This recording is from Christ Kingdom Church in Avalon Park, Orlando. Visit us online at ChristKingdom.org for our calendar driving directions and more audio recordings. Thanks Jason. Good morning. Good to see everybody. It's nice to have a full house here with the summer coming in and school starting tomorrow. Sorry kids, but facts or facts. It is beginning tomorrow at least for all of Orange County. Some of you are already begun. I'm aware of that as well too. Well, we are wrapping up a back to school list sermon series. We've been calling it just the last three weeks. I want to catch some of you up. Some of you have been out of town. Some of you are new here this morning maybe. Whatever the case might be. They kind of catch up real quick so that today's message, the last in this series, will make a little bit of sense to you. And to do that, let me just catch up. The first week, we talked about what? What was our little symbol two weeks ago? Compass, thank you because compass was to remind us of what? There you go, importance, okay? To say at the start of a new school year because let's confess. For those of us living in this area where 87% of the homes in 3 to 8 to 8 have at least one child. At least that was a few years ago, maybe it's higher. Okay, we are all thinking what the start of the school year. This is really the beginning for us. More than January 1st is. But you've got to be asking yourself a question, what's important? What matters most? And just real quick, you can go back and listen to it online. If you want more details of the actual sermon, when we looked at when Jesus was asked, he was the greatest commandment. Where does it all begin? And when we understood that commandments from the Bible, when God's son says, this is the most important one. He's saying, look, if you want to find joy, freedom, satisfaction, fulfillment in life, this is it. And then Jesus utters the words, love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. Jesus boiled it down with something very different than what the world normally would boil it down to as we looked at that week. So Jesus said, hey, you want to know what's all about? It's about a relationship with you and God and making God the primary love of your life. Not a piece of your pie in your pie graph in your area. Not your Sunday morning. Not just the topic you bring up if somebody says, well, what's your religion? Well, let me tell you, I'm a Christian. All of your life. Centered. And making God the love and the affection of your heart and life. God says it. You want to know what's most important, that's it. And then secondly, we talked about what? What was the symbol? Calculator. Remind us of something else. Diginality. Okay? We've got to calculate what's involved with that. Okay? It's one thing to figure out what's important. And let's just go ahead and acknowledge here right now. You may not buy that. You know, maybe you're in your spiritual pilgrimage and journey. You know, you're not sure who gives Jesus or the Bible the authority to make that claim. But entertain for a moment that if that truly is the claim of God, the crater of the universe. And if you really did visit this earth and this sun, Jesus Christ. And through his written word. If that were to be it, he would go on to say you got to calculate. You got to be intentional about making what's important, bringing it into your life with conviction and acting upon it. And we talked about last week too, that you are living intentionally every single one of us, according to what you think is important. Not what you say is important, but what you really believe is important. Every single one of you make an intentional decisions every single day. You're going to make in this afternoon. You made them by coming here this morning. You're going to make them tomorrow morning. Kids, adults, start a new school year. You're going to make them throughout this entire year. And we talked about the story of Daniel where he had... Here's a bunch of young, in fact, teenage boys probably in exile who had to make a decision ahead of time. That they weren't going to file themselves with the king's meat. But they were in obey God. They were in a trust God in the place where it was most difficult. In a foreign land. In a place where the consequences could mean death, imprisonment. They were going to trust God. And God honored that and God blessed that. Well, importance is primary. Being intentional to do something with that. But if you miss this third step, you're in trouble. If you miss this symbol, the calendar, and the understanding of you must implement now what you're setting out to be intentional about. Remember Daniel said he purposed in his heart. He became intentional not to defile himself with the king's meat. But then the choice came, when he was given the opportunity, would he defile himself with the king's meat and disobey God's law or trust God, no matter what the circumstances might be. He implemented his intentionality, found it on his own. Found it on what he knew was important, what God's word had said. Well, when you think about the calendar, I want you to think about that. What that really represents for us is time. It really represents the choices that we make in time. Do you realize this in your entire lifetime, if you live the average American lifespan of whatever 70-something years? Here's an idea, give you a glimpse of what you'll do. You'll spend six months of your life sitting at stoplights. Some of you are going, I think I already have. You'll spend eight months, this is kind of freaky. You'll spend eight months opening junk mail in the course of your life. Be intentional, just go ahead and slide that in the trash when you get it. You'll spend one year looking for misplaced objects. One year. And for every child you have, you need to add... No, I don't know. You'll spend two years unsuccessfully returning phone calls. Can you believe that? Getting a voicemail or something? Somebody else, not getting a person. You'll spend four years doing housework. Yeah, some of you are like, I'm there. You'll spend five years, just five years in your entire life waiting in line, somewhere for something. One that wasn't quite as surprising. You'll spend six years of your life eating. Some of you are off to a great start like me on that one. Just to give you an idea of time. Before you know it, and then this is if you live the average span. Some of you will live more. So you'll be at more traffic lights. Some of you will live less. God only knows. Jesus may come back tomorrow. We don't know how that's going to work. But time and how we're going to implement it is such a key decision. Listen to what James chapter one, it's not our primary text for this morning. But listen to what James chapter one says about being implementers. Says, do not merely listen to the word, God's word, and so deceive yourselves. But do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror. And after looking at himself goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues to do this. Not forgetting what he has heard. But doing it, he will be blessed in what he does. So let me get this straight to you. Make sure you understand that you can grasp and you can truly embrace what God says is important. Or at least try to. You can truly be intentional in saying, you know what, that is what I aim to do. But you will miss and totally not experience the blessings of God if you don't do step three. And that's actually implement it. And by the way, it's the scariest part. It's the part where you have to really trust and believe God in an area. It's the step that gets you out of your comfort zone. It's the step that will make a big decision even when it's not the popular decision. Will make a choice that might make you less popular, kids. Got lots of choices to make this year. Well, let's look at three aspects of the calendar implementation mindset that we're going to look at. But before we do that, I want to read our primary text for this morning. First Corinthians 16, just two verses 13 and 14. And before I actually read it, let me just remind you of the context. This is the very end. This is Paul's closing comments to one of his longest letters. In this letter, Paul has talked about all kinds of things. He's talked about when he had disagreements with other people. He's talked about when you have issues with lawsuits. This sounds kind of like 21st century America. He's talking about issues of sexual morality, issues of marriage, issues of living in culture as a Christian, issues of worship order and how you should worship God, issues of spiritual gifts, issues of love. Remember the first Corinthians 13? Love is patient, love is kind. You hear it at most your weddings? This is in this letter. He's talking about community and importance of it. And at the end of this letter, one of his longest letters he's going to write in the midst of saying, hey, tell so and so, I said hello and take care of this guy. His is closing comments. Bringing it all to a head, he says this. The on your guard stand firm in the faith. The men of courage, be strong. Do everything in love. He's already told him what's important in this particular letter to the church of Corinth. Corinth. He's already told them how they ought to be specifically intentional. And here at the end he makes two little short verses about implementation. Beyond your guard. Stand firm in your faith. Be men of courage. Be strong. Do everything in love. He's saying do it. Go out and implement it. And for us living here today, if it does not involve your calendar, I can guarantee you you're not going to do it. We'll talk about that more in a second. Let's look at these three aspects though here quickly. Number one, if you want to follow your outline, it's in print on the little insert in your bulletin. You can do that. Number one is this. Your time choice. Your time choice. Because you're making choices all the time. Think about this for a second. If you had a bank that credited your account each morning with $86,000. That's going to fund imagine. Just enjoy that for a second. That carried over no balance though from day to day. It was there only for that one day. It allowed you to keep no cash in your account. And every evening canceled whatever part of the amount you failed to use during the day. What would you do? You would dry out every day, of course, and use it to your advantage. Well, you have such a bank and it's called time. Do you realize you have $86,400 in a day? And if you had $86,400 pennies and it was going to be gone by the time the bank closed that day, I guarantee you would withdraw them. Because you'd want to spend them. You'd want to use them. You'd want to invest them with intentionality. You've got choices with time every day and we all make it. You know, we all have said or thought things like this. You know, if I just had two more hours in the course of my day, I could really accomplish what I wanted to get done. Just two more hours. But, you know, the reality is that you have all the time there is. There's not some extra time hanging out somewhere that could be given to you. You've got 24 hours just like every single one of us has. And that's it. We've got all that we could possibly have that's available all the time to do it. For the recent discussions about moving the five-day work week to the four-day work week, the majority of Americans are in favor of that, by the way. But how many of you think that's really going to change much about how we actually spend and work our hours? I'm going to give you some statistics in a second that will tell you something differently. It sounds like we're just going to kind of pack it into shorter time and have more leisure time to do things that are really important to us. I doubt it. I'll tell you why in just a second. But that's kind of the mentality. That's what people are thinking about that. So I want you to think this morning, how do you spend your time? What are you doing? What are you choosing to do that? And let me give you some facts. Look at this next chart. Now, this comes. If you look here at the bottom, this comes from a Bureau of Labor Statistics back from 2006. So realize that a couple of years have passed and things have changed. But this is leisure time on an average day for Americans. Now, you may fit perfectly in this. You may be a little bit more and some, a little bit less than whatever. But this is an average. This is what we do in our leisure time. Whenever you get off work, kids, whenever you get home from school, whatever you consider, that window of leisure time that you can make your random choice, whatever you want it to do. Now, look at this. Look at this first one, 2.6 hours of television. And just go around. You scan by and just read through this real quick. Now, as you scan that, 5.1 hours is what the typical American has per day to use for that. Now, let me tell you, because some of you might be thinking that, gosh, you know, 40 years ago, okay, and some of us were alive 40 years ago, or looking back and thinking, gosh, you know, it seems like we are busier now than ever. We have less leisure time. We have, we have, on average, 46 more minutes than they did 40 years ago of leisure time. We've got more leisure time, not less, according to statistics. And you know what another statistic is? For every additional hour of leisure time that you have, 30 minutes of it will go towards television. If you get an extra hour, 30 minutes of it will be added to this category. I want you to think about that. And I want you, I have nothing prepared for you to say, I want you to tell me, what are some observations that you have based on this information? Make some observations. First off, I'll give you some categories. So, give me some observations about work. Any observations about work? I know this isn't addressing that directly, but it is indirectly. Let me give you one more tidbit of information that might be helpful to that. Do you realize that the average person spends about three hours of these things that are related to work? So in other words, your socializing and communicating might be with people, co-workers, that you're, you know, maybe it's maybe you have a client in town. Well, you know, it's kind of not work, but it kind of is. Up to three hours for the average person in these leisure activities is related to work. Any observations that you would have related to work? This is the audience participation time. Yeah. It didn't actually say that. It's whatever somebody is determining is their leisure time is how I took it. Because I know some people work different shifts, different hours. So I don't have that information. Have about 11 hours of work? Okay. Other observations. I mean, is this, oh yeah, go ahead. That's a good question. I'm not sure. I'd only be speculating I don't have that information. I know some people actually do consider gardening recreation and enjoyable. It's Benara. Let me tell you this. If I'm at Benara, it is not because I'm in leisure time. All right. So, you know, when you're there all the time because it's your office, when it's leisure time, you don't want to give there. So trust me on that one. That's the observation. Well, is your general field that people are working too much or too little from this? Any thoughts on that? Yeah, work certainly can be enjoyable. And maybe more enjoyable in your leisure time. This is especially when I told you the statistics about up to three hours or more of your leisure time has worked. Would you say that work boundaries are very clear and defined? I don't think so. Certainly our generation technology and email coming right to your house or your telephone hasn't made it much easier. I want to propose to you a different thing too. I'm willing to bet that people are cheating at work and cheating at rest. The reality is, and the facts are, is that we need downtime. We need time to ourselves. And I struggle with this as much as anybody. I don't know. Maybe more than some of your less. I don't know. But I can find myself, if I don't find and take the time, is that I'll cheat from other areas to find time to get recharged. In other words, I need to maybe go to bed no later than 11. But I'll stay up to 12 just because you know what? I need time that somebody's not asking me to do something and there's not somebody looking at me and I can just check out and unwind. I probably need to be asleep at 11. But I'll watch TV from 11 to 12, especially if the Olympics are on. Like many of us. You know, you'll start to all of a sudden cheat things. You'll find that, you know, you're not as focused at work there and maybe that break time or that lunchtime spill is over because you're trying to find somewhere to recharge because you know the reality is you've got to have recharged time. And what I want to propose to you that we're becoming more and more cheating from different areas. You're cheating from your rest time. You're cheating from your work time because the two are blending in so many ways. There's not a real clarity. There's not a real clear idea of implementation. I mean, think about just leisure choices. I would say looking at this, there's real indication that we're doing a poor job arresting to some degree. Because there is a difference between most of the time watching TV now. And the watching Olympics probably is a little bit different. Now if you're like us, families around, we're jumping up and down, cheering, you know, when somebody at the last second wins. So not always. But most of the time, this is kind of a check and out. Many American families, every TV in the home has every bedroom in the home has their own TV. And you can go watch whatever you want. You know, it's very different of what involved other people, interaction, what some of these other things could. But even my proposal to all this to you is that we're not doing work well. We're not doing rest well. We're not doing either one really well with it all. We're cheating at both. And let me ask you here, look at taking care of yourself. If you're spending an exercise, average person is 17 minutes a day. Or relaxing and thinking 19 minutes a day. Less than 45 minutes of your day is spent on taking care of yourself. By the way, the average person spends about an hour and a half eating in the course of the day. Between all three meals, snacks, whatever else. If you're wondering how that fits in. But we're doing, I think, a terrible job in many of this and managing these areas of our lives. And if you think about what does it say about relationships, especially within our family. If you have a family. Or even if you don't have a family with your close friends. People that are your best friends that you are spending time with. Where did they fit in? Where does your spouse fit in? Is your date time watching TV together? Where do your kids fit in? Think about some of these things. These are just the facts that we're at. Can I ask you this? Do we all agree that we don't use our time as well as we should? But everybody kind of agree with that in general that we don't use our time as well as we should. I bet some of you do better than others. Secondly, would you all agree that we aren't intentional to use our time with the understanding of what God says is most important most of the time? Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. The purpose of this first one here gets you thinking. What are you doing? What are your choices? And what are they in light of what God says? Which takes us to number two? One was your time choice. Number two is, what's God's choice for your time choosing? What does God say about how you choose to spend your time with that? And that's what I think this verse speaks directly to it. I'll read it again, the two verses, be on your guard. Stand firm in the faith. Be men of courage. Be strong. Do everything in love. This is where God comes. And this is where God's giving me instructions. Remember, just in this long letter, as he's told him a list of things they should do and how they can be intentional, he's saying, here's how you do it. Number one, he says, be on your guard. There, some translations say, be alert. The same word that's used during the original language is also can be translated, wake up. Be on your guard, be alert, or wake up. Most of you know, my son, Davis, the three-year-old. Okay, Davis has two modes. Alert an on guard or dead asleep. There is nothing in between. Just I think, I'm not sure, I think, yeah, Saturday morning I was peeking in on his room, I was going to quietly close the door. He'd reach, share the room and keep him asleep. And as soon as I looked in the room, he looked like he was asleep. And I grabbed the door knob, he just went, he was up that quick. He was completely alert. In three-year-olds don't have any modes. I mean, if they have a mode in between, it's because they're sick. They're either totally alert and on guard and knowing what's going on or they're asleep or they're sick. If they're sick, they're kind of moping. That's the only time for a three-year-old. God is telling us, be alert, be on guard, wake up. There's another thing he's saying here. We can make choices that are more like for making them like we're asleep than we're being fully alert and awake. And the Apostle Paul is saying at the end of a long letter, if things to do and think how to make things important, and being intentionally saying, look, you've got to wake up. You've got to smell the coffee. You've got to think about what you're doing. He goes on to say, stand firm in the faith. This idea of stand firm is similar to the be on guard, has some military implications. It's not just be on guard and be ready, but as we've seen in the Olympics, your stance is extremely important. Being stable. Dave, you were talking last night about what's the archery, I mean, the shooting people that they wear some kind of what? They get in this big letter suit, which I haven't seen how to go back and look. It's to keep them stiff so that their foundation is solid, so they can make the perfect shot. Standing firm is an extremely important in the Apostle Paul and God is telling us, look, you've got to stand firm in the faith. You've got to stand firm being confident in God's promises. That when he says he has your best interest in mind, he really means it. And it doesn't matter what the most popular book at Barnes and Noble says. It doesn't matter if Oprah agrees or not, what matters is what has God said is true. And that is what comes with the promise of blessing. If you will stand firm and believe him, but he's not just some egocentrical God that says, hey, make it all about me. He knows if you make it all about him because he is God, your life will be blessed because he created you. And you've been made in his image. And the better you know him, the better you'll understand who you are and what your purpose is. He has your best interest in mind. Nobody would be offended if you're a basketball fan and Michael Jordan came up and said, hey, I want to show you how he can be like me. Nobody's going to go, oh man, you're so into yourself, Michael. Or Tiger Woods comes up and says, hey, you want to give me some pointers? Nobody's going to go, you're so egocentrical, dude. You're going to listen, aren't you? Because there's somebody that has glorified those sports more than others. And God is saying, look, I'm here to help you, I created you. Come, listen, stand firm in the faith, be confident in God's power. Then not only does he know what he's doing when he tells you to do these things, he has power to deliver you to help you through situations. Kids, as you start school and you think about how does it mean to be obedient and follow God, God's going to help you through those situations when you're tempted to cheat. When you're tempted to do whatever it takes to be cool, when you resist from that and trust God, he promises to bless you and to help you. And the same goes for us, big kids. Be alert or be on guard, stand firm in the faith. And then he goes on, he says, it says be men of courage and then IV. The best translation of that is act like men. If you want to clear translation of that, it just says act like men. So ladies, you can check out for a second. Men, I want to challenge you right now because Paul was talking clearly to the church of Corinth. And here he takes a point here to talk directly to the men. He says act like men. Act like men. Take charge of your family. If you're not don't have a family yet, take charge of yourself and the things that you do have. Be a leader. God's called you to do that. He's wired you that way. Be strong and do what God says every man should do in their marriage. And that's to be like Christ. Ephesians 5, you are to be like Jesus who laid down his life for the church. You are to lay down your life for your wife, for your children. That's what he's calling us to do. So when the Apostles Paul says be men, he's making a direct shot and say, look, you men got to be men. And I'm speaking this to myself as much as any other man here in this room. We've got to take charge and lead our families. Not because our wives aren't capable. They're very capable. But because you know what? God's looking to us to take that on that responsibility. And he's given us wonderful spouses to help us and to come alongside with us. But he's not going to look at your wife one day and say, what did you do with your family? He's going to look at you, husband, father, and say, what did you do with your family? He goes on to say, be strong. Women, you can check back in again. To be strong on things. You know what it means to be strong? I mean, imagine if you've gotten this. And unfortunately, Dave just heard this news about his dad. We need to pray for Larry, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, getting cancer. But what if you got the news that you had cancer? And somebody says to be strong. You would take that not to say, well, fix yourself because you can't. To be strong when you had the diagnosis of cancer means, you know what? You've got to make some decisions that you're going to fight this thing. That you're going to trust God and ask for a human power. That you're going to follow the doctor's instructions. You're going to take charge. You're going to be strong. And you're going to endure it. It means starting and it means enduring. So when the Apostle Paul here is talking about be strong. He's not talking about how you've got to go pump up and work out beforehand. He's saying, look, you're in life. You're in this situation. You're in the battle. And it's time to be strong now. And you know what? School starts tomorrow, folks. And the whole mindset of a new school year and a new start of a new year and decisions to make starts tomorrow for this community. Be strong. Start well and endure through it. That's what it means to be strong. How many athletes didn't make it to Beijing who maybe worked out just as hard, who prepared just as much. But when it came down to the wire, they're just, we're not as strong as the ones that are in Beijing or the ones that are winning in Beijing are the ones that have endured the most. The ones who not just not just started because every athlete who wants to be an Olympic athlete starts, but they endured. They went and they did what it took. Be on your guard. Stay in front of the faith. Be men of courage or be men. Be strong. And lastly says do everything in love. Trust in God's love for you is part of what that means. And the other is be God's conduit of love to others. When he says do everything in love, what he is saying is that you've got to be in love. You've got to understand that God loves you. That God's going to take care of you. That you are firmly in his hand. In fact, the scripture say if Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior, that you're in my hand and nothing can take you out of it. That's how firm you are in his hand. The same hands, by the way, that shape to create a universe. You're in those hands. And that is the anchor for you to love others. So if you're trying to love others and you're doubting God's love for you, forget it and it ain't going to work. Or whatever you give somebody else, you might call it love, but it's not. You've got to be firm, the anchor of God's love. That sets you free to love others. Knowing that, hey, if Jesus would come, if God did not spare his own son, but he would give his life here on earth for me. And if he would be persecuted and suffered and take on sin in my place for me and the scripture say this point blank, there's nothing else he's going to not give you that you need. If he's given you the main thing you need most, freedom from the consequence of death and eternal damnation and living in the bondage of sin here on earth, he's set that free. So I don't care what your circumstances are in life and some of you I know personally are in hard circumstances of life. God says, don't doubt my love. Stand in that. Do everything in love by being in it. And then you know what? Don't put on that happy little Christian face to walk around. Let the reality of my presence and my love just flow through you. We talk about conduity here as a church. We're talking about, it's not this, I like, you know, so often you hear the picture of, you know, let your cup, let your cup fill up and spill over to others. I like a better idea. Let's be a conduit, like a pipe, like a PVC pipe. Let God's love flow through you and just let it keep going. Just as you experience God's truth and His promises and security, let it flow through to somebody else. Just pass it on. Just be real. Share your life with others. Share the reality of your struggles. Share the reality of your hope, whether you're on the little league field, whether you're at the PTA meeting, whether you're kids sitting next to the lunch table. Everybody around you has the same kind of desires, the same kind of needs. Let church, those who are believers here, let them see the reality of God in your life. Just be real about it. Let them see your hurts, your pains, your sufferings. That's what it means to do everything in love. Care enough to be honest and transparent with others and care enough to say, I don't got the answers, but I know who does. And that's who I'm turning to every day. You want to join me? I got small churches getting started. I'm hanging out with us on Sunday mornings. Kind of one of our small groups. One, your time choice. Two, what's God's choice for your time choosing in last time for you to choose? And it is time for you to choose. And there is no such things as a non-choice. And Don Zermian has no choice but to do what I've asked him to do right now and pass out with Jeff, a calendar. Every single person here is going to get a one week calendar. We're going to make this practical. You have a choice to make. And if you choose not to make a choice here today, well, you've already made that choice, haven't you? You've got a choice to make. They're going to hand out a calendar here and it just has this next week ahead, but I want you to look at it as a weekly rhythm. I want to encourage you because the Bible talks about God creating the world in seven days and this pattern of six days of working and one day you're asked, I want to encourage you to, there's some good truth here that God is saying, you know what? Think about your life more in the pattern of a week. Now that you don't think ahead down the road of what I need to do and things that are months or even years down the road, that's important too. But think about your life in the course of a week. That's how God started out doing it. Let's do it too. And what I want to challenge you on is to ask three questions. All right, and this just has this actual week's dates but you can use this as a model for the entire next year which I hope you do. And I want you to ask these three questions and this is going to spill over by the way into our communion time. You know, there's 15, 20 minutes of time that we're serving the Lord's table. You have time to think. You have time to listen to the Holy Spirit say, God, what, how am I going to answer these questions? But we write down these questions somewhere on that calendar. Every pen, I mean, every chair should have had a pen and these questions are on the screen here because I want, if this is not relevant and practical, we've just wasted our time. Top questions to ask. Number one, what fuels and feeds your love for God? If God says the most important thing is to love me with all your heart, soul and mind. What's going to feed that? What's going to fuel that? I'm not embarrassed. Shameless plug to say that coming to church is one way to do that. You've got to be around the ministry of God's word and God's people. You've got to have that. That can also look like on the form of being one of our small group Bible studies. And if you're here and you go to another church, getting plugged into your church, there are a lot of great churches in this area in this community. But you got to ask the question, what fuels and feeds your love for God? And it's got to be engaged to part of your normal weekly schedule. Second question to ask. Who are the most important people in your life? Who? You've already answered that God is supposed to be with question number one. And I challenge you, if you don't begin there, if you don't make God the primary person in the rest of this all falls way short. But if that's been established, number two, who are the most important people in your life? And if you're married, it is your spouse over your children. And the thing your children need most is for you have a solid, faithful marriage relationship with your spouse. Absolutely. No question about that. So for those that say, I don't have time for a regular date night with my wife or with my husband, because we're involved with so many kids activities, you're not loving your children well. I'm just going to say that point blank. You remember this church and I'm your pastor, I'm going to say that I'm a for tatively point blank. If I'm not, I'm just going to make it a strong suggestion to those who are a guest here this morning. But you're not loving your children well, if you're not making that a priority. Your children want to see that as a priority. And you want to see them be secure and confident in who they are in their future. Show them a marriage that in weakness, don't try to show them that you're better than you are. And Lauren, I do a good job showing our kids the junk, too good of a job, probably. Let them see your need, your dependence on Christ. And you'll give your kids something they can really trust and believe in. Where are your children in this grid? That was one of the things that concerned me about how we spend our leisure time. You know, is where are our kids in that? Where do we engage our children? I'm not talking about dumping them off at the local activity and leaving them. I'm talking about when are you engaging eye to eye if you've got children with your children? When are you having the opportunity to ask them questions like, what's on your heart? Not on your mind, what's on your heart? And when do you have time to hear them answer? When is that happening? If you're not married, not in a family, who are your close friends? Who are the friends that you do life with? Who are those close friends? Ask the same questions. Where are you finding time and making that important? And let me challenge you this. It's got to be somewhere in your weak plan. And if you're a parent, it might be like, hey, you know, I've got one on one kid. I can't date every kid here. But you know what? Maybe I could have one date with one of my kids a week if I just take him to breakfast on the way to school. And we just hang out and make dollars and talk for 20 minutes. Put it down. This is the kind of stuff I want to encourage you to do. Maybe you're saying, hey, a date night once a week with my spouse is going to be tough with my job or situation. Then say, hey, every other week, we're going to make sure it happens. We're going to put it in. When you put it in your calendar, you put it in your daytime or your palm pilot, it takes on a reality of its own that you got to have. Where is that going to happen and making that important? Next question, you got to ask, how is your primary tool? How is your primary tool? The lumberjack's primary tool is what? The lumberjack's primary tool is what? His axe. For the analogy, if his axe is not sharp, he hasn't spent time to sharpen his axe. And he's not a really smart lumberjack, is he? He's not going to do very well. What is your primary tool? Now, I know Jesus, the Bible answers. I'm talking about on a little different level. What's your primary tool that you're going to use to do this yourself? Where are you taking care of yourself in on this? And I purposely put it third. Okay? Because what did Jesus, by the way, say, was a second commitment. Love your neighbor as yourself. God's got to be first in primary. And you've got to be thinking about others above yourself. But here's the key. Because a lot of times people get this messed up. People think, oh, I've got to really take care of me, then I can do the other two. No, no, no, no. God says, you're going to really mess things up if you do it that way. You've got to think, man, my love for God's got to be primary and above all else. And you've got to think, you know what? I need to be putting others like question number two is getting to say, I need to be putting others above myself and investing my life in other people. And then you've got to think, what's the best way I can do that? Well, I've got to take care of myself to a point so that I can do those first two. That's a completely different motivation for taking care of yourself than saying, well, I deserve it. You know, I've got to be putting me first because then I can't take care of other people. No, no, no, no. I've got to put God first. You've got to put others. And your mentality's got to be, I'm taking care of myself because as the Bible says, I'm the temple of the Holy Spirit. Being a temple is not about the building, right? What makes a temple important is because of what? Huh? What happens? Or who is in the temple, right? The presence of God. But why is the Bible tell us, hey, your body is the temple of God. You need to understand what it's supposed to be housing, what it's supposed to be exemplifying. And that's important. But it's only important because of who's in it. And so your mentality for taking care of your temple, taking care of your physical body is that because I represent God. I'm the main in his image because I need to have strength to do what he's called me to do. That's a very different motivation than what we can often have for saying, well, I've got a personal trainer and I work out three days a week because I want to look good. And I want people to be impressed by me. That's a very different motivation. But when you're saying, you know what? I've got to take care of me so that I can be faithful to love God the way he's called me to. I can be faithful to love others. That's very different. And that's important. How are you taking care of that? How are you going to do that? What is your pattern for rest and taking care of that? Are you working? Are you really working six days of the week? And are you really resting one day a week? I know in our culture we can't always make it easy and make everybody on Sunday anymore because civilization is pretty complex now. But you can find a way to take one day a week and rest. Are you doing it? What about your health and wellness? Is that even a factor as important to you? And is it important for you for the right reasons that you can serve others? Not impress them. Serve them. What about your emotional health? You know, it went until about two years ago that I even believed in such a thing as emotional health. I thought that was kind of for weenies and sissies to talk about emotional health. Come on Nike, just do it. I'm a believer of it now because I was wrong. There is something called emotional health and it means making sure you have boundaries and margins that honor God. It means making sure that you're being faithful to take care of those little things. Those three questions I want you to think about. I want you to use that calendar there to say what's going to be important. And maybe it's saying, you know, I'm going to set aside time to do this. I'm going to set aside that date night. I'm going to set aside the time with my kids. I'm going to set aside a time with a friend. I'm going to put taking care of exercising for myself, not for me. So I'll be faithful to love God and love others what God's calling me to. There is a calendar. There's where you will make choices. And as we wrap up now and even go to the Lord's table here, let me encourage you something. The fact we're just going to move right to, because of time, we're going to move right to the Lord's table here on this. You could have heard this sermon in a mosque at a leadership, Stephen Covey, similar. Many of the things I've said come from that. Many of you recognize that. You could hear this at a Hindu or a Buddhist temple. If so, I was talking about the way of life. You could have heard almost everything I've said, except the parts I mentioned about Jesus. I'm not unaware of that, but here is the point that sets us all apart. If you're trying to do this to please God, to earn His favor, then you might as well go to one of those other places, because every other religion teaches that's the method. Do this kind of stuff to please God. But if you want to be and do this under the power of Jesus Christ, he says, you can't do this. You don't have the power to do this. You're going to make wrong decisions to put on there. You're going to pick the wrong things that are important, unless you're looking to me, unless you're looking to my word, the Bible, unless you're seeking me with all your heart. You're going to miss it. It's your reliance and dependence on the Lord Jesus Christ that makes this a Christian message. So it's so important for me to close with that, for you to understand that. This is not about you whitenuckling it. This is not about you. I'm going to take charge of my life. Please don't, because the people that know you best have already seen you do that. And ask them, they'll tell you, it's not going to work that well. I know it doesn't work well when I do that. It's saying, let somebody who knows what they're doing take charge your life. Let somebody who has showed his unconditional eternal love by saving you from the depths of hell and sin and sending you free from that. And sending you free from having to please somebody to say, look, Jesus has already pleased God in your place. That's what the gospel is. And when you invite Jesus into your life and you trust him, you're saying, I'm trusting that somebody has already got the full favor from God on my behalf. And now I'm free to walk as a child of God because of what Jesus did, not because I've got to live up and perform. This is the Christian part of this message. And this is where so many people miss it. It is turning to Christ. It's trusting in him. What are you going to choose? Jesus says, come, if you want to picture what I, how important this is to me, you'll see what extent I went to to make it possible for you to trust in my power. Just think about a little bit about the disciples, what happened. Now, here you got these guys. Maybe you don't know much about Christianity, about Jesus and the Bible, and that's fine. But just think about a TV show you've seen of it. Maybe you've seen a presentation of it. Think about how these guys, what a bunch of losers. Arguing about who's better, who's greatest, they're arguing about who's greatest the night before Jesus betrayed. They're all talk, right? Because when Jesus gets arrested, they scatter, poof, they're gone. And they were all, and Peter was the biggest all talk guy there was. Jesus even if they come to kill, I will not deny you. And Jesus had to say, Peter, we'll give it less than 24 hours and you'll do it three times. Okay, that's the kind of mentality we're trying to reject here this morning. And then think about how that compared to after Jesus resurrected from the dead and after the Holy Spirit was poured out at Pentecost, you got the same group of guys who now, who are going out and being, when they're persecuted, they're being more bold. They're rejoicing and praising God that they've been considered worthy to be persecuted. What changed in less than a few months? The reality, the resurrection and the presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives. They became temples. Their bodies were filled with the Holy Spirit. The same weenies, the same goofballs that are just like you and me were transformed. So when Jesus says, when he comes, and he says, look, the perfect one has already come. He's already found perfect favor with the Father. He's already, and is going to be that night Jesus said it. He's going to be persecuted. He's going to be broken for you. It's done. You don't have to try anymore to be righteous enough. Jesus said, my body's broken because I'm the only one that is righteous enough. Come, eat all of you because perfect righteousness has come and now righteousness has become sin for you. That's what the Bible says. God made him who knew no sin to become sin on our behalf, and we might know the righteousness of Christ. Jesus becomes sin, even though he's perfect. Jesus is torn in two, even though he didn't deserve it. And when Jesus says, drink all of this because it's my blood, represented for you, these rights knew that you didn't spill blood unless there was for a need for forgiveness of sins. That's why they had animal sacrifices. They knew that. Jesus said, look. Your sacrifice is here, and my blood's for you. Drink of it all of you. Jesus offers that. So this morning, as we come to the Lord's table, and we invite you to come. If you're a follower of Jesus Christ, let me encourage you to come, come thirsty, come hungry, and hopefully you haven't done much with your calendar yet. You know, come and just realize, you know, without this, this calendar exercises useless. Come to penal Christ. As much as you need him for forgiveness of sins, I need you God for this new school year. I need you for my calendar. Come depend on him. You invite you to come. If you're here this morning, you're not a follower of Jesus Christ, and you're like, this is new stuff for me. You know, it'd be best for you not to partake of what represents surrender. And we're talking pretty extreme surrender. This is pretty extreme. Jesus saying, when you take of my body and my blood, you're representing your extreme trust in my broken life for you. If this is not your decision here this morning, you'd be best for you not to partake. Still come forward and let us pray for you. But what's even better, maybe make that your decision today. Invite Christ into your life today. Turn over your life today. And the backside of your bold explains a little bit how you can do that. I'd love to talk to you more about it as well. If you'd love to hear some of us around here, we'd love to share that with you. Invite him into your life and come eat and drink for the first time.