Living in Graceland- Shaken and Awakened

I was on a uh just had been appointed to a national committee with Youth for Christ and a creative committee and they had their meeting at the at what is I think the best headquarters I've ever seen for a Christian ministry. The navigators own a castle in the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. Wow. So it was really cool to go to a committee meeting there. The problem is the chairman is a slave driver So here we are in the Garden of the Gods and I'm the rookie guy. I'm the new guy, but I'm like, for a day and a half I'm looking out the window like and finally I'm going, hey, Can we stop and do can we stop and see where we are? You ever have this happen? You go, you know, you go to go to meetings in some wonderful resort area and it might as well be in in uh you know uh Tubeens, Nebraska, because I I don't if you're from there, don't be offended, but um it's like we can't go do anything. So they said, oh yeah, that's right. Well listen, we'll take you on we'll take you on the initiation hike. Well I heard the word hike, didn't pay much attention to the first word, and they said we are gonna go see this beautiful cascading waterfall, but you gotta hike to it. It's a it's really pretty breathtaking Great, let's do. So I changed my shoes, got some boots on. We started to walk along. It was May. So we're walking along this roaring Rocky Mountain stream. And uh we get to, we walked right up into a wall. And I said, I don't see any, what is this a scam? I I don't see any waterfall. They said, well, it's over there which is across the stream, which has no bridge. I said, how do we get to all this beautiful stuff? Well, all there was was a pipe about this big around across the stream. They said you walk the pipeline. I said, you walk the pipeline. I'm just, I'm like, there's no railing, there's no nine, just a pipe. And I'm like, I can see the headline tomorrow, Evangelist Body Found in Nebraska. I mean, you know, it's just like, I don't really, this is hot. So there's all this great stuff in this pipe So the uh and and and uh I here I am standing at the edge of the stream. I'm telling I'm told there's all this beautiful stuff over there. And I realized that I had gone as far as I could go safely. And so have you. And so have I. We usually stop at the point where it's not safe anymore. But if indeed God has shaken us to awaken us to get some old things out of our hands to lead us into a new thing in our relationship with Him, our love for Him. Our family, our ministry, our business, our future, whatever arenas he wants to lead us into new things You won't see it unless you cross the pipeline. I did cross the pipeline. I live to tell about it. I've done it again. Because what's on the other side is everything they promised. It was beautiful. It was powerful. God has some incredible things waiting for us, which you can't get there safely. You have to leave the same old business as usual Coasting spiritually. Got a good thing going. Don't mess it up. Don't disturb it. Maybe some of us here, maybe a lot of us have gone as far as we can go. safely. I want to kind of pull together what we've done this week and to me this is the most encouraging. of our messages together and appropriate as we as we head home. You see the key words, grace to help You see in your notes, we've been through our turbulent times. God's been saying something to us. It's been labor pains to birth something. I'm doing a new thing. Do you not perceive it? We talked about these five spiritual superpowers that I would call the components of the new thing God wants to do One is that that new responsiveness or new listening. Again, I told you as this morning, I'm trying to practice this. listening to the Spirit promptings, truly having that voice behind you say, this is the way, walk in it. And it is amazing how many times. You will have he'll prompt you to do something and and you if you're like me you go I'm so busy I don't have time uh and you know and and and you'll you'll miss it you'll miss a spirit assignment Or not do something, or don't go there, or do that. It's an exciting, adventurous, and it's how you get into the new thing You take a step, you see a step, you take a step, you see a step. So there's the new listening, the new responsiveness, a life guided by listening for the Spirit's leadings. That we wouldn't let that happen if we hadn't had our world shaken. We'd be just content doing it the way we've been doing it. Then the new surrender that we talked about, moving from being the make it happen person. To the let it happen person. I'm doing this, God says. Hands off. I'm doing this. And it's where you trade a lifestyle that really is pretty self-reliant. into one that is standing in the sovereignty of God and embracing what comes into your life. as an act of the sovereign God. And then we talked about this new urgency. Because We have we've we've lived in a world where we have we have watched everything people depend on become undependable. The last couple of years, anything that people could go to wasn't there to go to lives literally turned upside down around the world, including our own. And what that I think has done is prepare the way for an incredible move of the Holy Spirit of God. You know, that Greek word kairos, there's two words for time. Kranas, this is kranas, time. And then kairos, which is that moment of opportunity, the verse in Ephesians, making the most of every kairos, every opportunity. So when the quarterback sees his best receiver In the open, on his way to the end zone. That's a kairas moment. It won't be there long before those monsters come and get him. But in that moment, there's a kairas moment. It's a moment of opportunity to be seized while you've still got it. I think we're living because of the shaking, we're living in a kairas moment. People, everything is let them down. Nothing's dependable. Politicians don't do it. Programs don't do it. All the authorities, it's like, oh, I don't even know if I believe any authorities anymore. They're ready for Jesus. If they can find out what he's like. They really are. So it's a kairos moment. You will miss the kairos moment though if you're mired in the crisis moment. And all you can see is the crisis. The crisis creates the kairos. Does that make sense? If not, we'll move on. A new urgency. And then last night Doug talked to us about a new boldness. I thought um Interesting, I asked if Doug would mind if I told you about this and he's not thrilled, but okay. He was. Thursday, the opening day here, Doug had a very painful uh dental emergency. And the the doctor took some baling wire and bubblegum, well not bubblegum, but the dentist literally did a stopgap repair. And all last night while Doug was talking to us about do not hold back, he was hurting. And I didn't know that until we talked afterwards. He was living, he was preaching, he was doing what he was preaching, not holding back. That we'll have, it's funny because I've had a chance to live some of this year. He had a chance to live some of this year. Maybe you have too. But in order for you to step into God's new thing, since it is new and since it's unmapped territory and you're marching off the map into some new thing. You will need a bold faith. You will need to pray boldly because God's going to do a bigger thing, so you need to pray bigger. You need to pray for some things only God could do. It is unimaginable other than God does it And believe him for that. And today is about a new strength. A new strength. from his underused source of strength for supernatural living, Grace. So we're living in Graceland today. Elvis will not be here. He left the building. But this is about living our lives as a land of grace. Because I want to tell you, a lot of our personal stress comes from a grace deficit, and that grace deficit is not God's fault. Much of our interpersonal stress in our relationships is from a grace deficit. Again, not God's fault. And as your notes say, as pandemic and perilous times have revealed the inadequacy of our usual go-tos We are driven to the point where we have to rediscover how amazing amazing grace is. You ready for this? Two ways to live the grace difference and two ways to be the grace difference. Let's start with that first one. I call it downloading grace. Again, we visited these verses before, but that is what Paul was doing. With his pain. You know this and he had his thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment him. Let's keep going. Three times he pleaded with the Lord to take it away. That would have been the worst thing God could have done for him was to answer that prayer. I love what Tim Keller says about prayer. He said, yes, God answers every prayer. It's like, well, he didn't answer my prayer, for no. He says he answers with what we would have prayed for if we knew what God knows. Good point. We don't like, no, no, no, give me what I was asking for, please. No, no, no, no. You had you certainly had a better idea. But he did say to me, my gracious, my what Yeah. By the way, when you read this in the Greek, in the Greek, uh the the first word in the sentence is the big word that's being emphasized. It's like pay attention to the first word. The word order is different in the Greek. Enough! For you, my grace. Sufficient or enough is the first word. It's the one that jumps out. Enough! For whatever you're going through, enough for you, my grace. For my power is made perfect in weakness. And now we his whole attitude about his weaknesses becoming an opportunity to experience Christ's power because he's out of the way. So this is downloading grace. Our example is Paul. We'll have a different example for the second part of grace. But Paul's our example here. Here's my definition, my shorthand definition of grace. It is spiritual adrenaline It's spiritual adrenaline. So you're facing a crisis and you know what happens. God has designed us in such a way that this chemical is miraculously released in our system and suddenly like you're Superman You know, I mean you can lift something you couldn't normally lift. You can uh you can do something, move faster, lift more than you usually would. You won't be able to five minutes from now But you can right now. Nick, you know that guys play in NFL games with broken legs and broken arms because the adrenaline, they don't even know they've got a broken broken bone They'll go back into the game like that. Because adrenaline makes up the difference between what you got and what you need. That's what grace does When we came into a relationship with Jesus, we had nothing. But his grace comes flooding in to fill in the absolute total deficit that we had to begin a relationship with God. So here, you see, it is God's intervening strength. Intervening in your situation where you can't, it's his intervening grace, intervening strength and power when we're on empty. So if you are going to calculate obeying God in a new area to do a new thing, do things in a new way. Um you're gonna look at your resources and go, I ain't got it. I can't do that. God says, I've been waiting for you to say that. He smiles and goes, you're absolutely right. And that's where grace comes in. Spiritual adrenaline. You've experienced it, I know you have. Where a situation you could never have imagined yourself handling. When you got to it, you had what you had to have You didn't have it before, you didn't necessarily have it after, but you had it when you needed it. That's what God has promised. I call grace the difference maker, Hebrews 4. 16. Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence or boldness. So that, don't you love throne of Do you expect the word to be grace when you hear throne? Come to a throne that's all about grace with confidence so we may receive mercy and find what's the next three words Grace to help in our time of need. Let me tell you something fascinating about that verse. You see that word um grace to help? It's used, I think, one other time in the uh the Greek word in the Bible. And it's really a pretty fascinating place it's used. Acts 27, Paul is in a violent storm. The ship is in this storm for two weeks at sea It looks like they've thrown the tackle overboard. They've now thrown the cargo overboard, which was uh, you know, uh going to Caesar, and they they're like, nope, we can't, we're gonna go down So they're about doing everything but throw each other overboard to try to save the boat. One of the things they did back then was that they would have cords, strong cords, that they would somehow get around underneath the hull of the boat and that would that would hold the boat together during a storm That's the word used here. It literally grace to help us comes out in Acts 27 to hold the ship together. I thought how powerful is that as a picture? Because God uses there a rare word for the Bible. That we find grace to hold the ship together. In the storm. How many have had Grace do that? It's all that held it together. When everything else was falling apart and the storm was tearing you up. Grace to help. That grace is sufficient for your need. And it is specific for your situation Did you know there's not just one kind of grace? It's not one size-fits-all grace. Oh no, this is beautiful. This is beautiful. His downloaded grace will match First of all, the burden that you're carrying. 1 Peter chapter 4. The end of all things is near. Therefore be alert and of sober mind so you may pray. Above all, love each other deeply. Because love covers a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without murmur, murmur, murmur, grumbling. Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others as faithful stewards of God's grace. We'll come back to that. In its various forms. Now, you see what it says in its various forms? That word in the Greek means variegated. Multicolored. Rainbow Grace. It's used one other time in the book of 1 Peter. And then we don't have it on a slide, but in 1 Peter 1, 6, Peter talks about how you've had to suffer grief in all kinds of troubles. So he's talking about variegated grief, many kinds of grief, over many kinds of losses we have in our life But for variegated grief, there is variegated grace. It's all different colors of grace. So there is suffering grace. There is single grace There is married grace. There is prodigal child grace. There is exhaustion grace. There is sickness grace. There is funeral grace. There are all kinds of grace. And God sends you. He said, okay, I got grace for that. It isn't just a kind of this big blob of grace. It's multicolored, just like your trials. Different kinds of problems, different kinds of grace. Isn't that awesome? All kinds of trials, all kinds of grace. And you have the color of grace that matches the color of your trial. It would be a good time to sing Amazing Grace. That's pretty amazing. Cory Tenboom, the dear Dutch lady whose family was largely died in Nazi concentration camps and Cory would have, except she was miraculously released. Her sister died there. She ended up traveling the world talking to suffering people. Was a very wise lady. She talked about worry. Because usually that's how we handle our burden is we worry. She said, worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows. It empties today. of its strengths. Duh. That's what it does, man. It just doesn't has anybody worried a solution ever? I mean, it just doesn't help But sometimes that's what we do because we don't download grace instead. So you will have grace to match your burden. Secondly, you'll have grace to match your assignment from God. That's what we read in 1 Peter 4 verse 10, that you will be a steward of God's grace as you use your gift to serve other people. So if you're saying, well, Lord, I know what you're, I mean, you may be asking me to do that, but I I I really, I don't have what I need to obey you He's like, no, I know you don't. It's grace. Remember, it's the difference between your what you don't have and what you need. So when that adrenaline kicks in, you will be able to. Our On Equal Swings warriors have that happen every summer. I tell them at boot camp, you're going to do things this summer you've never dreamed you would do. We are more introverts than extroverts. They could not imagine standing on a basketball court with a microphone. They couldn't imagine standing anywhere with a microphone. You know, they did a survey with psychology today as to the greatest fears that people have. They thought the fear of death would come in number one. Came in number two. Number one is standing up in front of a group of people to talk. Some of our team members will go, yep, I'd rather die. And so it is hard. But that it's a you've had this happen where you step up to do something for the Lord and words you don't have, you have words that I didn't even know I knew that When I was writing, hoping your heart is breaking. And pouring out the depths of my heart on paper. I read sentences and go, where did that come from? I don't even know that. I mean, now I do. And I'm like, that is so good. But it wasn't complimenting me. Because I couldn't even think of it. He will give you what you need for your assignment. 2 Corinthians chapter 3. Such confidence we have through Christ before God. Not that we are competent. This has nothing to do with what you can do. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves. Our competence Our ability to do it comes from God. The adrenaline kicks in, closes the difference. He made us competent. He made us, he made us competent as ministers of a new covenant Not a letter of the Spirit, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. So you'll have what you need for your assignment. Thirdly, his download of grace will match your personal need And we kind of talked about that from Hebrews 4. 16. I know that since I was working a lot with our football team for a number of years at Wayne Valley, Kind of on the inspiration side. Um I was in the weight room to visit with the guys a lot and you know they'd be in there and and they're all trying to you know, increase their their bench press. And the coach is in there often. That's why they're in there checking to see who's in the weight room. Um Just a funny aside here, things come back and they trigger. I uh was in a situation we'd had some security issues and sometimes when you do uh public ministry you get You know, people and uh so I had a guy helping me who was just a retired Marine. He was a young guy. He had just come out of the Marine Corps and he had been on the presidential detail. He had been guarding uh president George W. Bush and uh President Clinton. And uh so uh in one of his assignments George W. Bush is a quite an exercise guy and he actually was a weightlifter And he would there was there was uh all the weightlifting equipment in in the uh White House. He was his spotter. He said, Ron, you know what it's like to be a spotter for the President of the United States He said, just imagine yourself having to say, breathe, Mr. President, breathe, said the President of the United States. Just, okay, that's it. No extra charge for that But you you see what you you if you're gonna become a star athlete if you're gonna become a champion you're always working to increase increase your bench press how do you increase your bench press By lifting more than you ever lifted before. That's how God strengthens you and makes you a warrior for Him. By giving you something heavier to lift than you've ever lifted before. Anybody got one of those right now? I'll bet a number of us do. It's heavy to lift. He's increasing your bench press. Do you know why? Because he's preparing you for the big game. He knows the big game he's got coming. So if he's pushing you to lift more, it is not bad news. It is his preparation for the big game. There is meaning in what you're having to lift Honestly, the strongest, most powerful Christians I know, so many of them, have had the heaviest loads to lift in life. Think of a Johnny Erickson Tata, for example. Just to take a prominent one. Our greatest God sightings are in our greatest moments of weakness. Our greatest God sightings are in our greatest moments of weakness. A. B. Simpson, I read this in Streams in the Desert, which I use in my Jesus time sometimes. I love this. It is your sweet privilege to place all your need. over against his riches and lose sight of the former, all that need, in the presence of the latter. all his riches. There will never be something you can't handle. There will always be matching grace. But you gotta go, it says, go to the throne to get it. That's downloading it. Supernatural resources that will equip you to live on a whole new level if you get good at grace. Get good at downloading grace. Now I said there were two ways that you can both live and be grace. Well, the first one is about getting grace. That's downloading grace. The second one is distributing grace. That's about giving grace We already read 1 Peter 4. 10, and our example is going to be who's called the son of encouragement in the Bible? Anybody know? Oh wait, it's in your notes. No fair Barnabas, that's right. Look at let's look at 1 Peter 4. 10 one more time because I want to emphasize another part. So you use whatever gift you have. to serve others because you are a steward you've been trusted by God with grace to give away you are a grace distributor you're not just a grace recipient You're a grace distributor. How you doing on that? So, if grace, downloaded grace, is spiritual adrenaline Then distributed grace is spiritual cartilage. What is that all about? Well, I just had a lesson in cartilage not long ago I um had a little fall right down not too long ago and um broke this finger in three places Doctor, I said, are we gonna have surgery? He said, the best I could do is get it back to where it was with arthritis. Okay, that's good news, bad news. Arthritis kept me from surgery. That's nice. I just call him Arthur for short. We've been around together. And so but the problem is, because of arthritis, you know, there's not much cartilage in there, so when I fell, there wasn't much to cushion it. Let me you got in your notes here what cartilage does. I think it's in your notes. I looked it up. Cartilage absorbs shock, reduces friction, supports and connects structures. That's when you become a grace distributor, it absorbs shocks in a relationship, it reduces friction, and it supports and connects structures. So for example, 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 12, and as we encounter more, and we don't have it on a slide, but as we encounter more and more hostility and closed hearts and and um uh a lot of um pretty ugly branding for our faith in christ listen to what peter says live such good lives among the unreached, that though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds And glorify God. They start out against you. But it's just, you're so kind. You're so loving. You don't retaliate. You don't give what you get. They're like, what's with you, God? Oh, I need to check him out. He goes on to say, it is God's will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men. You don't shut them up with an argument. You don't shut them up with a social media duel. You shut them up by treating them like Jesus would. What a concept. So let's look at Barnabas. Barnabas living looks like this. We came to Jerusalem. This is solitars. Saul tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him. I don't know why I'm laughing at this. It's just like, oh no, no, no, no, no. Not Saul. We know what he does. Yeah, I don't blame him. Not believing he really was a disciple. But Barnabas took him, brought him to the apostles. He told them how Saul had seen the Lord and that the Lord had spoken to him and how in Damascus he had preached fearlessly in the name of Jesus. So Saul stayed with them based on Barnabas' recommendation and moved about freely in Jerusalem, speaking boldly in the name of the Lord. So Barnabas, look. And before we move on, you see that Barnabas will take this persona non-grata guy that nobody really wants to have in the club, and he says, he's with me. He will reach out to him. He's got his arm around the guy that the others have, there please don't come in here. Then let's look at this example. Those who had been scattered by the persecution that broke out when Stephen was killed traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, Antioch, spreading the word only among Jews. Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch, which is largely a Gentile community, and began to speak to Greeks also. Ooh. Those Gentile dogs? Well, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. The Lord's hand was with them. A great number of people believed and turned to the Lord. News of this reached the church in Jerusalem. And who do they send? Now more persona non grata. Gentiles are coming to Jesus. That's good news, bad news. That's good, Gentiles. Gentiles? They send our Barnabas, the son of encouragement, to Antioch. When he arrived and saw what the grace of God had done, he was glad. He did see when God's doing something, just like he saw it in Saul of Tarsus. And he encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. See, he's distributing grace. He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith And a great number of people were brought to the Lord because he could see when God was working. He's a grace distributor. I love that. He sometime later Paul said to Barnabas, let's go back and visit the believers in all the towns where we preach the word of the Lord and see how they are doing. Barnabas, you know this, he wanted to take John, also called Mark, with them. But Paul didn't think it was wise. This is why I did not use Paul as the example, so much as Barnabas here, didn't think it was wise to take him because he had been a washout before on a missions trip. And uh we can't afford, we don't have time to rehabilitate these guys. Because he had deserted them in Pamphylia. He hadn't continued with them in the work. This guy's a quitter. They're such a sharp disagreement. They parted company. Barnabas took Mark and sailed for Cyprus. By the way, the end of the story comes a little later when Paul is in prison. before he is executed in 2 Timothy, and he says, please bring Mark with you. Again, do you see a life of distributing grace? Is this you? Everyone needs a Barnabas. Everyone needs a Barnabas. You know who really needs a Barnabas these days? Christian leaders. I know lots of them. 38% of America's pastors have told George Barnes people they're ready to quit. All right, well we have a don't we have a month once a month uh uh I mean once a year in October we have pastor appreciation month? Yes. And then we have 11 months of pastor depreciation But we all need a barnabas. Hebrews 3. 13 says, encourage one another daily. Who'd you encourage today? When you encourage, you put courage in. You don't have any idea what your word, what your smile, what your compliment, what your encouragement is fortifying them to do. Look at Acts 4. 33. Here's the power of the early church. With great power, the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus and God's grace. was so powerfully at work in the mall. And you know it was a welcoming community. 3,000 people daily were being saved. When's the last time you saw that? You know what they did? They created a culture of grace. I hope whether anybody else does or not that around you, you model a culture of grace. Ain't much of that on social media Even among Christians. There ain't much grace. But we have been gifted by God to give out his variegated grace. You give people what they need, not what they deserve. That's what grace is. So God did for us. He gave us what we needed, not what we deserved 1 Peter chapter 3 verses 8 and 9. Remember this is Peter, the ear surgeon. Notice how what he says. Finally, all of you be like-minded, be sympathetic. Love one another, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil. There's no payback in grace. There's no payback. Nor insult with insult. Repay evil with blessing. They do you wrong, you do them right. What in the world? That's grace. That's what Jesus did for us. We did him wrong. He did us right. Because to this you were called, so you may inherit a blessing. That's distributing grace. You got it, so you give it. As you got it, so you give it You don't keep score in relationships. Grace does not keep score. Grace does not retaliate. You remember in 2015, a young man walked into a Bible study at the at Mother Emmanuel Church in Charlotte, AME Church. Went to the Bible study and then started shooting people. And killed nine people in the Bible study who had been praying for him. I had the TV on that night. Anderson Cooper was really giving some very um very clear coverage of that horrible night out as a as the crowd started to form outside Mother Emmanuel Church. Sacred ground to the African American Christian community. And I will tell you what Mark Garagus, the very noted defense attorney, said because he was on with Anderson Cooper. He said, I have never seen such an outpouring of forgiveness. It's shocking. End quote. This is on national TV, people glued to the news. And Anderson Cooper said, as dark as the dark has been here tonight. The light is much brighter. In their darkest moment, God let them be grace distributors to a nation. In fact, again I quote Anderson Cooper that night. There is so much grace here, he said. Amazing grace. It's not just a song They may not like what you believe. They may treat you sh in a shabby form. But when grace comes from you, knowing to be against that. Be a walking culture of grace. And let's look at Colossians 4. 6. This is very practical Let your conversation be always, read the next three words, full of grace. Think about that now. At home when it's tense. Conversation full of grace. Or full of garbage. Online. Political dialogue. Always full of grace. Season with salt so you may know how to answer everyone. I know how to answer everyone. With grace. With grace. Giving them what they need, not what they deserve. Grace talk in a world of trash talk. Oh, that's living such a good life among the people who do not believe in your Jesus that they will begin to wonder about your God. In John 1. 14, we see that the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son And look what he came with. He came from the Father, full of grace and truth. It's not all grace. It's truth. But it's not all truth. It's truth wrapped in grace So yes, we stand for God's truth. But it's wrapped in grace, like Jesus was. And grace happened to come first in that sentence. Full of grace. And full of truth. This is the life-changing power of truth wrapped in grace. So Paul says, be strong in the grace. Be strong. In the grace. Get good at grace. Get good at grace. Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. This is the new thing. You need this kind of supernatural strength to live the new thing. And you will have it. Sufficient and specific to what you need. In the Chronicles of Narnia, most of you will know that Aslan is the Christ figure, the lion. The king who is not always seen, often not seen in the stories. But in in one of the uh one of the chronicles of Narnia Aslan has not been seen for quite a while. And Lucy, the youngest of the three children, who has been transported in Arnia, is looking for him and really missing him. And she finds him. And they have a very tender reunion. And this conversation takes place Welcome, child, he said. Aslan said, Lucy, you're bigger Oh, that is because you are older, little one, he answered. Oh, not because you are? Oh, I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger That's his intention for you. That as you grow in Christ and take greater risks and bold steps for him. It'll appear he grew bigger. I'm probably living farther out of me than I ever have, thanks to my world shaken. And my God has never been bigger and my Jesus has never been closer. I'll close with a story about A man whose life has really affected mine. His name was Bill Borden. William Borden in the biographies. Bill Borden was heir to the Borden Dairy fortune. Such a wealthy man that for his high school graduation, he received as a graduation gift A worldwide cruise. Typical graduation gift. But as he was on that cruise, something happened to his heart. He saw the world. And as a follower of Christ, Bill Borden said, he felt something happened in his heart, and he felt a calling. that he was to be a missionary. No, no, no. He's supposed to take over the Borden Empire. That's what he's supposed to do But he has a strong sense of calling on his heart and his life. And he comes back, ends up going to Yale. He is a top student at Yale. And he starts to share with the guys there. They say, well, what do you plan to do with the future? Because Ivy League is all about getting ready to be a big something or other. And he said, I'm going to be a missionary. And his roommate said, you've thrown your life away, Bill. At which point Bill Borden wrote something in his diary. He wrote two words. It said, No reserves. That's I'm I'm I don't I don't care. He started a Bible study group. There were 1,300 students at Yale at that time. A thousand of them came to Bill Borden's Bible study. Eventually they divided them up into groups of 300, he and some of the other Christian guys to have a little more manageable groups. And they were going down the list of names saying who wants to take this guy? Who wants to take this guy? And there were some guys who were really hardcore unbelievers. And they'd come up on a hardcore and no one would speak up. And he'd say, put him down for me. Put him down on my list. At one point he saw the needs of the city around him. Started a mere mission called the Yale Gospel Mission. With his money. And he ended up liquidating his assets and pouring just about all of his money into that kind of work with widows and orphans and street people. And he again was attacked for that. Like, you're crazy, Bill. He wrote two more words in his diary No retreat. And then his dad took sick and they said, Bill, it's time for you to take over the Borden Empire. He said, I'm going to China to work with Muslims in China. They said, Bill, you're the next in line. No reserves. No retreat. He did go to China, but on his well, on his way to China, actually, he stopped in Cairo, Egypt for about a month. And while he was there, he organized Christian Egyptians to go door to door, attempting to get to every door of every house in Cairo. to give them a New Testament and the gospel. And they got pretty close to getting it done. But he picked up spinal meningitis. He was 25 years old. He never made it to China. He died in Cairo. Don't be too sad Bill Borden's life, including while I was at Moody, has affected generation after generation after generation. of people considering going into mission work. There are so many people who have gone so many places inspired by the life of Bill Borton. Bill Borden, who had written these words in his journal, he said, in every heart. . . You just grab that here. Hold on a second. Um it's worth the wait. He said this basically here it is. In every man's heart, there is a throne and a cross. If Christ is on the throne, self is on the cross. If Jesus is on the throne, you will go where he wants you to go. Days before his death. He wrote two two more words. Actually, these were in his Bible. I'll tell you the last two words. Remember it was no reserve. No retreat. No, regrets. At a crossroads moment for some of us here. Might be time for that new surrender. The white flag moment. Sparheads to pray. God's done a lot to get your attention. Maybe with your kids, maybe with your marriage, maybe with your money, maybe with your health. Maybe with your plans. Because now he says, see, I'm doing a new thing. It's springing up in front of you. Don't you perceive it? Don't you see it? Don't worry about where where you where what you need is going to come from. I'll make streams in the wasteland. I'll make a way in the desert. I'll take care of all the things you need for it. But I need your updated surrender. I need your blank piece of paper, not your contract. I need your blank piece of paper. Signed by you. Filled out by me And perhaps you feel him calling you to a new kind of dependency on him. A surrender of all your strengths that have been the way you usually got things done. A new life of listening to the Spirit's voice and doing what he says all day long. You've already decided in advance you will obey those promptings. Whatever he tells you A new urgency, to live urgently, urgently for the lost, for it is awful to be lost. But you can intervene with the life-giving message that is buried in your heart for people you can picture right now. It's a time for boldness, not timidity. It's a time for um reckless abandon to the will of God, not for caution, not for holding back. And it's a time to venture out as a downloader of grace and then a distributor of grace in every relationship. If you want that, it's a new thing, deeper, farther maybe you've gone before. You're at the pipeline. Gone as far as you can go safely. Make this your white flag moment and tell him that. Lord, we anticipate new things. Maybe not easy things, but then the best seats cost the most. And I pray, Lord, for whatever work you have started, whether we are seated or whether we are kneeling up here. I know I'm very conscious of the work you've begun in me. And I pray that this surrender will be daily renewed. This is not an event. It's a beginning of a daily process of a new abandonment to your will and your way. Thank you that you who have begun a good work and every brother and sister here will carry it on to completion. By your grace, not their strength, by your grace, until the day Christ returns. I pray for people back home that will be affected by their commitment. We pray, Lord, that you would prepare their hearts. For a changed person coming back, where forgiving is needed. Bring forgiveness. Where healing is needed, bring healing. Where encouragement is needed, bring encouragement Where change is needed, where a changed heart is needed. Great heart surgeon. Replace the heart of stone with the heart of flesh. Go before them as they go back now. You'll get there before they do. And I pray that they will feel a surge of your grace. That will truly be wind beneath their wings to carry them into this exciting next episode. For each of us, Lord, if you have a point. May you be more, Lord, than you've ever been. For we don't want the best of our days with you to be in the rearview mirror. We pray the best is yet to come. So we may cross the finish line whatever that day is for each of us. And here. Well done. And I pray in the authority of the one who has all power in heaven and earth, all authority. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.