Scorpion Lollipops | Colossians 2

Pastor Scott Smith- March 8, 2026

This message walks through Colossians 2 and reminds us that in a world filled with competing voices, philosophies, and opinions about how life should be lived, everything must be centered on Jesus Christ. Paul wrote to a young church that was being pulled in many directions—religious traditions, cultural expectations, and persuasive but empty ideas. This message emphasizes that real wisdom and knowledge are found in Christ alone, and that believers must let their roots grow deep in Him. Just like a tree with deep roots can withstand storms, a life grounded in the truth and teachings of Jesus remains steady when life becomes difficult.

This message also challenges the idea that we can earn right standing with God through rules, appearances, or external behavior. While discipline and devotion are good, they cannot replace the transforming work of the gospel. True spiritual growth happens from the inside out as we surrender every part of our lives to Jesus. The message calls believers to develop deep roots through spiritual disciplines—such as reading Scripture, prayer, generosity, fellowship, and celebration—so that faith becomes genuine and resilient. When we pursue these practices with humility and consistency, God grows our faith, strengthens our roots, and shapes our lives around the truth of the gospel.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

All right, so we are in a series called Colossians. We are going through the book of Colossians. There are four chapters in Colossians. One, two, three, four. It is a four-week series. Last week we started with Colossians chapter one. Can you guess what we are doing this week in week two, Colossians chapter two? And any geniuses in the room know where we're going week three? Yeah, you do. Wonderful. So I would even encourage you to maybe even go ahead and read uh chapter three this week so that next week, when you come back on Sunday, you're prepared to dig into that together. But we want to unpack it. We want to go through it, and I want to help everybody be able to check a box that said, This year you read a book of the Bible before Easter. So every week we are taking the top of the message and we are simply reading through the chapter, and that is what we are going to do as well this morning and for the next few weeks. Colossians chapter 2. So if you have your copy of God's word, you've got it on your phone, or if you just have a set of eyes that work, you can follow along on the screen. We're going to read this together, and then we are going to learn through it together. So here we go. Colossians chapter 2. Paul, the author, writes this I want you to know how much I have agonized for you and for the church at Laodicea, and for many other believers who have never met me personally. I want them to be encouraged and knit together by strong ties of love. I want them to have complete confidence that they understand God's mysterious plan, which is Christ himself. In him lie hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I am telling you this, so no one will deceive you with well-crafted arguments. For though I am far away from you, my heart is with you. And I rejoice that you are living as you should, and that your faith in Christ is strong. And now, just as you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, you must continue to follow Him. Let your roots grow down into Him and let your lives be built on Him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness. Don't let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the spiritual powers of this world rather than from Christ. For in Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body. So you are also complete through your union with Christ, who is the head over every ruler and authority. When you came to Christ, you were circumcised, but not by a physical procedure. Christ performed a spiritual circumcision, the cutting away of your sinful nature. For you were buried with Christ when you were baptized, and with him you were raised to new life, because you trusted the mighty power of God who raised Christ from the dead. You were dead because of your sins, and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, and he forgave all your sins. He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. In this way, he disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross. So don't let anyone condemn you for what you eat or drink, or for not celebrating certain holy days or new moon ceremonies or Sabbaths. For these rules are only shadows of the reality yet to come. And Christ Himself is that reality. Don't let anyone condemn you by insisting on pious self-denial or the worship of angels, saying they have had visions about these things. Their sinful minds have made them proud, and they are not connected to Christ, the head of the body. For he holds the whole body together with its joints and ligaments, and it grows as God nourishes it. You have died with Christ, and he has set you free from the spiritual powers of this world. So why do you keep on following the rules of the world, such as don't handle, don't taste, don't touch? Such rules are mere human teachings about things that deteriorate as we use them. These rules may seem wise because they require strong devotion, pious self-denial, and severe bodily discipline, but they provide no help in conquering a person's evil desires. That is Colossians chapter 2. And for context, the church here in Colossians is about five or six years old. It's young, it still had its bambi legs under it, it's still figuring out what we would call Christianity is all about. And Paul, the author here, with his protege Timothy, are having to passionately dole out instructions because the people in this city of Colossae are in need of knowing truly what it means to be a Jesus follower, to be a Christian, because they're coming from different backgrounds and they're inside of a cultural context where they've got thoughts and philosophies hitting them every which way. Those who maybe come from Jewish tradition were living in this old covenant. You've heard of it in the Old Testament, first half of your Bible, and there would be sacrifices and rituals and ceremonies and customs and practices that were required, and they're a good thing, and we'll talk about that in just a moment. But that's what they knew. Jesus came and he fulfilled all of that, which is why he says Christ Himself is that reality of all that's to come. The idea there was to get to a place with God, and we'll talk about that as we unpack this. And so they've got voices like that. Then they've got other voices in society that are telling them, well, the way we kind of worship the deities or the gods that we believe in, are you have to do A, B, C, and D. And so you've got this early group of Christians, Bambi legs under them, trying to figure out what it even means to be a Jesus follower, and they're getting hit on all sides with all sorts of voices, and they're trying to figure out, okay, what does it really mean to be a Jesus follower? So Paul writes this letter with his protege Timothy to this group, to this church, this young church, and he tells them look, everything must be centered on Jesus Christ. Who he is, what he has done, and who he will always be. That Christ is over all things. Church, what's our mission? We help people know and follow Jesus. Why? Because we believe Jesus changes everything, not just for the eternity of your soul, but for the entirety of your life. So Paul and Timothy are writing to this church and they are passionately doling out these instructions. And we're going to go through some of them in Colossians chapter 2, because there's a lot here for us. Even in verse 5, this is interesting. And I caught this, you know, as I was reading, because sometimes things will just grab you, depending on where you're at in life, your age, stage, phase of life. And sometimes you'll dig into the Word of God and it'll speak to you in ways that maybe you've read it 32 times before, but it hits you differently this time around. The Bible is beautifully written in such a way that it does that for us. He says in verse 5, he says, I rejoice that you are living as you should, and that your faith in Christ is strong. So I'll tell you, I have one of those weird jobs as a pastor. It's not a very normal job that you hear a lot of people have. And I get a lot of questions. You know, what's your favorite thing about being a pastor? What's the hardest thing about being a pastor? It's one of those jobs that if you're flying and someone sits next to you on the plane and you're making, you know, small talk and they ask, so what do you do for a living? You're hesitant to share it with them. Because here's what happens when you're on a plane and you tell someone you're a pastor. Either they completely shut down, they put in their headphones, and they don't even look at you. Or they spend the next five hours giving you their life in a country song, and it becomes that for you. And so it's a unique job, and I get these questions a lot, and one of them is, what's your favorite thing about being a pastor? And I'm just going to pull the curtain back into the mind and heart, at least as your pastor here, that what blesses the heart of a pastor more than anything is found right here in Colossians 5. I rejoice that you are living as you should, and that your faith in Christ is strong. You know what blesses the heart of a pastor? It's in the prayer meetings before service, and someone shares, hey, I've been inviting my friend to church. It's the first time they've ever walked into the doors of a church this week, and I'm so excited to see what God might do in their lives. It's the it's the person in our kids' ministry who shares in a in a small group setting that uh they put Bible verses on their hard hat at work so when they're on the job site, people are forced to see scripture and it starts conversations with them. It's so neat to hear those things. You know what else it is? It's the conversations that I have with the man in his mid-40s not long ago who said, Scott, I I've grown up in church. I spent my whole life in church as a kid, as a teenager, as a young adult, as a married man, and and I I've heard for 44 years of my life, I have heard, oh, you should be a generous person. God loves a cheerful giver. And I gotta tell you, Scott, I ignored it for 44 years. I started a business, I became successful, made a lot of money, and I never, ever understood why anybody would want to give any of their hard-earned money back to God and through the church. And he goes, and I thought, that is the craziest thing. It makes no sense. He goes, until I reached age 44 and realized I had been chasing security, comfort, fulfillment, respect, and status by how much dollars were in my bank account, and I realized that it never gave me what I thought it would give me. And so I decided maybe I'll try this generosity thing out. He said, I've never had more joy and more peace than doing this, and it makes no sense. He goes, why? Why would taking something I've worked for and giving it back, why would that make any sense? He goes, I can't explain it. It's a peace that only God can provide. It's hearing stories like that. You know what else? It's hearing stories of students showing up at a lunch club and sharing their testimony with a hundred plus other high school students in the gym because God has worked in their lives and them finding me in the lobby to tell me here's how it went. It's stories of people who are going through real stuff right now. And finding them in prayer circles on a Wednesday night, finding them being just flooded with care. People taking them meals and loving them. Do you know what that is? Those are stories of people living as you should and your faith growing strong. Nothing blesses the heart of a pastor like watching people live out their faith. And Paul shares kind of the purpose of chapter two here, which is interesting because he says in verse 3, he says, In him, Jesus, lie all hidden treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Because here's what Paul knows is happening, and it's not unlike what happens today. People are looking for wisdom and knowledge in all the wrong places. And we're not doing it because we're seeking to find bad advice. People are looking for truth. People are looking for wisdom, people are looking for knowledge on, okay, how do I live? How do I navigate parenthood? How do I navigate marriage? How do I navigate loss? How do I make decisions that are wise? How do I respond when somebody does this? How do I see the world when the world looks like it is as upside down as it has ever been? People are looking for advice, they're looking for guidance, but oftentimes we look for it in all the wrong places. We find it in a podcast or we find it on TikTok videos or we find it in different, uh, as he would call it, high-sounding nonsense, in words that are terribly articulate, but ultimately are not grounded on the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so what we do is we look to these voices to influence us, and we're chasing down wisdom and knowledge in all the wrong places, and we have to keep searching and searching and searching and searching because we never we never find it because we're not grounded. And that's what he says in verse 7. That's why he tells them, he says, Look, you're gonna look and look and look, but life's gonna get real, and you're gonna be looking for wisdom, you're gonna be looking for the way to live. And you're gonna try to find it here, and you're gonna try to find it there, and then life's gonna hit you. Tragedy's gonna hit. You're gonna get that phone call that changes your life. You're gonna have that difficult season with one of your children. Your marriage is gonna go through it in this area. You didn't get that information about the job that you didn't want. Life's gonna hit you. Or some blessings are gonna come, and you're not gonna know how to respond to them. And life's gonna start doing this. And if you're not grounded, you're gonna get it tossed about. So he says, in Jesus, in Christ, who fulfills everything, where you need to go for everything, surrendered in everything, in Jesus, the truth and teachings of the gospel, that's where you need to let your roots grow down into him and build your lives on him. Why is it important to be grounded and to have deep roots in your relationship with God? It's because life gets windy and storms come. And if you don't have those deep roots, it's gonna toss you about. I'll show you a photo to explain what I'm talking about. Uh these are southern magnolia trees. Magnolia trees can produce these real pretty white blooms depending on what part of the country you see them planted in. I'm from the south, so I'm partial to the southern ones. And these are rows of southern uh magnolia trees. These trees can grow 30, 35 feet tall. They're beautiful. But the southern magnolia tree, the thing that's interesting about it is it has what's called a deep root system. So when you plant the tree, sometimes, have you ever tripped over a root, like at the park? There's a tree, you know, and the roots are out and you're you're playing and you trip over it and you yell at the tree, and people judge you because you yelled at an inanimate object. Am I the only one? Okay, great. Trees will grow, grow roots, and sometimes they'll grow out. Well, the southern magnolia tree, the roots grow deep, real deep. And we have a phrase in the South. We say, look, if you don't like the weather, just wait ten minutes, it'll change. There are parts of the country where the weather gets real and it gets real, real quick. And as uh God would divinely design it through nature, the southern magnolia tree and its deep root system is able, when it's planted and watered and it grows, not only does it grow taller, the roots grow deeper. So when the wind comes and the storm and the elements hit it, it doesn't blow over, it stays strong. And Paul and Timothy are writing, and they are telling them listen, it's going to be easy to be carried away by high-sounding nonsense. But deep roots and the truth and teachings of Jesus. A mindset submitted to godliness, centered on who God is, who he says you are, and God's best for you when you surrender your life to Jesus. If you build your life on the truth of God, the character of God, the teachings of Jesus, when life gets real, you'll be rooted. And you'll be strong. It doesn't mean that the storms won't be there, and it doesn't mean that the wind won't be windy. But you'll be grounded. And he shares this with them. It's very fascinating. He goes on and he says, Look, okay, so I need you to start there. I need you to know, be grounded in the truth and teachings of Jesus. Nothing will hold you like the truth and teachings of Jesus. Nothing will hold you like the gospel consuming your life and changing you from the inside out. Something we'll talk about in weeks to come. He says, but also you need to understand why that's important because the roots grow down deep, because that's where it grows from. Oftentimes, people approach life from an outside-in perspective. Well, if I get this much, I'll feel like this. If I do enough, I'll be enough. If I can consume this content, I will forget about this. I'll get enough dopamine hits when I scroll through Instagram for three hours, and it'll make me feel okay with my life. Or if I get enough money, if I get enough friends, if I get enough likes, if I get enough followers, if I have enough of this, if I drive this kind of car, we live life from the outside in, and we're we're essentially chasing happiness. And so what you end up doing is you can look like you have a real tall tree, but there's no roots, and so when life gets real, it falls over. And so Paul says, No, no, no, okay, here's the deal. You guys are dealing with a lot of voices in your life, and that's okay, that's normal. Even for us, I would say, okay, well, where do I go? Well, we're gonna talk about that. Because he tells them. He says, Look, you you're you're you're gonna be tempted to listen when people say, Okay, if you want to be in right standing with God, here's what you gotta do. You gotta check this box, check this box, check this box, check this box. And it's all on you, and as long as you do it, you'll be in right standing with God. Here's the kicker. No one has the capacity on our own to be in right standing with God. Because God is perfect, and his perfection demands that perfection be attained in order to be united with him. Well, that's just not reality. Not only did you have to lose an hour of your life last night, thanks to daylight savings, you also get to hear this you're not perfect. And so there's nothing you can do to earn right standing with God. Paul knows this. Jesus came to accomplish what the law could never fully accomplish. All of the boxes to be checked, they had to keep checking the boxes because they could never attain and sustain perfection. And so they're all thinking, okay, well, but this is what they said we had to do. And he's like, No, no, no, listen, listen. Jesus accomplished all that. Your job now is to respond to the gospel. But if you think you can be in right standing with God on your own, you will always fall short. You will accidentally become arrogant because you have a good run, but then when that run ends, you're gonna launch into a depression, you're gonna potentially walk away from faith because you realized you couldn't do it on your own. Here's the good news none of us can. And this early church needed to hear this. He says, Look, look, rules are good. Rules are good. I how many, and this is gonna divide some folks, and that's okay. How many people in the room love rules? You're a rule keeper. You love it. Yeah, be come on, be bold, share it. Great. Now, how many people love to break rules and don't like great. You just stressed out the other half of the people in the room. It's great. Some rules are good though. Some rules are good, and some rules I'm a big fan of. Recently, some airlines have caught some flack because they're starting to introduce a rule now on planes where they say, look, if you listen to your electronic device without headphones, there will be penalties for this. Now, I like that rule, and I'll tell you why I like that rule. Because when I'm on a plane, I do not want to spend the next several hours listening to your crazy true crime show and scare me for the next four hours. I don't care what's happening in the lives of the real housewives of Las Vegas. I don't care. And no one else does. Put in your AirPods. Some rules are good. And he's saying, look. Rules are good. Devotion is good. Discipline is good. These are good things. But the moment you think you can earn right standing with God is when you belittle the power of the cross. And you fail to recognize the power of salvation and the grace and love on display through the work of Jesus Christ. Paul is teaching them, don't add or subtract anything from the gospel. It's not Jesus plus, I like these things, so that's your jive. No. And it's not Jesus minus, well, I don't like these things, so I'm not really going to submit those things. Because that's what we do. We look for things that uh uh appease us, and we say, okay, I want to be in right standing with God, which is something people don't even really think about nowadays. And this is to call everybody out. See, thousands of years ago, you know the primary objective for early Christians was to be in right standing with God. We miss that nowadays. We miss that nowadays. I think in current culture, and it's been happening for a long time, what I see is people look at it and say, okay, well, I want God to agree with me about these things. And if God doesn't agree with me, then God must be wrong. And so our concern is not what does God think about this, what does God say about this? Our concern is, well, if God doesn't think or say what I think and say about this, then God must be wrong. And we have lost a reverence for God. Paul says, listen, you should have a reverence for God. Your desire to please God should be paramount in your life as Christ follower. But you should not let yourself think you can earn it on your own. You can't, and that's what makes the mysterious love and grace of God so profoundly beautiful is that he knew you couldn't figure it out on your own. So he sent Jesus to make a way so that you could have a relationship with God. And so he says, look, rules are fine, but don't add or take away anything from the gospel. The gospel should be central to your life. And he says this because he knows what people do. People try to change from the outside in. People try to attain from the outside in. We're searching for wisdom and knowledge everywhere but where we actually get it. There's a reason why we are told in Scripture to submit everything to Jesus, to surrender your hearts to Jesus. Do you know why? Because healthy things grow from the inside out. Otherwise, you're going to be a tree with shallow roots. And when things come like this, it's going to blow over. And so Paul says, listen, you can do all you want to check these boxes. You can make it look like you love Jesus. You can make it look like you're a Christian. You can wear the right clothes to church on Sunday. You can come every week. You can drop something in the offering envelope. You can do this online. You can serve in this area, you can have this done and this and look like this. And you can post all these verses on Facebook and Instagram and all this stuff. But if you are still coveting your neighbor's possessions, if you're still holding on to bitterness, if you're still lacking forgiveness, if you're still looking at pornography, if you're still gossiping about people, if you're still doing fill-in-the-blank things that you don't want anybody to know about, but as long as everybody thinks you look good, you're okay. What he's saying is, look, you can check the boxes and all the rules, but if you haven't surrendered every area of your life to Jesus, the roots aren't deep like they need to be, and you're in danger. And practically, you know what Paul is saying? He's saying, what ends up happening if we're not careful, if we're not careful and intentional to pursue the teachings of Jesus in all areas of life, if we're not building our lives like a Lego set, your life is a Lego set, whether you knew it or not, and every brick is a choice you make. And if we're not building our life on the teachings of Jesus, the truth of God's word, and getting wisdom and knowledge from the place it resides, then what's going to happen is we have a we run the risk of walking around like a scorpion lollipop. You ever seen a scorpion lollipop? I'll show you some. These are scorpion lollipops. They are what you think they are. Yes, that is a real scorpion inside of a lollipop. We lived in Arizona for a few years, and the first week there, when we had moved, I was at the gas station, and I go up to the counter and I'm going to pay for my gas and I see these things. Now I'm not from a place where they have scorpions. I thought scorpions lived in hell. I didn't know they were real. Maybe they do. I don't know. Arizona gets pretty hot. It's as close as you can get. But um I see these things and I'm like, that's not from Jurassic Park. That's real. That's in front of me. I can see it. And I asked the cashier, I said, hey, what are those? She goes, Oh, there's would you like one? I was like, no, no, no. I think you misheard me. I asked what they were. I didn't ask if I could have one. She said, Oh, there's scorpion lollipops. I was like, is that a real scorpion? Yeah, it's really cool, isn't it? I was like, our definition of cool is very different. I said, people eat those? She goes, yeah. There's blue raspberry, strawberry, watermelon, cherry. I was like, venom. She goes, no. I said, you telling me people eat these? I said, that's gross and dangerous. She's like, no, it won't hurt you. It's dead. I was like, look. Look. If we're not careful, we'll live our lives like a scorpion lollipop. There are things on the inside we have not surrendered to Jesus. There are things on the inside we hope nobody knows about. But as long as we look good on the outside and the candy shell is sweet, we can ignore what's on the inside. But eventually that candy shell goes away. And you have to face what's on the inside. And that's scary for a lot of people. Well, I don't want to admit this because I might be judged. Well, I don't want to, I don't wanna, I don't wanna bring this to God because I might have to actually do something about it. And you know what I've found? I've found that a lot of people are walking around like scorpion lollipops and they're afraid to admit they're a scorpion lollipop. But when they do, they find that other scorpion lollipop in their lives are there to help you in your journey with Jesus. We all can be a scorpion lollipop from time to time. But are you willing? Are you willing to surrender everything so that you grow from the inside out. Sometimes we get so consumed wondering what people will think when they look at our lives that we completely ignore what God thinks when he looks at our lives. But real growth, strong in your faith in Christ, comes from deep roots, growth from the inside out, where everything in your life is surrendered to Jesus, and it's a journey, and it takes time and it takes effort. So I know you might be waiting for that one liner we can post an Instagram reels of so it gets clicks on the internet and it's a zinger and it fills you up, something to do with what you leave in this message, and it makes you feel better about things. I don't have one of those. I have real talk about how to grow deep roots, and it's going to require action. I'm gonna give you a phrase, you ready? It's not a sexy one. It's not that sprinkle stuff you put over your cheeseburger to help you shed a few LBs. There's no magic pill. You're gonna have to do them push-ups, you're gonna have to do them sit-ups, you're gonna have to go for a run. Okay? Here's the phrase. Deep roots are built through discipline. Deep roots are built through discipline. You may have heard it. Again, I told you, you're like, ah, I didn't want to hear that. No, you didn't, but you need to hear this. Strong devotion, pious self-denial, self-denial is fine. Strong devotion is fine. These are good things. Pious means you're doing it because you think you're better than everybody else and you'll be better than everybody else. No, no, no. A humble posture of discipline. Discipline to do the things God calls us to do if we are going to surrender our lives to Jesus and grow in our relationship with Him. So let's get practical. Let's lace up our shoes with some spiritual disciplines. It's not an exhaustive list, but I've got a few for you, and we're gonna go through because I want to actually help you. It's not enough to just show some trees and make a joke about a scorpion lollipop and kind of challenge us to think from the inside out and surrender. And maybe that is enough for some of us because that's what we needed. But for others of us, we need practical, give me something I can grab a hold of and live out my faith. So I'm gonna do that for everyone, and we're gonna go through some spiritual disciplines that all of us can exercise. And that's gonna be the homework for this week. Yes, it's a daylight savings, and you get homework. It's such a good day. The first discipline that I would encourage you to do is to, you ready for it? It's gonna shock you. Read your Bible. Ha ha. You're like, he says that all the time. You are right. I am a broken record. I will not stop saying that. Do you know why? God's word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. Do you know that the Bible will read itself aloud to you on your phone? I talked to people after first service. They didn't know that. I said, no, you can pull up the chapter, you can hit play, and you can pick the translation, and you can even put it in a really cool accent if you want to. You can listen to it on your way to work, listen to it while you're getting ready in the morning, brushing your teeth, while you're working out, whatever. Get God's word into you. But you can't do that unless you get into God's word. It's a spiritual discipline. Nothing will change your life like getting to know the word of God. I'm gonna say that, and I can see some of you looking at me, and you're like, I know we're supposed to say that, but I'm probably not gonna do that this way. That's fine, because when you come back next week, I'm gonna say the same thing. And when you come back 42 weeks from now, I'm gonna say the same thing. And it's great. I'm playing the long game with this one. That's what discipline does. The second discipline is to pray. To pray. And I don't mean just pray because you drove through Del Taco and you're desperately needing God to bless this food to the nourishment of your body. I'm not talking about that. And I'm not talking about you're praying because your team is down by two and there's four seconds left. I'm not talking about that. Is prayer the place you go to to posture your heart in submission to Christ? Is prayer the place you go to because you have a heavenly father who wants to hear from you? We forget that. The love of God as heavenly father cannot be overstated. Parents in the room, you know what I'm talking about. You know it does not matter what age your kid is at, when your kid wants to come and talk to you, there is nothing sweeter than the voice of your child who simply wants to have a conversation, and you don't care what you're talking about, you love hearing their voice. And we're flawed, messed up parents. But God is a holy, heavenly father. Spiritual discipline of prayer not only postures your heart to surrender to Christ, but it also reminds you that God is there in all seasons. And sometimes you just need to sit with your heavenly father. There's the spiritual discipline of Bible reading, prayer, of Bible study and memorization. Did anybody grow up in church where you did these things called sword drills? They would call the Bible the sword, and you we'll talk about that even in our mental health series next month, peace of mind, about about utilizing God's word. But we would call these things sword drills, and you would go to church and they would say, okay, the first person who can find Proverbs chapter 3, verses 5 and 6 will win whatever piece of candy, right? And you have to sit here like this, or sometimes you have to sit here like this, and it's like three, two, one, go, and you're trying to find it. Is anybody familiar with this? We would cheat. You know what I mean? You would take like all your fingers and start putting them in different places, so you would be like post it up, you know? You're like, I got it. And they're like, You're cheating. No, I'm not, no, I'm not. Get in arguments with people in Sunday school. We joke about that, but Bible memorization, I'm gonna tell you right now, life's gonna hit you in a way, but if God's word's in there, it will bless your life. I'll give you an example. You're at home, you've gotten into an argument with your spouse, you're you're frustrated at life, you're frustrated at work, and you just want to blow up, and you have so much going on in your life, and your kid comes in and asks you for one more Dorito, and you lose it. And you ain't mad about Doritos, you're mad about all sorts of things. But if God's word is in you, what you hear is be slow to anger, be slow to speak, aggravate not your kids. And in that moment, God's word ministers to you. There's the spiritual discipline of memorizing God's word. There's the spiritual discipline of generosity. We talked about it before. Giving is actually a discipline. And the reason it's a discipline is because it requires action. It is active. Generosity is active. We mentioned the CYT Newsy show. I'll tell you what generosity does. They've started collecting foster care supplies through the CYT show because they said we love that Sunrise is doing that as a church. Can we come alongside you? They've got stuff being delivered every show. We are going to overwhelm foster care families in our community because of the generosity. But that's a discipline. That's a choice that you make. And we don't realize that sometimes. Generosity of spirit is a discipline. To be kind to people over and over is a discipline because people are tough. But giving is a discipline because it acknowledges that everything we have comes from God. And discipline is training you. And the discipline of generosity, the discipline of giving, as Jesus lays out, trains us to rely on God in all seasons for provision, to rely on God in all seasons for contentment. And to not put our trust in money to make us feel secure, to make us feel important, or to gratify ourselves. It's actually a discipline that leads to freedom because we no longer chase success in the ways we think it's going to come. But instead we find freedom through surrender. Giving is a discipline. Fellowship is a discipline. The church is meant to grow together, but we don't grow together unless we gather together. That gathering is a discipline. It requires action. God's people coming together. We call it relational discipleship, growing in our faith together, and we do it at every level here at sunrise. In our kids' ministry, they show up, music, time of teaching, large group, and then they break up into smaller groups with leaders, relational discipleship. We do the same thing in our youth ministry. Groups break out. We do the same thing on Wednesday nights. Groups break out, groups that meet in homes. We call it relational discipleship. People growing with other people in our faith, walking together, but it's a discipline of fellowship to lean into that. There's the discipline of fasting. Some of you are like, oof, I'm hungry right now. Don't talk about fasting. Fasting can come in many different forms. Food is the primary one. Fasting is essentially giving up so that you can focus on. That's in its basic form. For the Christian, essentially, we are denying one thing to focus on seeking God in an area of our lives as a discipline. It's not just food. Some of us fast from social media. Maybe you fast from YouTube, maybe you fast from some type of electronic because you're spending hours doom scrolling or attached to things, and it's taking you away from things that are helping you grow in your faith. It's a discipline. There is the discipline of, here's one that most people never ever see. The discipline of celebration. Do you know that celebrating things is actually a discipline? And it will shape your faith in such a way and you won't see it coming. Can you recall a time that God provided for you? Can you recall a time that God gave you grace in a season where you needed it? Where God brought you through something tough and he ministered to your heart in that season? Where God blessed you? Where God came through, where God provided a rescue. Can you recall those times? Do you commemorate those seasons of life? Because in the Old Testament, they did this and they did this well. God would provide a rescue, a victory of some kind. He would come through, he would bless them in some way, and they would post up memorials to remember what God had done so that not only they would see it and be reminded of it, but that future generations would see it and be reminded of it. Do you know that the discipline of celebration can help grow your faith? And I'll give you some practical ways to do it. Consider those seasons, those moments where God has brought you through something. And figure out how to remind yourself of it. Because guess what? You're either about to enter a storm, in a storm, or coming out of one. That is typically the three phases of life. And so if you've come out of one, remember what God did when you were in one because the next one's gonna come around and you're gonna need to cling to that. So I'll give you some practical things. Take a photo that remind you of that season of life and put it up in your house somewhere. Put it up in your office somewhere. Make a Christmas ornament that's gonna come out every year. Every October 1st when you put up your Christmas tree. It'll be there. And it will remind you. Put a sticky note on your computer. Put a magnet on your fridge. Do something to memorialize God's provision in your life. It's not an obvious discipline, but it is a wonderful discipline to help you grow in your relationship with God. And we don't do the growth on our own. We don't produce the growth on our own, but we posture our hearts in such a way that says, God, I want to grow deep roots into you. So I'm gonna surrender every area to you so that in all areas of my life, I'm looking at what you say and following your way. So, God, I'm gonna dig into your word. I'm gonna pray. I'm gonna get to know God's word. I'm gonna become a generous person. I'm gonna serve others. I'm gonna make sure that I that I exercise the discipline of gathering and a fellowship, God. Maybe I'm gonna deny some things to focus on growing in some areas. God, I'm gonna celebrate. It's not an exhaustive list, but there are things all of us can do. So here's your homework this week. Find one discipline to exercise this week. It could be Bible reading for you, it could be the easiest one. Pop it open, open the app, press play, listen to some South African guy read it to you on your way to work. And consume God's word. Maybe it's just praying. Maybe it's tomorrow morning. We pray when we get up. We don't wait till we eat, and we don't wait till March madness. We get up and we pray. Find a discipline. And it's going to ebb and flow in life. You're going to go through seasons of life where you're like, I need all the disciplines, all the disciplines. It's a golden corral of discipline for you. And you're just there, hometown buffet. I don't know what buffets are out here, whatever it is. Then there are other seasons where you're laser focused on some because God's growing you in these areas. It'll ebb and flow. But this week, exercise one and watch what God does as he seeks to grow us from the inside out when we dig deep roots into him through the disciplines of surrendering every area of our lives to Jesus and pursuing a relationship with God from the inside out. I'm going to pray, and then you're going to stay right there because we're going to do something before we all leave. God, thank you again for this day, for this time, for your word. I pray that your word is what infiltrates us, it's what consumes us, it's what guides us because that's what changes us, you, the work of your spirit through your word. So God, I ask that you give us the discipline we need to engage in the exercises that help us dig deep roots into you so that we too can be strongly knit together by ties of love and grounded in the truth of the gospel and grow from the inside out. So, God, I ask, as we always do, that you are honored by everything we say and do, sing and celebrate in this place, and it doesn't get left here, but we take it with us. It's in your name we pray. Amen.

SPEAKER_00 45:38

Thank you so much for joining us today at Sunrise Church. We hope this message encouraged you and blessed you. If one of the ways that you choose to worship with us here at Sunrise is by giving online, there's a link right here that you can follow and it'll take you to that payment portal. Everything that you donate helps not only go towards reaching people in the greater San Diego area, but also all around the world through our ministry partner. If you want to get further connected, whether in person or online, you can email this email right here, and either myself or some one of our team members will be there to answer it and help you get connected in any way that you need. Thank you so much for joining us, and we'll see you next week.