The Calibration Test

Alright, if you have your Bibles, go ahead and open with me to Mark chapter 2.

Mark 2 · chapter mention

Mark chapter 2.

Mark 2 · chapter mention

While you're turning there, I'll give you a little bit of context of what we're going to talk about today.

We started a series last week called the Master's Degree.

I'm going to be talking to you about seven different leadership tests and lessons that Jesus gave the disciples, things he taught them.

We know Jesus was pretty into leadership development because he ultimately was going to leave his entire work to his disciples.

And the book of Acts is that historical narrative that takes from links from the works of Jesus and the words of Jesus into the disciples that would take that full of the Holy Spirit and would carry it on.

And so it's worth noting that Jesus obviously spent time with down and outers and people that he would just give to and didn't want any reciprocity.

He wasn't looking for anything back, but he did spend quite a bit of time in investing in people that ultimately were going to go and bring a return on that investment for the kingdom of God.

And so we want to look at how he did that.

And I found a few lessons kind of embedded within the gospels that I wanted to share with you.

And we started last week.

I'm going to give you a quick summary from last week, real quick.

We talked about change.

We talked about you start out and you're going through life and we'll call it normal.

And something, some plus or minus, something's either added or taken away from your life to bring change, and that change leads to a process of disorientation.

All right, disorientation, it's different.

Sometimes it's up, sometimes it's down.

I keep circling back.

I don't know which way's up, which way's down.

We tend to look in in those times for some kind of off-ramp because I want to get back to normal.

All right, and that off-ramp might be trying to if you can quit, you you may quit.

Or if you can't quit, you might choose denial.

I'm gonna just pretend like, you know, this isn't happening or whatever, because this process of disorientation does not feel like development.

It doesn't feel like growth, it doesn't feel like anything good.

But what do we do in the disorientation?

We pray, we process, we persevere.

And we pray, process, and persevere.

Rinse, repeat, okay?

Do it over and over.

Pray, process, persevere.

And if I do that, I'll come to a place where I'll start to receive revelation from God with some good questions, good answers, and uh now I'm back to orientation.

Doesn't mean it's happily ever after.

It's definitely not bliss.

Okay, often something's been lost here that I can never get back, but I'm coming to peace with reality.

And here we start to stabilize into a new normal.

All right, into a new normal.

Um what that was Mark chapter 1.

Mark 1 · chapter mention

We started when Jesus said, put down your nets.

He was inviting the disciples into several iterations throughout their lifetime of change.

And uh they would go through this process over and over again.

Disorientation, orientation, new normal, and then uh you know, start it over again.

Today I want to show you kind of their first major disorientation and uh another test and a lesson we can get from this.

This is Mark chapter 2.

Mark 2 · chapter mention

Um, Jesus has already called Peter, James, John, and Andrew to be his disciples.

They were fishermen.

And it says in verse 13, it says, then Jesus went out to the lake shore again and taught the crowds that were coming to him.

Verse 14, as he walked along, he saw Levi.

Uh the name Levi is a guy you might also see in other places referred to as Matthew.

All right, so this is Levi, Matthew, the names are interchangeable.

Uh he's the guy that wrote the book of Matthew.

So he saw Levi, the son of Alphaeus, sitting at his tax collector's booth.

Follow me and be my disciple, Jesus said to him.

So Levi got up and followed him.

Later, Levi invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners.

There were many people of this kind among Jesus' followers.

Verse 16.

But when the teachers of religious law who were Pharisees saw him eating with tax collectors and other sinners, they asked his disciples, Why does he eat with such scum?

Okay, this begins the process of disorientation for the disciples, where these men who are fishermen have willingly put down their nets, put down their identity, put down their business, and in some ways put down their families, at least temporarily, to follow Jesus, with no contract, no guarantees, no explanation, just put down your nets and follow.

So that's a pretty big deal.

And Jesus pretty much immediately goes from calling fishermen to calling tax collectors.

And this was the beginning of their disorientation.

To understand who these tax collectors were, they were universally hated among the Jewish people.

Like we can disagree on a bunch of stuff, but here's one we all agree on.

None of us like tax collectors.

In fact, all of us despise tax collectors.

Let me tell you how deep this goes.

Okay, who were these tax collectors?

Why were they so bad?

Because nobody likes taxes, but why is it this bad?

Well, okay, the the nation of Israel was under the rule of the Roman government.

The Roman government hired Jewish, certain Jewish men, to tax their own people.

But the way that it worked is you would bid on a contract.

So if you and I were both tax collectors, and let's say we wanted the tax contract in Capernaum, we would bid to the Roman government.

So we're bidding against one another.

How would we do that?

Well, who wins the bid?

Well, the person probably that bids the highest, like this amount of money will come back to you, Rome.

I'll get this much for you.

Well, what does that mean?

Well, what it means is the more I give the Roman government, which is what I have to do to get the contract, the more, the higher I bid there, it comes out of my pocket.

Well, how do I get it back in my pocket?

I tax you higher.

Well, how high do I tax you?

The answer is as high as I can.

Okay, I can't, obviously, math is math, and we can go to infinity if we want, but you can't afford infinity.

So what I'm going to do is tax you to the edge of what you can afford.

How demoralizing is that to be a citizen to know that no matter how hard I work, no matter how much money I make, that these guys are bidding on contracts, my own community, my own countrymen, under the rule of another government, is gonna take my hard-earned money, pad their pocket, and then give it to our oppressor.

You see why they weren't liked.

In fact, here's how not liked they were they tax collectors had been excommunicated from the synagogues or the temples.

Their testimony did not hold up in court, and not only were they despised themselves, it trickled down to their family.

You wouldn't want a family member to be a tax collector.

Uh so these guys would stand at a booth and would interact with their own people, and we'll just say they knew what it was like to get some dirty looks and some offhanded comments and to be fully rejected.

Um, here's another dynamic, by the way, that's interesting.

Um, when it came to the general community, the Jewish community, and how they felt about tax collectors, it was a combination of things.

One, they despised them because of what we just talked about, the moral high ground that they had, like who does that?

But the second is that these were very lucrative positions, and frankly, there were a lot of Jewish people that would have loved to have those jobs.

Like if they would have had that opportunity to take, they would have taken it, but they weren't, they weren't easy to get.

They were very hard to come by.

So, these people, universally hated, Jesus calls one of them.

Come follow me.

If I'm Peter, James, John, or Andrew, I'm like, wait, wait, what?

You didn't even, you're not even gonna, we're not gonna talk about this?

Like, you're bringing them into our team, you're bringing this into our community, you didn't even ask me if I thought this was cool.

If I was okay with it, Jesus just does it without anybody's permission, and all of a sudden, here's Levi, here's Matthew.

Now, if I'm one of the disciples, here's my worst nightmare, okay?

I might be able to go, okay, Jesus, you know, you're you're great, and maybe Levi is you know the tax collector with the heart of gold.

Okay, maybe, maybe, maybe he's the one, you know, the one that you could reform or whatever.

But my worst nightmare is that birds of a feather flock together.

My worst nightmare is that pretty soon we're gonna look up, and this tax collector is gonna bring other tax collectors and and other notorious sinners, and one day, pretty soon, we're gonna be in the minority.

Pretty soon we're gonna look up and we're gonna be outnumbered by tax collectors and notorious sinners.

And friend, it happened immediately.

It's exactly what happened, exactly what happened.

Their worst nightmare come true.

Next thing you know, they're at a party full of tax collectors and notorious sinners.

Now notice what it says of the Pharisees, what the Pharisees say in verse 16.

It said, When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees, by the way, the word Pharisee means separated ones.

Separated ones.

The Pharisees saw him eating with tax collectors and sinners.

He said, Why does your teacher eat with such scum?

To which Peter, James, John, and Matthew probably went, Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

I was asking the exact same question.

Why would he be doing that?

Because understand this eating in that culture, to eat at a table with someone, to break bread at a table with someone, was more than just we're we're ingesting food.

This was more than just filling up our bellies.

This was a sign of relational intimacy.

These are my people.

We're connected.

This was this was like being brothers and sisters.

This was this was drawing close.

This was familial.

Why does your teacher, why is your teacher bringing close to him scum?

People that we universally have decided we want to reject, bad people.

Why is he doing that?

Um, you know, it's well discussed and talked about with Jesus.

One of the cool things about Jesus is Jesus was open to and reached out to and spent time with and you know, poured into people that we wouldn't expect.

And it always feels good when he does it with a down and outer.

You know what I'm saying?

Like when Jesus, you know, casts a demon out of someone who is um, you know, in bondage, or when Jesus heals somebody who's blind since birth, you know, and opens up their eyes.

But that's a feel-good story.

It's a feel-good story.

Jesus goes to the the woman at the well, uh, or the woman with the issue of blood.

Okay, like like these are raising uh uh Lazarus from the dead, I mean, these are great stories.

But then there's the tax collector story where where Jesus is going to the rich, corrupt person, the person who built a huge business off of exploiting us, and to welcome that person in.

And it's really uncomfortable.

And you gotta sit in the tension for a minute because before you too quickly go, yeah, Jesus was a friend of sinners, isn't that cool?

Think about it now.

Think about the speech you give your kids.

Right?

I got a 14-year-old daughter, these are what my speeches sound like.

Bad company.

Oh, you were there?

Bad company corrupts good character, good morals.

How about this one?

You're the sum total of the five people you spend the most time with.

How about this one?

You hang out with four broke dudes.

You know who's about to be the fifth.

How about this one?

You show me your friends.

You were there.

I'll show you your future.

How about this sermon?

Don't flirt with sin.

Don't hang out with sinners.

If you're running in the street with people, don't be surprised you get a stray bullet.

You hang out with a cra in a crack house, what do you think is gonna happen to you?

So what are you gonna do?

Cozy up as close to sin?

If this was a cliff, and at the edge of that cliff was death and destruction, well, would you walk on the edge?

No, you'd build a guardrail way, way, way, way over here.

You'd be a separated one.

All of a sudden the Pharisees aren't that bad of guys.

Hey, we gotta sit in this tension.

We gotta sit in this tension.

Because, you know, you wouldn't want to just throw all that wisdom out, right?

So, what's the answer, Greg?

What are you telling us?

Go flirt with sin?

Are you telling us to go get a sum total of five people?

How do we do this?

Well, you have to understand here is with Jesus, what we have is a fully developed leader disciple in perfection.

He's fully developed.

Jesus was never on a development plan.

Okay, he's fully God, fully man.

He's developed.

But what we see now is Jesus training the disciples to do something they were not yet ready to do.

They couldn't have gone and done what Jesus did in Mark chapter 2, but they were going to need to be able to because Acts 1 was coming.

Mark 2 · chapter mention

And he was gonna say, Go into all the world, go into all the world and preach the gospel.

You're gonna have to be able to sit and break bread with some interesting characters.

At times, your decency is going to be challenged.

At times you're gonna question, should I be doing that?

Should I even be there?

And you gotta be able to do this and to do it the right way.

But but it's a preparation, there's a process of preparation.

Okay, well, how do we do this?

How do we do this?

I want to show you because a lot of what we get from Jesus and how to do this, and and look I need I do need to throw this in here before I go any further.

If you're here and you've recently made life changes and you've recently accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior, and you are just now, okay, you're you're just starting to kind of come through some of this.

Maybe you're in your first journey of this, okay, you have to be tremendously wise with the ears, uh, the the voices you allow in your head and the people that are influencing you.

And so I would just totally not encourage you, okay, even in your zeal of the freedom you now have in Christ, to go immerse yourself back in your old environment.

Okay, there's a process.

Now ultimately, again, Jesus is the model, he's the someday, you know, we're gonna get there, we're gonna work our way to this, and I'm gonna show you how to do it someday, but I would encourage you, knowing, like self-awareness would tell you if I I am so vulnerable to temptation in that area, if I go back to that, I'm gonna I'm gonna fall right back into that.

That's wisdom.

That's just flat out wisdom, because there is a time for a big time guardrail, there is a time for that distance, but eventually God wants to use us.

Okay, think of this.

And Jesus says to the disciples in Matthew 5, 13 and 14, look what he says in Matthew 5.

He says, You're the salt of the earth.

You're the salt of the earth.

He he this is the salt and light text.

You're the salt of the earth.

What good is it if salt's lost its flavor, right?

Salt, you put salt on anything, it changes the taste of the thing.

So he says, if you've lost your flavor, in other words, you you you you haven't made, you haven't changed your environment.

He said, Can you make it salty again?

No, you throw it and trample it underfoot because it's worthless.

Verse 14, you're the light of the world.

There's light.

Light overwhelms darkness.

You have a dark room, you turn on a light, it's low, now it's a light room.

Darkness doesn't overcome light, light overcomes darkness.

So what?

The light makes the change in the room.

So he says, look, this is ultimately what you're supposed to do.

You're supposed to light up the world.

Like a city on a hill that can't be hidden.

No one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket.

You don't go hide it or separate it.

Instead, the lamp is placed on a stand where it gives light to everyone in the house.

So Jesus is preparing them and he's casting a vision to them that you are going to be an agent of change.

But it's a process to get there so that you don't end up like salt that's lost its taste.

And now the environment has influenced you instead of the other way around.

Alright?

So here's how I want to illustrate this.

I'm gonna need to get some help here.

Give my man Isaac.

Isaac.

Hey, can you help me out?

Come on out.

Huh?

You eating a donut?

Come out here, man.

Isaac's eating a donut.

This is Isaac Boma Jr.

Isaac Boma Jr.

back there eating donuts.

Is that what you guys do while I'm preaching?

We eat and we watch.

We eat and we watch.

Okay, all right.

I'll take your word for it.

All right.

This test that Jesus gave the disciples, and I want to show us how to pass the test, how to develop.

We're gonna call it the calibration test.

Jesus' ability to sit at a table of tax collectors and be salt and light was based on his consistent calibration to the Father.

His consistent attuning to the Father.

So he kept his saltiness and he kept his light and he changed them instead of them changing him.

You'll see this, by the way, because Jesus consistently embraces tax collectors.

You remember that story of Zacchaeus was a wee little man and a wee little, you remember that?

Well, he wasn't just a wee little man, Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector.

And Jesus ends up over at Zacchaeus' house, just like he did Matthew Levi.

And Zacchaeus, after having spent time with Jesus, began to tune to Jesus.

And he said, you know what, I'm gonna give the money back of who I've exploited.

With he starts coming up with his own changes.

Why?

Because he was tuned to Jesus, who was tuned to God.

Alright?

So we're gonna we're gonna illustrate it this way.

Alright.

I know very little guitar.

How long have you been playing?

How many instruments you play?

Uh 24 total.

Are you serious?

I didn't know that.

24 total.

Now I don't even want to preach it.

I want to ask you about No, that'd be like having 24 kids, right?

You'd be like, do you know all their names?

Like that's I literally want to see if you know all 24.

Okay.

No, no, you don't have to know.

We don't have time.

I forget half of the line.

Alright, so we're gonna tune this guitar.

Alright.

And the way we're gonna do it is, and I got a little cheat right here.

I've got this uh, it's a tuner.

Okay.

Um this is gonna tell me what it is.

But take me down these strings.

Okay.

Alright, now here's what we're gonna say.

The keyboard is in tune, correct?

Yes, sir.

The keyboard is God.

Yeah.

Okay, the keyboard is God.

So so this what string is this?

That's the E.

E.

So whatever God says is an E is an E.

Okay?

So give me an E.

Stick on the close, actually.

Not bad.

Yeah.

Uh you want to tighten that a little bit?

Which one?

That way.

Uh the other way.

Alright, by the way, when you spend time with God, sometimes there's some correction.

And I'm not offended by the correction.

I want to get the E right.

So we got A.

Still on E?

Uh A.

So the next one, yep.

So you want to tighten that just a little bit?

Uh a little bit more, a little bit more.

Uh okay, take it the other way.

Sometimes it takes a while.

There we go.

That's D?

That's D.

Huh?

D.

D?

Yeah.

Is it dog?

Dog.

Like Daniel.

Is that good?

Yep, that's good.

Perfect.

All right.

Pause here for a second.

Jesus taught the disciples how to do the Pharisee table.

I'm sorry, the tax collector table.

Outside of the table.

It was actually with the rest of his life.

If you study Jesus' life and you if you were to take and catalog what he did, how he did it, you would be astounded how often Jesus breaks away from the pack to go be with the Father.

Often in solitude.

Which is sort of a mysterious thing because you're like, He's Jesus, why would he really need that?

Because he's fully God.

But yet, what is Jesus doing in understanding his humanity and his flesh?

He's consistently going away to tune.

I want to make sure that the E is right.

I want to make sure that the A is right.

I want to make sure that the D is right.

I'm taking the tuner away.

Okay.

Okay, let me ask you this.

How often do you play instruments?

Uh every day.

Every day?

Yeah, a different instrument, but every day.

Hey, by the way, just real quick, just do something sweet on there, would you?

All keys?

Yeah, just do it.

Just want to make sure you knew he was the real thing.

Alright, now.

So do so do do this.

Okay.

Tune the last three by ear.

Yeah, don't even do this.

Yeah, don't mess with that.

And go ahead and take this out of the house because I'm sorry that you can hear me.

Okay.

I want to show you something interesting.

The scriptures I'm going to put up, these are scripture references, and I'll make these available this week because you're not going to get them all down.

But but I want to show you, these are the scripture references of every time I found in the gospels, Jesus taught about prayer.

Okay?

So go ahead and bring those up.

Okay?

So these are all the times, all the references that I found where Jesus in some way taught about prayer.

This is everything from the Lord's prayer to other times where he just kind of throws something in and he taught.

Why?

Well, it's important because he wanted us to know.

Remember, if we go back to this content here where we said, how do you get out of disorientation?

How do you get out of disorientation?

You pray, you process, you persevere, you pray, you process, you persevere.

Jesus is teaching us how to get out of orientation because what you don't want to do is go hear me, please hear me good.

You don't want to go sit at the table of a tax collector while disoriented.

Because if you go sit at the table with the tax collectors and you cozy up the tax collectors and you get super tight with tax collectors while you yourself are disoriented, you'll start tuning to them.

And maybe even God's word starts to sound sharp and flat to you.

Because you spent all your time at the table, you were disoriented.

So Jesus is teaching us how to get our orientation so that we can sit at the table with a tax collector who's disoriented to help them find theirs to be salt and light, right?

So these are all the times.

These are all the times Jesus taught how to pray.

Now watch this.

This is how many times Jesus prayed.

That's how many times Jesus prayed.

So so so he taught prayer like this, but he himself prayed like this.

Why?

Because he wanted to stay calibrated.

Now think about this.

You look at a guitar, just to look at a guitar, you don't know if it's in tune or not.

You gotta listen to it.

So Jesus' consistent tuning to the Father helped him to know when people were out of tune.

This is how Jesus knew the Pharisees were out of tune.

Nobody else knew the Pharisees were out of tune.

Why?

Because they looked like they were in tune.

They were a good-looking guitar.

And to everybody else, they looked, and to them they looked.

And yet, Jesus, what does he say?

When he's criticizing the Pharisees, he says, you are like whitewashed tombs.

You look good on the outside, on the inside is full of decay and dead bones.

So you you're a good-looking guitar, but every time you strum your mouth, ugh, uh, sharp and flat.

Why?

How would you know if it was sharp and flat?

Because he's calibrated to the Father.

And yet he saw something in Levi, he saw something in Matthew that he went, ooh, I can work with that.

He's willing to be tuned up a little bit.

This is why even Jesus along the way, you'll see with some uh Pharisees and teachers of religious law, he tries to tune them up a little bit, and some of them refuse to be tuned.

And he went, All right, fine, go ahead and be sharp and flat.

And yet there was a tax collector that was willing to be tuned, was willing to leave his tax collector booth to go follow Jesus.

So now, now, if you're Matthew, or I'm sorry, if you're Peter and James and John and Andrew, okay, you're learning a really valuable, valuable lesson right now.

All right?

Alright, go ahead and light that thing up.

Alright, so let's let's let's test it.

Let's test your work here.

Let's do it.

Alright, so these last three uh strings.

So you didn't cheat?

I didn't cheat.

At least nothing no one knows.

What string is this?

Oh, that's uh uh G.

Uh B.

Alright, so so give me a G.

G?

What's this?

What's this?

Bay he's a great guitar player, isn't he?

That's amazing.

That's incredible.

All right.

I'll say this last thing and you can go finish your donuts.

Thanks, man.

So I want you to think about this, all right?

Where are we going with this?

What what what is what does a uh a godly, Christ-centered leader look like?

Well, one of the aspects is it looks like Isaac in that spent so much time with the Father, I can tune by ear.

But I still go back and check my work.

Yeah, that's good.

I still go back and check my work.

Jesus was tuned to the Father.

Jesus was fully God, fully man, yet what did he do?

He went back to check his work.

But the more time you spend with the Father, I I don't even know what the strings were, but if I stay with it long enough, if I tune that thing every day, my ear is gonna just start tightening up to what the real A is and what the real B is and the real G.

I'm gonna start getting it, and it will start to become second nature.

I'll start to become who I am.

So when I sit at a table, whether it's with a Pharisee or a tax collector, I'll start noticing when things are sharp and flat, and I'll start being used by God now to influence them versus them making me sharp and flat.

Thank you very much.

Give it up for Isaac.

Staying calibrated to God prepares you to live right in the world.

Staying, staying, not just getting calibrated one time, staying calibrated to God prepares you to live right in the world.

And this is what I would say.

Staying calibrated to God gives you the opportunity and now prepares you to go into the world and to be salt and light.

Um here's uh one of my favorite quotes is by George Bernard Shaw.

George Bernard Shaw says the reasonable man adapts himself to the world.

That's what the reasonable man is.

The reasonable man looks at the world and adapts himself to the world.

He says the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.

Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

This is what we've been, and woman, this is what we've been talking about the whole, this is what we're talking about.

If you're going to be like the reasonable person and you're gonna go in there and let your environment adapt you to it, then you've not passed the calibration test.

And what have we been called to be?

Salt and light.

We've been called to be the unreasonable man and woman.

Not in a divisive way, not in a polarizing way, in an agent of change kind of way.

Which means that in a disorienting world, we have to find our orientation around the truth.

How do we find our orientation around the truth?

We pray, we process, we persevere, we listen to God's word.

I mean, look look look what uh it says in 2 Timothy uh 3, 16, 17, that all scriptures inspired by God is useful to teach us what's true, to make us realize what's wrong.

It corrects us when we're wrong and teaches us to do what's right.

God uses it to prepare and equip us, equip his people to do every good work.

So my time with the Father, my time in prayer, and I can tell you, I have there have been many times I've come to the Lord.

You know, my my desire is to, I want to be an agent of change, man.

I don't want to just be one of these guys that only spends his time with the same people.

I I don't want to just spend my time with all Christians.

I don't want to just spend my time with all people we can speak shorthand in the Bible.

I mean, that's cool, and I like a little bit of that, but I also I want to go be salt and light in the world.

But but when you're doing that, at times you've got to ask yourself, am I crossing the line here?

Are they impacting me more than I'm impacting them?

The only way I know is to go be with the Father and to strum the chord and to listen to the note.

How does this line up with the Father?

How does this line up with the word?

So I don't have anything super revolutionary for you other than you need to be praying and in God's word consistently so that you can be tuned, which will prepare you now to live right in the world and to go into the world and be an agent of change in your world.

And so this is ultimately what Jesus is training the disciples to do.

I'm gonna need you to do this, and I'm gonna need you to do it in a lot of exotic places in different ways.

Look what Jesus says in John 5 19 about tuning and calibration.

He said, I tell you the truth, the Son of Man can do nothing by himself.

What an attitude.

I can do nothing by myself.

He does only what he sees the Father doing.

It's in my time with the Father that he shows me what is right, what is in tune.

He said, Whatever the Father does, the Son does also.

Look at this.

John 10, 30.

The Father and I are one, he says.

The Father and I are one.

I'm tuned to him.

Here's what I want to do.

I want to take a moment.

I'm gonna give you four, I'm just calling these four calibrating questions.

For you to maybe even right now begin wrestling with a bit.

And uh, and then maybe even in your time where you you say, okay, what's this time with the father like?

Well, you go go take some time, separate out, go uh a bit of time of solitude and pray.

Here's some questions I want you to pray and ask the Lord.

The first is, how calibrated am I to God?

Be honest about that.

Especially if you find yourself in the disorientation season, and you you're maybe you're now getting around some people and you're getting into environments and there's some change starting to happen.

You know?

I I can't tell you how many times I've seen Christians who are starting to get into worldly situations, and maybe somebody confronts them and says, Hey, are you crossing the line there?

You're always gonna have a defense you can make.

You can always say, Well, well, you wouldn't have liked Jesus either.

They said he was always hanging out with to actually like you, you wouldn't have liked Jesus either.

Well, that's you got a point, and that could be true, but you could also use that point to deceive yourself that you're actually being impacted more than you're making an impact.

Have you lost your saltiness?

Is your light getting dim?

This isn't to beat you up or to create condemnation, it's to create awareness and truth so that I can calibrate.

So, how calibrated am I to God?

And I would I guess add another to that, which is what am I doing to stay calibrated to God?

Maybe this year it'd be good to add some more discipline to your daily routines uh to stay calibrated to God.

Here's another one.

Am I influencing them or are they influencing me?

That's a calibration question.

Be honest about next uh is the way I'm living bringing help or harm?

Step back.

Sometimes you can get so far into it, you're so far into it, so short-sighted.

Allow the Holy Spirit to take you back.

Look at the people around you, look at your environment.

Is the way that I'm living bringing help or harm?

And then fourth, is my lifestyle negatively affecting my ability to be on mission?

Have you started to create some different mission and you veered away?

It happens.

The current can drag you.

It's okay, you're a human being.

I've been there, you've been there, okay?

Some you gotta step back.

What do I do?

I gotta retune.

And for some of you today, is maybe God wants to start strumming chords.

He wants to start strumming strings in your ears so you can recalibrate to the Father.

Get back on mission, get back in tune.