Faith over Fear

Hello, and welcome to the Kalamazoo church of Christ podcast.

Thank you so much for listening.

We're startup church.

We just planted in September, 2020 and at the Kalamazoo church, we believe that Christianity is done best when it is done together.

And so if you live in the Kalamazoo area, we would love to connect, be it coming to a Sunday service, one of our small groups, or even just grabbing coffee with a member to learn more.

You can visit kalamazoo.church in order to do that.

We pray that you are inspired by what you hear today.

All right.

Good to see this crew.

Really appreciate you guys.

We appreciate Jaron and Bianca, their leadership.

My wife and I were really grateful for the church out here.

So many awesome, faithful couples and just see you guys grow kind of an oasis of faith out here in Kalamazoo.

If I can get to my slides here, I'd love to share some good news of what's happening, but just wanted to say before we get into it, aren't you guys grateful for Jaron and Bianca's leadership here in the church here?

Amen.

Yeah, they're, they're awesome old friends here.

Do I have a, here we go, Lesson, Mark King.

Hello.

Okay, great.

Here we are.

So I want to share some good news about the church in Detroit.

We've got about 250 disciples there.

We meet in two regions.

We have a group that meets in Ann Arbor and we have a group that meets about a half hour outside of Detroit and Kyle and Kristen Eastman are kind of the couple that lead that West group out in Ann Arbor.

And my wife and I lead the other group and we've got a great youth and family ministry.

So last year we had a great year and in the Detroit church we saw 27 people baptized last year.

So we're all encouraged by that.

So here's some of the victories of last year.

Here on the left there is a young man named Grant and then to his right, to the right of him is our campus minister whom we hired last year.

That's Max and his wife, Sabrina Plager.

In the middle is Owen.

He was also just baptized last year and he's already serving in leadership and in the campus ministry.

And to his right is Jason and Jason and Grant, they were baptized on the same day.

They were spiritual twins.

And on the right there is Nathaniel.

He's been a disciple for a while, part of our campus ministry.

So three of those young men were not here, you know, a year ago.

You know, they were just all baptized last year.

So that's really exciting.

Also in the campus ministry on the left here is just got baptized as a young man named Tyler.

He's also baptized last year, already serving in leadership in our college ministry.

And on the right is Theron, who was baptized at our ministry out in Wayne State.

So we had a bunch of Eastern Michigan, University of Michigan out in Wayne State.

And then in December we had, you know, you have twin baptisms where you get people baptized on the same day.

We had triplets.

All three of these people in December were baptized all on the same day.

So that's super encouraging.

And we're seeing so many people in our teens, our college ministry, our singles ministry and our young marriage ministry just make the decision, hey, this is what I want to do.

I want to give my entire life to God.

I want to be a disciple and be added to God's kingdom.

So what I want to talk about today is taking a step forward in faith.

All of us, it doesn't matter what you do, you're going to hit a wall.

You're going to come to a place where you feel like what I'm doing isn't working.

And I think what's tempting in those moments is to take a step back from your faith.

And what I think that the Spirit and what God wants us to do is to take a step up, right?

To step up and to move forward.

There's a lot of decisions that you're going to make in your life.

Obviously, you've made some decisions today.

You didn't just get up and come here.

The decisions in your life that require courage are the most important decisions in your life.

The decisions that require you step out and do something scary, sometimes that's be open.

Sometimes it's admit we're wrong.

Sometimes it's to repent and to let go of a sin.

That's kind of been something like a security blanket for us.

But the decisions that you make encourage.

And so I want to talk a little bit about courage and sort of just this life.

And part of what we combat as disciples is the fear that kind of the world uses to control.

I grew up in Canada and my parents moved a lot when I was younger.

When I was in fourth grade, we moved from a suburb of Vancouver to closer to the city.

And I went to this school for one year.

It was called Champlain Heights.

And I was in fourth grade.

I was a pretty social kid, so I made friends right away.

But I noticed it was a pretty tough and tumble school.

And during the recess and lunch, there were always kids kind of in a bit of a kerfuffle.

I remember walking by and kind of making fun of the kids fighting.

I never should have done that.

But I remember one of the kids heard that and said, oh, you think, you know, and it's like, you know, I'm eight, right?

So this is a nine-year-old kid.

And, you know, and he just started pushing me.

And I was like, you know, that second where you realize I'm in trouble here, right?

Like, this kid's pushing me.

And I remember, you know, thankfully the bell rang, but he goes, after school, you're dead, right?

And then I remember, you know, I was nine, you know, oh, my gosh.

And I remember all my friends came up to me and said, and this kid's name, I forget his last name, but his name was Kevin.

And they were all like, you ticked off Kevin?

You're dead, right?

Like, they were no comfort to me, right?

They only reinforced.

And so I remember just gathering my friends.

I'm like, okay, guys, I need your help, right?

Like, I remember right after school, me and three of my friends just hid in the bathroom.

And I just said, I need you guys to do that.

And I stayed there for like 45 minutes until like we eventually walked home.

I heard that next day at school, I went to like, I went like an hour early so that I wouldn't meet anybody.

You know what I mean?

And then I remember, you know, again, I just, I had this routine for like three days until eventually my mom's like, are you going to school so early?

I said, well, there's a guy that wants to kill me.

You know what I mean?

And that's kind of the way I put it, right?

And then she eventually went and, you know, she came with me early and she pulled the kids and said, hey, come here, you know?

And my mom was huge at the time, but she's like five foot one Asian woman, right?

But at the time, I just remember like, hey, it's a big Asian woman.

But she was five one and she kind of pulled that nine year old and was like, hey, come here, you know?

And the kid was nice to me afterwards.

But, you know, for like three days, my life was arranged by fear, like my whole day was organized around fear.

The Bible says in Hebrews chapter two, since the children have flesh and blood, that's you and I, he too, that's Jesus, shared in their humanity so that by his death, he might break the power of him who holds the power of death.

That is the devil and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.

One of the things that the scripture illuminates is that Satan controls us through fear.

That's his tool.

If he knows you can't do certain things, he controls us like a rat in a mace, right?

He's like, OK, well, we know you're not going to be humble, so then you're going to do this.

We know that after you've fallen into sin, you're not going to get open.

So, OK, OK, so then I'll just withdraw.

Then I'll just be quiet.

Then I just won't join.

Then I won't do this.

And, you know, kind of directs us through fear.

And what I want to illuminate and have us consider is this reality is that our life is arranged by something that is not physical.

That your life is arranged, you know, if you're a parent, part of your life is arranged out of the love and obligation for that child.

If you're a faithful disciple, you arrange your life so that you can effectively live out discipleship.

But there's also a part of your life that you live it.

It's arranged by fear.

It's arranged by fear of, like I said, perhaps get an open fear of maybe, you know, hey, Jared says, hey, sharing your faith.

So it's like, oh, my gosh, it's time for me to be sick, you know, or whatever, you know, but you arrange yourself.

And you arrange your schedule and your range is based on something that isn't physical.

So the for our Bible study today, I want to look at the book of Joshua, the book of Joshua deals with this theme of courage and fear.

Now, so Joshua is the sixth book in the Bible.

And for those of you that don't know.

So you have the first five books of the Bible and those first five books are given a special name, right?

They're called the Law of Moses, the Torah, the Pentateuch.

It's given a bunch of names because it's these first five books.

We know the story, right?

It starts in Genesis.

You go from Adam, right, to Noah, to Abraham.

And it ends with Joseph in Egypt, right?

Sold into slavery.

Exodus starts with Moses leading them out of slavery.

We know the story.

And then you got Leviticus and Numbers and Numbers.

It's about the Israelites.

They're out of slavery.

They're out of Egypt.

But now they wander in the desert for 40 years.

And Deuteronomy ends.

And it's the last book of the first five.

It ends with them about to enter the promised land.

And Deuteronomy is really just like three speeches from Moses.

And he's speaking to a new generation because 40 years had passed.

So you imagine the group that had left Egypt and the group that's about to inherit looks very different.

I mean, there's been generations of young people that have now been born in the desert that are about to inherit.

A lot of the older people had passed away.

And if they're still around, they're super, super old.

OK, and we're about to enter the promised land.

So Joshua is the one leading him to that promised land.

It's leading him to the unknown.

And so the book's about courage.

But the book is also about leveling up.

It's also about what's it going to take for us to get to that next stage that we want to get to.

So getting our hearts right for that next stage.

So let's read together in Joshua chapter one.

It says, keep this book of the law always on your lips.

Meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do everything written in.

Then you'll be prosperous and successful.

Have I not commanded you be strong and courageous?

Don't be afraid.

You do not be discouraged.

The Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.

So before I get into the weeds with Joshua.

So Joshua is a it's a big book.

It's 24 chapters.

So we're going to take a bird's eye view.

It's 24 chapters, but essentially you can you can narrow it down to three sections.

The first section is about entering the promised land.

The second section is about fighting battles within that promised land to kind of clear it out.

And then the third section is about dividing it up, dividing up the land amongst the 12 tribes.

And so it starts with this start where Joshua addresses the people and he says two things.

Be careful to do everything written in the law.

And it's this call to obedience.

It's this call to say, hey, make sure that you haven't neglected the most fundamental things.

When we asked a bunch of teenagers, when you think about discipleship and following Jesus, what do you think of?

And a lot of them came up with answers like restricted, you know, things that you can't do.

It means I can't do drugs.

It means I can't sin.

It means I can't do this.

And so many of these young people saw the commandments of God through this lens of this.

If I follow God, it means I can't do this.

But one of the things we just try to help them see is that discipleship and the commands of God aren't about restrictions.

It's about a doorway to a new life.

It is a gateway to a new life.

You know, you think about if I were to say, hey, we want to make you a famous professional athlete.

You would expect all of a sudden the patterns of your life would change.

If we said to you, hey, we want to make you a professional artist.

We want to we want to make you famous.

We want you to be a concert pianist.

We want to make you to speak in front, you know, to perform in front of thousands of people.

Well, you would expect that all of a sudden the pattern of your life would have to drastically change.

And see, God simply saying, listen, I have a plan to use you.

And it starts with you, first of all, obeying these commands.

All right.

And so it's a gateway.

It's a gateway to the life that God has for you.

And then it goes on and it says, have I not commanded you be strong and courageous?

Don't be afraid.

Don't be discouraged.

You know, when you start pursuing things, if you want to learn guitar, you want to get in shape, you will hit a wall.

And at some point you'll be tempted to be discouraged.

Right.

And, you know, I'd mentioned, you know, the beginning of the year, you know, I had kind of sat down and I thought about, I told my wife, I said, hey, there's like four or five things I would like to to just kind of grow in in terms of my own ability.

And I just kind of gave her a list of these things.

And one of them was learning jujitsu.

I follow MMA.

And I was like, you know, I took Taekwondo as a kid.

It's kind of like what you have to do when you're a Korean kid growing up.

And then and then, you know, I took wrestling in high school.

So I took, you know, I signed up for jujitsu.

And basically now I'm three, you know, I started beginning of the year and now I'm three months into it.

So I can just tell you this.

It's basically me showing up and letting 20 and 30 year old men beat me up for an hour.

That's all it is.

I'm not better.

In fact, I would argue I'm a worse fighter because I now know what I can't do, if that makes sense.

Because I'll do things like, oh, don't do that.

I'm going to go, why?

Because they'll do this.

And I'm like, oh, OK.

And I'm on the head and I'll do something again.

And they'll be like, don't do that.

And so these I'm at this point, I'm just getting beat up like I'm not getting any better.

And at and what they tell me is they say, like, so, Mark, you have to keep taking this and fighting.

You have to keep fighting until some of these disciplines get internalized in you.

Right, because they can show me a move, but that doesn't mean I can do the move.

Fighting is not about what you do consciously.

It's about what you do unconsciously.

Right.

And so it's about internalizing it.

And and so I find this truth, you know, growth, growth feels like failure.

And this is an important reality.

That's why Joshua says, don't be discouraged because growth feels if you're growing, you're you're heading into territory that you stink at.

And leveling up always means that you're brand new again.

We know that, right?

You finish high school and guess what?

You're a freshman again.

You know what I'm saying?

You finish middle school.

You're a freshman again.

And so leveling up for you feels like being a freshman again at something that you're not good at.

And the hardest part for me is a man in his 40s was driving was the first drive line.

I am going to be the worst person there.

You know, it's wearing an awkward outfit and go, hey, I'm new.

And that that whole moment of just sitting there going like, what am I doing?

Sorry.

You know, and hey, let me talk to you.

It's that.

And it's like, it's OK.

It's OK to feel like a failure because growth feels like failure.

You know, it doesn't feel like failure.

Quitting, quitting feels amazing.

Right.

Ever like I used to I used to run, you know, like three, four miles and, you know, kind of every summer, probably do it again.

And the first time I start running, the first time I start running, I always think, you know, you always think that you're as good in shape as you were last year.

And then what hits you is you're like, wow, I haven't run in a while.

And I always have this inner dialogue in my head when I start running.

I'm like, let's just finish the run.

Then, you know, probably like a mile into the run.

I'm like, let's just finish half the run.

You know what I mean?

And then halfway, you just keep kind of compromising your goals.

And you're like, you know, when you run that first time of the year, your heart's pounding, you're aching, your joints start to ache.

And at some point I just stop running.

And you know what it feels like when I stop running?

Feels amazing.

Feels amazing.

Quitting feels amazing.

But you don't become anything when you quit.

You're not growing.

Growth feels like failure and quitting feels awesome, right?

It feels amazing.

Ask anybody how they feel when they quit.

Hey, I stopped.

I stopped reading my Bible.

I stopped going to church and I stopped sacrificing.

How does it feel?

Feels amazing that first day, doesn't it?

But you ain't becoming anything.

You ain't growing.

All right.

Growth feels like failure and wrestling feels great.

You know, I'll close with this thought there.

And it's so important because I think, you know, it starts with this idea of courage and it starts with these fundamentals of do everything and don't get discouraged.

There's a book called Three Mile an Hour, God.

It's written by a Japanese theologian.

And three mile an hour, three mile an hour is the speed of walking.

And it's about walking with God.

And the kind of the main theme of the whole book, honestly, is that God took 40 years to teach the Israelites one lesson.

That is, man does not live on bread alone.

Forty, you know, if you went to college for 40 years and said you got one lesson out of it.

That's a terrible college.

But there's something that you got to understand.

Just because you sit and you learn something doesn't mean it's here.

Just like when I take martial arts and I learn them, I learn a move.

It doesn't mean I can actually do it because it's not in my body.

It doesn't mean I can initially I have to stop.

Oh, how does it go again?

OK, your left leg's here and I got to do it a thousand.

I got to do it 10,000 times where it becomes unconscious and it's not there.

So until it happens again and again and again, it took 40 years to learn one lesson.

Man does not live on bread alone.

And so, you know, as you make decisions, make sure you never neglect the fundamentals.

In Joshua chapter three, it says here, Joshua told the people, consecrate yourselves.

Tomorrow, the Lord will do amazing things among you.

You know, if you want to level up, you want to level up in your marriage, parenting, your faith.

You walk with God, here's something you got to be ready for it.

Have you ever met someone where you thought it's a good thing you didn't win the lottery because you would become a terrible person?

Where certain people aren't ready for success.

Or sometimes, you know, as a parent, I'm always trying to get my boys ready.

Hey, my wife's always trying to get them ready.

Hey, oh, you got a job interview.

Hey, you know, you're not ready.

You know, dress nicer.

Hey, you're going to school.

Did you remember your lunch?

Are you prepared?

Are you ready for what you're about to face?

Or sometimes, you know, we can see with single people, they pray for God to give them that special person.

And you're like, if that special person showed up, you wouldn't be ready for that person.

Right, like you are not the person that is able to connect and to give that person, you're not ready for it.

I grew up, my parents were small business owners when I was eight years old.

You know, it's very typical of sort of the the Korean immigrant experiences.

A lot of them became small business owners.

And so, you know, for a kid growing up in that situation, that kind of was like the forum in which a lot of our character was built, because I had to start working there at eight years old.

And you're in the kitchen when, you know, chopping onions and doing so forth.

My mom said that and my mom mostly ran the business.

My father had other jobs.

But my thought my mom said that in a business, the cardinal sin is to be unprepared for a rush.

Because if you unprepared for success, then you can't have it.

And so when a lot of customers would come, she'd be like, this is it.

This is this is what you hope for.

This is what you want, right?

You want a lot of customers.

And if we're not ready for it, we can't have it.

And she just drilled this into my head.

She's like, it's the worst thing a restaurant can do is be unprepared for a lot of people, because that by definition is success.

And a lot of restaurants aren't ready for it.

And they're like, then they'll never have success.

And God's calling us.

Are you ready?

He says, consecrate yourselves.

Why should I consecrate?

Why do I have to get my heart ready?

Because God is going to do amazing things.

And it says now the Jordan is at flood stage during the harvest.

Yet as soon as a priest who carried the ark reached the Jordan and their feet touched the water's edge, the water from upstream stopped flowing.

So you heard about the crossing the Red Sea.

Well, this is a new generation and they had to cross the Jordan River and then they moved together.

And so a lot of these a lot of these young people, they hadn't experienced this miracle that the older people talked about.

They just heard the old people talk about it.

You know, my youngest son, Bryce, he he is a he's a junior in high school.

And when he started the year, he said, I that how did you when you were in campus, how did you study the Bible with people?

How did you baptize people?

I really want to have an impact in my school.

And, you know, he he started, you know, inviting some a couple of his friends out.

And I and he's like, yeah, but what do I say?

What do I do?

And I remember just pulling him aside and saying, son, there's one thing I can't like only you can decide, and that is only you can decide what you believe God can do.

Only you, I can't tell you, like I can, you know, I could say, hey, God can change the lives of the students in your school, but it doesn't matter.

Like my faith can't carry you.

You got to you got to decide what do you believe God can do?

I said, listen, when God doesn't answer a prayer, it doesn't rock my faith.

Because I know God has a bigger plan or sometimes maybe there was just a reason he wanted me to persevere.

But you got to decide what you believe God can do.

And so my son started fasting once a week for about a month and he started praying every day for, you know, these students.

So he started inviting one.

He eventually got his friend out named Khan and his friend, a Vietnamese kid comes from a broken family, you know, comes from an atheist background.

And he started coming out to Devo for a couple of months and and really liked it.

And, you know, he started studying the Bible.

And I remember at every step, Bryce was like praying, like, please, I pray he'll be open.

And, you know, he's always scared because you're always scared that when you ask somebody to make a decision, you're scared that they're going to make the wrong decision.

And you're going to you're scared that this dream bubble that you created is going to burst.

And at every step.

And I said, but listen, I don't you're going to have to decide these are steps of courage that I can't take for you.

And just two weeks ago, Khan said Jesus is Lord and got baptized.

And I was really excited.

And I remember he was so excited.

He was so excited.

And I just said, don't forget how much you prayed.

And I said, don't forget that this is about what you believe God can do.

You see, the in order to to go into the to cross the Jordan River, this group of people, this group had to decide, we believe God can do this.

Right.

And they moved together.

It's so important as part of your faith that you move together with each other.

There's an old saying about community that we sin alone, but we heal together.

Right.

We move in faith together.

And so you see this call again of courage that God get your heart ready and let's move together in faith.

Let's look in Joshua chapter seven here.

It says, go consecrate the people.

And now we're in this section where they've inherited the promised land.

And now they're kind of getting ready to fight the battles within the promised land.

And in Joshua seven, it says, go consecrate the people, tell them, consecrate yourselves in preparation for tomorrow.

For this is what the Lord, the God of Israel says.

There are devoted things among you, Israel.

You cannot stand against your enemies until you remove them.

If you guys know this passage, I encourage you to read it.

And again, I'm taking a bird's eye view.

I think part of the hope is that you read some of these Bible narratives yourself.

Chapter seven of Joshua is kind of an infamous passage about called Achan's sin, where they're fighting the battles and God's people get defeated.

And Joshua's like, why did we lose?

And God is like, there's stuff in your guys' camp.

There's sin that you haven't dealt with.

And until this is dealt with, you guys can't stand against your enemies.

Like you're not going to be strong enough to be able to stand and consecrating your heart and getting your heart right.

There's a 13th century theologian monk named St.

Bonaventure.

And one of the things he wrote about the spiritual condition of man is he said that every person has three eyes.

Right.

And so the eye of their body in which, you know, the eye of the body is like what you see this.

And there's the eye of the mind.

And that's where you understand ideas.

That's where you like someone tells you, oh, I get what you're saying.

I see what you're saying.

What you're saying is you understand it.

But then he said there's a third eye that everyone has.

And that's the eye of the heart.

He said it is only with that eye that we see God.

And that is where Jesus referred to it.

The Sermon on the Mount.

He goes, blessed are the pure in heart.

What will the pure in heart do?

They'll see God.

Blessed are the pure in heart for they'll see God.

And a lot of times you can say, I don't see God working in my life.

Only because you're looking with the wrong eye.

Maybe you're trying to get it here.

You know, and if you try to live life thinking like, oh, you know what?

I can see with my, you know, physically or I can, I'm smart enough.

I can figure these things out.

Let me tell you, there's, if you will have this hypocrisy in your life, because if you're so smart, explain all the dumb things that you do.

Because there's something that is missing in your understanding of life, right?

And it is, you've got to open the eyes of the heart.

And that's what this is called to is, is God's people are being called to, hey, make sure your heart is right or you won't see God working.

You know, my wife and I recently, last month, we came back from Boston and we were asked to do a marriage retreat there.

And, you know, we talked about sort of the foundations of marriage that make it, but they apply to any relationship.

But one of them is, we talked about is generosity, like generosity, being generous to each other, generous with words and generous with time and how this is foundational for people that want close relationships.

And it doesn't just apply to marriage.

If you want to have close relationships, you have to be a generous person.

Show me a stingy person.

I'll show you someone with no friends.

I'll show you somebody that is always battling being connected to people.

But one of the weird things that we consistently saw in marriages were people that were very generous, yet were stingy to their spouse.

You meet a brother, so giving and loving, or you meet a sister.

She's just, she's a delight and she's just so giving.

And yet we talked about, yet sometimes in the context of your marriage, you're super stingy.

And we're like, what is that?

And often, more often than not, there's something in their heart.

There's a lack of forgiveness that they hold on to that prevents you from being able to experience the fruit of forgiveness in the context of a close relationship.

In the same way with God's people, sometimes, you know what, we don't feel the fruit of being in God's community.

God hasn't opened up the eyes of our heart.

Because there's grudges that we hold on to.

There is a lack of forgiveness.

If you feel like you're stingy towards each other or God's people, I encourage you, go on a forgiveness journey.

Consider if there's something you need to let go of.

There's a man named, a Christian writer named Everett Worthington.

He's an emeritus professor.

He's kind of a guru on forgiveness.

He's written like handbooks on forgiveness.

He tells a story about a married couple that it was just so obvious that they had gotten so bitter towards each other that like when they were together, they were basically just speaking words of hatred.

And what he wanted them to do, he tasked them to do, was to write a list of the 10 worst things that they had done towards each other, to write a sin list.

I want you to sit down and write down how you have sinned against your spouse.

And so he had the, you know, they came back the next session and they wrote their list.

And as they started to get open, he said, you know what, I feel like I'm invading on some sacred space.

I'm going to leave the room for half an hour.

And I'm going to come back, but I want you guys to share with each other your lists.

And he said that when he came back, they were on their knees, hugging each other, crying, just weeping and holding each other and apologizing.

And that is because that your capacity to forgive is directly related to how much you can confess.

If you can't forgive a wrong or a grudge, maybe there's something in your life you need to get open about.

Consecrate yourself, consecrate yourself.

Consider what you need to get open about, to get right so that the blessing, that the floodgates of God can enter into your heart.

Let's look at a couple more passages and we'll be done here.

Joshua chapter 18, the whole assembly of the Israelites gathered.

Joshua 18 · chapter mention

And so now we're on that third part.

So that first part, they entered the promised land.

That second part, they have to fight the battle, get their heart right.

The third one is now they're dividing up the promised land amongst the 12 tribes of Israel.

So in Joshua 18 says, the whole assembly of the Israelites gathered at Shiloh.

They set up the tent of meeting there.

The country was brought under their control, but there were still seven Israelite tribes who had not yet received their inheritance.

If you had traveled for 40 years in the desert, crossed the Jordan River, fought battles, and then all of a sudden you were one of the seven tribes who had not received their inheritance, how do you think you'd feel?

I'm sure you'd feel a little bit, at the very least, tempted to be irritated.

At this stage now, it should be a time of victory.

But what the Israelites have to battle is their own pride.

Pride is the fear of looking bad.

It's the fear that somehow I'm not valued or I did not get credit for what I've done or I'm not credited for who I am.

When I, in the late 90s, I went from Vancouver, Canada on the west coast of Canada and I moved to Toronto to train in the full-time ministry.

And I was, you know, just in my early 20s and I remember just feeling so excited to be there.

I was given a ton of responsibility for myself at that time.

I was leading a campus ministry, but I was also overseeing a singles ministry.

And I just remember feeling like I just wanna work so hard.

I wanted my lessons at Devo to be deep and fun and inspiring.

I wanted the ministry to be close, inspired, productive, and fruitful.

And I remember just feeling like I worked so hard, but I remember in that first few months, I felt frustrated, tired.

I wasn't fruitful.

I felt like I was constantly getting corrected for things I was forgetting or making mistakes, neglecting people.

And I just remember like I had this huge dream and anticipation to do everything and all it felt like I was doing was screwing up.

Sure, we've all been there at some points in our life.

And I remember being given this advice consistently from different people.

Hey, Mark, relax.

Hey, trust God.

Hey, Mark, don't try so hard.

I remember finding this advice frustrating, right?

What does it mean to not try so hard, right?

And then you're just like, well, does that mean not try?

But I do know this.

I know that many times in life, trying harder is not the answer.

I played tennis in high school.

And in serving, like in golf, there's a diminishing return if you just keep trying to serve too hard.

Like you can't just try to kill the ball.

In golf, if you try to drive it farther, the answer is not swing harder, right?

You're actually going to ruin things, right?

In music, if you're an artist, try harder to be creative.

It doesn't work, right?

Or you ever try really, really hard to go to sleep, right?

A lot of times in life, the answer is not trying harder, but I felt this tension, right?

You felt this.

And what exhausts us in life, when they say what exhausts us is not effort, but the desire for control, right?

What exhausts you?

Church exhausts you.

Effort doesn't exhaust people.

The desire to be in control exhausts people.

And that's what exhausted me in Toronto.

It was like I wanted to control the outcome.

I wanted things to be amazing.

I wanted my ministry to be perfect.

I wanted my lessons to be amazing.

And everyone was like, chill out, relax.

All I would do is get frustrated with that advice.

What does that even mean?

Like what are you actually telling me?

And as I thought it through more and more, I realized I had to let go of the desire for control.

I remember one time we were at a Midwest church leaders retreat and we're in a hotel and I was, we kind of had a meeting at the restaurant in the hotel.

And there were two Mexican waiters that were there and then we brought like 30 of us.

So they were massively understaffed.

Well, as I said, I grew up in a restaurant.

And so it's kind of like a really comfortable place for me.

And so as they were running around like crazy, I decided to do the fun thing and I helped them out.

And so I started waiting.

I put on an apron and everyone's having a good chuckle, but I'm helping out.

They're loving me.

They're like, hey, let me go.

They're just giving me a high five.

And I'm helping them.

I'm in the kitchen.

I'm with them.

I'm passing things with them.

I'm helping them out.

They're super appreciated.

This group is happening.

And so it's kind of a chuckle.

It's really fun.

And then all of a sudden, some people not from our group start sitting down.

And the lady there goes, excuse me.

And she starts asking me for something.

And I'm like, oh, OK.

And again, everyone's seeing it.

It's kind of fun at this time.

And at some point, I stop and I go to eat my meal.

And then the lady from the group goes, excuse me.

I need one now.

And she keeps calling me back and forth.

And I'm just like, OK, the joke's over now.

And she's constantly asking me for things.

And I remember just getting, ugh.

And thinking, OK, what do I tell her?

I might as well do it.

And she's just over there.

And there's kind of all the supplies there.

But I remember getting annoyed and sitting down.

And the church leader who was there at the time, his name's Dave Jung from Winnipeg, leaned over and looked at me and said, everyone likes being a servant until you're treated like one.

And he just kind of, everyone likes being a servant until you're treated like one.

Until you're treated like one.

Hey, I want to.

And this, dividing the land was about the courage to be humble.

It was about the courage to be forgotten.

It was about the courage to not care.

You know, we had a, about a month ago, my wife and I had a baby Christian dinner because, of course, we had 27 people baptized last year.

So we had them all at our house.

And I said to all of them, you guys, I want to challenge y'all.

And, you know, I talked about the ministry of inspiration, perspiration, and aspiration.

I said, the ministry of inspiration, you guys should find peers that inspire you, that raise your standard of life.

That raise your standard of life.

Like you go, oh wow, you know, like this is now the new standard for my life.

I said, find the ministry of aspiration.

Find people that you want to be like.

And then I said, now you find the ministry of perspiration.

And I said, every Christian should have a ministry where they give and they get nothing back.

You find that what it is.

It goes, you might not get complimented.

You might not get noticed, but you find something in the church where you give to the community and you get nothing back.

That's the call.

Jesus said, you know, when you do all you've done, you're still an unworthy servant.

And how we divide things up, again, everyone wants to be a servant until you're treated like one.

But that really tests our hearts.

Close with this thought and then we'll be done.

It ends here in Joshua 24 in verse 15.

Serving the Lord seems undesirable to you.

Then choose for yourselves this day whom you'll serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living.

But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.

The impact of Joshua's leadership was that during his lifetime, Israel was devoted to God.

And he said, for me and my home, we'll serve the Lord.

And I shared this with the baby Christians and I'll share it to you.

I said, you know, God calls us to finish the race to the very end.

If you don't end your faith well, if your faith doesn't end well, no one will remember how you started.

No one will remember how you started.

Nobody will care.

And no one will even remember how it all started.

They will just remember that it didn't end well with you.

With God, our call is not just to start the race.

It's to make sure we end the race well.

Amen.

Thank you guys.

You are all dismissed for kids class.

Is that it?

Okay.

Yeah.

Take care, guys.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for listening to the Kalamazoo Church of Christ podcast.

If you're in the Kalamazoo area, we'd love to get connected.

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