness. And when you do that, everything else is gonna be taken care of, right? What did Jesus say to the woman who was caught in adultery? This pretty intense moment in scripture, these righteous people are ready to just stone her 'cause she has sinned very publicly. And Jesus walks in and He puts something in, He draws something or writes something saying, "We don't fully know what it is." But then he says, "Who's without any sin? Go for it." Crowd disperses. Jesus turns to the woman and says, "Where are your accusers?" She goes, "They're gone." So Jesus says to her, "Go, send no more. Live in God's grace and His mercy. Live the life that you know you should be living." He forgives. When Peter decided to deny Jesus, not once, not twice, but three times, what did Jesus say? "Peter, you're canceled. Get out of here. Can't trust you anymore. No, what do you say? Says, "Peter, do you still love me, dude?" He goes, "Yeah." Jesus says, "Okay, go take care of my people. Love them, serve them." Jesus himself specifically tells us, he said, "I came to show the love of my father and I will never leave you and I will never forsake you. And that when Jesus left, He sent the Holy Spirit, He sent somebody even greater. And even a covering, a leader, a perfect comforter to be with us as we take these steps every single day in life, what a blessing. What a blessing. Every interaction with anybody is an opportunity to show the love of God, to build them up, to show them grace, to pour blessing upon them. You have no idea how God might use a single word of encouragement to change someone's life. This is faithfulness to God.

I want to tell you a story that's really important to my life, kind of the reason I'm even in this place here today. Out of college, Laura and I, my wife and I, got married in college and graduated, and I had an opportunity to take a job, one of the few jobs in about the '08 downturn that churches were even hiring. Most of my friends who graduated from school with a pastoral degree just went off into the world to try to start paying for student debt. They didn't get an opportunity. I was fortunate enough to get hired on staff at a church, And we moved there and got settled in. And a couple of weeks into me being a part of the team on staff there, I was leading worship and I was assistant pastor. We started having some conflict. Started having some issues where I wasn't necessarily performing at the level that the pastor wanted. There was a lot of confusion and missed communication with each other. And after eight weeks of being in my first pastoral job, after spending four years studying and writing papers and reading books and doing everything I had, God had called me this place in this moment, the pastor meets me and says, "Hey, it's just not gonna work out, we're gonna move on." And here I am with my wife, thousands of miles away from family, I have a year long lease on a house, and I have to go home and tell my wife I'm no longer employed by this church. And through a crazy, crazy series of events from a pastor who knew a pastor who knew a pastor who knew a pastor, I get a random phone call one day. This is like just a couple days after this had happened. And for whatever reason I answer it. And I had said, "Hello?" And I hear a voice on the other end. He goes, "Hey, this is Pastor John. You don't know who I am, "But I heard about your story. Can I buy you a cup of coffee?" I'm like, "I'm freshly unemployed. Nothing else to do. I'd like a free cup of coffee because I can't afford one right now." So I go and I sit down with this guy and he begins to tell me the story of his dad, who had been in a church for a really, really, really long time, and the church one day decided they didn't want him as their pastor anymore. And they kicked him out of the church. He goes, "I know your story isn't the same." He goes, "But I saw what happened to my dad, and I saw another local pastor come alongside my dad and said, 'Hey, just come sit in church.'" And I remember the coffee shop, I remember the conversation, I remember the pastor sitting there or across the table from me. And he told me, he goes, "You are called to be a pastor. God has placed that on you. And you are too important to be put on the bench right now. You need to stay faithful to God's calling." I was ready to walk away. I was so angry with God. I was like, "How could you take me to this place?" I had all the conversations with God. And he says, "I'm starting a church. I'm not asking you to do anything." He goes, "You and Lauren just come and sit." So we went and we sat. Couple weeks later, he needed some help with stacking chairs. I was like, "I can stack chairs. I got a four-year ministry degree. You betcha I can stack chairs." (audience laughing) I had A+ in that class. So it started with stacking chairs. And it started going to a small group. It started helping with a small group. And then it started helping with some of the teams. Started doing this thing and that thing. And pretty soon I found myself basically on staff working with this pastor pro bono, just being back, falling in love again with the church. you will never know what a opportunity to add value to someone's life may turn into. And one of the great ways to be faithful to God is to be a blessing to others. And that pastor that day and that season of life, even to this day, is an incredible blessing to me and my wife. You may even have a divine appointment on your calendar right now that you don't even know about, but God does. And the question for us will be, will we pre decide that every opportunity and every interaction is an opportunity, a moment to share love to other people and to be a blessing.

The second thing we see from Jesus is that every resource is an opportunity to multiply. Jesus in Matthew 25 tells this parable of a man, a rich man, who went on a journey and he trusted his wealth to his servants. He handed out bags of gold to the first guy, he got five bags of gold. To the second guy, he got two bags of gold. And then to the third guy, he was given one bag of gold. And the first two the five and the three bag bros went out and they risked their gold. They risked their investment and they multiplied it. They multiplied it. They were able to add more to it. And it says in Matthew 25, 21, he says, "His master replied, 'Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful with the few things. I will put you in charge of many things.'" They're saying, "You multiplied what I gave you, and in the kingdom of God, that is faithfulness." The Greek word here for faithfulness is actually pistos, and the definition here I want us to see is a person who shows themselves faithful in the transaction of business, the execution of commands or the discharge of official duties. One of the ways that you can be faithful to God is caring for what God gives to you. God gives you an ugly yard, you make that grass green, right? You make that yard better, that is faithfulness. God blesses you with a clunker of a car, you betcha you have the cleanest clunker on the road today. If God gives you a body, you take care of that body and you steward it.

If you are in business, and I have this conversation all the time, I feel like sometimes in business, maybe you own your business or you're high up in a business or you just work for a business, sometimes those people, because they're in the world of making money, making profit, sometimes they get viewed or they think of themselves as second-class Christians. That well, you know, I'm not a pastor, I'm not really like working for a nonprofit, like I'm not in the in the world to just like give things away that I am less than. Let me tell you this, you being faithful in your business, your job, your work, whatever you put your hands to, you being faithful in that is an incredible, incredible witness to God. Because the world's what? Trying to cut corners. World's trying to get ahead. World's clamoring, climbing over people, pushing them down just to elevate themselves. But for you to say, "I'm gonna have 100% ethical behavior in my job, that is a witness to Jesus. That you're gonna treat your co-workers with kindness. That you're gonna maybe treat those that you're a supervisor over, you're gonna care for them and how you lead them. That is an example that the life that you live, the way that you conduct your business is a massive, massive opportunity to show Christ to those around you. And that just because you're not one of the pastors, it doesn't mean you're less than. We're all called to be witnesses, we're all called to be ambassadors. Your workplace may just look a little different. And that's okay because God has called you there for a purpose and for a reason and a lot of that is to be faithful. And then there was the guy with the one bag. He had the five, the three, the one. He was afraid. I've been that guy. I feel him. I've been anxious. I've been worried. I've tried to be careful not to make a mistake, but what does the master say to to him. He says, "So I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground. So here is what belongs to you." I was scared. I was nervous. I didn't want to lose any of it. I didn't want somebody to steal it. I wanted to make sure it was still good. You trusted a lot with me, boss. So here you go. His master replied, "You wicked, lazy servant." Here's what I want you to see and to feel in this. The one who multiplied, the master said, "You are faithful." But the one who buried it, he wasn't just lazy. He wasn't just, hey, boss it was a busy week, had all this other paperwork I had to do, like stuff happened with the family. Like, he says he's wicked. If we're going to choose to be faithful, every interaction is an opportunity to add value. Every resource is an opportunity to multiply. And every prompting is an opportunity to obey God.

I love this part in Acts where Paul is really happy with where he's at in Ephesus. He's like locked in with the church, he's doing great. He's like, this is all set, we're golden. But he has this emotional farewell. He says, "Now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there." This word compelled means that it's kind of like wrapped up or like bound by a rope and kind of pulled in this direction that you can't resist that the spirit says, "I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there." It's one of those opportunities where you can't explain it, you don't understand it, you don't know the details, but you know is God, you are being drawn in that place. And when you follow Jesus, He will prompt you, He will compel you, and faithfulness is responding when you don't know what will happen. Sometimes we know, sometimes we don't. That job with that church or that pastor, I had to, God actually eight months later asked me to just completely resign from the job without having the next job lined up. And I didn't understand, Lauren, I didn't get it, but we felt like we had to just kind of let go before God would add the next thing. And after we did through a series of crazy events, I get an opportunity for another job and another church, and God takes care of that next step. So good. Other times where God's asked me to step out and to do something, even this last week, I stepped out and did something. I felt like God was saying, and then it just kind of went. Nothing happened. I was like, okay, really thought I was, okay. But the reality is that obedience is our responsibility, but the outcome is God's. Our job is to be responsible. And when he leaves, we say yes and take a step forward, even if it doesn't make sense.

Habakkuk 4:2, we started with this. "But the righteous will live by their faithfulness to God." I haven't always gotten it right. 'Cause I'm up here doesn't mean I've always gotten it right. (chuckles) But I've tried everything I can to be faithful in the small things. 'Cause when you're faithful in the small things, there's this incredible spiritual compounding interest, return on investment that God builds up. And I've seen it in faithful people in the church for generations. I said, "How did you get there?" He was just like, "Every moment of faithfulness." It's just like grains of sand. It's just being thrown onto the beach. And all of a sudden you look down and it's just a shoreline of just sand upon sand upon sand. And I think we will vastly overestimate what we can get done in a season. Well, thank God I'm gonna fix this. I'm gonna fix my marriage. I'm gonna fix my finances. God, 2024, like this is the year it's gonna be done. But I think we will also underestimate the faithfulness of God in a lifetime. That we will underestimate what God can do when we are faithful in little things time after time after time again. Every interaction is an opportunity to add value with relationships and people. Every resource is an opportunity to multiply. How do we steward with what God has blessed us with? and every prompting is an opportunity to obey God. Just do it. Obedience is our responsibility, the outcome is God's. We just have to be faithful. That's your life, to be faithful to God.

Pray with me. we thank you for this morning. God, we are so grateful for your faithfulness. Where you, since the beginning of time and the broken relationship in the Garden, God, you started the world on a path towards redemption and that even in the midst of that, when all hope seems lost, you, God, were still working a plan to make the world right once again. And when you sent Jesus, You fixed the biggest problem that we had in our life and you took care of us and you reached down and you said, "I love you." It's going to be okay. Jesus, we're so grateful that you are so faithful to us. God, may we in return be faithful in the little things so that we may then have opportunities to be faithful in the big things when the time comes, when you prompt us to step out. God, as we look forward to this next week for the divine appointments you have on our calendar already, God, may we be obedient even if we don't know the outcome. We thank you, Jesus. We praise you. We love you. We worship you today. Everybody said, "Amen."

Pre-Decide: Part 5

Pre-Decide: Part 5 - I AM GENEROUS

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

We are continuing in our series that we kicked off about five or six weeks ago called Pre-Decide. And the premise and the big idea of this series is that we would, before we're placed in any situation, pre-decide a particular action that we're gonna take. And we've been going through a couple different of these. We've talked about being ready, consistent, devoted, generous, faithful, and a finisher. And today I'm excited to kinda jump into something that not everybody is necessarily excited to talk about in the church, but it's something that we need to talk about and it's something that Jesus really commanded us. I read an article back in 2007, I know the good old days, right? '07, anybody remember '07? Yeah, okay, just me, okay. This was before Instagram, this was before like Netflix originals, this was before like Venmo and Cash App. I mean, how did we survive? Like honestly, like I don't even know how we lived. But in 2007, there was a study that was done that you on average every day were exposed to about 5,000 ads, 5,000 advertisements, whether that was in '07, do they have cell phones? Yeah, okay, cell phone, maybe the interwebs, your dial-up, your AOL chat messenger. Maybe it was a billboard, old school, right? The ones that aren't digital, but like the ones, maybe the ones that like rotated and like they were like three billboards in one, no? Okay, I'm a nerd. But you were exposed to over 5,000 ads every single day. Fast forward to now, 2024. I know everybody's like, huh. You are on average exposed to double that. Over 10,000 ads every single day. You look at, you scroll past, you try to block on your web browser. Everything that you do has an ad, right? Whether you're in an app, you're on social media, you're trying to read a blog to get that perfect recipe. Maybe you're watching an influencer on Google, you read a news article, YouTube videos. Anybody else just really YouTube? You're like, just get me to the video. Like I don't need like some, and they start stacking up. You get like skip one, skip two, skip. I'm like, how long is it? These ads are gonna be longer than the 30 second video that I was trying to watch on YouTube. But this is really bad news. This is really bad news because that study in 2007 actually told us that the more ads that we see, the more miserable that we are. I'm just here to bring hope and excitement to you in your life today, right? But the reality is that the more ads we see, the more miserable we are, why? because this ad wants to convince you and tell you that you don't have the perfect life, that you're missing out. You don't have what you need. And let me tell you today, ladies and gentlemen, what you need. I feel like I'm in my own infomercial right now in front of you guys. But the more ads that we see ad-plaked us to this place where we're just miserable. And the only way that these ads tell us and the world tells us to get happy is to get, get, get, accumulate, acquire, hoard in, hold onto it, have spares, have extras, why? Because then at that point, then you'll be happy that you have to have the new iPhone. You gotta have your favorite brand of shoes. You gotta have that purse. Ladies, you gotta have the Lulu leggings, right? I don't know, I just been told that that's where it's at, but we're told that it is more blessed to get. It is more blessed to acquire, it's more blessed to accumulate, and the world is yelling at us every single day, 10,000 times, that it is more blessed to get.

But Jesus has something different to say about that. I love what he says in Acts 20 verse 35. Jesus says, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." This word, the original word here actually means more blessed, doubly blessed, or some might translate it or look at it in the realm of you're happier, you're more generous, you're more joyful when you give, you're more fulfilled when you give, You're more blessed when you give than when you receive. And I think for the most part, we know this, right? We know this kind of deep down inside and we wanna give more. We wanna be able to help people. We wanna be able to take care of our friends and our family and to love them in a way of meeting a practical need. But the reality is that a lot of us are in a place where we just feel that we can't do it right now. Inflation is through the roof. It is bonkers out there, it seems like, what it costs to just... I was talking to my wife about just going and getting a cheeseburger the other night, and we were just like, "$15? Excuse me? When did that happen?" We're like, "No, we'll have a sandwich at home. Thank you very much." But it's like this crazy space that we live in where we want to give, we want to be generous with everything we have but we feel that we just we can't I want to share today and not an infomercial style but to share some principles where you and I can become irrationally generous if you were writing anything down this morning you want to write something out if you want to write today's title for the talk would be when you stop holding back. Pray with me. Jesus, we thank you for this morning. God, we are grateful to be here in your presence. God, we continue to invite you into this space. God, lead me with your words from your scripture, not what Pastor Chris has to say or what Pastor Chris thinks, but God, what you think and how you view generosity even in our world today in this moment in 2024. We thank you, Jesus. Amen. If you've been with us, we've been talking about this pre-decided thing, and specifically we've had this saying that we have, we can put this on the screen, that says when we're faced with this situation, we have pre-decided to take a specific action. We are pre-deciding even before we're in the moment, even before when we're looking at this face to face, we have pre-decided a specific action that we are going to take. We're not gonna let our emotions drive us, we're seeking God, we're going to Him, we've thought about it, we've prayed about it, we're trying to pre-decide in a very specific situation area. And we talked about six of these. And we had these stickers we gave away a couple of weeks ago if you didn't get one or you want a second one to put somewhere, they're on the table on the way out, next to hand sanitizer. And we would love for you to have one of these to have with you where your water bottle, you can put in your car, put it on your mirror, kind of wherever you want to be reminded of these statements of who we are. And I wanna say these together with us. We can bring this on the screen. Talking about being, I am ready. Say it with me, I am. - Ready. - Oh yeah, let's go. It's talking about being, I am consistent. I am. - Consistent. - Let's go. Talking about I am devoted. Pastor Andre shared with us last week, I am devoted.

Today we're gonna talk about being I am generous. I am faithful and I am a finisher. This is what we are talking about. This is who Jesus has called us to live as Christians, not only for the world around us, but for one another, and for what we would call our Spring Valley family, our church family, for each other, for our family family, for our neighbors, for our community, for our world. This is who Jesus called us to. And if we say we are a follower of Jesus, this is who he says that we are. So we are pre deciding, choosing ahead of time by God's grace that today talking about we will be more blessed by being generous and we are pre deciding to do so. Why? Why does any of this matter? Why does any of this matter? That no one ever accidentally becomes irrationally generous. Nobody just by chance stumbles into tithing or giving offerings or paying rent for someone who's need or buying groceries for someone who can't afford it or funding ministries or missions trips or having so much fun with tithing that they start with 10% and then go to 12, and then to 15 and 20, 25%, and then accidentally give away almost everything to God, more and more and more, and allowing him to be blessed, and to leave our kids an inheritance to our children, to our children, our children. No one ever stumbles into irrational generosity. It doesn't happen. And we tend to think that we will be generous when the time comes. that we will be generous, but I just can't right now. And we get in this circle of thought that when I have more, I'll give more, right? When, you know, God, when I just get that next pay raise, when I get that next bump at work, God, I'm all in on generosity. I am all yours, God. When I finally get that mortgage payment taken care of and I get the utility bills paid, I go, then God, you know what? I am generous. I am all of yours. You can have everything that I have when I get here. But I want you to understand that this isn't how generous people think. This isn't their thought process. Generosity isn't about what we have or don't have. It's about our heart. Generosity is about our heart. How do we know this? Well, we've seen some poor people who are crazy stingy, right? We've seen rich people who have it set for life, who you can't get a 20 spot out of them. And then on the other side, we've seen poor people who have literally nothing that just give it away. That just absolutely go, it's all yours, God. It's not much, it's all yours. And then we also see really, really rich people, philanthropists, who are incredible and change the world with what they have been blessed with. Generosity isn't something we just stumble into.

There's a story in Luke chapter 12, Jesus tells that illustrates this really, really well. And there's this rich guy who is getting richer, and then he has this incredible harvest. Okay, so farming terms, probably us city people don't get that. But this dude just basically just hit the jackpot, okay? We'll say that. He is loaded. And he probably, at one point, said, "Oh, what am I gonna do with all of this? Man, I have so much more than what I can store. the harvest, it's a grain, they gotta store it or it goes bad, they gotta keep it safe. Gotta keep it dry, gotta keep animals out of it, anything from eating, they gotta protect it. And so this rich guy, he's like, man, what am I gonna do? And I would venture to say, because I think each of us would be similar, that this rich dude at one point or another said, when I have more, I will give more. But what happens? We read this in Luke chapter 12, he said, "Then he said, I know, "I'll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. "Then I'll have enough room to store all my wheat "and other goods. "And I'll sit back and say to myself, my friend, "you have enough stored away for years to come. "Now take it easy, eat, drink, and be merry." Similar story, right? Written over 2000 years ago, but still rings so true to today. That this story of, when I get more, I'm gonna, God, when I have that harvest, when it comes in, baby, oh man, I'm bringing it to the church, we're gonna celebrate. I'm sending it to my buddy who's a missionary overseas. I'm gonna fund this, I'm gonna take care of this. I'm gonna take care of my neighbor's mortgage. I'm gonna take care of this rent over there. I'm getting groceries for the lady down the street who's a single mom. Like I am all in God when this harvest comes in. But what happened? His heart was revealed. And the reality is, I'm sorry, this one's gonna hurt. More money just makes more of what you already are. That one hurt. Money doesn't change who we are, it just reveals maybe our true self deep down inside. And that is why if you want to be generous, which I think we all do, when we have more, we have to learn to be generous when we have less. We have to learn now and we have to pre-decide to be generous even if we have less than what we think to be generous.

Giving is not just something that we do, it's an identity of who we are. In my, for some of you who would look at me, say my short time here on earth, other yous would look at me and say that old dude up front who's been around since dirt, In my life, I will say that I've seen two really big qualities of generous people. Whether in the church, I know a lot of generous people who have nothing to do with God in the church and they're incredibly generous. They make some Christians look really bad. Wherever they are on the spectrum, they are a generous person. Two things I constantly see from them. and the first of which is generous people plan to be generous. Generous people plan to be generous. You might think, I'll say this, and I felt like this for a long, long time, that being generous was spontaneous. You saw somebody on the side of the road and you're like, "Hey, here's a five," or, "Hey, here's my lunch," or you went and got food for them and brought them food. Maybe it's buying the meal or the coffee or whatever for the person behind us in drive-through, right? Or maybe it was, you would see these poor, poor puppies in cages, and you would start to hear Sarah McLachlan singing. That they have to free the puppies. We have to, they're so sad. And so then maybe you get to, You go down and you give some money to the local animal shelter, or you go do an adoption day, or you bring home a new family member, four-legged friend. But we think that that's generosity, but I wanna tell you today, that's not, that's giving. And that's fantastic, it's wonderful. And I wanna tell you, don't stop doing that. That is great, great stuff. We should be giving people. But what is the difference between giving and generosity is that generous people don't have to be guilted into giving. Generous people don't need to be inspired to give. Generous people are not reactive. Does that make sense? Generous people, they don't give whenever there's just a need. They don't give when they have something extra. They don't give when they're prompted to, but generous people actually have a plan. And scripture tells us this very clearly in Isaiah 32, chapter eight, it says, "But generous people plan "to do what is generous." Generous people plan. Generous people pre-decide. Generous people plan to do what is generous, and they stand firm in their generosity. They stand firm, I think stand firm as in maybe a stance where you're not gonna get knocked over, but they plan to be generous and they stand firm in that. Giving is not what I do. Generosity is who I am. And we have to plan to be generous. Pre-decide to be generous. See, what's funny about this is that all people have a plan for finances. All people have a plan for finances. Some, you might say, "Hey, pastor, no." No, I really don't. I really don't have a plan. You have a plan. Is there ever something that you really, really wanted? Like really wanted? You get strategic real fast, right? You start doing research, who's got the best price? Is it free shipping or not? Are they charging tax or not? Can I get a coupon? Can I get a discount? Do I buy it used, but still has maybe a couple of year warranty, so it may last a little bit, or do I buy it locally, so that I'm not paying for shipping, I'm not paying for taxes, a cash transaction. Where do I have the cash? Do I have the cash? I can get the cash. Wait a minute, okay, now I gotta meet this person. You're messaging in Facebook marketplace, offer up. Oh, then all of a sudden Amazon, boom, it's on sale. Oh my gosh, add $5 clip coupon. It's the word of the Lord. He has spoken to me. We have had it, here it is. Just me? Okay. Generous people don't plan to consume. Generous people plan to give. And when we become generous by nature, you are strategically and prayerfully designing your life around generosity. It's not something you do as a reaction. It is a strategy, it's a mindset. When we think differently, you sit down and you think, man, how can I bless somebody? How can I take what God has given me and make an even greater difference? How can I maximize what I have? How can I be a blessing to people around me?

Here's the key, it's not just spontaneous. Maybe it is, but not, certainly not all the time. That's not how it works. It's not emotional, strategic. It's not random, it's intentional. And along with our series, we are pre deciding before in the moment that we will be generous. So you might say, I'm just not a planner. It may not be a good plan that you have, may not be written down, but there's a plan. I'll show you kind of what I'm talking about today. I have the circle illustration I wanna show us. That for the most of us, the reality is where we are is we spend more than we make. God supplies us, God increases us, whether that's an income or an allowance or something special we get in our lives every single month or maybe quarterly, I don't know, it comes in and we probably most likely spend more than we make. But then that puts us in a really bad place because then we start lacking margin. And we don't have any wiggle room with where we're at financially. And then what does that cause us to do? It starts bringing worry into our life. And then to combat the worry, we go and have retail therapy and we spend more than we make and then we're lacking margin, and then we worry more, and then we spend more than we make, and then we lack margin. You guys kind of get the picture of this. This is not a money problem. It's a spiritual problem. Everybody like super excited they came to church today. Like, yeah! It's a spiritual problem. I'm preaching to myself up here by the way, this is hard. We are trusting in things rather than putting our faith in God. And what happens is that generous people, they break the cycle. Not accidentally, not by happenstance, not by just falling into it, but intentionally, strategically, pre-deciding with a plan. We break the cycle by choosing God first. Jesus said this, what did he say? He said, "Seek first the kingdom of God "and his righteousness, "and then all things, everything else, "will be added to you." We don't seek the shoes, we don't seek the countertops, we don't seek the new car, we don't seek the new watch, but we seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. We put Him first, then everything else will be added. We seek God first.

There's actually a principle in scripture that talks about this very, very powerful, important, life-changing thing, and it's called a tithe. Maybe you guys have heard of it, maybe you haven't, but we find this in Malachi. And it says in Malachi 3.10, "Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, "that there may be food in my house." What is a tithe? It's not a word that's typically used in society. It actually comes from the Hebrew meaning masser, which means 10%. And we see this in scripture as to bring 10% of what God has blessed you and me with back to him as an act of worship that there may be food in God's house. Confession, first time I heard about some of this, I was becoming a kid and I'd started mowing lawns and I started earning some money from family members and doing some yard work. And I first heard about this idea and I was like, Wait, what? A tithe? 10%? That is way too much. That's ridiculous. I can't afford to do that. God, you don't understand, I got things I need to buy. I got basketball shoes I need. I got the Backstreet Boys CD I need. I got the Pokemon cards. They just dropped. Like, God, you just don't understand. In order to do that, God, okay, I would have to completely rearrange my entire life, all of my priorities, everything that I have chosen to do, and put you, God, first. It's almost like he knew. It's almost like he knew that this would be a place where I would have to change my priorities, I would have to put him first, I'd have to fully trust him, I'd have to worship him with everything that I had, I'd have to step into a place that is completely uncomfortable, a place that I didn't like, a place that meant I probably had less, a place that rearranged all of my priorities, every single thing that I had focused on my mind, on my wishlist, I was working towards, it was almost like he could see the future. God can, by the way, just letting you know that.

God put us in this place You know what he said? Test me. This is the only place in the entire Bible where God says, I dare you. I double dog dare you. Put me to the test, bro. Test me in this. Says the Lord Almighty. and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be enough room to store it. If you put him first, God says, "See if I'll take care of you." See what happens. Now you might say, hey, hey, hey, Chris, let's, eh, careful here. It kind of sounds like a little tell the evangelist prosperity gospel here. If you give money to the church, then you will be rich. What I'm talking about today is not prosperity gospel. What I'm talking about today is the generosity gospel. And Jesus, God himself first did that, right? John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that He gave." God was the first one that was generous. God was the first one that poured out. God was the first one who blessed us, even when we did not deserve it whatsoever. God was the one who first gave, and this is the difference. And when you and I start to recognize giving, we begin to see that it is more blessed to give than it is to receive. And it breaks the cycle, right? It puts you into this new cycle. And it says this, when God supplies, we give, we trust him. We go, God, don't make no sense. My calculator on my phone, it doesn't add up, God, you don't get it. But then what happens? God blesses. And we go, wait, wait, wait a minute. I did this math. I'm not like the most brilliant person, I'm a math guy, I like numbers, and my math was not math in God. But then you took care of it, somehow. You took care of it. And then that builds our faith. And then it builds our faith and we go, okay God, you did this last time. Maybe we can do it again. And we give. And God blesses. And it builds our faith. And we give and God blesses and it builds our faith and it builds the faith of those around us. And then they see us giving and they go, Wait, how are you doing that? And you're like, I don't know, it's God, but I'm still giving. And God continues to bless and it builds faith and we keep giving. This faith that builds replaces the worry in our life. It pushes back those feelings of going, God, I'm living paycheck to paycheck. I don't get this. I got this stuff coming in. I don't understand what's going on. God, I need you. I'm stressed, I'm anxious, I'm worried. I don't know what the interest rate from the feds, what they're gonna say next month. I don't know what's gonna happen this summer with the housing market. God, I don't understand if they're laying people off at work, God, you don't understand. I just, you, ah, ah, ah, ah. And this faith that starts to build just pushes all of this stuff out. and we start living in this generous place. And it doesn't have to be a lot. If there's anything that you wanna take away with this morning, it's being generous doesn't mean it has to be a lot. Being generous doesn't mean we have to have our name on a hospital or on a plaque in a hallway somewhere or for people to see it and to be recognized. My grandparents were an incredible example of this. They would constantly just bring money to the church and drop it off, and they told the pastor, "You know who needs it this month." And every time they would show up, the pastor would look at him and go, "You have no idea. "We just had somebody call. "They need this much money, "and you just handed it to me in an envelope." That's God. That is generosity.

It's a mindset that changes who we are when we put God first, but we have to pre-decide. It's not just giving when it's convenient. It's not just giving when you might have some leftover, But we do it and we give God our first and our best, and we trust him to do what he's gonna do with the rest of it. We pre-decide to put him first. And I would say that it starts with a tie, that it starts with a decision to say, God, this is yours, but it doesn't stop there. There's a lot of people I know in the church, not in this church, my other old churches that nobody just, you just don't talk about it. That's a joke, it's okay. They were good churches. But I've met people in the church, they're like, "Hey, pastor, 10%, I'm in, buddy. Just wanna let you know, check the box. God's happy with me." And I would challenge them. I was like, "Dude, you're not being generous. Like, I appreciate it. You're helping keep lights on and ministry going and coffee and food on Sundays. Like, hey, awesome, thank you. Still got some hard work, man. This isn't an end all be all, boop, there we go, I'm done. That's where we start, that's like step one in our plan of being generous, but we don't stop there and we're not accidental about it. I heard this story one time of a guy who literally has in his monthly budget 50 bucks. And he gets paid, sets the 50 aside, and he says, "God, you know this month where this is going. "I don't know yet, but you know." And he goes throughout his day. "Hey God, you got anybody in mind yet?" "Hey God, what?" Every single month, God has a place for that $50. But he pre-decides. This isn't like, "Hey God, January 31st down here on earth. "Got 27 bucks in the checking account, where do you want this to go, God?" Pre-decide, put it in the budget. There's no accident, it's not planned spontaneity. You have pre-decided that this dude is gonna bless somebody with 50 bucks every single month. I've heard stories of people who have decided to increase 1% every year. So what does that look like? Well, it looks like they start one year at 10% and then it's 11, it's 12, it's 13, it's 14, 15. But they pre decided that this is what they're going to do with what God has blessed them with. And they've done some incredible, incredible generous things in their life. I know somebody who was a small business owner. And he talked to me and he was like, "Hey, can I give from my business to the church?" And I was like, "Totally, bro, absolutely." He goes, "I didn't know that. "I didn't know if like the whole tithe thing "was just like my income." Or I was like, "Dude, if you're feeling led "by the Holy Spirit to give through your business, "then do that." Well, say this, the caveat, business blew up overnight. I've also heard stories of people with business plans to get to a point where they are giving away 50% of their profit every single year to world missions. To fighting hunger around the globe, to ending diseases that we don't even have to think about in America, to changing the trajectory of cultures around the globe, people that have way less than anything we do.

That doesn't happen by accident. Now we probably don't do that tomorrow, but it takes strategy, it takes planning, it takes thinking, it takes pre-deciding what you're going to do to be generous. The other thing that I see when we close from generous people is that generous people always round up. Generous people always round up. What do I mean by this? I heard a story one time of some believers. And they had gone to a restaurant to have a meal. And the server knew who they were. The server hated God, the server hated the church, the server hated everything to do about Christian, server just utterly despised everything. And she goes, here's my chance. Gives them the most horrible service that they have ever received in their life. She goes, I'm gonna stick it to them. It comes time for the bill. And they feel led by the Holy Spirit for some reason. I mean, they were talking, "There's no way we're going to tip this gal. We're not paying her anything. We're just doing a fat goose egg under tip." I'm getting food comped. But the Holy Spirit's tugging their hearts saying, "You got to pay. You got to tip. You need to round up." round up. And they're like, oh, okay, God, that's what I gotta do. And they tithe, or not tithe, tip, round up, minimal to go, hey, God, yeah, I got you, I got you. Here we go. And she was floored. Fast forward a couple years later, she hits a point of just rock bottom in her life. And she goes, "You know who I need to go see? "Those Christian people who blessed me "when I had done absolutely nothing to be blessed by them, "and they rounded up." They rounded up. She knew what she had done. She knew how she had treated them. She knew that she was undeserving of anything, and fully expecting no tip or anything, whatever, just to be like, see, told you, feel that fire. God flipped that upside down, she went to church, she found the saving message of Jesus Christ and she's living for God. Generous people always round up.

Proverbs 21:26 says, "All day long, the lazy, he, the selfish craves and craves, but the righteous gives and does not hold back." Generous people round up. We see this all over scripture. I love this, real quick. See this all over scripture. First thing I will say, the Good Samaritan. You guys heard that story maybe? If you've been in church, you're Good Samaritan. This dude coming along the road, see this guy who just got beat up, he got jumped, he got everything stolen from him. He got just the living daylights beat out of him. It's basically moments from dying. Good Samaritan, bandages him up, says, "Hey, we're taking you to town. "We're gonna get you well." Takes him to basically a hospital in the inn and basically says, you gotta take care of this guy, you gotta take care of, and he says this in Luke 10:35. He says, "The next day, he being the good Samaritan "handed the innkeeper two silver coins, "telling him, take care of this man. "If his bill runs higher than this, "I'll pay you the next time I'm here." Good Samaritan bro could have just been like, hey, bandaged you up on the road, good luck, peace. He bandaged him up, picked him up, took him to town, Hey, he could have just dropped him at the doorstep of the inn and said, "Hey, innkeeper, "somebody out here, see ya," and rolled. But he takes in there, he pays the bill and then gives his word, "Hey, if anything else comes up, "it's on this dude." No, he says, "If anything else comes up, I'm good for it. "Next time I'm in town, tell me the bill, "I will take care of it." Generous people round up. Anybody remember Zacchaeus? Zacchaeus was a wee little man A wee little man was he Okay, some of you are like, who is that? It's okay. It's like early 2000s, late 90s church. It's okay. But Zacchaeus, this short little dude, he climbs up in a tree so he can see this guy, Jesus, walking on the road, and he's like, I wanna see who this dude is. And Jesus comes along and says, hey, Zacchaeus, I'm coming to your house for dinner. What you making? And the dude basically falls out of the tree in shock. And it's like, are you okay? Okay, cool, let's go to your house. He's like, ah, he fell on the tree, bro. No, but seriously, he goes to his house and he's having dinner with him. And this guy was the worst of the worst. He was a crook, he was a swindler, he was a manipulator, he stole money from people, he was taking taxes, but then he was taking his taxes, and then his friends' taxes, And then his friend's tax is on top, really he was taking it all, but he was taking all this extra tax stuff, and Jesus shows up in his life and radically changes him. And he says what? In verse, Luke 19, verse eight, he says, "If I've cheated anybody out of everything," newsflash, he cheated everybody out of everything, "I will pay back four times the amount." That's pretty generous. That is pretty generous.

Jesus himself, he tells us, he says, "Anybody demands your shirt, "give them your really cool jacket too." If somebody says, "Hey, go a mile with me, round up, go too." Jesus says, "Generous people round up." It's not what you're not doing, We're just not randomly giving. We're not just waiting until we have more. We are generous people who make a plan and round up. My wife, amazing, she's incredible. You haven't met her, she's really, really cool. She came up with this idea somewhere of creating these pre-made packs of stuff for people who are unhoused. And it has like deodorant and socks. And I think there was like a beanie in there and there was like a Starbucks gift card and all this stuff. And because we were driving around and our girls kept saying, "Hey, can we help this person?" It was just like, "Sorry, we have a water bottle." We hand them a water bottle and the girls were like, "That was cool! We gotta do this more. And so then we started having water bottles and it was just like, we didn't have enough water bottles. And then we came, my wife found this idea. She came probably with herself, she's brilliant, to make these packs that have all this stuff in it ready to go. And we would call them our bless packs. I think that's the term. But we would have them in the car ready to go. So when we pulled up next to them, one of the girls was like, "Hey, let's do a bless pack from the back of the van." And one was like, "Okay, Lauren, okay." And we would hand it to them. This incredible, incredible, and they, seven bucks maybe? A pack? 'Cause the Starbucks gift card? But it was just something so simple and so easy, but we had to pre-plan. Does it take some time? Yeah, does it take some effort? Yeah, you gotta go to the store, you gotta buy some stuff, you gotta put some, but that generosity in a practical way for someone.

There was another time I was working at Starbucks in college. Lauren and I were just early married, and we were living paycheck to paycheck. And we were trying to do the tithing thing, and every month or so we'd try to get there. Sometimes we didn't make it. But I had a coworker of mine who was a single mom. She had gone through a really ugly divorce, and she was living at home with like six kids. And a couple of them were in high school, and we were talking one time, she was my shift manager, and we were talking and she's like, I just, I don't know what I'm gonna do. I was like, what do you mean? She goes, it's a couple days before payday and we are literally out of food. She goes, I got nothing. She goes, I think the kids might be able to get something at school. She goes, but I really don't know what I'm gonna do. And we were like, okay, what can like, they're like, no, it's nasty, but here's a bunch of old muffins and some breakfast sandwiches, and here's a gallon of milk. We'll just turn a blind eye. And she had never asked for anything ever. And so I go home and I can't stop thinking about it. Can't stop thinking about it. And God's like, you gotta do something, bro. You gotta do something. I'm like, I don't wanna do it. So I talked to my wife, Laura, and I'm like, this is what's going on. And she goes, "We're going to the store." I was like, "What do you mean?" She's like, "We don't have the money." She's like, "Yeah, we do." She's like, "We're going to the store." And I was like, "Okay." And it was a couple of days before our payday, and we were looking at our fridge, and we were going, "Okay, God." And one time she turned to me, she goes, "We have to do something." And I was like, "Okay." So we went to the store, and we filled the cart, and we checked out. And we went to their house and we doorbell ditched them with a load of groceries. The math didn't math. God took care of the bill. It wasn't Lorna me. God took care of the bill. There was enough. We made it to payday. And then I had that next shift with her at work. And she was like, I gotta tell you a story. And she was in tears. She was like, I don't know who it was, or how it happened. She goes, there was just enough food. Young married couple buying for a family of six. We had no idea who could buy it. And I was like, man, that's incredible. And she was like, "I don't understand." I was like, "Probably not meant to understand, "but just say thanks God." And she goes, "Oh yeah, I've been talking to God "like I've never been talking to God these last 48 hours.”

Being generous is a heart, attitude, mindset change. It's not what you give. Being generous is who you are, and this is who God has called us to. If you want to be more generous when you have more, learn to be generous when you have less. This isn't, it wasn't like that day after Lauren and I did that, like we never struggled with generosity in our life. No. It is a constant battle and struggle. But when we seek God first, and we trust Him with everything that we have, He will take the portion that is left over, and it will go further than you could ever have best plans for the whole. It's the only thing I could tell you that. And I know generous people in this church that say the exact same thing. It's like we started just being generous. We didn't understand, it didn't make sense, and it just happened. But you have to pre-decide. We're not waiting till later. not making excuses of why we can't. We stand firm in our plan of generosity, pre-deciding, rounding up, because we serve a God who went above and beyond and was the most generous, who pre-decided to send his son to take care of everything for us as the ultimate gift. our choice is to then share from that generosity.

Pray with me. Jesus, we thank you for today. God, we thank you for your generosity of the rain outside, even this moment. God, you are so caring and loving. We are so incredibly grateful. And so God, I pray for us as we go from this place today that we would start maybe having some hard conversations, God, of where do you want us to give? Where do you want us to be generous? How do you want us to handle the increase, God, that you have given to us? Jesus, may we be people as Christ's followers who are identified as generous people, not because of the amount that we give, but because of how we care and we love for those around us, God. May we pre-decide, may we pre-choose to trust that you're gonna be the one who's gonna take care of it. Give us eyes to see, give us the strength to plan strategically to be generous. God, be with us as we go from this place. We love you, we praise you, we thank you for who you are. We love you, Jesus. Amen.

Pre-Decide: Part 4

Pre-Decide: Part 4 - I AM DEVOTED

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

I wanted to ask this as we jump into our sermon this morning. I want to ask this. Have you ever felt disappointed in life? Have you thought, man, by this time in life, I thought I would have more? I thought my life would look different. Maybe it's your job, your car, your living situation. Have you ever just thought, man, I thought this would be better? Or I thought maybe by this point in life, I thought I'd be doing something more significant. Maybe you've gotten to the place where you've gotten those things. You've got what you wanted. you've accomplished whatever you set out to do, and then you start wondering, "Is this all there is? Is there anything more to life? Is this all worth it?" And so that question of, "Is there anything more after getting everything that I wanted here on Earth, the spoil..." Oh, the answer is spoiler, yes, there is more. There's absolutely more. And that's what we're going to talk about this morning, about how when we live our lives, we should revolve around getting closer to God. We're gonna talk about pre-deciding, about getting closer to God. Would you pray with me one more time? God, thank you again for our morning together so far. We pray that through your word, we would be encouraged and empowered. And God, that we'd be drawn closer to you. Our desire this morning is to learn more about you so after we leave our time together, that we could go out and be your representatives in this world. So we give you all the glory and honor. We pray this in your name. Amen.

Alright, so again we're in our series Predecide, and we're talking about how when we predecide, those decisions that we make can positively affect the direction of our lives. And the direction is determined by the quality of our decisions. We talked about how when we get into challenging situations that inevitably come in life, those stressful and difficult moments, we're not the best decision makers in those moments. And so we want to, instead of waiting for those challenges, we want to pre-decide everything beforehand as much as possible. We're going to pre-decide now. We're going to pre-decide how to best follow God and honor God in whatever comes up. And so we have this situation that we've been going through which is, when faced with whatever you're - fill in the blank for you - whatever you're going through, whatever you foresee happening in your life, you're going to pre-decide, follow, you're going to make a decision to say, "When this happens, I want to be ready. I'm gonna honor God, I'm gonna live like Jesus through that situation by doing the following. So far we've talked about being ready. You guys ready to do this? We're getting this every week now, you ready? So say, "I am ready." I am ready, good. I am consistent. I am consistent. Yes, you guys are, good. And so today we're talking about devotion. With God's help, we can be devoted in all that we do. And we're not just talking about being devoted in our eating habits or our spending hats or our workout regimen. But as Christians, we need to know who we're devoted to, what it means to be devoted, and how we live a devoted life, and also when do we live this devoted life. It's the classic who, what, how, when. We covered the why last week, and so if you don't remember that, go ahead and listen to that sermon last week. But let's go ahead and start with the who. As for the who, as followers of Jesus, this one might be pretty obvious. We are devoted to Christ. We are fully devoted followers. If you are a Christian, you are a fully devoted follower to Jesus.

Let's go ahead and read Matthew 6. This is Jesus talking, and he says in verse 33, "But seek first His kingdom, God's kingdom, and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." Jesus is telling us to seek God first. When we're devoted to God, we're devoted to His kingdom, to His way of life, then we will experience the truest and fullest, the deepest sense of fulfillment. When we live according to Jesus, then this question of "Is there anything more than this on earth?" we don't even have to ask that question, because we'll experience true fulfillment living the way that God intended us to live. No matter what our worldly circumstances are, as great or as challenging as they might be, seeking first the kingdom of God is for everyone. So from this, this is going to be our umbrella theme for today, is we want to seek first the one who matters most. We want to seek first the one who matters most. Paul had his own way of saying this in Philippians 1:21, he says, "For to me," this is Paul speaking, "For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain." All this life, all that I do is for him. I want to seek him in everything. Jesus is looking for and truly demands all of our devotion. As much as we may love other things in our life, our spouse, our children, our family, our best friends, our job, our money, whatever situation we're in, we may love that. But first and foremost, we must be fully devoted to God. That's the who. All right, so now what does it mean to be devoted to Jesus? Well, the disciples do a great job of showing us what that looks like. I want to give you the setting here. We're going to be in Acts. Jesus has spent three years with his disciples, mostly the twelve, but there's other followers of him. And then as we know, Jesus died on the cross, and he's buried, and then three days later, he is raised from the grave, and that's when we celebrate Easter. And then when he's raised, he's 40 more days with the disciples. And then he ascends into heaven to be back with the Father, and he leaves the disciples in charge of what he had begun. He had been prepping them, He'd been training them, teaching them, discipling them. And so what do the followers of Jesus do? Well, they continue the work of Jesus, and the early church comes to life. And we read this in Acts 2:42, verse 42, it says, "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship and to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles.”

So the early believers, they devoted themselves to the teaching, which is the reading of God's Word, Jesus's interpretation of the Old Testament, they were learning God's instructions for humanity. Also fellowship, just spending time with each other, intentional time with each other, the body of Christ, so whenever they had their church services to throughout the week, just fellowship with each other. It says the breaking of bread, meals, communion, specifically communion, remembering, taking time to remember what Jesus had done on the cross, and also hoping in what he was going to do in the future. And they did this out of obedience to Jesus' instruction at the Last Supper, and then also the prayers. This is communing and talking and listening with God, listening for God. This could be in a communal setting, but also just the daily individual time spent in prayer. This is what devotion to Jesus looks like. And while some of these things might look different over the years, over the centuries, church, we're still doing this today. All these things. This is what we devote ourselves to. Teaching. Well, we have our Sunday sermons, we have our Bible studies, community groups. Fellowship. We have things like Morning Blend, family meals, community groups. hanging out with each other outside of church, breaking bread when we do our communion Sundays, anytime we're sharing a meal with each other, and then prayers, we pray in our service, we pray for each other through those monthly emails that go out of how we can be praying for each other. We pray, hopefully you're praying on your own. So followers of Jesus today are still devoting themselves to these things. The word here for devoted in the Greek conveys this, that their devotion is ongoing. It continues, they were continually devoted. And so we see from the disciples, the followers of Jesus, they had one thing on their mind, and it's this ongoing pursuit of Jesus. Now, that was the disciples back then, the early church.

What would a book about today's Christians sound like? Or at least a book about those who call themselves Christians today? What would the world describe Christians as today? If we were brutally honest, it might sound something like this. Christians today are devoted to themselves, continually and passionately pursuing a self-centered life of comfort and ease. Christians in the year 2024 wanted to be liked, they wanted to be comfortable, adored. They want to finish school, have a job they love, marry someone, have a nice house, travel the world, and at the end of their life go to heaven. Now if you didn't like the sound of that, good. That's not what we should be known for. Those things in and of themselves aren't bad, but are they the first thing that we are pursuing in life? Are they what we are devoting ourselves to the most? It should make us think and reflect, Are we devoting ourselves fully to Jesus? Are we seeking first the one who matters most? Would people ask this question to yourself, would people in your life identify your love in pursuit of Jesus first and foremost as a characteristic of who you are? If so, great, good job. Keep living in the spirit and if there was any conviction through the spirit then bring that forward to God. Say, "God, how do I change this?" How do I change being known from this to being known by you? We today as followers of Jesus can take our cue from those early disciples. We need to have an ongoing pursuit of Christ and have one thing on the forefront of our minds before anything else, and that's following Jesus.

Pastor Groeschel has an example that I think is really helpful. We're going to do it today. So I have a tape measure here. I hope this works. I've tested this. So I'm going to measure out-- OK, we're going a long ways-- 156-- OK, right here. Did I do it? Stay. Stay. Uh-oh. I'm not going to touch it. OK. Nope, I got the measurement wrong. Got to touch it again. 168. My bad. OK. Stay. Good. There we go. Sorry for those watching at home. Yeah, I can't see anything. There's a tape measure down here, and I measured 168. If you want to do this at home, go ahead. Go grab a tape measure. Put it out there in front of you right now. All right, so we have in front of me 14 feet, 168 inches. And this represents one week of our lives. If you can do math really quick, there are 168 hours in a week. So we have, for every inch here, we have an hour of our lives. OK? I want to show us how much we spend in devotion to different things in our life. Now, this is general. I didn't do any research here specifically. This is general numbers. OK? So your life may look very different, how much sleep you get, how much you work. But this is generally, we have-- OK, I got to start over here. This is one. Generally, we spend 56 hours a week, a third of our week sleeping. Some of you are like, I don't get enough. And some of you are like, well, hey, I get lots. And I'm way over there. That's great. But generally, 56, a third of our week is sleeping. We go another 56 inches, another third. This is work or school, whatever you're in. Generally, we're about here. So we're about 2/3 of our week sleep and work. Here's a surprising one. The average person spends 17 hours a week on social media. So now we're over here. Oh my goodness. Conviction yet? I know that was-- I was like, that's for sure me. I'm definitely doing that for church work, obviously. Obviously for church. That's-- no. So that leaves roughly 39 hours of our week. But we haven't yet factored in other things you guys are doing. So things around the house, chores, cooking, spending time with your kids, commute, working out, fill in the blank. But let's say we fill the rest of our week up and we're really close to the 168. And what we haven't factored in yet is how about our devotion to God? So let's say you guys are here, you spend one hour at church at least. So we'll dial it up right there. And we're really, by the way, 168 is right at that tape measure. So we're at the end. Our week is very full. And how much can you get from something that you're only giving one hour a week to? I won't ask that. There's a lot of things we can't control. You have to work. You have to sleep. But there is a lot of time that you do have some freedom in. If you invest only one hour a week into something, you're not going to see any significant growth or improvement. So one hour of exercise in a week, probably not going to be at peak health. One hour of time with your spouse, you probably won't have the healthiest relationship. One hour of study for the whole week, you probably won't graduate top of your class. The point is, if we are only partially devoted to God, only spending a little time with him each week when it's easy or comfortable, when there's nothing else to do, so you're like, "Hey, I finished everything else, might as well try to read my Bible right now." If we treat it in that way, if we treat our relationship with God in that way, then it's no wonder that we'll struggle with reoccurring sin in our life. It's no wonder that we don't often share our faith with other people. It's no wonder that we care more about what people think than what God thinks of us. And it's no wonder you find yourself only partially bought into a faith of living like Jesus. Partial devotion isn't going to help you have fulfillment in your life. It's not going to help in your pre-decisions of honoring Him in every area of your life. And it's not going to help you understand who God is and what He wants of you.

So then the question becomes how? If we want a fully devoted life to Jesus, it's not going to happen accidentally, it must be an intentional decision. You're going to have to pre-decide to live this ongoing single-minded pursuit of Jesus. And Jesus tells us how to do that in his Word. So if you want to turn with me again or look on the screen to John 15, Jesus, I'll start in verse 5, it says, "I am the vine," this is Jesus speaking, "I am the vine, you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing." So here in this verse, we have Jesus as the vine. Think of that as the trunk. It's the main one. And off of that, you have all these branches, and those are believers. So when we are abiding in Jesus, devoted to him, connected to him as the branch, then we will bear fruit. We're abiding with the source of life. What does that fruit look like? Well, that's love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, self-control, the fruits of the Spirit. These things are evidence that one is living life with Jesus. If you see that in a person, if you've ever encountered someone had an interaction and you're just like, "Man, there's just something about them," maybe because they're showing the fruit of living with Jesus. I was talking with someone this week who's losing their mother, she's passing away, and this person I was talking to does not have a good relationship with their mom and is struggling in this process because, by their words, their mom was not a very nice person. And they said, "I've never ever seen the fruit of the Spirit in them, and so I don't think they're a believer." And that saddens her. They want the mom to believe, but she just, I loved her process, she was like, "I don't think she's a believer because I've never seen any fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit, the fruit of abiding with Jesus is the evidence of faith. And so church, hopefully people see and experience some of the fruit of the Spirit when they experience you. When you are not living as the branch, when you're disconnected from Jesus, not devoted to him, maybe only spending one hour a week with Jesus, how do you expect to bear fruit in your life? Do you remember that question that I asked at the beginning? Do you ever feel like life seems a bit empty, meaningless at times? Well, when we devote ourselves to Jesus, when we live as the branch connected to the vine, when you dwell in him, life will start to feel full. Because again, This is what truly matters, and this is what truly lasts. This is what we were made for, to be Jesus' representatives in this world.

The author of Psalms, one of the books of wisdom in our Bible, says this about abiding and dwelling, remaining in God. It's Psalms 1 verse 1. It says, "How sit is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers. But the light is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night." And this is the part that I want us to just envision this in your mind. "He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yield its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither, and whatever he does he prospers." We want to be that tree. If we imagine Jesus as that river, as the source of life, we want to be the tree that's right next to it, always getting the nutrients and the nourishment that we need. And when we live right by the source of life, Jesus, then we will be exactly who we're meant to be. We will yield fruit. In our passage back in John with the vine and the branches, there's a word that appears a lot, 11 times in this chapter, so therefore we know it's very important, and it's the word remain. I'll just read verse four, right above verse five. It says, "Remain in me," again, Jesus speaking, "and I also remain in you. "No branch can bear fruit by itself. "It must remain in the vine. "Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me." This Greek word for remain is meno, which means to abide, to live and to dwell. And so that's not just one hour a week with God. This is constant, ongoing, full devotion, being all in to the one who matters most. And if we think of a vine and a branch, the branch needs the vine. The branch cannot survive without the vine. If the branch loses the vine, it dies. It has no life source, it won't get what it needs, and over time it will wither and die. It's the same for us. Jesus is the vine, you are the branch, so be the branch. Know who you are. Pre-decide to be devoted to Jesus. And make the decision today, "I will seek first the one who matters most." Alright, so we have the "who." We have what it means to be devoted, what a life of devotion looks like, and you have the "how," which is abiding in Jesus. And now I want to get to the practical. What's our game plan to make this a reality in our lives? How are you going to seek first God in your life? Like we said, it's not going to happen by accident. Not going to stumble upon a life of full devotion.

So, I have a plan. I have to reveal this plan to you. And I love how this is coinciding with our community group. We're talking in our community group, which meets on Wednesdays, about solitude and spending time with God. And so if you're in that community group, you're going to hear some similar things right now. I have three things for a plan of success for you. First is to pre-decide time. You gotta know when you're spending time with God. Are you gonna do it in the morning? First thing when you wake up? Or is it on your commute to work? Is it after the kids get dropped off at school or daycare? Is it at the end of your day? When you know that your mind is gonna be able to focus? You need to find a time that works regularly and has very little interruptions or distractions. And you need to decide how long. Are you spending 10 minutes, 15 minutes, a half hour, an hour? What does that time look like? Predecide. Don't go in it with like, "I guess I'll just go until I feel like it," because that will not work. You will fail. It's not going to go well. Predecide a time. When in the day and for how long? Secondly, predecide a place. You got to know where you are going to work best in a relationship with God. Is it that like perfect that couch with like your coffee table and the lamp, you got your Bible and your coffee setting is sometimes more important to some. I know for me I got to, everything's got to be right. I got to have the lamp on so I can see real up close and I got to have the coffee. Or maybe is there, is it on the back patio? Is it in the bathroom where you're just like, I can close that door, no one will bother me. This is my place of silence. Whatever, you know, whatever works. Is it in the laundry room? Is it in a park? Are you walking? Are you just moving? Are you in the car again in the commute or just like once you get to work you park and like before I go in I'm spending 15 minutes right here So find your time find your place and then pre decide a plan You got to have a plan for what you're spending if it's 15 minutes an hour know what you're gonna do Are you gonna be praying? How are you gonna be praying? Are you praying for people for other people? Are you? Praying through Scripture. Are you reading through the Bible? Are you listening to worship music? Is it a combination of things? I'm gonna spend some time here and then I'm gonna do this and then I'm gonna do this. I want to say this too. Remember to leave time to listen to God. We often have this need of getting caught up to fill the silence with noise. We don't like being quiet with God. And so we're just like as soon as we pause like, "Hmm, maybe a song will be good." Or, "Maybe I should talk some more. God, do you want to hear some more of my thoughts?" He knows your thoughts, by the way. It's good to express them, but you have to listen. It's got to be a two-way street. You talk to God and allow Him to talk back to you. Sit in silence with Him. So those are the three things. A time, a place, and a plan.

And I want to just mention a couple other things. If you are put in, I encourage you, put this into practice this week. But I want to give you a heads up. There's something called the J-curve. And if you've been in our Bible study, you've heard about this. But the J-curve is, and this is true of anything outside of spiritual practices too, if you just start a new hobby, or you try something out, you may experience some initial success. You start in this place of like, "Wow, this is going great, I'm actually, I can do this. I'm kind of good at this maybe." Maybe if it's devotion with God, you're like, "Man, that prayer time, that was awesome. I felt great after that, I felt close with God." But the J curve is studies show that over time, in the next week or two, you're going to be discouraged. And that is going to get really hard. And this new habit, this new thing you're trying to do, your feelings about it are going to go down. You're going to be like, "This is not working out anymore. I thought it was good, but I'm just struggling. It's challenging. I don't like it. I don't feel like it anymore." But studies also show that if you stick with it, in that downward turn, you will come back up and you'll go higher than you were before. So they call it the J-curve. You start off with maybe initial success, you like it, you get discouraged, but stick with it, and then you will experience more success. And so that is true of anything outside of spiritual practices, but it's very true in starting a new spiritual practice. So if you have all these things already down, you have a time, you have a place, and you have a plan, good. Be encouraged, continue that. You are living out a life of devotion. If this is new for you, then don't be discouraged when in the next week or two, it gets a little tough. That's okay. And I want to remind you of this too. The success in this quiet time, in this life of devotion, is not what you are checking off the list or gaining from this time. Some people go into this quiet time and they'll leave and be like, "I'm just discouraged. I didn't feel anything. I didn't feel God's presence. I didn't hear from him. I don't know if this is really working." But success in a life of devotion is showing up day after day. Just constant devotion to God, that is success. God loves it when you keep prioritizing Him day after day. That's what we talked about last week, is being consistent.

Be consistent in your devotion. And then also this, you've got to realize that your time of devotion, especially, I would encourage you to try to do at the beginning of the day, you are gearing up for what that day holds. This life, as we talked about two weeks ago with Pastor Lauren saying, "We need to be prepared. Are we ready? Because we will face resistance to our relationship with God." The enemy does not like when we spend time with God. The world does not really allow for us to spend time with God. It's going to try to distract us. It's going to try to pull us away. And even our own flesh. Our minds can be racing when we enter that time of solitude or that time of devotion. And So you have to know that that time is so important, you are gearing yourself up with the Spirit to face whatever happens that day. It is an essential time. Jesus practiced this, and so I think we should practice it too. If Jesus had to do it, we should definitely see that we have to do it too. So, our last question is when? If you have a plan of abiding, of spending time with him, but when? And we see our - I want to bring out our tape measure one more time - we see all this. Well, if we do those times in the day, that's still like only this much, right? If we were - only had a couple hours left, it's still maybe if you do 15 minutes, I mean, you're not - that's not - what about the rest of the week? What about the rest of the hours? I know maybe this is - here's where the perspective shift comes, all these 168 hours that you have in a week, God wants all of them. God doesn't just want the time where you're intentionally spending time with Him, He wants that too, but He wants all of your life. Through everything we face in a day, we should be talking with God, listening for God, and aligning our hearts with God. We want to be seeking God first, the one who matters most in every situation in life. He's not just some segment, some hour of our to fit in when it works for us. God wants all of our life. Seek God first. When something unforeseen comes up, when you are abiding in Him, you can hear from Him, He'll direct your steps, He'll give you the wisdom you need, He'll guide you through that, through His Word, through community, through prayer. You will have the wisdom to navigate life in the most God-honoring way when you are abiding in Him through everything. God doesn't want your leftovers. He wants all of you. God wants all 168 hours of your week. So, pre-decide, church, pre-decide to be devoted, to seek Jesus first and to let him impact every hour of your life. Whether that's at work, whether that's in how you spend your money, whether it's through parenting, relationships, whatever it is, abide in him while you are doing it. Remain in him. him, be devoted to him. So be ready, be consistent, and be devoted to God. Seek him first, the one who matters most, and devote all of who you are, your heart and mind, to Jesus.

Let's go ahead and pray. God, thank you again for your word, thank you for your example through the life of Jesus to show us what devotion looks like. And God, we pray that you would, through your Spirit, reveal to each and every one of us, because it may be different, how we can live a life that's more devoted to you. God, it really is a joy to know that you want all of our lives, you want every hour, and you're not satisfied with just a a little bit of every day, well that's essential and that's important. You want us to see that it's all of us that you want. You want all of our lives. So I pray, God, that you would help us to come before you, to hand over the burdens that we carry, to hand over the mess that we may feel our life is, and to surrender it to you. And to be before you with open arms, humbled, and say, God, use me. God, through your Spirit transform me. God, that's our prayer that you would continue to do work in us and through us. We are so thankful for all that you have done, for all that you're doing, and we know and trust that you will continue the good work that you have started. Be with us today and for the rest of our days. We pray this in your name, Amen.