[SERMON] The Map: Don't Miss the Main Quest | Side Quest Life

Using the world of video games as his lens, Pastor Cyle challenges his congregation to recognize the difference between life's endless "side quests" — hobbies, sports, schedules, and responsibilities — and the one thing that truly matters: knowing Jesus and making Him known. Anchored in Luke 10 and the story of Mary and Martha, the message calls out the danger of being busy with good things while neglecting the best thing — time at the feet of Jesus. The practical takeaway is a personal inventory: what is taking your time, your attention, and your affection, and is it time to clear your map and return to the main quest?

Transcript

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So I have a question for you. Who likes a good side quest? Raise your hands. Okay, that's this is gonna be fun. Uh so uh I love a good side quest. I think side quests are the things in life that are not the main quest in life, they're the things that you do and get involved in. I like a good side quest. I love to get very involved in side quests. I want to show you some pictures from a recent side quest adventure of mine. Here's a picture from um this is from Lansing Friday night. That is Ryan, who was up here to announce with his son Joe. We hang out with a group of about 12 to 14 people from our church, both campuses, and we play a card game, collectible trading card game called Riftbound. And anybody heard of it? Nope. Okay. Uh we know you're not nerds, that's fine. Um this is them playing. Uh a little a few weeks ago, I I got uh I like to do side quests well, so I like to win. So a few weeks ago I won a championship and I got a mat. And I will do anything for a prize. That mat is worth about$20 retail. And if I can win a$20 mat, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna invest into it. So I spent a lot of money to win that$20 mat. So um when I was at when I was in high school, I was a wrestler. And in wrestling competitions, you would always get a t-shirt that says champion. Like mine would say HWT, for he's he's he's way too cool. Um yeah. It also means heavyweight. I don't know why, but I don't know why. Uh so but if I could win a t-shirt, I would I would beat everybody mercilessly. I would I would wrestle eight to ten guys, I'd win them all, and I'd get this t-shirt, I'd be so excited about it. And then I realized I became an adult and realized those t-shirts cost like three bucks to make. Uh so you know, but the Mad Snow costs, but it's just something I that I'm involved with. I play with my kids, we play almost every night, we play at home. Uh, we've got we've got both teenagers and adults at our church to play collectible trading card games together. We had like 21 people at the Hoddle House the other night playing a game, and so we're just doing life together. But this is a side quest. Here's some more of the prizes uh that I'm really enjoying it, and I'm spending time in side quests because side quests are things that are not the main quest. And the main quest of life is always Jesus. It's that's real simple. We're a church, it's always Jesus. So anything that's not Jesus is a side quest. The things that you do in life, work, hobbies, all those things. Some of you have side quests, you just don't want to admit it. Like, where are my fishermen at? You're that's a side quest. All right, where are my boaters at? Okay? Where are my cooks? People like to cook. Uh raise your hand if it's arts of any kind, crafts, arts, paint, you name it, okay? Those are all side quests. Where are my golfers at? That's the side quest. All of that stuff is a side quest. Education. Who likes to get lots of education degrees and watch lots of instructional things? Okay, some of you, you're also nerds, just a different kind of nerd. Um that's just the way it is. Those are all side quests. And you can spend your whole life doing things that matter and still miss what matters most. Some of those things matter, some of those things are valuable, but you can do spend your whole life doing all these side quests, and then you can miss what matters most. And so we're gonna nerd out a little bit this morning. It's gonna be okay. Uh, if you're not a nerd, you'll hopefully still understand. People last service, they got it. Uh, and so ultimately, I'm gonna talk to you about video games. I love video games, I've been playing video games my whole life. I am the original video game generation, and so I've been enjoying video games my whole life. And one day I hope to be in a retirement home playing video games until the day I die. Um that's just the way it is for me. That's my plan. I've told my kids, just put me in a home, make sure I like video games and play video games. That's fine. Um, so I'm gonna talk about some of the video games. You don't need to have played a video game to understand this, I'll make it make sense, I hope. Um, but in every video game that I like I play, they typically have a map. A map of the world. There's usually some fantasy world that's created to encapsulate the game and the story, and in every one of them, there's some kind of map. And so that one of the first things you do when you start a video game is you open the map and you get to see whatever part of the world you can see. Sometimes you can only see a little bit, sometimes you can see the whole thing, it's depending on the game. And as you explore the map, you explore the world. And so I want to show you uh there's a new game out called Crimson Desert. Just came out, I think, three weeks, month ago. Um it's not it's not very old. It's a game that's on my list. I don't play it yet. I would love to, but I already have a current side quest called Riftbound. So this is is is my future side quest, probably. Um, but imagine you're playing this video game. Now I know that's a stretch for some of you, and you open your map up and it looks like this. Now, do you guys agree this is super busy? Right? You can't even see the world under there, right? It's like the Antarctic shelf. You can't see the land under all the snow. It is so full because in this video game there are 6,270 waypoint icons of things you can do. Side quests. You can stay busy for hours. I went on Steam, which is a place that has like it records like the time that everybody plays, so you can see how much time you've been logged into a video game, how much time all your friends have been logged into a video game. And so I went to the reviews and I found one reviewer. Now, this game has been out a very short amount of time, one reviewer who currently has 555 plus hours in the game. By the end of this year, this reviewer is probably gonna have thousands and thousands of hours in this game. Now, some of you will be like, well, that's a crazy amount of time. Remember where my golfers and fishermen are at? It's four and a half hours every round of golf, if I add that up, right? Once or twice or three times a week, right? What about fishing? Some of you go out for fishing for hours. Now, I'm just gonna tell you, fishing is not a side quest that I enjoy because when you're out catching fish and you're like, the fish are this big, I'm sitting catching nothing because fish don't get on my line. This just never happens. So when you say, Kyle, do you want to go fishing? No, it's not a side quest I enjoy because I'm terrible at it. Because for me, if I'm gonna do a side quest, I want to win something, right? I want to be good at it. If I'm not good at it, I'm gonna do a different side quest that I can be good at. That's just the way it works. A lot of us, that's how we do side quests in our life. You may not do one crafting hobby or arts crop hobby because you're not good at it, but you might find one that you really enjoy and are good at, and you you invest, and you buy a sewing machine, you buy all the stuff that you need to do to do that thing. In this game, there are thousands of icons, there's endless things to do, and there's places to go. You can actually repeat those those those journeys and those side quests over and over and over again. So it's endless. And there's people to help, there's loot to collect, there's all kinds of stuff that you can do. But hidden in all of those icons are just a handful of things that actually matter and move the story forward. I want to show you that map again. This is the map of these orange icons. These icons are the waypoints in the main quest, the main story of the game. The thing that you're actually supposed to be doing, this is the difference between those and all the busyness. Because as you go along the main quest, there's all these other distractions from the main quest. You actually go into a town in this game, and you'll be going along, and there'll be no your map will just be there, and then all of a sudden, all these little icons will pop up, all these adventures will pop up to distract you from the main quest, to take your time. And some of those can be very enjoyable. Some of my best experiences ever playing a video game were actually a really well-done side quest. And you think about it, you talk about it, you tell your friends about it, who are nerdy, um, and or get on stage and tell a bunch of strangers, I mean a bunch of people who don't know anything about games. It's just the way it works. But there's 168 waypoints in the main quest of the game, and it takes about 60 to 80 hours to finish the main quest. So imagine how much longer it's gonna take to finish 6,270 side quests of different lengths of time. Hours and hours and days and days. And we have the same kind of setup in our own life. We have a main quest in life, it's Jesus Christ. It's knowing, loving, and following Jesus. Knowing him and making him known. That's the main quest. I can tell you what the purpose of your life is. It's simple. The purpose of your life is to know Christ and make him known to the world. The Bible makes it clear. When you say, What is the meaning of life? I know what the meaning of life is. I'll be glad to tell you. I figured it out and it makes my life wonderful and complete, full of joy. Doesn't make it perfect, but it makes it joyful and it gives me satisfaction because I know the Bible makes it clear what the main quest is. The problem is everything else we do in life, it's a side quest. And the problem is some of us have spent our whole lives trying to clear icon after icon after icon on our map, and we never finish the main story. We're so busy doing side quests. And we do the same thing. We then we teach our kids how to be so busy doing the side quests, and then we teach our grandkids how to be so busy doing side quests that they miss out on the main story, the main thing. Because the main story is always Jesus. And here's the problem with it. Here's the problem that life feels exactly like that busy map. There's it's full of notifications. How many grab your phones right now? It's okay, pull your phone out. Look at your notifications. Tell me, tell me who has the tell me if you think you have the most notification. Who has who has notifications on their phone? Those little red bubbles that are scary. Anyone got so for me, I have one email, 14,252 notifications. I have 188 my text, I have 6,681 another email, and I have another email with 16,472. Anyone got that beat? All right, I got lots more emails. I have another email with 11, right? Or another email with 11. Um, so when it comes down to it, if you start up in social media, I've got I've got thousands on my social media of unread notifications. Life is full of notifications. Now, I I asked in last service and nobody had me beat until after service when somebody liked to confess. And so my buddy John from Bible study, he sent me a picture of his one email. 173,181 notifications. What? He's got me beat. So yeah. He got me beat. If you can beat 173,000, let me know. All of those are distractions, all of those notifications are opportunities to get involved in a side quest. They're promotions, they're emails, there's people wanting your time, your talent, and your treasure. They're side quests. We spend a lot of time doing all of those side quests, and then we make it important. We do the same thing with our kids. We tell our kids, you need to do more sports, you need to do travel teams, you need to be on this travel team, you need to do every sport. I remember my parents saying, you need to play a sport every season because if you don't, you're gonna miss out on things. But am I gonna miss out on the main thing? Some of us we get our kids so involved in all these things that our kids are missing out on the main thing, and it's Jesus. And I'm just gonna tell you, if your kids don't, if they miss out on Jesus, none of that other stuff matters. It's a waste of time. And I'm a person who I love side quests. I've got to go to the White House to meet the president, I won a national championship, I gotta do all these awesome things, and they're side quests. The problem is when I go back to reunions for my football team, those guys that went to the White House, those guys who were on the national championship, and I see them, and that was the most important thing in their life. That was the culmination of their life was being a champion at Michigan. And that was it, and everything else has been downhill. They're bankrupt, they're they're addicted to drugs and alcohol, they've been divorced once, multiple times, they're miserable, they're unhappy. And the guys that kept the main thing, the main thing, or figured out the main thing later in life that Jesus is what matters, they come back, and that was just a moment in life, and it was great. But there's so much more with Christ. There's a difference. And we do this all the time. We make things matter more because the world says they do, and they're just distractions. We do that with things that know notifications. We have too many responsibilities. We have responsibility after responsibility because people need us, they want us, they want our time, their talents, their treasures. So we have so many responsibilities in our life that we fill our map with all these waypoints and icons instead of focusing on Jesus. And we fill our map with opportunities. There's so many opportunities out there. You can get involved in anything and everything you want. You can be involved in every club, every activity, every group. You can there's opportunities of galore. You can have every hobby, you can go on YouTube and learn anything you want to learn in the world. And those are all distractions from the main thing. And some of those things are good things. When you're playing a video game, some of those side quests are great. Some of those side quests will allow your character to have a higher level of experience or some super ability where it allows you to play the game better. Some of those are good things. Some of our hobbies, our side quests, they're good things. Like for me, for Rift Bound, like I like to keep the main thing, the main thing. So when I went to Rift Bound and started playing, I go with my kids, I go with people from church. I just tell everyone, I'm a pastor, because they always want to know why do you have all these posse of people that come? Because there'll be like six people coming, and then we'll bring like 12. And so they're like, where do all these people come from? They come from our church. We play together, we have fun together as a church. It's one of the priorities of us is we do life together as a church. And so I'm a pastor, this is where I work. And so I'm excited to tell you that when you try to keep the main thing, the main thing, and one in your side quests, God can do amazing things. This Sunday, right now at our other campus, there are two people from our the that we play Rift Band with that found out that we're pastors and they said, you know, I want to go to a place where people get me. Because nerds in this nerdy kind of game world, they don't often feel comfortable in church because a lot of things they're into, the church is like, oh yeah, we don't like that, it's weird, we don't understand it. And so now they're attending church this Sunday for the first time. It's so exciting because we've been able to keep Jesus as part of it. And we always balance like, is this becoming an idol? Is this becoming a main thing, or is it staying a side thing that's just part of a journey, a bigger journey, but Jesus is still the focus? And a lot of times we take Jesus off the shelf of main thing and we put something else up there, a side quest, which becomes an idol. We just talked about false idols in our lives. And so we have to understand that all those things that can be good things can also distract us from the main thing and make it a bad thing. And then we have things in life that urgent. Some of us go from chaos moment to chaos moment to chaos moment, from urgency to urgency to urgency, and we just bounce through life trying to get those waypoints. In a video game, some of the video games I play, you'll be going along the map, and then something will pop up, but it's a limited time event. And if you don't get there now, it's gonna, you're gonna miss it. Some of you, you live your life because, oh, this thing is happening now, I don't want to miss it, and then this thing is happening now, or this emergency is happening now, and you go from all these side things and you still miss out on the main thing, which is Jesus. Because Jesus needs our focus. And although some of these things can be good, not all of them are the thing. The thing is and always will be Jesus. And not everything that's available to you is valuable. The problem is we think because it's available, it must be valuable. Because I can do it, I must do it, or I should do it. And the reality is you can't do everything, and you can't be everything, everyone. You can only do what you're called to do, which is follow Jesus and know him and make him known. And so I want to give the Bible. I want to tell you, uh, go to a popular story. It's about two women, Mary and Martha, their sisters. Now, some of you know the story, it's a famous story, but I think this is one of the clearest examples in Scripture of the main quest versus the side quest moment in Scripture. And we're gonna go to Luke 10. In this Bible, we're gonna go to Luke 10 where we find the story. And it says, Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. Now, this village was home of Lazarus and Mary and Martha, their siblings, and Lazarus, one of his best friends, who he later raises from the dead, and you've got Mary and Martha are his sisters. And he said, A woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. So Martha comes the door, she welcomes Jesus. Come on in, Jesus. And it continues on. It says, And she had a uh a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. So Jesus comes in, he starts teaching. You know, he's a great teacher, they're excited, he starts doing what Jesus does, he starts teaching people truth and who God is and who he is. And so Mary is so excited that Jesus, the teacher, is coming, she sits at his feet. But then in 40 it says, But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me. Martha's frustrated. She's mad at Mary, right? She's doing all this stuff. She's cooking, she's cleaning, she's making sure everything's taken care of. And she looks in the other room, and there's just Mary just sitting there, just hanging out with Jesus while she's doing all this work alone. She wants to be in with Jesus, but she's busy doing what she's doing. Now there's a problem here. We what we see in scripture that Mary and Martha are very different personalities. If you're talking about love languages, which we're actually teaching some of the teenagers leadership and love languages and their dispersonal profiles on Thursdays at the Hoddle House, we've been teaching them about love languages last week. My wife and my son taught them about. And so we know that Mary is probably what we would call a quality time person, right? Anybody quality time people out there? All right, you love to spend time with people, that's how you show love. I'm gonna spend time with you. Martha is what we would call an acts of service person. Who's my acts of service people? Yeah, you guys love it. You know that's you. You heard that story? Like, yeah, Martha's doing the right thing. Yeah, that's what you should be doing. All right? All right, she's an acts of service person, she's serving, she loves Jesus too, but the way she loves Jesus and shows it is she serves. That's how she's showing love. And so she comes to Jesus, she's like, hey, I want to be here in your teaching. Tell her to help me because I I want to be here too. And so Jesus responds, and and what we see here is you can be busy doing a good thing and still be off mission. Because when Jesus is there, you need to be with him. We need to spend time with him. It's not enough just to know Jesus, you gotta be with Jesus, you've got to spend time with Jesus. And so the story comes on, and the next verse it says, But the Lord Jesus answered, Martha, Martha, are you anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion which will not be taken away from her. See, Jesus didn't say, Mary, you're doing bad things. He just said you're doing too many things. When you should be doing the one thing that matters, spending time with me. See, we do a lot of things, and some of us we do a lot of things for Jesus. But what we forget to do is actually spend time with Jesus, which is praying, which is reading his word, spending time with his people, getting in Bible studies, church, life groups, all those things. All that's time, time is spending time with Jesus, learning about him, learning his word. But we spend so much time doing all this other stuff that's urgent or good or our takes our time and attention that we we miss out on the main thing. See, Martha wasn't doing bad things, she was just doing too many things. Some of you, you're not doing bad things, you're just out doing too many things, and you're missing out on Jesus. And that shelf that Jesus is supposed to be on in your life, you've taken him off and you've just put all this other stuff up there because you treat it as more important. Even though you may believe that Jesus is more important, you don't actually live that Jesus has been more important. And the problem is busyness, it's not equal to being obedient, it's not congruent. Like you're just because you're busy doesn't mean you're being obedient to God and his word. Martha was busy, but she wasn't being obedient to what was necessary, sitting at the feet of her Lord and listening to him. Some of you are too busy to actually obey Jesus and be with Jesus. And your excuse is, well, I'm just so busy. I wish I could go to life group, I wish I go to the Bible study, I wish I could go to church more, I wish I could read my Bible more, I'm just so busy. That's not a good excuse. Jesus would say, Oh, Kyle, Kyle, that is not the good thing, right? You're too busy for me. Right? Oh, Chris, oh Chris. You're too busy for me, right? Those are what that's how it would work in our life if we were talking to Jesus. And we can be active, but that's not equal to being aligned with what we should be doing in our relationship with the Lord either. Just because you're active for the Lord doesn't mean you're actually doing the right thing for Jesus. And if you got a full schedule, I know some of us we're really proud. If we look at take our concept and look at my calendar, I'm so I'm so important. I'm so busy. I got a full calendar. But a full schedule doesn't equal a fulfilled life. Those of you with a full schedule probably are pretty miserable at times. You're tired, you're exhausted, you're stressed, you're anxious, you're frustrated, you got your kids doing all these things, you got you doing all these things, you got grandkids doing all these things, and you're like, Why am I not happy? Why do I feel like I have a better relationship with Jesus? Well, because you filled up your schedule and you took Jesus off the shelf and you put all that other stuff on the shelf instead. That's what we do all the time. And that's what Jesus is telling Mary and Martha. Don't do that. Martha, I don't, I'm not asking you to do that. You're allowing the world to tell you that that's what's important. What's important is being with me, knowing Jesus and making him known. It's really hard to make him known if you don't know him. If you don't read his Bible, if you don't spend time praying with him, if you don't need to spend time with his people, learning and growing, it's really hard to make him known to the world if you don't actually know him. And so you don't drift toward purpose when you get busy with all this distraction. You actually drift toward the distraction. The more that you get invested in all this other stuff, the less you're invested in Jesus. And the problem is we think the more busy we are for the Lord, the more he's gonna appreciate it when all he wants is us to sit at his feet and know him and then make him known. And so the main quest isn't what you do in life or what you do for Jesus, it's being with Jesus. Now, this sermon series is the reason we call this sermon series side quest life is because Caleb Barrett sits over here. Yeah, hi Caleb. Um Caleb one time made a comment to Cody that Kyle has accomplished the main quest in life and he's just going through life tackling side quests. Because uh like I don't do things unless I'm well. And I thought that was really funny, but I thought actually sounds like a great sermon series. Um so that's thank you, Caleb. This is why we're doing a sermon series. You can ask, you can blame Caleb for it. But a lot of you that's the way you live. You're just trying to tackle every side quest, and you're trying to get your kids to do the same thing. You want your kids to have every experience. But guess what? If your kids do everything and miss out on Jesus, they they lose at life. They lose in eternity. And you lose for them. You cause them to lose. And so, one of the things I don't want to be guilty of, I don't want to be guilty of leading my kids down a path that ends in an eternal loss. I want them to know Jesus. I could care less if my kids work at McDonald's, I could care less if my kids play sports, I could care less as long as they're happy loving Jesus. That is all the only thing I care about. I don't. And and them being good at Rift Bound right now. So I'll go. But really, that's what matters. Some of you, your life looks like this map. It does. And you know it. You know it, your spouse knows it, your spouse tells you. I mean, if you're some of you are Mary, that's your personality, and you're married to a Martha, a busy, busy, busy, busy person, and you're just a person, I just want to sit here and hang out and hang out with Jesus. And like, you know, and you're frustrated with each other because you're always telling each other, I want you to just come in here and sit down and hang out with me, right? Spend time with me. And then they're saying, like, I want you to get off your lazy butt and come help me, right? That's a Mary and Martha mentality. But we do the same thing spiritually. Those same personalities come out in our spiritual relationship with the Lord. And so we have to be careful. Some of you, this is you, and that should be scary. Some of you, you look at this like, oh yeah, I've got all the stuff I've been doing in my life. This should be scary because it's blurring out the reality of what's covered in belief in that little orange, that there is a main quest in life, and it's Jesus. And if this is your map, if this is your life, you're exhausted, you're busy, you're and you're you're often doing good things because if you're here, you probably believe in Jesus, you probably want to live for him, you probably believe that you're doing good things for Jesus while you have the map, your life is that map, but you feel disconnected from God. Oh, I don't feel God, I just don't sense God, I don't know where God's leading me. Because you're you're too busy blurring out God with the distractions and you're not with him. You're a Martha when you need to be a Mary. And for some of you, it's time to be a Mary. You've been completing a side quest and you've been ignoring the main quest. And it's time to be Mary. And so, what does this mean for you? I know you may not like video games or any of that stuff, but hopefully you understand the purpose of this is to identify your distractions. Ask yourself these questions. What is taking your time, your attention, and your affection? What are you spending your time doing? Some of you have a list of books you want to read, Netflix shows you want to watch, and you have just stacked up more distractions in your life that you can't wait to get to. You don't have a list of Bible verses you want to read, you don't have a list of Bible studies you want to attend, you got all this other stuff that the world says is important when what you really need is Jesus. What's taking your time? What's getting your attention, and what's getting your affection? What do you talk about? What are you excited about? Are you excited about Jesus? Are you excited about telling people the transformation of your life? The things you learn, are you excited to talk about that next thing, that big fish, which is really this big, right? Who's got this big fish, right? How about I read this much scripture, right? I get excited because I learned this truth from scripture. Where is your affection going? We have to be careful. I'm not saying side quests are bad. I love side quests, and I love doing them well. But those side quests is all I'm always going back to is this what I should be spending my time, my talent, my treasure on? And I have a little birdie that's always speaking in my ear. And so it's called Patty, my wife. And so I'm always evaluating them. Am I taking God off the shelf and putting something else there? Like, I got a rule for Rift Bell. My rule is this if I get mad when I lose, it's probably become an idol. And so every time we go play as a group, it's like, anybody get mad? Anybody get mad? Because some of you lost a lot. So uh right? And like, if you lose and you get mad, it might be my affection is too much for this thing, my affection needs to be for Christ. And some of us do it with our kids and with sports. Like, if you get if your kids are getting mad that they're losing, you're teaching them to put that as an idol in their life. Sports should be fun. Sports should be fun. If God wants your kid to be a famous athlete, guess what? If they're going the main quest, they're gonna be a famous athlete. It's just gonna happen. God's gonna make it happen, all the doors will open, they'll go through. It is that simple. If if that's not the plan for your for your child, I'm sorry, your kid's not gonna be the famous athlete. They're not gonna be rich from sports. That's not gonna happen unless it's God's plan. So stop trying to force God's hand and just follow the main story and teach your kids to follow the main story in life. And then ask yourself this question: What fills your day but empties your soul? Some of you are gonna say work, some of you're gonna say my marriage, some of you are gonna say school. But you can't get rid of those things. I'm not telling you to go quit your job tomorrow. Don't do that. Um, I'm not paying your bills, so don't do that. Um, but reevaluate, maybe if Christ becomes the main story in your life, you'll find a way through your day that makes it better. That when Jesus is changing and transforming your heart, your work day will get better, your school day will get better, your life will get better, your marriage will get better, right? And your soul will become filled because you're spending time with Jesus at his feet. And then we also got to reevaluate our priorities. Are you choosing what's urgent in life, or are you choosing what's eternal? Are you just going from chaos moment to chaos moment, putting out fire after putting out fire, or that thing that you want to do, or that thing you don't want to miss out on right now? Because if I don't do it now, I'll be too old to do it, or my kids will be too old to do it, or if I don't go now, that may never come back around for me. Are you doing that? Or are you saying Jesus is the main thing and my life is focused on eternal things, and I'm not focused, I'm not as worried about all these earthly things that everybody else gets distracted with. Where's your priority at? And are you building a life, build on Jesus, or are you just maintaining the life that you have? Because if you're intentionally building towards that main quest, you're taking the steps forward from waypoint to waypoint on the journey that leads to life everlasting with Jesus. If you're just maintaining a life, you're just trying to exist from moment to moment, side quest to side quest, you're never really trying to progress out of the game to the end game. You're just trying to exist while you're here. And some of you don't need to try harder, some of you are trying hard. Some of you are some of the most diligent people who invest their time and you're you're you're serving the Lord. The problem is you're not sitting at his feet. You're Martha when you need to be a Mary. And some of you who are action service people, by nature, it's just hard for you, it's your personality. Some of you who are quality time people, you need to serve a little bit more. Let's be honest, right? Oh, I just read the Bible all the time. I do nothing else. Well, that's the problem for everybody else around you. Maybe you need to help out just a little bit more so the Marthas can sit at Jesus' feet a little bit more. That's the reality. Go help with the rubbish, go help with the rubbish cell, Marys, right? So like um, but some of you don't need to try harder. You just need to do the right things. You need to come back to Jesus and sit at his feet. You filled your life with so many things that you've squeezed out the main thing. Your life is that map. And so don't spend your life completing everything except the one thing that matters. There is so much that you can do, so many hobbies you could have, so many things that you accomplish. You're never gonna do them all. And we have we live in a world of FOMO, the fear of missing out. We're gonna miss out on this. And so we we live so much to FOMO that people won't register an event until the last second because they're waiting for that next urgency to come up because something might be more urgent, more better that I want to participate in. So I won't sign up for an event. This is America 2026. You cannot get people to sign up for things until the last second. Anything in the church, in the world, anything. Because people are holding out for something better. That means if you do that, you are going from urgency to urgency and you're not focused on the main quest. Because if you're focused on the main quest, everything you do helps you progress down the road to Jesus, the thing that matters most. And so your story only moves forward when you follow the main quest. That's what's important. And your story, it should end, it should end in eternity with Jesus. That's the goal. You can have side quests, just make sure they point to Jesus. We try to make sure that we when we go play cards, it's about Jesus. Like that's what we do. We want to invite people here to play cards because often in those places where they do play cards, those kind of nerdy establishments, those people are so used to being cast out of the church that they're anti-church. So we want to bring people to church, into church and say, hey, we love, we love this game. We also love Jesus, we love each other, we do life together. It's just a change of mindset that you're focusing now on the main quest as the purpose, not the side quest as the purpose. And I want to share this. The main quest is not just Jesus. Some people say, Well, I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior, so I'm good. I'm going to heaven. And the Bible says you are, right? If that's your thing. But that is not the main quest. The main quest is time with Jesus. Spending time with him at his feet. Mary was living the main quest. You know Jesus and you spend time with him, and then you tell others about him. That's the main quest. That's our journey. That's obedience to God's word. It's we have to have a relationship with God, not just knowledge of him. The devil and his minions know that God is real and they believe God is real. The Bible makes it clear. They don't spend time with him. We can know God is real, we can acknowledge that he's real, and we need to spend time with him because that's we have every waking moment of time we should be trying to spend for Jesus. With him, with his people, making him known in the world. That's the goal. And so if you're here this morning and you're struggling, if you know that your map is that busy map, and you know, although you know a lot of those things are good things, that you're lost along the way, you're miserable, you're frustrated, you're anxious, you're you're just you're depressed, you're not connecting with God, it's because this side quest has become the main quest for you. And the way we can help you as a church, we can pray for you. We always will pray for you. You can take out your connection card in the back and just write. If you're stuck in a side quest or two or 10 or 20 or 6,270, or 173,000 for emails, just write side quests. As a staff, we'll pray for you. I'll pray for you all week. I'm not gonna call you and ask you what your side quest problem is. I'm just gonna pray for you. I've been there. I am constantly re-evaluating all the time. Patty is always asking me, should you spend time doing this? Should you spend time doing this? Not that it's mean. She's a Martha and I'm a Mary. So that's just the way we are. We we balance each other. We ask each other those hard questions and we reevaluate all the time what we're doing. This might be a Sunday where you need to reevaluate some things and reevaluate some things in your life. You need to ask yourself some hard questions. And you might say, Well, I'm good with Jesus, great, but are you spending time with him? Or are you spending time with all this other stuff? And are you teaching your kids and your grandchildren to spend time with him? Or are you teaching them to spend time making all these other things in life important? So if you know that's you write side quests, we'll pray for you. If you need help, know that this is something as a staff that we talk about all the time because we all we all like sidequests. All of us on staff as pastors play play card games. Different card games, we play card games. We're always asking each other the hard questions about is this becoming too big of a focus? Are we keeping it about Jesus? You might just need somebody in your life to sit down and say those hard questions to you. So if you know you're struggling with side quests, write your name on the on the one side, write side quest in the back. Then also, I'm gonna challenge you uh on Easter that if you come four weeks in a row and you're newer to our church. Now, those of you who have been here seven years, you're not newer to our church. So you just want a free meal. Um but those if you're newer to our church, you can determine what newer means. And you write the word challenge or four by four challenge on your card. That means you're coming every Sunday from Easter to the end of the month. Uh, we believe if you do that, that spending time with God, God's gonna start transforming and changing your life. There's nothing magical about it. You're just spending time with our Savior, living out the main quest. We're gonna make a meal for you on April 29th, invite you. You have to write challenge every week. We're gonna we're gonna tally those. You gotta be here, you gotta be part, and we're just gonna have a meal with you and we're gonna do life together. And we're gonna hear what God is doing in your life, and maybe we can be part of your journey moving forward. And we see as you're transformed by living out the main quest for Jesus. So if you write that on there, let us know that you're here this Sunday. Uh, we'll be excited to invite you here next week. It's exciting, it's coming. But let's rip these off together uh and then we'll pray. On the count three, one, two, three. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, Lord, we we pray we are a church where we keep the main quest, the main quest, and we don't get lost in the side quest of life. Lord, I just pray if there's someone here, Lord, they just acknowledge in their heart and mind that they're they're lost, their map is busy, and they just go from side quest to side quest, and they're not focused on time with you, focusing on being at your feet. Lord, I just pray you just convict them of it right now. Lord, I ask I ask for forgiveness of my own life and forgiveness of us collectively as a church. We all need to ask for forgiveness, Lord, that we do get lost in the side quests of living in America in 2026. There's so many distractions, Lord, and we acknowledge it. And Lord, we pray we can do better, we can be better as people who sit at your feet, we soak in your word, we learn to be like your son, we listen to his teaching, Lord, we apply it in our life, and we live it out in the world. Lord, we want to be a church where the main quest is always the main quest, always Jesus and always time with him. And Lord, we get we get freed from some of the distractions of life that keep us back and distract us. Lord, we just lift this up, we make this our prayer. Lord, we just pray that your Holy Spirit works within and through each of us to allow us to recognize when we get lost in a side quest and we can be refocused on the main quest, which is Jesus. We just pray this in his name. Amen.