How to Keep Your Faith if It’s Slipping | Stay Close

🌊 Drifting away from God usually doesn't happen all at once.
It can happen slowly.

A little less prayer.
A little less time in God's Word.
A little more distraction.
A little more self-reliance.

Until one day, you realize you're much farther from Jesus than you intended to be.

In this message, Mark Carter walks through Hebrews 1:1–2:4 and explores the danger of spiritual drifting—and why we need to pay close attention to Jesus.

In a world where anxiety can be the first thing we see when we wake up, social media constantly puts our fears in front of us. It's easy to let the noise of the world become louder than the truth of God's Word.
But Jesus is greater.

❤️ We can bring our anxiety to Him.
🙏 We can bring our sin to Him.
📖 We can answer lies with God's truth.
🌊 We can turn back before drifting takes us farther away.

You don't have to clean yourself up before coming to God.
Jesus already knows.
And He is still there.

If you've been feeling spiritually distant, distracted, anxious, or stuck in sin, this message is an invitation to stop drifting and turn your attention back toward Jesus.

At Fierce Church, we're Helping You Walk with Jesus Step-By-Step because The Best U is in Community.

💬 Have you ever looked up and realized you'd drifted farther from God than you expected? Share your story below.

#DriftingFromGod #ChristianFaith #Hebrews #Jesus #ChristianAnxiety #SpiritualGrowth #FierceChurch

Transcript

Prayer For A New Series

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I'm excited because we're about to start a brand new series that I've been looking forward to preaching for a long time. So, what I'd like to do is ask the Lord's blessing on this series. You know, every book of the Bible is a special kind of medicine. It has a special flavor, it has a special antidote inside of it that comes to heal stuff that is wrong with us on the inside. So, as the people of God, would you join me? Can we ask God's special blessing on this medicine as we go through the book of Hebrews? Let's ask. God, your word is the most powerful thing in the universe, but it's nothing in our ears unless you anoint it. And that's what we're asking you to do. I'm praying that you give us focus. I'm praying that you would open up our hearts. I pray that you would help us to find all the great gooey goodness that is in your word that comes to heal. And we want to change because of it. We don't want to be hearers only. We want to be doers. Spirit of Jesus, we open ourselves to you, we open our church to you. We pray that this series would blow our minds and get us so much closer to you and be make us such better, more effective servants for you. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Let's do it, yo.

Demetrius And The Cost Of Faith

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Hey, um, if you would have been around in the first century, you might have been in a position like Demetrius, if you were around in between like 65 and 69 AD, and you would become a Christian, you might be in his shoes. So this is a young man, he's maybe in a slum apartment. Let's see that image, John, if you got that. He's maybe in a slum apartment. He's had a tough year, as a matter of fact. He became a Christian about a year and a half ago, and it was going really well at first, but then he began to experience some of the pushback of him being a Christian. See, his family didn't like it. His family thought it was a betrayal to the family. His grandfather wouldn't even talk to him anymore. And there was not only the family shame, there was the social shame that we don't really necessarily understand a lot about in our time, but shame culture was very much a part of his life. And it wasn't just that the family rejected him, it was that he he went from like a good job, he was a tailor's apprentice. Well, the the actual tailor wasn't having any of this Christian stuff. This was going to draw negativity toward his business. And so now the best that Demetrius can do is he works for a dip named Brutus who runs at fruit stand and he's got almost nothing. And what Brutus does is essentially picks on Demetrius all day and tells him what a joke he is and what a joke his religion is and why it's so dumb. And Demetrius misses the church because the truth is he hasn't been going around the people in this city very much. It's just been so hard. He's like, I'm too tired, I'm too emotionally exhausted, I'm too emotionally fatigued, and I'm all I'm getting is negativity about this. And so he's a little bit distant from the church, he's a little bit distant from God. And he has this thought from time to time it would be so much easier if I just went back to being only Jewish. I'd have instant help. I'd be instantly delivered from social shame. And then he hears that tonight one of the elders of the church he's been a part of has returned to the city with a letter. And the letter is actually a sermon that he wants to share with the church. And Demetrius says, Well, I got to lose. I'm gonna go tonight and see if this does anything. And as he gets there, and they pull out this we call it the book of Hebrews, but it's really, as we read it, it's a sermon from a pastor in a pastor's

God Speaks Fully Through Jesus

SPEAKER_00 3:44

heart. And it says, This long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. And he's like, Yeah, okay, yeah, right. Like like Abraham and Isaac and and Moses, and Moses was like one of the most important ones because Moses was where the law was given, and and there's nothing more important to Jews than the law. And and he he remembers, he imagines what it was like for Moses. And yeah, there's all these different times through the prophets and Elijah and all those folks. God spoke to them and gave us instruction. And God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days, he recognizes that phrase. See, Christians start using that phrase last days, to mean not the literal last day, but the epoch, the season of the world between when Jesus is resurrected and when he finally returns and puts everything about the earth back in order, restored and beautiful and ruled righteously again. That's the last days. And in these last days, God has spoken to us by his son. And when he says he's spoken to us, it's it's a special kind of spoken. It is the final word. It is, it's not that God is never going to speak again, but Jesus is the ultimate. Jesus is what the Father is trying to say. And these last days, God hasn't spared any expenses. I need you to understand exactly what this life, what God is like, even if I have to pour out my own blood. So here's what I want to say. And he remembers, yeah, it was the bits and pieces of the Old Testament law, but that was more like 2D. That was like really grainy film. It was even you could, it was a silent film, you couldn't even hear it. But with Jesus, dude, it's high death. It's 8K. All right. It's that new DMX super sound kind of stuff. Like, this is in living color, man. This is what God is trying to say. And it's God's answer to everything. All the problems of the world, anything you can say, whether you lost something, or whether you got hurt, or whether you have no hope, the answer from God is always wound up in somewhere. It's in Jesus. Jesus is the answer. Jesus is the solution. Jesus is what I'm doing for you, people. It's Jesus. And then he goes on to describe what this Jesus is. And listen to what he says about him, because he's he's not anything like the Old Testament prophets and the Moses and the people that came before. He says he uses phrases like this whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He's the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is more

Why Hebrews Talks About Angels

SPEAKER_00 6:18

excellent than theirs. And that's a weird thing to say. Superior to the angels. And he's going to talk about the angels for a second. And if you were to approach the book of Hebrews with no background knowledge, you would just think, man, these guys are really hung up on angels, huh? Like they're they think angels are some, like they're worried about the hierarchy of angels. What is this? But it's not really about angels, it's about that moment at Sinai when the angel handed the most important thing, the tablets that God had written on with his own finger. He handed those tablets to Moses and presented them with the law. And that's, man, that's such an important thing. It was an angel of God. It was so important. The message was so important it needed a special messenger, an angel to bring this ultimate change in the story of God. What was the story before? Well, there were slaves in Egypt. And that was what where God had them for 400 years. But then God changed what he was doing, he was moving forward the plan. And he sent an angel with a special message, special messenger to say, Here's the law. Now I'm doing something new. Now I'm going to take you out of Egypt and I'm going to bring you into a promised land, and you need to get with the law program. Now, if you would have said, um, I don't like the law, I want to go back to the Abraham times. I want to just do what I want to do. I want to just be a distant God. Not only would that have been dumb, it would have been rebellion. Because God is doing this now. No, you have to do this. I've called you out. You're going to be my, if you're going to be my people, you're going to obey my laws and be a light to all the nations. And now, in Demetrius' time, in the last days, another movement has happened. Another forward progress has happened. And now, yes, I did speak in bits and pieces before, and the law was a part of that, but now I've sent a special messenger that's more special than the angel. Because the message itself is more special than the message the angel brought. And that messenger is Jesus Christ, and the message is Jesus Christ. And so this pastor who's writing this begins to just talk all about how, you know, angels are okay, but Jesus is it, man. And he points to Old Testament passages. He says, These were always about Jesus. So let's check them out, verse 5. To which of the angels did God ever say, You're my son, today I've begotten you. That's from Psalm 2. Or again, I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me. That's from 2 Sam Samuel 7. And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says, Let all God's angels worship him. Of the angels, he says, Hey, he makes angels, his angels' winds and his ministers of a flame of fire. That's Psalm 85. But of the Son, he says, Your throne, O God, oh God, he calls them God. He doesn't call angels God. Your throne, oh God, is forever and ever. The scepter of your uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom. That's from Psalm 45. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness, therefore, God your God has anointed you with the oil of gladness above all your command uh companions. And from Isaiah, you Lord, talking about Jesus, you Lord, have laid the foundation of the earth in the beginnings, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you, Jesus, remain. They will all wear out like a garment, but like a robe, you roll them up like a garment. They will be changed. But you are the same, and your years will have no end. Which are the angels? He keeps going back and forth, which are the angels that he ever said, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. Are they not, are they not ministering spirits sent out to serve? That's what angels are. Yeah, they brought the law. They sent it to serve for the sake of those who will inherit salvation. What is he saying? He's saying, I just want to get everybody's attention here for a second. Jesus is the ultimate thing God wants to say, and it's a really big deal, and it's bigger than the giving of the law, and it's so much of a big deal that it was a special messenger that was way beyond what the original angels were, even though they were special. And he sent Jesus himself because the message is so important. That's what he's trying to get across to him.

Pay Closer Attention Or Drift

SPEAKER_00 10:12

Therefore, therefore, go on to chapter 2, verse 1. Therefore, we must pay much closer attention to what we've heard, lest we drift away. Lest we drift away. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, another way to translate that is unalterable, unalterable, and every transgression of disobedience received a just retribution or a penalty, meaning the stipulations that came through the law, if you disobeyed them, there were real results for that. That really happened. He said, and if that message was pretty doggone important, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? A greater, more important message brought by a greater, more important messenger. It was declared at first by the Lord Jesus when he was on the earth, and it was attested to us by those who heard. While God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit, distributed according to his will. What is he saying? He's saying, My friends, I'm afraid. This pastor that's writing the sermon of Hebrews, I'm afraid there's a chance that you're gonna drift. And drifting is dangerous because we don't necessarily notice when we're drifting, and we can drift. See, here's what I know about most of us. Your phone wakes you up every day, and one of the first things it does is it tunes you in to all kinds of agendas that are not necessarily related to truth at all. It's giving you dings about your work and about your favorite influencers and what you should think about some random opinion and what you should think about the person that thinks differently than you. And it's giving you all these walls and all these places to box you in and saying, This is all the things that are important for you, just so you know. And we start to drift and it starts to shape our world, and we it starts to tell us a story of like, well, here's what's important, and here's who the real heroes are. And this message comes along from heaven and says, There's a way more important message, it's way more important than that. And you gotta be careful that you don't give utmost importance to things that are not him. Don't drift away. Now it's coming through a pastor. You gotta hear a pastor's heart in this in this book. It's someone who cares about them. He's constantly encouraging in the book, even though he goes back and forth from exhortation to warning, to exhortation to warning. But it's a kind warning, it's a gentle warning. Because you guys need to be careful because you're being shaped by stuff that isn't the primary thing that should be shaping you, which is who Jesus is. So we need to pay much closer attention to what he's done and who he is, because it's possible, my friends, here in the 21st century, for us to under live for Jesus because we underget what a big and costly deal he is. He should be the center of the center of everything. So we need to pay attention lest we drift away. What's the thing that this pastor wants these

Jesus As Medicine For Anxiety

SPEAKER_00 13:18

folks to know the most? Well, here's the first thing: the preeminence and worth of Jesus. The preeminence and worth. We're gonna find that our ability to keep going in this life, in this Christian walk, our ability to keep going is entirely dependent on our clear view of who Jesus is and what he's done and who he wants to be to us. The more clearly we see him, dude, the fewer stressors we have. When we don't see him clearly, everything gets fuzzy. What's important gets fuzzy. Where we're going gets fuzzy. What we're for gets fuzzy. Unless we're looking at Jesus, perseverance gets a whole lot harder. And so he says a bunch of things about Jesus. And I want to let you know, he's gonna give descriptors. We already walked through them, but we're gonna walk through them deeply. Meditating on who Jesus is is a medicine for stress. Some of us we really struggle with anxiety, and anxiety is getting worse because our phones give us more and more things to be unsure and unanchored about. I really believe anxiety is not necessarily curable on planet Earth, meaning, because it's not just a cognitive thing, it's not just a thing that you, oh, well, it's illogical to worry about this, so therefore I won't worry. It's deeper than that. There's something broken in us, there's a sin nature that causes us to worry in response. We can see that even in the Garden of Eden. When Adam and Eve, the first real stress they have is they're running away from God. It doesn't make any doggone sense. It's totally illogical, but they're responding to their stress. One of the cures, the medicines for stress that God gives us is this look back to who Jesus is. He's the heir of all things, the creator of the world, and the one who upholds the universe. Yo, Jesus rules everything, he rules everything, it's all his. Here's what's powerful about that. Even if somebody tries to take something from you, I mean, can they really be if it's all his? And you're attached to him, he has everything. Even if you lose it, he still has it, and he can give back to you whenever the heck he wants to. So it's not even like you can really lose anything in some sense. And Jesus is also, he's the creator of the Greek words the world, which means not just the planet, it's time and space, it's everything. He's the creator and owner of it all, meaning he has the most knowledge of everything, he has comprehensive understanding of everything. It's important for us to like, you know, consult with experts and doctors and lawyers and all that stuff, and those are really good. But baby, Jesus is the expert, he knows everything about everything, about everything. And so, even if you're like, Well, I don't know what I'm gonna do, and I don't know what's gonna happen then, and I don't know what's gonna do what they're gonna do. Well, he knows. He knows, and he's totally chill about it. And what how would we well, how would we do it? We just reflect on that. Well, I have this problem, but Jesus knows about it. I have this problem, but Jesus is in control of it. How much time are you spending during the day, not just feeding your anxieties, but then answering those anxieties with who Jesus is? Because he also upholds the universe. Is that trivia? That means he didn't just make it and leave, he is actively sustaining the universe you and I live in right now. He's not, he's he didn't just not he's not the architect, just he's the he's the sustainer and governor of it right now. And he's ridiculously in charge. He's given himself approval to do whatever the heck he wants. That means when he starts something, count on it, baby, it's gonna happen. And if he stops something, there's nothing you can do about it, it's done. Because he's the one in charge, upholding the universe. Well, he also reveals God perfectly. That's what it said. He's the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature. Jesus shows us what she just shows up, Jesus shows us what God is like. I'm told that we could crank this LED screen up so bright that you'd go like, uh, you wouldn't be able to look at it. It'd be so bright. That's how God really is. He's so bright. His radiance and beauty and awesomeness is so bright you can't look at him unless you house that glory inside Jesus. Now you're turning down the brightness, but you can really still see God. You can see exactly what God is like, you can see exactly what God would do. So that means even though, yes, sometimes God is mysterious, sometimes things happen in the world that make us scared or confused or we're in pain really. How could God do this? And we start to misunderstand and misjudge God, and then we're watching TikToks where people are saying things about God that are absolutely not true. And how do we get out of it? Well, we look back at Jesus and then, oh, yeah, that's what God is like. He's not like that, he's like this. Look at Jesus, and you know exactly what God is like. That's how you get out of it. Look back at Jesus, and Jesus has finished the work of salvation. He did what he came to do. Yo, he opened up peace, a new and living way back to the Father. He completely demolished, dude, he put it in a headlock, double backflip, stepped on his neck. That's what he did with your sin. So I know that sometimes we're, I mean, I've been shocked at my own sinfulness sometimes. Jesus ain't shocked. There's nothing you're gonna tell him. There's nothing that there's nothing about your sin that he wasn't prepared for. And he not only prepared for it, he beat it. All right? He he defeated it. He's already done, it's already finished. All we have to do is run straight to the cross and confess, and we find those open and loving arms. And that's why it's so serious that we keep in our mind who Jesus is. Because he's relevant to every doggone day of our life. So, what does the pastor want us to know? The preeminence and worth of Jesus, and the very real danger of drifting. We must pay closer attention to what we've heard, lest we drift away. The higher messenger has a more important message, and therefore there's greater accountability and consequences if we don't take it seriously.

The Hidden Path Of Drift

SPEAKER_00 19:18

Drift. Drift is a gradual, slow moving away from Jesus in such a way that we don't totally notice that it's happening at first. It starts usually as passive, but then can slowly harden into intentional. So you probably many of you have been through this. Uh, if you've ever been to a beach where there's like active water, okay, maybe it's like you're in the ocean or what have you, and you you come out and you set your chairs down, your umbrella, whatever you, whatever you bring to the beach, and you go out and you're playing in the water for a little while, you're jumping around. I've done this, I've done this with my wife. We've been on the beach in the ocean, and you know, we're just kind of like hanging out and jumping around, and then we turn around, and I'm thinking, oh my my towel's gonna be like right there. And then I'm like, oh my gosh, it's like half a mile away, like it's down there. What happened? We drifted and we didn't know it. There was a current under that water that we just hop around, man, like it's just taking us down. We don't notice necessarily when we're drifting because I wasn't necessarily feeling it, because I wasn't paying attention to the possibility that some drift is dangerous. Some drift leads us places we don't want to go. Here's usually the path it follows, okay? First, we neglect, and neglect just means I take something that's important and I say, Well, I'm gonna wait on that. I'm not gonna do anything about that very important thing. Instead, I'm gonna do something else. It starts as neglect. I'm just not going to put myself in the places that would cause me to keep looking at Jesus, keep becoming closer to Jesus, keep growing in Jesus. I'm just gonna neglect it. I'm gonna say, I don't think I need that. And what that tends to lead to is first it leads to neglect, then disinterest. So first, I knew I kind of did need it, but I was neglecting it, and now I start to be like, I don't even know about this, man. Is this really necessary? Do I need to do this? I've got a friend that was with me in my college days, and he was a he was a sold-out Christian, man. He loved Jesus. And as the years went by, we remained tight, but I would just notice drift. Things that he knew, hey man, like, what are you doing? Like, you gotta come around again. You gotta get around Bible stuff, you gotta like spend time in God's word. And I wasn't trying to give him a law, I was just trying to lovingly warn him of what spiritual health looks like. And at first he was like, Yeah, yeah, I gotta do it. And then it turned into, I don't know, man, I don't know if I if I really need this stuff. Like, I it was almost like he was playing, I'm a special breed, I don't need that stuff. And that disinterest slowly turned into self deception. Where he he categorized himself differently, and he got to the fact to the point, even where he was saying, I'm not dissing them, I'm not loving. The dude, but he literally said this. You know, I'm not seeking God because I'm mad at God. And I can understand that because I've been mad at God, but I want you to hear the self-deception. The implication is I stand in a place where I can judge God's rightness or wrongness about what he does. And I've determined he did something wrong, and therefore he doesn't deserve my time. That's the self-deception. Now, when we're in a spiritual community and we're in places where we're putting God's word in front of us and the person of Jesus in front of us, there's just little truth bombs that blow up in our face that tends to blow that stuff off. Like it tends to remove those kinds of lies if we stick around. And eventually it becomes, turns from self-denial if we're not in those environments, to or self-deception, it turns to denial. The big idea is you don't have to reject Jesus outwardly to slowly begin to drift from him. All you have to do is prioritize a whole bunch of other stuff ahead of him. That's all you gotta do. You don't have to feel the drift. You just have to say, I get it, but I've got these things, Lord. Hey, look, I gotta go check out this plot of land I just bought. Lord, I got two oxen. I gotta check them out. Can't come. And what is the pastor saying? He's saying, careful, dangerous. You don't want to neglect us like this. That's what happened to the Israelites. They were fast and loose with their relationship with God. Watch your footing. God is saying this because he cares. He's not saying it because he's certain that means you're gonna fall. He's saying, I don't want you to fall. So don't neglect your walk and your pursuit of Jesus Christ. Let's pretend that you're out in the mountains and you're driving in at this, it's about dusk, man. And there's a warning sign as you go through this little zigzag of road where there's a cliff right off to your right. And it's about a 500-foot drop. And you look at that warning sign, you can't believe the hostility of these signs around here. No, because the sign's not hostile, the sign is warning you of danger. So when God warns us in the book of Hebrews, hey man, watch out for drift. He's being merciful, he's being gracious. He's saying, I got your back, and I don't want you to go flying off the cliff because people die here. And people spiritually die here. That's why it's in the Bible. Now, what we gotta watch out for, here's the one we really gotta watch out for respectable drift. This is where we have an alibi in our minds of why we're drifting. Hey man, look, I got a lot of financial anxieties right now. When that clears up, I'll go back to seeking God. But I gotta, man, I gotta hammer it at work right now. Yeah, that's a really bad plan because for those of you who've lived a little while, that might never happen. But also, it's a respectable, gotta provide, gotta, gotta get ahead, dude. That's why I'm not doing the special message that the special messenger brought. Or it might be, as happened to me before, I know you know this. Your sin gets you so sad, you feel so guilty, you feel so bad. Like, I can't go see God now. Say what? I need a couple weeks. That was I'm just gonna cool off toward the God thing because he's probably still mad at me. I need him to get less mad at me. Which is, dude, that's like falling in a pit of mud, and you have a shower inside, you're like, I can't go to the shower now. Tell you what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna wait till it rains. I'll let that water. I'll I'll I'm I'm afraid like I'll be embarrassed if I go to the shower. So I'm just waiting till it rains. Could be a week. I'm gonna let the rain wash off the gunk. Well, dude, you're gonna stink for a week then. Why don't you go right now to the shower? That's why there's a shower. Why don't you run to the savior right now? That's why there's a savior. Why don't you quit trying to get back into his good graces and recognize I have the good graces of God through Jesus Christ? That's what he is, baby. Don't spend a week trying to feel better about yourself. You can feel better in 30 seconds. You go to the cross, you say, Lord, I'm sorry, please forgive me. And he's like, boom! I got you. I got you. It was a lot of blood I spilled, and it's enough for your sin too. Come on, somebody. Hey, there's one more point, but I gotta tell you, I don't know if you guys really want it. All right, okay. You gotta convince me. You gotta get me, you gotta have me keep going by giving me some amens, all right? Here's the final thing the pastor wants us to know today.

Practices That Keep Us Close

SPEAKER_00 26:40

There's a pastoral plea to pay attention. Therefore, we must pay much closer attention. Paying attention just means putting yourself in positions and places where you're going to encounter God to knock you into truth lest you fall away. Think about all the ways we have to pay attention when we're driving a car. It's not, it's not when you're paying attention, and this is what this word means, it's not just one thing necessarily. It's not just like, hey man, just tune in, just kind of know where you're going. When you drive a car, dude, there's a lot going on. Okay, I'm I'm yes, I'm paying attention to the road, but I'm kind of paying attention to other drivers around me. If I'm smart, I'm paying attention to what's on you know the dashboard, I'm paying attention to somebody else who might be in the car and some weird noises going on. I'm paying, I'm definitely not trying to pay attention to my phone, but I'm paying attention to a lot of things. I'm paying attention to how much do I have enough gas to get where I'm going. I'm paying attention. If you are a swimmer, let's say you're a you're a world-class swimmer, and you're out there, baby, and you're you're in a competition, you're swimming in the ocean, you're paying attention to a lot of stuff. You're paying attention to the current, you're paying attention to what the temperature is, you're paying attention to I gotta keep my breathing right, you're paying attention to where are the buoys that I need to stay in touch with. Paying attention is more than just like having a vague idea. Paying attention is, dude, this matters, pay attention. Take a look at it, yo. And the way we do that is we stay in God's word. That's that's the first thing we do. We're gonna see this all throughout the book of Hebrews. We stay around God's word, we pay attention to God's word, we try to get in God's word. Paying attention, my friends, and this is what some of us don't like, but we gotta get it, dude. It's not gonna change. Paying attention means you occasionally have to do things you don't want to do. To stay healthy and robust. I mean, dude, I've never woken up one doggone day in my life and said, I can't wait to put gas in the car today. I never popped open and be like, whoo, gonna be some good gas. No, it's always a hassle. I mean, it's it's not necessarily super inconvenient, but it's like, oh man, I wish I didn't have, wish I could just snap my fingers. There'd be gas in the tank. No, I gotta do something to keep the thing working right. And we've got to do some things we don't necessarily always want to do to keep the thing working right. That means you crack open the Bible when you don't necessarily feel like it. You don't wait till you feel like it. I don't wait till I feel like going to get gas. I go gas when it's time. So you crack open the Bible. You go to church when you don't particularly feel like going. You go to a small group when you don't particularly feel like going. At work, even when it's a little weird, even people when people might give you a little, you know, side eye, you open up your Bible, you pull up your Bible app, and you're like, I'm just gonna get five minutes in God's Word because I need an antidote for the things the world's trying to put in me right now. And I need to take the initiative. I'm not gonna wait till I feel like it. Here's one way you could do it. Um, some of you know that I've been trying to write this book. I'm almost done writing this book, but this book is all about here's how you hear from God through the Bible. And I as I as I reread this, I'm just like, I this is stuff I've taught everybody over the years, but it's really condensed and it like doing it would make somebody close to God. It just would. So I'm just gonna ask you for a favor and also advise you do these things. If you'll be one of my beta readers for round two, okay, it's like 90% done, you get essentially a free book. But as you go through it, you'll not only help me, dude. You'll grow because the things in it make you grow. It's it's this, this is what it is. It's how you pay attention, it's how you stay in God's word in a way that God is talking to you. Here's another way that you could do it. There's some prayer cards on your seats. I think they'll show a little image of it in a second. But there's prayer cards on your seats. Why don't you take one of those prayer cards and you just put it right in the console of your car? So every time you get in your car, maybe it's after work, you're like, okay, this is my trigger to pray. And those are special things that we need prayer for in the church right now. But maybe the habit will cause you to, every time I get in the car, look to my right, oh, there's my prayer card, I'm gonna pray. So even when the prayer card's not there, you habituate it so much. I'm just gonna get in the car and pray. Why? To get in the way of Jesus, to get him in your way. We gotta stay close to God's people. That means I've got to prioritize human beings when I don't like human beings. I get it, dude. I get it. Come on. It is tricky, it's super tricky. But one of the things that human beings can do is they can stir us up. When I was a young, young man, I'd go in the Carter home fridge and there'd be some orange juice. Now it was made with Minute Made concentrate. And so if you let that thing go for a few days, it was really delicious at first. But if you let that thing go for a few days, dude, it just kind of separates and looks nasty. What do you gotta do? You gotta grab a little spatula and just stir it up, baby, stir it up. Sometimes the weight of life and the inertia of life and the difficulties of life, it just becomes so much sediment at the bottom of us. And we got a lot of Holy Spirit inside, but it's still just on the bottom. And so we need to come around fiery people. They're gonna say Jesus-y things, and that's gonna stir us up, and it's gonna make us vibrant and lively, and be like, oh yeah, what am I doing? This is true of God. They almost trying to get me to believe this lie, but this is true. Now that happens when we intentionally pay attention and put ourselves in those places. And you guys know this, it's a bunch of other things too, dude. It's sacrificially serving, it's sacrificially being generous. It's all those things. It's, hey men, here's something you could do. This is a cool place for fierce men. They do something at fierce men that I don't see anywhere else in the church. They they get together at the end often and they'll start talking about their sin. And it often leads to confession. Where else are you confessing your sin, dude? And these are manly bros, these aren't little dinks, these are dudes. But they're talking about look, man, I need to get in God's way. I need more Jesus in my life, so I need to confess my sin. Why don't you come to fierce men, man? Starts again in September. We're taking the month of August off. But, dudes, I'm telling you, it's one more way. Well, I gotta get up and drive over there. Yeah, you do. You gotta do something, you gotta pay attention. Dude, you're so male, you do all kinds of other stuff for people all the time. Why don't you do this for yourself? So you can get in God's way and make it happen. Here's the thing, dude.

Lost Stories And Being Found

SPEAKER_00 33:10

Every one of us is likely to drift at some point. When I was a little boy, probably about five or six, my parents took us to the Museum of Science and Industry. And we're walking around and looking at exhibits, and somehow I got turned around and I began to drift. I got distracted and I got lost. And then, as my little five to six-year-old boy did, I look around and mom and dad aren't around. I start to cry. The water works just going. I don't know what to do, dude. I'm a kid. I don't even know where I am. But I remembered my mom said, find the police officers when you're in trouble. They'll always help you. Now I didn't know the difference between a police officer and a security guard, but security guard looked like a police officer to me, so I went, I'm lost, I can't find my mommy. So he took me up into the security roof. It's kind of like right in the middle of the floor there. Once you know it, three minutes goes by, my folks come around the corner, they're kind of looking at me. I'm like, yeah, they found me. Went and was reunited. I got lost, I got drifted because I wasn't paying attention. And every one of us is gonna get lost and drifted because we're just not paying attention, man. And you know what? It's all okay. That's why we started with how awesome Jesus is to beat and defeat our sin. There's already payment made for that sin of drifting. Here's the other thing we need, other than just to pay attention. My mom and dad had to come find me because I wasn't competent to go find them. And that's the other part of it. See, there's the human part we need to pay attention, but we also need the meekness to say, Jesus, I can't find you. I need you to find me. Would you come find me? I'm just gonna hang right here, Jesus. I'm gonna try my best to pay attention. Would you come find me and get me back to where I'm supposed to be? And that's how I want to close in prayer and start this series. We're gonna ask Jesus, hey, we get that we're supposed to pay attention. We've done it wrong sometimes, but we need you to come find us and anoint our paying attention so that it's actually helpful. Should we do it? Let's bow our heads.

Closing Prayer And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 35:18

Lord, thank you for your word. Thank you for this special, awesome, better message. Thank you for sending Jesus Himself to bring it to us. Thank you for all that you are and all that you overcame on our behalf. And thank you for the warning signs. We don't want to go flying off a cliff. Lord, I pray for this series that we would hear you and the gentleness of your heart as you encourage us and build us up and occasionally throughout this book warn us. God, some of us in this, that, or the other way, we've drifted. Some we might even say we're lost. And here's what we know we know that you're able to find us. So we're gonna do our best. We're gonna do the next wise step that we know, but we're asking you to come get us and stir us up, God. Make us so addicted to your presence that it's almost like this stuff can't break through. In Jesus' name.

unknown 36:17

Amen.

SPEAKER_00 36:18

All right, folks, that's all the time we have, but thank you so much for listening to this sermon. If you got a lot out of this, feel free to share this with somebody who might need it. Also, there's a ton more content on our website, on our YouTube channel, on our Instagram channel, on our TikTok channel. Feel free to check all that kind of thing out. Also, if you're interested in leadership type stuff, go ahead and check out our other podcast or any other blogs or videos or anything over at BibleLeadership.com. And whatever else you do, make sure that you click out for the big thing.