Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Thank you.
[00:00:02] Every year, I like to remind you that it's a good thing to read the Bible.
[00:00:09] It's kind of at the core of what christians do.
[00:00:14] And to make it easier for you, we print this little slip that has a the whole bible on it and a little box to go with it all. And every day you can read your portion and check off your box, and it kind of helps you keep track of where you are. And if you fall off the wagon and you start seeing no checks on there, it kind of motivates you. So you can pick these up out on Main street somewhere. And if you read the Bible through a new year, look at this incredible certificate I'm going to give you.
[00:00:58] Ah, hot off the press. Wouldn't that look good in a frame hanging in your living room?
[00:01:07] So I want to encourage you to seek ye out the word of the Lord and read it. It's a beautiful and a healthy thing to do.
[00:01:20] Our dear heavenly Father, you ask us to consider what we're building our life with.
[00:01:37] You say it's possible to build our life with valuable things, but you also warn us that it's possible for us to build our life with trash.
[00:01:56] And you remind us that at some point we have to be evaluated by you.
[00:02:05] And you're going to examine what we built our life with.
[00:02:12] And I pray today that your holy spirit would convince us to solve the problems of life by building with the virtues that you teach us, that you say are more precious than gold, silver, and precious stone.
[00:02:30] So we seek your spirits convincing.
[00:02:35] In Christ's name, amen.
[00:02:39] About a hundred years before Paul visited Corinth, Julius Caesar decided to rebuild the city.
[00:02:50] And the reason he wanted to rebuild the city was he wanted to pay back some people who had helped him politically.
[00:03:00] And he knew that Corinth would be a thriving commercial center. So his businessmen, friends, if he rebuilt the city and he gave them the best areas in the city, they would feel rewarded for having helped him politically.
[00:03:18] But Caesar also knew that the city had to be spectacular.
[00:03:27] He wasn't just building a cheap place to get by.
[00:03:35] He was building something that would give him recognition, and the people he gave the city recognition to. And so he decided to build the city on a monumental model to equal Rome.
[00:03:54] That meant the workers for these monumental buildings, they had to dig down into the earth. And the Romans had concrete. The Romans knew how to make concrete. And when they stopped doing it, everybody forgot. And it wasn't invented again until the modern era. But they poured these massive foundations, just like we do today.
[00:04:21] And on top of these foundations, they put pediments. They were these huge stones that would hold the columns, some of them 35, 40ft tall.
[00:04:36] Craftsmen carved these columns out of expensive marble.
[00:04:45] The craftsmen sculptured tops for them called capitals, and you can even look up in books. There is the corinthian capital. It was one of the most beautiful capitals that was available.
[00:05:04] And then they put mosaic floors in the bottom of these and they painted murals and they made idols of Zeus and Apollo and Aphrodite, and they covered them with gold, silver and ivory.
[00:05:22] The picture I'm showing you this morning is called the Fountain of Parea.
[00:05:30] You can still visit this site in Corinth today.
[00:05:35] If you look in the middle of it, that was a pool and it was fed by a spring, and you can still see, though it's ruined, you can see the architectural beauty of it, the arches, the pillars.
[00:05:52] The city was built to be an awe inspiring place.
[00:06:04] In fact, the city continued to grow and they were still building buildings when Paul arrived there a hundred years later.
[00:06:15] And so in his letter to the Corinthians, he knew that all of them had seen the building process.
[00:06:23] He knew that all of them at one time or another, had seen the hole for the foundation, had seen the stone and the concrete in the foundation, had seen the pediments and the pillars going up.
[00:06:36] He knew at one time everybody he was writing to had seen that. And so he used it as an illustration for living a great christian life.
[00:06:51] He said, just like building your city, there has to be foundations.
[00:06:59] If you're going to build a solid christian life, you got to have a good foundation.
[00:07:06] And he said, for christians, there's no foundation that can be laid that is better than the one that is laid. Who is Jesus Christ?
[00:07:18] He said, if you're going to build a beautiful building, you have to have a great foundation. And if you're going to build a beautiful life, you have to have a great foundation.
[00:07:29] And then he said, look around the city.
[00:07:34] It makes a difference what you build your building with.
[00:07:43] They had a huge temple to Apollo.
[00:07:47] Some of the columns are still standing.
[00:07:51] They didn't build Apollo's temple out of wood, grass and straw.
[00:08:00] They built it out of the most expensive marble.
[00:08:04] They put gold and silver covering on everything.
[00:08:10] He said, look around at the agora.
[00:08:13] The agora was where people bought and sold things. And even as far back as the roman empire, when they built an agora, they did what we do with malls. They built fancy buildings because they wanted to attract people's attention and draw them and he said, look at the agora.
[00:08:34] Look how beautiful it is, how well it's made.
[00:08:37] If you're going to build a great life, it matters what you're building your life with.
[00:08:46] And then he said, and you must know that you're going to be evaluated for the kind of building you built.
[00:08:58] You build a sorry little trashy hut, and people are going to think about you in a way altogether different than if you build a solid, beautiful, holy life.
[00:09:13] He said, if you build a sorry little hut out of wood, hay and stubble, when Christ judges it, there won't be anything left.
[00:09:27] But if you build a life out of gold, silver and precious stone, God said, I will reward that kind of life.
[00:09:37] Now, let's look at this and see if we can learn from Paul how to solve the problem of building a solid, beautiful life.
[00:09:48] So he says in one corinthians 310, according to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder, I laid a foundation and someone else is building upon it.
[00:10:05] Let each one take care how he builds upon it.
[00:10:10] For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
[00:10:19] I want to say Paul starts at the very beginning and reminds us that everything begins with grace. Look what he says.
[00:10:29] According to the grace of God given to me, Paul said, I'm building a solid life on the grace of God given to me.
[00:10:42] And I think from time to time I need to remind you of some of the things that the grace of God looks like.
[00:10:52] I want to begin with grace means God treating me better than what I deserve.
[00:10:59] I believe my life is built on the saving grace of Jesus Christ.
[00:11:06] There was a point in my life where I came to understand that Jesus Christ died on the cross to forgive my sin.
[00:11:17] Listen, I came to understand that I wasn't going to be saved by my good work and by my wonderful self.
[00:11:31] That if I was ever going to be saved, God would have to treat me better than what I deserved.
[00:11:38] I want to build my life on the fact that I'm a christian today because God treated me better than what I deserved.
[00:11:48] I'd like to talk to you about restraining grace.
[00:11:52] In all of our lives, there have been times we would have done stuff we should not have done, but God restrained us.
[00:12:03] We would have made mistakes. We would have made choices. We would have gone astray, but God interrupted our plans. It's called restraining grace.
[00:12:16] There have been times in my life that God showed up and treated me better than what I deserved. And he simply said, dude, I'm not letting you do that today.
[00:12:31] I live a better life because of the restraining grace of God.
[00:12:38] I think of guiding grace.
[00:12:41] God has guided me through my life. He's treated me better than what I deserved by guiding me.
[00:12:51] The guidance is sometimes difficult in the moment.
[00:12:56] There have been times in my life where I really thought the right thing was to do this.
[00:13:02] But the door closed, the opportunity collapsed. Things didn't work out the way I wanted them to because God was subtly, and by his grace, guiding me in a different direction.
[00:13:18] And if I would have gone in the direction I thought was best, I would have never had the opportunity that he had waiting for me down this other path.
[00:13:29] My life is better because God treated me better than what I deserved in strategic moments and guided me in ways that I would not have gone myself.
[00:13:43] I believe in serving grace.
[00:13:47] I believe that in every christian heart, the Holy Spirit shows up, and we get that little prompting that we should be doing something for God.
[00:13:59] God treats me better than what I deserve, and he prompts my heart and says, what are you doing, dude?
[00:14:08] How are you serving?
[00:14:11] Is your life all about pleasing just yourself, or is some of your life about being my partner in my eternal purpose in this generation?
[00:14:24] God graciously shows up in my life and says, bro, we have work to do. I need you to get up and get with it.
[00:14:33] I want you to be a little more serious. I want you to engage a little more fully.
[00:14:40] And then, ironically, Paul says in his second letter to the Corinthians, there's such a thing as generosity. Grace.
[00:14:52] Paul was taking an offering to help the people in Jerusalem, and he said, I want you to share in this grace.
[00:15:06] I believe God has treated me better than what I deserve because he's taught me the wisdom, the beauty and the joy of generosity.
[00:15:19] If you've never known the beauty and the joy of generosity, you might whisper to him today and say, dear God, I'm open to exploring the grace of generosity.
[00:15:34] So Paul says, I'm building a life, and I'm trying to help people around me build a life. And I begin to build a better life by saying, the best things in my life come from the grace of God.
[00:15:52] The best things in my life are going to come from the grace of God. If there's going to be any gold, silver, and precious stone in the building of my life, it's going to come from the grace of God.
[00:16:08] Grace establishes a healthy approach to living and problem solving.
[00:16:15] The grace of God is part of the foundation of our life.
[00:16:23] And then he says, it was by the grace of God. That I started building on the foundation of Jesus Christ, our faith. If we're going to live a quality list, christian life has to be centered on Jesus Christ.
[00:16:40] Now here are six things you can talk about in your life group. I hope you're in a life group.
[00:16:46] I hope you join some people every week and talk about things that make you a better person. All right, what does it mean my life is centered on Christ. One, I know who God is through Jesus Christ.
[00:17:05] How do I know who God is? He dwells in unapproachable light. He's infinite, he's eternal, he's incomprehensible. How do I know him?
[00:17:16] He became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld the glory of the only begotten God, full of grace and truth. Your life is centered on Christ. When you allow Christ to show you who God is.
[00:17:35] Second, I know what God likes and dislikes through Christ.
[00:17:43] Don't ever trust somebody else to tell you what God likes or dislikes. It's where the church is at its worst.
[00:17:52] We are at its worst when we say, God must like what I like and God must not like what I don't like. And so the church ends up writing a bunch of stupid rules that have absolutely nothing to do with the heart of Christ.
[00:18:11] On the other hand, if you look at Jesus Christ, you'll see clearly what God likes and dislikes. He shows it plainly in the gospels. I don't have to guess.
[00:18:26] Three, my life is centered on Christ. My life is built on Christ. When I have come to fully accept that my sin is only forgiven through Jesus Christ. God only forgives my sin for one reason, for Christ's sake.
[00:18:45] He doesn't forgive my sin because I'm a nice guy.
[00:18:49] He doesn't forgive my sin because I hold a door open for an old lady at the grocery store.
[00:18:55] He doesn't forgive my sin because I say nice things to someone, I fooled myself. I'm building on sand if I believe that.
[00:19:07] On the other hand, if I believe that when Christ died on the cross, he died for my sin. And the father says, because of that, your sins are removed as the far as the east is from the west, and I will remember them no longer, I'm building on a solid foundation.
[00:19:32] Four, when you get my age, you start thinking about what happens after this.
[00:19:43] When you do as many funerals as I do, you get to really thinking about what happens after this.
[00:19:51] My foundation for eternity is Jesus Christ.
[00:19:57] My hope for eternal life is Jesus Christ.
[00:20:02] I have read that he said, I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will doubtlessly come again and receive you to myself. That where I am, there you may be also church. That is a solid foundation for the future.
[00:20:25] When my body wears out, when life doesn't work, I don't lose hope because someone is preparing a place for me. He is of the Lord and savior Jesus Christ. He's the creator of all the universe, and he's preparing a place so that at the proper time, I go to abide with him forever.
[00:20:52] In Jesus Christ, I get to think the thoughts of God.
[00:20:58] I'm a book reader.
[00:21:01] I think through a lot of people's thoughts.
[00:21:06] But to think the thoughts of God, to think the very thoughts that God thinks, that's only possible if you're building your life on the foundation of Jesus Christ and what he taught.
[00:21:25] Finally, if Jesus Christ is the focus of your life, you have a life solving problem with Jesus Christ.
[00:21:37] You never face another problem alone, because Jesus said, I will never leave you or forsake you.
[00:21:45] You know what I've learned over life?
[00:21:48] When the problems get thick and the problems get hard, your friends get fewer and fewer. Is there any amens out there?
[00:21:59] When the sun is shining and everything is good, I got dozens of friends, and the fun never ends.
[00:22:08] But when things get tough, when the sun isn't shining, when it's all heavy lifting, when we have those moments in our life that are like the garden of Gethsemane, it's easy to look around and see how many forsook and flat.
[00:22:32] Ah, brothers and sisters. But in Jesus Christ, you have a friend who sticks all the time. He never leaves you or forsakes you. When the problems are the hardest, he's the closest. When the difficulties are overwhelming, he presents himself clearest to the human heart.
[00:22:54] When you're building your life on the foundation of Jesus Christ, Christ becomes the go to in all of your life issues.
[00:23:06] And so I want to ask you this morning, are you building your life on the foundation of Jesus Christ, or are you just hanging around with christians? It's two very different things.
[00:23:23] When you go to work tomorrow, will you go to work on the foundation of your relationship to Jesus Christ, or will you go to work on the foundation of whatever else other people are building their lives on?
[00:23:42] And then Paul wrote, if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, and straw, each one's work will be manifest, for the day, will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire.
[00:24:03] And the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.
[00:24:10] Gold, silver, and precious stones are metaphors.
[00:24:15] You're not actually building a life with gold. You're not actually building a life with silver. It is a metaphor for what is valuable.
[00:24:25] And I believe James 317 is a good way to talk about what are the virtues of gold, silver, and precious stone? How do you turn those into virtues in your life? Listen to what James wrote.
[00:24:41] The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy, good fruits, impartial and sincere.
[00:24:53] I want to talk about these. What are the virtues that you build a solid life with?
[00:25:01] Let's just look at them. Number one, a purity is a virtue you can build a solid life with.
[00:25:09] I'd like to illustrate it in this way.
[00:25:12] Imagine you have these nice marble blocks. They've been carved by the best carver that you can get, and you're going to make a wall with them.
[00:25:25] But you lay one good block, and then you lay a pile of garbage, and then you lay one good block, and you lay a pile of garbage, and you start laying your wall out like that.
[00:25:42] Well, then you get to the second level. You put garbage, and then now you're trying to put a good, solid block on top of garbage, and it doesn't work.
[00:25:54] You see what he's saying? If you're going to build a quality life, you can't build with garbage. You got to have a passion in your heart. To have a pure heart and a pure mind. You got to be asking God to influence you. You got to be asking God to grow you, there has to be something clean and beautiful about what's going on inside of you. Church the second characteristic. Peaceable.
[00:26:26] It's hard to build a quality life when you're surrounded by conflict all the time.
[00:26:34] Church.
[00:26:36] When you've developed a combative approach to life and you feel like you need to argue with everybody, and you feel like you need to persuade them, and you feel like you're right and they're wrong, you're not going to build a quality life.
[00:26:51] A quality life requires some peace, some well being.
[00:26:58] When you're going to build a good life tomorrow, you have to ask yourself, can I live today? Jesus's teaching, blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.
[00:27:13] What can I do today to bring peace into my life and to share that peace with others and build a solid life with it?
[00:27:23] Gentle.
[00:27:26] This word gentle is a difficult word.
[00:27:31] We associate it too much with softness.
[00:27:36] I'd like to use the word useful.
[00:27:41] Are you living a useful life.
[00:27:45] In what way is your life useful to anybody other than you?
[00:27:51] In what way are you useful to the people you love? In what way are you useful to God?
[00:27:58] In what way are you useful to the things that are really important? See, if you're going to build a beautiful life, you have to be building with a sense of, I have God given gifts, and I'm going to use them in the kind of way that makes my life better and the life of people around me better.
[00:28:19] And then this next one. Reasonable.
[00:28:24] This is a word for our culture needs here. Again and again and again and again we've traded reasonableness for partisanship.
[00:28:35] And because we are more partisan than we are reasonable, we instantly, we instantly make life harder for ourselves.
[00:28:51] Look, have any political opinion you want? God bless you, but be reasonable.
[00:29:01] It's possible for people to love God and be good people and not agree with you politically.
[00:29:10] I want to say that one more time. This church needs to hear it.
[00:29:14] People can love God and be good people and vote for candidates you don't like.
[00:29:24] Thank you. We have to be reasonable. Okay. I vote for who I want to vote for, but I'm not going to stop being friends with somebody because they have a different political opinion. Can you hear this? If I'm going to build a quality life, I have to be reasonable.
[00:29:45] And by the way, who made you George Washington that you can decide everything politically?
[00:29:55] We need to be reasonable.
[00:29:59] We have disagreements about culture and a million things when you're reasonable. I'm not asking you to give up your opinion. That's not what reasonableness is. Reasonableness says, this is what I believe, and this is what I'm convinced of.
[00:30:20] But I allow you to do your own thinking. I allow you to figure things out. And I'm not going to allow my opinions to ruin my relationship with people.
[00:30:34] Church.
[00:30:36] I want to build my life with reasonableness.
[00:30:40] My wife wants me to do it also.
[00:30:48] How about this?
[00:30:50] Full of mercy.
[00:30:53] I want to remind you, mercy is God's answer to human misery.
[00:31:01] Life can make people miserable.
[00:31:05] But God said, you don't have to stay there. There is a pathway out of the misery, and it's called the pathway of mercy.
[00:31:14] I want to build my life with a solid gold standard of having a merciful approach to life.
[00:31:27] Good fruit.
[00:31:29] That's just a metaphor for accomplishing things that are meaningful. Are you building your life on any meaningful accomplishments?
[00:31:40] The word that's translated impartial literally means you're not the kind of person that has to critically judge through everything you're not the kind of person that has to nitpick every little thing you can build your life on. Having the ability to let something go once in a while.
[00:32:12] And then the last word that's translated sincere, is really the word for not hypocritical.
[00:32:18] You do know that if you're trying to build your life on hypocrisy, you're building with wood, hay and straw.
[00:32:27] A hypocritical, a facade is never, is never a good building thing to build a solid life.
[00:32:38] I also want to give some thoughts on what wood, hay and straw looks like.
[00:32:43] And this is going to come from two Timothy, chapter three, and I'm not going to spend as much time on it.
[00:32:50] Wood, hay and straw represent the poverty of vice.
[00:32:55] When I'm trying to build my life on flaws, it's never going to work. Now listen what Paul says to Timothy.
[00:33:05] These are the things you don't want to try to build your life on.
[00:33:09] For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money.
[00:33:16] Proud, arrogant, abusive.
[00:33:21] Do you really believe you can build a quality life on pride, arrogance and abusing people, disobedient to parents? Ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable man? I've known some christians you couldn't appease if you gave them Fort Knox, they would still have a grievance against you.
[00:33:48] Slanderous, without self control.
[00:33:52] Brutal, not loving good. Treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit. Lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of.
[00:34:04] Listen, listen.
[00:34:06] Having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.
[00:34:14] When Paul wrote these things, he wasn't writing to pagans. He was writing to christians like us.
[00:34:22] And he was saying, I look around and I see christians having lifestyles that they don't have a hope. They'd have no hope of building a better life because they're building with garbage.
[00:34:38] And Paul says the same thing to us. It's not enough to have the appearance of godliness. You got to be building your life out of solid quality, virtues that come right from the heart of God.
[00:34:54] When we approach life problems led by these vices, we make things worse, not better.
[00:35:03] And then there's a third metaphor in here. There's a third image. And the image is the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.
[00:35:15] So it turns out if you burn wood, hands double. All you have left is ashes.
[00:35:23] If you burn gold and silver, you know what you have? Pure gold and silver. That's how they refine it. They melt it down and skim off the top. The impurities.
[00:35:37] One day my life will be evaluated. My life will be scrutinized by Jesus Christ.
[00:35:45] And what is he looking for? Did I build my life with the quality virtues that he taught me?
[00:35:55] Or did I fall into line with my culture and believe that I could do what I wanted?
[00:36:03] I could say what I wanted. I could treat people any way I wanted.
[00:36:08] Because when Christ scrutinizes my life, the one won't hold up and the other one will.
[00:36:16] And then Paul concludes this by saying, if the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward.
[00:36:28] If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.
[00:36:39] Listen, what Paul says.
[00:36:42] You build a quality building.
[00:36:45] You build a quality life.
[00:36:48] You live a solid life. There is a reward for that.
[00:36:54] God appreciates that God values, that God will honor that.
[00:37:02] You build a life out of garbage, and you're going to waste your one good chance, and you're going to show up in heaven absolutely bankrupt.
[00:37:16] That's what Paul is saying.
[00:37:18] Paul is saying if you don't build a solid life, you wake up in heaven bankrupt.
[00:37:28] Oh, you're not saved by your works, he says, you're saved, but only by fire, only by the grace of God. You have nothing else to show for an entire lifetime other than Christ treated you better than what you deserved.
[00:37:50] All right, I want this to be very practical. I'm going to give you four ways to use this tomorrow.
[00:37:56] Four ways you can make this work in your life. One, have a new open minded awareness about God in your life.
[00:38:07] Ask yourself from time to time throughout the day what's happening and what does God desire from me in this situation or in this problem?
[00:38:21] If I'm going to build a solid christian life, I have to have a new open mindedness to God. And throughout my day and throughout my experiences, I need to stop and say, what's happening right now, and what does God want from me in this moment?
[00:38:40] How am I on God's team? Okay, what quality of life am I going to bring to this?
[00:38:47] Is this a moment where God wants purity from me? Is this a moment where God wants peace from me? Is this a moment where God wants me to be gentle? Is this a moment God is saying, you need to be a little more reasonable, dude.
[00:39:03] Is this a moment where my sincerity is challenged and I have to look at my own hypocrisy and bring something better?
[00:39:12] I have to have an open minded awareness as I am living, as I am laying the blocks of life, I have to be more and more aware that the things I do in this moment, they're part of the life I'm building. And if I'm going to build a better life in those moments, I have to bring a better self.
[00:39:36] Two, increase your understanding of graces and virtues that enrich your life.
[00:39:45] You got to think about the quality things.
[00:39:49] You got to think about what's going on in my life.
[00:39:53] What grace might I seek from God in this situation?
[00:39:58] Whatever problem you have to solve tomorrow, what if you start by saying, dear God, what grace do I need in this moment to handle this problem the way you want it to be handled?
[00:40:13] How about this?
[00:40:15] Pick a virtue every day and focus on it.
[00:40:20] You can develop a virtue by the same way you develop a muscle. If you use a muscle every day, you get stronger if you use a virtue every day. What if you say, Monday morning, this week, I'm going to focus on the virtue of being reasonable?
[00:40:36] And everything I do today, I'm going to challenge myself. Are you being reasonable?
[00:40:41] And I do that on Tuesday. I do that on Wednesday. I do that on Thursday. You know what? I'm going to start developing a richer awareness of being reasonable, and that virtue is going to show up in my life more often because I'm focusing on it. And then next week, pick another virtue and just start working on individual virtues in your life and building them into the solid way you live.
[00:41:07] Three, push back against mindless living.
[00:41:15] Do you know that is your enemy, mindless living. Somehow or another, you get into a way of thinking. You get into an approach of life, and you just live that way, and you never think about it.
[00:41:33] Brothers, let me illustrate this.
[00:41:37] There was a time in your life where you thought a lot about what your girlfriend thought about you.
[00:41:46] Are you too old to remember that?
[00:41:52] Oh, shall I wear this shirt? Will she like it?
[00:41:58] And then time goes by, and we start living mindlessly. And we never say to ourself the kind of things we said to ourself when we were boys. And we really wanted to impress that girl.
[00:42:16] Bros. Yeah, that's living mindlessly, ladies.
[00:42:23] You can live mindlessly, too.
[00:42:28] There was a time you were waiting for the phone to ring, weren't you?
[00:42:32] And if it didn't ring when you thought it should ring, you started getting that uncomfortable feeling in your stomach, and you were hoping that he would call you and see what you wanted to do on the weekend.
[00:42:50] And then we start met. Living mindlessly.
[00:42:54] I want to build a solid life, and I can't build a solid life living mindlessly. I have to develop a discipline where I force myself to think about the things that are important and I should be thinking about them.
[00:43:12] How about this one? This is part of three nurture a dissatisfaction with your own immaturity.
[00:43:21] You know what? It's real easy to get dissatisfied with the immaturity of people around us, those people that you work with, and they're so immature and it annoys the heck out of you.
[00:43:35] Well, what about my own immaturity? Why can't I be as dissatisfied with my own immaturity as I am with the immaturity of others and start saying, this is not the way I want to live life. This is not the life I want to build.
[00:43:52] Four.
[00:43:59] I better throw this in before four.
[00:44:02] What ruts are you running in?
[00:44:05] You're just running in the same rut day after day.
[00:44:09] How about this?
[00:44:13] Where should I create a plan to purposefully improve myself, not hoping that it'll happen? I've got a plan to make it happen.
[00:44:23] Four.
[00:44:26] How can I slow the pace of my life to have time to be more self aware and more diligent in building a better life?
[00:44:37] Part of the reason we don't do this is because we live at a ridiculous pace.
[00:44:46] We fill our schedule with all kinds of stuff that really isn't as important as this. And then we have no time to just be quiet for a moment and say, where am I in life?
[00:45:00] What kind of life have I built so far?
[00:45:04] Can I see quality in myself?
[00:45:07] Am I any better now than I was this time two years ago?
[00:45:12] And I start slowing the pace of my life and I start asking things of myself that I should be asking, and then I start paying attention to it in my life.
[00:45:26] How am I the problem?
[00:45:31] I slow the pace and I say, it's easy for me to blame this on everybody else, but how am I the problem? I'm going to talk about more about this in a future sermon.
[00:45:45] What if you say to yourself before every problem you have to solve, how am I bringing gold, silver and precious stone to this problem?
[00:46:00] You thoughtfully say, what am I going to bring to solving this problem that has value, that comes from a rich character, that makes me better, that makes the people around me better?
[00:46:16] Church, God wants us to build beautiful, solid lives, and he's instructed us on how to do it. Now we just have to be diligent and bear down and get to work.
[00:46:30] Our dear heavenly Father, I call upon your name.
[00:46:40] All these things I've said today. I want them to be true in my own life.
[00:46:45] I want to be this kind of guy.
[00:46:48] I want this teaching of Paul to change me.
[00:46:53] And so I pray for my self, I pray for everyone who's in this room. I pray for the people who are watching online, that we would take this to heart and we would begin to have a greater diligence about what kind of life we're building and what we're building it out of. And I pray that you would receive the glory and honor. Amen.
