Rise Up for God's Glory | Rise Up | Pastor Larry Osborne

This is a reading from 1 Peter 4:1–11.

1 Peter 4:1–11

Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh.

Arm yourselves with the same way of thinking.

For whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin,

so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh,

no longer for human passions, but for the will of God.

For the time that is passed suffices for doing what

the Gentiles want to do living in sensuality, passions,

drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry.

With respect to this, they are surprised when you do not join them

in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you,

but they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living

and the dead.

For this is why the gospel was preached, even to those who are dead.

That though judged in the flesh the way people are,

they might live in the spirit the way God does.

The end of all things is at hand.

Therefore, be self-controlled and sober minded for the sake of your prayers.

Above all, keep loving one another earnestly.

Since love covers a multitude of sins.

Show hospitality to one another without grumbling,

as each has received a gift.

Use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's varied grace.

Whoever speaks as one who speaks, oracles of God.

Whoever serves as one who serves by the strength that God supplies,

in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.

To him be glory and dominion forever and ever.

Amen.

Well, good morning and

welcome to the weekend gathering of Christ Community Chapel.

My name is Zach. I'm one of the pastors here.

So glad we get to be part of your weekend and I'm also glad

you picked this weekend to come because we get

I get to introduce an amazing guest speaker that we have here.

You know, I was in an event, recently where they said

the true mark of a Christian leader, a Kingdom leader

is that their name is on nothing, but their fingerprints are on a lot of things.

They're not after credit.

They're after impact.

And there is no one, I think, who typifies that comment more

than our guest speaker, Larry Osborne.

For decades, Larry led North Coast Church in Southern California,

all of the most influential churches in America.

There are a lot of things that you love about church small groups,

video screens that were Larry's idea, where he took mainstream.

He spends much of his time now investing in young pastors like me, developing us.

In fact, it was a couple of years ago I hung out with Larry and came back

and said to the team, we need to start a Thursday night service.

And his influence is everywhere here, even here at Christ Community Chapel.

And also what I love about Larry is he's

been married to his wonderful wife, Nancy, for 48 years.

They have three believing children,

eight grandkids,

all who live within about 15 minutes of them

because they're the kind of people you want to be around.

It is a privilege that he is here. Would you join me in

welcoming Larry Osborne to come give this weekend's message?

And it

has been a total blast to be here since, last Wednesday.

I came in Wednesday because you can't get from San Diego here.

On a Thursday and make sure you're ready to preach.

But just meeting with your team, and, I am

I I've been excited knowing Zach for what God is doing.

I got to meet Joe and spend some time with him to understand

what God had done and has done and will continue to do.

And, you guys just got a great team and a great thing going.

And, as someone who gets to see lots of churches all around the country,

I hope you realize that sometime familiarity can breed a little sense.

Hey, it's always this way.

And and God's on the move.

And, I hope you, embrace every moment of it, but today

we're taking, continuing this series you've been doing in first Peter. And,

you know, first Peter is basically a letter

that was written, about how to follow

Jesus when following Jesus is really hard.

One third of the verses, are on suffering,

persecution or hardship tied to our walk with Jesus.

36 out of 106 verses,

in his letter and explains why it happens and then how

we're supposed to think about it and how we're supposed to respond.

So today, out of the whole passage that was just read what I want to do is

I want to step back and we're just going to look again

at the first two verses and try to mind the depths of what they have to say.

So we'll put them up on the screen, for just a second,

since they're for Christ suffered in the flesh,

he tells us to do two things, one on themselves

with the same way of thinking as we suffer, the things we do.

Hey, learn to think and respond like Jesus did.

And the second is for this reason, for whoever suffered in

the flesh has ceased from sin

so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh,

no longer for human passions, but for the will of God.

Now I know we're in church, but let's be honest for a second.

The second thing here, that is not the experience

I know, personally or people I'm around like.

Like what? It what it's gone.

But, what do you mean?

Whoever is suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin?

Well, the problem is, when you read that,

you'll kind of go, okay, but in your heart, you know it's not true.

And the and the problem is that we miss understand

what he's talking about when he's talking about suffering here.

So I'm going to actually take the second thing, what I call the elephant

in these verses in the room.

And I want to talk about suffering and, well, how in the world does that

bring breaks, since grip on our life.

And then we'll circle back and say, this is how we're supposed to think

and respond, but what we need to understand is simply this,

that he's not talking about suffering in the way we normally think about it.

He's not talking about the suffering that is a human experience ever since.

Thank you, Adam and Eve.

In this fallen world, we're all going to face death.

Unless you

die at a young age or through an accident, you're going to lose loved ones.

You're going to be betrayed.

You're going to be hurt.

You're going to have financial hardships that come upon you.

You're going to have medical things that, you know, like, where did this come?

Oh, just a fallen world.

Everything is broken. There are weeds in every garden.

There is no job this perfect.

It's like everything is broken.

And so normally when we read about suffering, that's what we go to.

Hey, I just lost my job, or I just got a diagnosis

that, is not a good one from the doctor.

And yes,

the Lord shows up in that suffering, but that's not what he's talking about.

He's talking about a special kind of suffering.

The suffering that happens when you when, as a result of you

and I following Jesus, when you have made the right decision,

when you have done the right thing, but the wrong result shows up.

And that's always a confusing time.

Would you agree with me?

And if you've any of you who've had the privilege of walking

with Jesus a long time, I know a lot of you are new in your faith journey.

But as you go through it, I'm going to tell you there going to be times

where you do exactly what you know.

Jesus wants you to do, what Scripture tells you to do,

and you look up and we all have this tendency

to think, well, everything ought to go great. I just obey the Lord.

And yet

the reality is often we do the right thing

and the wrong results happen.

So it is our fear of those wrong results that often causes us to go.

I don't know, I'm not sure God's got this one right.

It's a rule for everybody, but I'm not sure it fits my unique situation.

I would step back and point this out.

I think that when you and I, with our eyes wide open, choose to disobey God,

do something.

We know we shouldn't or not start something we know we should.

The reason is fear.

We're afraid of something.

And so we think, in my case, this doesn't apply

what we tend to be afraid of are two things.

Number one, we have a fear of loss.

And number two, we have a fear of missing out.

Let me kind of flesh those out for just a moment.

The fear of loss will be those situations where I look at it and I go,

I know what the scriptures say here, but if I were to stop doing

what he wants me to stop doing, I'm going to lose this relationship.

I'm going to lose these relationships.

You know, my, my, my work career will not quite

be the same if I don't just go along with everybody.

The little business that I own,

if I play by all the rules when nobody else is playing by the rules.

Wait.

If I tell the truth in this situation, I mean, I could go on and on.

You see where I'm going?

That there is this sense of like, Well, I know what I do, but, like,

I'm afraid of what I lose.

There's also this fear of.

I'm afraid of what I'll miss out on,

pleasure and advancement in life, just all kinds of things.

That's actually, in the Garden of Eden.

That's the the trick Satan used with Eve.

He said, you've been told you can't eat any of these.

You can eat everything but this tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And he said, let me tell you why.

God knows that the moment you eat of this,

you'll be like him, knowing good and evil.

Well, the master liar.

Half truth.

Yeah, they know good and evil after they ate of it.

But they would know good and evil by experience,

not by knowledge of a concept.

And it was a fear of missing out

that caused Eve and then Adam to say, okay, let's go there.

So whenever I fear I'm going to lose something,

whenever I fear that, well, I won't experience something.

I do what

we do, what I like to call calling an audible.

The Bible calls it sin, but it's football season.

So let me talk about calling an audible.

And those of you who hate football, toughen up.

Too bad. Here we go.

What happens is a quarterback gets a play sent in from the sideline, the coach

and and the play says a running back is going to go right over here.

And he gets under center.

And he looks.

And there's nine of the 11 defensive players over here.

And only two of them over there.

So what's the quarterback do.

He does what's called an audible.

He changes a play that was sent in from the sidelines.

And he does a counter play where it looks for a moment like we're going here.

And then the running back goes over there and touchdown.

And then everybody praises the quarterback for his game awareness,

for his ability to to see what's going on and to check off the play.

The coach sent in and call a better play.

Well that's great if you're a football quarterback.

But guess what?

Human coaches sent

in the wrong play every now and then.

But when God sends in the play,

I would suggest it's not a very good idea to change it.

Would you agree?

And but what happens is I don't treat God as God.

I treat him as my cosmic consultant.

And I go, well, good idea.

Normally you got this one, but in this case, and I got all my reasons why

we're going to call an audible.

And when we call the audible,

nothing works out because he knows what he's doing.

Even if, by the way, play after play after play goes into the teeth of the defense

and nothing happens, I guarantee that the human coach over there is going on.

What do I do now? God, he's got a game plan.

He knows exactly why he's setting the stage up over there now.

That's why we sin.

And but yet that verse says, if I will not call the audible,

I run his play and his play doesn't work out.

How does that help me cease from sin?

How does that breaks his grip on my life?

Well, here's why.

Because the thing that I fear most

when I do what God calls me to do, is never as bad as I thought it would be.

And the thing that I missed out on is never as great as I thought it would be.

But we don't know that till we experience it.

I know some of you who have been through that,

where you've gone through a deep, dark valley and you

and if you had been told ahead of time you're going to go through this, you'd go,

there is no way I can make it through that.

That is absolutely impossible.

And then you get on the other side of it and go, man, that was hard.

But nowhere near as hard as I thought it would be.

Some of you been there and missing out is the same thing.

And here's why.

Because in the Valley I'm afraid to go there.

But I'm going to call your play.

And sure enough, it doesn't work out as I'm in that valley.

Guess what?

God shows up with all the grace, strength and mercy I need.

But here's the problem

it's a just in time delivery system.

I hate that

if you're in a business world, you might know the name Deming.

He's the guy who came up with it just in time.

Delivery systems.

And instead of building big warehouse houses and

and having all kinds of inventory, cut the cost

and have all the parts delivered just in time, put it together,

save a lot of money, much more efficient and whatever.

By the way, the American industry ignored it, Japanese industry bought into it.

And now, of course, American has.

But it's just in time.

And I remember reading about that and thinking, oh, that's what God always does.

If you go back to the Old Testament, there was a thing called manna

that showed up every day, one day at a time, just one day supplies

the children of Israel wandered through the wilderness.

Well, here's my problem.

When I'm about when I'm tempted to call the audible,

I look at the valley and I go, I can't make it through.

And guess what? I can't

as I am today with what I have today,

but I can when tomorrow on my doorstep shows up.

Just what I need now.

What I always wish, I wish my garage instead of being full of junk,

was full of pallets of mercy, grace and spiritual strength.

Wouldn't that be cool

if I had pallets full of it?

I look in there and whatever it is the enemy wants to put in front of me

to lift us. I got I got all the supplies

I need for this, but that's why it's called Faith.

It comes one day at a time.

Well, the flip side is when I do what God says to do

and I miss out on something, I'm really not missing out on anything.

And when I do the right thing over time, he gives me

what actually satisfies, even though sometimes it's not what I want.

Because one of the worst experiences in life

is when I get everything I want, only to find out it's nothing I want.

I call it destination sickness,

and I can't tell you how many people I've known in life, both Jesus followers

and non Jesus followers

who have chased the path because this is where I'll find all I want.

And then things they knew were not the right thing to do

to make sure they got it.

They were afraid to lose out only to get there and go.

Is this all there is

to find out the greener grass was painted concrete?

You ever had that happen to you?

It's like, what's up?

That brass ring was just a bubble.

And so how sinless this is.

Grip is very simple because after I've gone through that

a few times, I realized, like, there's nothing to fear here.

He's going to give me what I

really need, which is far better sometimes than what I thought I would want.

And that valley I have to go through is nowhere near as severe

and as horrific as I thought.

And every time I go through that, I get stronger and stronger and stronger

because my fear gets less and less and less.

That's what he's talking about.

Well, how do we get there?

Well, we think in respond like Jesus thought

and responded in the face

of suffering for doing the right thing.

As I like to say, when you do the right thing

and you get the wrong result, so let's pivot now and take the rest

of our time and take a look at if we're going to think like Jesus thought.

What?

How do we think and what do we do now?

By the way, a good starting point would be to take a look

at what the Bible actually says.

Let's see, first of all, here first Peter four one since therefore

Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking.

The problem is, he doesn't tell us right now what that means, right?

And if we're honest, we often have a Jesus and a Bible

that's more a figment of our imagination than what actually says.

Do any of you remember those little bracelets?

Wwjd? Anybody here? Remember those?

Okay, for those of you who do that, it represented

what would Jesus do?

And for a short period of time it was all the rage.

The problem is, these bracelets were worn by a bunch of people

who had no idea what Jesus actually did.

They just had a Jesus of their own.

Well, I think Jesus would do this.

Of course he'd do what I would do.

So we're going to now explore Scripture, and we're going to find some things

for Peter and other passages that are a little surprising and others

that absolutely confirm what you've always been told.

So let's start with verse one

suffering persecution.

Number one, if we're going to think like Jesus, believe it or not,

we're going to avoid it if possible,

we can avoid it if possible.

We are not called as Jesus followers

to seek out hardship and persecution.

We are called to accept

hardship and persecution and that's a massive difference.

I remember one conference I was speaking at, and the dude

who was speaking before me was talking about what it means to take up your cross,

you know, and, and follow Jesus.

And, he was talking about being a radical disciple,

Navy Seal for Jesus, you know, all that kind of stuff.

And and I'm Melissa and I go, dude, you are crazy.

And his

his, his major illustration was, if you're serious about following God,

you're going to take up your cross whenever you have in life a choice

and one way is easy and one way is hard.

You're going to take the hard way.

And I remember thinking, I just want to get up in the next

talk and say, this dude needs a counselor

because he wasn't talking about discipleship.

That guy was a masochist.

Like, you're, you're crazy if you choose a hard road just hit you.

There is no value in that.

The value is in accepting what God puts,

before us when we have the choice.

You see, when the Bible says save your cross and bear it,

he he's he's not talking about.

I want to tell you, here's what the Christians life's going to be.

Sign up for it. It's absolutely miserable.

And so

just every day that you're following Jesus is going to be a hard day tomorrow

worse than today.

And that means you really love Jesus and he loves you.

No, Jesus was saying a cross was an implement of death.

He says, if you're going to follow me, you need to be ready to go wherever I go

and you need to be ready if called upon, even to die.

We've got 12 apostles.

Judas was kind of a loser, so we'll go with the 11 left.

And ten out of those 11 died for their faith.

One of them, he lived to a ripe old age.

It's up to God, whatever he wants to do.

He's not saying be miserable.

He's saying be willing to go and do whatever it is I call you to do.

You see that difference?

It is. It is very massive.

Here's

what Jesus actually said about hard times.

In Matthew chapter 1128 to 30, come to me, all who

labor and heavy laden, and I will give you what my church folks for me.

So help me out.

I will give you what rest.

It's not like I'll show you how hard it can be.

No, I'll give you rest.

Take my yoke.

My stern guide upon you.

Learn from me I am gentle, lowly in heart.

And you will find rest for your souls.

Because my yoke is what is easy.

And my burden is light.

That's why you and I, when we walk through a valley, Jesus sent us in.

We didn't send ourselves in that.

You get to the other side, you go, wow,

that wasn't as hard as I thought because his yoke makes it easier

and his hand makes the burden lighter.

You realize

Jesus came to go to the cross right?

That's why he came.

But what did he do before he went to the cross?

He went to a place called the Garden of Gethsemane,

and he brought three of his closest guys with him.

He said, pray for me.

He went over here and he pled with the father that he wouldn't have to do that.

And when the father said, no, you need to do it,

he asked two more times.

Sounds like a toddler.

Like, are you kidding me?

And then he said, okay, obedience is that path,

but I don't want you to miss that.

And by the way, maybe some of you have seen the pictures.

You know, Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.

You know, he's by this little rock.

He's got his hair all nicely done in that little funky robe would wear.

And then there's that little shiny light around him, I guess was always there.

And he's like this prayed.

That's not what the Bible says at all.

The Bible says he told his three to go there,

and then it says, he went here and he fell on the ground,

groveling in the ground with a horror of what was in front of him,

saying, Lord, is it father?

Is there any way to avoid this?

He told his apostles, when you go town to town, stay where you wanted.

But if they don't want anything, leave.

He said, when they persecute, you, flee.

Now I need to take

a little sidebar here, because there is this problem.

Sometimes the hardship and persecution and rejection

we go through is not because we're being obedient to Jesus.

It's because we're being a jerk for Jesus.

It's self-inflicted.

And I thought it'd be practical because we got this thing called

the holidays coming up, where some of us get to be with the people we most love,

and some of us are experiencing the two days, three days we mostly.

And you know,

you're getting this family gathering and they want nothing to do with Jesus.

And all the things they're talking about are things like they're not very good,

that many of us speak up in those things

and get some rejection, some hardship, some suffering, whatever it would be.

And we think we're suffering for Jesus, and we're suffering

because we don't know how to keep our mouth shut.

You are

not a coward when you keep your mouth shut around.

People who don't want to hear what you have to say.

As a brand new Christian, I didn't understand this.

I mean, you need Jesus eternal life, forgiveness.

You need Jesus.

There is no other way.

So I want to tell everybody.

And so if I sat next to you on an airplane, a bus, God knows what it is,

I put a mirror in front of your face. It fogs a little.

You're alive. Boom!

I'm telling you the story.

And the truth of the matter is, I actually some people pray to receive Jesus.

Not really to receive Jesus, just for me to shut up and leave them alone.

Right.

But. But the thing was, I misunderstood

the fact that what I'm called to do is to speak

where people

are interested and not to stand up everywhere

and bring it and then say, oh, I'm being persecuted for Jesus.

When he sent out his 12 apostles later on, 72 two

by two is advance teams to go to towns he was going to around Galilee.

He said, when you're welcome, you stay there.

But if they don't want to hear you stand on the corner

anyway and keep preaching until they put you in jail. No,

he said, women don't want to hear you shake the dust off your feet and go away.

They want to hear you,

but you.

Timing matters.

How many, how many of you would love a blessing if I were to give you a blessing?

How many? You'd like that.

Okay. The rest of you were asleep, right? Okay.

Right.

It's a good thing,

but not if I give it to you at 3 a.m..

See, Proverbs says a blessing.

Good thing too early in the morning will be taken as a curse.

What we need to learn to do is to accept or when asked.

I love how Peter puts it always be ready.

Give an answer to everyone who asks you for the reason

of the hope you have.

I thought it was tell everybody a reason whether they wanted to hear or not.

Tell everybody. Living a godless life.

Here's five reasons why you're wrong, even though they have no interest in it

at that point.

Does this make sense? What I'm saying?

And our job.

Peter even says that you saw it earlier, live such good lives

that they start wondering, why are you different?

And then they ask, and then you speak into that situation

when, if at all possible, avoid it.

And like I said, you're not a coward.

You're wise when you know when to speak and when not to speak.

Now there's a second thing, though, which is accept it.

If the only way to avoid it is disobedience,

right?

Jesus pleaded, pleaded, pleaded.

And then it's like, nope.

The thing I'm called to do is go to the cross.

And he went to the cross

and and there are situations

where the only way out of the loss,

the only way out of the pain, is to do the wrong thing.

And at that point I will embrace and I will accept

whatever he brings out of my life.

And guess what?

In obedience, God always shows up with that just in time delivery system.

Here's another passage speaks about it.

First Corinthians chapter ten, verse 13.

No temptation has overtaken you.

That is not common to man, though sometimes when we think, come

on, God, I'm the only one going through this.

God is faithful.

He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability.

Well, every now and then we go, come on, God, I don't think I can handle this.

And here's what he says.

But with the temptation, he'll also provide the way of escape.

So you can endure it as a new Jesus follower

reading that in the Bible, I wonder, well, where's what is the way of escape?

I you ever done an escape room?

I kind of thought, like maybe that's what it is.

If I'm really smart, I can figure out know how to get out of this thing.

But in reality, you know what the way of escape is?

It's very simple. Obedience.

No matter

what the scoreboard says, no matter what's going on,

you run his play and that is always the way out.

And the way that we receive all

that we need.

Now, in the midst of that, there's a third thing I want to point out,

and that is we never return evil for evil,

no matter what.

That's how Jesus did it.

I want us to put up first Peter chapter two, verses 21 to

23 for a second for

this year has been called because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example.

So this verse says, see what he did and do it

so that you might follow in his steps.

Now remember, he committed no sin.

Neither was deceit found in his mouth, perfect, sinless Son of God.

And when he was

reviled, he did not revile in return.

When he suffered, he did not threaten,

but he simply continued to entrust himself

to God, who judges justly.

If we're honest,

everything in us

wants to repay some measure of evil for evil.

Is that is that okay to say right, whether it's road rage

or a massive injustice, I don't want you to get away with it.

So I need to figure out, like, how to do it.

Road rage is such a funny, strange, weird thing to me.

You almost kill me,

so I decide I need to let you know.

You almost killed me. I hung my horn.

But in my flesh.

I also want to teach you a lesson.

So instead of honking my horn, what I really want to do is just lay on my.

Horn. Right?

And then I.

It would be nice to tailgate you maybe roll down the window and

will not wave at you.

That's what I want to do right?

Well, the problem is, whenever I return evil for evil, I think I may the score,

but the person on the other side always does their math differently.

Have you been there or noticed that?

I think we're even now.

You almost killed me and I let you know I wasn't happy about it.

But what's he think?

He thinks he's one behind, so he slows down to two miles an hour

and the battle begins.

Whenever you return

evil for evil, what you end up doing is you've got a fire going on in the kitchen,

and you've grabbed the hose and you put water on it.

Only realize it's a grease fire.

It always makes things worse.

And tied to that is his fourth principle,

and is that we need to choose forgiveness over bitterness and revenge

and circle, highlight and underline the word choose.

It's a choice.

How are we going to respond?

I mean, let's be real.

None of us will ever suffer injustice to the level our Lord Jesus did.

We call it Good Friday because of what happened on Sunday?

It was actually damnable Friday, the most evil in just wicked

24 hours in human history.

Yeah.

What were his words, father?

Forgive them.

They know not what they do.

Now, when I choose forgiveness, you need to understand.

That doesn't mean I choose to forget.

I choose to give you a knife so you can stab me in the back again.

I choose to trust.

You know. Forgiveness is given. Trust is earned.

I don't even have to invite you over the Thanksgiving dinner.

There's a lot of people I don't invite,

but what I

do need to do is quit looking for ways to let others know the evil

you did to slander you, and worse, to let you live rent

free in my brain.

Have any of you ever let somebody live rent free in your brain?

You know, the other thing we do is we have what I like to call brain debates.

You ever have those?

I have never lost a brain debate in my life.

I just annihilate the person I'm.

And the thing is, they're just going on with life, not even thinking about me.

And I'm just consumed

because I've chosen not to say, Lord, it's yours.

By the way. Read the Psalms.

You can actually say, Lord, I'm entrusting you with it.

And by the way, sic them.

Now he'll decide what he

wants to do, and I need to remember he died for me while I was his enemy.

So he my turn my enemy into my brother or sister.

But but bottom line, it is a choice

whether I'm going to let this thing go or not in a

in a real, practical way.

A mentor of mine taught me something just in the small grievances.

It was this phrase he said, Larry, you need to learn to go towards

your enemies.

Well, what do you mean by that?

So he said, when somebody has hurt you, has done you wrong.

And your role as a pastor, they've not left the church,

which is fine,

but they've left it flaming everything along in today's stuff on social media.

They're going all after it or whatever it would be, he says.

When you see them in aisle seven, everything in you wants to go

leave the store, go down aisle nine.

Am I mentor taught me

no, go down aisle seven.

I want to tell you that's a choice.

There's nothing I want to do.

But what I learned

is every time I would go down aisle seven and I'd say, hey, how are you doing?

How are the kids or the spouse or whatever it is?

They flamed our church as they go to another church, ask,

hey, how's it over there?

It, you know, Christ, community chapel or, you know, wherever it would be.

I hear good things are going on.

You know what would happen?

It's like when you get an infection.

It's like you pop it and all the pus in the poison comes out.

It is one of the most freeing things in the world

to go towards your enemy with grace and mercy,

instead of the chains of holding on

to praying debates, living rent free in my mind, bitterness.

It's counterintuitive.

I'm standing up there and I go, yeah, but that means they got away with it.

And Lord goes, I know the play.

I got the right play.

Do not worry.

And the last thing I leave you with is this we're going to be like Jesus.

We're going to keep our eye on the finish line.

Because no pain, no gain isn't a cliche.

It's discipleship.

And I love Hebrews chapter 12, verse two,

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

where it says he it.

Jesus endured the cross for the joy

set before him, despising the shame.

And I want to tie this all together with those three words, endured the cross.

That means he didn't like it.

It's really okay to not like it, to just go.

I don't know if I can make one more day as he keeps showing up his man

his just in time delivery system.

Why? For the joy set before him,

he had his eye on the long term.

But I love this all the while despising the shame.

I go, I can do

that because I used to have the idea I'm supposed to be like, oh, fun!

Suffering for Jesus. No.

Call the play.

Because you know the joy.

Even if you despise the process.

You know what faith is?

Faith is trusting God enough to do what he says.

And it's not the thing that causes every trial to go away.

It's the thing that guides me through every trial.

And that's what it means

to think like Jesus.

And when we do, awesome things happen.

Father, would you take the things that we have looked at?

And Lord, we don't want to hear them as if your scripture has binoculars,

what we see in other people, but make it a mirror

to help us realize

what step of obedience is our next step to your glory and honor.

In Jesus name, Amen.