Triggered: Cheat Code- Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch 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.

Alright, MetaCurch, how you guys doing?

Yeah.

It's so good to see you guys here.

If it's your first time with us, my name's Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here at MetaCurch, and you have joined us in week five of our triggered series, where we are learning how to make deep, meaningful, long-lasting change in our lives.

To do a little bit of review, we started in week one by focusing on our identity and the things that actually lie underneath the behaviors that we're so unhappy with.

We learned we got to ask a better question.

The question is not what do I want to change?

The question is who do I want to become?

And so we left with a great exercise.

If you weren't here, you can go back on YouTube or our website and check this out.

We left with some daily declarations.

And I hope that some of you are staying in this habit of waking up day after day and speaking these truths over your life out loud about the person who you are becoming.

We learned that once we get that picture of what it would look like if we were living a meaningful, impactful, significant, purposeful life, when we can see that picture, then we can start the process of real behavior change.

However, if we want to change our behavior, we have to understand it at a deep level, which means we have to understand our habits.

We've been looking at some science pulled out of a couple books that we've thrown on social media if you want to dig a little bit deeper.

And what we've learned is that about 50% of our life happens at the subconscious level.

That's a level we're not aware of.

That's the level of our habits.

And our habits catch us in these destructive cycles, and so if we want to break the habit, we have to understand it.

The habit cycle is a simple three-step process.

It begins with a cue.

And there are cues all around us.

And what a cue does is it triggers a craving in our mind.

And once we are triggered, our mind will stop at nothing to satisfy that craving, which is why a cue moves us into our routines.

The routine is the actual habit.

The cue is your phone vibrating, the habit is scrolling through social media.

And if the routine is right, it leads us to the reward.

And the reward satisfies our craving and it also closes the loop, getting us stuck in these habits that are so difficult to get out of.

I know a lot of you have been spending the last five weeks trying to implement these different things we've been teaching and talking about into your life, and it can be really, really difficult, and maybe you're at a point where it's even discouraging.

And I have great news for you today.

Today, in my message, I'm going to introduce a cheat code.

My message today is called Cheat Code.

Before we dig into it, would you guys pray with me?

God, we love you and we thank you, God.

We thank you for loving us.

We thank you for this time that your people get to gather together, your movement of these beautiful, purposeful, powerful, jacked up, working on it people.

And God, we want to hear from you today.

So help us to have receptive minds and receptive hearts to what you are uniquely trying to say to each of us.

We love you and we pray these things in Jesus' name and everyone who agrees say amen.

Amen.

For those of you who have been struggling to change your habits over the last several weeks, you might find yourself at a point of frustration, and it might even feel a little bit defeating.

50% of your life is happening at the level of habits.

That is a lot of change.

And a lot of those habits are negative.

And then there are all these positive habits that we're trying to introduce into our life.

And just like our New Year's resolutions, man, it's really difficult to create these new changes and these new ways and these new patterns and to really instill them and feel them and love them.

And so it's like uh if you if you're angry, it's not like there's one habit, one trigger.

And if you deal with that one thing, it's over.

Man, if you really deal with anger, then it comes at you in all sorts of ways and all different times, different places, and around different people.

And it's like, man, I'm I'm angry in the morning and I'm angry at night.

I'm angry at lunch, I'm angry after my after lunch nap, like I'm angry at home, I'm angry at work, I'm angry at the gym, I'm angry around my in-laws, like I'm angry when I watch the news, I'm angry when I watch the sports, I'm really angry when I watch Hallmark channel, I don't know what's going on there.

Like there's just so many triggers to deal with, and so it's like it takes time just to focus on one of them.

It's like, why am I so pissed off when I wake up?

So you really work and you investigate the triggers and you figure it out, and you're finally like making some headway in it, and then you look, and there's 30 other ways that you're angry.

There's 15 other triggers, and it's like, it took me five weeks to get rid of one of those.

Like, this is gonna take you years.

If you're a procrastinator, there's not just one problem.

It's like Netflix is a problem, sure.

But so is social media, and so is your couch, and so is napping three times a day, and so is gossiping around the water cooler.

It's like I'm gonna fix one of them.

You know what?

I'm not gonna go to the water cooler, I'm gonna bring a water bottle, and now I'm not gonna go there and waste an hour of my time.

I'm gonna get more work done.

And I've really worked hard and I did one of them.

And now there's 12 other triggers to deal with, 12 other cycles to try to disrupt and break out of.

Today I I want to introduce you to a cheat code in your habit formation.

Now, a cheat code is uh a video game term, and I don't know if there are any gamers in the room.

I I don't play video games because I'm an adult.

Um, but don't look at your husband right now.

That's rude.

That's so rude.

Um now I I probably would play video games, and and I know a lot of people are into them, um, but uh I didn't grow up playing video games.

I gotta be careful because my my parents are in this service, but we grew up kind of like borderline Amish, you know what I'm saying?

Like we just that there was no um no video games, we made dolls out of straw and stuff, you know.

It was homeschooled for a little while.

It's fine.

It's I'm working through it.

My therapist.

Um no video games, and so what happened is I got to college and was like, I can play video games, you know?

Like no one's here, watch me.

I'll sneak in, play some video games.

But everyone else had had 15 years of gaming, and so I was terrible.

And and I have this weird thing about me where I really hate losing.

And so it's like Mario Kart's fun unless you're in last place every single time.

So it was very frustrating.

There was one game I really liked, NBA jam.

It was like two on two with you know the NBA basketball players back in the day, and we'd be on the N64, and I just couldn't compete.

I mean, I would just get housed, people were running over me.

And then I learned about cheat codes.

And a cheat code is basically a pattern that you put in on your controller, you know, up, up, down, down, left, left, square, square, triangle, triangle.

And all of a sudden, you get an advantage in the game.

And so I learned a cheat code for unlimited endurance in NBA jam, because what happens is you know, your players are running back and forth, they get tired, and they have to start moving slower and slower.

But not me, I had a cheat code.

My guys could just run all day, and all of a sudden, it's even the playing field.

And we we'd be on Goldeneye.

Anybody remember GoldenEye on the N64?

It's like a shooter game.

And I knew a little cheat code, unlimited ammo.

These other fools are running around looking for bullets.

I got bullets for days, you know.

Unlimited ammo, it's a cheat code.

And it uh it just kind of levels the playing field, it gives you an advantage.

I want to introduce a cheat code for our habits.

It can be very defeating to work so hard to break out of one cycle only to look up and know that there are 10 others that you haven't dealt with.

In the book, The Power of Habit, Charles Duhig introduces the idea of keystone habits.

This is not the habit of drinking keystone light.

This is not a beer pong habit, okay?

Um, a keystone habit, these are small changes or habits that when introduced into your routines create a domino effect.

I want you to get that picture in your mind.

A domino effect that changes many areas of your life.

And I'm sure uh all of us at one point found as many dominoes as we could, and we stacked them up just close enough to where when they fell over, it would hit the next one.

And maybe you try to make a pattern, you gotta place them down really carefully.

Now, how crazy would it be to get that all the way set up and then to just flick them sideways one by one?

That's not the purpose, and yet that's how many of us are attacking our habits.

We're looking at them as just individual, isolated habits, these cycles that we're stuck in in a vacuum, and we're trying to deal with them one at a time, and yet we look, and there's so many dominoes still standing, and what a keystone habit does is it finds the first domino.

And dominoes, when stacked, create a chain reaction.

You hit the first one, and all you have to do is knock it down.

Your attention only has to go to the first domino, and when you knock the first one down, it knocks the second, which knocks the third, and the fourth, and the fifth.

And our keystone habits, when they're right, they work the same way.

They are habits that we can put our time, energy, and attention to that when we get them right, they begin to disrupt the negative habits in our life and to trigger us to positive habits.

One habit that begins to clear the path across multiple habit cycles so that you can get on the path to your purpose.

Let me give you some examples that have quite a bit of research behind them.

Uh, one of probably the most studied Keystone habit is the habit of regular exercise.

Regular exercise.

Because if you want to be in shape, and I'm not talking about diet right now necessarily, I'm just talking about I want to be healthy, I want to be in shape.

There are so many things to consider.

You have to eat right and live right, and you gotta stretch, and then you gotta like sleep enough and drink enough water and eat enough vegetables, and you gotta drink less and you know, alcohol, and you gotta quit smoking, and there's all of these things that you have to accomplish, and that's a lot of dominoes to deal with.

But studies have shown that if you regularly, regularly exercise, which means three times a week, regular exercise is three times a week, that there is correlation and even causation to eating healthier, eating less, consuming less alcohol, smoking less, and even sometimes quitting smoking altogether and being more productive at work.

All of those things begin to fall when the first domino falls.

The keystone habit of regular exercise.

And it's not magic.

These keystone habits are not magic.

What regular exercise does for our diet is it makes us physically, viscerally aware that what we eat matters.

If you're working out three times a week and on Monday you eat 4,000 calories, high fat, high carb, high sugar, on Tuesday your workout is going to suck.

You're going to feel terrible.

And often you will see people, they can't get through a workout, they will have to quit or throw up.

And then on Tuesday, you eat lean meats, throw some veggies, drink lots of water.

The next day, your workout will feel so much better.

It's an everyday reminder that how we're feeling our body actually matters.

And without going on any crazy diet plan, without downloading any apps, without taking any magical diet pills, regular exercise begins to shape the way that people eat.

Not only that, but you're putting in the work.

You might not be doing some like crazy intense workout.

You might just be walking the block a few times.

But you're like, I am putting in enough work that I owe it to myself to start eating a little bit better.

You know, the the dangerous thing about smoking is people smoke for 40 years, and like we know the research shows it's killing us, but we go 40 years and we don't really see any signs.

And all of a sudden, 40 years later, we get a little smoker's cough, and three years after that we're dead.

And it just lays dormant forever unless you exercise.

And if you're exercising three days a week, you will learn very quickly that smoking is killing you.

And many people begin to decrease the amount they're smoking or quit altogether just because the keystone habit fell, the first domino fell, and things started getting out of their way, and you start overcoming things, start accomplishing things that you never thought before.

I mean, you you you've run a 5k.

It's like, man, I I couldn't, I couldn't walk 500 feet, I just ran a 5K, nothing had stopped me.

All of a sudden, things start lining up challenges that seem like you couldn't overcome them at work.

Man, all of these things start to fall behind a keystone habit.

Other things that have research behind them are things like sleep.

Americans are not sleeping, and some people have real, like, you know, neurological, psychological things that are going on that they're dealing with.

Most people aren't sleeping because their smartphones next to them.

And they just get on and scroll and scroll and scroll, and precinct at 3 in the morning.

Uh, Harvard Medical Journal said this: when we are sleep deprived, our focus, attention, and vigilance drift, making it more difficult to receive information.

Without adequate sleep and rest, overworked neurons can no longer function to coordinate information properly.

And we lose our ability to access previously learned information.

That's the way Harvard says it.

This is how I'm gonna say it.

When we don't sleep, we're stupid.

Our brains cannot function.

And look at the first things that go focus and attention.

And you're more talented than some of the people around you that are getting promotions.

But your boss doesn't believe your button because he doesn't feel like your attention's on it, and you don't have the attention, and focus because you're not sleeping.

And that one domino begins, you know what's really dangerous is it says our focus, attention, and our vigilance begins to drift.

Let me just say, as a pastor, um, I've sat across from many people when affairs come out, and we're quick to point at lust, and it's true, we're in an over-sexualized world.

But when the spouse that committed the affair is willing to go into counseling, they always, always, always say, I'm just so exhausted.

And when we sleep, uh, when we don't sleep, our vigilance drifts, and when our vigilance drifts, our moral center adrifts, and all of a sudden people start doing things so out of character, things they never thought that they would do, we get caught in these cycles.

And so anything that you use your brain for, to improve at work, to get promoted, to stop procrastinating, to become a reader, to grow your intelligence, all of those things, the keystone habit is sleep.

One domino that will begin a chain reaction to clear the path for the life that you can picture for yourself that you should be leading.

Journaling.

Specifically, food journaling.

All journaling helps.

In fact, there's a lot of research that shows just waking up and writing your thoughts and your frustrations and things you're happy about, it really improves your emotional and mental state.

But food journaling has been proven to be one of the most effective and long-lasting ways to begin eating a better diet.

And it's so simple.

It sounds like it's crazy.

How could this possibly work?

There's all these crazy diets, and they tell you you gotta do, you know, no fat, low fat, only fat, like no meat, only meat, only veggies, no veggies.

Like there's all these things that they're throwing at us all of the time.

And yet, food journaling, literally writing down what you eat, when you eat it, and why you eat it.

And it's not magic, it just shows you the patterns you're in.

And pretty soon you start being able to diagnose your own needs for your own diet.

Keystone habits pave the way for us to walk through the process to the picture of who God actually created us to be.

When we look in scripture, we see these keystone habits all over the great men and women of scripture, even Jesus himself.

You know, when Jesus was on earth, he showed up and he started healing people, like the blind could see, the deaf could hear, people were like on their deathbed, and all of a sudden he like restored them back to health.

And so people were coming by the thousands, and they would press in on Jesus, and they wanted to just hear him teach, and they just wanted to like touch his robe, they just wanted to see him and look him in the eyes.

And I mean, it was exhausting, and Jesus was just giving and giving and pouring out and pouring out and teaching and teaching.

And he had this one habit in in Luke 5, 16, it says, Jesus often withdrew to deserted places where he would pray.

And when you read the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the scripture, you see this over and over and over again.

Jesus had this keystone habit of solitude.

Even before he started his ministry, he went 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness.

And the most significant person ever walked the earth, the person who changed the world, in order to be able to continue pouring and pouring and pouring, he would get away.

He would get alone with his heavenly father, and he would be filled up.

It was one habit that pushed forward his ministry in unimaginable ways.

Maybe you know about Daniel in the Old Testament, the Jewish scriptures, uh, from Daniel and the Lion's Den.

Anybody learned that one growing up?

Daniel and the Lion's Den, and they said you can't pray, and if you pray, then you gotta go and you're thrown into the den of lions, and it was uh effectively a death sentence, and and uh Daniel didn't care.

In Daniel 6.10, it said, when Daniel learned that the document had been signed, he went into his house, he went to the window in its upstairs room, it opened towards Jerusalem, and three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed.

He gave thanks to God just as he had done before, day after day after day of Daniel's life.

Daniel and all of Israel had been taken captive, they're living in a foreign land, their freedoms are gone, and yet Daniel serves God and he stays true and he keeps getting promoted, more and more influence, and with more influence and power comes more temptation, and he stays grounded by this one keystone habit.

Three times a day, every day he opened his window towards Jerusalem to him.

That signified the presence and guidance of God.

Three times a day he got on his knees and he prayed.

In the New Testament, the Christian scriptures, when the church started, Jesus came and he lived and then he died and he came back to life.

And right before he went to heaven, he looked at a bunch of jacked-up people just like you and I and said, All right, it's you guys' job to take this movement all the way to the ends of the earth.

And one of these guys was the Apostle Paul, he wrote 13 books of our New Testament, and he's like the most prolific church planter of all time.

He went from city to city to city, all over the known world, and he started these gatherings of believers, and he always did it the same way.

In Acts 17, it says, after they passed through uh a couple of towns, I don't know how to pronounce it.

Anyway, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue, and as usual, this was the cheat code, over and over and over again.

The keystone habit, as usual, Paul would go into the synagogue, and three Sabbath days in a row, he would reason with the Jewish people from Scripture.

And this is how he always started.

Paul, a Jew, would go to the Jews, and they held something in common, the Jewish scriptures, what we call the Old Testament.

And for three Sabbaths, he would reason out of it, and he always went to the Jews first.

And watch what would happen.

He was explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer and rise from the dead.

Paul would say, This Jesus that I'm proclaiming to you is the Messiah.

And some of the Jews were persuaded and joined Paul, including a large number of God-fearing Greeks, the Gentiles, the non-Jews, as well as a number of the leading women.

And Paul would show up and he would go to the Jews first, and he would open the Jewish scripture and he'd say, You know the Messiah that you guys are waiting for?

He already came, and his name was Jesus.

Yeah, that's right.

You screwed up, you killed him.

You remember that?

But the good news is when he came back to life, he's in a forgiving mood.

And if you'll change your mind about who he is, not only will he forgive you, but you can live in eternity with him.

And this message not only changed the world, but it circled the globe.

And don't lose just the amazing fact that 2,000 years later, we are here right now, a part of that same movement.

It was the cheat code, it was the Keystone habit, and these all these guys had it, and it guided their life, and it was pushing one domino that cleared a path, that took care of other cycles and other habits that helped disrupt negative cycles in our lives and triggers us to new, healthier habits.

Many of you probably know Michael Phelps, the swimmer, uh, one of the greatest Olympians, if not the greatest Olympian of all time.

And man, I got a lot of love for Michael Phelps uh because I think I've told y'all before, but I don't really know how to swim, so I don't know a whole lot about it, other than I know how to drown really good.

Like I'm I'm I'm really good at keeping lifeguards employed, you know, they pulled me out of a lot of pools.

And and so I don't know all that goes into swimming, um, but I know it's a lot, right?

And and and there's all different kinds of strokes, right?

There's there's the there's the this one, there's the backwards, there's the doggy pad, that's mine.

I just doggy paddle.

There's all there's like flexibility, there's endurance, like being a certain height, he's got these big feet, he's got all these things that go into it.

But Michael Phelps had a keystone habit.

When his coach found him, he was a young guy.

He was uh emotionally very volatile.

He would lose, he would just melt down, he couldn't keep a hold of himself.

If one thing went wrong before the race, he like couldn't handle it.

And so his coach started telling him, Michael, watch the tape.

Now, this wasn't real tape, it wasn't a VCR in a television, it was a visualization exercise.

And this became his cheat code.

Before every race, he would watch the tape.

And he would see himself in his mind.

He would close his eyes and he would he would watch himself at the start.

He would visualize the perfect dive.

Whatever stroke he was competing in, he would picture exactly how many it would take to get to the other side of the pool.

He would imagine the perfect turnaround.

Perfect, the perfection every time.

Come around the other side.

He'd picture the victory.

It's interesting if you if you watch him, oftentimes he would come out with a gold world record, and it almost didn't phase him.

He'd seen it a million times.

In his last Olympics, he was looking to set another Olympic record and it was a quick sprint, just down and back.

He jumped in the water and a crisis.

Water instantly filled his goggles.

He was effectively swimming blind.

Most people would not have known what to do and might have even quit racing altogether.

But Michael Phelps still won the race.

It didn't matter that he was swimming blind, he had already seen it.

He knew exactly how many strokes, he knew when to turn it on, he knew how to turn around, he knew where the wall would be.

This one keystone habit led him to be the most accomplished Olympian of all time.

And listen, the Apostle Paul had a keystone habit and it pushed this movement forward, and now it's us.

Now we are the beautiful, powerful, purposeful, jacked up people who God has handed this movement to to push forward and be what Jesus called the light of the world.

And we're in this series because our habits often are sabotaging the significant life that we're meant to be living.

And so what if we could find a keystone habit that we'll do in six months?

What it might take us six years to fix if we're just doing it one habit at a time.

The way to introduce a keystone habit is by something that James Clear in his book Atomic Habits calls habit stacking.

Habit stacking.

It's a very simple template that says, when I, then I.

When I, then I.

And so let's go to some uh examples we've already used of Keystone habits.

We talked about food journaling.

And so how it starts is when I eat, and see, we all eat.

You know how I know you eat?

Because you're alive.

We all eat.

It is a habit cycle that every single human being is already in.

And what habit stacking does is it leverages a habit you already have to become the trigger for a habit that you want to implement.

When I eat, then I journal.

And you use the habit you're in as the trigger for the habit that you want.

When I eat, and that means every time, whether it's a full meal or a piece of candy, when I eat, then I journal.

I write down what I ate, when I ate it, and why I ate it.

What was I feeling?

What was going on around me?

When I eat.

And listen, habit stacking has to happen at the conscious level first.

We have to create habits over time.

We have to create triggers over time.

And so maybe you have to write the word journal on the back of your hand for a few weeks so that you'll remember.

Or perhaps if that doesn't work, you gotta get a pocket-sized journal and you have to start using it as your wallet so that if you want to buy that food, you actually have to get your journal out to get your credit card to purchase it.

Because when you eat, then you journal.

And food journaling is one of the most effective, long-lasting ways to improve your health and to change your diet.

When I, then I, and exercise is one of the most studied keystone habits.

And some of you are very organized and you're very type A and you're very scheduled.

And Pastor Tony's this way.

Pastor Tony is a little bit like a robot, and he literally schedules every week.

He sits down and he schedules his week hour by hour, like a psychopath.

I'm just kidding, probably a lot of y'all do that.

For me, I'm like, that's crazy.

And here's the crazier thing if it's on his schedule, he will be there.

He will be there.

And so when I schedule, then I book my workouts.

And I'm not saying you call the gym, you book them with yourself.

You write them in four times a week.

I'm getting there, it's on my schedule, and if it's on my schedule, I'll go.

And some of you are like me, and if you had to schedule your own life, you would only survive about three more days.

It's just not gonna work.

And you gotta get a little more creative.

And so, what's the habit you're already in?

When I get home, then I put on my running shoes.

And it's so simple.

But once you have them on, the likelihood of you taking a lap around the block increases exponentially.

And maybe, maybe you put those shoes right by the door.

When you open that door, you scoot, you gotta feel them.

And when I get home, then I put on those running shoes.

And if you'll walk a lap, it won't be long before you jog a lap, and then you might run a lap, and you might run the neighborhood, and pretty soon you are exercising regularly, and you have pushed the first domino.

And when I am tired, then I turn off my phone.

And we've got to sleep.

You want to live a significant life?

You have to sleep.

And I don't care if the first yawn comes at 7 p.m.

Turn your phone off.

Plug it in somewhere else.

Buy a$5 alarm clock from Walmart.

When I am tired, then I turn my phone off.

And you see what we're doing with our habits is we're using things that we're already triggered to do.

We're using habits we're already in, when I to create a new habit, then I.

They become new triggers.

And maybe you're struggling with being organized, and it's like, man, your house is a mess and your car's a mess and your purse is a mess and your wallet's a mess.

And if you're honest, just your life is kind of a mess.

And you've got a checklist of things that you need to do that just keeps growing every day.

And at this point, you're just ready to kind of give up on it because you don't even know where to start.

And millions of people have created a keystone habit.

When I wake up and everyone wakes up, then I make my bed.

And let me just tell you this that feels so stupid to me.

I don't like, I'm gonna get back in the bed, you know what I'm saying?

Um, and if it's made, it makes it really hard to nap.

Anyway, like when I get up, then I make my bed.

And you know what you do?

You start your day with a win.

And you start your day by orienting your mind towards an organizational mindset.

And people have changed their life with the Keystone Habit of the first thing they do.

And you know what you can do if you're struggling with it?

Withhold your reward.

I can't drink coffee till my bed is made.

And all of a sudden, once your bed is made, you get the reward of the coffee, and the reward of the coffee becomes oriented with the cue of waking up and the routine of making your bed.

And your habit begins.

And some of you are struggling with your kids.

And there's all sorts of research around the family table.

And studies have shown real correlation to eating around a dinner table with your family, to kids getting better grades, having less rebellious and dangerous behavior, and a significantly higher percentage of college attendants just by eating around a table.

And we all eat dinner.

It's already in our habit cycle.

Use it as a trigger.

Turn the screens off.

When I eat dinner, then I gather my family.

When I finish cooking, then I turn the screens off.

And all of a sudden, one Keystone habit begins to knock down the other dominoes that are in the way of the life you're wanting to live, the family you're wanting to have, the success you're wanting to see, and the difference that you're wanting to make.

This is the cheat code.

Find your first domino.

Pour your attention and energy into something that is gonna go further than just that one habit.

Exercise, sleep, journaling, making your bed, eating around the table, do a monthly budget.

Finance is out of control.

Where to start?

Where to start?

Keystone habit, sit down at the beginning of the month, every month, you make a budget.

You assign every dollar you have to what you're gonna do with it and follow it.

It's one domino that begins a chain reaction.

Your life and your purpose are too important to not get the habits that are sabotaging you out of your way.

A keystone habit could push you so much further to your purpose.

And you know, we have these as individuals, and all of us have these different things we're struggling with, and it's important for you to find your first domino, but we also have these as a movement.

And you know, the church is not the building, it's not the service, it's not the organization, it's not the staff, it's certainly just not the preacher.

It's you, it's the people.

You are the movement, and we are the body of Christ, but the body is made of individual parts, and everyone has to do their part if we're gonna function at a high level, and and we've got a high-level mission.

Our mission is we will do whatever it takes to get people to Jesus.

And man, there's a lot to following Jesus.

We should be like reading scripture and developing a rhythm of prayer and reaching out to people and loving people, and we should be in a live team, getting in community, we should be going to the classes we offer every once in a while.

Like, there's a lot to it.

But over the last year, we've been introducing the keystone habits for members of this movement.

And you've heard them every weekend for a while.

Our keystone habits are to invite and invest.

And these are the two dominoes that we believe, if we can effectively push down, will create a chain reaction that will allow us to have impact beyond what we can even imagine.

With investment, we are talking specifically about giving financially to this movement.

And we've already created triggers because uh over the last few years I've done maybe one or two giving talks.

And we always say the same thing.

We give in three ways.

We give first, we give sacrificially, and we give automatically.

What those mean really quickly is to give first means that the first thing you do when you get paid, the first thing you do, before you pay your groceries, before you pay your cell phone, before you go out to eat, before you go to the movies, before you do anything, you give back to God.

That puts God in priority when it comes to your money, and it says, I am not organizing my offering around my life, I'm organizing my life around my offering.

We give first, we give sacrificially, and that means something different to everyone.

And in the Old Testament, they had the tithe, that meant 10%, you give 10%.

Some of you have been so blessed financially that 10% is not a sacrifice.

For some of you, if you start giving 2%, you're gonna have to rearrange your life.

For you, 2% of what you make is a sacrifice.

In God's economy, it's not about what you give, it's about how you give.

We give first and we give a sacrifice.

We give automatically every time.

It's identity, it's not what we do, it's who we are.

We are generous.

How do we create new habits?

We stack them.

When I, then I.

When I, then I.

And when I get paid, then I give my offering.

And each of us does it every time.

And listen, we had a door open in Helotus, Texas.

And because some of you are investing in what you believe in, we were able to walk through that door and we already have seven people signed up to get baptized.

And God is going to open other doors.

And we just went to permit and finished construction drawings on a Kmart on Southwest 410 that we don't have the money for yet.

And we're moving in faith anyway.

And when the door opens, we have to be ready, which means we all have to be doing our part.

We invest in what we believe in, and when we get paid before we do anything else, we give a sacrificial offering to this movement that we're a part of.

That's investment.

We already have a trigger for that.

When I get paid, then I give.

We give first.

We already have that.

What about invitation?

Invitation can feel so hard, and some of you aren't inviting because you don't feel spiritual enough and you're not exactly sure how it happens.

Like, do I have to quote a Bible verse for this?

Uh um comest thou uh the Lord of hosts welcomes thee to the metachurch.

Is that how I'm like, do I have to sing a song?

Do I do I have to give, do I have to give them a rose?

You know, like how does this work?

And it's so much simpler than that.

What I want to do is I I want to create some triggers for us.

There are two words that I want us to become like like literally attuned to the words new and through.

New and through.

These will become triggers for us because both of these are transitional words.

And when you hear someone in your different circles of life, work, home, family, the gym, wherever you go, when you hear the word new, it should trigger you cravings to invite them to meta church.

New is a transitional word.

We're new to town, I have a new job, we have a new baby, I have a new, I have a new wife, I've got a new stepkid, I've got this new idea.

New is a transitional word.

And I love it when I meet people new to town, and it's so easy.

And first of all, I never tell them I'm the pastor, that's kind of a surprise when they show up.

Um but I just say you're new to town, that's really cool.

Listen, I don't know if you do the church thing.

Um, man, I go to this church, it is so dope.

You're really gonna love it.

You can come exactly as you are, right there, and and I invite them.

I'm gonna tell you how I invite them in a minute.

And someone's like, Oh, we have a new baby, oh new baby in the house.

That's a transitional moment.

To say, listen, you love your baby right now, but in six weeks you're gonna want to punt it.

And so here's what I want you to do.

At our church, we have a program starting at six weeks.

You can hand your baby off and come.

Someone can pour into you in this season when you're just pouring everything you have out to this baby.

It's new.

The word new and the word through.

Oh man, I'm just through with that relationship.

That's someone who needs hope.

We just got through with our divorce.

I don't know how I'm gonna get through.

These are words that we become attuned to, they become triggers.

They trigger a craving for us to invite them to Medichurch.

Let me tell you how you do not invite.

That's how you do not invite.

Uh, hey, whatever you want to say about the church, you heard new, you heard through, you attach it somehow, and you say, listen, we have two venues, right?

Two different places, and and these are all the service times for them, and I really hope you'll come.

That is how not to invite somebody.

It's one little change, but it's gonna make all the difference in the world, and it's gonna make the odds of them coming exponentially higher.

You heard newer through, you attach it somehow, and you say, Hey, here's the deal.

We actually have two venues, and here's the different service times, and I would love for you to come with me.

I'll meet you there, you pick the venue, you pick the time, and I'll meet you there.

And most people won't come on their own, but you would be shocked how many people will come if they're meeting a familiar face.

And so here's how it works: when I, then I, when I hear new or through, then I invite them to meta church.

And there are churches all over the place filled with people who can quote all sorts of scriptures and sing all of the songs and go to all of the classes, and they've never had the courage to invite the person in the cubicle next to them to come to their church.

And so another way to say it, I'm gonna say it in a way that maybe it's a little easier.

When you hear new or through, when you hear new or through, that is your cue.

That's right.

Pastor by day, rapper by night.

Y'all didn't even know this.

When you hear new or through, that is your cue.

And next week we're gonna be celebrating baptisms.

There's quite a few people signed up already.

Over the last about two and a half years, we've baptized over 300 people.

And I'm looking at many people who I remember your face coming out of the water, and I stand right over there so I can always see people right when they come up.

And at some point, someone had the courage to invite you.

They put some social capital on the line to extend an invitation.

And when you got here, and maybe you were broken, maybe something was new, maybe you were trying to make it through, maybe your life felt like it was in shambles, maybe you didn't have any hope.

There was a service, there was a chair for you to sit in, there was a place for you to come.

Because people who have come before you invested in what they believed in.

And baptisms are one of these incredible occasions where we get to see physically the result of the work that God is doing through this movement.

And so here's what I'd like for you to do to end the service.

Uh, I'd like for you to just kind of close your eyes right where you're at.

I'm gonna have you open them in a minute, but but let me just talk to you for a second.

Nothing magical about this, just kind of clear out your mind and create some space for yourself.

I want you to think about the different spheres of influence where God has you.

The circles of people that God has placed you around.

You have a circle of peers at work, you have people at your gym, you have people at home, maybe in your neighborhood, you have your family.

Maybe there's things you're involved in.

You you go to a book club, you you go to the same coffee house, you walk in, they know your order, you know their name.

Maybe you go to the same sports bar to watch all the games, you're like me, too cheap for cable, so you go to the same place, and you don't know the bartender's name, but but you see them.

You see her.

And sometimes you can look in people's eyes and you can tell they're defeated.

Sometimes you can just see their their slump shoulders.

I want you to think about people who need Jesus.

And maybe you can see a face, and maybe you know a name.

And not really looking around, but but opening your eyes.

When you came in, we left a blank piece of paper, a little note card, and a pen.

There should be one near you.

And what I want you to do is to begin to write down the names of people who you know, you know they need the hope that they could find in a place like Metachurch.

And maybe you know their names and you can begin to write those names on there.

Maybe you don't.

Maybe you just write bartender, barista, guy at gym, coach at gym.

Maybe it's your boss who, if you're honest, you can't stand.

But you know they're living without hope.

Get that card, begin to write some names.

And here's what I believe.

I believe that if we have the courage to personalize it and begin to put some names down on some papers, if we begin to seek the courage, to find opportunities, to invite, if we continue to do our part to invest and push this movement forward, that there are many names that are going on many cards throughout our services today, who someday in the future will also be going through the baptismal waters at Meta Church.

And so you guys continue to write as I pray over the names on these cards.

God, we love you.

And uh I I just I pray for every person that every person would have the courage to write a name.

God, even if it's just one, someone who they're willing to say, I'm ready to do whatever it takes to get this person to Jesus.

Jesus, we believe you're the only source of true hope, eternal hope.

That you see us and you love us, that you died for us and rose again.

God, I pray over every name on every card, every face that has come to mind.

God, I pray you would make an unmistakable opportunity.

That some of these names on these cards would show up this week and start talking about something new.

Start talking about something they're trying to get through or they've been through.

God, like an unmissable opportunity to invite them here.

God, I pray we would do our part, trusting you with our finances, investing in what you're doing.

We love you, we love you, we love you.

And we pray it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

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.

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