Best Laid Plans - Week 3

Amen.

Amen, and amen gentlemen, if you will uh come and

receive our morning giving. How many dads do we have

in the building. I just want to know how many dads?

Raise your hand? If your dad a lot of y'all,

good job, good job.

Uh.

We got just a small gift for you. Listen.

I don't know about you, but I'm always I'm always

looking for a measuring tape at the house.

Come on now.

And you know in that theme for Building for More,

we wanted to make sure that that when your wife says, hey,

go buy some blinds, that you can buy the right size. Amen.

Instead of making three trips to home depot, you can

actually go the one time.

Amen.

So uh so we want to have a we we

have a tape measure, says built for more on it

for father listen, Sorry, you got to be a dad

to get one, got to be a dad to get one,

and your only dad once if you got four kids.

That's not for tape measures, Amen, It's just one tape measure.

So uh but uh, these.

Are gonna be set up.

For you on your way out, so make sure you

grab that just as a token of our appreciation for

raising your family and being uh, the priest of your home,

thank you so much for standing in the gap and

praying for your family and fighting the wolves off and

standing in faith. You know, one of my favorite things

is is Tuesday morning Men's Breakfast. I look forward to

Tuesday morning Men's Breakfast, getting together.

With those guys and just listen. I'm just gonna be honest.

We do more laughing and fellowshipping than we do bibling.

Come on, now, you know, we get together and we

just we just share life and we talk and eat

breakfast and it's just a powerful time getting together with men.

Let me give you some some startling statistics when when

when we reach a child. When we reach a child

is the point of entry and the point of contact

into our church. Seventeen percent of the time, the family follows.

I want you to say about that. Seventeen percent of

the time, if we reach the children, the family follows.

If we reach the mother and wife, forty one percent

of the time, the family follows. If you reach the

dad and the husband of that family, eighty six percent of.

The time, the family follows to church.

Because God has designated men to be the head of

the home and to lead and be the priest. So Dad,

start inviting your friends to church, because we need spiritual

leadership at this critical time in our world, and the

only way to do that is to introduce them to

the same Jesus that you were introduced to that transforms

your life.

Amen.

Amen, If you've got a Bible, go to Psalm chapter

sixty three. Psalm chapter sixty three. I want to talk

to you today. I'm giving this the time. Daddy long legs,

Daddy long legs, Psalm chapter sixty three, starting in verse eight.

If you're there, say amen, Psalm sixty three, verse eight

that says, my soul follows close behind you.

Your right hand holds me up. Let's pray. Father.

I ask that you open our ears to hear in

our hearts to receive.

That your word would.

Change us profoundly and fundamentally. Lord, that you would make

us excellent in our walk with you today, that you

would allow us to see things we've never seen so

we can be someone we've never been.

Lord. We love you, and we thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.

You know I love the Psalms for one reason.

You know, when people write songs in the church today,

songs are written and in the back of every songwriter's

mind is will this play on the radio? Can other

churches sing this song? It's all part of the strategy,

the chord progression and the chord structures, and even the lyrics.

I can't lean too far into my denominational believings because

then other people can't sing it. And that's just the

way songs are written. But the songs are different. The

songs are different because many of these songs were never

intended to be published or for anybody to ever see.

It was someone sitting alone in a field, Come on, somebody.

It was David after he was anointed king, but sent

back to the field by his father, isolated and alone.

Just pouring his heart out to God.

The things that he wrote, probably when people began to

sing them, he thought, that's just a little bit too

come on, somebody, that's just a little bit too personal

for I believe if he knew the whole world was

seeing some of the stuff he wrote down, these were

his private thoughts, his journal to God, and they were

the very thing that lived in his heart. And this

passage in PSNG sixty three it says.

My soul follows close behind you.

One translation says my soul follows hard after you, that

there's effort, that there is a velocity at which it

can't be sustained unless God shows up. And our life's

pursuit should be to chase after the presence of God.

But I think a lot of times we hear preaching

like that from the stage and we don't understand why

why do I need to Why do I need to

chase after God's presence? After all, I can come in

on Sundays get my fix if the music is just right,

on a day like today, where the Holy spirit's moving,

I can just I can get my fix of God

and it's enough to get me through the week, or

at least through showing up to work on Monday. Come

on now that I'll worry about whatever's later. But why

do I need to chase after God's presence? And I

want to talk about why we need to chase after

God's presence? My children teach me a lot of lessons.

How many of your your kids have that you can

admit it even if they're here. How many of your

kids have taught you something? I had this experience when

when Madison was.

Just a little girl.

Probably I don't know three years old, maybe she was little,

and we'd had a one of those Georgia snow storms.

No very little snow, a whole lot of ice. Come on, somebody,

you know, we don't we don't even really know what

snow is here. We we we that's that's we get

something different. It's not the rest snow like everybody else gets.

And on this particular day, power went off, and Angie's

grandpa had decided to come pick us up and bring

us over to his house because he had a four

wheel drive truck, and everything was iced over and slippery.

And I walked down the steps and I started, and

I knew I couldn't go up the driveway because it

was gonna be slick as glass, right, So I just

went up through the yard because I knew that the

ice was sitting on top of the grass. When I

stepped on it, I would break. I'd have good footing,

So I just walked up through the yard. Well, when

I got to the top of the hill, I turned

around and here's Madison, bundled up like that kid from

Christmas Store, I mean, you know, and she's she's standing

in one of my footprints, and she's looking and I

watched her, and she's standing with both feet in my footprint,

and she jumped into my other footprint. She looked, she waited,

she sized it up, and then she jumped over into

my other footprint. And she did this all the way

up the hill to the truck can. I looked at

her and I said, baby, why, why did you do that?

And she said, because I knew if I stepped where

you stepped, everything would be okay. If you went before me,

the path was safe.

We chase after God.

Because he lays the path of safety before us, not

because we want an alter experience, not because we want

any of those tingles or goosebumps, Because the reality is

most of you. If you lived on that kind of

experience like you have when those worship moments are high

and that energy, you would be useless at work.

Amen.

If you answered the phone at your work and you

were speaking in tongues, you would get fired.

Amen.

But if you answer the phone and suddenly you're so

close to God that that spiritual gift word of knowledge

kicks in and you suddenly realize that there's somebody on

the other end of that phone that has need, and hey,

how are you doing today? And you say it not

like you said it to everybody else, but a little

bit different. Or you walk into your boss's office and

you're angry and he knows you're angry, but somehow that

peace of God just.

Sweeps over you and you're able.

To speak calmly and kindly and speak wisdom into the

situation where division normally happens. Suddenly people begin to see

that you're different, and in your heart rate doesn't go up,

and you don't get all bent out of shape and

end up having to repent for thirty minutes in the

car on the way home. Amen, because I'm walking where

the Father is leading, and I'm staying in that place. See,

here's the thing. We must be close enough to step

where he stepped. We gotta be close enough that we

can see where he's been, and that the tracks are

already laid in Psalm chapter thirty seven.

Put it up on the screen. Psalm chapter thirty seven.

It says, the steps of.

A good man are ordered by the Lord, and he

delights in his way. The steps of a good man

are ordered by the Lord, and he delights in his way.

Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down.

For the Lord upholds him with his hand. That image,

to me, is that the same image that when Peter's

sitting in the boat and the storm is brewing and

Jesus is coming across the water, and Jesus costs Peter

out of the boat, and Peter steps out, and he

begins to walk on the water, and suddenly he is

keenly aware of his surroundings. He takes his eyes off Jesus,

he begins to see, and the Lord reaches down and

he grabs him and puts him back in the boat

and delivers them safely to the other side. So many

times we're afraid to chase after God because if we

mess up.

I think a lot of people.

Are afraid to go deeper with God because they are

afraid they will fail in the process and people will

think they're a hypocrite. You're you're so afraid of being

seen as something that doesn't measure up that you never

take the step and engage in a whole new level

with God.

So we just.

Continue to live out on the current level of spirituality

where we are when God is always calling us up.

In scripture, every time we.

See God, he's ahead of us, leading us.

Or he's calling us up to a new level.

Moses said, Lord, show me your glory, show me, show

me your glory.

I want to see your face.

God speaks to Moses and he says, Hey, this is

what we're gonna do. I'm gonna put you in the

cleft of the rock. I'm gonna put my hand over you,

and I'm going to pass by you. I'm gonna pass

by you so that.

You can see the King.

James says, of my hinder parts. I'm gonna pass by

you so I can my residual glory. You can see

my tail lights, you can follow me where I'm going.

I'm gonna remove it.

You're gonna be You're gonna see where I was, and

you can pursue where I was so that you can

be where I am. That we're following God in such

a way that the circumstances and the situations don't matter.

That the glory is that the glory is not the objective.

The purpose is the objective. That where God is leading

me and how God is leading me is more important

than the situations I'm following him through right now, because

if my steps are ordered, that I'm going to be okay.

I'm not going to slip, and if I do, his

right hand.

Will hold me up.

Your father has already broken the ice ahead of you.

And if you follow, if you follow the steps that

are bigger than yours long enough, your stride changes. If

you follow the steps long enough, your stride will change.

You know.

I had my stepfather and uh he was probably uh great,

great business mind, great things, but one of the one

of the worst athletes I've ever seen in my life.

He just like when my sister was born, I thought

she may not even be able to walk. He was

that that that that bad and this and when he ran,

this is this is how he ran.

He would run like this.

We've played church softball one time, and we would occasionally

let him play, and that he would when he when

he hit the ball. And I finally looked at him

and I said, why do you run that way? And

he said what way? I said, like you run? Why

do you run that way? Why do you keep your

legs straight and only take like a twelve inch stride?

He said, well, that's the way. That's the way I

was taught to run. I said, who taught you to

run like that? He said, well, nobody. He said, I

guess I just watched other people run. I said, wait

a minute, who did you watch run like that? He said, well,

you know, now that I think of it, my dad

had hip.

Problems his whole life.

And I guess I watched him run.

So I started running. I said, do you have hip problems?

He said no.

I said, well, you're running like somebody with hip problems

because that was the model that you had. But if

you will learn to walk at the gate of God,

if you'll learn to stride like Daddy long legs, you

can begin to make progress faster than you've ever made

it in a safety that you've never had. Because God

stretches us to a new capacity. Every time he leads

us somewhere, He's stretching us to a new capacity. If

you're still living in the same level of faith, in

the same level of hope, and the same level of peace,

you're not allowing God to stretch you. You're not chasing

hard enough after him, because it will always increase your

capacity to be.

Filling the blank.

Because if God wanted you to stay where you are,

you would already be with him. If he was done

developing you, he would just call you home.

But He's not done with you. He is calling you

to a higher, deeper place.

And most of us struggle with the whole capacity of

thinking that my steps are ordered and that he wants

to protect me because we don't see him from a.

Place of light.

We see him from a place of darkness. In First John,

chapter one, verse seven, it says, but.

If we walk in the light as he is in

the light, we.

Have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ,

his son, cleanses us from all sin. Says, if we

walk in the light as he is in the light,

if I will walk from a place of illumination, understanding

that I'm not who I used to be, I just

want you to stop for just a second.

I want you to think.

If you still think about yourself the way you used

to be before God showed up, before he forgave you

of your sins, before he dropped purpose in your life,

before the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit moved into

you to guide you, to speak to you, to call

you to new places. If you still think of yourself

the same way you used to think about yourself, you

were cutting yourself short and you're not able to live

into everything God wants to be.

Because you're navigating.

Hold on, I preach myself out of that fill into

blame because you're navigating from a place of darkness, because

that's not who you are anymore. You we're not the

person that God found. You're not that broken vessel that

God rescued from the point of extinction. You're no longer

that person that did those things. Listen to me, You're

no longer that person that had those things done to you.

You're not that person anymore. God came into your life

and he wants to bring light into your life so

that you can see the next step of the Father,

so that you have that clear revelation, so that you

can chase him a little more, so that you can

have a little bit different experience with Him than you've

ever had.

Passion.

Cloud'm almost done. You guys can come and get ready.

In Genesis chapter five, verse twenty one, we find this

this unique moment in scripture. You know, when something is unique,

we should really kind of zoom out and take a

look at it.

This is the genealogy section. It's where so.

And so begat so and so and so and so begas.

It's that day that you know, when you're on your

daily reading plan, come on somebody and you get to that,

you just check it off.

And you don't read it.

Because that puts you a day ahead instead of behind,

because you know you're going to fall asleep if you

try to read it. So and so lived so many

years and begat so and so, and then they got

married and they had kids, and they lived, and then

they died. And then that person died and they had kids.

At some point I forgot when, And it's just this

list of people having kids and forgotten and living and

dying in years, and but right in the middle of it,

the cadence kind of changes, and we were introduced to

this figure named Enoch, the father of Methuselah. And in

Genesis chapter five, verse twenty one, it says Enoch lived

sixty five years and begot Methuselah. After he begot Methuselah,

Enoch walked with God three hundred years and had sons

and daughters. So all the days of Enoch were three

hundred and sixty five years.

And Enoch walked with God and he was not for

God took him.

In the middle of the God suddenly God speaks about

this guy, this guy that we don't know it yet,

but if you keep reading, you're going to find out

the father of the oldest living person to ever be

born on the face of the planet. And it says

that his claim to fame was not that, but that

he walked with God.

So passionately and so closely that God just.

Took him.

That he was there and then he wasn't.

Most people say that this was the first rapture in

scripture that God just reached down because he got so close. Jeremy,

come up here real fast. You get to be the

You get to be the main character today.

I usually get to play the part of God. I'm

gonna let him play the part of God today.

Excuse me.

God is.

Guiding with those Loah. Enochus pursuing God with everything that's

in him. He's jumping from footprint to footprints so he

doesn't slip down, and in his pursuit of God, Enoch

gets so close that you can't see him anymore. He's

just covered by the presence of God to where the

rules of the world and the nature don't apply to

him anymore. Because he's so close in his pursuit that

He's walked with God for so long that he just

simply is not That doesn't matter which way God turns.

Enochus right on his heels, warning and longing for that encounter,

to reach out and touch him, grab him, be part of.

Whatever He's going to do next. Thank you, Jeremy.

What if we were so close to God that we

weren't consumed and concerned with all of the other things

that we're concerned about.

What about this? And what if that happens? No, all

I'm gonna do is chase after Jesus.

All I'm going to do is get close enough that

nobody even sees me anymore.

It's just his purpose in me.

It's just him living and working on the inside of me.

And I'm going to get so close that one day

I don't even realize it. I'm just done, and I

open my eyes and I'm with Jesus, and the.

Transition seems so seamless, just.

Seamless, because I've walked after God so hard.

And so long. And listen, it's hard.

It's hard to walk in the footsteps of Daddy long lads,

it's hard to keep that gate.

For three hundred years. It's hard to do it for

three hundred minutes. But if we truly.

Want life and life more abundant, we'll wake up every

morning and say, show me the way. Lord, Let me

walk in the light God my steps, so I can

be where you want me to be. Believe that's exactly

what Jesus did, because he walked up the hill of Calvary,

he was walking in the steps of his father, laid

out before him a.

Destiny that was perfect, and he surrendered.

His life on that old rugged cross for you so

that there was no longer a distance, so that you

don't have to be separated anymore.

He closed the distance.

Through his death and his resurrection so that we can

walk and have an encounter with Jesus. And if you

will chase hard after him, he will reveal himself and

a wonderful encounter that transforms us time after time after time. Die.

The only way to live in constant transformation is to

first surrender your life to Jesus.

And if you're here.

Today and you you're not sure that if you died

today you would go to heaven, that's the first check.

If you don't know if you died today that you

would go to heaven, but you want that assurance. This

is your moment, every bout, every your head bowed, every

eye closed.

If you're here and you say, Pastor, I want to know.

I want to know that I'm saved, that I've given

my life to Jesus, and I don't know that.

That's you slip your head up, said that's my Pastor,

Pray for me. Pray for me.

Amen, Amen, every eye open, every head, everybody standing with me,

all over the room, Pastor Clay, we got up. We

have the pool set up, but we don't have anybody's

schedule to be baptized.

Is that correct?

But you know we went ahead and we filled the

pool up anyway, because we don't ever know.

What decision somebody's gonna make in the moment.

So if you've never been baptized, or you feel like

you need to be baptized again, that's between you and God.

I don't.

I have no theological standing one way or the other

on that. But you want to be baptized, we'll do that.

We're gonna give you just a couple of minutes to

think about it as the band sings this next song.

But if if you decide you want to be baptized today,

on Father's Day. I would love to do that. I

would love to baptize. If not, that's cool too. We're

gonna worship together, and if you want to take that step,

just meet me right down here in the front. We'll

talk through it and tell you exactly what you need

to do. But if not, we're gonna worship together. We're

gonna invite the presence of God back into this place

to meet you right there where you most critically needed in.

Your life, and see God do miracles.

Father, right now, in the name of Jesus, consume us

with your presence, draw us close to you.

As we chase after you. Do it now Jesus

A men, Amen, and Amen, Pastor play e