SPEAKER_00: Good, good.
SPEAKER_00: Um what he failed to tell you is he called me up out of retirement.
SPEAKER_00: You see, I used to be a youth minister back in the day.
SPEAKER_00: Um I'm now a therapist.
SPEAKER_00: That seems like a tra a strange transition, probably, but uh I actually uh got my master's of divinity and psychology and counseling from the seminary in New Orleans, and I do counseling.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but I spent most of my adult life doing youth ministry.
SPEAKER_00: From the time I was 19 until I was in my 40s, uh, I was a youth leader.
SPEAKER_00: Um that doesn't mean, well, for one thing, it I I do kind of speak fast.
SPEAKER_00: I'm kind of wired to preach to teenagers, y'all.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of weird.
SPEAKER_00: I'm a little scatterbrained.
SPEAKER_00: Teenagers can tend to stick with me and stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Um I I've also kind of learned that every good sermon's about two things.
SPEAKER_00: It's about Jesus and it's about 20 minutes because usually that's all the time I've got when it comes to teenagers.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I'm gonna ask you to do a couple things for me.
SPEAKER_00: If you got your Bible, I'm gonna give you a couple passages of scripture that I'm gonna turn to in just a little bit because I move fast.
SPEAKER_00: I don't mean to, I try not to, but when I don't, it gets weird.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna give you some passages that I'm gonna turn to so that we're not playing Bible drill in just a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so one passage I'd like you to open to if you got your little ribbons in your Bible, Matthew chapter six, and another one is First Corinthians chapter 12.
SPEAKER_00: Those are a couple places that we're gonna go.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so yeah, I've done most of my preaching to youth ministry.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so for today, just bear with me and pretend you're in my youth group.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna back up and pretend it's like 2018, and I'm preaching to my youth group because I kind of will be all over the place.
SPEAKER_00: Um, I want to uh when Jason had texted me and asked me what passage I was coming out of, we were dealing with some stuff.
SPEAKER_00: We'd had a vehicle that had shut down on us, and we got a lot of stuff we were going through, and and I was just really convicted uh to talk about pursuing Christ and what your pursuit of Christ looks like.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I want to tell you a little story about a thing that happened to me uh that was one of the times that Christ I felt the conviction of God in one of the most profound ways.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, and so I had just learned this passage of scripture in seminary.
SPEAKER_00: There's this class that we have to commit the book of Philippians to memory, it's a counseling class, and there's this passage that Paul talks about um that Paul writes, and he's I I kind of love the verse that I'm about to quote to you because it kind of embodied what I felt like was a passionate pursuit of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the thing is this story that I'm about to tell you is a point of conviction that came to me when I kind of thought I was pursuing Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I really did.
SPEAKER_00: I was I was in the ministry, I was preaching every Wednesday night and teaching Bible studies on Sundays.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that is kind of a, I feel like a dual-edged sword is that if you grow up in church and you live your life in church and most of your relationships are in church, that's got a lot of good things to it.
SPEAKER_00: But a lot of times we can also get lulled into this normalcy of I'm doing the church thing, I show up and I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing.
SPEAKER_00: And and this is the the the verse that Paul says, I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his suffering, becoming like him in his death.
SPEAKER_00: And so somehow to attain to the resurrection of the dead.
SPEAKER_00: Not that I've attained these things or I've been made perfect, but I press on towards the goal to claim the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, and all of us should take such a view on things.
SPEAKER_00: And that was really kind of what I thought I was doing, right?
SPEAKER_00: I was on staff at a church and I was pursuing God, and I was having a conversation at one point with a guy named Johnny Morgan.
SPEAKER_00: Many of you guys might know him, and he was asking me, Well, how do you get spiritually fed?
SPEAKER_00: What do you do?
SPEAKER_00: Because one of the one of the things, and it's encouraging to me that your ministers are taking time to to you know be together and work on themselves because it gets really easy when you're in the ministry that all your time in the word you're preparing to teach somebody else or talk to somebody else.
SPEAKER_00: And and what is what is your opportunity for the word to be changing you and for God to be leaning to you?
SPEAKER_00: And so he'd been having these conversations with me.
SPEAKER_00: And it it came in a time in my life where this very interesting thing was going on.
SPEAKER_00: See, I never hunted growing up, as you could probably you're probably shocked to hear I'm ADHD.
SPEAKER_00: And that doesn't really work real well if you're trying to sit in a deer stand because I'm like, I'm in the deer stand for eight minutes, where are all the deer at?
SPEAKER_00: So I never hunted as a kid, but when we got pregnant with our first kid, I was like, man, I want to learn how to hunt so I can teach my boys how to hunt.
SPEAKER_00: Well, first couple years of hunting, I had very little, very little success deer hunting, as you can probably imagine why.
SPEAKER_00: I've gotten better as I've gotten older.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but Johnny, the same guy that had this conversation with me about how you get spiritually fed, had called me one day, and I think he had heard I'd had so little success, he was trying to throw me a bone.
SPEAKER_00: He was like, Hey, I know you're not super excited about how you're deer hunting going.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever thought about going hog hunting?
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, That sounds interesting.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know what do I need?
SPEAKER_00: He said, Do you got a pistol?
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Yeah, I got a nine millimeter.
SPEAKER_00: And he's like, Do you got a knife with a long blade?
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Well, I got a buck knife with a six-inch blade, and he was like, That won't be long enough.
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Well, what are we, sword fighting the pigs?
SPEAKER_00: Like, what do you mean, not long enough?
SPEAKER_00: And so I said, Tell me about this process.
SPEAKER_00: And so he starts to tell me about hog dogging.
SPEAKER_00: He and some of his friends and family did what was called hog dogging.
SPEAKER_00: And hog dogging was you had dogs and a bunch of guys and some four-wheelers, and some of your dogs had GPS collars on them, and some of them were called catch dogs, and you kept them on the four-wheeler, and you would let the chase dogs go, and they would chase hogs, and you'd watch them on GPS, and you'd ride around on the four-wheeler.
SPEAKER_00: And when the hog got bait up, which meant it was done fight running and it was time to fight, then you got in real close and you let the catch dogs go in, and the catch dogs would go in, they'd grab hold of the hog, and then you, as the hunter, had to go in with the knife and put the pig down.
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, hold up a second, we're talking hunting.
SPEAKER_00: There's technology involved.
SPEAKER_00: I get to be on four-wheelers with my friends, and there's dogs, and I get to stab a hog and get bacon.
SPEAKER_00: I was like, sign me up.
SPEAKER_00: This is my kind of hunting.
SPEAKER_00: And it was, it was extremely exciting and really amazing.
SPEAKER_00: And what was crazy about it was like it wasn't until like my third time that I went that I actually got to put down a hog because you got to be the fastest one.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever gets the hog quickest gets to put down the hog or whatever, which I was not the fastest one.
SPEAKER_00: As you could probably tell, I'm gonna get out of breath a couple of times here before the sermon's over.
SPEAKER_00: But I remember like we were chasing some hogs, uh, a hog, and the dogs went through what used to be called Nickens Lake Hunting Club.
SPEAKER_00: It's now a subdivision up there, you know, on the other side of Jubit.
SPEAKER_00: And the the hog goes through the water and the dogs go off after it, and the guy that owned the dogs started taking off all his equipment.
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, What are you doing?
SPEAKER_00: He's like, We gotta go after him.
SPEAKER_00: I said, Through the water?
SPEAKER_00: He's like, Yeah, those are young dogs, they're gonna get drowned if we don't.
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm sticking my stuff off, and I got my knife over my head, and I'm wading through chest deep water, and Indiana Jones is playing in my head.
SPEAKER_00: Only because they made me stop playing it on my phone.
SPEAKER_00: But like, it was such an exciting and incredible time.
SPEAKER_00: And I got to go over there and I got to kill this hog, and it was super exciting.
SPEAKER_00: Now, here's the thing: the reason I'm telling you the story is because probably the most profound moment of conviction that I remember that's in my operational memory happened as I was leaving Nick and Lake Hunting Club.
SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't like an audible voice, it wasn't like God spoke to me in an audible voice, but as I was driving out, I got to the place where the fence is, and I go to open up the fence.
SPEAKER_00: And as I'm opening up the fence, I'm just overwhelmed with the conviction that I pursue God more like I set a deer stand than like I hunted hogs.
SPEAKER_00: Now, let me give you some clarity on that.
SPEAKER_00: When I started hunting, I was not successful.
SPEAKER_00: Part of the reason I wasn't successful is I didn't do anything.
SPEAKER_00: My father-in-law had some deer stands on some property that I didn't work.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't plow it, I didn't plant it, I didn't put out feeders or cameras.
SPEAKER_00: I'd show up and sit down with a gun and hope a deer showed up.
SPEAKER_00: And if it didn't show up, I was kind of ticked.
SPEAKER_00: And I was convicted because in that moment, God was revealing to me that my pursuit of Christ looked more like sitting a deer stand than like chasing after hogs.
SPEAKER_00: Because my pursuit of Christ looked a whole lot like me showing up twice a week on a Sunday, on a Wednesday, sitting down in the pew, patting my back and waiting for God to show up.
SPEAKER_00: And if he didn't, I was kind of ticked.
SPEAKER_00: If he didn't, I would probably go, well, the the music man should have picked a different song or the preacher should have done a different verse or something like that.
SPEAKER_00: And I was just overwhelmed with conviction that I wasn't chasing Jesus very well.
SPEAKER_00: I wasn't living the life of pursuit, but partly because I lived in the Christian world and everything I did was the Christian world, and it all kind of got normalized in an unhealthy way.
SPEAKER_00: And I wasn't pursuing after Jesus, and I wasn't having the things that happen when you pursue after Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite verses that I spent most of my life having a huge misunderstanding of is Philippians chapter 4.
SPEAKER_00: So I quoted that verse earlier.
SPEAKER_00: That's Paul in Philippians 3.
SPEAKER_00: In Philippians 4 13, he says, I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.
SPEAKER_00: And I misunderstood that verse.
SPEAKER_00: I used to think that verse meant if I believe hard enough, I can be successful.
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, I actually wrote that verse on my uh my cleats in football, which was hilarious because I also wrote die on my mouthpiece.
SPEAKER_00: So I had like Bible verses on my foot, and then I'd smile across line and be like, I love Jesus and I want to send you to see him or something.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what I was trying to convey, but I had this concept that if I believed hard enough, I I could be successful.
SPEAKER_00: And that's not what that verse means.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, if you go back and you read verses 4, 11, and 12, it says this.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying this because I am in need, for I've learned to be content in whatever the circumstances.
SPEAKER_00: I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty.
SPEAKER_00: I have learned the secret to being content in every situation, whether well-fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
SPEAKER_00: You see, if we're pursuing Jesus well, we can deal with whatever's gonna come.
SPEAKER_00: And part of the reason I'm preaching this this week is whenever Jason had text me, we were going through some stuff.
SPEAKER_00: We had just lost a vehicle.
SPEAKER_00: We gone from a three-vehicle family with two driving teenagers that both have jobs to a two-vehicle family, which is really hard.
SPEAKER_00: And I was kind of freaking out and in despair, right?
SPEAKER_00: And then something happened.
SPEAKER_00: I a young girl that was in my last youth group, she was in sixth grade when I was uh when I stopped doing youth ministry.
SPEAKER_00: She got into a terrible accident.
SPEAKER_00: She and her friend were driving down the road, and this guy doing like a hundred miles in a curb, lost control, hit him head on.
SPEAKER_00: He he lost his life.
SPEAKER_00: She got a broken femur, and her friend had all kinds of internal injuries.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason I'm telling you this is because I want to share with you what happened and I asked for permission before I said this.
SPEAKER_00: Her name's Olivia.
SPEAKER_00: We went to see Olivia last week in the hospital room.
SPEAKER_00: And I am freaking out because I ain't got, but we're a two-vehicle family.
SPEAKER_00: We're and we go in, and here's this poor girl with a broken femur who just had a rod put in her leg, who called her mama from the car because she said, Well, this is what's funny.
SPEAKER_00: She called 911, she said, and I hung up on them because they were not being very helpful.
SPEAKER_00: And then she called her mama because she said, I don't want to die alone.
SPEAKER_00: Can you get here?
SPEAKER_00: Because she was that sure she was about to die.
SPEAKER_00: And she is in the midst of a terrible recovery.
SPEAKER_00: She's probably gonna miss her first year of college because she's got so much rehab to do.
SPEAKER_00: And we went to see her, and she led us in a praise and worship song, y'all.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sitting there going, Oh my god, I don't have three cars.
SPEAKER_00: What a first world problem! And here's this young lady with a broken femur whose whole life has been altered, maybe for the rest of her life.
SPEAKER_00: And she's sitting there leading us, all my life, you have been faithful.
SPEAKER_00: All my life, you have been so, so good.
SPEAKER_00: You see, guys, when you're chasing the right thing, when you're pursuing Jesus well, whatever comes, it doesn't matter because you're chasing something else.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I didn't get that promotion at work, it doesn't matter, I'm chasing something else.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I lost a vehicle, it doesn't matter, I'm chasing something else.
SPEAKER_00: Well, that relationship didn't go, it doesn't matter because I'm chasing something else.
SPEAKER_00: And I feel like too many times, those of us that are believers, we get into a posture where we don't pursue Jesus well.
SPEAKER_00: We don't chase after him.
SPEAKER_00: We gotta just show up like we sit at a deer stand, sit a couple times a week and expect him to show up.
SPEAKER_00: And so I want to lean into you and share with you what I feel like are my biggest reasons that I've struggled to pursue Jesus well and that I feel like I've seen a lot in the church.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: So if you got your Bible, flip over to Mark chapter six.
SPEAKER_00: Mark chapter six.
SPEAKER_00: Now um, let's see.
SPEAKER_00: So uh again, I'm a little bit ADHD.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, not Mark, Matthew 6.
SPEAKER_00: Did I say Mark?
SPEAKER_00: I apologize.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: I'm looking at it going, where's it at?
SPEAKER_00: It's in a different book.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew chapter 6, starting in verse 19.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm very ADHD.
SPEAKER_00: I grew up in the 80s.
SPEAKER_00: We didn't believe in ADHD in the 80s.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, all my teachers did.
SPEAKER_00: They were always like, Have you ever been tested for ADD?
SPEAKER_00: Had one conversation with my mom about it.
SPEAKER_00: I said, Mom, I think I'm ADD.
SPEAKER_00: She said, I think you're D U M.
SPEAKER_00: Go do your homework.
SPEAKER_00: And that was the last time we ever talked about it.
SPEAKER_00: That was it.
SPEAKER_00: Never medicated, struggled in school my whole life.
SPEAKER_00: I wasn't officially diagnosed until I was an adult.
SPEAKER_00: I'd had a closed head injury, didn't lose consciousness.
SPEAKER_00: They had to send me to all kinds of specialists.
SPEAKER_00: I was sitting there with the psychiatrist and he's like, What age did you get diagnosed with ADD?
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, I don't have ADHD.
SPEAKER_00: And he was like, fascinating.
SPEAKER_00: Well, let's run some attention tests real quick, which I failed miserably.
SPEAKER_00: It was awesome.
SPEAKER_00: But I remember kind of feeling a little bit offended after I got that diagnosis.
SPEAKER_00: And for some reason, this passage jumped out at me.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna tell you why, not some reason, I'll tell you why.
SPEAKER_00: This is a passage in Matthew chapter six.
SPEAKER_00: And again, I'm wanting to talk to you about reasons that I've struggled to pursue Jesus well.
SPEAKER_00: As somebody who's been a believer since I was a kid, I haven't always pursued Jesus well, even when I thought I was at times.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew chapter 6, starting in verse 19, do not store it for yourself treasures on earth where moth and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal, but store it for yourself treasures in heaven, where moth and vermin do not destroy, and thieves don't break in steal, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
SPEAKER_00: The eye is the lamp of the body, and if your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light.
SPEAKER_00: But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness.
SPEAKER_00: Then if the light within you in darkness, how great is that darkness?
SPEAKER_00: No one can serve two masters.
SPEAKER_00: He'll either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot serve God and money.
SPEAKER_00: So when I first read this passage as an adult with ADHD, I went, Jesus was ADHD.
SPEAKER_00: Look at this.
SPEAKER_00: He's talking about money, and then he's talking about eyeballs, and then he's talking about money, and that feels like me.
SPEAKER_00: I look, it would be a totally normal thing for me to call Keith and be like, Keith, I bounced a check.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what happened.
SPEAKER_00: I thought I had money.
SPEAKER_00: Did you know in LASIKs they cut your eye open and shoot it with a laser?
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, I got a$35 NSF fee.
SPEAKER_00: That's a normal conversation for somebody with ADHD, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so when I read this passage, I was like, Jesus is ADHD.
SPEAKER_00: Check this out.
SPEAKER_00: He's not, y'all.
SPEAKER_00: When you dive into this, he's not ADHD.
SPEAKER_00: He's not jumping all over the place.
SPEAKER_00: This is a perfect teaching analogy right here.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is talking to a group of people whose concept of success was financial success and stability.
SPEAKER_00: If you were right financially, you were right.
SPEAKER_00: So much so that, like in another passage, Jesus says it is difficult for a rich person to get into heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know what his disciples said?
SPEAKER_00: Then who can be saved?
SPEAKER_00: Like, oh my gosh, then who can be saved?
SPEAKER_00: He is talking to a people who really, their standard of success is financial stability and success.
SPEAKER_00: And he says this, don't store it for yourself treasures here.
SPEAKER_00: And then he says, if your eye is broken, your whole body will be full of darkness.
SPEAKER_00: And I expand this because I don't think we can just leave it at the financial thing.
SPEAKER_00: I think that this is a teaching on the standard of success.
SPEAKER_00: And I find it in my own life personally and in the life of a lot of people that grew up in churches and participate in churches, one of the reasons that as believers we struggle to pursue Jesus well is because we live by the wrong standards of success.
SPEAKER_00: It's terrible as Christians when we are living by the world standards of success.
SPEAKER_00: When what gets us up in the morning and what we think about right before we go to bed tonight is the same thing that the lost world is chasing after.
SPEAKER_00: How many of us that know Jesus and have come to a place that we have trusted in him and believe in him like life depends on it, spend our life chasing the American dream more than we chase Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: You know?
SPEAKER_00: And you know, the the thing is, is we also can't be shocked when the lost world doesn't see Jesus in us when we spend all our time chasing the same things they are.
SPEAKER_00: And too many times as Christians, we don't pursue Jesus well because what we're consumed with is everything that everybody else that's not a believer says is successful.
SPEAKER_00: It's crazy.
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm of the position, I'm of the mindset, well, then what should my standard of success be?
SPEAKER_00: My standard of success as a believer, I believe, should be obedience.
SPEAKER_00: I I'm convinced of it that is a that like I and I'll give you some reasons why, like some of the passages, oh, I didn't write down the actual passages, but I wanted to share some with you.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, some of the benefits, there's untold amount of benefits for being obedient.
SPEAKER_00: But if you live a life as a believer with uh a standard of successive obedience, there's so many things that come along with that.
SPEAKER_00: One of the big ones that jumps out is stability.
SPEAKER_00: You know, Jesus talks about the person that doesn't hears these things, words of mine, but doesn't do them is like the person that builds their house on the sand.
SPEAKER_00: And then the person that hears these words of mine and puts them into practice and does them is the guy that built his house on the rock.
SPEAKER_00: And when the storm comes, not if a storm, when the storm comes, the house on the sand falls.
SPEAKER_00: If you're obedient, you're gonna have stability.
SPEAKER_00: It's one of the many benefits that you know it was crazy.
SPEAKER_00: Whenever, whenever COVID happened, everybody was tail spinning.
SPEAKER_00: We were really tail spinning.
SPEAKER_00: Well, my oldest son had a uretal pelvic junction obstruction the same time that COVID was going crazy, and then they were like, oh, he's high risk.
SPEAKER_00: We were washing groceries on our front porch before we brought him in because we were so scared of COVID-19, right?
SPEAKER_00: And you know, one of the things that uh shook me was how there were certain Christians, certain believers, I'm gonna throw Johnny's name out again, that during the midst of all of it were just good.
SPEAKER_00: They had that stability.
SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, I'm just gonna follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, just were it so simple, Johnny.
SPEAKER_00: It was.
SPEAKER_00: He just followed Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: If you follow Jesus and live a life of obedience, you're gonna have stability.
SPEAKER_00: Another big one is you're gonna have identity.
SPEAKER_00: James 1, it says, be a doer of the word, not a hearer only.
SPEAKER_00: If you're a hearer only, you're like a man that looks himself in the mirror and walks away and forgets who he is.
SPEAKER_00: But if you're a doer in the word, you will be blessed in what you do.
SPEAKER_00: You'll never have to wonder who you are if you're following Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: If that's your primary goal, your standard of success is obedience.
SPEAKER_00: No matter what age or stage in life you're gonna go through, you'll never have to wonder who you are.
SPEAKER_00: So, stability, identity, those are things that are examples of benefits of obedience, which should be our standard of success as followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And many of us don't pursue him well because our standard of success, look, and I'll just be honest, when I was in high school, what was my standard of success?
SPEAKER_00: I love Jesus, but my standard was popularity.
SPEAKER_00: People think I'm funny, they like what I'm wearing.
SPEAKER_00: You can probably tell I've gotten past that one.
SPEAKER_00: Uh one of my clients the other day was like, you know, overalls are the crocs of clothing, right?
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Oh, okay, well, they're comfortable.
SPEAKER_00: Uh but when I was in high school, my standard of success was how many people liked me?
SPEAKER_00: You know, how easy is it to get into a place where our standard of success is again the American dream, the financial goals that we're chasing after?
SPEAKER_00: And so I want to challenge you to think is what does your pursuit of Jesus Christ look like as a believer?
SPEAKER_00: It's real easy to get into a position where we've gotten normalized to it and our pursuit of Jesus is warming a chair twice a week and patting ourselves on the back for our attendance.
SPEAKER_00: Are we chasing after him?
SPEAKER_00: Or are we setting a standard of obedience?
SPEAKER_00: What does God want you to do right now?
SPEAKER_00: What if I ask you right now, one of the things we used to do with my Sunday school class a long time ago, we had an obedience goal for the week.
SPEAKER_00: What does God want you to be obedient in?
SPEAKER_00: If you're like, I don't know, it's not because God don't want to tell you something to be obedient in.
SPEAKER_00: Are you making yourself available to him?
SPEAKER_00: Are are you participating in the word and the worship?
SPEAKER_00: And then the next one I want to get to, uh, so this is 1 Corinthians chapter 12.
SPEAKER_00: So just to recap, because I'm bad at this with the note-taking thing.
SPEAKER_00: I think we struggle with our pursuit of God.
SPEAKER_00: One of the big reasons I think we struggle with it is because we live by the wrong standards of success.
SPEAKER_00: One of the other reasons I believe we struggle with it is because of the way we participate or don't participate in the body.
SPEAKER_00: First Corinthians chapter 12.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says this.
SPEAKER_00: Even so the body is not made up of one part, but of many.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if the foot should say, Because I'm not the hand, I don't belong to the body, it would not for that reason stop being a part of the body.
SPEAKER_00: And if the ear should say, Because I am not an eye, I don't belong to the body, it would not for that reason stop being a part of the body.
SPEAKER_00: If the whole body were nigh, where would the sense of hearing be?
SPEAKER_00: And if the whole body were near, where would the sense of smell be?
SPEAKER_00: But in fact, God has placed the parts in the body, each one of them, just as he wanted them to be.
SPEAKER_00: Now, here's the thing.
SPEAKER_00: Um, am I gonna squeal if I walk down in front of these things?
SPEAKER_00: Hey, Matt, could you throw me my phone real quick?
SPEAKER_00: Uh I want to share with you we've got any history buffs in here?
SPEAKER_00: History buffs?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, this is a fascinating thing.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you guys might find this interesting, some of you guys might not.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, there's this name, Agrippus, Agrippa Meninius Latinus.
SPEAKER_00: Most of you guys probably never heard that name.
SPEAKER_00: I never heard that name before.
SPEAKER_00: I did a deep dive on this passage.
SPEAKER_00: Um, now here's the thing.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if Paul and the Corinthians knew his name.
SPEAKER_00: They probably did.
SPEAKER_00: Um, they definitely knew of the analogy if they were a Roman citizen and grew up in Roman schools, because Paul Agrippus Meninius Latinus was actually um a Roman um, so you had the plebs, which were like the common people, and you had the patricians, which were like the ruling class.
SPEAKER_00: And most people in the Senate and in Rome were patricians.
SPEAKER_00: Um, sorry, I gotta open my phone.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so there was this time where there was a revolt where the plebs pretty much had gotten to a point where they were like, what good is the government?
SPEAKER_00: Can anybody identify with that?
SPEAKER_00: Like, what do we do?
SPEAKER_00: Like, we do all the work, we do everything that supports the Roman Empire, we do everything that makes it function, and then they got all these people in Rome.
SPEAKER_00: That what are they doing?
SPEAKER_00: What are they good for?
SPEAKER_00: And they started to have a rebellion, an uprising.
SPEAKER_00: And Agrippa Meninius Latinus was the first, was the guy that is credited with quelling that rebellion.
SPEAKER_00: And the way he did it was through an analogy, an analogy of the belly.
SPEAKER_00: And this was what his analogy was like, yes.
SPEAKER_00: Roman countrymen, you were like the arms and the legs and the feet of the empire, but we, the Senate and Rome are like the belly.
SPEAKER_00: And you need us because we send all the nutrients out or whatever.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know exactly how he extrapolated it, but that was kind of his story.
SPEAKER_00: And it was apparently successful and it apparently had quelled the rebellion.
SPEAKER_00: And so the reason I'm bringing that up is because this is a cool analogy that Paul uses here, but Paul is tapping into something.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't the first time they've heard an analogy of a body.
SPEAKER_00: And I was trying to think of something that, like Paul, is actually appealing to their civic pride and sense of responsibility.
SPEAKER_00: As Roman Christians, he's tapping into something.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I couldn't think of anything that was an exact thing that you could say that would evoke feelings, but this is something I came up with.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Does that evoke some feelings, right?
SPEAKER_00: For most of us, yeah, we get a little bit jacked up when we hear that kind of a thing.
SPEAKER_00: When Paul is talking to these Roman Christians in Corinth and he's referencing this idea of the body, he's tapping into their sense of civic responsibility and duty, but then he's tying it to something that's so much bigger than the empire of Rome.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, you have a part to play.
SPEAKER_00: You have something that you participate in, not for the glory of Rome, but for the glory of the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not something that, you know, it's something that you get to participate in.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the thing is nothing that you do in life will echo eternity except your pursuit of Jesus and your participation in the body of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And he's tapping into this and going, like, do you realize how important this is?
SPEAKER_00: Do you realize how important that you have a role to play?
SPEAKER_00: And one of the reasons that I feel like we struggle to pursue Jesus well is because too many times as Christians, we just kind of we've been around church our whole life.
SPEAKER_00: We go, we'd go when we look, I'm gonna pick on it, pick on a couple families because they're my fan club and they don't live in these areas anymore.
SPEAKER_00: But we got two families here that spent significant time in a place you couldn't talk about the body of Christ, because it was dangerous to people's lives.
SPEAKER_00: People could die participating in the body of Christ, and these families moved their families there and their kids there.
SPEAKER_00: Why would they do that?
SPEAKER_00: Because it's important, because it's the most important thing in the world, and too many times as Christians, we just don't participate.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just not gonna go.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not feeling it.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of us do not follow Jesus, pursue Jesus well because we don't participate in the body of Christ like we should.
SPEAKER_00: And what am I saying when I say participate in the body of Christ like we should?
SPEAKER_00: I don't mean just attendance.
SPEAKER_00: My favorite passage from Proverbs is iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
SPEAKER_00: I think we lose in translation what that verse meant.
SPEAKER_00: You know, unless you grew up in an agrarian setting, you might not realize that iron only sharpens iron when it comes together repeatedly at the right angle to cause the kind of friction to rub off junk that's not the point.
SPEAKER_00: What does that look like?
SPEAKER_00: What does that look like in a crew?
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't look like, hey, we're gonna sit together and you know, I mean, like we've gotten so good at church, like my brother and I grew up, we're my dad's my pastor.
SPEAKER_00: Like we are so good at church at everything being great.
SPEAKER_00: I swear this probably happened, but if it didn't, it could have.
SPEAKER_00: Tyson and I could have been fist fighting in the car on the way to church.
SPEAKER_00: And when you step across that threshold, how you doing?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I'm 500 frog hair.
SPEAKER_00: If I was any better, I'd be twins, right?
SPEAKER_00: We're so good at putting this mask on.
SPEAKER_00: Where is the iron sharpened iron?
SPEAKER_00: Where is the relationship where we can get up into each other's junk and ask each other the hard question?
SPEAKER_00: And and that's a thing that you've got to intentionally participate in.
SPEAKER_00: It's not something that's gonna naturally happen.
SPEAKER_00: I love the church.
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of places that the church struggles.
SPEAKER_00: You're not gonna find a relationship like this in in Sunday school.
SPEAKER_00: If I rolled up into Sunday school and was like, Tyson, what part of your life right now needs to come under the Lordship of Christ?
SPEAKER_00: People would be like, have a donut and a seat.
SPEAKER_00: We have a lesson.
SPEAKER_00: We don't do that in here.
SPEAKER_00: Why we we need to.
SPEAKER_00: We need to.
SPEAKER_00: Um, this place a long time ago was where our small group was at.
SPEAKER_00: And it was a sweet season for my family, for my wife and I especially.
SPEAKER_00: I think the boys enjoyed it.
SPEAKER_00: They were most of the time down at the river or something.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know where they were.
SPEAKER_00: Most of the time we were doing small group and stuff.
SPEAKER_00: But having those kinds of relationships that you can lean into each other and ask each other hard questions.
SPEAKER_00: Who are the people in your life that is the iron sharpens iron?
SPEAKER_00: Who knows what you struggle with?
SPEAKER_00: Who has the ability to go, Jared?
SPEAKER_00: I know you struggle with pride, and I know you struggle with your attitude, and I know you struggle with whatever it is that you struggle with.
SPEAKER_00: Who has permission to lean into you?
SPEAKER_00: Um, my kids were growing up, there was this uh show called Lego Ninjago, and in Lego Ninjago, the they had the bad villain, and you had the heroes, and somehow the bad villain's son ends up being raised by the heroes.
SPEAKER_00: Really kind of weird thing.
SPEAKER_00: And uh there was one episode where they there's a confrontation and they meet, and the kid's like talking to his dad, and he's like, You ruined my life.
SPEAKER_00: And his dad says, How could I have ruined your life?
SPEAKER_00: I was never even there.
SPEAKER_00: That's kind of a dark joke for Lego, you know, because it's like, oh, ugh.
SPEAKER_00: But the reality is this is that like we've gotten to a place in America in the American Christian church that we're really comfortable with the idea that we go to church for self-edification.
SPEAKER_00: That I go to church and God's gonna lean into me and I'm gonna have a great and I'm gonna be in the word.
SPEAKER_00: And if you don't show up, other people suffer.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't participate, other people can't be where they need to be with the because we are built for this community.
SPEAKER_00: We are built to be a part and we have this duty and this responsibility.
SPEAKER_00: And if we don't participate like we should, we're not gonna be able to pursue Jesus in the way that we should.
SPEAKER_00: We're not gonna be able to live that life where we're like, hey, you know what?
SPEAKER_00: Everything's falling apart, but it's okay because I'm chasing something else.
SPEAKER_00: I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
SPEAKER_00: And so I want to ask you to consider this is as a believer, are you in danger of not pursuing Jesus well because you've been in the church for so long, it's got normalized that you just kind of hang out and you know, do your thing and show up a couple times a week?
SPEAKER_00: Have you fallen into that pattern, or do we pursue Jesus well with a standard of success that says, I want to focus on being obedient?
SPEAKER_00: Lord, show me what that means.
SPEAKER_00: There was a guy that said something, I can't remember his name, I wish I could, so I could credit him.
SPEAKER_00: I was at a camp bringing kids to church, and I was really uh gotten to this point.
SPEAKER_00: I was on this read the Bible through the year, and I was checking the boxes and whatever, and he stood up, he said, Stop reading the Bible to finish and read the Bible to be changed.
SPEAKER_00: That was a good word, man.
SPEAKER_00: And are are we there in our pursuit of Jesus in our time of the word?
SPEAKER_00: Are we there where we're like, I want to go the word so I can look for what you're telling me to be obedient in?
SPEAKER_00: So that I can look for what you need to change in me.
SPEAKER_00: Man, the longer I follow Jesus, the more I realize that the big three, my time in the word, my time in prayer, and my time in the body, their biggest effect if I'm doing them well is to change me.
SPEAKER_00: It's to make and I've been following Jesus since I was a kid, and I've got a lifetime ahead of me to follow Jesus and experience change to look more like him.
SPEAKER_00: And so, are you living by the right standards of success?
SPEAKER_00: Are you participating in the body like you should?
SPEAKER_00: Do you have those people that can lean into you?
SPEAKER_00: Do you have those people that know the things you struggle with so that they can ask you the hard questions?
SPEAKER_00: And the last thing I'm gonna say is this is that um some of you might struggle to pursue Jesus well if you don't know it.
SPEAKER_00: You might not.
SPEAKER_00: Um, I feel like one of the things we have a hard time doing well, it feels like, especially again, if you're growing up in church your whole life, is really talking about salvation and saving faith and what that looks like.
SPEAKER_00: Um, because we use all kinds of interesting phrases, they're really not, we use them in ways that they weren't meant in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Like we'll say, like, you know, Jesus, I have a personal relationship with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And it does say, like, he will be closer to you, you know, than any brother.
SPEAKER_00: And we say, ask Jesus in my heart.
SPEAKER_00: There's one place that I can find that Paul says that, which is kind of weird because if you understand the Greek and Hebrew concept of heart, it was the seat of the will.
SPEAKER_00: It's a little bit different kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: I don't remember which one of my kids it was.
SPEAKER_00: I think it was Justice, but we were at a thing one time and somebody said, You come down, you can ask Jesus in your heart, and Jesus, Justice.
SPEAKER_00: He said, Is that why we get heartburned?
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Yes.
SPEAKER_00: No, don't say that to anybody.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what that looks like.
SPEAKER_00: We talk about being saved, we talk about having a personal relationship with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Um, most people are very familiar with the the thing that a lot of people call the gospel in short, which is John 3.16.
SPEAKER_00: I always tell the kids in my youth group, I'm always like, do not quote John 3.16 unless you quote and explain John 3, 14, and 15, and explain what's going on in Numbers 21, which most of us don't know, because John 3.16, which most of us know, for God so loved the world and gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him shouldn't perish but have everlasting life.
SPEAKER_00: That is a commentary on John 3, 14 and 15 and what was going on in Numbers 21.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus is talking to Nicodemus about the nature of the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And when it comes to the part of that conversation where they're talking about faith to be saved, Jesus says this as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him will have eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: Now, we kind of skip past that because that sounds like some kind of weird Appalachian church up in the mountains that is dancing with snakes or something, right?
SPEAKER_00: You know who didn't struggle with that?
SPEAKER_00: Nicodemus.
SPEAKER_00: Nicodemus was the Pharisee.
SPEAKER_00: He had the first five books of the Old Testament committed to memory.
SPEAKER_00: He knew that was Numbers 21.
SPEAKER_00: So what's going on in Numbers 21?
SPEAKER_00: The people of Israel, on their way out of Egypt, they get ticked.
SPEAKER_00: They're not liking the food, they're not liking the circumstances, they curse God and they curse Moses.
SPEAKER_00: So snakes get sent in among them and they're being bitten and they are dying.
SPEAKER_00: And so pretty quickly they go, hey, we made a mistake.
SPEAKER_00: Moses, intercede for us.
SPEAKER_00: So Moses prays, and God says to Moses, make a bronze snake and put it on a stick.
SPEAKER_00: And if any man is bit, if he will look at that snake, he will live.
SPEAKER_00: And then it moves on.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus is talking about the kind of faith that's necessary to be a part of the kingdom, he references an Old Testament story that never mentions faith.
SPEAKER_00: And what Nicodemus got that we lose in translation is this saving faith looks like this.
SPEAKER_00: You got to believe in Jesus like life depends on it.
SPEAKER_00: It's not some intellectual assent to this idea that he was there.
SPEAKER_00: I think one of the biggest mission fields, unfortunately, is in church because I think we have a lot of people who have come to that place where they believe in Jesus like life depends on it.
SPEAKER_00: And then I think we got a lot of people who believe in Jesus like they believe in George Washington.
SPEAKER_00: They believe he's there.
SPEAKER_00: He's a good dude.
SPEAKER_00: They like what he had to say, they never met the man.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the thing is that's not even something we can do.
SPEAKER_00: It's not something we can accomplish.
SPEAKER_00: I cannot, I cannot pull myself up by my spiritual bootstraps and believe really hard and believe in Jesus like life just depends on it.
SPEAKER_00: That's something that can only happen as a response.
SPEAKER_00: When the Holy Spirit shows up and goes, Let me let you in on the reality, I'm a reality.
SPEAKER_00: That's when you have the opportunity to respond in the only way that's appropriate, which is to give everything to him.
SPEAKER_00: You know, that's why it says we are saved by grace through faith and that not of ourselves, lest any man should boast, how could my faith not be of me?
SPEAKER_00: Because the kind of faith that's necessary to believe in Jesus, like life depends on it, only can happen when he shows up in your life and goes, Hey, I'm here.
SPEAKER_00: This is who I am.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that's an important thing for you to consider is it's impossible to pursue Jesus well if you've never come to that point.
SPEAKER_00: That point where you recognize who he is and that he is everything that he said he is, and that you respond in again the only way that is appropriate, which is to give him everything, and to pursue him with everything, and to live a life where your standard of success is pursuit of him in obedience to him, and participate in the body.
SPEAKER_00: Again, it's just I'll end on this.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of jarring to me that we got again, I'm not sorry to keep picking on y'all, but we got two families that are here that serve significant amount of times in places where you couldn't talk about church, you had to do it in secret.
SPEAKER_00: Move their families there.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because there is nothing that's gonna echo in eternity like our pursuit of Christ and our participation in the body, and it's worth it.
SPEAKER_00: And we don't really take it all that seriously a lot of times.
SPEAKER_00: And so here's what I want to ask you to do.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna come to a time of response.
SPEAKER_00: Jason will be in the back.
SPEAKER_00: I just want to ask you to do a couple of things.
SPEAKER_00: It's my my prayer is that we never come in contact with the word of God and walk away the same people.
SPEAKER_00: And so I want to ask you to, in the next couple of moments, while we have our moment of our time of response, I want to ask you to invite the Holy Spirit into your life and just to shine truth in your life.
SPEAKER_00: Are you pursuing Jesus well?
SPEAKER_00: Are you living a life that has a standard of obedience?
SPEAKER_00: Are you pursuing other things?
SPEAKER_00: And it's easy, man.
SPEAKER_00: It's easy.
SPEAKER_00: I got three kids and a wonderful wife, and it's easy for them to sometimes get into the wrong priority in my life, right?
SPEAKER_00: Are we pursuing well because we have the right standard of success?
SPEAKER_00: Are we participating in the body of Christ like we should?
SPEAKER_00: And this is what I want to ask you to do is just and again invite the Holy Spirit to just shine its light of truth into your life.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe you need to either in this time of response or after service, go talk to somebody in the body and say, hey, I don't have those iron-sharpened iron.
SPEAKER_00: And I need them.
SPEAKER_00: We all need them.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you need to talk to somebody about the standards of success you find that you're living by because they don't they don't look like what Jesus' standards of success would be.
SPEAKER_00: And and and if you're here today and you have never come to that point where the Holy Spirit has shown up in your life and let you in on the reality he's a reality, and you have not responded to him with complete and total allegiance and obedience.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to challenge you, don't miss this opportunity.
SPEAKER_00: Don't miss this opportunity.
SPEAKER_00: Step out and do what you need to do.
SPEAKER_00: Would you bow with me as we pray?
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, I thank you for this time.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we thank you for your word.
SPEAKER_00: God, again, we just pray we never come in contact with your word and walk away the same people.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we pray that you would just shine your light of truth into our hearts and minds and souls right now, God.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, show us what are the standards that we're living by that are wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, what does our participation in the body of Christ look like?
SPEAKER_00: Father, we pray that you would give us the grace and the wisdom and the courage to make the changes we need to so we can pursue you well, so that when we come into the storms and the trials that are going to come, Lord, that we'll be able to go.
SPEAKER_00: I'm okay.
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm chasing somebody else.
SPEAKER_00: I'm chasing something else.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we love you and we just want to glorify your name in all we do.
SPEAKER_00: We lay these things at your feet in the name of your son Jesus.