Speaker 1: Well, good morning everybody.
Speaker 1: My name is Randy.
Speaker 1: Thank you for watching out there where you are, and thank you, eddie and the choir, for doing such a great job.
Speaker 1: Well, that choir had a little attitude this morning, didn't it?
Speaker 1: As they're coming out, as they come, sit around you.
Speaker 1: If they sit near you, next to you, just reach over and punch them and say man, you had an attitude today which we could probably use more of that.
Speaker 1: So, so glad that you're here.
Speaker 1: If you're new with us and I know some of you are we're especially glad to have you.
Speaker 1: If you've never come into what we call a vital relationship with Jesus, that means you know Him in here.
Speaker 1: You know you have a personal walk with Him, regardless of church background or no background.
Speaker 1: We'd love to celebrate that.
Speaker 1: If that's a recent thing, if you feel like this is your church needs to be your church home as a Christ follower.
Speaker 1: We have an invitation time at the end, and so after my talk, we'll get to worship with song one more time and then that'll be your invitation to come down.
Speaker 1: Whether you're there up in the man, that balcony is almost full today.
Speaker 1: Whether you're in the balcony or whether you're down here, we would love to celebrate whatever decision you have to make.
Speaker 1: I mentioned our online viewer.
Speaker 1: Some of you watch online because you can't be here, some are not in the area, and we're just super glad to have you.
Speaker 1: I do want to give a couple of shout outs.
Speaker 1: Today, my friend, trey Trey is in Texas, so obviously he can't be here, he doesn't live here, but Trey is serving the country.
Speaker 1: He's on a medical I mean a medical.
Speaker 1: He's on a military assignment in Texas.
Speaker 1: He's got just a few more weeks left and he's going to time it perfectly, hopefully, where he'll get back just in time to see his firstborn born.
Speaker 1: So, trey, we are thankful for you and thank you for watching and shout out.
Speaker 1: Number two is to my friend and your friend for a lot of you, beth Renn.
Speaker 1: Beth Renn is in the hospital, so she is watching on a tablet on her lap right now from the hospital locally here.
Speaker 1: So, beth, we love you and we're proud of you.
Speaker 1: One of our core values is courage is essential for faith and, beth, you probably model courage better in anybody in this room, so we're grateful for you.
Speaker 1: Let's pray, shall we?
Speaker 1: Lord, in the absence of answers to all of our dilemmas and our questions and things that puzzle us today.
Speaker 1: We just need to confess that you are Lord and that you reign, and that our job is to accept it, to surrender to it, to do our very best to take our weak selves out of the agenda, out of the formula, and give our weak, frail, simple selves to you.
Speaker 1: The quicker we do that and realize your magnificent grace, the quicker we will get on plan with the path that you have laid out for us, which is a good path, but it's also a straight and a narrow path.
Speaker 1: So, god, today may we walk out more in the center of that path than we came in, and we give it to you.
Speaker 1: So come, holy Spirit, in Jesus' name amen.
Speaker 1: Well, turn to Colossians.
Speaker 1: Colossians, chapter 3, if you will.
Speaker 1: We said about two or three weeks ago that, like chapter 2, verse 9 of Colossians, through 3, 4, is like the core, the middle part, the heart of that apple from theology perspective, and so we'll finish up this segment today, and last week, I think we ended by saying you know how are we expected to live a life of a Christ follower on path, with all the things going on around us and feeding into us, and all the adversity that can come up in the mis-understanding.
Speaker 1: How are we supposed to do that?
Speaker 1: And I think I said well, chapter 3, verses 1 through 4, is a great start on that.
Speaker 1: So I'm excited that you're here today.
Speaker 1: If you are familiar with history or somewhat like it, especially history common in this area, you'll know that in the Revolutionary War what was going on behind the scenes off the battlefield was there was this tremendous struggle of loyalties and some writers have actually said in the South the Revolutionary War became more of a civil war than it did, a war just for independence, because there were a lot of Americans taking both sides.
Speaker 1: There were the Tories who were the loyalists to Britain, there were the Patriots who sought independence from Great Britain.
Speaker 1: And as the war drug on and it got more personal and it got more costly, there was a lot of actually sideswapping back and forth, both directions.
Speaker 1: There really was and it became a tremendous problem for generals and military leaders One of the most famous sideswapper if you'll put his name, his picture, up there, I'm sorry his portrait is none other than Benedict Arnold.
Speaker 1: He's famous for all the wrong reasons and he inflicted a tremendous amount of damage on the Patriots' war cause effort as someone who pretended to be a patriot but who was a spy for Great Britain.
Speaker 1: And finally, late in the war, when he finally was sniffed out and smoked out, it was, of course, a spy ring of Patriots pretending to be loyalists in New York City that flushed him out, and so we know that that was a huge thing.
Speaker 1: You know, today we do a lot of sideswapping, sideswitching.
Speaker 1: We do it without meaning too many times.
Speaker 1: In the spiritual front, weit's just so easy.
Speaker 1: It's so easy to proclaim Jesus with our lips, but for our hearts to be far from Him, as Isaiah said.
Speaker 1: Jesus said it's also very easy to lean in on your traditions and your history and the routines of faith and let that somehow carry the day for you, because you have at some point walked away from the personal engagement with God and therefore you have walked away from the path and you're no longer following, but you think you are cause.
Speaker 1: It's easy to be deceived when we switch sides.
Speaker 1: So let me propose a question.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to try to answer this one today.
Speaker 1: If you're a side switcher, if you do have a tendency to jump sides and go over to the other side, does that not make you prime target to be a spy for the enemy?
Speaker 1: Jesus said it does.
Speaker 1: If you're not for me, you're what Against me.
Speaker 1: He draws a clear line, just like the Old Testament leaders, joshua and Elijah and some of them drew that clear line and they say it's decision time.
Speaker 1: What side are you going to get on?
Speaker 1: Stop jumping, stop flipping, because choose you this day who you will serve.
Speaker 1: Paul comes along later, who wrote Colossians and says you know, if you're not with Jesus, with your heart, soul, mind and actions, it's not like you're neutral and you just took a time out.
Speaker 1: Oh no, you're working for the enemy.
Speaker 1: And if you do not know him yet and you've been exposed to the gospel of Jesus and his love for you, but you've said no, thank you, it's the same thing.
Speaker 1: Oh, you're not neutral.
Speaker 1: There are no neutral people.
Speaker 1: You're working for the enemy, and so that's why this discussion and others like it are so important, I think.
Speaker 1: So what fights it?
Speaker 1: We all like to bandwagon, don't we?
Speaker 1: Long time ago, my kids were younger I walked in the room there's football game on and it had just kicked off and I said all right.
Speaker 1: And so I made them all declare in the room who you far, who you far, who you far.
Speaker 1: Got around to my youngest son and he said I'll tell you at halftime who I'm far.
Speaker 1: So there's a tendency for all of us to want to know which direction the parade is going and get in with it, right.
Speaker 1: So because it's hard to be singled out, it's hard to be seen as different in, maybe a bad way.
Speaker 1: So Paul's going to address that.
Speaker 1: Actually, because you only have room for one master, that's our one statement today you only have room for one.
Speaker 1: Paul also says in Galatians, chapter 6, this on the screen he helps to find the whole thing today, I think when he says well, I'm on brag, I'm on brag, but I'm only going to brag on one thing and that's Jesus Christ and him crucified.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: Because I have been crucified to the world and the world has been crucified to me.
Speaker 1: In other words, I have stepped away from the line of flip-flopping.
Speaker 1: I have declared and I'm walking that path and I'm not really interested in swaying off that the world still comes at me.
Speaker 1: But at best can I say I am indifferent to the world Because I have found true love and I have found truth, period.
Speaker 1: So that's where we strive to be today.
Speaker 1: What's going on here?
Speaker 1: Last week we ended with verses 20 through 23 of chapter 2, which basically makes this claim of it's not about the externals, it's about the internals.
Speaker 1: It's not about the keeping all the laws, keeping the rules.
Speaker 1: Those are important, they have a place.
Speaker 1: The Torah, the Old Testament books were what were honored and revered and they should have been.
Speaker 1: To that point.
Speaker 1: He just said hey, I'm with you on those, I'm not fighting you, I'm not nullifying those, I'm just telling you that's not where life comes from.
Speaker 1: You add to those the personal walk with Jesus and now you got it.
Speaker 1: And that's what he's going to continue by doing here.
Speaker 1: He's trying to make the shift, say it's not about the externals, it's about the internals.
Speaker 1: And you know that's still true today you saw in the pre-roll we call it before we got kicked off today, a Bible journaling class that is just blowing up with participants, y'all.
Speaker 1: That's a good thing, because that is just another way, creative way, to engage with Jesus Christ on a daily basis, which is called spiritual formations, and that's what we cannot ignore.
Speaker 1: So Paul's going to make three appeals.
Speaker 1: We're just going to read verse by verse here, talk about the appeal a little bit and that'll help our knowledge, but what we're really after is the application.
Speaker 1: What am I going to do about this right?
Speaker 1: How's this going to change my life?
Speaker 1: So look at verse 1, chapter 3, verse 1, the first appeal is set your morals on God's Son, not the laws only, but God's Son, capital S.
Speaker 1: Look at verse 1, since then, you have been raised with Christ.
Speaker 1: Set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.
Speaker 1: You've been raised with Christ.
Speaker 1: Romans 6, 6 through 11, if I didn't mention it last week, that's one of the best definitions of not just the act of baptism but the reason behind baptism and what baptism symbolizes.
Speaker 1: The old's got to die so that we've got to die with Jesus, so we can be raised with Jesus.
Speaker 1: And that's really what he's saying here.
Speaker 1: Since you've been raised with Christ, set your hearts.
Speaker 1: When they say hearts in the Greek language, that meant the center of all of your emotions and your desires and your lust and, many times, your ambitions and things like that.
Speaker 1: How you feel, what you're drawn to, what's attractive or not attractive to you, it's an internal thing.
Speaker 1: Jesus in Mark 7 said the same thing.
Speaker 1: He said what you're drawn to is what is evidenced by what comes out of you, not what comes into you.
Speaker 1: Therefore, again back to the eating kosher foods and doing things like that.
Speaker 1: He said that's good, but that's not.
Speaker 1: What makes you righteous is what comes out, that reveals the heart, and that's what Paul knows here.
Speaker 1: So, as we look on down, he makes a big point, a big deal, out of saying things above, but where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.
Speaker 1: He says the same thing in Ephesians 1.20.
Speaker 1: Christ is seated at the right hand of God.
Speaker 1: He says that several times in just this short letter.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: Because, remember, there's Gnostics, this group of super spiritual people they claim to be, who know more than other people do, and they're going to shed their revelation that he only told them and they're actually false teachers and they, in doing that, were lowering Jesus to a notch or two below God.
Speaker 1: And Paul is doing his best to say, uh-uh-uh, they're right here, here's God, here's Jesus.
Speaker 1: They're on the same level.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: Because they're the same person, and so you're going to see him describe him like that at the right hand of the Father.
Speaker 1: Have you ever, those of you who are Christ followers, have you ever felt like man?
Speaker 1: This old world is getting stranger and stranger.
Speaker 1: Well, you probably don't have to be a Christ follower to say the same thing, isn't it?
Speaker 1: Do you ever feel like good night?
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 1: I'm just like do I even belong here anymore?
Speaker 1: You know, that's normal, because Paul again says we're aliens, this ain't our home, we're not supposed to stay here forever.
Speaker 1: We are passing through, so this should be.
Speaker 1: Hopefully, this is a little bit of a strange place to us, because we've seen Jesus and we have Jesus.
Speaker 1: So what are you saying, randy?
Speaker 1: I'm saying and this is reality 101, if you're devoted, if you're a devoted Christ follower, you will spend segments of time lonely.
Speaker 1: One of the loneliest places in the country is a college campus.
Speaker 1: If you're a Christ follower Because while your roommates and others are out doing who knows what, on Friday, saturday nights, you're not and if everybody's evacuated the campus and you're left as a Christ follower, what are you going to do?
Speaker 1: Well, you're going to spend a lot of time alone, and that's just the way it is.
Speaker 1: We happen to believe the payoff is much richer and the advantages are much better.
Speaker 1: So how does the Son S-O-N, capital S-O-N.
Speaker 1: Reveal Himself?
Speaker 1: Two ways, primarily the Word of God, which he is quoted in the much of it and the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1: The Holy Spirit is supposed to be the manifest presence of Jesus in me and you.
Speaker 1: That means the evidence of the reality of Jesus in us.
Speaker 1: That's His job, and so the better in tune with the Holy Spirit we get and the better knowledge we get toward the Word and how to use His Word, the better we are.
Speaker 1: John 10.30,.
Speaker 1: Jesus was pretty plain, pretty clear.
Speaker 1: He said if you want to know how all this works, I and the Father are one.
Speaker 1: If you've seen me, you've seen Him.
Speaker 1: You've heard me, you've heard Him.
Speaker 1: Let's just get that clear right now.
Speaker 1: He says so do you really believe God is sovereign?
Speaker 1: That's key to this part of following His Son.
Speaker 1: Is God really sovereign?
Speaker 1: That means, is he really in control?
Speaker 1: Because it sure looks like things are out of control many days and he's not really around, and some of the writers in the Old Testament especially actually questioned God on that.
Speaker 1: David was one.
Speaker 1: If you want to write down some stuff to meditate or think about it this week, scripture-wise, psalm 57 is a good read.
Speaker 1: Psalm 57, verse 2, let me just read that one too.
Speaker 1: You saw Psalm 57, 2, guess who's right.
Speaker 1: Guess who's speaking here, david, I cry out to God most high to God, who fulfills His purposes to me.
Speaker 1: That's the definition of sovereignty.
Speaker 1: He will fulfill His purposes to me, even if it's going the wrong direction right now, even if there's nothing happening right now, even if my grown children are as far away from God as they can be right now, even if the doctor's report came back worst case scenario God will do His purposes in me.
Speaker 1: What makes this even more dramatic and more gripping is the fact that we know the background of Psalm 57.
Speaker 1: It is written by David, but it's not when he's sitting fat and happy on the throne, it's when he's in the backside of a cave running from King Saul.
Speaker 1: That's when he writes this.
Speaker 1: In other words, I know you are a promise keeping God, and I'm just going to trust you to keep yours, because it sure doesn't look like you are, and we've been there, haven't we?
Speaker 1: God, I'm going to have to trust you, but, boy, there is a storm going on, but you said the storm will be over and I'm going to believe it.
Speaker 1: So how do we live out our morals focused on God's Son?
Speaker 1: Here's what you need to do you need to go home and you get a copy of our Constitution and bylaws.
Speaker 1: You need to memorize them from front to back.
Speaker 1: No, no, that'swe need those documents.
Speaker 1: Those are good, but they do not give life.
Speaker 1: What we need to do is make sure that we are in connection with what the loving thing to do day by day is.
Speaker 1: You have, and I have, things that, if we let it, boy, that could push our button, couldn't it?
Speaker 1: And we all have our way of demonstrating what happens next when we get our buttons pushed Our depressuses, our frustrations, our discourages, whatever that adjective is.
Speaker 1: What is the loving thing to do here?
Speaker 1: Can't change that.
Speaker 1: But Jesus, what would be the loving thing to do here?
Speaker 1: That means you're following the Son and not the culture.
Speaker 1: You're marching to His drumbeat as an alien, passing through a great place that he's given us.
Speaker 1: But, youthis, is not your home, because you only got room for one master.
Speaker 1: Number two is verse two.
Speaker 1: Set your mind on God's standards.
Speaker 1: Verse two set your mind there.
Speaker 1: We go on things above, not on earthly things.
Speaker 1: He's going to beat that again.
Speaker 1: Thinkthinkthink into eternity, into the spiritual and not into the material, the here and now, only what you can see.
Speaker 1: This is chapter six is all about that.
Speaker 1: I just quoted verse 14 to you also.
Speaker 1: This is the mental part, this is the mind.
Speaker 1: Well, why is that?
Speaker 1: I thought this was a spiritual discussion, absolutely.
Speaker 1: But you know, everything starts with the mind right.
Speaker 1: Everything starts with the intellect.
Speaker 1: Deuteronomy 30.17 even says that the worst sin starts with the concept.
Speaker 1: In here, ever, they ever danced around that golden calf.
Speaker 1: Somebody had to think up the idea right.
Speaker 1: And then there's a process which you emotionally then go there.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, hey, that's actually doable, I think, and all like that.
Speaker 1: Then your affections kick in, turns to a desire, lust, whatever.
Speaker 1: Now you're on your own.
Speaker 1: Now you're likeyou've turned your back on God and you're actively walking away from Him because you're in the sin here.
Speaker 1: So how do we fight it?
Speaker 1: There is tremendous power in believing what you know.
Speaker 1: You know in the Scripture about Christ and your life with Christ.
Speaker 1: It's called the power of belief.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of you are there already, because I've heard your unwavering testimonies.
Speaker 1: I've heard how you dealt with some stuff that was like crippling in its day.
Speaker 1: I've watched you overcome, I've watched you accept challenges and there is just tremendous power, like David demonstrated in Psalm 57.
Speaker 1: Romans 12-2 is another one you might want to write down.
Speaker 1: Romans 12-1 through 3 is actually awesome, but Romans 12-2 says basically my paraphrase.
Speaker 1: The harling translation says get your mind right.
Speaker 1: Get your mind right why?
Speaker 1: Because that's the only way.
Speaker 1: You will not conform to the world, but you'll be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Speaker 1: Here again we're back to the difficulty of the temptation of waltzing into church or watching it online, checking it off, and then you get on with your agenda, your life, your ways, no matter what that's being conformed to the world.
Speaker 1: And in case you've not noticed, I probably don't need to tell you how persuasive, how magnetizing, how attractive the ways of the present culture can actually be.
Speaker 1: And even if you don't cave into those, the pull of what we used to call peer pressure, which is now the cancel culture that will get you too, If you're not ready for it.
Speaker 1: There's power and belief that your path is the best path.
Speaker 1: And here's some goodthis is meant to be encouragement.
Speaker 1: And 2 Corinthians 4, 16 through 18, paul's writing to another church.
Speaker 1: He starts out.
Speaker 1: That whole chapter is really great, but he starts out saying we're jars of clay.
Speaker 1: Remember that one.
Speaker 1: He said a clay jar is pretty hard, but it's brittle right.
Speaker 1: Have you ever bought one at the landscaping place or at Lowe's or somewhere, and you get halfway across the parking lot and you drop it.
Speaker 1: And well, I just paid $29 for a bunch of trash.
Speaker 1: Now it's brittle.
Speaker 1: And he says that's us.
Speaker 1: We got cracks, we've got holes in us, we've got brokenness.
Speaker 1: You know, we can't stand too much, we have hard exteriors which won't allow the Holy Spirit into it.
Speaker 1: But then what I'm after is verse 16 through 18.
Speaker 1: Verse 16 through 18 is that golden passage where he says even though we're getting older every single day, the inward spirit is being renewed day by day.
Speaker 1: Let me read verse 18 to you.
Speaker 1: We fix our eyes not on what is seen but what is unseen, for what is seen as temporary and what is unseen as eternal.
Speaker 1: What are you saying?
Speaker 1: You stay on the path and you're legit.
Speaker 1: You're genuinely chasing after God.
Speaker 1: You will at times not every day you will at times will see the unseen.
Speaker 1: God will move through His Spirit and He'll challenge, encourage you, comfort you, whatever you need, with something that you don't see necessarily in your life.
Speaker 1: You don't see it necessarily on print, literally in the Bible, but he just showed it to you Y'all.
Speaker 1: That's a good day, because the first statement he's making is boy, I really love you because I'm showing you something that's unseen.
Speaker 1: The second good thing, y'all is it's always personal to you.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it'll be about somebody else, but 90% of the time he says if I want to tell them, I'll go tell them.
Speaker 1: This is for you and bam, it's what you need at that day.
Speaker 1: What is evidence that you're on the right track or beginning the right track?
Speaker 1: It's like compounding interest.
Speaker 1: Y'all know what that is right.
Speaker 1: Compounding interest is like in the bank.
Speaker 1: You give a little bit to the bank when you're 29 and when you're 69, you barely got enough to buy your meals.
Speaker 1: Used to be, you're really comfortable, but I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: Now that's the case.
Speaker 1: It's above the poverty level.
Speaker 1: Maybe, hopefully, at that point.
Speaker 1: But a little bit here adds up.
Speaker 1: Long, long time ago, heavyweight boxing was a big deal sport.
Speaker 1: Everybody in the world knew who the heavyweight champion of the world was.
Speaker 1: He was Muhammad Ali in the day, and everybody in the world knew who Muhammad Ali was.
Speaker 1: He had this big fight.
Speaker 1: He didn't think it was big.
Speaker 1: He had this fight one time One of the rare occurrences.
Speaker 1: Saturday Wide World of Sports.
Speaker 1: Some of you remember that show.
Speaker 1: Saturday.
Speaker 1: Wide World of Sports carried it live on a Saturday afternoon because it just wasn't a big betting thing because he was such a big, heavy favorite.
Speaker 1: So an unknown by the name of Ken Norton was lined up and everybody said, yeah, there's another one of those guys, they're just going to prop him up and he'll beat him up and knock him out in the second round and move on toward the real good fighters.
Speaker 1: And Muhammad Ali was kind of unfocused in his training and he was, you know, just kind of all over the place because he knew that too.
Speaker 1: So the bell rings and ooh, this guy's a little tougher than I thought he was.
Speaker 1: And, what's more, he spent most of the entire fight hitting Muhammad Ali right here in the abdomen, in the stomach and the ribs.
Speaker 1: You don't knock people out doing that.
Speaker 1: Those are not headshots.
Speaker 1: But what Norton thought?
Speaker 1: If I'm going to have a chance of winning, I'm going to take his wind away, I'm going to take his strength away.
Speaker 1: His hands will have to drop to protect his sore ribs.
Speaker 1: And then guess what, pow.
Speaker 1: And so by the end of that match, ken Norton had actually broken Ali's jaw and he got the decision over the champ.
Speaker 1: He beat Muhammad Ali Compound and interest said in the first round.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to batter.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to pound away his body and wear him down.
Speaker 1: I'll be stronger in the last round and maybe I can land a good punch and the game plan worked to a tee.
Speaker 1: Compounding interest here is a good thing.
Speaker 1: Work on it a little bit every day.
Speaker 1: Get your mind right every single day and take that into the marketplace, take that into your ministry area, take that into your family, take that into your relationship with your spouse, because y'all we only got room for one master and the world is not him.
Speaker 1: Last one.
Speaker 1: Surrender your present to his future.
Speaker 1: Verse 3 and 4,.
Speaker 1: I dearly love verse 3, for you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.
Speaker 1: Let me remind you, you died a while back.
Speaker 1: You gave up your life, right.
Speaker 1: Why do you keep taking it back?
Speaker 1: Your life is hidden with Christ in God, almost insulated, cocooned, if you will.
Speaker 1: What he means by hidden is your life now has been stripped of all of you and your wiles and intellect now to the point where you are dependent on him.
Speaker 1: You are dependent on him and not yourself, and that's scary at first, but it's the only way to go, because here's the deal.
Speaker 1: Your past always informs the present.
Speaker 1: If we don't change the patterns of the past, guess what?
Speaker 1: We'll repeat the past in the future.
Speaker 1: That's just the way it always works.
Speaker 1: But if we live our present informed by the past but wanting to be better than in the past, then Jesus will come into our future.
Speaker 1: And our surrender to him for the future because he's the only one who knows the future, that's the best insurance policy, that's the best compounded interest we can ever do.
Speaker 1: False teachers, y'all, today or back then.
Speaker 1: False teachers can't do that.
Speaker 1: They are so concerned with the present because they have no past.
Speaker 1: If they do, it's false and they can't predict the future like Jesus.
Speaker 1: So what do they have?
Speaker 1: They only got the present.
Speaker 1: It's very short-sighted.
Speaker 1: This brings in perspective.
Speaker 1: What do you mean by perspective?
Speaker 1: I mean, like Isaiah, 55, 8, 9,.
Speaker 1: Some of you know this one, god speaking, my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.
Speaker 1: As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts are higher than your thoughts.
Speaker 1: So the best plan in the world is to surrender our present, because we can't influence the future.
Speaker 1: Only God can.
Speaker 1: But let our present be aligned with Jesus well enough that when he moves into the future, guess what?
Speaker 1: You're going to walk with Him.
Speaker 1: Right, I don't have to be a prophet, I don't have to know how to predict the future.
Speaker 1: All I got to do is be prepared to follow somebody into the future, and I choose to trust Him with my future not perfectly, but when I do that, I'm in much better shape.
Speaker 1: So what's that?
Speaker 1: Look like Randy.
Speaker 1: You'll start to care about what he cares about.
Speaker 1: You'll start to love what and who he loves, and you'll start to hate what he hates.
Speaker 1: God really hates.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1: He hates a lot of immorality and a lot of simple things, but you'll get it right pretty much because you're informed by Him.
Speaker 1: This is where your faith comes.
Speaker 1: I love Isaiah.
Speaker 1: Again, isaiah, I think it's like chapter 46, he says my prayer phrase again.
Speaker 1: Let me remind you, I was there when you were born and I you're an adult now I have been carrying you the whole time.
Speaker 1: Isn't that great?
Speaker 1: You might not know it, but let me remind you.
Speaker 1: I created you, I brought you into this world, I've been carrying you up to the present moment.
Speaker 1: So what is intimidating you about the future at this point.
Speaker 1: Nope, you know, that kind of takes the fire away from that.
Speaker 1: So we're going to set our morals not on a book of list and all that, although we need them.
Speaker 1: We're going to set our morals on the Son of God.
Speaker 1: Right, he shows us how to perfectly do that.
Speaker 1: His standards are what we need to put our minds to.
Speaker 1: And lastly, every day we are living not so much for the present but for the future, and if we can live today like we know what the future is going to look like, then we'll be okay.
Speaker 1: Can you put that last picture up there for me, mr Skinner-Kinn?
Speaker 1: This fine-looking gentleman is one of our ex-presidents, martin Van Buren.
Speaker 1: When he was not the president, he wrote a letter to the president, who was Andrew Jackson at that time, and it was a protest letter and, believe it or not, he was protesting the new railroad system and he thought it was just going to be the end of the country.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure why, but it was an impassioned plea.
Speaker 1: He said we have a problem, and it's a national problem, with this new railroad system.
Speaker 1: Why is that?
Speaker 1: Because it is going operating at the breakneck speed of 15 miles per hour.
Speaker 1: No one can stand that long term.
Speaker 1: It's scaring the cattle, it's sparking fires that burn our barns down.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm like where to get all of his information, because it's like this is the biggest destructive power in our country right now.
Speaker 1: Please, mr President, put an end to this.
Speaker 1: Man was not created to go at this speed.
Speaker 1: That's how he ends and, of course, a few years later he becomes the president and he's like the biggest cheerleader for the railroad system that there ever was, because he sees the benefit of it by now.
Speaker 1: Don't live so short-sighted as to miss the life of Jesus and trying to live your life out.
Speaker 1: That's what the path is all about.
Speaker 1: So, what are you hearing today?
Speaker 1: From what are you seeing which may be seen but, as we're seeing, it may be unseen?
Speaker 1: What have you seen recently that you've never seen before and that's made a difference?
Speaker 1: What do you need to do as your next step of faith, eddie, can you come up and lead us?
Speaker 1: That's why we have these invitations.
Speaker 1: If you would, can you either leave during this quick prayer I do or head out during the announcements, so that we don't disturb those who need to make a decision.
Speaker 1: Why don't you stand and let me pray for you, lord, I'm grateful that what we can't see, you already see.
Speaker 1: What we do not know, your perspective is always perfect.
Speaker 1: What we don't necessarily like you remind us, is temporal and temporary, in light of eternity, and where we're just clueless, all we have to do is follow you.
Speaker 1: So, god, for those in the room or those online who are at a decision point of being able to celebrate their next step, give them the ability and freedom to do it.
Speaker 1: In Jesus' name, we pray amen.