Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Church, how are we? Oh, coming in hot this morning. Happy summer. Glad we're all here today.
[00:00:06] If you have been looking around last Sunday or this Sunday and you saw something awesome happening with our teenagers upstairs, maybe happy but tired faces. We got back from the mission trip last weekend.
[00:00:20] I'm going to be real honest with you. I thought I was done mission tripping like 10 years ago. And yes, I made it a verb. I promise it's real.
[00:00:27] I thought I was done 10 years ago, like did the thing, did the service.
[00:00:33] I wish everybody could be a fly on the wall and see what God is doing in the lives of our kids. I have so much joy and hope for the future when I have long, exhausting, sweaty, stinky but amazing weeks because I see God at work in the lives of our kids. I see faith being ignited. I see our kids feeling God calling them by name and into the future. And this church is so blessed to have the men and the women in the ministry. So I just want you to know you didn't get to see it, but if I could share with you this joy, God is at work doing something very, very special in this church and I'm so excited to see what he's gonna do next.
[00:01:16] I'm gonna say a prayer for us. Dear Heavenly Father, I love you so much. I'm thankful that you are a God who is so faithful and good.
[00:01:24] I thank you that you have an unfailing amount of love for all of us. I pray for myself. I pray for every heart here with us today in person and online that you would elevate Christ in our hearts today. I pray that we might see you more clearly, that we might have our perspectives, our values challenged in the kind of way that helps us go into the future better prepared to do this life well and cultivate the beautiful souls that you've given all of us. I pray this in Jesus name, Amen.
[00:01:55] So some years ago, Stephen King was asked to do the commencement speech at Vassar College. And I want to share just a little bit of an excerpt from somewhere about in the middle of the speech he said, a couple of years ago, I found out what you can't take it with you means.
[00:02:10] I found out while I was lying in the ditch at the side of a country road covered with mud and blood and the tibia of my right leg poking out the side of my jeans like the branch of a tree taken down in a thunderstorm. He's Stephen King, so he gets a little said I had a MasterCard in my wallet. But when you're lying in the ditch with broken glass in your hair. No one accepts MasterCard.
[00:02:32] We all know that life is ephemeral. But on that particular day and in the months that followed, I got a painful but extremely valuable look at life's simple backstage truths. We come in naked and broken. We may be dressed when we go out, but we're just as broke. Warren Buffett going to go out broke. Bill Gates going out broke. Tom Hanks going out broke. Steve King broke. You guys broke? Not a crying dime. He said, all the money you'll earn, all the stocks you'll buy, all the mutual funds that you'll trade. All of that is mostly smoke and mirrors. And it's going to be quarter past getting late. Whether you tell the time on a Timex or. Or a Rolex, he said, no matter how large your bank account, your kids will still play their music too loud. No matter how many credit cards you have, sooner or later, things will begin to go wrong with the only three things you have which you can really call your own, your body, your spirit, and your mind.
[00:03:28] And then he gives this challenge, and it's so good. He says, I want you to consider making your lives one long gift to others. And why not? All you have is on loan anyway.
[00:03:39] All that lasts is what you pass on. Said, we have the power to help, the power to change. And why should we refuse? Because we're going to take it with us. Please. Giving is a way of taking the focus off the money and putting it back where it belongs, on the lives we lead, the families we raise, the communities that nurture us. A life of giving, not just money, but time and spirit repays.
[00:04:04] It helps us remember that we may be going out broke, but right now we're doing okay.
[00:04:09] Right now we have the power to do great good for others and ourselves. He says, so I ask you to begin giving and to continue as you began. I'll think you'll find in the end that you got far more than you ever had and did more good than you ever dreamed. Isn't that good?
[00:04:23] He has this moment in his life where he got a real values check.
[00:04:28] And in this moment, something in his perspective changed. Something about how he looked at his life. Laying on the side of the road, injured, needing help shifted the priorities that mattered the most for him.
[00:04:44] He's obviously done well for himself, but in that moment, it had nothing to do with the money, the credit cards, the stuff he'd acquired because he realized none of it was going with him. And it shifted in him this value of generosity and doing good for other people.
[00:05:01] Now I would hate for us to have to have a tragic side of the road, near death experience, to have our perspectives challenged. But God does give us unique moments in life where through his wisdom and his teaching, we get to have a second to say, are my perspectives right?
[00:05:18] Are my values lined up with who he wants me to be and who he's created me to be?
[00:05:25] Many of us have values that guide our everyday life and we never really stop to think about them. We just kind of picked them up along the way and let them guide us where we're going. We say we value certain things, we say certain things matter. But if we were to stop and really look at our day to day lives, the choices we make, the things that we do, those values don't really show up anywhere in who we are.
[00:05:51] So today I just want to take a moment to take a closer look at what we value and how those values are going to lead us and guide us.
[00:06:00] So I think it helps to start with what is a value. Right? Let's have a shared definition of what a value is.
[00:06:06] I read last year a book called the Leadership Challenge and it talks about what values are. Here's what it says. It says values refer to the here and now, beliefs about how you should accomplish things.
[00:06:17] Says these are your personal bottom line. And when you know what your values are, they influence moral judgments, commitments to personal and organizational goals, and the way you respond to others.
[00:06:30] Says you serve these values serve as guides to action, set the parameters for the hundreds of decisions that you make every day, consciously and subconsciously. And inform the priorities you set in the decisions you make. I mean really simple. Your values tell you what to say yes to and tell you what to say no to. They help you explain. Like, when I have a choice to make, and I'm not quite sure my values help set the parameters for. Well, I know if I make a choice, it can't be this one and it can't be this one. But it's gotta be somewhere in here.
[00:07:02] And when life gets difficult, what's in you is what comes out of you.
[00:07:07] And so what's in you first has to be established.
[00:07:12] Because we all find out who we are in hard, difficult or disastrous moments. I heard one preacher talk about, like, if you want to see if there's rats in the basement, you don't like turn the lights on and like make a bunch of noise and go down there, what do you do? You like surprise and then everything scrambles out. It's kind of a gross analogy, but the same is true with us. Like, if I want to know what's really going on in me, what's really valuable, important, put me in a really, really hard, difficult life circumstance where I have no control, put me in a situation that I don't like, I don't want to be in, and quite frankly, I think is unfair right in there.
[00:07:49] Our values come out. Who we are, what we think really matters, not just what we say, but what's inside of us comes out.
[00:07:58] And many of us have to decide, what are my values? What is going to come out of me? Or maybe we've already had these moments and we didn't like what we saw.
[00:08:09] Or maybe we had a moment like Stephen King in our. Our comfort level for how permanent this life is got disrupted and we feel the temporariness of it all.
[00:08:20] Let's look at what Christ teaches us and see if we can't come up with guiding values that help us be the men and women that Christ not just created us to be, but says every single one of us have the potential to be.
[00:08:34] And I wanna look at a time in the Gospel of Mark, and it's Mark, chapter eight. It's a really interesting moment in Mark. If you read any, like, study commentaries about how the book of Mark is structured, the first, like seven and a half chapters are really Mark telling us this is who Jesus is. And then we get to this pivotal moment in the Gospel of Mark, and Jesus looks at his disciples and he asks, like, who do people say that I am? And they start throwing around these ideas. And then he stops and say, well, who do you say I am?
[00:09:04] And Peter, in this like Holy Spirit moment filled with wisdom, says, you're the Messiah. You're the one who came to save, the one we've been waiting for. And now from here until the rest of the Gospel, Mark shifts. If this really is Jesus, the Messiah, the one who came to save now, what is he going to do? What did Christ come to do?
[00:09:28] And so everyone has their idea because for hundreds of years they've been reading the prophets and the long expected, like God was gonna send a messiah and this was how things were gonna change. And they all had their human perspective of what they thought it was gonna be like, right? Do you ever get a new boss at work? We all have expectations of what we want the new boss to be like.
[00:09:49] And sometimes they're close, sometimes they're not, right? And we're like, who's this guy? Right?
[00:09:55] We all have expectations of what we think leadership should be. But even at a greater level. This is what their expectation of long awaited promises from God, who he thought they were gonna be, what power would look like, what safety would feel like, and what home would become.
[00:10:14] But God has a different perspective. And this is what Jesus says in Mark 8:31 said. Then Jesus began to tell them that the Son of Man must suffer many terrible things and be rejected by the elder, the leading priests and the teachers of religious law. He'd be killed, but three days later he'd rise from the dead.
[00:10:34] So you go from this moment like, great, Jesus is who we've been waiting for. Yes, Jesus is the Messiah. But now he's telling us about like suffering and dying and rising from the dead. And it's not what anybody expected to hear.
[00:10:49] It wasn't on anybody's agenda for like, yes, this is.
[00:10:54] Nailed it. That's what I thought was going to happen.
[00:10:57] And so they thought if, if God was going to send the Messiah and there was going to be a leader, it was all going to be about like power and authority and disrupting Roman rule and they would get their lives back to a sense of safety and comfort in this golden era.
[00:11:11] And Peter, God bless Peter. I love the humanity in the Bible. He hears what Jesus is saying and Mark says Peter took Jesus aside to scold him, like reprimand him. And he's like, Jesus, like, whoa, maybe you're just getting a little carried away here. That's not what leaders do. Leaders don't die, they go to power, they go to war, they change things. Maybe you don't know what you're talking about. Like, maybe you just wanna rethink that for a second and then come back in.
[00:11:41] And I love Jesus's response. He's like, get away from me, Satan.
[00:11:45] Like, whoa, here's Peter. Like, wow, Wisdom, Holy Spirit, clarity to like, that's a big shift in one day. Guys. I've had good days and I've had bad days, but Peter took a huge swing.
[00:11:58] But what Jesus is challenging is he said, you're seeing things from this human perspective, not God's.
[00:12:05] You're bringing what you think should happen from your understanding and you're missing God's understanding and Peter's. Like so many of us, we hear something that we don't like, we hear something hard or we face something challenging. That was like not in our bingo card for the year. My bingo card blew up like 15 years ago. I'm over it.
[00:12:31] No more bingo cards in my life, guys. They don't work and we have this Peter perspective. And we're like, yeah, that's great, God, that's good. But that's not what I want to happen. That's not what we agreed on here, right? Remember we had this deal, like I was gonna be a Christian and I was gonna follow you and going to get better.
[00:12:49] You were going to be out working with me and I had strength now to do things and my path was going to get redirected. New life. And we face these moments and we think, just like Peter, how could anything good come from something so bad?
[00:13:04] How could my expectation of what life was supposed to be now be marked by suffering and pain and death?
[00:13:16] In this moment, Christ guides all of us right where he wants to shift our perspective and teach us something so valuable about Himself and also about who he created us to be.
[00:13:28] Look at verse 34, says, if any of you want to be my follower, you must give up your own way.
[00:13:35] Take up your cross and follow me.
[00:13:38] If you try to hang on to your life, you'll lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, for the sake of the good news, you'll save it.
[00:13:45] And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?
[00:13:51] Is anything worth more than your soul?
[00:13:55] See, Christ is leading us right here where all of us have had these Peter moments. Like we have our very right now, human perspective. And it's what we know. We're human, right? We have that perspective because life.
[00:14:10] But Christ wants to challenge us and wants us to push us a little bit further in our life, our faith and our values.
[00:14:20] Because we all have values in our life that we need to evaluate.
[00:14:25] We all have ways of doing life that we say, this is most important to me. Or maybe we don't say it, but we actually live it. We might say all of the right things, but if you look at how we do life, it plays out what is most important.
[00:14:41] And Christ is saying, you can do that, but in the end, that's not gonna make you happy.
[00:14:47] You can live that way. You can make those choices, you can do those things, but it is not going to save your life or add any value to your soul.
[00:14:59] And see, I think we think like we're good at picking what's gonna make us happy. I don't know about you, but I feel like I've been with myself my whole life, right? I've watched myself grow up, I've learned a thing or two. And I think, no, guys, this is gonna make me happy. Like, I'm so Good at what I need to make life work.
[00:15:19] Well, it turns out this is where science and faith agree. Like, we are terrible at predicting what's actually gonna make us happy.
[00:15:27] I mean, just study, like trends, study New Year's resolutions. Study what? Every year we say we have to give up to have a better life, but can't.
[00:15:37] We aren't great at picking what we think is going to make us happy. And so often we miss the mark. So often we think, this, this is it, this is the path, this is happiness. And we end up with that disappointment because it never really quite get us there.
[00:15:57] And so this is a place where we all have to ask, what do I value most?
[00:16:04] What matters the most in my life? And I don't want you to just like think out loud. Like, write down whatever it is. I want you to like evaluate how you do life. Like, not just like, I took this class about how to pick like the three best values for what you should do. Like, when you evaluate your life, how do you spend your time?
[00:16:22] Like, add up your hours for the week, right? We all get the same 24 hours a day.
[00:16:26] Where does the majority of your time go?
[00:16:31] Here's another helpful how do you spend your money?
[00:16:34] Gotta love electronic banking. Now you can actually see. So easy. Like, how did you spend it? Just go back like a month, two months, three months. And where did the majority of your money go?
[00:16:48] Here's another good filter for you.
[00:16:51] When your mind has time to wander, what does it fill with?
[00:16:55] Like, nothing's being demanded of you right this second and your mind can just go wherever it wants to go.
[00:17:01] Where does it go?
[00:17:03] What gets filled in those moments tells a lot about what your values are.
[00:17:10] And so what we have to evaluate is not just what I say on paper looks good, but how I live my life. My values show what comes first.
[00:17:21] They actually show the agenda of our heart, what I think matters the most.
[00:17:26] Because, you know, we say, like, I value honesty, I value courage, I value faith, I value family, integrity, right? Like, those sound so good. I love them. I did this.
[00:17:38] Give me a test to tell me how to do the right thing and I will take it, I will practice it. Right? I did this about like they said, only pick two. You can't have too many values because then nothing is a value. And I was like, two?
[00:17:48] That's really hard because they all sound so good. But I did this and it really challenged me to think through. Like, okay, I say I value honesty, but are honesty and you really friends?
[00:17:59] Does it show up in what you say and what you do, are you a person known for telling the truth and maybe you just don't like egregiously lie in terrible ways, but you kind of bend it towards your benefit.
[00:18:10] You bend it so you end up looking good in the end and you're the hero of the story when maybe you actually weren't the hero of the story.
[00:18:19] I say I value family, but how much does my family come first in my day to day schedule?
[00:18:25] How much time am I spending with them when I'm tired at the end of the day and I just want to like zone out for a little bit and be on my phone and have a quiet minute and they want to do something with me, Do I value family or do I just think it sounds good on paper?
[00:18:40] See, when we really start evaluating our lives, I know this is uncomfortable. I promise I'm going to get us to good and hopefully. But it is uncomfortable because most of the times when I start to really evaluate and look at my values, for most of us, our values are driven by selfishness. This is what I want.
[00:18:57] This is how I want to feel. This is what I think is supposed to be happening. This is how I want to be treated, right? Where do relationship problems come from?
[00:19:11] Bad expectations, like I expect this and you can't meet my expectations.
[00:19:16] I heard one guy talk about happiness. He said, here is your definition for happiness. Reality minus expectations equals happiness. Right?
[00:19:26] Because we all have these unmet expectations that are surrounded by me, my self centeredness, what I want, what I think other people should do, what I think other people shouldn't do.
[00:19:40] Some of us, when we get real honest, we value control.
[00:19:44] I want to say in things, I want everybody to listen to me. I'm right, you're wrong. This is how it's supposed to be. And if the world would just pay attention, things would be so much better. Is there one mom in here with an amen in your heart? Come on. Thank you.
[00:19:58] We value control.
[00:20:00] I think I know what's best.
[00:20:03] And God and I wrestle with this because I'm like, yes, you're God. I know eternity, history, authority, power. But God, if you just listen to me, right, we value control.
[00:20:16] Some of us just value pleasure. We want to feel good.
[00:20:20] And these are the things that make us feel good, feel better, feel not so crappy at the end of the day, some of us are searching for power or attention or money or status or affirmation.
[00:20:36] Some of us have so many gaps inside of there, we're just trying to shove whatever we can in there. To make us feel like a normal human being. And we all think that if this could go this way, then I would be happy, then I would have the life that I really, really want.
[00:20:52] And what is Jesus telling us right here?
[00:20:56] Just doesn't work.
[00:20:58] You can get everything you thought you wanted. Stephen King had everything he thought he wanted. And he was lying there on the side of the road chasing all these things that he thought would make him happy.
[00:21:11] And he had this gut check moment and says, none of this matters in the end because I can't take it with me.
[00:21:19] And many of the paths we've chosen, the things we valued, we don't end up happy, we end up empty.
[00:21:27] We don't end up satisfied. We end up really miserable trying to find something else to fill the gap.
[00:21:37] And none of these things in themselves are bad.
[00:21:39] It's not bad to want to do well, to succeed, to have people like you, Right? None of these things are bad. But when they become my most important thing, when my identity is wrapped up in them, if my driving values are led by them, I will always be let down in the end.
[00:22:01] Because nothing can ever satisfy my heart and my soul the way that Jesus Christ can.
[00:22:08] And so Christ says, you gotta take a second and you gotta evaluate your heart, you gotta evaluate your life, you gotta evaluate this agenda that's been driving you so long.
[00:22:19] Because the more time I spend making everything about me, the more I will lose myself in the end. Did you hear what he said?
[00:22:27] You can gain the whole world and lose your soul. What is more valuable than your soul?
[00:22:34] Selfishness, self reliance, self righteousness are all destructive to the quality of soul that Christ has created us for.
[00:22:44] And Christ says, if this is where we spend our life, we diminish our well being.
[00:22:50] We destroy the very best life that he's created us for.
[00:22:56] But he's so smart, he's so good, he's so loving and faithful. He says, let me show you a better way. None of us have to stay there once we acknowledge this isn't working. What I thought I picked that was going to lead me where I wanted to be has left me feeling empty and dissatisfied. Now Christ says, let me show you a better way. He says, if any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way. You take up your cross and follow me now. It's not a comfortable word when we say give up.
[00:23:30] It's not a comfortable word when we say deny. It doesn't feel good to say no. I don't like saying no. I'll Just be honest. I want a reason to have to say no. Like I need a well thought out reason.
[00:23:42] But what Christ is saying, that when we have to deny something in ourself, it's actually forgetting ourself, it's losing sight of oneself and one's own interest.
[00:23:54] One of my favorite definitions of humility, it's not thinking less of yourself, it's just thinking less about yourself.
[00:24:00] And I think one of the healthiest gifts that any of us can give ourselves and the people around us is time. Just not thinking about me, because I can think about me until I'm blue in the face. And it doesn't make me feel better in the end, it always makes me feel worse. And so when Christ talks about denying ourself, saying no to certain things, it means I'm doing life in the kind of way that I'm so focused on the right things that I have some self forgetfulness in the process that I'm shifting this life instead of only being centered around me, what I want, what I want to control what makes me feel good.
[00:24:41] And I'm shifting it to a life centered on something else, something greater than me.
[00:24:49] It's me saying, I refuse to make my whole life wrapped up in my own existence because I'll never be happy there if I'm going to be a follower of Jesus Christ. Listen, all of us have to have moments where we say there are things I have to say no to in my life. There are things I have to deny myself. Not because God is meant to, not because God doesn't want us to have fun or just live these like woe is me miserable life. Isn't God good, right?
[00:25:16] That's not actually it at all.
[00:25:18] Because there actually is this awesome God who created me on purpose, with intention and design. And if God created me and you and this world that we live in, could it be possible that our designer and creator knows what is actually best for each and every one of us?
[00:25:39] See, I can look at certain areas of my life and say I know I have to deny myself there because if I don't, I'll be miserable. Okay, who raised little kids? Anybody have little kids? They had to go to bed at night. Not because they didn't want to hang out with them, not because I didn't enjoy their presence, because they were miserable if they didn't go to bed at night. Right?
[00:25:58] Anybody ever had a four year old who hasn't slept?
[00:26:02] It's unsettling, right? Okay, But I have to deny staying up and doing fun things to Let them go to bed. We see the easiness of that, right? I need to go to bed. I'm not my best self running on empty. Turns out I get a little grouchy. Turns out I get a little self righteous in my tired grouchiness. And everybody else seems to be the problem. Okay. Some areas that's easy.
[00:26:27] Some areas like eating right. When does a Roman burger not seem like a good idea to anybody? Right?
[00:26:33] Yeah, except for like every three years when I'm like, yeah, this is a great decision. And then I'm sick and my family's like, why do you keep doing this? And I'm like, cause it seemed like such a good idea at the time. I forget. And I need another three years to forget that. It makes me miserable. Okay.
[00:26:51] We all have things like, that's obvious. If I eat a certain way, I feel like garbage afterwards. Right. If I don't say go to bed, I feel miserable. In some areas it's obvious.
[00:27:03] In other areas it's not as obvious. We let things go unchecked. We let our emotions go unchecked. We let how we feel. Well, it's how I feel. It's true, it is, but it doesn't mean it's actually right. Right. Our brains have this process they go through where we respond to things emotionally before logic sets in.
[00:27:24] So when just my emotions are running the ship, not always everybody's best friend.
[00:27:31] I have emotions that I've let go unchecked. I have feelings that have raged out of control. We all have desires that are not healthy to our well being. We have actions that we take that do nothing to help us be the men and women that God has created us to be.
[00:27:47] We have areas in our life that we don't just need to deny ourselves. We need to question ourselves and say, I should be suspicious of this. I should be more cautious here.
[00:27:59] I should question my emotions. That's fair. I might feel it and it might be true to me, but it doesn't mean it's actually fact. Turns out sometimes emotions lie. Have you been there before where your emotions are raging out of control and everything is true and everything is right and everybody is the worst and nobody will listen to you. And then maybe you did need a nap or something healthy to eat and you look back, you're like, that escalated quickly. That was a little bit worse than I needed to make it right.
[00:28:27] We have to question our emotions.
[00:28:31] We have to question we like some things we shouldn't like and we don't like some things we should like, we should question if I'm always right and everybody else is wrong.
[00:28:42] Guys, I know. It feels so good, that loop you have playing in your brain. Like, man, they could just see what I see.
[00:28:50] They could just take a minute and I could really make them understand.
[00:28:54] Then everything would work out so well. That's actually a red flag. I don't know if you have little red flags in your mind that go off at certain moments. I do. I have little posts along the road like, hey, turns out, if you think everybody else is wrong and you're right, you're probably the problem here.
[00:29:10] Good. Little red flag.
[00:29:12] I should be suspicious of areas where I'm unteachable.
[00:29:16] See, there's never a point in your life or mine that we can't learn something new. It doesn't matter how old or how young you are. There's always areas for growth. And if I have space in my life where I say, you can't teach me here, or I have nothing to learn here, or I've already done everything I need to know, I should be real cautious in that area. Because the second I stop letting God teach me new things, I stop growing that soul he's cultivating in me, stops blossoming in the way that he wants it to be.
[00:29:48] If we're really going to follow Christ, well, we have to do these honest evaluations of our life and say, what have I left unchecked for too long?
[00:29:58] What do I think is great but is actually destructive to my soul?
[00:30:03] What's damaging my character?
[00:30:07] What can other people see that I refuse to see?
[00:30:10] It turns out the people around you usually can see some of this stuff before you can.
[00:30:16] And I don't mean everybody, but I mean the people you trust. If you honestly ask them this, they might be able to say, hey, I've seen this and I think you could use some help here.
[00:30:27] Guys, what's just making you miserable and robbing you of joy?
[00:30:31] Because Christ says, is it really worth what you're giving it?
[00:30:37] Is it worth the future that it's taking away from you for the momentary satisfaction you get right now? And here's the truth. This isn't a one time thing we do. Like, hey, the preacher said, check your values. Check my values. I'm good.
[00:30:50] Kind of a daily thing between you and Christ.
[00:30:52] It's kind of a space that you say, God, I want to spend some time with you.
[00:30:57] What do I need to value more to be who Christ really wants me to be?
[00:31:03] See, when we look at Christ, we have these beautiful gospels laid out. To us to see. This is what he said, this is what he did, this is how he connected. And he shows us areas that we can put a higher value on in our life that is gonna lead to the building of character and the growing of our souls. So I'm gonna give you a couple of these ideas. So if you're gonna practice anything, try anything this week I want you to do the evaluation and then I want you to say, how can I make this value more important in my life? I'm just going to give you three. If you can't pick all three, pick one and see what Christ might do if you put these into practice. And see if it doesn't change your inner sense of well being. See if it doesn't change your relationships, your family, the connections around you. All right, here's what Christ shows us. Number one, surrender.
[00:31:52] When we look at the life of Jesus Christ, there's not one moment we can look at his life and not see him following God, trusting God, letting God lead him even to the point of absolute hardness. He says to God, not my will be done, but yours.
[00:32:12] That's surrender.
[00:32:14] He came into this world and gave it all of himself, even his life on the cross, in a beautiful act of his surrender.
[00:32:24] And when I look at the life of Christ, I see he gave his power so that you and I might have hope.
[00:32:32] He gave his life that you and I might be saved.
[00:32:38] Look at the road that Christ walked.
[00:32:41] His road to glory was marked by suffering and loss.
[00:32:48] And in his surrender, we most clearly see and fully understand the unfailing love and faithfulness of God.
[00:32:58] Every one of God's promises find their yes in Jesus Christ.
[00:33:03] What does it look like for me to value surrender in my life?
[00:33:09] Where do many of us need the courage to just say, it's not about me?
[00:33:15] Maybe that's a daily chant.
[00:33:17] Maybe it starts a trickle effect of what comes next.
[00:33:20] Maybe it starts with the faith to believe God is at work and he is in control and his power and his authority extend farther and wider and have way greater reach than my one moment life could ever help to extend.
[00:33:35] Maybe I just need to start trusting in the One who always has been in control and see what he might do next.
[00:33:43] Maybe some of us just need to say to God, I've been making about my making it about myself for too long and I'm sorry.
[00:33:51] I'm done trying to lead. I'm ready to start following.
[00:33:55] Maybe surrender looks like a moment between us and God that says, I'm ready to yield.
[00:34:02] I'm opening up my hands to you.
[00:34:05] I'm opening up my heart to you.
[00:34:09] Will you lead?
[00:34:11] Will you show me the way?
[00:34:13] Will you help me see how it's about you more than it's about me?
[00:34:18] Because it turns out this God that we serve, he's always worth our very best.
[00:34:27] He always leads us in the way that we should go.
[00:34:31] Turns out when we yield our hearts to him, he will not ever disappoint us.
[00:34:38] He will not let us down.
[00:34:42] When I look at the life of Christ, I see how he served so well.
[00:34:47] He said, for the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and give his life away as a ransom for all. When you read the Gospels, you see this beautiful picture of how Christ served.
[00:35:00] He was always available for people.
[00:35:04] And the way he responded to people, it wasn't like some pat response that everybody got the same from Him. He gave people exactly what it was they needed. Some needs challenged and he challenged them. Some needed comfort and he comforted them. Some needed hope and he gave them hope.
[00:35:20] Some needed healing and he restored what was broken inside of them. Christ met people right where they are, but he didn't leave them there. He led them in a new direction by serving them well through love and kindness and compassion. He taught, he encouraged, he challenged. He helped.
[00:35:41] When I open up my heart to God and let him lead a new way, there's something within me that, that I'm able to look out around me. Once the focus is off of me, just only me, I start seeing the world around me.
[00:35:54] And when I have the eyes to see it, there's a lot of people who need help in this world.
[00:35:59] There's a lot of people who need hope.
[00:36:02] There's a lot of people who need compassion. There's a lot of people who've been told for too long that God doesn't care about you.
[00:36:09] There's a lot of service that can be done in the name of Jesus Christ that makes this world a better place.
[00:36:17] Maybe me looking outward starts with me having the ability to see the best in people, not the worst. You see what you're looking for and God forbid that people should only look at me and see the worst.
[00:36:30] None of us are just who we were on our worst day.
[00:36:34] All of us are becoming something better in Jesus Christ.
[00:36:40] And when my eyes are just off of my self centeredness, I see how can I help. Where can I move to make a difference for good? Where can I show up for somebody else who's been on their own for way too long?
[00:36:54] Where do you need to start serving?
[00:36:57] Maybe start at home.
[00:36:59] What if you had a heart to say, if God wants me to be his servant, I want to serve my family better than I serve anybody else.
[00:37:07] Serve your kids, even when they're grouchy, even when it doesn't look the way you thought it should look. Serve your spouse, love them well, and see what God might do right in your home.
[00:37:23] Take this service heart with you to work. I'm here to help wherever I can.
[00:37:30] I'm here to serve. What can I do to make a difference, man? If you wanna serve, join a team at Christ Church. There is no better place to serve than here at the church. God is doing awesome things, not just on Sundays, but all throughout the week. In this church, in this community and in this world.
[00:37:49] I have served. I've lost track. There's not a lot of ministries I haven't served in except singing. They still won't let me sing. Guys don't know why.
[00:38:00] Clearly my giftedness.
[00:38:03] You will never regret serving. You're going to meet a community. You're going to learn something about yourself, your skills, what God is doing that makes you a better person because of it. Find a way to genuinely just make somebody else's life better through service with no expectation in return.
[00:38:21] And then here's my third idea. So it's surrender, it's service. And these really lead to the idea of generosity.
[00:38:26] Part of you serving well is having a generous heart and a generous spirit.
[00:38:32] What if you started looking at your life, not of what am I acquiring, what am I growing, but what can I give away?
[00:38:40] What do I have right now that could benefit somebody else for the good? Maybe it's your time. Maybe you just need to carve out one hour every week that isn't yours, that you give it away to somebody else.
[00:38:53] Maybe it's your talent. Some of you guys are so stinking skilled at stuff and you show up and do something. It would have taken me three weeks and it took you an hour. Like you're stupid good at it, right? What if this talent that you've spent a lifetime developing and growing and building, you could teach somebody else, or you could use that talent that God's given you to start something that doesn't yet exist in the world and makes a difference for good.
[00:39:18] You have talent. Share it.
[00:39:21] Let it bleed out of you into somebody else and build them up with it. So we have our time, we have our talent and we have our money. We are a church that's ambitious to fund good in this world.
[00:39:33] And we want to do good and be the light of Jesus Christ. I have never regretted $1 that I've given away for God to do something good with.
[00:39:42] I've made a lot of purchases that I felt were stupid.
[00:39:46] I've spent a lot of money on things that are given away, donated, or collecting dust in my closet.
[00:39:53] Haven't you guys? I bought stuff that I'm like, this is gonna make me happy for the rest of my life. It's called retail shopping therapy for a reason. It feels really good.
[00:40:03] Six months later, I don't even know what it was that I bought. Right? Okay, we've done this.
[00:40:10] But what would happen if I started saying yes to living generously, to funding good in the world, to seeing what God might do? Instead of me holding on, I opened up and started giving to things that are making a difference in the world. When we give to the church, awesome things are happening, guys. You won't even believe that we are paying off this mortgage because so many of you said yes to the adventure of faith. I am astounded by it. I have this unique perspective. I work in the finance office, so I see bills. It's really glamorous when you get to pay the electric bill, guys.
[00:40:45] But I can tell you, without fail, God has never let us down. And we've kept the lights on because somebody said yes to giving generously.
[00:40:53] Somebody said, God's gonna do something here.
[00:41:00] We don't give because God is poor. We don't give. Even God doesn't need anything from me.
[00:41:06] I love Stephen King. It's all on loan.
[00:41:08] I just get to steward over this little bit for this little bit of time we give, because when we do, our hearts are open to the goodness of God in a way they never could be otherwise. It gives him space to work in me and through me.
[00:41:23] When we start to challenge our values, our perspective, the agendas that we've been living our life with, and just start serving God, surrendering to him, giving generously. I promise the more joy in this life that we find.
[00:41:39] And we do this because it's who Christ was and who he taught us to be.
[00:41:44] There's an author named Dane Ortland, and the way he speaks about Christ makes me love him more and more. He said, for the great and wonderful surprise of Jesus, Mission is that the one person who ever truly deserved to be exonerated at the end of his life allowed himself to be indicted so that you and I can be exonerated at no cost to ourselves.
[00:42:05] The King took a criminal's Punishment. The lion was treated like a lamb, a battered, bloodied Messiah. So out of sync with what hopeful Jews anticipated in their coming king, with what you and I expect in a Savior is at the very heart of Mark's gospel.
[00:42:21] No matter what happens economically or politically or in our jobs, health or relationships, and in the days ahead, the most fundamental reality of our existence stands unchanged, unmoving, gloriously open, inviting nothing more than a yes. For Jesus. Deserving a yes received a no. So that we, deserving a no can receive a yes.
[00:42:43] The Gospel of grace is not about what we can do for God, but what God has already done for us in Jesus Christ. All we bring is our need. All we bring is our blindness.
[00:42:54] That's the beauty of Jesus Christ, the one we serve, who asks us to follow him, gave richly and beautifully beyond anything I could ever comprehend or understand.
[00:43:08] Every one of us, our life is what it is today because of the goodness of Jesus Christ, because of his joy, his service and his surrender. I promise what Christ had to say no to is infinitely greater than any no we will ever have to say in our entire life.
[00:43:25] I'm asking you today, challenge your values. Challenge your perspective. Challenge your agenda. I know it's not easy, but it might just be the very thing that gains you your soul and redirects your entire future.
[00:43:40] Start looking at what Christ valued and taught.
[00:43:43] Let this surrender and service and generosity guide you, show you where to say yes. Show you where to say no.
[00:43:50] What if your very best life is going to be found in this connection to Jesus Christ?
[00:43:57] What if the very thing you've been missing, the very gaps that you've been trying to fill that are so empty is the exact space where Christ wants to be.
[00:44:09] Dear Father, I pray that you would help us. I pray that you would encourage our hearts today. Pray that you would challenge us where we've let our agendas and priorities and values go unchecked for too long. And pray that you would give us eyes to see and ears to hear and hearts to understand how we might do this all differently. I thank you for the gift of knowing Jesus Christ. I thank you that he meets us where we are and leads us in the way that we should go. I pray, Father, that you would do your best work in us this week that we might be open to you leading and us following. Thank you for the gift of Jesus Christ, your unfailing love and faithfulness. In your name we pray. Amen.
