Choose the Winning Side | Noah Diestelkamp | Men's Weekend 2026

Watching the same kinds of movies that I did.

Uh, or maybe for some of you, if your kids grew up watching the same movies that I did, uh, if you hear the words be prepared, you might think of a lion, yeah, a scar singing to hyena.

And there's even a part in that song where he says, you know, I'm not gonna be sharing the irons, but he says, be prepared.

And the one of the hyenas goes, Yeah, be prepared! We're gonna be prepared.

For what?

And he's his response, you guys remember his response?

Anyone?

Trivia?

The death of the king!

Anyway, he's it's when he's playing to kill Mupasa.

It's not uh not biblical, but it is wonderful.

So um but I I feel like sometimes we talk about being ready, but we're like the hyena.

What?

What are we getting ready for?

And the fact is that if we don't know what we're getting ready for, then we're not gonna get ready.

And we're not gonna do a good job of getting ready.

So I I wanted to just kind of start with a quick question.

You guys give me some ideas?

You guys give me some ideas and then uh uh let there be what you guys give me some ideas and then we're gonna turn to scriptures to solidify some things for us.

But just in general, what are things in life that require us to get ready?

And what do we have to do to get ready for those things?

Just give me some examples.

Get dressed to go to work?

That was one of the first ones I had down.

You you have to get ready for work.

What does that do?

Getting dressed for one.

Is a cup of coffee?

Okay.

Less than I expected.

How many of you are retired and you're not getting ready for work at all?

Yeah, okay, there we go.

Alright, what's other things that we have to get ready for?

A test.

You have to study for it.

Okay, so there's a test, there's a specific point in time, and what does good study look like?

Spending time.

Spending time on it.

Okay.

The night before?

Yeah, that's not a good preparation for a test.

Yeah.

Okay, what are what's the other things that we have to get ready for?

Morning run or morning walk.

Okay, you have to get ready for your morning routine.

Uh I am uh I preach for a living, but my wife is a stay-at-home mother.

And we've been working with our young children on a morning routine of some sort.

Right?

It's important.

Get ready.

Okay.

Marriage.

Okay, so sometimes it's something like uh an event, a life event like marriage.

How do you prepare for marriage?

I think you have some standards that you have in mind of the person that's going to marry.

There's all kinds of pieces of that puzzle.

Yeah, financially ready for it.

Okay.

So ready to mean several different things.

I really appreciate that you brought that up.

You have to be ready as in, you have to know what you're getting into.

You also have to you want to be ready in some regards from a physical standpoint that I provide for this woman and any children that come from this.

Am I ready emotionally, spiritually, you know, maturity-wise?

Um there's, as you said, there's a lot of pieces to that puzzle.

There's all sorts of examples you can give.

Um you said you're retired.

Did you get ready for retirement?

Some yes, some no.

How would what's when uh maybe you younger guys who are still working and you're thinking about retirement, what would you need to do to get ready for retirement?

Save money.

Save money.

You're gonna retire, that money's not coming in anymore.

What else?

When it comes to retirement, that's the big one, right?

Gotta save some money.

Um, who your likes to travel?

Okay.

Anyone gone out of the country?

Okay.

Uh, for those of you that actually were involved in getting ready for that trip, some of you were just whooping along, I'm sure.

What's involved in getting ready for a big trip like that?

Passport.

Okay, you gotta get a passport.

You gotta figure out your lodging.

Shots.

What's that?

Shots.

Shots.

Depending on where you're traveling, you gotta make sure you are compliant.

Pack all your stuff.

You gotta pack all your stuff.

Yeah, you gotta have a place to stay, and what's the other thing?

Transportation.

And normally these trips, you know, don't just fall in your lap monetarily speaking.

We don't all win cruises.

See?

So you gotta save some money, right?

Alright.

Anything else off the top of your head that you have to get ready for when you think get ready.

I think we've we've hit a pretty good spread of different things.

Most of these, I want you to notice, most of the things that we've talked about, uh, they are big things like an event, uh, like marriage or a test that you're preparing for.

They are one-time events.

And to prepare for them, you're doing lots of little things.

Right?

You're you're reading and studying a little bit every day or every couple of days to get ready for the test.

There's lots of puzzle pieces involved in getting yourself ready for marriage.

When you're wanting to make that big trip that's only going to last four or five days, there are many, many days worth of preparation, of little things, figuring out all the details.

Okay.

Um another uh example that came to mind is that of a battle.

You think back to large-scale battles like World War II.

You think about the amount of planning and preparation that went into one battle, the allocation of resources, the communication lines that have to be in place for that to happen, the delegation of duties, the uh you know, moving soldiers from place to place, they have to talk tactics, they have to look at maps, all of these little pieces building up to one big thing.

Now, all of that being said, that is not the kind of readiness we're talking about this machine.

And here's why I want to make that clear.

The readiness that we're talking about really doesn't come down to, well, we've handled all of these little things really, really well.

I want to read you a verse I think summarizes the kind of readiness that we're gonna be talking about this weekend.

It's in Proverbs chapter 21.

Proverbs 21 · chapter mention

I see some of you have Bibles, so I'll give you a second to turn over there.

Aisle is already open, so I can teach you to it.

But I'm gonna let you turn over there so you can see it with your own eyes.

I ended with the illustration of a battle because the battle is coming.

In fact, the battle is already here.

But unlike the earthly battles that start with discussions of tactics, soldiers, all of the logistics.

The battle that we're talking about, there's one thing.

Ultimately, there is one thing above all else that we have to make ready for this battle.

Proverbs chapter 21, verse 30.

Proverbs 21:30

Proverbs writer says, No wisdom, no understanding, no counsel can avail against the Lord.

The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the Lord.

See that?

All the counsel, all the planning, all the wisdom, all the horses that are being gotten ready for battle doesn't matter.

What?

God's gonna win.

God's gonna win.

The outcome of this battle is already known.

So in a battle where the outcome is already known and the victor is already sure, what does it look like to get ready for that battle?

Okay, stay faithful.

Let's simplify it even further.

Choose the winning side.

Choose the winning side.

If you're gonna be ready for this battle, it has all the little things that you could do to prepare.

Won't make a difference if you chose the wrong side.

It won't help if we don't get this right, because God's victory is sure.

And so the question is, are we with God?

Are we on his side?

Because he's winning.

Now, you may think, well, that's really obvious.

No, thanks.

Thanks for that.

It is obvious.

I'll get that.

But something being obvious doesn't make it any less necessary to understand, doesn't make it any less important for us.

We sometimes sing a song victory in Jesus.

Victories in Jesus.

So being ready for battle means what?

Staying in Jesus, following Jesus.

He's going into battle.

We're going with him.

Now, I think a good question to ask is if Jesus is victorious, there's this battle that we've been talking about for the first few minutes here.

Um, what kind of victory is Jesus offering?

Life.

He offers victory over death, which is life.

He gives us life.

Victory over death.

Uh I had a passage written down from 1 Corinthians 15, familiar passage here.

When the perishable puts on the imperishable, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.

Thanks be to God who gives us the victory.

How?

Through the Lord Jesus Christ.

Okay, so Jesus is going to and has won the battle against death.

That's a victory he offers.

Is that it?

What victory does Jesus offer us?

Victory over sin.

Who said that?

Victory over sin.

Romans chapter 8, verse 1.

Romans 8:1

There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

And then if you go further into the chapter, verse 37, in all these things we are overwhelming conquerors, more than conquerors, through him who loved us.

He gives us, let me put it this way, he is victorious over sin, he is victorious over death, and he offers to share that victory with us.

Any other victory that Jesus offers, I can only, I'm sure that we could go in under this for a while.

I have one more in my mind.

Reconcile back to God.

Okay, there's a reconciliation to God, which is a good way of summarizing victory over sin and death.

Because those sin is what broke that relationship with God, and death is the consequence and separation from God.

I want to offer to you, this one's a little less uh trod ground in Scripture, but if I were to quote the words of a well-known hymn, faith is the victory.

Faith is the victory, oh glorious victory that overcomes the world.

Comes from 1 John chapter 5, where he says, This is the victory over the world, our faith.

1 John 5 · chapter mention

And who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes Jesus is the Son of God.

In John chapter 16, verse 33, Jesus reassures his disciples by saying, In me you have peace in the world, you will have tribulation, but take heart, I have overcome the world.

John 16:33

The difficulty, the strain, the struggle, the pain, the rejection that Jesus faced from the world and that his people face in the world.

Jesus says, I overcame.

And through faith, so Jesus offers us victory over sin, over death, over the world.

So the single most important thing when we think about this battle, and if we want to be ready, the single most important thing is if Jesus is the one that offers all these things, then being ready looks like this.

We're gonna choose Jesus.

So I want you to consider a couple things as we get ready for this weekend.

Tomorrow we're gonna spend a lot of time together, and we're gonna spend a lot of time in God's Word.

A couple of the topics from tomorrow.

The first one tomorrow, ready starts within.

Ricky's gonna be leading that one.

Readiness is a thing of the heart.

I'm not gonna try and spoil Ricky's lesson here.

The heart change that is required to be men who are ready.

That begins by us submitting our hearts to God, to Jesus.

That's where victory is found.

We're also gonna talk about ready to stand firm.

That's another one of Ricky's topics.

If we're gonna stand firm, what's the thing that we need?

Foundation.

Matthew chapter 7.

Matthew 7 · chapter mention

The wise man who built his house on a foundation is the one who heard the words of Jesus and did them.

Standing firm only happens if we choose the right side.

Ready for self-control.

That's gonna be my breakout session tomorrow.

Bottom line, spoiler alert, bottom line about self-control.

Our will has a new master.

We're not in.

Jesus is.

So you see, all of these topics that we're gonna be talking about this weekend about being ready, preparing ourselves.

They're all gonna have to point back to this.

Because we can try to make ourselves ready all we want.

If we haven't followed Jesus, doesn't make a lick of difference.

So if all of these things that we're talking about this weekend, they flow out of them, they come from following Jesus and submitting to his authority.

I want you to understand that this weekend is not a self-help journey.

This isn't this is not a uh this isn't uh ten ways to be better men seminar.

It's a challenge to choose.

A challenge to choose Jesus, and then go and live like you've made that choice.

It's not a lot of little things building up to one, it's one decision.

And that decision flowing into the rest of your life.

So, you want to make the most of this weekend?

I really enjoyed last year.

I want tomorrow to be a success in every sense of the word.

In order for this to be successful, we're going to have to consider the heart of the gospel message.

Because true, meaningful change and growth in our lives cannot be separated from the gospel message.

And if it is, it's pointless.

So, yeah, what what I'm saying tonight is obvious if we read our Bible for more than you know 20 minutes.

But still, it's fundamental to what we do tomorrow.

The gospel message is this Christ is king.

And in him alone do we find life and forgiveness of sins.

So, are you ready?

Are you ready for this weekend?

Don, are you ready for some football?

Although there was some of that going on earlier.

Are you ready not just for this weekend, but are you ready for the spiritual battle that's ahead?

Keep your eyes on Jesus.

Keep your heart submitted to his will.

And I believe that tomorrow will be a raving success for you.

Because you will be made stronger by spending time in God's Word and with God's people.

Keep choosing Jesus.