The Blueprint

Good morning, good morning, good morning.

God bless you, God is good.

Why don't you put those same hands together for Jesus?

Can we do that?

I'm Heavenly Father.

Come on, you can do a little bit better than that.

The King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the one who woke us up this morning.

Yeah.

Let's give God some praise.

It is a blessing to be standing before you today to deliver God's word.

I always count it as an honor that I get to stand before you as my church family.

God is good.

Happy Father's Day to all the fathers in the house.

Fathers, make some noise.

Come on, where the fathers at?

There we go.

Fathers are probably tired from doing something that they had to do yesterday through their Father's Day weekend.

Can I get an amen for that?

And if you're sitting next to your wife, just say it quietly.

God is so good.

I have the opportunity to be the father of two beautiful kids.

I'm gonna start with my son, my son Eddie Tyus Parker V.

This is him right here.

He came with me to Guy's Night.

Shameless plug, if you weren't at Guy's Night next year, you gotta get there.

We were standing and just sitting right over there in this section, and about 300 guys here having a really, really good time.

And I asked him uh spontaneously, I said, Hey, EJ, do you want to come pray for all these guys as we get out of here?

I'm hosting, so I can kind of do what I wanted to.

So I'm like, why don't you come up here?

And I'm like, how do you feel?

He's like, cool.

He's nine years old, mind you.

And uh I'm like, are you sure?

And I'm like, you need some help with like your prayer.

He's like, yeah, I got it.

So he comes up here, he grabs the mic, and he tells everybody, close your eyes and bow your head.

And I said, if that isn't the fifth generation Pentecostal preacher coming out and come on, boy.

But I was so proud of him, he delivered a masterful prayer.

It was about two seconds, so the guys loved it.

It was really quick, but it was powerful.

And uh, so proud of him.

And then my daughter, Charlie Gene Parker.

Yeah, I always put this picture last just in case the content isn't great for you.

I can get some sympathy, amens, with this.

How could you not be just drawn to that beautiful face?

Uh, that is my daughter.

She gets everything that she wants.

Um, even now, I'm sure her mom is somewhere spending money on her behalf.

So, God bless both of my children.

So let's dive into the word of God.

Ladies, ladies, ladies, let me give you uh some context here.

I'm gonna speak to the guys today.

Is that okay?

Can I do that?

Is that alright?

Don't cancel me, don't, don't, don't block me out, anything like that.

I'm gonna speak to the fellas today.

Uh, I want to honor them, hone in on them, and help them develop a little bit.

But hey, if you find yourself in this season of singleness as a lady, take some notes.

We're gonna be going through some attributes of a godly guy.

This could help you out a little bit.

And if it does, just throw some love a brother's way.

All right?

So we're gonna dive into some really good uh content.

I believe that it's going to bless not only just the men, but everyone, everyone in between.

Now, as we look around, I'm gonna lay some groundwork here.

One church, our church, is an anomaly.

There's a lot of guys who worship here.

Now, growing up, being a PK, I tell this story every time I get up because I do honor my father who's probably preaching right now.

He started at eight, he won't get done till one, but I love him dearly.

Normally, it is not the case to see so many men in church.

You can look around next to you and see a bunch of different guys, but this is not commonplace in churches across America.

Newsflash.

If you didn't know, if you've been in church, if you're new to church, I'm gonna put you on some game.

This is different, right?

And what I've discovered is that a lot of guys don't come to church because they don't find it useful.

They don't find the message useful.

They think worship is weird.

There's lights and fog and all this other stuff.

Community can be cumbersome, right?

I mean, as a guy, there's nothing worse than forced community.

I cringe in my stomach when my wife says, Hey, we're getting ready to go to dinner with one of my friends, and oh yeah, her husband is coming too.

And like he doesn't watch sports, so I'm sitting there like, man, I don't really know what to talk about.

Forced community, right?

These are all kind of the things that come along with coming to church, and a lot of men don't find it useful.

They come to church, they hear all these terms like tabernacle and the Holy Spirit, and they're like, uh, how does that affect my Monday?

Can I get an amen?

And men typically have the superpower and the ability to edit things in their life that aren't useful or productive.

And Peter writes in 2 Peter and he addresses this.

He says in 2 Peter 1 verse 8, that the more you grow like this, someone say this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

2 Peter 1:8

Is there any man?

Is there any husband?

Is there any son out there that could use a little bit more productiveness in their life?

Just raise your hand right now, and if it's just me, that's alright.

But those who fail to develop in this way are short-sighted or blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their old sins.

He says, the more that you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be.

What is he talking about?

What is growing like this mean?

I'm gonna give you some biblical qualities and attributes of how to grow as a healthy, committed, and more loving man.

Peter explains that through our dependence upon God and our diligence in this human process that we are going to discuss, we will be productive and useful.

We are called, Peter says, to build on the foundation of our faith.

It's not just enough to be saved and feel like that's the finish line.

Baby, that's just the beginning.

You got a lot of work to do, and sometimes we don't understand that.

So after we say, Oh Jesus, I'm gonna come to the altar, I'm gonna be saved, and we get hit with an attack, we're confused.

As if the Holy Spirit was just supposed to block out everything that we're supposed to go through.

No, this is the beginning, and Peter says, This is how you supplement your faith.

Faith brings you to salvation, but this is how you can supplement, add to it, right?

If you're doing uh a fitness routine, trying to get rid of that dad bod, what's the first thing you usually do?

Hit G and C for the seventh time this month and get a supplement.

Thermogenic, maybe.

But these things, these things, Peter says, these things are fundamental.

They are the foundation, the building blocks that we can build on for our faith to be more helpful, to be more useful, and to be more productive.

What are these seven attributes that we're going to discuss today?

Well, one is moral excellence.

If we look in verse five, it says, in view of all of this, make every effort to respond to God's promises.

He says, supplement your faith with a generous provision of what?

Moral excellence.

And moral excellence with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with patience, endurance, patient endurance with godliness, godliness with brotherly affection, brotherly affection with love for everyone.

Now that is quite the honeydew list, and I know the men are looking at me now like, hey man, I just got was able to escape for a couple hours.

Now you're giving me more stuff to do.

But the beauty about all of these is that they are to supplement each other.

This is not a junk drawer of attributes that God has given us, and we get to just pick one.

No, they're supposed to build a foundation of our faith.

And today I want to show you how all of that can work for you today, right now.

This biblical footing, this spiritual flooring and moral framing will enable us to be effective for God.

I don't want to just call myself a Christian and not be effective for God, not to be productive for the one who has called me.

So today we're gonna go over a vision, a blueprint of how we are to develop and to mature as Christians.

So, number one, moral excellence.

Say moral excellence.

Say it a little bit louder.

Moral excellence.

I know it doesn't necessarily sound as cool and bright and flashy, but hey, we gotta get into it.

This is the foundation.

The New Living Translation uh calls virtue moral excellence.

So in the King James Version of this, you might read it.

This is what I grew up reading a lot of times, the King James Version, Old English, I love it.

I feel more saved when I read it.

But moral excellence and virtue are they go hand in hand, right?

So here's a working definition for what virtue is it's conformity to a standard of right.

Ooh, I love that so much.

Conformity to a standard of right.

And if there has been anything that has been skewed in our world, it's the idea that there is a moral center or standard that we must adhere to.

If there is anything that has gotten uh dysfunctional in our world, it's this idea that there is a such thing as a standard to live by.

I don't know about you, but every single day I'm bombarded by so many different uh types of messaging to allow me to be a good person, but not necessarily a godly person.

And the standard of the Holy Spirit has not only been lowered, but in some instances it has been eradicated in our life, and we don't know what's good, what's God, and what enables us to embody the fruit of the spirit.

There's no moral center.

We live in an age where morality is all about being a good person.

How many times have you heard that?

Hey man, come to church with me.

Oh, I'm good, man.

Or like, hey, this guy is a he's a good person.

Has anybody heard that before?

Your excuse not to get into the house of God?

I used to hear that, and I'm like, okay, yeah, no problem.

But sometimes I think that it's an attack of the enemy for you to think that doing good is good enough.

That doing good is going to be what gets you into heaven.

No, Peter says we must supplement our faith with these things to qualify us for a grand entrance into the kingdom.

We are not just living for now, but we are living for after here.

Standards of holiness, moral, excellence.

And how can we define things like truth, morality, or goodness if we have no standard by which we measure it?

If we look at our natural world, we see that there are standards everywhere.

We measure length by inches, feet, and yards.

We we measure weight and physical objects by pounds and ounces and tons.

We have formulas that define volume and mass, mass, mass, volume and mass.

I said math.

We have standards that scientists and engineers and mathematicians uh that on how to build skyscrapers and jets and bridges.

We have all of these standards.

We even have standards for how kids are supposed to go to the next grade.

All of these things, but why are we so willing to give up biblical standards by which we live?

Every single day we adhere to a standard, but when it comes to a biblical standard, that's where we drop our intentionality and our focus.

How can God be the source of our strength if he isn't the source of our standards?

This is important for us to understand.

The Apostle Peter lists moral excellence as the first thing we must strive to add to our faith.

Why?

Because he is implying that the combination of our faith and moral excellence builds a firm and a solid foundation.

You're gonna see how all of these things start to work together.

It's not just taking one uh and solo, but it's simultaneously working together.

So he starts with moral excellence.

And to that moral excellence, we must add knowledge.

Someone say knowledge.

This is a deeper understanding of who God is through his word and through prayer.

This informs our goodness.

Merely wanting to be good is not good enough.

We must know what good is by knowing who God is.

Knowledge.

Spiritual development doesn't just happen by just self-development.

It doesn't just happen by us learning more religious facts, it doesn't even happen by us participating in more religious activities, but no, growth happens as we know who Christ is.

This is so central to Peter's teaching.

This is why he starts and he ends the letter with this.

You don't think that knowledge is so important?

Listen to what Hosea 4 and 6 says.

My people are destroyed because of a lack of knowledge.

We just saying about the blessing, about may his favor be upon you in a thousand generations, and your family, and your children, and their children, and their children.

We oftentimes stop at clause one of Hosea 4 and 6.

My people are destroyed because of a lack of knowledge, but let's fast forward a little bit.

It says, Because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me.

And since you have forgotten the law of God, I will also forget your children.

Can anybody stand a little bit more knowledge?

And as Christians, seasoned Christians at times, sometimes we have selective memories and what I like to call spiritual amnesia when it comes to the things of God.

Sometimes it's not just knowledge and learning a new thing, but a lot of times as believers, it's remembering what we already know.

Remembering that God has always been there for us.

A lot of times we can get to the place where we forget that God picked us up out of the worst position we could have ever been in, and we're still here to testify about it.

Listen, if you are waking up, if you are in this room, if you put your feet out of the bed this morning, that is a miracle from God.

And so many times we forget what God is doing fast-forwarding to try to look what's next.

And then we embody the spirit of complaining when the spirit of gratitude is the lens that we much live our life with.

The knowledge of who God is.

When we know who God is, we won't be concerned when we don't have.

Because we remember the promises that my God shall supply all my needs.

When we remember and we have the knowledge of who God is, we won't be worried when we become weak because we understand that his strength is made perfect in our weakness, but we can only have this understanding with a knowledge of God.

That we receive the things that come through knowledge.

He says in verse 4, we have promises that we have access to.

So, what is Peter's point through this letter?

It's that knowing Jesus, the knowledge of Jesus, the one witnessed and known by the disciples and revealed through scripture, is the way that we become more like him.

Knowing him, knowing his characteristics, are the way that we become more like him.

And we don't try to become a better version of ourselves in the hope that we can draw near to Jesus.

Instead, we draw near to Jesus so we can gradually become more like the one that we worship.

The next thing, after we talk about moral excellence, then we build up a little bit and we talk through knowledge.

This next thing, self-control.

Someone say self-control.

Self-control.

This is a sticky one because it involves self, right?

So I grew up playing video games.

Love to play video games.

Now, wasn't like a headset gamer type guy.

I think that's like a newer concept where I stayed in my basement and drank Mountain Dew and played video games.

That wasn't like the kind of gamer that I was.

No shade to people who are gamers.

I love the gaming community.

But I was like a Madden 2K guy, that's about it.

I started off with a Sega Genesis.

How many Sega Genesis guys I got out there playing Sega Genesis?

Not a lot of gamers.

I'm gonna help five people with this point and speed along, right?

Nintendo 64 was my next game system.

Woo! Donkey Kong was on that mug.

Fantastic.

Then from there, I had a PS1.

I took a little gap, you know what I mean, in the middle, but I had the PS1.

Any PS1 fans out there?

I thought it was the man when I got there for Christmas.

Then I moved to the PS2.

PS2 was fantastic.

I had NBA Street on that game.

Then after the PS2, I got a Dreamcast.

Everybody didn't have the Dreamcast with the big memory card that you put right in there or whatever, right?

For the Dreamcast, I took a little hiatus because I was 18.

I got out of my father's house, so I had a little sabbatical because I had to buy my own game systems.

So my last game system was the Xbox 360, and now we fast-forwarded all the way to an Oculus where you can literally sit on your couch in your living room and play a game with somebody across the world and actually probably be in the same room together.

What am I saying?

There was so much development between the Sega Genesis and now the Oculus.

From analog to digital 3D.

But you know one thing that hasn't changed as all these games have developed and upgraded?

There's a controller for all of them.

May I suggest to you that no matter how much you develop, no matter how much you grow, no matter how much you change over time, there is always going to be something that is fighting to control you.

And if you don't allow the Holy Spirit to control you, you will default into the ways of this world.

You will think that what you see on social media, that what you see on TV, that what you see in music, all of these other influences are the guiding force of your life.

If you don't submit to the knowledge and the self-control that the Holy Spirit gives.

Now, the Holy Spirit, self-control is one of the fruits of the Spirit.

It's one of the fruits of the Spirit.

What does that mean?

That means that it is the evidence of the Holy Spirit working inside of you.

It is the fruit of the Spirit, which means that we have access to self-control and the other fruits of the Spirit, whether we know it or not.

When we invite the Holy Spirit into our life, we have access to the fruit of it is the evidence that we have it.

And it makes me think of Juneteenth.

Today.

We celebrate Juneteenth.

June 19th.

And it marks the federal day where troops arrived in Galveston, Texas in 1865 to ensure that enslaved people were free.

Mind you, this was two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation.

Just think about it.

There were slaves that were free but didn't know that they were free.

There were slaves who were free and didn't know that there was legislation changed to change their status.

There were slaves that were free that didn't know that their characteristics, that their ability to be free was even possible.

And may I submit to you today that there's some things that are keeping you bound right now that don't have the authority and the ability to because of the work on the cross?

Because we have access to the fruit of the Spirit, whether we know it or not.

What if I told you that you no longer had to be a slave of sin because you were a child of God?

What if I told you that who the Son sets free is free indeed?

It's too many times we walk around life being bound when the finished work of the cross has caused us to be free.

I love this.

The scripture says this, that where the spirit of the Lord is, what?

There is liberty.

Freedom.

That's why I love coming to church, being around the community of believers, because I know if I get to this place, there's going to be freedom there.

No matter how I feel bound in other areas of my life, this is the place of freedom.

The scripture in 2 Peter verse 3, uh, chapter 1, verse 3, it says this that we have everything we need to live a godly life.

And we have access to everything we need, and this includes self control.

Proverbs 25 and 28 say this that a man without self control is like a city broken into left without walls.

Why is this important?

Well, city walls.

At the time where Peter was writing this, served as a very valuable purpose to a city.

It kept the citizens safe and the enemies out.

So building a city without walls in that time was unthinkable.

And a life without self-control is susceptible to sin.

We must look at it through that framework.

Self-control naturally leads to our next idea of patient endurance.

Someone say patient endurance.

Patient endurance.

This is the value of long-term good instead of instant gratification.

As a society.

You post a picture on Instagram and you don't get five likes in five minutes, you're probably taking it down.

For my millennials out there.

And if not, and if it's just me, this is my intervention.

Right?

Patient endurance.

We're so impatient.

Just imagine trying to get food and the DoorDash says 55 minutes.

You're probably choosing something else because everything right now, we want to be at our fingertips.

We want to be able to fall in love in a hot second, make a million in a hot second, be skinny in a hot second.

All of these things, but this the biblical scripture tells us to endure.

And I think that's why it's so hard for us as believers to wait.

Because we feel like waiting time is wasting time.

But God says, no, I'm developing something inside of you, and if I were to give you what you prayed for prematurely, you would not be able to steward it.

Can you endure the same endurance that Job had after he lost everything he had?

He had the faith to dictate, though he slay me yet, will I trust him?

Endurance, the same endurance that Jesus has, and he was going to the cross.

And so many stories of scripture about how people endured.

What am I saying to you right now?

You might be in the middle of the hardest season of your life, but God has called you to patiently endure.

Patient endurance, here's a working definition.

It's the ability to practice self-control over time.

Now you're starting to see how all of these things are working together to build you as a mature and disciplined Christian.

And our sprints of doing good turns into marathons.

And our moment by moment, hour by hour choices eventually become our lifestyles.

I read a book probably once a year called Atomic Habits by James Clear, and it talks about how change is not just tied to what we say we're going to do, but who we say we are.

It is tied to our identity.

So if you're trying to lose that dad bod, right?

It's not just saying, hey, I'm going to lose 10, 15 pounds.

It's like, no, I'm going to be a healthy person.

So every action that you take from that point is to cast a vote for the person that you want to be.

This is the same thing with patient endurance as we wait.

Isaiah says it like this: But they that wait on the Lord, he shall what?

Renew their strength.

They so mount up on wings as eagles.

They shall what?

Run and not be weary.

They shall what?

Walk and not faint.

This is why I endure, because I know that I have access to the promises that I can walk and not faint.

I can walk into that new job and not faint.

I can walk into that new relationship and not faint.

I can walk into that new season of life with the strength that God has given me because I didn't quit, I didn't give up, and I patiently endured.

The next thing Peter writes is about godliness.

Someone said, godliness.

And I would like to suggest to us today that godliness is our assignment to be more like God.

Being a Christian is to be more like Christ.

I hate to oversimplify it, but that is the term of godliness.

To be like God.

And I feel if that is our assignment to be more like God, a lot of our frustration has been around us trying to complete the wrong assignments.

I'm not saying that professional pursuits are bad.

But if you do not pursue godliness, you will not be able to steward the season that God has for you next.

If we're not fully developed, how can we prepare for what we pray for?

We stay busy.

People doing a lot of things.

Busy, busy, busy working in church, busy serving, right?

Busy in groups, busy doing the things of God, but not necessarily knowing the heart of God.

We're so busy and we're looking for fruit.

We're busy, we're doing this, we're doing that.

We're working in church.

A lot of ministry folks can even feel this.

You can get so busy working on church that you lose your devotional time.

We're so busy, we're busy, all of this stuff, and we're looking for fruit, we're looking for fruit, but we're busy and barren.

Not becoming more like Christ, but becoming more like the world.

Timothy 1, 1 Timothy, excuse me, 4 and 8 says that body discipline is only of little profit, but godliness is profitable for all things, since it holds the promise for the present life and also for the life to come.

He says that this thing called godliness is not only good for you, but it can profit you.

Now, even selfishly, if there's a profit attached to something, you might want to tap in.

Let me tell you what godliness is not before I tell you what it is.

Because that can help us better understand.

2 Timothy says, having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.

A form of godliness.

What is this form of godliness?

For men shall be lovers of them own selves.

They should be covetous, boasters, blasphemers, disobedience to their parents, unthankful, holy.

And he begins to list all of these things.

This is the form of godliness.

When you look up form in the Greek, a word for it is either silhouette, or there's another word that I love, it is shadow.

Another word for form is shadow.

If you look at someone's shadow, naturally, you see their outline, but they don't have any substance.

This is the same thing with godliness.

You can look at someone and they can have a form of godliness, but they don't have the power thereof.

So, how do you know if it's godly or not?

If there's no power attached to it, it's not a godly thing.

The last two things Peter talks about as he begins to really build this ladder of development.

It is brotherly kindness and love for all.

Now, when Peter writes about brotherly kindness and affection, this is this idea that we are to become more motivated to do good for each other.

This is a familial type of love, a love that is between a brother and a sister, right?

And I hear you out there, but yo, I have a dysfunctional relationship with my family, Eddie, and all this other stuff.

I get it, I get it, I get it.

But he's not only just talking about your blood brothers and your sisters, but in this room, in this place, you have hundreds of brothers and sisters in Christ who we are to love.

Love, not like love.

And the beautiful thing about family is that sometimes family has disagreements, but at the end of the day, you have a love, you have a bond between one another.

This is the type of connection that is experienced with our closest friends, our family.

And Peter calls us to make every effort to have brotherly affection and love for one another.

How can you be a Christian and hate someone or talk cold to someone who is also called by the same God that you love and serve?

How can we be called a Christian and be cold to other Christians and warm up and say, Dear Heavenly Father, I love you so much?

God is looking up in heaven like, miss me with all that.

You can't even be kind to your brother, right?

So heavenly minded that you're no earthly good.

He calls us to love our brothers.

And this last thing, he says, not only do I want you to love your brothers, now you're really growing in faith, right?

This takes a lot of maturity.

Not only do I want people to love who you considered in your spiritual family, I'm gonna take it one step further.

I want you to love people who are not even in your family, who don't even look like you, who don't sound like you, who don't vote like you, who don't have the same thoughts as you.

I want you to love everyone, and I think it's so beautiful because I love the greatest among it's love.

How can we love?

We get to the end of this progression and he tells us to love.

How ironic.

Because for God so loved the world, he gave his only, he so loved the world, he gave.

Imagine a world would be if we supplement our faith with moral excellence, moral excellence with knowledge, knowledge with patient endurance, patient endurance with self-control, self-control with brotherly affection, brotherly affection with love.

Imagine a world where we progressed like this as believers and we didn't stop at the point of salvation, but we developed our faith.

Imagine a world of the type of men, husbands, and fathers that would be developed if we take the principles from 2 Peter.

Who wrote this?

Peter.

Let me tell you a little bit about the guy who wrote this.

The same guy who denied Jesus three times.

Jesus says, Peter, before the rooster crow, you are gonna deny me the same Peter who was sinking as he was walking to Jesus.

Peter had his fair share of denials and disappointments.

After the denials, after the sinking, after the failures.

We love to preach about Peter's failures, but nobody talks about what he did 30 years after the resurrection to pin this letter of attributes to become more like Christ.

How was he able to even do this?

Because he didn't quit, he didn't give up, he kept his hand on the plow.

He knew what consistency, commitment, and the Holy Spirit could do if it was applied to your life.

So, what am I saying today?

Take these things, use them, apply them in your life so that you can be useful and productive.

You might be in the middle of a storm in the middle of the ocean, trying to walk to Jesus just like Peter.

But listen, your children's children 30 years later are going to thank you for never giving up after the defeat, after sinking, your patient endurance through it all.

Just imagine in this moment, if you weren't quit, you weren't to quit, what story would you write?

What story would you tell?

Being developed, fully developed, mature as a Christian, lacking nothing.

Let's take the next few moments just to meditate on this thought as we worship together.