[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 5pm or Wednesdays at 7pm if you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, you can find us
[email protected] be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast, Madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: So we're going to get to Colossians 3 in just a second, but I did want to do a little bit of review because what we're about to talk about tonight has a lot to do with what is talked about in the very beginning. So if you go back to chapter one, but also if you go back to chapter one and two of our Bibles, when God created man, he designed us to be two things. One of those things was to be spiritual creatures, and the other one was to be workers and keepers. And I think those are important for two reasons. Not yes, because God told us that that's what he wanted us to be and he calls us to be as men. I think the first one is important because we have to make sure that a part of our core of our conversations, the core of our identity, is not our jobs, while the job is part of the working and keeping. But but first is to be a spiritual being, but also for us to be people that talk about spiritual things together. I know for me it's easy to talk about sports, it's easy to talk about different outdoor activities and things like that. But I even find myself at times not engaging or talking about maybe spiritual things. So we are spiritual creatures. The other part is this workers and keepers. And if you go back to the Hebrew of that term, it's really interesting because it's very similar to what we would call a leader. And I want us to think about that. And here's why, because one of the comments that he makes in the book is this, that people around us will suffer if we as Christian men aren't who we need to be. And so are we. So he was basically saying if we aren't going to be those spiritual creatures and if we aren't going to be those workers and keepers, wherever that is, maybe it's in your job, maybe it's at your home, whatever that looks like. The people that are around us are going to suffer, but we ourselves are not stepping into that calling God has given us, and we are going to suffer, too. So I want to give us that from the very beginning. And so what we talked about, what we talked about last week or the last two weeks is one of the decisions if we're going to be the men they need or we need, is to forsake the fake and relish the reality. And if you were with us in that class and topic, one of the things that we mainly talked about is how we've made a very unfortunate exchange in our life a lot of times, whether we choose whether it's alcohol, whether it's a relationship, whether it's a pornography, whether it's social media. We often make this trade of forsaking what is fake for what is real. And we talked about the consequences of when we do that. One of the consequences we talked about, yes, part of it is that we're not stepping into what God wants us to be. But the other part is we looked at the anxiety, the depression, the suicide that has also happened as we keep making this trade for what's fake. And the danger of making the trade for fake versus real is the more you go for the exaggerated fake, whether it's alcohol, social media, or whether it's pornography, you start to lose your appetite for the real.
And we talked about some ways that we make that trade. And it's kind of like the food illustration. We talked about. The more you eat the bad things, the more you start to lose your appetite for the things that can help you the most. And so we talked about different ways to not make that trade. We talked about it's not enough. And I love this conversation I had with Jason as he talks about technology and things like that. And. And I think about the young men that have been in my office before in their struggles with pornography. It's not enough just to say, hey, stop. They're like, well, I want to stop. And we discuss that. It's not just enough to say, don't do it to ourselves. We also have to put something, and as we put it, someone in its place. That's what Galatians 5 was about. It's not just removing something, it's about putting something there in its place. So that's a summation of all the things that we talked about. So today we're going to get to the next decision, and that is this one. Choose today who you're going to become tomorrow. Choose today who you're going to become tomorrow. And so as we think about that, this is one of the first things that popped into my mind. I don't know if y'all remember this app that was very popular around 2019-2020, it was called Aging Booth. There were several other versions of it. Age yourself.
And I think I forget what the other one was called, but basically what you would do is this. You would download this app and you would put in your age and your information. And it was a really, really good way for us to give our information to people in China. And so we did that and we downloaded it on our phones and also gave them pictures of us. So anyway, long story short, people were downloading this app. It was one of the top five most downloaded apps that year. And what you would do is you would put your picture in it and you would fast forward and say 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years. What am I going to look like? What am I going to become? And here's what was interesting though, is the biggest group of people that downloaded this app were 50 and over.
Is that shocking to you? But what does that tell you? Maybe anything that tell you.
Okay, even the elderly. And so you just called people over 50 elderly. I'm just kidding. But no, no, but no, I get what you're. It's a good point that even as you get older, you're still wondering. I wonder what I'm going to be. Alright, any other thoughts?
[00:06:11] Speaker C: Really? Young ones don't want to see.
[00:06:13] Speaker B: Yeah, they don't want to see. Yeah. So I was trying to find my picture of it. I look like Colonel Sanders turns out in 20, 60 something or whatever year that was. But yeah, I thought it was interesting and especially in light of this topic. Who are we going to become one day? It kind of shows you that no matter what stage of life you're at, you're kind of asking that question. You're wondering, who is it that I'm going to become? And you think about it, you start like that. When you're a kid, you kind of have that wonder. I know my sister, when she was little, she really enjoyed drawing out her wedding dress and her wedding. She would like draw out what she wanted her wedding dress to be and what the wedding would look like. She's very into like flower arrangements and stuff like that. She would draw everything. And my mom actually sewed her that exact wedding dress that she was drawing as a little girl. But it's not just for girls that do that. We do that. When you were younger, did any of you kind of try to picture in your mind, I wonder who it is that I'm going to marry. In fact, I had a conversation with somebody recently, and he was talking about, yeah, even when I was young, I was praying, God, please give me a pretty Christian woman. God, please give me a pretty Christian woman. I would dare to say we've all kind of prayed a prayer similar to that. We like the idea of wondering what we're going to become. But here's the thing that I want us to notice as he's going to talk about in this book is the future is really not that mysterious. It's not. And there's a quote that I have in one of my Bibles from high school. It says this, that future you is an exaggerated version of current you. Future you is an exaggerated version of current you. And it's the idea that the choices you're making, the choices I'm making right now, is what's going to impact one day what I'm going to become. Right. We say this with our kids in a lot of different ways. Have you all ever heard this statement, you are who you date, or who you date is who you're going to marry. Do you think that's true? Yes or no?
Why do you think that's true? I saw a lot of yeses. I did see one. No.
Well, there you go. Okay. Yeah, you're not going to marry someone you didn't date. Any other thoughts? All right. Any other examples of something like that?
I've heard, you know, you are who you're going to be around.
There's a book I have that said you are the sum total of the five people you spend the most time with. Would you think that's true?
All right.
[00:08:43] Speaker D: My dad always used to say this.
[00:08:45] Speaker E: Saying, you're not going to soar with.
[00:08:46] Speaker C: Eagles if you hang out with chickens.
[00:08:48] Speaker B: All right, There you go. That's a really good one. That's a good one.
One of the things that I. When I think about the aging Booth app, by the way, that's Dwyane Wade down there.
So he didn't look too much different to me, but that. I used to think that it's time and one day, right, things are going to change.
Here's where I thought about this. I go back to even my, like, premarital counseling days. And if y'all ever. If you had premarital counseling, maybe you had this happen that I took and Brandon and I Use this with people that are planning to get married is this assessment that basically shows what your strengths are going to be, your growth areas as a couple. And I remember seeing those growth areas, which was an encouraging way to say weaknesses. Okay. And said, oh, when we get married, I'm going to have no problem with that. Like, that's going to be a piece of cake when we get married. I'll get better at that. When we do this, it's going to get better. Well, here's the reality. Time doesn't fix things. Time, yes, time can be a resource to gain wisdom. But time does not change who we are. Time itself doesn't.
It's what we do with that time.
And so it's a choice we have to make every single day. So with that, this is what he said on the very first page. Who we become is a direct result of what we choose to pay attention to.
So I want you to think about that phrase, pay attention. And I want you to think about, just for you, what is it that you pay attention to now as you think about this? You know, we talk about future us.
I would like to know if any of you would like to share if you know, you today could tell you something 20 years ago. Is there something you would have told yourself knowing what you know now and you're. Oh, man, I got a list. And we probably all just don't. Just don't. Yes. Just don't.
[00:10:48] Speaker C: You made it.
[00:10:49] Speaker B: You made it.
Who would have thought?
All right, Anybody else?
Anything in particular specific?
[00:10:59] Speaker F: Only my mom's gonna remember what my GPA was in college.
[00:11:02] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
Well, that's a. You know, it's funny you said, because I was thinking about things that I used to get wrapped up in in high school and that were like the biggest deal where they're at on the totem pole, even in college, things like that. Alright, Brandon?
Yeah.
In case you didn't hear that, he said, give yourself a little grace.
[00:11:23] Speaker G: You're gonna make mistakes. And you know, depending on how you grew up, sometimes your mistakes were like punitive forever. It felt like. And you know, it doesn't need to be that way.
[00:11:35] Speaker B: You need to be able to move.
[00:11:36] Speaker G: Past your mistakes, change your behavior and not have to continually relive those things over and over.
[00:11:42] Speaker B: Yeah, awesome. Anybody else?
You're right where you're supposed to be. Okay. All right. So you're basically saying from the standpoint of God has something he's doing here and that's good too because, you know, maybe y'all have lived under this illusion before that, life is just the next big thing, right? When the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. And the challenge of that is, is it makes you sometimes miss what's here, right?
What's that something about the quote, about your feet be where you are or something like that. All right, anybody else?
All right. An example to me of somebody who became something based on what they chose one day or several days is Samson. He's my go to example whenever I think of something like this. Do y'all remember back when Samson was going to be born, God gave him a heads up that he was with two things. Number one, you're going to have incredible strength and you're going to have all the capacity and the ability to lead, Right? There's just a few things I need you to stay away from. Do y'all know what those were called?
They're part of a vow. Do you remember what that was?
[00:12:54] Speaker F: Nazarite vow.
[00:12:55] Speaker B: Nazarite vow. What were the three different parts of that Nazarite vow that God gave Sam Samson, that he said, don't violate these three things. What were those three things he didn't want Samson to violate?
Don't cut your hair.
Don't touch anything. Unclean, debt and alcohol. And don't cut your hair. And those might seem a little random, but those were protective measures that God was putting in place because he said, hey, you are somebody that I see something very strong in, I see something very special in. And the Bible says this. The spirit of the Lord rushed upon him. Okay, but here's what you'll notice. Did he. How did he do with all three of those horrible. Which one did he violate all of them. But is there a common denominator you notice in his life that caused him to violate all three of those?
Lack of self control. Delilah.
One thing you'll notice that is a common pattern is he kept not being where he was supposed to be.
That was a common issue for him. And here was the other problem is if you notice his parents were kind of passive with his poor decisions.
There wasn't a time where they really. He went down to the women at Timnah and turns out you don't just go down to Timna. It's not like Hay was just walking by Timnah. He went out of his way to go there. And what you notice is his parents didn't really intervene. It kind of makes me think in a way of the priest Eli. Do you remember his sons and some of the poor decisions they made? Part of the challenge for them is when they made poor decisions, what did dad not do?
Swept it under the rug, didn't deal with it. Right? So that was part of it. But I had this up here that Samson, kind of like us, this is why we're thinking of today, how it impacts tomorrow. He didn't ruin his life all at once, okay? But it was one step at a time. That's why we looked at Psalm 1 the other day in this class to talk. And we looked at Proverbs 5 about the enticement of a woman, that if you notice in Psalm 1 and Proverbs 5, there was a progression, right? It wasn't just like, well, how did I get in the bed with her? And it wasn't just, well, how am I standing with the company of fools? Well, I'll tell you, you made several decisions, little by little, and that's why you are where you are. Samson didn't get there all at once. And so if you look at judges 15, very end of judges 15, there's a phrase there that said that Samson led and judged. And the idea of judge was meaning that he was doing his job for 20 years. One verse points out the fact that Samson did do his job for 20 years, but then look what it says one day.
So he. He is about to, as well put it here, risk 20 years of faithfulness by traveling 25 miles. One day it said he went to Gaza. Turns out Gaza was 25 miles from where he was. And here's why that matters to me. He was walking this walk, or however he got there. And somewhere along the lines, as he's walking, knowing what's in that direction, he was reasoning in his own mind, right? He was maybe doing what? Someone brought up a good point last week is that maybe part of our challenge at times is we might think, well, I deserve this. I've had a rough day.
I've had a rough week.
That because of what's happening here, it's almost as if I deserve this. We don't know what it was, but somewhere along that 25 miles, he decided not to turn around and kept going and kept going and kept going. And so I thought about that with us as men, who would make that trade?
Us men do. We can do that all the time if we realize and make serious every single one day, every single moment, to not risk that faithfulness. I love this graph. And if you were in our leadership class. Yes, three years ago, I shared this and I love this graph. It was in a leadership theory class I had, and the teacher One of the things he pointed out is if you ask most young men about what they want to do, one day, he said, they will tell all about this, how they want to make a lead this and lead the community, lead things that are. He said, the challenge is leadership works from the inside out. It's the idea that we want to do things to impact other people, but we haven't mastered yet leading ourself, and we will always be right. Our toughest leadership challenge. And so he says, the individual course is you. The group is maybe your family, it might be your close friends.
And then this takes care of itself. So the individual is. You first have to have an awareness of who you are really who. Am I? Right? This was a challenge for David. This is a challenge for us. Understanding leadership foundations, having faith value and ethics. Here's what's interesting. Harvard is the one that put this out. But to me, this is a picture of a deeper spiritual truth, is learning how to lead us well. So here's the text I want us to get into tonight that talks about what we put before us and what we pay attention to. Colossians 3. Someone read this. This is verse 2, and then verses 5 through 8. Colossians 3, verses 2 through 8.
[00:18:37] Speaker C: Set your minds on things above and on earthly things put to death. Therefore, the components of your earthly nature. Sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming on the sons of disobedience.
When you lived among them, you used to walk in these ways. But now you must put aside all such things as these. Anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips.
[00:19:08] Speaker B: All right, is there anything you think for us as men, and what is it that is really pertinent that sticks out to you in this verse? About me? About you? Anything stick out to you?
[00:19:22] Speaker F: Covetousness.
[00:19:23] Speaker B: Okay, how do we do that?
[00:19:26] Speaker F: I had a friend that came into town and they had a really nice new car.
And so I have a car that's fine. And then I'm just like, they left town and I'm like, all right, how can I try to figure out how to get this car?
Almost equivalent car.
[00:19:44] Speaker B: Yeah. Awesome. All right, what else? Any other examples of things you see up there?
That's a very good point. And so if you didn't hear what Joseph said, he was basically pointing out this part which says that all of these are idolatry.
And I love that, because we need to see sexual immorality.
Also idolatry. It's setting something or an experience above God. Impurity, passion, evil, desire, covetousness, which is idolatry. Good point. All right, anybody else?
[00:20:27] Speaker F: That's a wide topic.
[00:20:28] Speaker B: Yeah, it's almost.
[00:20:32] Speaker F: It's on that edge of what is desire, right? Is that like we're being tempted? That's, I don't know, typically say being tempted isn't sin.
[00:20:43] Speaker B: Right.
[00:20:44] Speaker F: So what does that desire mean? You know, that just maybe you're surrounding yourself by things like tension wise, putting.
[00:20:52] Speaker E: Yourself in those situations of environment.
[00:20:56] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's a good point too because the desire evil does what you desire is impacting what. What you pay attention to. Excuse me, is impacting what you're going to desire. Right. What you put before your eyes, that was Samson's issue.
He didn't just happen to be near Delilah. He put before him, he desired it. Right. He saw one of the things and I don't remember what chapter it was, but when he saw the honey and the lion and when he got drunk, he said for this is good for me to do. So that was part of his. Like he justified in his own mind. That so? Yeah.
[00:21:29] Speaker H: Craig, I think obscene talk is really interesting in this day and age because growing up it used to be four letter words and now it's like people try to strive to just blur the lines and do whatever they can. And so, you know, I think if anything we need to give thought, just give thought to the things that we're saying, you know, just to make sure that it's not offensive to those that we're around. And that doesn't mean we need to be different in different scenarios. But do we think about the words that are coming out of our mouth?
[00:21:56] Speaker B: Yes. Is it Ephesians 4 when he talks about our words can lock us up. It's the idea that our words have way more weight. James 1 and 3 talks about the same thing, right? Our words have big time weight, Craig.
[00:22:13] Speaker C: So you mentioned earlier the idea about it's not just shying away from things, it's replacing them. To me, the first sentence there that says set your minds on things that are above.
And the word therefore in the next sentence to me says that's what this is there for. And only by doing those things, the death, all these other things, right? You have to put something in its place, otherwise it's still going to be there. Even no matter how you try to touch it, it's going to be there no matter what because we're imperfect, but we have to crowd it out with the other things. In order to get rid of it.
[00:22:58] Speaker E: To put it to death.
[00:22:59] Speaker B: Hold on to what he just said about crowd it out and put to death. We're going to come back to that in a second.
[00:23:04] Speaker C: This was the one that kept sticking out to me. The finality of it. They work on it. It doesn't say, you know, make it less. It says kill it. Kill it.
[00:23:12] Speaker B: Yep. All right, we're coming back to that. Awesome. Brandon, maybe one thing you want to.
[00:23:16] Speaker G: Talk about, but it's basically that put to death part is remove its power over you. That's another part of it. Take away its power that it has over you.
[00:23:27] Speaker B: So now that they already brought up, we're going to come back to it. But it does. Like what Brandon said is the idea of removing the power and its influence.
Colon, make dead.
Hold on to that. Okay, any some other thoughts on this verse?
[00:23:41] Speaker D: To me, it's more striking in kind of verse seven in those you two once walked when you were living in death. To me, it sounds like a confession because, you know, you have to admit that you're doing something wrong. And then when you are putting that in your mind, then you go, but now you must put away those things.
[00:24:04] Speaker B: Yeah, awesome. And that's important for what we're about to read, too. Anybody else before I. Yeah, Paul.
[00:24:10] Speaker F: One thing that stands out to me is when it says what is earthly in you? So all those things by nature are within you. And it basically points out to me that it's going to be a battle. It's not going to be easy at all, and you're really going to have to fight hard.
[00:24:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. All right, so before we get to put to death, because we're getting there in just a second, we got to give some context to what we just read. Look at verse one. And what does this context. How does this contact text, excuse me, impact all those things? Because I look at that, I'm like, well, I want to do that. Like, I want to be good with my anger, my wrath, my malice, my covetousness. I don't want to have. Like, Andrew talked about evil desires. Like, that's pretty broad. Like, I don't want to do. What does the context have to do with what we're about to see? Read verse one, somebody.
Therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Okay, how does this. That impact that?
Baptism is not the end of our walk. It sounds like it's the beginning. There you go.
When we put On Christ. So let's kind of give it as this example. What if we did with our kids? Alright. When you get to the age of, we're gonna feed you really well to get to six. When you hit seven, good luck. Right. We don't do that with them. Right.
There's still steps. Right. He's saying that once you have been raised with Christ, there's a connection between your raising and your seeking. Right. Anything else you notice in that verse?
What is Christ doing?
His redemptive work is finished. Kind of reminds me of what Brandon said earlier about if he could tell something to past self, give yourself a little bit more grace.
I think about that with that the picture. This is similar to Hebrews. If you remember the Hebrews, it says that he is seated right at the right hand of God and the seated. If you were a king and you were standing, that meant that there was still a battle to be fought.
If he's seated, that means the battle is won.
And it's the idea that we are fighting from a place of victory, not for it, which is a big difference. That the victory in Christ has been won. Now how does that impact us as men to know that Christ has won that battle?
Satan can't make you do anything. There's the phrase the devil made me do it. Now the Bible says, you know, he's a roaring lion, he will try to tempt us. But the Bible also says with him and his influence that there is always a. What?
There's always a way of escape.
Yeah. So imagine I'll just. To me it's a very heavy mind sport and you can get in your own mind going through shooting slumps, wherever basketball. Like if you knew in a basketball game like you were going to lose and you go the free throw line, how's that going to go? Probably you're like, evidently I'm going to miss this because I know I'm on the losing team. But then if you know, if you have the confidence in the very beginning to know that you're winning on the winning side, does it let you breathe a little bit but also give you the confidence? It's not a false confidence, guys. This is a gospel generated confidence. It's real.
That's where we're operating from. Any other thoughts, Craig?
[00:27:33] Speaker H: You know, I think of James 4, 7, you know, where it says, therefore submit yourselves to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you. You know, so many times we think we got to fight the devil and really all we got to do is just resist.
[00:27:44] Speaker B: Good point. Very good point. All right, so let's go back to. Oh, so two things. He says once you've been raised. And I want us to think about this for a second. What did Jesus do after he was raised? Okay. Because you just mentioned. All right. That once. It's not over once we've been raised, there's something next. Just for fun, what did Jesus do after he was raised? He ascended and seated. Okay. He was ascended and seated. Okay, so ascended. That one way we could put to it. He looked to heaven. Right. He was looking upward. Kind of going back to what we saw earlier. Set your mind on things above. All right, what else? Someone said something that was, I hurt.
He ate. Right. And he was seated around the table with people who were very discouraged. And in that, do you remember what he did? He just sat and listened to them. Right. And their hurts, broke bread with them. And then what ended up happening? Who did they realize he was? He was the Savior Right through the eating of bread. Anybody else? Yes. He ministered to people.
He ministered to other people.
Alright, anybody else? Yeah, went to Thomas. Isn't that interesting of why he picked him?
What does that tell you about us? And I think about it from the standpoint.
So one of the things I used to say growing up sometimes is I'm bored. And my parents had a statement, they always said, our dads always said is there's no such thing as a bored Christian.
And what they basically were meaning by that is there's always, always something you need to improve on. There's always somebody that needs love. There's always somebody that needs encouragement. And I think about all the things that we just mentioned about what Jesus did right after he was raised. I think that's also a parallel for us to understand. After we are raised, we have a job. Right. And one of the examples that they gave in the book is that when people think outside of themselves, he gave the example of a mission trip. Brandon can probably expound on this more too. If you've taken kids on overseas mission trips or did anything service.
The quickest way to fix pride is serving people outside of your comfort zone. Why is that?
Yeah, it's not your environment.
And this was the quote he said, I took a bunch of high schoolers over to Juarez, Mexico to build houses. We camped in tents outside the city. It was exhausting, sweltering work. Once, near the end of our trip, I asked some of the guys I'd long had a long rapport with.
So have any of you been struggling with lust this week? And he said, of course they were like, actually, no. Lust had been their number one issue back home, but it wasn't in Mexico. Here's why. They were too busy serving other people. Their mind was on other things. They were structuring their lives differently, and everything else in that moment was falling into place.
Remember what we said? What we pay attention to everything. What did Jesus do? We made the list, left the tomb. So should we. He ministered to other people, so should we. He sat with at a table, discouraged people, and he looked up to heaven. So let's go back to put to death. That phrase, put to death. One of the. I like the ending part of one of the Greek definitions was to make dead. And I think about what Wesley said in conjunction with that.
When I hear put to death, maybe you've done what I've done and justified it in my own mind that maybe what he means is just suppress it. Push it to the side, you know, ignore it. That's not what that means. Put to death means to make dead.
So it's not suppress. It's wipeout. So how do we as men. And I don't even know if I spelled this right, when I look at it, it doesn't look right. So it may not be. How do we men suppress when God has asked us to wipe out? Is there something we do anything with? Like, is that a challenge you think we have?
Yeah, we. One of the ways I think about with Samson, okay, he flirted with disaster all the time. Like, he was just constantly around it. And so maybe we can think about that with us as men. What do you keep around you at, like, a safe, comfortable distance, maybe that you. You've been suppressing but you haven't wiped out.
Example that ended up talking with somebody after class about when they talked about the. The phones and social media, their rule for the bedroom with their wife. Because. And I'm sure none of you have ever had this problem. You get in bed and then you just start scrolling and you end up, you know, 45 minutes later after watching cat surfing videos. You're like, man, I really got to get to bed. And then, anyway, what was mentioned was they put their phones up away from the bed, put them on chargers away from the bed in order for them to pray together, to talk together, and to have intimacy together. And I thought about that example with this, that I know for us, one of the things we've talked about before is we got to do better at that. We got to do better at that. And I could say that I do that with everything and so many things, when it's one thing to talk about it, but to choose to start filling that gap between intention and action and saying, you know what, I've been suppressing this, I'm going to make a change, I'm going to put it on a charger over here. And like I told you last week, as that person said, it made them more productive. Right. They had to get up and they had to move towards it. But it also helped other things in life. Any other before we sometimes we think.
[00:33:51] Speaker D: Better than what God is asking us to do.
Like there is a biblical story that, you know, God asked to wipe that whole nation out but the king decided no, I'm going to keep whatever's best and I'm going to give it an offering. And then the prophet came. So you didn't listen what God asked you to do and because of that you won't be having a consequence of not listening and obeying God that you.
[00:34:20] Speaker B: Haven'T given over completely to Jesus is not wiped out.
[00:34:27] Speaker H: When you're trying to do things on.
[00:34:29] Speaker B: Your own power, in your own righteousness, in your own ability, you're only suppressing, you're never taking care of the problem. Only Jesus can.
And I think what Satan likes to do so we don't have what you're basically saying is dependence on Jesus and surrender to him. I think Satan likes to give us a lot of little bitty victories to give us this false confidence that we got it, we can do this.
And I think about, and this is a weird way to put it but like you know, with Abraham and Isaac, when God told him to sacrifice Isaac, one thing that I didn't notice till last week or something. Yeah I think it was last week and I just kind of forget it was a three day journey for them to make that walk up to Mount Moriah.
It's easy to make a really hard good decision on day one.
It's very difficult to keep making good decisions on day two and three and again. And I'm glad you made that point because yeah, it's making sure that we are surrendering it all and not just day one. All right. Anybody else?
All right.
[00:35:44] Speaker E: So a long time ago I got long after I married carry into my life I already had two children and another one tell me. We just want to get it all done and push together. Anyway, I, I wanted a horse or a horse is since I was really little, you know and I got over and I rode some horses with friends and we were waiting before to have a More even a horse. And I. I remember at some point in our first year of marriage, I decided, give it up, James. You just do not. You're never going to have time or the money to spend on that. I was around in the job I had for a while in that first year. And the second thing was, you know, maybe like half the people in your house going to play guitar and do it really well, perform somewhere, you know, doing something, even if just a little.
But at some point I decided that's just never, ever going to be something that I could really conscientiously do. So I. I actually kind of considered quitting. The way I did it was. I just talked God about it and I said, yeah, I'm not ever going to have a horse. There's just no way that I would have. It would just take so much of my mental energy and all that. Same thing with guitar. But I have a bunch of other little stupid stuff. Honestly, you get down to it. Just stupid little things that I really want to do, or maybe I'll work with this little crappy thing, blah, blah, blah, doesn't matter. But I got so many little things down. I just haven't put down to give it up. And I thought of that when you asked about this because I think we all have dreams we came with, we haven't really built up. Maybe it's a good thing to pursue, but if there's not enough time for that, I'm already not giving enough time to time with God.
I'm not looking at a physical thing. These verses are really tied to me. Before tonight. I'm not long before I need to leave here. And the best thing I can do is work on my service.
What you're saying, he says when he's looking for the service men who will serve and be unselfish. And I'm still at this age right.
[00:38:05] Speaker F: Now.
[00:38:12] Speaker E: So many of those that I think we all have so much and so many options.
So it's hard to give up those things.
[00:38:22] Speaker B: Yeah. So we have a good bit to cover. We're going to end here tonight because I want to. I think it.
Yeah, let's. Let's end right here. Because here's what we're going to talk about next week is since the important thing is what we pay attention to is the Bible talks about this. And I want you to be thinking about this. Taking every thought captive and giving it to Christ. Taking every thought captive and giving it to Christ. We're going to talk about that next week. But here's my challenge. For you today in this, this week. Because who you're going to be one day is who you are right now. What have you been suppressing that you need to wipe out? I want you all to think about that. For each person. What's something you've been suppressing? Keeping close by, keeping within what you feel like is a good enough distance, but it's not. What have you been suppressing that you need to wipe out? All right, thank you all so much.
