Grit Factor

I have a message this morning I'm super excited about because I feel like it's custom made for Texans.

I am going to be talking about the grit factor.

And I you're probably thinking, what did she just say?

Well, I'm gonna define it for you.

The grit factor is a passion for long-term goals coupled with a powerful motivation to achieve objectives.

It is a perseverance that overcomes obstacles that lie in or on an individual path.

Grit has actually been acknowledged as a virtue since the time of Aristotle.

So I'm not making this up.

You can actually find out how gritty you are.

There is a test you can take online.

It goes from one to five.

It is important that you tell the truth when you take the test, or you'll get a false result.

When I was truthful, I found out I only am a 3.9 on the five scale, which means I need to up my grit level a little bit.

One of my favorite historical figures who is gritty is Winston Churchill.

And he said, if you are going through hell, you just keep going.

Gritty people have this awareness of what they are looking for, what they want to see, and if they have not arrived at that destination, then they understand it is not the end of the story, and they are going to just continue to keep going.

I know as a grandmother, what I see in my spirit is not what I see in the natural right now, and so I believe it is time for the church to just keep going.

The attack that we are seeing all around us is not about our history, it is about our destiny.

And so I need to up my grit factor, but I also need to up my godly factor.

And so, because I am a Sicilian grandmother, I am going to take you to the book of Romans to unpack the grit factor for you.

First, we're going to talk about the reality of God.

Romans 1, verse 19 says, but the basic reality of God is plain enough.

Romans 1:19

Open your eyes, and there it is, by taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created.

People have always, always been able to see what their eyes as such can't see.

Eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being.

So nobody has an excuse.

By taking a long and thoughtful look, all of us can see in the stars, see in a sunset, see in a sunrise the evidence of the unseen.

God's eternal power.

All of creation preaches that there is a creator.

So that none of us are without excuse.

We've all had those conversations on airplanes.

They find out you're a Christian, they're like, what about people born on a deserted island and no missionaries come?

What about that?

Is your God gonna send them to hell?

Well, my Bible says that all they have to do is take a long and thoughtful look.

And when they see what God has created, they'll begin to have a connection with the Creator.

When I take a long and thoughtful look, which is kind of the antithesis of our day, because we live in a day and a time of distraction where nobody pauses and ponders.

Oh, there's Facebook like, there's Twitter feeds, there's Instagram, everything about our culture is trying to get us to forget who we are and distract us from what is going on.

But when I step back and I take a long and thoughtful look, I have to say, what the heck is going on?

When I compare where we are right now to where we were five years ago, I'm like, what happened?

Well, part of the problem is we need to close the gap with gritty and godly.

And gritty and godly happens with God's word and worship.

God's like, I already knew you were gonna ask that, Lisa.

So the very next verse, verse 21, has an answer for me.

It says, What happened was this.

People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn't treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion, so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives.

They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life, refusing to worship him, refusing to worship, you know, worship isn't acknowledgement, and worship isn't admiration, worship is bowing the knee.

Worship is when what God says is higher than my opinion.

Worship is when I submit to his will and his ways.

Worship means it doesn't matter what our government says, it doesn't matter what popular opinion says, worship is when we understand that we are owned by our God and we submit to his ways and we live his ways.

Recently I watched an interview and they were talking to a 52-year-old father of seven, and he began to explain that he had decided to self-identify as a seven year, six-year-old girl.

And he began to unpack what that looked like.

He said, now I ride my tractor like a six-year-old girl.

I drive my car like a six-year-old girl.

Every single day I'm filling up that love tank of that six-year-old girl that never got it.

And I'm like, what in the world?

Let's take this to the logical progression.

If you are a six-year-old girl, you're gonna have to lose your license.

If you are a six-year-old girl, you're going back to the first grade because you are not going to be working if you're a six-year-old girl.

It seemed incredibly absurd to me, but what was even more disturbing to me was after the interview, they asked different individuals, what do you think about this?

And do you know not one person would give clear input?

People said things like, Well, I didn't know we could self-identify age.

I mean, we're learning a lot of things right now, and maybe that is a new thing.

Maybe you can not only self-identify from a man to a woman, but you can now change your age.

Well, illiterate regarding life.

If my five-year-old granddaughter knows that a 52-year-old father of seven is not a six-year-old girl, then I don't think that we should call lies truth.

And here is the issue.

We the church have been intimidated to not say anything because of the judging trump card.

If you speak truth now, people say you're judging.

You know what?

Speaking the truth in love is not judging people.

Speaking the truth in love is restoring clarity and boundaries to people that have lost their way.

If you and I don't speak the truth in love, who is going to speak the truth in love?

Oh, yeah, we've spoken the truth in meanness and bred legalism.

I hate that.

But now, if we preach love without the truth, we are going to continue to breed deception.

It goes on to say they traded the glory of God who holds the whole world in his hands.

For cheap figurines, you can buy at any roadside stand.

So God said, in effect, if that's what you want, that's what you get.

And it wasn't long before they were living in a pig pen smeared with filth, filthy inside and out, and all because they traded the true God for a fake God and worship the God they made instead of the God who made them, the God we bless, the God who blesses us.

Oh yes.

I am afraid we have traded the image of the real God for an image of a fake God.

And you know that fake God can be a mean-spirited, legalistic God.

You know, ISIS is not showing a real God.

And if we do not show a real God, a real God who gives us the sword of the Spirit so that we set people free rather than beat them up, then the world is not going to see the real God.

It goes on to say, worse followed.

Refusing to know God, they soon didn't know how to be human either.

Women didn't know how to be women, and men didn't know how to be men.

Here we are.

Women not knowing how to be women.

Men not knowing how to be men.

Need to understand an attack on gender is an attack on the image of God.

Because God makes us in his image male and female.

Our culture seems to be doing some kind of voyeuristic sociological experiment right now, where we are asking children and we are asking junior hires to self-identify.

I'm just gonna tell you, if somebody had asked me to self-identify in junior high, I might have said I was a unicorn.

I cannot even remember another moment in my life that was more uncomfortable than 12 and 13.

It was an awkward, awkward time.

Why would we ask people who are in transition from a girl to a woman or from a boy to a man to self-identify?

They haven't even landed where they are yet.

And I'm just gonna say this male and female, with all of its complexities, with all of its challenges, actually create a dependency on God.

I didn't like being a woman.

When my husband asked me to marry him, I was like, you are getting a bonus package.

I have a man's brain and a woman's body.

And John was like, No, I'm not comfortable with that.

But the truth is, the more we press into God, the more human he makes us.

The more I press into God, the more he reveals me.

Sexy confused, they abused and defiled one another, women with women, men with men, all lust and no love.

And then they paid for it.

Oh, how they paid for it, emptied of God and love, loveless, godless wretches.

Let me just talk about this.

This is not God making them pay.

When you spend your whole life on something you think is going to bring you strength and wholeness, and we have people out there right now giving everything to try to heal themselves.

When they spend it all, it is costly.

It is expensive.

When you build your life with untempered mortar and you drink from unfaithful streams, it is a horrible time.

A horrible time.

And Romans 1 closes up with this verse.

And it is not as if they didn't know better.

They know perfectly well they are spitting in God's face and they don't care.

Worse, they hand out prizes to those who do the worst things best.

That is the reality of our day and our earth.

But that's not our reality because we are ambassadors of heaven walking the face of the earth.

So let's talk now about the reality of us.

The reality of us is found in Romans 2, verse 1.

Romans 2:1

It says those people are on a dark spiral downward, but if you think, that leaves you on high ground.

Where you can point your finger at others, think again.

Every time you criticize someone, you condemn yourself.

It takes one to know one.

Judgmental criticism of others is a well-known way of escaping detection in your own crimes and misdemeanors.

But God isn't so easily diverted.

He sees right through all such smoke screens and holds you to what you've done.

You didn't think, did you, that just by pointing your fingers at others you would distract God from seeing all your misdoings and from coming down on you hard.

Or did you think that because he is such a nice God, he'd let you off the hook?

Better think this one through from the beginning.

God is kind, but he is not soft.

And in his kindness, he takes us firmly by the hand and leads us into a radical life change.

I want to talk to you about the moment that God took me firmly by the hand and led me into a radical life change.

When I was 21 years of age, I heard the gospel for the very first time.

And it wasn't a 10-degree course correction, it was a 180-degree course correction.

I was going the direction of crazy.

I came from a family that had learned how to do dysfunctional long before the Kardashians learned how to make money off of it.

And so it was not like we can just do a minor adjustment.

We like boom.

I remember that John led me to the Lord on our very first date.

I went back to my dorm room.

I'm like, Jesus, you need to stay in the hall.

You need to stay in the hall.

There's some stuff I need to get out.

You know, there was pornography in my room.

Why?

I don't know.

I was a heathen.

You do things like that.

There was alcohol in my room.

Yes.

And so what was I doing?

I understood that something had happened.

I understood holy, even though I didn't even know the word.

I understood that my life had been changed and I was no longer under the domain of a kingdom of darkness, that I had been changed into a kingdom of light, and light doesn't just let darkness in.

And I was like, you need to just stay there a moment.

I got darkness that needs to get out that belonged to my old life.

And then I spent all night looking for the book of Paul because Jonathan said, Paul said this, and Paul said that.

And then I took my way Bible, and then I stood it on its mind, and I was like, please open to the book of Paul.

I cannot find it.

And I found Corinthians, where it said, if any man be in Christ, they are a new creation.

I like freaked out, and I was like, I found the book of Paul.

But John knew I was a little bit of a mess, so he said, I would recommend you don't just read your Bible.

I would recommend you read your Bible out loud.

So when I was safe for two weeks, I went back to the University of Arizona and I came into my sorody house, and I remember I walked in, and everybody said, Wow, you look really good.

Did you lose weight?

I said, I got born again.

They were all like crap.

We don't want that.

We don't want you born again.

We liked you mean.

We liked you naughty.

I was the marshal.

I was in charge of hazing.

Now all of a sudden I'm in my dorm room reading the Bible out loud.

People come running from all directions.

Stop reading that Bible out loud.

Well, you know what?

I didn't.

You know what I did?

I climbed up the fire escape and I went to the roof of my sorority at the University of Arizona and I read the word of God out loud over my life, over my campus, over my sorority house.

Somehow I knew I needed to speak the word of God into my future and what would one day be the future of my children.

At night, I walked up and down the halls with my hands on either side of the halls, and I would pray over my individual sorority sisters within those rooms because I understood how they had spent everything and how costly their choices were, because I had been that.

And when you have been taken by the hand and led into a radical life change, you're gonna have knocks on your door late at night.

Young girls would come and say, Hey, we heard you used to be a hoe, and now you're like an on-fire Christian.

We need to know what happened, and I would say, I need you to sit down and close your eyes.

Why?

Because I would get out my campus crusade track and I would read the entire track to them.

I have been saved for two weeks, and now people are flocking to me to get born again.

But then there was also other knocks on the door.

It wasn't the unsaved that began to persecute me, it was the 10-degree course correction Christians.

You need to tone it down.

I'm like, are you seriously a Christian?

Yes, I've been a Christian all my life.

You don't see me going around saying, Praise Jesus and praying for people.

You need to tone it down.

I'm like, you're a Christian?

You were laughing about my Friday night escapes.

You would show up in my room and live vicariously through my life.

Why did you not tell me?

Why did you not tell me?

You saw what I was doing.

But you know what?

They didn't see me read my Bible, they didn't see me walking up and down the halls, they didn't hear me praying in the tongues, praying in tongues in the shower.

What they did see.

It was a change of life.

It all happened one morning at breakfast.

I pulled an all-nighter.

I studied international economics.

Why?

I don't know, because I'm definitely not using it.

But anyway, I studied international economics, and I'm not making fun of elementary ed.

I wish I'd actually taken it after having four boys, but there was an elementary ed girl that was not pulling all-nighters with us that were studying for the stats final.

And she walked in and looked at all of us around this table, you know, proctoring each other, and she said, Oh, wow, you guys all look like you've been run over by a car.

We're like, Thank you, thank you, thank you, Kelly.

And then she was like, No, I'm serious, y'all look awful.

And the unregenerated Sicilian thing inside of me just kind of rose up, and I just said, Kelly, why are you such a beep in the morning?

And everybody just stopped.

She stood up from the table, she pointed at me, and she said, I heard you were a Christian.

I couldn't believe that you could become a Christian.

I knew you're not a Christian, you just cause and stormed out of the room.

Now everybody's looking at me for my reaction to that.

And one of my sweet sorty sisters reached over and grabbed my arm and said, I was just about ready to say the same thing.

And I said, I know, but I jumped the gun.

And you know what?

That's when I stood up and preached my first sermon.

I stood up in front of all of them and I said, I am completely and utterly out of line.

I owe her an apology.

And that was the day that my sorority sisters actually knew I was a Christian.

Because they do not expect us to be perfect, but they do expect us to be humble.

They do expect us to be taken by the hand and led into a radical life change, not doing the same things that the world is doing and saying it's covered by grace, because the truth is that you and I are called to clothe the naked in the world, not get naked with the world.

And you and I have been called to be bedside with the world, not in bed with the world.

And you and I are supposed to feed the hungry and thirsty in the world, not hunger and thirst for what the world hungers and thirsts for.

And they are watching and they are waiting to see if what we have is real.

And they are disappointed when we compromise.

I don't know how long you've been saved, but I got saved in the 80s, which was an awkward time, and then the 90s, which was a weird time.

But here's the thing: we understood the presence of God.

And we'd go to meetings that were three and a half hours long and maybe ridiculous, but there might be five minutes, five minutes in the presence of God.

And we would take that presence of God home and we would create sacred spaces in our life.

I'm not talking to this church about salvation.

I'm talking to you about sanctification.

I'm talking to you about what we were singing about.

I have a desperate longing for God's glory to show up on his body.

I have a desperate longing for this gritty and godly gap to close, that we are people who are carriers of the power and the glory of God, that his anointing is evident on our life.

That we are once again holy people set apart for God.

And we don't look like we want what the world wants.

But that the world can look at us and get the answers they are so desperate for right now.

So because I'm kind of related to your church, I'm gonna pray a Sicilian grandmother prayer over you.

I'm gonna believe that the best days for this church are before them.

I'm gonna believe that you're going to take this message and you're gonna go home and you're gonna ask God, what are the areas of my life where I am not living in worship?

Oh, I'm living in acknowledgement, I'm living in admiration, but God, I want to worship you.

I want you to be glorified.

Show me those spaces that you can evade by your spirit.

Heavenly Father, I thank you that we would be a people who would see up close what other generations only saw in the distance.

Father, give us the boldness to speak out loud what other generations only dared to whisper.

Father, may we lay hold of with our hands what other generations only handled in prayer.

Father, as our God take us by the hand and lead us into a radical life change.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.