SPEAKER_00: Today I want to talk to you about what to do when things aren't happening fast enough.
SPEAKER_00: I know it seems like the pace of life is pretty doggone fast, but for some of us, we can't get it fast enough because we're we're go-getters, we're doers, we want to see this thing happen, we want to see the touchdown happen.
SPEAKER_00: Well, if you are anything like that at all, today's message is for you.
SPEAKER_00: We're here to see Jesus, and he's here to see you.
SPEAKER_00: And I really believe if you open up your heart, you might sense that he is laying something on it that is straight from his heart to yours today.
SPEAKER_00: Mordecai, thus far in the story, has been a man of action.
SPEAKER_00: He's been a guy that initiates, he's been the guy that starts stuff.
SPEAKER_00: We're in the book of Esther, we've been in this series uh called for such a time as this.
SPEAKER_00: And Mordecai has been a primary actor.
SPEAKER_00: If it were a movie, he'd be one of the leads that's doing things.
SPEAKER_00: He's adopting Esther, he's raising her, he's uh checking in on her when she's taken into the palace.
SPEAKER_00: He goes and he gets the whole town to fast.
SPEAKER_00: He's someone who's taking action.
SPEAKER_00: You many of you know, you remember, there's now been a decree against the Jewish people that they're all gonna be put to death because of wicked Haman.
SPEAKER_00: And Mordecai and Esther, and in the previous exchange that we looked at, chapter four of Esther, Mordecai says, Esther, look, it's all on you.
SPEAKER_00: You gotta go do this.
SPEAKER_00: You've got to approach the king.
SPEAKER_00: I know you might die, but it's all on you if you don't do it.
SPEAKER_00: God will he'll rescue us somehow, but baby, you don't want to miss what he would have done for you, and it might work against you if you don't do it.
SPEAKER_00: So he gives her the ball, and from there, he a little bit says goodbye from being the main actor in the story.
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna just review verse 15 of chapter 4.
SPEAKER_00: Then Esther sent the message to Mordecai: Go and gather together all the Jews of Susa and fast for me.
SPEAKER_00: Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day.
SPEAKER_00: My maids and I will do the same.
SPEAKER_00: And then, though it is against the law, I will go see the king.
SPEAKER_00: If I must die, I must die.
SPEAKER_00: So Mordecai went away and did everything as Esther had ordered him, and then it's off his plate.
SPEAKER_00: And then there's really nothing he can do.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Like he does this, he he initiates this fast, but now it's on Esther.
SPEAKER_00: Esther has to go do the thing.
SPEAKER_00: And I imagine if I'm Mordecai, there's probably a little bit of anxiety of like, let's go.
SPEAKER_00: Come on.
SPEAKER_00: Get to the conclusion.
SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm I'm anxious, I'm restless, I'm afraid of what's gonna happen.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody know what that feels like?
SPEAKER_00: Anxious, restless?
SPEAKER_00: Can we go now?
SPEAKER_00: Let's go.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us really have a hard time when change is slow.
SPEAKER_00: For some, it's like, dude, I'm still at the same doggone job.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I've been trying with my spouse and they're still acting the same way.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know about to do what to do about that.
SPEAKER_00: I tell these kids again and again and again, nothing's very different.
SPEAKER_00: Change comes about slow.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us, and I feel, I feel for those of us in the room or watching online who this is true of you, you kind of feel, if you're if you're honest, you feel responsible for just about everything.
SPEAKER_00: Like you feel like, if I don't do it, it's not gonna happen.
SPEAKER_00: You've got all your own problems and you poke at other people's problems.
SPEAKER_00: Like, what do you have over there?
SPEAKER_00: Can I have some of your problems?
SPEAKER_00: Like, I just I need to be able to weigh in on yours too.
SPEAKER_00: That's how it is for some of us.
SPEAKER_00: And again, it creates restlessness, it creates fear, it creates anxiety.
SPEAKER_00: If I don't make it happen, it might not happen.
SPEAKER_00: And it's it's like everyday stuff.
SPEAKER_00: So life starts to pile up.
SPEAKER_00: It might be that you've got a do-it-yourself project that you've been putting off, but it's just this low-level tension in the back of your mind.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I got to get to that and I gotta get to that, and I'm gonna have to shut something down.
SPEAKER_00: Gosh, I don't even know how to do that.
SPEAKER_00: I need to go on YouTube and learn how to do that.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever it is, there's stuff that drags on us.
SPEAKER_00: My wife calls it when everything comes to the front.
SPEAKER_00: There's so many things going on that you're trying to juggle all these things and suddenly they're all right here in your face.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like having all your windows open on your desktop.
SPEAKER_00: Like there's ah, like I don't know what to do.
SPEAKER_00: But it's also all those open apps are sucking power because there's a little bit of psychic RAM that you're using to hold all those windows open.
SPEAKER_00: And oh, can I just get a break?
SPEAKER_00: Can we get past this?
SPEAKER_00: Can we get through this?
SPEAKER_00: Can we get on with this?
SPEAKER_00: Well, Mordecai, if he could have done it, would have been cool.
SPEAKER_00: If he could have time traveled back 500 years to the time of King David, he might have learned some good wisdom from David.
SPEAKER_00: Now we're today we're gonna look at something that David said, but it's not young David, it's not like cool David, it's old man David.
SPEAKER_00: It's not it's not the giant slayer David, it's the guy who's looking back on life is like, you know, I learned some things.
SPEAKER_00: It's Psalm 37, and it's maybe one of the most awesome Psalms in the entire Bible.
SPEAKER_00: They're all awesome.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a competition, but it's pretty good.
SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes, when people call me up or pull me aside with a problem, almost all the time, their answer is in Psalm 37.
SPEAKER_00: Like really, I could just say, hey man, why don't you just go home, take two Psalm 37s, call me tomorrow, see how you're feeling.
SPEAKER_00: Because that's the power of this awesome Psalm.
SPEAKER_00: So I just want to challenge everybody, why don't you uh do yourself a favor and check out that psalm a few times this coming week?
SPEAKER_00: But we're just gonna look at two little verses that David penned, and he's at the end of his life, and he's saying, I've just kind of looked at how it goes.
SPEAKER_00: I know what it's like when your enemies are like on top of you.
SPEAKER_00: I know what it's like when you feel like evil's kind of winning.
SPEAKER_00: That's what's happening with Mordecai and Haman.
SPEAKER_00: I know what it's like to feel like when are we gonna get through this?
SPEAKER_00: And so he pens Psalm 37, and this is what he's gonna say to the hearers.
SPEAKER_00: Then it's what we hear from God now.
SPEAKER_00: Trust in the Lord and do good.
SPEAKER_00: Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.
SPEAKER_00: So good.
SPEAKER_00: What do we do when things aren't happening fast enough?
SPEAKER_00: Number one.
SPEAKER_00: So the first thing that David says, he says, Man, when when when your enemies are breaking out at you, the first thing he says we should do is trust the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That means I'm gonna depend on God's character and God's timing, and I'm gonna resist the impulse to try to control everything.
SPEAKER_00: And for many of us, we we like get that, but we need to maybe practice it and get a little better at it.
SPEAKER_00: Trusting is really confusing a little bit sometimes because it it almost feels like you're not doing anything.
SPEAKER_00: For doers, we're like, that's not doing anything.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, yeah, trust God and I'll get onto the stuff and fix the problem.
SPEAKER_00: But trusting actually is the thing to do.
SPEAKER_00: That's the first thing to do.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's also the most potent thing to do, it's the most powerful thing to do.
SPEAKER_00: Trusting God moves God.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is a message in the Old and New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: Like God will start going when you start trusting.
SPEAKER_00: But when you got your own solutions, he's like, good luck, man.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, tap me in when you're ready to start trusting.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't often answer the how questions for us.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes he doesn't always answer the why questions, he doesn't always answer the when questions, but he does call us, hey, trust me, trust the Lord and do good.
SPEAKER_00: Start, somebody say start.
SPEAKER_00: Start with trusting him.
SPEAKER_00: Start, don't go any further.
SPEAKER_00: Start right here.
SPEAKER_00: Trust God.
SPEAKER_00: What is the thing that you need to start trusting him with?
SPEAKER_00: I'll give you a little hack for those of you who are kind of new to church, or maybe you're you're coming back and you're exploring, you're like, maybe I'll just give this Jesus thing a try.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'll explore this.
SPEAKER_00: Can I just give you a hack on the front end?
SPEAKER_00: Can I give you a shortcut?
SPEAKER_00: I want to encourage you to start with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Start with trusting Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You could walk into a place like this, or you could tune in online, and you can think, I think these guys are kind of religious, and I gotta learn what they do and do the things, and then maybe I'll feel a little bit closer to God or something like that.
SPEAKER_00: You'd think that's a good plan, but what that will do is it'll give you confidence in things you do as kind of a lever to get God to do stuff.
SPEAKER_00: It's the opposite of that.
SPEAKER_00: See, Jesus comes to do everything for us.
SPEAKER_00: The problem really is humans can't do anything for themselves to fix their moral problem.
SPEAKER_00: They are sinners.
SPEAKER_00: And the only way to, they can't make up for the sin, they just need someone to come along and pay for it that has never sinned at all.
SPEAKER_00: So start with Jesus instead of like, I think I'm gonna start doing these things for Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, do that, but you're gonna do it imperfectly.
SPEAKER_00: Start with just focus on here's what Jesus did for me.
SPEAKER_00: And it was a big deal.
SPEAKER_00: Like it was, it was necessary.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, like because I was lost, and there's no getting found unless Jesus dies on the cross for me who loved me.
SPEAKER_00: So start, somebody say start, start with Jesus and start with trust.
SPEAKER_00: See, so for some of us, when you can't act, and there's nothing you can do, start with trust.
SPEAKER_00: That is a thing.
SPEAKER_00: That's an action.
SPEAKER_00: Start with trust.
SPEAKER_00: Many of you know this.
SPEAKER_00: If we're to look at like commercial airlines, the pilot is up there and they're up way above the clouds and they can see lots of stuff, but they're not using their eyes to see where they're going.
SPEAKER_00: No, they don't trust their eyes.
SPEAKER_00: We got a picture of those uh instruments that the pilot's using.
SPEAKER_00: They don't trust their eyes, they trust their instruments.
SPEAKER_00: In the same way, God says, Hey, y'all, don't trust your eyes all the time.
SPEAKER_00: You will get lost if you just follow what you think.
SPEAKER_00: Clouds are tricky like that.
SPEAKER_00: You'll just get lost up there.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, Jesus says, I'm all the instruments.
SPEAKER_00: Just let go and let me fly this thing.
SPEAKER_00: I know where to go, I know what to do, I know the right time.
SPEAKER_00: And this sounds like this, this sounds so easy that it sounds like it's not really true.
SPEAKER_00: It sounds like a Christian thing to say.
SPEAKER_00: When we're trying to trust God more or better or like start, we have to tell ourselves statements of truth about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Statements of truth about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And and many will be like, yeah, I think that's true, Carter.
SPEAKER_00: And then, but but we'll never do it.
SPEAKER_00: So we have to actually, like, in the moment, know, okay, whoo! I'm I want to get through this.
SPEAKER_00: This is hard.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna start trusting Jesus and talking about it.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's where we say, this is where you just repeat.
SPEAKER_00: You can repeat it out loud, you can say it into the mirror, you can just record it and have it play over and over to yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus cares about me, and he cares about this.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus cares about me.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus knows what's coming next and what to do next.
SPEAKER_00: Come on, somebody, let that sink in.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever, whatever the thing is you that's hard right now, Jesus knows what to do next, and he knows what's coming next.
SPEAKER_00: He knows what his purposes are for you.
SPEAKER_00: He knows how to accomplish his purposes in your life.
SPEAKER_00: He's never going to abandon you.
SPEAKER_00: All these are true statements that we're saying out of our mouths to ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how Jesus is gonna do it, but I know Jesus can be trusted.
SPEAKER_00: I can believe what he told me in the light, even though it is now dark.
SPEAKER_00: He's still gonna be good.
SPEAKER_00: I can't see, but he still sees just fine.
SPEAKER_00: What we're saying is, God, you are the God over this.
SPEAKER_00: What is this thing?
SPEAKER_00: What is this hard thing?
SPEAKER_00: We we call it out, we say, this thing, this right here, God, you're God over that.
SPEAKER_00: You know what to do with that.
SPEAKER_00: You're super on the case, you've got detailed files.
SPEAKER_00: See, the outcome, this is the trick.
SPEAKER_00: The outcome is out of your control, but there is one thing you can control.
SPEAKER_00: You can control whether or not you're gonna decide to trust God.
SPEAKER_00: That's what you get.
SPEAKER_00: It's not that you can't do anything, you can do something.
SPEAKER_00: Start with trusting God.
SPEAKER_00: That's where we start.
SPEAKER_00: That means you you trust him with the timing of maybe relationships.
SPEAKER_00: You trust him with the timing of dating.
SPEAKER_00: You trust him that uh maybe you're slowing down as you know, you get a little bit older and you're slowing down your productivity, is not what it once was.
SPEAKER_00: And you trust God that he can use the stage that you're at to accomplish his purposes through you, you'll be just fine.
SPEAKER_00: What do we do when things aren't happening fast enough?
SPEAKER_00: Well, number one, we trust the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Here's number 1.5.
SPEAKER_00: It's say amen in the sermon that Carter is preaching.
SPEAKER_00: Say amen a lot.
SPEAKER_00: That's number 1.5.
SPEAKER_00: Trust the Lord, say amen a lot.
SPEAKER_00: And number two, do good.
SPEAKER_00: Trust in the Lord and do good.
SPEAKER_00: That means keep doing virtuous things even when the thing you want to happen is not happening.
SPEAKER_00: Keep doing virtuous things.
SPEAKER_00: See, especially those Mordecaies among us, those who are go get them kind of people, like we got a lot of dreams, we got a lot of deadlines, we got a lot of details, we want to get there.
SPEAKER_00: And the danger of this is it can trick us.
SPEAKER_00: It can trick us into thinking, um, I've got to get somewhere where I can do something really big and good instead of notice where I am and do little goods right here.
SPEAKER_00: See, there's little goods right here.
SPEAKER_00: I it's it's cool if you help your friend, you know, move.
SPEAKER_00: It's cool if you go visit somebody in the hospital.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, man, it's great if you go work at the food pantry.
SPEAKER_00: All those are great.
SPEAKER_00: But the problem is we can look at those and be like, yep, that's the good thing.
SPEAKER_00: And we can start to even take a little bit of like self-applause and be missing, but here's all the little folks and things and opportunities that I'm just passing by because I'm trying to do my thing.
SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to rock my day, and I'm missing in my attempt to look for what appears significant, I'm missing what is actually significant in my day-in and day out life.
SPEAKER_00: Because guys, many of us know this.
SPEAKER_00: Dude, life is not just all significant seeming things, it's a lot of do-goods in the place where we are.
SPEAKER_00: Fierce Jesus followers who know that Jesus loves them fiercely, they know, hey, I can't just look for something that appears significant.
SPEAKER_00: I've got to actually do significant stuff.
SPEAKER_00: That means when there's a new person in the class, you say hi to them.
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember what it's like to be new?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: It helps when somebody's friendly.
SPEAKER_00: That means when, you know, someone that you work with is walking by, you have the opportunity right then to be like, hey man, you were working on that project.
SPEAKER_00: I just gotta tell you, that went awesome.
SPEAKER_00: Way to go.
SPEAKER_00: That was fantastic.
SPEAKER_00: It's a little deposit right there.
SPEAKER_00: This is probably gonna make her day if I tell her something like this.
SPEAKER_00: It's the little applause.
SPEAKER_00: You catch one of your children doing something right, and you just stop the whole game.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, well done.
SPEAKER_00: I love that character.
SPEAKER_00: That's fantastic.
SPEAKER_00: It's the little, the little, the little doing of good, day in and day out.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says that our faith can move mountains.
SPEAKER_00: And that's true, but sometimes it's not time to move a mountain.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's not time.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, even though you can't move the mountain, you can start to plant little seeds on the mountain.
SPEAKER_00: You're on the mountain, the mountain is not moving.
SPEAKER_00: God has placed you here and plant seeds here.
SPEAKER_00: You want to do something big out there?
SPEAKER_00: No, do something little here.
SPEAKER_00: Plant little seeds and see what I grow over time.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody say over time.
SPEAKER_00: Speaking of planting little seeds, we trust the Lord, we say amen, we do good, and we dwell in the land.
SPEAKER_00: We dwell in the land.
SPEAKER_00: That means we stay faithful where we are, even though it's not where we want to be necessarily.
SPEAKER_00: Have I got anybody watching online or anybody here in the auditorium who there's some place you want to be that you are not yet?
SPEAKER_00: God says, dwell in the land.
SPEAKER_00: Dwell in the place where you are.
SPEAKER_00: We can be so focused.
SPEAKER_00: I want to get over there that we miss the lessons of here and we miss the miracles of here.
SPEAKER_00: I really believe there are multiple things that God will not move us on from until we learn the lessons here.
SPEAKER_00: I want to get there, I need to learn the lessons here.
SPEAKER_00: That might be uh just finishing the work here.
SPEAKER_00: It might be learning how to love the people here, not the ones that'll be there.
SPEAKER_00: It might be learning how to pray for this set of circumstances instead of just get to eject and be in a different set of circumstances.
SPEAKER_00: There's a fantastic movie.
SPEAKER_00: Uh when I say fantastic, that's probably not totally accurate.
SPEAKER_00: There's there's a good movie called Click with Adam Sandler.
SPEAKER_00: It's an Adam Sandler flick.
SPEAKER_00: The Carter family appreciates most Adam Sandler flicks.
SPEAKER_00: But if you haven't seen this one, he's an architect that's really ambitious and he's trying to get ahead.
SPEAKER_00: He's got little kids, and he gets this magical remote that if he wants to, he can just skip the boring parts of life.
SPEAKER_00: He will still have done all the boring work, but he gets to skip to the exciting parts.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's kind of like the tension of the movie.
SPEAKER_00: That's what he's doing.
SPEAKER_00: He's skipping forward and he begins to totally shipwreck his relationship with his wife.
SPEAKER_00: He totally shipwrecks his relationship with his kids because he wants to do the things that are there and he's missing what is here.
SPEAKER_00: He's not ever really dwelling in the land.
SPEAKER_00: He's just trying to get to a different land.
SPEAKER_00: It's a really good picture of what we can sometimes do.
SPEAKER_00: We can sometimes say, oh, I don't want to deal with all the this is boring stuff.
SPEAKER_00: This is a boring part of the movie.
SPEAKER_00: Can we just move on?
SPEAKER_00: Thank God you actually can't.
SPEAKER_00: God says, no, dwell in the land there because there's lessons right here.
SPEAKER_00: At some point, at some point, you're gonna be out of this season.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be, you're gonna reach the goal, whatever it is.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna have moved on.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be there.
SPEAKER_00: And is it possible you're gonna miss some of the things from here that you might not have taken the time to really think through?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, this is actually pretty dog awesome.
SPEAKER_00: So, yes, you're going to graduate.
SPEAKER_00: That'll be cool, but will you miss some of the people that are only in your life really in this season of life?
SPEAKER_00: I get it.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna have money later that will be nice.
SPEAKER_00: I get that.
SPEAKER_00: Kenzie and I were like super poor.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, when we first started our marriage, I'm not saying that to brag.
SPEAKER_00: Like we were hustling, man.
SPEAKER_00: We were trying to do everything we we could do, but there was there's there wasn't a lot of great work.
SPEAKER_00: There was only very minuscule, low-paying work.
SPEAKER_00: But that's what we did.
SPEAKER_00: But we would imagine, oh, can you imagine like what it's like when we have any kind of money at all?
SPEAKER_00: It'll be so great.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, things are going a lot better now.
SPEAKER_00: But it's true that if I look back to that time, there was a sense of God's movement in our lives, just miraculously providing because we needed him to.
SPEAKER_00: Like, yep, okay, we got we got groceries for the week.
SPEAKER_00: That was pretty doggone awesome.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know how that was gonna happen.
SPEAKER_00: If you want new clothes, oh dude, you don't you don't get new clothes.
SPEAKER_00: You can pray for new clothes, and someone will come along and hand you a bag of clothes.
SPEAKER_00: Like, that's how that works in that season.
SPEAKER_00: And it's you can get to a different season and miss that was pretty doggone cool, though.
SPEAKER_00: I failed to maybe appreciate what that was.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes parents, we do this with kids.
SPEAKER_00: We want to see them move on and want to see them get better and get strong and graduate and do miraculous things, but we don't remember.
SPEAKER_00: But you know, when they're really young and full of wonder and innocence and their giggles fill the room, when I get there, I can't have what was here.
SPEAKER_00: That's no longer around.
SPEAKER_00: And so one of the reasons God keeps us in the land is to teach us to dwell here and work here, but also to have gratitude for what is here.
SPEAKER_00: This is a good place, this is a great place to live.
SPEAKER_00: God has got you here.
SPEAKER_00: Don't miss here on the way to there.
SPEAKER_00: We're getting there, we're almost there.
SPEAKER_00: Number four.
SPEAKER_00: Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: Cultivate faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: Faithfulness is focusing on consistent execution today.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna I'm gonna get after it.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna do what God is asking me to do today.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna do it with zeal, I'm gonna do it with fervor, I'm gonna get after it, and I'm going to value I'm going to value the doing of it, not just the results of it.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to uh value the doing of it.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to do faithful wisdom, I'm going to do execution, I'm going to do self-discipline.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not just going to covet somebody else who already did all those things and the great land that they've got.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to say doing the things itself is worship.
SPEAKER_00: Doing the things itself is worship unto God.
SPEAKER_00: This is where if you got a lot of drive and you got a lot of ambition, it can really help.
SPEAKER_00: Faux show, dude.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Have as much drive and ambition as you possibly can.
SPEAKER_00: But no, there's a subtle sabotage in it because it can steal all your peace right now.
SPEAKER_00: You're always pushing out.
SPEAKER_00: It'll be awesome then.
SPEAKER_00: And we forget to worship God with our faithfulness now.
SPEAKER_00: Are we hearing that?
SPEAKER_00: I remember when um before we started the church, I would look at other folks who had planted churches, and I was like, oh man, that's so cool.
SPEAKER_00: Like, look at that.
SPEAKER_00: I feel like we could do that.
SPEAKER_00: I I could do that.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that, wouldn't that be so great?
SPEAKER_00: And I knew that it, like, I just knew because I was close enough to it, like, yeah, that's hard.
SPEAKER_00: That looks hard.
SPEAKER_00: Once I got into it though, it's like, Dang, this is hard.
SPEAKER_00: Holy cow.
SPEAKER_00: And back then I was tempted maybe to say, I want to have the kind of thing that they have, but I had no concept of the wise decisions day in and day out that they had to make, the faithfulness that they had to demonstrate, the push that they had to demonstrate, the way they had to get their heart ripped out again and again and again and again and get up and fail and make mistakes and learn from them and get up and go again and trust God again.
SPEAKER_00: I just didn't even, I didn't get the long term of that.
SPEAKER_00: I was like, yeah, flick a couple of those in there and then you get these results.
SPEAKER_00: No, baby, that's not how it works.
SPEAKER_00: It's again and again faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes roots have to grow before more fruit will show.
SPEAKER_00: That sounds like a lame preacher rhyme, but it's still true.
SPEAKER_00: Roots, roots have to grow before more fruit can show.
SPEAKER_00: Where are you now?
SPEAKER_00: Dwell in the land now.
SPEAKER_00: Let your roots go down now.
SPEAKER_00: Cultivate faithfulness now.
SPEAKER_00: Celebrate now the faithfulness itself rather than just the results.
SPEAKER_00: Faithfulness is what God has called you to do today.
SPEAKER_00: And he defines that as success, not just the results.
SPEAKER_00: See, we think about success is when I get the results.
SPEAKER_00: And God's, from his vantage point, success is when you're faithfully doing it.
SPEAKER_00: Andy Stanley is a famous preacher now.
SPEAKER_00: His dad, who recently passed away, was Charles Stanley.
SPEAKER_00: He was a famous preacher, like in the generation before.
SPEAKER_00: And Andy writes this about his dad's like fame that he came into.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what he says.
SPEAKER_00: When did my dad become successful?
SPEAKER_00: I know when he became famous, but when was he successful?
SPEAKER_00: The day he embraced the vision God gave him for his life.
SPEAKER_00: He was successful long before he was known.
SPEAKER_00: His success slash faithfulness in those early years is what enabled him to enjoy the rewards of his success during the latter years.
SPEAKER_00: But he is no more successful now in God's eyes than he was then.
SPEAKER_00: Is it possible that sometimes we don't even feel good about ourselves until I'm like, did it, got it, did the goal thing?
SPEAKER_00: And God says, you can celebrate just faithfulness every day.
SPEAKER_00: When you just get up and rock it out again, it's still faithful.
SPEAKER_00: And God sees it.
SPEAKER_00: God sees it when you change that diaper again.
SPEAKER_00: You're being faithful.
SPEAKER_00: And he sees it and receives it as worship.
SPEAKER_00: God sees it when you send that thank you card that you're like, I don't even know if this is going to make any difference.
SPEAKER_00: No, he sees it and you're being faithful.
SPEAKER_00: He sees it when you show up faithfully again and again.
SPEAKER_00: He sees it when you put in your reps.
SPEAKER_00: He sees it when you give and you're like, I don't even know why I'm giving.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what's I feel like I can't outgive God, but no, you can't.
SPEAKER_00: You give again and again and again because you're faithfully rocking out what God has asked you to do.
SPEAKER_00: You're in a place.
SPEAKER_00: The truth is, yo, you just don't like it.
SPEAKER_00: I know what that's like.
SPEAKER_00: You just don't like it.
SPEAKER_00: Where you are, I don't like this.
SPEAKER_00: It is worship.
SPEAKER_00: While you don't like it, as you show up again and again in Jesus' name, just because he's asked you to dwell in this land and cultivate faithfulness when you faithfully receive feedback, when you faithfully learn how to serve Jesus better and better, you're being faithful.
SPEAKER_00: And he sees it.
SPEAKER_00: I want to read you part of a poem.
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's gonna be on the screen.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe the online people can see it.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know that the folks in here can see it, but at least you can kind of follow along.
SPEAKER_00: If you just listen, I'll read it to you.
SPEAKER_00: I'll stay where you put me.
SPEAKER_00: I will, dear Lord, though I wanted so badly to go.
SPEAKER_00: I was eager to march with the rank and file.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I wanted to lead them, you know.
SPEAKER_00: I planned to keep in step to the loud to the music loud, to cheer when the banner unfurled, to stand in the midst of the fight straight and proud, but I'll stay where you put me.
SPEAKER_00: I'll stay where you put me, I will, dear Lord, I'll bear the day's burden and heat, always trusting thee fully when even has come.
SPEAKER_00: I'll lay heavy sheaves at thy feet.
SPEAKER_00: And then when my earthwork is ended and done, in the light of eternity's glow, life's record all closed, I surely shall find it was better to stay than to go.
SPEAKER_00: I'll stay where you put me.
SPEAKER_00: I want to encourage you, if you're in that place, trust your God first and cultivate faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: You didn't see this coming, there's a bonus point.
SPEAKER_00: It's number five.
SPEAKER_00: Delight yourself in the Lord and give you the desires of your heart.
SPEAKER_00: Delight means I enjoy God fully and most and first.
SPEAKER_00: That means I spend time with him.
SPEAKER_00: I spend time thanking him, I spend time asking to feel the deepness of his presence.
SPEAKER_00: I spent time celebrating with wonder all that he is as I see him revealed in scripture.
SPEAKER_00: Delight yourself This is a verse, dude.
SPEAKER_00: It sounded too good to me to be true when I first read it.
SPEAKER_00: Delight yourself in the Lord, He'll give you the desires of your heart.
SPEAKER_00: What?
SPEAKER_00: That sounds that just sounds like an empty promise, like someone's just gonna give you a million dollars.
SPEAKER_00: If I delight in a million dollars, do I get that?
SPEAKER_00: Is that how that works?
SPEAKER_00: Here's how it actually works.
SPEAKER_00: He does get you some of the stuff that your heart wants, but he also makes your heart, he takes your little clay heart and he shapes it and he makes it want the right things.
SPEAKER_00: He causes it to happen.
SPEAKER_00: So I'll give you two examples real quick.
SPEAKER_00: When I was 18, 19, 20, I wanted to be famous.
SPEAKER_00: I wanted to go be an actor, and that was literally the plan.
SPEAKER_00: I was gonna graduate acting school, I was gonna go out to Hollywood.
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, we're gonna do this thing, we're gonna make this happen.
SPEAKER_00: But as I got nearer and nearer to graduation, even though that was the desire of my heart, something had happened on the way to Hollywood, and that was I fell in love with Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And I began to notice when I would communicate even slightly his words, something in my heart would light a fire.
SPEAKER_00: And I began to think, I don't want to do anything other than just talk about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He had taken my heart that had a desire, and he said, You know, you won't really be happy with that.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, I remember the day when he laid it right in my heart.
SPEAKER_00: It was, it wasn't an out loud sentence, but it was like a sentence in my soul to cover even if.
SPEAKER_00: If you get all that Hollywood stuff, without me, you'll never be happy.
SPEAKER_00: I was like, hey, doggone, that's right.
SPEAKER_00: And now I look at like famous actor people, and I'm telling you the truth, I'm not dissing anybody, but I think, I'll bet you my life is so much better than theirs.
SPEAKER_00: My life is so rich with the presence of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I've got the dopest wife, the dopest kids, the dopest church.
SPEAKER_00: Like my cup runeth over.
SPEAKER_00: So, in one sense, he shaped my heart and caused it to go a different way.
SPEAKER_00: But in a different way, he provided a desire of my heart.
SPEAKER_00: See, I married this girl named Mackenzie.
SPEAKER_00: She's gorgeous, she's wise, she's tough.
SPEAKER_00: When I was probably about, I don't know, 13 years old, I was dreaming about who my lady would be, who my wife would be.
SPEAKER_00: And I imagined a woman who's she's beautiful and she's tough and she's wise and she's nurturing, she's got a stout heart.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord brought that back to me after I was always already married to Kenzie.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see how I gave you the desires of your heart?
SPEAKER_00: This is the very kind of woman you secretly wanted, and that's the one I gave you.
SPEAKER_00: So God does it both ways.
SPEAKER_00: He changes our heart, and then he also gives us things in our heart that maybe we weren't even entirely aware of.
SPEAKER_00: And why does he do it?
SPEAKER_00: He does it because here, as I delight myself in the Lord, he shapes my heart because I need to be the right guy there.
SPEAKER_00: I can't just wait to get there and oh now let's become the right guy, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: He says, delight yourself in the Lord, and I'll begin to shape and shift your heart, and I'll change you into the right guy.
SPEAKER_00: I'll change you into the right girl.
SPEAKER_00: So by the time you get there, you're ready to receive it.
SPEAKER_00: You're ready to live in it, you're ready to do what you're supposed to do in it because your heart has been shifted and changed.
SPEAKER_00: Did you know that Jesus Christ, He's the real longing of every heart?
SPEAKER_00: He's really the thing that we will most delight in.
SPEAKER_00: You want justice?
SPEAKER_00: He is justice.
SPEAKER_00: You want purpose?
SPEAKER_00: He'll give you purpose.
SPEAKER_00: Do you need forgiveness?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, baby, he never runs out.
SPEAKER_00: I want to do a couple things.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna sing a song in a couple minutes, and I want us to pick out something maybe that you need to trust first with.
SPEAKER_00: Start with trust.
SPEAKER_00: You've been trying to come about it the back way.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not that your heart has been entirely wrong, but start with Jesus and start with trust.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna pray and then we're gonna go into this song.
SPEAKER_00: Let's start with trust.
SPEAKER_00: Let's close our eyes.
SPEAKER_00: That we want to be the person who is delighting in you and shaped by you now so we can be who we're supposed to be and where we're supposed to be later.
SPEAKER_00: We invite you into this room, Jesus, into every room everyone is in.
SPEAKER_00: Would you come in like a flood?
SPEAKER_00: Would you fill us with the light that we need for this very moment?
SPEAKER_00: Would you convict us of places?
SPEAKER_00: Truth is, we've been trying to control this thing.
SPEAKER_00: We're a little bit addicted to control.
SPEAKER_00: God, we we relinquish it, we let go of the lever, and we come around the other side.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna start with trust.
SPEAKER_00: Father, in Jesus' name, I pray for a spirit of contentedness for those who, man, they just want to be any place but where they are.
SPEAKER_00: I know it's hard.
SPEAKER_00: Father, in Jesus' name, would you just grant an acceptance and a reliance and a trust in your good, faithful hand and wisdom?
SPEAKER_00: God, strengthen them to get them through.
SPEAKER_00: Help them to get the lessons that they need to get here.
SPEAKER_00: And God, some they need forgiveness today.
SPEAKER_00: And so we come to the throne of mercy.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, we have done things wrong that hurt you and hurt other people.
SPEAKER_00: And we just want to say we're sorry.
SPEAKER_00: And God of heaven, we know that because Jesus Christ died on the cross, forgiveness is free to anybody who asks for it.
SPEAKER_00: And your word promises that you'll make them a new creature.
SPEAKER_00: Fill them with your Holy Spirit so they're doing life with you in a way they never thought possible.
SPEAKER_00: Father, for those people today, we ask, would you forgive us and fill us not only with your Holy Spirit, but with the confidence that Jesus Christ justifies the wicked.
SPEAKER_00: He justifies anybody that comes to him.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Father.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, thanks for tuning in today.
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SPEAKER_00: We'll see you next time.