"Some Things Never Change" by Daniel Floyd

Welcome to Gateway Churches Podcast.

Wherever you're tuning in from, we hope you're encouraged by today's message.

Well, if you have your Bibles with you, I want to look at Proverbs 22-38.

And we're going to bounce off of that verse and I want to share some other things with you.

But the Bible says this in Proverbs 22-28.

It says, do not remove the ancient boundary stones set up by your ancestors.

Do not remove the ancient boundary stones set up by your ancestors.

I'm going to bring a message entitled, Some Things Never Change.

Some things never change.

If you're the note-taking type, write that down.

If you're not, go ahead and write it down anyways.

Note takers are world changers, so uh go ahead and write it down.

Let's pray one more time.

Holy Spirit, speak to us.

Our hearts and minds are open.

May we never be the same because of it.

In Jesus' mighty name we pray.

Amen.

So we're in we're in a season of a lot of change, as you can imagine, uh in our family.

We're changing homes and changing states and uh changing schools for our kids.

We're uh we're in just a lot of change, new friend groups, new rhythms, new new grocery stores.

Let's be honest, everybody.

You get into a grocery store and you kind of, you know, and and we've been talking about our with our kids with this, and the big kids, we call them the bigs and the littles, you'll you'll hear this language.

The big ones are the 18 and 15-year-old, the little ones are the eight and six-year-old, and so we call them the bigs and the littles.

So the bigs, we brought them in early into the process to pray and honestly to help disciple them through what it looks like to hear the voice of God and what it looks like to make a decision when God is speaking to you.

And uh the littles, though, we told the night before we told our church.

So we told them last Saturday night.

They're not old enough to get in on family discussions yet.

They have no input, they add no current value, they take a lot of value, um, but they don't add any right now.

And uh, and so we we told them uh Saturday night, we said we have something to tell you, and um, and we we told them the news, and our youngest Jonas, he's six, and he just starts crying, and he goes, but I don't want to move.

My friend Zuri, which he hasn't seen in four months.

My friend Zuri lives here, and he go, and then through his tears, he goes, What country is Texas in?

I said, currently the United States.

It's always up for debate, though.

And then he said, Did they have toys in Texas?

And we told him yes, and after that we were good, and he was back to his Transformers.

So it didn't seem to affect him a whole lot.

But you know, we've been navigating change.

One thing that I found is good in the middle of change and even helping our family embrace change more, is we've talked a lot about what won't change.

Talked about what the Floyds are and what our family's about and our our laughter, our time together, our conversations, our love for Jesus, our love for building his church, our love for God's people.

We just talked a lot about what won't change.

And I thought this first time you're hearing from us, I want to talk about some things never change.

There's some things that should never change.

As life changes and we all go through change, there's some things that have been passed down since the first century of the church that should never change.

And the scripture we just read said, don't move the ancient boundary stones.

And in the context of that verse, what it's talking about is they would use boundary stones to kind of set their property lines.

If you're with me, say amen.

Okay, they would set their property lines, and when someone would move them, they were stealing someone else's property.

But what some scholars said is they didn't take the stones and just pick them up and move them feet or even yards.

What some people would do sometimes is move them a little bit at a time.

They just come out and move it a little bit at a time and a little bit, almost unnoticeable, so that the time, by the time it was noticed, it had been moved feet or it had been moved yards.

And obviously, we're not talking about boundaries of property lines today, but I think there's a great application to us today, and it's this is that there are some boundary lines that have been given to us since the book of Acts that just can't ever change.

That there are some things given to us in the Word of God about His church and about following Him and living for Him that just can never change.

They must remain the same.

I've brought my top five.

I'm sure we could have more.

I could make a list of more, but I thought, what are the top five that I they just some things never change, and I'm gonna give those to you today.

Number one is our love for God.

Our love for God is one of those things that can never change in our life, it can never change with us as a church family that we're passionately in love with God.

The Bible says this in Mark 12, 30, and you must love the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all your soul and all your mind and all your strength.

In other words, our love for God is an all-in kind of love.

You know, whenever Tammy and I started dating, I don't think it would have gone well if I'd have said, hey, I'll love you, but don't expect me to show it.

I'm just not an expressive, I'm not a showing kind of guy.

That's not in my nature, you know.

It's not my personality, right?

I think I wouldn't have been married to Tammy.

I think should have been like, okay, you can go on and find somebody else, right?

Like, I want some expression of love.

And this is our love for God.

There, there should be an evidence for it.

Romans 12, 11 says this.

It says, never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor.

In other words, there's a responsibility that we have in keeping this passion for God and this love for God alive.

There, there's something that we have to do, and it is it's a it's a responsibility we have to keep this zeal, to keep this passion for God.

May when people encounter us, may they go, man, I don't even know if I agree with them or believe what they believe, but I believe they believe it.

I believe there's a love, there's a passion, there's an urgency, and there should be some evidence of it.

There should be evidence of it in our worship.

Hello.

There should be evidence in our worship that that love expressed to God, there should be something in our worship.

I love that this is a worshiping house.

It's a boundary stone that can't be moved.

That we're a worshiping house, that we aren't afraid to express our love to God.

We won't let Saturdays in a football stadium look more like church than for somebody that don't know my name and never did anything for me.

May I come into the house of God and give my all for a God who knows my name has count the hairs on my head that saved me, rescued me, redeemed me, picked me up from the miry pit, put my feet on solid grot, heals all my diseases, has given me a purpose and a hope.

May there be a love that is expressed.

We evidenced our love and our intimacy with Jesus.

Man, may we be people that pursue the heart of God.

May we be people that are that are remaining in the vine, right?

John chapter 15, you know this.

John 15 · chapter mention

You remain in me, I'll remain in you.

This takes consistency.

This takes discipline.

You know, some people think that passion is expressed by how loud you are.

I don't.

I think it's expressed by how committed you are.

That's a true test of passion.

You can feel something in a moment, but once the feeling is gone, will you keep doing it?

Can you lean in when you don't feel it?

When can you can you show up when you're tired?

Hello, somebody.

That's the true test of passion is my level of commitment.

My time in the word, my time in prayer, my time in personal worship.

Man, let it not be said of us.

May not the only time we lift our hands be in the house of God.

May it be in our own house.

May there be moments in our own car where we just pull over and God, I just want to say I thank you and I love you, and I express my gratitude to you.

May we lift our hands in our own bedroom.

Before I ever lifted my hands in this house today, I lifted them this morning in my own bedroom, saying, You are good and your mercy endures forever.

Great is your faithfulness, oh God.

May we be people that express our love for God.

We evidenced our love for God in prayer.

Prayer, fasting.

That's a boundary stone.

Nothing of eternal consequence or nothing of eternal value happens apart from prayer.

I love that we're a praying church.

We believe in the power of prayer.

We believe in joining our faith together.

We believe in the power of agreement.

We believe that God is still doing the miraculous in our day and in our time.

We still believe that if we'll knock on the door of heaven, that we have a God whose ear is not too deaf to hear us and his arm is not too short to reach down into our situation and rescue us and do the unexplainable in our life.

This is how we evidence our love for God.

It's a boundary stone that we can't move.

If you believe that, say amen.

I would say the boundary stone number two that we can't move is our love for people.

Now I want to differentiate this from our love for each other.

I'm gonna talk about that in a minute.

I want to talk about our love for people, for the barista that you pass, that you get your coffee from, from the neighbor that you live beside, from the person in your dorm room.

I want to talk about our love for people.

The Bible says this in 2 Corinthians 5, 17 through 20.

It says, therefore, if anybody is in Christ, they're a new creation.

The new creation has come, the old is gone, the new is here.

All this is from God.

Listen to this, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of every of what every campus says it out loud, the ministry of this is your ministry.

You've been given the ministry of reconciliation.

That God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them.

How many of you are grateful for that today?

And now listen to this.

As though God were making his appeal through us.

Think about that for a moment.

It's mind-boggling to me that the God of the universe, with the most important message ever given to humanity, decides to choose you and me.

And he says, I'm gonna make you an ambassador.

I'm gonna make you an ambassador.

In other words, I'm gonna make you a representative of Jesus Christ, and I'm gonna make my appeal to humanity through you.

What a great responsibility.

What an amazing opportunity, right?

So everywhere you go, I don't know if you know this, but when you go to class, you're an ambassador of Christ.

When you walk up into the grocery store, you're an ambassador of Christ.

When you go to the sporting event, you're an ambassador of Christ.

When you're at the beach wanting nobody to talk to you, you're an ambassador of Christ.

And what are you doing?

You're giving this ministry of reconciliation that the King of heaven came and put on flesh, and he died on a cross for all of humanity to forgive our sins, and he rose again three days later that to prove that he is who he claimed to be, the Son of God, with the power to take away the sin of the world, and he did it to reconcile lost humanity with a loving God, and now you are the one he's making his appeal through.

What an amazing opportunity we have.

Because the world is in need of the gospel, everybody.

The only hope of the world, it's not found in the White House.

I've lived near it.

It's found in the church house.

Because we have the message of reconciliation that the brokenness of humanity can be healed and can be forgiven and can be restored.

Why?

Because of what Christ did on the cross, and now we get to declare that message.

What an amazing thing.

And I think it's what Jesus cares about.

If you want to know the mission statement of Jesus, it's this He came to seek and to save the lost.

That's what we should be about.

Seeking and saving the lost.

Our family's big Disney fans.

Hope that doesn't offend you.

Hope you didn't just lose respect for us.

And uh we've been going for like 15 years now, and we used to go when we only had the bigs and they were little.

And so we would go with our very best friends, and they had two little ones as well.

And um, so we would all go and we stayed at the same resort every time we went, and we knew the system.

We me and my best friend Matt, we had the system down.

Like we knew how to work the fast pass system, and we knew how to ethically get around the fast pass system in the name of Jesus.

Just saying, just want to put that ethically, put morally upright before the Lord righteously.

All right, all those things.

Um we we would do that.

Well, one time we were all about to leave, so we all met and we were about to go, and Matt and Christine's son, who's the same age as my son, they're they both graduated together, and my son Owen, their son Noah, we couldn't find him.

Now, my friend Matt, he now is an executive of Wells Fargo, but then he was a federal agent.

And so all of a sudden we're walking, and someone goes, Where's Noah?

And we all look, and I was like, I don't know where he is.

We didn't even speak, y'all.

We just all dispersed across this resort.

I don't know what happened to the other three children that were with us.

All I know is Matt went that way, I went that way, and I'm walking around this resort, not caring who knows me or who thinks I've lost my mind, and I'm just going, Noah, Noah, I'm stopping people I don't know.

I'm on vacation, I want to talk to people I don't know.

I'm stopping people I don't know.

You see a little boy dark hair about this tall, he's like seven years old.

Have you seen?

I'm walking around grabbing people, and finally we found him, and he was he was just fine.

He was walking along, just enjoying his day.

And I was like, Noah, we've been looking for you.

Come here, and we got back.

And obviously, the reunion between our friends and their son, and ever we're almost in tears.

There's a lot of emotions.

Our heart is beating, and in that moment, the Holy Spirit said, That's how I think about my lost children.

Is that I'm desperately searching for them, and I'm desperately wanting to run after them, and I'm looking for my ambassadors.

We're the ambassadors, everybody.

It's our love for people, and so we serve people and we care for people, and we do outreach, and we look out for the poor, and we plant churches, and we do things.

Why?

Because there are people that will never move towards God, we move towards them.

We move to them with the love of Jesus.

Number three boundary stone that we can't move is the love for God's word.

The love for God's word.

I love this scripture.

Matthew 24, 35 says, Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

I grew up on the King Jimmy.

Anyone else?

Can I get a wave?

Okay.

It says, but the word of the Lord remains forever.

I love Colossians 3.

Let the word of Christ dwell richly in you.

2 Timothy 3.

The word of God is useful for correcting and rebuking and training in righteousness, right?

James chapter 1.

James 1 · chapter mention

We're to be doers of the word, not just hearers of it.

We're actually supposed to live this word out.

This isn't just some good stories or good principles or good precepts to live in your life.

It is the living word of God.

It is powerful as a double-edged sword.

It is the not just a guide book, it is the book for our life.

It is how we create our worldview.

It is how we train ourselves for living.

It doesn't matter what culture is saying around us.

Is this okay to say in church today?

I don't care if church culture says it's right.

If the word of God says it's wrong, then it's wrong because this is the word of the living God.

It's a boundary stone that we It's a boundary stone we cannot move in our life.

It is what we run to.

It's where we figure out how to do everything in our life.

It guides us not only in doctrine and theology, but it guides us in relationships.

It guides us in finances.

It guides us in parenting.

It guides us in wisdom.

It guides us in knowledge.

It guides us in how we should view the world.

It guides us in every area of our life.

It is a boundary stone that cannot be moved in our lives.

The word of the living God remains forever.

Governments will come and go.

Philosophies will come and go.

Philosophers will come and go.

Leaders will come and go.

All those things will come and go.

But the word of God will remain forever.

It is still standing today, thousands of years later.

It is what we build our lives upon.

And I'll just tell you this: I commit to you that anytime that anyone stands on this platform, it'll be centered around the word of the living God.

Let God be truth and every man be a liar.

It's a boundary stone that you can't move.

I was raised that it's the inerrant, inspired, infallible.

From Genesis to the maps.

Come on, somebody.

Word of the living God, and it's a boundary stone we cannot move in our lives.

It's as current as tomorrow's headline.

It's as relevant as TikTok.

It's alive, it's active, and if you let it, it'll pierce down into your soul.

It'll shape your heart.

It'll transform your life.

It's amazing how one word from God can change everything in us.

It's amazing how you can be down and a word from God.

Why is it so important to be in the Word of God every day?

Because you need more than one meal a week.

If this is all you're eating, you'll be emaciated as a Christian.

You need to dine on it every day, let it come alive to you every day.

It's amazing how the word of God can transform you, change you, change your thinking.

Isn't this what Paul told us in Romans 12, too?

That we're to be transformed by the renewing of our mind.

How do we renew our mind?

We renew it with the word of God.

Why?

Because our mind has thought a certain way, your past experiences, your life, what people have spoken over you, but you get the word of God retraining your thinking according to it.

You want to live a life that is fulfilled.

You want to live a life that is on purpose.

You want to live a life where you're enjoying the presence of God.

I'm not saying an easy life, but I'm saying a powerful life.

Then you let the word of God renew you.

You want to begin to transform yourself.

It's not about following enough rules, it's about changing your want-to.

The Bible says if you love me, you'll obey my commands.

If you're on the I love you side, you're going to want to.

Nobody has to tell me to love my wife and my kids.

I love them.

Nobody has to tell me to provide for them and bless them and get gifts for them.

Why?

I love them.

And if you'll get in love with this, oh goodness, then his principles aren't heavy.

His burden is light.

His precepts are not a have to.

They're a, oh God, I want to because I'm in love with your word.

Like David said, as a deer pants for the water, so my soul longs for you.

I'm telling you, you can come to a place in your journey of faith where this becomes like water to a thirsty soul.

It's a boundary stone that can never move.

The word of the living God.

Number next.

It's four, I know.

It's love for one another.

Hebrews 10, 25 says this: let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another all the more as you see the day approaching.

Can I say some?

We need each other.

The Christian life was not designed to do in isolation.

You need each other.

You need the presence of God.

Did you know there are a hundred, over a hundred one-anothers in the Bible, 59 that are direct commands to us of how we should be with one another.

You can't do the one-anothers if you're not with one another.

You're like, wow, I'm glad we hired this guy.

He's really smart.

You need people in your life.

You need iron to sharpen iron.

You need someone to carry a burden with you.

You need the experience of loving someone.

When they need to be loved, it does something in you.

It strengthens something on the inside of you when you walk with someone.

Some of my closest friends in life are people I do life with, small groups.

You know, your pastor needs a small group.

You can't just preach this, you gotta live this.

Man, in those small groups, I've been challenged, I've been advised, I've been prayed for.

I've taken the mask off and go, I'm really hurting in this area.

I don't know what to do about this.

And you need that.

You need a place where you take the mask off, where you just don't walk in and go, God bless you, we're good.

Welcome to church, we're so great.

No, you're not.

You were just trying to find a kid to hit on the right in the church.

Just me.

You need to be known.

You need to be known.

Getting in community is how how a large church gets small.

Man, don't walk in and out of our church, and you're not known.

Just another face.

No.

God never intended it to be that way.

You need community, people that will challenge you and encourage you and love you, and that you can go, hey, I I you need those 2 a.m.

I can text you, and I know that you're gonna pray for me.

We need that.

We need each other.

You also need people that'll correct you.

That's not the fun part.

But you need those people in your life.

Hello, somebody.

If you don't have people that love you enough to correct you, then how are you ever gonna grow because you never see your blind spots?

You know, one of the most vivid correction moments I remember in my life.

I was a sophomore in college, and I was studying to be I'm a youth pastor.

That's what my my undergrad, that's the direction I was going in.

And um I still I say I'm still a youth pastor.

I just somehow got the senior pastor job.

It's pretty amazing when the youth pastor gets the main job.

So I can't wait to be at YouthCon.

And man, parents, please get your student signed up.

It's gonna be a great, great time together.

There's not no better investment you can make in your student this summer than having them in the presence of God, getting the word of God poured in them before they head into school.

No better investment.

Listen to me.

I know you don't know me that well, but can I just say it's better than the investment you're gonna make in their travel team?

It's better than the investment you're gonna make in the new sneakers.

It's better than hello, I'm not against all that.

Do it all.

But get them at YouthCon, have them in the house of God, it's gonna be a great time.

But I had a I had a you have a youth professor that said, Hey Daniel, um, I want to go to lunch with you.

And one day we went to lunch together, and he sat down and we did some small talk, and he goes, Here's why I wanted to have you have lunch with you.

He goes, You're incredibly gifted.

I was like, Well, thank you.

Thanks for the encouragement.

He said, He said, You're incredibly gifted.

God's gonna do something great with your life.

I said, Thanks so much for the encouragement.

He goes, but and with compassion, he said, You're incredibly arrogant.

I was like, can we go back before the butt?

And it marked me.

I needed that.

I may not be with you today if someone didn't love me enough to go, you're arrogant, and God won't use arrogance.

You need that in your life.

You need some people that are that look, I'm not talking about everybody, I'm not talking about, you know, somebody DMing you.

Come on, somebody.

But I'm talking about people that love you enough to look at you and go, hey man, you come off this way, and you're better than that.

We need each other.

We need each other for encouragement.

Yes, we need each other for inspiration, we need each other for advisement, but we need each other to sharpen each other, to get better, to look more like Jesus.

The final boundary stone is this the love for God's presence.

Oh, it's it's a it's a boundary stone, we cannot move.

The love for the presence of God.

The Bible says this.

In Psalm 16, 11, it says, You'll show me the path of life.

And listen, in your presence is fullness of joy, and at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Man, there's so much in the presence of God, is there not?

Would you agree?

I believe signs and wonders are available in the presence of God.

I believe miracles are available in the presence of God.

I don't think the Holy Spirit stopped doing that stuff in the book of Acts.

I believe God's still moving.

Am I in the right place today?

I believe, okay.

Just making sure.

Just I was making a middle note.

You need to do a series because we're not sure.

But but I love this that there's joy in the presence of God.

That there's fullness of joy.

Not just happiness that is fleeting with the circumstances of our day, but there is fullness of joy.

Isaiah 61, prophesying about Jesus, says this the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor.

He sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

It's the year of Jubilee, right?

And the day of vengeance of our God.

And listen to this, to comfort all who mourn and to console those who mourn in Zion and to give them beauty for ashes.

Here it is: the oil of joy for mourning and the garment of praise for a spirit of heaviness.

Can I just say this to you?

There is enough heaviness in our world right now.

You want to stand out as a follower of Jesus?

Just have joy.

Have joy no matter the circumstances.

And I'm talking about something that comes in the presence of God, not in a corporate service, but the presence of God with us every day.

I'm talking about the attitude that we choose.

Are you with me?

We love the presence of God for all the things, but this thing of joy, what a testimony that is in our lives, that there is fullness of joy in the presence of God.

That means that I can be going through a diagnosis I did not want, but I can have fullness of joy in the middle of it.

How does that confuse the enemy, right?

I imagine he's gonna be like, but I threw this to them and they still have joy and they're still worshiping and they're still praying.

Why?

Because in the presence of God there is fullness of joy, and there's plenty of people that are walking around with a garment of heaviness.

There's plenty of reasons to have a garment of heaviness, is there not?

And maybe, maybe you're even here today, and you've been wearing a garment of heaviness, the heaviness of life, the heaviness of issues, the heaviness of things you're walking through.

And the Bible says you can put on a garment of praise, that he'll give you the oil of joy.

My pastor has this joke, and so I'll pass it along.

I didn't come up with it.

It's this man, and he's in a grocery store, and he's walking around with a cart, and he's got a little boy in there, a little toddler, and the toddler's losing his mind.

I mean, he's just crying, he's crying, he's losing his mind, and and the dad's just going, It's okay, Albert.

Everything's gonna be okay, Albert.

It's all right, Albert.

You're fine, Albert.

Everything's all right, Albert.

And a lady comes up and says, Sir, I'm just amazed at your composure with your child, with little Albert.

He goes, his name's not Albert, my name's Albert.

There's enough people that are walking around with a spirit of heaviness, anxiety, depression, fear.

It's plaguing our culture, it's plaguing a generation.

But in the presence of God, there's fullness of joy.

It's interesting to me the title of the autobiography of C.

S.

Lewis.

You know, C.

S.

Lewis was raised in the Church of England.

He was baptized, he was confirmed, and at 15 declared himself an atheist.

And it wasn't until around he was 29 when J.R.

Tolkien, who wrote Lord of the Rings, influenced him back towards Christ.

And he named his autobiography, Surprised by Joy.

Not intellect, not reason, but surprised by joy.

And maybe you're wearing a spirit of heaviness today.

Can I tell you you put on the garment of praise?

Because in the presence of God there's fullness of joy.

Church, these are some boundary stones that can never be moved.

Models change and styles change and leaders change.

But some things never change.

And the word of God, the love for people, the love for God, the love for one another, and the love for the presence of Almighty God can never change.

Will you pray with me today?

Every head bowed, every eye closed at all of our locations.

Maybe you're at one of our prison campuses or one of our gateway gatherings.

And maybe today, as you heard about the need of the gospel of knowing Jesus, not knowing about him, not embracing a religion, but knowing him personally, intimately.

Maybe you've never taken that step.

Maybe you're here today and you feel a million miles away from God.

You know in your heart that you're far from him.

You maybe even culturally take on the title and label of a Christian, but you know in your heart you're far from God.

You don't have to live that way.

Jesus came, he lived the life you and I could never live, he died the death you and I deserve to die.

And he did it to forgive our sins.

And if we'll receive his free gift by faith, then according to the word of God, we will be saved.

Saved from the penalty of sin, saved to a life in Christ.

And so at all of our locations, I want to give you the opportunity to respond to this invitation to receive Jesus as your Savior and as your Lord.

The Bible says that you confess Him with your mouth as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, you will be saved.

And so with no one looking around, we wouldn't come to you or embarrass you for the world, but just want to know who we're praying with today.

So when I get to three, if you say, Pastor, that's me.

I want to know that I know.

I want to know that I'm a new creation in Christ today.

I want to know that heaven is my home.

I want to surrender my life to Jesus.

I'm not talking about kind of dipping your toe in the water.

I'm saying I'm surrendering my all to Jesus today.

If that's you, when I count to three, you just shoot your hand up high enough and long enough.

Then we're going to pray together on three.

One, two, three.

You just shoot it up high.

God bless you.

God bless you.

I see in the very, very back row.

Beautiful.

You can put it down.

Church, why don't we pray this out loud for the benefit of those who just lifted their hand?

We don't want anybody praying alone.

Just say, Jesus, I need you.

I ask you to forgive me of all my sin.

I believe you died for me.

I believe God raised you from the dead.

Today I make you my Lord and Savior.

Thank you for a brand new beginning.

In Jesus' name.

And the church said, Amen.

Amen.

Come on, let's celebrate those who made that decision.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you'd like to connect with us, text Connect to 71010 or visit gatewaypeople.com.

We hope you have a great week.