The Simple Life

Heavenly Father. Lord, we thank you so much for the kids that you brought into our life, into this church. Lord, we thank you so much for the blessing they provide, and we thank you so much for the opportunity to see that blessing. We just asked you you continue to be with us, Lord, as I preach. I asked that you that they beat your words and not my words. I asked you you touch the hearts of those in the audience today and help them to see you, Lord and your character in Jesus name. Amen. So I should mention the sermon is, you know, because we have some quite a few kids here and they're all in one spot, I thought it'd be a good point to have a spot where we're specifically talking to the kids. But there's also plenty in there for adults. So this isn't just a kid's sermon. So I'm an associate pastor and I have responsibilities for both the youth, the kids, and the adults, and so this is this sermon's kind of a good mix of all of it. So make sure kind of take a look at that and identify maybe something that's in there for you. In the late nineteen sixties, a gentleman named Bob Gore, not related to Al Gore, was working in his father's Teflon factory. As it is with a lot of our blue collar workers today, he was working very long hours and he was really trying to figure out what it was. He was trying to figure out the solution to a problem to make a plastic stronger. I think our friend mister Jeff Garrett could understand that because he does that often, but he's really kind of He felt like if he could stretch this plastic just a little bit more and just get a little bit past its point of no return, then this plastic would become stronger than anything that they've had before, and it would make that Teflon product much more stronger and more usable for the avduce for the average household. He'd been working on this for a long time and it was getting late in the day and it just wasn't working like he wanted it to work, and out of frustration, he slammed it down and ended up stretching the product a lot more than he thought that. He would stretch it by about eight hundred percent, and he thought for sure it would break, but it didn't. The accident ended up creating the product called et ept fe a dollar for anyone who knows what that is, which is also known as polytetraflorio ethylene, or as you guys know it, gortex. Gortex was made as an accident. See what happened with gortexas when he did this, it stressed the product to where the product itself was seven hundred times larger than a water vapor molecule, but twenty thousand times smaller than a droplet of water. So what that does, and the beauty about gortax is that it allows you to Breathe allows your vapor from your perspiration to come out, but it creates a waterproof situation. Gortex Gortex is now sold in or is now part of over two hundred million products in the world, and it was created by somebody's failure an accident. The Christian life is not complete after we accept Jesus Christ or Lord and Savior. That's not the end of the story. That's the beginning of the story. Howdy she's gonna come, She's part of the sermon. That's the beginning of the story. You see, once we accept him, then it's the transformation and the growth that only He can provide. That happens within our life. See people who have accepted a call, accepts that call. But the Spirit continues to work within us, and even when we accept him. We are not perfect. Now. I know a lot of us say that, but I can tell you that looking at a lot of people, they don't believe it. It's easy to say, it's hard to believe. The sinful world produces scars. It's something that naturally happens. It's through this imperfection that God works within us. You all know my story. I think. I went to T Mobile and I worked there for over twenty years. I was just wells for some big high level products, promotions, payments, or international products and services five G home Internet. I was part of a startup lab. I launched our T Mobile Fiber before I have my calling to pastoral ministry. I learned to take risks, disrupt the industry, and create valuable experiences. That was my job. I would consider my life at Team Mobile a huge success story because I started off in the call center making minimum wage and I rolled up to a much higher position in senior management, working much making much more than minimum wage. But it wasn't me. It was him. It was always him, you see. But one of the things that's through all my successes, I learned more through my failures than I did through all my successes. And the corporate world, we're called to encourage or celebrate failures as long as we learn from those failures for wells and promotions, for example, I mean I had told you guys that I had managed over three billion dollars in promotions at one point, but for only some of you. I mentioned that the Carrier Freedom launch, which is the promotion that most of you guys, if not all of you, have used when you switch from one carrier to another. It was a disaster when we launched it. I think I mentioned some of you. I actually got yelled at for thirty minutes straight by my vice president. Yeah, that was not fun. For my Time and Payments, my entire goal was to implement Google pay, Android Pay, Samsung Pay, Apple Pay, and to start building out cryptocurrencies within our payment products. Guess what. I didn't do any of that, so you could say my Time and Payments is a failure. I almost actually created two international incidents, well my time in international product management. I got a call from somebody complaining that the ambassador of Israel was upset because when they had landed into Tel Aviv, they had connected to a Palestinian tower and we said, welcome to town, welcome to Palestine. That's a problem. I had somebody from Burma upset because we called it Burma, not me. And mar Yeah, that's a problem. But through my time and promotions and that call, it helped me to be a little bit less unoffendable. Excuse me, a little bit more unoffendable. During that time of trying to work through payments, I learned better planning and how to get stuff into market better. And while I was trying to figure out how to come down from those international incidents I almost cost. I learned the importance of communication. But guess what, My failures also weren't me. My failures were also him. They were always him. See, it is through failures that God recreates us to be holy. Listen to me, kids, it is through our failures that God recreates us to be holy. The Harvard Business Review points out the importance of accepting failures over successes when people take a leap of faith. Furthermore, a companies should eliminate shame with failures. This is why companies today, successful companies celebrate failures that you learn from. Children are learning their growing. They have many failures. We know that as part of the box. Right's right there on the warning label children like adults will fail. You see, I grew up into church and just like everybody else, just like every other child, had many failures. And one of the misguiding failures that I had was I was extremely athletic, so I really enjoyed sports more than I should have. And it started off where I would enjoy sports, but I would also find time to attend church. Do you see. We moved from my grandma's house, who was a church going Christian, down to the city, but my grandma still kept taking us until eventually my grandma stopped taking us. But it wasn't her own doing. It was because to me, I had more value in playing sports than I did going to church. Now I think about that, and I think, why was that we have the best product in the universe, Jesus Christ. He gives us a free gift. Why would I want to give that up for something so temporary such as sports? And I thought about it, and I said, you know what, I think it was. I think honestly, I was tired of feeling bad for myself for playing sports. You see, what happened was people always have the good intentions. I believe in that. It was actually a corporate juggernaut not that introduced me to trusting in the positive intentions of others. She would walk in to any business meeting and she would have jewelry all over her body. I don't know how she put it all her fit at all. She would have so much she would we would actually call her the bling Queen, that's how much jewelry she had. But she introduced me to a concept that I absolutely adore, and that's always trusting in the positive intentions of others. We all have positive intentions. But when I was young going to church, what I felt was I felt all the negativity over how I wasn't celebrating the Sabbath. Over celebrating the Sabbath. They love me, but I felt there wasn't a standard, that wasn't a standard I could live up to. In business, there's something called value creation. Value creation is the idea that you focus on creating so much value that your value proposition, which is the point in where a customer will come to you because there's so much value in your product that they have to come to you. It's so high that they won't want to leave you. You literally make it to where they desire to be with you. If we have the best product in the universe, we have the best best value proposition in the universe too. If the children find no value in the church, they will leave as soon as they can. And value does not come with rules. It comes with being loved. Look at the kids here. They're so precious. Look at them, they're all together. It breaks your heart art when a kid says, I want to be here and you can't and you have to end the program because you have to sleep. They're more precious than gold itself. But if they are more precious than gold itself, we must value their presence here. A study completed in twenty twenty amongst one fifty one classrooms across Missouri, Tennessee, and Utah show that kids increase performance by thirty percent when they were strictly praised and not reprimanded. They also found that they were more engaged and disruptive behaviors stopped completely in the classroom. This may seem obvious, But I gotta tell you, and I'm calling myself out here because I've done this in the past as well. But I've seen pastors, the evangelists and teachers whose shame and blame kids because they're not following the rules. I have seen pastors in evangelists escort crying babies out of the sanctuary because it disrupted their sermon. But look how Jesus interacted with the kids. He says in Mark ten in Matthew eighteen, the only those who enter the kingdom will be like that of children. I can't find a spot in Jesus's ministry where he reprimands a child. And if it was important, like some of us believe, believe you me, it would be in there. Jesus praised the children. He used them as positive examples, not negative examples. He didn't condemn or correct them. He just showed what it was like to be saved. Job was somebody who you would say would be a failure. I mean, we see the full story now, but back then his friends thought he was a complete failure. He had everything. He had beautiful wife, beautiful kids, he had all the money, very rich, very wealthy, and he was righteous Job failed to keep his family safe, his finance and order, and even his health in order. But God allowed that to happen for our sakes. I used to wonder why God didn't allow Satan to kill Thus, Satan to kill Job, wouldn't that have been merciful? Like think about everything that Job went through. And I used to think, Wow, that's so merciful of God that you know he would allow Job to be an example, but don't take his life. But really, Job was righteous before and he was righteous after. So if he was righteous before and after, if he would have allowed the Satan to take his life, he would have woken up to the second coming. That would have been merciful. Well, Job didn't understand it either, by the way, because in Job nine twenty twenty four, it says, though I am in the right, my own mouth would condemn me. Though I am blameless, he would prove me perverse. I am blameless. I regard not myself, I loathe my life. It is all one. Therefore, I say, he destroys both the blameless and the wicked. When disaster brings sudden death, he mocks at the calamity of the innocent. The earth is given into the hand of the wicked, He covers the faces of its judges. It is not he. If it is not he, then who then is it? Oh? Those are some powerful words. There are some powerful words before this. Right before this, he was defending God in front of his friends. His friends at the time were suggesting that Job should have received worse for what for what he must have done against God? But then God responds to Job in verse thirty eight, or in chapter thirty eight and thirty nine. And I'm just gonna summarize a couple of things because it's a long reading, But he says, where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Have you commanded the morning since the day's begun? Do you know the ordinances of heaven? You see? We look at our little sphere and what we know, and we think we know best. But God's like, I see a bigger picture here, and I got plans. We have no way to know why God allows us to go through trials and failure, but neither did Job. And then Job responds in Job forty two, verse three, two and three, with I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand. Things too wonderful for me which I did not know. I love those verses because it means something to me. You see, Job hadn't fully ridded himself of self. Job saw the short term of what he understood, but he didn't it fully except but God was doing in his life. Now, I don't know that I would have either, Let's be clear. But Job was at example, righteous example, and at this point he accepted. He simply accepted God's plan, whatever it was to be. You see, the story of Job has absolutely nothing to do with Job. There is nothing in that story that stated that Job needed to go through this for his own faith. He was righteous before and he was righteous after. It could very well be that our failures are not for our own sakes, but for others to learn from them as well. Could it be that our failures are not necessarily for us, but for the people who are observing us. I don't know if anyone here plays chess. I've played a little chess from time to time. Oh that's great. Chess is a game of strategy, and with chess you're always trying to figure out the good players play the entire game in every move. The thing about chess is that there's a move. It's called the four Nights. The four nights is what you start the game with. But the point about the four nights is not to win the game with the knights. It's to set up a head of protection with the other pieces. And so you move the four nights, and they're boring moves. It's not flashy or exciting. It's overly simplistic. It's known to be a silent move until later in the game. But other pieces become the hero of the game. It's not the knights, not the horses, you see. We want the splashy, exciting play, but God is only splashy when he needs to be. We often question why we go through what we go through, but God has played the entire game in his head. Every movie makes I've mentioned this before, but before my call, I was the definition of laodicia. I would go to church, I would do nothing else, And even when I went to church, I wasn't going to church, if you know what I mean. I accepted my call a few a couple of years ago, and I was fired up to be a pastor, and I had great experiences with my first two churches. I was a laymaniser, not a full time pastor. That probably had something to do with it. And I moved over to Maryland. God called me to Maryland. I said, okay, I said, God, if you want me to go to Maryland, I'll move to Maryland from Oregon. If anyone's been to Oregon, it's beautiful, and I'm sorry, I appreciate Maryland, but it's not Oregon. I'm sorry. And when we here, we're on fire, we're excited. My family is with me, and we end up staying at this three hundred square foot place. Not only that, but I start to have other problems. I had start to have problems with people, with processes, with other things that are going on in my life. At one point, I can think of three specific incidences, but one point, I was just laying in my bed. My daughter was in the pull out couch because they didn't have a room big enough for all of us. My two sons were sharing a bed, a queen bed. My wife had to share a bed with me. And thanks, I'm glad you guys got that. And I was just laying there and it was late at night, and I started laughing, and everyone was like, what are you laughing about. I was just laughing so hysterically. I may have lost my mind for a short while. And and I said, you know, I said, I was just thinking about the fact that two weeks ago we were in a comfortable environment, making a lot of money, with a twenty five square foot house with a two car garage, in a place that we know, surrounded by family, and look at us. Now, this world would say that we are a failure. And then it wasn't a couple of weeks later that I had a shouting match. Well, it wasn't really a shouting match. I was more shouting. God was just calm and cool and collected. But I yelled at God and I said God, I said, I can't do this. And guys, it's hard for me to say this, but I want to be honest with you. That was the first time of two times that I almost went to the calm Prince offers, paid them my moving costs to come out here, and went back to Oregon. I almost left my calling that close, that close, you see. Shortly after that, I did some soul searching and I found out what their issue really was. It had nothing to do with what was going on in my life. It had to do with God had to purge me from me. Through that process, I realized I had to figure out that what might make sense may not make sense. And that's okay. I realized that living the Gospel is simple. It's super simple. It is the simple life. But we overcomplicate it because we get in the way. We get in the way with our rules and requirements. Second Timothy one nine. This was our Bible verse for VBS. I love it. I was actually planning on doing the sermon before I knew of the Bible verse for VBS. Yes, that's right. I didn't study the Bible verse until the week before VBS. I'm sorry, I'm a bad pastor. Second Timothy one nine says Jesus who saved us and called us to a holy calling not because of our works, but because of his own purpose and grace which he gave us in Christ, Jesus before the ages began. And how do we follow that up? Kids? Yeehaw? You see this verse. I never knew this verse was there, but it's so perfect. You see, he saved us, called us to a holy calling. Not because of our works. Has nothing to do with us, has nothing to do with us. And this is when I realized that at all that stuff that God had prepared for me at t Mobile and before, that wasn't me. It was God. Because God had a plan for me, He had a call for me. But it's because of his own purpose, God's purpose and grace which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began. It's because of God's purpose and grace that we're called to do what God wants us to do. It comes down the simple life, comes down to trusting God's calling for your life. Period. When we truly do that, we no longer worry about what is to come, but we celebrate what God is going to do with us and where He's going to lead us. It doesn't matter if we haven't experienced like job, if we're in Paul in prison and we're singing, it doesn't matter because we know that God put us there for a specific reason. In Matthew eighteen three and four, Jesus says, truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven. I'm bet youa Jesus didn't find the most holy child and said, whoever humbles himself like this child is going to enter the Kingdom of heaven. The way I read the Bible is that Jesus grabbed the closest kid to him and maybe the spirit was working in him, and maybe he knew his life, and maybe he knew. But I tend to believe that what Jesus is talking about is we need to be like the children. That includes my little guy who's hitting people with his sticky thing, even the kids who are not being holy at that moment. God isn't saying be like the holy kids. He's saying, be like the children because even through all their failures, leon even through all their failures, they have humility that we need to have. They trust in their parents like we need to trust in our father. And this is a simple life that the kid can teach us. We are not defined by our failures but what God does with us. And if we are not defined by our failures, we should not define others by their failures. Either kids listen up and adults. This goes for you too, as God works in your life and calls you to your purpose. Remember this, God loves you. You are never a failure in his eyes. Whatever stumbling blocks the word throw the world throws at you, know that it is God who works in you to develop you to who you are meant to be. Called me different, called me faithful, called to forgive, called to serve, and called to give. Let's pray, Heavenly Father, Lord, thank you so much for the kids. Thank you so much for the kids that come to this church and make it lively and make it spiritual. Lord. We thank you so much for providing them as an example for us, and help us to learn from them as much as we would like them to learn from us. Lord Lord, we have an opportunity to live the simple life. We just need to accept you except your calling for our life. So I pray that everyone here in their hearts You know who they are. Everyone here accept your calling for their life, whatever that may be. Lord, help them to live the simple life, help them to get rid of all the distractions, and help them to focus their attention on you. Lord. Thank you so much for the opportunity to be here today, and thank you for the opportunity to worship you and Jesus precious name you. Pray, Amen,