True North (Psalm 16:8) | Louis Azuma

Speaker: when you think about it, your life is really actually,

um, a battle for attention.

Maybe you've never thought about it this way.

There's, so there's th- there's kinda three things we're gonna

work our way through here.

Your life is really a battle for attention.

I don't know if you've, you've really realized how much your

attention is a competition.

Everything's competing for your attention.

I don't know if, um, you're, you've heard of this before, but, um, th-

there's this thing called, called Netflix, and, um, their CEO said

something really interesting.

He said that Netflix's main competitor is not Hulu, it's not Disney Plus,

it's not anything else, not Paramount Plulch- Ultra Pro Max or whatever, right?

It's sleep.

Netflix's biggest competitor, he said, is sleep.

Because sleep takes up so much time.

Sleep takes up way more time than, than Hulu or Disney or whatever.

They said their main competitor is sleep, and that's because they're

fighting for your attention, right?

YouTube is fighting for your attention.

Facebook is fighting for your parents' attention, not yours, right?

'Cause none, none of you care about Facebook, right?

All these things-

Are fighting for your attention.

And the phrase, even the phrase pay attention, right?

Pay attention.

Why, why do you think we say that?

Attention is a resource you have.

You only have so much attention, right?

Some of you are losing it very quickly right now.

You only have so much attention

What you decide to give it to is a huge deal.

What are you paying your attention to, right?

What are you giving your attention to?

This verse is saying this person who's, who's talking about they're,

they're living this, this life and it's hard sometimes, but they're

saying that eventually I know that if I give my attention to the Lord,

I'll be safe, I'll be secure, right?

Both maybe emotionally presently, but also forever, 'cause they know they'll

be safe with him forever, right?

But your attention really matters.

It…

Your attention is a priceless resource when you think about it.

You can't get your attention back once you've given it away.

You can refocus it, but you've lost those, that amount of focus.

You, you never get to use that attention ever again.

It's gone.

Just like time.

You never get to use it ever again.

So what I wanna ask you tonight is how are you spending your attention?

Where is your focus going?

Because your focus is going to determine who you are.

What you give your attention to determines the kind of person you're gonna become.

You're becoming someone every day.

And when you think about Sherwood North, when you think about student ministry,

when you think about what you're doing here on Wednesday nights, every day, every

hour, you're becoming someone, right?

Think back to last year when you sat in this room for the first time.

You were a different person.

You liked different things.

You had different priorities.

Maybe you even had a totally different outlook on life.

You're a different person than you were a year ago.

Next year, when you sit in this room, or not, right, when you graduate,

you're gonna be a different person than you are now, and that's because

of the things you paid attention to.

What you gave your attention to shapes who you are

Attention is an invitation to influence.

When you give your attention to something, you're saying, "Influence me.

Change me."

When you go watch a video, when you listen to someone talk, when you sit

down to, to read something or not read something, you're saying, "Change me."

Whenever you pay attention to anything or choose not to pay attention to

something, you're saying, "Change me.

I want to be like what I'm paying attention to."

That's what you're doing every time you pay attention to anything, whether

it's a conversation at school, whether it's, um, something you see online,

whether it's people in your life, the people you pay attention to, the

people you put yourself in the way of.

You're saying, "Change me."

That's what you're doing when you give your attention to something

In the book of Hebrews, it says in chapter two, verse one that

your attention is actually what keeps you holding fast to Jesus.

The book of Hebrews is written to a bunch of people who are tempted

to walk away from Christianity.

It's these people that they're, they're not sure if they wanna be Christians

anymore, which maybe in a year in your college dorm room, that's gonna be you

Or maybe with when you have to decide, oh, do I wanna be with these friends who are

gonna lead me away from the Lord, or do I wanna maybe be faithful to the Lord and

obey Him, even at your school right now?

That's the decision you have to make.

Do I, do I wanna walk away from this, or do I wanna stay faithful to Jesus?

And what he says is, the au- the author, he says, "Pay attention to what you've

heard so you don't drift away from it."

Attention is how you hold on to Jesus.

Attention is your anchor to Jesus.

And so part of the reason we spend so much time at True North of, of me

just talking to you is because what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to

hold up Jesus through the Word, right?

I'm trying to say, "Look at God.

Pay attention to what He says," because I want you to anchor onto

Jesus so you don't walk away, right?

If you're a Christian.

And if you aren't a Christian, I want you to pay attention to Jesus so you latch

onto Him, you grab onto Him in faith, and say, "I trust you, and I'll follow you."

That's why your attention is such a big deal.

And so what we're all about here in True North is I, I'm trying to convince you

from scripture that Jesus is worth your attention, and that's something that

even if you're a Christian, you have to convince yourself of every single day.

Jesus is worth it.

He's worth my attention.

He's worth my trust.

He's worth my devotion.

That's because your attention shapes your values, your priorities.

When you say, "I set the Lord before me," I'm putting Him in front of

me because I think He's important.

You pay attention to what you think is important.

If wh- I was gonna ask you, "Hey, what do I think, what you,

what do you think is important?"

You can maybe tell me, oh, yeah, maybe you, you know people like this at school.

They say, "Oh, God first," right?

Maybe their s- you know, their senior quote or their whatever.

They say, "God first.

God first," right?

But you look at their life, what do they give their attention to?

That's what they really think is important.

And worship is really all about priorities, right?

If, if I heard someone m- one time define it to me this way.

They said, "When you think about worship, think about worthship."

It's what you think is important, what you think is valuable, what

you think is worth your time, what you're paying attention to.

You think it's valuable.

It's about your prior-- So your attention is gonna influence your priorities.

And maybe you think, "Okay, yeah, my priority is I know God first," right?

I remember in sixth grade we had to, like, do this thing.

It was a really dumb project.

I thought it was really lame.

We had to, like, draw a picture of, like, our heart, and it was

like, "What's in your heart?"

Right?

And me, you know, growing up in a, in a Christian home, I

was like, "Oh, yeah, Jesus."

So I'd put, like, a cross in the middle, right?

And then I'd put all these other things, you know, on the out--

like the outside of my heart.

But I was like, "Cross has to be in the middle 'cause I'm a Christian

and Jesus is most important."

But really, the-- what my life was is it was like Jesus first and

then, like, all these other things.

That's really not putting Jesus first.

Because if you're really putting Jesus first, Jesus is gonna be

in all the other things, right?

It's not like, oh, I just do the Jesus stuff first, and then I

go and do whatever I want later.

It's Jesus is actually in everything I do.

That-- When Jesus is most important to you, it's kinda like He's the sun and

everything orbits around Jesus, right?

It's not like, well, I did the Jesus stuff first, and then I d- got that

done, and then now I do the rest of the stuff that I really wanna do.

Right?

I think that's a lot of professing Christians, that's probably what they do.

They say, "Well, God first.

Okay, I did that.

You know, I hit the home run, and I, you know, pointed to the sky,

and then now I can go party and do whatever I want 'cause I did that."

That's not what putting God first actually looks like.

What it looks like is everything they did orbited around Jesus.

That's what we're talking about.

I set the Lord always before me, right?

Not just first, not just most often, always.

So your attention changes your priorities, and your priorities are really all about

your heart, your desire, what you want.

You prioritize what you want.

That's how life works.

Jesus said it this way: "Where your treasure is, there

your heart will be also."

Right?

Show me what you think is important, I'll show you what you want.

And your attention, like we talked about at the beginning,

is what shows you what you want.

You pay attention to what you want

And so really what this is all about is I want you to want Jesus.

That's the, the, the main goal of everything we do in True North,

is I want you to want Jesus.

Not just like Jesus, not just think Jesus is helpful, not just

think Jesus is kind of important.

I want you to want Him.

I want you to, to love Him.

I want you to be really excited about Him.

That's really why we're here, and that starts with your attention.

It starts with what you give your attention to, 'cause that's gonna

shape who you are, it's gonna shape what you think is important, and

that's gonna change what you want

And so really that's what it, it all comes down to is do you want Jesus?

How much do you want him?

Because who you are is gonna be downstream, right, from

what do I think is important?

'Cause that's what I'm gonna focus on, and that's gonna shape everything about me.

Okay, so let's pray.

That's what True North is all about.

We're gonna pray, and then you guys are gonna hang out

with your groups, all right?

Heavenly Father, um, you love us a lot.

Um, you don't just kind of love us.

You don't just tolerate us.

Um, you love us more than we could actually ever imagine loving someone,

which is crazy to think about.

Um, and it's not just because we're so great, it's because of who you are.

It's because you are love, and you give us your commands because you

love us, and you make hard things happen to us because you love us.

Because our problem is that we love things that aren't as good as you, and we turn

those things into our source of happiness.

And really, those things aren't gonna make us happy as you will,

because you're so much better.

Jesus, you are better than anything and everything the world has to offer,

just like we talked about last week.

And so I pray that you convince us daily that you are better than everything else.

And I pray that you give us a deeper and stronger and more consistent desire for

you, that we would be so excited to be with you, so excited to talk to you, so

excited to hear from you in your Word.

And I pray for anyone here who doesn't want you, for anyone here who, um, is,

whose heart is kinda cold towards you, or they don't really feel like-- they

don't feel very excited about you.

I pray that you open their eyes and show them that you are so much better, um,

that you can make them so much happier.

You offer so much more joy than the things that you've made that they're

looking to to make them happy.

I pray this all in Jesus' name, amen.