Pursuing the things of God

This is a teaching.

Jacob, I think I told you last week, Jacob told me to,

I was emailing back and forth to Jacob, how do we progress?

It seems like in some ways we stalled.

How do we go forward?

So I emailed him some thoughts and he liked them so much

that he told me to teach on them.

So last week we looked at the gods in the business

of reconciling the whole world to himself,

of bringing the world back to himself.

And we looked at how he invites us to take part of this

and how it's a privilege for us to now join in this work of God,

of bringing the world back to God,

of seeing the kingdom established on the earth.

This is a huge privilege for us to share in this work.

But along with the privilege is also now the responsibility, right?

It's the responsibility that I actually step out

and now start doing this work.

Just because God's given me this mandate or given me this privilege,

I can't just sit back and enjoy it.

I have to actually step out to do it, right?

And a lot of the doing involves training and getting prepared for it.

And that's what we're going to talk about this morning.

This morning I want to talk a lot about,

there's going to be a lot about counting the costs of about

what it's going to cost us.

There's a lot of it.

And it's all coming out of stuff from my own life.

So I'm sharing a lot of things and struggles and battles I've had to face.

So it's kind of a personal message this morning.

Most of them are, but this one even more so.

And yeah.

So know that everything I'm talking about today

is stuff I've had to work through for the last four years.

I think I've been here four years, right?

I'm asking you, but three or four.

I think it was 2010 I came, December.

So all this is coming out of stuff I've had to work with.

And I emailed it to Jacob.

And he was like, that's tough when you put it that way.

As in it's a hard thing to do.

But he approved of all the stuff.

So that's good to know.

So we talked about the privilege and the responsibility that we have.

So what do we do now?

How do we now, from taking the knowledge that yes, we have this job to do,

how do we now actually take that step?

How do we actually now step into it?

How do we start accomplishing what God wants for us to do?

Well, the only way I can accomplish this thing

is if I'm willing to train myself

and I'm willing to grow in my gifts

and grow in my understanding of who God is

and what his kingdom looks like.

And this is accomplished in a number of ways.

None of this will probably be new, this part here.

I'm just going to mention it now. We'll come back to it later.

But all this training and this growing up and this maturing

all happens in three ways.

Or from three sources, you could say.

One is through a...

What did I put here?

By willing to place myself under a spiritual father.

I really don't like the word spiritual.

But it helps, in this case.

No, we'll get there.

Yeah, I don't have a category for this part.

This is more just setting it up.

We'll come back to this later and explain all these things.

So I place myself under a spiritual father or just father.

I prefer just father, but to distinguish between my biological dad

and my other dad or father, Jacob,

I'll just use the word spiritual.

The reason I don't like spiritual is because it makes it sound like

he's just there for the godliness part of me

and has no influence on the rest of my life.

There, the spiritual father has influence on all areas of my life.

From how I treat my family, to how I go about my work,

to how I stay calm or get mad,

to how my relationship is with god.

There's an influence from the spiritual father on all those things.

The second influence that I need to grow in

is being connected to a body.

So I place myself under a father.

I'm connected to a body.

So that's the second place.

I'm connected to a body where a body can encourage me,

can strengthen me, allows me to take risks and to fail

and to grow and learn from those risks, those failings.

A body being like this body here.

So I learn from the father, the body, and also

I learn by placing my, or reconnecting with the father,

or the holy spirit.

That's not how you spell that word.

This is a really nice marker by the way.

Connect with my heavenly father.

Connect with my heavenly father.

As in I need to grow in that connection with god.

These are the three areas, three things I need to be connected with

of coming under, of learning from, in order to grow

so that I can now accomplish this mandate that god has given me.

In order to accomplish and to learn from all these though,

I have to begin by first counting the cost.

This is where we'll get to the first point on that sheet.

We have to count the cost and realize the sacrifice that's required.

Because guys, there is a sacrifice, a huge sacrifice

required out of you, out of me, in order to now walk in these things

that god has given to us.

And so often neglected the fact that there is,

because this is going to cost us.

Luke 14, 25-33.

Jesus doesn't shy away from this idea of sacrifice and there being a cost.

He talks about it quite a bit.

So here's Luke 14, 25-33.

That's how Jesus puts it.

Now the crowds were traveling with him, and he turned and said to them,

He said to them, whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother,

wife and children, brothers and sisters,

yes, and even life itself cannot be my disciple.

Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

For which of you intending to build a tower

does not first sit down and estimate the cost

to see whether he has enough to complete it?

Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish,

all who see it will begin to ridicule him,

saying this fellow began to build and was not able to finish.

Or what king going out to wage war against another king

will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with 10,000

to oppose the one who comes against him with 20,000?

If he cannot, then while the other is still far away,

he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace.

So therefore, none of you can become my disciple

if you do not give up all your possessions.

Jesus puts it pretty starkly here, there is a cost.

To be his disciple, to learn from him, to grow in him,

to grow in this mandate that God has given to each one of us,

this privilege and responsibility to join his work,

there is going to be a cost.

And Jesus says, unless you hate your parents, your wife, your children,

your life itself, you cannot do these things.

Jesus is using some kind of exaggeration,

he is not telling us to actually hate my wife and children.

We cannot go too far in the extreme where we now just abandon everything.

1 Timothy 5.8 says,

And whoever does not provide for relatives, and especially for family members,

has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

So in one sense, we are not abandoning our family,

that is not what Jesus is calling to,

you should just leave them all behind and go be with him.

The point here is that you cannot have anything to tie you down,

if you are going to follow Jesus.

That he is the only thing you are after, more than anything else.

So let's say, I will give an example here,

if I like chocolate ice cream,

whoops, if I like chocolate ice cream,

it also has this kind of tie to me, right?

Where if someone offers me a bowl of chocolate ice cream,

perhaps I will, I am willing to give other stuff up to go to it.

Or let's say someone offers me chocolate ice cream,

and says, if you will go and grab my sneakers,

you can have some of my ice cream.

Now there is this incentive to do it, because I kind of like the ice cream.

However, if I hate chocolate ice cream,

which I kind of do,

you too? Wow.

Me too.

Wow.

If you hate chocolate ice cream, all of a sudden,

there is no more, chocolate ice cream has no hold over your life, right?

So someone can't use chocolate ice cream to get you to do something,

that you wouldn't normally do.

Because I don't care.

I am not getting your shoes, because your chocolate ice cream means nothing to me.

In fact, it is less of an incentive to go and do that.

If I hate chocolate ice cream,

then that ice cream will never be a reason, for instance,

that I don't go outside on a hot sunny day.

Because I might be afraid my ice cream might melt.

If I don't like the ice cream, it doesn't matter if I go outside,

because I don't care if it melts, because I don't like it anyways.

This is kind of the point Jesus is getting at,

that we can't allow our family members,

or other people, or our own life,

to have influence on what we are going to do, or what God calls us to.

And guys, this is a huge issue.

And having four kids,

this is obviously a very pertinent issue to me.

And this is an issue where there is tons of guilt.

Right?

I'm sharing from my own life here, guys,

because this is something I've had to deal with a lot.

For the issue of family, how do I value my family?

So the question I have to ask is,

should I go and meet with Jacob this night, say on a Tuesday night,

or should I be at home with my kids to tuck them into bed?

This is the dilemma I face, right?

Should I go to Teliaus on a Wednesday night,

or should I be at home with my wife and kids?

The kids aren't feeling well tonight.

Should I be with them, or should I go do something else that God has called me to?

Understand the big issues here.

Sometimes we like to use really fluffy ones,

and like, oh, if we just give up our $10.

But the issues here are huge.

These are issues I deal with all the time.

How do we face these tough situations?

And it's not just spouses and children.

I know not everyone here has children and spouses.

Other issues too.

Following the path of God can take you away from your parents.

And so following God might mean that you can't be with your parents if they're ill or sick,

and you can't help them.

Two years ago, I think it was two years ago,

most of you guys know, my dad went through a complete nervous breakdown.

Lost it all. He couldn't stop crying.

You said the wrong word, and he would just lose it.

He couldn't remember. He's still affected by it.

And it was tough.

There was part of me that wanted to go move back to Alberta to be with them,

just so I could help out at the time,

because my dad's going through this huge thing,

and he's on heavy medications.

He can't sleep, or he sleeps too much with the medication.

My mom was also going through a lot of stuff that time,

and it was just a mess.

And part of me wanted to go there,

and yet at the same time feel like God is calling me here.

Am I willing to give that up?

Marianna struggles with this too.

We have tons of family in Ontario,

and love to be with our family.

We love living with family.

We spent a couple of years in Vernon, where my sister lived by.

It was some of the best times, having a sister live close by.

And yet, now we live here, and they moved to Alberta.

We have no real close family here, like relatives and stuff.

I have an uncle in Delta, but that's about it.

And we're not all that close.

We see each other once or twice a year, but that's about it.

These are issues you guys have to face too.

Some of you haven't seen sisters and brothers or parents in decades.

Why do we get this stuff?

This is the stuff that...

These are the kind of costs that we have to start evaluating.

Another one, maybe if we go down this path,

our parents will disapprove of us.

I mean, again, struggled with this too.

Where we were kind of the black sheep of the family,

because we moved out to Vancouver.

We were the black sheep, apparently just moving to Vancouver.

For a number of reasons.

It came even worse when we moved out here.

I know talking with Jacob, he faced that too.

How he faced this kind of backlash from his family,

because he came out here, because he was following what God was going to do.

Because he didn't have a real job.

He didn't know where his paycheck is coming from or anything like that.

This is part of the cost that God is calling us to.

What are we going to do?

Are we going to love God?

Or are we going to spend our time with our family?

And these are not easy decisions.

Because I love my wife, I love my kids.

It is not easy to say,

I'm going to go be at Telly House on a Wednesday night,

rather than be with them.

It is not an easy decision.

Maybe the cost is disrupting of your lifestyle as well.

Where all of a sudden God is calling you to give up a job,

or give up a security, or give up something like that.

Are we willing to let that go?

To hate your own life, in order to follow God?

There is this cost to discipleship of Jesus.

Where yes, it's a privilege, and there's a responsibility.

And to do that, there is a cost for our own selves to give up.

There needs to be a time of reflection guys, where we ask ourselves,

do I really believe this word that was spoken over me?

I think last week we talked about going over the prophetic words that have been spoken over you.

Hopefully some of you did that.

And looking at this word, we have to ask ourselves seriously and say,

do I believe this prophetic word, that this is what God has called me to?

And if this is what he has called me to, what am I willing to give up to see it come about?

How much am I willing to sacrifice in order for it to come about?

How much am I willing to pay to see this word come to fruition?

And it can't be an emotional decision.

I mean sometimes it's really easy to get caught up in emotions.

Like in Vernon, when we were there and Jacob first gave this prophetic word,

and you first hear it, there's this emotion that kind of goes along with it,

right off, yes, let's go do it, let's go move to Vancouver.

Not even thinking about what that will actually mean in terms of cost to family,

of living, of money, of no job, of all these things.

There's an emotion sometimes that just carries us off in there.

We can't allow the emotion to be the thing that makes us make that decision.

We have to really pray about it, we need to really contemplate about it,

think about it, what are we willing to give up to see this come about?

We can't also just do it just because this is something that we should be doing.

It can't just be like, well okay, God called me this, I'll just kind of go along with it,

because he's my king so I'll just kind of go along with it, I have no other choice.

It's got to be more than that.

It's got to be more than that.

If we're just going along with it because you're supposed to or you should,

again, it's going to be a burden on you, it's going to weigh you down,

it's going to cause you to become bitter and angry and it will ruin your life.

Yeah, it'll be a pain.

Or sometimes we just, again, with emotions we get swept up into it, right,

and we get all excited and we move out there, and then all of a sudden,

the world starts to come and the cares of the world, this is the parable of the sower and the seeds,

we accept it quickly and we don't really count the cost, we just kind of jump into it,

and all of a sudden life becomes a lot harder, and then all of a sudden we're like,

why are we doing this?

And it weighs us down, the cares of the world weigh us down,

and all these things start to choke it right out of us,

and now what had potential is choked and withers and dies.

Or sometimes we want to just accept the word, so we kind of accept it and say,

that's great, but again, we don't count a cost or figure in that there's going to require us of something,

and so we just let it be and nothing gets done.

It just kind of, we do the whole, ksar-a-sar-a, as Jacob likes to say a lot,

whatever will be will be, right, and so we just kind of lounge back and say,

ah, this is the word spoken over me, it'll come about, I don't have to do anything,

and then it just kind of fades away and nothing gets done,

the birds come down and eat it all up before it takes any kind of root, right?

I told you this week would be a bit more of a harder one.

Listen to Sue what she said, right? Sue said you're supposed to listen to every word.

She had no idea what she was talking about when she said that.

So we need to count the cost, we need to figure out the cost,

and then when we do that, when we're willing to say,

okay, I know God this is going to cost me, this will cost me my reputation,

this will cost me time with my family, this will cost me all these different things,

now we begin to be able to grow in this, and we still say yes, we begin to grow in it,

and that's where we come to these things.

So now that I know the cost, I can place myself under a father,

because I don't really like the word spiritual there,

but a father who's able to help me, to guide me in all these things of life,

who can help me hear what the Holy Spirit is saying,

because sometimes I don't like to hear this part about the cost thing,

so I'll just ignore that part.

But a father can hit that with you.

Well, 1 Corinthians 4 verses 15 to 16 says,

1 Corinthians 4:15–16

For though you might have ten thousand guardians in Christ,

you do not have many fathers.

Indeed, in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel.

I appeal to you then, be imitators of me.

This father then is someone we can cling onto, we can grab to for dear life sometimes.

We can learn from the father, from our father.

This is the, yeah.

1 Corinthians 4 verses 15 to 16.

1 Corinthians 4:15–16

We learn from this father.

I call you a spiritual father just to help distinguish between God the father and the other father.

We can learn through the spiritual father by talking to them.

Guys, I spend tons of time talking with Jacob, every other week or every week or more,

talking to him, asking him questions, learning from him.

We allow them to speak into our lives, where Jacob's constantly speaking into my life.

We allow the father to correct things, to change directions that we are heading in.

This has been a lot of recently too, where Jacob's been able to speak into my life.

This is where we need to go now, Jacob, or Jason.

Where Jacob can say, these are the things that need to change in your life.

A father's able to warn you.

This just happened just before he left on his trip.

Jacob's saying, Jason, when you're going into this time,

beware of these things coming back into your life.

Just watch out for them. Don't allow them to take a hold in your life.

All these things that the spiritual father is able to point me in, to direct me in,

to correct me in, the spiritual father is someone we can cling to

when life is just kind of crummy sometimes.

I did that last two weeks ago, where life just seemed hard.

I didn't know what to do, what to turn.

I phoned Jacob out and said, Jacob, help, I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing.

I don't know where I'm supposed to be going.

I feel like there's all these different things happening right now,

and I don't know which direction to go into.

It's a father I can just go to and share these things with,

kind of get a little weepy with.

And he didn't even necessarily give answers, but I know his love for me.

I know that he's praying for me. Not just even praying,

just to go over things, but where he's really concerned about what's going on

and trying to help.

And it was the encouragement I needed at that time that I could go to him

when I'm feeling really down and I can connect with him

and he can speak words of life into my life, which I really needed at the time.

And sometimes we just learn from fathers just by being around them,

being in their presence, that we watch what they're doing,

we imitate what they're doing.

It's amazing how your kids imitate you when you're not telling them.

The repeating words that you have said, for the good and for the bad sometimes,

they're acting like you do.

All of a sudden, it's like, whoa, she's doing that just like Mariana does that all the time.

Or she's being like me. Stop that.

Your kids are imitators. And not just of us, even you guys, too.

What is it?

My kids at one point started saying, aw, shucks a lot.

Because Jacob was always saying that.

I can't remember what it was the other day that they were saying.

And it's just because Jacob says it all the time.

Easy, squeezy, lemon squeezy. Yeah.

Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy. Yeah.

So notice that you guys are, my kids are imitating you as well.

So watch what you're saying.

Pardon?

They snort when they laugh, too. Yeah.

Oh yeah, they watch all of you guys, right?

And it's not just us, you know, mom and dad.

All of you guys are having an influence on our kids.

And it's the same. We get influenced by Jacob just because we're with him a lot.

Because we see him on a Sunday morning even.

All of a sudden, you start imitating him.

I remember I did an internship once with this pastor in Musjah, of all places.

And he always said, cheerio. I don't know why.

He wasn't British at all.

But every time he would say goodbye to somebody, I'd say cheerio.

And I found it the weirdest thing.

And yet, after spending like three months with this guy, I'm starting to say it.

And I thought it was the craziest thing ever.

Like, who says cheerio at the end of a sentence?

But just subconsciously, also, I started imitating this guy.

And he wasn't even anywhere near like a spiritual father to me.

But sometimes we're just influenced by being around those people, right?

And that's what a spiritual father does.

He influences you even just by his presence.

That's what Paul said at the end, right?

I appeal to you, be imitators of me.

Just imitate what I'm doing.

Follow what I'm doing.

It doesn't mean you have to be perfection.

I don't expect you guys to be perfect around my kids.

But the kids can learn what repentance is like as well when we screw up.

They learn a lot of what screwing up is from me.

I do it a lot.

And they can learn what it means to say you're sorry when you've gotten upset or when you've messed something up.

They learn repentance too. They learn forgiveness from you as well.

That's all these things that the kids can learn from you.

So we learn from a spiritual father.

We learn by being connected to a body.

I think I told you guys before, you guys have helped shaped who I am in a lot of ways.

A body can encourage you.

You guys have encouraged me so much the last four years.

Even before we moved here. I remember I went to a Bible study.

This was like two months before we even moved here.

You had no idea who I was.

I think all you knew was this is the guy who's a prophetic word where the baby kicked the wife in the stomach.

That's how I kept being referred to as.

You know that word where the baby kicked the mom?

That's this guy.

And you guys are encouraging to me.

When we moved here, you guys have helped.

You probably don't even know half the time of how you've made me feel better about things.

You guys have supported us on these last four years.

This is what a body does.

This is why we need to be connected to a body.

A body encourages us. A body strengthens us.

It gives us the muscle when we're feeling weak.

The body allows us to take risks and to fail.

You've put up with some really bad messages from me.

There have been. You probably weren't here yet.

But there were some that were just not that great.

And Jacob, you guys are nice so you don't let me know.

But Jacob lets me know when they're not good.

And you guys have allowed me to continue teaching.

And hopefully improve.

Yeah, you guys allow me to mess up.

And it's great.

It's also been some very excellent ones.

Yes, thank you.

Yes, they have gotten a lot better.

I know.

You guys have helped shaped who I am.

Of the confidence of knowing what God's love is for me.

I've learned from watching you guys.

What it means to speak in tongues.

What it means to hear from God.

I've learned it from Jacob, but I've also learned it from watching you guys.

That being connected helps us to do that.

It's important that we connect together.

And it's important that we don't connect just on a Sunday.

And this is appeal to all of us.

We need to connect more often than that.

We need to connect to these things throughout the week.

That's why we have a prayer meeting or a Bible study throughout the week.

So we can connect to each other.

We can encourage each other more often.

That's why we only try to do it once a week or maybe twice a week.

We don't want to burden people.

But it's important that we still get together more often than just on Sunday mornings.

The growth that happens for doing a prayer time together.

The growth that happens when you come and just study the Bible together.

In the Bible study setting.

It's incredible.

If you want to walk into things of God, you've got to connect.

And yes, it will cost you time.

Yes, it can be a hassle sometimes.

It can be really inconvenient sometimes in the middle of the week to go out to a Bible study or go out to a prayer meeting.

But this is again part of counting the costs.

Are we willing to pay that cost of going out to a midweek thing, to a turn up thing, like Chris likes to call it, the turn up?

Are we willing to pay the cost of going out to that?

Because of the benefits that will come to us, the benefits that then we can step into these things that God has for us.

The benefit of being trained by the body to accomplish these things.

And then finally we need to connect to the Heavenly Father as well.

That we need to connect to the Father through the Holy Spirit, connect to Jesus by meditating on Scripture, by spending time in His presence.

So I can better understand who this God is and what He's like.

God forms us both through the Father.

So God will use both this and this.

It's not like they're doing these things outside of God, right?

It's not like Jacob's just being Jacob when he's teaching me.

God is using Jacob to teach me.

God is using you guys as the body to help teach me.

And yet there's also times when it's just one on one time between God and me where I'm sitting down with the Bible

and reading the Bible.

And there's times I'm sitting down and praying and pouring out to God, what am I doing?

Or God, I need your help.

There are times when I'm just sitting and saying, God, I just want to feel your presence.

I just want to be with you.

There's times when Jacob starts waking up and being at the banqueting table.

When you're feasting on who God is and feasting on the things that God has for you.

These things need to take part of it as well.

All three of these things.

Any questions so far?

There's a lot in here I've been talking about.

I shocked you so much with the first part.

This is how we're going to grow.

This is how we're going to grow to accomplish what God has for us.

We come under a spiritual father.

We connect to a body.

We connect with our Heavenly Father.

It has to be all three of these.

If any of those are missing, you're not going to be able to accomplish what God has.

It just won't happen.

If you try to do it without this, you're like an orphan.

You'll just kind of make things up.

If you try to do it without this, you become a maverick.

Just doing your own kind of thing.

If you try to do it without this, you're nothing.

It's pointless.

Then you're weak and you can't accomplish a thing.

You need all three things.

If we do all three of these things, like I was saying before, there's going to be a cost.

There's going to be a cost.

I know there's a cost.

To pay the cost, it will involve us giving up control.

This is the one thing I've had to learn.

We have to be willing to give up the control of all these things.

Why do I want to be there to raise my kids?

Because I love them, which is certainly part of it, obviously.

But I want to see them...I want to be there to raise my kids.

Because I want to see them become all who they can be, right?

I want to see them come into their fullness.

And this is good.

But I also want to be there because I think I need to be the one who does that, right?

We think we need to be there because we want to have this control over who our kids are going to be.

And like I said, on one level, that's a good thing.

I mean, if you're not there in your kids' life, if you're not there for your parents when they're sick, that's not good.

We're supposed to be there.

We're supposed to be there.

We're given the responsibility of raising these children.

However, if we're going to walk in these God things and do these things and start accomplishing what God wants us to do,

we have to let go of this control and in some way trust God to say,

okay, Father, if you're calling me to meet with Jacob tonight,

I need to trust you to take care of my kids tonight when I'm not there.

Which sounds really nice and pious, but it is hard.

Really hard.

Do I actually trust God that my kids won't be screwed up if I go meet with Jacob or if I go to Tellyos or if I do all these other things?

Guys, I'll tell you.

My life is crazy sometimes.

Because of what I'm doing, this is in no way trying to brag.

It's just what God's called me to do.