Unqualified Success

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And now, here is this week's message.

I've heard a lot of graduation speeches in my three plus decades of ministry.

I don't plan on giving one today.

Um, I've given four myself graduation speeches.

I helped my daughter craft two.

She spoke at the high school graduation or college graduation, um, and I've sat through countless others.

Uh and each speech shares kind of um this idea of trying to inspire and try to challenge.

One of the best ones, you could actually go, you can go online and you could listen to a retired Navy Admiral.

You may have already heard it at the University of Texas.

He gave us he gave his whole commencement speech was on Make Your Bed, and it was fabulous.

This one doesn't reach to that level, but I saw one in 2025 I really, really liked, and I thought I'd play you a segment of that.

Let's make sure the audio is up from the get-go.

Graduates, today you enter the real world, ready for whatever lies ahead, except for the following, which you are likely to find exceedingly difficult.

Going to a nine-to-five job, doing your taxes, putting on a duvet cover, taking off a duvet cover, realizing you're never gonna go to the gym.

This guy knows what I'm talking about.

In summary, life is hard, but saving money by bundling your home and auto with progressive is easy.

Oh, oh yeah.

Deciding what's for dinner every night for the rest of your life.

Thanks.

Okay.

Today's graduation service sponsored by Progressive.

But it's pretty practical, isn't it?

You have to decide what you're gonna eat every day for the rest of your life.

You know, her character name is Mara.

I thought that was a unique tie-in to last week's message on uh Naomi changing her name to Bitter.

That's why, that's why you get that persona, I think, from from that, from Mara.

So it doesn't take long for the mundane of life really to drop your all your dreams into an ice bucket.

Um, you know, you've been asked, we've all were asked probably at some point in time by somebody in our life when we were little, what do you want to be when you grow up?

And it's always kind of giving some fun answers to what do you want to be when you grow up.

Um the I I think really the the the philosophical side of that question is what do you want to do to be successful?

And and I know that's not always a likable term in church world, but that's really that's really the question.

What what do you want to do to be successful?

Now, success has its own definitions for a variety of people.

Uh, I think you dig a little deeper, that really what we're asking is what what do you want to do that's gonna matter?

How do you want to marry it?

And I do believe all of us want to live lives of consequence, something that matters, something that's gonna outlive, outlive uh ourselves.

Um, so in light of that, today our text is gonna shine the light on success, or I'm gonna use that as my filter.

Um, where does success come from?

What is the role we play in success?

And what's the ultimate purpose of success is where we're going.

Um So my title this morning is Unqualified Success.

Have you heard that phrase before?

Unqualified success.

Here's what it means: a total, absolute, complete success with no reservations, except exceptions or doubts.

It describes an outcome that's 100% successful, where all goals were met or exceeded without any buts or limitations.

Those are called unqualified success.

Like there's nobody, even the most pessimistic person in your world, is not going to be able to pick apart an unqualified success.

However, every successful person has had an unqualified season to their story.

So as a 15-year-old high school sophomore, Michael Jordan was cut from his varsity basketball team, made to play on JV.

At 17, Vera Wang did not make the U.S.

Olympic ice skating team, who she were what she had trained at her entire life.

At 18, Walt Disney was fired as a commercial illustrator for the Kansas City Star newspaper, citing a lack of an imagination and having no good ideas.

At 22, Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first news anchor position in Baltimore because she was too emotionally invested in her stories.

And then our 16th president, Abraham Lincoln, a book I'm reading right now called Team of Rivals, which is kind of the quintessential biography of Lincoln.

It's 750-some pages.

It's the largest book I've ever tried to read.

I'm halfway through it, and it's, I think I sprained my wrist each night that I pick the thing up and I try to read it.

He was defeated in eight separate elections before he was elected president.

And no one, I don't think, would argue the unqualified success of these people.

Now, Jordan was 5'8, and the starting forward on their varsity team was 6'7.

So this is why Jordan doesn't make the team as a sophomore.

Um, Vera Wang, well, 1% of competitive skaters have the ability to make an Olympic team.

Um, so she pivots to fashion.

Did pretty good.

Did pretty good.

She was editor of Vogue for a long time before she stepped out into her own right, designing mostly uh just high-end wedding dresses.

Um Disney may not have had much imagination at age 18.

Right?

It's possible.

They told the truth.

You ain't that good.

It turned out to be okay later on.

And Oprah was too emotionally invested as a news anchor, but what she wasn't too emotionally invested to be the largest talk show host in history, um, the most successful by far as a dollar and cents thing.

And then Lincoln in his early years, um, it was true, and he's playing catch up.

Lincoln grew up in a very poor family with very little access to education.

He, if anyone ever was going to be a self-taught, that you would say they're self-taught.

I mean, Lincoln was self-taught for a lot of his life before he graduates law school.

So here's the point.

Um it's not that decision makers aren't accurate sometimes in their assessment of us or of these guys, but it was they were unable to see past those moments.

Those unqualified moments, they were unable to see past those moments to the unqualified success those people and I believe you will reach.

Just because your moment isn't now, or even where you want your moment to be, that's a crucial one to lock into.

It doesn't mean you're not destined for a moment.

The actuality is that we're not destined for a lot of different moments.

Now, we might not achieve one name star status like Oprah, um, but that's not the greatest measure of success.

I believe what we accomplish through the person of Christ is what the greatest measure of success is.

So, with that, I believe there are three core necessary qualifications for to be this unqualified success with Christ.

All right, and the and they're low shelf.

They're obtainable by all of us, all right?

Availability, trust, and worship.

That these are the qualities of a follower of Christ, regardless of what you consider your qualifications to be.

It's these three things that turn you into an unqualified success as it relates to in partnership with Christ.

So here's how I want to persuade you today is that your availability will lead to unqualified success.

That our unqualities do not limit God's power and calling.

In fact, throughout Scripture, his calling is consistently to people who do not feel qualified or would not measure as qualified in most people's assessment.

The second is that God's presence overcomes our fear.

It's God trust, not self-confidence, that we're after, which which flips success thinking on its ear in terms of American perspective.

The third is that the proper response to success is worship.

Success, when it's personal success, it just points people to you.

Worship points people to a savior.

And I'll unpack all of those three.

So in Judges chapter two, it chronicles a leadership vacuum in the history of Israel.

So so the can the context here in Judges is what we'll be in Judges 2 and then Judges 6, 7, and 8.

Um, is Moses has led have led Israel out of Egypt to the promised land, and but he doesn't go in.

And you just have to read the backstory there.

Okay?

So Joshua, he raises Joshua.

Joshua takes Israel into the promised land, and they conquer all that's necessary in order to occupy this promised land.

And Joshua then he lives to the age of 110, and Israel follows God all during Joshua's lifetime.

And then Judges says that even the elders that he raised up, that Israel followed God until the last of that eldership, that leadership team, dies off.

And when that happens, when Joshua's gone and that team, that generation's gone, this is what happens.

We read it in Judges chapter 2, verse 10.

Judges 2:10

After that whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel.

Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals.

This would have been a god of the surrounding nations.

They forsook the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of Egypt.

They followed and worshipped various gods of the peoples around them.

They aroused the Lord's anger because they forsook him and served the Baals and the Ashtaraths.

In his anger against Israel, the Lord gave them into the hands of raiders who plundered them.

He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, whom they no longer were no longer able to resist.

Whenever Israel went out to fight, the hand of the Lord was against them to defeat them, just as he had sworn to them.

They were in great distress.

Then the Lord raised up judges who saved them out of the hands of these raiders.

So during this judge's period of time, Israel was on again, off again, on again, off again.

In fact, if you read the Old Testament from cover to cover, this is what you experience with Israel.

They're on again, they're off again.

They worship God, hmm, things get easy, they get smooth, they step away, believing that they have everything they need in and of themselves.

And then the further they step away, the more distance they creep by God, they create their own issues, and at some point in time when they no longer can handle the distress of the issues that they've created by their own self-dependence, they yell out, they call out to God, and God always responds.

Now, this what's interesting is like they're not a robe to decide cases.

They I mean they basically were a deliverer.

And as long as that judge was leading, people followed God, God responded on our behalf, that judge dies, and then here comes another period of time of people stepping away on their own.

Now, what's interesting about this, this is not a priestly line, this isn't a bloodline, the judges weren't a bloodline, like we didn't have a dad and then a son and then a daughter.

There's no connection between these judges like a priest or king on.

God just takes somebody, he raises somebody up, he rallies or she rallies Israel, because there's a woman judge in here too rallies Israel only to have this pattern repeated.

So the message today is coming out of the fifth judge.

The fifth judge in this time is a man by the name, a man by the name of Gideon.

And we find his story in Judges 6 through 8.

Now as they've come to this, is the end of a seven-year period where Israel had um basically right, they were supposed to be there to occupy this land.

It was a very fertile land.

But seven years now of them not serving God, what's happened is there's been a nomadic group by the name of the Midianites, who wait until harvest time, and the and the word says they swarm in like locusts, and they devour or destroy whatever has been harvested, and then they go back to wherever they were.

And Israel, while they swarm, goes and hides.

Okay?

They go and hide.

There's no opposition that they are able to give against it.

And that's the period of time that we come across our um our text today, Judges 6.

We're going to start with verse 12, and I'll give you the irony of this in a second.

Verse 12 says, When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.

Now, wouldn't you love God to say that to you?

The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.

Here's what Gideon is doing when the angel appears.

He is threshing wheat in a wine press.

Again, I these this requires so much context.

Wine presses were dug into the ground, and they had a hard service where when you're harvesting grapes, then they were they were pressed in this wine press.

But he's not pressing wine, he's threshing wheat.

To thresh wheat, you wanted to be on a hillside.

You wanted to be above, you wanted to be higher, because once you harvested this grain, you would beat it, you would beat it on a canvas, if you will, and then you would winnow it.

You would take it and you would toss it in the air ever so slightly, and the wind would take away the chaff, the things that you didn't want to eat, and the kernels of wheat would fall back to the ground.

Why is he winnowing wheat in a wine press?

He's afraid.

It's harvest time.

He's trying to hide what he's harvested from the Midianites who would come in and take it.

That is what he's doing.

That's where he's doing it, and this is where the angel shows up and said, The Lord is with you, O mighty warrior.

There isn't anything mighty about this.

There isn't anything warrior about him.

The only constant is the Lord was with him.

The angel of the Lord, who appears as this angel of the Lord, you read, you keep reading, and it's actually, it's actually God's church.

It's like Moses has God's voice in a bush.

Gideon has his presence there.

Four important notes to me about that verse 12 is that some of it I've covered there in that commentary, but mighty warriors don't thresh wheat in wine presses.

Fearful people do.

Second note is that God sees more in us than who we are in the moment.

And here's why I can say that, because this is not just about God saying, ah, he's got real potential.

I think he can, I think he can be somebody.

No, it's the sowing and reaping principle we've been talking about this year.

God has sown something in Gideon in his life.

He he has sown it.

So he's not calling out something that's not there.

He's not saying, Come on, young man, you can do this.

He's not being a cheerleader.

He's calling out something that he's put deep inside of Gideon that Gideon doesn't even know it's there.

The third is that God calls us out of our moment and he calls us that for his purposes.

Listen, folks, God's call is always first about him.

Now there's always great residual, but his call is about him.

The fourth note out of this book to me is that it's the Lord's presence that makes us mighty.

It's the Lord's presence that makes us mighty.

Now, Gideon is such a picture of a lot of us.

So an angel has just come to him and has told him that God is with him and he's mighty.

And verse 13, Gideon says, Pardon me, my Lord.

But if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us?

Like you're with me now?

Like where have you been for seven years?

Where are all his wonders that our ancestors told us about?

I think at this time, if I'm if I'm the Lord, I'm like, okay, yeah, I'm sorry, wrong Gideon.

You know, I mean, let me let me find another, let me find another guy.

Where are all his wonders that our ancestors told us about when they said, Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt?

But now the Lord has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian.

Now, this is interesting.

You know, sometimes we ask questions that God we think God ignores, and maybe it's because they just aren't good questions.

Because he moves on, he mentions none of it.

So the Lord turned to him and said, Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian's hand.

Am I not sending you?

Verse 15.

Pardon me, my Lord.

But how can I?

Wow, how quickly that shifts, right?

How can I?

I is not the problem.

How can I save Israel?

My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, I'm the least in my family.

The Lord answered, Here comes again.

I will be with you and you will strike down all the Midianites, leaving none alive.

Here are three more important notes.

His question, if you're with me, where have you been?

Just because life doesn't look the way we thought doesn't mean that God has been absent.

See, that's how we take it.

If I just got punched in the face, where where was my guardian angel?

Where where is the father?

Where are you?

The second it has a double ring to it.

He says, Go in the strength that you have.

Here's the double ring.

One is God knows what's inside of Gideon because God put it inside of Gideon.

So so Gideon can be fearful in the wine press, but God knows what he's put in there.

Alright?

The other ring to this is God's presence is where the strength rests.

Okay?

So so he's calling something out that he's planted in Gideon, knowing the context that Gideon's in, that Gideon's not necessarily going to buy into all of that, that that's inside of me.

So so it's God's presence that he promises it's always then then should counteract, should counteract our fear, what he's calling us into.

Because here's the last piece that I know to be true, personally know to be true, is that where God sends, God goes.

When God says come over here, it's because he's already here.

When God says go, he's going with you.

He's going before you, he's going to be behind you, he's to the side of you.

God, of course, God always calls us into moments that are bigger than us.

Of course he does.

But he calls us there because he is already there, calling out something he's put deep inside of us.

Here's the thing that we get wrong in Western culture.

We we get we get so wrapped up in our self-worth, our self-confidence.

Um and I I get it.

I want more of all of those.

But those are found, those are found in God.

God is the one that gives us our identity.

He's the one that plants things deep inside of us.

He's the one we trust.

And it's more about growing our confidence in God.

Listen, the enemy, enemy is so creative, and then and then not.

So he starts with something when you're small.

Some maybe some crucial time in your life, and something doesn't go well.

And he takes that moment and he seizes that moment and he spends the rest of our lives trying to spin that failure or that disappointment into that God's not enough and you're not enough.

And then once he can start establishing that in you a little bit, then he'll use every circumstance he can, like he doesn't orchestrate those, but he'll use every circumstance he can.

He spins it to continue to qualify that lie to keep us in our place.

When we have confidence in God, I don't have to have enough confidence in myself to do anything.

What I have to have is enough confidence in God to make myself available for whatever he pulls me into.

That's where it comes from.

That's where that confidence comes from.

So our availability leads to unqualified success.

Our unqualities do not limit God's calling.

Your unqualities have no qualification on his call.

He's looking at you.

Oh here's the second one about confidence.

So the middle part of Judges 6, Gideon um makes an offering to the Lord.

So he wor he recognizes it's the Lord.

He's afraid he's going to be killed.

Be in the presence of God.

And so he presents an offering, which is worship.

So worship is always a great first move after God calls you into a moment.

But here's the interesting thing, because he hasn't lost all his fear.

He says yes, but he does it at night.

I mean, because he knew the wrath of whoever is coming down on him if he's seen dismantling this altar.

So he does it at night.

When people wake up and realize who did this, it was, it was, it was getting it.

Well, he he you know, he kind of kind of musters up a little bit.

He kind of feels like, yeah, I did that.

And God's called me in this moment.

And so he makes this clarion call to the nation about to show up, let's show up and fight.

We're gonna show up and fight.

And and and sure, shortly after he makes that, he starts getting a little fearful again.

And so he does he does this.

If you're familiar with the story, um, if you're if you're not, this is kind of how it goes.

He puts out a wool blanket on the ground and he says, Lord, if you're gonna be with me, then when I wake up in the morning, let this wool blanket be saturated with water, but the ground around it dry.

And he wakes up the next morning and he does it.

So wet blanket and dry ground.

Now like that's a that's that's like pretty amazing.

And then Gideon goes, and he even knows he's pushing it a little bit because he says, Lord, it i if if you're okay, I need to ask you one more thing, I just do something again.

Can you do can you do one more thing?

Now I'm gonna lay that wool blanket out and I want the blanket to be dry and I want the ground around it to be wet.

Is that all right?

Next day he wakes up and that's how that is.

You know, it's easy to make fun of Gideon, but Lord knows I've been there.

Lord, I heard you.

I know what you've called me to do.

I'm ready to go next day.

Hey, look, if what you said, would you mind doing this?

Well, wow, that's great.

That's two in a row, but would you mind me doing?

Now, some might argue, well, that showed how much his self-confidence was so low.

And I would I beg to differ.

I beg to differ.

Let me give you an example.

So, Pastor Harry, if you've been around a while, you would know Pastor Harry was the first associate pastor, and Pastor Harry was retired.

But when he was when he was working with me, there was a guy who came to see me and he wanted me to counsel him.

And so I sat through an initial back and forth with the guy.

We finished, and I said, you know what?

I think this is gonna work out better for you if you spend time with Pastor Harry.

And he goes, No, no, no, no, no.

I I want you to do the counseling.

Oh, okay, I understand that.

That's why you're not a problem.

But I'm but I'm just telling you, after hearing your story, I think that you're gonna be better served if Pastor Harry is your counselor.

He said, No, not at all.

I won't I won't accept that.

I want you.

He said, Okay, tell me why you want me.

He said, because I trust you.

And I said, Well, apparently you do not.

And he just went, you know, and he goes, Yeah, okay, I'll go see Pastor Harry.

And that worked out really well for him and me, by the way.

So do you understand how that works?

I mean if you try if you trust, then you you do.

And you trust.

And you do.

So he gets uh Gideon gets kind of excited again and he sees that 32,000 people respond to his call to fight.

32,000.

And so God, in the series of events, reduces that number from 32,000 to 300.

And in my in my professional circles, we call that a Gideon revival.

It's when the church attendance goes backwards.

So now, look, 32,000 against 135,000, he was pretty pumped.

I don't know why.

Right?

It's still you're down four and a half times the size, right?

But now at 300, he's back to being in a mess again.

But there's a specific reason why God brings it down to 300.

And he says this in Judges 7, verse 10.

Judges 7:10

This can be not uh no, that's the wrong verse.

Uh verse 2.

The Lord said to Gideon, You have too many men, I can't deliver Midian into their hands, or Israel would boast against me, saying, My strength has saved me.

As Gideon starts getting like this, God's saying, You are in the wrong place, bud.

No victory is gonna happen when you think you're all that in a bag of chips.

I gotta get you back to a place where you realize it's I'm the one doing the delivering.

All right.

So, but once he God said, Well, if you're afraid, here you here you go.

Go down to camp, take someone with you, go down to camp.

So he they sneak into this meeting camp at night.

And so you know there's no such a thing as a coincidence.

They overhear two people talking, two men, two warriors.

One had a dream, he wakes up startled out of the dream, wakes up his bunk mate, and said, Man, this is what I just dreamed.

And this is how the person interpret interpreted his dream.

This can be nothing other than the sword of Gideon, son of Joash, the Israelite.

Now, Gideon's hearing this.

God has given the Midianites and the whole camp into the hands of Gideon.

The Midianites believe this more than Gideon believed it.

So here's my point.

It's not to have more confidence, self-confidence, it's to have more God's confidence, more God confidence.

It's God's presence is what overcomes our fear.

So we're looking for God trust.

We're not looking for self-confidence.

All right.

So here's how here's how the this the story ends.

God delivers uh Israel from the 135,000 Midianites.

And it's a very, it's a very, it's a shocking, it's it's gotten everybody's attention.

And so human nature, like a host of people come to Gideon and say, we want you to rule over us.

And in a very prudent move, very prudent move, Gideon says, No, no, no, you don't want, you don't want me ruling over you.

You want the Lord to rule over you.

It's the Lord we want to rule over us.

Right?

That's a I wish the story ended there.

It doesn't.

It's almost like the words exit him, and then he's like, but this was a pretty good thing.

I mean, I was the leader.

We did win.

So how about this?

So the Midianites were gold earrings.

And so Gideon says, from all your plunder, how about giving me at least one of those earrings?

That's not a lot to ask.

And so they went, yeah, yeah, whatever you want.

So he kind of lays out this tarp and they start bringing earrings.

And then so Gideon takes all this gold earrings and he fashions it into what's called an ephod, which was a priestly garment.

And then he had to put it over something.

And what happens now is that Israel starts to worship the ephod.

And then scripture even says that that monument that he built was a snare to him and his family all of his days.

So, wow, yeah, I mean, how far have we come from threshing wheat in a wine press to look at me.

To look at me.

Now, here's here's why this is important.

Here's the problem with turning a God victory into a personal victory.

God worship draws people to God, personal worship draws people to us.

Our personal wins win no one.

God's wins win everyone.

And God's wins last for all eternity.

Our wins die with us.

Because here's how this is how the story ends.

No sooner had Gideon died than the Israelites again prostituted themselves to the Baals.

They set up Baal Bareth as their God and did not remember the Lord their God, who had rescued them from the hands of all their enemies on every side.

They also failed to show any loyalty to the family of Jerobaal, that is Gideon, in spite of all the good things he had done for them.

When our successes pull worship away from God, everybody loses, including us.

The proper response to success is going to be worship because when we point worship, when we point our success to God, that can save everyone.

Look, God's put deep stuff in you, from the youngest in this room to the oldest.

And we weren't built for one moment.

We were built for a lot of moments.

He puts different stuff in all of us for different moments.

And when those moments come and he calls you out of that wine press, it's because he's already been planting and watering something in you, whether or not you recognize that or not.

And you don't have to really recognize it much if you will listen to the first part.

The Lord is with you.

And then calls out this mighty warrior.

The rest of the world, the rest of your world wants to speak stuff into your life that pushes you down.

This is why when someone tells me a big dream they have, I tell them, I said, be careful who you share that dream with.

They go, why?

Because there's more people out there wanting to pour water on your dream than there are people who want to stoke the fire of that dream.

And that's just the truth.

Your dream ends up making someone else feel less than.

And so they want to take you down a pack.

I can't explain it.

I just know it exists and I've had to live with it.

But God always is going to speak life and pull stuff out of you that He's put inside of you.

And the only way you're going to respond to those moments when you don't see what's going on inside your own life is you have to trust that He said, I am with you.

That I'm going with you, that I've made you for these moments.

But listen, guys, your success, I mean, this is not any success that you have, God has put something deep in you and is calling it out of you.

And when you use that success to point people to the Father, there's your mattering, there's your life of significance.

Yeah, God, God has given you the opportunities, but at the end, don't sit around with your arms crossed saying, Well, I think I'm going to build me a gold image.

Because it just plunges everybody else, you and everybody else.

It's an interesting comment.

It became a snare to him and his family the rest of his life.

A snare.

Snare something you catch birds in.

Birds that usually fly are walking and get caught in a snare.

You can't snare a bird in the air.

You snare a good bird walking.

God's created all of us to fly in those moments that He pulls us out.

Listen, so I've spent I spent a lot of time with people in their last moments, in their last weeks.

And I remember even my grandmother, this is a story my mom told me.

So my mom died at 58, but my grandmother died at 52.

And at 52, she said, I just wish I had more time.

I just wish I had more time to serve the Lord.

And that just always struck me.

All that I saw her to do in her church when I was just a little tyke.

And I wish I had more time to serve the Lord.

And when I talk to mature followers of Christ in their last times, I hear them say to me stuff like, I just want to hear, Well done, thy good and faithful servant.

So you have to tie that back to a parable Jesus told.

Jesus told a parable about a wealthy man who was going away for an indiscriminate period of time.

It was unsaid how long he would be away.

And so he pulls three of his servants to him and he says, I'm going to give you one talent, I'm going to give you two talents, I'm going to give you five talents.

Now, talent was a weight measure.

It was a weight measure of currency.

So he was giving them part of his estate.

So he gave it to them and said, You care for that while I'm gone.

Well then he shows back up.

Well, the one that had two shows up, he's pretty excited.

Master's back and he says, Hey, you gave me two, I've turned it into four.

I've turned it into four, I've doubled it.

And this is where the master says, Well done, thy good and faithful servant.

You've been faithful with little, I will make you ruler over much.

That's gotta be a great feeling, right?

Guy with five shows up and said, You gave me five, I turned it into ten.

He gets the same, he gets the same retort.

Like it's not, oh, ten, well, you're so much better.

No, it's you double two, you double five.

Hey, well done, thy good and faithful servant.

You've been faithful with a few things.

I will make you rulers over money.

But the one that had one, he said, Well, look, I buried it.

I knew you were a hard man, and so I didn't want to lose anything.

What's that sound like?

Fear.

So here's the one back.

And boy, in the parable, that master clings his clock.

Everything about our Western world says it points, it points everything to us.

But as a follower of Christ, it points everything back to him.

The life you want, the life of mattering, the real purpose that we call it a gateway, isn't chasing just your dreams.

It's chasing God.

The dreams you have, where do you think they came from?

Where do you think that bet came from?

Where did that drive come from?

And when you use it to partner with Christ, the things that can be done and accomplished in his kingdom, the amount of people those lives will be changed.

I remember a very successful wealth manager was attending here years and years and years ago.

And his business wasn't great.

And then he had this epiphany on, you know what?

Um, I need to serve my clients like Jesus.

I need to love them like Jesus.

I'm so worried about the book of business and this and getting other people.

And I'm gonna narrow that thing down and I'm gonna focus on loving, loving people.

Well, his business has been exploded.

And he told me, he said, Pastor, I'm getting flown all over the place to speak, and I don't know what to say because I can't stand in these ballrooms and say, um, well, it was when I gave my business to Jesus and um I decided to love him like Jesus.

And I said, Well, maybe, maybe not.

But let me ask you this.

Does anybody ask you to go to lunch?

Does anybody say, hey, can I talk to you privately?

I said, he said, yeah.

All the time.

I said, there's your open door.

You're afraid of saying it in front of a ballroom of people?

I can understand that.

People didn't invite you in to give a testimony.

I can understand that.

Maybe that's not the moment.

Maybe the moment is when the person wants to get you to the side and ask you what's going on.

And they started doing that and started telling me all kinds of great, crazy stories.

God sets you up for his kingdom.

And we get we get the benefit of the harvest too.

No doubt.

But when we worship and we worship God, it has it has generational ramifications.

So how do you become an unqualified success when you feel so unqualified?

Are you available?

Are you available to hear Him call you?

Are you available?

Will you trust Him?

Because His call is gonna far supersede what you feel comfortable with.

Can anybody attest to that other than me?

His call is gonna put pull you into some places that you feel the least qualified.

This is where your God confidence of, did I hear you?

And if you need to throw out a couple wool blankets every once in a while, throw them out.

Lord knows I have.

But I think the goal is to get to where when he speaks we listen and we're not waiting for days to find out if something's gonna be wet or dry.

You agree with me?

All right.

And then turn it all to worship.

Turn it all to worship.

That's what they're after.

That's what makes a difference.

Stand with me.

I'm gonna pray, and I'm just gonna invite you.

I don't know where this message hits you today.

I don't know if there's people in the wine press today.

I don't know if you're in the if you're in the throwing the wool blanket out part of your story.

You know, who knows?

Maybe, maybe you were excited because you had 32,000 and by your surprise, God's God's knocked you back down to 300 and you don't know what to do with it.

You think maybe he's left and he's left you alone, and no, he hasn't all he's done is trying to get you more focused that his presence is there than that there's 135,000 people against you.

So, Father, I pray for my church.

People that I know that you've deposited stuff into, people I know that you're calling them into moments.

Lord, that we would respond to you today, that our confidence in who you are and your call, Lord, we would rise to that, that the voices of the enemy would be silenced, or at least recognize that they come from him, so that we can kick them to the curb.

Help us differentiate your voice today, Lord Jesus.

I pray.

Communion is available on my left and my right.

The altar to my left, you want to come and just spend a moment by yourself with the Lord.

Over here to my right, you can come, you can share a request uh to someone up here, be an elder or someone of our care team or pastoral staff, and they'll link arms and link faith with you and pray.

Um, as we close in worship, I invite you to the altar.

I invite you to move.

We hope you were encouraged and challenged by today's message.

Again, to learn more about Gateway Franklin Church, find us online at gatewayfranklin.com.

Thanks for joining us today.