SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Church, it is good to see all of you.
SPEAKER_00: And uh it's good to have everybody online, all of our campuses with us.
SPEAKER_00: If you are a guest at any of our campuses, man, I would love to meet you here in the lobby.
SPEAKER_00: Your campus pastor there would love to meet you in the lobby.
SPEAKER_00: And uh I just I tell you, I would love for you to connect because I think there's just some great things going on at our church.
SPEAKER_00: I want to tell you a couple things.
SPEAKER_00: First, we've got a whole bunch of students that are super excited because we all of our campuses.
SPEAKER_00: Um, I want to show you a picture of these guys last Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: That is all of our students at our campuses.
SPEAKER_00: Man, we're gonna get nothing done with this crew here this morning.
SPEAKER_00: So that is our high schoolers heading to camp last week.
SPEAKER_00: We took almost 500 high schoolers and adults uh to camp at Biola University, and you can see some of the pictures of worship and uh what they experienced.
SPEAKER_00: It was phenomenal.
SPEAKER_00: And as you can see, these guys are fired up.
SPEAKER_00: The ones at the campuses are fired up, and uh man, we should be excited about what's going on with our students.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the other thing I would say is a little, I don't know what I think about this.
SPEAKER_00: That is not what my camps looked like when I was a kid.
SPEAKER_00: How about you?
SPEAKER_00: It's uh a little bit different.
SPEAKER_00: These guys get to experience, man, the best worship, the best teachers, some of the best facilities and opportunity.
SPEAKER_00: It just sets up for them to experience some incredible things.
SPEAKER_00: And we're super excited about what all of you and all the high school students experience at our campuses.
SPEAKER_00: And then we had Friday, we had all of our fourth, fifth, and sixth graders, about 250 of them that went up to camp.
SPEAKER_00: They're up there right now at camp near Pat Prescott.
SPEAKER_00: So that's exciting.
SPEAKER_00: And then we had a mission trip that got back from Kenya today.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, guys, there are so many things that are going on.
SPEAKER_00: And I just want to say thank you to all of it, um, to all of you, because man, when you volunteer around this place, when you give around this place, you make these things happen.
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm super grateful.
SPEAKER_00: If you want to join us in participating in those things and giving toward those, you can see the ways to give on the screen at our website.
SPEAKER_00: We also have boxes in the back.
SPEAKER_00: But seriously, there are some incredible things that are happening.
SPEAKER_00: We still have our middle schoolers getting ready to go to camp.
SPEAKER_00: So please be praying just for all the things that God's doing in those ways.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to get to John chapter 15.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna finish up a series we've been in called Healthy Hustle.
SPEAKER_00: Many of you may know this name, but Urban Meyer, Urban Meyer, if you're a college football fan, he is one of the most successful college football coaches of all time.
SPEAKER_00: Kind of made his name at University of Utah to start off.
SPEAKER_00: Uh went to a national championship with a guy named Alex Smith and uh future NFL guy and all of that, and lost that national championship, but then went to University of Florida and won two national championships with a guy named Tim Tebow.
SPEAKER_00: Recognize that name.
SPEAKER_00: Then he went to Ohio State.
SPEAKER_00: Oh man, ushers grabbed that person, take them out, please.
SPEAKER_00: I tell you.
SPEAKER_00: I paused hoping that there would be nobody.
SPEAKER_00: There's somebody.
SPEAKER_00: So, anyways, he went to Ohio State, won another national championship.
SPEAKER_00: Interesting enough, that kind of success, like it is incredible, but that kind of success usually comes at a cost.
SPEAKER_00: Before he took the Ohio State job, sat down with his kids, three kids in the kitchen, they slid a piece of paper across the table to dad, said, Dad, before you take this job, you have to agree to these things.
SPEAKER_00: Urban Meyer turns it over, and what it was was a contract.
SPEAKER_00: It was a contract from his kids saying, Dad, we've seen you dive into your work and you're so good at what you do, but we've seen you dive all in and we've seen the price you've paid for it in health.
SPEAKER_00: We've seen the price that we've paid for in a family, in our family.
SPEAKER_00: And so we want you, before you agree to this job, you have to agree to these things with our family.
SPEAKER_00: And here's here's what they were.
SPEAKER_00: He said, first, it said first, my family will always come first.
SPEAKER_00: I will take care of myself and maintain good health.
SPEAKER_00: I will go on a trip once a year, minimum, with Shelly, my wife.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_00: You shouldn't have to say minimum, should you?
SPEAKER_00: Like you just that should be known.
SPEAKER_00: I will not go more than nine hours a day at the office.
SPEAKER_00: I will sleep with my cell phone on silent.
SPEAKER_00: I will continue to continue communicate with my kids daily.
SPEAKER_00: I will trust God's plan and not be overanxious.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the reality: none of that's radical.
SPEAKER_00: Like to every man sitting in the room, every man that's watching online, every man that's another campus, here's the deal.
SPEAKER_00: You should do those things without even having to be asked.
SPEAKER_00: But here's what happened.
SPEAKER_00: These kids knew to get their dad's attention, they needed to have him sign for it.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the reality: Urban Meyer went on to sign that with his kids.
SPEAKER_00: He went on to win a national championship with Ohio State, and then he had to, many of you know the rest of the story, he had to quit that job because of stress-related health issues.
SPEAKER_00: Like the very things that that contract was supposed to help, you know, kind of protect him and them against.
SPEAKER_00: Then he takes a job with the Jacksonville Jaguars, NFL head coach.
SPEAKER_00: Heading back from a trip from Cincinnati.
SPEAKER_00: He stayed in Cincinnati to see his grandkids, he sees his grandkids, he goes to a um he goes to a restaurant that he owned, had a bar in it, and all of a sudden he has to months later leave that job because of the drama surrounding two viral videos that came out.
SPEAKER_00: One, one that came out of some people that did not know him but connected with him because he's a famous coach, they're there, and just some inappropriate behavior by those people.
SPEAKER_00: Then another video comes out of some inappropriate behavior by Urban Meyer with those people.
SPEAKER_00: Now here's what I want you to understand.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not casting stones.
SPEAKER_00: Not casting stones because no one is perfect.
SPEAKER_00: But here's what I am saying is a piece of paper and a contract will never hold a human heart.
SPEAKER_00: Like you can write down all the priorities in the world.
SPEAKER_00: You can write down what your family means to you, your marriage means to you, your relationships, your friendships, your job.
SPEAKER_00: You can write down all the priorities in the world, sign your name to it, and still drift.
SPEAKER_00: Because rules are never the root of a healthy heart.
SPEAKER_00: Like what you need, what we need, if we're gonna be healthy in our relationship with God, healthy in our relationship with our family, and still work hard and give everything to our work, what we need is more than a contract.
SPEAKER_00: And if you look at Urban Meyer, Urban Meyer was not the only one who struggled.
SPEAKER_00: Like many of you would say, I've struggled.
SPEAKER_00: All you have to do to see the struggle that's gone throughout history is to go to scripture and see that in scripture, it's story after story.
SPEAKER_00: Scripture is actually, when it comes to balancing your relationship with God, your relationship with your family, and your relationship with work and being healthy, scripture is a graveyard.
SPEAKER_00: It is a graveyard of well-intentioned men and women who were flawed.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, just go back into the Old Testament and just start looking at some of the heroes that we hold in such high esteem, and we just take David and we're like, man, scripture said God said that David was a man after God's own heart.
SPEAKER_00: Was it reality?
SPEAKER_00: Man, the reality of how the story played out is David was able to build a kingdom but couldn't build a family.
SPEAKER_00: Then he has a son named Solomon.
SPEAKER_00: And Solomon is called the wisest man in the history of the world.
SPEAKER_00: And I would contend against that one.
SPEAKER_00: I would question that one because reality says Solomon had, he's the wisest man in history, and he had 700 wives.
SPEAKER_00: Like, ladies, no disrespect, but even I know that's not common sense.
SPEAKER_00: Like that's not, that's not wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: And his lust for women, for possessions, and for power split a kingdom in half and it never recovered.
SPEAKER_00: Man, you just go through and you could go through story after story after story.
SPEAKER_00: And guys, here's the interesting one is I said, it is a graveyard of flawed men and women.
SPEAKER_00: There is like 10 to one more flawed men than there are women in the stories of scripture.
SPEAKER_00: And there's something we've got to understand, guys, we've got to just kind of lock in today and say, what is this thing?
SPEAKER_00: Because God does call us.
SPEAKER_00: God does call us to be healthy in our relationship with Him.
SPEAKER_00: He calls us to be healthy in our relationship with our family, and He calls us to do what we're all driven toward doing, and that's to work hard and to give our best to our work.
SPEAKER_00: We're stepping in and we're finishing up this series called Healthy Hustle.
SPEAKER_00: And it is this whole idea of having health in all three of those areas, that it is actually possible.
SPEAKER_00: But if it's gonna be possible, there are some things that I hope you caught throughout this series that we've got to apply in our lives to be able to say, if we're going to be healthy in all three of these areas, there's some work that we've got to do.
SPEAKER_00: And I just want to recap real quickly what we've talked about in the last three weeks.
SPEAKER_00: I stood up here on the stage the first week and just talked about this idea of work, how God calls us to work.
SPEAKER_00: All of us, men, women, young people, older people.
SPEAKER_00: He he created us to work.
SPEAKER_00: It says in scripture in Genesis that God worked six days and then he rested, but he worked for six days and then he created us in his likeness.
SPEAKER_00: We are created to be people who work and bring our best to making this world the best that it can be.
SPEAKER_00: But here was the point of week one.
SPEAKER_00: The point of week one is that we are to work like it matters to God, and we are to love our family and care for our family like they matter to us, and we can do both.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have to sacrifice one for the other.
SPEAKER_00: We can do both.
SPEAKER_00: Then week two, we said if we're gonna be able to do both, there's this little thing called rest.
SPEAKER_00: God didn't just work, he rested.
SPEAKER_00: Cal Jernigan came, he just did a phenomenal job.
SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite messages I've heard him teach on this idea of rest.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what he said.
SPEAKER_00: He said that we need to, we need to work as hard at resting as we do at working.
SPEAKER_00: Because every one of us knows how to work.
SPEAKER_00: Man, in this distracted, fast-paced world, we get out there and there's so much activity.
SPEAKER_00: What we've got to do is take time to be able to rest, to recalibrate and reconnect with God and reconnect with our families, and to be the best we can for both.
SPEAKER_00: And then last week, DJ Hayward, campus pastor at our Glendale campus, did a great job.
SPEAKER_00: He talked about this idea that we do live in a distracted, crazy, fast-paced world.
SPEAKER_00: And what most of us deal with is overgrowth in our life.
SPEAKER_00: Overgrowth spiritually, of maybe some things we need to prune out and cut out, but also just grow overgrowth activity-wise.
SPEAKER_00: And he said this that we need to prune the overgrowth so we can focus on healthy growth.
SPEAKER_00: And I love that.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what we're gonna do today is once we prune, then we've got to understand this idea that we need to prioritize.
SPEAKER_00: About 20 years ago, my wife Jen and I, we lived in Colorado.
SPEAKER_00: It was two churches ago, so not Rocky Mountain Christian church that we were in before we came here.
SPEAKER_00: It was Life Bridge Christian Church that we were in.
SPEAKER_00: It was in Longmont, Colorado.
SPEAKER_00: And they would do a thing where they took three couples at a time, took all the ministry staff throughout the year, but they would take three couples at a time, and they would send us away to a place called Blessing Ranch.
SPEAKER_00: Blessing Ranch was outside of Fort Collins, Colorado, it was up in the mountains, and it was a counseling location, a ranch, but it was a counseling center for pastors and their wives.
SPEAKER_00: And so they would send us up and we would have three days.
SPEAKER_00: It was a health checkup, like marriage-wise, emotional-wise, work-wise, all of that.
SPEAKER_00: So my wife and I show up.
SPEAKER_00: There's a guy named John Walker, and John Walker, just you can imagine this guy with cowboy boots on, big, just gray beard, just real like stately looking guy with this massive deep voice that sounded like God.
SPEAKER_00: Like you were gonna do anything that John Walker told you because he sounded like it was coming from God.
SPEAKER_00: It's that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: We walked into the room and I walked in like I did when I was 30 years old to anything.
SPEAKER_00: Like I walked in, I was driven, I was hungry as a leader.
SPEAKER_00: I was constantly just trying to perform because I believed if I performed, there was some connection in me that if I performed, I would be more valuable and essentially would be more successful.
SPEAKER_00: And what I was dealing with was this massive issue in our marriage of I was putting so much effort and focus into performing at work and then trying to on the side, trying to just keep my relationship with my wife and our new daughter and trying to keep that healthy.
SPEAKER_00: And the reality was this is I was drowning in both.
SPEAKER_00: Like I really wasn't drowning in both.
SPEAKER_00: I was drunk, I was doing well at work, being recognized because that's what happens in our crazy culture.
SPEAKER_00: We get recognized for our hustle.
SPEAKER_00: Like you ever notice that?
SPEAKER_00: We get rewarded, you get promotions, you get, man, that person's a hard worker.
SPEAKER_00: When at home, the home's going, I never see this person.
SPEAKER_00: Does this person actually care?
SPEAKER_00: What I was doing is I was drowning and not being successful at home.
SPEAKER_00: And John saw through all of it.
SPEAKER_00: I walked in and I wasn't gonna tell John Walker that, but my wife was.
SPEAKER_00: And she shared what was going on, and John Walker just cut to the chase and he said, Hey, Sean, here's the deal.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what you need to understand is that God has put multiple missions in your life.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, there's a connection with him, there's your relationship with him.
SPEAKER_00: That is a mission in your life that you need to go after as much depth in your connection with God as you can, but he's also given you work.
SPEAKER_00: He's also given you work.
SPEAKER_00: He said, You're a pastor of a church, and that is that is God's mission to the world.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing: some of you will take this and you'll go, well, yeah, your work, you're a pastor, that's like working for God.
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember week one?
SPEAKER_00: Anything we do, like God has created us to work, and just because my job might be to be a pastor here at Central Christian Church, excuse me, you, your job, whatever it is, coach, teacher, supervisor, leader, what builder, whatever it might be, you that is a mission given to you by God to make the world a better place, to love people and give people opportunity in this world to see God.
SPEAKER_00: And John was just saying, hey, whatever it is, that's a mission given by God.
SPEAKER_00: And you also have a family, and what you can't do is be successful in this mission, lead a whole bunch of people to God, and have your family, your wife and your kids over here hating the church and hating you, and then applying that to God.
SPEAKER_00: He's like, You have multiple missions, and you don't need to understand.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what he said that caught me.
SPEAKER_00: He said, Sean, the people who are going to be healthy, like the people who are gonna be healthy and successful in the future, like the next generation, he said, they're gonna be the people, not the ones who just work harder than everybody else.
SPEAKER_00: The ones who will be healthy and successful will be the ones who learn to manage multiple high priorities.
SPEAKER_00: The ones who will learn to manage multiple high priorities.
SPEAKER_00: And I and I'm just like, I was like, okay, John, talk to me more about that because I feel like that in my life.
SPEAKER_00: There are all these things that are really important.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes I feel like it's this list, and I gotta have God number one, and then my family and church, but church takes more time actually during the week and my waking hours than my family.
SPEAKER_00: I don't even know how to balance this.
SPEAKER_00: And he's like, balance is a myth.
SPEAKER_00: What you have to learn is how to balance how to manage multiple high priorities.
SPEAKER_00: And then he took me to John 15, the gospel of John.
SPEAKER_00: We'll be there today.
SPEAKER_00: We were there last week, we'll be there again today.
SPEAKER_00: John 15, and he pulled out two words the word abide and the word abound.
SPEAKER_00: The word abide and the word abound, because Jesus says in John 15, he says, If you when you abide in me, if you look at an NIV, you'll see a different word, remain.
SPEAKER_00: When you abide in me or remain in me, you will abound or produce or bear, you will abound in good fruit.
SPEAKER_00: What you gotta understand how to do how to do is you abide first.
SPEAKER_00: You gotta understand how abiding in Christ becomes this fuel to fuel everything else in your life to keep both things, your work and your family, healthy.
SPEAKER_00: Because literally, it took me years.
SPEAKER_00: It took me years to be able to figure out this idea of managing multiple high priorities that God put in my life, my family, and making sure I'm loving and caring for them as well as the energy I'm putting into my work and doing the mission that God's called me to and my relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: And so today, here's what I want to do.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to go to John 15.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna be in verses five through eight, and we're gonna look at this idea of how do we manage multiple high priorities.
SPEAKER_00: Now, we're gonna dive in.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, we're gonna dive into this, and what I want you to understand, okay, what I want you to understand is when we dive in, guys, like this is for everyone, but our guys in the rooms, I want you to lean in.
SPEAKER_00: Because literally, literally, our ladies do this way better than we do.
SPEAKER_00: And for the sake of our relationships and our families and our kids and whoever it might be, man, you need to learn and lean in and do this because what we're just we have more of a propensity to do.
SPEAKER_00: And ladies, don't hear me wrong, you do too.
SPEAKER_00: You work so hard in so many areas, every area, whether it's a workplace, home, all of those things.
SPEAKER_00: But guys, there's this thing where we just have this propensity to put everything into work first.
SPEAKER_00: This is what we do.
SPEAKER_00: It's what we're created to do, and what lags and what's missed is our relationships in other areas of our lives.
SPEAKER_00: So John chapter 15, verse 5 through 8.
SPEAKER_00: Here it says Jesus is speaking to his disciples.
SPEAKER_00: It's the Last Supper, it's his last moments.
SPEAKER_00: He's gonna walk out of this room, he's gonna go to the Garden of Gethsemane, he will be betrayed by Judas.
SPEAKER_00: Then he will go through a trial, he will be convicted, wrongly, falsely convicted.
SPEAKER_00: Then he will be brutally beaten and crucified.
SPEAKER_00: This all is gonna happen in the next 18 to 20 hours.
SPEAKER_00: All of that, so this is the night before.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus knows this is his last big conversation with the disciples to say, here's how I want you to lead.
SPEAKER_00: Those last words are incredibly important.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what he says: I am the vine.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, I am the vine, I'm the source, you are the branches.
SPEAKER_00: If you remain, that's the word for abide.
SPEAKER_00: Other translations it says abide.
SPEAKER_00: If you remain or abide in me, and I in you, you will bear, or the idea of abound, produce, bring forth, you will bear much fruit.
SPEAKER_00: Apart from me, you can do nothing.
SPEAKER_00: If you do not remain or abide in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers.
SPEAKER_00: Such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire, and burned.
SPEAKER_00: If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
SPEAKER_00: This is to my father's glory that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus is looking at his disciples, he's teaching them, and he's saying, as you go take this mission, and understand, Jesus gave them multiple high priorities.
SPEAKER_00: They had families.
SPEAKER_00: Some of them had families.
SPEAKER_00: Peter, we see that later.
SPEAKER_00: He was married, he had a family.
SPEAKER_00: They had families, but then he was giving them a priority of a mission leading the church.
SPEAKER_00: And there was a local church that Peter was gonna lead, and then he was gonna be sending people out to spread the church, like to be able to take the church beyond Jerusalem and just take it to all the world so you and I could actually be sitting here.
SPEAKER_00: They were given multiple high priority missions.
SPEAKER_00: And what Jesus was saying is you gotta understand, these two words are going to define if you are healthy in all of them.
SPEAKER_00: And they're two words they're worth slowing down for.
SPEAKER_00: The word abide or remain, as you see, as we read it in the NIV, is actually the word menno in Greek.
SPEAKER_00: New Testament is written in Greek, Old Testament is written in Hebrew.
SPEAKER_00: The New Testament word menno is this idea to stay, to remain, to abide, to take up residence in.
SPEAKER_00: So it's a difference of stopping by someone's house and then actually moving into someone's house.
SPEAKER_00: Like that's what we're talking about.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus doesn't say, hey, I want you to stop by on Sundays.
SPEAKER_00: Like, hey, stop by, it'd be great if you stop by, you know, every Sunday or one or two Sundays a month.
SPEAKER_00: No, what he says is I want you to be in a posture of abiding with me every single day.
SPEAKER_00: And there are three ideas with that word that ought to stop you, ought to challenge you, like ought to call you up.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the first one it's present tense.
SPEAKER_00: In the Greek language, that word, abide or remain, is present tense.
SPEAKER_00: So what it means is keep on remaining.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean it's something that abiding or remaining is something that you like all of a sudden accomplish and then you check off your list.
SPEAKER_00: Like guys, ladies, we do that all the time.
SPEAKER_00: We just get something done, we check it off the list.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you are list people?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, abiding is not something you can check off your list.
SPEAKER_00: Abiding is something that you remain.
SPEAKER_00: In a posture of.
SPEAKER_00: It is a connection of with God all the time.
SPEAKER_00: It is we keep on abiding.
SPEAKER_00: You don't climb to the summit in your spiritual life, put down a stake, and said, all of a sudden, I abided.
SPEAKER_00: I'm good.
SPEAKER_00: No, you keep on doing that, is a posture of a relationship with God where He lives with you and you live with Him.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the second thing.
SPEAKER_00: Did you get?
SPEAKER_00: It goes both ways.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Abide in me and I will what?
SPEAKER_00: I will abide in you.
SPEAKER_00: Abide in me and I will abide in you.
SPEAKER_00: It is this back and forth together.
SPEAKER_00: When you give your life to Christ, what God does is He, when you give your life to Christ, claim him as your Savior, you're baptized into the waters of baptism, somewhere in that thing, when you confess Jesus as your Savior, he gives you his Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: His spirit comes to abide in you.
SPEAKER_00: Man, which ought to be sobering for a lot of us.
SPEAKER_00: Because one, it ought to challenge us to remember that if his spirit, the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead, the same spirit that has the power of creation and resurrection, uh, lives and abides in you all the time, then that ought to make us look at life and say there's no challenge in life that I cannot overcome or withstand with God's spirit within me.
SPEAKER_00: But it also ought to sober you up.
SPEAKER_00: Because if God's spirit resides in you, some of us need to stop, stop taking God's spirit into places and doing behaviors that we shouldn't be doing, that we shouldn't be connecting Him with.
SPEAKER_00: Whether it be habits that we have or sexual things or whatever it might be, man, do you understand this is an I abide in you and you abide in me.
SPEAKER_00: That Jesus' spirit is with you constantly.
SPEAKER_00: And then it goes to the second word, not just abide, but abound.
SPEAKER_00: It's actually the word in Greek, Pharaoh.
SPEAKER_00: It's the idea of that we produce.
SPEAKER_00: It says, abide in me and you will produce, or you will bear, or you will bring forth.
SPEAKER_00: And then the idea of abound actually comes out from the next portion.
SPEAKER_00: It says, if you abide in me, you will produce how much fruit?
SPEAKER_00: A little bit of fruit?
SPEAKER_00: No, it says much.
SPEAKER_00: Much fruit.
SPEAKER_00: That God is the source, and God is the source that brings life through us into our relationships, into our marriage, into our family, into our parenting, into our friendships, into our workplace.
SPEAKER_00: Not just a little fruit, much fruit.
SPEAKER_00: What kind of fruit?
SPEAKER_00: What are we talking about?
SPEAKER_00: Galatians chapter 5.
SPEAKER_00: Paul writes, and he writes about the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.
SPEAKER_00: That we begin to produce the justice and goodness and mercy and grace of God in every area of our life.
SPEAKER_00: Now, will we be perfect?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: But you will begin supernaturally to see when you abide in Christ, you will begin to see that his spirit produces good things in the places you work, in the places you relate with people who are important to you.
SPEAKER_00: You see, this abiding thing is incredibly important.
SPEAKER_00: See, abiding leads to abounding, it leads to producing fruit in our life.
SPEAKER_00: See, the branch's job, Jesus is using the idea of a vineyard, which the disciples would have gotten, they would have understood because it was a major part of their economy.
SPEAKER_00: If you looked at a picture of a vineyard, you had the vine that grew out of the ground, and then you had the branches.
SPEAKER_00: And the branches' job was not to produce the life, the life came from the vine.
SPEAKER_00: The branch's job was to be a conductor, to take the life from the vine and push it all the way through to produce the fruit.
SPEAKER_00: All the life, all the strength, all the nutrients that were going to create the fruit, they came from the vine and was just passed through.
SPEAKER_00: It's like we were just this conductor, this pipe that allows all the life to flow through to produce fruit in the different areas of our life.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what I missed for years.
SPEAKER_00: I missed the idea.
SPEAKER_00: I thought that abiding in Christ, my relationship with Christ, was just another line on the list of priorities.
SPEAKER_00: Like it was supposed to be line one, right?
SPEAKER_00: And then my family, line two, and then relationships and workplace and whatever, however you would put those in order.
SPEAKER_00: But I thought it was just another line on the list.
SPEAKER_00: What Jesus is saying, no, it's not another line on the list.
SPEAKER_00: It is the root system, it is the strength, it is the foundation, it is the life that flows into every other thing in your life.
SPEAKER_00: It's why we have a value around this place that says Jesus first.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: We abide first.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus first, because Jesus isn't just supposed to be categorized into a part of our life, he is supposed to be the power that flows through into every portion of our life.
SPEAKER_00: And that takes time.
SPEAKER_00: And my question to you would be, how are you doing in that?
SPEAKER_00: I want to get practical for just a moment.
SPEAKER_00: The fruit is always downstream of the connection, so we've got to talk about the connection.
SPEAKER_00: Because if we don't, if we don't, we will be like a David, we will be like a Solomon who tried to produce fruit in their life apart from the vine.
SPEAKER_00: And you see the results of those things.
SPEAKER_00: There were good things.
SPEAKER_00: There were good things that happened in their work.
SPEAKER_00: There were good things that happened in their leadership, but there were also really difficult things that could have been avoided if they were abiding in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Abiding in the vine.
SPEAKER_00: Now, let me say this before we get practical, understand abiding in Christ, abiding in the vine, it's not passive.
SPEAKER_00: This is not the idea of, well, okay, you just let go and let God, and all of a sudden it's gonna fix your marriage, it's gonna fix your, you know, this you pray a little bit, you read your Bible every day, everything's gonna be fine.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: Like here's the thing it does not absolve you of your responsibility to lead, to love, to show up, to care, to parent, to be a good husband or wife, to be a good friend.
SPEAKER_00: It does not absolve you of those responsibilities.
SPEAKER_00: But what it does is it becomes the energy.
SPEAKER_00: It becomes an energy source that flows into those responsibilities that will not burn you out.
SPEAKER_00: So here's what I want us to do.
SPEAKER_00: I want us to dive in and look at how we do that.
SPEAKER_00: I want to give you three things.
SPEAKER_00: Actually, not three things, one thing, because you already have an overwhelming list of life things that you're trying to accomplish.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna give you one thing and then two angles to apply that.
SPEAKER_00: If we want to manage multiple high priorities, here's what we have to do.
SPEAKER_00: First thing is we abide first.
SPEAKER_00: We've been talking about it all message, but that is the number one thing.
SPEAKER_00: We have to stay connected to the vine.
SPEAKER_00: We have to abide and keep our relationship connected to God because the first step of learning to manage multiple high priorities is to abide.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I want to show you a picture.
SPEAKER_00: I was barbecuing on Friday night.
SPEAKER_00: I was thinking about my message.
SPEAKER_00: I just preached on Thursday night, and uh message went well, but I was like, you know what?
SPEAKER_00: I think we need a little bit of a visual.
SPEAKER_00: And so I have these.
SPEAKER_00: This is one of my fruit trees in my backyard.
SPEAKER_00: I have two.
SPEAKER_00: I have two fruit trees.
SPEAKER_00: I have a lemon tree and a lime tree.
SPEAKER_00: That's my lime tree.
SPEAKER_00: It is like I pruned it last year.
SPEAKER_00: It it produced so much fruit last year, you would not believe.
SPEAKER_00: Like my wife was taking lemons and limes and like putting them on the front porch, asking people to come get them.
SPEAKER_00: Like it was incredible how fruitful these things were.
SPEAKER_00: And so fertilized it, took care of it, pruned it, did the whole nine yards.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what John says John 15, verse 6.
SPEAKER_00: Reminder: He says, if you do not remain or abide in me, if you do not stay connected, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
SPEAKER_00: That is the same branch.
SPEAKER_00: I cut that branch off Thursday night while I was barbecuing.
SPEAKER_00: And from, or excuse me, Friday night.
SPEAKER_00: And from Friday night till today, this is what happened.
SPEAKER_00: And guys, this is what we're talking about with our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Like we we will hustle and work hard and do everything we can to try to produce good fruit at work and even in our families, but at some point it runs out.
SPEAKER_00: It runs out because you're working on your own power and see the branch was never supposed to produce the life.
SPEAKER_00: The branch was supposed to be the conductor for the life to go through it.
SPEAKER_00: And man, that tree, you go to my house right now, that tree is green, it is beautiful, but this branch, when it is separated from the vine or from the trunk of that tree, man, it withers quickly.
SPEAKER_00: And so what we've got to make a mess.
SPEAKER_00: What we've got to do is we've got to figure out how to abide first and stay connected to the vine.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the thing: here's the problem with telling a group of doers because we live in this distracted, crazy life that has all kinds of expectations in our workplace, all kinds of expectations in our families.
SPEAKER_00: Man, we are how many of you look at your calendar, you're like, I don't know how I'm gonna do all this.
SPEAKER_00: We still have to do all this.
SPEAKER_00: But the power to help us to be able to manage and to get through is that we abide first.
SPEAKER_00: That we understand that the power to produce fruit in our life comes from staying connected to the vine.
SPEAKER_00: And we've got to be taught how to do that.
SPEAKER_00: And so, how do you do that?
SPEAKER_00: What it looks like on Monday morning is when you get up, when the alarm goes off, the alarm goes off, the first thing you grab is not your phone.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you, the first thing you do is you roll over, you grab your phone, hit the snooze button four times, right?
SPEAKER_00: But then the next thing you do is you start surfing social media.
SPEAKER_00: You start scrolling social media and just seeing what's going on, or you hit your news app and you're checking out what's going on in the world.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we've got like one honest, few honest people right here.
SPEAKER_00: Rest of relying.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we have a tendency to do.
SPEAKER_00: What this looks like is before, before you produce for God, before you jump up and you just get involved in the chaos of this world or get to your email or go to the to-do list, and before we produce for God, we connect with God.
SPEAKER_00: And so tomorrow morning, what this looks like, instead of grabbing the phone and scrolling, you grab the phone, if you read your Bible on your phone, you turn off all your notifications.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you can't even do that because you're so dislike, it's such a drug, like just so connected to that thing.
SPEAKER_00: You set that thing aside, look at your Bible app to say what you're supposed to read, and go get a physical Bible and sit down and read the Word of God.
SPEAKER_00: And what we do is we make time before the kids get up, before we get into the email list or the to-do list or whatever, we go sit down in a quiet place and we just let God know we're there.
SPEAKER_00: And the problem for most of us is that feels so unproductive because we know how to work for God, but we don't know how to sit with God.
SPEAKER_00: And you may want to read a song, you may want to read a chapter out of a Bible plan that you find on UVersion.
SPEAKER_00: You may want to take some time to pray, and you may sit here and say, Today, Sean, know how to pray.
SPEAKER_00: Well, jump on our guided prayers.
SPEAKER_00: On our podcast or anywhere you get your media, you can find our guided prayers, and they will teach you how to pray.
SPEAKER_00: And what you do is you sit there and you just soak time in with God and you bring your difficulties to God.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what will happen.
SPEAKER_00: I guarantee you, if you're not used to doing this, what will happen is all of a sudden you'll sit down, you'll be there for a minute, and all of a sudden, something on the to-do list.
SPEAKER_00: Distraction.
SPEAKER_00: Something, something else that I gotta do today.
SPEAKER_00: Something, oh, the wife said to do that, or I gotta do this with my kid.
SPEAKER_00: You know what?
SPEAKER_00: You don't avoid those things, you just bring those things to God.
SPEAKER_00: That difficult conversation, that meeting that I've got, this to-do list, God, would you be in?
SPEAKER_00: How what do you want me to know about these things?
SPEAKER_00: And what do you want me to do?
SPEAKER_00: And you take 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever it is, and you abide first.
SPEAKER_00: Because here's the thing you were never created to produce the life source and power into all the areas of your life.
SPEAKER_00: You were created to be a conductor of the power of God's Holy Spirit to flow through you.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the thing: if you just jump right into, like if you jump right into all the to-do lists and all the other things, what you become is eventually you become this because you can't produce the life.
SPEAKER_00: And so what we do, we abide first so Jesus can be the life in our families, in our relationships, and in our workplace.
SPEAKER_00: Abiding first means you receive from God before you produce for Him.
SPEAKER_00: That plays out in a couple different ways.
SPEAKER_00: Second thing we've got to do is we've got to prioritize what lasts.
SPEAKER_00: Like DJ talked about pruning some things, but the reality is still, even if we prune some things in our life, there's so much in our life that what we have to do is we have to begin to prioritize, to manage multiple high priorities.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're gonna do that, you have to prioritize the most important things.
SPEAKER_00: It's interesting.
SPEAKER_00: There's a woman named Bronny Ware.
SPEAKER_00: It's not Bonnie, but Bronny.
SPEAKER_00: She writes a book.
SPEAKER_00: She is uh a hospice nurse in Australia.
SPEAKER_00: She wrote this book about her experience with all of her hospice patients.
SPEAKER_00: She was a hospice nurse throughout her entire career.
SPEAKER_00: You can imagine all the stories that she has experienced.
SPEAKER_00: And she said, when people get to the end of their life, they get very honest and very vulnerable.
SPEAKER_00: They'll say things that they never would have said before.
SPEAKER_00: And she made an observation that so many of the people that she dealt with and cared for had the same regret.
SPEAKER_00: And here was the regret verbatim, almost word for word, I wish I wouldn't have worked so hard.
SPEAKER_00: Now here's the interesting thing.
SPEAKER_00: Guys, you know what she said?
SPEAKER_00: Every single male patient that she dealt with in one way or another said the same words.
SPEAKER_00: Not all the females, but to a man, every single male that she dealt with and cared for, every one of them said, Man, I wish I wouldn't have worked so hard.
SPEAKER_00: Meaning I wasn't willing to miss the deal.
SPEAKER_00: I wasn't willing to miss the board meeting.
SPEAKER_00: I wasn't willing to miss, but I was willing to miss my kids' games.
SPEAKER_00: I was willing to not show up and be connected with my wife.
SPEAKER_00: I was willing to sacrifice family vacation.
SPEAKER_00: I was, and they got to the end of their life, and there's nothing they can do about it except for grieve.
SPEAKER_00: You and I don't have to get there.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter what your age is.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have to.
SPEAKER_00: We're not in that position.
SPEAKER_00: No matter how you've lived your life, you can always restart and change.
SPEAKER_00: You can always begin to look at what lasts because you get to the end of your life, you're gonna have God who's gonna be there with you.
SPEAKER_00: Every single one of you.
SPEAKER_00: You will be there.
SPEAKER_00: And what you hope is the people you love.
SPEAKER_00: Now, some of you would say, Man, I messed that one up.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, there's always an opportunity to start prioritizing what's gonna last from now on in your life.
SPEAKER_00: You start with abiding first, and then you prioritize the relationships in your life that last.
SPEAKER_00: And here's how you know that you've prioritized what lasts.
SPEAKER_00: It shows up in one place, your calendar.
SPEAKER_00: Because here's what so many of us do.
SPEAKER_00: So many of us we just like, oh man, we'll do that soon.
SPEAKER_00: Dad, how many times have we said that?
SPEAKER_00: We'll do that soon.
SPEAKER_00: Soon is it is a payment that bounces.
SPEAKER_00: No, we don't say soon.
SPEAKER_00: What you say is Saturday.
SPEAKER_00: Like it should show up.
SPEAKER_00: The things that are most important to us should show up on our calendar, and we should say, Saturday, you and me, phone stays in the truck, we're going to breakfast, we're going to do whatever you want to do because I want to be with you and I want to hear what's going on in your life.
SPEAKER_00: To your spouse, we're going away on a trip.
SPEAKER_00: It's on the calendar.
SPEAKER_00: Not I want to go on away on a trip, it's on the calendar.
SPEAKER_00: Because what's on the calendar matters, and it speaks to those that we love.
SPEAKER_00: And the last thing we do is we recognize our seasons.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you have said it's just a season?
SPEAKER_00: Like I said that for years.
SPEAKER_00: It's just a season.
SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, it works beneath my nights.
SPEAKER_00: Babe, it's just a season.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's another misgame.
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, it's just a season.
SPEAKER_00: There came a point when I was younger when my wife looked at me and said, It's always a season.
SPEAKER_00: Reality is, if that's the way your life's been for three years, it's not a season, it's a lifestyle you've chosen.
SPEAKER_00: And here's how abiding fixes that.
SPEAKER_00: Is if you're abiding with God every single morning and you're bringing your priorities and you're bringing your relationships and you're connecting and you're you're saying, God, what do you want me to know?
SPEAKER_00: And what do you want me to do in my marriage or my parenting or my friendships or my workplace?
SPEAKER_00: Man, the lie or the agreement that you make with yourself in the dark about it's just a season, you can't meet with God every single morning and be honest about that.
SPEAKER_00: Because what God's Spirit's gonna do is he's gonna convict you.
SPEAKER_00: He will bring the season into light, into the light, and begin to say, supernaturally through his spirit, he will begin reordering what's important to you.
SPEAKER_00: And he will say, Man, yeah, you go work like it matters to me.
SPEAKER_00: But man, I called you to love your family like they matter to you.
SPEAKER_00: They matter to me, he says.
SPEAKER_00: But you gotta love them like they matter to you, to me, as much as they do to him.
SPEAKER_00: And so what we do is we sit down with God, we get honest about the season.
SPEAKER_00: And then, guys, if you have messed up on this, men and women, if you have messed up on this, what you do if you're in the middle of a season, you sit down with the people it's costing and you admit that yeah, it's a season.
SPEAKER_00: And it's been a season for quite a while.
SPEAKER_00: There probably ought to be some conversations this afternoon or this evening where you sit down and you just get honest with whoever it is in that relationship that you love with all your heart, but it's costing them.
SPEAKER_00: And you say, I know it's costing you.
SPEAKER_00: I know this has been difficult.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the thing I'm gonna work really hard to fix it, and I want to know how you see think that we fix it.
SPEAKER_00: But there are some things that are gonna go on the calendar to prove to you that we're gonna fix this.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what Urban Myers kids were trying to teach him.
SPEAKER_00: Trying to work through with him.
SPEAKER_00: And again, I'm not casting stones.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just saying that a contract didn't fix it.
SPEAKER_00: Guys, you can sit down.
SPEAKER_00: Ladies, you can sit down, you write out all your priorities and still drift.
SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't have anything to do with how much you love or how it just has this thing to do with this managing multiple high priorities and showing that those people matter to you.
SPEAKER_00: You don't need a contract.
SPEAKER_00: You shouldn't sit down with your family and write out a contract.
SPEAKER_00: You should get up every single morning and abide.
SPEAKER_00: You should recognize your seasons, you should prioritize what's last, and what you'll find is when you abide in Christ and you continually begin to do that, and then prioritize some things that really matter in your life.
SPEAKER_00: Recognize those seasons.
SPEAKER_00: What you'll see is some fruit will start coming out of your life that looks like the very things that were written down on paper.
SPEAKER_00: Man, the best thing we could do is take this branch.
SPEAKER_00: The cool thing about God is what he does is while this branch will never come back to life, what God does is with his spirit, as soon as we reconnect this with the vine, what he does is he immediately begins to put life back into it.
SPEAKER_00: It's a choice you gotta choose.
SPEAKER_00: And it is worth choosing for those you love.
SPEAKER_00: Father, thank you for sending Jesus to show us how to love.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for being a gracious God who forgives.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for being one who can reestablish us even when we have failed.
SPEAKER_00: And so, Father, I pray for every single dad, mom, every single adult, young adult, young person.
SPEAKER_00: Father, I pray that we will begin to get this right, that we will get up in the mornings, we will start our day, we will not fuel our day with the chaos of this world, but we will fuel our day with the life-giving, sustaining love and mercy and grace that you give us.
SPEAKER_00: And Father, out of that, help it to flow in.
SPEAKER_00: I pray there will be miracles in people's lives through some admissions of some wrongdoing, of some things that need to change.
SPEAKER_00: And there will also be some miracles of some men and women who just get intentional.
SPEAKER_00: Intentional about connecting with you and letting you uh be the life source.
SPEAKER_00: Father, help those who feel like they're burn out, help those who feel like they just just help them to connect with you and see life begin to flow.
SPEAKER_00: God, we love you.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It's in his name we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Church, it's good to see all of you across our campuses.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to keep praying for our kids who are at camp and then also for our middle school kids who are gonna be heading to camp this next week.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to say to all of you at all of our campuses, if there's somebody in here right now that just needs someone to pray over them, connection, needs to share some things, just needs a hug.
SPEAKER_00: We've got prayer teams up front at all of our campuses.
SPEAKER_00: They would love to be there for you.
SPEAKER_00: You just walk forward and we'd love to pray for you.
SPEAKER_00: You guys have a great week.
SPEAKER_00: We'll see you next Sunday.