Choose Your Moment

Good morning.

Well, my name is Justin, and I have the uh oh hi.

Guess where our high school students are sitting?

Anyway.

No, I uh hey guys.

I was just about to say that I have the uh I have the pleasure of being able to lead our student teams like our high school team here at His Hands.

And as you could tell from the video, we have we've been blessed with a really incredible group of students at this church.

We really have.

Um God's doing some really, really great things in that group.

Actually, I was just thinking about it standing off to the side, and I was realizing that right now, uh, one of our former high school students who's graduated is doing the message for the junior high kids this morning, and uh in his kids, all the worship is is high school students.

And um a couple of the guys on the worship team this morning are former high school students, and so God's really doing some incredible things with our young people.

And the reason I'm saying that is because our high school group starts back on August 15th.

It's a week from this Wednesday.

And I guess I just wanted to take this chance just to encourage any high school student who's never been before, maybe you came once and and uh you know haven't been in a while, I I could not encourage you more other than just to say, come on August 15th, come next Wednesday, and be here, be a part of it, because uh if you do that, you know, I I can pretty much guarantee that you're gonna make friends, you're gonna get closer to God, you're gonna have a blast, and you're gonna have some amazing experiences as a part of that.

Um, you know, also I'll just say this too.

If there's anyone who you watch that, you see some of the awesome young people that we have at this church, and you're like, man, I want to be involved from a volunteer standpoint, and we're always looking for great people to pour into the young people we have here, whether it's uh whether it's his kids or junior high or high school, and so if that's ever something you're interested in, just come see me.

Uh I definitely give you any details you have about that.

Um in a few minutes I want to share an experience that our high school students had just about a month ago, but first I have a few quick announcements.

For starters, Steve is gonna be back next week, and he's got three more weeks left in his Proverbs series where he's you know going through all the all the wisdom that God's given us in that and giving us choices that we can make that will change our lives and make our lives better.

I know personally it's been one of my favorite message series that I've ever been a part of here, and just it's I don't know, it's made me look at my marriage in a different way, a lot of different parts of my life in a different way, and I can't wait to see what the last three weeks are gonna hold.

So you definitely want to be here for that.

We have a great motorcycle group at this church, and uh, as evidenced by all the motorcycles in every Sunday morning, so there you go.

Seven of them.

No, I'm just playing.

Um, we we have a lot of people that are motorcycle enthusiasts, and and if that's you or you want to be, right after we're done with hands in the pile this morning, the motorcycle group's gonna be meeting in room two, which is right in the main hallway here.

Um that's it, it's an incredible group.

And not only do they love riding motorcycles together and that stuff, they really love people.

I know they they have a great prison ministry that's a part of that group, and you would definitely enjoy being a part of it if that's something you're into.

So I definitely want to encourage you to check that out.

Um finally, this is actually, I'm really excited about this.

We are starting a brand new young adult group this September.

It's gonna be really, really good, yes.

It's gonna be for anyone that's post-high school up to age 25.

So if you're in that sort of college stage of life or a little bit after, it's it's gonna be for you.

It's gonna be every other Tuesday night, every first and third Tuesday, starting September 4th.

It's gonna be in the coffee shop.

We'll have live music, worship, discussion, and it's gonna be a group that really focuses on growing closer to God by action.

We're gonna we're gonna be involved in serving people at this church and in this community.

It's gonna be a very active group, and we're gonna have a blast.

So if if you're at that stage of life, or maybe you have a child that is, um, I say child because they, you know, they're always a child, I guess, to the parent, um, a young adult.

If you have a young adult that you know that would love to be a part of that, let them know it's Tuesday, September 4th, 7 o'clock.

That's when we're gonna be kicking it off.

So you definitely want to uh be there for that if that's for you.

All right, let's pray and just jump into what we're gonna talk about this morning.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for your love.

Um thank you so much for blessing us with with a place uh in a family that we can be a part of, where we can worship you, where we can we can hear you, where we can feel your presence.

We just want you to fill our hearts this morning.

Holy Spirit, we ask that you would be in this place, and and I just ask personally that you would just speak whatever you need to speak to everyone's hearts.

And we ask all this in your name, Jesus.

Amen.

I said a few moments ago that I wanted to share a uh a really great experience that our high school students recently had, and and just some reflections, I guess, from that.

Um I think it's it's cool for us to know as a church what's going on with the younger people here because God is doing some incredible things.

We just got back from our annual summer road trip a few uh few weeks ago.

It was a good time.

We uh we took 65, well 64, I don't want to exaggerate.

We took 64 high school students, we had a pretty big group, as you can see there, took them up to Gatlinburg, and uh, you know, we had a cabin for the guys, a cabin for the girls, we had an amazing time.

And man, when we were there, you talk about having a good time.

We got out in nature and got to experience you know some of that stuff.

We went to did some cool hikes for the students that were willing to get up early enough to do it.

You know, there were a few, four or five.

Um, we had a really good time getting out and and doing that stuff.

Worshiping Jesus, I mean, every single night.

If if you can ever be in a room that is full of 64 just young people worshiping, I mean it is it is an incredible thing.

There's so much energy.

So every night we got together, we worshiped Jesus.

It was uh it was fantastic that we have a picture of that.

There you go.

Um I want to say a big thank you to everyone who who helped send a student.

We had over 20 students that couldn't afford to go, and every single student got taken care of by you guys, every single one.

So that was huge.

The uh it's funny, last year God showed up in a way that we had never seen him do with our high schoolers, and they went on the trip an incredible group of students.

They came back so passionate about God, and it lasted the entire year.

It's not like it was one of those moments where, you know, for a few weeks they were excited.

I mean, it stayed throughout the entire school year.

And so this year we really asked that God would give every one of our students kind of a personal experience with him.

Last year there was this big group experience, and we asked God this year, we said, please show up and and just give all of them an experience with you that they know is real, that it's right to their heart.

And you know, funny thing about God is when you ask him to show up, he he likes to do that.

It's it's you know, he doesn't mind that invitation.

And so he did.

And the last night we got together, we had a night of just worship and prayer where God's spirit was so, so present.

And you could tell that that I mean every single student was just talking to him and dealing with him.

And I had so many, so many of our students come up to me and say they had never felt God's presence like that, that they were they were working on some stuff with him that they had never worked on before.

And uh and I just know that it's one of those things that's gonna stick with them for uh for a long time.

And I guess maybe the icing on the cake is that we had right about 20 of our students get baptized on the trip as well, and that's always really exciting to happen.

So every year leading up to that trip, I get really excited.

Um, and it's not, you might think it's because driving a caravan of, you know, seven or eight, fifteen passenger vans is just such an experience that you can't wait for it.

That's actually not the thing I look forward to the most.

Um the reason I look forward to that trip every year, I think this was our fourth or fifth year doing it, is because I know God's gonna show up.

And I know that he is going to give our students an experience with him, that they are gonna have a moment with him that changes them.

A defining moment with God.

That's that's the whole reason that we do what we do on that on that trip is we want them to have a moment where they they just encounter God in a way they never have before.

And I know that God's gonna be faithful to that.

So I just I get excited.

Honestly, the word would probably be giddy.

I get giddy about them having a God moment.

It's amazing when you think about our lives, how much of who we are and how we think about ourselves, about other people, the world around us, is shaped by specific moments that we have in life.

You know, we grow every day, little by little, day by day, we have experiences that grow us and mature us, but then we have these specific moments, these sort of defining moments in our lives where in one instance and it might only last 30 seconds, we are so heavily impacted that it shapes the way that we think, the way that we view ourselves, our life, even the way that we view God in a dramatic way.

I'm sure all of us can think of moments like that that we've had in our lives, and maybe it was a recent moment for you, but a lot of times it's it's moments that may have happened 20 years ago, moments that may have happened in our childhood.

And even though we might have a hard time remembering what we had for lunch yesterday, we can remember those moments with crystal clarity.

Because we relive those moments in our minds all the time.

They come back up on our memories, and so they don't they don't stay in the past, they're present.

Because we're constantly thinking about them, remembering them, reflecting on them.

Sometimes those moments are positive.

You know, maybe we get chosen for something, maybe we win something.

Maybe someone speaks into our lives, someone we love and care about, speaks into our lives and shares something with us that just I don't know, makes us light up.

That opens a place in our heart that you know we didn't even know existed before.

I always remember um with my son when he was born, that was a really cool experience, seeing him be born and all that stuff.

But it was about three or four months later, the first time I saw him smile.

And I remember that, I remember so clearly, uh it was early in the morning, my wife and I were, well, she was rocking him, and I was on the side watching.

It'd be weird if we both rocked him together, that'd be strange.

Um, you know, but she was rocking him, I was watching, and he smiled, and when he smiled, it was literally like a part of my heart turned on that had never been on before.

You know, and I can remember, I can remember that so clearly.

Those are great moments in life.

I know my wife had one of those recently with our son too.

Um, you know, sometimes someone speaks something to us, like I said a second ago, that just makes us light up, and I wish that this was me saying something to her that did that.

I've done that, I have.

Um maybe.

Maybe.

But but about two weeks ago, my wife was on the couch, and our son is two and a half, he's close to two and a half, not quite.

I'd say two and a half, but she is, you know, committed to making sure he is the exact age.

He's not growing up too fast.

So if I ever say two and a half, she's like, no, he's two and four and a half months.

Don't, don't say he's two and a half, he's not.

And he's two and four and a half months, and he sits on the couch next to Megan, and he just looks at her and he says, I love you, mama.

I like how your face look like.

Exact words, I like how your face look like.

You know?

That that for Megan is a moment I know she will never forget.

It was a defining moment, and it's one that she's gonna look on, you know, for years with a lot of great memories.

They should make greeting cards like that, by the way.

If anyone's looking for a business idea, you know, they always have these, you know, as a dad, when it's Mother's Day, your three-year-olds don't buy cards, you go find one for them, and they always have these poetic Shakespearean statements.

But no kid would say that.

We should just have cards where kids have written them, so you can give your wife a Mother's Day card that says, Happy Mother's Day, I like how your face looked like.

And it's it's genuine, it's real, you know, it's believable.

But but that was a great moment.

A great moment for my wife.

And we all have moments like that that we can think of that just bring a smile to our face.

Those are defining moments.

They're not always positive, though.

Sometimes we have moments that are intense or just really, honestly, negative moments that have shaped us.

And I know that even saying that, I know that right now when I say that, those memories of things that we would put in that category kind of flood our minds, and that can be a really heavy thing, but we're just gonna ask this morning that God lifts our spirits and that and that he does something with those.

But we all have defining moments in our lives that are not positive, they're the opposite of that.

And it's interesting how much easier it is to hold on to the negative defining moments than the positive ones.

If someone says something that encourages you, you receive it, you're thankful for it.

It's a lot easier to forget that than it is to forget something that hurts, something that causes pain, something that lets us down.

We have a we're really good at remembering those.

There are a lot of moments that I can think of in my life that would sort of fit that bill.

Um, there's one specifically that I want to share this morning, and and I I guess I need a little disclaimer with this one.

It has to do with my relationship with my dad growing up.

And uh, you know, I want to make sure that it, you know, I just say this that I love my dad very much.

All of us have experiences with our parents that may not be positive, and we have to deal with that as adults.

Um, I'm a dad.

I hope that never happens with my son.

I'm sure it will.

I'm gonna do everything I can not to.

And so this is not me bashing my dad.

I love my dad.

Um, he's not a terrible man at all.

But growing up, we had kind of a tough relationship.

And also in sharing this, I just also want to say that I know a lot of us in the room have had experiences with our parents that are much, much more severe than anything I'm gonna share.

And so this is not trying to dramatize anything, it's just an experience from my life of something that has described what I was just talking about, a negative moment that shaped me for a long time and something I've had to work through.

I say growing up, my relationship with my dad was a little uh strained, and and that mostly revolved around sports.

That's not an uncommon story with men and their sons and sports, but sports were very important in my house.

Um I'm sure when you guys look at me, when I walked on the stage, the first thing you thought was, he's an athlete.

Um I know, I know, it's I try to hide it, you know, with for humility, but when I was seven, I'm serious, you would have no.

When I was a kid, baseball and basketball were pretty much you know life, and I played baseball every summer and basketball when it was done, and and I loved it.

I loved playing sports, and my dad was really passionate about that.

Actually, some of my best memories with my dad were us doing sports stuff together.

I remember being six or seven years old, and I was I was being taught how to catch a baseball, and I was having a hard time with it.

And I remember my dad taking me to a side and saying, you know, son, just picture you're picking an apple off a tree.

I'm pretty sure I'd never been apple picking before, but the analogy made sense.

I still haven't been apple picking, so I know I hadn't.

Should do that.

But but for some reason that that and now it clicked.

It just clicked, and and the next time he threw the ball to me, I caught it.

And I just remember being so excited, and that's a great memory I have with my dad.

That's one of my favorites, actually.

I have a lot of memories involving sports of my dad that are the opposite.

Really tense moments, really frustrating moments, really sad moments, actually.

Um, you know, it was just one of those things growing up where if I played badly in a game, it didn't matter if I was seven or seventeen.

If I had a bad game, it was gonna be a bad night.

If I had a really good game, it was gonna be a good night.

But anything short of that, I just knew that the conversations afterwards were not gonna be enjoyable.

I remember one very, very specifically.

Um I was 17 years old, I was playing basketball for my school, and my coach, before practice one day, it was right before the start of my junior season of high school, he pulls me into his office and he and he tells me, he says, Justin, um I think if if you work really hard on a few a few things, on a few areas of of your game, you have a chance to play college basketball.

Not somewhere big like Duke, you know, somewhere small like Lehigh or something like that.

You know?

There's like eight people in the room that got that.

And for those of you that did, I'm a big Duke fan, and that was really hard for me, but you have to laugh at yourself sometimes.

Okay?

So there it is.

But you know, he wasn't talking about some huge school.

He said, you know, if you work really hard, a small college, I think you have a chance to play.

And and hearing those words, I remember I was on cloud nine.

I was beaming.

I mean, I was so excited.

I had I'd envisioned myself playing college basketball in my driveway when I was a kid, and by kid I mean 16, so many times.

You know, I would be hitting the game-winning shot or whatever.

But but when he said those words, I was just filled with absolute joy.

And the first thing I wanted to do was tell my dad.

And so I got in the car after practice, I drove home, still beaming.

I get home and I went right to my dad's office.

He had an office in our basement.

I can still remember this story so clearly.

Um, I go to my dad and I said, Hey dad, I gotta tell you something.

And he was working, he stopped, he said, What is it?

I said, Well, coach talked to me today, and he told me that if I really work on this and and a few other things, he thinks I've got a really good shot to play college basketball.

And my dad laughed.

He just there was no LOL yet because texting hadn't come about.

But that was, I mean, he literally just laughed out loud.

And I was, I mean, I was stunned.

Because I was so excited and I said that, and he laughed.

And and I could I could tell he knew it hurt because he sort of finished that by saying, Son, I'm I'm sorry, I just don't want you to be, I just don't want you to get your hopes up and then get really disappointed if that doesn't happen.

You know?

But he laughed, and it cut, I mean, it cut me to the core.

I was 17 years old, but I felt like I was five.

And it took every little ounce of strength that I had just not to cry, as manly as that sounds.

So, you know, he said that.

That was a moment that really shaped me.

Before that, I already had this unhealthy obsession with impressing people, especially, you know, guys in my life that were in a position of authority, whether it was a teacher or a coach.

I was, you know, it's fine to be driven to impress those people, please those people, but I was unhealthily driven to do that.

And it all really started with my dad.

I just wanted him to be impressed, and so that kind of carried over to tons of other relationships.

But after that moment, it really went on onto a whole other level.

And it was it was pastors and it was bosses.

You know, I would kind of put the expectations of on my bosses to be what my dad wasn't.

So I would want to impress them so I would hear them say what I always wanted to hear my dad say, and then and that's not healthy because bosses aren't dads, and they're not supposed to be, they're supposed to be bosses.

And I spent so much time and energy in my life trying so hard, so hard to fix that moment.

You know, to create moments in life that would replace that, but it never happens because I just rethink about that that moment so many times.

Honestly, that's probably a moment in my life that I have thought about ten times more than any other.

And I know in the grand scheme of things, that is not that is not the worst thing in the world that can happen to you.

Someone laughs at you.

It's not a huge deal.

I know in the room right now there's some of us that have been through much, much more.

I'm just sharing that because for me, that became a life-defining moment.

I've thought about that more than the day that I got married.

I've thought about that more than the day my son was born.

I have thought about that moment so many times, relived it over and over in my head.

I've interacted with it.

You know, I've thought about it and talked to my dad and responded in something I wish I would have said.

I don't know if you've ever done that before, but but I've done that so many times.

For so long I've thought that that moment defined me, that moment shaped me.

And that that's the reason that I have such a hard time worrying being worried about impressing people, you know?

And that's not really the truth.

Over the last few years, God has sort of been forcing me to deal with some stuff.

It's always a fun time when God makes you deal with issues and things like that.

Um it's kind of felt like the show Clean House, or maybe the show Hoarders, if you've ever seen that show, except except instead of you know cleaning out junk from a room in a house, it's been cleaning out junk in my life.

Um but God's been sort of making me change my perspective on some things that I've I've always believed were true in my life.

And one of those has to do with this moment and a lot of other moments like it.

For years I've believed that this moment shaped me, this moment defined me.

It's because my dad said that or laughed or whatever, that makes me how I am.

And that's not true.

The truth is that I have chosen to let that moment define me.

It doesn't have any power.

I've chosen to give it the ability to define me.

I've chosen to think about it over and over again, and when I think about it, accept it as truth.

I've allowed that moment to shape me.

And I could have chosen a thousand other moments instead.

I had a huge crush on my wife when we were in high school, and she married me.

That's a pretty good accomplishment.

And she's still married to me.

And that's a miracle.

And you know, why why wouldn't I choose that to be a moment that I would think about every day?

And let that define me.

My father-in-law is a man that I respect as much as any man I've ever met, and he's told me so many times that he's he's proud that I'm his his son in law, and I'm 95% sure he's telling the truth.

And I could have chosen those moments to be ones that I gave that that kind of influence over my spirit.

Ironically, my own.

Dad.

I mean, it's not like that was the last interaction that we had.

Since that time, he's told me hundreds of times that he's proud of me.

And I never let that sink in because every time he'd say that, I just think back to that moment and a lot of other moments like it.

I've been the one that's chosen the moments in my life that I've allowed to shape me.

And I picked the wrong moments.

That's the opportunity that we have this morning is to re choose the moments in our lives that we have allowed to shape how we think about ourselves, how we think about life, how we think about people, how we think about God.

I read a quote in a book by a guy named Andy Andrews.

It's a book called The Traveler's Gift, and there was this really simple statement in it, but it's definitely true.

It says, you can't change your life until you change your thinking.

And so much of our thinking is shaped by these moments in our lives that we think on and we've reacted to.

And maybe this morning it's time to choose some different moments.

Or ask God to give us some new ones.

Because I believe he'll do that.

And this is something that Jesus himself had to do.

When you ever see a movie of Jesus, most of the time he's this very stoic man.

You know, he just sort of walks about with no expression and just kind of makes these ethereal statements about life that are very, and then you go, you know, it's just very strange.

And he's definitely not affected by anything.

It's almost as if the people playing him were like, this is Jesus.

Okay, he has no emotions.

Nothing bothers him.

He's above that.

And that couldn't be further from the truth.

Life affected Jesus.

He laughed, he got upset, he got excited, he got frustrated.

I mean, he he was affected by life.

He just handled it really, really well all the time.

But he was affected by life.

And life gave him countless moments that he could have chosen to be his defining moments.

It definitely gave him thousands of really negative moments he could have chosen to hold on to and think about and react to.

Take, for example, the time in Luke 7, where the Pharisees accused him of being a drunk and a glutton.

He responds to him, he says, For John the Baptist didn't spend his time eating bread or drinking wine, and you say he's possessed by a demon.

The Son of Man, on the other hand, feasts and drinks, and you say he's a glutton and a drunkard, and a friend of tax collectors and other sinners.

That's a pretty major accusation.

And it's really easy from where we're at to look back on moments like this in Jesus' life and just sort of dismiss them.

These are the Pharisees, they're the villains in the story.

That's just what they do.

We see them as the enemy against Jesus.

We forget, though, that in Jesus' time, the Pharisees, they were not viewed as the enemy.

They were, for the most part, respected, feared, admired by a lot of people.

They were viewed as the experts on God.

So imagine yourself, let's say you're an artist and you have your first big art gallery opening, and the most revered and respected art critics show up to review your art.

Now, if they give you their stamp of approval, imagine how big of an impact that's gonna have on your career.

How many doors that is gonna open.

Imagine the opposite.

If they publicly trash your art, imagine how many doors that's gonna close.

You're gonna be fighting an uphill battle from that point on to be successful.

It would be hard for a moment like that not to be a defining moment that you thought about, something that made you bitter, angry, whatever.

That's not that dissimilar from what's happening here with Jesus.

If the Pharisees would have endorsed Jesus, if they would have said, listen to what this guy says, he's got it.

Jesus could have gone from town to town, they would have hyped him up, they would have given him the prime teaching times in the synagogues, but that's not what happened.

Jesus was a hunted man.

He had to teach in the wilderness just to avoid the Pharisees who were trying to kill him at every turn.

But he didn't let that define him.

He just sort of rejects their accusation and he goes about his life.

He still loves people, he's still positive, he's still Jesus.

That's definitely not the only time.

You've got the time he was accused of being demon-possessed and working hand in hand with Satan.

Matthew 12, 22 through 24, it says, Then a demon-possessed man who was blind and couldn't speak was brought to Jesus.

He healed the man so that he could both speak and see.

The crowd was amazed and asked, Could it be that Jesus is the Son of David, the Messiah?

But when the Pharisees heard about the miracle, they said, No wonder he can cast out demons.

He gets his power from Satan, the prince of demons.

If being called a drunk and a glutton was a big deal, imagine how it must have felt for Jesus to be accused of working hand in hand with Satan.

And remember for a second that none of us like Satan.

But Jesus, there has never been a man or woman, there's never been a human being more opposed to Satan, more committed to everything that is the opposite of him than Jesus.

That had to hurt.

At least a little.

It definitely had to make him angry.

But this is not a defining moment in Jesus' life.

He does not take this moment and hold on to it.

He does the same thing he always does.

He dismisses the Pharisees.

He kind of embarrasses them a little in the process, which is fun.

And he just goes on about his life.

He's unchanged.

You know, the Pharisees at every turn are giving Jesus these kind of moments, and you would think that for a for a person it would make sense that he would slowly become a little less excited, a little more bitter, that he would lose some of that passion and love he had for people, but that does not happen.

Let's look at one more.

Jesus is on the cross.

Now we've gone beyond words and accusations, and we're dealing with something physical.

I'm sure that's something that a lot of us can relate to.

Now, how could how could being arrested for nothing, being put up on a phony trial, being beaten, mocked, and killed, not be a moment that changed how Jesus saw the world and how he saw himself and how he saw people?

In a lot of ways that doesn't make sense, but that moment didn't change Jesus' view of life and people.

On the cross, Luke records Jesus saying, Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing.

On the cross, Jesus has compassion, he has forgiveness, he has mercy.

That's amazing.

Maybe Jesus chose the right moments to define him.

Maybe he chose the right moments to give him that perspective on who he was.

Maybe it was moments like when he was baptized.

In Matthew 3, God speaks to him and says, This is my dearly loved son who brings me great joy.

Could there be a better statement a father could say to a son or a parent to a child?

It's right up there with, I like how your face look like.

It's in the same, maybe a little above.

How much do you want to bet that Jesus thought about those words a lot?

When people brought accusations against him, when he was going through something hard, when people were saying, you know, God is against you, God is opposed to you.

How many times do you think Jesus in his mind went right back to that moment and said, No, God loves me.

He told me.

He said he's pleased with me.

I don't care what you think.

I would bet he did it often.

Because when he is accused of things, he has this very calm response, and it's almost like his confidence in how God sees him is undeterred.

I think moments like this had a lot to do with that.

I said a moment ago that our opportunity this morning is to re-choose the moments in our life that we have given the power and authority, whatever you want to call it, to influence us, to make major changes in how we see ourselves and how we see the world.

And so I have this very short little exercise that I want you to do with me this morning.

This is a little cheesy, I know that.

The high school students are used to me doing cheesy things, so they're ready.

They're in full form.

Okay, so here's what I want you to do.

Very simple.

I want you to think right now on a moment that is the best moment that you can think of.

I'm talking about a defining moment in your life that is amazing.

Someone said something to you that just you know lit you up inside.

Something happened in your life that just changed how you saw yourself and what you saw yourself as capable of being, or maybe it was a God moment.

Maybe God spoke to you and God did a miracle in your life, answered a prayer, and you knew it was it was directly from a father to a child.

I want you to think right now on that moment very, very carefully.

Picture every detail.

Now you notice that I didn't ask you to think on a negative moment.

That's because those are a lot easier to think of.

We don't have to focus as hard.

And I know that even as I'm saying that right now, I know this is what's happening.

That positive moment that you were just thinking about, that great moment, as soon as I say now that negative moment, boom, our mind gets invaded by that negative memory, by that thought, that moment.

So here's what you do.

When that happens, you say, stop.

You talk to yourself, and you literally say, stop.

Stop thinking about that.

And you force yourself to then think about the moment you just had in your mind.

That great, awesome, defining moment.

I know this seems a little cheesy, self-help, okay?

But it's not.

This is biblical.

Philippians 4 8 says, and now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing.

Fix your thoughts on what is true, honorable, right, and pure and lovely and admirable.

Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.

So of those two moments that you've thought about recently, the really great one and the awful one, which one do you think God wants you to focus on?

Now, it's funny, a lot of times this verse gets used in this sort of uh religious stop watching R-rated movies and don't listen to this kind of music and don't read these books.

That's what that verse gets used at more often.

Think about what's right, honorable truth.

That's actually not the context of that verse, though.

It's not in the midst of Paul writing about the things you should and shouldn't do.

You know, that verse is right in this section where he's saying, you know, be filled with joy.

When you get worried, pray.

Let God's peace come over you.

That verse is all about you personally having joy and peace.

And he says, fix your thoughts on what's good.

That's about something personal.

So which moment of those two does God want you to focus on?

It's the good one.

That's the answer.

It's the good one.

And I'm not being flippant.

I know that that's hard.

I know it's not so simple as just, okay, well, I'll just I'll let go of that horrible thing that happened and think about good things.

That's not easy.

But God will help us.

Maybe you need counseling to help with that.

You know, we have great counseling resources here.

There's people that we can refer you to here.

There's cards on the back columns and at the info desk with incredible people that will help you deal through something.

I've had some counseling to help me with that.

I'm not ashamed of that.

It's been an amazing experience.

But God Himself will help you.

He loves you.

He wants you to see yourself how he sees you.

And you are his child, who he loves and he is pleased with you.

Doesn't mean there aren't things he might want to change and work on.

We're all like that, but he loves you.

At your core, he loves who you are.

And if any moment in your life has changed that, he wants to change it back.

So maybe this morning what you need to do is ask him to give you a moment.

A moment with him where he shows you how he really feels.

If you've never had that, I know he wants you to.

Ask for it.

Go to the prayer team after we're done and ask them to pray over you, give you a blessing.

They'll do it.

And God speaks.

The worship team wants to come up and get ready to send us out.

You know, there's really no bigger defining moment that you can have in your life than the moment that you ask Jesus to become a part of it.

And if there's, if any of us in the room have never done that, you can do that right now.

You know, there's no ritual, there's no uh magic words you have to say.

It's just your heart saying, Jesus, I love you.

Help me.

I want you in my life, I want to follow you, I want to make you everything.

I want you to be an intimate part of me.

And when we do that, God's spirit becomes a part of our spirit.

Actually, our spirit comes to life for the first time.

And so if that's something that has never happened for you, that there could be no greater defining moment in your life than that.

And you can have that right now.

And for the rest of us that have had that moment, let's ask God's help this week in focusing on what's good.

On replacing and honestly re-choosing the moments in our lives that we have allowed to shape us.

Let's pray.

Jesus, thank you so much.

Thank you for being our example.

Your life wasn't easy and it could have been, but it wasn't.

So thank you that we can just look at how you lived and how you dealt with life and do our best to imitate it and know it's going to turn out well.

I pray that you strengthen all of us.

Holy Spirit, give us the strength to just trust that you love us.

And no matter what has been done to us in life, no matter what we've experienced, that may have made it harder for us to believe that, I just pray, Lord, that you would cut right to our heart this morning and you would remind us of your love.

That you would speak into us like just like you did to Jesus.

Give us moments in our life, God, that define who we are that are that are totally from you.

And we ask all that in your name, Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.