Speaker 1: Thank you guys so much.
Speaker 1: It's good to see y'all Welcome back.
Speaker 1: I know we were only gone for one week, but it's good to get the summer started.
Speaker 1: Well, I remember playing football in high school and how many of y'all play sports.
Speaker 1: How many of y'all are in strength and conditioning right now?
Speaker 1: Decent amount.
Speaker 1: So if you play sports, in your opinion, like what's the hardest part of the season?
Speaker 1: You can answer Off season Okay.
Speaker 1: What's the hardest part of like season?
Speaker 1: You can answer Off-season Okay.
Speaker 1: What's the hardest part of like the actual season?
Speaker 1: Conditioning Specifically for me it was the first week of two-a-days.
Speaker 1: Right, we would always go out on the field and you know it wasn't like anything specifically terrible about that week, like we weren't in pads yet, for whatever reason, the volleyball coach at our school was a psychopath, so she was like running those girls to death Like all the football players, just like praise God, we're not them because they, like that volleyball coach still scares me to this day.
Speaker 1: But the hardest part was that week, and not because it was like this crazy week.
Speaker 1: I mean we would have conditioning and everything, but without a doubt there would always be like five, but without a doubt there would always be like five to ten kids just like up chucking in a trash can, like 20 minutes in every single time.
Speaker 1: And why was?
Speaker 1: Because of the summer?
Speaker 1: Because what did most of those guys spend the entire summer doing, colin?
Speaker 1: What did you spend the summer doing?
Speaker 1: When you played football?
Speaker 1: Exactly, eating 4,000 calories a day, playing video games, staying inside.
Speaker 1: That was me right.
Speaker 1: And so then, when coach tells me to go put on a helmet and strap it on and go sprint from that end of the field to that end of the field five times, it doesn't really sit well right.
Speaker 1: And the thing was, what I thought was a normal summer routine was actually setting me up to fail.
Speaker 1: Why am I telling you this?
Speaker 1: Well, because summer is officially here and many of you guys, many of us, are in the same mindset that summer is just kind of like a break right, that what I do this summer doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1: The things I give my time, my energy, my attention to, it's no big deal.
Speaker 1: I'll just pick up with whatever I want to do in the school year.
Speaker 1: But the reality is the next two months are actually going to do a lot to shape you, and I'm not just talking about the physical, whether or not you're going to throw up at two-a-days.
Speaker 1: That might happen anyways, right, colin?
Speaker 1: Yeah, amen.
Speaker 1: So what I'm talking about is also the spiritual right.
Speaker 1: So a lot of us what the summer looks like, unfortunately, is like the first month and a half kind of just like skating by, maybe you know, living off some structure from the school year, kind of getting in the word, kind of doing good, kind of not, and then you kind of hit the skids like right before camp, and then you go to camp and camp's amazing, right, you have a crying night.
Speaker 1: Everybody's boohooing, hugging each other like it's the best thing ever, and then, unfortunately, like a week and a half max later it's back to normal.
Speaker 1: And the thing is, summer doesn't have to be that way.
Speaker 1: You do not have to have this spiritual drop-off, like God is not present in the universe during the summer.
Speaker 1: But then the question is, how do we avoid that Right?
Speaker 1: If I were to ask you what would it take for you to be closer to Jesus at the end of July than you are now?
Speaker 1: What would that look like?
Speaker 1: And that's actually what we're going to see tonight as we look in Psalm chapter one.
Speaker 1: So if you have your Bible, you can go ahead and flip it open to Psalm.
Speaker 1: It's the very first one and a little bit of background on this Psalm.
Speaker 1: For a long time, this Psalm was actually treated as the introduction to the book of Psalms Like.
Speaker 1: This was the intro to the whole thing.
Speaker 1: It was telling you how to read the Psalms, it was telling you how to understand them, and so you'll notice some of that in here as to why it covers the ground that it does so.
Speaker 1: Psalm chapter one should be about in the middle of your Bible.
Speaker 1: We're going to read verse one.
Speaker 1: It says the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.
Speaker 1: He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither.
Speaker 1: And all that he does, he prospers.
Speaker 1: The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.
Speaker 1: Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous, for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
Speaker 1: Let's pray, lord.
Speaker 1: God, we thank you for your word tonight.
Speaker 1: We pray that you would just help us to be honest with you tonight, lord, that in this moment, as we come before your word, that there would be no mask that we have on before you.
Speaker 1: We're not trying to hide anything from you, god, but we would just come to your feet and lay it all out and say, jesus, this is what I have.
Speaker 1: God, would you remove what you would remove, and would you encourage me or convict me or shape me or direct me in the way that you would?
Speaker 1: God, because we want your will for our lives more than we want our own will.
Speaker 1: And so, lord, I know that can be scary, but would you give us the courage to just have that posture of heart towards you tonight, to feel that way.
Speaker 1: We love you, we praise you, praise things in Jesus'.
Speaker 1: Name.
Speaker 1: Everybody said amen.
Speaker 1: So how this passage works is it actually starts with a negative example, right, it's really trying to tackle the question that we asked earlier of what does it look like to grow close to God, like, how do you do that?
Speaker 1: And it starts with hey, don't do X, y, z.
Speaker 1: In fact, it says blessed is the man who doesn't.
Speaker 1: And then it gives three things.
Speaker 1: And one thing you have to say and for those of you who were there this past spring, we went over the Sermon on the Mount.
Speaker 1: That word blessed does not necessarily mean blessed with money.
Speaker 1: That word blessed does not necessarily mean blessed with happiness or status.
Speaker 1: We think of blessings in that way and sometimes that is what blessing means, but the Hebrew word that's being used here is actually more like this psalmist this author is writing this is the type of person that's living the good life.
Speaker 1: This type of people have the good life.
Speaker 1: It's what we talked about in the Beatitudes.
Speaker 1: That's why the Beatitudes, we read it and we say, well, blessed is the poor, blessed are those who mourn, like that doesn't sound like they're blessed.
Speaker 1: Well, it's not talking about material blessings, right, it's talking about this is the person who has it good?
Speaker 1: And then he gives the negative examples.
Speaker 1: He says who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, who does not stand in the way of sinners and who does not sit in the seat of scoffers.
Speaker 1: Do y'all notice that progression Walk, seed of scoffers?
Speaker 1: Do y'all notice that progression Walk, stand, sit.
Speaker 1: It's slowing down, right?
Speaker 1: And so at some level I think the author is trying to get this point that, hey, if this is the negative example, if this is what it looks like to drift away from God, right, what happens to many of us over the summer.
Speaker 1: It's a process and it starts slowly.
Speaker 1: It starts with just walking and then you kind of slow down and then you take a seat, like that's the imagery here.
Speaker 1: But again, the main emphasis of this is not just on that, but think about what it's saying.
Speaker 1: It says walk in the counsel of the wicked.
Speaker 1: Does anybody know what the word counsel means?
Speaker 1: You can shout it out.
Speaker 1: It's a small group.
Speaker 1: It's like advice, right?
Speaker 1: So this would be like thoughts.
Speaker 1: These would be taking bad advice, sinful thoughts.
Speaker 1: This would be like at the mind level, of what you think about.
Speaker 1: And then the next line says does not stand in the way of sinners.
Speaker 1: We taught about this a couple weeks back.
Speaker 1: We said that there's two ways in life, and when we talk about way, what we're really talking about is behavior, actions.
Speaker 1: And so it starts with sinful thoughts and then it moves to choosing sinful behavior, things that are opposite from what God calls us to do.
Speaker 1: And then, finally, it says do not sit in the seat of scoffers.
Speaker 1: And this is talking a little bit about like belonging, like where you find your identity, like to sit with people or sit in the seat of someone is to identify with them.
Speaker 1: And, at another level, this is who you hang around.
Speaker 1: This is community.
Speaker 1: And so you see how this drift starts.
Speaker 1: It starts with what you think.
Speaker 1: It begins in the mind.
Speaker 1: You think about something, and not just like a thought pops into your head because you guys know we can't always control our thoughts Like things will pop into your mind and you didn't put it there.
Speaker 1: It could be random, it could be from something you saw on TV last night, or it could be from the enemy, but what we can control is whether we feed those thoughts or not.
Speaker 1: And so when you start to feed a thought, you feed that thought long enough and it turns into an action.
Speaker 1: You start to actually act on that thing, right?
Speaker 1: So if I feel angry and I feed that anger, what action is that going to lead to?
Speaker 1: I'm going to yell at someone, I'm going to be mad, I'm going to give somebody the cold shoulder, right?
Speaker 1: So the action then leads to almost an identity or a lifestyle and you start to hang around those type of people, right?
Speaker 1: So let's use that anger example.
Speaker 1: You feed anger in your life and you start to act angry.
Speaker 1: You start to pop off at that Taco Bell employee because they didn't get your crunch wrap just right, which in reality it's never right, it's Taco Bell.
Speaker 1: Like set your bar lower right, but you get mad at that waiter or whatever right.
Speaker 1: So you start to choose sinful behavior.
Speaker 1: But then do you notice like angry people tend to find each other.
Speaker 1: Like have y'all ever seen that?
Speaker 1: Like people who tend to have a lot of complaints or negativity in their lives tend to kind of group together because that's how it works.
Speaker 1: And so what am I trying to say with all this?
Speaker 1: What is the point that I'm trying to make?
Speaker 1: The point is that drifting from God does not start with some huge, life-altering mistake.
Speaker 1: Like nobody wakes up one day and is like, hey, I think I'm going to go murder someone today.
Speaker 1: Or hey, you know what sounds fun Alcoholism, I think I'm gonna become an alcoholic just because that seems like a blast.
Speaker 1: No, it starts small.
Speaker 1: It starts with a thought and that thought turns into an action and that action then turns into a pattern of action which eventually shapes you in to a person.
Speaker 1: And so if we're talking about how to not drift, it would be pay attention to what you pay attention to, because that's where it starts.
Speaker 1: One time one of my favorite pastors told this story, and I don't know if this story for sure happened.
Speaker 1: I've heard it from a few different people, so I'm assuming at some point it happened.
Speaker 1: I just don't know who came up with it.
Speaker 1: But the story is that he's this pastor.
Speaker 1: He's working in this big mega church in Dallas and some guy comes in for counseling and he knew this guy.
Speaker 1: But this guy had recently cheated on his wife and so, as normally happens, his life exploded.
Speaker 1: His family couldn't stand him, didn't wanna be around him, everything is in shambles.
Speaker 1: And so this pastor asks this guy hey, man, where did it go wrong?
Speaker 1: And this guy answers he goes man, I really think it started with the Dr Pepper.
Speaker 1: What in the world does that mean?
Speaker 1: How does Dr Pepper cause you to cheat on your spouse?
Speaker 1: He said well, here's the thing.
Speaker 1: A long time ago at work, I would go to this fridge and I would open it up and somebody brought a bunch of Dr Peppers and set them in there and I thought you know, it's no big deal, I'm just going to take one, nobody's going to miss it, it's just one.
Speaker 1: And so he decided to take that Dr Pepper, and then the next day he took another one, and another one, and another one, and soon it became a habit and a pattern where he really didn't feel that bad about it.
Speaker 1: But then, after that, that one compromise started to bleed into other compromises in his life.
Speaker 1: You know, no longer is it stealing a soda, but it might be telling a little bit of a white lie, it's, you know, no big deal started to turn into a habit, and that habit started to shape how he thought about right and wrong, and so he started to stay late at work.
Speaker 1: He started to talk more with a coworker, he started giving her information and sharing things with her that shouldn't have been for her, should have been for his wife.
Speaker 1: And little by little, that line just moved a little further, a little further, a little further, until one day he looked up and he had blown his whole life up because he decided to cheat on his spouse.
Speaker 1: And the reality is, the truth is that it didn't start with this affair.
Speaker 1: It started with a thought that led to a behavior, that led to an identity shift.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing.
Speaker 1: That's an extreme example.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that, like you steal a soda and you are guaranteed to cheat on your spouse one day.
Speaker 1: But the point is, it always starts somewhere small, right?
Speaker 1: An addiction to lust does not begin, or some of these horrible crimes that you see, don't begin with just deciding to do something terrible.
Speaker 1: It begins with an internet habit or an anger problem to where you lash out against people.
Speaker 1: Does not begin with you deciding to punch someone in the face.
Speaker 1: It begins with you deciding to hold anger in your heart towards one of them.
Speaker 1: And so, you see, it starts small, and we all have these stories in our minds that we believe about things.
Speaker 1: We have stories for our money, for our relationships, for our sports, for our band.
Speaker 1: What do I mean by that?
Speaker 1: Well, it's what you believe that exists for in your life.
Speaker 1: So an example is if you believe that your relationship's purpose is to make you happy, that's going to lead you to think a lot about taking advantage of somebody else for your own benefit, and that's going to create a behavior where you don't respect boundaries and that'll shape you into a person who uses and abuses others.
Speaker 1: Right Again, it starts in the mind what you dwell on and that will eventually work itself out into who you become.
Speaker 1: And so you have to ask yourself tonight what might be the thing that you're compromising on what might be your Dr Pepper for lack of a better term, right?
Speaker 1: Is it little white lies that you're compromising on what might be your Dr Pepper for lack of a better term, right?
Speaker 1: Is it a little white lies that you tell your mom and dad Is it the time that you spend lingering just a little bit longer on a certain kind of TikTok or a reel, just a few more seconds each time?
Speaker 1: Is it the kind of music that you listen to?
Speaker 1: Is it the kind of people that you hang around?
Speaker 1: The shows that you watch on Netflix, the games that you play?
Speaker 1: Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to fill you with shame, but I'm trying to lovingly tell you.
Speaker 1: The best thing you can do is to drag that into the light and get rid of it.
Speaker 1: Tell someone, confess it, because it's happening.
Speaker 1: Just step into reality.
Speaker 1: Quit pretending like it's not.
Speaker 1: Let someone know so that you can get help and so that you can turn away from that.
Speaker 1: That's what the word repent means.
Speaker 1: When we say hey, confess and repent, it literally means a change of direction.
Speaker 1: That means I'm heading towards this direction, right, I'm heading towards anger.
Speaker 1: I'm heading towards lust.
Speaker 1: I'm heading towards comparison, I'm heading towards self-hate.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stop, I'm gonna turn around, I'm gonna go towards Jesus and that's the most important thing you can do.
Speaker 1: Sit here tonight and you say, hey, I've got all this stuff in my life, that I'm starting to compromise and that snowball is starting to go downhill and it's starting to pick up speed and it's starting to get bigger.
Speaker 1: Man, stop it now.
Speaker 1: It doesn't get any easier than in this moment, because, whether you realize it or not, those compromises are taking you somewhere.
Speaker 1: But that's the negative example, right?
Speaker 1: The real point is not just what not to do to avoid drifting, but what to do.
Speaker 1: How do you actually grow closer to God If we're saying, hey, this summer, that's the goal.
Speaker 1: It's one thing to say, don't do something, but that sometimes makes it harder to not do, right?
Speaker 1: Like if I tell you hey guys, everybody, real quick, don't think of a yellow school bus.
Speaker 1: What did all of you just do Think of a yellow school bus?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 1: Because the more you try not to do something, sometimes it makes it harder.
Speaker 1: So you have to replace it with something else.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what the author of Psalms is going to get at here in verse two.
Speaker 1: Verse two says but his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law he meditates day and night.
Speaker 1: So remember he's still talking about who's blessed.
Speaker 1: So basically this could read blessed is the one whose delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law he meditates day and night.
Speaker 1: So this is the positive example delight in the law of the Lord.
Speaker 1: Well, the law of the world sorry, lots of L's the law of the Lord is scripture right.
Speaker 1: For them it would have been the Torah, it would have been the Old Testament.
Speaker 1: For us it's all of scripture right.
Speaker 1: And so what he's saying here is that if what you think will shape what you do and who you become, then you need to set your mind on the one thing with the power to actually shape you into who you want to be, and that's God.
Speaker 1: And primarily, that's gonna look like setting your mind on God's word, because we believe that the Bible is God's revelation of himself to us, not only the revelation of himself, but the revelation of his plan to save us from our sin.
Speaker 1: And it's all in God's word and it's good for teaching, rebuke, correction, and it is all sufficient.
Speaker 1: This is what we need to be shaped into the image of God.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing it's more than just getting a bunch of information about God.
Speaker 1: Notice that this doesn't say, hey, read your Bible or read the law.
Speaker 1: It says delight in it.
Speaker 1: It says meditate on it day and night, because growing close to God is more than just getting a bunch of information about him.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of people in church on Sunday morning who know all the answers, who have a lot of theological knowledge, who just know a lot, but they're not even saved Because, at the end of the day, information alone has never produced transformation.
Speaker 1: It's the power of the Holy.
Speaker 1: Information alone has never produced transformation.
Speaker 1: Right, it's the power of the Holy Spirit, and you not only have to have knowledge about God, but you have to have a way to actually get that in to who you are.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like Kobe Bryant, right.
Speaker 1: Rest in peace, kobe.
Speaker 1: You've probably heard the stories about him and his late night practices, right, or early morning practices 4 am, the mamba mentality.
Speaker 1: But what a lot of people who were really close to him would say is that what made him so great was not necessarily his practice on the court, but was that he practiced more in his head than anywhere else, because he one time said in an interview that he would visualize the game, not just during practice but like all day, and he would imagine how defenders would guard him, how the ball would feel as he shot it, what type of move he would put on somebody as they came up to guard him.
Speaker 1: If he was in a car, he was running through scenarios in his head.
Speaker 1: If he was sitting in a meeting, he was picturing footwork and different plays and things.
Speaker 1: Even before he fell asleep he would run through like the entire game in his mind.
Speaker 1: It's visualization.
Speaker 1: We've seen this from a lot of athletes, right Like.
Speaker 1: You've probably seen Aiden doing his like kick-step thing or Colin deciding to pass rush Tyler on a Wednesday night.
Speaker 1: But this visualization piece is so important for so many of them because what makes you good at a sport is not just knowing about it but getting that information into your body so that you can actually do it and live it out.
Speaker 1: And in the same way, if you want to grow close to God this summer, you need more than just some information about him.
Speaker 1: You need to set your mind and your heart on him, which again begs the question how Like?
Speaker 1: That's a really churchy term, like if I were to tell you right now hey, go set your heart on God, leave, be blessed.
Speaker 1: That wouldn't be helpful to anybody, right?
Speaker 1: But the hard thing is there's no like one size fits all approach to what it means to set your mind on God.
Speaker 1: A lot of it is kind of figuring out what works best for you.
Speaker 1: For some people it could be prayer.
Speaker 1: One thing that's been helpful for me is this concept of breath prayers, and what it is is you get a short line of scripture and when you pray through it you match it up with your breathing, and it sounds a lot more complicated than it is.
Speaker 1: But for me, one thing I pray before I step on stage.
Speaker 1: As I inhale, I pray to God, not with words of wisdom, so I take a deep breath not with words of wisdom and I exhale, but through the power of your spirit.
Speaker 1: That's short, it's simple, but it has a way of not just engaging with God with your mind, but also your body and your breathing, and it has a way of just getting that into you and you can carry that with you throughout the day.
Speaker 1: Some people like to pray through the Psalms and what it looks like to pray through scripture is, instead of me reading it like a book, I'm going to read it and I'm going to pray it back to God, right?
Speaker 1: So if I read Philippians 4, 6 through 7, do not be anxious about anything.
Speaker 1: Lord, would you help me to not be anxious about anything but, with prayer and petition, present your requests to God.
Speaker 1: Lord, help me to have the courage to give my requests to you, and the peace which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
Speaker 1: Lord, help me to feel that peace, because I'm anxious, right?
Speaker 1: And so you're actually praying through it.
Speaker 1: It's more than just reading it like a book and, guys, sometimes it's just inviting God into every situation in your life, right?
Speaker 1: What would God want you to do at strength and conditioning?
Speaker 1: How would Jesus want you to act?
Speaker 1: It's the old, everybody's heard it.
Speaker 1: What would Jesus do?
Speaker 1: But what, in this situation, are you able to use to make God known to the people around you, right?
Speaker 1: Could it be being nice to that waiter who was really rude to you when you were trying to get the table, or could it be just doing what that coach says when you know he's in a bad mood and chewing everybody out.
Speaker 1: But I'm going to listen, I'm going to do my job.
Speaker 1: Like what could it be that God could be calling and pulling you to do in that moment?
Speaker 1: And honestly, it's hard to kind of explain, but a lot of it is just practicing.
Speaker 1: What I've heard some people say is like being in two places at once, and so at one level, I'm doing my homework, I'm studying, I'm practicing volleyball or I'm filling out college stuff or I'm mowing a lawn.
Speaker 1: But at another level, I'm having an ongoing conversation with God.
Speaker 1: So, even though I'm here physically, I'm constantly diverting my mind and my heart back to the reality that the God of the universe wants me to talk with him in my heart, back to the reality that the God of the universe wants me to talk with him.
Speaker 1: The God of the universe wants to know me and I know that there are some of you in this room who that's incredibly helpful, like you're the creative type, you're the artistic type, that's how your brain ticks, great.
Speaker 1: There's another section of you who you're the math types and I just spattered a bunch of nonsense for like 10 minutes and it's like none of that's helpful.
Speaker 1: That's okay.
Speaker 1: It is difficult, it is messy.
Speaker 1: There's going to be days where you feel like you've just been walking with the Lord your entire day.
Speaker 1: And there's going to be days where you get to 9 pm and you're about to lay your head down and you realize I haven't thought about God once today.
Speaker 1: That's all right, keep coming back.
Speaker 1: That's the practice of it.
Speaker 1: Nobody's perfect at something new.
Speaker 1: They do the first day.
Speaker 1: Practice of it.
Speaker 1: Nobody's perfect at something new.
Speaker 1: They do the first day.
Speaker 1: You just constantly when I feel myself getting distracted.
Speaker 1: It's the same thing in prayer.
Speaker 1: If I'm praying and I start to get distracted, all I'm going to do is my eyes start to wander.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to say no, bring them back to God, or whatever.
Speaker 1: I'm distracted in right.
Speaker 1: If I'm trying to pray and all of a sudden I get distracted about my homework and this test that I have coming up, all right, well, let's pray about this test, like, let's bring God into that.
Speaker 1: And so it's a lot less black and white than we like to paint it, but it's more of how do you just bring God into every aspect of your life, because even though it's hard, it's going to be worth it.
Speaker 1: And that's where the psalm ends and where we're going to end tonight.
Speaker 1: Verse three says that person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season.
Speaker 1: The person who delights in the law of the Lord and whose leaf does not wither Whatever they do, prospers.
Speaker 1: The wicked are not so, but are like a shaft that drives the wind away.
Speaker 1: Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous, for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
Speaker 1: And so the author compares the end result of these two different ways the way of the wicked, right, the way of the sinful, the drifting from God, and the way of the righteous, the drawing near to God.
Speaker 1: And the righteous are like a tree that's planted by a stream of water and you're like.
Speaker 1: That makes no sense, right?
Speaker 1: How am I a tree?
Speaker 1: The idea here is that you would be connected to a source of life.
Speaker 1: What do plants need to thrive?
Speaker 1: We all learned this in like second grade.
Speaker 1: What are the three things they need?
Speaker 1: Water, sun and dirt, or soil, if you want to sound fancy, right, perfect.
Speaker 1: So the idea of a tree being planted by a river means that it's always got that source of life right.
Speaker 1: It's got constant access to water, it's not reliant on rain, it's got a stream that's, in my mind, spring-fed, so it never runs dry.
Speaker 1: And so when it says that that person is going to be like a tree planted by a stream of water, that means you have a source of life that can't be taken from you.
Speaker 1: And here's the reality.
Speaker 1: Whether we realize it or not, we are all looking to something in our lives to be a source of life.
Speaker 1: It might be a boy, it might be a girl, it might be football, it might be football, it might be people's approval, it might be our grades, and the thing is all of that stuff is temporary.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it's a bad thing to want to be good at, but I'm saying it makes a really bad source of life because it can be taken away.
Speaker 1: You can fail the test, you can lose that relationship, you can miss the team, and when that happens, all of a sudden you're sent into panic mode because your source of life is gone and it's going to make you to never actually be able to enjoy that thing anyways, because you're trying to get something from it Exploit or desperation.
Speaker 1: When you're desperate, it always leads you to just striving and trying to use people for your own gain.
Speaker 1: But it's saying no, if you delight yourself, if you set your mind on God, you will have a source of life, because God's not going anywhere and it says that it's leaf will never wither.
Speaker 1: That's not saying that things won't get hard, but that is saying because, like the seasons change, right, leaves fall off of trees.
Speaker 1: But that's saying that even when the seasons do change, even when things do get hard, you have a hope, knowing that you have a God who knows you deeply and loves you and cares for you and that will use evil, hard, wicked things that are guaranteed to happen in this life for good and he can redeem them.
Speaker 1: And at the end of time, every tear will be wiped and every sad thing will be made untrue and we can rest in that hope.
Speaker 1: But on the other, in the negative example, it's all just temporary, it's fleeting, it's here and then it's gone, it doesn't last.
Speaker 1: And example it's all just temporary, it's fleeting, it's here and then it's gone, it doesn't last.
Speaker 1: And so the offer here, guys, is at the end of this summer.
Speaker 1: If you were to look the next two months, not saying that.
Speaker 1: If you set your mind on God, everything is going to turn out okay.
Speaker 1: Not saying that if you set your mind on God, everything you want to happen is going to happen.
Speaker 1: But I am saying, if you set your heart and mind on the Lord, on his word, by the end of the summer you will be rooted in something that's deeper than football or a guy or grades.
Speaker 1: You'll have a hope and a future.
Speaker 1: And here's the reality, guys, that the point is you've got a lot of time and you can choose how to use it, but setting your mind on God first and foremost is setting your mind on the gospel, the truth that God made this world and everything in it, that we are not perfect, that we don't have eternal life in and of ourselves, that we've all screwed up, we've all made mistakes and God is just and he punishes evil, and we want that right.
Speaker 1: We want the bad guy to face the consequences at the end of the movie.
Speaker 1: But what happens when we're the bad guy and scripture says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God?
Speaker 1: Yet God didn't want us to be separated from him?
Speaker 1: Because the wages of sin are death.
Speaker 1: What you get paid for choosing sin is death, because you're choosing to separate yourself from the source of life, from God.
Speaker 1: But God loved us, so he sent his son Jesus to live a perfect life, die on the cross for our sins.
Speaker 1: It wasn't an accident.
Speaker 1: He chose to walk into Jerusalem and let people nail him to a tree so that he could suffocate to death on the side of the road.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: Because he loved you and on that cross he became your sin, so that when God poured his wrath onto Jesus, it was as if your lust, your greed, your lying, your comparison was being paid for and punished.
Speaker 1: So when the enemy later, if you place your faith in Jesus later on, you're like oh, but think of all the bad things you've done.
Speaker 1: You know you couldn't really be forgiven.
Speaker 1: Like you have no idea, like all the junk you've done.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, god does.
Speaker 1: He looked it in the face and he said I'm going to pay for it, every single bit of it, and your worth and your value are no longer tied to performance or earning or trying to earn God's approval.
Speaker 1: Because there was nothing you could do in the first place.
Speaker 1: He freely gave it so that if you would place your faith in him, believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, you would be saved.
Speaker 1: And that is the truth that, no matter how far away you get away from placing your faith in Jesus and deciding to be a Christian, you can never forget Every day we talked about this earlier this week, me and some people on the staff is every single day.
Speaker 1: We need to preach the gospel to ourselves.
Speaker 1: When you look in the mirror and hate the person that you see, you need to preach to yourself.
Speaker 1: I placed my faith in Jesus and I am an adopted child of the King and he loves me.
Speaker 1: When you look around and you think, man, everybody else has it together, like they've got their life together.
Speaker 1: They know what they're doing.
Speaker 1: I don't have any plan, you remind yourself no, god has given me an inheritance, he's given me gifts, he's given me talents and he's going to use me not for my own glory, but for his glory.
Speaker 1: When you feel like you're too far gone, when you screw up the same thing that you've been screwing up over and, over and over again and you've sworn off 15 times that same thought pattern comes back that you've tried to shove so many times.
Speaker 1: You're getting sick of it.
Speaker 1: You remind yourself that sin, that stronghold was paid for with the blood of Jesus and I'm free, and even if I've got to learn how to walk in that freedom, that freedom is still available.
Speaker 1: You never graduate from the gospel.
Speaker 1: So what does it mean to set your heart and mind on Jesus?
Speaker 1: It's to return to the fact that we're broken sinners, that we can't clean ourselves up, that we can't do it all on our own and we desperately need a savior.
Speaker 1: But God made a way, the God of the universe, put on flesh, came down, died for our sins, so that we can be healed, we can be made whole, that we can be chosen, adopted into a family, redeemed.
Speaker 1: And there's a group of you in here tonight who that all sounds great, but you haven't made that decision to embrace all of that yet.
Speaker 1: And if that's you, we're not going to do small groups or anything.
Speaker 1: So there's perfect time to come and have a conversation with me or one of the leaders.
Speaker 1: But all of that is available to you.
Speaker 1: But you first have to take the step.
Speaker 1: Some of you might've grown up in church, you might've grown up with a Christian family, you might've grown up around it.
Speaker 1: I said this on Sunday look, if that's you and you're not sure about all this, keep coming back.
Speaker 1: We're glad that you're here, but eventually you have to make a decision.
Speaker 1: Maybe always defaults to no, maybe never magically turns into a yes, and so at some point you have to put that first foot forward and says I want to believe in my heart and confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord, and then you get access to all of those things I just talked about for the past 10 minutes.
Speaker 1: And if you have questions, great.
Speaker 1: God is not scared of your questions and he's not scared of your honesty.
Speaker 1: But if you do have questions, actually try to seek answers, make a plan, list them out.
Speaker 1: This is what I wanna know.
Speaker 1: This is how I'm gonna try to find it, because I promise you there's answers, but you have to look for them.
Speaker 1: And so I'm about to pray and we're gonna wrap this thing up, and we've got a lot of fun stuff this summer.
Speaker 1: Guys, it's gonna be an amazing summer.
Speaker 1: I'm really excited about what God's going to do, but my challenge to you is don't drift, don't be spiritually lazy, not because you're trying to earn God's love or favor or approval, but because he wants what's best for you.
Speaker 1: He wants to just bring you into more of who he is and he wants you to flourish.
Speaker 1: And sometimes that doesn't look like what we want it to look like, but it's always for our best because he's a good king and so let's talk about it.
Speaker 1: If you need help with what that looks like, find a leader, find me, and it's a process.
Speaker 1: It's not you're not gonna leave here all of a sudden, perfect for the rest of the summer, but keep coming back and if you're struggling we thank you so much for tonight and the opportunity to meet here, to gather together, to worship you, to get to read from your word and Lord, I just pray that as we leave here, god, you would do what only you can do, that you would encourage us, you would convict us, you would shape us, and, God, that we would just be mindful of what we're thinking, what we put into our hearts and our minds, and what we listen to and what we do, and that we would submit all of that to things that are gonna bring us closer to you, that we would set our hearts and our minds in you.
Speaker 1: That we would invite you into every area of our life.
Speaker 1: And if there's nobody, if there's anybody here tonight who has not invited you into their hall.
Speaker 1: Lord, that they would make that decision as soon as possible.
Speaker 1: God, we thank you for your word.
Speaker 1: We thank you for the blood of Jesus.
Speaker 1: We thank you that you came down and made a way.
Speaker 1: Praise things in the name of Jesus, amen.