Unshakable – The Writing’s on the Wall

This podcast is presented to you by Pastor Jason and Liz Burns in Access Church in Lakeland and Bartow, Florida.

For more information, visit Access.tv.

But for today, I have the privilege of wrapping up our series unshakable.

For the last two weeks, we've been asking this question: how do I stand up in a culture that demands that I bow down?

How can I have the faith and the courage to stand when culture around me shifts and when it can change in a moment?

If you miss week one, we've we started by looking at the life of a guy named Daniel.

And Daniel gave us this beautiful picture of how to live our life.

It's what Jesus modeled, living a life full of grace and truth.

We said, how does it look for these believers, for all of us, thousands of us, to make this decision that we're gonna be the people who show the grace of God and model the truth of what Jesus stood for?

So we're gonna talk about that.

Week two, we talked about there is a battle going on for our worship.

Whether or not you realize it doesn't change the fact that it's happening.

So what does it look like to make sure we appropriate our worship to where it was created to go?

Today, I've got a challenging message to wrap this series up.

To get us started, if you if you know me at all, you know this about me.

I am a lifelong die hard Dallas Cowboys fan.

I have loved, there are three of us.

I have loved the Cowboys for a long time.

That's my team, ride or die.

I have said for years I want them to be the pallbearers at my funeral so they can let me down one last time.

I mean, I love them so much.

I do.

And and when I was a teenager, they won three Super Bowls.

And since I was a teenager for like 30 something years, we have been garbage.

We have been so bad.

So if you're like new to church and you're like, I don't know if I can trust this guy, I have been faithful to a garbage football team for 30 years.

Imagine how much more faithful I'm gonna be to my God, my church, and my family, okay?

Are you with me?

Okay, but but some like 15, 16 years ago, the Cowboys had one of those miraculous good seasons, and I was so pumped about it.

And this was the early days of Access, and when Access started, we met on Monday nights as a college Bible study, and then we moved to Sunday nights.

And I loved that season of our church.

The only part I didn't like was that it was during football season, and so the Cowboys, by some miraculous grace of God, had made the playoffs, and I was so excited, but the game was happening during our church service.

So I made this decision.

I turned my phone off.

I didn't want anyone to text me.

I said on stage that night, if any of you tell me I will personally make sure you never come back to this church ever again, I get a restraining order on you.

I turned my radio off on the way home, and I got to my house, and I was so excited to watch the Cowboys get back to their days of glory from the 1990s.

I was like, I won't have to watch it on a VHS anymore, I'll see it in real life.

And so I get to my house, and my wife is there, and two of my best friends are there, and they were gonna watch the game with me.

But when I walked in, they had this look on their face.

And I can't describe it to you other than it looked like an intervention.

And I was like, What is happening?

I don't do drugs, I don't drink, I don't, what is this about?

And they looked so sad, like someone had kicked their puppy or stomped on their turtle.

I was like, What is what is going on?

And they're like, Listen, we we just love you so much that we feel like you should hear this from us and not not have your heart broken.

The cowboys lose tonight.

And I was like, why would you get out of my house?

What are you talking?

What do you what do you mean the cowboys lose tonight?

They're like, Yeah, I just we wanted you to know so you don't get your hopes up and get crushed.

And I was like, fine, whatever.

So I was like, well, it's the last game of the season for me.

I might as well watch it anyways, and the game starts, and I start watching it.

Eventually, my friends leave, and it's just me in my living room, sad watching the game, and the cowboys are losing in the second quarter, in the third quarter, but in the fourth quarter, I don't know what happened.

But all of a sudden we started getting hot.

And I say we, like I'm on the team, but we, the cowboys, start getting hot, and we start coming back, and I literally have this thought we're gonna win this game.

Like, like they were messing with me.

This was all an attempt to prank me.

It's like, where's the camera crew?

I'm getting pumped.

Like, what is this?

Turns out uh they were right, the cowboys lost the game, but I got my hopes all up for no reason.

I had a warning, I had someone tell me what was gonna happen, and I still chose to ignore it.

And the funny thing is, we can be that way about everything.

We can be that way of the things of God.

God can speak to us, challenges, change us, we can hear a sermon, we can read the word of God, we can be challenged by a loved one, and we can have warnings from God, and if we don't pay attention, we just set ourselves up for disaster.

If you can understand that, you understand where we're going today.

Daniel chapter 5.

Daniel 5 · chapter mention

We we met Daniel in Daniel chapter 1.

Daniel 1 · chapter mention

He was about 18 years old, his whole country was overtaken by the Babylonians.

Now, some 60-something years have passed.

Daniel's around 80 years old, and this is what it says.

Daniel chapter 5, verse 1.

Daniel 5:1

It says, King Belshazzar.

Now, this is the second king that Daniel lives under, and it's kind of an interesting history thing.

He's not the son, technically, of the first king, King Nebuchadnezzar, but but I don't know why, but like he's gonna refer to Nebuchadnezzar as his father, but that's not his true father.

I think it's talking about the lineage.

Like he was the king, and now I am the second king.

So King Belshazzar gave a great banquet for a thousand of his nobles and drank wine with them.

When Belshazzar was drinking his wine, he gave orders to bring in the gold and silver goblets that his predecessor, Nebuchadnezzar, had taken from the temple in Jerusalem, so that the king and his nobles and his wives and his concubines might drink from them.

Let's just pause here for just a moment.

Anytime you read in the Bible, when it implicitly says that people are drinking wine or alcohol, there is this undercurrent of an understanding that they were there for the moment.

YOLO, right now, right here, the only thing that matters is not tomorrow or next week or what I'm gonna do next year, I'm living for right here, right now in this moment.

And here's what I need you to understand.

This king, King Belshazzar, he knew that his predecessor, King Nebuchadnezzar, had, when they had overtaken the people of Judah, they'd not only just ransacked their place, but they they took all the artifacts, all the beautiful sacred pieces of furniture, all the beautiful sacred cups and goblets and plates and all those things from the temple, and they had brought them and stored them.

So he's throwing a party, flexing for all of his 1,000 friends who come, and he tells his people, Go get those things that we stole out of the temple in Judah.

So it goes on and says, So they brought in the gold goblets that have been taken from the temple and temple of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his nobles, his wives' concubines, drank from them.

And as they drank the wine, they praised the gods, lowercase g, the false gods of Babylon, the gods of gold and silver, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone.

And I want you to see this next word, because it's interesting.

This story is going one direction.

There's a king who's flexing how strong he is, and then God is going to do something.

And I love the language of the Bible because Daniel drops an adverb that changes the whole direction of the story.

And I want you to understand he's going to do, God is going to do whatever he can to get the king's attention, but he does the same thing with you and me.

It says, suddenly.

Like without warning, all gas, snow breaks, suddenly, God is going to do something to get the attention of King Belshazzar.

And I just want you to know that it might seem like your life is going a certain way or a certain direction.

You might be living for here and now for this moment, but God will do anything he wants to get your attention.

I had a professor in college who said, God will do whatever he jolly well pleases to do because he's God and we are not.

So suddenly, he goes on, the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall.

Can you imagine this?

Like, it's not a hand, it's just some fingers that look like human fingers begin to write, and it gives us this detail in the plaster of the wall.

Like when you go home today, try to write with your finger in your drywall.

And drywall is softer than plaster, but if your finger goes through the drywall, see a contractor, I've got a good one for you.

But like a finger shows up, some fingers, and it begins to write.

Now, can you imagine you're at this party?

You're like, what am I?

What am I am I seeing things?

What am I drinking?

And these these fingers they begin to write in the plaster of the wall near the lampstand in the royal palace.

The king watched the hand as it wrote, and his face turned pale.

And he was so frightened that his legs became weak and his knees were knocking.

In verse one, we meet a king that feels so powerful.

He's the most notable, strongest person in the room, arguably the strongest person in the known world.

And just five verses later, it says about him that he's pale and her his knees are knocking with each other.

It says, the king summoned the enchanters, the astrologers, and the diviners.

Then he said to these wise men of Babylon, whoever reads this writing and tells me what it means will be clothed in purple, the color of royalty, and have a gold chain placed around his neck, flavor, flavor, and he will be made the third highest ruler in the kingdom.

This is the very first episode of Shark Tank, everybody, because the king is like, I'm looking for anyone who can tell me what that finger writing in the wall means, and if they do it, I'm gonna give them 33 and the third percent equity in my kingdom.

Now here's the thing.

I always read the Bible and I wish there were video cameras in the room.

I wish there were pictures or anything to show us what happened.

Can you imagine being in the room and you're drinking and you're living for the moment, and everyone sees the same thing?

All of a sudden, fingers appear like a human hand and they begin to write in the wall.

Now we don't have pictures of it, but in the 1600s, the artist Rembrandt painted a picture.

It's called Belshazzar's Feast, and here he kind of shows us his interpretation of what that moment might have looked like to the king and to everyone else in the room.

Here's the thing: we we don't know a lot and there's no pictures to see, but here's what we understand.

The letters that were written in the wall were written in the language called Aramaic.

The Bible is predominantly written in Greek and Hebrew.

There's a little bit of Aramaic, but Aramaic was kind of the language of the people of this time.

So this hand starts writing and it's written in Aramaic, but nobody can understand it.

So scholars have some theories as to why.

One is Aramaic is considered a consonantal language.

That means there's not vowels really.

So if the words are all kind of pushed together, maybe it was just confusing.

Maybe they just had a little too much to drink.

In in Rembrandt's painting, he has the letters going from top to bottom instead of left to right or right to left.

Maybe that was it.

We don't know.

Can I give you my theory?

My theory is the reason he couldn't understand it is because the things of God can only ever be understood or interpreted by the people of God.

And none of his people get it.

None of his people understand what's happening.

So he's like, I'm so upset over this that if anybody can tell me what that says, I'll give them a third of my kingdom.

And the queen speaks up.

She goes, Hey, uh, there was a guy named Daniel.

He he worked under your predecessor, King Nebuchadnezzar.

He he seemed to be able to interpret dreams.

So if he verses down, it says this.

So Daniel was brought before the king, and the king said to him, Are you Daniel one of the exiles my father the king brought from Judah?

He said, I have heard that the spirit of the gods, again, lowercase g is in you, and that you have insight, intelligence, and outstanding wisdom.

The wise men and enchanters were brought before me to read this writing and tell me what it means, but they could not explain it.

Now, now I have heard that you are able to give interpretations and to solve difficult problems.

If you can read this writing and tell me what it means, you'll be clothed in purple and have a gold chain placed around your neck, and you will be made third highest ruler in the kingdom.

Over the next couple of verses, Daniel's like, you don't have to give me any of that.

But Daniel understands something that I think you and I are gonna have to understand.

He knew the God who was writing in the wall.

He knew that God would give him the interpretation for what was inscribed in the wall.

But in order to say this to the king, it was gonna require an unimaginable, extraordinary amount of courage to step into this moment and to tell the king what God was saying.

Why?

Because Daniel knew that this king is the most powerful man in the known world.

With one snap of his fingers, he and his family and friends could all be put to death.

He has to have this moment where he decides, will I step into a moment with holy confidence, with a sense of holy courage, or will I wither and fade into the backdrop of obscurity?

Daniel has this moment of courage where he steps in.

A few verses later it says this.

He says to the king, instead, you have set yourself up against the Lord of heaven.

Remember, every time the king talks about gods, it's lowercase g, and he says, Listen, you don't realize it, but you have poised yourself, you versus the Lord, the God of heaven.

You had the goblets from his temple brought to you, you and your nobles, your wives, and your concubines drank wine from them.

You praise the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone, which cannot see or hear or understand.

Listen, he says, but you did not honor the God who holds in his hand your life and all of your ways.

He's saying to the king, This is the difference between you and your predecessor, King Nebuchadnezzar.

Nebuchadnezzar lived for himself.

He wanted the worship to be on him, but there was a moment, we talked about it last week, where he threw Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into a fire.

God shows up and saves them miraculously.

And the king is so moved that he literally turns his heart towards the things of God.

Humility changed him.

He said, I my way wasn't working, so God, I trust you.

This king, Belshazzar, he has a moment, a warning sign, an opportunity to turn from his ways, and instead of turning from his ways, he doubles down and watch what happens.

Then the story of Daniel goes on to tell us what those words were.

It says, This is the inscription that was written.

Meanie, meeny, techo, parson.

Now, I want to just try to help us understand.

These are three unique Aramaic words.

It's interesting.

We don't know exactly why he said the first one twice.

Some people think it was like poetry, because in Hebraic poetry, words would be poised in a way to help bring emphasis to them.

So maybe this is an important series of words.

Maybe it was to build a certain cadence to them.

What's interesting is these words at their simplest level could be translated into forms of money or currency like coins in descending value.

So it might be like quarter, quarter, dime, nickel, something like that.

But here's the here's these words.

He reads them out loud, and then he says, This, this is what these words mean.

The first one, meanie, means this: God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end.

Try to imagine for just a moment the courage it would take to step into a moment in front of the most powerful man in the world and to say to them, Hey, listen, you have not been living for God, and you've not been living with humility, so your days are numbered, which means God is going to humble you.

You either choose the path of humility or God will bring humiliation.

What are you gonna do?

And I want you to understand each of these prophetic warnings were written for the king, but I believe here we are some several thousand years later, and they're prophetic warnings from God to us.

The first one is this remember, your days are numbered.

You need to remember, don't forget that your days are numbered.

Can I show you one of the most difficult verses in the Bible?

The author of Hebrews writes this in Hebrews chapter 9.

Hebrews 9 · chapter mention

People are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment.

Anybody else just encouraged by that verse, so excited about it?

But here's what it means: it means all of us live this life, but there is a day when we will breathe our last breath on this side of eternity.

I think this is the reason that funerals can be so beautiful, but they can also be so challenging for us.

Because all of us, we get busy with our life and our friends, and our job and our school and our work and our kids and all the stuff that we get busy with, and we start to live here and now in this moment, and we never stop to think, man, this life has an expiration date to it.

I've had uh the privilege of speaking on large stages across the country, some of the largest churches around the world.

And one of the things I love is I love getting to travel and speak, but can I tell you one of the most beautiful opportunities I ever had to preach in front of people?

Several years ago, I had the distinct honor to share at the funeral of my grandfather.

And um, I don't know if anybody else had this, but we called him Papa.

It's kind of a southern thing, and I love Papa.

My man lived to be 95 years old.

That's a long, amazing life.

And I love this man, and so sharing at his funeral was this beautiful, incredible opportunity.

And I remember standing there thinking, like, why aren't there more people here?

I mean, this man lived a big life, an extraordinary life that impacted lots of people, and then it hit me.

He just outlived all of them.

He lived a 95-year-old, amazing, incredible life.

So I preach his funeral and it goes really well.

And afterwards, Papa's older sister, this lady named Olita, comes up to me and she goes, Jason, whew, that was amazing.

Someday will you do my funeral?

I was like, let's not schedule it.

Like, what are you talking about?

She goes, Oh, honey, don't worry about that.

I'm not dying anytime soon.

I'm gonna live till I'm 108 years old or I get ugly, whichever happens first.

That's what I'm gonna do.

It's like, what a woman to talk like that, right?

You ever uh you ever been around a person who's lived for God and they've lived a long life?

Like they're at the end of their life and there's way more days behind them than there are before them.

Yeah, you ever been around someone like that?

It's so interesting hearing them talk about heaven.

It's not this far-off someday maybe kind of thing.

It is this present hope and reality with which they they live.

Especially if they've had loved ones that have gone on to be with Jesus before.

They talk about heaven with a sense of certainty.

Like this, this, I know that this life is maybe coming to an end, but I can't wait to be with Jesus.

I can't wait to be reunited with my spouse.

I can't wait for heaven.

One of the observations I have as a pastor is over the last 50 years or 100 years, the kind of songs that we sing in church, it's kind of changed.

It's kind of just morphed over time.

We sing songs that are beautiful and true and honest and godly.

We sing about the goodness of God and the faithfulness of God and the love of God.

And all those things are wonderful and true.

But 50 years ago and a hundred years ago, do you know what a lot of the songs that we sang in churches were about?

Heaven.

Songs like when we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing it will be, when we all see Jesus will sing and shout, Victory.

Why?

Because heaven and understanding that this life isn't all that there is, it changes your perspective.

In fact, I would say it like this you can't hurt a person who has the hope of heaven.

When a person has hope that this life isn't all that there is, but there is something greater coming where I will spend my eternity in the tangible, real presence of the living God.

All of the things on this earth that hurt us, offend us, and break our heart, it all seems to pale in comparison to that.

So you got to start living, understanding your days and my days are numbered.

One last thought on this.

You ever notice that when you have a lot of something, you don't you don't really care, you don't, you kind of take it for granted.

But when you have a very limited supply, you really care.

We we noticed this in my family years ago.

We started realizing, like, oh my goodness, we're running out of summers where my whole family's together before our oldest son Joey goes off to college.

When you start to realize that, you start living a little differently and thinking and spending your money differently.

I just wonder, how would we live differently if we realize that this life, it's not all there is to this life, and you and I have a limited number of days, so we better live a little bit of a different kind of way.

Meanie, meanie.

No, the second word is this word techo.

And techo means you have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.

Here's the warning from God to us: don't allow your life to get out of balance.

I can tell you the reality for you, and it's true for me as well.

We all have 24 hours every single day, and that's all there is.

If you obey more, give more, serve more, you don't get more time.

That's not how it works.

It's an the common condition of the human narrative is we all get 24 hours every single day.

And like you, there's been many nights I've gone to bed wishing I had three or four more hours to get some more work done, or to spend some more time with my kids, or to have more fun, or just to do more stuff that I want to do.

But all of us have the same limitations on our time.

The question is not, will you have time?

The question is what will you do with your time?

Study was done recently that said the average American lives till about 77.4 years old on average.

Now that's that's them, not you.

You're gonna live to like 120.

You're gonna be good, okay?

But let me show you how the average American spends their time.

The average American spends their time eating out 14,411 times, including 1,811 trips to McDonald's.

Come on.

Bada bop bop bop, diabetes, right?

Like the average American spends 13 years and four months watching TV.

The average American spends five years waiting in line, and if you have Disney annual passes, it's like triple that, okay?

The average American spends one year looking for misplaced items, and this must be women, because men it's like 12 years looking, like, where's the ketchup?

It's right there, okay?

Uh the average American attends 35 weddings, the average American drives 627,000 miles, which is about twenty.

Five times around the circumference of the globe, all of us have a certain amount of time and we spend it doing certain things.

Now let me say this: none of those things are good, bad, right, or wrong.

They're just how we spend our time.

I want to ask you a question.

If you were to audit your time, what would your time say about you?

Because if every minute you spend is about you and your life and your joy and your pleasure, if it's all about making you more money or you having more fun, you've missed out on the beauty and the purpose of this life.

You see, the challenge for many of us, especially as you get a little older, is you start to realize I've got a limited time, so I need to maximize my time.

I need to go on more vacations, I need to earn more money, I need to do more things.

Look what Solomon, the wisest man to ever live, said.

And this is at the end of his life when he's examining the scope of his life.

Ecclesiastes 4, he says, better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind.

Like, listen to that.

The wisest man to ever live, as he looked back over the course of his life, he said it would be better to live with one handful and to have a heart that's at peace than to have two and to exhaust yourself chasing after the wind.

What an incredulous kind of thing to waste your life on.

Mini meeny, techo.

And the third one is the word parsons.

The singular of it is this word teras.

And that word means your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and the Persians.

Again, imagine the courage.

This man is talking to a king who's emotionally shaken by seeing fingers writing in the wall, and he says to him, God is saying to you that your kingdom that you lead, the kingdom where you feel invincible, the kingdom where you thought it was appropriate to have a banquet with a thousand people using the goblets and the cups and all the silverware from the house of God in Judah.

It's all gonna come crashing down.

That's a warning to the king, but here's the warning to you and me.

We need to stop ignoring the warning signs.

You see, God is a good God who loves you.

In fact, he loves you so much that he wants to stop you from doing things that will hurt yourself and lead to devastation.

Some people are like, oh, God's just an angry killjoy who never wants me to have fun.

God wants you to have fun, he just doesn't want you to have baggage and hurts and pains.

You see, when you disregard the things of God, here's the stuff that happens to you.

The risk of sinful choices increases.

My emotions get all over the place and are inconsistent.

I am less productive, and here's one I can't hear from God.

I want you to understand this.

This is the big deal.

This is why we need to pay attention to the way we think and the way we live when it comes to the things of God.

Today at 4.05, the Minnesota Vikings will fly to here in Tampa and they will play the Tampa Bay Bunkaneers here at Raymond James Stadium.

I want you to see this.

This stadium holds just under 70,000 fans, 69,400 and something.

I want you to imagine this.

Imagine if you and I went today to the game and we bought tickets on the front row of the 50-yard line, but across the stadium from each other.

And if during the game we shouted as loud as we possibly could at each other, trying to get each other to hear what we're trying to say, would there be any chance of us hearing each other at all?

No shot at all.

Why?

Because there's so much noise, there's so much chaos, and there's so much competing for our voice.

But if we were to go tomorrow at 4:05 p.m.

and there's no one in the stadium, we could literally sit across the field from each other and talk in a reasonably loud voice and hear with clarity because there's nothing competing for the voice.

Okay.

Let me say this to you.

If you're here and you're like, I just can never hear from God, is it possible that you filled your life with noise and chaos?

Is it possible that every free moment of your life is filled with TikTok and Instagram reels?

Is there ever moments when you drive in your car and you're not listening to music, listening to a sports talk radio?

Is there ever a moment when you're not on your phone?

Do you ever have moments where you just sit in silence?

Because it's in the silence that God's voice resounds the most loudly and clearly.

The story goes on back to Daniel chapter 5.

Daniel 5 · chapter mention

It says this It says, Then at Belshazzar's command, Daniel was clothed in purple, a gold chain was placed around his neck, and he was proclaimed the third highest ruler in the kingdom.

And this has to be like the worst promotion ever.

Watch why?

Because that very night.

Daniel's not even number three in the kingdom for 12 hours at this point.

And that very night, Belshazzar, king of the Babylonians, was slain, and Darius the Med took over the kingdom at the age of 62.

God was trying to get King Belshazzar's attention.

He was trying to get his attention the same way I believe he tries to get yours and mine by giving us warning signs.

And you and I can live and we can listen to them, or we can live for us, live for here and now and miss it.

So here's what I want you to do with this.

I want to give you three thoughts to write down.

Then I'm gonna pray that you and I will live with a different kind of courage to actually trust God.

What do we do with this?

Number one, we need to learn to live with a sense of purpose and urgency.

Purpose is why we do what we do, and urgency is the speed at which we do it.

Why do we do what we do?

I believe the reason you are here is to worship God, but I also believe it is to lead other people to know the saving grace of our Lord Jesus.

That job you have is not just so you can earn money, it's so you can have influence.

The resources you have are not just for you, it's so you can be a conduit to give to make a difference around the world.

That you and I were never intended to live a life that is exclusively for me, but it's to live a life that makes a difference for the things of God.

Can I give you a prayer?

This is King David, right?

Psalm chapter 39.

Psalms 39 · chapter mention

David writes this prayer work this into your prayer life.

David says, Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be.

Remind me that my days are numbered, how fleeting my life is.

He says, You have made my life no longer than the width of my hand.

My entire lifetime is just a moment to you.

At best, each of us is but a breath.

It's here and then it's gone.

Okay.

How would you live differently if you understood that your life is but a breath?

I think you'd be less apt to get offended.

You would hold on to bitterness way less.

You would forgive really, really fast.

You would learn to live open-handedly with the stuff that God entrusts to you.

Your time, your money, your abilities.

You would live open-handedly with it.

Why?

Because this life isn't even about us.

This is the precursor to eternity.

This life is but a doorway into everlasting life in the forever presence of our great God.

Number two, I want you to learn to put first things first.

And a lot of us, if we could just examine everything that we can count, our time and our money, we would say we're first.

But when you start to understand that God is first and he literally can't be anything but first in your life, it'll change how you orient your life.

Jesus Himself, like from the mouth of Jesus to you today, said this in Matthew 6.33, but seek first.

Not after you've taken care of yourself and made sure you're taken care of and your needs are good and you're having a good time and everything in your life is coming up roses, but seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and then he'll take care of you.

All these things will be added to you as well.

Final thought, then we're done.

Here's what I want you to do.

Number three, I want you to learn to live with eternity in mind.

I want you to stop thinking about your life through the lens of what's here and now and what's in front of you.

The apostle Paul wrote like half the New Testament.

In 2 Corinthians, he says this.

He says, So we fix our eyes.

We make this decision.

I'm choosing what I'm giving the focus and the directive of my life to.

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.

Since what is seen is it's what?

It's it's temporary.

But what is unseen is eternal.

Can I tell you something?

I think your life would look and feel a whole lot different.

If you stop thinking about your life as all that there is, I think your life would feel a whole lot different if you realize that heaven is a reality and it's coming for us.

So the point of this life is to get our lives and our hearts ready for heaven and to bring as many people as we possibly can with us.

Said it earlier and I'll say it one more time.

If you live for here and now, you're gonna live a frustrated, anxious, depressed kind of life.

But if you want to live a life like Daniel that stands up when culture wants you to bow, if you want to live a life that has the courage to stand up when culture and the world around you can shift at any moment, you need to start living with eternity in mind.

Here's the reason.

When the world around you is shaken, when it feels like nothing solid is standing, you need to understand that you can't shake a person who has the hope of heaven.

So what would it look like?

If we start living with eternity in mind, I think it changes everything.

Would you bow your head and close your eyes with me?

Come on, all across this place at all of our locations, which stay where you are for just a moment.

Let me pray.

When we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing it will be.

When we all see Jesus, we'll sing and shout the victory.

God, it's an old song, but the words are just as true today as the day they were penned.

Help us to live with eternity in mind.

Help us to stop being so focused on here and now.

Give us the courage to see through your eyes, which is not what is temporary, but what is going to last forever.

And God, I pray for our church to have this supernatural dose of holy confidence and courage, to find our strength in you, not in our circumstances, not in what is temporary, but on what is happening for all of eternity.

God, I pray that we will leave today with a renewed sense of heaven is my home, so heaven is my hope.

God, we thank you for that.

Jesus' name.

Your head still bowed and eyes still closed.

Maybe you're here today at one of our church locations and you don't know if you're right with Jesus.

It is making the decision to let Him be in charge of your life.

It is that decision that gets you into heaven with Him, but it's also that decision that changes your life here and now forever.

Maybe you came to church today because someone brought you and you didn't know you were going to meet God, but he wants to meet you right here and right now.

And if you've never made the decision to follow Jesus, or maybe you prayed a prayer when you were a kid at church, but you just haven't lived for Jesus and today you want to hit restart and make the decision to follow him.

In either case, if it's you, would you have this three more seconds of courage and raise your hand and say, Jason, right now I want to decide to follow or to start following again Jesus.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Wow, so cool.

Thank you.

I love this.

So many people are saying yes to Jesus now.

Come on, at all of our locations if it's you.

I'm gonna ask you to have one more moment of courage.

See, the Bible says if you'll just confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord, He'll save you from your sins.

So here's what I'm gonna invite you to do in a moment.

I'm gonna pray.

And I'm gonna invite you to pray out loud and repeat after me.

And I want you to know something.

Our whole church family, we love you and we support you.

We won't let you do this alone.

As I pray and you repeat after me, we're all going to say out loud, we're gonna say it loud and proud this prayer as you make the most important decision of your life.

Come on, everybody, pray this after me.

And if you're praying this for the first time, mean this with all of your heart.

Everybody say this.

Say, Jesus, I give you my life.

Be my Lord and Savior.

From this day forward, I choose to follow you.

Jesus, I give you my life for the rest of my life.

I choose to follow you.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Come on, church, let's celebrate with those who make that decision today.