Almost True: Week 2

I was in a meeting and we were just talking

about some of the outreach ministries that we have going on,

and we're excited that Celebrate Recovery will be launching soon.

That's going to change a ton of lives. But I

also know that one of our kind of maybe more

not so public ministries is our ministry to those who

don't have homes in our area. And we found a

camp just right down the road from us, and we've

been going over there and helping them with supplies, food

and making relationships. Well, I heard the story this week

that as they were going around and they were collecting information,

one of our leaders noticed that, hey, this come as

soon as their birthday. And so when the group showed up,

they showed up with a birthday cake. When do you

think the last time that person received a birthday cake?

When do you think the last time they were celebrated,

sung for, loved on that right there, that's the heart

of this church. That's the heart of going and loving those,

seeing those, making sure people who maybe the world has,

let you know, gave up on We in the name

of Jesus Christ, we will be the hands and feet

of Jesus. And I was just so proud to hear that.

I'm so excited about so many more of the ministries

that we'll be launching here soon. And thank you for

your faithfulness today though we are going to continue now.

Last week I stepped on a lot of toes. I'm

fine with that, and Gina asked me, my wife, She said,

are you gonna step on any toes this week? I said, honey,

I'm gonna be sitting on laps. So this message is

another tough one and so but it's a true word

from the word of God. Let us pray. God, we

give you pray today. We thank you for the opportunity

to seek you, the opportunity to know you, the opportunity

to worship you, the opportunity to sit and receive from you. Now, God,

I just pray right now that you will allow every

heart andess room to be tender towards you today in

Jesus' name. Amen. Now, I I like to win. I

don't like losing. When I was younger, I love to

win and I hate it to lose. But as I've

gotten a little bit older, I've chilled out a lot

and I realize it's okay to lose every once in

a while. But you know, when it comes to competition,

it's kind of funny because at this point in my life,

my main source of competition is shopping. Yeah, you might

be like, what, that doesn't make any sense. Well, I love,

you know, vintage items, antiques. I love to collect sports cards,

and I love to collect, you know, little collectibles from

my childhood air. Some of you might call them toys.

I call them collectibles because they go up in value

and I don't play with them. Okay, don't worry, all right,

But I love that competition because almost everything I buy

is from an auction site, and I love the idea

of winning something, not purchasing something. It makes a big

difference whenever you say, look at what I want versus

guess what I just went out and bought. And I

just love it. And I've learned some things along the way,

because you know, first of all, I want to get

the cheapest price on something. I want to get something

for a steal. And so I've actually came up of

a system in my life that it's actually helped me

win a lot of auctions. On Umber one, I do

all my research, what are the comps, what does it

sold for? Recently. But secondly is when the auction starts,

I just keep upbidding it until you know, basically it

kind of cools off because then I realize, all right,

we're close to what people are actually willing to pay.

And then the second thing I do is, I've realized

that most people will not go up more more than

twenty five percent on the price within the last minute.

So here's what I do. With one minute left. I

type in a number and it's usually twenty six to

thirty percent higher than the last bid, and then I

just wait. I just sit there, I hold, I hold,

I hold, and when there's about eight seconds left, I

hit bid. Because what happens it takes about four or

five seconds for it to regenerate. Then it says you're

now the current high bidder, and then all of a sudden,

you can just imagine the person on the other end

they're like, oh my gosh. I they start to scramble, scramble,

but then they can't type in that number quick enough

and hit bid and I win, and I imagine them

going ah, And I'm like, no, I don't know why,

but I'm alone often in my office and I do this.

That's my greatest thing I do for competition nowa days. Now,

let me ask you something, considering that because I won,

that means that someone else had to What do you

think I care? No? I don't care. Matter of fact,

do you think I think about how maybe that's the

thing that they've been looking for for years, or maybe

it was the thing that reminded them of that one

gift that their deceased parent or grandparent got them as

a child, and they're just trying to recapture that, you know,

that moment in life. Do you think I care whether

or not they've been saving up for a long time

and they finally found the thing they dreamed of at

a price that they could afford. Do you think I care? No? No.

Do you know why I don't care? Well? One because

I actually never thought about those things until I was

writing my sermon this week. We'll tell you this. I

do care a little bit now, because you know, I

used to take pleasure in thinking about how something was

in their hands and then all of a sudden it vanished,

and now it's in my hands. I used to love

that thought, but I never thought about how some people

are actually emotionally attached to things and it could mean

a lot to them that I just want I'm gonna

put up on a shelf going yeah, anyways, why don't

I care or why haven't I cared? Let me tell

you why I haven't cared up to this point, And

that is very simple, because when it comes to most

things in life, all right, putting ourselves first is one

of the most natural things we do. Can I get

an amen? Yeah? Well, it's putting ourselves first, one of

the most natural things we do. And I can prove

it right now, ready, because you'd be like, oh, James,

I don't put myself first.

You are wrong.

Let me show you how you are wrong. Okay, ready,

here we go. Imagine, Well, don't you don't have to imagine?

Remember the last time you saw a group photo? And

let me ask you, how do you determine whether or

not that group photo is a good photo? Who do

you look at? You so some one you know, your

kid could be staring up at the ceiling. Another kid

could have their eyes closed, another kid could have hair

all over her face, and there could be rabbit here

or something. But when you look, if you look good

at that picture, guess what it is? It's good picture? Right,

can we get a name. Yeah, absolutely, that's a good picture.

Why because we naturally put ourselves first. That's just something

we do. And let me tell you something when it

comes to the world, the world encourages this. The world

encourages self obsession. See culture. It tells me to do

what's best for me. And that's why I focus on

myself so much, and I come first. That is the

anthem of our culture. But then something happens to us,

especially those of us sitting in this room. We are

raising an I am first culture. We're raising a culture

that says it's all about you, baby, and we're raising

that culture. But then all of a sudden, we come

to Christ. And all of a sudden, as we come

to Christ, we're called to lay down the culture of

the world and pick up this new culture. And the

problem with this new culture is this new culture cure

turns the old culture upside down, and it's very difficult

for us to move into a new culture. And today

we're gonna be looking at a culture setting passage and

it's gonna give us a glimpse into the type of

people that God has called us to be. Let's look

at this passage together, you're familiar with this if you've

been around here for a while. It says, do nothing

out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, rather in humility.

What you want to do. You want to value others

above yourselves. So how do you do that? You don't

look at your own interest, but you look at the

interest of others. And again this morning, God's word tells

us to do nothing out of selfish ambition, but culture

preaches the exact opposite. We put ourselves first. And you

know what, by the way, that sounds good, it feels true,

but it's not good, and it's not true. It's almost true.

And what's interesting, there's a very popular teaching today that

says this, you can't truly love others unless you want

love yourself. See oh, I didn't have to teach you that,

did I. We don't love We can't truly love others

unless we love ourselves. And so what do we do?

We put ourselves first? Or I like this line from

one of my shows Off Washington Past. They say, treat yourselves,

And I love that because we do want to treat ourselves,

and we want to put ourselves first. Be guide, because

we deserve the best. So what do we do. We

live for ourselves. We justify our actions. And if people

are in our life and they're judging us, or or

they don't make our life better, what do we do?

We cut them out of our lives? Why? Because we

come first? Again, this is a heartbreaking but very true

message from our culture. And we live in a generation

has become obsessed with ourselves. So what do we do

about it? Well, first of all, we look into God's

word and we allow our heart to be shaped by

God's words. So let's go ahead and look at this today.

It says this. And by the way, before I jump

into this again, we have Paul speaking into the future.

Paul is led by the Holy Spirit. He's writing a

letter to one of his disciples. But here's what's interesting, Paul.

As I've always seen a Scriptures as a discipleship letter,

I believe that there are some parts of Paul's writings

that are prophetic. And this is a prophetic passage here today,

And let me tell you look at it. Tell me

if this is not true, tell me if this is

not a true thing that has come true in our generation.

Here we go, let's look at it. He says, but

mark this. He says that there will be terrible times

in the last days. People, Well, they're gonna love themselves.

They're gonna be lovers of money. They're gonna be boastful, proud, abusive,

disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy without love, unforgiven, slanderous,

without self control, brutal, not lovers of good, treacherous, rash, conceded,

lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. And then

check this out. They're gonna have a form of godliness,

but they're gonna deny his power. Have nothing to do

with these people. So as we look at this, do

we see this scripture coming true today? Because at the

very beginning one of this says people will become lovers

of selfies. That's wrong, I'm sorry. I do think that's

the original Greek though, that they will be lovers of selfies,

no lovers of themselves. Do we see people being lovers

of money nowadays? Absolutely? Are people boastful nowadays? Absolutely are

people proud. See it says that they will be lovers

of pleasure rather than lovers of God. And it says

this having a form of godliness but denying his power.

All Right, I want to break down what that actually

looks like. What it's saying is that there's gonna be

a lot of people who show up the church. There's

gonna be a lot of people that have a Bible

in their living room. There's gonna be a lot of

people who are involved, you know, in a lot of

the things that the church does. And Paul says, they're

gonna look like Christians, but they're not being led by

the spirit. They're gonna look like they are followers of Christ,

but they really are just followers of themselves because they

have not been transformed by Christ. They have not been

changed by Christ. They're not truly in Christ. So they're

gonna look like their followers of Christ. They know how

to act, they know how to behave, they know how

to present themselves. But Paul says, in the last days,

we're gonna have a lot of people filling up sanctuaries

all throughout the world, yet they will not have the

spirit of God. I think we see that today. I

think this prophecy has been very, very true. And here's

what happens in the church world. When we start following

and we start you know, saying it's okay just to

live this life, but not living in the spirit. And

here's what happens. We know in our heads that we're

called to serve God, to love God, to love others.

But here's what happens. And I've seen this happen in

the church over and over again. People start to believe

that God exists to serve us. Hey, I've been a

preacher long enough to know this. Okay, I've been a

ministry for twenty five years. I've seen this. When we

have the head knowledge, we know we're sposed to love God,

love others, serve others. But here's what happens. People start

to believe that God exists to serve them and their

own interests. Paul says, this is gonna happen in the

last days, and so we may believe in God, but

it's often a self censored belief. We claim to love God,

but we really love ourselves. Just last week, I was

in a conversation with a couple of people and one

person said, you know what, I don't think I ever

want to get married again. Okay, that's fine to get married. Well,

he says, I'm not going to get married again, but

I still want to have sex. I guess I'm just

gonna have to ask God to forgive me. And you know,

it's kind of like the recker scratches in the conversation,

like what and they're like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know,

I don't ever want to get married. When one person said, well,

why don't you just get married again if you want

to have sex again, No, I don't want to get married.

So I guess I'm just gonna have to ask God

for forgiveness and He's just gonna have to forgive me.

And I'm so glad that conversation in't it very quickly after?

This was so awkward. It was such an awkward conversation.

It reminded me of a conversation I have with Michael

Thickpen a couple of weeks ago on the phone. Michael

Thickpen reminded me that, uh, you know, everyone loves to

be saved. Everyone wants Jesus Christ to save him. Everyone

wants to know they're going to heaven. Everybody wants to

be saved, but not everyone wants to be a disciple.

They want the benefits of the kingdom, but they don't

want to live in the kingdom lifestyle. And you know,

Thomas Kipps in his most incredible book, it's my favorite

book in the world besides the Bible, The Imitation of Christ.

He says this. He says that Jesus, Jesus has many

lovers of his heavenly kingdom, many lovers of his heavenly kingdom,

a few bearers of his cross. For some people, if

God doesn't do what we think he should do, if

God doesn't do what I want him to do, then

I'm not going to have anything to do with God.

It becomes a self centered version of Christianity. And here's

what's interesting, and it's mind blowing if you think about it.

In a culture obsessed, you know, culture that we are

in today, we prioritize ourselves. We do want us best

for us. But let me tell you something. In a

culture that is more focused on taking care of themselves

than probably any other culture in our history, let me

ask you a question. Are we more anxious? Are we

more worried? Are we more stressed out? And are we

more depressed than any other culture in our history? Do

you hear that in our culture today there has never

been a culture that has been more obsessed with self care.

And yet we have never had a culture that is

more anxious, worried, stressed out and depressed. And now I'm

not talking about clinical depressions, okay, I'm just talking about

that every day anxiety and depression. Here's the problem. I

think the problem is that we don't love ourselves enough.

Maybe the problem with our culture today maybe we love

ourselves too and we're so focused on ourselves that it

causes anxiety, stress, and worry and oppression because every single

thing isn't going our way every single day. And so

what do we do when we find ourselves completely the

opposite of what Jesus says? Well, will you look at

what Jesus tells us to do? So let's look at

the words of Jesus. So one day, it says that

one of the teachers of the law came up and

heard Jesus debating wants some people, and noticing that Jesus

had given us some good answers, he said, Jesus, we

need to know of all the commandments, which one of

these is the most important. So Jesus, all right, there's

two of them. Okay, the first one is simply this

the most important one, Jesus said, hero Israel, the Lord

our God, the Lord is one. And then we know this.

Love the Lord your God, with what all of your heart,

with all of your soul, with all of your mind,

and fall your strength. So he says, all right, number one,

first and foremost, love God. Put God first in your life.

The second greatest commandment. Number two. What does he say?

The second one is love your neighbor as yourself. All right,

So we got two things. Love God, love your neighbor. Okay,

love your neighbor as yourself. And he says, now there's

no commander greater than these. So we got love God,

love our neighbor. So how do you love your neighbor?

The text says as yourself. Now, here's where you get

very weird. In our culture and in theological circles. Some

people believe that the text it says love your neighbor

as yourself. It's given us a command to love ourselves.

But the scripture isn't telling us to love ourselves. Matter

of fact, Jesus doesn't have to command that, okay, And

so this if we believe that we are commanded to

love ourselves, that actually creates this false gospel. And here's

what happens when we follow this false gospel of working

on loving ourselves. See, if we believe that you really

can't love others until you love yourself. And if you

can't love others until you love yourself, here's what happens.

You put yourself first. You put yourself first. And I

want to remind you right now that Jesus didn't have

to tell us to love ourselves. Why because loving ourselves

is not a command, it's an assumption. Jesus already assumed

that we loved ourselves. Jesus assumed that we were love.

He didn't have to tell us to love ourselves. And

by the way, can I just make a confession right now?

I love myself. I like me. I love myself, and

I can prove that. I can look back over the

years of my life and I've seen moments where I

have put myself first, while where I have loved myself first.

One time I remember I was take it back this

week too. A time my best childhood friend, Wes, brought

a friend from high school who was a little bit

older in us. Brought him into his house. See, our

friend become addicted to drugs and he become a drunk.

And let me tell you something about this guy. This

guy was big, he was violent, and we knew he

could fight really good. This guy was kind of a

scary guy. And I did not like that he was

at Wes's house because I felt very nervous for Wes.

So Wes laid down some rules with him, said, if

you want to live in my house, you can live

in that bedroom as long as it takes me to

get your life back together. But here's the rules. Well,

I show up at Wes's apartment one afternoon and West says,

we just kind of got into it. Here's what he

did last night, and I had to confront him about it,

and he's not happy, and I'm like, oh, okay, all right,

are we safe? Okay, all right? So then I go

use the restroom and then I'm walking by the bedroom

and the doors close and I hear him loading a

gun clip, and so I quickly kind of scurry to

the living room like West, and I get West out

in the hallway of the apartment, go, dude's in here

loading a gun clip. Westay, No, he's not, Dudees loading

a gun clip. Let's go let's get a hold of

the police. And West like, no, he's not loading a gun,

don't worry about It's like, guy's loading the gun. Let's

get out of here. And West goes, I'm not, I'm not, no, no, no,

I'm gonna go confront him. I'm like, bus, you should

not be doing this. This is crazy doing and so

you know, and let me ask you a few questions.

When West decided to go confront him. Did I step

in front of West and say, no, my friend, I

must give my life for you. I've known you since

second grade, since we were eight years old. Did I say,

you know, let me go first, let me try to

handle this. No, no, no, no, I said, okay, I'm going

to go start the car and have it pointed towards

the road in case I hear shots. You know, I've

always been considered the smart friend. But so West goes in.

Then he comes back up to the car and he goes,

he wasn't loading a gun. Clip you know when he

was loading. Do you remember those old walkmans and you

know how you had to put all those batteries in it.

And if you listen to that through a door and

you think somebody's crazy, it does kind of sound like guns,

you know, bullets being loaded into a Cliff, but he

was just changing out music so he can calm down now.

When West tells the story, he likes to tell the

story that I ran out of the room like Wes Wes.

He's gonna kill us, He's gonna shoot us. And he

tells this whole story about how, and I don't like

the way he tells that story. I saw how it

happened in a calm, orderly manner. I said, this guy

is gonna shoot us, let's get out of here. But

here's the thing. I put myself first. I hope that

twenty some years later it would be a different scenario.

But I do know at that moment, I knew that

my safety was first paramount. See Jesus when he says

love your neighbor as yourself, he doesn't have to command

us to love ourselves. Why because there's an assumption. And

you might be like, well, James, okay, I'm with you

a little bit here, but there's some things I really

don't like about myself. How can you say I love myself?

You know I don't like myself. You know I don't

like this about me. You know I don't like that

I have some wrinkles. I don't like that my hairliner

is receding. I don't like that I have a big belly.

I'm sorry. I'm talking about myself again. I apologize. Here,

do you guys know that middle school girls, I'm so sorry.

If you're in middle school, rate your hand. I'm so sorry.

This is gonna be painful middle school girls, if they

choose to be not our kids, because C ATC kids

are the best kids on this whole earth. But yeah, yeah,

but other kids not like you. They're really mean. Middle

school girls are really really mean. They can be. And

I went home for Christmas and I show up and

there's my brother's kids, and he's got a middle school daughter.

And she walks over to me like, oh, what did

you do to your hair? And then she started touching

my bald spots and she said, look how far your

your hairline goes back. That's worse than any buy in

our family, No one goes back this far. Then we

had to have a long discussion about the hairlines and

the history of our family, which was not awesome. And

then she kept saying it it just doesn't look good.

It doesn't look good, and I'm like, it looks good.

There's some really old ladies who told me it looked good. Listen, listen,

it looks good. And she kept touching it, and then

she's like, ugh, well, too bad, I already got her Christmas.

I wish I could have took it back. But anyways,

we're sitting there, and about five different times during Christmas,

I just happened to glance over her direction, and then

she would just silently look at me and go, I

don't like her anymore. If I win to lottery, I'm

paying for her brother's college, not hers. All right, So

there's some things I don't like about myself. But do

you think that because there's some things I don't like

about myself that it means that I don't love myself. No, Actually,

because I love myself so much it drives me nuts

that there are some things that I don't like about myself. See,

I don't like those things about myself because I love myself.

Does that make sense? It's not because I don't love myself.

It's because I love myself that these things bother me. Now,

here's what I'm gonna do for the remaining time, the

few minutes we have left. Here's what I want to do.

I want to transition. I want to talk about what

Jesus tells us to do, how Jesus tells us to live.

And so let's go ahead and look at this. Now.

I wanna have to give you a little bit of

context for you to understand this passage that we're gonna

look at. Okay, because first of all, Jesus is with

his disciples. They're going to Jerusalem, and so he starts

to explain to hey, when I get to Jerusalem, first

of all, I'm gona be arrested, I'm gonna be tortured,

I'm gonna be killed. But three days later, I'm gonna

resurrect God. It's gonna resurrect me. And when Peter hears this,

he says, there's no way we love you. We're never

gonna let that happen to you, Jesus. And then Jesus

says to him, get behind me, Satan. In other words,

Jesus calls Peter Satan. By the way, that should be

one of the goals in your life to never have

Jesus call you Satan. But anyways, and so then Jesus

says this. In response, he says, if you want to

be my disciple, you must deny yourself and take up

your cross and follow me. Jesus says, whoever wants to

be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their

cross and follow me. In other words, if you want

to be my disciple, you got to deny yourself. You've

got to take up your cross. Now, when Jesus says

this to these disciples, there was probably an audible gas. Okay,

because you gotta understand that this wasn't like, you know,

we hear this sometimes, like take up your cross. That means,

you know, be nice, go to church when you can,

catch up on YouTube when you can't, you know, just

you know, just kind of just flow with things, serve

a couple times a year. And no, no, no, no.

When Jesus says take up your cross, it was a gas.

He says, if you want to be my follower, take

up your cross. This would have shocked his disciples. Here's

why you have to understand the context, why they would

have been besides themselves, and why this was such a

big deal. When Jesus says this, because he's referring to

the language, the hearkens back to one of the bloodiest

moments in Jewish history and so we find this actually

mentioned in Acts chapter five. What was going on was

Jesus's disciples. After he passed away, they continued to preach,

and the Sanhedrin wanted them to shut up. So they

have this discussion about how to get Jesus to shut up.

While they're discussing it, they mentioned one of these rebellions

that Jesus alludes to when he says take up your cross.

Let's look at this, it says. Then he addressed the

Sanhedrin men of Israel. Consider carefully what you intend to

do to these men talking about the disciples. And let's

think about a couple examples. Okay, some time ago, Theodesk

appeared claiming to be somebody, but then four hundred men

rallied to him, and then guess what, he was killed

and his followers went away verse thirty seven. After him,

there was Judas a Galley and not Judas Iscariot. He

appeared in the days of the Census, and he led

a band of people in revolt. He too was killed

and his followers were scattered. So just here's some context.

Thirty years before Jesus says take up your cross, there

was a moment where a lot of Jewish people said,

you know what, the Roman government is charging us way

too high of taxes. So here's do let's revolt and

let's take over the Roman government and let's kick them

out of here. Big, big, big mistake. Rome crushed them,

killed a bunch of them, and then for those who

were left alive, they did this thing where they said,

now take up your cross, and each one of them

they were given a cross, and they would take up

their cross and they would have to march through the

city in front of everyone, and then the Roman soldier

would say, lay your cross down. And when you would

lay your cross down, that's when they would crucify you

without any clothes on, so that you were further humiliated.

And then they would stand you up and you would

be crucified. But here's the messed up part. The Roman

government said, you are forbidden to take these dead bodies down.

And historians tell us that these bodies of these people's

relatives stayed up sometimes for years, and it was a

reminder every single day, do not rebel against Rome. You

are not in charge. We are in charge. And there's

a good chance that when he was talking to the

disciples that some of the disciples when they were young.

They have some family members that they can remember that

were hung up on these crosses. So when Jesus says

take up your cross, it meant something different. It meant

that you die to yourself, that you are not number one.

That it's not your agenda first, it's not your desires first,

that it's about Jesus. I like how Paul says it,

because Paul says, here's what it means to follow Jesus.

He says this in galatious to you. He goes, I have

been crucified with Christ. I no longer live, but Christ

lives in me. So then I now live my life

in the body, but I live it by faith for

the son of God, who loved me and gave himself

for me. In other words, I no longer live, but

when I come to Christ, I die to myself. I

crucified my old sinful nature, and now my life belongs

to God. I give my life to God, and He

leads my life. He guides my life. It's no longer

my life. It's not about me. Christ lives in me.

So here's what I want to do. I want to

begin the work of the Holy Spirit. You know, my

prayer today is a holy spirit begins to work in you.

So I'm gonna ask you a couple questions and I'm

praying that God will speak to you in deep way. Say.

First question is this, let's look at it and what

area of your life are you loving yourself more than

loving God and loving others? And then there's a second question.

I want to get to what is God calling you

to do about it? What is God calling you to

do about it? And before we get to that and

give you some time and respond, you know, I when

you have messages like this where you're calling people or

you're calling people to lay it all down, I think

it's always important for me to share how God has

called me to lay some things down, and you know,

it's not things I really want to share. But six

months ago, God and he had been working on me

for a while and I finally submitted. But God had

been talking to me about my health. I don't like

to talk about my health. I don't want to talk

about my health why because it conjures up shame and

God starts saying, you know, you really need to do

something about your health. So six months ago I started

a much healthier lifestyle, and the reason I felt like

God was calling me to do that was one is

I could get through the ministry day. But once the

ministry day was over, I didn't have anything left over

for anyone else. And God was saying, how can you

love others? How are you going to be able to

do all that I need you to do if you're

war out and exhausted all time? And so you know,

I made a lot of changes and come hunting season,

guess what, I felt pretty good. I felt really good.

But then while I was up hunting and having some

time by myself, and during that time off, God started

to speak to me about something even deeper. And this

I did not appreciate. See, I've always daydreamed about retirement.

I started working. My family had a family business, so

we were always working. And I started a ministry full

time at twenty. So I'm forty five, but I've been

ministry full time for twenty five years. Forgive me for

a daydreaming about retirement, okay, And so I've always been

daydreamed about retirement. I read all the articles on how

much money you got to have the retire and then

I talked to my wife, felt what we need to

do to set ourselves up for retirement. We've had that

conversation a ton of times. And then God started to

speak to me and again, this isn't for you, but

this is what God's been speaking to me. And God's

been asking me to forego that dream, to not have

a retirement day, to get retired, not to retire, to

preach and do ministry until somebody says, you really got

to stop this. Now, what does that? Now that's a

big deal. And I struggled with this and struggled with

this and struggle with this, and finally I just handed

over to the Lord, like, all right, I'm done with

the retirement dream. So I'm going to give up that

American dream. I don't have a finish line now in

my life. And also it's kind of really real now

that I'm sharing that with everybody, because I got a

whole group of people that hold me accountable to, especially

those of you who are younger who will be around

for that.

Sorry about that, but it's not my life, and.

I think there's times will be. God speaks to us

and says, lay this, now, take up your cross and

follow me. And so as we close today, here's what

I want to do. I'm take some time to process,

to pray, and I believe that the Holy Spirit is

going to speak to your heart today. And so here's

the question for you today that I'm going to ask

you to ask the Lord here this morning, and what

area of your life are you loving yourself more than

you're loving God and loving others? And then secondly, what

are you going to do about it? And so let's pray,

and I'm gonna give you a few moments to respond

quietly while you're at it's our sanctuary. God wants to

talk to you today. Holy Spirit. We ask you to

speak to us now. Please do not withhold yourself the

Holy Spirit speak to us clearly today