Jesus Over Everything | Jason Patterson

We're gonna dive right in.

The message I have for you today, I've titled Jesus over everything.

Jesus over everything.

We're gonna go to Matthew chapter 13.

Matthew 13 · chapter mention

It'll be a few minutes before we get there, but if you want to go ahead and be ready, Matthew chapter number 13.

I have uh this feature in my truck.

Some of you will have this in your vehicle as well.

If not, you're familiar with it probably.

Um, you know, I've got the the screen that connects to my phone, and then you know the GPS directions for where I'm going can just be displayed on the screen.

Some of you will have experienced this, notice this as well.

If you have events in your calendar that have locations associated with them, if your car thinks that, you know, you're headed or it's time to go there, it will just give you that destination on the screen and it'll give you directions for how to get there.

You know what I'm saying?

And then there's times, and some of you have experienced this as well, where you uh, if you go to the same place around the same time on the same day over and over again, it will just kind of think it knows where you're going, and it will just plug that in as a destination for you and give you directions.

Some of you are like, yeah, and it's creepy, you know, because it's just like this thing, why does it know where I'm going, you know, or why does it think it it knows?

Like, is it watching me?

You know, is this like a spy network?

Um, you know, and so it puts that stuff in there, and you guys will know this.

Sometimes it thinks that it knows where you're going, but that's not where you're going.

And it's one of my favorite things because it wants me to turn right, but that's not where I'm headed, so I'll turn left.

And what does it do?

Does it give up?

Nope.

It just reroutes me.

And it's just like it just figures that I didn't know what I was doing, and that it knows better than me, and so it will just tell me now that I've turned the wrong direction, how I can still navigate to get there, and I love it.

And I'll make another turn that it thinks is wrong, and what will it do?

It will reroute me again.

And here's what I've been realizing in my relationship with God is that I often do the same thing to him.

And let me be clear about kind of the illustration here.

In this illustration, the vehicle, the car, is my life.

The one who is driving the car is God.

Because we know this, we've accepted Jesus' invitation for salvation, we've confessed him to be the Lord of our lives, so that means he's in charge, right?

So he's the one driving.

The GPS giving the directions is like my will.

It's my desires, it's my dreams.

And there are times in my life and in my walk with God where I think I know where he needs to take me, where I know where I want him to go, and instead of taking a right, God takes a left.

Anybody ever experienced this?

And you have one of those moments where you know it's kind of like, hey, God, you know, I know you made like the universe and everything, but you were supposed to take a right, you know, and you went the wrong way, but it's okay, God, like I've got you.

You know what I mean?

Like I can get you there, God.

Don't panic, God, don't panic, you know?

Like we will get there because we know like where we're going and what I've begun to experience in life.

And just to be honest with you, what I want to share today, really, in a lot of ways, is this just where I'm at.

What I've realized is oftentimes I find myself really anxious because I don't feel life is going where I want it to.

Or I think maybe I am headed where I want to go, but I'm not getting there as fast as I thought I would.

Anyone?

And what I've found often is that I am anxious to the point of exhaustion.

Like anybody else, you're just worn out.

Anybody else just feel exhausted today?

Come on, you're in the room, you're in overflow, you're watching online, wherever you are.

Yeah, we're just it is.

It's just can be it, life can be so tiring and we're exhausted.

And I've started to ask myself, like, why is this happening?

Why does it feel like this is my perpetual state, you know, just in life?

Like, and what I've realized is I think one of the reasons as Christians we are anxious to the point of exhaustion is because we keep trying to get a hold of or get keep a hold of if we've already got a bunch of things God never promised us.

Like there's so many things I desire, so many things I dream of, so many things I chase after in life that God didn't promise me, but I act like He did.

And then I get really frustrated, I get anxious, I worry, I'm exhausted, I'm tired.

Like anybody else, the tired version of you isn't that great.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, and I am, and it's it affects my marriage, it affects my relationships, it affects my parenting, it affects my pastoring, it affects all of these things, just like it does for all of us.

Like, but what is the answer?

Like, this isn't the life Jesus died for us to have.

Like, so how can we experience less anxiety and less of this exhaustion and less of the rat race?

And we're gonna dive into Matthew 13 in a second, but I do want to be clear.

We're talking about these destinations, so to speak, that we've entered into the GPS of our life, that we want God to take us to or where we're trying to go.

What we're talking about is not sinful things.

We know we have to give up on those destinations with God's help, right?

We're talking about dreams and desires and goals for life that aren't necessarily sinful, they're just part of life.

So this might be dreams for our business, this might be dreams for our career, maybe for our education, maybe relational dreams that we have, you know, in life, whatever those things are.

We're not talking about things that we have to let go of because they're sinful, but we're talking about things that we chase after and that when we don't get them or we don't get where we feel like we want to go, we we don't experience joy.

We're not at peace, we're not content, we're not happy or whole.

That's what we're talking about today.

And I think Jesus can help us.

So I want to take you now to Matthew chapter number 13.

Some of you will be really familiar with this teaching.

You've been in church for a long time.

Others of you today, maybe you're newer to this thing, you haven't heard this.

One of the things Jesus did in his teaching is he used a lot of little illustrations, a lot of little short stories.

They're called parables.

And the one we're gonna read is a parable from Jesus.

It's only two verses, but it's in like a series of parables, and Jesus would often do this to kind of explain something about himself, something about his mission, what he was trying to accomplish, something about his kingdom.

And so he would use these little illustrations to try to explain spiritual truths.

So that's what Jesus is doing here.

It's just two verses, but I love this parable.

So the Bible says Matthew 13, verse 45 and 46.

Matthew 13:45

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.

And I want to hang out just with this parable for a few moments.

Jesus, again, is using this little story to explain deep spiritual truths about his kingdom and about himself.

And so this would have been something that was familiar to Jesus and his original audience.

Like they knew about merchants like this, they knew about like pearls which were really valuable.

They're valuable today, but they really were in the ancient world.

Because, as you can imagine, without modern equipment, without like scuba diving gear and all that stuff, it was really hard to get them, and it was really dangerous work.

So pearls were exceedingly valuable.

And so there's these markets that sell these things, and this merchant, this is his life.

He's he's buying and selling, he's trading these things, he finds things.

He's we know from the second verse of this parable that he already had a treasure because he sells it and uses it to buy the pearl of great value.

Everybody tracking with me.

And so I want you to think about it like this this merchant is going from like market to market to market.

There are pearls at multiple markets.

He already has a treasure that likely contains pearls.

But when he finds this one pearl of great value, he is so he thinks it's so beautiful and so incredible that he has to have this one pearl.

So he sells all of his current treasure and whatever pearls might have been in it to buy this one pearl.

There might have been other pearls at that market.

There were other pearls at other markets.

He doesn't buy that pearl plus some other ones, he only buys this one.

And many of you, again, you've been around for long enough, you know who the pearl is in this story.

It's Jesus himself.

What the Bible is saying, what Jesus is teaching to us, is that knowing Jesus and being in relationship with him is the most valuable thing there is in this life.

It is so valuable that it is worth, in fact, choosing Jesus over everything else.

This merchant is willing to sell all of his current treasure, again, whatever pearls are in it.

And think about it this way: the pearls, like think about them like competing systems of value in the world.

There's all kinds of systems in our world that is telling us what to value and what to want and what to chase after, right?

The world is full of these value systems, and he's he doesn't buy any of the other value systems, he sells all the value systems he's already got to own the one that is worth more than all of the rest of them put together.

And it's just Jesus.

And that's a really beautiful story Jesus tells to again illustrate a spiritual truth that knowing Jesus, being in relationship with him, is the most valuable thing we will ever have in this life.

That's one of those spiritual truths that's really easy to preach and really hard to live.

It's really hard to live in relationship with Jesus, but not still value some of the things that the world tells us to value.

It's really hard to have the pearl, but not still want some of the other ones.

It's hard not to go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I want to have the pearl of great value.

I want to have Jesus, but I still want to keep some of the other ones.

You know what I mean?

I don't want to get rid of them all.

And there's still some other ones that I don't have yet that I'd still like to have.

I want Jesus like plus all these things.

It's really easy to preach, it's really hard to live.

And how does this happen?

Because we know this.

We we I I really I think most of us we know this is true.

Then why do we still chase after all of these other things?

Why do I spend so much of my time rerouting God to try to get him to go where I want him to go?

Rather than surrendering those things, letting go of those things because I already have the most valuable thing there is.

Jesus Himself.

Can I be honest?

I think that the heart of the problem isn't that we don't value Jesus, it's that we haven't devalued everything else.

I think we know the value of Jesus.

To be honest, I think if we could pass the mic, we don't have time, but if we did it here over in Overflow, if you're watching from there, if you're watching online from wherever you're at, if we could pass the mic somehow, I mean we would get all these beautiful descriptions from each of us of about how incredible Jesus is and the way you've experienced his love and his grace and his mercy and his kindness and his humility, right?

Like we could go on and on.

We know the value of Jesus.

I don't think oftentimes the issue is really that we don't value Jesus, it's that we still overvalue everything else.

We still are pulling too much from the world around us and letting it tell us what we should want and what we should chase.

And again, to be clear, it doesn't mean you gotta give up on every dream you have.

That is not the point of the message today.

That is not what Jesus is saying.

But what he is saying is there's a way to live our lives in relationship with him, in possession of the pearl, so to speak, where we don't live with the anxiety that everybody else has and the exhaustion that everybody else has and the lack of contentment that everybody else has, because what we have in Jesus is what we want most, and we've already got it, so it changes how we chase all those other things, not necessarily whether or not we chase those things.

Jesus is telling us there is a way to live this life, not being anxious to the point of exhaustion, not being frustrated and tired and worried constantly.

There is a way to do it, but he's got to work in our hearts to get us there.

Because I think this happens a lot.

It was January 12th, 2007.

There was an experiment that was run by a reporter.

He worked for the Washington Post, and they set up this whole uh experiment in the subway in Washington, D.C., early in the morning when everybody's in a rush to get to work.

And what they did was they had a violinist.

His name is Joshua Bell.

He is a virtuoso violinist.

He is one of, if one of, if not the best violin player in the world.

And they set him up in the subway, at the entrance, between the entrance doors where everybody comes in and the escalators where you go down to the subway during the morning rush.

Normally, to listen to him play the violin, you would have to pay hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars to listen to him play the violin.

And they set him up in the subway.

Oh, yeah, we got the picture for you.

He's the guy in the hat with the giant red arrow pointing at him.

That's Joshua Bell.

He's playing on a violin that cost three and a half million dollars.

It was handmade by Stradivarius himself.

He is playing some of the most complicated music ever written.

He is one of the only people in the world good enough to even play it.

And he's doing it for free when you would normally have to spend a lot of your hard-earned money to hear it.

He played for about 45 minutes.

He had his little case open, you know how the street musicians do.

And he played for 45 minutes.

And in that time, 1,097 people passed Joshua Bell that morning.

Anybody want to take a guess at how many of them stopped to listen?

Seven.

Seven people.

Some of you are like, I got it.

That's God's number.

I knew it, you know?

It's like seven people.

Yeah.

Twenty people glanced at him.

He made in his little case$32.17.

And again, normally you'd pay like a thousand bucks to listen to this guy play at a concert.

1,070 people were so distracted by where they were going that they missed the beauty that was right next to them.

Here's my question: how often do we do the same thing to Jesus?

How often do we miss the beauty of what we have in him because we're so busy chasing after things that we all know aren't as good as him?

And again, the point isn't don't ever chase after any of those things.

Some of those dreams God gave you.

And that's okay.

You may never get there.

God may have given you that dream for you to go on a journey that you didn't understand, that He has planned out for you.

You guys know how this works, it doesn't always work our way.

But Jesus is trying to help us understand here in Matthew 13 that if we will choose him over everything else, that is the recipe in life for living in a way that is not available outside of him.

Living a life that is not driven and consumed by the things that everybody else is chasing and the panic that they experience and the anxiousness and worriness and the exhaustion that we experience, and many of us are experiencing it even though we have the pearl.

And what Jesus is telling us today is that we don't have to.

We don't have to live that kind of distracted life.

I wish I had time to kind of chase this rabbit down the hole, but one more thing about the Joshua Bell story.

There were not very many that passed by in the 45 minutes that he played because it was early morning and most people are just headed to work.

But a few of the people that passed by were parents who had their children with them.

Without fail, every single child that passed by Joshua Bell fought their parents to stop and listen.

Every single child pulled on their parents to stop.

What was it that Jesus said?

I can't remember.

If you want to enter my kingdom, you have to become like a child.

We are so consumed by getting the other things the world tells us are valuable.

Again, that we forget to appreciate the beauty of what we already have in Jesus.

How does this happen?

Again, I don't think that it's because we don't value Jesus.

I think it's because we haven't devalued everything else.

And that's how we wind up refusing to let go of destinations that we plugged in, even though God took a left and we wanted him to go right.

And we just keep trying to reroute him and reroute him and get him to go where we want, and it is exhausting.

Jesus is trying to help us today.

But how does this like change?

How do we stop running our race like this?

I think we have to devalue the other things that the world keeps telling us are actually really valuable.

I think that is part of it.

I think part of the problem is this, and this is we're gonna spend the rest of our time.

Is I think the other problem is that as Christians, we don't live from our true reality.

We don't live from our true reality.

And now that's gonna take a little bit of unpacking because some of you are like, what does that even mean?

So here's what we're gonna do for the next few moments, and I'll just tell you right now, we're we're we're gonna get a little bit deep into God's word, okay?

We're gonna look into something that the Bible teaches us that is true for us as Christians, but this is kind of like the deep end of the theological pool.

Everybody tracking with me.

Some of you are like, I would have had more coffee if I would known we were gonna do this, you know?

And some of you are like, oh yes, yes, yes, yes.

You're like, where's my notebook?

You love this.

And some of you are like, I'm new here, you know?

So let's take it slow, and we will.

Even if this is, I and I really do mean this.

If you have never heard this before, this is like kind of your first time in church or first few times, like you're you're gonna be able to follow with me.

But I think part of the problem and the reason why we fail to choose Jesus over everything consistently in our lives and live with all of the blessings and benefits that should come with that is because we don't live from our true reality.

The Bible is book-ended by creation and new creation.

In other words, the Bible starts with a good God who made a good world, right?

It only took us three chapters to mess that up.

We know that.

But the Bible ends with new creation.

Jesus says, Behold, I will make all things new.

Somebody say amen.

He will make all things new.

So creation and new creation, this is a bit of an oversimplification, but in a way, the Bible ends where it began with God's creation project being put back on track, so to speak.

And he will make all things new when we get to spend eternity with him.

That new creation world is a promise God makes to us in the Bible.

He is promising one day I will do this, right?

Jesus will come again, he will finish what he started.

There is a description of that new creation world in your Bible.

It's found at the end of the Bible in Revelation chapter 21.

Revelation 21 · chapter mention

For the sake of time, I'll just paraphrase it and summarize it for us.

Some of you know this.

There is a description in Revelation 21 of that new creation world.

When Jesus comes, he's gonna make all things new and we get to spend eternity with him.

And here's what he says about that time, about that world, about that new creation.

He says, There will be no more sickness, no more sadness, no more sorrow, no more pain, no more brokenness, no more abuse, no more poverty, no more racism, no more war.

You guys want me to keep going?

I mean, come on, right?

Anybody want to go?

Anybody want to live there?

You know what I mean?

Like, listen, one thing nobody has to convince us of is this world is broke.

It's broken.

And it's like humanity's spiritual gift is breaking it.

You know what I mean?

Like we're good at it.

But he says that world, that's his promise to us.

You know, to which we would all say, sign me up, you know?

I would love to live in a world that is void of all of those things that we just listed.

No more death, no more sickness.

It's all gone, it's all over.

That world is the promise of God.

And the Old Testament tells the story of one nation, the nation of Israel.

They are chosen by God to be the people through whom his salvation would come in the person of Jesus.

So the Bible tells the story of the nation of Israel.

So ethnically, they're all Jewish people.

And here's the way the Jewish people understood what God was gonna do.

They looked at it in two ages, the present age and the age to come.

They got a diagram, they're gonna show up to help us out a little bit.

So, this present age, the apostle Paul even calls it the present evil age.

Why does he do that?

Because it's evil and sinful.

That's that's where we live, the present evil age.

And then the Bible says that there is an age to come, that's new creation, right?

Everybody tracking with me?

And here's how they thought this was gonna work that the Messiah would come.

So God promised to send a savior, a deliverer.

That's what the Messiah is.

And they thought that the present age would go up to the point that the Messiah came, and when God did what he promised he would do, there would be a clean break between the present age and the age to come.

The present age would end and the age to come would begin, and that it would be a clean break between them.

And what the New Testament writers discovered, and then they wrote about, particularly the Apostle Paul talks about this, what they discovered is that's not how it happened.

What ended up happening is this.

They got another diagram they're gonna throw up for us.

What ended up happening is rather than there being a clean break between those ages, there became an overlap of those ages.

Everybody hang with me.

And that overlap is created by the first time Jesus came and the second time Jesus will come that hasn't happened.

And what happened when the first time Jesus came with his death and the specific event of his resurrection, when Jesus was raised from the dead, that new creation world, that age to come, that Revelation 21 description and promise of this world that is out there in the future, that we get to spend eternity with God without all of that stuff.

That world that's out there in the future, in the resurrection of Jesus, was brought into the middle of history.

So that new creation world that is still out there in the future has already started in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Everybody tracking with me?

And that has created a time, an overlap of those ages between the first time Jesus came and the next time he will come and make all things new.

Somebody say amen.

That's where we live, is in the overlap of those ages.

So new creation is something that is caused by the death and resurrection of Jesus.

But it is also something that has happened to Jesus.

It happens through Jesus, but it has also happened to Jesus.

So Jesus is new creation.

His body that went into that tomb was corruptible and could die, right?

He died on the cross.

His body coming up out of that tomb was incorruptible.

He is new creation.

He is the cause of it and in a sense the recipient of it.

Everybody tracking with me.

So what the Bible teaches, and this is really deep.

Anybody ever watched a Bible project video?

Anybody ever watched one of those?

The guy who is the primary teacher is Tim Mackey.

And when he talks about these really deep spiritual truths, he says there, there's like these are truths that are work of worth a lot of cups of tea or coffee and a lot of long walks.

This one fits into that category.

What the Bible teaches is that if you have accepted Jesus' invitation for salvation, if you have confessed him to be the Lord of your life, in other words, if you are in relationship with Jesus and He's your Savior, that what is true of Him is true of you.

What is true of Him is true of you.

And because new creation happened through Jesus and has also happened to Jesus, even though you are still a broken person in the middle of a broken world, if you are in Jesus, you are new creation.

That's what the Bible teaches.

So this with the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians chapter number 5, verse 17, he says, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

That's what the Bible is talking about.

What is true of Jesus is true of you.

So everybody hang out with me for just like another minute here.

Hang out with me.

What's true of him is true of you.

We spent a minute, a moment ago, talking about Revelation chapter 21 in that new creation world.

Revelation 21 · chapter mention

No more sickness, no more sadness, no more sorrow.

All of that gone.

No more sin.

No more evil.

No more suffering.

Again, sign us up, right?

Like who doesn't want to go?

That's the world we want.

That's the destination we long for most, right?

Like who doesn't want to go?

We are longing inside to get there.

Even in the busy busyness of our lives, if we ever stop to think about it, it's like, yeah, I want to be there with Jesus forever, right?

But what the Bible is teaching that is that if you are in Christ, because He is new creation, that place you want to go more than anywhere else in this life because of Jesus, you're already there.

You're already there.

And some of you are like, I am?

Like I thought I was at one church, you know?

Like I am, and that's part of the mystery of these deep spiritual truths in the Bible.

That is what the Bible is teaching, is that yes, despite all feeling, despite our perception and what we see just of our own lives and our own families, our own homes, our own communities, and in this world, all the brokenness that is around us, yes, we are in Jesus already there.

If you've ever heard somebody refer to the kingdom of God as both it is the now and not yet kingdom, that's what they're talking about.

It is yes, both now here and in another way, yes, it is not yet here.

And that's true of you in Christ.

There is, in a way, are you not there?

Absolutely, because you're right here.

But in another way, because you are in Christ, yes, you in fact are already there in Him.

Which means we are new creation people, so that should change how we live our lives.

That is actually the reality that we should live from.

That's what we should be doing in our lives.

That's how this is supposed to be working.

It's not just on the individual level, it's supposed to be on the community level.

As a church, here at One Church, this is supposed to be a new creation community where the power that destroys humanity and the world outside the church loses its power inside the church.

So, as far as it depends on us, we're supposed to live from that reality so that here in this place, we, as we serve one another, love one another, care for one another, and carry one another, that we are together in the suffering, we are together in the pain, we are together in breaking down the problems that are destroying this world.

That's who we're supposed to be.

That we could spend all day talking about that.

That's what we could just get, we could go layer after layer after layer, and some of you like, let's do it, but we gotta lay in the plane.

This is what the Bible is talking about.

But this is again, well, honestly, I was gonna say it's easy to preach hard, hard to live.

I don't know how easy to preach that was, but that's what the Bible is teaching us.

But it's hard to live out, it's hard to remember that just on a day-to-day basis.

What I find in my own life, and I'm the one preaching it.

What I find in my own life is often I'm one of the I'm one of the 1,070 people who blew straight past Joshua Bell on the way to work.

I get so consumed with the destinations I've plugged in that I want God to take me, right?

I'm so busy trying to reroute God and it's exhausting, and I'm anxious, and I'm worried, and I'm frustrated, and then sometimes I get angry.

And here's my guess I'm not the only one.

Here's my guess is that there's a lot of us today who can relate, and the point of the message today is not give up on every dream you have.

We're not talking about sin, we're talking about just things we're going after in life, whether that's a relationship, whether that's a job opportunity, whether that's a a level of influence we're trying to reach, or a financial status we're trying to achieve, or whatever it may be.

And that's one of those things today.

I I have no idea what your dreams are.

I don't know what the things are that you're chasing after that maybe you haven't gotten to yet.

That you're hoping and hoping and hoping that one day you'll get, and once you get there, you'll be a little bit better off, or you'll be a little bit more happy, or you'll be a little bit more content.

Again, what Jesus is doing today is saying that all of that is worth trading to have Him.

It's choosing Jesus over everything else.

You can pursue it, you can chase after it, but you just can't need it anymore.

Because you have everything you need in Him.

That's what Jesus is saying, and He will help you, He will help you.

I want to say this getting to the place where we can choose Jesus over everything is a journey, it's not a moment.

Like, I wish I could just like sort of pray a prayer real quick and we'd all be like, oh, I'm good with that, you know, and just move on to something else.

You know what I'm saying?

Like it doesn't work that way.

It does not work that way.

It's a journey, but what can we do to take some steps in that journey?

I want to give you one thing.

It's really practical, it's really simple.

If you've been around church for very long, you have heard this many, many times.

Some of you have been serving the Lord and following him for 30, 40, 50 years.

You have literally heard this thousands of times.

Some of you have heard it hundreds of times.

There are some of you who you're brand new to all of this, and maybe this will literally be the first time or the first handful of times you've heard this, but what can we do?

How do you get to the place where you can choose Jesus over everything and get out of the anxiousness and get out of that rat race?

How can you do it?

We have to grow to a place in our relationship with Jesus, to a place of maturity where we spend time every day stopping to listen to the violin music, so to speak.

You've got to have time every day that you spend with Jesus.

You've got to have time reading your Bible and praying and being with Jesus.

You have to.

Some of you are like, oh, he wasn't kidding.

This is like Sunday school 101, right?

Like we talk about this all the time in the church.

Why?

Because to get where God is trying to take you, you can't just connect with Jesus on Sunday mornings.

Now, what we do here is beautiful, isn't it?

There's a reason the church has gathered on Sunday mornings to worship together for 2,000 years, because it matters.

Because God uses it.

But as beautiful as Sunday is and as helpful as it can be, how many of you guys know this Sunday doesn't always get you through Monday?

And that was one day.

That was one day.

You know what I'm saying?

Monday is tomorrow, and sometimes this won't even get you through tomorrow, let alone Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or all the way to next Sunday.

You know what I mean?

You've got to learn how to connect with God on your own to truly mature and grow in your relationship with Jesus and learn to enjoy what you have in him.

You have to learn to connect with God in an opportunity and an environment that was not given to you or created for you.

You have to learn how to create your own opportunities to be with him.

You have to learn how to create your own environment to be with him.

Now you can meet with Jesus anywhere.

You can do it in the car, you can do it cut in the yard, you can do it anytime.

You can develop routines, you can get up a little early.

There's all kinds of ways to do it.

The way you do it is not nearly as important as the fact that you do it.

But we need his help.

Guys, we need some routine, new routines, we need some new rhythms.

We need to make a decision and ask God to give us the determination to carry it out.

It is possible to choose Jesus over everything.

You've got to develop a lifelong habit of surrendering everything else to Jesus every single day.

Because that's what it takes because we live in the overlap, right?

We're still in a broken world and we're still broken people.

So we need his help all the time for this.

So what I'm saying is we gotta learn how to rely on him so that he can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

Jesus is trying to help us today, he's trying to help us live the life he died for us to have, where we stop the craziness of life to appreciate the beauty and the value of what we have in Jesus, and in that learn to devalue everything else and live from the new creation reality that we have in Jesus Christ.

One church, can I pray for you today?

Would you stand to your feet all across the room?

I'm gonna close in prayer and then I'm gonna, in a moment, I'm gonna invite the prayer team to come and we'll give opportunity for anybody who would like to receive prayer today to come as we're dismissed.

But would you bow your heads with me and let's go to the Lord?

Our Father in heaven, thank you.

Thank you for your word.

Thank you for the way that you've spoken to us through Matthew 13, through the teachings of Jesus today.

Lord, I pray that you would just do some deep things in our hearts.

That you would help this to just get way down inside of us today.

That you would help us to take steps to be determined in our relationship with you, to develop new habits and new rhythms, to consistently connect with you, to consistently value you so that we can begin to devalue everything else, so that we can become the people and the church that you've called and created us to be.

Lord, I pray that you would help us today, encourage us through your spirit.

Build up your church today by strengthening us through your spirit.

God, help us to get the accountability that we need to actually live this out.

God, I pray in Jesus' name that right now you would begin to set some of us free from the anxiety and the weariness.

That we would just feel a fresh breath of air into our lungs from your spirit and from your word.

Lord, we love you.

We thank you.

Strengthen us today and help us to choose you over everything else.

And it's in the holy name of Jesus we pray, and everybody said, Amen, amen.