SPEAKER_00: You guys have a seat.
SPEAKER_00: Great.
SPEAKER_00: You know what?
SPEAKER_00: I've done a lot of men's.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, y'all have a seat.
unknown: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Like, no, let's keep going.
SPEAKER_00: I've done a lot of men's retreats.
SPEAKER_00: You guys sound really good.
SPEAKER_00: I love hearing men sing, and I think the Lord does too.
SPEAKER_00: There's something really cool about that.
SPEAKER_00: You know, um, I have a uh I actually have a doctorate in expositional preaching, and I always preach expositionally.
SPEAKER_00: And this is, and if you don't know what expositional preaching is, that's like preaching word by word, verse by verse, the scripture, and and your points from your sermon come from the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: And this is the sermon this morning is like the only sermon I've ever preached.
SPEAKER_00: It's not, and so I normally uh would say open up your Bibles to the book of whatever.
SPEAKER_00: I'm doing a lot of paraphrasing of the scripture in this, and so just hold on, and I think we'll be in Philippians 1, 6 later on.
SPEAKER_00: We'll look at that for a minute.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but we talked about the gospel last night, and one of the implications of the gospel is that after your sins are forgiven, your life begins, he captures your heart, you realize that it is his kindness that saves you, and that it's because of that kindness that we want to ultimately give Jesus our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I talked about worship last night, and that that worship always comes out of a heart that's been captured by the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: One other thing that's going to come out of a heart that's been captured by the gospel is a desire to obey and to walk with and to honor with your life, this one that saved you.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's kind of what I want to talk about today, this morning.
SPEAKER_00: There's a story in the Old Testament about Jacob, it's an interesting story.
SPEAKER_00: It's about a wrestling match that Jacob had with God.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the interesting things about that story, if you can read it, it scripture says that God and and Jacob wrestled all night with each other, which is weird and interesting.
SPEAKER_00: And but what's significant about that is that if you've ever wrestled with somebody, I I did back in college, some, I was in the core cadets, we were always wrestling with somebody.
SPEAKER_00: But if you've ever wrestled anybody, you know you're exhausted after a couple minutes.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's it's fascinating to think that that there could be this wrestling match that occurred all night.
SPEAKER_00: But I think that the reason that the Holy Spirit put that little detail in the scripture was to show us that Jacob was going through a significant time of testing.
SPEAKER_00: He's going through a significant time of testing.
SPEAKER_00: And I think the length of Jacob's struggle shows us that God, hear this, that God was allowing Jacob to sort of get to the end of who he was, to get to the end of who he was, and then so he could change him into the man that God wanted him to be.
SPEAKER_00: And we know that because after that night of wrestling, two things happen.
SPEAKER_00: The first thing is that God changed his name.
SPEAKER_00: God changed Jacob's name from that moment he was called Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And the other thing that we know is after that wrestling match with God, that Jacob walked with a limp the rest of his life.
SPEAKER_00: For the rest of his life, he walked with a limp.
SPEAKER_00: You see, here's the thing.
SPEAKER_00: After Jacob wrestled with God, he never walked the same again.
SPEAKER_00: He never walked the same again.
SPEAKER_00: And years ago, I was at a conference with um, sorry, I years ago, I for some reason when I get to preach, I don't know if it's a nervous tick, I might I start draining, and it's really weird, but that's that's if you hear that, that's what that is.
SPEAKER_00: I apologize.
SPEAKER_00: But um went to this conference and Tim Keller was preaching.
SPEAKER_00: This famous pastor from New York, brilliant, and he told the story that I um just told you.
SPEAKER_00: And after he got done, he sort of paused and he said something I've never forgotten.
SPEAKER_00: You know, most sermons that you hear in your life, you know, you hear them, they impact you in the moment, but then maybe you don't remember them a month or two later.
SPEAKER_00: This sermon was different as he walked through this wrestling match between God and Jacob, and at the end of it, he paused and he said the same thing that I did, that after Jacob wrestled with God, he never walked the same again.
SPEAKER_00: And then he looked up and he said, Gentlemen, never trust a man of God that doesn't walk with a limp.
SPEAKER_00: Never trust a man of God that doesn't walk with a limp.
SPEAKER_00: And his point is that you want to be a man that God has dealt with your sin to the point that you don't walk the same as other men.
SPEAKER_00: That he has gone into your life and dealt with your sin to the point that you don't walk the same as other men.
SPEAKER_00: And what I want to do with some time today, I want to talk to you about how I got my first limp.
SPEAKER_00: My first limp.
SPEAKER_00: I started walking with a limp.
SPEAKER_00: I got my limp back in 2005.
SPEAKER_00: That was when my wrestling match with God started.
SPEAKER_00: I came to Christ in 1992 at Texas AM.
SPEAKER_00: Um, I desperately loved Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I love Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I adore him.
SPEAKER_00: He's the love of my life.
SPEAKER_00: But looking back on my life in college, young adulthood, even in the early ministry, and in my early ministry, I realized that as I look back, there were, as much as I love the Lord, there were things in my life that he was calling me to surrender to him.
SPEAKER_00: There were things in my life that I remember the Spirit leading me to surrender to him, but for whatever reason, I just wouldn't do it.
SPEAKER_00: Um I made a list here, some things I thought of.
SPEAKER_00: One really interestingly was food.
SPEAKER_00: And these are these are gonna get progressively worse.
SPEAKER_00: But I remember, I was just a glutton.
SPEAKER_00: I I there were days where I'd eat fast food three times a day.
SPEAKER_00: I was overweight, um, and it wasn't because of any genetic thing going on, it was just that I did not honor the Lord with what I put in my body.
SPEAKER_00: And I remember him, the spirit sort of prodding me at that.
SPEAKER_00: Let my body be a temple.
SPEAKER_00: And I ignored it.
SPEAKER_00: One was my relationship with my wife.
SPEAKER_00: When we got married, you know, and I planted the church and um back in 2002.
SPEAKER_00: I'll talk about that tonight.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna tell you this story tonight.
SPEAKER_00: But I pretty much put my God-given responsibility to love and lead my wife spiritually and emotionally just on the back burner.
SPEAKER_00: Ministry became my job, became my mistress, and my marriage was sort of falling apart.
SPEAKER_00: And I just didn't care because I was going after uh, you know, the golden calf.
SPEAKER_00: And I remember the Spirit called me to do that, and it wasn't until kind of a crisis in our marriage that I fixed that.
SPEAKER_00: Another was per my personal holiness.
SPEAKER_00: I grew up in a home where my my father was a Baptist deacon, and there was pornography all over our house.
SPEAKER_00: And they would always leave and do God knows what.
SPEAKER_00: And as a little kid, I was home alone a lot, and at 11 years old, I remember looking at pornography for the first time.
SPEAKER_00: And um, when I went to AM, just got, you know, I got radically saved.
SPEAKER_00: Didn't look at pornography one time in in my entire college career, not once.
SPEAKER_00: And then, but then later on in the 90s, the internet came out.
SPEAKER_00: And it was one of those things that it was kind of the internet was fast, it's fascinating because we have access to pornography um more than any other generation in history.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, used to back in the day, if you wanted to, if you wanted to look at pornography, you had to get in a car and you had to go drive somewhere, watch some movie, get some magazine at some store in order to look at it.
SPEAKER_00: So there were these hurdles that you had to sort of cross in order to look at it.
SPEAKER_00: Now it's anything you could possibly imagine is in your phone 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with a punch of a button.
SPEAKER_00: And so having a computer with the internet was kind of like having a Playboy magazine on my desk all the time, you know, and and 364 days a year, I'd have the strength not to look at it, but then I'd get tired, I'd get emotionally exhausted, whatever, and I would just sort of look at it.
SPEAKER_00: And um, and and and and then that was sort of the thing.
SPEAKER_00: I remember the Lord just calling me to have all these things surrender to him and wouldn't do it for whatever reason completely.
SPEAKER_00: And there was a an instance, a thing that happened in 2004 that scared me to death looking back on it.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but I I never understood why men in the ministry had affairs.
SPEAKER_00: I never understood it.
SPEAKER_00: Um I couldn't, you know, as a young pastor, I could not fathom what it was, how a guy that could preach every Sunday could fall into an affair.
SPEAKER_00: And a little backstory, when I was a senior in high school, I dated a girl that was a foreign exchange student from Spain.
SPEAKER_00: She was gorgeous.
SPEAKER_00: She she uh she actually won the Miss Madrid contest in 1991.
SPEAKER_00: She was fascinating, and for whatever reason, she she liked this goofy country boy, and we dated our senior year, and we never really broke up.
SPEAKER_00: I just went to AM, she went back to Spain and um got married to my wife, which I adore, and and um in 2004 I was sitting at my computer, booms email pops up, and it's this girl, her name was Marta, and her husband had left her and cheated on her, and she sent me all these pictures of her and bikinis, and it was crazy.
SPEAKER_00: And she made it very, very clear that she was open to picking the relationship back up.
SPEAKER_00: And for about 24 hours, I just I got it.
SPEAKER_00: Like I got it.
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay, this is why a guy's have an affair.
SPEAKER_00: Because they've never been given the opportunity.
SPEAKER_00: And there was a temptation that I had never experienced in my life.
SPEAKER_00: I praise God that woman was in Spain.
SPEAKER_00: Because I don't know what sh I would have done if she was down the street and lost my mind for about 24 hours, and I came to my senses finally, and I told my wife, I told my elders, responded back to her, actually shared the gospel with her in my response.
SPEAKER_00: But what that did was expose that there were these parts of my heart that I had not fully surrendered to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And um it was a really short time after that that I uh woke up one night, had a horrible pain in my stomach, and it just kept getting worse and worse and worse.
SPEAKER_00: And so went to the emergency room.
SPEAKER_00: Turned out I have appendicitis.
SPEAKER_00: They removed my appendix, felt great.
SPEAKER_00: Um, everything was good.
SPEAKER_00: About three or four days later, I get a call from my doctor, and they said, Matt, we just got the pathology report back on your appendix, and we found a 1.9 centimeter malignant tumor in your appendix.
SPEAKER_00: It's like you have cancer.
SPEAKER_00: And um, that's all they knew.
SPEAKER_00: He's like, I need you to come set an appointment with an oncologist, and we'll find out more.
SPEAKER_00: And I was I was 31 years old at the time.
SPEAKER_00: I had three little children at home.
SPEAKER_00: A wife, a pastor of a young church.
SPEAKER_00: And that word, those words, you have cancer.
SPEAKER_00: If you've never heard those words, they're the most shocking words you can possibly ever hear, besides maybe you lost a child.
SPEAKER_00: It is the it is the biggest gut punch you can possibly ever imagine.
SPEAKER_00: I remember I hung up the phone and I fell on the ground, just fell on the ground on my knees.
SPEAKER_00: And the first thing I could just sort of get out of my mouth was, Lord, comfort me.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know, I I was just so I was going crazy, Lord, comfort me, comfort me, comfort me.
SPEAKER_00: Tell me what you're doing, tell me what you're doing.
SPEAKER_00: And I opened, I got up, got at my desk, opened up my Bible, and I was like, I'm just gonna read the first thing that I come to.
SPEAKER_00: So I just flipped my Bible open and I looked down, and I kid you not, the first scripture that I came to after I'm begging God, comfort me, comfort me.
SPEAKER_00: The first scripture I came to is Jeremiah 2.13, and here it is.
SPEAKER_00: You ready?
SPEAKER_00: Don't turn there, just listen.
SPEAKER_00: For my people have committed two evils.
SPEAKER_00: They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, hewed out for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that hold no water.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm crying out to God that He would comfort me.
SPEAKER_00: I have cancer, crying out to God to comfort me.
SPEAKER_00: And the first verse I read about is the people of God turning to things to satisfy themselves other than the living God.
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, thank you, God, that's incredibly comforting, right?
SPEAKER_00: Well, I realized in that moment, I realized in that moment that the Lord was not gonna comfort me, not yet, but that he was actually using that in my life to discipline me.
SPEAKER_00: And I've not to punish me, but to discipline me.
SPEAKER_00: And I've noticed that there's a pattern in my life when I fall into sin.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says that narrow is the road that leads to life, and few are gonna find it.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're on this narrow road that leads to salvation.
SPEAKER_00: And every once in a while you try to step off that narrow road, right?
SPEAKER_00: Well, I've noticed that in the times I sort of try to step off the narrow road, one of two things occurs.
SPEAKER_00: Number one is that the Holy Spirit begins to speak to me.
SPEAKER_00: Say, that's not who you were created to be, and I step back on the narrow road myself.
SPEAKER_00: But there have been other times where I step off the narrow road and I and the Holy Spirit speaks to me, but I just keep walking.
SPEAKER_00: I just keep going.
SPEAKER_00: And um, thanks, brother.
SPEAKER_00: I may I may take you up on that right there.
SPEAKER_00: And um, and I just keep walking.
SPEAKER_00: And what I've noticed is that when the Holy Spirit's speaking to me, because I've stepped off the narrow road and I keep walking away from the Lord, then at that point the discipline of the Lord comes into my life and picks me up and places me back on the narrow road.
SPEAKER_00: And uh we know this in Hebrews 12, 10.
SPEAKER_00: He said, for uh actually I have more scripture than I thought.
SPEAKER_00: You want to you want to grab that?
SPEAKER_00: Can you do that quick?
SPEAKER_00: Or I'm gonna get a little drink of water.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 12, 10.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's ESV.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 12, 10, and 11.
SPEAKER_00: It says, for they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them.
SPEAKER_00: But he disciplines us, he's talking about our earthly fathers, but he, God, disciplines us for our good that we may share in his holiness.
SPEAKER_00: And then verse 11, it says this.
SPEAKER_00: It says, For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but hear this.
SPEAKER_00: It says, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
SPEAKER_00: And so I realized in that moment that that's what God was doing.
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't he wasn't using cancer to punish me, he was using cancer to bring about the peaceful fruit of righteousness in my life.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the initial tests weren't going well.
SPEAKER_00: It's called the carcinoid tumor of the appendix, it's really rare.
SPEAKER_00: And um, the way that this cancer works is if they if they cut it out before it gets into your lymph nodes, then you're good.
SPEAKER_00: Then it typically never comes back.
SPEAKER_00: But if it spreads to your lymph nodes before they cut it out, then there's actually no cure for it.
SPEAKER_00: Chemo doesn't work, you're done, it's just a matter of time.
SPEAKER_00: And the initial test where I got a CAT scan, the lymph nodes were swollen.
SPEAKER_00: And the blood marker was high for that tumor.
SPEAKER_00: And the doctor came to me and he said, Matt, here's the deal.
SPEAKER_00: He said, It's possible that the lymph node is swollen because of the appendectomy and the tumor marker is high because of the original tumor in your body, and that we're gonna come in and test it in three months and we'll see, and then we'll know.
SPEAKER_00: Because if cancer's not on lymph nodes, it'll go back down.
SPEAKER_00: And so, guys, think about that.
SPEAKER_00: Little kids, wife, I've got to wait three months to know whether I'm gonna live or I'm gonna die.
SPEAKER_00: That was a that was a rough three months.
SPEAKER_00: Well, turns out um sometime during that three months, during that time of waiting, I got this call from this guy named Neil McClendon.
SPEAKER_00: Y'all might have heard of him before.
SPEAKER_00: Um Neil, had we do you remember this story where I'm going?
SPEAKER_00: Had we had we met before then, or was did you just call me out of the blue?
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember?
SPEAKER_00: But I don't know that we'd ever met.
SPEAKER_00: And so I'd heard all these stories about the crazy great Neil McClendon, you know, the prophetic Neil McClendon.
SPEAKER_00: And his buddies was some of my buddies, and so he heard I had cancer, and and I thought, and and the one thing I'd heard about Neil is that he was prophetic, that he gets words from the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We exchanged pleasantries, and he said, Matt, I've got a word of God for you.
SPEAKER_00: Got a word from the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And I remember thinking, oh man, here it comes, you know.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what he said, true story.
SPEAKER_00: He said, Matt, he said, I don't know if you're gonna live or gonna die.
SPEAKER_00: I have no idea.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, this is comforting.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Neil.
SPEAKER_00: He said, but I know this.
SPEAKER_00: He said, God is calling you to live with unction.
SPEAKER_00: And I said, okay, Neil, what does unction mean?
SPEAKER_00: He said it means holy urgency.
SPEAKER_00: Holy urgency.
SPEAKER_00: And he said, read Psalms 39, and you'll know what to do.
SPEAKER_00: Like, okay.
SPEAKER_00: We hung up.
SPEAKER_00: So I'll turn to Psalms 39.
SPEAKER_00: Psalms 39 is a fascinating little story in the scripture.
SPEAKER_00: So King David speaking to the Lord, and he asked God a question.
SPEAKER_00: He asked God to do something for him.
SPEAKER_00: He said, God, show me the length of my days.
SPEAKER_00: He asked God to show him sort of how long he's gonna live.
SPEAKER_00: He said, God, show me the length of my days.
SPEAKER_00: And then he says this.
SPEAKER_00: He said, God, show me that my life is just a handbreadth.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what's a handbreath?
SPEAKER_00: Well, come over, let's say, here in about three months on the two days in Houston that it's really cold.
SPEAKER_00: You go over to those windows over there, got the heat inside, you breathe against the window, it fogs up instantly and then immediately it goes away.
SPEAKER_00: That's hand breath.
SPEAKER_00: And so King David says, God, I want you to show me that my life is just like that.
SPEAKER_00: It's just boom, it's there and it's gone.
SPEAKER_00: Now, why would David ask God to show him that his life is just like that breath that appears and is gone?
SPEAKER_00: And you know, why does he say, God, show me the length of my day?
SPEAKER_00: Show me that my life is just a hand breath.
SPEAKER_00: And then he sort of answers his own question because after that he said, Because most men live their lives in vain.
SPEAKER_00: Most men live their lives like phantoms that are just walking around doing their thing.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of what he says.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the point.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what David is getting at, and hear this clearly today.
SPEAKER_00: What David is getting at is that there's a direct connection between you realizing how short your life is and the urgency with which you'll live your life.
SPEAKER_00: There's a direct connection between you understanding and realizing and hitting you how short your life is and the holy urgency with which you'll live that life.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the thing, guys, we would never admit it.
SPEAKER_00: But the truth is that most of us live our lives like we've got 95 years.
SPEAKER_00: We do.
SPEAKER_00: We don't think we're gonna get the cancer call.
SPEAKER_00: None of us in this room do.
SPEAKER_00: Truth is, half of you will.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know that?
SPEAKER_00: Go look it up.
SPEAKER_00: Half of men get cancer at some point in their life.
SPEAKER_00: But most of us live our lives like we got 95 and we're gonna die in our sleep.
SPEAKER_00: But David was asking God to help him not live that way.
SPEAKER_00: Now think about this.
SPEAKER_00: If for some reason, if for some reason you you you walk out of here today and you got a call from your doctor that said, hey, you have XYZ, you've got a week to live.
SPEAKER_00: Would that not change the way you spent the next seven days?
SPEAKER_00: Y'all starting to hit you?
SPEAKER_00: What David's getting at?
SPEAKER_00: What Neil was getting at with me?
SPEAKER_00: If you got a call, you got seven days to live, how would that change how you live the next seven days?
SPEAKER_00: It would change everything.
SPEAKER_00: You would live with an absolute holy urgency.
SPEAKER_00: The reason that you don't is because you think in your back of your mind you got 95 years.
SPEAKER_00: You don't know if you do or not.
SPEAKER_00: If you got a call that said you got seven days to live, would you look at pornography in those seven days?
SPEAKER_00: No, you wouldn't.
SPEAKER_00: A dang sure didn't look at it in three months.
SPEAKER_00: Because I knew the length of my days.
SPEAKER_00: If you knew you had seven days to live, would you waste your time scanning the internet, looking at social media, trying to build your platform?
SPEAKER_00: No, you wouldn't care.
SPEAKER_00: Who cares?
SPEAKER_00: What do other people think about you?
SPEAKER_00: If you got seven days to live, if you knew that you had seven days to live, if some woman started flirting with you, would that even be a temptation to you?
SPEAKER_00: Would it no?
SPEAKER_00: Man, you're about to see Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Get away from me, woman.
SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't even be a temptation to you.
SPEAKER_00: If you knew that you had seven days to live, would you turn off the television and put down your phone and put the face of your wife in your hands and look at her in the eye and say, you are the greatest gift that God has ever given me in my entire life.
SPEAKER_00: And pay attention to her and listen to her and speak value to her.
SPEAKER_00: I promise you you would.
SPEAKER_00: Would you worry about your job?
SPEAKER_00: Would you be spending that seven days thinking about how to how to climb the corporate ladder?
SPEAKER_00: Or would you maybe spend a little more time with your kids and get down on the floor with them and point them to Jesus and speak value to them?
SPEAKER_00: You would.
SPEAKER_00: If you knew you only had seven days to live, would you read the Bible differently?
SPEAKER_00: You would.
SPEAKER_00: When you think you're dying, or you may die, you don't read the Bible like, uh, let me let me get into it for a second and knock it out before I go to work.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you read the scripture like it's a lifeline and it's all you got.
SPEAKER_00: And you're trying to suck the marrow out of it.
SPEAKER_00: It's an interesting story, real quick.
SPEAKER_00: Um, you guys know who John Piper is?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, good.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know where to tell the story because I didn't know if everybody knew John Piper.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't, he he's probably one of the most famous pastors of the last hundred years in America.
SPEAKER_00: You know, of all the of all the pastors that are alive today, you know, besides Neil McClendon, there's probably gonna be one person that people are talking about a thousand years from now, and it'll be it'll be John Piper.
SPEAKER_00: When um and uh and that's not even true, Neil, we're gonna be forgotten, and that's an awesome thing.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm joking, but when I planted the stone, uh my first worship leader was Chris Tomlin, believe it or not.
SPEAKER_00: He planted the Austin stone with me in in Austin.
SPEAKER_00: Chris was his star, if you will, was taken off about that time.
SPEAKER_00: And we were at the Passion Conference, and John Piper reached out to Chris to have lunch with him, and but he didn't say why he wanted to eat lunch with him.
SPEAKER_00: He just said, Hey Chris, can you eat lunch today at 1230?
SPEAKER_00: And Tomlin was scared to death because he thought he'd written some song that had bad theology in it or something, and he was a bit Piper was about to take him to the woodshed, and and so he came to me, he's like, Carter, you gotta go with me, man.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he might say some stuff I don't know, and you gotta bail me out, and and so I I went.
SPEAKER_00: And I was going through cancer at the time, and I was still in that three-month period, and and um, and it it was hands down the most awkward lunch of my entire life because not many people know this because they see Tomlin and he's like super out going on stage, but he's a massive introvert and he just doesn't talk much.
SPEAKER_00: And Piper was worse than him.
SPEAKER_00: Like they look true story before the Lord, they just didn't even look at each other, they just sat kind of sat there and ate.
SPEAKER_00: And it was so bad.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm trying to make conversations, it's not working.
SPEAKER_00: And finally, thankfully, Piper looks at me and he said, Matt, I hear you're going through cancer.
SPEAKER_00: And I actually knew this at the time through another person, but it had not become public.
SPEAKER_00: But Piper was actually walking through cancer at that very moment.
SPEAKER_00: He got prostate cancer.
SPEAKER_00: And so he asked me, he said, Matt, what have you been learning through walking through cancer?
SPEAKER_00: And let me just tell you this.
SPEAKER_00: Let me one one backstory here.
SPEAKER_00: Through that, not only were they not talking, but Piper wouldn't, Piper didn't smile.
SPEAKER_00: Like he's not a smiler.
SPEAKER_00: And so he hasn't smiled the whole time.
SPEAKER_00: Um, Neil, you remember Jesse Reeves?
SPEAKER_00: Jesse was actually, that's Chris Homel's bass player, he's hilarious.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesse was there too, and he was failing attention.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesse, true story, made some joke about something in the middle of it, and Piper looked up at Jesse and just said, riveting.
SPEAKER_00: So it's it's bad.
SPEAKER_00: He hasn't smiled.
SPEAKER_00: So he looks at me and says, Matt, tell me about walking through cancer.
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Look, I could tell you a lot of things.
SPEAKER_00: I could tell you a lot of things.
SPEAKER_00: He said, Dr.
SPEAKER_00: Piper, cancer has been one of the best things that's ever happened in my entire life.
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm walking in an intimacy with Jesus that I never have.
SPEAKER_00: And for the first time in lunch, he smiled and he leans into me.
SPEAKER_00: Big old grin on his face.
SPEAKER_00: And he goes, Matt, suffering is a beautiful hermeneutic.
SPEAKER_00: And I remember thinking, I have no idea what that means.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm texting on the table, my pastor of theology.
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, quick, what does beautiful hermeneutic mean?
SPEAKER_00: And what he's saying is this is that suffering changes the way you read the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Suffering makes the Bible come alive, is what he's saying.
SPEAKER_00: If you knew that you had a week to live, would it change the way that you pray?
SPEAKER_00: You would, yes, it changes the way you pray.
SPEAKER_00: You pray with passion.
SPEAKER_00: You you pray like your life depends on it.
SPEAKER_00: I could go on and on and on and on, but there's a direct connection between you knowing how short your life is and the urgency with which you live your life.
SPEAKER_00: And God allowed me to go through that.
SPEAKER_00: He allowed me to go through cancer to show me how seriously he wanted me to live with holy urgency.
SPEAKER_00: My life literally just completely, completely changed.
SPEAKER_00: I lived with unction.
SPEAKER_00: I lived with a holy urgency.
SPEAKER_00: I surrendered everything to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Everything.
SPEAKER_00: Long story short, after several months, tests came back, everything was totally normal.
SPEAKER_00: I've been cancer-free for 14 years, which is really cool.
SPEAKER_00: Now, my life, here's the thing, since those days of wrestling with God back in 2005, I haven't been perfect.
SPEAKER_00: I haven't been perfect.
SPEAKER_00: You know, that when the wrestling match with God gets over with, you know, it's sort of easy sometimes to fall back into complacency and to fall back into things that you don't want to.
SPEAKER_00: And I've had other struggles and failures, and we'll talk about those tonight.
SPEAKER_00: But again, men, I want you to know something that since those days of wrestling, I've never quite recovered.
SPEAKER_00: I've never quite walked the same again.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to sort of start landing the plane this morning by helping you sort of evaluate your own lives and because it's critical that we do.
SPEAKER_00: It's critical that we do because, man, I don't know if you've noticed, but the enemy seems to be on the prow these days.
SPEAKER_00: And he's taking a lot of good men out.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what I've noticed that Satan is pretty ingenious at how he works.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I've noticed in 25 years of ministry.
SPEAKER_00: I've noticed that Satan doesn't typically try to take out Christian men in the early part of their lives.
SPEAKER_00: He can, and he does.
SPEAKER_00: But what I've noticed is what the enemy tries to do is instead of going after a 23-year-old, you know, because if you take out a 23-year-old man, that does a certain amount of damage to the body of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: But if you take out a 43 or a 53 or a 63 or a 73-year-old man with a whole life behind him to discredit and a whole family to destroy, that does so much more damage to the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: So I've noticed that Satan loves to wait until men are sort of at the height of their influence to do the maximum amount of damage, and then he tries to take them out.
SPEAKER_00: It's not always the case, but that's what he does.
SPEAKER_00: But here's what I've noticed that Satan will do in our youth is he places little hooks in our mouth.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't set the hook, he just places them in our mouth.
SPEAKER_00: When we're young, he puts little hooks of lust in us, puts little hooks of love of money, puts little hooks of power and desire for credit and desire for the applause of men, puts little hooks of arrogance and entitlement, puts little hooks of desire for isolation and lack of accountability, little hooks of bitterness and resentment toward people that have hurt us.
SPEAKER_00: And he'll just put those hooks in our mouths and he'll just sort of let them sit there.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the thing: if we do not remove them in our youth, if we do not remove them when we become aware of them, if we don't take them out when we realize that in our mouths, he'll allow them to just sit there, he'll allow them to fester, he'll allow them to calcify, he'll allow them to get entrenched, and at the right time, at the right place, he sets the hook and he gets you and he takes you out.
SPEAKER_00: And so here's the question I want you to get to the bottom of today.
SPEAKER_00: Is there anything in your life that God is asking you to surrender to him, but you have not?
SPEAKER_00: If there's anything in your life, anything in your life, any little hooks of sin in your life that you have sensed are there, you know they're there, you sense the Spirit calling you to remove them, and for whatever reason, you've allowed them to stay.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, most of us, if not all of us, do.
SPEAKER_00: Now, here's here's I want to give you one of the most comforting and scariest verses at the same time in the entire Bible, Philippians 1, 6.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says, For I'm sure of this that he who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Now, here's why that's comforting.
SPEAKER_00: If God started a good work in you, he's gonna complete it.
SPEAKER_00: That's good news, amen.
SPEAKER_00: He's got your back.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the scary news he ain't giving up on you.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to complete the good work that he started in you.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you're saved, God's the one that began that good work in you, he's gonna complete it.
SPEAKER_00: And so if there are hooks of sin in your life, sooner or later he's gonna get them out.
SPEAKER_00: He's gonna get them out.
SPEAKER_00: And what I've learned from experience is that either I remove them, or he does.
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of times when he does, it's not quite as fun.
SPEAKER_00: And so I want to end today by reminding you of one more story in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: You know it.
SPEAKER_00: But I'll remind it for you, it's um King David was at the height of his power.
SPEAKER_00: Everything had fallen into place, and he was at the stage of his life where he had given away a ton of his power.
SPEAKER_00: It said it was the time of year when kings go out to battle, but David was at home on his couch.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't have to go out to battle.
SPEAKER_00: There were other guys that could do it for him.
SPEAKER_00: He deserved a break.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever reason, he was home.
SPEAKER_00: He was on the couch.
SPEAKER_00: He was in bed.
SPEAKER_00: That same night he gets up, walks out on the roof.
SPEAKER_00: It's a cool night.
SPEAKER_00: Gets over to the edge just to look at the kingdom that God had built for him.
SPEAKER_00: And he looks down, and there's a woman that's naked.
SPEAKER_00: She's bathing.
SPEAKER_00: And you know the story.
SPEAKER_00: He's overcome with lust in that moment.
SPEAKER_00: In a moment of absolute stupidity.
SPEAKER_00: He sins for her and he sleeps with her.
SPEAKER_00: Finds out she's pregnant, doesn't repent in that moment, keeps going.
SPEAKER_00: Tries to get her husband to come back from the battle, sleep with her so he can hide the pregnancy.
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't work.
SPEAKER_00: He's faithful.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't sleep with her, so David tries to have him killed.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the thing I want you to hear.
SPEAKER_00: That sin that David committed that night didn't start with that night.
SPEAKER_00: I promise you it didn't.
SPEAKER_00: It didn't start that night.
SPEAKER_00: Somewhere along the way in David's life, Satan put little hooks of entitlement in him, where he thought he could take any woman he wanted.
SPEAKER_00: Somewhere along the way in David's life, Satan put little hooks of lack of accountability in David where he didn't have to share the things he was struggling with.
SPEAKER_00: Somewhere along the way in David's life, Satan put little hooks of sexual fantasy and lust in him.
SPEAKER_00: And because David allowed them to stay there and he allowed them to fester and get entrenched in the right time and the right place when the temptation presented itself, Satan set the hook and it took David out.
SPEAKER_00: And he was never the same again.
SPEAKER_00: I want y'all to hear that.
SPEAKER_00: After that one sin, David's kingdom and David and his family were never the same again.
SPEAKER_00: From that one moment, from that one sin, the implication of that night, of that one sin would have rippling effects that would affect his kingdom and his family and the rest of his life that he never really fully recovered from.
SPEAKER_00: And I've often thought about this.
SPEAKER_00: I've often thought about what would, if somehow, given the opportunity, if somehow like the 75-year-old David could somehow get back in a time machine and go back to the roof that night and talk to the 35-year-old David before he sinned, what do you think he'd say to him?
SPEAKER_00: If the David at the end of his life could somehow go back to the roof that night and look at his 35-year-old self, what do you think he'd say to him?
SPEAKER_00: I'm telling you what he would do.
SPEAKER_00: He would walk over to that 35-year-old David, he would put his hands on his shoulders, he would get in his face and say, Boy, go back in the house.
SPEAKER_00: Go back in the house.
SPEAKER_00: It's not worth it.
SPEAKER_00: It's not worth it, son.
SPEAKER_00: You're about to destroy your life in a way you can't even imagine, David.
SPEAKER_00: Please go back in the house.
SPEAKER_00: I guarantee you that's what he'd say.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us came here this weekend and you have pornography in your browsing history.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you here may even have um a girl that's not your spouse number that's in your phone already.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you maybe came here with a mindset that your marriage is too far gone and it's not worth fighting for.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you came here with a little hook of desire for recognition or love of money or comfort or power or control or safety or whatever.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you came here with little hooks of bitterness that you've never quite taken out.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the question.
SPEAKER_00: If the 80-year-old you could come back to the right now you and say anything to you, what would it be?
SPEAKER_00: I'm telling you what the 80-year-old you would say to the right now you.
SPEAKER_00: If there are hooks in your life, he would look at you and he'd grab you by the arm and he'd say, Take them out.
SPEAKER_00: Take them out.
SPEAKER_00: You do not want to walk down that road.
SPEAKER_00: So here's the last thing I want you to hear, guys.
SPEAKER_00: It's at some point in your past, God called you to himself.
SPEAKER_00: He cleansed you of your sin.
SPEAKER_00: He gave you his righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: If you're in Christ Jesus today, that's that's who you are.
SPEAKER_00: He cleansed you of your sin.
SPEAKER_00: Called you to himself, he clothed you with his righteousness, and after he cleansed you with his blood, he called you to walk in a manner worthy of that calling.
SPEAKER_00: He called you to walk in a way that you're a man after his own heart.
SPEAKER_00: And because of that, he loves you too much to let those hooks stay in you.
SPEAKER_00: And so let's love him enough to take those hooks out.
SPEAKER_00: And I can't think of a better time than right now to just open up your hands and open up your heart to the Lord and say, before you get cancer, before disciple, you know, discipline comes before it falls apart.
SPEAKER_00: When you're here, you're healthy, you're whole.
SPEAKER_00: Just say, God, you can have anything you want.
SPEAKER_00: You can have anything you want.
SPEAKER_00: I am full on in with you.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna tell you something.
SPEAKER_00: There are very few things in this world more powerful than a fully surrendered man of God.
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine what would happen if this crew right here said, going all in?
SPEAKER_00: Not gonna be perfect, but I'm in.
SPEAKER_00: You can have my heart, you can have my life.
SPEAKER_00: Change the city, man.
SPEAKER_00: I'm telling you.
SPEAKER_00: Change the world.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Father, hooks are hard to get out.
SPEAKER_00: But the last time I checked, your word said that you can do exceedingly abundantly more than all we can ask or think.
SPEAKER_00: According to the power at work in us.
SPEAKER_00: And so, Father, if there are men in this room that have the Holy Spirit in them, which I know there are many, I pray that you would speak clearly to them about the areas of their life that are not surrendered to you.
SPEAKER_00: And that you would give them the power to surrender.
SPEAKER_00: I ask that today in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.