So well this morning we're finishing up our series on the life of David. And uh it's been good summer to walk through this series and to walk through the life of David. And as we kind of come to a conclusion this morning, um the idea and the question that's been rolling around in my mind is this What will your life be remembered for? Think about that for a second. I know for some of us in the older ages, that might be coming, a question might be wrestling in our minds a little bit more often than some people that are younger in the room. But what is your life going to be remembered for? I've had the fortunate opportunity to do a number of funerals over the course of doing ministry. And anytime you do a funeral, you realize just how temporary and fragile life can be. Whether you're seeing someone that's passed away and you're burying them at 85 years old, or if I've done the youngest one I think I've ever done was three years old. Life is fragile. And it makes me think of Proverbs 7, 2 that says, It's better to spend your time at funerals than at parties. After all, everyone dies, so the living should take this to heart. Now that seems pretty depressing for sure. I mean, to spend your time at a funeral rather than a party doesn't seem like that's true for any of us. No, not many people enjoy going to funerals, but I think that funerals have this uh unique ability to wake us up to the reality that death is imminent for all of us. And the sad reality is we live in a culture that uh teaches us and gets us to believe that we're immune from death, that death is not something that's going to hit us, that we're going to be free from that. And so, because of that, we oftentimes live for temporary means and temporary solutions in life and temporary pleasures instead of looking at the eternal rewards and the eternal uh pleasure that the uh heav our Heavenly Father wants us to engage in. And so again, I'll ask the question: what will your life be remembered for? I came across this interesting story. I don't know if any of you guys know this, but there's a guy, it was a guy named Alfred Noble. Um he's most famously known for the Nobel Peace Prize, which was named after him. But in the 1800s, Noble was one of the richest men in the world because he had invented dynamite and he had built his fortune on the cell of these explosives. And in 1888, his brother ended up dying, and a French newspaper reported the details incorrectly, and they accidentally published the obituary of Alfred rather than his brother. And the headline read, The merchant of death is dead. The story went on to say he became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before. Could you imagine that you wake up in the morning and you open the newspaper and there's your obituary, and that's what's set about you. That you've made this fortune and the fame of your name by inventing dynamite, which killed more people than anyone else had at that point. And so this headline wrecked him, obviously. So, and so he made decisions that he was going to change his life. And so what he did is he changed his will and he quietly began to leave everything, the majority of his fortune and today's money, which would be hundreds of millions of dollars, to establish a set of prizes for the people who did the most good for humanity. Prizes in medicine and literature and science and in peace. And today his name is no longer known as the merchant of death, but instead he's known as a patron of peace. It's interesting that he got to rewrite his story. The sad reality is that most of us will not have that same luxury. We won't have the luxury of getting to rewrite our story, but we do get to all answer the question of what do we want our life to count for? And as we finish up David's story this morning, the last two weeks of the series, we've looked at David's catastrophic failure and how that could have been the end for him. That could have been the end of the story. He could have disappeared into oblivion, but that's not how his story ends. David turned back to the Lord, and his failure wasn't the final part of his story. And so this morning, what I want us to talk about is how to finish well. How to finish well in this culture and world in which we live today. And so here's our big idea. Finish well is surrendering, surrender the plan and invest in what lasts. If you want to finish well, we surrender our plans and we invest in what truly lasts. And so let me pray for us before we jump in this morning. Lord Jesus, Lord, we thank you so much for this morning. And uh, Lord, just for the opportunity we have to be able to come into a room like this and sing praises to you. And Lord, even just to declare that you are worthy and you are holy this morning is a joy. It's a gift to our souls. And Lord, we know that there are people in this room this morning that have had great weeks, and there are others that have had really, really hard weeks. And Lord, I just pray right now, Lord, that you would work and move like only you can. Lord, that you would speak, that your voice would be clearly heard by all of your children. And Lord, that you would give us the courage and the boldness to be able to do whatever it is that you're calling us to do. And so, Holy Spirit, would you come now and speak like only you can? And it's in your name we pray. Amen. So, if you're just joining us, you're coming to the end of this eight-week series that we've been in. And so far in the life of David, we've talked about how he was chosen from the shadows. He was the most unlikely candidate to be the next king of Israel. He defeated Goliath. He had courage in the valley. Even when he had risen in his fame and his popularity, Saul, the king of Israel, began to pursue him because of his jealousy of David, and he tried to kill David. And so David fled to the wilderness, and in the wilderness, David was even faithful. But then we talked about how last the last couple of weeks we talked about how David got comfortable and he allowed sin and compromise to creep into his life, and as a result, he took things that was not his own, and he uh rebelled against God's words and commands, and he had an affair, and he killed a man, and just these horrible wicked things. But then even last week we saw that he returned to the Lord in such a profound way. And so, in the midst of all of that, we've seen him overlooked, we've seen him whining, we've seen him waiting, we've seen him befriended and fallen and restored. But this morning we're looking at what it looks like to finish. The old king is at the end of his life, and it's a picture of what it looks like to finish well. And so we're gonna kind of jump around this morning, but if you want to start in 2 Samuel chapter 7, that's where we'll be. This is actually rewinding a little bit. So this is earlier on in David's life, but we've got to understand this story in order for us to understand how David finishes well. So in 2 Samuel chapter 7, again, David is now the king of Israel. Things are going really well. He's in this beautiful palace, he has peace from his enemies, he's living a life of comfort, and this is what it says in verse 1. It says, When the king had settled into his palace, and the Lord had given him rest on every side from all of his enemies, the king said to the prophet, Nathan, Look, I am living in a cedar house, while the ark of God sits inside tent curtains. So Nathan told the king, Do go and do all that is on your mind, for the Lord is with you. So David has this grand vision for what he wants his life to be about. He's conquered militaries, he's conquered kingdoms, he's seen incredible growth, he's built this massive, beautiful palace that the Lord has given him. And he wakes up one day and he realizes, man, I'm living in this palace, this lavish palace, and I've got anything and everything that I want. The Lord has been so gracious to bless me, but yet the Ark of the Covenant, which was where the presence of the Lord was residing, was living in a tabernacle, in a tent that was still portable in nature. And here's David having these grand plans that he wants to go and do something significant for the Lord. He wants to build this home for the Lord that would be a permanent structure, a massive and impressive temple where the Lord could be worshipped. And Nathan, the prophet, goes, Man, that sounds like a really good idea, David. You should go and do that. The only problem was that Nathan didn't consult the Lord. And I think this is a lesson for us that oftentimes I think that we can get in our minds that we're doing good things, but good things are not always God things. Sometimes the most dangerous yes in your life is the things that everybody else applauds, and they're good ideas and maybe good things for the world and the community around us, but they don't necessarily mean that they're from God or God's plan for your life. And so the next day the Lord reminds Nathan overnight that he doesn't need David, which I love that. Like he's like, David, you're my chosen king, you're my chosen instrument, you're a man after my own heart. But then he reminds him, hey, listen, I don't need you. I never asked you to build a house on my behalf. You are a tool in my hands, but he says no to David's request. And here's the reason why. 1 Chronicles 22, 8. It says, But the word of the Lord came to me. This is David talking. Um, you have shed much blood and waged great wars. You are not to build a house for my name because you have shed so much blood on the ground before me. God's not shaming David. All of the military battles that David went into were directives from the Lord. But the no here was because David's role and design. The Lord wanted his house to be built by someone who was known as a man of peace, not a man of war. And so he says to David, No, you're not going to build my house for me. But then he promises David that he's going to build David's house, meaning his descendants. 2 Samuel chapter 7, verse 12, it says, When your time comes and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up after you your descendants. This is the Lord talking to David, who will come from your body and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. Your house and kingdom will endure before me forever, and your throne will be established forever. So God declines David's request to build this massive temple, but yet he promises them at the same point that his throne will never end. And this is a promise that is ultimately pointing to Jesus, who would be David's great, great, great, great, great, great grandson. That how is David going to respond to the Lord's no? I mean, how do you respond to the Lord's no? I mean, when you hear the Lord say no, or there's doors that are being closed, and opportunities that you so desperately wanted to go down that path, and the Lord seems to close those opportunities and close those paths off. How do you respond to the Lord? What do you do? Do you just continue to fight and continue to push forward? Do you continue to do what you've decided in your heart to do? Or do you slow down long enough to trust the Lord and his plans for your life? That's what David does. It says in verse 18 of chapter 7, it says, Then King David went in, sat in the Lord's presence, and said, Who am I, Lord God? And what is my house that you have brought me this far? What you have done so far was a little thing to you, Lord God. For you have also spoken about your servant's house in the distant future, and this is a revelation for mankind, Lord God. What more can David say to you? You know your servant, Lord God, because of your word and according to your will, you have revealed all these great things to your servants. What David's doing here is he's turning his no from the Lord and he's turning it into a doxology. His disappointment is turned into a doxology of praise. This man after God's own heart is ultimately saying that he is surrendering to God's plans. That's what he wants to be about. He wants to be about a man that is surrendered to God's plans. And so when the Lord says no, and he promises him that he's going to have this incredible inheritance that awaits him, that he's going to have from his lineage, the Messiah is ultimately going to come. And David maybe doesn't understand that to the fullest extent, but these incredible promises that are given to David of what is to come from his lineage. And David is overwhelmed. When was the last time you were overwhelmed by the goodness of God in your life? In the midst of David being told no. He's praising God because he recounts the faithfulness and the goodness of God. And this is what leads him to surrender his plans to God's plans. And this is what all of our lives should point to. Our lives are not going to be judged on the good things that we did or didn't do, but we're going to be judged on how faithful we were to what God's plans were for our life. Because oftentimes I think that we can have this decision paralysis where we oftentimes can be so overwhelmed by the needs around us and all the different things that have to be done that we fail to be faithful in anything. And the Lord is saying, Hey, listen, I want you to follow my plan for your life. And this is the beautiful thing about the body of Christ. The body of Christ is meant to be a body where we're all working in unison together, doing what God has called us to do. And when we all say yes and we all say, we all surrender to God's plans, it's a beautiful, beautiful sight. David was willing to say yes, even though that changed how different his life might look and what he might even be known for. Now listen, I'm not against goal setting, I'm not against vision boards, I'm not against strategic plans. But I just want to tell you that I've walked with a lot of people, and so often your dreams don't line up with what the Lord's plans are. And I say that in a in the most loving way, not in a critique. I'm just saying that so often we have to hold our dreams with loose hands and loose grips, with open hands, because oftentimes what God has for us is radically different from the way that we thought it was going to turn out. Maybe it's that you wanted, you dreamed of having biological children and you weren't able to. Maybe it was that you wanted this lucrative job, but you sent a sense that the Lord was leading you in a different direction. Maybe it was a bigger paycheck, but you left that to pursue ministry or missions. Maybe it's a parent that had big dreams for their kids and what their kids' life was going to turn out for, and it went dramatically different. Maybe it's the couple that planned on retiring and traveling the world together only to be interrupted by a diagnosis that pushed them to the ground. There are times when life, in life, where we have to learn to mourn the losses of what we thought that our lives were going to be about. But here's the beautiful thing about the Lord is that his ways are always the better. We might not see it on our side, we might not even see it on this side of eternity quite often. But his ways are always better. I recently came across an interview, some of you would recognize the name, Joni Erickson Tata. Incredible story. If you have not heard her story, I encourage you to go on YouTube and search her name, and there's tons of interviews and things that she's produced over the years. But if you don't know her story, when she was 17 years old, in the prime of life, looking forward to what life was going to be, she was in a driving accident that left her to be a quadruplegic. At 17, she was active, independent, had big dreams for her life, and in an instant, those dreams were gone. And she would say that she didn't handle this well at first. Could you imagine going from this perfect kind of you know ability to go and to do and to live and to move however you wanted to move to now being confined to a wheelchair and struggling to survive on your own? She went through years of depression and despair, times when she wanted to die and she begged God for healing and it never came. Until finally one day she stopped demanding her plan and she started surrendering to God's will. And out of that no that she never wanted to hear, God built a worldwide ministry, and Joni and Friends is what it's called. And it's carried the hope of Jesus to people with disabilities to nearly every corner of the globe. She said, if I can't die, God show me how to live. I heard her in an interview say that one time just recently, and she said that she says every night she says I get in bed and she has to have some type of you know life kind of support to help her overnight and she can't move. Her husband has to kind of tuck her in and make sure that she's comfortable because that's where she stays the rest of the night. And she says that every night she prays that, you know, God, if I can't die, show me how to live. And she said, and I've been living now for 60 years. Her plan looked much different than what she thought it was going to. But she surrendered to God's plan and God used that. Now, I want you to understand though, when we talk about surrendering to God's plan, we're not talking about passivity. We're not saying, okay, I can just put my hands up and I can do nothing, that I don't have to work, that I don't have to move forward, that it's just all up to God, and so therefore I don't have to do anything. That was not what David was doing in this situation. David was fully surrendered to God's plan, but he didn't sit idly by. Surrender for David meant that he was not sidelined in the process of building the temple. God had told David that his son Solomon would be the one that would build the temple. So what David did is that David knew that he would never walk through the doors of this great cathedral. He would never see the sacrifices that were made on the altar. He would never hear the songs that would be sung that he would have maybe even written in the book of Psalms in this sacred place. But that doesn't stop David from playing a major role in the building of the temple. David begins to spend the rest of his life getting everything ready for the temple to be built. And this is the second secret to finishing well. It's when we invest in what alas. We invest in what truly matters. Listen to what it says in 1 Chronicles 22, verse 5. David's talking here, and he says to Solomon, David said, My son Solomon is young and inexperienced, and the house that is to be built for the Lord must be exceedingly great and famous and glorious in all the lands. Therefore, I will make provision for it. So David made lavish preparations for it before his death. So David goes on to collect stones and iron and cedar and gold to construct this sacred building and not just a little bit of it. He inquires tons and tons of all of these materials. He wants to set his son up for success. And he's not just focused on building the structure, but what he's also focused on is building the generations that would come behind him. He doesn't just leave the materials and say, best of luck to you, but he puts them in charge from the Lord. He gives them this statement when he says this to Solomon in verse 20 of 1 Chronicles 28. It says, Then David said to his son Solomon, he's at the older age, he's, you know, about to take his last and final breaths, and it says, Be strong and courageous and do the work. Don't be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord God, my God, is with you. He won't leave you or abandon you until all the work for the service of the Lord's house is finished. Here are the divisions of the priest and the Levites for all the service of God's house. Every willing person of any skill will be at your disposal for the work, and the leaders and all the people at your every command. David was not just passing on materials and wealth to Solomon, but he was also passing on his flesh. Faith. He wanted to set his son up for success. He wanted Solomon to carry the torch forward and to build this massive structure and to lead the nation of Israel in worship to the one true God. But here's the irony that we're in in this current cultural moment that no one ever really wants to talk about. We're so focused on wanting to make an impact and leave a legacy that at the same breath we are told to chase after the things that don't matter for eternity. You're told and taught that we just need to build our personal brand, make your name great, that that's what you need to chase after. We're told that it's about your net worth. And man, just build up and acquire as much wealth as you possibly can so that you can retire at a really early age and then you can begin to enjoy life. We're told to build a bucket list and then to make that bucket list be full of all the things that are going to bring comfort and cool experiences into your life. And I just want to say this morning that we don't need to buy into the lie that those should be the things that we focus on in life. One of the most pivotal books that I've ever read in my life is a book by John Piper. It's called Don't Waste Your Life. In the book, Piper talks about this reader-digest article that he read about a couple who retired early and moved to Florida where they spent their days playing softball and collecting seashells on the shore. And this is what he says from that book. He says, At first, when I read the article, I thought it might be a joke, a spoof on the American dream, but it wasn't. Tragically, this was the dream. Come to the end of your life, your one and only precious, God-given life, and let the last great work of your life before you give an account to the Creator be this: playing softball and collecting shells. Picture them before Christ at the great day of judgment and them saying, Look, Lord, see my shells. That is the tragedy. And people today are spending billions of dollars to persuade you to embrace that tragic dream. Over against that, I put my protest. Don't buy it. Don't waste your life. Now, listen, I'm not against people traveling. I'm not against people going to Florida. I'm not against people collecting shells if that's what you want to do, and that brings joy into your life. But I'm telling you, if that's how you're spending your last days, if that's what you're making your life be about. I mean, I've shared this story tons of times in the past, but I can remember doing a funeral one time, and I was didn't know the man, the funeral home called me. They needed a pastor to perform the ceremony. And so I go and I'm trying to meet the family, and I'm talking to the family, his daughters, his wife, and I'm saying to them, hey, tell me about your father. Tell me about your husband. And literally the only thing they had to say was that he enjoyed collecting coins. And I walked out of that funeral home just in deep despair and depression, just thinking that here's a man's life that lived 75 years, and all that his family had to say about him was that he enjoyed collecting coins. And it might not be coins and it might not be shells for you. It might be something entirely different. It might be you just frivolously spending your time on things that don't matter, but I'm telling you, if we want to finish well, we've got to invest in what truly matters. For the parents and the grandparents in the room, you have an important job. You are leaving an inheritance by passing on an eternal inheritance of your faith to see your kids walking and living for Jesus. Listen, I'm all about sports and baseball, but listen, if your primary target for your kids is that they become a professional baseball player and you're running them all around the world to make sure they have every opportunity in that lane. I'm telling you, you're missing it. We want to invest in what truly matters. If you're an empty nester in the room or you're a retired person and you're just kind of coasting, man, man, you're missing it. We so desperately need the older generation in a church like this to share their wisdom because it's a gift that we don't know. And we're wasting some of the best years when you could be mentoring younger generations and serving and discipling younger believers. Larry Black, I mean, one of the things that he says quite often to me is, hey, I know that I'm on the second part of life, and I want to spend the rest of my days intentionally investing on those things that are multiple, that can be multiplied, that have eternal significance and difference. And so many of you get this. So many of you guys will serve in our kids' grove environments, and you'll show up early on Sunday mornings, and you will rock babies, and you will teach preschool kids and elementary school kids of what it looks like to follow Jesus. And I just want to say you're not just filling a role, you're making an eternal difference. You're making an impact that will impact not just one kid's life, but families and generations to come. If you show up and you are leading a community group or a discipleship group of some kind and you're investing in other people, you aren't just being a good friend, but you're not just creating a good social environment, but you are helping to shape families for generations to come. If you are sacrificially giving to the local church and the causes of the ministry of Jesus, then you are making an eternal impact. You're making a difference in the world around you so that people are coming to know and hear about how what it looks like to follow Jesus, and they're being discipled and trained and sent out, and you cannot underestimate the significance that you're making when you financially invest in the life of the church. And let me just go ahead and say it. I'm feeling, I don't know, something this morning. So uh sadly, in a church like this, in most churches in America, there's something called the 80-20 rule. The 80-20 rule is that 20% of the people do 80% of the work. The shoulders and the burdens of ministry and discipleship and leading and trusting and leading people to follow Jesus and uh teaching them what it looks like to follow Jesus, that that falls on the shoulders of a small number of people in a crowd like this. When it comes to generosity and giving in a church like this, it falls on the shoulders of a very small number of people. And listen, I know that people push back because the church all they want is my money and all that kind of stuff. Listen, I don't care about your money, but I do care about your life and I care about the impact that you can make. And I don't want to see you waste it. I don't want to see you waste what God has put in your possession. I want you to be a good steward of the resources that God has blessed you with so that you can make an eternal difference. What I want more than anything else for you is for you to take your last breath here on earth, whether that's 40 years, 50 years, 80 years, 90 years, whatever it is, and for you to hear the words, well done. Good and faithful servant. That's what I want. And that's why we say, hey, we want you to jump in and serve. We want you to make an impact. We want you to give. We want you to do these things, not just so that we can build an organization or not so we can just build a church. It's because we want to see you become the person that God has called you to be. C.T. Studd said, only one life twill soon be passed. Only what's done for Christ will last. Invest in what matters. So David surrenders his plans. He invests in what lasts. He's looking to the future. He's giving Solomon everything he needs. He's pushing his faith down to the next generation. And in 1 Kings chapter 2, verse 1, it says, As the time approached for David to die, he ordered his son Solomon, as for me, I'm going to the way of all the earth. In other words, I'm going to die. Be strong and be a man, and keep your obligation to the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his statutes, commands, ordinances, and decrees. This is written in the law of Moses, so that you will have success in everything you do and wherever you turn. David's life is coming to an end. And this giant slayer, the king, the psalmist, the man after God's own heart, lies down and dies just like everyone else. Centuries later, in the book of Acts, this is what's said of David this would be kind of David's obituary. Listen to how powerful this is. It says in verse 36 of Acts 13, for David, after serving God's purpose in his own generation, fell asleep, was buried with his fathers, and decayed. That's it. Like I mean, this man did a lot. And it says, he served God's purpose in his generation, he fell asleep, was buried with his fathers, and his body decayed. And that's the same reality that awaits all of us. I know. That's such a great thought this morning, right? But death is happening. It's gonna happen, it's gonna come for all of us. It could be today, it could be tomorrow, it could be 10, 20, 30, 40 years from now. I don't know when it is. But that's what awaits all of us. And when you take your last breath, man, 5, 10, 15, 20 years will pass. And you will just be a memory. And 50 and 60 and 70 years will pass. And you might not be remembered at all. That's a sad realization, right? Because we we we think of ourselves as having this eternal significance, but at the end of the day, our lives are going to end and we will just be a memory at best. Or forgotten completely at worst. But the beautiful thing is that a life that points to the one that is eternal is a life that it doesn't matter about my name, but it matters about the name of the one that is not dead, that is alive. It says again in Acts 13, 36, for David, after serving God's purpose in his own generation, fell asleep, was buried with his fathers and decayed. Verse 37, but the one God raised up did not decay. David died, but his life pointed to the one that would defeat death. The greater son of David, Jesus, who did just finish, didn't just finish his generation's work, but he finished the work on the cross once and for all. And so you don't finish by trying harder, you finish by ultimately fixing your eyes on the one who has finished it all. The writer of Hebrews in chapter 12, verse 1, says, Therefore, since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, so all these people that have come before us, all the people that have paved the way for us to be where we're at right here in this moment, he says, Let us lay aside every hindrance and the sin that so easily ensnares us. Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, for the joy that lay before him. You want to finish well? Man, surrender your life to God's plans. Invest in what truly matters. But maybe the most important of all of those things is fixing your eyes on Jesus, beholding his beauty, beholding his goodness and his grace and the life change that you've experienced. And so as we come to the end this morning, I'll start with the same question that we began with. What will your life be remembered for? It isn't necessarily even that question, because it really doesn't matter what other people say about you, it matters what God says about you. And so what will God remember your life for? Alfred Nobel got the unique opportunity to rewrite his story. And here's the sobering and wonderful truth this morning: that if you're breathing, there's an opportunity to rewrite your story. If you're not dead, then God's not done with you. It's never too late to start walking faithfully in the ways of the Lord. And so this morning, for some of us in the room, I just believe that idea and that thought of just death and how death is imminent for all of us is a little bit of a wake-up call. And maybe you realize that you've never put your faith and your trust in Jesus, that if you were to take your last breath in this moment, that you have no clue where you would spend eternity. And this morning I want to give you an invitation to be able to put your faith and your trust in Jesus, to surrender your life to him. And so in a minute we're going to pray, but it's just ultimately us acknowledging that Jesus is the Son of God, that he came down to earth, lived the perfect sinless life, died on a cross for your sins and for mine, rose again on the third day. And if we put our faith and our trust in him, that we can have eternal life, that our lives can be transformed, that he'll remove the heart of stone and put in a heart of flesh, that he'll reconcile us with our Heavenly Father for all of eternity. And so that's the invitation for you this morning is to take that step of faith, to surrender. And maybe you've filled a church seat for years or decades, but you've never really come to a moment where you've done that, man. Today is the day of salvation. But for those of us that have put our faith and our trust in Jesus and we've said that we've surrendered our lives to Jesus, maybe somewhere along the way we've picked up our plans and we began to kind of chase after our dreams. We've chased after what we want out of life. And hey, the most beautiful thing is that sometimes those things can coincide. God's dreams and our dreams can be one in unison, but sometimes they're not. And maybe you've been fighting with the Lord, and He's been pushing you in a direction that you just desperately don't want to go. And this morning, maybe it's a time where you just kind of open up your hands and say, God, I trust you. I'm surrendering my plans and my ways and my dreams, and I'm trusting you because you are so much better. Maybe you've spent your time and your energy in recent days on things that do not matter. You've chased after the things of this world and your comfort and your satisfaction and pleasure. And the Lord's waking you up to the reality that, man, there's a better way to not just invest in what's here on earth, but invest in eternity. Maybe you recognize that you're part of that 80% and not that 20%. That you're just kind of filling a seat on Sunday mornings, that you're comfortable in this consumeristic Christianity that we've created in America that's nothing like what Scripture teaches. And this morning you're coming to the realization that you need to get in the game. You need to get off the bench. You need to get into the game and start living and doing what the Lord has called you to do. We only get one life. And by God's grace, you get to choose what it's spent on. So will you surrender to God's plans? Will you invest in the right things? And will you keep your eyes fixed on Jesus? So that when you take your last breath and you see our Heavenly Father face to face, He says, Well, so Holy Spirit. As David did. To think that you would want to use us, that you want to use us to impact eternity and to make a difference in the lives of people is overwhelming. Who am I? A sinful man that you would look to me and call me friend. And so, Lord, I just pray for people in the room this morning. Lord, people that have maybe never put their faith and their trust in you, Lord, that they have maybe been waiting or putting it off, or just they've never really come to the realization that they've never surrendered, Lord, that today that they would do that. Convict their hearts even now, Lord, to take that step of faith and to step out and to trust you with their life. For those of us in the room that have maybe gotten comfortable and complacent and we've invested in things that do not last, temporary things like collecting seashells on the shore. Lord, would you wake us up to the reality that we have a responsibility to invest in what truly matters? Lord, help us to get off the bench and into the game. Help us to do whatever it is that you're calling us to do. And I just pray specifically for people in the room this morning that maybe don't know what they're needing to do. Lord, right now in this moment, in the days and the weeks ahead, Lord, would you give them clarity about what you're calling them to do? Would you close doors that need to be closed? And would you open doors that need to be opened for them to walk through? Lord, let there not be an excuse in the room for us to not do what you have called us to do. And so, Lord, Holy Spirit, would you come now as we just respond to you? Lord, as we turn our eyes to you this morning and look at the beauty of your Son, Lord, help us to push aside everything that clings to us so that we can focus on you and what you have for us. And so, Holy Spirit, would you come now and work and move like only you can? And it's in your name we pray. Amen.