Beach House - Week 1

Amen. Amn.

So we're moving into a brand new series and uh,

you know this one is it's all about where every

single one of us live. The the series, Uh we're

calling it Beach House because it's all about learning to

rest and relax, uh in the presence of the Lord

and how we do that. And when we talk about

did you know that that Americans now listen, you know

we we we are called the land of privilege, We're

called the land of excess, We're called the land of plenty.

We're called and we truly are that place. We truly

are that place. But did you know that Americans work

more than any first world country, that Americans get less

vacation time and are more stressed than any other first

world country in the world. We we we run, and

we do and we chase things. We we chase that

that materialistic level that feels beneath because we compare it

to all of the all of the opulence and all

of the the just growth amount of things that we

have here in America. And we apply ourselves and we

compare ourselves to those things, and we we do ourselves

a disservice as we chase things that we don't need

in order to try to make ourselves feel better about

working as long as we work. Come on, somebody, and

I want you to know that it's not healthy to

run at that level. And I also want to go

ahead and tell you that I know I don't have

the high moral ground here. I want you to know

that that I'm preaching uh and I'm here with you.

I'm not preaching to you. Come on, somebody, because I'm

the world's world about running and going until I can't

go anymore. And that's just the method that I have

adopted over my life. And when I get so tired,

I just crash and then I don't do anything until

I'm able to get back up and do it again.

That's just the system that I've adopted. And I want

you to know, in the core value of transparency, that

that is a bad way to manage life and energy

and health and all of those things. Amen. So, now

that I have repented to you and got that out

of the way, and you know, I don't think I've

got this all figured out, let's see what God has

to say about these things. Because when we look at rest,

when we look at relaxation, there's really three areas of

our life that this applies to, and there's spiritual disciplines

that aid us and help us in all of these

different areas. You know, there is an emotional fatigue. Come on, somebody,

how many of you raise your hand if you know

what I mean when I say emotional fatigue. You've been there,

You've you've experienced that. You're experiencing it right now. Yeah, yeah,

some of y'all raise your hands higher right there, you know.

And then there's physical fatigue. You know, it's just like

when you're tired, you just you sit down in the

chair and you go to sleep because you're just physically

worn out. And then there's spiritual fatigue. It's like, uh,

you know, you pray that prayer and it feels like

it's bouncing off the ceiling and you've got to get

out of the way because the recoil is gonna knock

you unconscious. That's spiritual fatigue. Like we pray and we

feel like God's not moving on our behalf. We pray,

we feel like God's not hearing us. Or sometimes when

we're spiritually fatigued, we pray we think God hears us

and he just laughs. Amen. I mean I've been there too.

It's like, God, I know who you are, but was

I wrong about who you are? Are you enjoying the

place that I'm at right now? And when we look

at that, if we're truly going to operate in kingdom

what I call kingdom energy, right that that supernatural energy

that allows us to achieve more than we ever thought possible,

we need to kind of have alignment in all those

areas of our life. And I want to start with

the area that probably one hundred percent of us will

according to show of hands, one hundred percent of us,

I struggle the most, and that's emotional fatigue. In Matthew

chapter eleven, verse twenty eight, it says, come to me,

all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I

will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and

learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart,

and you will find rest for your souls. For my

yoke is easy and my burden is light. Let's pray, Father,

I thank you for your mercy and your grace. Lord,

Your word is the only change agent on the face

of the planet. And I pray that right now you

give us ears to hear in a heart to receive

that your word would be planted deep at the foundation

of our soul and bring a harvest of life that

revolutionizes every area. Father, we give you glory and honor

and praise in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You know, I don't know why I adopted this philosophy

of life. I don't know where it happened, and I'm

working on it actively right now. But I'm in a hurry.

Everything I do, every single thing I do, I do

it in a hurry. Now I have a daughter. My

oldest daughter is the exact polar opposite. She's never in

a hurry for anything. It's like she moves in what

I consider sloth pace in every single thing she does.

When she's home, she will say things like this. She

will say, just tell me when to be ready, and

I'll be ready. Just tell me. And then I get concerned,

right because it's fifteen minutes before time and she still

hadn't started getting ready. Now she thinks she knows how

long it takes to get ready. Obviously she doesn't because

she's not ready. When I sweent well, she doesn't follow

through on her end of the deal. She's never ready

at the time because she has also set an arbitrary

time of when we should be there and when she

thinks it's appropriate to show up right. But I have

watched her life, and I have watched the fact that

she manages, you know, that that anxious state of being

so much better than I do. Because if I'm supposed

to be somewhere at eleven, I tell my family we

need to leave at ten thirty. I'm sitting in the

car at ten fifteen.

Amen.

Because there's just this always, this this need, this invisible

pressure to always be early and to always exceed expectations.

And you know what, Nobody places that pressure on me

except me, you know. Pastor Clay and I we had

this in depth conversation a few weeks ago about the

pressure we put on ourselves as staff pastoring the church,

because there are these invisible expectations that we put on

ourselves that you don't even think about. Come on, somebody,

and it's not just here, but you do the same thing.

You place these responsibilities, or you place these deadlines or

these pressures on yourself that don't really exist. We're always

trying to make sure somebody's not disappointed, or to make

sure somebody has this, or to make somebody has that

or to make sure everybody sees or and we operate

under this anxiety load that's just simply not manageable, natural,

or sustainable. And when we become emotionally fatigued. Listen to me,

When we become emotionally fatigued, the enemy doesn't even have

to attack us, but he does. The fall did something

to our bodies that make us react negatively to stress

and anxiety, and we release this crazy chemical called cortisol.

And cortisol causes all kinds of physical issues, but it

comes from an emotional source. When you worry, when you're stressed,

when you have anxiety, when all of those things happen,

it causes you to have high blood pressure, It gives

you susceptibility to diabetes. So many things that this chemical causes.

And it has nothing to do with physical health. That

has everything to do with emotional health. Everything to do

with emotional health, but it causes physical problems because we

are tied completely together. Let me read this passage of scripture.

Jesus says, come to me, come to who, now, Let

me just paint a picture. I mean, I know this

is not y'all, but I mean somebody else may hear this,

so it it's for them. I know it's not for y'all.

But you know, things get a little tight financially, right,

Things get a little tight, little snug. Come on, somebody say, snug.

Don't live I don't live in deficit.

It's just snug. Come on, now if things get a

little snug.

And the first thing we think, the first thought in

our mind is I need to go work more in

order to make ends meet or to create margin. So

I start stressing. But Jesus says, listen, don't go to work.

Come to me. And you're like, oh, well, Jesus is

not paid a single one of my bills. And that

may be true. I mean, he's not writing checks for

me usually either. But here's the problem. It's not just

the money thing. Jesus says, come to me. Come to

me because I hold some answers that you might not

see yet. I have an angle on the situation that

maybe you don't fully grasp yet. I may be able

to give you some peace in an area so that

you can fill in the blank. Because when we come

to him, he has a holistic view of our lives,

and he's standing outside the pressures on he's standing outside

of that weight and that heaviness that we feel every day,

and he has insight into things that if we come

to him, he can share and pour into our lives.

He says, come to me, all you who labor and

are heavy laden. Come to me, all you who labor

and are heavy laden. Now I will point out this

though he does not come to He did not say

in this passage of scripture, come to me, all you

who are lazy and looking for a handout. I mean

that sounds fun, but it plays both ways, right, I mean,

it does play both ways. He doesn't say, listen, I'm

not your I'm not gonna do everything for you. The

first principle, the first institution he put in place, was work.

He told Adam, he said, get busy, and Adam didn't.

He told Adam to take the beauty in the garden

and to spread it to the rest of the world.

And how do we know he didn't because when they fell,

they were still in the middle of the garden. That's

where the enemy was. Because Adam wasn't doing what God

called him to do. Had they been doing what God

called them to do, they wouldn't have been close enough

to the tree to fall in the first place. Just

the thought, just the thought. He says, come to me,

all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I

will give you.

Man what a.

What a passage of scripture, and I will give you rest.

And then he says how he's gonna do it. He says,

take my yoke upon you, and learn from me. That's

the part we struggle with and learn from me because

we want the rest of the Lord. We want to

rest in him, we want to fall into his arms.

We want to find ourselves in that place. We want

to enjoy who he is and not have the worry.

But we also have to understand that it's about learning

from him. And some of the things he calls us

to make us really uncomfortable, some of the things he

asks us to do. We even say, well, this is

this is just the way I am, This is just

this is just who I am. I can't not do that.

I can't I can't make myself do that. It's just

God just wired me this way. God just made me

this way.

Listen, if you were born that way, be born again.

Amen. If you feel like that's tied to your DNA somewhere,

understand that you know, our faith has nothing to do

with a bloodline anymore. It's all about a faith line.

Jews track themselves back through the blood of Abraham. We

track ourselves back through the faith of Abraham. It's a

completely different story. And it's not tied to our genetics whatsoever.

It's tied to our faith. And we reach a point

where we understand that I'm exhausted and I'm not effective,

and I'm not efficient, and I'm not making a difference

because I'm so stinking exhausted all the time, and I

have worried myself into a state of sickness, and I've

self medicated to the point where I've become addicted to

and listen, I'm not even talking about I am talking

about substances, but not just substances. I've become addicted to

sitting at home and just watching Netflix on binge all

the time because I don't want to think about anything else.

And then I don't even know how it happened, but

i wake up and I'm surrounded by pringles, cans and

mountain dew bottles. Come on, somebody, and it's we got

to have crowd mics. I mean, that was just.

That is.

And we find ourselves in that place and we don't

know how it happened, But what happened is we didn't

do the learn from me part. We just accepted that

the way things are are the way things are always

going to be. And I'm just I just have a

high propensity to stress and anxiety and worry and gossip

and anger and all of those things. And we have

just simply turned ourselves over to the enemy and allowed

our vices to define us. And if that's the place

we are, we will never find a place of rest.

I'm gonna be honest with you. I have seen lots

of people who live a life of addiction, and I've

never seen a single person living a life of addiction

that I would quantify, classify, defined as a rested person. Never,

it doesn't matter what the addiction is, there is no rest.

He says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me,

for I am lowly in heart, and you will find

rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and

my burden is light. My burden is light. Now is

there a burden that comes with serving the Lord? Yes,

there is, but it's light. It's light because it's super

naturally carried. It's light because it rests in the anointing

that's already on the inside of you. See, every single

one of you are anointed for a purpose and a task,

and the burden of the Lord is tied to that,

and the anointing makes things easy. The anointing makes things manageable.

The anointing is the anointing destroys the yoke or the

bondage of the enemy in our lives and other people's lives,

and we can enter into that rest. But if we

keep looking for things that we think will fulfill us

rather than the things that will fulfill us i e.

The plan and purpose of Jesus, we're always going to

be stressed out, worried, tired, exhausted people always. And when

we're emotionally exhausted, we can't emotionally connect, we can't give ourselves,

we can't be selfless. We just simply exist and move

through life. And the times we have to guard ourselves

the most are in times of immense life change, when

we're going through through some kind of life change, when

we lose somebody or someone is born, or we lose

a job or we get a new job or school

starts back or what these times of life change. It's

when it's the easiest for us to make changes in

the life in our lives. But it's also our most

vulnerable moments because those things lead to emotional exhaustion. And

if we're already emotionally fatigued because we're not leaning into

the plan and purpose.

Of Jesus, it's just helping it. I know this is

a little different than what I don't know? Is this okay?

Ever, somebody say, amen, If we're not leaning into that,

when we go through those times of life change, it

becomes devastating and crippling. That's why you look back over

your life and you think, oh wow, you know what,

some of the hardest times were some of what should

have been the happiest times. Some of the hardest times

were those moments where it seemed like everything was going right,

but I just felt so bad.

You know. Uh.

If Philippians chapter four, verse six, Paul writes, be anxious

for nothing. There are a few things I'm gonna ask

Paul about when I get to heaven. Uh. This is

one of them. Uh you know.

Uh.

The other one is count it all joy.

You know.

I'm like man you're just he was just further along

than me. Come on, somebody, you know. But but I

think Paul is seeing something that we don't see. Paul

is coming to the place where he has been under

such immense persecution in his life, so many trials and tribulations,

that when he looks at anxiety, he wasn't coming to

that from the place that we come for. He said, Listen,

I was shipwrecked. I was shipwrecked. I was bit by

a snake. I got stoned a couple of times. I

got beat up a couple of times. I was stranded

out into cold with no coate. I've been through some stuff. Hey,

you know what, be anxious for nothing. If God brought

me through that, God can bring me through anything. I

don't have to have anxiety. I don't have to have

that self imposed pressure pushing against me because God has

already proven himself time and time and time again. You know,

we are a selfish people who demand that God continues

to prove himself after he has already proven himself time

and time and time again. Every time I ask God

for something, I say, but it's okay if you don't.

And it's not a lack of faith because I feel

like God has already done so much. Ange and I

were in the truck coming down the road, and she

looked at me and she said, you know what, we

have such blessed lives. And my honest response to that was,

I have deep best life in the whole world. I

would not trade my life with anybody anywhere for anything,

because this is the one that God has for me.

Billy Graham was approached by a group of politicians and

they asked him to consider running for president. They said,

Reverend Graham, we want you to go, and we believe

that you would be a great leader for our nation.

And with your name recognition and your popular larity, we

believe that you could come into office and that you

could fix the woes of America. Billy gram says, you've

asked me to pray, So I'm going to go, and

I'm going to spend one day praying, and I will

come back and I'll give you my answer tomorrow. So

he went and he prayed for a day, and he

came back and he sat down in the meeting and

he said, gentlemen, I'm so honored and flattered that you

would consider me putting me up for that office and

getting behind me. But I want you to understand that,

after much prayer, I have decided not to take a demotion.

And they looked at him and they said, uh, we're

talking about the president of the United States. He said, right.

And doing anything other than what God has designed me

to do as a demotion in life, not a promotion,

because it's not about what we do. It's about who

we are. And when we can rest in who God

created us to be, we don't have to be anxious

for anything, he says, be anxious for nothing, but in everything,

in prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. Let your requests be

made known to God. And here's true rest, and the

peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your

hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. He says, here's how

you get it. Here's how you stay emotionally rested. Number

One prayer prayer.

You know, we.

Could go through all the different ways and the different

methods of praying.

You know.

I use this thing I call prayer circles, and it's

just an idea web and I write something down in

the middle of a page and I circle it and

I dry a little offshoots, and then.

I pray about that, and I pray about that, and

I pray about that, and I pray about that. Then

I pray about those things. I pray about those things,

and it just kind.

Of grows over my notebook, and you know, I have

one for my kids, have one for my wife, have one,

you know, all these things, and I go through that.

But here's a way. Here's where I want you to

start if you truly want to master the discipline of praying. Now,

that's complicated, so you may want to write this down.

So I mean, I'm gonna go through as fast as

I can, and we're gonna get out of here in

a in a you know, a normal amount of time.

But I need you to write this down so that

you don't miss any of it. Talk to him. That's it.

Just talk to him. And if you're that kind of

person who you think to yourself, you know what, I'm

gonna spend some time in prayer this week, and then

you get to the end of the week and you

realize you didn't pray. Here's another amazing spiritual discipline method.

Take out your phone and set an alert that repeats

every day. Amen. And in that little tag spot put

pray dummy. Now those things that language works for me.

I mean, you may you want to put pray beautiful

pray has I put pray dummy? Come on somebody, And

when it goes off, I look at my phone and

I think, oh, dummy, you hadn't prayed yet. It's time

to pray. And I just stop right then and I

pray now. First of all, I don't set that alarm

to go off at three o'clock in the afternoon when

it's my busiest time. I said it in a time

that's already a down time. But then I just need

that little reminder to turn off alone and talk to God.

I love those survival shows. If I ever get picked

for that, I'm gonna take sabbatical. Amen, I'm gonna go

out there. I'm gonna see how long I can just

last into wilderness. My plan is to bury myself in

the leaves, and I think I got enough preserve that

I can outlast everybody building houses. That's crazy. I just

lay down prayer. The second one is gratitude. He says, hey,

come to me with some thankfulness. Gratitude. Here's a discipline

that will leave your soul refreshed and start you on

the day. When you open your eyes in the morning,

before you put your feet on the bed, tell God

three things you're grateful for. Just three things you're grateful for.

And when you start out listen. It's okay the first

two or three weeks you start doing that, just name

the same things over and over again. But then once

you get in the habit of gratitude, I want you

to make sure that when you wake up and you

name those three things, that you don't repeat any of

those things for one year. So when you wake up

and you start tracking that, the first time you wake up,

it's going to be Lord, thank you for my job,

thank you for my bed, thank you for my family.

Right because we're thankful for those things. Then the next

day it may be, Hey, thank you for my car,

thank you for coffee, and thank you for a warm shower.

When you get about two months down the road and

you can't repeat any of those things again, you really

have to start digging deep to find gratitude. And when

we master the spiritual discipline of gratitude, it's when we

start having to dig deep to find those things we're

grateful for. God. I'm grateful for the fact that I'm

able to find peace in the most difficult times in life. God,

I'm grateful that you found me where you found me,

and you loved me anyway, and oh yeah, that you

didn't tell anybody where you found me. And we start

having to dig deep and find those areas of gratitude.

And then when that pressure comes, we've already established that

we're going to live gracious lives with an attitude of gratitude,

and that attitude of gratitude is an equalizer and it

pushes back against that pressure because even if I lost everything,

what has God done for me so far? And how

blessed am I that He just put me where I am,

when I am, and who I am. And then the

last spiritual discipline just kind of to balance that emotional

pressure and fatigue that we feel. And it's one that Christians,

really especially Christians in the Western world, have really pressed

gets because it just kind of sounds and feels a

little new agy you know, I think the enemy has

built it that way because it's one that can make

the biggest difference in our lives. And that's meditation. And

I'm not talking about that's not what I'm talking about,

not talking about Buddha. I'm talking about taking a passage

of scripture, a principle of the Lord, and practicing just

filling your life, your lungs with just deep breaths of

air and it just kind of oxygenate yourself. Do you

know that most of you don't breathe enough that you

that you work at an oxygen deficit. Learn to breathe

deep the way God created you, To breathe as if

it is both your first and your last every time

you breathe, and then just allow the principle and the

presence of the Lord just to sink out of your

mind and into your heart. Because it's one thing to

have God's principles and word and promises in your mind.

It's a completely different thing to have it in your heart.

And when you've trained the filter of your mind to

let God's stuff through to your heart, it's completely transformational,

completely transformational. Laura's laugh because she thinks I'm gonna tell

the coffee filter story right now, and I'm not going to.

I might as well as I mentioned it. You know,

when I went to work at this very large church,

my office was right beside the breakroom so I had

the task on my first day of making the staff coffee.

Now that was my job. I went. I made sure

the coffee pot had coffee. Here's the thing that I

never made coffee before. They never gave me any instructions.

I didn't ask how because it was kind of embarrassing

that I was a grown man and I didn't know

how to make coffee.

Amen.

It kind of folded all the way back to when

I went away to college and I didn't know you

had to put soap in the washing machine. I washed

my clothes for an entire semester without ever using soap

because I thought when you put the quarters in, it

did it all for you.

Amen.

So I start making this coffee, and you know, the

first day, you took the thing, you put it the filter,

You put it in there, and you put the coffee

on top of you push it in, you mash the thing.

The coffee comes out of the bottom. Done.

I'm like easy.

The second day, I pulled the thing out, put the

coffee in, push it in, mashed the button came out.

Third days, did the same thing. On the fourth day,

my phone rang and Bishop Lant said, Hey, Steve, can

you come up here to my office for a second,

and I said, yeah, man, So I went up, and

first of all, we're really good friends. Know I'm just

I'm so happy I'm working there. We're impacting people, reaching

people all over the world. And he said, hey, are

you making coffee? And I said, yeah, did you want

me to bring you coffee? I'll go get it. He's like, no, no, no,

I got a call, he said, but come here, come here, come.

He said, what is this stuff floating in my coffee cup?

And I looked at that and I said, I don't

know what that is.

He said, it kind of looks like nats. He said, oh,

it's not. He said, I know what it is. He said,

it's coffee grounds. He said, did you use a filter

when you made the coffee?

I said, we, yeah, everybody knows you have to use

a filter. I said, I'm and I've only been using

that one for four days, so I don't understand why

that's happening. I just kept putting you coffee over the

old coffee and running the water through it to the

point where the filter gave up and it allowed the

stuff that it was supposed to filter out to drop

in and make a coffee, that's a bad thing. But

when we're talking about the principles of the Lord, training

the filter to allow the grounds to drop into our

heart is a good thing because the filter rejects the

things that are not supposed to be in there. But

most of us have not trained our mind. And the

way you train your mind is through the spiritual discipline

of meditation, where it's not about quantity of reading, it's

about quality of ingesting the word of God. Clay, you

guys can come and get ready. But here's the thing.

We've laughed and we've come to some realizations. But the

truth is we have to have a firm understanding of

what Christ does for us when he brings us into

the kingdom. And Second Corinthians, Chapter five, verse seventeen is therefore,

if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

All things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new.

Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us

to himself through Jesus Christ, and is given to us

the ministry of reconciliation. That is that God was in

Christ reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses

to them, and is committed to us the word of reconciliation.

He says, listen, all of those things that are chasing you,

come on, somebody. All of those things that you've done,

all of the mistakes you've made, all of the people

you've heard, all of the wrongs you've perpetrated, those things

that are chasing you, that are bringing this stress on you,

that are bringing this emotional guilt on you. He said, listen,

when you've come to me, all those things are gone.

Those things are passed away. When when when you, when

you repent and you turn from those things, Jesus washes

that junk away and he remembers it no more. It's gone.

You're cleansed from it. Those things have passed away, and

all things are new, the limitless possibilities and potential that

lie inside your destiny and your purpose that God has

waiting for you. He's canceled the old and he's awakened

you to the new. And that new is filled with

a burden, that's light, It's filled with peace and joy.

Love.

Right now, in this place, for just a few moments,

some of you have experienced a lack of pressure that

you haven't experienced in so long. But the Lord wants you.

To leave walking in that same piece. It's not.

Magical, but it is supernatural that you can come to.

Him and lay those old burdens down and you can

take up his yoke. Today, everybody's standing with me all

over the building. If you're here and you've never asked

Jesus give you of your sins, you're.

Still living under that guilt and that shame.

Of all of those sins committed.

You haven't.

You haven't asked Jesus to cleanse you.

Of those things. And if that's you, in just a moment.

I'm going to count to three, and I'm gonna ask

you to step out and make your way to the front.

What second.

I know we've already prayed for needs, but I believe

there's maybe two or three people that you just feel

like the pressure you're under is about to crush you.

Because you don't know how you're you're going to manage,

and it's it's taking a toll on you physically now

because of the emotional weight you've been under.

If that's you, I want to pray for you. So

I'm going to count to three. If you're here and

you want to accept Jesus for the very first time.

I want you to come.

If you're hearing you feel like life is about to

crush you. When I get to three, I want you

to come. If you understand prayer, I want you to

pray right now. I want you to pray right now,

the sign of the distraction at the enemy will be

canceled that people would feel at peace to come. It's

on the count of three, that'sk you. When I ask

Jesus to save me, forgive me of my sins to

be the lord.

Of my life.

Or I feel like life is about to crush me.

One of those two things.

When I count to three, don't look around to see

if anybody else is moving. You step out and you

move one, two, three, step out and move right now.

Come on, come on, come on, amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen.

There's somebody's still hanging on. Somebody's still hanging on.

Let's turn loose and calm amen, Amen, Amen, Amen.

Pastor Class worst

M HM