Following Jesus Well | Jerry Harris

Awesome, awesome job. How are you guys doing today,

doing? Alright, so good to be the house

of the Lord with the people of the Lord and to be able to

worship God. And and unlike the people of

Ukraine, not worried about about bombs going to be dropped on

you. The think about what they're

dealing with that's been occupying.

A lot of my mind is have been doing that with yours as well

and I just want to take a moment.

Before we get any farther to just pray for the people of

Ukraine, particularly for our Brothers and Sisters in Christ

in Ukraine. You know, there's Revival that's

been going on for quite a while in Ukraine with regards to just

faith in the Lord. And, you know, that's being

tried and it's amazing how they've been standing up against

these, you know, overwhelming odds.

And I just want to pray that God would be with those brothers and

sisters. Would you bow your heads with me

and just take a moment Heavenly Father and Jesus?

This name I pray that you would protect our Brothers and Sisters

in Christ and Ukraine right now that you would watch over there

and they would feel your presence around them here in

America. We cannot imagine what they're

dealing with right now but we can see a lot of this on social

media and in the news and I just pray father that you would watch

over the people of Ukraine right now and that they would feel our

presence. Prayers because I think our

prayers have a lot to do with what's going on.

Help them Father to resist. And help them to be strong in

your power. And your might, I pray in Jesus

name. Amen.

I want to welcome all of our campuses that are joining with

us today, all across the region. Everyone that's inside everyone,

that's on line. So thankful for each and every

one of you and I know that we lose people to death the go on

to glory and I don't usually talk about them but I want to

talk about one today because Because this man had a lot to do

with with who we are as a church and he was a guy who went

relatively unnoticed by so many. But he's the first man that

greeted me. When I came here to try out to

be the pastor of this church is name is Bill Hall.

He passed away two days ago, the age of 94 and Bill was the

quintessential greeter. He was the most awesome greeter

and have to tell you, even though a lot of you at other

locations, don't know who I'm talking about, a lot of our

personality in our culture was defined by that guy.

How everybody is welcome. Everybody is greeted.

Everybody is cared for it. I remember him wearing his green

jacket and just looking to be that first guy, that said hi to

somebody else. And I just I just can't imagine

what it's like for him to be in glory with his wife or a wiener

right now. Pretty awesome.

Awesome thing. He was a guy Delivered communion

to homebound people. He did so much.

And, you know, every one of you has the opportunity to be a

kingdom, shaper a kingdom changer, just like Bill Hall,

and I pray that God would put that on your heart will earn a

sermon series called better. Clayton kicked it off last week

and and I'm continuing that talking about the foundation of

being better, Of winning in your home.

How many of you are familiar with this?

It's called Jenga. How many of you play Jenga

before? Yeah.

So this is what Ginga is. It's a stacks of blocks three

wide three across and on up. And what you do in this game is

you look for that block? That is susceptible to movement.

And oh, there's one. and when it's your turn, You try to take

it out without disturbing the rest of the block.

So it is relatively stable when it begins, but as we start

removing blocks, it becomes less and less stable.

That's the way it works in. Then, you know, the person that

it falls on is the one that loses the game of of Ginga.

Well, what if you are able to like do the opposite of that,

instead of starting from stability and moving to Already.

You started with instability and try to create stability.

I want you to think about it, like in Reverse.

So there's a guy named K and he's also known online as the

manga man. He's not the Ginga man because I

would imagine that that is a protected, you know, trademark.

But he has set all sorts of World Records for stacking

jingle blocks on a single block. Talk.

And it's pretty amazing to see how many of you like to see what

K actually does. Okay.

Want to show you that? Check that out.

Okay, so this is a single block and he's got it on an angle with

the Ginga block underneath it. And he's a and, you know, some

of you might go are those glued together like it's that real,

right? I gotta know if that's look at

another one that he's done. Those are on a golf ball.

Do you see that? He's got those, the Jenga blocks

on a golf ball? That's just nuts.

Here's another one. Look at the size of that one.

Ginga block all the way up to the ceiling.

You had to remove a ceiling tile.

It's incredible. Okay, here's one.

Like looking down. I think like, this is like,

structurally, what he can do. I mean, just every kind that you

can known to, man. I mean, he could actually make

works of art. Look at this next one.

Isn't that insane a single Jingle block and he's done that

off of it. Just incredible one more and

this is to Jingle blocks. So I'm looking at this and I'm

like, how did he do the sinner? How did he get that?

I mean, it's just absolutely amazing.

Well as I said, K holds the world record for stacking jingle

blocks on the single Ginga block.

And there is a Time Lapse video of him breaking, the world

record. Would you like to see that?

It's pretty awesome. Let's watch it together.

Here we go. So there's K and here he goes.

It's me how you can see like this is what it looks like

vertically. And this actually kind of proves

that, you know, these are not glued together.

He's actually doing this absolutely amazing.

So you can watch as this thing gets taller and bigger and

wider. It starts to want to move a

little bit. See that him?

Oh, that's like, oh, it's crazy. And he just keeps running these

Ginga columns down. And he's going to get down to

the last six. There they are.

And you can see him put them on the top over in the left-hand

corner. 1512 Ginga blocks off of a single Jingle Rock.

But what I want you to really see as what happens next ready.

Yeah. Didn't last long but it sure

look good for a little while, right?

Hmm. You know, Jesus talked about

Towers in, Luke chapter 14. Look what he said.

Luke 14 · chapter mention

He said, suppose one of you wants to build a tower, won't

you first sit down and estimate the cost.

See, if you have enough money to complete it for.

If you laid a foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone

who sees it will ridicule you saying this person began to

build and wasn't able To finish. When we use the term better in

this sermon series, it's not about building Towers.

It's about building relationships and there's an

order to building relationships and you know what?

I'm going to venture a guess, but it's an educated.

Guess there's a number of people that are listening to me right

now at all of our locations and online and inside And you can

really identify with the last part of that time, lapse video.

That you thought you had it all worked out.

You thought that you could do a great relationship that you had

all of the tools, you had all the Savvy.

You had everything that was necessary to put that

relationship together and for a while it was looking good,

right. And then the crash happened and

Jesus says you know you try to build a tower but you need to

think through it first. And probably building on a

single Ginga block is probably not a recipe for a long-lasting

construction. It's actually a recipe for

disaster and some of you have done that.

Once some of you done it twice, Some of you have done it more

than you can count. And the reason that I'm bringing

that up today is I don't think that any of us want to fail.

There's nobody that goes into a marriage.

I mean, I've done plenty of marriage counseling and, you

know, getting ready for a wedding and there's nobody, I've

never experienced a couple saying, we really want to have

about a good 18, to 24 month run, and then we just want to

blow apart. Everybody comes into the office

thinking thinking that they're going to be happy at forever

ever after but that actually is not the reality.

They think they have it all figured out but maybe they

don't. And there has to be a better way

to build relationships, and there has to be an order and how

we build relationships that honors God.

And that's what I know that you want and together all of us

together as a church, a body of Believers, that's what we want.

And all of our locations, there strengthen that when our

relationships are sound, Now, there's a book called becoming

better together. It's a great book.

I would encourage anyone to read it.

That's newly. Married thinking about getting

married. The author's name is John Van

Epi PP building better together and he shares a truth about how

relationships are built properly in the context of God's word.

What makes them stable and what makes them sustainable.

And I think all of us, want stable, Sustainable

relationships not just in our marriages, but in all of our

relationships and our families, with our kids, with our parents

and our workplaces, our Social Circles, we want to have great

relationships. And in this book, he refers to

something, he calls Ram or relationship attachment model.

And I'm going to start out with that today because I think

there's some really practical use for that that you That you

will have, I want, and I want you to evaluate.

So I want you to think about you right now and your

relationships. I want you to apply this

relationship attachment model to yourself.

Don't be thinking so much about the people around you.

Now, there are five components that need to happen and they

need to happen in a particular order for a solid relationship

to form. Okay, I'm going to give you

those five and then I'm going to come back in to find them.

Here's number one to know. The first major component in a

relationship is to know. S is to trust.

Third is to rely fourth is to commit and five is touch.

Now, I want to Define what is meant, by each one of those.

All right, so let's begin with no to know.

This is the result of you sharing your thoughts, share, in

your dreams. Sharing your feelings, and your

experiences and it needs to happen day after day.

There needs to be time, set aside every day in relationships

to be able to share those things with each other regular time.

See this is Not talking about communication.

But as talking about the quality of communication, it's not like,

you know, here's what the weather is going to be today.

And what are we having for breakfast and who won the last

game, or what? Anything like that.

It's about quality communication.

Do you have quality Communication in your

relationships? In all of them, not just

marriage relationships, but all relationships and is it

communication that's happening regularly, because if it's not

listen, circumstances change in relationships and that right?

Like, these are the rules that you establish, but things happen

and you can't be like in a marriage.

You can't say I told her I loved her when I got married and if I

change my mind, I'll let her know.

It has to be regular. Regular, because, circumstances

change. And you have to stay up with

each other. And without proper knowledge

that comes from constant communication, you know what's

going to happen? Distance is going to form in

that relationship and then that's going to effect the next

four components that we're going to talk about.

So, knowing one, another regardless of the relationship

is critical to do first. Second comes Trust, Now trust is

more than just keeping promises or vows it's this feeling you

get a feeling of confidence and a feeling of security isn't that

what trust is when you have confidence and Security in that

relation relationship and it's flowing out of what you think

about? Who you are in that relationship

with Because knowledge and that repeated knowledge and that

sharing that comes from, knowing one another has developed this

thing called trust. Now, trust doesn't come from,

just what, you know, it comes from how you think about what

you know, Right? Because now you're

contextualizing that knowledge and you're actually saying, I

think I can lean into this person.

I think I can get closer. I think I can become more

vulnerable to this person. This is all happening in your

heart and head, right? But eventually the relationship

goes from knowledge to trust to the third one, which is reliance

to rely. To rely refers to the way we

actually depend on each other to meet each.

Other's needs and wants to fulfill life's responsibilities

to love to play together to make our experiences in life

memorable. To understand the difference

between trust and Reliance. Trust is more about what you

think and Reliance is more about what you actually do.

There has to come a time when it moves from just head and heart

to hands and feet, right? And you're actually walking it

out. Number four in this, five

components is to commit. To commit.

Now, I think some of us, we may immediately go to the whole

vows, you make it an altar, like, in front of a Preacher,

when you have your wedding ceremony, because I think, you

know, that's tangible to us. But there's actually more than

that. And what we're talking about.

Vows I'm a, this might not be a traditional looking church, but

there are some areas where I stay pretty traditional and this

is one of them because when people get married today they

like to Write their own value. That vows to each other and I

have Read those vows and I've had people repeat those vows and

if you can see what I'm actually thinking, I am inserting my

finger and throwing up. Because I know it's your thing,

you know and you kind of have your words and that kind of okay

but yes, some of them are just flaky.

Okay? So yeah I love you in the

sunshine and I love you in the rain and you know and you got to

find something that rhymes with rain like pain anyway.

And I'll let people do their own vows, but they don't get to not

do the traditional vows and the reason that I make them do

traditional vows is there are two reasons for that.

Number one, is you're not basing your commitment off of anything

that your spouse does. Did you know that when you read

the traditional vows all it's saying, all you're committing to

is what you will do. That's why it says better or

worse. Some of you are gone.

Yeah, I've experienced better but I have definitely

experienced worse, right? Richer or poorer.

You know, when did I have to inherit that credit card debt or

that school debt? When think about that?

Sickness or in health. I just never thought we would

have one of one of the two of us on permanent disability.

All your promising is what you will do.

You're taking an oath right? Second reason that those valves

are very important to me is it's like everybody else that attends

your wedding. They get married over again.

Because they remember when they said those vows and they're kind

of elbowing each other. Most of them are not looking

lovingly and longingly into each other's eyes.

It's usually like an elbow to the ribs.

Remember that? Remember, you promised that?

Yeah, so those valves are important and they are.

It's actually the first of three commitments, you make okay in

relationships, you make three. The first one is to promise and

that's what this is to promise, but I want you to see in Greater

detail what commitment is because after promise is

priority, You are priority means it means that that relationship

is so important to you. That it isn't just one thing in

your list of things to do, it doesn't get pigeonholed but it

becomes a priority like all the other things in your life, end

up being determined by that first priority.

That happens first. That's number one.

And I especially in our marriages, that needs to be

understood. Third, one in this isn't in our

world, today is super critical, and that's presence.

Promise priority in presence presence.

Is this is that you're going to stay true to your, to your

promise. And you're going to stay true to

your priority. And presence means you're

carrying your partner in your heart with you, wherever you go.

Wherever you are just as if they were there.

You think about it? How many things would we give

ourselves permission to do? When we are not with our spouse

that we would never ever do if they were standing right there?

If you practice presents. Like they are there right there

in that moment, even if they're not in that moment that there

with you, it's going to change your behavior.

You're not going to be riding yourselves permission slips and

that's really good for your relationship.

Right to know to trust to rely to commit and the fifth one

touch touch. Now, of course, you know, our

minds are going to go to romance and affection and intimacy

that's expressed through touch, but it doesn't just have to be

in a marital relationship. I performed a funeral yesterday,

we went to the committal I was talking to the funeral director

on the way there and we were talking about the impact of

covid on funerals and you know, we tithe of course.

I think about it in my context, I think about it in the church

context. But can you imagine being a

funeral director and saying you can pick 10 people?

To go to the, to the funeral, but no one else can go and you

have to stay apart from each other and you have to wear a

mask, when what needs to happen, because there's verbal

communication. And then there's nonverbal

communication, and you can say whatever you want to say.

But you know what? There are times in life, when it

isn't about words that you just need to have somebody put their

arms around you and hold you while you're rich.

Because of the grief that you're feeling, you know, you

connecting with me. There touch is a really

important part of relationships, and particularly obviously, in a

marriage relationship. Check this out.

God hired hardwired you this way because there are chemicals that

your body produces hormone Ali. That with touch are released

into your bloodstream, through into your system, like oxytocin,

dopamine vasopressin, and when they get released into your

bloodstream, they are actually designed to hardwire you for

permanent bonding to that person, that's serious stuff.

Now, hang on with me because now it's going to get real.

These components that I just mentioned are in order.

And each one has a slider look at this right here.

Okay. So you know think of a like a

tech control board to have back here, they have these sliders,

you know, volume up volume down, right.

And so you have no trust rely. Commit touch.

I wonder if you're here with your spouse.

If you're here with your fiance. If you're here, was somebody in

that kind of a relationship. I wonder if both of you were to

do this. like as a little Test and you didn't do.

Like, you didn't do yours. You did theirs.

And then you exchange papers. Where would you be on the no

scale? How much attention are you

painted at? Where would you be on?

Trust, where would you be on rely?

Where would you be on? Commit, where would you be on

touch? Huh?

When I ask you a question? When it comes to romantic

relationships and marital relationships, where do you

think most relationships begin? Honestly today.

A lot of them start right here. Don't they?

All I'm saying is that explains a lot.

Actually does we have all these chemicals then bonding us

without any of the components that we need?

All of these components are necessary for that relationship

to be stable and substantial. And we don't have those because

we released all of these chemicals into our body.

But permanently bonding to somebody, we don't even really

know. Some of you are going whoo why

didn't I come next week? Why I have to come this week?

And I'm just saying. How's that working out for you K

because you're not K? You think that you can build

your relationship, starting with a one, Jenga block, and you'll

just figure out how to put all this stuff up on top and I'm

telling you, that didn't work very well.

So some of you are like, where's the door?

Because now I'm just a, I came here to get a little

encouragement, you know, a little strength for the week and

now I'm not feeling too good. So if you haven't done this,

right? And you're living in the reality

of not doing it right? Are you doomed?

Not necessarily, but it's going to take a lot of work.

You're gonna have to pay some real attention to this.

You're going to have to start moving these sliders where they

need to be, and some need to go down while others go up so that

you can build it, right. Get them in the right order.

Alice and I you know, we're building a marriage Retreat

Center at Camp, right? We're putting that together and

the walls and sticks are going up now and Alice and I are going

to start doing marriage retreats in the fall.

We're going to do it for all of our campuses and that's what

this Center is really all about and we're excited to see how it

would strengthen marriages in our church.

Because if you have strong marriages in your church, that

goes a long way to having a strong church right?

And and I know that's what you want.

We're all going to be in agreement there.

It's what we want. And regardless of where you are

in your relationships, you need to know which sliders need to be

moved up you and and, you know which ones may be need to be

moved down. So that gives room for the

others to move up. but the real thing I want to share with you,

The I said all that so I can say this moment.

Is that when it comes to starting it any relationship,

they all need to start in the right place.

Check this out and they all need to start in exactly the same

place. It doesn't matter if you're

single, if you're staying single, if you're engaged, if

you're married, if you're divorced, if you're a single

parent, we all have to start in exactly the same place.

Look at Matthew 22 verses 34 to 40 here.

Matthew 22:34–40

That Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got

together and one of them an expert in the law tested him

with this question teacher, which is the greatest

commandment in the law. What a question and Jesus

replied. Love the Lord, your God with all

your heart, with all your soul with all your mind.

This is the everybody say this word, say it one more time with

with passion, this is the first and greatest.

Commandment. And the second is like it.

Love your neighbor as yourself, all the law and the prophets,

hang on these two Commandments. Now, we've talked about this

commandment before. Many of you have heard this

before, but you know what, when usually discussed, it's titled

the greatest commandment Like, we'll talk about being Great

Commission, and great, commandment people.

So we think about the word great.

But you know what? We don't think about the word

first. What does it mean?

When when, when Jesus says, this is your first commandment, that

means it goes first. That means everything else in

your life has to be built on. What comes first that it's

foundational to your life. This is foundational to your

marriage is foundational to your family.

It's foundational to your social relationships, is foundational

to the way that you view the world.

No matter what we desire to do or have or achieve in this life,

this has to come first because the stronger, the foundation,

the more stable whatever is built upon it.

Jesus said this in The Sermon, on the Mount, in Matthew 6:33,

Matthew 6:33

but seek, there it is. Again, first, his kingdom and

his righteousness. And all these things will be

given to you as well. This Foundation ensures that

those other things are going to come in life and they will come

in life, but they will have, what is necessary to withstand

the test of time and the tests of circumstance, how many of you

remember last year is a big story last year.

In Miami of the Surfside condominium.

How many of you remember that? The Surfside condominium for

those of you that don't remember, I'll just tell you

that there was a condominium Tower in Miami that Lapsed at 1

a.m. in the morning. Killed 98 people.

And this is an animation of what happened.

This is what it looked like and then at 1:00 in the morning, the

center part fell. And then after it, the tower

fell Now what was interesting about this tragedy is that the

tower was not particularly old, it wasn't under any major

Renovations. They weren't doing any

construction. It wasn't the victim of any

storm or outside influence like that, like a natural disaster.

There wasn't an earthquake. There wasn't like a gas

explosion, there wasn't a terrorist attack, no one to

blame for that. It had stood for over 40 years.

And then it just fell down. And it took a while for

investigators to understand and unravel the mystery of this

tragedy. The problem went back to guess

where the beginning. The way that they had laid the

foundation, the way they had built off of that Foundation,

the shoddy workmanship, The Cutting of Corners, the

disregard for how time affects a building and how nature affects

a building. And you know what?

There were plenty of warning signs, plenty of warning signs

cracks in the condominium in the housing, cracks in the the

pillars that held up the building.

Do you know how they solved it? Spackle and paint.

More cracks more spackle, more paint, more cracks put a planter

down, they actually did this, they build concrete Planters and

put like foliage in those Planters.

So people would not see the cracks that had formed.

The thing is, the Surfside condominium was no Jenga game.

It was a tragedy. And your marriage and your

family and your key relationships.

They're not a game either, are they?

We have to understand the stakes are high.

We have to start in the right place.

We need to put first things first, and that is our

relationship to God, our love for God, and one another.

We put those things in the right place, the right things, and

then we build in the right order and only then, are we building

something that's going to withstand the test of time and

all that this world can throw at it?

Because let me tell you, the world is throwing things.

Hey, your relationships. And you want to be ready for

that. So, here's a moment. just a

moment for all of us at all of our locations to get serious and

say, hey, am I building on the right foundation?

On the foundation of love and the Lord being an intimate

personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Am I building it on a foundation?

That starts with loving the people that are around me,

doesn't end with it. Really starts that way.

And am I doing relationships? The way God designed.

To start in the right place. And build it up.

So that I don't end up looking like what K world record look

like about 10 seconds after he achieved it?

I want you to think about that. As we move to a time of

decision, I cannot tell you. Moment of transparency.

You know, we've got new carpet and so we had to take all the

chairs up and a lot of you here last week, s Service, you

stayed, and you helped and and got all the chairs out so that

all this carpet could go down and we put the chairs back.

And you know what? When these are carpet squares,

it's a whole lot easier to line up these chairs.

Because you can use those squares to do that and then we

kind of reconfigured it and you'll notice that probably.

Now you're a little closer than you were before.

Have you noticed that? And and all the chairs that were

stacked up on the sidewalls. Now, they're almost all down

here and I'm looking at and I'm seeing like a full half and so

thankful. I'm just so thankful.

I'm just so thankful to see the last service.

It was that way. There's not, it was that way.

And I'm just that so exciting to see God doing that and you

cooperating with that and all of us together getting to learn

from the Lord together. It's just great, but we're at

this point now. At this point.

With opportunity, you're here. You made the investment.

You and made the investment to be here.

Now, I want you to consider making the investment.

In the Lord, Jesus. Some of you have never come into

an intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Look how far you've come just to be here in this moment.

What if you step just a little further?

Me think about it where you're in a moment.

We're going to be standing, you're going to be standing, you

know, and if you've never made this decision, maybe you're

skeptical, you still think your K.

You still think that you can like build your life off of one

block you maybe this is challenge you.

Today I want you to calculate like there's going to be someone

standing right over there by the baptistry, want you to calculate

wherever it is that you're sitting in our Auditorium right

now. How many steps do you think it

is from where you are? Two over there.

And how hard would it be? For you to take those steps and

which steps would be the hardest?

Probably the first and the second, the third and the fourth

one, right? Because that's when you kind of

just step out. The commitment is, you're moving

forward in the commitment. How many of you are to the place

where you could say? I know enough about the Lord to

know that he loves me and died for me?

I can trust him. I want to rely on him.

I want to commit to him. I wonder how many could just go

over there. And say I'm ready to make that

commitment. To you today.

Lay that Foundation because its first Some of you today.

That foundations laid, it came first.

And some of you are thinking about it like you thought about

your wedding vows, you know, I told him I loved him when I

accepted him and if I change my mind, I'll let him know. when

the truth is, Commitment to the Lord is more than just a

statement. You make it one time in your

life or the water that you're baptized it that one time in

your life, right? Because you practice priority

And you practice presence. Right?

And some of us are like, I'm not doing too good on the presence.

I'm not doing too good on the priority.

All good. Good, that you're here.

Because what better way is there than that, just taking need to

humble yourself to get low. And to tell the Lord, I want to

get that presence, right? When you get that priority,

right? I want to keep my promise. the

last Services we've had people up here, we've had people to 3D,

you know, and you still have to make that calculation.

From where you'll be staying. How many steps up here?

You walk up here and you get down on your knees for an

audience of one. And he's ready, he's ready to

have that conversation with you. And you'll leave here.

Not with one Ginga block holding up your life.

You'll leave here, feeling, God's Mighty hand.

I encourage you to think about that.

As you stand with me, would you stand?

I'm going to pray, then, we're going to sing Heavenly Father

and Jesus name. Would you?

Please take this moment? pray father, that you would be

Lord of this moment that father we wouldn't be So connected to

our own ego in our own Pride that we wouldn't just take a

moment to be humble. To count the cost. and to make

the commitment, you know, father that we mess up every married

person in this room messes up. It'll happen today.

But father continually Living in the promise.

Living in the priority living in the presence when we fail

failing forward. Getting back up, trusting you

again. You're so faithful.

And your love never fails. Father, take this moment and

restore. Restore our souls in Jesus name,

amen.