Become

It's good to be there there as well.

And then we're online as well for the people that are at home for whatever reason.

We're thankful that you're joining us as well online this morning as we're continuing a series that we're calling Vision 2022.

And we've been really talking about this series around four different words believe, belong, become, and build.

And that's what this whole series has been about so far.

And Russ has kind of hit on the believe and the belong part of the last two weeks.

And this morning we're going to talk about become, becoming all that God has called us to be.

And that's what we're looking forward to this morning, is to see how can we grow and how can we become the people that God has called us to be.

A few years back, um, I was given the opportunity to have a little bit of a partnership with Tim Stewart Funeral Home.

And uh Tim Stewart Funeral Home, when they had a family that would come in that didn't have any church connection, they had no way of uh like contacting a pastor, they wouldn't know who to contact.

They would actually call me and they would say, Nathan, are you available?

Are you free to come and to help minister to this family in their time of need?

And if you know me very well, this is not my strong suit by any stretch of the imagination.

I am low on the mercy scale.

I am not that guy you want when people are grieving.

Like I get weird and awkward.

I really don't know what to say and how to kind of relate and connect to them.

Like I'm weird with physical touch and hugging people, like that's just weird and strange for me.

So it's definitely out of my comfort zone.

But I was like, yes, I'll do that if that would be helpful for these families.

And so I did probably a dozen or so of these funerals.

And I would typically try to show up early and I would try to meet the family, get to know them a little bit, introduce myself, tell them a little bit about who I was.

But more importantly, I was trying to figure out who they were and who the loved one that had passed away, what their lives were about, what they enjoyed, what was their purpose and mission and kind of just in life and just what they had to say about the loved one that had passed away.

Because in a few short moments or the next day, I was going to have to do a funeral service, and I wanted something personal to be able to share about the loved one that had passed away.

And so I did about a dozen or so of those, but there was one in particular that really stuck out to me.

And it was an older gentleman that passed away.

He was probably in his mid to upper 70s, just kind of died of uh normal causes.

And I remember going into the funeral home and meeting the family for the very first time, introducing myself to them, and just trying to learn a little bit about the one that had passed away.

And when I asked them about their father, there were two kids there, so I asked about their father.

He had a girlfriend, so I asked the girlfriend about her boyfriend.

And then I asked the other family members and the few friends that were there just about the one that had passed away.

And when I asked them about their friend, their husband, their, or their boyfriend and their family, their father, I said, tell me a little bit about him.

And their response was, well, I mean, there's not a whole lot to say.

I mean, he's a he was a good guy.

I mean, he was pretty nice.

Um that's that's about it.

And so we kind of continued conversation a little bit farther, it went along, and then until somebody had kind of a light bulb moment and goes, Oh, I know something he used to love to do.

He hasn't done it in a while, but one of the things that he used to love to do was collect stamps.

And I went, okay, we'll go with that.

So the only story I could really tell about the one that had passed away was that he loved to collect stamps.

And there's nothing wrong with collecting stamps.

If you're a stamp collector in the room, congrats, that's awesome, more power to you.

But it was sad to me as I left the funeral home that day, thinking to myself, that this guy lived 70-some odd years, and the only thing that could be said about him was that he was a nice guy and he collected stamps.

And I it was kind of a little bit of a wake-up call for me because I wanted my life to count for more than that.

I wanted my life to have a deeper purpose and meaning.

If I lived to be 70-something years old, I wanted my kids to be able to say something more than I collected stamps.

I wanted my wife to be able to share something significant about our relationship and the relationship that I had with her and how I treated her.

I wanted the community around me to notice a difference when I was gone.

I wanted to make an impact with my life.

Not just here in this moment, but I also wanted to make an impact for all of eternity.

And so I wanted my life to count for something more.

And I think that for many of us, we want that same thing as well.

We don't want to get to the end and think of all the time and all the energy that we've wasted.

And we ask ourselves the question is, what is there more for?

What more do we have?

And that's a question I think that many people are asking.

When it comes to faith, when it comes to following Jesus, many people are bored, they're safe, their faith is ordinary, and they're simply asking, is this all that there is, or is there more?

I've been doing 50, I've been in full-time ministry now for uh 15 years, and I've had a number of these types of conversations with people, where they're asking the question of, is there more?

I can think of a gentleman that's in his mid-40s that I've had a conversation with.

He's a hard worker, he's someone that does well for his family, he loves his wife, he loves his kids, and he tries his best to serve them as best he knows how.

That they've kind of jumped around from church to church over the last decade or so, been in a few different churches, and when they show up to church, um, he's willing to jump in and serve and hold a door, and he'll always drop a little something in the offering box at the end of the service.

But he has no close relationships, no close friendships.

There's secret sins and issues that he struggled with and failed to truly turn over to the Lord.

And as a result, his faith just seems safe.

It seems like there's nothing extraordinary about it.

There's another guy that I can think of that's in his young 30s, has a few small kids, and he travels a good bit.

And so he's gone to work, you know, in different parts of the country.

He has to travel and fly out.

He's gone two to three weeks out of the month.

And when he comes home, Saturdays are a day when he kind of tries to catch up with everything that's going on around the house, trying to fix the different things, all the honeydew lists, he's trying to fulfill all the needs that are trying to be made, not to mention going to little league games and going to all the different activities that the kids have going on.

And so when Sunday rolls around, for him, Sundays are just a time for him to possibly just maybe one day out of that week sleep in.

And so he comes up with excuses of how he should be able to sleep in in the mornings.

And so church attendance becomes less and less infrequent.

And because of his crazy work schedule, community, and having relationships that are godly friendships just don't seem to be sustainable to him.

His faith is boring.

For others, I think of a young mom who's got a few kids and she's constantly busy shuttling kids from preschool to gymnastics and all the different activities that they have going on.

And it's there's hardly a moment for her to think and to be alone by herself.

She's constantly hearing screaming kids, and there's someone that's always pooped, right?

That's how it is.

And she's trying her hardest, but her life is just simply chaotic.

She's busy, she's stressed out, she's overworked, she's losing sleep because the kids aren't sleeping.

And she came to know Jesus when she was earlier on in her like college-age career, but yet at that point where she maybe even felt like she was called into missions and to do something significant for the Lord, but she met a guy, she settled down, they had kids, and simply life happened.

And now the thought of living on a mission field somewhere is just something that seems so far-fetched and not even a possible reality today.

Her faith is just ordinary.

And I think these are the stories that oftentimes we hear.

And maybe you can relate to one of these stories, or maybe you have a story that's similar in nature, but it still comes back to the same realization of is there more?

Is there more to our faith than maybe what we're experiencing right here, right now, in this moment?

I believe that in the church today, especially in the American church at large, we've settled for consumer Christianity, which is this idea that it's about our uh convenience, but we don't really want to have the commitment on the back end.

We don't really want to have to do the hard things in life.

And so as a result of that, our faith is boring.

Our faith is ordinary, our faith is safe.

Our lives look no different from the rest of the world around us.

We are busy, we are overworked, we are tired, we don't have peace, we feel like failures as parents and as leaders.

We we read scripture and we read that we're the light of the world, but it's really hard for us to believe that because our faith just doesn't seem to be that type of way.

I read a book over Christmas break by Diedrich Bonhoeffer, incredible guy, uh pastor that lived back in the time of World War II.

He grew up in Germany, he was a German pastor, and uh he was someone that opposed Hitler actively, and the national kind of church at the day was kind of bowing to Hitler.

And so what uh Bonhoeffer did is he actually created an underground seminary to oppose Hitler and the Nazi regime and just kind of all the stuff that was being thrown at them.

And he actually, really crazy story later on in his life, he's actually on the team to assassinate Hitler, uh really crazy from a pastor to an assassin, crazy story.

And he was eventually found out and they actually killed him.

Um but uh his legacy still lives on.

But he wrote in a book called The Cost of Discipleship, he said this.

He said, cheap grace, or what we could substitute that with, would be consumer Christianity, is preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance.

It's baptism without church discipline, it's communion without confession, it's absolution without personal confession.

Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

It's a version of Christianity that doesn't cost us anything.

That we can kind of get our cake and or we can enjoy the cake and we can uh you know get all the benefits of that and all the things that we enjoy, but what doesn't really have to cost us anything as a result.

This is the lifestyle that so many people live, that it's about salvation, but there's no sanctification.

That it's about us coming to Jesus and getting a stamped ticket to go to heaven when we die, get fire insurance, and then we just kind of move on from there, and there's no real life change.

There's no transformation that takes place.

Our life look exactly the same before we were new Jesus and after we knew Jesus.

It's about this conversion, but there's no commitment.

That it's about this idea that, man, I want what Jesus has to offer me, but I don't really want it to cost me anything.

And this is what I believe the church has kind of made up of today, especially here in America, where we've settled for this kind of watered-down consumer Christianity.

And no wonder our lives are or our faith lives are safe and boring and ordinary.

No wonder we're asking questions like, is there truly more?

I believe that there is.

It's interesting when you start to kind of think about two different groups of people.

You got this group over here where their faith is boring, ordinary, and just kind of safe.

And then you got people over here that you probably know, and they're super passionate about Jesus.

And I mean, they're constantly talking about Jesus, they're talking about how Jesus has changed their life, they're wanting to tell other people about Jesus.

They send to live with a sense of peace and joy that kind of surpasses all understanding.

There are people that are just passionate about their faith, and they want to see God do great things in their lives and through them into other people's lives.

And you kind of look at these two different profiles and you go, well, what's the difference?

Why is it that this person's just passionately following Jesus and they've got this close, intimate relationship with him?

And then over here, there's people that are just safe and ordinary and it's just kind of going through the motions, and it really doesn't mean a whole lot.

Is it that God loves this person more?

That God wants more for this person than he does for this person?

I don't think that's right.

Is it that this person's just so more anointed that God's gonna use them in a more significant way?

And as a result of that, this person doesn't get to experience the things that this person over here gets to experience?

No, I don't think so.

I think that God has a plan for each and every one of us.

No matter what our background is, no matter what our education level is, no matter what family we grew up in, no matter what history or baggage that we bring into our lives, God has a radical, supernatural plan for each and every one of us.

And that He wants to use you, He wants to use me in ways that we can't even begin to imagine.

He doesn't want us to live a safe and ordinary and comfortable life when it comes to our faith, but he wants us to be people that are on the edges, charging the gates of hell and making a difference to push back darkness in our community and around the world.

He wants us to be a part of something that's much, much bigger than ourselves.

So, what's the difference between those two?

Well, I believe that it comes down to our big idea this morning, which is simply this that without God, we can't.

But without us, he won't.

Without God, we can't.

Without us, he won't.

So without God working in a supernatural way, there's no way that we're ever truly going to experience his grace, his love, and forgiveness.

But at the same time, without us, without us working it out, then God's not going to probably move in a great way in our lives.

Now, before some of you push back and call me a heretic, let me just go ahead and clearly say that I'm not talking about salvation this morning.

Ephesians chapter 2 clearly tells us that we are saved by grace through faith so that no one can boast.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

So in no way do we work our way or earn our way to have a right-standing relationship with Jesus.

That's only through his death and burial and resurrection that we are able to have a relationship with Jesus.

That's the only way that we have that relationship restored and we're able to access into that.

It's by what he has done, not anything that we have done.

However, in Philippians chapter 2, verse 12, we read Paul telling us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.

Philippians 2:12

That it's not about just coming to know Jesus and saying a prayer and walking an aisle and maybe getting a little bit wet in a baptistry and then moving about the way that we want to live our lives.

But it's about working out our salvation.

Without God, we can't.

Without us, he won't.

And that's what I want us to talk about this morning is to see that what we have been given is this incredible gift, and we have to steward it well, and we have to be people that are proactive in our faith so that we can experience the Lord breaking through in new, different, and just supernatural ways.

So if I have a Bible, you can turn to Mark chapter 4.

Mark 4 · chapter mention

We'll be there pretty much all morning.

And it's a familiar passage.

If you've grown up in church, you probably have heard this a time or two.

And it's a parable that we're going to look at.

Now, a parable is just a short story that Jesus tells, and uh is kind of a picture that he's trying to paint.

But the great thing about parables is that the more closely you look and inspect them, they turn into mirrors, and you start to see yourself in the story.

And oftentimes when you're looking in the mirror through the lens of the parable, um you don't like what you see.

And so Jesus is kind of hitting us in the heart, hitting us in the gut a little bit this morning through what the story he's going to tell us is.

And so it's in Mark chapter 4, and we'll start reading in verse three.

Mark 4 · chapter mention

It says this it says, Listen, a farmer went out to plant some seed.

As he scattered it across the his field, some of the seed fell on a footpath, and the birds came and ate it.

Other seed fell on shallow soil with underlying rock.

The seed sprouted quickly because the soil was shallow.

But the plant soon wilted under the hot sun, and since it didn't have deep roots, it died.

Other seed fell among thorns that grew up and choked out the tender plants, so they produced no grain.

Still other seeds fell on fertile soil, and they sprouted, grew, and produced a crop that was thirty, sixty, and even a hundred times as much as had been planted.

Then he said, Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand.

So that's the story that Jesus tells, right?

It's this story of just, hey, listen, I'm telling you this that there's there's there's four different types of soil, but there's two different results.

There's the one result that gives no fruit, and there's the other that just comes from the good soil that produces an abundance, a huge harvest of fruit.

And then he says, He who has ears, let him hear.

And that's how the story ends.

And for us, we go, what?

Like, what does that even mean?

Like it doesn't make any sense, right?

But for the peasant farmers that he's talking to, it probably uh was something that they would have understood and something that they would have been able to identify with.

But the good news is for us is that a few moments later, just a few verses down, Jesus pulls his disciples to the side and he begins to tell them exactly what he meant by the story.

And so let's read that.

Uh that's in uh verse 13.

He says, This.

Then Jesus said to them, If you can't understand the meaning of this parable, how will you understand all the other parables?

So there's something that's tied to this parable in particular that's important, that's significant.

If we don't understand this parable, we can't understand all the other stories that Jesus is going to tell us.

The farmer plants seeds by taking God's word to others.

The seed that fell on the footpath represents those who hear the message only to have Satan come at once and take it away.

The seed on the rocky soil represents those who hear the message and immediately receive it with joy, but since they don't have deep roots, they don't last long.

They fall away as soon as they have problems or are persecuted for believing God's word.

The seed that fell among the thorns represents others who hear God's word, but all too quickly the message is crowded out by the worries of this life and the lore of wealth and the desire for other things, so no fruit is produced.

And the seed that fell on good soil represents those who hear and accept God's word and produce a harvest of thirty, sixty, and even a hundred times as much has been planted.

So this is the story that Jesus tells his followers and what it means.

There's four different types of soil.

The word or the seed is the word of God.

The soil is the heart that is receptive or not receptive to that word.

And so he gives us four different types of soil.

Let's walk through those real briefly, and then we'll kind of try to pull it all together.

So the first one was the path.

The path was something that was cut in through the fields.

As they planted crops, they didn't want to obviously walk on top of the places where they planted the crops.

And so what they would do is they would cut these zigzag paths through the fields, and people would walk over those paths in order to tend to the garden.

And so they would walk day after day after day on top of this path soil, and eventually it would get compacted, it would get pushed down, the rain would make it come down, and it would become hard, dense soil.

And so when the seed is thrown on the path, it bounces off, right?

It just kind of sits there on top of the soil.

There's no receptivity to the seed that is being planted.

In the same way, the people that have this type of soil in their life have a callous heart.

The path represents the callous heart.

It's someone that hears the message, but it's one in one ear and out the other.

There's no receptivity to this idea and to the understanding of what the word of God has been given to them.

It just kind of sits on the top and it says that Satan can easily come in and steal that seed where it just removes that word from their life.

These are people that just have callous hearts.

They don't care about the things of the Lord.

They don't care about what the Lord is speaking or what he is doing.

And we have a world that's full of people that have callous hearts.

They just refuse to listen to the things of God and refuse to listen to the message of Jesus.

They want nothing to do with it.

And instead of following the message of Jesus and the truth that he presents, instead, they're typically pulled away to follow the worldly kind of traditions and philosophies.

And one of those philosophies that has so quickly kind of taken over our culture and America in particular is this idea of postmodernism, which I don't want to go too much into theory here, but just this idea that there's no absolute truth.

And so when you begin to buy into that type of lie, eventually everything erodes around you.

Because here you have this idea that no, there's no absolute truth.

So what's right for you might not be right for me, and what's right for me might not be right for you.

And so it's okay for you to have your beliefs, but I have my beliefs, and they're just different from yours.

And you have to accept mine just as equally right as yours.

And that's what our world and our culture process.

Pushes.

And what it does is it makes our heart calloused.

It makes our heart push away the things of God because, man, I don't need what somebody else is sharing.

I don't need a book that was written thousands of years ago.

Instead, I'll just kind of come up with my own version of truth.

It's the path, it's the callous heart.

Then there's the rocky soil.

The soil is typically on the outskirts of the field, or it could be in the field itself.

And as the seed lands on this soil, it quickly goes down into the dirt.

And but the because the bedrock is right there, because the stone is right underneath the uh soil and there's only a few inches deep, the soil can't penetrate the rock, and as a result, it sprouts up really, really quickly.

But as a result of it sprouting up, the sun comes out and there's no moisture for it to pull up.

And so the plant soon withers and dies.

And if you've ever been around in if you've ever been to Israel, been fortunate enough to go to Israel, or you've seen pictures of Israel, there's rocks everywhere.

Literally everywhere there's rocks.

And here Jesus is saying the rocky soil is someone that hears for the moment, they respond immediately, but then it shrivels up and dies when the pressures of life come.

And so the rocky soil represents the shallow heart.

It's someone that initially believes, initially makes a decision to follow Jesus.

They maybe get caught up in the emotions of the moment, but because there's maybe not a theological depth there, because they don't really know true and proper theology and what scripture teaches, they base their faith and they base their salvation on something that's simply not true.

We see this all the time in people that think that coming to Jesus is simply gonna make your life like rainbows and sunshines and skittles like this.

It's gonna be awesome all the time.

And then when the real world sinks in and reality hits, they recognize that that's not true.

That life is still hard, life is still difficult.

It doesn't mean we have somebody that is going through life with us to give us a peace in the midst of the storms, but there's still storms.

And so they come and they respond to Jesus initially, but because the world is hard, eventually give it a few weeks or months and they're done.

They've walked away.

It's shallow soil.

And let's just bring this on a real practical level.

I feel like we've seen a lot of this type of soil at Church at the Grove.

We've been around now for 15 years or a little over 15 years, and we've been fortunate enough to baptize about 300-ish people, which is phenomenal.

But where are all those people today?

There's a lot of people that have gotten wet and they've publicly professed their faith in Jesus, and then a few weeks or even a couple of months go by and they're gone.

They're nowhere to be found.

Well, why is that?

It's shallow soil.

The things of life started to hit up, the reality of this world began to push in on their lives, and they just withered and died.

That's the shallow soil.

Then there's the thorny soil, or some translations and some people would say the weeds, right?

And this is someone that uh has you throw the seed out, and you know if you have a yard or a garden or anything, weeds just pop up out of nowhere.

Uh come to my my house and you can look in my yard, and it's just weeds all around.

Like we don't even plant grass, it's just weeds.

That's what is our grass.

And uh weeds just pop up out of nowhere, though.

You can have a flower bed, and weeds somehow are coming out of the flower bed.

You gotta be proactive in pulling up those weeds.

And here's what weeds do: weeds or thorns, they come in and their roots start to intertwine with the good seeds' roots, and they begin to literally choke out the good seeds' roots and begin to steal the moisture and the nutrients of the soil away from the good seed.

And so they're literally coming around the good seeds' roots, and they're choking the life out of it.

And in the same way, the thorny soil represents a divided heart.

It's a heart that's in competition.

It's a heart that is saying, Yeah, I want to follow Jesus, but I also want all the things that the world can give me.

And so Jesus has a piece of your heart, but he doesn't have your whole heart.

You're in con he's in competition with the other things that the world is throwing at you.

And I think that by and large, this is the soil.

This is the type of heart that is predominant in the American church today.

It's this idea that I want to follow Jesus absolutely, but I also want the things of the world.

And so we give Jesus just a piece of who we are instead of giving him everything.

And so what eventually happens is the things of the world begin to intertwine with the things of our heart.

And remember what Jesus said himself, that no one can serve two masters, that they will hate the one and love the other.

And eventually the things of this world begin to choke out our faith and our dependency upon Jesus.

We see this uh in uh 1 John chapter 2.

1 John 2 · chapter mention

John is talking, and he's talking about the things of this world.

And he says this in verse 16.

He says, For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life is not from the Father, but it's from the world.

And I think this is a pretty accurate description of what most of us can be consumed by.

There's the lust of the flesh, which is this temptation to feel, where we're pulled away to try to find things that are gonna just bring pleasure into our lives, whether that be sex or whether that be eating an abundance of food, or maybe it's uh the abuse of some alcohol or medication or some other substance, but it's something that's going to make us feel good.

And so we chase after that.

And that competes with the things of the Lord working in our lives.

There's other things like the lust of the eyes, which is this temptation to have.

It's this temptation to get possessions and to try to get things that are hopefully going to bring us happiness.

It's stuff.

It's the boat, it's the car, it's the vacation home, it's the new clothes to go in the closet, it's the new phone or iPad or whatever your thing might be.

And it's chasing after these things, thinking that if I just get hold of this, that it's going to bring happiness and joy and fulfillment into my life.

And what it is, is it's something of the world, and it's getting deep down into our heart and into our soul, and it's beginning to compete with Jesus.

Then there's uh the pride of life, which is the temptation to be uh popular.

It's the temptation for status, it's the temptation to be great.

You want people to look at you and you want people to admire you for all that you have done.

It's this kind of proud, arrogant kind of mindset.

And that chasing after that type of lifestyle was the roots begin to dig down deep into our soul and they pull us away from Jesus.

And here's the thing about the weeds and why they're so dangerous is because you plant the seed and the weed, the weeds or the thorns weren't there.

But eventually, over time, they show up.

And so it's a constant practice of recognizing the weeds that have grown up, and a constant practice of making sure that you remove them from their life.

But notice that it says that these people are not producing fruit, but because their spiritual lives are being choked out by the things of the world.

Then there's the good soil.

The good soil is the fruitful heart.

This is a soil that's been loved and nurtured, it's been something that's been invested in, and it's ready to receive the seed.

The rocks have been removed, the soil has been tilled, it's soft and it's ready to be cared for so that no weeds pop up.

And as a result, this soil with the seed thrown in it produces a harvest of 30, 60, or even a hundred times as much as what was planted.

So there's this beautiful picture of the supernatural kind of harvest that happens with somebody that has the good seed, good soil with the seed thrown in.

All right, now we say all that.

Let's bring it back around to how this connects to our lives today and why this matters in us becoming all that God has called us to be.

We don't control the growth, right?

We don't control the growth of the seed.

That is done by God alone, but we do control the conditions for growth.

You can say this way God controls the growth, but we control the conditions for growth.

We, without God, we can't.

Without us, he won't.

That there's a responsibility on our end, if we have come to know Jesus as our Lord and Savior, to make sure that the soil of our lives is ready to go.

So that we're able to do all that God has called us to do, that we're able to be all that God has called us to be.

But here's the beautiful thing that we don't talk about probably enough when it comes to this passage of scripture is that soil can change over time.

And that can be a negative thing.

You know, you can have some good soil where there's crops that are growing up, but you leave that soil alone long enough and you neglect it long enough, and weeds will shoot up, rocks will come from the bottom of the surface, and they'll rise up on top of the ground.

You'll have it eventually, if you give it a long enough period of time, that soil will become compacted and hard, and it will become just like the path calloused towards the things of the Lord.

And we've seen people that have had that story in their life.

But the beautiful thing is that there's also the other end.

And the other end is that soil can change for the good as well.

And so we can have soil, uh, like this lovely soil down here.

I put the lid on it because it smells.

Um, and this soil, it can be hardened and it can be stuff that has rocks and different thorns or weeds that were popping out of it.

But in order for this soil to become good, it requires for us to do the hard work.

It requires us to put on the gloves and for us to be able to get blisters on our hand and have uh sweat drop down from our brow as we, you know, beat up the soil and we make sure that it's all tilled up, and then we rake out, sorry, whoever's cleaning the church, um, we rake out all the rocks and we remove them to the side, right?

And then we come back and we fertilize it and we put water all on top of the soil to make sure that the soil has all the conditions that it needs for the seed to grow.

But here's the real secret in making sure the soil of our life is cared for and healthy and ready to receive the word of God.

Notice the position that I'm in.

I'm on my knees.

It's a place of humility where we come down.

Don't look at my bald spot, but but when we come down and we're on our knees and we're sitting down and we're in a place of humility.

It's a place of humbleness where we come before the Lord and we don't have proud or arrogant ideas because God opposes the proud, but he gives grace to the humble.

But we come in a place of humility before the Lord, sitting before him and waiting for him to speak and to move into our lives.

And when we have a heart of humility, our soil is ready to receive.

And we're ready to have a harvest that can produce 30, 60, even a hundred times more than we could ever imagine.

And so, how do we do that?

We gotta understand that Christianity is not a one-time decision, but it's a lifetime of discipleship.

It's not a one-time decision, it is not about praying a prayer and then going on with the rest of your life.

I believe that that's one of the biggest tools that the enemy has sold into the American church is that it's just about this one-time decision, and then you go and do whatever you want to do and live however you want to live because you're good to go when you die.

Man, when we come to follow Jesus, our lives should be transformed.

So it's not about a one-time decision, but it's about a lifetime of discipleship.

Jesus said it this way in Matthew chapter 7.

Matthew 7 · chapter mention

He said in verse 17, likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, and a bad tree bears bad fruit.

A good tree cannot produce or cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.

Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire, thus, by their fruits you will recognize them.

And so, who are the ones that are put in the and truly followers of Jesus?

It's the ones that are producing fruit in their lives.

If there's no fruit, then you seriously have to question whether that salvation and that relationship with Jesus is genuine.

And the fruit is seen in our attitudes, it's seen in the way that we live out our lives, our actions, and it also is seen in the production of new believers that show up all around us.

That's what our fruit looks like in our lives.

And so he says, You'll know of tree by its fruit.

Jesus says, hey, it's not about a one-time decision, it's about a lifetime of discipleship.

He says this in Matthew chapter 16, verse 24.

Matthew 16:24

Jesus tells his disciples, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

That sounds hard.

That sounds a lot like work, honestly.

That yes, we we we come to him freely.

He gives us this free gift of a relationship with him.

And so, but if we want to come after him, then it's a process of learning to deny ourselves, deny the things of this world, taking up our cross, and then following him.

This is the way of Jesus.

You want to know what separates this person over here that has this passionate relationship with Jesus and the person over here that their relationship with Jesus is constantly going, is there more?

This is what sets it apart.

It's a lifetime of discipleship.

So let's get practical for just a second and then we'll come to a close.

How do we prepare the soils of our heart?

We've already looked, it's a place of humility, but there's also practices that we can put in place that can help facilitate the soil being healthy.

The first is that we practice spiritual habits.

Practice spiritual habits.

Andy Stanley says it this way: your direction, not your intentions, determine your destination.

So it doesn't matter where you want to go, but it matters what you actually do and the direction you're actually driving that determines where you end up.

Now, this is logical, right?

But this is something that we've kind of been led to not believe that this is true.

We believe that if we can just know enough information, if we can go to the newest Bible study, or if we can go and read the newest book that has just come out, then we'll be okay.

Then we'll be able to grow, we'll be able to transform, we'll be able to do and to become all that God has called us to become.

But that just simply doesn't work that way.

It's about our actions, it's about what we actually do that determines who we become.

And so, yes, there's a process of renewing our minds that needs to happen.

Absolutely, 100%.

The Bible's clear about that.

But at the same time, it's also about our actions and what we do on a regular basis.

Great example of this is if you wanted to lose weight, you could read every single book on weight loss, right?

You can know every single bit of information, you can know exactly how many calories you need to put into your body, you can know exactly what you could do to speed up your metabolism or what workout routine that you could do, but until you actually do it, there's no weight loss, right?

Because it's our habits that ultimately form us.

Now let's get real practical for a second.

You can't expect to grow and to become like Jesus and to become all that you've been called to be if you're spending three hours a day on social media and three minutes reading a devotion in the morning.

It doesn't happen.

It doesn't.

Put it another way for some other people in the crowd, try to make everybody upset.

Um put it another way, you can't watch all night long Fox News or CNN, whatever your poison might be, and then come to church one day a week for an hour of that week and expect to become the disciple and the follower of Jesus that you have been called to be.

Because you're being discipled.

You're being formed by the things that you are taking in and the habits that you have currently.

And so we have to be proactive in establishing spiritual habits in our lives that allow us to grow and become all that God has called us to be.

We don't have time to go into all of that this morning, but just know that if you are someone that is looking to develop some of these spiritual habits, there's great resources out there.

There's Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life by Donald Whitney.

There's Celebration of the Disciplines by Richard Foster.

Both of those are kind of iconic books on this subject.

But what matters is what you do day after day after day, week after week after week, year after year after year.

That's what forms you.

And it might not happen instantly, but you'll look back a year previously and you'll go, man, look what God has done in that year.

It's a slow, continual process of what we do every single day.

Second thing we need in our lives to grow is we need biblical community.

We need people in our lives that are going to help us grow.

And Russ talked about this a little bit last week, and so I don't want to go into it in depth, but we need other people that can help us and encourage us and challenge us to be all that we've been called to be.

We need people in our lives that are going to help pick up the rake and help pick up the hoe, and they're going to help till the soil of our hearts so that we don't have to do it alone.

We need people that go, hey, I don't know if you see that over there, but there's a weed right there, and it's starting to compete with other things that are in your heart, and we need to pull that up.

That's why we need community.

We need godly people around us that are helping us grow to become all that we have been called to be.

We finally need to listen and obey the Holy Spirit.

And this might sound a little strange to some in the room this morning, but we need to be people that know the Lord's voice and that we obey what he's asked us to do.

We read this in the book of John, that he is the good shepherd and that we are the sheep.

And the sheep hear his voice, they know his voice, and they follow him.

And so it's this process of hearing the voice of the Lord and then stepping out in faith to do whatever the voice has called us to do.

And typically it's not the comfortable things, it's the things that are hard, it's the things that are difficult, it's the things that pull us out of our comfort zone.

That's what the Spirit typically does in our lives.

But the process of taking those steps and following the voice of the Holy Spirit is what transforms us and makes our soil, the soil of our hearts, receptive to the seed that has been planted.

But notice in uh Hebrews chapter 3, verse 15, it says, Remember what I said today.

Hebrews 3:15

Today, when you hear his voice, don't harden your hearts as Israel did when they rebelled.

When we harden our hearts against the voice of the Lord and we refuse to obey the commands that he has given us, what eventually happens is our heart becomes more and more hardened to the truth of God.

And so we got to be proactive in hearing the voice of the Lord and then being active in trying to obey the voice of the Lord.

And that's how we grow.

That's how we become all that God has called us to be.

There's not some special formula, but it's really just a daily practice of following Jesus, picking up our cross and following him.

That's what it's all about.

It's not about the one-time decision, it's not about consumer Christianity, it's about something so much more.

And when you get this, you get this.

When you get it, you get it.

When you've experienced the grace and the power and the love of Jesus, man, it transforms your life in a supernatural and a powerful way.

The Lord, I believe, is calling all of us to go deeper.

I believe the Lord is calling all of us into more.

Where we're looking into the vision for the next three to five years, and we're praying that God is going to allow us to baptize a hundred people over the next two years, five hundred people over the next five.

We're praying that we'll be able to start a new campus, we'll be able to start a new church and send people out.

We're praying for new leaders to be developed to make all of this even possible.

We're praying that 85% of our church is going to be engaged in small groups and be in serving relationships and serve teams on Sunday mornings.

We're praying for all of these things.

But if it doesn't start here, if it doesn't start with us becoming the people that God has called us to become, those things are just a way for us to waste our time and energy and our words and praying for.

Because it starts with us having the ability to come before the Lord, humble ourselves before Him, and become the men and women that God has ultimately called us to be.

So without God, we can't, but without us, he won't.

And so, what is it in your life, maybe, that you need to give up?

As you look through these soils, what soil is the predominant soil in your life?

And what do you need to change?

I'm gonna ask our band to come back up this morning.

They're gonna lead us just in one kind of more prayer and just declaration for us this morning, just to ask the Lord to still till up the soil of our lives and to break into new ground this morning.

But what is it that you practically need to do in your life?

Don't let this, don't let this moment pass by.

The Lord is speaking to you in this moment.

What has been the condition of your heart?

Are you hardened to the things of the Lord?

Are you someone that's allowed the stones, just the issues and the things that you've just kind of become accustomed to kind of creep up in your life and you failed to remove them?

Are you someone that's allowed the weeds and uh the thorns to come up and and to choke out the power of God and the work of God in your life because you've been chasing after and competing for the things of God?

Are you the good soil?

There's the good soil, and the good soil is where we want to be because that's where the more resides, and we want more.

We want to see God do more.

And so let me pray for us this morning.

Lord Jesus, I thank you so much for who you are, and I thank you so much for all that you have done.

Lord, we thank you that you're just a good God and that you're a God that that just even gives us the ability to know you and have a relationship with you.

And Lord, I know so often, Lord, I can uh not be proactive and I can neglect my own heart and my own soul.

And Lord, I'm just so thankful that even in the midst of that, Lord, you give grace, Lord, and that you allow me to come back to you and that I'm never too far gone, but you you you say, God, come back to me.

That's what you want, and that you just forgive me and you you pour out your blessings upon me as I draw back to you.

And Lord, I pray that we would be a church that does just that.

That we would be a church no matter what the condition of our hearts may be this morning, Lord, that we would be a church that strives to seek after you in humility.

And that we would be people that are willing to do the hard work of discipleship, that we would not just go through the motions, we would not just allow just a decision that was made in our past to be the uh extent of our relationship with you, but Lord, instead we would give you everything.

That we would not base anything on a one-time decision, but that it would be a lifetime of discipleship.

And Lord, we pray that you would use us in a powerful way as a result.

And maybe you're here this morning and you've never prayed to receive Christ, you never put your faith and your trust in Him.

Maybe you've had that callous heart and you just pushed away the things of the Lord.

And this morning, the Lord's waking you up to the realization of your need for him.

And this morning, you need to turn and surrender your life to Jesus.

We'd love to have a conversation with you after the service.

We'd love for you to text the word start to follow to 9700.

We'd love to follow up with you this week.

But Lord, don't let this life go by, Lord, and have us waste it.

Don't let us live 70 some odd years, and all that we have to say for it is just that we collected stamps.

But instead, Lord, let us be people that you use mightily as we continue to chase and seek after you.

Lord, we love you, and it's in your name we pray.

Amen.