Patience for the Process

So uh if you are just joining us, we're doing something this year called the whole story.

The whole story.

We've broken the Bible down into 14 different series, and we're going through the entire story of Scripture all throughout the year.

Today uh we are about to wrap up our fourth of those 14 series.

We, by the way, are like right on track.

We have to average 3.2 Sundays per series.

We're ahead of schedule.

It's amazing.

I've never been ahead of schedule in my life.

So this is awesome.

Um, maybe I jinxed it, I don't know.

But today we're wrapping up our fourth series, which is called Figuring Out Freedom.

That's what we've been talking about for the last few weeks.

How to figure out freedom.

The setup is this the people of Israel that the Old Testament tells the story of in the Bible.

The people of Israel were slaves in Egypt for generations.

And God had promised them things.

He had promised them that they would become a mighty nation.

It's hard to be a mighty nation when you're enslaved by a mightier nation.

But God shows up through this man named Moses, and he does these miracles, and he frees them, and they escape, and now they have freedom.

Not only do they have freedom, but God's promised them this land called the promised land.

It's going to be the land that they have so they can become this nation that they're supposed to be.

But the challenge is freedom is one of those things that's a little messy, it's a little tough, you have to figure it out.

And even though technically they're free, they're not really ready to be free.

And so they spend 40 years in this wilderness.

40 years between leaving Egypt until entering the promised land, where they are figuring out freedom.

And so each week in this series, we've explored some necessary concepts for living with freedom.

Because even though we're not the nation of Israel in the Old Testament having just escaped slavery, we are in many ways in the same situation in life.

Because Jesus has freed us.

If you've put your faith in Jesus, he has freed you from the power of sin and the power of death.

The Bible says, even the fear of death.

He's freed us from so many things, all the things that truly have us bound, all the things of this world that have everybody else so stressed out, so so afraid, so anxious, so nervous.

He has freed us from all of that, but we have to figure out freedom too.

If we're going to experience all of those blessings, all of those benefits, it's not just one of those instantaneous things.

We've got to figure it out.

And so this morning we're talking about the third component.

We looked a couple weeks ago at confidence.

Last week we talked about beneficial boundaries, and today is patience.

Everyone's favorite subject.

Patience.

I was thinking about patience this week, and I, for some reason, this is like a super specific, deep cut reference that some of you are gonna get, and others are like, what in the world is that?

Alright, think like it's 2005.

Okay?

And for whatever reason, you're watching daytime TV.

It's just it's what's on.

And it's before there's streaming services galore, and you're not so much in control of everything that's on, you're just sort of like, well, this is what it is.

It's Judge Judy.

Here we go.

And uh you're trying to, you know, take in some it's just in the background, whatever.

Maybe you're really into Judge Judy.

I'm not judging you.

I don't know like what your life is in 2005.

But all of a sudden a commercial comes on, and uh, first, that's probably a series of commercials because that's how those work.

First one's gonna be, let's say, like Ken Nugent, you know, one call.

Yeah, okay.

You guys know.

One call, that's all.

There you go.

This message was not sponsored by the Ken Nugent attorney's office, I promise that.

And then, and this is the super deep cut.

There's I because I don't even know if these are still around.

I haven't seen one of these commercials in a long time, but there's this period of my life where I just remember they were on all the time.

It was this company called JG Wentworth.

You guys remember JG Wentworth?

And their slogan was, it's my money and I want it now.

Wow.

All right, good.

It wasn't just I literally was prepared for me to be like the only one.

With a very okay, good, it was not just me.

Yeah, JG Wentworth.

It's my money and I want it now.

That that idea of I want it now.

I want all of it, I want everything all at once, I want it now.

That is that is so indicative of human nature.

And not the best parts of our nature.

It's gotta be, it's gotta be right now.

An easy way to look at this in our culture is the lottery.

Uh, has anyone here ever won the lottery?

Okay, I didn't think so.

I'm just curious.

I was like, maybe, that'd be cool.

So no one here's won the lottery.

I've never even played the lottery, so my chances winning are small.

But if you were to win the lottery, you're given two options with your fortune.

Option A is you can have it given to you bit by bit over the course of several years as this like structured annuity, and you actually get more money if you do it that way, and there's a lot more safety because let's say you make some big financial mistakes, you go, oh dang, but well, next year you get another payment.

Next, the year after that, another payment.

Okay, that's that's option one.

Option two is you can take it all as one lump sum.

But uh you actually only get less than half of the total amount that you win if you take it all as one lump sum.

What percentage of people do you think who win the lottery take the lump sum?

Pretty much all of them.

It's over 90%.

Over 90% of people who have won the lottery, given the option of saying, hey, you can have more money for a longer period of time.

That gives you a safety net that if you make mistakes, because you know, there's probably some things you're not aware of, you've never really lived in this kind of a financial world before, um, there's just a lot more, there's a lot more breathing room, you can do it this way, and even if something happens, you can like leave that to your children.

Or you can have it right now, but it's gonna be less than half.

90% say, I'll have it now.

And then 70% are broke within two years.

It's like, I want it now.

And what we find is that having what we want right now is often more of a curse than a blessing.

Patience truly is a virtue, and the nation of Israel is about to hear from the Lord how much patience they're going to need as they begin to explore and experience the freedom that He's won for them.

We're gonna look at Exodus chapter 23, verses 20 through 33.

Exodus 23:20–33

This is God preparing his people for the journey ahead, letting them know hey, when the time comes, when it's time for you to enter this promised land, which by the way happens to be occupied by very mighty nations who don't like you and are going to oppose you, here's what you need to be prepared for.

He says, See, I am sending an angel before you to protect you on your journey and lead you safely to the place that I have prepared for you.

Pay close attention to him and obey his instructions.

Do not rebel against him, for he is my representative, and he will not forgive your rebellion.

But if you are careful to obey him, following all my instructions, then I will be an enemy to your enemies, and I will oppose those who oppose you, for my angel will go before you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, the Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites, and Jebuzites, so that you may live there, and I will destroy them completely.

You must not worship the gods of these nations or serve them in any way, or imitate their evil practices.

Instead, you must utterly destroy them and smash their sacred pillars.

You must serve only the Lord your God.

If you do, I will bless you with food and water, and I will protect you from illness.

There will be no miscarriages or infertility in your land, I will give you long, full lives.

I will send my terror ahead of you and create panic among all the people whose lands you invade.

I will make all your enemies turn and run, I will send terror ahead of you and drive out the Hittites, Canaanites, and the Hivites.

But I will not drive them out in a single year, because the land would become desolate and the wild animals would multiply and threaten you.

I will drive them out a little at a time, until your population has increased enough to take possession of the land.

And I will fix your boundaries from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, and from the eastern wilderness to the Euphrates River.

I will hand over to you the people now living in the land, and you will drive them out ahead of you.

Make no treaties with them or their gods.

They must not live in your land, or they will cause you to sin against me.

If you serve their gods, you'll be caught in the trap of idolatry.

Now, uh, if you're reading this and following along, and you're like, ooh, there's a lot of talk here about conquering and you know, fighting and invading and all that kind of stuff, that that's one of the more challenging aspects of this part of scripture is all these wars and God saying, hey, go in there and take it over and wipe them out.

And if you're like, what's that about?

Well, our very next series that starts next week, and I just realized, like, next week's Mother's Day, isn't it?

Yeah, this was well timed.

Uh so next week we start a series called So Much Blood, you know, on Mother's Day.

It's great.

Invite your mom, say, hey, mom, come to church with me.

It's gonna be great.

And this what's what is the series?

It's called So Much Blood.

That's what we're talking about next week.

Um, maybe we'll pause that.

I don't know.

I don't think.

No, let's go with it.

Let's roll with it.

We don't have time.

We gotta stay ahead of schedule.

So we're gonna spend three weeks actually exploring, hey, what's going on in this section of scripture?

And and it may not seem super practical to our day-to-day lives, but I will just say this on the front end.

Um, I think it's super important that if we're gonna have serious relationships with God, that there's nothing in scripture that trips us up.

That we're able to engage God's word in a way that doesn't lead to confusion or anything like that at all, no crises of faith.

And I think we're gonna learn some really interesting things over the course of the next few weeks.

So that's next week.

But this part, right here, God is telling the people, hey, listen, the land, it's yours.

The freedom that I've won for you, it is yours.

It's all yours.

But it's gonna take a while for you to have all of it.

It's gonna take a little bit of time for you to experience all of that, and you're gonna need to be patient.

Because I'm not gonna do it all at once.

I'm gonna do it little by little for a variety of reasons, but ultimately because you need to grow into the freedom that I've I've won for you.

You've got to grow into it so that you're ready to really possess it and have it for yourself.

You've got to grow first.

I had kind of an interesting experience with this concept in the last week.

Um, just so you know, Megan was actually supposed to be the one giving the message today, and then she had to go out of town last minute, and so she's like, hey, this was will you will you do it?

And she gave me all of her notes, and so if it goes well today, it's Megan's fault because she did all this work.

If it goes bad today, it's my fault because I messed it up.

Um But she was out of town for several days, and it's just me and the boys, and Lily, my daughter too.

But like she was at Lily, I'm not that sounded really bad.

Like I forgot about my daughter.

Lily was at dance for six hours yesterday.

She does dance and it had this big thing.

So it's mostly me and my boys.

And so I decided to take on this project.

Um, in my house, the boys live upstairs.

Okay, my wife and I, Lily, we live on the main level, and that's civilized territory.

Okay?

This is like normal human existence.

And then up there is just barbaric anarchy.

And it is, it's filthy, it's gross.

You go upstairs and you're like, what is that smell?

What is that on the floor?

What is going on?

Who has raised you people?

You know, it's like that.

And so I said, you know what?

I do this about every six months to a year.

I just, I'm like, we're starting over.

I'm gonna go through, we're cleaning out every closet, we're throwing away all kinds of stuff.

It's time to get this place organized so that you people can behave like humans, right?

So I did that over the course of it.

It took me like two and a half days.

It was way more, I bit off more than I could shoot.

But in that process, uh I opened up some bins.

I was trying to clear out some space in the attic.

This is a really boring conversation about what I did with my wow.

But uh, but I I uncovered uh boxes upon boxes upon boxes of shoes.

And see, here's the way it works.

When you have uh any of you have like multiple children?

Okay.

So when you when you have a lot of kids and you buy your oldest pair a pair of shoes, you're not really buying one pair of shoes.

You're buying three.

If you're me, because you're like, these have to last.

Like, you're gonna take care of them, and then I'm gonna hand them down to the next one, you're gonna hand them down to the next one.

That's the way it goes.

And so I've been like obsessive in a weird way.

Like, it's it's unhealthy.

There's parts of me that need to change, okay?

I've been obsessive in a weird way for years about my oldest taking care of his shoes so that they're in good condition for his little brothers.

To the point where sometimes I'll like just look, I'll just find myself looking at his shoes and just being like, hmm, these are still in pretty good shape.

And he's about to grow out of them.

These are gone now.

We're putting them in the bins.

And he's like, No, I still like those, I still wear them.

I'm like, can't risk it.

I can't risk it, you know.

We gotta put it away.

You know, you're about to grow out of them anyway, you never know.

So there you go.

So I've had these in bins, and I saw I'm organizing the rooms, and I pull out these bins, and I'm like, wow, there's way more in here than I thought.

I may have a problem.

But then I had this idea, and it was about my my middle son Judah, who I love so much.

I love Judah.

We're very close, but he's like, he's the middle, and he's as middle as you can be.

Because my oldest is the oldest, my daughter is in the middle, but she's the only girl.

Then I have my youngest, and Judah is not the only boy, he's not the oldest boy, he's not the youngest boy, he is just in the middle, and sometimes being in the middle is tough.

I'm sure many of you grew up as middle children, you know what that's like.

And so I had this idea.

I was like, hey, instead of these being in these bins, what if I cleared out this big closet that's in my oldest son's room has a huge closet.

I'm like, I'm gonna clear it out, and I'm gonna set up all the shoes.

All the shoes that he's not quite ready to grow into yet.

I'm gonna have them like all on display.

A, it saved up some space in the attic, and I got some bins, and bins are like gold, so that's good.

B, I thought this could be like a cool thing to say to him, hey, look at what's coming to you.

So I did that.

So I'm gonna show you a video, and this will show you the extent of my problem, okay?

So go ahead and play this.

So this is what I did.

Don't, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.

Stop.

Okay.

It's seven years worth of shoes.

It's not like a week.

So those are all the shoes.

I told you I had a problem.

Um, they're not my shoes.

I can't wear any of those.

They're little, those are all my sons.

So I bring Judah in.

And I'm like, Judah, check this out.

And he's like, Whoa.

I'm like, yeah, these are all yours.

He's like, what do you mean?

I'm like, those, those, that's all yours.

He's like, really?

I said, yeah.

You just can't wear any of them yet.

I was kind of backfired for a second, like, but he actually handled it really well.

Because I laid him out, I was like, these are what's next.

In about six months, these will be yours, and then these, and he just started walking up and down and being like, whoa, that's and I'm like, this is all yours, man.

It's all yours.

You just have to grow into it.

As you grow, there's more coming.

That's how it works so often with God.

That there's so many things that we don't even know are coming to us.

There's so many things that God has in store for us.

We're just not ready for it yet.

We've got to be patient.

We've just got to grow a little bit.

But patience is hard.

Growth is not always easy.

So, what do we do as we as we wait?

Because again, we're like the nation of Israel.

God's freed us, He's given us freedom.

But it's not JG Wentworth and Associates, it's not now.

Right?

It's it's over time, it's bit by bit as we are growing and maturing and ready for more.

Well, the cool thing about this scripture is it really lays out a blueprint for us of what this looks like.

So, I want to explore first the things that God says that he will do as we wait patiently.

God says that he will go before us.

He says, I'll go before you, I'll bring you into a prepared place, I'll come against your enemy, I'll send fear and panic ahead for the enemy, I'll cut off the opposition, I'll send forces to help drive out the opposition, I'll deliver the enemy into your hand, I'll set the borders, bless you, feed you, heal you, multiply you, and fill up the number of your days.

God has a lot to do.

That's a big to-do list.

But he's not the only one with something to do.

This is what he says we're supposed to do while we wait.

We're supposed to watch, listen, obey God, don't rebel against God, serve God, fight the enemy, destroy false gods, do not conform, and do not make covenants with the enemy.

So, what I want to do for the rest of our time is I want to go through each of those, each of those things that God tells the people that they should be doing as they wait for the full measure of the freedom that He's won for them.

And I want to say this on the front end, there's a bunch of them.

I do not expect you to remember all of these at all.

And I don't expect every single one of them to jump out to you and be like, that's exactly what I needed today.

But I do fully believe that for all of us, there will be one or two.

And I'm just trusting the Holy Spirit to highlight those for you so that you go, that's what I need.

That's an area of my life that needs to change and grow.

As I'm waiting patiently to experience all that God has won for me, as I'm waiting patiently to experience all the freedom that He's given me, that's the thing that I need to be focusing on right now.

So I believe that one or two of these is gonna stick out.

It's gonna be exactly what you need, but don't feel the pressure of having to remember all of them or have all of them speak to you right now.

So let's go ahead and get started with the first one.

Watch.

We're supposed to watch.

It's amazing how often Scripture tells us to watch and to pay attention to God.

Matthew chapter 11, verses 28 through 30.

Matthew 11:28–30

This is the message translation.

It says, Are you tired, worn out, burnt out on religion?

Come to me, get away with me, and you'll recover your life.

This is Jesus talking, by the way.

I'll show you how to take a real rest, walk with me, and work with me.

Watch how I do it.

Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.

I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you.

Keep company with me, and you'll learn to live freely and lightly.

Jesus says, Watch me.

Pay attention to me.

Ephesians chapter 5, verses 1 and 2 says that we're to imitate God, therefore, in everything that we do, because you're his dear children.

Ephesians 5:1

Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ.

He loved us and offered himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God.

We're supposed to imitate God.

Well, how do you imitate someone?

You watch them closely.

You pay extremely close attention to them, to the point where you even understand the little nuanced things that they do.

That's how you become good at imitating someone.

You watch them so closely.

Hebrews chapter 12 says, Therefore, since we're surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up, and let us run with endurance the race that God has set before us.

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

We do this by what?

By keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith.

We do this by watching Jesus.

Just like staring at Jesus, paying attention to God, paying attention to Jesus.

And so maybe the question for you this morning is what are you watching?

What are you paying the most attention to?

What are you focused on?

What are you fixated on?

It's so easy for us to take our eyes off Jesus and put them on other things, even things that feel really important.

Maybe it's things going on in the world right now, it's current events, it's politics, it's that kind of stuff, it's the economy, maybe it's other things happening in our world, in our orbit, in our lives, our families.

There's drama, there's challenges, there's tragedies, there's all kinds of things happening.

There's stress at work, there's important things, yes.

But what we've got to realize is that our lives are not supposed to be that, you know, we we look at all those things, and every once in a while, once a week, we look at Jesus for a few seconds and go, cool, and then we go back to looking about.

No, it's the opposite.

Like we keep our eyes on Jesus, we think about Jesus, we focus on Jesus, we pay attention to God.

We're we're like staring at him from a mental standpoint, we're thinking about him all the time, and then you know, we take our eyes off of him briefly to deal with this here and there, but then boom, we're right back.

So we're supposed to watch.

That's what God says.

Watch, pay attention to God.

And maybe a prayer that you could have today is, Lord, help me pay more attention to you, help me be more attentive to what you're doing.

You might say, What does that even mean?

What does that even look like?

Well, I'll just say this: God is always doing something, He is always working.

And if you pray and you seek, He says, You will find.

And so maybe begin to pray, Lord, help me see you, help me pay more attention to you.

Number two, we're told to listen.

Listen, Isaiah 55, verses two and three, he says, Listen to me, God speaks, and you will eat what is good.

You will enjoy the finest food.

Come to me with your ears wide open, listen, and you will find life.

Jesus in John chapter 10 says, My sheep, listen to my voice.

John 10 · chapter mention

I know them, and they follow me.

It's amazing how many people there are for us to listen to.

And this is something I talk about fairly often.

It's just something I think I'm personally passionate about because I so easily get off track here.

Like anybody like a podcast person, like you love podcasts, you have so many podcasts playing.

Like, how many of you are music people?

You're driving in the car, it is music.

All right.

Any of you like podcasts, I'm listening to someone talk for hours, right?

I've my phone is filled with podcasts, just so many of them.

And my kids in the back go, Dad, can we please listen to music?

Can we please listen?

I'm like, what, you don't enjoy listening?

No, okay, and I I turn it to music for them.

But I turn it to like 80s music, which is great to you know, mess with them.

Um I've earned it.

It's my no, just joking.

So I love podcasts.

And the the negative though is that there's almost always someone's voice playing in my mind.

Because I even if I'm doing stuff at home, I'll just put something on.

And and for years I would find myself starting to, in conversation, repeat certain things I'd heard in podcasts as if it was my own thought.

And I wasn't being disingenuous, I wasn't saying things like, you know, I've always said this.

I would just, because I listened to It's so much, I would find myself just regurgitating other people's thoughts as if they were my own, even though I hadn't really thought through them at all.

And I had a moment where that really hit me, and I was like, I gotta stop this.

Because what I realized is like I'm supposed to do that with Jesus.

Like I'm supposed to listen to Jesus so much.

I'm supposed to listen to his teachings.

He's supposed to be my teacher.

And I shouldn't settle for anyone else to be the primary voice in my mind.

But if Jesus is my teacher and I listen to him so often and so intensely that it's his thoughts, it's his words that I begin just to utter and speak because they're so entrenched in my heart.

That's what I need.

So I gotta listen to him.

I gotta listen to him.

I've got a good friend, and his main strategy for reading scripture, he reads a proverb, and he reads it at the very least, he reads other stuff, but he he always reads a portion of Jesus.

He's like, I want to spend every day just familiarizing myself more and more with what Jesus has said.

And it's amazing how often when I spend time with him, I start to focus more on Jesus too.

And so maybe for you today, it's who am I listening to?

Who's my teacher?

Who do I spend the most time listening to?

Whose words and teachings and thoughts are running through my mind the most?

Let it be Jesus.

He will not let you down.

Alright, the next one is it's super fun.

Obey.

Yeah.

Obedience.

Oh, it's like patience, everyone's favorite thing.

James 1 tells us that we're not to just listen to God's word, but we must do what it says.

Otherwise, we're just fooling ourselves.

For if you listen to the word and don't obey, it's like glancing at your face in a mirror.

You see yourself walk away and forget what you look like.

But if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don't forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it.

1 Samuel 15, Samuel says, What is more pleasing to the Lord, your burnt offerings and sacrifices, or your obedience to his voice?

Listen, obedience is better than sacrifice, and submission is better than offering the fat of rams.

You know, we are we're not right with God because we obey him.

That's religion that tells you that if you want to be right with God, you earn that by following the rules, by all that.

We talked about a little bit of that last week.

We're not right with God because we've obeyed him well enough.

He's made us right with him because of what Jesus did, but now, because of what Jesus has done, we're actually free to obey.

We're actually freed up to be able to say yes to God.

Just obedience, simple obedience to God.

Obedience is tough.

Because no one really likes being told what to do.

And maybe I'm wrong.

Maybe some of you really enjoy being told what to do.

I don't.

But God knows what he's doing.

God knows what is right, God knows what is good.

He's the one who defines right and wrong.

And when God asks us to do something, when he tells us to do something, it's important, I think, to realize.

Sometimes, you know, I have to tell my kids, I'm not asking you, I'm telling you.

Right?

I even had to do that one time with a text message to someone that was working for me where I was just really polite and I sent a text saying, you know, hey, can we meet tomorrow at this time?

And they were like, oh, that's not good for me.

And I just had to respond with, like, hey, that was just a polite way for me to say we're meeting tomorrow at this time.

You know?

And it's like, that's about as intense as my leadership style gets.

But there is a there is a God's authority is a real thing.

His authority is a real thing.

And he loves us, and he's our father, and he's our friend, but he is also like the king of the world, the creator of everything.

His authority is legitimate, and and we would be foolish not to respect that.

We would be so foolish not to have a heart and a desire to follow his will.

And so maybe maybe your patience growth just needs to be simple obedience.

Hey, what does God ask me to do?

What if I just did it?

I think sometimes we think, well, what if I'm wrong?

What if I hear wrong and I do something and it wasn't God telling me?

I would rather one day if I stood in front of God and he's like, Justin, what in the world were you thinking when you did that?

I think I'd be okay saying, God, I'm, look, in hindsight, I see where I went wrong, but for what it's worth, I thought I was doing what you told me to do.

I'd rather say that than say, yeah, I thought you were telling me to do that, but I just didn't want to.

Or I just convinced myself that it wasn't the right thing.

No, just simple obedience.

It will bless you like you cannot believe.

The next one, it says that we're supposed to avoid rebellion.

Obviously, these things go hand in hand.

The opposite of obedience would be rebellion.

I don't know if any of you have a rebellious streak in you at all.

I'm not gonna ask for a show of hands or anything like that.

But I mean, we all do.

Like we we all do.

There are so many times in my life where if I'm gonna be honest, I just decided that what I wanted was more important than what God wanted.

It's as simple as that.

There have been so many situations in life where I was in the wrong, and and if you wanted to trace it down to one fundamental thing, I just had a rebellious heart.

In that moment, I just decided what I want is more important than what God wants.

And so I'm gonna do that.

And when we're rebellious, we actually end up walking away from God.

He pursues us and we can't escape him.

He loves us.

It's not about like you ruin it or anything like that, but there are moments in life where you can say, hey God, no, I'm gonna I'm gonna do this instead, and it just doesn't go well for us.

And he loves us enough to give us the freedom to do that, and he loves us enough to bring us back to him when we do, but rebellion never serves us well, not rebellion from the Lord.

And so obey, but but also avoid rebellion.

I I heard someone once say it this way we should tell the truth or at the very least avoid telling lies.

We should obey God or at the very least avoid rebelling against him.

Let's go on.

Serve God.

Oh, this is a simple one.

Serve God.

Like we're all wired to worship.

We're gonna talk about that here in just a second.

But but service.

Like, what do you live in service to?

Who do you live in service of?

I don't know about you guys, but have you always wanted to be part of something just bigger than yourself?

Like, I just I want my life to be about something so much bigger than me.

And there's nothing bigger than God.

There's no one greater than God.

And what an amazing thing that we have the opportunity to live our lives in service of God.

Because so many people live their lives in service of something so much smaller.

We have this opportunity to serve the Lord, to live our lives in just absolute service to Him.

John chapter 12, Jesus says that the time has come for the Son of Man.

John 12 · chapter mention

That's a phrase Jesus uses to describe himself.

It's linked to a bunch of prophecies in the Old Testament.

He says, the time has come for the Son of Man to enter into his glory.

I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone.

But its death will produce many new kernels, a plentiful harvest of new lives.

Those who love their life in this world will lose it.

In other words, those who live to serve the things of this earth, that's a short-term way to live.

But those who care for those who care nothing for their life in this world, in other words, those who care so much more about God and about the life beyond this life, those will keep it for eternity.

And anyone who wants to serve me must follow me.

Because my servants must be where I am, and the Father will honor anyone who serves me.

Now keep in mind, this is Jesus who serves us.

He served us in his life, he served us in his death, and even now he serves us.

Scripture says that even now he literally like prays on our behalf.

But he says very specifically that, hey, God will honor you.

The Father will honor you when you serve Jesus.

Live your life in service to God.

And maybe that's your patience moment.

Maybe that's the thing that God's working on you with right now as you're patiently waiting for whatever God has next for you.

Maybe it's all about living your life for something bigger than yourself, living your life in service to God.

We go on.

Fight the enemy.

Any fighters in the room, I just would love to see a show of hands here.

Like anyone like, I'm pretty good at fighting.

I don't mean like martial arts.

I don't mean you have like that's fine if you have that.

Anyone here not conflicted verse and you find yourselves in fights more often than you'd like to admit at all?

Just me?

Oh man.

I know because like I don't know why, but I've always been just like ready.

I like and mouthy.

When I was a kid, I mean, I was so mouthy.

And I define kid anything before 30.

Uh I turned 40 in July, so I'm getting less mouthy, but it's like one of the panic moments in my life when someone comes here to church and they go, hey, have we played, did we play basketball together?

Did you play in such and such men's league over?

And I'm like, I did.

I'm trying to remember back to how that league went, and oftentimes not well, because I just I get, I'm like, I I don't know, something's wrong with me there.

I'm working on it.

God's, we're all growing.

You know, it's like God's God likes fighters.

He does.

It's okay to be a fighter.

You just gotta fight the right things.

Ephesians chapter 6 says, we are not fighting against flesh and blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.

Ephesians 6 · chapter mention

Now, for some of you that maybe are new to the whole Jesus thing, you're like, that sounds like a bunch of gibberish.

All I would say to you is if you've ever had so much come against you in life that it almost seems like there's some intelligent, invisible force working actively against you, trying to sabotage your life in such a perfect way, it's it's because it's true.

Like you're not crazy.

We have an enemy.

We have an enemy.

Satan, the devil, we have an enemy.

And he's real, he's good at what he does.

But his power doesn't hold a candle to God's.

But he's good at what he does.

And we're we're called to fight that, to stand firm against that.

You know, you say, okay, well, God said that he was gonna fight their battles.

So in the list we read earlier of the things God will do, it says God will fight your battles, and now he's saying fight your battles.

Well, which is it?

Does God fight our battles or do we fight our battles?

Yes.

Yes, both.

We fight, but but our struggle as people is that we often fight the wrong, the wrong things.

We fight people.

We fight each other, we fight the people in our homes.

We we tend to personify our enemy as people in this world, people who disagree with us, people who make life harder for us.

But the reality is your battle is not against flesh and blood.

Maybe your patience season right now, as you're waiting for God to help you find what's next, is to learn who your real enemy is and to start focusing your attention on fighting that enemy and not wasting your time fighting pointless battles with the people around you.

Fight the real enemy.

The last few, here we go.

Destroy false gods.

Okay, this is interesting.

This is really interesting.

1 Kings chapter 11, King Solomon, the wisest king that Israel ever had.

1 Kings 11 · chapter mention

Except, toward the end, the wisdom ran out.

It says King Solomon loved many foreign women.

Besides Pharaoh's daughter, he married women from Moab, Ammon, Edom, Sidon, and from among the Hittites.

The Lord had clearly instructed the people of Israel, you must not marry them, because they will turn your hearts to their gods.

Yet Solomon insisted on loving them anyway.

He had 700 wives of royal birth and 300 concubines.

Just even thousand.

Why not?

In fact, they did turn his heart away from the Lord.

In Solomon's old age, they turned his heart to worship other gods instead of being completely faithful to the Lord his God, as his father David had been.

Solomon worshipped Ashtareth, the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molech, the detestable god of the Ammonites.

In this way, Solomon did what was evil in the Lord's sight.

He refused to follow the Lord completely as his father David had done.

It's so interesting.

If you ever read like the book of the kings, first and second kings, it's so it's it's like there'll be this one king and it says, and he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord.

And he tore down all the false temples and he worshipped Jesus and then the next king.

It's like, and he did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord.

He worshipped all the false gods.

You're like, why do they keep doing this?

It's like this weird cycle.

And the reality is that there is this amazing uh pressure to conform to the world around us.

And the world around us worships all kinds of false gods.

It just does.

I I talked about this a few months ago.

That if you ever read the Ten Commandments, the first two, you know, have to do with idolatry.

Do not worship another God, don't make a false god.

And I always grew up reading that, being like, yeah, duh.

Like, when am I gonna do that?

You know, it's the other stuff, like, don't lie.

That's the stuff that's really practical.

Don't worship a false God.

How many of us woke up this morning going, hmm?

I wonder if there's a false God I could worship today.

I don't know.

I'll go to church.

I'll just go to church instead, right?

But I've realized that maybe the reason that those are the first two is because they're actually the ones that we have the biggest struggle with.

Idolatry is a real thing.

It's just sneaky.

And in some ways, it's actually sneakier in our world today because no one's telling us worship this statue.

The main thing that we're told to worship in our world today is ourselves.

Worship yourself, right?

Do what feels good to you.

Treat yourself, be yourself, find yourself, express yourself.

It's just like you, you, you, you, you.

And what we're supposed to do as we wait for God to give us whatever He has for us next is to come against any false gods.

Because any God that isn't God isn't God.

Does that make sense?

Any God that isn't the real God, the only God, is not God.

And if you live your life in service to something that's not God, what are you living for?

How's that little G God gonna help you in a time of trouble?

How's that little G God gonna comfort you when you need comfort?

How's that little G God gonna step into your life and solve the problems that you can't solve on your own?

It's not just God being jealous and saying, I don't like sharing attention with all these other fake things.

No, it's God knowing what's best for us.

We need Him.

We need the real God in our lives, and we can't settle for anything less.

And so it's a weird thing to think about.

Do I struggle with idolatry?

I have.

Totally been times where there were things that outranked God in my list of priorities.

And maybe as you're waiting patiently for what God has next, you need to look at yourself and examine your heart and say, is there anything that outranks the Lord?

All right, two more.

And worship team, you guys can go ahead and make your way out.

I say that so that I hurry up.

Alright, do not conform.

While we're waiting, while we're being patient, we're told not to conform.

Romans 12, 2 says, Do not copy the behavior and the customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.

Then you'll learn to know what God's will is for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

Do not conform to the pattern of this world.

Don't go along with the customs of this world.

That is really hard to do.

That is difficult.

Because the world that we live in has values very different than the values of our faith.

It's true.

And if you're new to this whole Jesus thing, I just want you to know that the values that God has are often the complete opposite of the values of the world, so much so that it's like upside down.

In fact, sometimes the kingdom that Jesus talks about, the kingdom that he's building, is referred to as the upside down kingdom.

Because it's so the opposite of what this world values and cares about and loves.

And so to follow Jesus is in many ways to go against the grain.

To follow Jesus is to be a nonconformist.

And that's hard.

There's so much pressure.

Like I said a few minutes ago, there's so much pressure to just go along with the way of the world.

To sort of relent and say, okay, I guess I'll just be okay with this.

I guess I'll support this.

I guess I'll celebrate this.

I guess I'll go along with that because it's what everybody else is doing.

But we're told, do not conform because we're supposed to be different.

We're supposed to be different.

As followers of Jesus, we're supposed to be different people.

The Bible says we're supposed to be a holy priesthood, which is a cool thing to think about.

In other words, we're supposed to be so set apart, so different, that the world looks at us and goes, that's a little odd, that's different.

There's something there.

But in order to do that, you have to be willing to be a nonconformist, to go against the grain.

Do not conform to the pattern of this world.

And finally, don't make covenants with your enemy.

Don't make covenants with the enemy.

I love the progression of these last three.

It's like tolerate false gods, conform to the pattern of this world, make covenants with your enemy.

Like those kind of go together.

To actually get to a point where you, this is like the ultimate thing that God warns against.

And it's something that it's so easy to do, to actually get to the point where you come into agreement with your enemy.

Where it's not just you going, okay, whatever, but you actually begin to agree with the enemy that we have.

Sometimes that might be agreeing with lies that have been said about you.

Someone's told you that you're not enough.

Someone's told you that you're a failure.

Someone's told you that you'll never measure up, that you've wasted whatever potential you had in life, someone's told that that's not God.

God doesn't say those things to people, not the people he loves, not his children.

But that might be the enemy.

But if you start believing those lies, you come into agreement with the enemy.

Or it might be the values of this world, whatever it is.

But if you actually tolerate idolatry and conform to the pattern of this world, eventually you actually make agreements with your enemy.

How can you fight the enemy if you're in agreement with the enemy?

That's actually something that the nation of Israel struggled with.

You'll read as the story goes on, if you read on your own time, they actually do start to make covenants with their enemies, and it goes really terribly for them because those are their enemies.

They don't wish them well, they wish them harm.

Never come into agreement with something that's against you.

Maybe as you're waiting patiently for what God has for you next, for the freedom that He's won for you, you've got to identify areas in your life where maybe you have actually come into agreement with your enemy who's against you.

That's something that God will help you sort out.

Don't do that.

Instead, be patient.

Be patient.

Like what's you guys ever wonder what's next?

Like what now?

What's next in life?

What's God have for us next?

I think about that a lot.

What's next for us as a church?

What's next for my life?

What's next for my kids?

What's what I don't know.

Half the time I'm just living like one day at a time, crazy busy, trying really hard just to make it to the next day and have my sanity.

But I know that God has something for you.

He has something next.

He's got something lined up.

What is it?

Whatever it is, it's good.

Because he's good.

He's won freedom for you.

And what we're supposed to do in the meantime is be patient because freedom is a process.

God doesn't just snap his fingers and give you everything all at once.

God doesn't just wave his hand and zap you and make you exactly the person that you're supposed to be.

No, no.

He wants you to grow.

It's a process called sanctification.

It's you becoming what you are.

You are a child of God.

You are a royal priesthood.

You are holy in the eyes of God, but he's also making you into that day by day.

You're growing so that just like my son Judah is going to be able to wear those shoes, you're going to be able to wear, you're going to be able to put on all the blessings and all the good things that God has for you.

But it's a process, it's a journey, and it takes patience.

So you just have to be patient.

Like God, by the way, God is patient.

Second Peter, it actually tells us that the whole reason that Jesus is waiting to come back is because he's so patient.

He's being patient with the world.

Revelation, we'll end with this.

Revelation 7, 9 and 10.

This is this is crazy stuff.

It's awesome.

John, the writer of Revelation, he's having this vision.

He says, I saw a vast crowd, too great to count, from every nation and tribe and people and language, standing in front of the throne and before the Lamb.

They were clothed in white robes and held palm branches in their hands.

And they were shouting with a great roar, Salvation comes from our God who sits on the throne and from the land.

So John sees this vision.

He sees all these people.

It says, Too many to count.

Too many to count.

I heard someone, I think it was actually Randy on our prayer team.

My wife told me this that he said, maybe the reason it's too many to count is because it's still being added to.

There's all these people coming to Jesus.

God is so patient, he's essentially waiting for so many more people to come to him to know him.

He's patient with the world and he's patient with us.

And we've just got to be patient like him.

And maybe right now you're going through some difficult things and life just doesn't seem like it's what it's supposed to be.

Just be patient.

Just hold on.

Because God is growing you.

You may not realize it, you may not recognize it, you may not feel like it, but he is growing you.

And you are going to grow into the person that you're meant to be.

You are going to mature and be the person that He created you to be, and you will be ready to experience the fullness of the freedom that He has for you.

Just be patient.

Watch, listen, obey.

Don't rebel.

Avoid false gods.

Don't tolerate any of that.

Don't conform to the pattern of this world.

Serve God, honor God.

Fight the real enemy, not the people around you, but the real enemy.

Be patient.

Freedom is a process, and God will get you there, no matter where you are today.

Let's pray.

Father, thank you so much for this day.

Lord, thank you so much for this amazing group of people.

Lord, we love you so much.

We're so excited to hang out together.

We're so excited to be in your presence.

At least I am, Lord.

And I just thank you for your word.

Because I can be so impatient so often.

God, it's so hard for me sometimes just to just to stop and wait for what you have next instead of trying to force it on my own, trying to force your hand, trying to go faster.

Help us be people patient enough to wait on you.

Help us be people, Lord, dedicated to doing the things that you've asked us to do as we wait for you to give us the full measure of freedom that you've offered to us.

I just pray for every person here, Lord, that they would know you, they would hear your voice, they would walk closely with you, Lord.

And if there's someone here that doesn't know you, I pray they give their life to you today.

Because we need you.

We can't do this on our own.

I pray this in your name of Jesus, amen.