I Get an "A"

Wow.

Oh switch.

Look at that.

I get two stands.

I don't know what to do.

It's like a pulpit or something.

I'm just joking.

I get fined a dollar if I ever say that word, so I'm not gonna say that.

Um man, wasn't that awesome?

Sometimes, sometimes you have worship moments where you feel like amen needs to be replaced with heck yeah.

And that was definitely one of those.

Um I got a few announcements this morning.

Actually, I have quite a few announcements.

We have a lot going on right now.

So I'm just gonna try to go through that as fast as I can, and we'll get into what we're gonna talk about this morning.

First off, if it's your first time here, welcome.

Um, we're really excited that you're with us this morning and hope that you can tell that this is a place where we just love Jesus and we love each other.

Um you can just be yourself, be whoever you are, and engage with him uh whatever way you want to.

If you want to know more about us, we have these brochures that you can grab.

They're at the back four columns of the room.

There's also some at the info desk, and it just gives you an overview of who we are as a church, what we're about.

So feel free to pick one of those up if you want.

Uh, this upcoming Wednesday is our kickoff of Wednesday nights at his hands for February and March.

It's really exciting.

I want to highlight some of those groups again, but I also want to take a minute and go through some of the other groups that we have meeting at different times and places.

We have a lot of amazing groups of people that you can be part of here.

Uh, get closer to Jesus, you know, make some great friends in the process.

And last week Steve went through all the Wednesday night stuff.

I want to take a second and go through the other times and places.

On your way out this morning, you'll see flyers that look like this.

Very nice.

There you go.

Um, and you can grab those, it has all this information.

But but first off, we have an amazing college and young adults group that meets uh on Tuesday nights.

We start back this Tuesday at 7 p.m.

So it's gonna be that's right.

I hey what's up, guys?

Um we we last time around we met every other Tuesday night.

This year we're gonna meet every Tuesday night.

So 7 o'clock Tuesday nights.

If you're in college or or just past college, it's really for anyone post-high school, like age 25, that age range.

Just be here at 7 o'clock.

We meet in the coffee shop, we do worship, all kinds of stuff, and uh, we go out and do a lot of fun things around the community.

It's a great group.

Motorcycle group, we have an awesome group of bike is bikers, is that the term?

I never know, because I am, yes, bikers.

You ride the hogs, right?

That's yes, those things.

Yeah.

Um we do have a great group of motorcycle people, bikers, whatever you want to call it, motorcycle enthusiasts.

They meet every first Sunday, right after we're done here in room two, and they get together all the time for rides, service projects.

It's a great group, and there's some awesome people that are a part of that group.

Every time I'm around that group, I want a motorcycle, and then my wife says no.

So it's a very easy dynamic, but you should totally be a part of that.

There's information on who to email to ask how to be a part of that.

We have a singles group for singles age 30 plus.

It is not your typical singles group.

It's a bunch of great people who can relate with you.

Is that Robin Cantwell?

I'm guessing.

Yes?

It meets at Robin Cantwell's house, so it's it's a good thing she's excited about it.

Um and she's amazing.

If you know Robin, you know what I'm talking about.

She's great.

Uh, but you'll definitely get closer to God through that if that's where you're at in life.

There's a group that meets on Sunday mornings with John Romani called Walk Through the Word.

They meet at 9 o'clock in room four, right here at his hands.

So if you ever want to come early and just do a great Bible study through the New Testament, that's what they do.

Um, Bruce Nelson leads our jail and prison ministry.

And man, that's one of those groups where if you want to be part of something and help share Jesus with people that are in a really tough place in life, I guarantee you it will impact you as much as it impacts them in a lot of ways.

And Bruce has a real heart for that, and he leads that for us.

He's great.

So his email address is on there if you want to know how to be a part of that.

Talk to Bruce.

Uh, Becky and David Grizzle have been leading a group for a long time here called the Unhome Group.

And they call it that because instead of meeting at someone's home, they go out to different restaurants every single week and they just pick a restaurant, they go, they eat together, hang out.

It's a great group to be a part of.

We have a women's Bible study that meets at Betty Hayden's house.

Betty is awesome, if you know Betty.

She will pray for you.

I will just say that.

She will.

So if you go, you're gonna get prayed for.

It's gonna be great.

Um and uh, and you'll definitely do this thing.

Uh I don't know what the the entire study is, but it's about slaying some of the giants in your life.

Um I'm guessing it has to do with David, but I don't know that.

But it's gonna be great.

I know that for sure because Betty's an awesome person and we love her a ton.

Uh I said John Ramondi a few minutes ago.

John also leads a group called the Great Outdoors Group.

And that is that is a fun group.

Seven years running, they they lead his hands and number of waivers signed.

It's a great.

It's a big, it's a big achievement.

And uh if if you know, honestly, they do a lot of great stuff outdoors.

It's really for families.

You can bring kids to a lot of the things they do.

They they do fishing, they do zip lining, they'll do camping, boating, you name it.

Always something fun.

Um, today's kind of a special day for the next two groups.

It is our our Scouts Appreciation Day, or I don't know if that's the official title.

Is that what it is?

Scouts.

Do we have any scouts in here?

I see the scout uniforms.

You guys want to just stand up if you're a scout?

There you go.

There they are.

We are uh we're actually really proud to have you guys be part of this.

We have a great Boy Scout and a Cub Scout troop and a pack.

The Boy Scouts are troops, Cub Scouts are packs, but it's it's pack and troop 6410.

They meet here every week on Tuesday nights at 7 o'clock, and it's just it's a great group of kids, great group of people, all the families that are involved.

Last but not least, softball.

Yes, softball.

We have a great guys' softball team.

I think dynasty is the word I've heard thrown around a few times.

I don't know what the measuring stick for that is, but we'll just say that.

Um they play at Hobgood Park on Thursday nights.

Daniel Griesbeck, if you want to uh to get involved in that, if you're a guy and you like to swing a stick at a ball.

Softball.

That's most sports, that's what it really is, and softball is the same.

So you can just be a part of that and uh you'll definitely have a great time.

But check out our website, hishandschurch.com, for more info or grab one of these flyers and you'll know all you need to know.

And then back on Wednesday nights, this Wednesday night, like I said, 7 o'clock is when everything kicks off.

We open the doors at 6.30.

Uh, we have so many great groups.

There's groups for men, groups for women.

Uh Bill Thrasher's leading an awesome Bible study about Jesus' last week that's gonna be really exciting.

Um, Financial Peace University, if you want to get your finances in order, there's still time to sign up for that.

It is worth it.

It's Dave Ramsey's study on how to get your finances in a place where you can have peace with that.

It's just it's great.

There's an art group, all kinds of stuff.

High school also meets on Wednesday nights.

Yes.

And high school, we are finally starting back this Wednesday.

It's happening.

So, yes, it's time.

We were supposed to do it last week, and the storms happened, and it's just gotten pushed back.

But this week, high school starts back on 7 o'clock, so it'll be it'll be awesome.

All right, a few more announcements, really quick.

I'm so sorry, we have so much going on though.

Um, I said a few seconds ago to go to hishandschurch.com if you ever want to find any any information on what's going on around here.

We have a brand new website we're really excited about.

We've been working on it for a while, and definitely want to encourage you to check it out because the calendar uh features and all that kind of stuff, super up to date.

If there's ever anything going on, you can go right on the website, and if you're logged into your Facebook page, you can hit share.

It'll post a link on your Facebook page to whatever you're excited about here.

It's just got a lot of great new features, and it's always up to date.

There's something that kind of goes along with that, and that is we have a brand new uh smartphone app for the church that we just kind of kicked off.

We haven't officially announced it, which is why I'm doing this now, I guess.

Um, but it's really exciting.

It's one of those things that I'm really pumped about because it's all it's totally designed to give you any piece of information you could possibly want, you know, about the church, anything you want to know that's going on, any way that you want to interact with it, and it's totally free.

All you have to do is go on your app store to if you have your app store with either iTunes or in your iPhone, if you have an Android device that works, works with Blackberries too.

Uh it's a free app.

You just search for his hands.

You'll see a couple apps that pop up.

One's for our high school kids.

They have their own app because they're teenagers, you know, they need their own thing.

That's good.

Uh and then the app you're gonna look for just says his hands.

You'll see our logo and download that app.

We're getting some new Wi-Fi stuff installed here, so hopefully it'll work better in the building to download things.

You may need to wait till you're out of here if you have a bad connection right now.

But the app's really exciting.

You can do a lot of different things through it.

For example, if you have a prayer request, there's a little tab that says prayer on the connect page, and you can just click that and type in a prayer request.

It goes right to our prayer team instantly.

Um if you want to sign up for a team, if it's Wednesday and you're like, man, I really want to be involved in this team, you can go to volunteer and fill out just a really quick little form on your phone and you'll volunteer for any of the teams here.

It goes right to whoever you know is involved with that team.

You can listen to any message on the app right from there.

Any message that's that's been out in the last year, it's right on the app.

You can just hit play, it'll play it.

Um you can give through the app.

You know, if it's a Sunday morning even and you're like, oh, I forgot to give or something like that, you can just go to the give section and give right through the app.

It takes you right to our secured site, all totally safe.

It's really good.

Um trying to think of other things.

Groups and classes.

Every group has a little featured page, and you can post comments and you can you can ask stuff.

The other thing is when you first sign up for the app, it'll have you register.

You're not gonna get emails or or anything like that.

What that is for is for if you know you want to get push notifications.

And and I would encourage you to do that.

We're not gonna blow up your phone.

It might be something once every you know a couple of weeks.

For example, those of the people that already kind of had it to test it out, on Wednesday night, the high school group was canceled, so we sent a notification saying, you know, high school group canceled because of weather.

Any big things we have like that, you get a notification right on your phone so you know what's going on.

It's really exciting, and we just want to encourage you guys to download that whenever you get a chance and use it because we're gonna use it a ton.

It'll help you out a lot.

It'll be it'll be awesome.

What else?

This has been so many things.

Um, oh yeah, uh, just giving, I just want to say a big thank you to everyone who who gives.

We're kind of a different church.

We're a volunteer church.

There's a few of us that work here full-time, just two people that are on staff full-time, and a couple people that do some part-time stuff.

Um, but we are a volunteer church.

I I look around and I see so many people that I know that volunteer, and you guys give so much of your time and your talents, and we appreciate that a ton.

And and we also want to say thank you to people that give financially.

We need that.

That's how we we operate.

And one of the exciting things about us this year is we're giving 15% of every single dollar given to three local charities who really help people in crisis situations.

It's the Hope Center, uh, the Center, Cherokee Family Violence Center, and uh Papa's Pantry.

Really exciting charities that help people in crisis, and literally 15% of every dollar given goes right to them.

We write them a check once a month.

Uh we don't take any of that.

So if you uh if you give here, not only are you giving what God's doing here, but but it's gonna get spread out to the community and it's gonna touch a lot of people's lives, and it's a it's an important thing for us to do.

So I just want to encourage you to do that at the back four columns or on your phones or computer, really anywhere, I guess.

If you leave it on the ground, someone will find it.

Um it'll be good.

But uh, but as always, we want that to be out of out of your relationship with God.

We're not pushing that and and never, you know, always feel free to give and free not to, really.

Um, but it's important that we do, I think it's good.

Okay, let's pray and then we'll we'll move on and get started with what we're gonna talk about.

I'm really excited about it.

Uh Jesus, thank you so much this morning.

Thank you for letting us worship you.

You created everything.

And you could have had the trees worship you, you could have had the rocks worship you, you could have had anything worship you, but you you created us and gave us the privilege to be the ones that get to sing your praises and to just be in your presence and bask in your glory, and we love that.

I just pray that you would speak to our hearts this morning.

Um, just God help me share what I need to share and nothing more, nothing less.

And I just pray all this in your name.

Amen.

You probably noticed when you sat down this morning that there are some cards and pens on your uh on your seats, and we're gonna get started with a little exercise using those.

So if you want to grab one of those near you, grab a pen, grab a card.

If you want to, you don't have to, but I think you'll get a lot out of it if you do.

I'm pretty terrible at giving instructions, I would be the worst flight attendant in airline history, so I'm gonna try to make this really simple.

What I'd like you to do is to hold the card horizontally and draw a vertical line right down the middle to divide that card into two sections.

Just two sections.

Okay.

Once you've done that, I'll give you a second, in the top left corner, so this would be like a title for the left side section, I just want you to write the name Jesus.

You're gonna label the top left section Jesus.

We'll get to the right section in a little bit.

What I want you to do, I want you to have Jesus labeled there so you know that the left side belongs to Jesus.

I want you to think about Jesus' life.

Whatever you know of his life.

Whether it's a lot or a little, just when you think of Jesus and you think of life, I want you to give Jesus a letter grade for life.

The typical school A through F scale, and I want you to be honest.

Don't write, okay, we're in church, so we all have to write A.

Um, just write really whatever you feel.

If you're grading Jesus on life, what letter grade would you give him?

So write that down in that left space, fill up the whole side with that.

That's all that's gonna go in that side, whatever letter grade you give.

And I'm just gonna go out on a limb and guess that there are at least five A's written down in the room.

Maybe more, margin of error, I'm not sure what it is, but I'm guessing there are a lot of A's written down, and that makes sense.

One of the things that always amazes me about Jesus is that really, for the most part, everyone's cool with Jesus.

Even people that do not consider themselves Christians, don't believe that Jesus is God's son, you know, don't have faith or whatever you want to call it, are okay with Jesus.

Even people that belong to other religions love Jesus.

Other religions include Jesus.

I mean, Jesus, I'm just saying that when people have a problem with, you know, connecting with God or church, it's usually not because they have a problem with Jesus.

I think that's something pretty amazing about him.

You'll find that people that are even, you know, diehard atheists and and super skeptical about God's stuff still look at Jesus' life and say, yeah, it was it was it was great.

When I was in college, I read this book by a guy named John Stuart Mill.

And John Stuart Mill was an early 1800s, kind of mid-1800s political theorist, and he wrote a lot of influential things, uh, really had a big impact on he was British, which is important, I think.

Um, you know, it's kind of like kind of like a Piers Morgan of I'm just joking, of that time.

But I don't remember any of the stuff he said because I read the book in college because I had to.

Um I didn't commit it to long-term memory.

The reason I remember his name now is because a few years after I read that book, I stumbled upon across a quote that he made about Jesus.

And I remember from the class that I took, I remember that he was he was not a person of faith, he wasn't a Christian, he wasn't even someone that believed in God, so I was kind of like, okay, this is gonna be something, you know, kind of negative about Jesus.

But that's not what happened at all.

Um what John Stuart Mill said about Jesus that was pretty cool, he said that Jesus was an ideal representative and guide for humanity.

An ideal representative and guide for humanity.

In other words, Jesus got an A for life, according to John Stuart Mill, even though he didn't believe in Jesus.

You'll see that all throughout history, people that would not fit into the box of what we might consider a Christian or not, still have incredible things to say about Jesus.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, for example, said that Jesus is the most perfect of all men that have yet appeared.

It's a pretty big praise.

In other words, Jesus gets an A.

We don't need to belabor the point very much because I'm just guessing that most of us, we think about Jesus' life and we go, okay, uh changed the entire course of history, uh, loved people, didn't have any money, didn't do anything for personal profit, helped people, healed people, taught people that God loves them.

I mean, all that stuff.

We say, okay, okay, Jesus gets an A.

I get it.

Let's move on to the right side of the card.

I don't want you to write anything on this side of the card yet.

We're gonna do that later.

What I want you to do right now is just write the word me in the top right corner.

M-E.

Sorry that why I think you need to know how to spell me.

I really apologize for that.

Like I said, I'm I'm really bad at these kind of directions, but stick with me.

Um, I don't want you to write anything else right now.

We're gonna come back to that later.

What I want you to do right now is visualize another letter in that space, and that would be the letter you would give yourself for life.

Now I'm not doing this to make you feel bad.

Okay?

The Falcons almost made the Super Bowl.

We feel bad enough today.

Okay, we don't need anything else.

I'm just gonna go out on another limb and suggest that I'm guessing a lot of us are having a hard time putting an A in that spot.

Especially when we look at Jesus' A.

Had we done it in reverse, give yourself a grade for life, I bet there would be more A's.

We're like, yeah, I'm doing good.

I love people, I love God.

But when we're looking at Jesus and we see the letter A, and then say, oh, let me give myself a grade, we look at that and we go, I can't, I can't put an A now.

You know?

I might not even be able to put a B because when Jesus is the standard, we look at that and we say, okay, well, uh, C, D, F, I don't know.

What's below F?

What can you can you needs improvement?

Whatever.

It's been a long time since I was in school.

Incomplete.

Maybe we could just put a big incomplete for that, right?

We've got some time left.

This is good.

But it's hard to give ourselves an A, especially when we're comparing ourselves to Jesus.

Again, don't write anything in that in that column yet.

We'll come back to that later.

One of the most impacting moments of my life happened uh in a moment that I got an A in something.

One of the probably I put it in the top three moments of my life so far that impacted me the most deeply came from me getting an A for something.

And I and I want to give a little context before I share that story because it was one of those things that happened to me and it just floored me.

Uh emotionally, whatever you want to say, you know, I cried, very masculine tears.

Um and but but this was one of the few moments that I literally, I mean, I was just kind of a wreck, but in a good way.

And before I tell the story, like I said, I want to give some context.

Um, I always get nervous when I share stories from my childhood that maybe have something to do with my parents, and it's not a good thing.

It's it's a negative thing.

And I get nervous about that for a few reasons.

Number one, I love my parents, and I think they were really good parents in a lot of ways.

I really do.

I love them very much.

I could talk about the positives from my life growing up with them for a long time.

They did a lot of great stuff.

Um I also want to honor my mother and father.

I never want to complain about them, and I know that in the room there are a lot of us that have experienced much worse things via our parents than I've ever experienced through mine.

So it's not about complaining about my parents or my childhood or blaming anything on them, but I think it's an important thing for us to be able to look at our past and look at our experiences and say these things influenced how I'm wired.

These experiences had an impact on how I think and how I think about myself and about God.

And it's okay to look at those and say, that wasn't good.

I need to replace that with something.

And that's something that God's been helping me do the last few years and in my walk with Him and looking back at my life and some of those relationships.

Um, you know, like I said, I had really good parents.

One of the things that that was hard growing up is that my parents were big on pushing us to achieve a lot.

I'm a very performance-oriented person.

I have a I have an unhealthy need to do well at things in order to hear someone say, great job.

And that happened because I grew up in an extremely performance-oriented home.

You know, it doing well was not something that we were encouraged to do or hope to do, it was expected.

You know, for example, in high school, I was expected to be the valedictorian of my class.

That was not a hope that my my mom had for me, that was an expectation.

And if I didn't live up to that, that was a disappointment.

It was an expectation.

I I was going to be top of my class no matter what.

With with sports, it was it was probably the worst with sports.

And and mostly with my dad, a little bit with my mom, but mostly with my dad.

Um I played basketball in high school and I had I had some success with basketball.

I had a good run, or whatever you'd want to say.

Um but it was a really tough experience because of that performance orientation with my parents, because of those, though, the the because of the pushing.

And I want to share a few of those experiences to uh to kind of give some context to what God did that really, really helped me out.

I played for North Cobb Christian, which is a smaller school here in the area.

I won't tell you guys when, I'll let you guess.

It'll be fun.

Um and we were a pretty good team.

My junior and senior season, we were 46 and 5 or something like that.

We were a very good team.

And I started at point guard in those years, and I worked really hard, I played really hard.

In my junior season, uh, for example, I was really blessed and I got named to the all subregion team, which was kind of like the equivalent of being second team all conference, so to speak.

And I remember being really excited about that.

Um my dad, when I got that award, first thing, the first thing he did was remind me that it wasn't like I was playing for a 4A big school.

That was his first reaction.

You know, I was like, Well, son, you're not you know, you're not playing for a big school, so let's just not get you know caught up in ourselves.

And I was like, it was an award, you know?

Come on.

And that was kind of par for the course with my dad in sports.

It was like that in everything.

I remember my junior season started really well.

We had a big tournament.

We came in second in that tournament, but the team we got beat by was really good.

And I was named to the all-tournament team.

I had a really good, good tournament.

And then after that tournament, I had four or five games where I just played kind of iffy.

And I remember coming home after the fourth or fifth game, really discouraged, really dejected.

I was worried that I was gonna lose my starting spot because that was my identity.

You know, I was a starting point guard.

If I was the backup point guard, well, no one would like me, obviously, so I had to be the starter.

And and I went to my dad and I told him, I said, Dad, I just I'm really worried that I'm gonna lose my starting spot.

And my dad's response was, if I was your coach, I wouldn't start you.

That's what he said.

And I know his his heart was to motivate me, uh, but it but it wasn't good because I already had a coach, and he he was plenty hard on me, so it was fine.

I was hard on myself.

I've I've always been one of those people that was my biggest critic.

Uh, you know, and that's actually not true.

In high school, my dad was my biggest critic.

I can say that and be honest about it, and and and not say that to to you know say anything about my dad, it's just true, and it was just like that all the time.

Senior season was our best season.

We were ranked number one in state for most of that entire season.

And that was probably the worst year that I can remember when it came to sports.

Just a lot of bad experiences that year.

That year I was actually named to the all-region team.

So that was like being first team all conference.

And what that meant was that all the coaches in our region would get together and they would vote for the 10 best players in the region.

Your coach was not allowed to vote for you.

So I got named to that team.

That meant that the other coaches in our conference saw me as one of the 10 best players.

In other words, they gave me an A.

And that was really exciting.

That whole season, my dad did this thing where he gave me a letter grade after every single game.

And I think I only got three A's the whole year.

And again, we had a really good year.

I think I was, you know, second or third on the team in scoring.

I led the team in assist.

I was all region, but yet in my dad's eyes, I think I averaged a B minus or a C.

And it was, it was just, it was really, really brutal.

It was hard.

I craved hearing him say, you know, you get an A.

And it just didn't happen that often.

Because my dad was very hard to please.

A few turnovers, a few missed free throws instantly dropped you from Nate to a B.

I remember my senior season, our homecoming game, we had the house packed.

And it was a huge turnout, and we just stomped the other team.

And it was like the perfect homecoming game.

Everyone was cheering.

And I actually led our team in scoring that game.

And halfway through the game, I was playing really well.

I looked up to my dad because I always knew where he was sitting, and he was giving me this really stern look.

And he yelled something at me that he was displeased with something.

He was always displeased with something, so whatever.

And I remember being so upset in that moment because I was playing really well.

It was homecoming night, and we're beating this team, and yet my dad, he's not happy.

And it broke my heart.

And it was just stuff like that over and over again.

Our state tournament, we we lost in the second round.

We were ranked number one in state.

We were supposed to win it going away, and we lost in the second round to a team that we had no business losing to.

And we we played terrible as a team, but I played terrible as a player.

I was 0 for 11 that game.

It was bad.

And when I got home, what my parents told me was that it was my fault we lost the game.

You know?

I'm not saying that for pity or anything.

I'm just using these experiences to set up what God did because it was great.

And it got so bad that year that my coach ended up talking to me about two-thirds into the year.

And what he told me was that he was really excited by how I was playing, and he thought that if he sent some footage to some smaller colleges, nothing big, Mike Sheshewski was not coming to our games to watch basketball.

Um, but showed small schools.

He said, Hey Justin, I think you're good enough that if we send some footage to some schools, I think there'll be some coaches interested in you playing for them.

Do you want me to do that?

Some small colleges.

And I told him no.

And I told him no, and when I said to him, he kind of looked at me surprised because he knew how hard I had worked.

And I said, No, coach, I'm I'm good.

I really just want to focus on my grades and school and all that.

I know basketball is not a career, the NBA is not recruiting too many five, nine white guys that can't jump very high.

It's just not what's happening.

So, you know, I'll just stop where stop while I'm ahead.

And that was a lie, though.

That's not why I said no.

I said no because I was so tired of dealing with my parents, especially my dad in sports.

It was just such a constant negative.

The last thing I could could deal with and even wanted to think of was four more years of playing basketball and having them on the sidelines.

I just couldn't handle it.

It was such a discouraging thing.

So, fast forward to about three years ago, I've been out of high school for how long?

I hadn't thought much about, I mean, I guess that is a lie.

I've thought about those moments a lot, but at the time I wasn't thinking about it a ton.

And there was this group of people here that were doing this kind of conference thing here at the church, and it was all about God's love for us as our dad.

And we're in this room and we're praying, and I heard God speak to me more clearly than I've probably heard him speak, except for maybe one or two times my entire life.

I don't know if you guys have ever had this experience.

It wasn't like I heard an audible voice from God, but there was a thought that came into my head out of nowhere, and I knew it was not from me.

And it was one of those thoughts that just stopped me in my tracks, brought me to tears, and I knew God had spoken to me.

And and what God said to me was very simple.

It was clear as day.

He said, You get an A.

That's what he said.

And it brought me to tears.

Thank you.

You know, it brought me, it brought me to tears, and it floored me because there was this sense that I had when he said it.

It was like, it was this deep thing communicating to my spirit, and I knew a few things about it.

Number one, I knew it was not conditional, because it wasn't you get an A because.

In fact, at that time of my life, I was really struggling in a lot of areas.

I knew I didn't deserve that A.

I had an addiction that I was not uh not doing well with, and so I knew that in my life with God, I never felt proud of myself.

I never felt like I was I was doing well, and especially back then I had some rough stuff I was dealing with and I wasn't doing well with it, so you get an A, I I knew it wasn't conditional because I definitely didn't earn it.

And I I knew it was it was a permanent A.

It wasn't you get an A when you get an A so long as you do this, or you get an A.

But I mean it was just this very solid, permanent, you get an A, period.

And like I said, it floored me.

Because this was this was God, my father, replacing what I desperately wanted for my my earthly father.

And God is our father.

And what he said to me was, you get an A.

It was hard for me to process that because we we don't we don't think about God and our relationship with him the way he thinks about our relationship with him most of the time.

We live in a performance-oriented world, and I'm sure I'm not alone in terms of having experiences that made me all about you have to achieve, you have to do, if you want someone to be happy with you, you want God to be happy with you, do, do, do.

That's what we we learn.

And that's the way our world works.

If you want to get ahead at work, you have to work hard, you have to perform.

Tonight at the Super Bowl, they're probably gonna give the MVP to the guy that performs the best.

It's just a shot in the dark, I'm just guessing.

But, you know, whoever scores the most touchdowns usually gets the MVP.

It's about performance.

That's the world we live in, but we forget sometimes that God's world is different than our own.

The way things work with God are very different than the way things work in the world that we live in.

And you see that all the time in Jesus' life.

He says things that do not fit with the way our world works.

Jesus said, if you want to be first, be last.

Find a successful corporation that has that as their mission statement.

Our goal is to be last.

No, you don't find that.

Our goal is to crush the competition.

That's what makes you successful, right?

No, what Jesus said, if you want to be first, be last.

Jesus said, if someone steals your coat, say, hey, here's my shirt.

No, that doesn't work in our world.

And Jesus gave us pictures of how God operates, and it was so the opposite of how this world works, and that's why even today, even after 2,000 years of thinking about it, we read things that Jesus says and we kind of go, huh, that's interesting.

That just doesn't process.

Because God's different than us.

And his relationship with us is not performance-oriented.

Grace is one of the basics.

It's one of the basics of our of our faith, one of the basics of our relationship with God.

But it's easy to forget the basics.

It's easy to lose sight of the basics when we're trying to live life.

And not to keep jumping on sports, but you see that in sports all the time, right?

A team loses, and rarely does the coach point to some nuance of a game, is why they lost.

Usually it's the basics.

We didn't play defense hard enough.

We didn't out hustle the other team.

It's the basics.

Tonight in the Super Bowl, the team that executes the basics the most will probably win.

But the basics are easy to forget, they're easy to lose sight of.

And one of the most basic things about our relationship with God is that it's not on us, it's on Jesus.

It's grace.

Grace literally means getting what we don't deserve.

Ephesians 2, 8 and 9 says, God saved you by his grace when you believed.

And you can't take credit for this.

It is a gift from God.

Salvation is not a reward for good things we have done.

That's performance orientation.

So none of us can boast about it.

I spent most of my life with my relationship with God, taking the lessons I've learned from this world, from my parents, from jobs, whatever, and applying them to God, trying to perform to make God happy.

And then that's so easy for us to do.

Because again, that's the world that we see.

And honestly, it's not just the world that we live in, religion doesn't help.

Religion's the worst culprit of all because religion is all about what you do in order to make God happy.

And when we all experience religion, and I'm sure all of us have from some angle or another, all that happens is the laws that Jesus came to fulfill and do away with, so we could have a grace-based relationship with God, they just get replaced with new laws.

And new rules.

And we we can all think about our church experiences or things we see and think of some of those laws and rules.

Some of them have probably affected us deeply personally at some point in time.

But what religion does is it tries to make our relationship with God performance-oriented again, and all that does is make it so that Jesus' death on the cross really didn't accomplish that much.

We still have to perform for him to love us.

It's just new things we have to do.

He doesn't care as much about our beards as he used to, but you know, there's new stuff.

But it's it's the same.

It's just do.

Do this, don't do that, do this, don't do that.

I don't have this scripture, I didn't think to put it up there, but but there's a scripture, I want to say it's in Jeremiah, it might be in Isaiah.

I can't remember off the top of my head, but it's Jesus talking about, it's God talking about the new covenant that He's gonna create with us one day, before it ever happened.

And there's not one part in that whole covenant that says that we do anything.

It's God constantly saying, I will do this, and I will forgive them, and I will create this.

It's God doing it.

And it's done.

The last words Jesus said on the cross were, it is finished.

It's done.

Our relationship with God is not about what we do, it's about what Jesus did.

But it's so hard for us to forget that.

And the great example of it is how hard was it for you to picture an A next to Jesus' grade.

Why is that?

Because we look at ourselves and we think, performance.

I haven't earned that A.

I haven't earned it.

Let's take a look at how grace works.

And this will help us uh fill in that letter on that side of the card.

Um, kind of start there.

I got a few verses to share.

They're really exciting.

Romans 5 20 says, God's law was given so that all people could see how sinful they were.

I love that because it lets us know that God never intended for us to have to perform in the first place.

The law was just there so we would realize we need Jesus.

We can't do this.

But as people sin more and more, God's wonderful grace became more abundant.

This is one of my favorite verses in the Bible because it's pretty mind-blowing when you think about it.

Religion tends to think that the answer to more sin is more law.

You know, if people are doing things wrong, we need new rules to keep them from doing those things.

So the more sin you have in the world, the more rules you need to have in order to stop that from happening.

That was not God's solution.

It says that as people sin more and more, God's wonderful grace became more abundant.

So God's solution to more sin is more grace, not more rules.

And this is important because what religion and what the world kind of tries to convince us is that in order for us to please God, you know, we need to live by more and more discipline laws, more discipline rules.

And usually the mentality is this: if we focus too much on grace, we're gonna get lazy.

And it's gonna be an invitation for us to sin more.

If we really get a hold of God's grace, the worry is that we're just gonna go and we're gonna be like, yeah, now I can sin.

And that's so silly.

I try to think of an analogy at work with a boss.

If you had a if you had a boss that hired you, let's say you apply for a job, and this boss looks at you and looks at your resume and says, Hey, thank you so much for turning this in, but you're not qualified for this job.

However, I love you.

Okay?

And I'm going to hire you, and I'm never going to fire you.

There's nothing you can do that's ever going to make me fire you.

This job is yours, it's yours for life.

All right, let's be honest.

How many of us would be like, yes, I'm totally not coming into work tomorrow?

You know?

There's no way.

That's what religion fears, but our hearts are wired so that when we experience that kind of love from God or from someone, we are filled with a desire to respond to that.

And if you ever had that happen, you would work harder for that person than you have ever worked in your life.

And you do it out of love.

God's solution to sin is grace.

And that's what He's done for us.

He said, Hey, you're not qualified.

You didn't earn this, but I've given it to you.

You can never lose it, and I love you.

That's what grace is.

Romans 5 has some other cool things to say about grace, and it's kind of complicated, but it's cool.

Romans 5, 12 through 19.

I'm just gonna read this and we're gonna think about it for a second.

It says, When Adam sinned, sin entered the world.

One of the great things about this, it's only the first verse, is that what it's saying is, sin is not all your fault.

You were born with it.

How many of you had to teach your children how to lie growing up?

The first time we ever saw our son lie, he was probably about one and a half.

He was playing outside.

If I've ever told the story before, I'm sorry, but I do that sometimes.

But he was playing outside, and we have this sliding glass door that we had tinted because the sun comes right through it.

So we can see outside great, but if you're outside looking at it, it's it's like looking in a mirror.

He was outside playing, and we have we have this shovel that we use to clean up after our dog.

No, no, no more details needed.

And it's outside, and he knows he's not supposed to touch that shovel.

He knows that because it's it's icky, it's yucky, whatever.

And yet, because we're humans, actually, Paul said in the Bible, he said that because of the law, we have a desire for sin.

The law actually makes us desire sin more.

And that's how it is with kids, right?

The one thing you say don't touch, he never cared about that shovel until we said don't touch it.

Now all of a sudden I have to touch the shovel.

So he's outside playing, and he doesn't know that we can see him, and he is playing with the shovel.

He's a year and a half, a year and a half old.

And we we said out the door was barely cracked.

We were like, Liam.

And we see him, he stands up, there's panic in his eyes.

And it was one of the funniest things I've ever seen because his first reaction was just throw the shovel on the ground.

And then he walked off, and then you see in his face, he's like, that won't work.

So he goes and he picks the shovel up and he goes and he puts it right back where it goes, and he puts this lid on this thing we have outside, and he and right as he does that, we open the door and he's like, Hi mama, hi daddy.

And I looked at him in the eyes and I said, Liam, did you play with that shovel?

And he's like, no.

I know a few things about that situation.

I know he's one and a half.

I know I've never seen a Sesame Street episode that taught him how to lie, and I know I never sat down with him and said, Hey, Liam, if you're ever in trouble, here's what you do.

Just make something up.

Just, you know, that doesn't happen.

We are born with the ability to lie.

No one teaches your, you never teach your child how to lose their temper.

You know, we have to teach them, no, tell the truth.

Control your anger.

We're born with sin, and that's what it says.

When Adam sinned, sin entered the world.

So great news.

God does not hold you personally accountable for all of it.

He understands.

You're born with it.

Adam's sin brought death, so death spread for everyone, for everyone's sin.

Yes, people sinned even before God's law was given, but it was not counted as sin because there was not any law to break.

Still, everyone died from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even those who did not disobey an explicit commandment of God as Adam did.

Now Adam is a symbol, a representation of Christ who is yet to come.

But there's a great difference between Adam's sin and God's gracious gift.

For the sin of this one man Adam brought death to many.

But even greater is God's wonderful grace and his gift of forgiveness to many through this other man, Jesus Christ.

And the result of God's gracious gift is very different from the result of that one man's sin.

For Adam's sin led to condemnation.

But God's free gift leads to our being made right with God, even though we're guilty of many sins.

For the sin of this one man Adam caused death to rule over many.

But even greater is God's wonderful grace and his gift of righteousness.

For all who receive it will live in triumph over sin and death through this one man, Jesus Christ.

Yes, Adam's one sin brings condemnation for everyone.

But Christ's one act of righteousness brings a right relationship with God and new life for everyone.

Because one person disobeyed God, many became sinners, but because one other person obeyed God, many will be made righteous.

Okay?

Is that not amazing?

And it's so it's so cool because what it says is we're born with sin, but because Adam sinned.

Okay, well, what happens when we believe in Jesus?

We call that being born again.

And this time we're not born with sin.

This time we're born with righteousness.

What it literally tells us is not, I love this because it's such a cool example of grace and an explanation of it.

It's not that God takes Jesus' score, and I think God gave Jesus an A, and then he looks at ours and averages the two together.

Even if that is the way grace worked, that would be a pretty sweet deal.

Because no matter what happens, you're gonna get a passing grade.

That is not the way grace works.

That's not what this says.

It says that God literally transfers Jesus' perfection onto us.

Jesus' grade becomes our grade.

Galatians 3, 26 and 27 says, For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus, all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes.

So when God looks at you, what does he see?

He sees Jesus.

And Jesus gets an A.

Guess what?

So do you.

We get an A.

We all do.

In fact, right now, go ahead and grab that card, and even if you don't believe it in you, if it doesn't make sense to you, feel guilty doing it, just if lightning strikes, I'm wrong.

But I don't think it will.

Just write an A.

Write an A next to that and make it big.

You know, make it bold.

Write a big A on your card next to Jesus' A.

That's your score.

Now, why does God do this?

Is it because we ask him to?

Is it because we've earned it?

Is it because he knows we desire to?

No.

There is an amazingly simple reason why God does this for us.

And we find it in Ephesians 1.

Ephesians 1, 3 through 5 says, All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms.

Because we are united with Christ.

Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.

That's so cool.

Even before he created the earth, he thought of us and chose us.

God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus.

So God decided before he created the earth that he was going to bring us into a relationship with him through Jesus, through Jesus, his life and death on the cross.

He knew it.

And this is so cool.

Why?

This is what he wanted to do.

And he took great pleasure in planning this.

So the reason that you get an A, the reason that Jesus came and died, it's very, very deep yet simple, I guess.

I don't know, is because God wanted to.

Because he loves you.

That's what he wants.

So you don't have to look at that A with guilt and go, I know I really didn't deserve it, but whatever.

No, you look at it and say, this is what God wants.

He wanted you to have that.

He wanted you to have that freedom.

This isn't just feel-good stuff.

This is essential for us to actually live the life that God created us to live.

God has created you to do some great things, to live a great life that shows other people who He is.

Anyone who's ever been worried about losing their job or felt like they were on thin ice at work will tell you it is much harder to do well when you feel insecure about your standing somewhere than it is when you're totally secure.

When you have security, when you know that, hey, there's someone behind me, I have the freedom to make some mistakes, you can accomplish so much more because you can go for it.

You don't have to worry about every little mistake.

When we're not thinking of God's grace, we're not living in God's grace, all we're trying to do is not mess up.

But when we have his grace and we're living in that daily, when we remind ourselves, I get an A, I get an A, God gives me an A, you can make mistakes.

You've already gotten the grade.

You can go for things, you can you can you can go for the life that you feel like God's called you, and you can go for it aggressively.

The worship team wants to come up, you guys can go ahead and make your way back.

I think a lot back to high school, and I wonder what it would have been like if my dad had come to me before a game even started and said, Hey son, I just want you to know that before the game even begins, you get an A.

No matter what happens on the court, you get an A.

Would I have played better?

And the answer is yes.

And I know that because there were games my dad couldn't be there because of work, and I usually played better when he wasn't there.

And the reason was there was no pressure.

There was no tension, there was no fear of messing up and having to look up in the stands and see him cringe.

There was none of that.

And it freed me up to play better.

So God's grace is not just a relief to us that it makes us feel like, yes, I don't have to.

It's the key for us having the freedom to actually live the life he's called us to live because we have security in him.

What I want you to do with these cards this week is really simple.

I want you to put it somewhere that you will see it often.

I know it's not fancy, I know it's pretty basic.

Some of you might have amazing handwriting, and it probably is beautiful.

I wasn't trying to say that, but mine would not be.

So I want you to put it somewhere you'll see it on your refrigerator, you know, next to your computer, up at your office, on the dashboard of your car, somewhere you're gonna see it all the time.

I know this is kind of cheesy, but but stick with me because here's what's gonna happen this week.

Satan is going to lie to you, and he's gonna remind you of things, mistakes that you make, whatever, and he's gonna try to convince you that you don't get an A, that God is disappointed with you.

I talked about feeling like you're on thin ice at work.

I'm guessing that some of us have felt like we're on thin ice with God.

You're not.

Because of grace, because of what he wanted to do.

You get an A.

And when that happens this week, and you get that discouragement, you get that lie in your life, I want you to look at that and just go, no, I get an A.

I have done that so many times in the last three years, ever since God gave me that moment.

I have had times where I have been absolutely feeling like a failure to God.

Tons of times.

As a husband, as a father, as a as a worker, whatever it is.

And I've sat there and been like, man, I'm oh God, I'm so sorry.

I'm so sorry.

And then he has reminded me, no, you get an A.

And you know what my response is at that point?

Thank you.

And I'm lifted up and I'm encouraged, and I'm like, okay, I can do this.

You you've given me an A.

He's reminded me of that so many times, and that's not for me, that's for everyone.

You get an A from God, just like Jesus.

That is a beautiful thing.

So remind yourself of that often this week and live the life he's called you to live with freedom and security.

Because that's what he wants for his kids.

Let's pray together.

Jesus, thank you, thank you, thank you for giving us an A.

You took the test for us.

That'd be the example, I guess.

And it's not cheating because God knew about it, and it's good.

And I just thank you so much.

We all thank you that it's not on us, it's on you.

That we don't have to stand before you one day, God, and try to justify our lives based on what we've done.

But we can just point to Jesus and say, I'm with him, and you're gonna be proud of that.

Thank you, Jesus.

Remind us of that often this morning, God, because we live in a world that is designed to make us forget that you are not about performance, you are about grace.

So remind us often, keep us filled up, keep us encouraged, help us live the life you've called us to live, and help us experience the blessings you want us to.

We ask all this name in all this in your name, Jesus.

Amen.

All right.

Have some fun.

We're gonna do one more song together, but before I want to make a quick announcement for