Focus

Amen.

Well, some of us in the room, we are very organized people.

And you don't have to hide, you don't have to be ashamed.

Some of you love to-do lists.

You love organization.

You like things color-coded.

Some of you even care if your socks match.

I don't know if mine do right now or not.

I really don't.

I don't pay attention to that.

I'm wearing shoes.

I have pants.

I have who's gonna tell, right?

But some of you, that's a big deal.

And and it's people like you that make the world work as well as it does.

I'm not like you.

I am not a very organized person, but I'm married to someone who's very organized, and I'm thankful for it.

My wife loves organization.

In fact, a year ago, she bought this.

This is called an Erin Condren planner.

Some of you may not know it.

Wow.

Did not expect that.

Um, this is like the mother of all organizers.

It is an organizer on steroids with a giant injection of estrogen.

That is what this is.

Because it's like it's cute, it's got stickers and flowers and ribbons, and my wife believes equally in cuteness and organization.

She doesn't sacrifice one for the other.

Keep in mind, she has a smartphone.

Okay?

Those of us who are technology people, everything this does, her phone already does, and honestly, it does it better.

But she decides to carry this giant monstrosity around everywhere we go, everywhere we go.

I don't mind though, because our whole life is in this thing.

And this book, the to-do lists that this book produces in our lives are the only reason things get done.

I'm not a person that naturally makes to-do lists, but I'm glad that my wife is.

I heard a story this last week about a specific to-do list, and it caught my attention.

It's a story of a to-do list involving Warren Buffett.

If you're familiar with Warren Buffett, he's a very successful person.

Uh, one of the most successful people ever.

He was the most successful investor of the 20th century.

So he's worth about$66 billion.

He's doing fine.

He's doing well today.

And the story involves his pilot, because again, he's successful enough to have a pilot.

The story goes like this: his pilot came to him one day and wanted some advice, some help on some goals that he had, and so Warren Buffett said, Okay, I want you to go and make me a to-do list.

I want your top 25 aspirations on this list.

So the pilot went and he made the list, he brought it back to Warren Buffett.

Warren Buffett said, Okay, now what I want you to do is find the five that matter the most to you.

Of the 25, which five matter most?

And so the pilot took some time and he circled those five.

And Warren said, Okay, now you have two lists.

You have one list with five, you have one list with twenty.

I'm curious, what are you gonna do with the the 20?

And the pilot said, Well, they're not my primary focus.

The five are what I care about the most, but these others, they're still very important to me, so I'll give them some attention when I have time.

And Warren said, No, no, no, you've got it all wrong.

You've got it all wrong.

That list of 20, that is now your avoid at all cost list.

You have a to-do list and you have a do not do list.

And you're not to touch anything on that list of 20 until you've successfully completed your list of five.

See, Warren brought a gift to his pilot, the same gift that my wife brings to me through this planner and many other, many other color-coded things in our household.

It's the gift of focus.

It's the gift of focus.

We don't live in a very focused world, if you've noticed.

All you gotta do is drive and take a second to look around at the people you're driving with on the road and see how many of them are looking at the road.

It's not many.

It's scary, right?

And we're we're a society that's so distracted, we're so unfocused, that the best ideas we've come up with to tell people to look at the road when they drive are billboards, reminding people not to text and drive.

So we've decided the best way to get someone to look at the road is to not look at the road.

That's our answer.

We are not very focused people.

We have too much going on.

There's too much to do, there's too many things fighting for our attention.

But focus.

Focus is absolutely one of the most valuable things we possess.

The most successful people in the world treasure focus.

When Steve Jobs came back to Apple in 1997, he'd been away for several years, started a little company called Pixar in his spare time, you know, pretty successful.

He came back to Apple, he made this huge decision that caused a big stir.

He cut the company's products from 350 to 10.

340 products that people had worked on, that people had spent time investing in and bringing to completion.

He said no to 340 and yes to 10.

But here's the thing, it worked.

I love the visual of this.

If you just indulge me for a second, show of hands, how many of us have ever owned an Apple product?

An iPhone, an iPad, you've owned an iPod.

Okay, keep your hands up for just a second, you keep them up, sorry.

Ever.

Okay, you can put your hands down.

How many of us owned an Apple product prior to 1997?

It's very different.

Focus works.

Focus works.

We're in a series right now called Defined.

We're looking at the decisions that we make in life that define us because the truth is, it is the decisions, it's the choices we make that define our lives.

Our circumstances do not define us.

Never let yourself be fooled into believing that your circumstances define you.

Two completely different people can experience the same exact circumstance and emerge with different outlooks on life, with different attitudes.

One can be a victim, the other can be a victor.

The victors, they do not let circumstances define them, they define their circumstances.

The choices that we make, the decisions that we make every single day, they are what defines our lives.

We can have this life that's full of passion.

We can have this life that's full of life if we decide to, if we choose it.

See, the great thing is we have a model to follow.

We have a man that lived life, and even if you don't believe Jesus is God, you have to admit he lived a successful life.

When the world measures time based on when you showed up, you have lived a successful life.

We have this model in Jesus to follow, this example.

And we can see the decisions that Jesus made that defined his lives and his life, and we can say, you know what, I'm gonna follow suit.

I'm gonna follow in his example, I'm gonna walk in his footsteps, I'm going to define my life the same way Jesus defined his.

I'm gonna make the same decisions.

And Jesus was a man of intense, intense focus.

I don't know where you're at today, but I'm gonna guess that life does not feel focused very often for you, at least not on accident.

Very rarely do we wake up with this with this lightness because we have so few things to get done.

I mean, how many times do you wake up in the morning and go, oh, my to-do list is so small and my done list is massive?

Or at the end of your week, is your to-do list something that grows and grows and grows for everything you cross off, or there are five more that show up?

I mean, we are people that live our lives treading water.

It's like a juggling act, and there's way too many balls in the air, and I can't juggle at all, so it's hard.

I mean, we're going a thousand miles per hour in a thousand different directions.

Life is screaming at us from every which way, and one of the hardest things for us to do is to focus, to know what really deserves our attention.

But if we could, if we could decide, if we could decide what to give our focus to, it would change everything.

Because what gets your focus is what grows.

Jesus was a man of intense focus, and because of his because of his focus, he lived a finished life.

Before he died on the cross in John chapter 19, Jesus says this, these powerful words.

John 19 · chapter mention

He says, It is finished.

It is finished, and then he bowed his head and he released his spirit.

Right before Jesus died, he was able about his life to say, It is finished.

In other words, Jesus said, I've done it, I've done what I set out to do.

How many people in history have finished their lives being able to say, I'm finished?

I've done what I set out to do.

How many days of my life have ended with me saying, I finished it?

I'm done.

How many weeks of my life have ended with me being able to say, Yep, I I've done everything I meant to do on Monday.

I'm finished, I'm done.

It's good.

I could probably count those weeks on two hands.

What I could not count, what I couldn't even begin to count, or the number of weeks in my life where I'm I'm ending them going, I hope I can catch up next week.

Please, God, help me.

Help me figure out how to get all this stuff done.

I would settle for a finished month.

A finished month.

What if, what if you could have one year of your life, one year where on December 31st you could say finished?

You could be like, I'm, I did it.

I did exactly what I set out to do.

What if in just one area of your life, one area, finances, relationships, career goals, education, health goals, what if in one area of your life you could just say, I finished it.

I did exactly what I set out to do.

Jesus did not say that about a day of his life, he did not say that about a month or a season, he said that about the whole, the whole thing, his whole life.

He said, It's finished, I've done it.

And the only way he could have done that, the only way Jesus lived a finished life was to live a focused life.

Jesus was a man of focus.

He decided to focus his attention on what mattered most.

And that is not an easy thing to do because focusing your life requires saying something that no one likes to say.

Except for toddlers.

It's the word no.

Right?

My baby girl is 20 months old.

She is so good at saying no.

So good.

Much better than me.

I mean, how many times in my life, I'm sure you can relate, have I been stressed out of my mind because I have said yes to so many people, I have said yes to so many opportunities.

I haven't said no nearly enough, and I've overcommitted myself.

I have more to do than I have time to do it because I said yes, yes, yes, yes.

And even in times when I knew in my heart that I should say no, I don't have the time to do this.

I'm not even good at this, but I don't want to let this person down.

I don't want to miss a good opportunity, so I say, Yeah.

I should say no, but I say yes, and I'm stressed as a result.

I live unfocused as a result.

Jesus was a master.

A master at saying no.

We see it happen countless times in scripture, and Jesus said no, not just to the evil things that came along.

He said no to really, really good opportunities.

Right after he was baptized, Jesus was tempted.

Satan himself handles Jesus' temptation.

He didn't delegate that one, and so Jesus gets taken to the wilderness.

He's tempted three times.

We see the third temptation in Matthew chapter 4, verses 8 and 9.

Matthew 4:8

It says, Next the devil took him to the peak of a very high mountain, and he showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.

I will give it all to you, he said, if you will kneel down and worship me.

Now we can look at this a couple of different ways.

One way is that Jesus wasn't really tempted at all.

That this was easy for him, that he just said, No, I'm not gonna do that.

Being tempted was just a formality for Jesus, but I don't believe that's true.

Because the Bible says that Jesus lived life as one of us and he experienced everything we experience except for sin.

That means Jesus experienced real temptation.

And so, what tempted him in this?

Think about the power and the wealth that would come along with being in control of all the kingdoms of the earth.

The obvious choice is the abuses that that would bring, the indulgment that that would bring.

But I don't think that's what tempted Jesus at all.

See, I think Jesus was tempted by all the good he could have done.

No one was as compassionate as Jesus.

Several times in scripture we see Jesus heal people for one reason.

He sees them and his heart is broken.

He's moved with compassion.

You take a man like Jesus, a man who loves so powerfully, and you give him that kind of earthly power, imagine the good that he could do.

If Jesus was king of all the kingdoms of the earth, that would be a very good thing for this world.

If Jesus was president for a week, for a week, imagine what would change.

Jesus thinking about having that kind of military power.

If he's in control of all the armies, guess what ends?

War.

It's gone.

If Jesus is in control of economies, there's no more poverty, there's no more world hunger.

If Jesus has that kind of influence and power, say goodbye to social injustice of every kind.

Jesus could have done that had he had that kind of earthly power, but he said no.

Now there was a little catch with that temptation.

There was the whole bow down and worship Satan thing.

But this isn't the only time that Jesus is offered earthly power.

In fact, he was tempted with the same thing again, but but this time it doesn't come with the catch.

It doesn't come with the worship the devil catch.

It's it's something we see in John chapter 8, verses 14 and 15.

John 8:14

Jesus has just performed this big miracle.

And it says, when the people saw him do this miraculous sign, they exclaimed, Surely he is the prophet we've been expecting.

When Jesus saw that they were ready to force him to be their king, he slipped away to the hills by himself.

Again, Jesus has the opportunity to say yes to being an earthly king, to having that kind of influence and power.

But he says no.

He says no.

He's not saying no to worshiping Satan this time.

He's just saying no to the power to leave these people.

All the good that he could have done with that power, Jesus said no, and this was not a bad thing.

This was a good thing.

This is a good opportunity for Jesus to be king.

See, it's the good things that trip us up.

It's easy to recognize something that's evil and say no to what's evil.

What's challenging is when we have all these equally good options fighting for our attention.

I read this quote in a book called Wide Awake several years ago, probably eight years ago.

And it stopped me in my tracks.

It says, if you're gonna create the life of your dreams, if you're gonna discover the life that God created you to live, you have to learn how to say no to all the other options.

And the tough choices aren't between the good and evil, but between all the equally good options out there that are simply not the right paths for you.

There's something inside of us as people that believes somewhere, somehow, we can say yes to everything.

We'll figure out a way to do it all.

But we can't.

One of my favorite things that Jesus said is in Matthew chapter 5, verse 37.

Matthew 5:37

He says, Let your yes be yes and your no be no.

Implied in that statement is this we will have to say yes to certain things in life.

But we cannot say yes to everything.

There are times where we have to be people with enough focus to say no.

Living a focused life, it's all about saying no.

And sometimes we've got to say no to good things.

That's hard.

I had that happen in a big way a few years ago.

Those of you who know me know that I'm a big fan of college basketball.

A lot of you guys are football fans, right?

Football fans, are you here?

Can you make some noise or raise your hand or something?

Okay.

See, you guys think it's football season.

It's not.

It's college basketball, recruiting season.

Y'all are so distracted by these football games, you have no idea who the different colleges are recruiting for the class of 2018 right now.

You don't know, but I know.

Because I'm about college basketball, so that's what season it is for me.

I don't watch football, I don't need that distraction.

When college basketball season hits, I my priorities, guys, get a little out of whack.

It's gotten better in recent years, but there have been some moments.

In 2006, I'll give you an example.

It was our first Valentine's Day as a married couple, 2006.

Megan and I had been together for a while, but it was our first Valentine's Day while we were married, and it just so happened that my favorite team had a big game on Valentine's Day.

And not only was this a big game, but but our star player was going to break, without a doubt, he was gonna break this massive record.

This was gonna be a historic moment in my favorite team's history, Valentine's Day.

So I kind of did what a lot of husbands do.

Test the waters a little bit.

I walked up to Megan and I said, Hey, honey, just what if what if on Valentine's Day, what if we went out and I don't know, watched watch the game somewhere?

And Megan looked at me and she said, please, Justin, tell me you're joking.

And I I I mean I recovered quick.

I was like, yeah, of course I'm joking.

Oh my goodness.

I would never, honey, I love you.

Valentine's Day is a celebration of love, and I would never trade going to an expensive restaurant and spending that kind of money on one meal over a game?

Honey, I would never do that unless, of course, you wanted to.

And do you want to know?

Okay.

All right, then just making sure.

And I was a good husband.

I said no to the game, I said yes to dinner.

I just went to the bathroom eight times and checked the score.

But good man, okay?

And see, it's a humorous example, but I can't even begin to count the number of times, especially in that season of our life, when Megan would come to me and say, Hey, can we do something?

Can we do this together?

And I would say, No, I can't do that tonight.

There's a big game on.

I'm sorry, honey, I can't go over there, I can't be involved in this, I can't really pay attention to you right now because there's a game, and this game will never happen again.

It's the one time this game is going to occur.

I said yes to college basketball more than I said yes to my wife.

And this snowballed for years.

Eventually I started writing uh sports journalism articles in my spare time.

I really didn't have any spare time.

I just filled up every bit of it with sports writing.

And I got all these opportunities through these little websites here and there to write more and write more, and I said yes to every opportunity.

Sometimes I'd spend 20, 30 hours a week doing this.

I'd get home from work and I'd tell Megan, hey honey, I can't really talk tonight.

I don't have a lot of time.

I've got two articles I've got to get done by the end of the night.

There's deadlines.

There were call-in radio shows that I was supposed to be a call-in guest on, and I call into those, and one day, one day, the best opportunity that had ever come to me, that had ever come to me when it comes to my passion for sports and college basketball showed up.

I got an email and it floored me.

It was a crisis in my life.

Those of you who are sports fans would have potentially had the same response that I had because the email had a very recognizable domain name.

It was an email from ESPN.com.

And it was a recruiter.

And this email, I mean, I'm reading this and I almost couldn't believe it because this email says, Justin, I'm a recruiter for ESPN.

We've been following your stuff and we really like it.

We'd like to bring you to Bristol, Connecticut to interview you for some open positions that we have.

And so I'm just like, ESPN knows who I am.

I mean, ESPN, right?

So I have this choice I have to make.

Do I say yes to this opportunity or do I say no?

Because I know if I say yes to the interview and I go up there and they offer me a job, I'm going to say yes.

Being at ESPN, I'm theirs.

Like they could have said in the office, we want to offer you the job, it doesn't pay any money, but we'll kick you in the shins every day.

And I'd say, yes, what a great opportunity for my life.

If I got up there, I was theirs.

But but the only chance I have to say no is to say no to this interview, and that was hard.

Because I wanted to say yes.

I mean, as soon as I got this email, I was by myself in my house and I danced.

I'm not gonna lie, I did like a dance around my house.

Megan was gone.

I danced so hard that day.

I mean, I got an email from ESPN and I told Megan about it, kind of testing the waters again.

Hey, honey, funny thing.

I know it's really important to you that we we live here in Georgia where your family is, and I know you're pregnant, you're about to have our very first child, and I know that we love our church.

But I got an email from ESPN.

And they just want to see if we might be interested in, I don't know, you know, Connecticut.

It's got good schools, right?

Um what what would you think about that?

Obviously, I'm just thinking about it.

And again, it was that please, please tell me you're joking.

Please, please don't make me move to Bristol, Connecticut.

She would have done it, but we used to live out of the South, and you can't take a Southern girl from the South, it does not work, all right?

Especially a place that has snow.

We moved back for that very reason.

See, being here was really important to Megan, and it was actually important to me.

That's the thing.

You would think that church and family, ESPN, should be an easy choice, right?

But guys, it was ESPN, which is Spanish for sports or something.

I don't know what it stands for, but it's how do you say no to that?

I mean, I fought it.

What a good opportunity.

I mean, what an amazing opportunity.

It's not a bad thing, it's not evil.

In a lot of ways, it would have been a dream come true in my life.

But I said no.

I still have the email.

I don't read it every week and cry.

It's nothing like that.

I don't.

But I have the email where I emailed this guy back.

He kind of pursued me for a while and I emailed him back finally and said, Hey, thank you so much for the opportunity.

I'm flattered, but I'm going to have to say no.

I decided to say no to that.

And here's the thing: my life changed as a result.

I would not be here right now if I had said yes to that.

I know that very well.

Megan and I would not be here.

Our children would not have grown up in this church.

I had more focus in my life as a result of that no than I'd ever had before, because that was the first time I'd ever put my wife's needs above my own desires.

I'm just being honest.

It's the very first time I did that.

And here's the cool thing about saying no, especially saying no to something big like that.

Once you say no to that, it becomes really easy to say no to other things.

I mean I said no to, did I mention it was ESPN?

Okay.

I said no to that.

And all of a sudden, these other opportunities that I used to say yes to, and I'd give them a ton of my focus, a ton of my time, I'd say no to Megan, these other opportunities for these really small, random websites would come up, and I'd say, no, I'm not gonna do that.

And within six months of me saying no to ESPN, I said no to all sports writing.

I haven't written an article in over five years.

I don't even miss it because now, for the very first time in my life, my family does not have to share my attention.

I'm saying yes to time with them over my own personal hobbies.

Megan and I are closer than we've ever been as a result.

My kids don't have to share me unless the Duke North Carolina game's on, but that's different.

Okay?

It's totally different.

It only happens twice a year.

It's not a big deal, okay?

See, saying no is powerful.

Saying no gives your life focus.

But saying no is hard.

And so I'd love, as we kind of wrap up, I'd love to just give you the secret of saying no.

The secret of saying no, which is the key to focus, by the way, saying no, the secret to saying no is saying yes to something much more important.

See, I don't really look at that as the time that I said no to ESPN.

It's when I said yes to Megan.

It's when I said yes to my family, it's when I said yes to my church.

That's what that moment was in my life.

In that book that I referenced a minute ago, Wide Awake, he talked about the concept of this thing he called the big yes.

And that that statement, that phrase stuck with me for years.

The big yes.

The big yes is whatever whatever you have in your life that you are so passionate about.

That's so important to you, that you recognize is so meaningful, that you're willing to give it your everything.

That you're willing to allow all of your talent, all of your time, all of your energy converge together.

You're willing to live for your big yes.

It's something in your life that is so valuable.

You say yes to it, and you're willing to say no to anything that would take you away from that thing.

It's it's the same thing Warren Buffett called the top five.

Jesus had a big yes, by the way.

We see it in Mark chapter 10, verse 45.

Mark 10:45

He says, For even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.

See, Jesus knew what he was here to do.

He had said yes to being a servant.

So saying no to being a king was much easier for Jesus because he had already said yes to being the opposite of a king, to being a servant.

Jesus was able to say no to the people who wanted him to be their ruler because he had already said yes to being their sacrifice.

He said yes to being a servant.

He said yes to being a sacrifice.

That made it possible for him to say no to anything else that would keep him from that.

Do you realize today that that means Jesus said yes to you?

That he chose you over being a king, over being king of all the kingdoms of the earth?

Because as Jesus was contemplating that decision, he knew that saying yes to that would mean saying no to dying on the cross for you.

You were part of Jesus' big yes.

You were something that gave Jesus focus.

Your life gave focus to Jesus.

You are who he said yes to.

And he was so passionate about saying yes to you that he said no to some really good things.

I read a quote recently that said, for every yes in our lives, we have to defend it with a thousand no's.

You were the yes that Jesus defended with a thousand no's.

I mean, how powerful is that?

If we want to live a finished life, if we want to be like Jesus, if we want to have a day in our lives where we can say, yes, I've done what I meant to do, I've accomplished the purpose of my life.

We need to live focused lives.

We need a big yes.

Do you have one today?

Do you have one?

If you think about it, if you if you sat for 10 minutes, could you come up with your big yes?

Those few things in life that are so important to you that you're willing to say no to anything that takes you away from those.

Could you come up with a top five list yourself?

I encourage you to.

I did that this week.

I thought about that.

What would be my top five?

And it's cool because I only came up with four.

And that actually excites me because when you have focus, you have room.

And I don't know what the fifth thing is gonna be yet, but I'm saving it for something really good.

It's gonna be awesome, whatever it is.

My top four, there's Jesus.

I'm supposed to say that.

But I will say this, and this has proven true in my life.

When Jesus is your primary focus, everything else becomes clear.

When you have your eyes on him and you refuse to take your eyes off of him, everything else has more clarity than you've ever experienced.

Have you said yes to Jesus?

He said yes to you.

Have you said yes to him?

Have you made him the foundation of your life?

He is strong enough to be the foundation of your life.

You make him your big yes, your life is headed in the right direction.

What about your family?

Is your family part of your big yes?

If I had asked Megan five years ago, do you feel like you're part of my big yes?

She would have said no.

And she would have been right.

Does your spouse, do your children, your parents, your siblings, your friends, whatever that is, do they feel like part of your big yes?

Do you say yes to them and no to the things that would take you away from them very often?

Look, I know many of us in the room are providers.

We work.

Some of us might be single parents.

We have to work really, really hard.

We want to provide for our families financially.

I get that.

I'm in that role as well.

But guys, what good is it if we provide money for our families to have, but we don't provide them with memories of time spent with us?

Our families need more than just dollars to spend.

Our families need attention.

Our families need time.

Our families need people that are willing to say no to a phone call, no to an email, so we can listen to them, so we can live life with them.

Is your family your big yes?

Did you hang up on your boss if your wife was calling?

That's tough.

What about your calling in life?

You have a calling.

You absolutely do.

It may not be something that everyone sees as a calling.

I was at a corporate training event recently with a bunch of people that sell insurance, and we all had to give 30 seconds of time to explain what we do in life.

And a bunch of people got up and said, I sell insurance.

This one guy gets up and he says, I protect the retirement of good people.

He sold insurance too.

But he saw it very differently.

And I don't know this guy.

I have a feeling he's gonna do very well.

Because he sees his job as a calling.

That can be difficult sometimes, but you do something that's important.

Every single day you do something that affects someone else, and it is important.

Do you see it as a calling?

If you know it's not your calling, say no to that so you can say yes to your calling.

But find the meaning in what God has led you to do.

Your calling might be to be an unbelievable stay-at-home parent.

Your calling might be to be the best accountant Georgia has ever seen.

You have something that God has created you to do.

So do it.

Do it with passion.

Say yes to that.

Say no to distractions.

What about your friends?

What about what about you?

Are you part of your big yes?

I mean, do you say no to working out?

Do you say no to doing things that you would actually enjoy in life because you're so busy saying yes to all these other things, and you're the one that suffers.

You're the one that falls behind.

Are you part of your own big yes for your life?

You should be.

What are you living for?

What is your focus?

There's a question I want to encourage you to ask.

Every week, as part of this series, we're going to finish with a question.

And the question is very, very simple, but it's powerful.

What deserves my focus?

When an opportunity comes along this week, when it's asking you for a yes, stop and say, Does this deserve my focus?

And it's okay if it doesn't.

It probably deserves someone else's focus.

But it may not deserve yours.

And if you'll look at your life and just ask that simple question, does this deserve my focus?

Am I giving my focus and attention to things that do not deserve it?

That will become a filter for your life and it will keep your eyes on what your eyes need to be on.

We don't have to live treading water.

No more, no more juggling, no more doing everything we can just to get by and catch some air from time to time.

There's no reason to drown in a sea of good when we can set sail for the great things that God has for us.

It starts by saying no, which starts by saying yes.

Say yes to Jesus, say yes to your calling, say yes to your family, and say no to anything else, anything else that would take you away from what matters most.

Let's pray.

Let's pray.

Jesus, thank you so much for saying yes to us.

God, we we we don't deserve your yes, and we don't pretend to.

But you looked at us, you looked at us, and with all of our mistakes, with all of our flaws, you were able to say yes to us.

You were so passionate about that, Jesus, that you said no to some amazing, amazing things.

We are grateful for you, Jesus.

We're grateful and honored to be part of your yes.

God, give us the courage to make you part of ours.

Give us the courage this week to look at our lives, to take, to take inventory of our lives and ask ourselves the question what deserves my focus?

Help us say yes to what matters most.

And God, help us say no to the things that would take us away from what we're really passionate about.

Bless us this week.

Protect us, God, bring us back next week, ready to hear more from you.

We love you, we praise you, and we ask all this in your name.

Amen.