Discipleship Pt 1

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Good morning, good to see you all. If you're new to our church, my name's Dan Hay. I'm a deacon here. If you came last week, I led worship and now I'm preaching, so I'm going for utility player of the year, apparently. I'm gonna try to just make sure I know how to do everything. But I'm also a pastor in training with Daniel Oster, and so part of that is getting some reps up here to preach. And part of our vision of our church is sharing ministry, and so to share a ministry, that means Drew shares the preaching duties, and we also share the worship duties with people, and we're sharing all kinds of ministry here so that we can share a ministry that's a core value of our church. Well, today we're gonna be talking about investing in people's spiritual journeys. But first, before we get into that, I wanted to tell you a little story. When I was a kid, I watched a lot of TV,

and so somewhere between Gilligan's Island and I Love Lucy usually would always be this commercial and there would be these old west dudes, right? It'd be the, you know, hot horses, the whole nine, and then they're all looking mean, like they're desperados or something. And there would be another guy standing there, but he would have a noose around his neck, and it would be a very, very serious scene, and you're like, what's going on? And the one cowboy would say to the guy with a noose surrounding neck, do you have any last words? And he'd say, nope. And then he'd say, well, what do you want on your tombstone? And then the guy with this noose surrounding neck would say, pepperoni and cheese! And then it was a frozen pizza commercial, okay? You guys, anybody remember that? What do you want on your tombstone? Yeah, I knew Kenneth would be with me on that one. And I just would always laugh.

I'd seen it a hundred times, but I'd always chuckle. Later in life, I've often thought about that commercial because what do you want on your tombstone kind of means like, generally, what do you want to be remembered for, right? And so, unfortunately, I've spent some time in cemeteries lately for various reasons, and I often am always trying to read the little inscriptions on people's graves. In fact, we go and we take a mission trip to England every year with our school, and the church we serve there is 1,000 years old, and we always like to say that things are older than America, and everything is older than America in England. But this old church that's 1,000 years old is surrounded by this, you know, an old school church graveyard, as you'd normally see. And so, I usually wander through the churchyard, and I try to read some of the graves. Some of the graves have been there for so long,

the headstones have been there for so long that the weather has worn away a lot of the face of the granite or whatever it's made of, and you can't even read the words. And then some of them are written in Middle English, which is even hard to read already because the letters are different. But anyway, I think about these things, and some of these graves are really ornate and huge and magnificent, and obviously cost a lot of money to make and to have remember this person. And then I read the gravestone, and I'm like, nope, don't know that guy. He must have been really a big shot in this area back then, but I don't have any idea who that is. In fact, there's like kind of a famous person buried in that churchyard, the guy who invented the strikeless match, which is buried there. And I go over and I read his name, nope, never heard of that guy, but that's cool, they invented the match.

And I think like, I just have this kind of idea that these people lived lives, and they had families, and they had businesses, and they had all these relations and contacts, and here we are, however many years later, 100 years later, 200 years later, nobody has any idea who those are. I bet you could get some historian from that village to come, and he would probably say, yeah, I know who that is, yeah, I know who that is, but really, most of us don't know who those people are. And so that gets me thinking, what do I want on my tombstone? How do I wanna be remembered? Well, I don't mean to be, you know, cast a shadow, but my life is probably half over. Isn't that fun to think about? I'm 46, you know, double that. That's probably gonna be about the end of it, hopefully, Lord willing. And so that's sobering, and Amy and I, in our lives have been thinking like, okay, our lives are half over,

how are we gonna really make these last years count? We hope that there's lots of them, but we really don't know. How are we gonna make them count? There are people that have invested in our lives that nobody knows their name, but they have invested in our lives, and we live today, and we honor them because of what our life means. So nobody is probably, except for people right here, have heard of Grandma Todi, St. Grandma Todi? No, never? Okay. Well, of course you've never heard of her because she was the one that invested in my life. She's part of my testimony, my grandmother.

She was a Christian, and she kind of lived her life. I think her faith wasn't super strong, but then they had a tragedy. In 1972, my aunt was killed by a drunk driver when she was 19 years old, when she was home for the weekend from Iowa State. And that event just did something in my grandmother, and I think the events of tragedy can have an effect of where we really cling to the Lord, and she did that. So she was hurting, she clung to the Lord, and that really deepened her faith. In fact, just as a side note, she wrote a really long letter to the man who was drunk and killed my aunt in forgiveness of him. She sent a letter of forgiveness to him. I don't know if I could do that. And I often think about that because, I'm trying to put pieces together when people tell me stories about my grandmother before I knew her, and I really see how that thing that happened in her life

brought her to her knees before the Lord. Well, in doing that, she became a woman of prayer, she read her Bible, she was in church every time the doors were open, and she really deepened her faith. Well, when I came along in 77, she was primed and ready to share the Lord with this new grandson. And buddy, I heard about Jesus all the time, more than I ever thought I would. We would do devotions before bed. I was in VBS every day, it was opened ever. I was in church on Wednesday nights, I was on Sunday mornings and Sunday nights. She wanted to make sure her grandson heard the message of the gospel, because it's so important. Now, I didn't grow up in a Christian home, and so that was a, in my mind it became compartmentalized, like, oh, church, Jesus, that's the thing you do in the summer, like go into a water park, that's a summer thing, go into church, it's a summer thing.

So it never even kind of figured into my mind that maybe I should be doing this all the time. I just figured, well, it's summer now, I'll go to Arkansas and do church things, and then I'll go home to Arizona, and do school, and never the twain shall meet. So that's kind of how I grew up. But when I got into my teenage years, and rebellion started to hit, and my parents were divorced, and all this stuff started to happen in my life, the foundation that my grandmother laid was there, and it got me into a college ministry, and the Lord really got a hold of my heart. I mentioned her today to say her prayers for me, her words of encouragement, of Jesus, I wouldn't be standing here today if it wasn't for her, but nobody knows who she is. Nobody knows who she is, but that's okay. We live in a world where we wanna leave this kind of legacy, and if you've got a lot of money,

you buy buildings, and you put your name on them, so nobody will forget you, right? You guys have heard of Amon Carter? Anybody live in Fort Worth ever heard of Amon Carter? I think his name's on everything, the Amon Carter Memorial Bathroom somewhere, you know? We know Amon Carter's name, because you've been places in Fort Worth, but do we really know Amon Carter? I read a little bit about him, and from what I read, I don't think we really wanna know Amon Carter. I don't think he was a very nice guy, okay? But he wanted to leave a legacy, so he left a legacy by naming buildings, but he didn't really leave a legacy, because we don't know who he was, right? I read, we read a book every year in preparation for the mission trip called Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper, and there's this part that gets me every time, at the beginning, he says, you know, we have this American dream,

and the American dream is to work, and that at a certain age, you retire, and then you go down and maybe live on your boat in Florida and collect seashells for the rest of your life in this beautiful surrounding, and that's the American dream or some version of that, and then he kinda has this part where he says, and then you die, and the Lord asks you how you used your life on Earth, and you say, look, Lord, my seashell collection.

That just really gets me, you know? Like, what am I doing with the time that I have left here on Earth, and am I giving it to things that matter, okay? So what are the things that matter? Well, there's a lot of things that are good things to do, and there's a lot of things that help people. There's only three things that are eternal, meaning if you invest in these three things, they will live on past you. Now, nobody's gonna remember your name probably, but that's okay because these are things that will continue on for generation for generation, even though they may not remember who you are personally, and that's God, God's word and the souls of men. If you will invest your life in those three things, you will have an eternal impact, okay? Now, Sadie, Jack, Bonnie, Ruthie, and James, is that all of them? Bonnie, yeah, I have to, sometimes I forget some.

They know who Grandma Todi is because I tell them stories, but it's really kind of a, it's just really an ethereal knowledge. Their kids may not even know who she is, but the gospel that we're sowing in our kids, that they will sow in their kids, it started from her, and we are thankful for her. Amy and I have thought about this, like I said, and we wanna invest our life in eternal things, God, God's word and the souls of men, and we've been thinking about how, are we doing this most efficiently? Are we doing this with urgency? And so we've had a stirring for a couple of years, and I'm not saying that we haven't been doing this at all, because we work at a Christian school, and we get to be with students, and we get to encourage them in their faith, and pray for them and all that stuff, but we've been really feeling like the Lord has been pushing us to something different.

And so, long story short, we feel called to make a change. We're currently school administrators and teachers. We feel like the Lord is calling us back into full-time ministry. Not that what we're doing is insignificant, but we feel like the Lord is saying, well, I want you to be doing this full-time. And so, it's been hard, because we live comfortable lives, we just moved into our dream home, we love South Berlus and Baptist Church, and we felt like the Lord is saying, it's time to move, it's time to do something different. So, we didn't really know what that was, but we really felt through prayer that the Lord was saying, you need to have faith in me, and you need to step out in faith, and trust that I'm gonna do what's next for you. And so, we stepped out in faith, and we had a meeting about a month ago with our bosses at our school, and we told them that we are gonna leave

at the end of the school year, we're leaving. And we're done, okay? We're giving them a year's notice, a school year's notice, because we care about them. We have a deep relationship. Amy's been there 16 years, I've been there 11 or 12. We're deeply embedded and ingrained in this organization, the school. And so, just to honor them and transition in a way that's respectful of our time and honoring of our time, we're giving them this much notice.

We have some ideas of what we might be doing next, but nothing's in stone and things can change. We've been invited to go back to Norman, Oklahoma, to the University of Oklahoma, to the Baptist Collegiate Ministries there, and to be on staff, and to minister to college students. Next week, I'll be preaching next week too, by the way. Next week, I'm gonna get into a little bit more of that history, but basically, that's where the Lord really got ahold of me and my wife when we were single, and then we met there, and then we got married. And so, that ministry is very, very special to us. And we feel like the Lord is calling us back into collegiate ministry to spend the rest of our days, however many that are, just investing in college students. And it's a really strategic time in people's life. If you think about it, they just left mom and dad's house. They're trying to figure out

what they wanna do with their life. And it really could go a lot of different directions. Most people don't have a clue when they get to college, even though they say they do. And we can be there to try to really encourage them to invest their life in eternal things, God's words and the souls of men, no matter what they're doing, whether a doctor, a lawyer, or they decide to go in full-time ministry themselves, we really wanna be there to encourage them and share the gospel. We know, we could give you a list of people that we know that heard the gospel and decided to follow Jesus the first time when they're in college. And so, we really feel excited about that, although it is scary, so I'm glad that Joey shared about fear this morning. That spoke directly to my heart.

We have a salary that God has provided for us and our five children, and we're looking forward to a salary that means we are gonna be raising our salary, so no salary. All right, so we're stepping out in faith in our finances and taking that big step. So we feel called to invest more of our time in investing in people's spiritual journey, and that's what we talk about here a lot at South Berlison, is investing in people's spiritual journey. So there are two buzzwords that churches use, and there are evangelism and discipleship, and if you're not around churches a lot, those seem like foreign terms, so I'm gonna kind of define them for you this morning, just real quick. Evangelism is the idea where you're sharing your faith with people, letting them know who Jesus is, giving them this idea that the gospel is for them, that Jesus died for them, and that there's something that they need to do,

that they need to accept that gift, the gift is given by the Lord Jesus, but then you have to take that step and accept it, and then follow him, okay, so that's evangelism, right? Discipleship usually means training, mentoring, where you're helping somebody along in their faith, you may be coming alongside of them and teaching them how to read their Bible, memorize verses, maybe share their own faith, give testimonies, these sorts of things, do Bible studies, and also partner with them in ministry, so part of that means like, as you're ministering, you're taking people alongside of you and showing them how to do things. Those are generally what evangelism and discipleship means. The issue with that is they kind of delineate between when people are not Christians and then when people are Christians, and that's not wrong necessarily, but it's not totally correct.

Evangelism and discipleship are inextricably linked, okay, even though we often put them into two categories, both of those things are moving people along in their spiritual journeys, okay, moving people along in their spiritual journey. So let me put it this way, let's think about it as a number line, okay? So we've got a number line, and over on this side is like a negative 10, and then over on this side would be a plus 10, and in the middle, well, I mean, if we're a math people, in the middle would be zero, but I don't like putting a zero there because in this illustration, the middle is where you come to know the Lord and a zero to be Christ. So let's just say the middle is cross, okay? Yeah, that's more spiritual, right? So you've got a negative 10 over here, you've got the cross in the middle, and then you've got a plus 10 on this side, and people are somewhere along this line,

and part of us getting to know people and spending time with people is figuring out where they are on that line. So let's just, for argument's sake, let's say a negative 10, clear over here on this side. This is just somebody completely antagonistic to all things religious and spiritual, probably an atheist, probably not easy to talk to, very defiant and argumentative, okay? And then all the way over here on this side, a plus 10 is somebody who's ministering, actively sharing his faith and serving one another, active in the local church and these kinds of things, okay? And then the middle, the cross, is the point of salvation, and so everybody is along that line somewhere. Well, investing in people's spiritual journeys just mean that you're coming alongside them and you're just moving them closer or moving them a step in the right direction where they need to go.

And so part of that is just discerning, figuring out and praying where people are somewhere on that line, and then helping them to move one space over, or several spaces. I've often heard that it takes people seven times to hear the gospel before they decide to make a decision, on average, some people more, some people less. So you're talking the things that needs to happen over and over again, but it's not like the person that shared the gospel with them the first time did it in vain because they might have moved them from a negative nine to a negative eight, you know what I mean? We always like to be that person who is there and it says, hey, would you like to ask Jesus into your heart and commit to following him for the rest of your life right now? You wanna do that, and we would love for them to say yes, but we're not always get to be that person where they're a negative one and they're moving

towards the cross at a great speed. But all those other opportunities are not wasted and they're not in vain. Just let me encourage you that investing in people's spiritual journeys and moving them towards the Lord may not always have the fruit that we expect, but is not in vain. The gospel never comes back in vain, okay? So whether we are sharing Christ with people or we're helping them walk in their faith, it is all discipleship. It's all investing in people's spiritual journey. And just to delineate that, discipleship and investing in people's spiritual journeys are synonymous. And so I'll go back and forth between those things, but I mean the same thing. Investing in people, moving them forward in their journey towards Christ or growing in their relationship with him. Now all people are different. You can't just have a one-size-fits-all method to helping people know Christ.

It just really depends on the person. It depends on their come from. Depends on their personality. In fact, I just got done reading God's Smuggler by Brother Andrew. If you haven't read this, it's really fantastic. It's about this man in the 50s who smuggled Bibles behind the iron curtain into communist countries. Well he, in the beginning of his book, he's talking about how he came to faith. And he came to faith, I mean he had some Christian neighbors that encouraged him, but he just read the Bible a few times and came to faith. The same with my dad. My dad read the Bible a few times on his own. And while there were some Christian people in his life, he kind of just understood what the Scriptures were saying and he decided to follow Christ on his own. My wife on the other hand, she tells me that she knew very little about the Lord, but the first time she heard the Gospel,

she knew that's what she needed and she accepted Christ. For me, I never read the Bible until I decided to follow the Lord. I mean I read a verse here and there. But I just heard the Gospel a few times from my grandmother, it made sense at vacation Bible school, and I decided to walk with the Lord. Mechanics have more than just an adjustable wrench in their toolbox. If you ever see a mechanic and he plops open his toolbox and there's just an adjustable wrench in there, you should probably hire a different mechanic, because he'll use that as a hammer, he'll use that in anything. There's lots of specialized tools in a toolbox that use for special things that make those things really easy if you have the right tool. Vangelism and discipleship is the same. People are different and people need different things, and as we walk with the Lord and as we learn and as we grow, we kind of gain these different kinds

of tools for our toolbox to help people along in their journey. So as you get to know people, you're trying to figure out what exactly they need to help along in their journey. Let's go to the scriptures. We're gonna go to 1 Thessalonians 1 if you have your Bibles today. And 1 Thessalonians, this is a letter from the Apostle Paul to the church at Thessalonica. And he's writing after a visit there, and he's talking about what they did there and he's thanking them, but in this, we can really see some key principles of how he invested in the spiritual journeys of the church at Thessalonica.

So I'm gonna start at verse four, this is 1 Thessalonians chapter one, verse four. For we know brothers and sisters, loved by God that he has chosen you because our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and deep conviction. We're gonna stop there for just a second. By the power of the Holy Spirit, it did not come only in words, but by the power of the Holy Spirit. This should be a great relief to you. It is not all on you, okay? If the Spirit is not there, it's not happening. We gather every Sunday morning out here in the foyer at about 10 o'clock, and our prayer that we pray every Sunday is that the Spirit would be here because no matter how well Joey or David does or how eloquent my words are or how delicious the baked goods are or how comfortable the seats are, if the Spirit is not moving, it is all in vain. We are just trying to be conduits

for the Spirit to move through. And so the Spirit has to be there. That should be a great relief that we can do nothing without the power of the Holy Spirit. Those that have the greatest impact come in personal weakness, but yet divine power. When I was in college, I was involved in a collegiate ministry, kinda like the one that we were gonna be going to serve, and I just kinda got involved with them. This is my first time I'd ever had Christian friends. I'd had all my friends, but this is my first set of Christian friends, and so it's kind of a new thing for me to hang around with Christian people. I loved it, but it was just different and new. And there was this guy named Richard who was kind of a mentor to me. And Richard, by the way, Richard and his wife have been missionaries in Poland for like 22 years now. But back then, we were at college at Arizona State,

and he just comes up, we're eating lunch in the shade, and he's like, hey, let's go share the gospel. And I'm just kinda like, what? I mean, like, to me, at that point in my life, he might as well have said, hey, let's go drive to the moon because to me, that was just as silly because it never occurred to my mind to get up during my lunch and go share Christ with people. That's where it was in my life. And so I was like, okay, so we get up, and I'm hoping he's gonna take the lead in this thing, and I'm just kinda like, what are we getting ourselves into? So we start talking to this guy, and he's kind of got this face you can't read, and I'm sweating bullets because it's nervous, it's nerve-wracking, and it's Arizona, so it's very hot. And we're sharing the gospel, we're kinda going back and forth with him, and I'm kinda like, I think we left some stuff out.

You know, I'm not even really sure what gospel we shared with him. We were stumbling over our words, and the look on his face was, please just wrap this up so I can go to class, okay? So we kinda get to the end of it, and I look at Richard, and he looks at me, and I'm just kinda like, uh-uh. And Richard goes, well, you know, there needs to be a step where you actually decide to follow the Lord, and if you would like to do that, you can do that right now. And he kinda paused for a second. He said, yeah, yeah, I wanna do that, let's pray. And we prayed, and he received Christ right there. And we were blown away. I mean, I really thought he would be like, I'm cool, thanks, I gotta go, psh, you know, outta there. But the dude prayed to receive Christ right there, and we went away from that just like, I can't believe that just happened. We totally butchered the gospel.

I'm not even sure which gospel we shared, honestly. And he was receptive. He was probably a negative one or a negative two on that, you know, that number line. And he was ready, but we didn't know. We were just being faithful to go out and share, and here comes this guy. But it was the spirit that was moving, because I guarantee you it wasn't through our eloquence of speech, as Paul says, okay? And I'll never forget that, and it just helps remind me that it is the Lord who does that. We need to be obedient in sharing, but it is the Lord who does those things.

Let's flip to 1 Corinthians 2, 1 through 5 real quick. It's on the screen, if you don't have your Bible with you today. And so it was with me, brothers and sisters, when I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaim to you the testimony about God, for I resolved to know nothing while I was with you, except Jesus Christ, the hymn crucified. I came to you in weakness, with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God's power. Wow, I mean, I think that Paul was probably downplaying it just a little bit, but he was driving the point home that it is the Lord who does that, and I can really resonate with him. I chuckle a little bit, especially verse three. I came to you with weakness, with great fear

and trembling, I think that describes me that day out on campus at ASU, weakness, fear and trembling, but we were praying, and that guy decided to follow the Lord that day. So we cannot do anything without the Lord's power. Back in 1 Thessalonians 4 or 5, it also talks about deep conviction. It's just, it's kind of almost an afterthought there. It says, come in the spirit's power and deep conviction. I wanna talk about that just for a second. Deep conviction, do you really believe it? I see deep conviction as something that you would do on a desert island. I believe this thing and I will do this thing even when nobody's watching. Now, to cut yourself and myself a little bit of slack, we don't always know what our deep convictions are. In other words, it takes some sort of event to kind of reveal what's in our hearts, right? I've always heard it say that like,

you're like a cup full of water, and when your cup is knocked, what sloshes out? Does love and caring slosh out, or does anger and malice slosh out? Because that's what's truly inside of you, right? And, but to be honest, sometimes we don't always know what's in there. You know, go with me, you guys have probably never experienced this, but you're having a happy-go-lucky day, you're cruising down the interstate, listening to your favorite song, and somebody cuts you off, and next thing you know, you're like, you've lost it. You're on the horn, and you're like, yeah! And then you're kind of like, whoa, whoa. Where did that come from, you know? I read an article about, just the other day, about somebody who did something totally out of their character, and the person said, I just lost it. It was so weird, I just lost it. That's the word, right? And I see that as kind of a time

where the Lord is revealing what's actually inside of you by showing what's coming out of you when push comes to shove, right? So, convictions are the same. How do we know what's really inside of us, and how do we know what our convictions are? Well, I think a good example is, do you still do that thing or believe that thing when people aren't watching, right? If you do, that means you have a conviction about it, right?

Do I only believe that thing or do that thing when I'm around my church friends? That might be an indication that you're not really convicted about something, okay? He is asking us to develop deep convictions, okay? We need to believe it in our hearts. And like I said, look, there's sometimes that things are revealed to me, and I'm like, I don't have a conviction about that, but I need to, because the Lord says that's important. And I just pray and I ask for help. I get accountability from people, from my bros in my life group, whatever I need, to help try to build that deep conviction.

Back to 1 Thessalonians 1, we're gonna look at 6 and 7 real quick, verses 6 and 7. Verse 6 and 7 of 1 Thessalonians 1, "'You became imitators of us and of the Lord, "'for you welcomed the message "'in the midst of severe suffering "'with the joy given by the Holy Spirit. "'And so you became a model "'to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia.'" All right, so basically Paul is encouraging and thanking the church of Thessalonica for being a good example and setting the pace. We need to be a good example for others to follow, okay?

I grew up in a house that was kind of, my dad set the pace where he would say, do as I say, don't do as I do. Anybody ever heard that before? No, just to my family? No, I'm just kidding. Do as I say, don't do as I do. That is like the worst advice ever. That is like, you know, that does not work. That is a total complete misunderstanding of how people operate. People only do what they see other people do, okay? If you want to invest in the spiritual journeys of other people, you need to be walking the walk and talking the talk, okay? And not just in areas of hypocrisy, right? Obviously that's a given. Like you need to be a person who follows after the Lord and you need to be a person who is honest and all those things. Then all the other things, like if you know it's a good idea that people should read their Bible and you tell people they should read their Bible

but you don't read your Bible, that's a problem, okay? People will not read their Bible if you're not reading their Bible. A personal just conviction for me is I live in kind of a Christian bubble. I work at a Christian school. I do a lot of stuff here, being a deacon and all that. And all my neighbors are Christians. Like it has been kind of difficult for me to have deep relationships with people that don't know the Lord. And so here I am telling Sadie and my kids how important it is to reach out to people that don't know the Lord and share the gospel with them and I'm not doing that. I'm convicted of that and one of the things that I'm really praying for and know that will happen and God's gonna answer is that I will be around a lot of people in Oklahoma that don't know the Lord and I can develop relations with them and love them and share the gospel with them.

So I've gotta set the pace of sharing my faith. If I expect Sadie or anybody that I know helping along to do that, to share their faith. I've gotta be sharing my faith too and that's one of the goals in our life group. I'll be talking about that later. Life groups is to be praying for and asking for the Lord to bring people that don't know Him into our lives so we can love and care for them. Titus 2, seven and eight, it's on the screen. And everything set them an example by doing what is good and your teaching show integrity, seriousness, and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned so that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us. So not only are you living a life of example but you're also living a life above reproach. Now nobody expects anybody to be perfect but to the best of your ability, you're living your life in a way

that nobody can say anything, right? They've got nothing to hold against you and to accuse you that your testimony or your message is in vain. In this vein, I think about how Sadie is only in the seventh grade, she's starting the seventh grade this year but she's already starting to ask questions like what do I wanna do with my life? Where am I gonna go to college? How am I gonna pay for college? And of course I'm like, you're too little to be worried about that stuff. Seriously, you need to relax for a while.

But her mother and I always say that above all else you need to follow the Lord. And it just seems like this nice thing that you might put on a bumper sticker, a t-shirt, that people kind of pat you on the head and say follow the Lord and then they walk off and you're kind of like, what does that mean? Well, as Sadie knows that the Lord is dealing with us as far as like our jobs and what we are to be doing and how we are to invest in other people, we need to follow the Lord to Oklahoma if that's where he's leading for just a simple fact of modeling it to my kids. How can I expect my kids to follow the Lord and step out in faith and in difficult decisions if when their mom and dad has that opportunity to do so we go, well, I don't know how we're gonna pay for stuff so I guess we'll just stay in Texas. You know, like, how lame is that? Like, man, I just, there's just so many,

I guess what I'm trying to say is there's so many different aspects and angles to this thing that we have no idea how the Lord is working and all that by just stepping out in faith and following him, right? It has to do with our kids watching us, it has to do with the testimony of the people that know us and that we are setting an example of really putting our money where our mouth is. We've been telling people to follow the Lord, well, we're gonna follow the Lord. I talk about investing in our kids and being an example and that is a goal of our church to invest in the lives of young people. We have some adults here at the church who are investing in specific young people and what I mean by that is like spending time with them, going to their volleyball games and having them for ice cream and things like that because we realize that parents have limited time

and parents have limited methods but if you bring somebody else in sometimes, they can share the same message with your kid and it totally rings different and new. I can't tell you how many times, I laugh about this all the time because my wife and I were in collegiate ministry for years before we came to Texas and now we work with students at a school but you'll meet with these guys or whatever for a long time. You'll talk to them about the importance of a good testimony and reading your Bible and following the Lord and all this stuff and then they'll go off to some conference and some speaker will come in and they'll come back all jazz and you'll be like, hey, would you learn at the conference? You're like, dude, so awesome. The guy said I should read my Bible every day and share the gospel and memorize verses and I'm like, oh man, wow, that is amazing and I'm like, I've been telling you that for years.

You know what I mean? And so we realize that kind of having this cross training, if you will, is really, really effective with kids and so I just wanted to let you know that our church is doing that this year. It's a goal to invest in young people. Let's look at Hebrews 13:7. Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you and consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. Let me show you a story about somebody who I try to imitate and emulate as much as I can. His name's Max Barnett. He's in his 80s now. He was the director of the Baptist Collegiate Ministries at Oklahoma when I was there and when my wife was a student. And I'll never forget, it was my first week there, I was still getting kind of the lay of the land and we had our very first big worship night. It was called Vespers at the time and the building was just chock full.

There was like 400 college students in there. We had a praise and worship team and it was amazing because I came from Arizona where if you had a meeting on your campus and you had 100 people show up, you were the big dog in town. If you had like 50 or 100 people, you were the big ministry. But we came to Oklahoma, there's like 400 kids here. Anyway, before the main speaker got up, a freshman got up to give a testimony and this young lady had just accepted the Lord just the week before and she's very brave because they asked her, you just accepted Christ, would you like to show your testimony at Vespers with 400 people? And she agreed, so she's up there.

And she's given her testimony. She's been a Christian all of like four days. And I look over and there's Max who had been the director, this is the early 2000s, he had been the director there since 1967. And I look over and Max is taking diligent notes off this freshman who is giving her testimony. And I'm just like, what is he doing? Like is he like critiquing her? Is he pointing out all the things that she said wrong? Like what is he doing over there? And I didn't feel, I don't know, I feel like I knew him well enough to ask him. So I asked a friend of mine, I was like, Max is like over there writing like mad during that freshman's testimony. What was he doing? He was like, oh, he's taking notes. I'm like, notes are what? He's like, Max will always tell you he never ever wants to be in an opportunity to miss what the Holy Spirit says to him. And he knows that the Holy Spirit

can speak through a freshman who just became a Christian four days ago, just as well as he can speak through somebody who's been a Christian their whole life. And he never ever, ever, ever wants to miss anything the Lord has to say to him. So he writes down everything that he hears when somebody's speaking about the Lord. And I was blown away. I was blown away, but guess who had a notepad and a pen that next week's vespers? Because I wanted to make sure I didn't miss anything the Lord had to say. Another quick story about Max is he's a diligent note taker, especially in his quiet times. And he's gone through like the same Bible reading calendar for 50 years probably. And he writes things down and he'll get a new book every year. And so let's say if he wants to, if he wants to see anything the Lord has ever spoke to his heart on 1 Thessalonians 1, he can just go and get any book off the shelf

and say like 1974, pull it off, turn to 1 Thessalonians 1, the area that he was reading at the date. And he can see anything that the Lord has ever spoken to him on 1 Thessalonians 1. He said one time if the house was on fire, I'd get my wife out first and then I'd get my quiet time journals out second because they're that valuable to him that he's recorded and he has not missed anything that the Lord has said to him. Now I'm inspired by that but I'm not there, okay? But what he has modeled in me is the life of a learner. So you remember that timeline I talked about earlier? You got the plus 10 over here, right? Well, that doesn't mean like if you're a plus 10 that you've made it and you can just kind of sit on your laurels and retire, that's kind of like an endless line there because as long as we're still on earth, we still have more to learn. And Max realized a man that's forgotten more about Jesus

than I've ever learned, he's realized that he should always be a learner and always be looking to the Lord to challenge him and grow him in things. And so I just want to challenge you to be a learner. Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God, you consider the way of life and imitate their faith and always be a learner and follow the Lord in that. I spoke about life groups earlier. This is a very practical way that South Burleson is addressing this idea of investing in the spiritual journeys of others is through life groups. Okay? I meet with two other guys, they're same sex, so the guys meet with guys, girls meet with girls. And we, it's not just a supper club and a hangout time. We're getting to know each other first of all and we're hearing each other's stories, understanding our come from, meeting needs if we need it. If the guy's going through a real tough time,

we'll pray for him, we'll give him advice, those kinds of things. We definitely have an agenda to get through and that's who does not know the Lord in your life? If you don't know anybody, we're gonna pray that's got somebody bringing somebody in your life. What is the spiritual discipline we're working on? In our life group, we're working on just being consistent in our quiet time and that means reading the Bible consistently day after day during the week and praying. We're doing a Bible study together and we're also just being open and honest with one another and repenting of sin if we need to and confessing to each other as brothers that I really messed up in this area. I need prayer, pray for me to make it right or pray for me to not do that thing again, whatever that is. And so there's accountability, there's encouragement to get in the word and there's outward focus of that.

We are not just doing this for ourselves but we're also looking to see who the Lord has put in our life that we can share the gospel with and that's a life group. If you're interested in a life group, talk to Drew or myself or Daniel. Later, we can fill you more in about the details of a life group but that is South Burlesons kind of, that's our Swiss Army knife, if you will, to kind of address some of these things and help you grow and take that next step in your spiritual journey.

If you're not in a life group, that doesn't mean you can't do this stuff, all right? If you have neighbors, if you have coworkers, I mean just doing life with people, inviting people to your home, having a meal together, meals are very, very great. You get to know people over food. We like to eat as Americans, that's a very natural thing to do to invite people for food or coffee.

If that goes well, you can just start reading the Bible together with somebody. Listen, as we showed in the scriptures, the Lord relies, we rely on the Lord's power and not our eloquence of speech. The Bible itself will show people and convict people better than we will ever, okay? And so if we can get people reading their Bible on a regular basis, the Lord will do an amazing work through the reading of the scriptures. Praying with them and for them, I can't stress enough how our prayer life is important to helping invest in the lives of others. And as we pray, the Lord is going to just answer those prayers.

And to the best of your ability, meet their needs, be generous and gracious. It's really hard to show somebody that you care about them if they have a really specific need and you're kinda like, ah, sorry, you know, like, now we can't do everything, I understand that, but to the best of our ability to help them and to be generous. And then lastly, connect them to a community of believers. So you're not the only one that they're hanging on to to get them into a community and they might connect with somebody else better and know somebody better than you once they get to that community of believers and that's okay because we are all working together to invest in people's journeys and to move them down closer to the Lord.

So the same principles apply whether the person is a Christian or a pre-Christian. It's all discipleship, it's all investing in someone's spiritual journey, just moving them one step. And I think if we think about it that way, it becomes more manageable, it becomes less of a daunting task. We don't feel like a person's eternal, you know, destination rests on our shoulders. We're giving it to the Lord, we're asking Him to use His power, the Holy Spirit, to help us and we are just stepping out in obedience and following the Lord and just telling people what the Lord has done in our own life. So I hope that we can continue to do that. Be praying for us as we have nine short months left of before we step out in big faith. We talk a big talk like right now because it's nine months away, yeah, we're gonna follow the Lord. And probably in like eight months, we'll be like,

you know, so just be praying for us as we have the ups and downs that come with making a big change. Pray for our kids, they don't always understand what's going on and they just have to trust us and that's really hard. So we're gonna just give our lives to investing in others. Let's pray. Lord, I just ask that you would, you would bring people into our lives that need to know you, Lord. You would help us to know what the next step is for those around us, that we would just be faithful and taking that next step alongside people. We would pray and ask, Lord, that the Spirit would guide that and fill that because we know that our eloquence of speech and our wisdom are nothing without the Spirit.

Lord, I pray that we'd be challenged to set a good example that we would step out in faith and just try to live a life that is worthy of following. And Father, most of all, we pray that it gives you glory and God, that you would, people would be changed and experience the joy of what it means to follow you through our lives and through South Burleson. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.