This recording is from Christ Kingdom Church in Waterford Lakes, East Orlando. Visit us online at ChristKingdom.org for our calendar, driving directions and more audio recordings. Stan, thanks Jerry. What's good to be back this morning having an opportunity to share with you all this morning? One of the things I had an opportunity to do over the summer that was kind of fun was watch some documentaries and I watched, remember, one night on World War II and I knew some things about it, but this one gave me some insights. I'm not sure if you all heard of a guy named Abraham Wald. He was a statistician, a British statistician, and during that one of the things during the process, if much about the war, you know that the bombing of Germany and so on was a huge factor in World War II's success. And so having the success of actual airplanes, the bombers was critical. So they worked hard to try to figure out how can we not only make sure they have enough gas or whatever else to it, how can they make sure they can survive the anti-aircraft fire that they were getting so the planes could be reused and so on with that. So they hired him to come in to try to help them understand as they were needing to replenish and rebuild planes that were being shot out of the sky, where should they strengthen, where should they add extra armor to the airplane for them to be better and improved. And after he had done some studying with that, he came back and said, here are the places that you should add it. And it was all the places where the airplanes had not received, they had not been hit before. And so the Royal Air Force leaders were quite confused with that. They were like, look, we brought back airplanes in our airplanes that have survived. You can see where they were taking on fire. Why would you suggest the very places that they have not been hit to, that's where we would put added extra armor. They were confused with that. And so the reason is this, is that the ones that did not come back for me to look at were the ones that took critical fatal hits. And so those are the spots that if extra armor is added, the planes will have the best chances of surviving. So according to history, those adjustments were made and that was a critical part in helping with victory in World War II. Hearing that made me think how often counterintuitive things are really critical for us to have understanding about. That was a very counterintuitive thing that somebody was smart enough to think about and makes perfect sense looking back at it. But when you're in the moment of it, when you're in the process of it, it can be very difficult to see with that. And if you haven't already figured it out, the text that we're looking at this morning is very counterintuitive. In fact, it almost sounds paradoxical in many ways. It talks about dying in order to produce fruit. It talks about loving your life, will make you lose it, but hating your life will allow you to keep it somehow. It talks about honor not coming from being served, but in serving the one who is worthy of the true honor. Counterintuitive recognizes that our brains will naturally make assumptions that are incorrect or inaccurate, left to themselves without other additional information or insight. In this text, I believe, as well as many other places, got to say that because of our sin, because of our sinful nature and flesh, our natural default way of seeing life, of interpreting life, of understanding the life around us, will be inaccurate, will be incorrect. And often we'll have deadly results. I'm reminded of Robert's 1412, which you may have heard, says, there is a way that seems right to a man, but it's end is the way of death. That's a scary verse, if you think about it. It's basically telling you that you know what, you're in trouble if you don't have extra help and insights, because there's going to be a natural way for you to assume things are happening and that are correct, that is wrong. And it's the results or death. Well, verse 24 here that we already heard read, says, truly, truly, I said to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. If you were here last week and I was sharing about probably the most important thing I learned over the sabbatical over the summer, it was based on this text. That's why I wanted to preach on it the first week back because it had such an impact on my life this summer and thinking about what does that mean, what does that look like? And here's the thing I want you to come away with as a key point this morning is asking yourself this question, are you dying to live? Are you really dying to live? Just like a little acorn if you hold it in the palm of your hand. Other than what the scientists told you, you would never come that conclusion on your own that this thing has the capability and the ability to produce one of the strongest trees in the forest. But it does. At least when it's planted, when it's buried, when it dies. Well, once you look at two key points here this morning is we're looking at it. One, I want you to look at the choice or choices. And then I want you to look at your choice or choices. But let's look first at the choice, the choices because there's two here in this context here. Jesus' life and message was counterintuitive to his followers in many ways and it's counterintuitive to anybody who would choose to follow Jesus. Let me illustrate. He said that the greatest of his followers would actually become the servant of the rest. He said to enter through the narrow gate is the way that leads to life, not the broad gate. He said the first should be last and in many cases the last will be first. He said that we must die and be brought back to life. He taught them that they must die to experience true life. In many ways that the counterintuitive message it goes against our natural fleshly thinking about things. So let me want to ask you, just like the disciples back in his day had to ask themselves, what would they choose? What do you choose? Are you dying to live? Have you given your life to Christ? Because there is a primary choice. There is the initial choice. There is a choice that's choosing to turn away from a life that's following its own path to say I believe in Jesus. I'm going to commit my life to Him. I'm going to believe that what He says is true. That without forgiveness and pardon of my sin and that that I will spend an eternity separated from God. But that through faith in Jesus Christ, that his death on the cross can be counted on my behalf. And his penalty, he can pay my penalty for death and the life and the reward that he deserve can be given to me instead. That is a primary choice, but it's very much that Jesus refers to in many ways as a death decision. Like a Galatians 4 says this, I have been crucified by Christ and it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. And then chapter 5 verse 24 says, in those who belong to Christ, Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. So are you dying to live this morning? Have you come and been crucified with Christ? Because that's what it means to be a follower of Jesus, to identify with His death on your behalf, to identify with His resurrection as your hope to live a new life for Him to transform you. The choice to die to self if all of Jesus automatically comes though with the commitment to many other daily choices which we need to look at. These are secondary choices in many ways, these are choosing to die daily. Listen to a couple other texts, Romans 5, I'm sorry, Romans 8. For if you live according to the flesh you will die but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live. Or as Jesus said Luke 9, and He says to all, if anyone would come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. There's a choosing of a death to give your life to Christ and to die into your way of living and doing things to follow Jesus. There's also for that follower of Christ there's a daily choice to surrender your life moment by moment as opportunities present themselves to take up your cross daily. So there's two different ways that we can look at the choice and the choices as we look at this. Let me illustrate what I think it might be a helpful example. Think about if you're a Marine, do we have anybody that is or was a Marine in the room? Just curious, sometimes you have somebody in that category with that. There is a day that every Marine recruit walked into an office and this is actually a copy of a real one, at least page one of a real one. Where they walk in and they sign a document that they are really looks like you read it. They're signing their life away that I am going to come and commit myself to be a Marine of the United States of America. That's an enlistment day. That's a contract that is a anyways a death to whatever their plans were of how their life was going to look, at least the next few years. Well, there is another element to this commitment as a Marine and this is something I found on the internet. A sample of a daily routine. If you look at those time things and I didn't have time to put out every single hour there but you can see that there are some moment by moment commitments and decisions that a Marine makes. What happens on the left is a very important decision. That triggers everything. There is no decisions on the right. There's not a decision that happens on the left. But let me tell you, when you wake up at 5.30 when that alarm goes off or when the drill sergeant comes in and says, get up. There is a decision. When you decide that in the next 30 minutes, I'm going to wake up and clean up my barracks from start to finish, which by the way is QCIP level. Taking wall sockets are red, taking wall sockets, the power outlets off the plate and with the QCIP cleaning the backside of your wall socket, that's the level of inspection. Decision, moment by moment as your day goes on in the life of a Marine. Not a one-time decision is it. It's a daily choice, a moment by moment choice because it is. It's what it means to be a Marine. Let me ask you again, are you dying to live? Well, that's the choices. Let's look at your choice. Let's look at your choices. In mine, let's unpack his debt a little bit. You know, first, we talked about that choice to commit. There is a decision that we made to lay down our lives to follow Christ. It's like if you remember, if you were here last week and I shared that example of the missionary who was going overseas and when his family told him that they said, hey, are you afraid of dying there? And his response was, no, I died the moment I decided to go. There was a decision point, not that he would necessarily, or she would necessarily, would die, but they were willing to do that and their life was put aside as that that was not going to be an obstacle. They made a choice and made a decision to do that. There's a decision point. It's like listing the Marines or is for every single one of us in Jesus Christ, either we will choose to reject Jesus Christ or choose to lay down our lives and follow Him. So the key question again is, are you dying to live? But likewise, there are daily choices. There are daily choices that every follower of Christ makes moment by moment and it looks more like the daily routine type of thing. Dying to the sin nature, the flesh, to experience the freedom of righteousness of Jesus Christ. The Marine makes dozens of choices in the day and so does the follower Christ, moment by moment. Will they choose to live for Him in that moment, die to self, or will they choose to live to self, and die to the commands and the Word of God? Are you dying to live? Has your life been buried in Christ? So as Paul himself said, to live is Christ. That's how he defined his life. And by the way, to die is gained because I get to go and be with him. Just surround your life with that kind of assurance. Well, let's take the rest of our time to look at some couple, at least two ways that he can apply, but this text is trying to teach us what Jesus is trying to share with us this morning. The first thing I want you to go away with is this, is to learn how to spot them, learn how to spot the choices in the course of the day. I guess as most of you are here, you've already made a choice, those of you are here. Then maybe some haven't yet, and that's great if you're in that category. But most of us here have made a choice to follow Jesus Christ. We've enlisted, so to speak. So what I want you to think about, what about those daily choices? What about that like the seed being buried so they can produce fruit? What does that play out? How does that look like? Can you spot them in those moments? It's a little bit like smoke. When you smell smoke, probably the first thing you think about, at least if you've been around any kind of fire, is that the smoke is coming from a fire. I've shared a story before, but I remember as a kid growing up when my dad did a surprise birthday party for my mom and thought it'd be really, really funny to have the little magic candles that you blow them out and they re-light themselves. We still have them today, but this is version 20 today. This was version 1 which wasn't so safe. When he had lit the birthday candles, if you remember the story for those that heard me say it before, he had been in the living room and had used a magic candle to light all the other candles. Then he blew it out and left it in the cake box in the other room. He comes in with the candles. It surprised my mom and when she blew out the candles and they re-lip, that was really funny. That seemed to explain the reason why there was extra smoke in the room at first. Once those candles got really, really dosed in water and they were really, really out. There was still smoke bellowing in the room. We knew we had a problem. There was a fire in the next room. Fortunately it was contained to just the chair and it could be heaved out the front door, which it was, so the house didn't burn down. But smoke means fire, right? So when you start seeing and find the signs of it, what are some of those signs that will show you and help point you in that kind of direction to know what is the underlying decision that has to be made in that moment with that? Think about it this way. There are some tools that God has given us to identify where this choice has come through. One primary tool that I would encourage you to use is God's Word. One of the main ways that God will continually show you where he's calling you to die in a moment or in a particular part of your day or in decisions that you have to make this week is that you spend time meditating and reading God's Word. You see what the life of Christ was devoted to. You see God's provision for people as Jerry shared with the story of the spies this morning. That brings a good question for all of us this morning. Are we going to trust God with the next few months ahead? Lauren, are you asking that question? I know you guys are asking that question, but it's God's Word that has brought us to understand that there's a decision there. And what the consequences are those that have followed Christ in the past and those that haven't with that. Look to God's Word. Look to the power of praying in the Holy Spirit. The tool that we have, the circle of the, I'm sorry, draw the circle, is all about encouraging you to look to God's promises in His Word. And circle them in a sense like Joshua did in taking the people around Jericho was to emphasize and to hold on to God's Word no matter what. And we need that, not just the start of a school year as our church usually does the 40 days of prayer, not just when we have big decisions and things going on like our church does, but every day we need to be surrounding and looking to the Lord and prayer with that. And God shows us through that. Sometimes it's through the observation that someone in your life will come and bring. Maybe it's a trusted friend, maybe it's your spouse, maybe it's your children, parents, listen to your children. They will have insight sometimes that nobody else has the ability to see or even maybe sometimes the guts to say. Children, listen to your parents because nobody has been around you more than your parents have to understand and to give you insights and to speak truth into your life. Just to myself for this, as I shared in the story last week, I'm so glad that Ted Strawbridge, that night July 20th, when I was in Buckrobeach talking to him on a cell phone, that he asked me a hard question. That he spoke in, that he was listening to how it's processed and doing things and he pushed him and challenged it. So I could come and I could apply the principle of this text to lay down my life, to die to what I thought I had figured out and what I thought it was going to look like to say, God, I'm just available for you to do what you want to do. I am your servant and my assumptions I'm done with. Show me what you want to show me. It's a game changer for me. It'll be a game changer for each of us or whatever decisions that we're looking for processing to know where he's calling us to die. I want to also encourage you to look at your emotional dashboard. I haven't been so good with this in most of my life. I'm getting better at that. This is how we can spot these decisions. Let's see things like this, fear. Where do you feel fear? I'm not talking about necessarily where you see a blue light in the back of your every window when you're driving down that interstate. That's fear. I'm talking about where is the fear that makes a little difficult to fall asleep at night. Where's the fear coming from that when you go into a certain setting, you can feel your blood pressure going up. Ask yourself what's going on there. Is this a place that God's inviting me to die to something of my flesh? Something of my sinful nature, the way I would just by default do things. It's inviting me to be counterintuitive here to say, God, Holy Spirit, what do you want to show me here? What am I holding on to? That's making me so fearful. Look at the worry meter on the dash of your heart. Where do you feel worry or anxiety? That's another place that I can show up. Where do you feel anger? And here's the area that you made me haven't thought of as I was thinking through this. Where are you privately happy? Where are you privately happy? Where are you experiencing something that's giving you a feeling of life, but it's a private thing and you can't share it with those around you. Those are some of the scary places. Ask the Holy Spirit to show you impressed in there. But these would be key places to be able to start to spot the place, the Holy Spirit, inviting you to be that acorn. And to die, maybe do something going on in your life there. Look to fatigue. Fatigue would be another area. And ask yourself, as scriptures I think do invite us to, are you dying to live? Let me give you some real life examples in broad categories. Control dies in order to yield to the fruit of surrender. Comfort dies in order to yield to the fruit of a missional purpose driven life in obedience to God. Worry dies to yield to the fruit of prayer. It's one of the things I love about the book that if you choose to read along with us, the draw of a circle. I've been going through it over the last couple of months here, is that he talks about how he has totally revolutionized his viewpoint in anxiety and worry. And every single time he's tempted to do that, the author says, it's become my invitation to pray. And it's revolutionized his prayer life. He says, you want to learn how to pray without ceasing? Start learning how to see those spot those moments to be the invitation to stop worrying and to pray. For example, indulgence dies to yield to the fruit of moderation and contentment. I'm going to pass the Paul writes that he's going to be content in all circumstances. Focus on earthly things dies to yield to the fruit of living for eternity. Serving to get honor dies to yield to the fruit of serving to give honor to the one and only one who deserves it. Self dies to yield to the fruit of worship of God. And as Paul writes in Romans 121, your life is a living sacrifice offered to him. Well, some tips and suggestions had to spot them. Lastly, once you spot them, don't stop. Deal with them. Deal with them. Couple of expectations. Don't ignore them. My bet is I've shared enough thoughts about how you can spot them. That something Holy Spirit has probably already pricked your heart with something this morning. Don't ignore it. Don't go, maybe that's not Holy Spirit. Maybe that was something I ate this morning. No, it's probably Holy Spirit. Pray, turn it and don't ignore it. Secondly, don't procrastinate. It's so easy to procrastinate. Jerry talked about analogy making decisions and stuff and his cycling world analogy. A non-choice is a choice, right? Jerry asked me years ago, hey, you want to come and be part of the cycling club? I never got back to him on that. Is Jerry still looking for an answer from me? No, because Jerry got an answer. Because I gave the answer, right? So procrastination is an answer. Don't procrastinate. Thirdly, don't rationalize. Don't minimize it. Don't blame it on somebody else or some other circumstance. It's an invitation to trust God in that moment, no matter what it looks like. And fourthly, don't not pray. I know that's bad grammar, but don't not pray. Pray, ignore those areas where you haven't yielded to him as soon. Pray, asking God to give you the grace to repent in those specific areas. Pray, asking for the grace and mercy and the power of the Holy Spirit to walk in faith. Are you dying to live? It's counterintuitive. It's counter flesh. It's counter self. And as Kurt reminded us last week, it requires humility. Because pride is at the heart of not wanting to die to self. We have an invitation. We have an opportunity. And I have an opportunity. It's scary. Christ's kingdom church has an opportunity. You specifically, or your family, or your marriage, or your job situation, or your financial situation, whatever it is, you have an opportunity to trust, to do the very thing that's counterintuitive, to let go, to say, God, it's yours. Do what you want. With it, do what you want with me. And to trust His promises true, that He will bring a fruit from that. He will resurrect something from that little acorn that others will gather to take shade under one day. And that you'll give testimony to Him for. Let's pray. God just asks that you would give us that kind of wisdom and insight that we need this morning to see how you're working, how you're moving. God, there is something natural about us that we don't want to die naturally physically. But we certainly don't want to die naturally spiritually. But God at the same time, we know that there's hope and there's life. When we finally acknowledge and give up that this life is not it. That our control is not it. That our obsessions, that our desire for comfort, that our desire for acknowledgement and reputation and whatever it is, money, that we know it's not it. We know there's something more. So God has become, we look to you, give us your grace and mercy. We Holy Spirit show us, we are calling us to die. And we resurrect life in our hearts. And when you come and work and do it, you're a glory and honor. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.