Have you counted the cost of following Jesus? Today: counting the cost. Contractors love to dream big. Hard to deliver. 28% average cost overrun. Comic. Some of the worst in history: Sydney Opera House (1959): $7M estimated. $102M final. (4 years planned, 14 years total) Montreal Olympic Stadium (1976): C$40M. C$836M (20x!) What does it cost to follow Jesus? Before you follow—know the cost. Luke 14:25-27 (family, cross) Luke 14:28-30: Tower: built to guard a vineyard/house. Foundation. Background: Herod Antipas: one of the three building projects he accomplished during his 35 year reign were the fortifications in Sepphoris, only three miles away from Nazareth. It’s likely Joseph would have worked there. Nearby were two rock quarries: Kefar Kenna and Khirbet Cana. 90% of construction was with stone. Jesus grew up a (teknon’s) contractor’s son: he knew the need to prepare the costs. Twice: also Luke 20:17. The Jews knew well the cost of construction. Taxes spiked to 20-50% under the reign of Herod the Great. Greatest builder in the history of Israel: five fortresses, the second temple. Jews loved the temple. Hated taxes. Developing world construction. Rocky Point -- has many unfinished buildings. The rich young man: what you want! Mark 10:17-22. Run after him and lessen. Descriptive v. prescriptive. Grace is free, but it costs us everything. Not an optimized life "the life you always wanted." Not a cheap salesman. What is it going to cost? Repentance: me: giving up pastoring. Angel: homeless in the streets of Princeton. Defending myself. Control. Reputation. Luke 14:28-3- 1. Count the cost. Comfort. Respect. Control. Money. Reputation. Friendships. Suffering. Jesus counted the cross. Heaven for us. 2. Pay the cost: Matthew 13:44; treasure. Sell everything. Don't delay. Give away so little. Get: Christ, character, inheritance. Security. Release your will to God's will. Our plans are so small. Jeus paid the cost. 3. Trust the Master Craftsman God is the master craftsman: Ephesians 2:10. Philippians 1:6: the master Craftsman has no incomplete jobs.

Daniel the prophet was a great man. He was dedicated, disciplined, excellent of spirit and a mighty leader. How do we develop good habits? Small, consistent changes transform us. We are not successful when we hit our goal somewhere in the future! We are successful when we’ve honored God today. - Well, it's incredibly emotionally to me just to watch and see the looks in people's eyes when they go under water this weekend to be baptized. And I hope you'll join me in thanking the goodness of God that we get to see over 1,200 people, believe it or not, say yes to Jesus, going public in baptism, and the reality that every single one of those people have a story. I read through just a few of the stories and want to give a little shout out. Alicia from the Stillwater campus, one, I thank God that you survived the car wreck and are able to walk again. But also I congratulate you on two years of being clean. And we celebrate your baptism today. From Overland Park, Kimberly, you said you didn't think that God could forgive you. His grace is real. You are new, and the old is gone, and we praise God for your baptism today. And Donya from Rio Rancho. I am heartbroken that you lost your marriage, but I thank God that you see there are new chances, there is grace, and we congratulate you today and every person who's being baptized. It's amazing to realize we're part of something where so many lives are being changed. We are in a message series called Habits, and what I want to do just to start the message today is ask you to think about your last normal day. If you work, what did you do at the beginning of your work day? You might say I'm a stay-at-home parent. That is a job and you need a raise. Whatever you did on the last normal day, think about what you did when you woke up. Here's what I know. The odds are very, very high that what you did on that day was very similar to what you did on the normal day before that. In other words, if your alarm woke you up that day, you probably were awakened by your alarm the day before. Or if you just normally get up with no alarm, you probably got up on that day with no alarm again because you probably did something similar to the day before. You probably went to the bathroom somewhere early in the day and then you probably did something like the day before, which might be check social media, maybe check your email, maybe read your Bible, maybe do a little workout, perhaps make coffee, maybe make some food. You probably took a shower, which is good, or you may not be employed if you don't do that every day. You probably got to work a similar way as you did the day before. You probably worked with the same people, did similar things. You probably got home the same way. If you drove, what's very scary is you probably don't even remember the drive home, like you just kinda automatically got home. You probably had a normal evening routine. You might work out in the evening, or you might do fast food normally, or you might cook the meal and then gripe at everybody who didn't help cook the meal because they didn't clean up the dishes afterwards and they didn't say thank you, and you have every right to do that in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. You might have a normal routine with your kids. You put three kids in the bathtub, one always escapes. You always find that kid, throw him back in the bathtub. Once the kids are done, you have an evening routine. It might be you look at social media, you binge-watch Netflix. It could be that you spend prayer time or you journal. At the end of the day, maybe you leaned over to your spouse and made a move, you got rejected again, you went to bed upset. I don't know what your day is like. But chances are it was pretty similar, a lot of similarities to the day before. In fact, if you're taking notes, I want you to write this down. Most of what or much of what you normally do isn't a result of conscious choices but of daily habits. Much of what you do every single day is not a result of a decision that you make, but of a habit that you already have in your life. In fact, Duke University did a study in 2006, and what they found is that fully 40% of the actions that you take in any given day are not a result of decisions, but are a result of habits. 40% of what you do every single day is a result of habits. That's why if you wanna change where you're going in life, if you wanna change who you're becoming in life, we have to change our habits. If you were with us last week, I recommended a few different books, one of them is the book called Atomic Habits by James Clear, and he talks about the reality that many people have similar goals. Think about it, we all wanna have good relationships. If you're a Christian, you wanna be close to God, you wanna make a difference in this world. I don't know anybody who wants to drown in debt. Most of us wanna have some financial freedom or flexibility. Most of us wanna be healthy. The reality is that so many of us have similar goals, but we have dramatically different results, why? James Clear writes this, because goals don't determine success, but systems determine success. A quote from his book I like was this. You don't rise to the level of your goals, but you fall to the level of your systems. I wanna talk today about systems from a spiritual perspective, and I'm gonna show you a powerful example of a guy who had a system. Or we could say he had one habit that helped shape him to become the person that God wanted him to become. We took a brief look at him last week. I wanna take a more detailed look this week. His name is Daniel. And if you've grown up, maybe you were in Sunday school and you know who Daniel is in the Old Testament. When you think of Daniel, most people think of Daniel in the lion's den. That's impressive that he had the faith to stand down lions and survive, but to me, what's also really impressive is there were 120 young leaders who stood out in the nation, and of the 120 top leaders, Daniel stood out amongst all of them as having exceptional qualities. In fact, here's what scripture says in Daniel six, chapter three. Now Daniel so distinguished himself among the administrators and the satraps by his exceptional qualities that the king planned to set him over the entire kingdom. Why in the world did Daniel stand out? What was it that made him who he was? He might've had a spirit of excellence, maybe great leadership gifts, maybe he was good relationally. We don't know exactly what it was, but there was something in the life of Daniel that caused him to stand out amongst 120 top people around. Before we answer the question of what made him stand out, I wanna tell you what kinda happened. He became popular with the king, he was gonna get promoted. There were a lot of people that didn't like him. Anytime you rise in success, you have people that don't like you, and so his enemies decided to try to take him down. They looked for any kind of weakness, any kind of flaw in his character, any kind of defect so they could trip him up. But they had a problem finding it. Scripture says this in verse four. At this, the administrators and the satraps tried to found grounds for charges against Daniel in his conduct of government affairs, but they were unable to do so. They could find no corruption in him because he was trustworthy and neither corrupt nor negligent. So what they wanted to do, is they wanted to trip him up. They couldn't find any flaw or weakness, so they determined the only way we can trip him up is to do something about his God. This guy is so into his God, that that's the only chance we have of getting him to make some kind of mistake. So what they did is they tricked the king into issuing a decree, that if anyone prays to anyone except the king in the next 30 days, that they would have to be thrown in the lion's den. Daniel stood out. He was so distinguished that amongst 120 top leaders, he was the one that rose to the top. What was it that made him who he was? I would argue it was a system. Or it was one very small habit that over time shaped his identity and gave him confidence to be who God created him to be. I'll show you this system. Daniel 6:10 says this, when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, don't miss it, here it comes, are you ready for it, here it is. He gave thanks to God just as he had done before. What did Daniel do? Not once a day. Not twice a day. But three times a day. Not when it was convenient. Not when it was easy. Not when you'd watch every good show on Amazon Prime. But every single day he stopped, he sought God, he listened for the voice of God, he brought his burdens before God, he petitioned to God, he let God direct his steps, three times a day, as he had done before. He prioritized his life around intimate time with his Heavenly Father. What did Daniel do? He lived a habit, a system. Fellowship, intimacy, time with God. One small discipline. What I would say to you is this. Never underestimate how our God can start something big through one small habit. Never underestimate what God might do, something special, something powerful, something that impacts a lot of people that starts with one single, small act of obedience. Our God loves to take small acts of faithfulness and do something special through those things. In fact, what I'm gonna do today is I'm gonna share with you a little bit of what's helped shape me. For three decades now, if you can imagine that, I'm 51, probably a little more than three decades, I have started one new discipline a year. One small, little seemingly insignificant discipline. If you look at the totality of the 30 years, I had a few years where it didn't take. I had a couple that I dropped along the way. But I would say with complete confidence, sincerity, and integrity that I have 20-plus disciplines that are now in my life that were started one small discipline, one year at a time. And there's not a single one that's made me a great husband to Amy, a good dad to my kids, an effective leader, or closer to God. But all of them together over time have helped reshape how I see myself, renew my mind toward truth, change my body and my posture, my spiritual confidence, all of them together have made a real difference. One small discipline a year. I'll share a few of these with you. My first one that I started was flossing. And I'm not talking about that, you know. Although I am practicing, I may master that before the end of the year. Could be my new discipline to learn to floss. Flossing my teeth, the reason why I did that is because I hate flossing. And this one small, simple act tells me I am a person who chooses right over comfort. I am a disciplined person. Years ago, I determined that to be close to God, I had to have some disciplines in my life. In other words, nobody just stumbles into intimacy with God, like aw man, I was just sitting, and bop, I got close to God, wow, that was amazing. Nobody accidentally becomes full of spiritual strength, power, and faith. And so years ago, I started the discipline of tithing. Very simple, one discipline. Any time God blesses me, I choose in that moment to honor him and put him first. It's a constant consistent reminder that he is my source, my provider, the goodness, and so I worship in the tithe. When I met Amy, when we were dating, even before we were married, we made a choice together that we worship God every week at church. And so we have. I promise you, there has never one time been a conversation in my house where any kid has ever said, are we gonna go to church this weekend? Because that is not something we talk about. You can ask my kids, we're on vacation in the mountains, we're there on a Sunday, we find a little Baptist church, a little Bible church, and we go to church. Because that's what we do, we are people of God, and it's a priority to us. I decided years ago that I needed to learn God's word, so I decided to read the Bible every day. I want you to notice that the fact that I'm telling you I decided to do it meant there was a time I did not. Just to make you feel better, okay? I read the Bible, then I decided to read the Bible one year from front to back. It's probably been 17, maybe 18 years that I've done that over time, started it years ago. I started journaling, and then I failed one year. I started another year, and I failed again. I finally found a five year journal where you only journal five lines, I'm on year number five 'cause I can do five lines of journaling what God is doing in my life. I used to not pray with Amy. There are a lot of reasons, the biggest of which, it takes her about 45 minutes just to get warmed up. I mean, like, okay, she's not here at this service, so don't tell her I said that, but-- Get on with it, God's like going, get on with it, Amy. And so I just didn't do it. And so one year, we created a discipline. Before I leave for work, we join hands and we pray. It's a very short prayer, but every day we're connecting with God. If you've been with us for a while, you know that I used to, I started declarations a few years ago. I had some insecurities, some wrong thinking, and so I declare spiritual truth, say it out loud, to renew my mind. I've got other categories, and I can go on and on. With health, years ago, man, I could drink more Dr Pepper and Mountain Dew than any five of you put together. I quit drinking soft drinks, only water. One year, I limited myself to one dessert a week, then one cheat meal a week, now my diet is much stricter. And I can go on and on and on and on. I go back to one habit that helped make all this possible. One of the books that I recommended to you was The Power of Habits by Charles Duhigg, and he talks about what he calls a keystone habit. What you'll do in your life is you will find there are certain habits that when you have them in place, they help propel you on to other helpful, God-honoring disciplines. Daniel stopped to pray three times a day. This was a keystone habit that I promise you brought other elements into his life that helped him become who he was supposed to become. The presence of that one habit, when I floss, I tell myself I'm disciplined. Therefore, I go to bed on time, I get up on time, I do my Bible reading plan, I go to work, I have a productive day, I come home in a good mood, I kiss my wife, and that is why we have six kids for the glory of God. If I do not floss, I don't feel disciplined, I hit snooze on the alarm, I don't have time to do my Bible plan, I rush into work, I'm not productive, I have a bad day, therefore I have to stay late. I know Amy's gonna be mad at me, so I drove home really, really fast, a police officer tries to pull me over, I don't want a ticket, so I try to outrun him. Eventually four of them capture me, put me in jail, all because I didn't floss. And you can tell that I'm slightly exaggerating, but not by much. I was going over this message with some staff members from my floor, I always do that ahead of time, and there was a 25-year-old in there, and there was a 40-year-old in there, and they said, oh, don't tell 'em all your disciplines. They're not gonna like you. They'll be like, you're perfect, like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you don't understand. They said, that's just, that's unrealistic to do all those things. Look, you're 25 years old, I'm 51. You do this one a year, you're gonna have 26 disciplines. 26. One a year. The 40-year-old, you'll have 11 by the time you're my age. There's not a single one small discipline that really improved my marriage, dramatically improved my leadership, completely overhauled my relationship with God, but I promise you, one small one year over year consistently built my faith, changed my marriage, empowered me as a dad, and equipped me as a spiritual leader. What set Daniel apart? Three times a day, he stopped to have intimate fellowship with God, just as he had done before. Never underestimate how God might start something big, something special, through something very small, one act of obedience. If you were with us last week, we said let's start a little different way this year. Instead of starting with the do, what do I want to do, let's start with the who. Before we ask what do I wanna do, who does God want me to be? Who am I supposed to be? A godly parent, a bold witness, a person who's healthy, breaking generations of obesity in the fam, whatever it is, I wanna be a person that's clean and sober. Who do you want to be? Now we add another piece of application this week, and here is your one assignment. Based on who you want to become, what one habit do you need to start? Based on who God is calling you to be, what is one small discipline that will move you in that direction? And I wanna tell you right now, it's better if it's not big. Something small, it may be for you that you're not gonna hit the snooze button ever again. Listen to me, you can do all things through Christ who gives you strength. Get up and go on with your day. It could be something incredibly small. You might say Bible before Instagram. Before I pull up social media, I'm gonna do my YouVersion plan for the day, or I'm gonna pray with my kids before they go to bed. But just one simple prayer. What do you do based on who you wanna become? You may say, I wanna be a person that cares about others. So for you, it's, I'm gonna write one note a day to express my gratitude or appreciation to someone in my life. Or I wanna be a person that's organized. So for you, you're gonna make your bed every day. Why, because you start the day that way. You wanna be a godly example to your kids, so you do a YouVersion reading plan with them, so every day there's this spiritual touchpoint together. You wanna be a person that's focused. You take out your little note card every day, three things. These are my three priorities, you do them every single day. You wanna be a person that's healthier, so you walk three times a week for 20 minutes or you eliminate soft, whatever it is. Based on who you wanna become, what one new habit do you need in place? What new system do you want that will take you where God wants to take you? Now some of you will say, well, I don't do systems. We all have systems. You either have systems by intent or by default, but you have systems. We all do. Your system may be hit the snooze button four times, get up late, kick the cat, yell at the kids, drive like a bat out of the dark place all the way to work with your hair wet, putting makeup on. Get at work, be grumpy all day, come home, yell at the kids, go to bed, and feel guilty. It's a system. It's not a good one, but it's a system. What new habit, based on who God wants you to become, do you need to create? In all the different books on habits I read, they all talk in different formats about the habit loop. Let me show you how this plays out. This is what happens in the life of everybody, habit loop. There is something that will be a trigger or a cue for you. You see something, you walk by the refrigerator, you get bored, you get angry, you get hungry, you get lonely, it's the end of the day, it's the beginning of the day, there's a trigger or there's a cue that always leads to an action or some sort of response. Then you do the act, you eat the piece of cake, you pray with your kids, you sleep in later, you yell at somebody, you eat a second hamburger. Whatever it is, there's an action. Then you get the reward, the dopamine, the sugar rush, the pleasure, the extra seven minutes of sleep, and then it goes back to the trigger. This is how habits are formed. There's a trigger, we see something, we feel something, we have an emotion, we go to the same type of action, we get a similar type of reward, and then the process repeats itself. How do we start a new habit? What we want is we want the trigger and the action to be two things, if you're taking notes. We wanna make it obvious, everybody say make it obvious. -Make it obvious. -And we wanna make it easy. Somebodyt say make it easy. -Make it easy. -The first thing we're gonna do is we're goanna make it obvious. If you wanna change what you do, then we're gonna change what we see. Make the trigger obvious. If you wanna take vitamins every day, put the vitamins out the night before you go to bed so when you wake up, boop, there's the trigger, I'm gonna take the vitamins. If you wanna be someone who is reading every night before you go to bed, take your book, put it out on the pillow at the beginning of the day. At the end of the day, yeah, oh, there's the trigger, it's really, really obvious. If you wanna write a note every day to encourage somebody, at the end of the day, put the note and the pen on your desk so when you walk in the next day, oh, there's a trigger, this is what I'm supposed to do every day, make it really obvious. Then make it easy, and this is what's so much fun. You don't need to say I'm gonna read through the whole Bible this year. If you try that, you might be done by the third week of January. Instead what you might do is simply say, this year, I'm gonna read one verse every single day, every day. Get a streak going on your YouVersion Bible app. Do you know there's streaks that tell you how long you've done it? Get a streak going, then every day you just open it up, first thing, and read the verse of the day. Here's my promise, if you do that for 27 days, you might just get an appetite to read two verses, and then one day you're reading a chapter. Start small and let it grow from there. You might say, I wanna pray with my spouse. But we don't know how to pray together. It's just too awkward and too intimate. I mean, I know we can have sex together, but we can't pray together. Should I have said that out loud, I don't know. But it just felt right in the moment, okay? I mean, we can just likebut we can't, you know, woo, okay, so I don't know. So we don't know how to do that, so what we're gonna do is just grab your spouse's hand and thank God for one thing, just one, every day. Thank you, God, that we have heat in our house on this cold day. Those of you in Florida, thank you, God, it's not cold here ever. Whatever, you know? Thank you, God, that we didn't kill one of our children. Thank you, one thing every single day. You want to journal, what do you do? One sentence, just start there. Here's where I saw God work today, one sentence. You might get carried away, have two sentences one day. And then one day you might be as good as me, five whole lines. I wanna get in better shape, something. 10 pushups, can't do 10, do five. Can't do five, do one. Can't do one, put your knees down. Do it the, can't do that, lay down on the ground and stand back up, do that once a day. Do something, start small, and see what happens. What are you doing? You're building a system. There's a cue, there's a trigger that tells me, after this, this is what I do because this is a new habit in my life. And here's how you'll write it out in your notes. You'll say this, you'll say I will do blank after I blank, there's your system. I will do blank after I blank. Daniel would've said this. After I eat my eggs, I pray. After I eat my ham, not a ham sandwich. After I, not a ham sandwich. After I eat my roast beef sandwich, I pray. After I eat my chicken dinner, I pray. I do this, and then I do this action. I will do blank after blank. My morning routine looks like this. My alarm goes off, I go to the bathroom first thing. I do my Bible plan, I spend time praying for similar things, and then whatever God puts on my heart. I do my daily declarations, I meditate on one truth. Then I make my oatmeal, I put my 12 berries in it, I take a shower, I shave, I get dressed. After I get dressed, I go pray with Amy, then I start my day. What I've got is, I've got a system, a routine that aligns my heart with God, renews my mind with truth, empowers me to do what God called me to do. Just a few small things started over a patter of time have helped shape who I've become. What's yours gonna be? It might be after I drink my coffee, I read one Bible verse. After I put my kids to bed, I do a 30-second plank. After I brush my teeth, I journal one sentence. After I journal one sentence, I grab my spouse's hand and we thank God for one thing. After we thank God for one thing, I look my spouse in the eyes and I let the Spirit lead me to wherever he leads me. Or what it is for you. But successful people do consistently what other people do occasionally. People who are close to God, but not there by accident, they have small disciplines that draw them close to God. People who are financially strong, they don't do it going shopping for whatever they wanted or they want. There's discipline, there's a plan, there's a mindset, there's habits. People who are in shape like you, doesn't happen going to all-you-can-eat buffet three times a day. It takes a plan. It takes some exercise. It takes some small disciplines consistently done over time. We all have similar goals, but we have incredibly different results. We don't have goal problems, we have system problems. We got habit problems. What set Daniel apart? Time with God three times a day. The biggest revelation I've had in my life in recent years is this. I'll just be honest with you, if you look from the outside, you might say, well, you've had some things that have fallen into place that might be called success. And yet I am never satisfied. I'm always wanting something else, something different, something more, and what I've realized is that I've been living with the wrong kinds of goals. My goals had been primarily means goals. What is a mean goal? A mean is a goal that leads to something else, it's a means to an end. How do you know if your life is full of means goals? Because on the other side of your goal, there's always a so. I wanna get good grades so I can go to a good school, so I can get a degree, so I can get a good job, so I can make enough money, so I can take her out on a date, so we can get married and go on a good honeymoon, so we can raise a family in a nice house, and so on. My goals have always had a so on the other side of it. The problem is this, whenever there's a so on the other side of it, then happiness or fulfillment or contentment or joy is always deferred to the future. There's always something else out there, it's always in the future. And what I've realized is that instead of setting means goals, what I wanna do is I wanna set end goals. And the only end that I can find on the other side of every so is not a what, but it's always a who. -Amen. -It's not what I'm getting or where I'm going or what I'm doing, but who I'm becoming. And the only end goal that ever seems to matter is if I become more like Christ. -Yeah, amen. - More like Christ. More of anything, why would I ever want it unless I could use it for his glory? More like Christ. And if that becomes the driving force of your life, then success is not somewhere out there, but you can be successful when you're obedient to him today. It's not some big result that's five years in the future. It's in a single act of faithfulness and obedience today. I am successful because I honored God today. So if there's always a so at the end of your goal, you're always gonna be reaching for something. My hope, my prayer, based on who God wants you to become, what one small act of obedience will you start today, and then find joy in it. I did what you called me to do. Wasn't big, but I was faithful in the small things, and guess what, God's word says that whenever you're faithful in the small things, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, God will trust you with big things. Be faithful to few, and God will trust you with more. But don't kid yourself. You're not successful when you get more. You're successful when you're faithful today. So Father, we ask that you would help us be faithful today. Stir, God, within us, the desire to please you, to find joy in pleasing you, even in the small ways. At all of our churches, as you reflect in prayer today, who does God want you to become? Based on who he wants you to become, what one small habit, make it easy, make it obvious, do it for the glory of God. All of our churches, those who say I'm gonna seek him, I'm gonna talk about it, talk about it in my life group, talk about it with my family. I'm gonna go public with it, this is real. I'm not gonna try to do 20, I'm gonna do one. And I'm gonna be faithful to God doing that one. Would you lift up your hands right now, all of our churches. Those who say I'm all in, I'm in, I'm in, I'm in, I'm in, man, hands going up all over the place. Thank you, God, speak to us. May we hear from you. God, help us be faithful, direct our steps more than anything else, God, that we could become like your Son, Jesus. Help us be obedient today, successful today in doing what you called us to do. And God, I thank you that when we're faithful with what you put before us, you may put more before us. But God, help us to not wait for the more to feel successful, but be fulfilled in being obedient to you even today. As you keep praying today at all of our different churches, we're talking about starting a new habit, a new discipline. Let's talk about the word start. There's some of you, you need to start a relationship with Jesus. What does that mean? I grew up going to church, and I believed in God, but I thought God was kind of some separate entity, some distant ruler and such. I had no idea that God sent Jesus, not only to save me from my sins, but to reveal the character and the nature and the goodness of God, that God wanted to have a relationship with me. What's the problem, why is it that just we can't just like openly talk and hear from God on our own? The problem is that we're sinners. Our sin separates us from God. God is so holy that sin separates us. And this is why Jesus was born without sin. This is why he was perfect, why he never sinned. He was the innocent sacrifice who became sin for us on the cross. He, the innocent one, died for us, the guilty. And by the grace and the goodness of God, God raised Jesus from the dead. He defeated death, hell, victory, and the grave, why? So that anyone who calls out on the name of Jesus, the name that is above every name, anyone who calls on the name of Jesus would be saved, would be forgiven. There are those of you here, if you're honest, you're not following Jesus, you're not walking with Jesus, he's not the dominant source of truth in your life, he's not your Savior, he's not the Lord of your life, and you realize you need to start something. How do you start a relationship? Very simply, we confess and acknowledge that we have sinned. We ask for his forgiveness and grace, and then we decide to follow him. He will direct your steps, he will make you new. At all of our churches, there are those of you, you recognize you're doing life without him. You're not here by accident, you're not watching by accident, God brought you here for this moment. You can sense it. Your decision is to start a relationship with him. I turn from my sins, I give my life to Jesus. Today, I give my life to him, that's your prayer. Lift your hands high right now all over the place and say yes. Right back here in this middle section, praise God for you, and over here as well, both of you here, sir, right back over there in this section others of you saying, yes, Jesus, I lift up my hand, I surrender to you. Back here in this section, praise God for you. Others of you today, I call on him, Jesus, save me. Church Online, you click right below me. As we have people coming to faith at all of our different churches, would you simply pray aloud with those around you. Pray, Heavenly Father. -Heavenly Father. - Forgive all my sins. - Forgive all my sins. - Make me brand-new. - Make me brand-new. - Jesus be first. - Jesus be first. - My Savior. - My Savior. - The Lord of my life. - The Lord of my life. - Fill me with your Spirit. - Fill me with your Spirit. - To direct my steps. - To direct my steps. - My life-- - My life-- - Is not my own. - Is not my own. - I give it all to you. - I give it all to you. - Help me to show your love. - Help me to show your love. - And honor your name. - And honor your name. - In all I do. - In all I do. - Thank you for new life. - Thank you for new life. - I give you all of mine. - I give you all of mine. - In Jesus' name I pray. Could somebody celebrate today, somebody thank God for new life in Christ.

Proverbs 14:30: “A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot.” Envy causes us to compare and compete with others in an unhealthy way. It brings arrogance when we’re winning and discouragement when we’re not. It robs us of contentment and causes us to feel like—as an ancient king put it—we’re chasing after the wind. But envy doesn’t have to be the boss. As we get started, a quick survey and I'd for you to raise your hand and everybody play along and if you're watching at home, play along or if you're driving keep one hand on the steering wheel. How many of you actually are on Instagram? I'm just curious. Not right this minute but like, you do Instagram. Yeah, okay. Yeah, most of us. But I was kinda late to the whole Instagram thing. It seemed like a girl thing to me to be honest and then I realized, oh! There's all kinda cool stuff on here. And the great, the great thing, the great thing about Instagram is, I mean, like, the really, really great thing about Instagram is... Anyway, the problem, really, if I'm just honest, the problem with Instagram is that now that I'm on Instagram, I find I'm constantly needing a new pair of shoes and this is embarrassing to talk about because I never really thought about shoes and every once in a while at Christmas or something, Sandra would show up with some shoes. I'm like, are those cool? Okay, I'll wear those. I never thought about it. Now that I'm in Instagram, I have more shoes. Okay. I have almost as many shoes, I think sometimes, as Sandra. It's just ridiculous. And I, again, I just never gave them any, much thought to shoes or shiplap. Now we have shiplap in our house, okay? I never gave much thought to that. I never gave any thought to your cute kids and I can't go back and redo all of our family pictures 'cause they're on film. You remember that. Like, what can you do with that? So now I take pictures of pictures to put on Instagram. It's so lame. I'm also bothered by all the incredible vacations you have. Like, they look amazing. You go places I've never been. In fact, I've gone to some of those places but it didn't look near as cool as it was when you went with your cool pictures. I'm very bothered by the cool young preachers and they're overpriced sneakers. That's starting to bother me a little bit too. You know? So I thought well the way to solve this is I'm just not gonna look. So I just, I just quit. I thought I'm gonna get off Instagram. Then I though, wait a minute. I'm not a quitter. So I got back on. I thought, no, I'm not a quitter. I'm just gonna up my game and I'm gonna make you as discontent with your life as you have made me with my life and so I'm gonna start using better filters. I'm gonna crop it a little bit closer and kinda, you know, edit out all the stuff and I'm just gonna take it over and over and over and over until I get the perfect picture and I'm gonna put on Instagram the highlight reel of my life so that it'll make your lame life look even lamer, right? No, the great thing about Instagram, it really is, the great thing about Instagram is that it is a constant reminder, and we all need reminding of this, it is a constant reminder that there really is no win in comparison. There is absolutely, you've hear me say that before. There really is no win in comparison and the reason I talk about that is because we are in part three of this series called, "You Are Not the Boss of Me". You're not the boss of me and the subtitle says it all. How to, because this is a how to series, how to say, "No", to the emotions that compete for control. How to say, "No", to the emotions that compete for control because all of us have two or three emotions that compete for control of our lives. Specifically, they compete for control of our mouths and then our mouths get us into trouble because we let those emotions be the boss of us. Jesus said it perfectly. Here's how he set up and this is where we're going for the rest of the series. He said this, he said, "Don't you see", talking to his disciples, "Don't you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and our of the body", to which they said as we said last week, yes, we see that. We see it two or three times a day. Or, is this gonna be in the Bible? Are we gonna, anyway, he says, "I'm just getting your attention". He says, "But, here's the real point", "But the things that come out of a person's mouth", the other end, "the things that come out of a person's mouth they actually come from the heart", what comes out of your mouth comes from your heart, and what comes out of your mouth from your heart actually is what defiles you. Eating the wrong things doesn't defile you before God it's what comes out of your mouth that defiles you before God because what comes out of your mouth puts you at odds with God when it puts you at odds with other people and God is most concerned about what comes out and how it effects people then he is about what goes in and in a culture that was all about a dietary law, this was like what? He goes, "Yeah". God is not petty. God is not small. God is not overly concerned with what you accidentally eat but he is very concerned about what comes out of your mouth if it hurts other people because if you hurt people God loves, you set yourself up to be at odds with God. And then he makes this brilliant insight that it took us a long, long time to catch up with. He says this, "For out of the heart come evil thoughts". He kind of equates the and our mind. "For out of the heart come evil thoughts", and our thoughts are what instigate, our thoughts are where all of these behaviors come from. Everything you've ever done, began, for the most part with a thought. It began with your mind or it began with your heart. He uses these words interchangeably. "For out of the heart come evil thoughts and those thoughts are what bring about murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander", and then in another gospel, he adds other words. He says, all of these things that you at odds with people, that puts you at odds with God, all of this comes from your heart. Our words and our deeds, actually reflect, he says, what is in us and we don't like this because I wanna think that the thing I said that I didn't mean to say is an exception and doesn't reflect poorly on me. It's just, it was an accident so I say, "Well, I didn't mean to say that", right? And I didn't mean to do that. And, you know, I'm not sure where that came from. Jesus says, "I know. I'm sure". And if what Jesus says is true, and I just think anybody that predicts their own death and resurrection and pulls it off, I just go with whatever they say so I think that what he says is true. And what says is true is that these things come from your heart. They come from my heart. And so we dare not, we dare not allow these destructive forces that reside within us to come out of us and undermine our own success, undermine our marriages, our relationships, our futures, our dating and you know, whatever it might be. That we can't just go along in life as we said the last two weeks simply monitoring our behavior. Jesus calls us to do something far more significant and something that all of us need to learn to do and if you're a parent, especially if you're a father, you gotta teach your children to do this and that is to monitor your heart, to monitor what's going on on the inside because what's going on in the inside is eventually gonna come out on the outside. And if all we do is try to put a filter over our mouth, from time to time, as you know, we're gonna fail. Then we're gonna be like, Oh, I didn't mean it. I didn't mean to say that. And we treat our words as if, you know, an accidental, saying something accidental, and then taking it back or proving its an accident removes the hurt but that's just not true, right? If I accidentally back into you with my car, right? And I get, and I say, hey, it was an accident. You don't jump and go, oh, well if it's an accident, I'm fine. No, it hurts just as much. Same with our words and those words, he says, You can fool yourself all day long. The reason you said them is because they were already in there. So we need to go after this stuff and rid out hearts and cleanse our hearts. And that's what this series is all about. So last week we talked about guilt, how to say, guilt, hey guilt, you're not the boss of me. Shame, you're not the boss of me. And today, we're gonna talk about this ugly word. Envy. Envy. To me, this is just me, I think this is the ugliest thing in human nature. I know it is the ugliest thing in me. There is no bright side, upside, positive side to this word. And we can put the word jealousy. I like envy 'cause it sounds, I don't know, a little bit more sinister. Envy is that thing, and I'll just, you know, if confessions good for the soul, I'm about to do my soul a big favor, 'cause there's a lot of you to confess to. The thing that I don't like about me the most and if you can't relate to this, please don't judge me too harshly, the thing I don't like about me the most is that every once in a while, someone will fail and my initial emotion is like, yes. And I hate that about me. Now eventually get over it and like, Andy that's terrible, but I hate that every once in a while, somebody goes down or somebody makes a mistake or trips up. I don't know if it's public figure or private or whatever. Have you, has any, don't raise your hand. Have you ever had this experience where you are? Okay, it's not just me. Even folks on the front row, right? At home, you know? Somebody and that your initial emotion, the first thing that pops up is, yes. Like, that'll show them. Or somehow that made me feel better about me 'cause, and then you immediately, if you're, you know, if you're sane, you're like, oh, that's horrible. I just think for me, that is the ugliest, ugliest, ugliest part of me. And imagine if that became the boss of you. Imagine if that is the boss of you. That's an ugly thing. That will ruin what is most valuable and most important to you. And I think it resides in all of us. King Solomon, considered the wisest man who ever lived next to Jesus, said this, he just goes right at it. He says, "Envy rots the bones". Envy rots the bones. In other words, when we are envious, we're focused on someone out there and what they've done and what they have and who they raised and how smart their grandkids are and how cool their car is and Solomon says, don't kid yourself. The consequences of envy, they may be a little bit out there but at the end of the day envy rots the bones and here's why. It leaves us competing. This is the joke. This is how ridiculous this is. It leaves us competing with people that don't even know there's a competition and we're striving so hard to drive cooler, live cooler, you know, be smarter, do better, perform better, you know. I mean, we're competing with people. They don't even know there's a competition and it makes us arrogant because we're successful and we accomplished more than they did or it makes us depressed and we despise ourself because we fall short. I mean, again, there's no upside. There's no positive side to envy. It rots the bones. It ruins relationships. It'll make you a not very good friend, a not very good sister-in-law or bother-in-law, or cousin, or child or bother or sister or whatever it might be and so if you have to leave early or you lose electricity here's the bottom line. So jut knock it off, all right? Just stop with that. If only it was that easy, right? But this isn't gonna go away. I mean, it suddenly we feel it. We don't mean to feel it. We don't know where it comes from. Jesus says, I'm telling you where it came from. It came from within you. It is in you. You just dare not allow it to be the boss of you. So even if it never goes away, it doesn't have to control us. It doesn't have to drive us. We can began to monitor heart and deal with it. Because this is just my opinion. I don't think envy is a problem to be solved. I think it's a tension to manage because we're human and we're fallen and it's just natural to compare and it's natural to, you know, allow our self-esteem to be built upon what other people are doing as opposed to what God has perhaps called us to do. So, the great news is, Solomon, who gives us the envy rots the bones statement, Solomon also gives us a way forward. In fact, in his writings, he gives us a place to go. This is how I think about it. He gives us a place to go mentally so that when you find yourself drifting emotionally toward envy or you find yourself drifting emotionally toward comparison or jealousy, whatever word you wanna use. When you find yourself drifting there emotionally or suddenly that ugly, ugly part of you crops up and starts to, I mean, he says, let me tell you somewhere you can go mentally and when you start to lean that way emotionally, and he gives you a word picture to help us regain our balance because one of the things that's important to remember throughout this series is that all of these emotions, the reason they get in control is they throw us off balance. Anger throws you off balance. That's why you come back and you're like, I can't believe I said that, did that. Envy, it throws you off balance. Suddenly you're acting on things or saying snarky things and you're like, where did that come from? I'm off balance. Lust throws you off balance. All of these emotions throw us off balance. So Solomon gives us kind of a, a word picture and it gives us a phrase we're gonna get to in a minute and I'm hoping that as a result of our time together, that you would take this phrase, that you would take this imagery that he gives us and this would become so instilled in your thinking that when you begin to have those feelings, when you're tempted to say that thing, when everybody else is going on and on about them and you're tempted to join in, that you would find yourself saying, "No, no, no, no, envy. Uh-uh. I caught you. You are not the boss of me and you are not the boss of my mouth". Here's what Solomon writes. He said, "I saw that all toil", that is all work and labor, "and all achievement spring from one person's envy of another". So this is King Solomon. He's got all this perspective, all this wealth, go anywhere, do anything. He's been there, done that, seen it all. He says, here's my observation. For the most part, and this is a little bit of hyperbole, but, for the most part, he says, as I've observed people, everybody is competing with everybody else. And everybody is determining how successful they are by measuring themselves and their success by everybody else's success. This is going on 3,000 years ago. It's just human nature. They're determining where they are based on where everybody else is. Sound familiar? They're determining where they are, based on where everybody else is. And then he says, this is ridiculous, but he uses a different word. He says, this is meaningless. This is meaningless. And then, he gives us this word picture. These are, these next few words are the words that I hope you'll just grab ahold of and that this will become part of your internal vocabulary so that when you start having those internal, you know, imaginary conversations with people. Do you ever do this? Where you're having an imaginary conversation with people? Yeah. And how you always say the right thing in your imagination, right? And they always look stupid? Is that just me? Sometimes I have imaginary conversations with people and there's a crowd, you know? And they're like, Andy, yes! You know, then I just drop the mic and walk off like Jesus and the Pharisees, you know? But we always sound good. So this is, this is a phrase that I think we should all incorporate into our, our repertoire so when we start having these imaginary conversations, this is where we go. Here's what he says, he says, "I saw all this toil, all this achievement spring from one person's envy or another. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind". Let's just say this together. A chasing after the wind. Everybody, one more time. A chasing after the wind. Now, I want you to think of that. That is powerful imagery. Chasing the wind. It's endless. There's no finish line. There's no peace. There's no ultimate satisfaction. There's no contentment. It's like an unquenchable appetite. Chasing after the wind. There's always an -er. We've talked about this. There's always an -er because his is newer and hers is nicer, and her kids are smarter and theirs is bigger and his is faster. There's always an -er. There's always somebody with a bigger -er, right? And so if you're chasing the wind, if envy becomes the boss of you, you're just chasing the wind. It never, never, never ends. There's never any satisfaction. There's never contentment as we're gonna see. You can't even enjoy your own accomplishments. Dissatisfaction guaranteed if you chase the wind, if you allow envy to become the boss of you in any area or as we're gonna see, even in a single relationship. It steals the joy from our accomplishments because there's always someone who's accomplishing more, right? And so when you catch yourself looking in that direction, when you catch yourself drifting in that direction, when your emotions begin to go in that direction, that's when you have to step back and say, "No, no, no, envy. Envy. Listen to me. You are not the boss of me. That is simply chasing the wind and I don't chase the wind". That is just chasing the wind and I don't chase the wind. Envy, you're not the boss of me. No, I'm not even going there. Uh-uh, envy, I'm not going there. That' just chasing the wind. I don't chase the wind. That's sideways energy. It a waste of my time. I'm not gonna waste my time which is my life chasing the wind. Your time is your life. But on the other hand, Solomon was a very accomplished person. I mean, he was a King. He accomplished more in his lifetime than anybody else ever accomplished in his lifetime. So this isn't, he's not trying to bait us into being lazy or to do less or to accomplish less. He says, "No, only a fool would fold their hands and ruin themselves". This is his imagery of somebody who's like, Well, I'm not even gonna try. Well if I can't be making 100%, I don't care what percent. I'm not even gonna try. If I, if I can't compete at all, why, you know, if I can't win, why compete at all? I'm just not even gonna try. It's like, no, no. That's not the answer either. This isn't about being passive. This isn't about doing your best. This isn't about trying to accomplish something in the world. This is not about being un or non-productive. And then, he's so wise, he brings these two ideas together. On one hand, you don't just give up and do nothing. On the other hand, you don't stress yourself out trying to be someone you're not. Then he gives us, again, more imagery that's so powerful. He says, "Better". And for some of us, this is good news. For others of us, this is gonna be a struggle because of the way you're wired, because of your temperament, because of your personality. He says, "Better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind". It's better to have one handful of what you were designed to do and what you were created for then to have two handfuls when one of those handfuls is causing you, is just stressing you out because you're trying to keep up with someone you'll never keep up with. He says, at the end of the day, tranquility, even if you have less, is better than having more and losing your peace and losing your tranquility and losing your sense of self and losing yourself. Tranquility, what is tranquility? It's a word we don't use a lot. It's just satisfaction. It's contentment. It's going home in the afternoon and going, I did my very best and that's, I'm fine with that. It's laying in bed at night knowing, I have peace because I'm not stressed out trying to be somebody I can't be and trying to accomplish things that maybe I wasn't called or designed to accomplish. But chasing, chasing leaves us wanting more. Again, it's an appetite that can't be satisfied. It's chasing the wind. His point is simply this, that less, less is actually more, that less is actually more when it leads to contentment because the result is peace. The result is peace with yourself and ultimately, it's brings greater peace with the people around you, especially the people that are most important to you. Better one hand full with tranquility than grasping and striving and pretending and editing and cropping and retaking, no, that's not it, retaking, no, that's not it, retaking, no, that's not it. This is why some of you have gone off of social media, isn't it? It was just driving your crazy. You just found yourself thinking about it all the time. I'm a loser, I'm a loser, I'm a loser, I'm a loser, I'm a loser. No, I'm a loser, I'm a loser, I'm a loser, I'm a loser. Oh, my husband's a loser. My wife, loser, my kids, oh my kids. You just, and you're like, you know, I just can't deal with it anymore and some of you, you know, have been wise enough to decide, you know, I'm just gonna take a vacation. So here's my suggestion when it comes to that. Now, I've been saying this a long time. Anything, anything that stirs up discontentment in you, just remove it out of your life. Now, I'm not talking about being inspired to do great things and be your best. That's different. But the thing that just leaves you feeling less than, discontent it may be something your subscribe to, maybe a magazine. It may be a website. It may be some social media. But anything that stirs up envy in you, anything that stirs up discontentment in you, anything that stirs up jealousy in you, just remove it because it's feeding that thing that resides in you and resides in me that will be the boss of me, if I allow it to be. Just get rid of it. Cancel that. Quit looking. Quit taking. Quit watching. Quit scrolling. Whatever that might be. Now, Solomon's not done because he's got so much to say on this subject and now he takes us a little bit different direction and he says this, he says, Let me tell you something else I've seen. "Again I saw something meaningless", or we would say just ridiculous, "I saw something else meaningless under the sun". Under the sun was his way of saying in this world. There was this guy and he was all alone. "He didn't have a son and he didn't have a brother". Now, in this context when you read a phrase like this, here's what it meant. He didn't have anyone to leave his stuff to because women could not inherit in this culture. So here's this guy and he has no son and he has no brother. He has no one to leave his stuff to and Solomon says, but I watched this guy and there was no end to his toil. I mean, he just would not let up, yet his eyes were not content with his wealth. He was just going after it and after it and working and working and working and accumulating and doing more and more and more and just, just, you know, just killing it but just going for it, just had so much focus on what he was doing. And then Solomon says, this guy finally stopped and asked a question, a really important question. If you're an ambitious person like me, if you love progress like me, if you love accomplishment like me, here's a question you need to ask. Here's a question I need to ask. Here's a question we probably need to ask from time to time. He said, I saw this guy who has, he doesn't have anybody to leave this stuff to and he finally pauses and he asks this question, "For whom am I toiling"? In other words, who am I doing this for really? Well, why am I doing this? What's, this is it. What's really driving me? What am I trying to prove? And here's the tough part, who am I trying to prove it to? Or if you don't like prepositions at the ends of sentences, to whom am I trying to prove it, right? So here, let me ask you, this is something to think about. This is a question to wrestle to the ground. Why are you, why do you stress yourself out to do everything that you do? Really. And now, again, the fathers, it's like, doing it for my family. Really? So your family's pushing you. You get up in the morning and your family's at the door going, come on, Dad. Get out there and come on, Dad. You can do this. You're doing this for your family. Maybe you are. But maybe there's a deeper answer to that question. Come on, men. Maybe there's more going on. Why are you doing this? Why are you doing this really? For whom are you doing this? Are you internally competing with someone and your competition with the person out there that doesn't even know you're competing with them or the industry out there, they don't even know you exist much less you're competing with them. And in your competition, you're actually alienating the people you say you're doing this for. It happens all the time, doesn't it? This is a great question. For whom am I competing? For whom am I toiling? For some of you, there's a name. For some of you, there's a face. For some of you, it's your father. For some of you, it's your mother. For some of you, this happens all the time, I'm not trying to, you know, stir up any emotion. For some of you, it's for a deceased parent. You're still trying to prove yourself to someone who's not even around to see. This is an important question because until we have an answer to this question, we may in, be internally striving, envying, we are desiring or we are jealous for their approval. We are jealous, we're jealous for that pat on the head. We're jealous for something we can't even get and we have given up our one handful of tranquility because we have opted for two handfuls of striving and chasing after the wind. Phew. He says this, going, talking about this imaginary person. He says, "And why am I depriving myself of enjoyment". Do you ever ask yourself this question? Do you ever come to the realization, oh my goodness. I'm not even enjoying what I have. I don't pause long enough to stop and, you know, just to use that old phrase, smell the roses. I mean, I love my kids. I just don't spend any time with them. I love my wife. I don't spend much time with her. I love my husband but I'm just, I just gotta go, go, go, go, go. I don't even, he says, I don't even enjoy what I'm doing. See, this is the death spiral, isn't it? This is the relational and family death spiral and sometimes we don't understand what's driving it, is something on the inside of us and for some of us, it's envy. And for some of us, it's jealousy. For some of us, it's comparison or just the quest. We're jealous for the approval of somebody or a group of somebodies, in most cases they don't even know we're competing with them. He couldn't enjoy what he had and he didn't know why. Solomon says, "This is ridiculous, isn't it"? I mean, hearing me say it, this is just ridiculous. "This to", he says, "is meaningless". I love this phrase. "It is a miserable business". Isn't that great? In other words, it will make you miserable. You'll put a check in every box. You'll accomplish everything on your to-do list. You'll get the award. You'll graduate at the top of your class and you'll go home and you will be miserable because something's driving you and you never put your finger on it. Now, if you're not a Christian or a religious person, let me just say this to you, okay? You'll never be. You'll never be what you were created or designed or what you have the potential to be. You will never be what you were designed or created or have the potential to be as long as you're looking over your shoulder at what everybody else is becoming. Now, if you're a Christian, this is even more serious because you'll never, you'll never experience, you'll never experience God's purpose for your life if you're distracted by God's purpose for someone else. Now, this is a big deal. This is a really big deal to me. I grew up with a very successful father and I don't know any other way to say this. I followed him in the family business, so to speak, okay? I mean, my dad is a pastor. There was a time, you know, when I was thinking about ministry and looking at what he was doing. You're gonna think I'm exaggerating. This is, once upon a time, there was no internet. Does anyone remember this? Okay, yes. It was a terrible time, right? This didn't mean anything. In fact, half of the words we use didn't mean anything before the internet, right? In fact, they meant there things. This is kinda funny to think about. So, before there was an internet, my dad, I mean, this would be amazing now. My dad was on television, short wave radio or radio, preaching in every country of the world every day of the week. He was preaching in every country of the world, every day of the week by television, radio or short wave radio because radio stations would blast his preaching across national boundaries. I'm sure this is somehow illegal and people with short wave radios could listen to him preach when it was illegal to preach in some of those countries. And then I come along, I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna go and be in the ministry. Well, what are you gonna do? I think he did it all. I think it's pretty much all done. I mean, if you're dad's preaching in every country of the world every day of the week then what is there left to do? And I just remember struggling. I felt like this is something I wanna do but to fall into the comparison trap, and he was so great. He never put that on me. He never, ever put that on me. I put it on myself and I found myself, like some of us find ourselves, kinda competing with someone who doesn't know there's a competition. Competing with people who would be shocked and feel like, wait, wait. Why do you feel like you're competing. But to find the race that God has called you to run and to find the lane that you're to run in and to quit looking over your shoulder and looking at all the other lanes to see what other people are doing, it is so extraordinarily liberating. And do you know what it does? It allows you to work harder with more peace. You work harder, you get more accomplished with more contentment and you begin to measure success differently. Now, I'm still trying to figure this out because this is a tension to manage. So every day, in some capacity, I find myself saying under my breath, "Envy, mm-mm, you're not the boss of me". I'm not going there. I'm not chasing the wind. So here's the phrase that Solomon began all this with. I just gave you the second half. Here's the entire sentence. Here's what he says. This is so powerful. "A heart at peace gives life to the body but envy rots the bones". A heart at peace, that is, this is this internal thing. Finding peace, finding contentment, finding that sense of, I've done all I know to do. I've done my very best. I will be content with one handful and tranquility. He says, "A heart at peace gives life to the body, but it's envy that rots the bones". In other words, you cannot compete. You cannot compete or compare your way to peace. You cannot compete or compare your way to peace. You cannot win by chasing the wind. Now, here's the thing if you're a Christian. God has given you a race to run, as a parent, as a professional, as a student, as a mentor, as an athlete, as a coach, as the teacher, as whatever it might be. God has given you a race to run. He's given you a lane to run in. So stay there and thrive there. And here's the most important part. And change somebody's world from there because the moment you get out of your lane, and the moment I allow envy and comparison and jealousy to be the boss of me, do you know what I quit doing? I quit being concerned about other people because envy is extraordinarily self-centered. Jealously is extraordinarily self-centered. I'm gonna have a difficult time caring about you if I'm overly worried and concerned about me. That's why that ugly, ugly, ugly, embarrassing thing that pops up every once in a while when somebody else fails, where does that come from? That comes from this false sense that the lower you go the higher I get. The less you succeed the more I succeed. What a lie that is. But that's what envy does. That's what jealousy does. Jealousy says if someone else will tear you down, I can feel better about myself. How extraordinarily self-centered is that. And you have been called to live a better life and your better life is found in the lane that God has called you to run in and from that lane, you can do more for other people because you will be less concerned about who and where you are compared to other people. Sure, there's a time to look to other people. You look at other people for inspiration, not imitation. Read biographies. Be inspired by their stories. Don't be afraid of their success. Envious and people who are eaten up with envy, they don't even like to hear about other people's success. They have a hard time celebrating with other people. Use other people's stories as inspiration not imitation. Celebrate, even in areas where you can't participate. Jordan Peterson says this. I love this statement from his book. He says this, "Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who somebody else is today", from "12 Rules of Life". Isn't that good? If you're gonna do the comparison thing, compare yourself to yourself. Compare yourself to where you were yesterday. In other words, making progress. Again, this isn't about sitting on your hands and doing nothing. This is about, to use the phrase, being all you can possibly be and being that God has called you to be. But you compare yourself to where you were yesterday. Love progress. Pursue progress. But don't compare yourself to where somebody else is today or to use some old school language, count your blessings, not your neighbor's. Yeah, right? Count your blessings. Have you ever actually done this? I mean, this may seem so strange, to sit down and to make an actual list of all the things in your life that are a blessing. Do you know what happens when you begin to count your blessings? Something happens on the inside of you. You become grateful. Grateful people are generous people because grateful, generous people are not self-centered people. So just count your blessings. Don't worry about everybody else's blessings. God has called you to do something specific and you don't wanna miss it. Don't miss the life that God has for you. You'll never experience. You'll never experience life to the full as long as you are trying to get in on the lane of somebody else around you. You'll never experience your life to the full until you focus on the life that's right in front of you. So, this afternoon, maybe before you leave here, maybe before you turn, you know, as soon as you go to the next browser, you know, just today, when you find your mind and you find your emotions drifting towards that sense of envy and comparison, and I don't measure up and I'll never have and I'll never drive and I'll never live and I'll never look like that. When tempted to compare, when tempted to compare, then you just really need to stop and declare, and maybe out loud, maybe under your breath, "Envy, you're not the boss of me". Envy, you're not the boss of me. I will not chase the wind. Envy, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Envy, you're not the boss of me. In fact, envy, let me show you what I'm gonna do. I'm actually gonna write her a letter and congratulate her on the very thing that makes me hate her, okay? Because you are not the boss of me. I'm not gonna hate her. Watch this, I'm gonna write a letter and I'm going to hand her and congratulate her because, envy, you are not the boss of me. You know what? When he gets home, I'm gonna celebrate him, even though he gets all the attention and I do all the work. Even though she gets all the attention and I do all the work. Whichever way that goes. You know what, envy? I'm not gonna be jealous. I'm not gonna allow jealousy to be the boss of me. I'm going to congratulate him and congratulate her. I'm going to cheer them on until you finally shut your mouth. You are not the boss of me. So let's just say this together out loud. Ready? Ready? Everybody, even if you're watching online. Envy, you are not the boss of me. I will not chase the wind. Now, this time with a little more attitude, okay? 'Cause you gotta tell envy, now, real quick. This is not spooky. We're not talking to people or demons or spirits, okay? This is just an exercise to help us get perspective in those moments when our emotions wanna take control. So one more time with a little bit more attitude. Ready? Envy, you are not the boss of me. I will not chase the wind. Besides, if you're a Christian, you already have a boss of you and Jesus have you some very specific instructions. I'm gonna read you the implication and then the instructions. The implication is this, now this is such a big deal if you're a Jesus follower. Ready? Don't compare yourself to one another. Love one another. And you can't do both very well. Don't compare yourself to one another. I've called you to something so much higher and greater. You are to love one another and envy always gets in the way of love. So this is not a nice to-do. This is mission critical. Jesus said it. I mean this is an amazing statement that I, it should just cause us to wonder every time we hear it. He said, by this, this is how people are gonna know that you're my follower. If you love, if you celebrate, if you cheer on, if you refuse to give in to, if you love one another, that's where peace and that's where purpose is found. It's living out and staying in your lane, head down to the thing that God has called you to do. Celebrate what everybody else is doing and leverage who you are and the opportunities that come your way in order to serve and celebrate other people. That's where the peace is found. And ultimately, that's where purpose is found as well. So last question and we're done. Is it possible, this is so hard to admit. This is so hard to see in the mirror. Maybe it's impossible to see in the mirror. Is it possible that in some area of your life, envy has become the boss of you? Let me be specific. Is it possible in one relationship that envy has become the boss of you? It's your sister-in-law. It's your bother-in-law. It's your older brother. It's your older sister. My older sister's so smart she doesn't even have to try. I try and I try and I try and she just gets up and it just all works out. Maybe it's just one relationship, in one relationship, in a relationship has envy become the boss of you? What can you do about that? Maybe it's one environment. It's just school. It's on that team. It's at work. Hopefully it's not at home. Is there an environment where envy has become the boss of you? You gotta deal with this. Or you'll end up chasing the wind. If you chase the wind, that's meaningless. If you do what's meaningless for too long, your life becomes meaningless. If you do what's meaningless for too long, your life becomes meaningless. If you chase the wind for too long, if you do what's meaningless for too long, your entire life becomes meaningless. Because as I've told you before, the way you find meaning is by becoming a means to an end that's not you and envy will draw you in and suck you in to self-centeredness that drains your life of meaning. You don't want that. You don't wanna model that. The world doesn't need any more of that. So, let's follow Jesus. Unlike envy, he will make your life better and unlike envy, he will make you better at life.

Fear, guilt, and shame are silent killers And so, this article will examine doubt and see how slyly it sneaks in to spy out our joy and hope in Christ. Many of us understand doubt. If we’re honest with ourselves, we will even grant that doubt is part of living. Indeed, our doubts are actually pretty wide and diverse. Take, for example, the political landscape and sports. I’ll start with sports. As an Aggie, I have gotten used to letdowns each fall. I begin with high hopes, looking to another great year of recruiting, but, as it turns out, the Aggies can’t seem to pull out the National Championship. And so, while I have high hopes, I doubt they will “actually” win. What about politics? Is it possible to doubt that your political party might win? Even if they win, do you find yourself doubting that it will actually bring about the kind of real change needed to solve society’s ills? Let’s move this topic to a more personal level. What about the Easter bunny? Santa Claus? Tooth Fairy? All three of these figures don’t exist, but for many children, they do; well, until they don’t. Not making any judgment on those who brought them to life in their children’s lives but imagine that moment when the child realizes Dad was Santa, Mom was the tooth fairy, and well, the Easter Bunny just got in the way. I digress. What happens is, kids face disillusionment, and a seed of doubt is sown, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Doubt is part of life. We experience it every day. As we briefly examined above, doubt is personal, political, relational, and much more. And so, on the one hand, doubt is not inherently wrong. Doubting the success of a football game has no real consequences on my eternal destiny, and may actually help me enjoy the game more. However, doubt becomes a problem when applied to our spiritual life. Take, for instance, anxiety. If we were to trace the source of anxiety, we would pass the reality of facing an undesirable outcome and arrive at the object we are hoping meets our needs. It is here, by examining the object, that we understand if this thing was designed to make us happy or pleased. Thus, to put it the opposite way, the object of our faith ought to regulate and alleviate our doubt. So, what are we to make of doubt? Let’s look at it from a biblical, theological, and practical standpoint. Biblical. Doubt begins in the Garden of Eden, leading to the first sin and, subsequently, sinful humanity. Doubt continued as Abraham and Sarah, doubting God’s promise, used Hagar to conceive a child (Gen. 16:1-4). Moses doubted his usefulness and sought a way out from going to Pharaoh and liberating God’s people (Exodus 3:11). Gideon doubted God’s presence with His people (Judges 6:13), and Elijah doubted God’s power to save him after seeing it on magnificent display (1 Kings 19:4). Doubt continues into the New Testament as Peter, sinking into the water, hears Christ say, “...you of little faith, why did you doubt?” (Matthew 14:31). Later, Thomas, aka Doubting Thomas, doubted Christ’s resurrection until he saw in “His hands the mark of the nails” (John 20:25). There is a tension, isn’t there, when it comes to doubting and having faith? We see this explicitly in the desperate cry of a father seeking his son’s healing: “...I believe help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24). The agony of this experience was well captured by Arthur Pink, who wrote a little pamphlet on it titled The Believer’s Paradox. Pink essentially argues that, for the Christian, doubt is an indication of belief. He contends, “No unbeliever ever shed tears over his unbelief; no empty professor ever groaned because of his questioning of God; no hypocrite is burdened by his doubts and fears.”* In other words, to doubt is to have a measure of faith. And, for the Christian, we believe that faith is not from within a person, being generated, manufactured, divined, purchased, or conjured, but is instead a gift of God so that no one should boast (Ephesians 2:8-9). Thus, if faith is a gift, doubting while seeking to believe is part of the process for a fallen person in a broken world. Doubt rightly guided points us to deeper faith. Theological. To say that guided doubt leads us to deeper faith is to say that our faith or trust is anchored in an immovable, eternal, infinite, and personal God. Only the Trinity, taught in the Christian faith, can meet these qualities and infinitely more. Indeed, it is the Trinity that is the object of faith and the source of faith. It follows that when I doubt, I have taken my eyes off the Triune God and placed them squarely on something or someone not designed to sustain my trust—thus, doubt. Yet doubt exposes my lack of faith and, for the Christian, draws them deeper into God. The journey of the Christian, then, is a journey of seeking to know even as we are known and grow in faith. Therefore, faith is the means through which God transacts His will, not the source. The Triune God is the objective source, and faith is the conduit through which God’s grace flows to the Christian. Thus, it is not the “amount” of faith that I possess but whether or not it is real or genuine. The Trinity is the Source and Sustainer of genuine faith. Practical. We doubt, just as the father in Mark 9 does. We doubt, just like Peter, beginning to sink into the sea after taking his eyes off Christ. We all doubt. Yet, rightly directed doubt moves us deeper into God. Anxiety, thus, has an answer. We draw near to God with real faith as the conduit through which God executes His will. At the same time, there may be times or seasons when doubt seems to stay around and visit us far too long. In those seasons, it is important to know you are not alone, to remind yourself of the Object and character of your faith, and to surround yourself with other Christians and counsel that will encourage and fill your heart with truth and love. Doubt as an experiential reality causes us to face our days with an open hand. We leave outcomes in God’s hands. We prepare, plan, and work with excellence, yet remind ourselves daily that our trust is in God, not in circumstances or outcomes. Our faith is rooted in a Person who loved us and gave Himself up for us. Replace doubt with trust. God help us, Amen!

Words are powerful. They can beat us down and lift us up. They wound and they heal. And the right words at the right time can be exactly what we need to hear—or what we need to say. Preached at www.lifechurch.tv - [Child's Voice] My big fat mouth gets me in trouble. - Hey, it's a great day to have church today. I'm excited to be with you guys. Welcome to all of our churches, all the way down into southern Florida meeting today without power, but no power will stop us from meeting in church. We love you guys in southern Florida. Hey, we are actually in part two of a message series. It's called My Big Fat Mouth. Last week at my life group, you would not believe the powerful discussion that we had talking about the problem of complaining. If you're not yet in a life group, we totally and completely believe that life change happens better in circles than it does in rows. I just want to tell you we have groups starting at all of our different churches. I want to introduce the theme for this week's message by telling you a little story about the very first time that I ever preached a message. I was 22, maybe 23 years of age and I was serving under my pastor, Pastor Nick Harris at First United Methodist Church in downtown Oklahoma City and he invited me to preach on a Sunday. I was so nervous, I couldn't sleep the night before. I was, if you can imagine, I'm a young kid and I'm wearing a very formal robe. My robe was stripeless because I was not yet ordained and so had a stripeless robe, which made me a little more insecure because all the other robes were striped and my pastor introduced me. I had a 30-minute window. Within the first 30 seconds, I'm told that I had such a big red blotch across my face. Amy started praying, she was afraid I was gonna die at my very first message. I spoke really, really, really, really fast because I did my whole 30-minute message in on 18-minutes and it was over and i had nothing else to say. It was bad and it got worse. The part where I almost had the audience, at one point I said something and it must have made a little sense to them because they leaned in and they kind of smiled and a few people said amen. I said something about God knew ya before you were born. And someone was like, amen. There's something we can like get into. And so I worked with it and I kind of decided to take it a step further, so I said God knew you way before you were born and they were leaning in and then I said and God knew you before your mama knew your daddy. And they kind of in it. Then I made my mistake. This is where the plane crashed, so if you can imagine. I'm like God knew you before you were born, God knew you before your mama knew your daddy. Then I said God knew you before you were an itch in your daddy's pants. I know, I know. It was horrible. Amy will tell you it is a 100-percent true story. After you preach at First Methodist, you go to the door. There's one door people come in and there's one door they leave. You greet them when they come in and when they leave they're supposed to tell you like great sermon, pastor. Great word. Thank you for that word, it blessed me pastor. They said to me, I was standing at the door. Nice try. Keep trying. And it was really awkward. The most awkward part was when the rude critical church lady came to the door. There is one rude critical church lady in every church in the world. It is a spiritual principle. You can try to strike her down, the devil will raise two up in her place. There is one at every single church and she laid into me. She said, "Young man." She said, "You looked like you were gonna die up there. "You talked way, way, way, way too fast. "You were too loud and you were incredibly "difficult to follow." She said, "And that part about your daddy's pants, "well, you're just gonna have to talk to Jesus "about that part." And that was the nice part. Then, this is almost a direct quote because it was burned into my soul. She said something very close to this. She said, "I hope you're good at something else "because you're never gonna be a preacher." Okay, so today I want to talk to you about my big fat mouth and our topic is the problem of criticism. Now, when I'm talking about criticism, I'm not talking about he constructive feedback that we give because we care about people and want to help them get better. What I'm talking about is the critical nitpicking unkind, uninformed, cruel criticism that so often goes on. It's the problem of criticism. Some of you right now, you're smiling in your seats going oh, dear God, thank you. I just need my spouse to hear this. I'm gonna send this link to my boss, you know. And you're thinking about all the people that you cannot wait to hear this. I want to remind you that this message is called my big fat mouth, not their big fat mouth. Because the problem of criticism is really difficult to see in the mirror because we hate when other people criticize us, but we often don't realize when we're criticizing other people because we often feel very justified in criticizing them because if they weren't so weird, so stupid, spent their money in such an unwise way, then we wouldn't criticize them, because after all, we know what's best for their life. God has a wonderful plan for your life and so do I and so if you don't live up to my plan, I will criticize the way you raise your kids, they way you dress, what you post on Instagram, how you drive and where you went for your last vacation because I know you're in debt and you cannot afford that. Man, you're quiet today. I don't know where you are. Maybe this is hitting close to home, maybe I'm the only one with this problem. I'm not sure. What I want to do is I want to show you a very popular verse in the Bible. If you're not a Christian, you may actually know this verse. Chances are though, that are very few of you that actually know the verse that comes after this very popular verse. So I'm gonna look at the popular verse and then I want you to see what comes after it. Paul said this to the believers in Galatia. He said in chapter 5, verse 14 and 15. He said for the whole law can be summed up in this one command. Love your neighbor as yourself. Most of us know that and we love it and that feels good. Love your neighbor as yourself. But then he goes on to say, but if you are always biting and devouring one another, watch out. Be aware of destroying one another. Love your neighbor as yourself, but be careful. If your words are constantly critical. If you're always cutting into people. If you're always harsh with the words, be careful of destroying one another. What if, for some of you, your critical words are actually destroying the potential intimacy you could have in your marriage. What if your critical words are driving a wall between you and your children. What if there are those of you, your critical words are actually keeping you from sharing the goodness of Jesus because people can't get over how critical you are about anything and everything. Be careful that your words do not end up hurting those around you. I want to look at a couple of other verses and I actually call these contrasting versus. There's so many contrasting versus in the Bible. They'll say one thing about a subject and then they'll say something completely opposite about the very same subject. I love Proverbs 12:18. Here's one side of it. Some people make what, some people make cutting remarks, you know how it is. Your grandma says to you did you lose your phone? Well, no grandma, why? - 'Cause you haven't called me in two weeks. I could have been dead and nobody would have known. It's cutting remark, it's a grandma burn. Some people make cutting remarks. Here's the other side. But the words of the wise bring healing. Some people cut, hurt and criticize, but other people speak words of wisdom and those words build up, they don't tear down, they create healing. Paul said it this way in Ephesians 4:29. He said do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs that it may benefit those who listen. He said don't let unhelpful, unwholesome, impure words come out of your mouth. Don't tear other people down. Let the only words you speak be words that are helpful for building others up according to their needs. Here's what I hope you'll understand. Is you have no idea whatsoever how a single word of criticism can pierce someone's soul and stick with them for years and years. And on the other side, you have no idea how God can use a single word of encouragement to build someone up, to give them the faith to go on. Your words have power. Some people make cutting remarks, but the words of the wise bring healing. Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouth, but only that which is helpful for building others up according to their needs and benefit those who listen and this, the flip side is exactly what my pastor did to me after my very first message crashed before it ever took off. Right after the lady said I hope you're good at something else, because you're not good at preaching, I walked into my pastor's office and the first thing that he did is that he put his arm around me and he said, "Well, I got really good news for you." He said, "You ready for it?" I said, "Yeah, I'm ready." He said, "You will only get better from here." I was like yeah.And I'm fighting back the tears. And he's like, "Your first sermon was 18 minutes, my first sermon was 15 minutes. I didn't make it as long as you." And he said, "You made some mistakes "and you shouldn't have said that thing "and we know that, but let's look at the things "you did right." And then he started to build me up. He said your insight into scripture was amazing. This guy was a hero to me. He's like a Bible scholar, you know. And he's like, "I've never seen that in that text "like you did." He goes, "Wow, it's so obvious that you're "spending time with God." And then he said, "You know, you were talking "a little fast, but it's because you're so passionate." And he said, "Passion is not something "that can be taught. "That's inside of you and over time, God is gonna "own that and develop that," and he said, "I have no doubt in my mind "God is gonna use you to reach so many people. "I can see it in you, I believe it with all of my heart." You have no idea how much one word of criticism can take somebody down. And you have no idea, I will tell you this, I am here today because of the voice of hope from my pastor who continued to talk me through my own doubts and my own insecurities. You have no idea how one word of encouragement, how God can use that to build faith and hope into someone who needs it. This one lady, she was a life taker in that moment. My pastor was a life giver. Our words have the power of life and they have the power of death. I want to ask you this. What kind of person do you want to be? Which type of person do you want to be? And I want to give you two options. And these will be very, very clear and when I say it, my face will not be blotching and I will not be speaking too fast at most part of my message. I'm just saying that in case you're paying attention. Maybe in a few. Any time I go too fast, Amy does this. That's a symbol for a turtle. If you ever see Amy, she's not knuckle bumping me, she's slow down, slow down. Sorry, I'm just having fun, okay. what type of a person do you want to be? I'm gonna give you two options. Which do you want to be? The first type is what I'm gonna call a fault finder. A fault finder. This, quite honestly is what most people are. Because of our sin nature, we tend to look to find what's wrong before we find what's right. Those of you who are married, oh, be careful. Because it's so easy to be a fault finder. You can take a relatively good person and pick them apart before you ever even get to lunch that day. I don't like the way you walk. I don't like the way you chew. I don't like the jokes you tell. I don't like the way you snore. I don't like the way you breathe. Some of you are laughing because you've had that conversation. I don't like the way you breathe. You know you can go into the office. I don't like the way she runs her meetings. You know, this is, I don't like the way they talk. You know, we don't have any kind of real plan here. This is the stupidest place I've ever been. I can't believe the picture she posted on Instagram. She says she loves Jesus. Looks like she loves her body, but you know, I'm not judging, I'm just saying. Can you believe the way they raise their kids. I mean, if they're gonna raise their kids like that, they might as well put them in prison right now because those kids don't stand a chance. And the way they drive their car. They better take the Life.Church bumper sticker off their car, because they're being a bad witness. Whatever it is, it's so easy to be a fault finder. If you're a fault finder, let me remind you, you're a lot like the Pharisees. Because this is exactly what the Pharisees did. You're not only like the Pharisees, but you're actually like the devil because one of the names of the devil, he's the deceiver, he's the devourer, he's the prince of darkness, he's the father of lies. He's also called the accuser, who accuses the people before God day in and day out. What does he do? He finds fault, he finds fault. That's what Pharisees do, and that's what the devil does and the reality is is that's what a lot of us do and why do we do it? The reason is a lot of times is because we are full of pride, we think we know what's best. We're also insecure and therefore we criticize in others sometimes the very things that are weaknesses in ourselves. I can spend a whole message talking about that if we had more time. The third reason is because we just don't understand. So often we criticize from a distance things we know nothing about. You can criticize a lot about the church. If you had context, you might say I understand. It's a lot like before we had kids, man. I could criticize parents all day long for how they didn't discipline their two-year-old in the grocery store and the reason is because I'd never had my own two-year-old in a grocery store. And when you know, you have your own two-year-old in a grocery store, you know you cannot negotiate with terrorists. You don't know that until you have your own two-year-old. And then you don't judge anybody. You're like I know this is bad parenting, I just surrender. I give up. You can have the candy, shut up. I'll buy you a Porsche, you can have a pony, just get in the car, don't embarrass us. You don't judge anybody because you didn't understand. I need to tell you this right now. When you criticize others, here's a lot of times what we're thinking. We tend to think, well, this makes me look smarter. This makes me kind of look like an expert. This just shows just how good I am. No, what it does is it makes you look insecure and mean spirited, that's what it makes you look like. Ask yourself, have you ever met a critical person that you want to be like? I have never one time met a critical person that I wanted to be like. In fact, speaking of critical women. There's a verse in the Bible about this. I'm gonna show you this verse and you may criticize me for bringing up this verse, but I want you to understand, this is the word of God. Now me, when I read this verse, what I want you to do is just look forward. Don't elbow anybody. Don't let your heart rate go up. Don't you dare nod. Don't say amen or your life is over. Just keep your breathing normal and just let God do what he wants to do. This is not your place. This is all in the hands of God. Some of you are getting mad, I'm so sorry. There's more coming, just get ready. Proverbs 21:19 says it's better to live alone in the desert than with a quarrelsome, complaining wife. May God add his blessings to the reading of his word. There's not a verse about men, but if I ever get to add a verse to the Bible, it'll be first Craig 12:24. It'll say something like it's better to get bamboo shoots in your fingernails than to live with a man who constantly picks you apart. This goes both ways. I've never met a critical person I wanted to be like or to be around. So, I want to ask you, those of you who like me have battled with a very critical spirit that's so difficult to see in the mirror, because we justify what we do because we feel like we actually have the right to pick other people apart. Do you want to be a fault finder or do you want to be what I call a hope dealer. Hope with an H. Just making sure you know I said hope dealer. For those of you online in Colorado, actually. I forget, you don't deal in Colorado, you're consumers, right. Don't eat the brownies. I said hope dealer, just so you'll know. I had an energy drink this morning, it's a rare day. It's a hope dealer. This is what scripture says. Romans 15:13, check out what the Bible says. Do you want to be a hope dealer. Paul says this, listen to the hope, listen to the hope, listen to the hope. He says may the God of hope fill you all with joy and peace as you trust in him. Why? So that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Man, Paul was a chief hope dealer. Any time he'd speak, any time he'd write, he wasn't gonna tear people down, he was gonna build them up. He wasn't gonna let any unwholesome talk come out of his mouth but only that which is helpful for building life into other people. He was a supreme hope dealer. In fact, if you just read some of his writing, I picked Romans chapter 8, I want you to listen to the words of hope that Paul said. I just picked some high parts out of one chapter. He starts it and he says this. Listen to the hope. Now therefore, there is no condemnation for those of you who are in Christ Jesus. He said the Holy Spirit, he helps you in your weakness. He said Jesus is making intercession at the right hand of God the Father right now. That gives me hope. He said that you are more than a conqueror through Christ Jesus. That gives me hope. He said neither death nor life, neither demons nor angels, neither powers of the present or the future, neither height nor depth, neither anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Do you want to be a fault finder or do you want to be a hope dealer? The Pharisees were fault finders, the devil is a fault finder. Jesus is full of hope. I love the different metaphors of Jesus. He is the bread of life, he is the living water, he is the good shepherd, he is the door, he is the living vine, he is the gate, he is the King of Kings, he is the Lord of Lords, he is the alpha and the omega. Let me tell you who else he is. 1 Timothy calls Jesus this. He calls Jesus our hope. Titus 2 calls Jesus the blessed hope. 1 Peter calls Jesus the living hope. Whenever someone would sin, the Pharisees would point out the sin and accuse. Jesus would come, he'd call sin what it was, but then he would offer hope to walk away from the bondages of sin. When there was a woman caught in adultery, what did the Pharisees do? The Pharisees said, stone her. The law says put her to death and that was exactly what the law said, but the Pharisees pointed out everything that was wrong. Jesus instead knelt down in the sand and started writing something. We're not sure what he was writing. Many scholars believe and I tend to agree, he most likely was writing something like the sins of the Pharisee men, because one by one from the oldest to the youngest, they all just started walking away. Walked away. Then what did Jesus do? Jesus knelt down in the sand to this woman who was broken and full of shame and said to her, woman, sweetheart, where are the fault finders? Where are the accusers? Where are those who tried to condemn you. And she looked up and said they're all gone. And so Jesus said, neither do I condemn you, don't do this anymore, there's a better way. He said go your way and don't sin anymore, but you can find forgiveness, you can find life, you can find real love. What do you want to be? Do you want to be a fault finder? That's what the Pharisees were. That's what our spiritual enemy is. The prince of darkness, the father of lies, the great deceiver, the accuser of the brothers. Who is Jesus? He is the way, he is the truth, he is the living hope. He is the blessed hope. He is our hope. I want to be a hope dealer. I want to tell you a story and I'll try not to get emotional about it, but Amy and I have had the blessing for now 20, I guess it's almost 6 or 7 years of marriage, I'll get that date exactly right before next time, just work with me. Once you're over 25, you can, over a quarter of a century, okay. We've had a lot of kids stay with us for varied amounts of time. We've been able to take in children and I call myself a weekend dad. We usually have four or five extra kids that will stay with us on the weekend. We've got a couple this weekend and I'm a weekend dad. And there was one particular kid years and years and years ago before we had kids that was in a really bad spot. His dad was everything you would never want a dad to be. And he was absent and this kid picked up more unhealthy thought patterns than you could imagine for a 12-year-old and so Amy and I said we would take him in and spend some time with him, have him on the weekends and take him to church and do the best we could to speak life into him and they warned me, they said you need to understand, he will steal from you, he will lie. If his lips are moving, he's probably lying. He'll talk back to you, he'll run from you, he'll hit, he said, this kid is bad news. 12year-old kid, I'll call him Jonathan to respect his privacy and so I said fair enough, we're ready for him. Well, when I met Jonathan, I never will forget. I reached out and I said young man, my name is Pastor Craig and I am honored to meet you. And he shook my hand and went oh, man, that was the most firm handshake I've gotten all week. That's the way a man shakes a hand. You must be a young man. Are you a young man? He went, uh, yeah. I said no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Young men, they say yes, sir. I said that was a handshake of a man if I've ever felt one. Are you a young man? He went yes, sir, I am. I said aw, man, you looked me in the eye when you said that. You're like crazy polite. You're not only just a young man, but you're strong and you're polite. I said wait a minute, do you know I'm a pastor. He said, yeah. I go, you gotta hold on a second. Pastors have weird spiritual gifts. I'm sensing something in you. I sense greatness inside of you. Have you ever had anyone tell you that there's greatness in you? He looked up at me, he said no. I said great young men say no, sir. Have you ever had anyone tell you? He said, no sir, no sir. So you need to understand, I sense greatness in you. It's all over you. I bet you love to go to church, don't you? He said, yeah, I do. I said I bet you're polite. Yes, I am. I bet you like take the dishes over to the, I just said this, all this kind of life into him. Let me tell you what. We've had so many kids in our home throughout the years. I have never had a politer, better behaved kid working his tail off to live up to someone who believed that there was greatness inside of him. Years later, this kid, you wouldn't believe who he's grown into be and he calls me his spiritual dad. Very little time. The window of time we spent with him was so short, it would stun you and he points back and says that was the season that God completely changed his life. You have no idea. You have no idea when you criticize your spouse what the does to self-esteem and intimacy. You have no idea when you're hard on your kids how it belittles them and distances you from them. You have no idea how foolish you look when you criticize and criticize and criticize, thinking it makes you look better. It makes you look insecure and mean spirited. And you have no idea how one word of encouragement, how God can use that to change a life. You have no idea when you speak the best about others how God can build them up. Let no unwholesome talk come out of your mouth, but only that which is helpful for building others up according to their needs. So your kid may not be the neatest kid, but he's got a great heart. Tell him, you're amazing, I love what I see in you, I love the way you speak about others. Build them up. Your roommate may eat your food and wear your clothes. Of course, that's what she does. She's a she does. That's what she's do when they're roommates. But she's a great friend, tell her you're the most loyal faithful friend. I couldn't image a better roommate. Your wife may not be the most organized, but she's an incredible mom. Instead of picking her apart for what she's not, build her up for what she is. I love the way you love our kids. I could have never married anyone that would impart more life into our children. Your husband may not ever win yard of the month, he doesn't like to mow the yard, looks kind of bad. Next time he does, just say you so sexy out there in your black socks pushing that lawnmower. I love what I see. Words of life, words of life, words of life, words of life, you have no idea how God can use your words to build someone up. You might say Craig, you're a little bit passionate about this, why are you so passionate about it. Because I had the most critical spirit that you'd ever seen. I'll tell you what. When Amy married me, the reason why I was so insecure and so what I wanted to do is I wanted to make her think I was smarter and better, so I'd criticize that girl's husband, he's nothing like me. And the way they spend their money. Oh, and church thing, man in my 20s, I criticized every church thing. Instead of finding the good of what God was doing, I'd try to pick it apart. It's amazing how when I was young, I thought I knew everything and now that I'm older, you know, I recognize a little more humility. I was so critical in my spirit because I was so insecure. The closer I got to God, though, the more aware I became of my sinfulness. And the more aware I became of my sinfulness, the more I became aware of the magnitude of God's grace and because of who he is and what he's done for me, I will not waste time criticizing the speck in someone else's eye when I've had a log stuck in my eye for way too long because of who God is, because of what he's done, because of how he's forgiven me, because of how he's given me hope, because of how he has loved a person who didn't deserve that love, I will not tear down. I will build up. Who are we? We are people of God. We are hope dealers. We point people to Jesus, the living hope. We point people to Jesus, the King of Kings. We point people to Jesus, the one who forgives brokenness and heals all infirmities. We point people to Jesus, our Savior, our King, our Lord. We point people to hope. We are not fault finders. Anybody can be a fault finder. Pharisees are fault finders. The devil is a fault finder. We are followers of Christ. We speak words of healing, we speak words of life. You have no idea, no idea, how a single critical word can pierce, kill and destroy. Hope you're good at something else. 'Cause you'll never be good at preaching. You have no idea how a single word of encouragement. You could only get better from here. You've got passion, you can't teach that. I see it inside of you. You have no idea how God can use a single word of encouragement to push you forward, to build your faith and to transform you even more into the image of Christ. So, what do you want to be? I want to lead a church full of hope dealers, pointing people to the one who is our living hope, our Savior, our King, our Lord Jesus. All of our churches praying today. Father, we ask that you would do a very healing and even a convicting work in our hearts and God I just confess that I've been one who has had a critical spirit. God helps us all become aware of our need and the grossness of our own sin and the magnitude, God, of your grace, that we wouldn't even have time to point out the faults in others, but we would offer words of hope and words of healing. All of our churches, as you reflect today in prayer, those of you who would say, yeah, I can be a little more critical, I can be harsh, I can tear people down. It may be in my marriage, it may be with my kids, it may be with people I work with, it may be at school. It may just be in society and politics and online, I can be a critical person. God, help me not to be a fault finder, but a fault finder, that's you. Lift up your hands right now, I hope it's everybody. Lift up your hands high. Father I pray that with hands lifted toward our eternal hope, God, that you would work on our hearts. God that you would help us see the power of our words. They have power of life and death. God, may we be life givers, not life takers. God, every time we want to just criticize, point something out that's wrong, God I pray that we would remember all that's wrong with us and not waste a breath on tearing somebody else down, but God you would use our words, use our heart, use our spirit to built others up and most importantly, to point them toward you. God, while so many will make cutting remarks, empower us to say wise words that bring healing. We pray, oh, God that there would be no unwholesome talk that comes out of our mouth, but only that which is helpful for building others up according to their needs. God, make us hope dealers. Everywhere we go, God, when we walk into the room, hope walks into the room. God, we come to a party, hope just came to the party. God, wherever we are. Help us to represent the living hope your son Jesus. As you keep praying today at all of our different churches. There are those of you, you may have been listening to the words of the chief fault finder, your spiritual enemy. What's so interesting about the devil is before you do something wrong, Satan's gonna say, hey, it doesn't matter. Do whatever you want. No one's gonna care. Afterwards you do something wrong, it's like God could never love you. You're pathetic, after what you did. You're ruining, you'll never be used. That's how he lies to us. He's the chief fault finder. You're not good enough for God. You've gone too far. After what you've done, God couldn't love you. Let me tell you who God is. He sent Jesus, our ultimate hope dealer, Jesus was perfect in every way. He said I have come that people may have life. I have become that they may have life to the full. Jesus went to the cross for us. The sinless son of God. He died in our place, rose again for the forgiveness of sins, so that anyone, and this includes you, anyone, no matter what you've done, no matter how dark your life feels, anyone who calls on the name of the Lord would be saved, forgiven, made completely new and all of our churches right now, you are here today because you need to experience the living hope. You are dead in your sins, but you are one prayer away from experiencing true life. At all of our churches, those that say yes, I need his grace, yes, I need his forgiveness. Yes, I turn my life over to Jesus. That's your prayer today. Lift your hands high right now. All of our churches say yes. That's me right back over there. God bless you. Over here as well. Back here in this middle section over here. Leave them up, I want to find you. Leave them up, right back over here. Others of you today, over here as well. Back here in the middle section. Oh, my gosh, somebody better cheer. A little louder than that. Right here, all of you right here in this section. Hope is in the house. Hope is in the house. Church Online, you click right below me. Everybody pray aloud. Pray heavenly Father, I give you my life, forgive me of all my sins. Make be brand new. Fill me with your spirit so I could follow Jesus, so I could become like him. My life is not my own. Today I give it to you. Thank you for new life. Thank you for hope. Help me to be a hope dealer, spreading the love of Jesus to everyone I meet. It's in his name that I pray and everybody say loud, amen, amen, amen. Worship loud, worship loud, worship loud. We're living in the middle of a move of our good God.

Citizens and Employees John Beeson 1 Peter 2 But if you only knew. But if you only knew how corrupt the government is. If you only knew how stupid that legislation is. But if you only knew how that politician is in the pockets of that corporation. But if you only knew. But if you only knew how abusive politics my boss is. But if you only knew how greedy the corporation I work for is. But if you only knew how toxic the workplace I work in is. But if you only knew. That little phrase can include truth in it, and yet there's a danger there in letting our hearts off the hook of God's hard commands for us in our text today. Now let me just tell you up front, there's going to be a caveat as we apply God's word to the government and to our workplaces. At the Inn, there are caveats to what we're about to say. But we also want to hear the full force of the scripture that's going to come to us today. Peter is going to tell us that our call is to lay down our rights, to put aside our rights, so that Christ may be glorified as citizens and employees. And can we just be honest that that is really hard for anyone, and it's especially hard for us as Americans. Deep in our hearts is a self knowledge, a self understanding. It's not even necessarily bad that we, each one of us knows the rights that we have, the rights we have to be treated well, the rights we have to be respected. But Peter is going to tell us to lay those aside as citizens and employees. Peter's writing a manual to us about how to live as strangers, as aliens, as exiles. So our homeland is heaven and we are living in this world as exiles. And so he's giving us a manual for how to live. And that's his point in the passage is you're gonna be living in a culture that tells you have rights to stand up for your rights to stand up for what you deserve. But I want you to set all that aside and I want you to gaze on Jesus who did not claim his rights, but laid them aside and gave himself sacrificially to serve others. So at the heart of the passage, in fact at the heart of his whole letter, is a gaze specifically on the Gospel. And so we're going to start there and then we'll back up through the passage. But we're in first Peter, chapter two. We're going to begin in verse 21. For to this you have been called because Christ also suffered for you, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example. So that you might follow in his steps. Now just pause there. He's bringing up the gospel. He's saying, jesus Christ gave his life for you. And we can all shout amen and hallelujah. The only holiness we have is because Jesus gave his life for us. The only way our sin is forgiven is because Jesus gave his life for us. The only righteousness we have is because Jesus gave his life for us. He's saying, jesus gave his life for us, and that is a grand glory of the gospel. But it doesn't stop there. He gave his life for us as an example that we would follow in his steps so that we, like Jesus, would live sacrificial lives, setting aside rights and privileges to serve others. And the passage goes on. He committed no sin. Neither was deceit found in his mouth. He was sinless. In fact, if there's anyone in the face of the earth that has the right to say, I want what I deserve, that's Jesus. We ought to be a little leery of any human being who says, I want what I deserve. Do we really want to gaze into the face of God and say, give me what I deserve? Then the passage just gets sharp. Verse 23. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed, for you are straying like sheep, but have now returned to the shepherd and the overseer of your souls. We oftentimes think of the gospel as the very beginning of the Christian life, the very beginning of the Christian story. And in a sense, the gospel is a significant part of the beginning. But it's not the beginning. It's the beginning and the middle and the end. We cannot live the Christian life today without the gospel. We cannot be exiles without the gospel. We cannot live as Christians in the United States of America without the gospel flowing through our veins. That we, on a moment by moment basis, as we interact with government, as we interact with employers. The passage goes on to interact at home without the gospel of the one who set aside rights and privileges to sacrifice his life for the good of others. The gospel changes everything. We believe that in our core, it doesn't just change a destination, it doesn't just change an identity. It changes actually the way in which we live, the way in which we walk. The gospel changes as. And at the center of this letter is this Picture of Jesus Christ. And Peter wants us to make sure that in whatever circumstance, we're constantly looking back to Jesus Christ. Today as citizens, as employees, next week, as in the context of marriage, look to Jesus Christ. Look to Jesus Christ. So let's go back to the beginning of the passage and we're going to begin with his application of a picture of Jesus in the context of our relationship to the government, to our life as citizens. Starting in verse 13, Peter says this. Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be the emperor as supreme or to the governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. Peter says God is sovereign. Whoever our authority is there. God didn't lose, didn't fall asleep at the wheel. To every human institution, to every human leader, Honor them, treat them with respect. Now, again, for so many of us, it's the. But, but if only you knew. Let's not forget the context Peter is writing this letter in. Peter's writing in Rome. He's writing likely in the early 60s A.D. he's writing this letter to churches that are being persecuted by the worst governor, I mean Emperor Caesar over in the history of Rome. His name is Nero. Nero, you might know that name. There's a picture of him. There's a bust. Every time you find a picture of him, he has the same haircut. He liked himself some chops, I guess. So this is Nero. Nero is absolutely the worst emperor in the history of Rome. Likely. If you were to do a world history of the Mount Rushmore of most evil leaders in the history of the world, it's likely Nero would make that Mount Rushmore. He was a depraved man. He's wicked in his sexual appetites, wicked in his greed, wicked in his pride, wicked in his vindictiveness, wicked in his lies that he spread, for instance, 68 AD. So this is a few years after this letter is written. Rome burns. Significant portion of Rome burns to the ground. Most historians believe Nero set that fire. Why would Nero set fire his own city? Because likely he wanted a bigger palace. And so he torched the city, killing people so that he could claim and expand his own palace. Well, it turns out the citizens of Rome were not too happy with their homes being burnt down. And so Nero points the finger on a scapegoat that had been a scapegoat throughout his reign. The Christians. The Christians. Christians who he had already sewn up into the skins of animals and thrown into the gladiatorial arena. Spectacles for Rome, Christians whom he had already crucified. Christians now hang as burning lamp posts in his palace out of spite hatred. It's under Nero's reign that Peter pens these words. Be subject to every human institution, Peter says, even Nero. He continues in verse 15 saying this, for this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the end ignorance of foolish people. Peter just takes it for granted that lies about Christians are going to abound, that there's going to be slander and gossip, and that our response is to live holy lives as unto the Lord, to live lives that reflect our Savior Jesus Christ in this world. Paul has a similar metaphor, Peter's metaphor that we've heard. This identity that he calls us into is as elect exiles in a foreign land. Paul loves to use this other similar related metaphor that we are ambassadors, that we are those who are sent from a foreign kingdom by a foreign king to live in foreign soil and in that soil to do good, to love the land that we're living in, to do good for that land. But to represent the true kingdom that we are citizens of, the message has to be reflected by the messenger. Peter says we can't just speak the gospel, speak the hope of Jesus Christ. We have to then live that out, even if there are significant consequences to that. Live out the gospel as exiles, Peter says. As ambassadors. Paul will say, for the King of kings and the Lord of Lords, Jesus Christ. You could easily say, well, that politician doesn't deserve honor. To which Peter's reply would be, but Jesus does. And it's because of Jesus that you're honoring. Here the passage continues to unfold with a metaphor of being a slave of God. Verse 16. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover up for evil, but living as servants of God. Now the word servants here of God is doulos in Greek. It's oftentimes translated slave or bondservant or servant. It's the same word that he goes to when he talks employees of servants and masters. He's saying, yes, you're free, you're free, but you're free, not free of Rome or free of America. If you say you're not just free of things, you are free because you are subject to a king. Lord, you are free because you are a slave of God's. So don't use your freedom to do evil, thinking that is you are a slave of God's, and in that context use the freedom God gives you to do good. Then the passage gets a little bit practical into verse 17. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood, Fear God. Honor the emperor. Honor the emperor. Now, you and I live in an age in which we don't honor much as a culture. We live in an age in which we question authority. I think the threshold was Vietnam, that once upon a time, if a student said something about a teacher, you just naturally assume the teacher is in the right and your student needs to go some sanctification process in their life. That's that. If a statement was made about a church leader, you just assume the church leader is right and the person saying it is walking in slander. That if something is said about a government official, you would assume that they were doing the best they could for the country with nobility. Now I see bumper stickers on a regular basis that are vile in how they tear down. They don't critique a policy, they critique and attack a person. Peter says, no, no way. Let me ask you a question this way. Now I'm going to get a little political for a moment. I don't expect an answer to this question. I don't want you raising hands or verbally responding. Please don't, please don't. But my question would be, do you honor President Trump? Do you honor him? That's challenging for some, easy for others. Let me rephrase it a different way. Do you honor President Biden? Did you in office and do you now out of office honor? You could pause, say, well, okay, like what does honor mean? Quick definition of honor. I'm gonna put two nuances to honor. One is a posture of respect. A posture of respect. It's not just words. I can't, like, honor is in words, it's in attitudes, it's in a lot of things. But we all know like, you could make some kind of law of. It's gotta be these kinds of words. The problem with words is you can say thank you so much for doing what you do. And you can say, oh, thank you so much for doing what you do. So it's not just words, a posture of respect. And secondly, it is purposing their good, pursuing their good. How can I make their lives as leaders easier, better? How can I serve them? How can I come alongside them? How can I lift them up? How can I pursue their good? Do we honor if we tend to honor those that we agree with more and not honor others? We're not honoring. Honoring those who you agree with is just a form of self worship and idolatry of your own rights. Peter is saying we gaze on Jesus here. The standard is at A whole other plane. And it is setting aside our rights, setting aside our privileges to honor. Now, again, there's some caveats to this. We'll get to those at the end, but we cannot miss the teeth of the passage. So strong. Honor everyone, honor the emperor. And then he turns from government to employment. Verse 18. Servants. It's the same word used earlier that we are servants of God. Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the unjust. Now, we don't use servants and master language very often talking of any kind of employment. It has a slavery tone to it. A couple of nuances here. First, oftentimes we immediately filter that through the sinful practice of our own American history, with slavery not justifying anything. I'm just saying this is different than that. This is not a racial slavery. It's common to be a slave in Rome, 25% of the population. You give yourself as a bondservant to make wages, to bring home finances and provide for your family. So it's common to be a slave. But do you hear the language he's saying in this environment, as a servant and a master, be with all respect not only to the good and gentle, but also to the unjust. Show respect to the good and gentle, it's easy. And show respect to the unjust, not so easy. A little pre. Caveat. Caveat here. Note that this passage is written for those under right. It's not written to the slave master. It's not written to the politician. The words that Peter would say would not let that person off the hook from being godly in that office. They need gospel too. Yeah, the sacrificial in that office. Actually, you actually go to Philemon word to a slave master there. If you want to kind of see the gospel being applied in that context, you can go back to the Old Testament and see hard words to those in government authority. But here it's what if you don't have a position of authority? What if you are under. How do you live then? You live shaped by the presence, by the character, by the heart of Jesus Christ who released his rights for the glory of God. He continues reflecting on this employee employer relationship in verse 19. For this is a gracious thing. When mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. What credit is it if when you sin, you are beaten for it, and you and are beaten for it, you endure. But if when you do good and suffer for it, you endure. This is a gracious thing in the Sight of God. In other words, like, don't mark down those occasions in which you were disobedient, which you broke policy willfully and with a lack of integrity and righteousness in your workplace, and you got your hand slapped. It's not a credit to Jesus Christ. It's just a consequence of sin. No, no. There's a time and a way in which you will live out your calling. Peter says, as a citizen and in the workplace here, where you are living under injustice and doing good then costs you dearly. And that is the glory of Jesus Christ. I don't know if anybody here is like me. Like, injustice is like an issue for me. It's like a button. I can deal with unkindness and gossip, and to me, that kind of stuff. I can navigate that kind of stuff. But you hit injustice and like, I flare. And Peter says to me, and to those of you who struggle with that, hold on, be careful. You are not the arbiter of justice. God is. And as you navigate that injustice, do so with the heart of. Of Christ. My heart, my hope for you is that you have healthy and whole workplaces that treat you. You have bosses that treat you with dignity. You have workplaces that you are, like, locked in on the purpose and vision of what that workplace is. I hope that's your circumstance. But I know that some of you are not in those workplaces. You work for disrespectful, abusive bosses. You work in toxic work environments where gossip is the norm. You look for companies whose mission appears to be not much more than filling their own pockets. And Peter says to you, look to Jesus Christ in the middle of that injustice. Be a light, do good, walk with integrity, avoid gossip, build up honor, honor. And then he continues with this picture of Jesus Christ, verses 21 to 25 that Greg has already read. That picture stands really in the middle of these three applications as citizens here as employees. Next week we'll talk about this in the terms of husband and wife relationships. And I don't want to read that whole section for you, but I want to read one line for us, verse 23, to remind us of the heart of Jesus Christ. In the middle of this, Peter says this. When he, Jesus was reviled, he did not revile. In return, when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. Jesus lived a life of obedience and righteousness. And in the middle of that, he was reviled and slandered and unjustly treated absolutely at the cross. But you go through his Life. That's not just the story of the final day of his life. That's the story of his life. And Peter says so you too sow me. Walk in the pattern of Christ and reflect his gospel in your workplaces. Hi, my name is Greg, and this is hard. Jesus knew it. Father, take this cup from me. If there's any other way, Peter knew it. It's not just writing under Nero. Peter was killed by Nero. He gave up his life by Nero. This is a hard. A hard teaching. We are trained in today's world to question authority. When I was a kid, be at a political parade, fourth of July parade, governor would come down Main street, boy, howdy, hat was off. You were standing tall. Didn't matter who it was today, banners, cuss words, you stupid throwing things. We just think government officials are stupid. They're all crooks. They're all corrupt. We think it all the way down the line of a friend who's a schoolteacher. They're on pins and needles when it comes to talking with parents. There was a day that if your child brought up something about the teacher, you assumed the teacher was right. That day has long since passed. If there's something going on in class and that teacher is getting together with parents, they are prepared that they are going to get chewed out because they're stupid. They're the ones that are wrong. The kid is right. Peter's really telling us we. We don't get to assume the worst over there. You hear it on every level. Those school boards, they're so stupid that hoa. They're so stupid. Local government, they're so stupid. Boy, if I was just in charge, I would do everything right. No, no. Peter calls us to honor. Not because they're inherently worthy, but because Christ is. And in Christ, we bring honor here, that's a hard call, but it's the one he gives us. It's the one we have to wrestle with. In an age that tears down with personal attacks, he calls us to it. Government employment and home. Home. We separated out. We'll do that next week. With all the abuses in church history between husbands and wives, thought that deserves its own week to talk about what does a mutual submission and a Christlike attitude look like there? That's the simple foundation of this whole thing. Where do we go with this? We gaze on Jesus and we sacrificially give our lives as he did. But if you. If you only knew just how corrupt that politician is. But if you. If you only knew how abusive my boss is. We're about to step in the caveats. And as we do so, I just want to encourage us to check our hearts even in these caveats, because our tendency, every one of us is going to be like, oh, that's my loophole. Sneak through the honor loophole that way. All right, what are the loopholes in both circumstances with the government and with your employer? You, if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, you are called to follow him and his word for you. So if the government, if your employer forbids you to do what God commands, then you obey God. If your government or your employer commands you to do what God forbids, then. Then you object. Now, you still do so. With honor. With honor. Now, what about those areas in which we have deep concerns about the government, about the way in which they're comporting themselves, about the injustice in which it's being perpetuated by our government and its officials? Am I allowed to speak out? Yes. With honor. With honor. So would we check ourselves, filter ourselves to do so with honor. I've heard those in the military say that in the military you're taught that you. You respect the office, you respect the position, even if you don't respect the person. It's a good place to start biblically. Although Peter is actually calling us past that. Honor the emperor, he says, honor the person too. Caveat with the government. Caveat in a workplace. So, you know, most of us have the opportunity in America, praise God for this, to leave our jobs and to choose another job. Are there circumstances in which the lack of integrity of your company, the toxicity of your workplace, means you ought to hand in your resignation and work for someone else? Absolutely. Absolutely. But even if that's the case, a couple invitations. First. Seek God first on that. I'm not telling you this isn't a thus saith the Lord, but the Lord actually might have you there on purpose and intentionally so. Seek the Lord. Seek counsel from others in your life as you pursue the Lord's leading in that. And second, even if you go to the very last day, to the very last hour, may your presence be a presence of honor, of integrity in the middle of injustice, of respect in the middle of gossip, of humility, in the place of ego, would our presence be a presence of honor for the glory of Jesus Christ? So are there caveats? Yes. Yes. Called to honor God, first and foremost, we're called to follow him in conscience. And yet in all these things, we are always called to honor. Certainly there's caveats. When my kids were little, I would prep them for a night with a babysitter. And I would kind of go through the expectations that they are to follow that babysitter's instructions as mom and dad didn't matter. You say, yes, sir. You say, yes, ma'. Am. You follow what they say. And so if they get frustrated in the middle of dinner and it's not going well, and they say, okay, dinner is over, I want you to go to your room, clean your room, and we're going to bed. What do you say? You say, yes, sir or yes, ma', am. Okay, the afternoon is not going well. And they say, you know what? No dinner. We're cleaning our room, and we're going to bed. What do you say? You say, yes, sir. Yes, ma'. Am. Yes, ma'. Am. They say, you know what? All right, I want you to beat up your little sister. All three of you beat up your little sister. What do you say? Yes, sir. You say, I'm sorry, sir. I'm sorry, ma'. Am. That would be disobeying a higher authority. We obey God above all things. Government, church, home, employer. No one can command us individually to disobey God, or at least if they do, we obey God. However, the teeth of this passage and the unfortunate reality of our culture is that we miss this. It doesn't matter what news channel you watch. It doesn't matter what podcast you seemingly are getting. There is dishonor all over the place in our culture. And Peter's call is radical. How do we apply this? We. We look to the shepherd. We look to Jesus who gave up his rights, who held back his words. I frequently say, if. If I was Jesus on the cross and people are looking up at me saying, oh, how cool are you? Like, if you're such a big deal, why don't. Why don't you come down from there? So I'm sorry. I would not be a good. That'd be it for them. I'd be like, I mean, the command of the host of heavens behind him. I wouldn't do well with that. But he's our example. He's our model. And we set aside rights to sacrifice ourself to serve others. So how can we do that? How can we serve others? How can we serve our HOAs? How can we serve. Honor our school boards? How can we serve. Honor our teachers and our principals? How can we serve. Honor police officers and leaders in culture? Someone just told me their husband was a part of a fourth of July parade down south in South Tucson, and it happened to be border patrol. And I get it. But they went through and they were bombarded with stuff being thrown at them. They hooped and hollered for the fire truck, but they threw stuff they threw. I'm not. It's easy to pick on them, pick on us. Peter saying, no, no, no, no, no. This culture of standing up and using your freedoms to tear down, it's done. You are a slave of God's and Jesus is your model, and you follow him. How can we bring honor to those who are serving around us? How do we bring honor to our politicians? How do we bring honor, Honor to our leaders? How do we speak words of honor? How do we disagree with policy without tearing down a person or slipping into disrespect? As Christians, we ought to be the pinnacle of honor. We ought to infuse every station with honor. Join the hoa, join the school board. Get involved the church leadership, government leadership, civil leadership, all the way up. Get involved and infuse the culture with a humility of Christ that is sacrificial in nature. We gaze. We gaze upon our shepherd as citizens and we gaze upon him as employees. How can we bring honor into our workplace? How can we pursue favor of bosses and supervisors and co workers? How do we not tear down but build up and serve, setting aside our rights, our privileges, to build others up? Because that's what Jesus does. Would you pray with me, Lord? This is a. This is a hard teaching. You can say culture is off track, but that's easy. We're off track. Our own thoughts, our own attitudes. Would you build us up to overflow with respect this week, to overflow with honor this week, to build up those around us, help us set aside what we think are our own rights to walk in the steps of Jesus and to serve in the precious name of Jesus. We pray. And everyone said amen. Amen. Let's go ahead and stand as we sing.

The idea of a resurrection demands our faith and absolute surrender. If Christ did not rise, there is no hope. There is no meaning apart from God. Because of what Jesus has done, there is an answer for every ache. Learn why Jesus’ resurrection changes everything. Jesus gave His life and rose from the dead not to tell us a story, but to demand that we give Him our whole lives if we believe in Him and follow Him. If the Gospel is not all true, then none of it's true. What happened when it comes to Easter? Is it true? The wrong tomb theory, the swoon theory and others are refuted. The idea of a resurrection demands our faith and absolute surrender. If Christ did not rise, there is no hope. There is no meaning apart from God. The earth is traveling around the sun 67,000 miles per hour and we feel no wind. Solomon owned the world and yet he saw it as throw pillows-vanity, worthless. Are you environmentally conscious? In your effects to save the planet, the planet will be destroyed. You, like Christopher Hitchens said, do not exist as you. When his doctors told him, "you are fighting this disease really well" Hitchens said, "I don't have a body." An atheistic worldview has no room for God. If you are explained as a cosmic accident by biology, physics and chemistry, then there is no soul. None of your deepest desires make any sense. We long for forgiveness, peace, but we are missing something. We somehow want something more. Why would we be so obsessed with justice? Why do we feel “It’s not fair?” In a world governed by natural selection, no one should care about fair. C.S. Lewis said, "The universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how did I get the idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has the idea of a straight line." If there's a God of love, why would He allow suffering? There's no hope if there is no God. If Christ did die and was raised, hope has a name. His name is Jesus. He will hear your prayer. You say life has no meaning? Everything matters to God! We can go to work knowing that everything matters. As for this concept of you being you, you will never not be you. Jesus proved this when He said, "God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." These patriarchs, they are still themselves. Christ shall redeem every person from death and give them a resurrected body. What are these desires we have? Because of what Jesus has done, there is an answer for every ache. We were made for a person and a place. C.S. Lewis also said, “…heaven once attained, will work backwards, turning every pain into glory!”

Who are angels and what do we know about them? The Bible has answers, especially from verses about Christ's birth. One December my husband and I decided to throw a Christmas party for some family, and friends. Fearing our party might bombe since most of our guests were unknown to each other, my husband found a Christmas I.Q. test we could use as a game to warm our festivities. With a fire built in our fireplace, the tree lit in all its' glory, and food scrumptiously prepared we welcomed our guests and organized them into two teams, girls against the boys. As the two groups brainstormed together I learned something very important during our game about my mother. In the future I must remember to never play a biblical trivia game against her. That night my mom’s ability to recall obscure facts was astonishing. The boys’ team had two pastors, but they never stood a chance against the intellect God blessed my mother with. Even though our responses were merry and bright in truth I didn’t do very well on the test and neither did most of the participants. As we giggled at our answers throughout the evening it became clear to me that many of the details I had taken for granted as being in the Christmas story were not based on the Bible’s account but on tradition, Christmas carols, and even cartoons. One little known fact which was uncovered is the Bible’s version doesn’t say the angels sang on the night Jesus was born. I tell you this in all seriousness. Instead Luke 2:13-14 reads, “And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” Scripture says that they said it, but it doesn’t explain how. They might have said it with musical accompaniment, or they might have proclaimed with a shout, but in the end the passage does not say they sang. I know I assumed they sang because of Christmas carols like, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”. Another question we wrestled with that night was, “What is a heavenly host?” Huddled together with our collective knowledge and listening to all the possible answers on the multiple choice quiz we all agreed that a heavenly host must be a choir of angels. Once again our answer was wrong. In the early Greek language the words translated “heavenly host” in our English Bibles meant an angelic army. I think this I.Q. test was the first time I realized that many of the events of the Christmas story we have come to accept have not come from good biblical scholarship. And this is a big problem for us if we want to know the truth. It would be easy to misunderstand God and his intentions if we are placing our faith in fiction. In my cozy little house full of friends, I certainly enjoyed the merriment of that Christmas party. Of course my favorite part was when the women beat the men because we had my mother on our side. Later, though, I pondered about some of the truths exposed that night. How does an angelic army war? Why would they need to war on the night Jesus was born? In Luke’s account these angels came to praise Christ’s birth and were God’s messengers sent to inform the shepherds of his birth. A multitude of angels appeared to the shepherds, a host of heavenly beings proclaimed this birth by glorifying God. So, was angelic praise a form of angelic warfare? Interestingly Psalm 8:2 reads, “From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies to silence the foe and the avenger.” Does giving glory to God disarm the enemies of his kingdom? Why would it be necessary for these angels to war or provide protection for this baby? Was this baby in any real danger? Yes, in Matthew’s account of the Christmas story found in chapter 2 it records that when the Magi came looking for the Christ child they originally went to King Herod’s home. They incorrectly believed the birth of a king would naturally take place in a king’s palace. Herod listened to their story of the star, but a pure heart was not driving Herod’s attentiveness. Scheming and feigning a desire to help the wise men Herod inquired from the best Old Testament scholars of his day where the prophets foretold the Messiah would be born. While he cloaked his concern with a longing to worship this new king his true intent was to murder the Christ child he viewed as a rival. Herod’s paranoia trapped him into listening to the lying voices of jealously and ambition. Jesus was coming to establish a heavenly kingdom, a fact Herod was never able to grasp. God protected baby Jesus from Herod’s clutches by revealing this threat to the Magi and to Jesus’ parents, so they could safely escape. After Herod realized he had been outwitted by the wise men he sent an execution team directly to Bethlehem with an orders to slaughter all the young boys living in region under the age of 2. Weeping was heard throughout the area of Bethlehem as family after family grieved the murder of their son. History has rightly labeled Herod a petty, murderous ruler who cared nothing for the subjects under his charge. Yes, baby Jesus needed protection from evil men and evil schemes after his birth. When we combine the information found in Matthew chapter 2 with Luke chapter 2, we see there were numerous reasons the heavenly host came and worshiped the night of Jesus birth. One of those reasons was to protect the Christ child and their sweet adoration silenced the foe and the avenger. One Sunday after church I was cleaning up the kitchen when one of my sons asked me, “Mom, do you know how to tell a good angel from a bad angel when they speak to you?” Not knowing where this conversation was going I said, “No, how do you tell a good angel from a bad angel when they are speaking to you?” “Good angels always start their conversation with, ‘Fear not.’” “Oh.” I said, “That is really cool, where did you learn that?” “Oh, we talked about it in Sunday School today,” he said nonchalantly. I was amazed at the insight coming from my son’s lips. Today, as I read the Christmas story in Luke chapters 1 and 2, I thrill at how many times the angelic messengers spoke to their hearers, “Fear not…” Though my son is grown I can still hear the wonder in his voice. “Mom, do you know how to tell a good angel from a bad angel when they speak to you?” Biblical curiosity can be a glorious adventure. Wisdom dictates that in our research we carefully put our trust in the correct facts. Remember what got me searching in the first place, “How and why would an angelic army need to war at Jesus’ birth?” Meditating on the angels’ activities and their desire to not incite fear in human beings has allowed me to view the Christmas saga with fresh eyes. In the true account we discover God has provided everything we need because reconciliation with him is his idea. On that holy night so long ago the heavenly host exalted God by saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” I want to exalt God, too. The King of the universe has sent his only begotten son, who by his sacrificial death paid the price for your sins and mine, so that we could experience God’s peace and God’s pleasure. What might change if, like the angels, you gave glory to God out loud this Christmas? Try reading out loud what the angels said, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased.” Wasn’t that fun? You know, since it is Christmas’ time why don’t you give glory to God again?

Jesus assured His mother at the wedding feast that there’s always enough when He is in charge. Do you trust Christ’s provision in your own life? Here’s how you can. Fear of Running Out: Jesus and the Wedding Feast Steven Furtick I don't struggle with the Fear Of Missing Out more like for me the fear of running out. That's more what I deal with. I'm a pretty lazy person, I'm pretty boring, I'm not lazy about the things that matter, but somebody's like, "You know, there's a lunar eclipse tonight", and I'm like "eh somebody'll take a picture". You know what time is it at? 10:45? I'll check it out tomorrow. It's a once-in-a-lifetime thing. It'll be on YouTube. You know, that's kinda my thing I'm fine to miss out. But Fear Of Running Out — F.O.R.O. — F.O.M.O. not so much, F.O.R.O., fear of running out, I think about all the time. I guess because my fear in life is not having what I'm supposed to have and people show up expecting something that I can't give. Even in church I'm always so nervous that I won't be able to get my energy up to the level that I need to get it to, to connect with you because sometimes you come in with very low energy, I'm just being honest, but I know you need a gourmet meal from the Word of God and I don't wanna hand you a cheese sandwich in a Styrofoam box. You know I don't want you to show up with a FEMA tent when you're expecting a villa, but I'm scared of this I'm scared of running out all the time. I'm constantly scared like my creativity is gonna run out because I need creativity to do what I do and even in writing sermons you're kind of saying the same things over and over again sometimes and even though the Bible has a lot of interesting stories and letters I'm scared like one time maybe I'm open my bible and I won't be able to find a sermon. You know and sometimes it gets late in the week and I'm so scared of running out when we write worship songs I'm always like how many different ways can we say, "God, you're good. I trust you"? You know there's different ways I'm not saying that God is simple I'm just saying sometimes I'm like, "Can we write another song, can preach"? I'm scared of running out of time. I always feel like I don't have enough time, always feel like I'm gonna run out of time raising my kids. I'm scared to death that I won't get everything instilled in them in the time they're in my house and then they will end up on a therapist couch $250 an hour because something I didn't teach them or Abby is gonna marry some jerk because maybe I didn't teach her what a man should be like because I don't know how to fix cars and so, she never saw me fix cars she's gonna end up you know on the corner. I'm scared about this stuff. I'm scared like that they're gonna leave — I know it's dark, right? — and I'm scared I'm gonna send my kids out and they're not gonna have what they need for the world because I ran out of time to give it to 'em. I'm scared that I'm gonna run out of money. I'm more scared now that I'm gonna run out of money then I was when I was 22, and we didn't have any money. I can't figure out how the more we got of it, the more I started to depend on it and now it consumes more of your time. You think you'll get to an amount of money where you will no longer be scared of running out? All money is gonna do is create more obligations, all more money is gonna do is create a bigger lifestyle and now you will need more money to create the lifestyle so you really won't lose the fear of running out it will just be on a larger scale and you'll have more to lose. I'm so scared of running out. F.O.M.O. not so much, Fro-yo? Never liked the stuff. F.O.R.O.? So when they got there and they didn't have it, I was like, "John 2". The fear of running out. What if I don't have what they need, what if I can't be who they need? Any new parents? Any new parents? You don't; you don't have what those kids need; it's gonna have to come from God. Please, believe me. Did you figure this out yet? Have you already got the baby or you're expecting or what? Yeah over there any kids you just came here to get a break is this your date? It's a good way to do a date, by the way. Free childcare. You gotta understand, this was the first sign, Jesus did way more signs than John puts in his gospel and he uses the word 'sign', not 'miracle', because he believes it's pointing to something deeper. That's what a sign does. That's why that says "Exit" because of the door. The sign is worthless if that's just a wall. It's pointing to something. And when you see things in Scripture a lot of times you're gonna see it on a natural level, but then it's gonna point to something beneath the surface like life does. Like there are things going on in your life right now that are trying to point you to something deeper there are things you're experiencing in your life right now, but the surface is not the story. There is a deeper meaning for it. And so John says in his gospel that if he were to write down everything that Jesus did he said, "The world would not have room for the books that would be written". This was before Wikipedia. Now you can put it all out there, but at the time, he said, "If I wrote it all down, I'll run out of room". So he chose the number seven, it's the number that represents completion in the Bible, and it's the days of the week, the world was created in seven days, it's a symbolic number in the Bible, seven is all over the Bible. He uses the number seven and he puts in the Bible seven signs that Jesus performed to point to who He was. Everything that God does for you is to point to who He wants to be to you and if you only live at the level of what He does for you, but miss what He is trying to point to that He wants to be to you, you can receive resource from the Lord without revelation of the Lord who gave the resource. And if your attachment is to the resource, then you will always run out at some point. If your attachment is to the Revelation you will always know who He is and so whatever you need he can be because he is The Great I Am. Shout about it for 5 seconds so I can move on. Seven signs he says I'm going to give you seven. The second sign that Jesus did in John's gospel is, when He, in John 4, He healed a royal official's son, in John 5, He healed a man at the pool of Bethesda who'd been lame for 38 years and was waiting for the angel to stir up the water, but Jesus came on the scene and said, "You don't have to wait for somebody to stir up the water, the Living Water has come to you and since you can't move in your sitting by this pool I'm gonna bring to you what you could not get for yourself". He flipped the flow. He flipped the flow. I can preach this series for another year and not exhaust all the times that Jesus flipped the flow. In fact in John 6 this was the fourth sign that Jesus recorded in John's gospel. Jesus was looking at some hungry people and a little boy had a Styrofoam box with a cheese sandwich and Jesus... fish and loaves, but I modernized it. Jesus took it and blessed it and broke it, and gave it to them, and they went from hungry to full, they went from hungry to I can't eat another bite. They went from hungry to, "Would you like to see the dessert menu"? "No, I'm full". That was the sign in John 6. In John 6 Jesus also walked out on water to His disciples. He had sent them to the other side, but they encountered a storm and what was really most important wasn't what was on the other side, but what they went through to get there because when they went through the storm and gave Him an opportunity to reveal who He was in a way that they could have seen if they didn't go through the storm. So He's trying to get us to see, "You see the sign"? — He's trying to get you to see that the storm points to something that is deeper than what you can see on the surface, to show you that the power of God on the inside of you is greater than the wind that blows against you. He gives 'em a sign. In John 9 He heals a man born blind. The man didn't do anything to be blind, his parents didn't do anything to make him blind, Jesus said this was to reveal the glory of God. He is using something that the man can't see to show the men something that physical eyes cannot detect. It's a sign He's trying to show something deeper until John 11 when He shows the ultimate sign that foreshadows the very work that He came to do when He shows up at Lazarus house late after Lazarus has died misses His healing appointment and tells him come out of the Tomb because He had to show them: "You've seen Me as a Healer, but now it's time for a deeper expression of your understanding of me because even when I don't show up when you want me to show up in your life I already have in mind what I'm gonna do. And even if they wrapped you in grave clothes and buried you, if you have the faith to come forth I can still speak a word that will bring you out of any situation, because I am the resurrection and the life". Somebody, shout, "God, gimme a sign"! Just wanted a sign so Jesus gave 'em a sign. So what was the first one? Those were the six, but the first one was... and I know some of you already know. Some of you really, really, really, know your Bible and when I said John 2, you were like, "Water into wine"! And you're right, but if you would have shouted it out it would have ruined my setup because you already know, but you know sometimes we have the curse of knowledge and we think we know something and we do know it at the surface, but why did Jesus turn water into wine? And I'm gonna show you. This is so powerful. God, I'm excited. I haven't had this much fun preaching in a long time as I'm having today. I think it's the denim. Holly said I don't wear enough color up here so. I like black it's slimming. Dark colors, dark colors. Now go back to John 2:1 somebody shout, "flip it". Jesus shows up on the third day at a wedding which took place in Cana in Galilee. This is a small place, not necessarily an important place, but nevertheless Jesus's mother was there at a wedding and Jesus and His disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine was gone the miracle started. You missed it. When they ran out of what they brought, when they ran out of what they planned for. Which to us would not be the biggest deal, you know, you run out of wine at a wedding and it's probably a good thing because you got crazy family members and when they drink too much they start fightin' anyway and one of 'em ends up in jail, but in this culture it was the epitome of dishonor to invite a guest and to not be able to provide. And this wedding was not a... you know how we do wedding and it's like 40 minutes and then a reception, this was more like the Fyre Festival; It was supposed to last a week, the weeding would last a week, and everybody showed up expecting that at whatever point they showed up at the wedding there would still be something to drink. You know, to show up at a wedding and there to be no wine, it was actually recorded that if the groom who is responsible to make sure that the wedding went off right, if he did not provide everything that necessity required, he could be sued by his mother-in-law. You thought you had family drama right? But Jesus shows up at the wedding and they run out of wine. Now I don't wanna skip over this what have you run out of? What are you running out of right now? What are you constantly afraid of running out of? Is it wisdom? Is it peace? Is it ideas? Are you out of ideas for how to fix a relationship? Are you out of ideas for how to reach a level of success that you thought you would have been at 4 years ago? What are you running out of? What have you run out of? The worst thing is to run out of gas when you're the one driving. The worst thing is for people to show up to your kitchen and all you have is cheese and bread. The worst thing is when you know that people expect something of you. Because some of you, you're the life of the party. Some of you you're the strong one. Some of you you're the one that the people come to with their problems and they don't know you are sick of being the place where they dump their crap. You got your own sewage and they keep backing up and dumping more on you and they don't even know how close you are to quitting and you're running out. And that's why I like this 'cause you don't have to say it out loud, I'll say it for you. Everybody in here is running out of something. Not wine, how 'bout joy? How 'bout how you haven't been happy in a long time? How 'bout that? The last time I was up here I preached on joy, did you hear that sermon? Sounds like it meant a lot to you praise the Lord. Why do I do this?! Were you here when I preached on joy? Well since wine represents joy I thought it'd be good to stay in this flow, but Jesus comes to the wedding and He's a guest, but He's about to provide what the host could not provide. Why? he did not come to demand righteousness. He came to provide righteousness. He flipped the flow. The first thing Jesus did was to take away the shame of a couple who had run out of what they were unable to provide. That's the first thing He does when He comes in your life. He doesn't just expose your shame, he doesn't just come to condemn you, he doesn't just come to point out everything that's wrong with you. He says, "I didn't come just to show you your shame; I came to take it away. Look the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world". I'm happy about it. I need the Lord in my life 'cause I'm so scared I'm gonna run out, and yet the Bible says that Jesus didn't do anything about it, he let it run out. He let it run out. He let it happen like He often will do, until watch this, "When the wine was gone, Jesus' mother said to Him..." You gotta imagine: the wine's really important, at the wedding, this is not the first person who has discovered that it's gone. They probably had many discussions and there's probably been a lot of finger-pointing. That's one thing on that documentary I watched, everybody was saying it was everybody's fault. Everybody was pointing, everybody was pointing at somebody else, "Well, we didn't know, we didn't know, we didn't know," How did you not know? That's what we wanted to know is how did you not know, but Jesus's mother knew something. Rather she knew someone. And she did something interesting. She didn't go to the wedding planner, she didn't go to the couple, Jesus's mother when the wine was gone, Jesus's mother... "Mary, did you know"? Yes, she knew. She didn't know what to do, but she knew who to go to. I'mma preach this message today, I'm coming for it today, 'cause you don't know what to do right now, right? But if you know who to go to... And see a lot of the reason you've been running out, it's because you've been running around to people who don't have what you need. They don't have it, they can't give it, they've got their own stuff, they're running dry too, but if you go to the Man From Galilee, if you go to the One Whose Name is Life... She came to Jesus and said, "they have no more wine". She didn't tell Him about the solution she just told Him the need. She just told Him what He already knew. I promise you He already knew. Wow do I know He already knew? Because He was the Word from the beginning. If He spoke the grapes onto the vine, He certainly knew that they didn't bring enough. He knew, I know He knew because in John 6 when He turned the little boy's value pack, Chick-fil-A value pack, when He turned it into a buffet, all-you-can-eat buffet He asked Philip, "What are we gonna do about this"? And Philip was an accountant so Philip was like, "if we did... can't do it". But the Bible says, give me John 6:6, I know I didn't use it in the last one, but I wanna use it 'cause these people want it they really, really want it, these people are hungry, these people want the Word of God. "He asked this only to test him, for He already knew..." He already knew what He was gonna do. How cool is that? You mean I'm coming before God praying a lot of times and I'm like... like, I'm God's administrative assistant you know? Like, "Lord, just reminding you about that appointment you missed last week when I asked you to help me with the thing and I told you to fix 'em and you didn't fix 'em so just putting it back on your calendar if you get around to it, Lord, and then this other thing over here bah-bah-bah..." And, lately, I've been praying like this. "You already know, I know you know, I know you know". That's why Mary went to Jesus even though it wasn't His job he was just a guest at the wedding, but she knew what was in Him because He had been in her and when Christ is in you and you are in Christ you already know. How many of you already know that God will do it, you just don't know how? That's all Mary knew. Mary did you know. Maybe like "Yeah, I knew He would, but I didn't know how He would. I didn't know how". But see every need in your life is pointing you to a deeper source. Every sign that John recorded was pointing to something deeper. Every need that you experience in your life is pointing you to a deeper place in God that you can access. A deeper place of strength, a deeper place of confidence, a deeper place of help, a deeper place of relationship, a deeper place of the penance. Everything is pointing to something deeper. So when she said, "they have no more wine," Jesus responded. And I don't recommend this as like something to say to your mom or your wife, John 2:4: "Woman, why do you involve Me"? That's not like a great marriage seminar love languages verse, but she didn't tell Jesus the need to inform Him like we do. She didn't pray like a ritual in, "God bless me today is a go to the thing and after the thing and God just let me go through my list and worry about it and say that I'm praying, but really all I'm doing is worrying out loud with my eyes closed". She wasn't doing it to inform Him, she was doing it to involve Him 'cause she knew if He gets involved I don't know what He'll do, but I know who He is. Now I'mma need you to shout, right now, if you know who He is. Come on Blakeney, don't be quiet I know you love the lord. I need you to shout right now if you know who He is. I know who to go to — I lift my eyes to the hills. And His mother watched this, his mother goes to Him, He says to His mother, "Woman," — I'mma start talking to Holly, "Woman"! "Help 'em with their homework"! "Woman, why do you involve Me"? That's my favorite verse this year. I'm gonna use that a lot this year. "Woman, why do you involve Me"? Jesus replied, "My hour has not yet come". He's talkin' about the cross, but she needs Him to do something right now. Some of us have things that we need God to do now. We really do we need Him now. Yeah, I'm goin' to heaven when I die, and yeah, there's a white horse that I read about in the book of Revelation, but how 'bout now? And so watch what she does. She doesn't argue, she doesn't convince, she doesn't beg, in fact she doesn't talk to Jesus anymore; she turns away from Jesus points to the people who are working at the wedding and verse 5 she, "said to the servants, 'Do whatever He tells you.'" 'Cause if you start moving in faith He's gonna do something. I don't know what He didn't tell me, I don't know the details, I don't know the plan I wasn't the wedding planner, this isn't even my party, but if you start moving, if you'll start obeying, if you'll take a step you're gonna see something. And she said, "Do whatever He tells you". Now, I know what you're thinking. I already know, I already know. I already know what you're thinking. "I would, if I knew what He wanted me to do". But sometimes the way God speaks, it's like, the Lord was saying to me the other day, because I was praying about "I don't know whether to do this or that", and I know you have situations that are nuanced, and I really don't like preaching that doesn't respect nuance. I really think in some ways it's misleading to say, "You know, it's just simple: Do whatever He tells you to do," because sometimes I don't know what that is. Sometimes, I don't know if I should take the job and make a little more money, but it's gonna put me away from my family more, but I need to be here for my kids, but I also need to be able to send them to college in four years and I need to be able to provide for them. So, I'm kind of caught between, I don't really know what He wants me to do, because I can't find a Bible verse about whether I should live in Atlanta or Charlotte, you know? But let me just tell you something: There's traffic in both cities, and there's problems in both cities, and there's ups and downs to both cities. "Where am I going to go to college"? I see a Wingate shirt over there. "Where am I gonna go to college"? You know, you can live for the Lord at Wingate or at Wofford. You can live for the Lord either place. It's not as important. I mean, go where the scholarship money is. Or if there's no scholarship money, go... But it's more important what kind of friends you make the first week of college than it is whether it's Wingate or Wofford. Can I preach a little bit? So, the Lord was speaking to me, I was like, "If I knew what to do, I would do it". And God said, "If you would do what you knew..." See the flip? You see the flip? Because I'm waiting for new information from God, and God is like, "Alright, what do you already know"? I'm speaking to somebody today who has run out and you don't know what to do, and you don't have the wisdom, and you don't have the experience, and you don't have the "I don't know, I didn't..." You know, it's really hard to do something you don't have a context for. But if you would do what you knew... What do you already know? I mean, I know for one that gratitude is the gateway to joy. So much so that I bought a journal and put it by my bed. It's a gratitude journal. It's orange like everything else in this church, and like God's favorite team, the Clemson Tigers whom He has anointed with the fresh oil of yet another national championship for the glory of His name His kingdom come. Some of y'all look like you hate me right now. But I found out the gratitude journal doesn't bless me if I don't open it and write in it. And I already know that, but I haven't touch it in seven months, and it's got dust on it. And then I'm gonna go to God at some point praying that He'll help me to feel joy, but I already knew what to do. I didn't do it. I've got 17 books on my Kindle that I bought last year that I read one chapter of. I probably don't need to buy another book this year, and you might not either. I'm serious. I'mma preach until it's so quiet that you think this is Elevation Presbyterian Episcopalian Cemetery Service. Look at me. You know enough right now; I promise you do. I promise you do. You know enough right now to be physically fit. I'm just saying. You might not need Men's Fitness with Hugh Jackman's workout to do some push-ups and to take less calories. But we're addicted to knowledge. We're addicted to "if I knew what to do... if I knew... if I could do this diet over here, and I heard about this and this celebrity diet, and I gotta do this thing. I heard about this kombucha, if I drink that, then my gut will be healed". You know, you already know. Touch somebody and say, "You already know". You know push-ups, you know sit-ups. You already know. Get a trainer if you want, but the trainer will not transform you. If you know what to do and you do what you know, you will know what to do. Come on. God, I don't need You to clarify; I need You to give me courage to do what I knew that I didn't do last time. I knew I needed to humble myself, I knew I needed... Some of us know exactly what we need to do, but we don't wanna do it, so we wanna pile more knowledge on top of the last thing that we didn't do that He gave us to do. I'm preaching, Mom. They might not come back next week, but I'm preaching. I'm preaching. Because there's three things that Jesus points to, and I want to give this to you, because I believe that God already knows. Somebody say, "He already knows" "I know the plans I have for you. Plans to prosper you, not to harm you". But there's something that you don't know, that you can't know, it is not in the knowing, but in the doing, that the miracle happens. Praise God. You feel this word, man? It might be just for you. God might've gave me this message just for you, I don't doubt it. He's that good. Do you believe that? That He would put this in me just for you? I do. So, I was noticing the details because His mother said, "Do whatever He tells you to do; and don't do what everybody else tells you to do, because you'll spend all your energy doing what everybody else tells you to do, and then not have the strength to do the thing God called you to do. Saying yes to everything else but what God gave you to do. Do whatever He tells you to do". And listen, so Jesus, He wasn't reluctant to get involved, He just needed their involvement. And He tells them to do something. Look at it in verse 6. It says, "Nearby stood six stone water jars", what kind of jars? Stone water jars, "the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing", they were common, they were there for a common purpose: "each holding from twenty to thirty gallons", they were big. That's a big gall, In fact, by the time they did what He said in verse 7, Jesus said to the servants, "Fill the jars with water"; so they filled them to the brim...", which would have made 1.000 bottles of wine. More than they needed; because He's a God of more than enough. He is a God of more than enough. It's not that He doesn't have it; it's that we're so busy pointing to what's not there, that we miss what is. And that's why we've gotta flip the flow. And the Bible says that "Not even knowing what would happen when they did it," because they needed wine, but He points to water. He doesn't point to what they need, He points to what they have. And then He told them, "Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.' They did so". They did it; they just did it. They had a Nike mentality, they just did it. Swoosh. I'm looking for a sponsorship, I'm just trying to work this in. I'm trying to get us some money for the expansion program. "They did so, and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine". Now he tasted the product, but he did not understand the process. He didn't know, he did not realize where it had come from, though the servants knew. Touch somebody, say, "You already know". You know who knows what God is doing in the earth today? Those who serve Him. Not just those who come and sip, but those who serve. Those who involve. I wanna thank God for every volunteer in this church, for everybody who serves something today, for every e-Group leader in this church. I thank God for you, because you already know that it's more blessed to give than receive. Not those who sit, but those who serve. That's who God blesses the most. Amen. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside and said", "You flipped the flow because everybody brings out the choice wine first, and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink". That's the way the world works. It's good for a little while, and then it runs out. He said, "You did it different. It got better and better, and sweeter and sweeter". I've come to tell you, your best days are not behind you; God is not like that. He didn't let you run out because He left you; He let it run out so He could give you something better than what you brought to the party to begin with. Yeah. "You flipped the flow. You have saved," verse 10, "the best until now". But how did He do it? How did He do it? Because everything you're running out of in your life today is in Jesus. It's in Him. But there's three things that I wanna show you and we'll go. Quickly, quickly, quickly. Number one: It's not gonna be in the places you expect, it's gonna be number one: nearby. It's not gonna be by you moving to a new situation or thinking that your solution is out there somewhere. It's not gonna be distant, it's gonna be nearby. Verse six, where were the stone water jars? Pay attention to the details. Nearby. Where is the help that God has given you for the shortage in your life? It's nearby. It's nearby. The reason we don't see what's nearby is because when something is close, we see it as common. These were stone jars made of earth. They were leak-proof so that they wouldn't be ceremonially unclean, but there was nothing gold-plated about them. These were not iced out jars. That's not what made them special, what was special what was inside. But they didn't have to go... you know, Jesus right here could've been like the disciples. "Go to town, you've gotta get some wine". But the thing about Cana is it's in the middle of nowhere, so they can't go get anything, so they have to use something nearby. I wonder what's nearby that if you pour yourself into it, God can flow again through your life? It's nearby. It's so close. Like remember, they all came in the party and washed their hands, so the miracle was in something that they had already walked by to get to the party. The miracle is in something that you're walking by every day. It's in a Bible-reading plan that you already started but you've just quit it, and you can't pick it back up. The wisdom that you need might be in the wife that you chose to do life with six years ago, but you don't wanna listen to her because she's nearby. So, I will see men go to conferences to learn how to be a better man, but they won't even listen to their own wife because they don't wanna be humble. I'm telling you, it's nearby. It's not out there, that's not where the provision is. It's not somewhere out there, it's nearby. It's gonna be so close, you'll miss it if you're not careful. It's gonna be so close, I'm telling you, it's something that you're walking by right now. You've been praying for it, it's an orange gratitude journal that's right there on your bed, it's an exercise plan that you already know to do, it's gonna be nearby and it's gonna be normal. That's the second thing: It's gonna be normal. It's not gonna feel so supernatural, it's gonna feel natural. And then it's gonna be super. But you can't wait for something special; you've got to embrace something normal. We have this treasure in earthen vessels that the Excellency and the power might be from God and not from us. It's coming through something normal. It's gonna be normal. It's gonna be habits, it's gonna be discipline, it's gonna be normal. God, use me. Go home and have dinner with your family. It's gonna be normal, it's not gonna be exciting. It's not gonna be sexy, it's not gonna be Instagram models in bikinis on the beach. It's gonna be normal. It's gonna be normal. Tell somebody, "It's gonna be normal". Tell them, "It's gonna be natural, but it's gonna be super". When God gets done with normal, what happens on the inside of what looks normal on the outside, God is doing something in me. And I wonder what you've been walking by because it looks normal. You don't even notice it, because it's nearby and it's normal and it's now. Jesus said, "Now". Verse eight: "Now". Everybody say, "Now". Not after I've explained it to you, now. He didn't tell them, "Now when you draw it out, it's gonna start to turn purple. Like when you stir the Kool-Aid in the... it's gonna be a fermentation process and the molecular structure is going to... let me draw it up for you, guys". And says, "Okay everybody, come on in, come on in, guys". Now, I know you don't know what I'm going to do, but I already know. I know you don't know why I'm telling you to do this, but I know. I know you don't know why I'm telling you to forgive, but I know what I wanna do that I can't do in your life if you have a clogged heart. So, do it now, now, now". Faith is the substance of things hoped for. And Jesus never points to what's next without dealing with what's now. Now, draw it out. Now. I could imagine: He could've gone around the whole party: "You should've planned better, and you should've known better..." But He didn't do any of that, because He didn't point to what they should've done. It doesn't do any good. He points to what is now. Now. Even though you've run, even though you could've done better. I'mma tell you, you could've done a better job. You need to fire your wedding planner. I hope you didn't give her too much of a deposit, be-cause she really screwed this up. But now. That's actually what Mary and Martha said to Jesus when He showed up for Lazarus. "If You would've been here, our brother would not have died". But even now. I feel the power of "Now" on this word today. Now, now, now, now, now, now. Because the truth is, you might be running out of time. And Jesus only had three years on earth. Isn't it crazy? Think about this, I'm almost done. Y'all got like five more minutes or I'm out of time. I don't know how to receive that tepid encouragement. I guess go if you need to go, I'mma talk to who wants to hear this last part. I just study too much to get up here and let a clock tell me when to quit; because I know what it feels like to be empty; I've been there in my own life, just dry, and empty, and "ah, if another person asks me if... I don't even wanna do it. I don't..." But there's something significant not only about what Jesus did, — water into wine, the law into the spirit, we can preach about that, we will one day — that He did it in a ceremonial jar, and it was an idea, the fact that the ceremonial washings of Moses for not being replaced by the blood that would be shed — that's all in there. It's the signs, pointing to a lot. But why did He do it in Cana? Why did He show His glory in Cana? And to understand this, we need to meet Nathaniel, because Nathaniel was a disciple who came to Jesus. Guess who brought him, by the way? Phillip: The one who Jesus said, "Where are we gonna get the bread from"? but He already knew. I promise you, He already knows, but He's just trying to make sure that you know where it comes from. "And Philip brought Nathaniel to Jesus," pick it up in 45, "Philip found Nathaniel and told him, 'We have found the one Moses wrote about in the law, and about whom the prophets also wrote Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Joseph'". There were 456 different expectations of the Jewish Messiah. And Philip was doing the math, you know? "Carry the one," just like it was, and he said, "I think this is Him. I think so. I'm not sure, but I think. Come see". And Nathaniel starts trying to figure it out based on what he can understand. He's like, "Did you say 'Nazareth'? You said 'Nazareth'? 'Moncks Corner'"? See, I'm used to being from a place that people don't respect when you say the name of it. "Nazareth! Can anything good come from there"? And Nathaniel asked the question, and Philip said, "I can't answer that, but You can come see". Now watch this: This is where it gets good. "When Jesus saw Nathaniel," I always preach John 2 thinking that verse 1 is where it started. "On the third day, Jesus went to Cana," but it started before that. When Jesus saw Nathaniel approaching, He said of him, "Hear truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit". Now Nathaniel was kind of creeped out. Verse 48, he said, "How do you know me? We haven't met, how do yo know"? He said, "I know what's in you". He said, "But you don't know me". He said, "But I know what's in you". One time, when Elijah was little, he would walk around the house. How old was he? Two, three? He'd walk around the house going, "How do you know my name, how do you know my name". I think he heard it on a TV show. And I thought that was so bizarre. He'd walk up to me and Holly, "How do you know my name? How do you know my name"? I said, "Cause I made you, 'cause I gave you your name. I know who you are, I know what's in you". Jesus looks at Nathaniel, and He knows what's in him because Nathaniel came from him. Now watch this, this is so important: for everybody who spend a lot of time feeling like that's what's against you is greater than what's in you, I want you to know that God already knows what's against you, and He already knows what's in you. I said He already knows what's against you, and He already knows what's in you. He said, "I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Phillip called you". And Nathaniel said, "You saw me? Rabbi, you are the son of God, you are the King of Israel, you hadn't even met me yet and you saw me before I was called? You mean you saw me in this situation before I was even in it? You saw me in this dry place, before it even stopped raining? You saw me in this dumb decision, You saw me in this divorce? You saw me in this low place"? He says, "Yeah, I saw you. I wouldn't've put you in it if I didn't put it in you. You've got it in you and you will not run out and it will not run out and it will not run out, you will accomplish your purpose. You will fulfill. You will complete your assignment. It is in you". I love Jesus. He said, "You believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that". And then they went to Cana so Jesus could show Nathaniel what He just told Him. I am the One Who flips the flow. I am the One, come on get happy, who gets grace for shame. I am the One who turns rejection into blessing. I am the Resurrection, I am the Life, your struggle is sign, your set back is a sign, your secrets are a sign, God is with you, it is in you, release a shout of praise in the place. I said, "Release a shout of praise in the place". And you will not run out. You will not run out. You might not have any wine, but if you have the One who can stir the water, you will never lack, you will make it and you will achieve it, in Jesus name!

When our dreams are shattered, can we actually experience the grace of God in the midst of our humanity, watch God’s spirit move in a powerful way, in a vibrant way, even at times through dysfunctional people. And that’s the power and capacity that can be seen and experienced in the local Church. When we’re hurt, we’re going to work through it in a healthy way. We’re going to pray. We’re going to serve. We’re going to repent. We’re going to keep going, keep dreaming. So at his height, Pablo Escobar was the seventh richest person in the world, which is really hard to believe and hard to even fathom that this drug trafficker who built a cocaine empire became the seventh wealthiest person in the entire world, according to Forbes magazine. At the height of his success, he was raking in, they say, about $420 million every single week. It's hard to even get your head around that kind of a number, over $400 million coming in every single week. Of course, this led to a net worth at the time of his death of something around $30 billion, which, in today's currency, with inflation, we're talking like $50 billion. It's just ridiculous money. In fact, it was so much money that it became a problem. Because what do you do with all that money? And his brother was an accountant, and wrote a book after his brother's death and kind of revealed some of the things that they tried to do. You know, they tried to put as much as they could in, you know, banks overseas. But Pablo insisted that he be the only one that had the account numbers. So when he died, so much of that wealth is literally just sitting there frozen in accounts that no one knows even how to access. So what they did with a lot of the money, and this is just absolutely crazy, is they just buried it. Real creative, right? They just literally like, let's just dig a hole in the ground. And so that's what they would do. They would bundle it and all that. And this is actually one of the craziest details, to sort of like show you how much money we're talking about, when 420 million is coming in. I mean, you can only spend so much on cars and planes and the two submarines that he had. He also started his own personal zoo in Colombia, when he wasn't buying islands that were used for great festivals later. But basically, for wealthy millennials who needed something fun to do, all right, on Netflix. But basically, they were spending at the peak of the craziness of this narco money coming in, $2,500 every single year on rubber bands. Just to bundle the benjamins. Can you imagine $2,500 worth of rubber bands? Just to bundle together all the cash that most of it was just literally going into the ground. In the book, his brother says that they would write off 10% of it, about, every single year because that's how much the rats would eat. They would come back to these cash deposits later, and they would find rats just feeding on bundled $100 bills. And so 10% or so, oh, that's a whole different mentality of what a company, you know, grocery stores lose food that expires, but Pablo's cash was getting eaten by rats, right? This is crazy. Years after his death, in, of course, 1993, he was killed at the age of 44. And this isn't the glorifying Pablo Escobar hour. I mean, he was responsible for upwards of 7,000 deaths, all right? So I'm going somewhere, I promise you. Some of you are like, what the heck is happening? What kind of church is this? And others of you are like, this is the greatest sermon of my entire life. So it just really depends on what interests you, I suppose. But there was a farmer. A farmer was just sort of preparing his field on a new plantation that he purchased, an oil palm plantation. And he purchased it from land that was repossessed and recovered by the Colombian government when they seized all of his land, seized all of his property. They were stunned that they only found $8 million. Now, imagine, he was worth upwards of 30 billion, but only eight million was ever recovered by law enforcement and drug enforcement agencies. So so much of it is just still out there. But sort of a clue emerged when this Colombian farmer, you know, he's got an excavator going and, clink, it hits something metal. Like, classic, right? This is Pirates of the Caribbean edition, right? Clink. Right along. And the whole field, literally the whole field was full of those Walter White, Heisenberg metal barrels, right? And casual reference, some of you got it, some of you have no idea what I'm talking about. Crystal blue persuasion barrels, right? And so he pops these things out. And turns out these metal barrels held $600 million. And this was just one of many of the cash deposits sprinkled, they believe, all over Colombia, perhaps Mexico. Money from Pablo Escobar's hiding has been found as far as in Miami, Florida. Now, I want you to bring that with me, that idea. Not Pablo Escobar and his submarines. I want you to bring the idea of a farmer in a field working the ground in the soil on this land, and all of a sudden, what does he find? Well, title of my message is Buried Treasure, for that is, in fact, exactly what's on Paul's mind as he, in 2 Corinthians 4 verses six and seven, our passage for today, says "for it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shown in our hearts", look at this, "to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us". Father, I pray just for a minute, as we just consider these two verses and let them just roll around in our hearts, I pray that you would speak something new to us, show us something different, help us to make sense of the madness and oftentimes craziness of our lives, where what we dreamed of is often very different from what we're experiencing. And help us to see that, in you, our life can make sense. In you, we can find the fountains of living water that we can't find out in this world. We pray for you just to open up our eyes and our hearts. We pray for our lungs to expand with fresh air and new life, and you to give us a different kind of passion, perhaps, than what we originally hoped for. Light us up, God, with your light from above. We ask this in Jesus' name. And we all said together, amen. In this passage, what we find is this statement, this statement is true, that just like that farm in Colombia, the church, as seen through God's eyes, is a place full of buried treasure. Now, in the New Testament, and we've been kind of camped out on this idea, we have these two sister analogies used to explain the church. We have a structure and we have soil. We have house and we have land. We have both the metaphor of a building that's built full of living stones, but we also have this metaphor of land, where you and I are all parts of the soil that are in this field. So we're living stones, but we're also earthen vessels. That's what this passage says. We're God's home, yes. And that's how they become connected, because yes, we're God's home. But listen, we are his home made out of mud. Made out of earth. Now, in the most literal sense, this is actually biologically true. If you look at what composes our body, it is very much the same as the ground. And that's why we so easily, after we die, we return ashes to ashes - finish it with me if you know it - and dust to dust. That's how we started out, y'all. Talk about starting from the bottom, now we're here. Genesis chapter two puts it this way. "The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground". You can picture him there, gathering the dust into a pile. And then what did he do? "He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And then man became a light... a life... a full of... full... a living being". All right. This is the hard words. It's got multiple syllables, right? Pray for me. Now, if you could have paused time, and maybe you were an angel, because there was no one else there to witness this moment. God had just finished creating the world. He had just finished breathing the Milky Way into formation, and all that he did in the Great Barrier Reef and the Grand Canyon and the Mariana Trench. I mean, just think about all this. And he's finished this world. He's divided water from land, and he's created all these animals and birds of the air and fish of the sea. But now, he has turned to what he has dubbed the crown jewel of creation. Not because we are more powerful than the angels. No, we've been set a little lower than the angels. But what caused us to be a cut above was, out of all the things that God had it in his mind to create in those six days, we were the only thing that were trusted with the most important thing that there is. We were made in God's image. Trusted with his likeness. And as he said, so to speak, to all of creation. But now watch this. He began to pile some dust together. And then if you would have just looked right there and seen him stooped over with this, all you would have seen is a pile of dust. But God looked longingly at it. And he would have explained, I don't see a pile of dirt, I see a home for my breath. Dang. Wow. And so he breathed into our nostrils, and so we rose, and so we are, to this day, a home for God's breath. And that is true individually. It's even more so true corporately. For as Jesus put this is Matthew chapter 18, "where two or more are gathered together in my name, I am there with them in the midst". That's the power of the church. That's the power of our gathering together to worship. That's the power of coming together in small groups to have a cup of coffee together, to talk about the reality of life together, to commiserate when life is awesome and terrible and something in between. That's the joy of life together. That's the joy of serving together. That's the joy of giving together. That's the joy of sacrifice. That's the joy of all that we get to do planted in the house of God. As earthen vessels turned into living stones, all individually full of the Holy Spirit, but coming together somehow, some way able to experience the transcendent glory, the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But it's a treasure we have in earthen vessels. The irony, the interesting thing about that is that that puts the excellency and the power, all of the superlatives go on what goes inside the container, what goes inside the package. It's the Splenda you want, not the paper. It's the drink you want, not the straw. The canal is never the point. The pipe was never the point. All the pipes that went when your house was plumbed, it was never about the pipes. You know, like, I'm gonna have the best network of PVC anyone's ever seen. Great, you gonna get water? Nah. No, it's always about what flows through you. You see, the emphasis in this passage is never to make us feel like we're a big deal. It's never about you. It's always about what God wants to put in you, what God wants to do through you. You and I are still dirt. We're just piles of dirt. But we're dirt full of God's breath. We're dirt full of God's power. We're dirt that God has set his name upon. We're dirt that God's given a commission to. We're dirt that he's called to this dance of life with him and relationship with him and community together with him. The power, the excellency, the authority, it all comes from what's inside us. We have this treasure in earthen vessels. Y'all, it's buried treasure. It's treasure deep down inside of us. The excellence is about what's inside of us, and not about us. But I love the word earthen vessels. Earthen. We have a treasure of earthen vessels. Because it doesn't just speak to our origin story, it doesn't just help us to be emotionally set for end game because we saw Captain America won and suffered through Red Skull, right? We're not just reminded here of the Genesis account of mankind in this passage. What we're also given is a picture of the need for us to come together, because Paul intentionally picked a word that did not speak fully of a vessel, but instead spoke of it as its individual component. You see, the word for earthen vessels in the original Greek would actually be better translated as pot shard. Shard. Come on, turn to your neighbor and say shard. Right? Its a great word, shard, right? A shard is a fracture. A shard is a broken piece of pottery. In fact, in that day, writing utensils were so expensive and difficult to get your hands on, you could actually write on a pot. And if a pot was broken, they would never just throw the pieces away. They would always retain the individual fragments. And that was what they used for scrap paper back in the day, because you could write on it for a little bit. So a broken pot, have no fear. And by the way, he had lots of choices for pots that he would speak to. The pot that he chose was their version of Tupperware. It was basically what you'd throw olive oil in, you'd throw leftovers in, you'd throw a little bit of wine in, you'd throw a little bit of grain in. It was the kind of utility workhorse pot that you have in that drawer somewhere in your kitchen. And you're always trying to figure out which lid goes on which one. And now there's nine different brands and you're kind of frustrated because someone brought something over at one point, and it's not even in the Hefty brand. It's in the Tupperware brand. And how you seal them. And they all have a secret place you've got to push to get them to do a little burp. And then they seal good. You know what I'm talking about? So when he said earthen vessels, that's what he meant. But it's not even the whole thing. It's just a piece of it. Yeah. So again, no one loves the Tupperware, they love what they put in the Tupperware. You love you some leftovers like I love it, right? In the morning on Black Friday, there's nothing better in the world than some Thanksgiving leftovers, right? But the excellence is never the vessel, it's what the vessel contains. Right. I want some sweet potatoes. I want some macaroni and cheese. You see what I'm saying? And so you think about what he's saying, he's saying it's not about us, it's about what goes inside of us. But it's not that any of us can contain all of what God wants to do through us, it's all of us coming together like all the individual shards of pottery. God's written something on you, written something on you, written something on you, written something on me. And when we come together, we can hold the power and the glory of God in a way that we cannot by ourselves. Oh, I'm preaching so good on a nine o'clock Sunday morning. So that's what this passage is telling us. And that's how God wants us to live transformed, mad about the house, realizing and aware of the fact that we're meant to come together as one to hold this buried treasure. The knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ that others might see him as we all take our place as the shard. And when you leave your shard unfilled, there's a hole in the pot where you were meant to go. There's a leakiness to the pot where you were meant to be there serving in that spot prayer-wise, serving in that spot through taking your place in our fast when it comes at the beginning of the year, serving in sacrificial giving, serving in faithful, continual generosity, serving rostered on the team, serving in that small group so someone else can come into that group and hear that story. How touched were you? Everything changed when someone said, would you go to coffee, I care about what the crap's going on, I mean, just give me a break. Give me five minutes to have a ugly cry for a second up in here, because that's the power of a cup of coffee. So let me ask you this question: who are you not providing that for? Who's not provide, you see what I'm saying? Let's not leave our part of the pot undone. Let's be the shard. Come on, be the shard. Fill the place. We have this treasure in earthen vessels. So once you get that, once that revelation snaps into place, what happens? It changes the way you speak, number one. It'll change the way you speak about the church. I think it's real easy to get flippant and, you know, it happens all the time. And I don't mean any disrespect at all, but I meet people a lot of times who are super excited about now they go to our church. And they feel somehow their obligation is to spend the first few minutes maybe running their mouth down on the last couple churches they went to and what they didn't do, that's why they're here. And I just always have to just really, as respectfully as I can, say we speak so well of that church, hope it's well. If God called you here, great, but that's not our spirit, that's not our heart, that's not our mentality. But just as often, as I'm meeting people and they'll be then telling me why they don't go to our Church anymore and this and that. And I'm just telling you something. Here's how I speak about the Church. This is the bride of Jesus. This is the bride of Jesus. So if I'm going to talk about the Church, a gathering full of people who are honoring Christ, I'm going to speak about that as the bride of Christ. And that is a real forgiving lens. Why? Because what does a bride wear? What does a bride wear? A bride wears something like that. Now that's my wife 15 years ago on our wedding day. And dear God, Lord Jesus, have mercy. If he didn't just spoil me like crazy with His grace from above that He would trust me with such an angel as Jennifer Lusko to let be my wife and be my bride and let me serve her these last 15 years. I just want to thank God in the presence of you all for this woman. All right. Now someone told me to take a mental picture when she shows up at the top of the aisle. And so I did. I don't have to look at that picture to see that picture. I can see that. It is burned into the deepest parts of my soul, my wife on this day, when now I saw this one that I would come together with and be one with and serve with and love with and dream with and cry with and... take it away. It's too much. I can't look at that anymore. All right. So here's the reality. As good as my wife looks in a wedding dress that day, God sees you as the Church every day. No, I don't think you got it. You'd be in a fetal position crying because of that love. It is too much for you. You don't have it. So here's what I'm trying to say. I'm trying to say, on your worst day. On your first day in your bathing suit after a long winter day. When you're like, oh Jesus. This is not good, right? On that day, God sees you as the bride wearing white on her wedding day. And you have to realize, the wedding dress, my wife looks great in everything she wears. So everything I'm about to say has nothing to do with her. All right? The wedding dress is the single most forgiving garment that's ever been invented and it was for a reason. Everyone looks good in a wedding dress. I heard a pastor one time say, even Dennis Rodman looked good in a wedding dress, right? You think about it, it's true. Like, dang. Right? That's incredible. So why? Because it doesn't show you what you really look like. It makes you look like an angel. Right? What is it? It's like the shape of a bell. And it's got a train that goes sometimes 12 yards, right? And there's lace involved. And it's so overpoweringly glowy that you can't help but be like, there's a radiance. You're just shining. No, she's just wearing a wedding dress, right? No, there's a special angel kiss on brides. Or it's the dress, right? I don't know. Which is it? Both. But that's the point. And the reality is we picked this garment to enhance the aura of that moment. And it's not for no reason that God says, when He pictures the Church, He sees a bride adorned as a woman on her wedding day. And what Jesus is saying, is my heart leaps when I think about you gathering together to worship me. My heart leaps when I think, So what does He think about the Church? Is He like, oh. Well, you did this last Thursday. And you missed last, no. He's like the bride on our wedding day. It covers over the multitude of sin. So how are we going to speak about the Church? As the bride of Christ. I love this Church. I love the gatherings, imperfect as they are. They're covered in a wedding dress. There's a beauty to it. There's a joy to it. What else do we have? The Church is God's plan A to save the world. And there is no plan B. It was the cross. That's the hope of humanity. It's the empty tomb. And now He's trusted that message to us all. Now the angels, quite frankly, don't know what He's doing sometimes. You did what? After all this, you came, you died, you rose, you gave the message to who? We had done so much better of a job. Why would you give it to them? They're just a pile of dirt. And God says, that's a home for my breath. Be careful who you're talking about. That's the bride of Christ. It's been trusted to us. We have this treasure in earthen vessels. So how we're going to speak about the Church? With gratitude. How are we going to speak about the Church? We're going to choose to do what I do when my wife and I are in a fight. I remember her on our wedding day. And even when I'm frustrated. Even when I'm frazzled. Even when she's frazzled. When I'm wrong, when she's, that's the moment. It's remember the joys. Go back to the beginning. It's do the first things. I see her as the bride on her wedding day. I don't treat her like I want to in the moment. I treat her like that woman deserves to be treated. And she does the same. And that's the service, together honoring Jesus. It changes the game. And that spirit needs to infect the local Church. I don't got ears to hear someone talking bad about the bride of Jesus. You go, come on, Jesus, yes. Church, no. Really? Tell me how that conversation is going to go. Jesus, thanks for everything you did. Love you. By the way, hate your wife. Right? Your relationship can't do well when you hate the thing He loves the most. What is Jesus passionate about? Building His Church. Using His Church. Changing the world through His Church. Come on, who's thankful for the local Church? Who's thankful for Fresh Life Church? I'm thankful for it. I love it. My life's been blessed by it. It's what I'm going to give my life to. I believe that God is using us. We're messed up. Yep. We're full of sinners. Totally. But let's build it. Let's be mad about the house. All right. OK. So that's how we're going to speak about it. And that's also going to drive how we sacrifice for it. I'm going to sacrifice for it. When you're building a house, you just know it's going to be expensive. And you just know, if you talk to some people on our teams, some people in our lives who maybe just built a house. And they're so excited because they got that down payment. They worked hard for it. And when you're building something, you have this long term mentality that we're doing something big here. And so we'll get Dave Ramsey for a second. We're going to live like no one else. Right? Eventually, we'll give like no one else. And in the meantime, we're not going out to eat like anybody else, right? There's things you do. And when you have something in your heart and mind, you sacrifice for it. And sacrifice always makes sense in the context of a bigger perspective. So what is that that we're, as a Church, all willing to sacrifice for. Not only through the regular generosity, to our regular tithes that keep the ministry going, but also the ongoing as we can, as God blesses us. And God would speak to our hearts with spurts of radical sacrificial generosity, both planned and the spontaneous variety. Why would we do that? Because in our mind, we're always hoping for that bigger picture. Which is what? Legacy. Legacy. Not just the ministry we're doing, the ministry we're not doing yet. We're not going, wow. That's great. We got a prison Church in Deer Lodge and we've seen hundreds of inmates give their lives to Jesus. Because we go, what about the prisons we don't have Church in? You don't have a heart for the state prison in Oregon? What about the one in Utah? We don't have a ministry mentality for Wyoming? Doesn't our heart burn for the locations we haven't opened yet? I was having dinner with some friends and I told them that one of the things that I would joke with is Fresh Life San Diego. Fresh Life San Diego. What about San Diego? We're trying to build leaders because what about Fresh Life San Diego? Which not only am I going to apply as the campus pastor for that one when it comes, but the mentality for us is never about what we're doing. It's what we haven't yet done yet. It's a legacy. It's a bigger picture. It's a perspective to expand. We're always in a perpetual state of addition. We need to create more bandwidth and margins and raise up more leaders and all of us give more so that we can do the ministry we're not yet doing. Well, this Church is so big. Really? It's a tiny Church. There's like 8 billion people in this world and we only get 70 years to reach them all. So what are we doing? There's not a moment to lose. We've got to have the spirit of sacrifice so there can be legacy. Do you know there's only two places in the world to see hippopotamuses is in the wild? Two. One is Africa. The other is South America. Because Pablo Escobar built a zoo. And he had elephants and he had rhinos and all kind of animal. That when the Colombian government seized his lands, they turned over most of the animals to the Colombian Zoo. But there were four hippopotamuses they didn't know what to do with and the zoo had no way to contain them and so they decided to just let them free. Flash forward almost 30 years, and there are a bomb waiting to explode in the hippopotamus crisis of South America. Because their populations are expanding. They've been found as far as 100 miles away from where they were originally let go. They have no natural predator. Where in Africa, as young kids, they could be eaten by a lion or a crocodile. In South America, there are no such things so they thrive. In Africa, there's natural rhythms and cycles of drought that keep the population in check. There's no such drought in South America. And so basically, the conditions under which they live has been described as a hippo heaven. And all of these hippos are living their best life now. Hashtag. Right? So you have now what is going to be quickly escalating and spiraling into a habitat shift. And they say it could wipe out the manatees, but don't worry. If we just turn back to plastic straws, I think we could kill the hippos. So here's what's crazy. The ultimate, long-term legacy of Pablo Escobar might be the introduction of hippos to South America. It may be too late. It may be a thing where they eventually, ultimately, are dominating in that entire continent. So here's my question to you. What will be said of us 30 years after we're dead? Because it's coming. There's going to be a day when we've been dead for 30 years. And all I'm saying is, let's live so that we did something and built something so that our great-grandchildren might be reached by those who are part of the work that were reached under our watch. Let's dig deeper. Let's build a little bit more. Let's give a little bit more with a spirit of sacrificial generosity so there might be the legacy. I don't want the story of my life to just be the story of hippos. I want to reach some people for Christ. Sacrifice. This also will change how we handle setbacks. Talk about a house? You know what I've learned about building a house? There are setbacks. It takes longer. It costs more. This is anecdotal at this point. Right? People always say to me, you know it takes longer? And I'm like, yeah. It probably costs more, too. Yeah, it costs more. And then, hey, setbacks. It's a real thing. You start out and you're like, oh, man. We're going to do the granite countertops. We're going to no expense spared. We're going to do this and this and this. By the end, you like, how much does that cost? I didn't say we wanted. No, we don't want that. Get rid of that. No, we can't do that. Right? Setbacks. Setbacks. It gets crazy. How far you can be from the sidewalk because that can be an issue too. What are the setbacks? Oh, we didn't think about the setbacks. And all of these things come into play. And there's difficulties. And guess what? I don't know if you know this, but when you build the Church, there are setbacks also. It doesn't always go according to plan. There's difficulties. There's hiccups. There's glitches. In what we're doing and changing lives, in what we're doing together in seeing the knowledge of the glory of God and the face of Jesus Christ, It'd be great if He trusted it to China vessels. It'd be great if He trusted it to ceramic vessels. But He had to have the gall to trust it to earthen vessels. And do you know what dirty people do? Dirty things. This just in. As a result, we get disappointed. And that's a good thing, believe it or not. At least that's what Dietrich Bonhoeffer said. He said, and he put it better than I did. He said this. "Church is a place where our dreams are shattered. And that is a good thing". Why? Because all of us come into Church with different expectations, whether they're realistic or not. Of how we're going to be treated. How we'll advance through the ranks. Perhaps what songs will be sung. The style of communication or the methods that are used to convey the message. And here's the interesting thing that I've discovered. They are whatever ones were being utilized the day you got saved. Whatever it was that touched you is what always should be done to reach someone new. In your mind. Why? Because we are ultimately - just take us with a grain of salt - selfish. But here's a little tidbit for us all. The bait is never for the fish in the boat. It's always for the ones still in the water. Newsflash, all denominations ever. Right? The style of accomplishing the job of getting the message out as fishers of men should never be with a mentality of what do those people, It should always be a mentality of keeping it fresh. Keeping it current with style and culture to reach and communicate an unchanging gospel to an ever-changing world and society. And so the setbacks come when style changes. And well, you know, whatever it is. And so all of sudden, our dreams are shattered. But Dietrich says that's a good thing. Why? Because only then, when our false expectations are punctured, are we poised and positioned to actually receive the grace of God in the goodness of each other. Because in the reality of the nittygritty of life together and the friction and the sparks at times, there we are poised to actually experience a powerful move of the Holy Spirit. Or as Paul put it in the same chapter that we've been reading. This idea of being hard-pressed, he says, on every side, experiencing every kind of pressure, but we'll discover we're not crushed. Look at this. At times we don't know what to do but quitting is not an option. We are persecuted by others, but God has not forsaken us. We may be knocked down, but guess what? We are not out. We continually share in the death of Jesus in our own bodies so that the Resurrection life of Jesus will be revealed through our humanity. We have this treasure in earthen vessels. The humanness of us all is at times what causes us to say, you know what? Forget it. I'll just go find a different Church. Or I'm just giving up on Church. But that's quitting. And what He says is quitting's not an option. And when we, instead of running away and going to find someone who will pour honey into our ears and tell us what we want to hear. When we actually double down and bear down on the discomfort and the difficult conversations and the reality of doing life together. And we keep serving and keep going and keep dreaming. When our dreams are shattered, can we actually experience the grace of God in the midst of our humanity. And watch God's spirit move in a powerful way, in a vibrant way, even at times through dysfunctional people. And that's the power and capacity that can be seen and experienced in the local Church. Like nowhere else can it be seen. And so that's how we face setbacks. We face setbacks knowing, listen to me. There's gold in the walls. And there's treasure in the attic. Buried treasure. We just need to get to it. We need to fight for it. We need to keep going, believing it's there. Believing something's possible. When we're hurt, we're going to work through it in a healthy way. We're going to pray. We're going to serve. We're going to repent. We're going to keep going, keep dreaming. There's gold in these walls. I'm telling you, you are an earthen vessel that contains the knowledge of the glory of God and the face of Jesus Christ. There's leadership gold in you. There's something that could unlock something for you at business. I believe that. There's a God dream in your heart that when you're poised and positioned as a son or daughter of the house, all of a sudden it can shift in what takes place outside of the house. There's gold in the walls. There's treasure in the attic. It wasn't five years ago that I read in the news of this couple that was frustrated one day to find their roof was leaking. Ugh. You didn't go with me. Ugh. Right? So they opened the door they'd never opened before in their house. It had always been locked since they lived there. Inside was a rare Caravaggio painting. An Italian masterpiece estimated to be worth over $136 million. They never would have gotten to the treasure had there not been the leaky ceiling. So the leaks and the breaks and the fights and the falling out. If we don't quit but instead if we double down, they're the opportunity to discover the masterpiece that God has in mind for making of us all. Do you receive it? Say "amen" if you do. Don't leave me alone up here all excited because man, my cup's running over. All right. We're going to be done in just a second, but lastly - none of the three things that I just told you - setbacks and sacrifice and how we speak, can happen if it's not for the way we see. If this doesn't change the way we see our Church. If it doesn't change the way we see the soil. And I'm going to close by telling you how I came to write the sermon of buried treasure. I was in my neighborhood and I noticed that there was a new house being constructed. And I watched a woman park a minivan and get out of her vehicle and delicately step over all sorts of debris and rubble and construction stuff. And this woman - I don't even know why she was doing this walk. It seemed like she was floating. She seemed like a bride on her wedding day. I'm not joking you. And I was just stopped dead in my tracks watching her with her phone start taking pictures of the dirt. And I looked and I'm like, is there a shape in it? Is it a cloud? And man, she just looked at this photograph and then she's just taking more. And all of a sudden I realized this is a homeowner. She had finished her day of work. And so now she's come by to see what they did that day. And I almost got, my eyes started almost leaking for a second when I was watching her watch the dirt. And God just spoke to my heart. Levi, she doesn't see what you see. You see dirt. She sees where her grandchildren are going to play. You see scaffolding and mulch. She sees sleepovers and Saturday brunch. You see nothing but excavation. She sees a place where her family's going to entertain. She sees a place where her and her husband are going to sit on the porch and drink tea and watch the kids play. She sees a home. All you see is mess. You see, everything changes when you're mad about the house.

1. Returning to God Spiritual awakening involves returning to God. When God seems distant from us, it is never God who has departed from the relationship. God urged His people through the prophet Malachi: “. . . Return to Me, and I will return to you” (Mal. 3:7). Throughout the historic accounts of revival, there are repeated references to the nearness and palpable presence of God in the midst of people. Just as in the days of Malachi when God’s people asked, “In what way shall we return?” (Mal. 3:7), so God’s people are often unaware of how far they have departed from God until He leads them to return. In times of revival, God’s people suddenly become aware of how far they have strayed from God, and return. 2. Holiness True revival always leads to holiness. You cannot continue to practice sin and simultaneously experience spiritual renewal. In Isaiah chapter 1, God rejected His peoples’ worship when they entered the place of worship with sin-filled lives (Isa.1:1-20). When the prophet Isaiah experienced a fresh encounter with God, his immediate concern was his lack of holiness (Isa. 6:5). More than our worship or our service for Him, God desires holiness (Lev. 11:44; 1 Peter 1:15-16). While some people suggest there can be a revival of worship or prayer without repentance, we do not see this as possible or biblical. It is only after God restores us to holiness that we are free to pray, worship, and serve Him in the manner He deserves. 3. Filled with the Holy Spirit When revival occurs, people are filled with the Holy Spirit. Preaching becomes powerful when anointed by the Spirit. The congregation can sing the same songs, yet now they are invigorated by the Spirit and the times of corporate worship are characterized by the joy and presence of God’s Spirit. 4. Willing Obedience Revival stimulates an attitude of willing obedience to whatever God requires. Much of carnal Christianity comes not from ignorance of what God expects but from hearts unwilling to do what God has clearly commanded. Revival, because it draws people back to the Lord, inevitably produces an eagerness to do His bidding. Love Relationship Most importantly, revival brings God’s people back into a love relationship with Him. When revival comes, people recognize their sin for what it is: a renunciation of God and a violation of the love relationship. That is why, in times of revival, people often declare that God’s salvation is too good for them considering the way they coldly rejected the love of Jesus Christ. 4 REVIVAL PRAYERS Thanksgiving We are grateful for the gift of prayer and Your willingness to honor our requests: “If you ask anything in My name, I will do it” (John 14:14). Jesus, thank You for the spiritual discipline of confession, for if we confess our sins, You are “faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Dear God, we appreciate the discipline of repentance and the opportunity to be restored: “Return to me, and I will return to you” (Mal. 3:7). Confession Our churches resist a fresh work of God. Forgive us, Lord, that we do not long for spiritual awakening. We resist the Spirit taking us to a place of repentance. Change our hearts. We often resist returning to God. Dear God, we repent of hardheartedness. We are often lacking holiness in our lives. Cleanse us, Lord. Our churches promote religion rather than a love relationship with God. We repent of our neglect of You, Jesus. Petition Lord, as we practice spiritual disciplines, may we be as one “who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles” at Your Word (Isa. 66:2). Jesus, through fasting and prayer, might we “get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice” (Eph. 4:31). Dear God, might we, starting with me, have the response of Isaiah: “‘Woe to me!’ I cried. ‘I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.” (Isa. 6:5). Jesus, we have strayed; therefore might we return to You: “Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded” (James 4:8). Holiness Dear God, might we desire holiness as much as You: “I am the LORD your God; consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy. Lord, may we “not get drunk on wine. . .instead, be filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:18). Dear God, “tell us where we should go and what we should do” (Jer. 42:3). Lord, might You bring us into a deeper love relationship with You, for we cry out for You: “Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know” (Jer. 33:3). * Henry and Richard Blackaby and Claude King, Fresh Encounter: God’s Pattern for Spiritual Awakening, Revised and Expanded (Nashville: B&H Publishing, 2009), used by permission.

KNOWING YOU ARE SAVED Read: John 1:12-13; Romans 8:38-39; I John 5:11-15; We can know we are saved because of the promises in the Bible about our salvation. (Hebrews 10:23) What we think about determines how we feel and how we behave. Therefore, the first thing we need when being assured of our salvation is to think upon the promises of God in the Bible. The Bible gives us many assurances that the one who believes in Jesus is promised eternal life. Read again the promises in John and I John listed above. How do they give you assurance that you are saved? How does Hebrews 10:23 assure you that the promise of salvation is true? We can know we are saved because of the witness of God’s Holy Spirit in our hearts.(Acts 5:32; Romans 8:15-16) Everyone who has truly received Jesus as Savior and Lord has the Holy Spirit dwelling in him. He is God’s down payment of our eternal salvation. We can know we are saved because the Spirit testifies to this in our hearts. How does the Holy Spirit assure you that you belong to Him? We can know we are saved because our desires are changing. (Romans 12:10; Philippians 2:3-4) Instead of living selfishly for ourselves, the Christian’s desires begin changing so that Jesus and others start becoming more important. When we sense our desires changing like this we can take that as one sign among others that God is changing our hearts. And if God is changing our hearts, then we can know that He has saved us from our sin. How has God changed your desires since you’ve begun to know Him? How would you like God to change you? What are you willing to do to experience that change? FEELING THAT YOU ARE SAVED Read: Philippians 4:8-9; Ephesians 4:23; II Corinthians 10:5 The knowledge of our salvation changes our feelings. (Philippians 4:8-9) Have you ever tried to pull yourself out of a bout of depression? The depressed person thinks continually about things that make him or her feel bad. But often dwelling upon good things can turn that around. So too, when we dwell upon the promises of God for salvation we can change our feelings from insecurity to security. Put this into practice today. Look up verses in the Bible about God’s love and dwell upon them. How does this practice make you feel? The work of the Holy Spirit in our lives changes our feelings. (Galatians 5:22) God’s Spirit is at work in you! The natural outgrowth of His work in you is a changed disposition. He naturally wants us to experience his joy. Therefore, submitting to the Holy Spirit’s work in you will change your doubts into security about His love for you. What have you been thinking about? What does God’s Spirit want you to think about? How does God encourage you in this way? The changing of our desires brings emotional assurance of our salvation. (Psalm 40:8) What is your innermost heart desire? Is Jesus and the Word of God at the center of your life? When we change our desires for godly things we gain security that God is with us and will fulfill our desires for Him. Think about the things you desire the most. Where are God and the Bible in that list? How can you rearrange your priorities so that your relationship with Jesus is the center of your life? ACTING LIKE YOU ARE SAVED Read: Matthew 22:37-38 Knowing and feeling we are saved changes our behavior. (Romans 8:38-39) Once we rest in the knowledge that God loves us and holds us in his hands our whole attitude about life will change. A full change in our lives in not possible unless what we know and feel about something works itself out in our outward expressions in the world around us. How has knowing and feeling you are saved changed your behavior? Do you want to obey God’s commands? Do you want to share what you have experienced with others? The Holy Spirit changes our behavior. (John 16:7-14; II Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 5:22) When the Living God comes to inhabit us there is no way we can come away from the experience and not be changed. The Holy Spirit changes our convictions and that works out to a change in our behaviors. When we are filled with His Spirit we will want to live a life that gives credit and glory to God. Since becoming a Christian how has your life changed? As you look ahead in your life how do you think He will work further change in you? Our changing desires changes our behavior When we decided to place Jesus as the center of all of our affections we will not be able to resist the changes that will happen in our lives. Making Jesus the center of our lives changes us in remarkable and exciting ways! Make a list of the things that are the most important to you. Where are Jesus and the Bible on that list? How can you reorder your life so that Jesus is at the center of your existence?