Prove It: Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaChurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaCurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

What's up, MetaCurch?

It's Pastor Clayton.

I want to start right in scripture today.

We're going to spend a lot of our time in the book of 2 Timothy.

That's in our Christian scriptures, the New Testament.

In 2 Timothy 2, starting in verse 3, it says this share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.

No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in the concerns of civilian life.

He seeks to please the commanding officer.

Also, if anyone competes as an athlete, he is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules.

And it's the hardworking farmer who ought to be the first to get a share of the crops.

If you're new to us and streaming with us for the first time, my name's Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here at MetaCurch, and we're in a different season right now.

We normally are in sermon series that are connected and we're leading somewhere, but right now, with all that's going on in the world, we have walked into a season where we are very simply looking in scripture, digging into God's word, and seeing what it has to say to us during this time of quarantine and pandemic.

We're so glad that you joined us, and I don't know who you are, and I don't know exactly where you're from, but I know that you've come to the right place.

And if you are just now sleeping off a hangover, or if you are just now driving home from another one-night stand, or if you are just now craving getting high one more time, if you're just now putting all of your hope into your wealth that is slowly diminishing as the stock market plummets, you are in the right place.

MetaCurch is here for you.

We're in a season where everything has changed, and yet for us, the mission stays the same.

At MetaCurch, we do whatever it takes, whatever it takes to get people to the hope that we have in Jesus.

And so we're so glad that you have joined us today.

In fact, you know, sometimes organizations grow and they kind of get married to their strategy.

And we have a really simple strategy here.

We meet together and we move together.

We keep it very simple.

We believe that the church, the movement of Jesus was meant to be very simple.

So we meet and we move, and we meet and we move.

But but we are willing to do whatever it takes, even to push aside our normal strategy for a while.

We can't meet together.

And so for now, we're gonna stream together and we are going to serve together.

And if you're on this stream, I'm so glad that you've joined us.

And we've seen God really increasing our boundaries and the people that we're reaching.

We're here in San Antonio, Texas, but we're seeing people who are reaching out from Houston and Dallas and Austin and from other states and even from uh across the oceans and Germany, and we had people streaming in South Korea.

And I don't even know who you are, but you jumped in and you stuck around with us and watched us.

And one of the things I really miss, I miss you guys being here.

I miss I miss people filling up the chairs in the room.

I miss that we have an interactive service and we we worship through music and then we worship through the word.

And I don't preach by myself.

You guys, when you're here, you help me preach, and I really miss this time that we have uh every Sunday when we gather together and we give you like a couple of minutes and we say, you know, just meet ten people around you.

Like, say what's up to ten people around you, and we don't get to really do that right now.

And so I want to give us a chance right now.

If you're live streaming with us, this is what I want you to do so that people watching this know they're not alone.

We are still gathering, we are still growing, we are still going out and seeing how we can serve the world.

I want you to do something simple.

In the chat right now, put your name and put where you're streaming from.

Put your name.

If it's me, I'm Clayton, I'm in San Antonio, Texas.

Fill that up.

Let other people see who you are and that you are joining us today as this movement continues to move.

And as the chat fills with names, with locations, whether you're here in Texas, whether you're in another state, which just in Texas kind of feels like another country, whether you're actually in another country, whether you're right down the street here on the west side of San Antonio, wherever you are, put your name, let us know who you are, let us know where you're watching from.

And as those names fill up, I want to pray over every one of them.

God, we love you.

And I thank you, God, I thank you that you're continuing to expand our reach.

God, as we have committed to continuing the movement, God, they can close our venues, and we say it every week, they cannot close the church, the movement of your people upon the earth.

And God, I pray for every name.

I pray for every person watching, I pray for every one of those little eyeballs and the families they represent at the top of the screen.

And God, I ask that you would speak to us something powerful today.

We we love you.

We're here for you.

We want to hear from you, we want to navigate this time well.

And so be with us.

God, I pray for everyone who's hurting, everyone who's out of work, everyone who's sick, everyone who's scared, everyone who's anxious, everyone who's depressed.

God, I pray that you be with every single one of them, that your presence would be felt even right now in this moment.

And we ask it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Last week we started this new season.

We had gone through a series leading us up to Easter, and we really felt called to just address the elephant in the room, and the elephant in the room is that there's no one in the room, you're all having to watch this from home or wherever you're gathered together or living right now.

The elephant in the room is that there are millions upon millions of people who have lost their jobs, who are out of work, the stock market is volatile, and one day it goes down, the next day it slightly comes up, then it goes way back down, and people are panicking.

The reality is there is high levels of uncertainty as we don't really know when this ends or what transitioning back to a new normal actually looks like.

Last week we started by seeing what our role as the church is, the movement of Jesus, like corporately together, what is our role?

We called this moment what it actually is.

It is an emergency.

We saw, first of all, that God will emerge in emergency.

It's just what he does.

And because God emerges in emergency, because he is with us as we weather the storms of life, he enables and empowers his people to emerge and see in the midst of emergency, to rise above the crisis and find the opportunities to be the hands and feet of God.

That is what we do.

That is what MetaChurch will continue to do.

Today I want to kind of shift gears and I want to look at what our role is as individuals during this time of pandemic.

It's it's a tough time to be human.

You know, it's it's difficult because as humans we think ahead.

As humans, we plan our futures.

The animals are just freaking out.

They don't really know what's going on, but but they're also not like calendaring out 2022 and where they'd like to be.

We do that.

And when nothing is certain about the future, it makes it so difficult.

And so, what is our role?

How do we manage our time?

How do we manage our emotions?

I think that scripture has something to say to us.

We started today in the book of 2 Timothy.

This is a letter written by the Apostle Paul.

The Apostle Paul is like an OG, man.

He started right at the beginning.

Uh Jesus like called him to go and start churches and build them up and to build up leaders.

And Timothy is a young Christian leader, and he's suffering.

To be a Christian in the first century, you were opening yourself up to all kinds of persecution.

He was under opposition.

We are suffering.

We're under opposition.

And I think this is a good word for us as he speaks directly to Timothy about how to handle these situations.

Paul is going to use three major metaphors back to back to back.

Soldier, athlete, farmer.

Soldier, athlete, farmer.

First, he says, share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.

And Paul uses this military metaphor pretty often throughout his writings.

Paul lived constantly aware that we are in a spiritual battle, that we are called to be soldiers of Christ.

Last week we saw this as Elisha's servant's eyes were opened, and he saw the spiritual realities, even just for a moment, that the God of angel armies, chariots of fire all around them, fighting on their behalf, and we are up against a physical adversary, if we want to call it that.

We're up against coronavirus, which attacks our physical bodies.

And there are people much smarter than me, scientists and uh epidemiologists and all these people out there who they're working on it, they're working on it.

But for us, our mission never changes.

We are in a battle, a spiritual battle for the souls of people whose lives are hanging in the balance between heaven and hell.

We're called to be a good soldier.

And as a good soldier of Christ Jesus, it says no one serving as a soldier gets entangled in the concerns of civilian life.

Instead, he seeks to please the commanding officer.

I grew up in a military home.

My dad was in the army.

And really, when young soldiers would get in trouble, it wasn't when they were deployed.

It wasn't when they were out on assignment, it wasn't when they were training for mission, it was when they had time off.

And when they had time off, they were distractable.

They had some capacity to once again entangle themselves in the concerns and distractions of civilian life.

I have no idea what it's like to be a soldier.

I have no idea what it's like to be in battle.

I do know that we live in San Antonio, and here in San Antonio, if you're watching from elsewhere, we are military city USA.

And every single week I stand up and I preach to people who are soldiers, who have been deployed, who have been in battle, who have been in the front lines.

I don't know what that's like.

And I'm gonna make a comparison that's gonna almost seem like sacrilegious.

And so I need you to know I'm not making the comparison to say I can be in your shoes.

I'm actually making the comparison to show the giant chasm between what I may have experienced and what it would actually be like to be in battle.

I don't know what that's like.

But I do know what it's like to play laser tag.

And just follow me for just one second.

Because when I play laser tag, again, huge chasm.

I can't even imagine with what I feel there, what someone would feel in actual battle.

But listen, when I get in laser tag, everything else disappears.

I I don't think about how much money's in the bank.

I don't think about what kind of car I drove there, what shoes I'm wearing, how my hair looks that day, what my social status is.

When I get in there, I something turns on and it is like fight or flight, and I am going to fight.

All I care about is capping some fools and not getting tagged.

That's all I am about.

And if you decide to bring your seven-year-old into laser tag with me, I'm gonna light him up.

I'm a sinner in need of a savior.

I don't know what to tell you.

I take it very seriously, and it isn't until like 30 minutes later my adrenaline finally clears out.

It's like all the other worries in the world fade away.

That's laser tag.

It's in like a you know, a giant, incredible pizza company.

It's like in the middle of an entertainment center, real soldiers, the real deal.

Over in battle, people who are living in fight or flight, who are risking their life, who have the weight and expectation and freedom of a country on their shoulder, they feel the responsibility.

And on the front lines, only one thing matters.

And Paul says, if we're supposed to be living as soldiers, then why are we allowing our life to be driven so much by the concerns of civilians?

If we are fighting for an eternal kingdom, then why are we allowing ourselves to be so wrapped up in the things of this very temporary world?

I once heard a preacher, and he was comparing churches to ships, and he said, different churches are like different kinds of ships, and some some churches are like cruise ships.

And oh my gosh, they're so much fun, and there's always something to do, and there's water slides for the kids, and there's all day margaritas for the adults, and like you feel like you've really accomplished something, you'll come back with some stories, and you'll come back with a sunburn.

But really, the mission was self-satisfaction.

It's all surface level, it doesn't go deep.

He said, others are like yachts.

Yachts, not really even a ship, it's much smaller, it's way too small.

And we see this, we see churches, and they keep their congregations really tight.

It's a very exclusive club.

There's all kinds of written and unwritten rules, and you gotta wear the right kind of clothes with the right kind of brands, and you gotta drive the right kind of cars, and you gotta know the right kind of judgmental language, and only a select few actually get in.

They're pretty much country clubs without any of the fun things about actually being in a country club, and the bigger check you write, the more influence you get to kind of determine the direction that the church goes.

It's it's a yacht.

Some churches he said are like the Titanic.

They're sinking, they're sinking ships, and he's not wrong.

Every year, thousands of churches are closing their doors across the country.

Some of them have already hit the iceberg, they're already filling with water, and they have no idea.

And then he looked at the church in the New Testament.

The church that is closest to the original intention that Jesus had for his movement.

He said, The church in the New Testament is a battleship.

And its mission is not self-satisfaction, its mission is self-sacrifice.

Its mission is to do whatever it takes.

Its mission is to obey the commands of the head officer Jesus Christ.

And it's not that there isn't fun and deep, meaningful relationships and passion and intrigue and meaning and purpose.

In fact, it's the most purpose that you can find in life.

The movement is meant to move.

And eat, man, right now, in the middle of pandemic, in the middle of emergency, the world doesn't need another cruise ship, the world doesn't need another yacht, the world doesn't need one more thing to be excluded from and judged by.

The world doesn't need to put its hope in one more thing that's sinking and failing.

The world needs people who are on mission, who are intentionally seeking out the people who are drowning in the hopeless waters of this world.

We are meant to be soldiers.

He goes on, he he moves to the next metaphor.

He says, also, we're supposed to be soldiers, not civilians.

Also, if anyone competes as an athlete, he's not crowned, doesn't win the trophy, unless he competes according to the rules.

This is another metaphor that Paul loved.

He loved the athletic metaphor.

In fact, one time scripture says that we are to run the race set before us with endurance, throwing off anything that hinders us, never looking to the left or to the right, but keeping our eyes focused on Jesus Christ, the author and the finisher of our faith.

The finisher, Jesus, the finish line, our eyes glued on him.

And much like the soldier who becomes concerned with civilian life, looking to the left, looking to the right.

Man, one of my favorite YouTube videos from the last five years happened on the collegiate level.

I want to say that the runner was from Oregon and it was a medium distance race, and so they're not running really fast, but he has like meters and meters ahead of everyone else.

And he's just about 10 meters from the finish line.

And he takes his eyes off of the finish, he throws his arms out, and he begins to look to the left.

Look to the he should have read some Paul.

He should have studied the Apostle Paul.

This is a bad move.

Looking up at the adoration of his fans of his hometown, looking up at his university student section, soaking it all in, and unbeknownst to him, there was a runner behind him in a dead sprint, eyes locked on the finish.

And right when they got to the line, the one celebrating fell behind.

Second place.

Doesn't feel so bad, except only first place qualified to move on to the next event.

His college career was over.

We are to run with our eyes set forward on Christ.

I don't know if y'all are watching uh The Last Dance, Michael Jordan documentary.

Y'all know I'm a huge Jordan fan, and I sneak as many basketball analogies as I can into my sermons, and there's this incredible thing that happens because we see so many athletes who come in and it's like they're amazing.

A lot of people think what's amazing is how few insane athletes there are, and I beg to differ.

I actually think it's insane how many crazy talented, one-of-a-kind athletes there are who don't end up making it professionally, they take their eyes off the finish.

What separated Michael from everyone else is he never quit looking at the win.

It was all about winning.

In fact, in his own personal life, to his own detriment, but on the court, Michael Jordan, Michael the GOAT Jordan, like email me at me if you don't agree.

Michael the GOAT Jordan, he was focused on the end.

He wanted the prize.

Nothing could distract him, nothing could deter him.

Paul says, as a soldier, we have to stay looking at the command.

Soldier or civilian.

There are some people who, more than wanting to be an athlete, they really just want to be seen as famous.

They're not an athlete, they're an actor.

They're trying to play the part, but it never works out.

Athlete or actor, there's one more.

Paul says, the hardworking farmer, now we've gone soldier, athlete, farmer.

The hardworking farmer ought to be the first to get a share of the crops.

I think there's not enough farmers anymore.

I don't know this for a fact because I wasn't wasn't alive, but it seems like a couple centuries ago, everyone was a farmer.

It was like every third person was a farmer.

It was like butcher, banker, farmer, shoeshine, blacksmith, farmer.

Barkett, it was like every third person you found was a farmer.

And here's the beautiful thing about farming is you don't have the luxury of just dreaming about harvest and not going out and doing the work to get harvest.

And we are now in a society where there is plenty of dreaming and very little doing.

It's so frustrating because if you were a farmer and you just sat around and dreamed about how great your harvest was gonna be and tweeted about how great the crop was gonna be, and went and hung out in your little social circle and bragged about how great your farm is and went to the store and bought the newest like name, brand, overalls.

Like, if that's how you spent all of your time, you would die.

You'd have no food, you would actually die.

And now we live in a world where you ask anyone under 30 years old, like, hey, uh, so what do you, you know, what do you want to be?

Uh I'm gonna be like a billionaire.

Really?

You're gonna be a that okay, that's fine.

So what's your plan to get to, you know, some it's a lot of money, billionaire says, you know, I've uh I've been like really upping my Instagram game, been like posting a lot more regular.

It's like, okay, your plan is to be a billionaire, but no, I'm gonna be an influencer, and then I'm gonna like work with Kanye, obviously.

And that it's like we have these dreams, but we have no drive.

We have these dreams, but we never do it.

If someone is is so tired of people wishing their way to wealth, just say amen right now in the comments.

Let them know you're so tired of people who want to wish but who don't want to work.

My grandpa Tyner, um, I'll never forget this.

He had the weirdest sayings, and I never appreciated them.

But I would say things like, Oh man, I wish I was in the NBA, or oh man, I wish, you know, that I was seven foot tall.

And he would always say this weird thing.

He would say, wish in one hand and spit in the other.

Now slap them together and tell me what you have.

The answer is you have two hands full of spit.

Here is what he's saying: you have to work.

You can't just wish, and we just think that we can dream our way into our destiny.

And so we've got people who just boomering back into their parents' basement, still just tweeting some selfies, still just taking some mirror picks, thinking they're gonna be a billionaire by not doing anything.

If you were a farmer, you'd be dead.

So many farmers.

A farmer can't dream of harvest without doing the work, tilling the land, sowing the seeds, irrigating the crops.

Real work, real work, real work.

And Paul's writing this for a reason.

There's a tension that he's addressing in the world around Timothy.

And he really wants him to get it because he goes, metaphor, metaphor, metaphor.

Soldier, athlete, farmer, you've gotta get this.

There's this human tendency.

And the way I'm gonna capture Paul's instruction to Timothy is that we have this deep desire as a part of our human condition, a desire for you to prove yourself.

We live in order to prove ourselves.

And when a soldier would get back from deployment and when they would have some downtime, and this is when they would find themselves in all kinds of trouble, entangled in the things of civilian life, because they are trying to prove who they are.

And so many athletes who never reach anywhere near their potential.

Because instead of staying on the track that got them to where they were, they start trying to prove something that they're not.

Dreaming instead of doing, creating a persona around ourselves instead of actually looking to the purpose that God has placed inside.

Of us.

And we're in this time where we can really evaluate all the ways that we're living to try and prove ourselves.

It's really what the world instructs us to do.

You gotta prove yourself.

You gotta prove your words, you gotta prove your value, you gotta prove your merit, you gotta prove your influence.

There's probably no greater example right now than celebrities.

All of a sudden, like in the blink of an eye, we don't need celebrities.

The movie theaters aren't open to go watch their movies.

We can't go to a venue to watch their concert.

I can't go to the stadium to watch you play basketball.

There are no red carpets to walk down, there's no paparazzi following you around.

The celebrities have all of a sudden found themselves through this little window of time completely inconsequential to our lives.

And they're so desperate to prove that we still need them.

There's a big group of them that had this great idea.

What if we sing the worst rendition of a Beatles song ever?

That will probably fix it all.

So desperate.

Maybe you have a different view of it.

To me, it's almost gross.

It's almost gross how much they have to prove that they still matter to our life.

The craziest thing happened.

I walked in and my kids, this is kind of confusing.

My kids were watching NBA players who were watching a video game that they were playing.

NBA players were playing a game that my kids were watching them play.

It was like video game inception.

I I didn't understand it, but I went, this is how bad they need us.

Just proving I'm still relevant, proving I still matter, proving that people still want me.

And before we judge the celebrities too harshly, we need it ourselves.

And if we're honest, we've probably spent a good percentage of our life trying to prove who we are to the people that are around us.

To the church in Rome, Paul wrote in Romans chapter 12 Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.

Romans 12 · chapter mention

And then he says, This is your true worship, your true worship.

And that word true there, that adjective, that is the Greek word logikos, which is where we get our word logical from.

It means this is the way to live that actually makes the most sense.

This is the way of life that has meaning and purpose and substance.

And what does it look like?

This is the antidote to living to prove yourself.

It says present yourself as a living sacrifice.

A living sacrifice.

All throughout the book of Romans, Paul talks about the present that Jesus was to us, the free gift, the present of eternal life in Jesus Christ.

He gave himself as a present to us, and now we in return, in view of his mercy, in view of his love, in view of him dying on a cross for our sins, the only thing that makes sense is for us to present ourselves as a present to him.

What does it look like to live as a living sacrifice?

It looks like prioritizing the desires of your commanding officer Jesus above anything and everything else in this world.

What does it look like?

It looks like as an athlete running the race with endurance, not looking left or right, focusing on the finish.

It looks like as the farmer, the hardworking farmer, not just dreaming, but doing, trusting that the God of the harvest will be bring the crop, will bring it to fruition.

Living sacrifice, the only way of living that makes sense.

The antidote to proving yourself is to improve yourself.

He goes on and he contrasts the two.

Prove yourself, improve yourself, prove it, improve it.

He contrasts them in the next verse.

He says, Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of your commander in chief, of your finish line, of your trophy, your prize, of your harvest, the pleasing and perfect will of God.

We can conform or we can transform.

We can live to prove it or we can live to improve it.

But here is an essential idea as you are navigating this time of quarantine.

This is so critical to understand.

You cannot prove yourself and improve yourself at the same time.

You cannot prove yourself and improve yourself at the same time.

If you are living to try and prove yourself to the world around you, it will render you incapable of making meaningful improvements in your life.

The two cannot exist together.

So many of us are living to prove ourselves.

And we wear it in a way where the world can read us.

At the end of the day, living to prove ourselves, we're proving ourselves to the people outside of us.

We're really allowing them to become the judge and jury of how we're doing in life.

We're allowing them to determine how much purpose, significance, and meaning we have.

It means nothing, but it doesn't need to mean anything to me.

As long as it means something to you, do not be conformed to this age, conformed to the ideals and worldviews and status and definitions of significance and meaning that the world has to offer you, do not conform.

If you are a soldier, don't live like a civilian.

If you are running the race, do not run for the attention of the spectators.

You are the one in the sprint.

If you are a farmer, do not live for what others think of your harvest.

Do the work and trust that God will see it through.

It's a huge difference to live to prove yourself and to live to improve yourself.

See, when we live to improve ourselves, it ends up not making a lot of sense to the world outside of us.

To the world outside, in fact, our life might kind of look a little bit upside down.

And when you're really living to display the light of God in every moment and every move that you make, when you are really living only concerned with the judgment that your commanding officer Jesus Christ has on your life, your life might look upside down to the world's expectations of how you are supposed to live.

You put others ahead of yourself.

You love even when they hate.

When we improve, it doesn't make much sense to the world around us.

And yet it is something that we can see so clearly.

At the end of the day, it's the difference between allowing the world outside to judge the facade of who you think you should be and allowing God to judge the person that you are actually becoming.

You you cannot prove yourself and improve yourself at the same time.

You must choose one or the other.

And as we are in this moment of quarantine, I wonder as you look back on the last six weeks that we have spent in this pandemic, if you have been living to try and prove yourself, or if you have been living to try and improve yourself.

If we go back to 2 Timothy, the same chapter that we left, here's what Paul writes He says, be diligent to present yourself to God as one approved.

A worker who doesn't need to be ashamed, correctly teaching the word of truth.

Present yourself as one approved.

And right there, Paul gives us the key.

If we live to prove ourselves, we will end up force-fitting ourselves into a mold of a person that we were never created to become.

We will allow a world around us that doesn't actually care about us to be the judge and jury of our significance during our time on earth.

And our only hope will be that we can make the right moves and buy the right things and have the right friends and put up the right posts that someone outside of us, someone who has no bearing on our life or our future, will see us as worthy.

If you live to prove yourself, you will ultimately lose yourself.

But those who live to improve, what did Paul just tell Timothy?

You're a soldier, not a civilian, you're an athlete, not an actor, you are a farmer, not living for fame, trusting the God of the harvest.

If you live to improve, to follow the example of Jesus, to die daily to yourself, to take up your cross and follow after him, no matter what he calls you to do.

If you live to improve, you will be approved.

And we're talking not about the approval of the people around you, the people who are too busy trying to prove themselves to actually care about you anyway.

We're talking about the approval of the one who holds eternity, the one who holds your life in his hand, the one who holds your destiny, the one who created you and loved you enough to give his life for you.

You cannot prove yourself and improve yourself at the same time.

And as we look back on the time we've spent so far in the pandemic, the hard truth, if we're honest, is that some of us have spent this trying to prove ourselves.

And some of you are now on the verge of divorce because you're so busy trying to prove that you're the one who's important, you're the one who is smarter, you're the one whose job matters more, you're the one who's the better parent, you're the one who's actually the victim.

You're so busy trying to prove yourself when you could be investing this time into improving who you are as a spouse.

Some of you are trying to win a divorce right now.

It's already over.

You just assume it's over, and you're already making the moves to try and get the friends and family on your side so they see you as the real winner of the divorce.

Working so hard to prove.

When we've been given this time to improve, some of you are trying to prove to your kids that you really are the authority, and you're trying so hard to prove that you're the authority, that you're not doing the one thing that a true authority does, which is sacrificially love them.

And instead of coming out of this time of quarantine with a bond like no other, because you're actually getting time at home with your kids coming out of this and looking back on this in years and seeing this as the turning point where your family really became a powerful unit for the purposes of God.

You're too busy proving yourself.

And all I see on social moo media is people proving it.

I'm just proving it.

Some of you are spending six hours a day in political arguments, putting all of your hope and trying to sway someone up someone's opinion, and you never have and you never will, because they're not actually there to debate, they're just there to try to win.

They're proving it, you're proving it, and you're both proving that you're wasting your time.

And what could you be doing if you would log off and find some way to improve your life?

And I don't know, I'm not a scientist.

I don't know about this, I don't know about the virus, I don't know how serious, I don't know how not serious, I don't know how deadly, I don't know how not deadly.

I don't even know if the experts know.

What I do know is it's gonna be impossible to tell because all the media does is try to prove that you need to watch them 24 hours a day.

Whatever headline they gotta put up to prove that they're the one that you should be watching.

And you cannot prove it and improve it at the same time.

Here's what's really on my heart.

I don't want us to waste the waiting.

We are in a waiting pattern.

We don't know.

We don't know when your job comes back, we don't know when schools open up, we don't know when we get to go back out.

We don't know.

It's opening slowly, but like back to normal.

We don't know.

And I'm afraid that the people of God are going to waste the waiting.

I believe that we could come out of this improved, that we could come out of this with more faith, more peace, stronger relationships, better habits, better health.

And if we live like I've lived for most of my life to try and improve myself, you will waste the waiting.

You won't come back the same, you will come back worse because as time moves on, we get left behind.

What if we came out of here in a different place in our parenting?

What if we came out of here in a different place in our friendships?

What if we came back in a different place of our stewardship of our resources?

What if we came back allowing this time that God has us?

You see, Paul says, You gotta work, man.

You wanna harvest, man, you gotta put your hands on the plow.

You wanna finish the race, you gotta throw off all the crap that you're worried about, just digging into all the drama, throw it off, run with endurance, find the finish line and keep your eyes on it.

You wanna win a war?

You gotta follow your commander, you gotta keep your eyes on Christ.

It's work, but it's work in the waiting.

And if you're a soldier in the Lord's army, it means that you have already put your faith in him and you're a child of God.

And if you're an athlete running in this spiritual race, it means that heaven is already yours and it is secure.

And man, if you are a farmer putting in a spiritual harvest, it means that you already belong to God.

Heaven is already yours, but some of you are wasting your time like hell while you're here.

Don't waste the waiting.

And we can see this as opposition, and we can shrink back into familiar patterns.

We can live to prove that we are the smartest and the best and the friendliest and the most attractive, and man, we got it all going on and this whole facade and this fake life.

Man, we can prove it.

Or we can take this time, we can give it to God, we can put our eyes on Christ.

We can give ourselves as a present, living sacrifices.

We can be transformed, we can come out with renewed minds.

We can walk out of the waiting.

Right now we're waiting between believing in Jesus and going to heaven.

What are we gonna do in the waiting?

Right now in quarantine, we're in the waiting.

Here's the beauty.

Paul says, present yourself as one approved.

Some of you are trying to prove yourself to the people around you because you had a parent that never approved.

Some of you are trying to prove yourself to your colleagues because when you were in school, you sat alone at a table, you sat outside of the circle, you sat outside while everyone else got married, you stayed single, you sat outside while everyone else got famous on Instagram, you sat outside and now you're hell-bent to prove yourself.

And God says, I've already approved.

Do we believe in him enough to give our lives?

Living sacrifices, improving every step of the way.

Would you pray with me?

God, I'm the first to admit that I've lived so much of my life to try and prove that I'm someone I'm not.

Trying to prove that I'm a version that I think other people want to see of me.

God, I've done it enough times to know it's a losing battle.

I pray that we would quit living to prove ourselves to humanity and we would begin to improve so that we stand before you.

Having lived our life as soldiers, having run the race, having sown the seeds that produce a great spiritual harvest.

God, I I preach this sermon and I've preached it with all the passion I can because I believe that behind this camera, behind the screens, wherever they're watching, here in San Antonio, Texas, across Texas, out of the state, out of the country, across the ocean, whoever's watching this, whether they're streaming it straight into their AirPods, whether they've got it up on the television right there with their family, whether they're watching it all alone, isolated in an apartment, God, I preach it with everything that I have.

I preach my voice all the way out because I believe that there is purpose inside the lives of every person.

God, I believe that if we will use this time to improve, to grow closer, to give our full self to you, to keep our eyes on you, I believe that we will look back and see this time as a gift.

A gift that you've given us to become closer to the versions of ourselves you created us to be.

God, I believe MetaCurch is a movement of soldiers, not civilians.

I believe that MetaCurch is a battleship, and we are ready for whatever mission you throw our way.

And so guide us and lead us.

We love you.

And we pray all of this in the powerful name of Jesus.

Amen.

The question as you move forward, as you evaluate your time in quarantine, are you proving yourself or are you improving yourself?

Man, we love you guys so much.

We're so glad that you guys joined us.

If you're joining us for the first time, you can find out all about us at our website, which is metachurch.tv.

For those of you who are a part of this movement, we always remind and we encourage you guys to continue to give.

Man, give generously to what God is doing here among us.

Y'all follow us on social media, keep up to date with us.

We're gonna continue sending you inspiring content and helping you to not waste the waiting.

We love you guys so much.

Be safe and be the movement.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

If this was helpful to you and you want to help us get the word out, you can subscribe to this podcast.

You can rate and review or share it with your friends.

If you want to get connected further with what MetaCurch is doing, you can go online to metachurch.tv.

There you can learn how to take next steps, you can learn where our different venues are at if you ever wanted to visit, and you can also give financially to help push this movement forward.

Man, I love you guys, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.