Training for Reigning - Mark: The Messy Gospel

Well I hope all you guys had a great Thanksgiving.

We did.

Um really fun to have some of the family in from California.

And um great to uh go hunt some pheasant, and that was awesome.

And um also eat tons and tons of food.

Who had turkey?

Okay, I don't say everybody.

How about prime rib?

All right, we did we did both, never done that before, so that was kind of fun.

Um listen, we are in the gospel of Mark, and if you uh if you have your Bibles, we're in the Gospel of Mark.

And what we're looking at here is what um I'm calling the messy gospel.

And the thing that makes Jesus unique is he's so messy, and he's constantly this outlaw prophet because he doesn't follow the system.

And what we what we tend to find in our own lives is we want a system to follow.

We we we many of you, uh if not all of us in this room come out of some kind of a religious background that has often been built around this concept of maybe do's and don'ts and religious regulations that we live by.

And what is great about it is it sometimes gives us boundaries, but what's not good about it is that oftentimes it creates condemnation.

And Christ came to set your heart free.

And so as we study what Jesus did, we we constantly go back to this rubric of Luke 4, 18 and 19, that he came to set the captives free, to heal the brokenhearted.

And so when we talk about being whole-hearted disciples, which is our mission, our vision of the road, we are talking about this wholeheartedness that embraces both that forgiven, loving, experiential, intimacy side of our relationship with God, but also learning to embrace the dark side.

That side of us that's not really in our experience yet fully developed, but we're embracing it, not accepting it, but embracing it in the sense of letting God shine his light on it.

Because Christ came to heal the brokenhearted.

And every one of us in this room have brokenheartedness.

And until we address the broken side of our heart, we can't come into wholehearted devotion and discipleship.

So if you turn in your Bibles to Mark chapter 6, last week we were in Mark chapter 6, and we looked at Jesus doing what I think makes him unique in the arena of discipleship and in the region of a kind of a pedagogy of not just lecturing people, but actually communicating to them truth and then sending them out to do it.

Mark 6 · chapter mention Mark 6 · chapter mention

So if you recall last week we looked at him sending them out two by two.

And one of my main points last week that I want to emphasize today is that we need each other.

There's no Rambo Christianity at the road.

We are a special ops church.

And you that are in the military, many of you have military background, you know somebody in your battalion, your unit has got your back, and we need relationships, and he sent them out two by two.

And so as we look at the discipleship of Jesus as he takes this next step with them, it's always, listen, it's always in intentional, relational environments.

Church, we have got to have relationships with other guys.

We have got that, you women need other women in your lives.

You young people need other young people in your lives, you men need other men in your lives that will forgive, break off shame, and be wholehearted in their communication and love and devotion to each other.

We've got to have that.

We've got to have that today because demons gang up.

Demons always gang up.

And we and we and not one of us in this room has all that we need.

You say, well, Jesus is enough.

No, Jesus is not enough.

He's enough for your salvation, but he's not enough for your sanctification.

And what I mean by that is he's the one who built the church.

And if it was good enough just to have Jesus in you, then he would have left it that way.

But he gave us the body of Christ so that we could grow together, with some people being hands, and some people being ears, and some people being feet, and some people being, I don't know about you, but sometimes I feel like I'm the dairy heir.

Okay?

But we need each other and we become whole by having relationships with other men and women in our lives who give us what we're missing because God made it that way.

It's the whole body of Christ when we come together.

And so my prayer in all of this endeavor as we grow and we build the kingdom here on earth is that we do it together.

And we do it as a team, and we do it as a church.

So Mark 6 is where we are.

Give us a context for this.

And let me just say, I forgot to say this about the announcements.

Christmas Eve service is at 12.30 p.m.

right here.

So on Christmas Eve, that Wednesday, Christmas Eve, 12.30 in the sanctuary.

Um, and then we're gonna have refreshments and stuff afterwards.

So we thought we'd do it early so that you could be home with your family for the rest of the day.

But in anyway, at Mark 6, verse 31.

Mark 6:31

Mark 6, verse 31, Jesus has just uh had the disciples come back.

Mark 6:31

If we compare it with other gospels, they come back rejoicing.

I mean, it's really cool to cast out a demon.

It's like one of the coolest things.

And if you hang out with us long enough, you'll get a chance.

We'll give you somebody who's got a who's packing a few growlers, and we'll let you cast them out.

You can cast them out.

In the name of Jesus, you can cast out demons.

It's not that big of a deal.

Demons are way more blustery than they are substance.

And so casting out a demon is really easy.

We'll train you, we'll equip you in how to do it.

But these guys just came back and they're like, whoa! The demons were subject to us.

And Jesus, like, that's like nothing.

That's like the finger of God.

You know, rejoice that you're going to heaven.

That's more important.

Right?

Right?

Then they saw people get healed.

You're going to see people get healed as you lay hands on them, and you're not even going to be all there.

You might be thinking about your shopping list.

And somebody said, Would you pray for me?

And you're going to pray for their headache, or you're going to pray for something, and they're going to get healed, and you're going to go, What?

I've never gotten further than a headache with anybody.

No, man, I'm telling you, the pain went away when you prayed.

I went to the doctor and I was healed.

And you're going to struggle with, like, you know, I did that.

No, Jesus does that.

And he usually works through the most foolish people.

That's why you're going to do well.

That's why all of you here are potential students in the discipleship of Jesus because you're all a bunch of fools.

You wouldn't be here if you weren't pretty foolish, right?

Anybody who helps a church get planted is foolish.

It's really foolish.

So it's like the guy who one time was out and he had a sandwich board and he was preaching.

And he had on one side, I'm a fool for Christ.

And then he turned around and it said, Whose fool are you?

So you're all fools.

Why not be a fool for Christ?

Right?

So he comes back, verse 31.

And he said to them, Come aside by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.

For there were many coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat.

Almost sounds like Thanksgiving.

So they departed to a deserted place in the boat by themselves.

Church, you need to rest.

You need times of rest.

There's seasons in our lives of busyness.

There's seasons in our life where we are called by God to be busy for the things of the kingdom.

There's times in your job where it is nonstop.

But if you live your whole life burning that way, you'll lose your intimacy with Christ.

Because intimacy with Christ is often at its best and at its deepest when we actually have times to listen and have quiet.

I heard a guy one time say he was talking to a psychologist, said, Man, you need to, here's what I want you to do.

I want you to take 15 minutes a day, total quiet, because of some of the issues in this guy's life.

He said, I can't do that.

And he said, Why?

Because I'm afraid of what I'll hear.

I think some of us are afraid of quiet.

Some of the great saints of the past, some of the great men and women of God of the past have said that their most intimate times with the Lord were in times of solitude.

As many of you know, I try to take a prayer walk four, five, six times a week, and I'll take these prayer walks.

And almost always, this is where, this is kind of how it's evolved.

At the beginning, I'd say six months ago, eight months ago, well, I guess now it's been maybe 10 months ago, started doing this.

I was always praying the old time.

But as the months have gone by, I find it beneficial on the way back, maybe the last 20 minutes.

I don't pray anything.

No, I don't say anything to the Lord.

I just listen.

I just listen.

You guys, you need rest.

Men and women, you need rest.

You need sabbaticals in your life.

You need regular days off.

I hope that in your jobs you're able to.

I know some people with multiple jobs that's difficult.

My son Daniel's been like burning it at every wick because he's got five jobs at one point, like about a month ago.

But um, if you can take days off.

We meet on Saturday night.

Don't do anything on Sunday.

Seriously, rest on Sunday, enjoy Sunday.

Drive by those churches with their packed parking lots and go, I don't have to go.

I already went.

It's really cool.

You know, but you need rest.

You guys need rest.

Jesus needed rest.

And he's telling his disciples after this great mission tour where they went out, he's saying, Come and rest with me.

But the multitude saw them departing, and many knew him.

I was reading that today.

Many knew him.

I was thinking about that.

I was like, what do they mean by they knew him?

Because you know the term know has the idea of intimacy a lot of times in scripture.

And I don't know if it means that they just knew him by reputation, or if some people, because he's not far from his hometown, knew him.

They had a relationship with him.

The reason I thought about that is because, you know, how many of you have lived in this city for 10 years or more?

You see, the majority of you guys, people come to College, they don't leave.

They always say they're going, I don't like this place, especially young people growing, I don't know.

And then they end up coming back because it's still the greatest city around.

But people know you, right?

And so sometimes when it comes to relationships with others, you still got to pull away.

And you need time to pull away.

So they knew him.

So I don't know if that meant people coming up and hounding him about needs in their life or what, but they ran there on foot from all the cities.

They ran there.

And this is like a mess.

They arrived before them.

So he's trying to depart.

He's trying to get some rest.

He's trying to take his disciples to sabbatical.

People are they're running to Jesus.

They are not going to give him a break.

They arrived before them and came together to him.

And Jesus, when he came out, saw a great multitude, and he's moved with compassion for them.

Because they were like sheep, not having a shepherd.

So he began to teach them many things.

This is a pastor's heart.

This is a shepherd's heart.

Jesus saw them, and instead of being angry at them for disturbing his peace, his heart overwhelmed with compassion for them.

And men and women, I believe this is the basis for all ministry.

I believe it's the basis of parenting.

I think it's the basis of leadership is compassion.

We know the word means a combination of pain with.

Com with, passion, pain with.

He could feel their pain.

We have watched now over the last few years, our nation, other nations of the world, because man, it's piped in 24-7.

We can see what's happening on any kind of disaster, any kind of situation anywhere in the world, with whatever station you put it on or on the internet, you can know what's going on, and you become jaded, don't you?

Instead of having compassion, we start having a hardened heart.

And so we go, oh, those people.

Or why do they do that?

And I would challenge you and myself, I'm looking in the mirror too, you guys, that Jesus was different.

Jesus looked at the motivation.

Jesus looked at the heart of what they were struggling with.

It's probably one of the biggest struggles of any church and any Christian community is that we start, we so quickly judge performance.

We tend to judge outward activities instead of looking at the heart of what's motivating it.

And Jesus sees the heart of the matter and he says they're like sheep without a shepherd.

So people are running to him.

It sounds like they're kind of shouting at him, they want stuff from him, they're yanking on his heart.

And he has compassion.

Because they're like sheep without a shepherd.

He sees the hardened, damaged, broken heart.

I would challenge us that in our journey with Christ, when we see stuff in the news, when we see stuff happening in our schools, when we hear of addictions in people's lives, that we would look past the behavior to the heart.

Because we haven't walked in their shoes.

We don't know what happened to them.

We don't know who their parents were.

I would dare say that in most cases, when we see someone who's got a sexual addiction or someone who's struggling with an issue in their life of anger or hurt or lashing out, it's not that dissimilar, maybe, than mom and dad.

If they even had a mom and dad that they knew.

I believe they've chosen that, but because of that relationship of possibly abuse in their background, they are where they are today.

Jesus would look at them with compassion.

Not blessing, don't don't hear me, I'm not blessing the behavior, but saying, I came to heal the broken heart.

There's something broken here.

There's something broken here.

I love Ezekiel 34.

Ezekiel 34.

Every pastor should probably should know Ezekiel 34.

If you're a leader of a small group, a C group, or a D group, you should know Ezekiel 34.

This is the heart of a shepherd.

And I've wondered at times if because of the way Mark writes this, Luke is similar, where he says he was moved with compassion because they were like sheep not having a shepherd.

I've wondered if he taught from Ezekiel 34.

So let me read Ezekiel 34 starting at verse 11.

For thus says the Lord God, because I imagine let me just say this: the context would probably be Pharisees, Sadducees, Scribes, and then all the other people just coming upon Jesus, because it seems like everywhere he turned, there were Pharisees, Sadducees, religious leaders, and scribes, and then the commoners, the common people of that time.

If he read, if he spoke from Ezekiel 34, this is a pretty major rebuke to the leaders of Israel.

I think this is a pretty big rebuke to the church in America.

We're not doing a very good job with the church in America in discipling people.

And I'm speaking to the vocation.

I think it's a calling, not a vocation, but the calling that I'm in.

Ezekiel 34 is powerful.

Ezekiel 34, 11.

For thus says the Lord God, indeed, I myself, this is God speaking through Ezekiel the prophet, will search for my sheep and seek them out.

As a shepherd seeks out his flock on the day he is among his scattered sheep, so will I seek out my sheep and deliver them from all the places where they were scattered on a cloudy and dark day, and I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries and will bring them to their own land.

I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, in the valleys and in all the inhabited places of the country, I will feed them in good pasture, and their fold shall be on the high mountains of Israel.

There they shall lie down in a good fold and feed in rich pasture on the mountains of Israel.

Verse 15.

I will seek what was lost and bring back what was driven away, binding up the broken and strengthening what was sick.

But I will destroy the fat and the strong and feed them in judgment.

So if you read the first ten verses, he's rebuking the shepherds of Israel.

And then in verse 11, he says, This is my heart.

Meditate on that.

He's saying that the heart of a shepherd king is one of seeking out wayward sheep.

The heart of a shepherd king is feeding the sheep.

The heart of a shepherd king is binding up and healing the sheep.

May that be true of us as fathers and mothers in our families.

May that be true in our sea groups.

May that be true at the road.

That we are people of shepherds.

That we go after wayward sheep.

You have friends, you're in relationship with people right now that are wayward.

Go after them.

Take them to coffee.

Find out how's your heart?

How's your heart doing?

I remember a few months ago I was at um a coffee shop in Black Forest and I and I ran across a group of guys that I haven't seen in a long time, and I knew that this one particular guy had been out of work for two years.

And you know, what do you do?

I mean, you've at every time we see how's it going with a job?

It was always the same, well, now things come about.

And so I just felt led on this particular encounter to say, How's your heart?

That's gotta be so hard.

And I mean, he lost it right there in the coffee shop.

And just big tears running down.

I put my arm around him.

I mean, for a guy, for a man, two years out of work, it's really, really tough.

Really, really at the very core of who you are, it's a struggle.

Asking the question though to people, how's your heart?

What's God doing in your heart?

When the day was now far spent, verse 35, his disciples came to him and said, Okay, we finally found a deserted place, Lord.

This is a deserted place.

And already the hour is late.

Send them away that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy themselves bread, for they have nothing to eat.

So, pretty, you know, I think pretty standard operation here.

Pretty clear MO with any of us.

Hey, they don't have any food.

It's late at night.

Let's let's go, let's let them go.

And then Jesus does this weird thing.

He answered and said to them, You give them something to eat.

And they said, Shall we go and buy 200 denari worth of bread and give them something to eat?

This is 5,000 people.

Have you ever been in a position where it just seems extremely impractical to do what God's asking you to do?

Beyond your resources, beyond your natural abilities, beyond anything in your past experience.

It's called walking by.

If you can't take risk, then you miss out on the epic adventure.

So Liz and I watched Braveheart last night.

And I've watched Braveheart probably a dozen times, but I think it's maybe the first time Liz actually made it through the entire movie without leaving during like one of the battle scenes.

Like, oh, ooh, uh, and she's gone.

Where's my wife?

She's out of here, you know.

She hung in there.

But you know why we love, why we guys love that movie, and even why you women love a movie like that if you'll stay through the whole thing, is because something within us was born to take risks.

You long for adventure in your heart.

You that the a passion that God put in your heart is for adventure.

Men or woman, especially men, but women too.

To do something, and that's the reason we admire and we get we so get into those kind of movies, because here's a guy that's doing it.

He's laying it all on the line, he's risking it all, and we wish that we could be more like that.

Right?

You see, watching it recently, seeing some clips of parts of it recently.

I was with Ryan Steyer and I were together to retreat recently, and Ryan made this comment.

He said, here's the problem with the whole William Wallace thing and Braveheart is I'm really more like Robert the Bruce than William Wallace, and I don't want to admit it.

But it's true, isn't it?

Because when Robert the Bruce meets that old gnarly dad of his who's got leprosy and everything, and he's so impassioned by the zeal and the risk taking and the walk of faith and boldness and courage of William Wallace, his father says to him, It's about, son, we all admire men of great conviction, but it's all about survival.

And so much of our life, if we really are honest, that's true.

For us, with our jobs and our situations, it's all about survival.

And he said, a real man knows how to compromise.

And we you can't even you can't even make a movie about that guy except as a bad guy.

Right?

Because who I want to go see a movie about a guy who just compromises his whole life.

And his whole life is about survival.

No, we were born for risk.

We were born to walk by faith.

It's who you are.

Jesus came as one who challenged these disciples to take the risk.

You feed them, you figure it out.

No compromise, no survival, risk it all.

And so God calls you at times with your finances, God calls you at times in your marriage, God calls you at times in your relationships.

You feed them.

And you go, I can't.

That's the point.

You can't.

There's no way I can do that.

That's the point.

You can't do it.

But you know in your heart that God's called you to take that step.

And there's something that happens within us when we take that step, even if we fail in taking that step that we failed boldly, and at least for a brief period of time, it was really fun.

And then you're really stuck because it doesn't always work out, and yet you know what?

God's pleased with that.

I think God is actually more interested in bold faith than he is in being successful.

I would challenge you not to be dumb, but with some amount of wisdom, but also a little bit of the audacity that comes with the spirit-filled life, that this year you might take some risk that you haven't taken before.

Even when we have ministry time up front, you're praying for someone and you get a mental picture or you get something that might be from the Lord, now you can couch it with, I could be wrong, I know this seems bizarre, but I got this picture of, and you share that, and the person goes, that means absolutely nothing to me.

Man, what an idiot.

You keep doing that, and I'll guarantee you'll start hearing from God.

Until you've prayed for 45 people and nobody's gotten healed, can you say, I don't have the gift of healing?

You've given 45 words of knowledge to a person, every one of them were absolutely wrong, then you can say, I'm not very good at hearing from God.

The problem is we don't take risk enough.

I want to tell you, you've got to take risk.

You've got to take risks.

There's so much of being a wholehearted disciple that involves a step that is really scary.

At this church, I want you to do scary stuff.

At this church, I want you to step out of your comfort zone.

That's what Jesus did.

He tells them, you feed them, they're thinking logically, and then he says this.

Well, how many loaves do you have?

So he can see there, they're thinking, okay, we passed 7-Eleven like uh 45 minutes ago.

And Walmart is an hour and a half from now.

They're not even, they don't get what's going on, which you don't either, and neither do I.

And so Jesus in his kindness actually asks them another question that they can understand.

Well, how many loaves do we have?

Okay, well, we can do that.

And so they all pull out their calculators and stuff, they take out their iPhones.

Well, how many loaves do you have?

Go and see.

So when they found out, and they said, five and two fish.

Then he commanded them to make them all sit down in groups on the green grass, verse 40.

So they sat down in ranks, in hundreds, and in fifties.

And when he had taken the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, blessed, broke the loaves, gave them to his disciples to set before them, and the two fish he divided among them all.

So they all ate and were filled.

And they took up twelve baskets full of fragments and of the fish.

Now those who had eaten the loaves were about five thousand men.

So I'm thinking 15,000 at least were there if it's just 5,000 men that were counted.

You ever think about like who did all this counting?

I mean, there's always an how many counters do we have in here?

I mean, like, how many are say are you an accountant or administrative?

You're administratively gifted or you're accountant.

I always want to say, I bless you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

I am not that, and I just love people like you.

Melody, you're like that, and I love that.

I guess I'll ask Melody something.

She knows like every angle on it.

Like, I didn't even think about it.

So if you're willing to go the distance, God is willing to make you a champion.

He is.

Church, the Lord wants you to experience more than what you're currently experiencing.

This is training for reigning.

This is training for reigning.

You realize we're gonna get to heaven, we're gonna reign over cities.

You know, by our faithfulness here, God's gonna give us stuff.

And I don't get it all, except that the earth is going to be restored.

It's gonna be a new heaven and a new earth.

It's not gonna be sitting on clouds plucking harps.

That's hell.

Okay.

I don't know about you, but singing for 10,000 years is hell.

Okay.

You're gonna get we're gonna get a restored heaven, a restored earth, and somehow we're gonna be reigning, and our time on earth is training for reigning with him.

I want to get in some reigning on earth, though.

How about you?

Some of you have been kicked around your whole life, pushed around, you got so much fear.

You got so much fear.

You fear people, you fear for your reputation, you're constantly comparing yourself to others, and it's killing your heart.

And at some point, how about 2015?

We start breaking the spirit of fear and start walking by faith.

I will stand behind you, this church will stand behind you, and in so doing, you're gonna discover new life and power for living.

And that's what happens to these guys for a brief moment.

Let's read on, verse 45.

Immediately he made his disciples get into a boat, go before him to the other side to Betheda, while he sent the multitude away.

And when he had sent them away, he departed to a mountain to pray.

Now when evening came, the boat was in the middle of the sea, and he was alone in the land.

Then he saw them straining at rowing, for the wind was against them.

Now about the fourth watch of the night he came to them walking on the sea, and would have passed them by.

Can you imagine that?

Like you're straining, and this guy just is walking past you.

This is uh this is an interesting night.

And when they saw him walking on the sea, they supposed it was a ghost.

And just think about that for a moment.

The scripture does not say it's not a ghost, and it doesn't disrupt the the the uh the pericope here by saying anything negative of ghosts.

I believe there's ghosts.

There are ghosts, they're demons.

So if you think you've seen a ghost, you probably have seen a ghost.

And you can cast them out.

That's another discussion.

But they cried out, for they all saw him and they were troubled.

But immediately he talked with them and said to them, I guess he's still like hanging out on the waves or something.

He starts talking to them, having a conversation.

Be of good cheer.

I don't think he said be of good cheer.

That's the translation here.

He said, dudes, it's everything's cool.

We got it under control.

But he says, be of good cheer.

It is I.

I don't know what the right translation is, but I'm sure Eugene Peterson would say it differently.

Do not be afraid.

Do not be afraid, church.

Do not be afraid.

You're gonna go through some hellacious storms this year.

Don't be afraid.

We're there for you.

We hang together.

You're not alone.

You are not alone.

I was with a guy on Tuesday at an appointment for coffee, and I said, What do you think is your biggest struggle in life?

And he says, I feel like I have to do it all myself.

And I said, I will guarantee you, nine out of ten men would all say the same thing.

That you feel like you have to do it yourself.

That is a lie, that's an agreement with the enemy.

You're not alone.

And they were greatly amazed.

He gets into the boat with them, the wind ceases, and they were greatly amazed in themselves beyond measure, and they marveled.

Verse 52, for they had not understood about the lows because their heart was hardened.

So this is the commentary of Mark that they're afraid.

Mark looking back over the historical accuracy of what happened before, he then makes this statement.

They didn't get what happened with the multiplication because their heart was hardened.

So listen, everybody, if God's done miracles in your life and you did not figure it out for the next miracle, hey, you're in good company.

These guys are hanging out with the man.

I mean, they are with him.

They saw what God did and they still didn't get it.

That gives me tremendous faith for the future because I'm constantly not getting it.

They didn't get it.

And I have to trust this guy I can't see.

And they were with him.

So all I say is grace, grace, grace.

We need each other.

Even they didn't get it.

And when they had crossed over, they came to the land of the Genneseret and anchored there.

And when they came out of the boat, immediately the people recognized him, ran through that whole surrounding region.

Everybody's running.

You know, that's one thing about Mark is everybody's like on a some some people call Mark the runner's gospel.

I mean, everybody's running and everything's immediately.

And when they had come out of the boat, immediately the people recognized him.

They ran through the whole surrounding region, began to carry about on beds those who were sick to wherever they heard he was.

Verse 56, wherever he entered into villages, cities, or the country, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, begged him that they might just touch the hem of his garment, and as many as touched him were made well.

Now, I don't know about you.

I was not born yesterday.

But this is an epic adventure.

This is better than any movie.

This is better than any drama.

This is better than turkey and dressing at Thanksgiving.

I mean, everywhere he goes, people are getting healed.

People are having probably their demons cast out, they're getting set free, and that's what's happening wherever he goes.

And guess what?

He still does it today.

In John 14, he says, the works you've seen me doing, you also shall do, and greater works than these, because I go to my Father.

Guys, we are called into this epic adventure.

We are called into a work of God being ahead of us doing stuff that if we will say, Lord, this year I want to enter into what you're doing.

I want to enter into what you're already up to.

I don't want you just blessing my plans.

I want to bless your plans.

God, whatever it is in my plans that are not of you, would you show me?

Would you guide me?

Would you start leading me in all of my frailties, in all of my humanness?

In all of my selfishness and sinfulness, would you somehow get me where you want me to be?

With the right people, meeting the right people, doors opening in certain times.

God, I'm available to walk by faith.

That's an epic adventure.

And you're called to that, church.

We're all called to that.

Whatever form of Christianity that has become so boring is not biblical.

Men and women don't die of addictions, they die of boredom.

Addictions are just some pursuit of some kind of excitement because they're just so bored with their life.

I call us to come against the spirit of boredom and say, God, do something this year that's even more powerful and more important than the Georgia, Georgia Tech football game.

Which was a great game until the last part of it.

Because you're born for adventure, you're born for excitement, you're born to do something great with your life.

And you're born by God to an epic adventure.