Three for 3: Week 2

Welcome to Church of the Crossing. My name is James,

and you know we have an awesome youth ministry and

you might notice that a lot of them are not here.

They are at a camp this weekend, a retreat, and

you know what, they're a boutriay to have their last

services where kids will be making commitments to Christ or

maybe a calling in the ministry or whatever. And so

before we jump into our service and sermon, can can

we just pray for them? Let's pray for our kiddos. God,

we love our students, we care deeply for them. They're

gonna have their last services this morning, and God, I

just pray for one safety on the way home as

they travel back from their weekend. But also Father, for

those who need to let go of some stuff, for

those who need to be healed, for those who you're

maybe calling into ministry, and for those who you were

calling to you. God, we just lift them up to

you right now the name of Jesus. We lift up

our children, We lift up our youth. We know that

you love them deeply care for them today, and so

we put those services in our service today in your hands.

In the name of Jesus. We pray amen. Do you

like being employed? That's the question that I heard on

the other end of the phone at eleven o'clock at night.

I think it was a Tuesday night. I saw the

phone ringing. It was from my senior pastor. I'm about

twenty years old and maybe been on staff for about

a year a year and a half. And I look

it down at the phone. I'm like, oh, man, there's

either a tragedy or something's really wrong for him to

be calling me this late. I said hello, and he goes,

do you like being employed? And I was like, well, yes,

I do. I do like ving. He goes, well, then

why did you miss the Board of trustees meeting tonight?

And I was like, to be honest, I one hundred

percent forgot that there was a Board of trustees meeting.

And this was back in the days before your watch

reminded you, before your iPhone jumped up and said, don't

forget about this. I just forgot. And I had never

missed a meeting before this. He knew my heart, yet

he still gave me a good talking to that night,

one of those talks that you don't want to have again.

He intentionally scared me half to death because he wanted

me to feel the steam. He also reminded me, James,

I'm not going to be here to cover for you

for the rest of your career. If you do something

like this in the future, you know you can get fired.

It's going to harm your reputation if you miss meetings.

So the next day I got a line, looked at

principles for you know, how not to ever miss a

meeting again. And so I used a date book, had

a wall calendar, and I had post it notes all

over my desk and the whole rest of them. Maybe

the next eight years of brill never missed another meeting.

Still to this day, I have a schedule on my phone.

I carry a day planner. Before I go to bed

each night, I check my schedule for the meetings. The

next day, I look at it again in the morning,

and I check it before I leave work, just a

case I forgot something. Now, over the last twenty some years,

I've missed a couple of meetings. But when I missed

those meetings, they were just complete innocent mistakes, like you know,

putting it on the wrong day, by accident on your

calendar or whatever. You know. My friend David. He disciplined me,

he rebuked me. It was a brutal conversation I learned

from a lesson, But I knew this. David believed in me.

He loved me. He wants me to succeed in life.

Still to this day, he's one of my biggest fans.

And so he disciplined me like a file who loved me.

And that day I learned an invaluable lesson about being disciplined. Now,

this word discipline, it could evoke a range of emotions

in this room when I say discipline. For some of you,

it's good. For some of you it's bad. But for

some of us who as strict parents, it could maybe

evoke the memory of a you know, sting of punishment.

My family, they disciplined with belts and if you got

in trouble, you got a whooping. And my dad used

to say this to me all the time. He says, son,

I want you to know that this is going to

hurt me more than it hurts you. And I always

thought like, well, bend over and give me the belt,

like let's test your theory. I still today like, even

as he's older, I'm like, I just want to pulling

this to say, you know, that's all crazy, right like that,

that's not true, you know, But I was also one

of those kids. I don't know about some of you,

if you're old enough, because this is how it used

to work. If you got a paddling at school, you

got the belt at home, and so there was like

this double incentive not to be bad even when you're

away from home. I was not, i would say, the

most behaved kid. I don't know if you've ever noticed,

but I don't have much of a hind end. I'm

pretty flat back here, and that's because I pretty much

got my hind in and wooked off growing up. But

you know, I can laugh at it now and joke

about it. But for some of us, discipline evokes Onselling memories.

Now for some of you, when we think of the

word discipline, you think about your studies, your career, exercise,

training hard for sports. Recently, I was talking to Dan Courtney,

who grew up in this church, still goes this church,

and he runs one hundred mile marathons. Now that's about

four marathons in one. That's three marathons and a half

too many, if you ask me. But he goes and

he runs one hundred mile marathons. We were sitting down

in a have r stick a few weeks ago during

one of the after church events, and I asked him

just to take me through his training and his regimens

and all this other stuff. And I was really impressed,

like he knows what he's doing. And then I just

asked a normal question. I said, Hey, uh, I'm just curious.

How often do you have to buy shoes? He knew

down to the mile of when he needed to change

his shoes out, and he has to go buy very

very good shoes at a certain mile marker. And I

thought to myself, my Lord even that, I mean, he's

got it all down. And so my takeaway about his

discipline was simply this that I really don't need a

new pair of shoes. But every twenty five years now,

whether we think of discipline as positive or negative, discipline

is something we're all gonna encounter in our life. And

here's what we're gonna do today. We're gonna talk about

a specific kind of discipline. We're gonna talk today about

the Lord's discipline. And it sounds fun, huh, you guys excited.

Today We're gonna talk about the Lord disciplining you. It

sounds fun to me. And here's the counterintuitive claim that

the Bible makes here. It is okay, God's discipline isn't

him against you, Okay, it's him for you, forming Christ

in you. I'm gonna say that again. When God disciplines

you or allows you to be disciplined, his discipline isn't

him against you, It's him for you, and he's forming

Christ in you. Now, whenever I read what the Bible

says about God's desascipline and how it's his love for us,

I sometimes think I must be one of the most

loved disciples. Does anyone else in here feel like a

special child of God? If being disciplined is something that

shows God's love? Yes, yes, Well, if you feel that way,

there's probably two possible reasons why you might be disciplined

a lot. Number one, maybe you're just not getting a

message and God's trying to grow you but you're just refusing.

Or this is interesting. He's shaping you and you continue

to allow him to shape you, and so He's going

to keep shaping you until you become like his son Jesus.

And I hope the latter is most true for most

of us today. Now, as we deal deeper in to

the text, I believe that God's going to reveal his

wisdom to you today about his discipline. So here's what

we're gonna do. We're gonna focus on Proverbs chapter three,

looking at verse eleven and King Solomon. Here he's talking

to his son and he says, my son, do not

do not despise the Lord's discipline. Do not resent his rebuke? Why?

Because the Lord disciplines those he loves as a father,

the son I pay attention to this, he delies in. Now,

before we jump into this interpretation, we got to ask

this question. Here's Solomon writing to his son, and we

have to ask Solomon, why are you so passionate about this? Solomon?

Why do you care so much that your son not

only understands that God loves him, but that he doesn't despise,

he doesn't rebuke, that he actually accepts the Lord's discipline

as a sign of God loving him. Why are you

so passionate about this, Solomon? Well, if you go back

into Solomon's history, Solomon was the love child David and Bathsheba,

and when David had this affair, they had this child

named Solomon. And when David decided he did not want

everyone to know about his sin, he decided to have

Bathsheba's husband, his friend. By the way, Arrayah murdered. So

David had an affair, had a love child, and then

he had someone murdered. Pretty big deal. And by the way,

how does the Bible describe David a man after God's

own heart? It doesn't match up, does it. It doesn't

match up well. When God sent his prophet Nathan to David,

it was a painful moment of discipline. If you go

back and read that story, David's discipline. Trusts me, He's disciplined.

But the discipline that led David to repentance and restoration

his greatest failure, wasn't the end of his story. So

Solomon he grows up with this burned image in his mind.

My dad was humbled, My dad was disciplined, but because

of God's grace, he was restored by God's mercy. So,

first of all, Solomon kind of grows up in this

background of God's discipline. But what about his brothers? We

look at his family. Let me tell you about some

of his siblings. Solomon. On the flip side, when we

think about his brother, his brother am Non. He lived

a life without restraint. Matter of fact, he lusted and

lusted and lusted after his sister Tamar, and one evening

he broke into her room, he raped her, and then

the text says that he hated her in his heart.

So that's a whole other thing. We can talk psychologically

some other time. His other brother Absalom became so mad

at Amnon for raping his sister that he actually went

in and killed his brother Anon, and then down the

road kind of like, you know, why didn't Dad take

care of this? Why didn't Dad do something about this family?

Why didn't Dad step in? He decided that Dad wasn't

worthy to be the king anymore, so he split the

kingdom in half and took davis throne from him for

a season. Oh yeah, by the way, there's another brother, Idonija,

who also at one point exalted himself and tried to

steal the throne. So Solovan has his dad who was hubbled,

disciplined and restored. But then he has his brothers, three

brothers who did evil things, grew up spoiled brats, did

whatever they wanted. They did not heed, disciplined in each

one of them died in disgrace, but even bigger than that,

the result of his family not heeding the Lord's discipline

led the tragedy, bloodshed, a fractured family. And so it's

against this backdrop where Solomon's grown up in a really

messed up family, a family that's been broken and fractured.

That now he turns to his son and he says, son, Son,

I really need you to listen to me. You're gonna

do some things sometimes that's not God's will. And God's

gonna allow you to reap some discipline. He's gonna punish

you sometimes. But I need you to know. I don't

want you to get mad at this. I don't want

you to get angry. I don't want you to reject

the Lord and go do whatever you want. No, no, no, no, no, Son,

I need you to know that this is God's way

of loving you. He's shaping you, he's changing you. Son.

Please listen to this message because I've seen how it

turns out. Back to the verse says, my son, do

not despise the Lord's discipline and do not resent his rebuke,

because the Lord disciplines those he loves as a father

of the son. He delights in. Remember that word again.

I'll come to back a little bit. Delights in. Now

This ancient wisdom kind of challenge us because if we're

going through something painful at the moment, there's no one

that enjoys being disciplined, like, yes, this is fun. Oh,

I love that God's discipline me right now. No. No, our

initial reaction is defensiveness and anger discouragement. As Solomon anticipates this,

and that's why he says, my son, do not despise

the Lord's discipline and do not resent his rebu In

other words, don't hate it, don't lose heart, don't resent it.

In other words, don't let your heart get bitter at

God when he's trying to correct you. Now, why do

we despise discipline? But one, it's unpleasant too, it hurts

our pride. And also when we're discipline, guess what happens

when you and I are disciplined. We have to in

front are faults. Who in here enjoys having someone bring

up your faults, none of us. If you want to

stay after service today, me, you and your spouse, we'll

talk about your faults. That sounds fun to me. By

the way as long as my wife does not come around. See,

discipline's hard because not only does it hurt, but also

we have this thing called pride, we have this thing

called an ego, and we don't like facing these consequences.

But Solomon says, hey, don't misinterpret God's discipline. No, no, no,

you do not understand that this is an expression of

God's care for you. Remember, God's discipline isn't him against you,

it's Him for you, forming Christ in you. Now here's

what I want to do at the very beginning today. Well,

I have found as people get very confused between the

lords disciplined in me and I just live in a

messed up world, in a fallen world. It's hard to

figure out is this the lord discipline mean because I've

done something wrong and he's trying to correct me, or

do I just live in a messed up, fallen world

and stuff just happens. And so what I've done for

you is what I hope for us to go through

the next few moments, is basically a discipline decision tree.

So you have a big trial in your life and

you're trying to figure out is this God's discipline or

is this just me living on this earth. Okay, So

here's a discipline tree. You go through. You ask yourself

a few questions. The first question you asked when you're

going through a big trial or something bad has happened

to you, you say, did I sin? Is there a

clear sin disobedience to the Holy Spirit that God keeps

convicting you about. If yes, it's easy, own it, confess it,

make things right, and see it as God's grace as

he lovingly corrects you. All right, So that's the biggest

that's easy. Did I send? Yes, confess it, understand God

is shaping you. Number two though this is a big,

difficult one. We're going to spend a couple of moments

on this. Okay. This one is like, am I being

disciplined because I made a bad decision? I made a

bad choice. And here's the answer to this. Sometimes it's yes,

Sometimes it's snow. Sometimes it's well, maybe maybe you did.

And let me explain this to you. See, my mamma

whenever something bad would happen and it will cost a

few thousand dollars. Uh, my mamma used to say, thank

God that we have the money. Well, she had it

that we have the money to take care of this.

See she grew up in the depression era. She saved

her money for years. She paid her home off twenty

years early, plus three other rentals. People don't do that nowadays.

From just working in factories, working at a beauty salon.

She hated debt. So when something breaks down in my

life and I either got money in savings or I

have a home warranty, who and here can say hallelujah

home warranties. It's true, I say thank you Lord that

I got the money bors covered. I learned that from

my grandma. Our air conditioner broke a couple weeks ago.

God was not punishing me. Okay, the capacitor broke. We

have a home warranty. We were not being disciplined. Sometimes

things just break. Now, now this is just for me,

because for many years of ministry we made nothing. We

were broke, we were in poverty, and we were in

the middle of doing God's will. So when something would

break and it wasn't covered by insurance and we did

not have the money to pay for it, guess what

it was. It was a trial. It was not God

disciplined me. It was a trial. And I would have

to grow in my trust in the Lord as I

lean on him. Now, Gina and I make a living salary.

When something breaks and I don't have the money for it,

the Lord helps me, yes, but he also convicts me

with scriptures like this. So whenever I have to go

and figure out how to pay for something or put

it on a car, the Lord will show me this

scripture put and bring it to my mind. It says,

go to the ant, you sluggard. I don't feel like

he's called me a sluggard. But consider its ways and

be wise. It stores its provisions in a summer and

gathers its food at harvest. In other words, even an

ant knows to put money away when you have extra money. See,

And so when I don't save money and I'm being wasteful,

I'm forgetting that, Hey, something's going to break in the

future because why things break? And so God gently convicts me, James,

pay closer attention to what you're doing for money. Okay,

I gave you extra money, not for you to waste it.

So that's how the Lord deals with me. So let

me let me just break this down how the same

thing happening means different things to each of us. All right,

who and here's ever had a transmission breakdown? Raise your hand.

That is one of the worst days ever. Nowadays are

like what seven eight thousand dollars, It's ridiculous, it's a shocker.

All right. Let's just say everybody in this room, when

you walk out it here today, your transmission is done. Okay,

I wanna talk about how we go through this differently.

If you are rich in this room, guess what it is.

It is annoying. It is not a try. You are

not being disciplined, but you are being reminded that everything's

not gonna last forever. And it should cause you to

look at Jesus and be reminded, Hey, this life I have,

it's not forever. Now. If you're broke in this room

and you're used car that you could barely make payments on,

if that transmission breaks, guess what you are in the

middle of. You are in the middle of a bona

fide trial. That is a trial to you and you're

gonna have to lean in the Lord, trust in him

and watch him provide for you. But it's gonna be

a tough thing now for those in the middle. Okay,

if your transmission breaks down today and you've put money

away because you're a savior. Guess what, it's annoying. It's

not a trial. You're not being disciplined, and you praise

God that you have the money, and you also remember

things don't last forever. Got one life. Now, if you're

the middle class here, your transmission breaks down. But because

you just went to the Bahamas and put it all

on a credit card, then your transmission breaks down. Yes,

it's a trial, but the Lord might say you might

want to think about the aunt. You need to save

your money and be more wise with your money. So

you might actually be corrected and disciplined by the Lord.

But at everything, no matter what situation you're in, you

learn from it and God is going to train you

through it and you're going to grow wiser. So the

third question you ask, well, to this trial that I'm

going through, I think it happened to me? Did it

happen while I was trying to follow God? So basically,

you've got an illness, loss, trouble, car wreck, a tumor,

somebody's hurting you cancer. If the answer is yes, treated

as God using this hardship to shape your faith, and

you pray father grow me through this. And this is

the classic. Sometimes bad things just happen. It's not the

Lord disciplining you, but the Lord will use it to

grow you. Lastly, am I suffering because I'm obeying Jesus? So?

Do you have pushback? Ridicule, a persecution because of your fake? All? Right? Now,

I have a relative. He's always been real high up

in his company. He's very successful. He's an extremely hard worker.

He's an IQ and EQ off the charts, very successful.

And it was during an economic downturn and his company

really needed this contract with this big client, and part

of his role was entertaining the clients. And so they

all are out and they're working through this contract. Well.

Later that evening, after the guys had dinner, they've been

drinking a little bit. The rest of the group they

wanted to go to a strip club, and my uncle,

who's a passionate follower of Christ, said, guys, here's where

I gotta leave you for the evening. Guess what they

started to call him behind his back. He's not a

team player. He's not a team player. When they didn't

get that contract despite great performance reviews and doing a

great job when it came down to it and they

had to cut some people. Guess who they cut, the

non team player. He lost his huge home, he lost

his airplane, he lost his Porsche hardly, he lost his boat.

He lost everything. Why because he said, guys, I can't

go in there with you. He lost everything. Sometimes you

will have a trial for trying to become like Jesus

or trying to be Jesus. And so if that happens

to you, you rejoice, you stay faithful, but you don't

fight back, see, because God sees it and he rewards it. Oh,

by the way, he is so richly blessed again today.

It's ridiculous how blessed he is again today many years later.

God is faithful. So is it discipline or is it

just happening? And so it starts with, hey did I

send did I make a bad choice? Does this just

happen in life? Am I suffering from following Jesus? But

whatever the case is, the answer is is God will

use it to make you more like Jesus. And I'm

gonna give you two warnings, Okay. One, don't over spiritualize

everything that happens. Every day. Your coffee spills and it

lands on your new shoes. God's not disciplining you. It

was a bad top conversion. They didn't put the lid

on tight, or you're just clumsy. God's not punishing you.

Number two, don't ignore conviction though. If God is convicting you,

this is where you make a big mistake. Don't ignore. Now,

getting back to not despise onundor's discipline. What does the

Bible say about people who hate discipline? They despise discipline?

Proverbs twelve to one says whoever loves discipline loves knowledge,

but whoever hates correction is are we allowed to say that?

Who would hear? Was not allowed to say this word

growing up. I wasn't allowed This was not a tier

one cussword. You guys know what Tier one is. You know,

don't you be saying that around here? Got Tier one?

I mean you get your mouth washed out soap? But

then tier two is that word you say where the

family goes. We don't say that around here. So stupid

with a tier two word. I wasn't allowed to say

stupid growing up. So when I read this scripture and

I was like, oh, stupid. The Bible says you're stupid

if you hate God's correction. And so I was like, well,

I don't feel comfortable saying stupid because my mom watches

my sermons sometimes. And so I went to the other

translations that I normally use, and guess what each one

of them said? Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. I was like, well,

I guess the word is stupid and I refuse to

apologize for the Bible and God's word. And so what

the Bible says is that those who it's not saying,

it's not talking about someone being stupid, as in, like

we're not talking IQ here. Okay. What the Bible is

saying is that if you hate correction, if you don't

allow the Lord's discipline in your life, if you don't

change your ways after being convicted, the Bible says you're

being stupid. So I didn't want to leave you there,

so I spent some time working on biblical stupidity defined. Okay,

So I felt like we needed to define biblical stupidity.

And this is, by the way, the most fun I've

had researching a sermon in quite a while. Because I

have found it, I can't wait to use it. You know,

next time I'm in an argument with somebody, and I'm

gonna be like, I'm not saying you're stupid, but the

Bible might be saying, you know, you could be being stupid. Okay,

So anyways, so what does the Bible say for those

who are being stupid? One is you're unwilling to be

held accountable. In other words, people are coming to you

and they're saying, hey, listen, you can't act this way.

This doesn't honor Christ, this is not how you're supposed

to behave, and you know, you're just unwilling to have

anybody hold you accountable. If people come and they speaking

to you, know Christians, mentors, bosses at work, if they

speak into some things you're doing that needs improvement. If

it makes you angry and it makes you mad, it

might be being stupid. If you shut the door learning

in the words, you just refuse to grow. You don't

allow any more information, no one else. There's other opinions.

In other words, you have to live in your echo

chamber and you shut the door learning. You might be

being stupid. If you're confronted with something but your pride says,

I don't care, I'm gonna do things my way, you

might be being stupid. See, I have a dog that

is biblically stupid. His name is Marty. I feed him,

I house him, I give him amazing furniture to lounge on.

He gets treats when my other dogs get treats, which

is multiple times a day. We take him to the

vet to make sure he is healthy, and he does

not care to do anything that I tell him to do.

I say, stop barking. He looks at me and barks more.

I say, don't use the restroom on that. He stares

at me as he uses the restroom on that. I

yell at him to come in the house. He just

looks at me and continues to do whatever he wants

to do. Eventually, when he comes in the house, he

takes one step at a time, looking at me. And

as a result, I don't love on Marty as much

as I love on my other dogs. Thursday night, I

got some murmurs and I said, hey, listen, if you

want Marty, you can have them. And by the way,

I'm the type of person like I love loving on

my dogs. When I come home, the first thing I

do is I walk up to my bedroom and I

put on my dog clothes and then I sit on

a couch and I'm like ace venture. I mean, I'm

just the rest of evening. I'm loving all my dogs,

but Marty. I do not go out of my way

to love on Marty. And let me tell you something.

He is a lie today only because my daughter loves him.

He's living with his own consequences because of the many

choices he has made to ignore my instructions. Now, think

about how much of the world acts this way like Marty.

God provides for them, God protects them, God heals them.

Yet they want nothing to do with God or his ways.

They want to do life their own way. See, Marty

is biblically stupid. My friends don't be like Marty. So

the Bible's clear it helps us an way to despise

the Lord's correction. The Bible says it's stupid to despise

God's question. So here's two ways that we might respond

wrongly to God's question. One, you might despise it. What

does it mean to despise it? It's kind of like

the teenager that rolls their eyes are slams the bedroom door.

In other words, they harden their heart towards correction. Or

you could resent it, and that means you grow bitter.

You're like, God, why are you doing this to me?

Are you getting angry at God instead of saying, God,

how can you grow me? Or God, can you show

me you do something? And then you get disciplined in

you and you reap the harvest, and then you're mad

at God because he didn't get you out of trouble,

and so you grow bitter. Talk to anybody who works

corrections or works the court system. They see that every day. See,

if we're honest, many of us here, when we're disciplined,

we do get We're attempted to get angry, discouraged. But

the scripture gently and says, don't go down that path.

Don't hate God's the discipline. He's not being cruel to you.

Matter of fact, it's opposite wide because the Lord disciplines

those he loves as a father, the son pay attention again,

he delights in. This is the heart of the message.

God's discipline is motivated by his love. Now, interestingly, the

Bible says something else about discipline. There's a proverb that

talks about what if a parent never corrects a child.

It says, it's almost like the parent hates the child.

So in this passage, God says, as a father, I

love you when I discipline you. But then we have

this other passage. It says, when a parent doesn't discipline

their child, it's like they don't even love them. They

hate their child. It says, whoever spares the rod, and

I'm not getting into a debate about how you punish

your child, but whoever spares the rod hates their children.

But the one who loves their children is careful to

discipline them. In other words, when we don't discipline our child,

it's not love at all. Real love is willing to

correct even when it's hard. God corrects us because he

loves us. He wants us to mature and grow and

become more like his child, and so he allows us

to be disciplined us. He convicts us because why, because

he knows the stakes are high. God doesn't want spoiled

spiritual brats who never learn obedience or wisdom. He wants

us to become mature, fruitful, christ Like and that's why

he speaks from the viewpoint of a father. Let's look

at this text again. First of all, it says, my son,

So this is a relational it's intimate, it's tender, comes

from a place of love. Thisys, do not despise the

Lord's discipline, and do not resent his rebuke. He's saying, hey, listen,

don't despise us, because you gotta understand your father, God

delights in you. Those of you have a child, her

niece or nephew. You know what it's like to delight

in your child, you know when you just even look

at them. Caitlin got a new guitar this weekend. It

doesn't sound good, and there is a show I wanted

to watch, but I just sat back and watched her.

I went caught playing, but this went off for over

an hour and I just watched her, and I just

delighted in her the same way God delights in you.

He just loves you. And you know and and and

and if you're a parent, you know that feeling of

delighting in your child, and and and you know about

this that if your child starts to run into a

busy street and there's cars coming, what do you do.

You don't just go no, you go stop. Hey, if

you could grab a hold of them, what do you

do You grab a hold of your child? As the

cards coming on and what do you do? You you

ate your child all the way and for some of us,

because it was so frantic, we might say, don't you

ever do that again? Then your trial starts to cry, right,

you scared me. My arm hurts. But let me ask

you something. Was that abuse when you grab and ate

their arm out of the way of incoming traffic. No,

that was the greatest level of love. It's not abuse.

And see, sometimes because you're God's child and God sees

you going in the wrong directions, sometimes God is gonna

yate you out of the situation, and now the discipline

is gonna hurt. It's gonna be a painful and you're like, God,

why did you do that to me? And God's saying,

you don't understand. I did this because I love you.

I pulled you buy of the fire. I pulled you

out of the harm. Yeah it hurts, but I love you,

you know I love C. S Lewis. And C. S

Lewis says things in ways, or says things in ways

that no one can and he wants to compare us

to God's masterpiece. I want you to pay attention to

this for the next couple of minutes. Okay. When he's

writing about God's discipline, he used a powerful analogy. He says,

we are not metaphorically but in very truth, a divine

work of art. In other words, you are God's divine

work of art. Now, over a sketch made to amuse

a child, say like on a napkin or something like that,

an artists might not take much troub You know, the

kid wants a picture, He'll draw him a little picture

of a duck, and here you go. But over the

great picture of his life, the work he loves, he

will take endless trouble and would doubtless give endless trouble

to it. And here's what you need to understand. Hope

you catch this. He's comparing us to God's masterpiece. And

think about this for a moment. If a painting could

fill the artist's brush, it might say owl, It might

complain every time the artist scrapes away a mistake or

adds a new stroke, and the painting says, weren't you

just leave me alone? This hurts. But the artist is

going to take endless trouble that comes from love of

the artwork, because he wants to create a divine masterpiece.

And if the artist didn't care, he would just say

good enough and walk away from the work. Though is flawed,

you are God's masterpiece. He doesn't look at you and say, man,

good enough. He goes endless trouble for you. See, God

loves us too much leave us alone in our flaws.

He takes endless trouble over you because He intends to

make you the masterpiece of his grace. And some of

us we just wish God would leave us alone and

give us an easier life. And when we want that,

we're actually saying God love me less. Speaking of CS. Lewis,

I love his quotes, and one that I've went too

many times says God whispers to us and our pleasures,

speaks in our conscious but shouts in our pains. It

is his megaphone to rouse a death world. Guy's pain

gets our attention like nothing else. When we're hurting, when

we're struggling, we're at the end of ourselves. All of

a sudden, we're just all the ears for God. We're listening,

and it's in these moments that God will use his

loud microphone of suffering to wake us up, get us

a listen, to draw us back to him before we

head out today. As we close up, can I hope

you don't mindf I just get a little personal here. See,

there's two things that I needed to root out more

than anything in my early years of Christianity. One was

my youthful pride and the other one was my constant

need for other people's approval. And God used two trials that,

by the way, we all experience these to shape me

and grow me graciously. And you know I didn't calls

you the one of these trials, but God, like a

loving father, didn't miss the opportunity to show me how

I needed to grow through these trials. By the time

I was twenty years old, I was leading a youth

group of over one hundred and twenty kids a week.

It had grown from thirty to one hundre twenty in

a year. Everything I touched it seemed to go really well.

In fact, seasoned youth pastors would meet with me all

the time and say, how do we grow our youth ministry.

I wouldn't call myself prideful. That was too sanitized. I

become cocky and arrogant. I love the Lord, I wanted

to do his will, but my confidence has shifted from

him to me. At twenty five years old, I became

the youngest associate pastor in the history of a church

that was over one hundred years old and by many

people would consider it a flagship church of our movement.

By twenty seven, I was ready to plan a church

that I thought I'd done everything right and I expected

God to bless it like no other. But in two

thousand and eight, that church plant organization canceled all the

church plants for two thousand and eight because of financial struggles.

And suddenly I found myself in Pittsburgh. And here's the thing.

I've been in ministry for close to ten years, but

now I'm in Pittsburgh, don't know anybody, And instead of

leaving a thriving church that I had worked for for

years and dreamed of for years, by the way, I

wasn't just humbled. I felt humiliated, embarrassed, even ashamed, even

though now I look back, I shouldn't have felt that way.

But here's the thing. You know, sometimes things don't work out.

But my pride was so tied up and how other

people viewed me and viewed success, I couldn't see it clearly.

But here's what God had done in his grace. I'm

now leading, at twenty eight years old, a youth group

of thirty kids. I was leading a youth group of

thirty kids at nineteen years old, and as I was

talking to God about it, I felt in my spirit, James,

I'm giving you a do over. And for the next

nine years I had a do over. Let me tell

you something. God bless that ministry, the ministry group, But

let me tell you something. I didn't brag about it.

I didn't run my mouth about it, and every time

anybody talked about, hey, how do you grow youth Grouping'm like, man,

I don't know. The Lord just does stuff and it

could be gone tomorrow, and I knew it wasn't me.

I knew it was the Lord. And that season taught

me to stay humble because I knew at any moment

things can fall the part and only God can sustain

what last. And in many ways I repeated that's those

first eight or nine years of ministry, but this time

the difference was clear. My confidence was not myself, was

in the Lord. His grace was real, but the change

He worked in me was extremely painful. The second thing

that God needed to root out of me. Was my

self esteem being so connected with how other people or

my self esteem being connected with other people's opinion of me. Well,

leading a church through a global pandemic, and that's going

to help that for me as a pastor. Leading a

church through this crisis was one of the toughest challenges

in my life. Over nine every church in America everywhere

was stoning to confuse and no public gatherings. People divided,

don't know how to respond health fears, economic fears, and

I had to make decisions that I never thought in

millionaires I would have to make. And no matter what

decision I made, somebody or some group was unhappy. I

faced criticism from all sides. It was stressful, it was heartbreaking.

But it was in that season that God finally taught me, James,

you can't please everybody. And since you can't please everybody,

there's no way you can build your self esteem on

what other people think about you. Why don't you just

make decisions that you think please me? And so I

shifted into a season and I'm still there. Of I

make decisions by principle, not by what I think will

make people happy. Now do I want to make people happy. Yes,

I'm not a psycho, but I honestly try to make

every dy decision off of a principle based from God's word.

And from time to time, as someone doesn't appreciate what

I did, I'm more than happy to meet with them

and love on them and share. But at the end

of the day, I'm not going to change my opinion

just to make them happy. I want to make Jesus happy.

And let me tell you something, God, you all went

through the same trial. And let me tell you something.

God made us a better church because we became so

much more focused on doing what Jesus wanted us to

do than anything else. Those were hard lessons. And let

me tell you something. If God came to me tomorrow

and said, here's five million dollars, would you like to

go back through that season? I would say keep it.

It was painful. Why because correction and growth is painful.

But on the other end, you become more like Jesus.

So here's how you do it at the end of

the day. Humility and teachability. Okay, remember the later on.

Remember it's only for a season. Number three draw closer

to God, not further. When people get disciplined by God,

they run away from God. When this is the time

you should draw near to God. And number four, lastly,

today fix your eyes on Jesus. Let me share one

last story that I'm done today. In nineteen fifty four,

during the British Empire Games in Vancouver, two world class runners,

Roger Bannister and John Landy faced off in the mile

and here's what they did. It was the first time

ever that two men in the same race broke the

sub four minute mile. It was called the Miracle Mile. Now.

Through most of the race, Landy was leading and it

looked like he was gonna win. But in a final

stretch with only about ninety yars ago, John Landy did

something runners are told not to do. He glanced back

over his left shoulder where Banister was. In that split second,

Banister searchs on his right side and passed him to

win the race. Later on, Landy said that glancing back

calls him to win. By the way, there's even a

famous US you of him glancing back. Could you imagine

there being a statue of you in your greatest moment

of failure? Now, why do I share that he lost

the race because he looked back when discipline hurts. Don't

look back, don't look around, look to Jesus, look forward

to what He wants to do in you through this process. See,

God's discipline isn't him against you, it's him for you,

forming Christ in you. And now we're going to enter

into a time of communion. And here's what I want

to do right now. See, when we take communion, it's

a time to remember what Christ did for us on

the cross. It's also a time for us to remember

that his body was broken on our behalf, that his

blood represented the covenant that brings forgiveness of sin. And

so what we do here when we take communion is

we simply take time to confess our sins before the Lord.

We go before the Lord and say, Lord, search my

heart if there's anything offensive in me, and then we repent.

So let's take some time. Now they're going to a

prayer time for the next couple of minutes. Search your

heart as the ushers come forward, search your heart and repent.

I'm to you now, and we thank you for your forgiveness.

Let me thank you for your grace. Thank you Jesus

for what You've done on the cross for us. May

we draw near to you today, in Jesus' name, the

ushers will dismiss you row by row to come up

and receive communion.