No Regrets 4 | Not So Simple | Nathan Lawson

Music.

Your next step. I'm not going to say I'm jealous, but I did find out that if

you sign up to coach a soccer team, you're a coach to give you sure it says coach on it.

But if you volunteer to help a t-ball league, you're a manager.

And that seems like a real upgrade because if you're looking to fill out your

resume, you can add to it.

I managed a small athletic group and I just feel like that that goes better than just coaching.

When you sign up for it, though, it's always a little more than you're expecting.

In fact, I could just use that as the subtitle for every project that I have

done around the house, which is it was more complicated than I thought going into it.

We just put up a barn door at my house to split one of the rooms and, you know,

help to decrease stress by creating zones and

like this was pretty much done almost for me

coming out of the Larry Lamroff perfection workshop

the corners had been cut on his miter saw and

sanded already done with the biscuit joints ready to go so this thing is already

measured calculated and done my job is the sum assembly required step and you

know when we did it in his workshop it just fit so well But I don't know if

it was adding glue or the gravitational forces in my living room,

but they would not go together at my house.

There were hammering, there was shouting, there was YouTube consulting.

I got to learn after this that what wood filler is and why you need it to cover

a multitude of sins like grace and try to somehow make corners that had been

perfect somehow work together.

It just got more complicated. And I don't know about you, but as we're working

through this series, we've been in a series through the book of Proverbs called No Regrets.

And this is talking about the fact that none of us could stand at this point

in our life and say we have no regrets. We don't have access to time machines

or flux capacitors, that nothing can be fixed.

But what we can do is make sure that we don't repeat the same mistakes again into the future.

That as we said throughout this series, that just going through hard things,

even though they seem like they're big ordeal and important,

if we don't allow them to help us become more wise, we're just going to repeat

those cycles again and again.

That experience is only the best teacher if we are the kind of people who are taking notes.

We're taking what happened through the lens of scripture saying,

what would I say different? What would I do different?

How did I contribute to that problem? And it's that reflected on experience

that allows us to become more wise.

And throughout this series, we've touched on some just a few topics that Proverbs

deals with about our words, how many of us are regrets or things we said or

things we didn't say or all kinds of ways in which we put our foots in our mouths and regret it later.

We talked about in that second week, that circle check, who is in your close circle?

That don't tell me you want to like change your life, but you don't want to

change your friend group.

Because the highly accurate predictor of success and overcoming an addiction

or trying to change a significant area of your life is who is in your closest circles.

And sometimes that means we need to kind of gravitate toward people that are

going the same place we're going and distance ourselves from people who,

even though they've been with us for years, may not be a good fit for where we want to go next.

We talked last week how the skill of fun, as innocuous as that seems,

the ability to make fun out of wherever you are is going to save you from all

kinds of financial problems in this country.

We're going to be the kind of people that are skilled enough at fun that we're

not just always going to fall for that line of you need to consume and purchase

your way to family happiness.

And that installation is a really important step in our culture to both find

joy, cultivate joy, but also to reduce the financial strain on our marriages and on our spouses.

So we're going to continue the series today, and we're really talking about

a subject about how life is just more complicated than most of us thought getting

into it, whatever it is, new job, marriage, relationship, family dynamics,

you know, families that are getting together for the holidays.

It's, you know, it's to quote a poem by Billy Collins, who was the poet laureate for the U.S.

And wrote three phases of a poem that called Aristotle about life.

And he describes life's beginning, life's middle, and life's end.

And right in the middle of the poem, he says, this is the middle.

And things have had time to get complicated, messy, really, right?

Cities have sprouted up along riverbanks, and there's now a million people at

cross purposes and cross intentions, because life has a way of getting complicated.

And your complicated life is alongside of thousands of other people living and

working in the same city who also have of very complicated lives.

And we're gonna look at that this morning. How do we handle the things that

we're going through in life and all of its nuance.

But before we do, you are lucky that you are here today.

Because I have access to some files that people have been desperate to see released. Some secret files.

There's a lot of controversy around it. And I was able to, through means that

I cannot share without divulging secrets, I have access to that.

And of course, we're talking about Bill Belichick's playbook that he used going

into coaching UNC against his game against Tennessee Christian University.

For those of you who are not football fans, Bill Belichick was the famous coach

of the New England Patriots when they were really, really just winning Super Bowl after Super Bowl.

Considered to be one of, if not the best coach in the NFL, certainly in modern times.

And he made the decision to go into coaching college football,

University of North Carolina.

And his first game did not go well. Tennessee Christian University,

that's a real university apparently.

They were going up against this supposedly powerhouse team

and absolutely destroyed them so bad that

a commentator of this game put his dog on at one point

to do the commentating because he could just no longer stomach to watch disaster

after disaster but I found Bill Belichick's secret playbook that he was using

to go into North Carolina that may at least explain part of the reason he was

having a hard time so let's let's look at that here's his secret play that I have access to.

Here it is up on the screen, and we've got one sheet in here,

and this is the Bill Belichick playbook from the disaster game.

A lot of movement going on, and a get ball here. That's the end zone.

Now, on the surface, there's not a lot wrong with that plan.

That's a tweetable plan, right? The end zone is the fun zone.

You could make that work, but as you might imagine, that did not go well.

Lost the game by 36 points.

I want you, though, just to put your thinking caps on. Let that second cup of coffee do its job.

I want you to turn to the person next to you and say, why was that a bad play?

Why wouldn't that work? Go ahead.

Well, I hope that what you're saying is something along the lines of,

look, that's a fine goal, but the plan is too simple to account for the complexities of football.

There's too many variables. That's not even a strategy. That's literally just

like win goals. That's not going to work. It's too simple.

Now, what you need to recognize is that it's complicated as football is,

that a normal football team has a playbook, and everyone does,

with hundreds of plays, each one having dozens of variations in it that they're

going to use to train their team, they know how to line up, when they're going

to pass, when they're going to do a trick, how they're going to read the field,

the different types of turf they can be playing on,

that as complicated as football is to need hundreds of plays,

by comparison, your life is way more complicated.

Your life makes football look like tic-tac-toe by comparison.

And this is why early in the book of Proverbs, A group that is described,

a certain type of foolishness is described as being simple.

That a simple strategy is not an effective strategy. Here's what it says in

the very beginning of Proverbs chapter one, verse 22.

How long will you who are simple love your simple ways?

How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge?

So a mocker here is somebody who's sitting back with their buddies with sarcastic

quips, but they figured it all out.

They know what's wrong with Washington. They know it all. They've got a very

simple way of explaining everything.

And the problem is, is that on the surface, they have the same goals as everyone else.

They want healthy relationships, good finances, but their strategy is so simple.

It's a get the ball in the end zone strategy for a life that is a tad more complicated than that.

It's just as much as I wish that it would work to take that slogan from Nike

that was echoed at some point by Shia LaBeouf saying, just do it.

You want to win in sports?

Just do it. It is not actually a great strategy for being successful.

A fine slogan for inspiration, a good starting place, but not a good strategy.

That the slogan used by J. Paul Getty on how to become wealthy,

a very famous business tycoon, he said, I'm going to simplify it for you in

three easy steps to becoming a billionaire.

Step number one, get up early. Step number two, work hard.

Step number three, discover vast amounts of oil on your property.

That's the three-step plans to becoming a billionaire, right?

There is no simple plan to becoming a billionaire for most of us.

The fable that I heard growing up trying to argue for simplicity was the space pen story.

And it was said that NASA scientists needed a pen that could work while they

were sending capsules to the moon.

And so they spent a million dollars in research to invent this pen.

And that at the same time, Russia used pencils.

Maybe you heard that story growing up that Russia says a pencil is good enough.

You know what's wrong with that story is nothing about it is true.

First off, they did try to use pencils, but graphite conducts electricity.

And you could see why little bits of particles that conduct electricity inside

of a capsule filled with electronics is not actually a good idea.

That would damage the equipment.

And NASA didn't actually invent the pen. It was Paul Fisher,

and he sold the invention incrementally back to NASA.

But the issue is that it was a very complicated problem that scientists had

to work hard on, because you might not believe this, but space is a very complicated environment.

There were factors of cold and gravity and all kinds of issues.

And the thing is, your life is just as complicated.

And if you have been going through life with that simple approach,

it leads to all kinds of heartache.

The couples that I meet, they're like, we don't need premarital counseling.

Let's not make it complicated. Like we love each other. I mean, not like other couples.

We really love each other. They're like, oh man, we know that that's gonna make

it work because all you need is love.

And they just know that going in and that's all you need to not have any fights in marriage.

You'll never fight about money. You're never gonna fight about who does chores

if you love each other. Am I right, married couples? Don't answer that.

Of course you would be like, look, look, I love the enthusiasm,

but the marriage is a tad more complicated than that.

I don't need to ask. I don't need a financial advisor. I watched a YouTube video

on her. You kidding me? Like I know what I'm doing. I don't need a budget.

Like I have the plan. The plan is like, don't buy things we don't need unless

they're really, really cool.

No, not even those things. We're just going to spend less money.

That's my plan. And I don't know if you realize this, that's probably not going

to work. That is probably not the best plan.

The guy who has kids and he's like, you know what? Don't parenting books,

you know how long those things are?

Like it's simple. You just, you just tell your kids to be good, right?

And they should just like, oh, parents, you know, children, obey your parents

and the Lord. I got a verse in everything.

Boom. I'll just say the verse every morning.

Problem solved. The problem with those simple approaches, is that they just

run into constant friction.

They don't work that well. They're not great strategies. They lead to heartache.

And we're sitting here trying to defend why it didn't work out the way that we thought it would.

There's a famous story you perhaps grew up with of the tortoise and the hare.

You know, the rabbit is going to be competing against the turtle.

And yes, I know they're actually different species.

But in the books that I have, it's always a turtle and a rabbit.

And we're told growing up that, you know, the The reason that the turtle is

going to be victorious is because, right, the turtle knows that what?

Wins the race. Come on, guys, you heard this in school growing up.

One more time, what is this?

You heard this in every elementary school across the nation.

Slow and steady wins the race.

Slow and steady wins the race. And you talk kids through it.

And this turtle, if he just keeps on keeping on, he's going to beat that rabbit.

And at some point, though, a slightly annoying fifth grader may put his hand

in the air and say, just out of curiosity, ma'am, have you ever actually seen,

though, a turtle beat a rabbit in a race? Like in real life,

has that ever actually happened?

I mean, I've watched a lot of nature shows, and not once have I ever seen the turtle win.

Like, I've just never seen this happen. I don't know what you've been watching,

but I guess we'll just take it on faith that, you know, slow and steady wins the race, probably.

The version of this that they tell in Zimbabwe, the fable, same fable,

there's a tortoise and a hare.

And the turtle here realizes it's a little more complicated than just give it

some more effort. He's looking at his legs and like, biologically,

I did not win the lottery.

He's looking at his reflexes and going, all right here, that rabbit might have

an edge on us, honestly. Like, I don't even know if taking hormones would help at this point.

Testosterone's off the table. Steroids are not even going to help.

And so he's taking a realistic assessment of his chances of victory through

brute effort and decided that that equals never.

And so in the Zimbabwe version of the story, a turtle goes and finds another

turtle friend, his cousin, who looks just like him and has him wait right in

front of the finish line way miles ahead.

And so when that turtle takes off, that rabbit, boom, takes off out of the gate, 100 miles an hour.

And he gets there. And when he finally makes it the multiple miles to the end

of the race, he looks and there's a turtle crossing the finish line.

He loses. Now, I know some of you are like, I have a word for that. It's called cheating.

But in their version of the story, it's not about who sets the rules.

It's about the fact that clever, clever is going to beat brute force every time.

That a lot of problems in your life don't just need some more effort.

They need a wise person to seriously consider what is going on.

The danger of a simple approach to life, a slogan, a tweetable mantra that you can hold on to.

They are fine to remind us of great truths. My wife says things like, hurry hurts kids.

And there's a lot of truth to that when I'm trying to rush.

But underneath, it has to be a more realistic and accurate view of the way the world really works.

Because simple doesn't just lead us to not be as successful as we want,

to have struggles in job after job. and we're not sure why, but it can lead

to serious damage and derailment in life.

In Proverbs chapter 7, there is a series of conversations in Proverbs chapters

Proverbs 7 · chapter mention Proverbs 1 · chapter mention

1 to 7, where it is a conversation between a father to his son.

And that's the metaphor that sets up. And look, don't overthink that.

You can make it in your mind when you're telling it to your kids,

a mother and a daughter, a father and a daughter.

It's an older generation talking to a younger one. And here in chapter 7,

verse 7, here is the setup.

I saw, this wise person, I saw among the simple.

That's not a good group, by the way. I saw among the simple,

I noticed among them a young man.

So he's simple, he's inexperienced, and in case you didn't get the picture,

he's a youth who had no sense.

So three ways, he's an idiot by three different degrees. He is both inexperienced

and naive, he has a very simplistic outview on life, and he's dumb besides.

And so what it's saying is here's what's gonna happen.

He was going down the street near her corner.

You do not need a theological degree to wonder who her is.

It is fleshed out in that chapter. It will be personified as lady folly,

lady foolishness, an immoral person, a person that represents lifestyles and

habits and immoral behavior, headaches and financial fallout from trusting the wrong people.

She is everything bad that is going to tempt him along. And so here's this young

guy and he's going near her corner, right?

He's walking down her street at the twilight.

The sun is going down and here he goes.

Now, oh my goodness, it's dark. Who saw that coming after sunset?

Everybody, everybody, everybody sees that coming. Now, you don't have to read

the rest of the chapter to wonder how this is going to go.

He's going to lose money. He's going to get wrapped up in a relationship with

an extremely bad person. He's going to have a husband who wants to kill him

now. Like, it is going to go badly.

And you can swap it in your mind with your kids. You can say a young lady is

going in the night, and there's a cool guy on the corner who promises adventure

and security, and she's just going to walk along.

And to this young man, the danger is made clear.

Because in his mind, in the years that follow, he's going to say,

I don't know why this happened to me.

Oh, my goodness. I have the worst luck. Like, what are the chances?

And the person of Proverbs says, what are the chances that walking in the wrong

direction at the wrong time of day to the wrong people with the wrong intentions is going to go badly?

The answer is everybody sees that that would end badly.

That what the simple person describes as random, Proverbs wants you to see as a pattern.

What a simple person says is, I don't know why this happened.

This is like, you won't believe this, but I was just walking along outside this

bar at one in the morning and I got mugged. Can you believe my luck?

Like, what are the chances that there are bad people out at night near bars?

The really good chance there's bad people out at night near

bars like that was actually a really high chance of that happening but to

a person who has a simple outlook the only place

they have to retreat is that it's fate it's bad luck or the one that our culture

loves right now it's all rigged it's all rigged every school job every factory

promotion every management thing it's rigged there's like you know how these

people are they're friends and i don't have any of them and there's just so

many cutting connections.

And that's why I got let go probably.

And they're going to explain it in terms of life being random because to a simple

person, they had no idea that was going to happen.

And what Proverb wants to say is recognizing patterns, recognizing that life

has a series of likely cause and effects.

It doesn't mean that everything in life is your control, but it does mean that part of it is.

And it doesn't mean you're responsible for everything, but it does mean recognizing

certain patterns means it's more likely that you will have the kinds of outcomes

that you were hoping for.

Don't, you look at a person, a marriage falls apart and our culture comes back

at a mantra, you know, the heart wants what the heart wants,

you know, we fell out of love.

Like it was the weather, you know, like you can't help it. You know,

sometimes you get a Nor'easter on the peninsula. Other times you fall out of

love. It's just how it goes.

And, and as true as it is that it does take two people to make a marriage work.

It's also true there are words in proverbs which

come back and say are you sure that you didn't do

anything to make this marriage worse do you not think that there's some tools

that if you use them you could change the pattern of your relationship proverbs

that say things we've read in this series like reckless words pierce like swords

but the tongue of the wise brings healing a gentle answer turns away anger.

Don't tell me it just happened to happen when your main tools underneath your

toolkit, when you take a look, are sarcasm and the silent treatment.

And oh my goodness, that ended in a lack of intimacy in our marriage.

I don't see how this happened.

The reason we sometimes need a good program like Reengage is to recognize that

what feels powerless is actually sometimes patterns and habits of communication

and involvement and coming together that could ultimately change the outcome of a marriage.

Don't tell me it just fell apart.

Ask yourself, were there ways in which I made the pattern worse?

It is possible that the boss that you have at work who seems irrationally angry

and you're like, huh? Nothing I can do about it.

It doesn't work for me. I work for him. He's angry. He's accusatory. He's an awful person.

And that may be true, but there are patterns in Proverbs that it wants you to

see. Things like, through patience, a ruler is persuaded.

Or the one we said, which applies to relationships, both in marriages and at

work, a gentle answer turns away wrath.

It's possible there's nothing you can do, but it's also possible that responding

in kindness and patience over time can soften even an agitated boss to make

them easier to work with.

There is a pattern that leads toward freedom and success, and there are patterns

sarcasm, anger, and defensiveness will almost certainly make the situation worse.

When you ever take Financial Peace University here at the church,

which we offer in that series, Dave Ramsey will ask you to walk through a number of exercises.

And one of my favorites is the totally expected unexpected.

Because when you hear some people talk things that they absolutely should have

seen coming, they did not see coming.

Oh man, financially, I'm wiped out right now. I had to get tires for my car

and woof, who saw that coming?

Like apparently cars need tires. Did any of you guys know that cars need tires?

I had no idea that they were going to need tires.

The answer is everybody knows that cars need tires.

I don't know what happened. Like my roof needed to be fixed.

And I'm like, bull, like we're in real trouble now. I didn't see this coming.

I'm like, you didn't see it coming at all though. Like you just thought the

roofs that we have on the peninsula were here when Jesus walked the earth.

But apparently they need to be fixed sometimes.

And what he's gonna tell you to do is to start setting aside a portion of your

money because that is going to happen.

Not maybe, not, I mean, it's an emergency.

I mean, it is an emergency, but it is a totally predictable emergency. It is likely to happen.

Your car, if Jesus doesn't come back, will need tires at some point.

And some of the things that we have to be careful on is we can act like we're

being thrown around like a boat in the ocean. And what we're really lacking

is a clear look at our life saying, wait a minute, I might have a little more

control here than I want to admit.

When we see our kids hanging out with bad influences and we say,

well, kids will be kids, says our cultures.

But Proverbs says, walk with the wise and become wise. A companion of fool suffers harm.

We're gonna shift that circle. We're gonna do everything in our power to make

sure that the kind of people they're hanging out with are going in the right

direction that we want them to go because proximity is a pattern.

Proximity is a predictor of success and influence and we want to help stack

it in the favor of our kids' future.

The one who fights addiction saying, I don't even know how I keep falling back

into it. Yet Proverbs is going to say this.

Can a man carry fire next to his chest and his clothes not get burned?

You see a guy carrying a whole bowl of fire right around, right here,

right in front of him. And guess what happens?

His clothes catch on fire. And he says, I didn't see that coming.

I was just carrying fire home.

And all of a sudden, believe this, they caught my clothes on fire.

It says you have to put distance between yourself and dangerous things.

That means changing your route home from work. That means putting filters on your phone.

That means doing things differently because what were you expecting?

You can't walk around carrying fire and then look at the world saying,

why did it burn me? It says, look at the patterns.

You don't have to make life as hard as it is.

John Wayne is famous for saying life is hard, but it's harder when you're stupid.

Now that's a little aggressive. So let's change that. Soften that a little bit.

Life is hard, but it's harder when you're simple because it's not like they

don't, We all don't want the same outcomes.

We want happy families. We want better finances.

And what Proverbs is asking you to do is to recognize there's a lot more patterns

at play than most of us grew up being taught.

And if you take some of these precautions saying, my instinct is to do this,

but I know that's not a good idea because I remember what Proverbs said.

A man without self-control is like a city without walls.

I need to be careful when I'm going home. I lack self-control sometimes.

I need to put some barriers there. I recognize that as a pattern and I make

adjustments accordingly.

There was a famous, it's not only helps us avoid all kinds of disasters and

heartaches, but it also helps us to go through life like a pro.

In 2019, the Houston Astros, a major league baseball team, was involved in a

tad bit of a controversy.

Anyone follow baseball and know the story I'm about to say?

Yeah, they used cameras against their opposing team's pitcher during the game

to read the signs that the pitcher was giving to know what pitch was coming.

And then they would tap the trash can in different ways in the dugout so the

guy at the plate would hear that noise and go, oh, it's gonna be a fastball. Oh, it's a break ball.

Oh, it's a, and he would know these signals and guess what?

They were really successful that season. Like it was going great because what

better tool would you have as a batter if you knew exactly what was coming?

It's a lot easier to be successful.

Now in baseball, the term for that is cheating. Like they got in big trouble

for that. They had to pay a bunch of fines. but in life, that's just wisdom.

Our main verse today, Proverbs 27, 12 says, the prudent see danger.

Oh, I know that pattern. And they take refuge, but the simple keep going and

suffer the consequences. A prudent person, right?

A person who is prudent says, I'm recognizing that pitch.

I know what's coming. And they take precautions.

They take refuge, but a simple person just keeps walking along and then suffers the consequences.

The vice in Proverbs is that God is just pleading, saying, look,

look at the way the world really is.

And I'm telling you, it doesn't have to be sometimes as hard as we make it.

Orange has a curriculum called It's a Phase, and there's all the parenting books

in that hallway that Debbie can give you access to and help you order one.

Deals with how to handle kids at different ages. And perhaps you've seen people

that are really good with preschoolers.

And some people can act like this is magic, but it is not magic.

Like all preschoolers are pretty similar. They follow some pretty predictable patterns.

In that book, it's going to say right on the opening page, a preschooler thinks

like an artist, not an engineer.

They want experience, creativity, imagination, taste, your presence.

They want to create things. They want to make that mess. They want to create

beauty. That's what I love.

And you do it and people are like, you are so lucky that you're good with preschoolers.

There are some people who are better than kids with others, but a lot of it

is learning what certain kids are like and then using that to help engage with them.

My wife may have slightly violated this principle on accident in a recent attempt

for a mother-daughter hangout. out there playing Candyland.

And my little five-year-old is all in.

She is not just playing Candyland. We are in Candyland. And the line between

reality and imagination is real thin.

Like we got, there's candy canes over there. And oh, what if over here,

there was chocolate in a waterfall and she is in it.

And then my wife, based on our other nine-year-olds were like,

we need to make this a little more exciting. We need a little more plot,

a little more conflict in here.

And so she says, but what if, what if I was like captured and the queen of Candyland

tries to kick me out and you can help rescue me.

And just skipping forward a little bit, this does not go well.

This is a literal, like a huge, major political scene.

My daughter, by the end of this imagining is literally crying like,

oh my gosh, how could a queen in Candyland do something so cruel as to hurt my mother?

Candyland is not a fun place. I do not want to go to Candyland anymore.

It was so serious that later I tried to ask her about it and she says,

I don't even want to talk about it. And she walked out of the room.

Now, the problem is it was totally natural to sing because we enjoy plot and

conflict. My other kids enjoy plots and conflict.

A preschooler does not need conflict to make a story fun. They just like imagining

a world with candy. That was the fun part.

Recognizing that pattern makes

it easier to be successful with the kind of kids you are influencing.

She's way better than kids than I am. That's why I can use this story.

She is way better at imagining and playing and coming and helping Athena.

We also found that our kids are on this soccer team. older teens are on this

soccer team and the coach is amazing. She's a former goalie in college.

She's really in it. She's giving just enough advice.

And maybe if you've tried to coach as a volunteer, you have found this problem

before that, you know, parents, they just don't want to be involved.

They drop off their kids, put their hands in pockets. You just can't even work

with them. That's the problem these days. The parents, they just want to sit

in the sideline. They're going to do anything.

Grumble, grumble, grumble, grumble. Okay. So this lady comes over to my wife

and says, those are your boys out there?

And she's like, yeah, yeah, those are my boys. And she goes,

those are some big athletic boys right there.

That's not what she said, but I can't say it exactly in church,

but that was the gist of what she said.

And she said, man, those are some fit boys right there. Wow. Look at that power.

Man, we're happy to have them. She's bragging on them. And you know how that

made my wife feel, if you're wondering?

Amazing. And here's a tip for you. Here's a little pattern. Bragging on people's

kids to parents is cocaine.

That is the best thing ever and so

we're walking out of that practice going this coach is the

greatest coach of all time they should play for fifa this

is great like she's great we're great my boys are great everything's great we're

all pumped up we're going home and she texts later and says i'm thinking about

doing a an extra practice to work on skills and we're like of course greatest

coach of all time and so we text back we're gonna go do it and get together

and what is it she just got so lucky that we're involved.

And those other poor coaches look out at the parents with a grumbling and critical

eye. Can't get anyone involved.

So unlucky, you know what I mean? Sometimes there are patterns at play that

if we have the humility to say, you know what? There might be a better way to do this.

The mantra we want to have is I want you to continue to read the book of Proverbs is this is twofold.

It's the desire to know and your willingness to change.

That when you stop reading Proverbs for interesting tidbits and little bits

of encouragement, when you begin to go in saying, I need to be a better dad,

I need to be a better husband, I need to be a better employee,

I need to be a better advisor to my teenage kids.

I'm going in with a desire to learn something new and a willingness to change the way you do things.

Maybe it's me and I'm not equipping the parents on my kids' soccer team that

way. I'm just not encouraging enough.

Now, it doesn't mean that everyone is going to pour it out, but I can say as

far as the patterns go, I wasn't doing a lot to stack the deck in my favor.

And you start bragging on those kids to those

parents and you will find that there's going to be energy and excitement because

we're all exhausted and trying to hope that we're doing a good job and we're

shooting in the dark and this is rec league after all like no one here's going

pro like we're just here to that encouragement can be the difference between

a family that feels engaged and one that is just checking a box off getting things done.

But do you really want to know? Are you opening up the book of Proverbs and

saying, God, I need to learn the kinds of wisdoms that can change my relationship.

I will sign up for Reengage.

We have a ministry out there, if you missed Reengage, called Weekend to Remember.

It's like Reengage, but it's like a weekend seminar.

And it is a great opportunity if you missed it and you don't want to wait a whole year.

It can give you all kinds of new ways of thinking about your marriage that can

breathe life back into it.

But the last thing we want to warn this morning is that you have to be careful

that as you get one verse, it doesn't become the verse in your life.

Because wisdom is not about having the right play.

It's about the right play for the right time.

Using yet another sports story. In a football like this, a football playbook

like this, there's hundreds of potential plays.

And if I were to ask you, which play is guaranteed to win the next football

game, you would look at me as a confused person saying that's a dumb question.

There's no such thing as a winning play. You have to have the right play for

the right field and the right team at the right time.

Right? Wisdom is going to require from you, yes, there are patterns,

but they're not universal. Different situations call for different responses.

A famous setup is this one in Proverbs 26, and it's going to say this in verse

5, answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes.

Sometimes you need to speak up. You need to go to that parent who's talking

in the car line and say, let's take this and go talk to the office.

This sounds like it's turning into something more serious.

But there are other times where it's going to say this, sending a message by the hands of a fool.

Meaning trying to interact with a fool who's just absolutely,

you know, just causing a lot of headaches is like cutting off one's feet or drinking poison.

Like some people just getting involved in the fight is like drinking poison

saying, I don't know why that didn't go well. Well, which is it?

Answer a fool or don't. And the answer is both patterns are true sometimes.

Sometimes you'll have to speak. And sometimes the best answer is silence.

Even a verse like, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your

own understanding, a great verse to learn that is true, but taken too far.

As an exclusive verse, I've heard people say that I trust in the Lord with all

my heart and I lean not on my own understanding. And that's why I'm not reading any parenting books.

That's why I'm not finding more advice about my marriage. I'm just trusting

in the Lord. He's going to make those kids turn out right. I'm just trusting in the Lord.

But there are a lot of other Proverbs that say, seek knowledge.

There's a lot of them that say, seek knowledge. How about this one?

In Proverbs 24, verse five, a wise warrior is strong because knowledge makes strength stronger.

That one says, look, yeah, I get it. You should trust God. And that is true.

And sometimes we need the humility to say, I'm not gonna try to say,

I've figured this all out. I'm gonna lean on God, not my own thinking.

But at the same time, there's lots of other ones that say, but seek out good knowledge.

There's a time for that humility and there's a time to pursue better answers

through books, through parenting you, through re-engage, through community groups

where you say, I need to add knowledge to strength if I'm going to make it through

this next season of my life.

There's a Proverbs that says, Proverbs 19, 11, that says, it is one's glory to overlook an offense.

That's a great verse. It is glorious at times to hit, I don't care.

I wish we had a button on the phone that says, not going to worry about it.

Like you're in a family chat, you see something on social media.

I wish they had an extra button, not like, not dislike, but doesn't matter.

I'm just going to overlook it. You know what? That was a mean thing to say,

and I don't even care. I'm overlooking it. There's a time where it is to your

glory to overlook an offense.

But it also says in Proverbs that the wounds of a friend can bring life.

Sometimes to overlook is really cruel for that other person.

And you need to go and tell them, look, I hate to be the one to tell you this,

but when you said that in the office thing, it made a lot of people uncomfortable.

And look, I'm saying this because I care about you.

So sometimes it's overlook and sometimes it's speak up.

Wisdom is to recognize all those patterns and then to trust a certain sense

of discernment saying, but what is the right play here?

What's the right move? Is this a emphasizing my authority with my child or is

this to empathize with them and come alongside of them?

Is this a moment where I'm going to decide to respond this way or I'm going to do it like this?

Is this something where we need to be more financially cautious as a family,

or it is in our best interest to go ahead and sign up for sports this fall because

we need to do something, and this is the best thing we've got right now,

and it's in our best interest.

Wisdom is both recognizing patterns, but knowing that second step of discernment

is also vitally important.

There's a lot of Christian traditions out there that ask us to read through Proverbs regularly.

Billy Graham is famous for reading through the chapter of the book of Proverbs

that represents the day of the month. And this is a practice I have used for

years, where if today is the 7th of September, so you would read Proverbs chapter.

Come on, help me out of it. Now, tomorrow, you're going to read Proverbs chapter.

Now, there's 31 chapters in Proverbs and sometimes 31 days in a month.

And what I do is I don't try to absorb everything in it, but read through it

with the questions that I'm asking God. And you find that phrase that says,

whew, I got to work on that one.

Man, that's the one I need to remember this week. That's what I'm going to work

on. and listening with that desire to know and that willingness to change,

God put into his word, not just messages of forgiveness, but they are there. We'll talk in a second.

Not just all this stuff about God's redemption of being part of his family,

but like how to help you with your money and your kids, because God wants you

to be a source of joy and of life and of his healing presence in it.

Paul is famous for combining these ideas, both the wisdom and the redemption and power of God.

One of our elders just got back from doing a tour through a lot of the biblical

places mentioned in Greece and in Turkey.

And he went to the place in Mars where Paul actually preached.

You can stand on the stone even now where Paul gave this sermon.

And if you were at Greece in Paul's day, it was a land of philosophy.

The Plato and the Aristoteles, the Stoics, the Eponemones, all the people that

go on. wisdom was a back and forth like popular sports.

And they would love to hear Paul's description of wisdom.

And he said, when I do that, I said, the Greeks, they just want wisdom.

They just want to talk about how to live the best life and justice and truth.

And when I hang out in Jewish synagogues, they want to see evidence of God's power.

They want to see miracles and redemption and life change. And as he opens up

the book of Corinthians in chapter one, he'll say the message of the cross.

Jesus is both the wisdom of God and the power of God.

He is the image of what it means to walk is a renewed person created in God's image.

This is how you were designed to live when God created human beings in his image.

And you wonder what that looks like.

Jesus did not just come down and die on the cross immediately.

He walked on this earth for years so that we could see what renewed humanity looks like.

And he demonstrates that power and that healing presence of God to come into

our brokenness and all of the fallenness of the world and demonstrate that we

need access to a power that is beyond ourselves. And in Jesus, we see both.

And if you're here and hearing this series about, you know, I've been struggling

a little bit. I want to increase in wisdom.

It's not going to be found as your first step by saying, give me your best self-help book.

The first step is going to say that Jesus's way is better.

That at the risk of quoting Forrest Frank, you can search the world till your

head hurts. And you'll still find out that his way is better.

And the reason that we start our walk with Jesus with laying down in the waters

of baptism is it is a letting go and dying to self,

saying I realize that my own natural patterns are not gonna take me toward life

and healing, they're what led to my brokenness in the first place,

and I lay down because I want to identify with his death.

Music.