Grads That Glorify

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Alright, can y'all hear me all right?

Yeah.

Well, uh, man, I just want to say congratulations again to all of our seniors who have graduated.

That is awesome.

I almost didn't graduate.

Uh I had a couple F's, um, but my teachers didn't like me, so they passed me through, right?

I made it on out.

Um, but as I was thinking about this message, um, one of the things that God really pressed on my heart to tell them is it's not about what job you can get.

It's not about uh how much money you can put in your bank account.

Uh it's not about the spouse that you can get, but at the end of your life, what matters most is if God was number one.

And if I could uh put this all into one sentence, it would be this that God deserves to be worshiped in every facet of our lives.

Right?

He deserves our worship.

So I want to pray and we'll get started.

I'm deemly father.

God, I just pray right now, God, that you would be lifted up.

God, because you say if we do that, you'll draw men to yourself.

Lord, I pray for a special anointing over the seniors.

And Lord, that you would lead them into a life that would be pleasing to you.

And God, for the rest of us, Lord, as God, maybe we we have the job or the career that we sought out to have.

But God, maybe something's missing.

And Lord, I pray that this message would be used by you and that you would remind us of what our sole purpose is.

And that you would be lifted up and glorified.

Lord, we love you and thank you in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

So believe it or not, um, it's been 11 years since I graduated high school.

Right?

That's crazy, huh?

I asked some kids, we were on a mission trip, and I asked some kids, I said, How old do you think I am?

And they said, 50.

Six, I said, wait a minute, man.

I said, wait a minute.

All right, and so then I brought uh Pastor Dave up.

I said, How old do you think he is?

35.

I said, Y'all ain't right, man.

God ain't gonna bless that.

But believe it or not, it's been 11 years since I graduated.

And one of the things that uh got me into school um was geology.

I went to go study about rocks, right?

That's what I think geology is about.

Anyone here study geology?

Yeah, yeah.

So I didn't know what a geology degree would look like.

I just thought, you know, hey, I had just gotten saved.

I'm gonna make some money doing something called geology, right?

I had my first class and I knew that's not what the Lord had called me to.

Okay?

I didn't know anything about rocks.

Uh I only passed because I was a teacher's pet.

And my professor liked me, right?

He gave me a C on my uh final exam to pass me through the class.

Uh but my my goal was to do something that I wanted to do.

My goal was for me to have control over my life, right?

I wanted to love God but do what I wanted to do.

And the problem was, my life is not my own.

Right?

The moment that I said Jesus come into my heart, I became his.

Right?

And so what I learned is that, man, my life is about bringing God glory.

If I don't do anything in this world that anybody cares about, you'll forget my name one day.

But if I bring glory to God, that's all that matters, right?

And so I want to encourage you today, man, to bring God glory.

Whether you're you're a maintenance man, whether you uh uh you're a cleaner, whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

So how do we do that?

First point is this to glorify God in your heart.

Glorify God in your heart.

Uh when I think about bringing glory to God, the first thing that comes to my mind is Romans uh 12, 1.

And it says, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.

When I think about glorifying God in my heart, the first thing is this that I have to give my heart to him, right?

He wants your whole heart.

And I think sometimes we get to this place in our lives where we give him parts of us.

We'll give him a Sunday, we'll give him a morning to come to church and sing a couple songs, and then the rest of the week is our own.

We'll give him a Wednesday.

Yeah, I'll serve God on Wednesday.

That's cool too.

But God is saying, I want every part of you.

Right?

It's not that he's just our first on our list, because y'all know when you have a list, you do the first thing that you got to do first, and then you go on to the rest of your list.

God's not saying, no, I don't want you just to wake up in the morning, have your devotional time, and forget about me.

He's saying in every single part of your life, I should be a part of it.

Everything that you do, whether you're at work, whether you're dealing with your kids, whatever it is, it should come back to me.

So we glorify God in our hearts.

And the first thing is this, that we have to let peace, the peace of God rule in our hearts.

Let's go to uh chapter three of Colossians and verse 15.

And it says this, let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which you are also called in one body, and be thankful.

Um now, this verse, we're gonna break it down.

So when we think about peace, what that is, is a relationship with God.

Okay?

Before we get into a relationship with God, we are separated, right?

Y'all seen the bridge diagram.

Because of sin, God's over here, he's perfect and holy, and we're over here.

We can't even get to his side.

No good deeds that we do can get us to God, right?

We're forever separated because of sin.

But God, who is rich in love and mercy, sent Jesus, right, to die the death that we deserved, right, so that if we would receive him, we could have peace with God.

Right?

We could be on God's side.

And so the first thing is you have to have peace in your heart.

So if you don't know God, guess what?

You don't know peace.

You can have a false sense of peace, right?

You can have a lot of money in your bank and think that everything's cool.

You can have a great spouse and think that everything's good.

You can have all the A's you want, but not truly have peace.

And when I think about uh uh this idea, I think about all the actors who had all this money and yet committed suicide.

All these people who had great success and committed suicide.

See, you can have a lot of things.

You can gain this whole world, but not have the one thing that really matters.

That peace with God.

But out of having a relationship with God, there's another sense to peace, right?

The scripture says that he gives a peace that surpasses understanding, right?

That comes through having relationship with him.

That comes from uh I know who God is and God knows who I am, I have a relationship with him, and because of that, I know that my eternity is secure, so come what may, it is well with my soul.

God gives us that peace.

And so in the scripture, he's saying, Let peace rule your heart.

So that word rule, it's to be an umpire.

Okay?

Now I'm gonna tell you right now, I don't know a whole lot about baseball.

I'm just gonna be honest.

Uh I I think I know what a double is.

Is that where you go?

Is that a double?

What is a double?

Going to second base, right?

I know a double, and I'm guessing a single is first base and a triple is third base, right?

Uh but this word rule, it means to be an umpire.

Okay, now I have watched enough games to know that the umpire is not the favorite person sometimes.

Depending on the call, I have seen coaches run out to the umpire and they're about to get them, right?

Because of the call.

Listen, in our hearts, when he says let peace rule in your heart, he's saying, let peace be an umpire, right?

That means let peace decide what your next move is.

What is he saying here?

So because you have a relationship with God, let that influence your decisions.

Let that influence when somebody's calling you out your name, how you respond.

Let that influence uh when your spouse is doing something you don't like, how you respond to them.

Let that influence um when you don't have what the world says is success, let that influence your decisions, right?

Because if I know God, my actions should follow.

It's hard for me to talk to people who say, Yes, I love Jesus, but then act a certain way.

I know a lot of people, oh, the church is hypocrites and da-da-da.

And sometimes it's because we really are.

Because we know God, but yet we don't act like we know God.

We don't let peace be an umpire, we don't let peace uh be a referee in our lives.

And if that's the case, if peace is an umpire, it's gonna have the final say.

If your relationship with God is real, it's going to affect how you live your life.

But sometimes we have peace and we don't activate it.

Sometimes we know God, but we don't live that way, right?

And here's the thing: in our lives, there's a whole lot of things trying to get control of our heart.

There's so much.

It's fear, anxiety.

Man, this week I have had anxiety like I haven't had it before.

And I know now it's because God wanted me to get this message for myself.

And so when those moments come up and we have anxiety, we have fear, and we have all these things fighting, we have to get back to the truth.

We have to get back to God's word and let it reinforce that God's peace in our lives should dictate everything.

I was uh back at home last week and I was talking to Michaela's pap and uh they gave him, you know, without he has cancer, and they gave him like six months to a year if he doesn't do anything, right?

And I remember I drove to his house and I just sat with him.

Not I mean, I'm I've been in ministry for seven years now, and you would think I had all the answers.

I didn't.

I just sat there and I just listened to him talk.

And what blew my mind is the peace that he had.

Like he wasn't afraid.

He's facing eternity.

But he said, you know what?

I know who Jesus is, and I know that one day I'll see him face to face.

And it doesn't matter what happens here.

He said, I'm good.

And I was blown away.

I'm like, all right, I ain't got nothing else to say.

I don't have anything to say.

I'm gonna take that note and I'm gonna apply it to my life.

He said, I know Jesus, and because of that, nothing else matters.

So if we're gonna glorify God in our hearts, the first thing is we have to have him in our heart.

And then as we have him in our heart, we have to let peace uh dictate how we live.

And before I move on, I just want to say this is an act of submission, right?

Letting peace rule in your heart when you want to do everything else beside that is an act of submission, right?

So four years ago, five years ago, I was at Pastor Rick's house and uh I was making jokes about him, right?

I'm calling him short and all this, and I remember he he gave me one warning.

He said, Listen, you're not gonna be in my house and make fun of me.

I'm like, what are you gonna do?

Short, and then next thing you know, I'm I'm on the ground, I see a light, and I hear angels singing.

I'm like, okay, Lord, and then I heard him say, tap, tap, and then he let me go.

I had to submit or I was gonna die.

Okay.

Listen, when we think about having peace in our lives, God is saying, look, you can do it on your own.

You can do this life on your own, but you're gonna have a spiritually dead life.

If you keep on trying to do things your own way, guess what?

Spiritually, you're gonna be dead.

So you have to submit to that peace if you want to have life in you, spiritual life.

I wasn't gonna share that story.

Something was tugging on my heart.

I just had to do it.

But the second thing is this that we must have a posture of thankfulness.

That we must glorify God in being thankful.

And I just want to say, when it comes to being thankful to God, it's not a uh once-a-day type of thing.

Okay, I'm gonna tell you a real thing about me.

Uh, when I was in elementary school, um, we had these things where we'd do Thanksgiving and we would get all this food and we would say what we're thankful for.

And I remember thinking that was the only time I had to say I was thankful.

Right?

I would I would wait every year.

Man, turkey legs, thank you, Lord.

Thank you for this, thank you for that.

But then I wouldn't be thankful for the rest of the year.

And then I learned like that's not the way it goes.

Like, we have to be thankful in all things.

1 Thessalonians 5.18 says this give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

Now I'm gonna say that's a hard thing to do.

Because what do you do when you get the news that you have cancer?

What do you do when you get the news that you have twins and they're not gonna make it?

What do you do when your loved one is on their deathbed?

It's hard to say, yes, God, I know that this is bad, but thank you.

It's hard to do that.

But if you do that, God is going to shape and mold you in a way that without pain you can't be shaped.

There is something that happens when even though everything looks dark and bleak, I get on my knees and God, I thank you.

I don't understand what you're doing in this moment, but God, you're still good.

I don't know why this had to happen to me, but God, you're worthy.

You deserve all the glory and honor.

Something happens in pain when we give God worship.

When my wife lost her baby, and I could have done everything in the world, I could have been mad at God, I could have done anything.

I just got down on my knees and I said, God, I don't know what you're doing, but you give and you take away.

But blessed be your name.

When I think about glorifying God in my heart, I have to have a heart that is postured to give towards giving God thanks.

Come what may.

Because when I do that, guess what?

I have a testimony.

Listen, I heard somebody say it like this you don't get a testimony without a test.

Some of y'all are in a test right now and you don't know when you're going to get out of it.

You don't know what God is doing, but guess what?

You still can lift your hand and say, It is well with my soul.

You still can lift your hand and say, God, you are worthy of it all.

And God will do something in your heart.

God will move in you.

God will take you to a different place of worship.

It's easy to say he's good when everything's good.

But man, people look around and they wonder what's going on when everything's going bad and you're still lifting your hands up to him.

So if I'm going to glorify God in my heart, I have to let peace control me, and I have to have a heart posture towards thankfulness.

The second point is this that I need to glorify God in my heart.

Let's go to verse 16.

And it says this, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly and in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with the grace in your hearts to the Lord.

Glorifying God in our mind starts with knowing God's word.

Listen, you cannot give what you don't have.

I'm gonna tell you right now, your mind is the first thing that happens, like the thoughts that lead to an action.

You're not just gonna do something.

Sometimes, you know, you think, oh man, I did that without thinking.

No, something was happening in your mind before that action.

Right?

And so God is saying, if you're gonna glorify me in your mind, you need to put your mind to the word.

You need to have scripture constantly on your mind because guess what?

We will sin a lot when we don't know it's sin.

If we don't know something's sin, we're gonna do it.

If it feels good and we like it, we are gonna do it.

That's just reality.

Right?

But if I know that it's sin, man, I have to pause.

And I have to ask myself, am I, I know this doesn't bring glory to God, so am I gonna do this?

Or am I gonna obey God's word?

But it's hard to do things that you don't know how to do.

Right?

Uh Michaela and I were talking about the ice cream truck and uh wherever Greg Wood is at.

This man hooked up the ice cream truck.

It is good to go.

You ain't gotta jump it anymore.

Like the wires got rewired.

It is dope.

Like it's good to go.

I got in there, man, uh Saturday or Friday, and I was like jumping around, praising the Lord, like it's good to go.

And and y'all don't understand, every morning before it gets out, I'm there hooking it up, trying to start it, trying to get it going, right?

Um, but McCain and I were talking, and I and I told her, I'm like, I'm glad that that we found this guy to be able to do it.

She's like, well, yeah, you should have asked around.

I'm like, well, I don't know who I don't know, right?

What am I saying?

I don't know who can fix the icing truck.

Okay?

I could be asking somebody who's a teacher.

They're not gonna know how to help me, right?

I could be asking somebody who who's a painter, right?

Hey, can you help me fix the icing truck?

They're not gonna know what I'm talking about, right?

But if I find somebody who knows, then they can help me.

If if I find God's word, guess what?

It can help me.

If I don't know what is sin, I'm not gonna have help when it comes to sinning and not sinning.

But if I get God's word in my heart, I'll know what is sin and what is not.

We have to know God's word.

And in my small group, I was asking uh if anybody had known God's word before they got saved, right?

Could they understand God's word?

And everybody was like, No, I didn't understand it.

And so I began to tell a story about uh before I got saved, I was asking around for a Bible.

I didn't have one.

I was 18 years old, never had my own Bible.

And so I asked my Aunt Muff, and she's like, Yeah, I got a Bible.

So she brings me my uh great grandmother's Bible, and I'm talking, the Bible was this big.

Okay?

Like, I'm like sitting it on my lap trying to read this thing, taking everything I got to turn the page, right?

The word.

Were this big.

And I remember I'm like trying to read it, and I could not understand what was going on.

I mean, I think I might have been in Leviticus, but still, I did not know what was happening.

And I got so mad I just stopped reading my Bible.

But then I got saved.

And I opened God's word.

It was like magic.

Like I began to understand things.

I began to know what God's word was saying.

Because the Holy Spirit, unlike the other time, the Holy Spirit was sitting there with me, right?

And the word says that he will teach us the truth.

And so for me to glorify God, I have to know God's word.

But first I have to know God.

You cannot understand God's word without having him inside of you, without the Holy Spirit teaching you his word.

God wants you to get in the word daily.

And I'm going to tell you this: something happens when you get in the word and then you start your day.

Something happens when you're reading about something and you get into your day, and that thing happens and you know how to respond to it.

Listen, when I get into God's word, it has given me weapons, spiritual weapons, to fight for every day because we have an enemy who doesn't stop chasing us.

And so I have to have weapons that are not of this world.

Right?

When somebody comes up to me and they're calling me out my name, I cannot fight them like the world says to fight them.

I have to fight them with God's word.

With love and joy and peace and compassion.

I have to give them God's word.

And so I want to ask you like, are you in it daily?

Listen, you don't wait to eat.

I mean, I guess if you're fasting, you do, but most of us ain't fasting.

You don't pride or take away from yourself of eating food.

You know when you haven't eaten food.

I know when Pastor Rick hasn't eaten.

Okay?

He's different.

He's different.

And he'll be in the in the fridge, like looking around, like trying to grab.

You know, we get that Panera bread.

He's in there getting pieces and he's got cookies and stuff, crumbs on him.

You don't give or not give yourself food.

This is spiritual food.

This is more important than that hamburger, than that breakfast.

You won't survive spiritually without it.

And if you eat three times a day, some of us four, why not do the same?

Why not?

How about this?

Every time you sit down to eat, you read a Bible verse.

Every time you snack, let me snack on the word too.

Every time you drink water, let me drink the spirit.

What would happen in your life if that was the case?

Now I get it.

Some of us we don't read the Bible because it's it's sometimes hard to understand.

But man, if you keep doing it, you'll understand it better.

And I have a couple things, a couple tips for you seniors as you go to college for your Bible reading.

I want you to write this down.

The first thing is ask yourself this.

Is there a promise to claim?

When I'm reading God's word, is there a promise to claim?

Is there a lesson to learn?

Is there a blessing to enjoy?

Is there a command to obey?

Is there a sin to avoid?

And is there a new thought to carry on in your life?

God's word has all that.

So every time you sit down and read, God has something for you.

But you have to receive it.

So as we're getting in God's word, the second part is this that we have to uh dwell in God's word or let God's word dwell in you.

Like I said before, you you know when you've been in the word and when things come up and you act different, you you respond differently because you've had that time with God.

When I read my Bible, it helps me with my wife.

Okay?

Because I get in a lot of trouble sometimes.

And I get in the most trouble when I ain't read my Bible.

Okay?

But when I get in there and I read about not being selfish and about loving my neighbor, she's the closest neighbor I got.

When I read those things, and then I get with my wife, it should come out of me.

If it's dwelling inside of me, it should come out of me.

Right?

But there's times when it isn't dwelling in me, and it's the furthest thing to come out.

What are you taking in?

Because what you take in is the first thing to come out of you.

I know some of us in here, we have to have our morning coffee.

And when we don't have it, some of y'all got them little cups that have some little sayings like, uh, first let me get my coffee, right?

Some of y'all are like that.

Right?

You gotta have that fresh cup.

I saw Miss Amanda wrote something about she was yelling at some people, and you know, she got her coffee, then the rest of the day was smooth.

The same thing with Jesus, but even better.

Listen, I know this is an elementary sermon, okay?

That's okay.

But some of us ain't doing it anyways.

I'm being honest.

I used to go to counseling and I would have the counselor say the same thing over and over, and I'd wonder why he keeps saying that.

And then I learned it's because I wasn't doing it in the first place.

God's word is true whether you believe it or not.

And so I could read the same verse every day, and guess what?

It's still the same verse, it's still true.

And if I don't apply it, guess what?

I need it again.

Listen, I know y'all parents get tired of telling your kids the same thing.

Right?

I tell Brandon the same stuff all the time.

Boy, stop doing that.

Why are you always getting on me?

Because you keep doing the same thing.

Come on, look, look.

If we're gonna do the same thing, why don't it be this?

Why don't it be what actually matters?

God deserves every part of us.

And guess what?

This needs to be every part of us.

It's good.

When I was thinking about this message, one of the things that hit me is uh a couple weeks ago, my my brother, my adoptive brother, told me that the family had adopted me into their will.

And that that messed me up.

This family that has only known me for 10 years said, you know what, we love you so much that what the boys get, you get equal.

They may be our blood kids, but you're our son too.

And they wrote me in the will.

But before that happened, in 2012, I was kicked out of my brother's house, and this family took me in.

And originally it was supposed to be for three weeks until I went to college, but the day before I left, they they stopped me and they said, Listen, this house is your house.

That room is your room.

You're our son.

You come and stay here and live here as long as you want to, as long as you need to.

That fridge, man, anything in there you want.

They shouldn't have told me that, but they did.

I said, all right.

And after that, man, I was walking around my boxers, I was doing whatever, right?

I didn't think they didn't, they didn't mean all that, but they said, you know what?

This is your house.

You have access to everything in this house.

God's word needs to have access to every room in your heart and in your mind.

Sometimes we say, Yeah, God, you can do this and this part of me.

Sometimes we say, Yeah, God, you can have the living room space.

But my bedroom is is locked.

You can't go in there.

God is saying, He wants to have every single part of you.

And if my actions start here, he's saying, I want to be in every part of your mind, every part of your thoughts, so that the rest of your life follows.

God doesn't just want his word to be part of you, he wants it to be in all of you.

Man, it's time for somebody in here to unlock some doors.

It's time for somebody in here to allow forgiveness to that person who hurt you.

That person who hurt you for years and you never forgive them.

It's time for you to let God's word apply to your life so that you can start living the way that He would call you to live.

We gotta stop only reading the parts that we like.

Because that's what happens a lot of times.

Right?

It's like, you know, we we got this mortgage board and we get, oh, I like this and I like that.

Y'all know I'm a picky eater, okay?

I know what it's like to get what just I like.

But God is saying, with my word, man, the whole thing and apply it to every part of your life.

And I'm gonna do something.

I I'm gonna not finish my sermon because God, God did something in my heart last night uh while I was sleeping, and uh one of the things that He just I couldn't get off my mind and my heart was eternity.

And somebody here, you don't really know where you'll spend eternity.

And I couldn't sleep, I was tossing and turning because I couldn't stop thinking about how long eternity is.

And yet some people are willing to give it up for this little small piece of life.

Some people aren't willing to give God everything because they want to live their own life, and God is saying, listen, it is my will that no one should perish.

But the sad truth is people are perishing every day because they're choosing to.

God isn't sending anybody to hell, it's people making the decision not to accept him.

And so I want to take a moment with every head bowed and every eye closed.

Man, maybe you're here and and this message it just hit different.

Maybe you're like, you know what, I haven't been glorifying God because I don't even know God.

I don't know what it means to have a relationship with God.

I don't know what it means uh to put my faith in him.

And in a moment, we're gonna have the prayer team come up.

And I'm not gonna do an open prayer on you accepting Christ.

If you mean it, man, if you want to know what it means to be saved, if you want to know what it means to one day spend an eternity in heaven with God, I want to challenge you to come up to one of the prayer leaders and talk to him about it.

Listen, eternity is a long, long time.

And God loved you and I so much that he wanted us to be there with him for eternity.

But you gotta make the decision.

The work's been done.

Jesus paid it all on the cross, and all we have to do is accept it.

So as we go into the time of invitation, the time of altar call, as everybody stands up, we're gonna uh sing, but man, if that is you, we have some people up here.

If you want to know what it means to be saved, come up.

God does not want you to die in your sin without knowing him.

I'm gonna pray and we'll continue.

Dearly Father.

God forgive us for not glorifying you with every part of our lives.

Lord, forgive us for the moments where we take you for granted.

Forgive us for the moments where we're not thankful in all things.

God, I pray for the one here who needed this word.

God, who needed to be reminded that you are worthy of our heart, our mind, and our soul, our actions.

God, speak to them today.

God, as we enter into a time of altar call, move on our hearts, God.

Help us to come up and God lay things down.

God, help us to come up and forgive somebody who hurt us.

God, help us to live out our purpose and bring you glory, whatever we do, in word or in deed, to bring you glory.

We pray all this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

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