Unshakable – God’s Got My Back

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.

So glad you're with us.

I want to look right into the camera and welcome our church family.

If you're new to our church, we are one church that meets in three physical locations.

And then really these days, it's thousands of locations when people join us at Church Online.

Come on, no matter where you are, would you put your hands together and welcome our church fam?

Welcome, North Lakeland.

Welcome, Barto.

Love you so much.

Honored you're with us today.

Today we're in part two of a three-part series that I'm excited about.

The series is called Unshakable.

And in the series, we're asking this question: how can we live a godly life when culture shifts?

We're asking this question, how can we stand up to the pressure of a world that demands that we bow down?

And I'll get to that in just a moment, but to get us going today, have you ever um you ever had a moment where you don't know what happened, but somehow out of you came this heroism, this ability to have courage that you didn't even know existed in you?

A couple years ago I had one of these moments.

I was outside in my front yard doing manly stuff.

I was pressure washing my driveway.

It was a summer day, so it was about 7.3 billion degrees outside.

I'm sweating, I'm exhausted.

And right as I'm finishing pressure washing my driveway, a snake slithered right past me, and it went into the bushes over where the water spigot is that I had to go turn off.

Now, you need to know this about me.

Your boy hates snakes.

Like, like I'm good with all kinds of things.

Spiders, no big deal, roaches, no big deal, but for whatever reason, snakes, I don't want anything to do with snakes.

If I go to a zoo, I avoid the snake area.

I won't watch movies with snakes.

I never saw snakes on a plane because I'm on planes all the time, and I don't need that in my mind.

I don't do nothing with snakes.

And I don't know what happened, but a snake went by me and I had a pressure washer in my hand.

I could have blasted that guy back to the pits of hell where it came from, but I panicked and did nothing, and it went right by me into the bushes where the water spigot is to turn the water off.

And I thought, what do I do?

Like I can't leave the water on all day.

So I gathered up all of my courage and I went over to the water spigot, and I stood as far as I possibly could away, turned it off, and went running back.

And when I did, it must have scared the snake because it went back across my driveway.

And here was the bummer.

My garage door was open, and it went into the garage under my wife's car.

And I thought to myself, it lives here now.

Like, what do we do?

And I'm like, I can't go in and tell my wife because she's worse than the snake.

If she knows there's a snake in the house, she'll kill me.

I've got to do something, and I don't know where this came from.

But as I was pressure washing my driveway, I had this broom, it's kind of a scrub brush broom, and I got it, and I saw the snake hiding under the van, and I don't I don't know where this moment of courage came from, but I reached under the van and I swept as hard as I could, and that snake went just like spiraling out into the driveway, and then it took off.

And I was so amped after this moment.

I I've never done drugs, but I think that's probably what it feels like.

I was so excited.

I literally ripped my shirt off and I walked into my house like John Cena after a fight.

I've got veins popping up out of places, and I walked in to my bedroom where Liz was, thinking when she hears this story, she won't be able to control herself.

This is gonna be like unbelievable.

And I walk in, I'm like, girl, you have no idea what just happened.

She's like, What happened?

I said, a snake got in our garage and I got it out.

And she said, Okay, thank you.

And I said, What?

What are you talking about?

Like, no, no, you have to see this.

And then I remembered we have a driveway camera, and I'm like, girl, you got you've got to see this.

You're gonna want me so much more after you see this.

And I go to my app, and and here's the problem.

Our camera is like the farthest away from the Wi-Fi, so sometimes it drops signal.

And I had hours of footage that I could rewind, but there was a five-minute gap right in my moment of heroism.

I couldn't couldn't believe this.

Couldn't believe it.

Now, look, here's the deal.

I'm gonna be honest with you.

I I don't consider myself the most courageous person.

It feels like some people are born with this natural ability to step into moments.

It feels like God carves some people out of solid granite.

He didn't do that with me.

I'm not the most courageous person you'll ever meet, but every once in a while, life demands that you push aside your fear and you step into a moment with courage, nobility, heroism.

Just last week, a week and a half ago, we we celebrated and remembered the heroic people who ran into the World Trade Center buildings 25 years ago.

I remember where I was, I remember watching, feeling my heart drop.

I remember that moment.

It will forever be etched into my mind what happened on that day.

And what's crazy about it is this summer my family and I went to New York and we went and toured the memorial for the World Trade Centers, and just being there, just imagining the moment.

What is it that would cause firefighters and people to run into the building where everybody else was trying to run out?

What is it that would cause people to risk their lives to save someone that they had never met before?

And I think if you just answered quickly without thinking about it, you might think that there's just something different about that person.

That they were born with an extra dose of courage, they were born with a different dosage of heroism.

And maybe when God was passing out the gifts, he passed up on you and me when he was handing those out.

But here's the reality every courage, every moment of courage, every hero kind of moment is not about a person having extra courage, it's that what they have is the ability to be selfless.

It's in the moment I'm making this decision that someone else matters more than me right now.

Here's the thing every moment of heroism happened because a person lived with priorities.

What is the priority?

It just means prior to the moment, I've decided that what I'm going to do is step into the moment, not step out of the moment.

That this is this is the reason that if you've ever seen a child fall into a swimming pool and someone jumps in to save them, they're not thinking about anything else.

They're not worried about their phone or their clothes, or they're not worried about what it's gonna do to their hair.

None of that matters because in the moment, the priority is saving the child.

You understand how this goes, right?

And the reason I'm saying all of this to set us up today is there's going to be a moment coming for each and every one of us where we're going to have to know in advance what our priorities are.

We started the series last week with this question, and the question is simply this how do you live in a godly life when culture shifts?

And you understand this, culture shifts all the time around us.

It just does.

And if you've lived long enough, you know this.

We are literally just one Supreme Court decision away.

We are one presidential executive order away, we are one moment, one tragedy, one virus, one pandemic away from the whole world shifting underneath us.

And according to the Bible, we know that it's going to happen.

The question is not will it happen, the question is what do you do when it happens?

So today I'm calling you to a life of nobility.

I'm calling you to a life of courage, but courage based on being selfless.

Courage based on having your priority straight, knowing what you will stand up for and what you will not bow down for.

You see, God calls us to be the kind of people who make a difference.

I was studying recently and I found this interesting study by an organization called Pew Research.

And they said this: they said, of the 193 countries in the world, 173 of them are in what I would call a modern-day revival.

Now, what I mean by this is revival is not just getting goosebumps and Christians having a beautiful experience with God.

That's beautiful, but that's not what it is.

Revival is people are becoming Christians, followers of Jesus at a rate faster than the rate people are being born around the world.

It means Christianity is growing around the world at exponential rates.

And that would be a reason for us to celebrate, but before you celebrate, here's the sad reality.

In the 20 countries that it's not happening, America's one of them.

In the 20 countries where it's happening, we're not one of the ones.

What it means is there are more babies being born percentage-wise than there are people making a decision in our country to follow Jesus.

And I just want to say to you, we can be a part of that solution.

We can't change the whole country, we can't change the whole world, but here's what it means: it means we can change the cities of Lakeland and Bartow.

It means we can change our surrounding communities.

It does mean that if a group full of Christians, like on any given Sunday, there's about 3,000 or more people that come to our church.

Beyond that, there's thousands of people who come but just don't come every single week.

Beyond that, there's thousands of people who are connected to our church in some way.

And what it means is if that many people will just get this idea in their hearts that I'm going to live a selfless, heroic kind of life, that I'm going to be a part of what God is doing in the world, and I'm not just going to live for me selfishly.

We can literally change the world.

Here's another way to see it it's that we will either set the culture or we're going to reflect the culture.

We can be a part of the change, or we can just be people who comment on it.

And come on, there's lots of Christians who are really good at reflecting on the culture, aren't there?

You know these people, you're friends with them on social media.

Hopefully it's none of us, but there are people who will just comment on every little thing, they'll give their opinion on every news story, every problem that's happening in our city and around the world.

It's easy to reflect the culture, but God didn't call us to be reflectors of culture.

He called us to change and to set the culture.

It's kind of like this it's the difference between a thermostat and a thermometer.

Thermostats change the temperature.

Thermometers just tell you what the temperature is.

You understand this, right?

And God called you to not just reflect what's happening, not just to comment on what's happening around us in the world.

We are called by God to be people who step into moments with courage, selflessness, and nobility.

The kind of people who step into the world and say, God, I see what's happening around the world.

Like that's that's the thermometer in me, but I'm a thermostat.

God, you've you've called me to change the world.

What does it look like for you and me?

It means you change your workplace.

It means you change your home.

It means you change your school.

It means you change your neighborhood.

You should be the kind of person, and I need to become the kind of person that lives so selflessly that the world around us is different because God has changed us, and so we're going to change it.

Jesus said it like this in John chapter 17.

John 17 · chapter mention

He said, My prayer is not that you take them out of the world, but that you protect them from the evil one.

They are not of the world, even as I am not of it.

He's saying, like, listen, you're going to be a part of this world.

Like, there is all kinds of weirdness and evilness happening all around you.

And you need to know, God didn't say I want to just remove you from it.

He said, No, you're going to be a part of it, but if you're going to be a part of it, why don't you go ahead and use your life in a way to change the world around you?

Now I said this earlier.

What do you do when culture shifts?

What do you do?

And today I'm challenging you to open your eyes to see a biblical prophecy.

And if it was true, then it's going to be true in your lifetime.

There is in the Bible and in our world today a battle raging.

And the question it's asking is, what or who will I worship?

What or who will I worship?

Last week we were in the book of Daniel, chapter one.

If you missed last week, it was a really important message where we talked about how Daniel, his whole world shifted overnight.

And one night he went to bed from the place of Judah, his country was overtaken by the people of Babylon, and instantly everything about his world changed.

And I asked the question, what do you do in an ever-changing kind of world?

Well, now some time has gone by, and we're gonna pick up today and we're gonna look at two different stories that are arguably the two most famous stories in the book of Daniel.

If you grew up going to church and you were in Sunday school or children's church of any kind, chances are you've heard these because these are some of the highlights of the Bible.

It's the story of King Nebuchadnezzar building a golden statue, and then and the which is leads to the Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace.

And then the second story is the story of Daniel and the lions, then.

And I want to show you that both of these stories are actually connected to the challenge we face when it comes to that question, who or what will get my worship.

Story number one starts this way Daniel chapter 3, verse 1.

Daniel 3:1

It says, King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold, 60 cubits high and six cubits wide.

So kind of a 10 to 1 ratio.

And he said upon set it up on the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon.

Let me try to explain this.

He's going to build a statue that is an image of himself as king.

And he builds it and it's huge.

It's this really tall, really thin thing, to try to help you visualize it.

If you've ever been to Washington, D.C., the Lincoln Memorial sits about 99 feet tall.

This would have been about 90 feet tall, so just a little bit shorter than it.

But the aspect ratio of it is more like this, the Washington Monument.

It's kind of 10 to 1.

So I took this to ChatGPT, and I'm like, help me show my friends what this would look like if just taking the Bible as literally as we possibly can, and this is what it came back with.

It was this golden statue of the king, and it was about 90 feet tall by about nine feet wide.

It would have been a very tall, very narrow statue.

And what you're gonna see in just a moment is this king builds this image, this picture, this statue of himself, and then he tells his country that if you are going to live here under my rule, you have to worship me.

The story goes on in Daniel chapter 3, verse 2, a couple slides later, says this.

Daniel 3:2

He, the king, then summoned the satraps, prefects, governors, advisors, treasurers, judges, magistrates, and all the other provincial officials to come to the dedication of the image that he had set up.

He calls all the leaders from all over the country to come together.

So it says, So the satraps, prefects, governors, advisors, treasurers, judges, magistrates, and all the other provincial officials assembled for the dedication of the image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up, and they stood before it.

And then it goes on, and I want you to see this line.

It says, Then the herald loudly proclaimed, nations and people of every language, this is what you are commanded to do.

No options.

It's not like, hey, if you feel like it, or hey, if you're having a good day and you want to go along with what the king wants, it's not that.

He says, This is what you are commanded to do.

He goes on, he says, as soon as you hear the sound of the horn, the flute, the zither.

Anybody think we need a little more zither up in here?

Come on.

A zither would have been like a like an ancient guitar, lyre, harp, pipe, and all kinds of music.

You must, you must fall down and worship the image of the of gold that King Nebuchadnezzar has set up.

He says, Whoever does not fall down and worship will immediately be thrown into a blazing fire.

Essentially what he says.

He says, I've set up this image of me.

I am your God.

You are to worship me and no other gods.

And so when the music starts to play, when the zither starts to zither, what I want you to do is I want you to bow down, and I want you to worship me.

And this isn't optional, this is what you're commanded to do.

And if you don't do it, we'll make an example of you, and we will throw you into a pit, an oven of fire.

You'll be burned to death.

Here's what I want you to understand.

This is true then, and a version of this is true now.

Roughly a third of the Bible is prophetic.

The book of Daniel is called a prophetic book.

Literally, what it means is if it was true then, we need to pay attention because it can happen to us now.

And here's the principle from this first story.

It's that culture's motivation for worship is fear.

I'm going to scare you.

If you don't do what we tell you to do, we're going to kill you.

If you don't do what we command that you do, there will be some sort of consequence to you.

You have felt social pressure in your life.

If you don't do what we tell you to do, if you don't do what our group of friends is doing, we're going to exclude you.

If you don't sleep with me, I'm going to ignore you.

If you don't, like we feel pressure, like this happens to all of us, and culture will always use fear as a motivator to get you to obey what it wants you to do or who it wants you to worship.

That's the first story.

That's the setup for the first story.

Twin years later, the story goes on.

King Nebuchadnezzar has died, and there's a new king.

His name is King Darius.

And King Darius is a pretty good king compared to Nebuchadnezzar, but he has these guys working for him, and they come to him one day and they're like, Listen, we have this idea.

And the reason they had this idea was Daniel, who was not of their same nationality, had found so much favor with the king that he had risen in prominence, and these guys who were close to the king thought, we've got to do something to get rid of Daniel.

Because if we don't get rid of him, he's going to rise up above us.

He'll be our boss and he can do anything he wants to us if he's in charge of us.

We've got to catch him doing something wrong.

Here's what the story picks up.

23 years later, Daniel chapter 6.

Daniel 6 · chapter mention

Finally, these men, these advisors to King Darius, said, We will never find any basis for charges against this man Daniel, unless it has something to do with the law of his God.

They're like, he lives a life that is so different, so unique, he lives a life that is so full of integrity, that if we don't do something about it, if we don't find some sort of some sort of reason to accuse him, if we don't find a reason to get rid of him, we'll never have a way.

I want you to get this.

Integrity is the best way to live your life.

The word integrity comes from the root of the word integris, which means whole.

And so many people live these fragmented, compartmentalized kinds of lives.

It's like I've got my church version of me, but then I've got my Monday through Saturday version of me.

It's like I want to do what I want on the weekends, I want it really not to matter, but but the truth is for me, I I'll come to church and I'll do my God thing, but it's like I want to live a different, disintegrated kind of life.

That this is the reason that back in the day when I used to do a lot of premarital counseling, when we got to the section where we talked about being um full of integrity in the area of your marriage when it comes to your sexuality, here's what I said.

I said every couple needs to define what their boundaries are.

Here's what it means for me.

Um, I made a decision when I got married to live with what's called the Billy Graham rule.

Billy Graham came up with this idea many years ago that because of the calling on his life, he would never be alone with a woman that wasn't his wife.

So I just adopted this principle.

Because in my world, in my line of work, all it takes is one accusation against me, and it could take 19, almost 20 years of building a church with integrity and cause it to come crumbling down.

And here's the thing I I'm not like, I'm not the strictest person in a lot of parts of my life, but when it comes to this, I have so much strictness and integrity.

Why?

Because I want to honor my wife, I want to honor God and the calling of God in my life, I want my kids to grow up in a home where there's no brokenness in the marriage.

I want you to come to church and to never have an example of a reason to be like, well, I just left the church, another pastor failed me.

I never want any of those things to happen.

So I'm so legalistic and strict about it in my own life.

I'll give you a dumb example.

Many years ago, we were on our very first trip as a church ever to the country of Honduras.

And we were at the end of the bit the trip, we came back to the city called San Pedro Sula, where the airport was.

And on that night, we stay at a nicer hotel than the one we'd stayed at while we were doing the work of the camp that week.

And so we were there, and I'm with my son Joey.

It's just me and him.

And in the in the story with me and Joey, we're literally there together.

And um, when we go into the hotel, it's interesting because we're there at the hotel, and on the very first floor, the ground floor, there is a restaurant which is normal, but then there's like a massive club, and it's like bumping.

The music is so loud when we get there, I'm having to pull Pastor Ryan out of there.

I'm like, get out of there, boys, stop it.

You're be an example to everybody, whatever.

And we we go to our room, and then it's later, like we were gonna meet down in the lobby to go to dinner together as a group, and so it's just me and Joey.

And Joey was young, he's maybe 10 years old at the time.

And it's just me and Joey on the elevator coming down by ourselves, and we go down two or three floors, and the doors open, and a girl steps on, and she is dressed for the club.

And when I say dressed, I mean undressed for the club.

Like she's barely, barely covered at all.

And in that moment, I grab Joey's hand and it's like, oh, this is our floor, and I step off the elevator.

She goes, This isn't our floor.

I said, It was right now.

Yes, it was.

Why?

Because integrity.

Living with integrity matters so much.

Living even with the perception of integrity.

I didn't want those doors to open and my church is there, and I step off.

It just would have looked so bad.

I want to live a life so full of integrity like Daniel, and I hope you want to live this way, that there's no reason, no ability to accuse me of anything.

Are you with me?

Story goes on.

It says this it says so.

These administrators and satraps went as a group to the king and said, May King Darius live forever.

The royal administrators, prefects, satraps, advisors, and governors have all Agreed that the king should issue an edict and enforce the decree that anyone who prays to any God or any human being during the next thirty days, except to you, your majesty, shall be thrown into the lion's den.

Now, your majesty.

Issue the decree and put it in writing so that it cannot be altered in accordance with the law of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be repealed.

So King Darius put in put the decree in writing.

Let me just kind of explain quickly what's happened.

These guys are trying to trap Daniel, so they think to themselves, here's what we got to do.

We've got to find a way to create a law that Daniel's going to break because of his integrity.

So they go to King Darius and they're like, Darius, you're so much better than a king.

We see you as a God.

What if we kick this off as like a national thing and we say for a month, nobody can pray to or worship any other God, human or anything, other than you?

Darius likes this because who wouldn't?

He signs it into law.

These two stories are separated by 23 years, but I want you to see they have a commonality.

In the first story, they say you have to pray to this God.

You have to bow and worship.

But in the second story, it says you cannot pray to your God.

And I want you to understand, this is coming for you and it is coming for me.

And it begs the question, what will you do in that moment?

What will you do when you are told that you cannot pray a certain way, you cannot live a certain way, you cannot worship a certain way?

What will you do when you are told that you are to worship something or someone else?

What are you going to do when culture hands you that moment?

Well, I want you to understand this is what the enemy of your soul, Satan, has always been about.

Experts believe that between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, there's this moment where the book of Ezekiel later refers to it, where Satan falls like lightning.

Satan didn't start as Satan.

Satan started as an angel in the presence of God named Lucifer.

Scripture tells us he was absolutely beautiful.

And he was the angel of worship, but he made worship all about himself.

It's what pride does.

Pride makes worship all about you and getting the focus to be on you.

And this has been his goal from the very, very beginning is to get your worship off of God and onto himself.

These are the goals of the enemy.

Write these down.

Number one, his goal is to exalt man above God.

To exalt man above God, which is a place we were never intended to be.

Back to the first story, it says this.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego replied to him, King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter.

They say, if, listen to this, if we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from your majesty's hand.

And then listen to the resolve, listen to the moxie in their voice.

They say, but even if he does not.

Like we're not going to bow to your image.

We are not going to exalt you above God.

And God's going to deliver us.

But even if he does not, he goes on, we want you to know, your majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold that you have set up.

Listen to that resolve.

Even if it cost me everything, I am unwilling to bow my life to anything other than the one true living God.

The rest of the story is a miracle.

The king is so upset over this that he takes these three guys, Shadarach, Meshach, and Abednego, and throws them into a furnace that is literally so hot that the guards who are throwing them in get close and die of heat.

It's just unbelievable.

And they throw them into this furnace, and it says later that not a hair on their head was burned.

They didn't even smell like smoke.

And when King Nebuchadnezzar looked at it thinking, This is what you get for disobeying me, he looked, and scripture says, he goes, wait a minute.

I thought I threw three men into the fire, but now I see the fourth one.

Like who is that?

It was it was Jesus, the Son of God, in the moment.

Why?

Because when you have God's back, he has your back.

The whole country changed because three people had the heroism, the selflessness to step into a moment and say, No, no, I will not bow.

Second goal of the enemy is this.

The second goal of the enemy is to stop the worship of God.

This is what Satan wants to do.

He wants to stop you from worshiping the one true God because pride will always make it about himself.

Pride will make life about you.

And this is the antithesis of what worship really is.

So back to Daniel chapter 6.

Daniel 6 · chapter mention

This is the second story.

It says, when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, what do you think he did?

Do you think he caved and bowed to the pressure of this new law?

No, no.

When he learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem, like where everybody would see him, and three times a day he got down on his knee and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before.

Then these men went as a group and found Daniel praying, asking God for help.

So they went to the king and they spoke to him about this royal decree.

And this breaks Darius' heart.

They say this to him Did you not publish a decree that during the next thirty days anyone who prays to any God or human being except you, your majesty, will be thrown into the lion's den.

The king answered The decree stands in accordance with the law of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be repealed.

Essentially, we have to do what we've agreed to do, and I hate this so much.

But they take Daniel and they throw him into a den of lions.

But remember, when you have God's back, God has your back.

God shuts the mouth of the lions.

Daniel lives, he's not dead.

The next morning the king is so upset over this, he goes and looks, and Daniel's alive, and he realizes that God had shut the mouth of the lions, so King Darius rounds up all the guys who made this law to try to trap Daniel, and they threw them in with the lions.

And scripture has this interesting detail.

They didn't even make it to the ground before the lions got them.

That's some real Mufasa stuff right there, everybody.

Like, got them, got them, right?

So here's the question I want you to ask.

When you think about worship in a culture that's going to demand that you worship it, here's the question: What has my worship?

Well, Jesus was talking one day in Mark chapter 12, and a man came to him and said, What's the most important law in the Old Testament?

Mark 12 · chapter mention

What's the most important commandment?

And Jesus said, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, with all your mind and with all of your strength.

How do we live a life that worships God?

It's with these four things, and let me show them to you quickly.

What does it mean to worship God with all of my heart and my soul?

Here's what it means: it means God gets my affection.

Here's the question of heart and soul.

The question is, what do I love the most?

And listen, I love lots of things.

Can I be honest with you?

I'm kind of boring.

I don't have lots of hobbies.

My hobbies are my family, my church, and I love football.

I love football so much.

I love Sundays in football season.

I love going home and taking a nap, kind of falling asleep and waking up to football.

I mean, I love football season.

Can I tell you something weird about me when it comes to football?

I really enjoy like a Green Bay or a Buffalo game where it is completely snowed under where it's hard to even see the field because there's snow falling so hard.

And right before they go to commercials, you've ever noticed this, they'll go to the fans and there's fans on the front row.

They're not wearing a shirt, they're painted in the colors of their team, they've got a some sort of a wig or a hat on, and they just look like idiots.

And they're freezing.

And I think to myself, that's awesome.

Why?

Why?

Because they love their team so much that they would do that.

And what's funny is we we'll do that for a team.

We'll spend more money to get up close, front seats, for a concert, something we love.

But when it comes to worshiping the God of the universe, we'll roll in late.

We'll wake up and say, I've had a busy week.

We will pay crazy amounts of money to get close seats to a sporting event, to a concert, but we will fight for seats in the very back of the room.

Like, I'm I'm just of the opinion that God deserves my best.

I am a get to the front, worship with reckless abandoned kind of guy because I believe the God of the universe, He deserves my heart and my soul, which is my affection.

Here's another one: love the Lord God with all your heart, soul, and your mind.

Your mind is your attention.

And here's the question: what do I think about the most?

I heard someone say one time, our lives are always moving in the direction of our strongest thoughts.

I want God to be the first of my thoughts.

Every day before I go to my phone, before I go to my email, before I go to social media or anything else, I go to my great God.

God, I want you to have the first of my attention.

When I find myself starting to worry, I'm like, God, God, hold, hold up, hold.

I have this worry, but God, you're so much greater.

Can I just level with you for just a moment?

Anybody else just worried financially right now?

Gas prices are high.

Gas prices are a driver of the cost of everything else.

So everything else is gonna get more expensive.

And what's funny is if you turn on the news, the news will sell you these hard headlines about how hard everything's gonna get and how difficult it's gonna be.

And it's easy for that to get your attention.

I think when something like that gets your attention, you should double down on your faith and trust in God.

What so many Christians do is we're like, oh, gas prices are high.

I better pull back my giving, pull back blessing others.

I better pull back the things that God's called me to do because I need to take care of me.

No, no, no.

When something else gets my attention, I double down on the things of God.

Third thing is love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength.

Your strength is your abilities.

The question of abilities is what do I do the most?

Here's the thing: there's lots of things clamoring for your time.

Every single person who's ever lived on the face of this earth wishes in some capacity that days were a little longer, that we had a little bit more time to get all the things done that we want to get done.

Can I teach you the secret to not not living anxious about your time?

It's to use some of your time to serve somebody else.

To use some of your energy, the God-given giftings and talents that He's placed inside of you to use those to serve and to bless somebody else.

Why does this matter?

Because if you all you do is work for you, work for your paycheck, work to keep food on the table, nothing wrong with those things, do those things, but you're the focus of all of it.

Where does anxiety come from?

An extreme amount of self-focus.

But if you want to live a life of purpose, live your life in a way to serve somebody else.

This is the reason that every single month on the first and second Sunday of the month, we do an event called our Next Steps class.

Next Steps class is about joining the church, but it's also about finding a place to use your giftings and talents to serve somebody else.

Why?

This isn't to help the church run.

We're good.

This is not that.

This is to help you discover your giftings and talents so you can live out your divine purpose.

This is a quick commercial, but if you haven't done that, tap this the dark blue dot on the seat back in front of you.

There's one literally starting on the first Sunday of every single month.

We want you to be a part of this for you, not for us.

Here's the question What do you worship?

Culture's gonna shift around you.

It's gonna demand that you bow, it's gonna demand that you worship something or someone.

And I just want you to hear this when you have God's back, He has your back.

Would you bow your head and close your eyes at all of our locations, anywhere you are at church online, we're gonna pray.

God give us courage.

If the book of Daniel is prophetic, I just know that it means that what happened then is going to happen now.

May we have the courage to prioritize our lives in a way to know that when culture shifts, we will stand.

That when culture demands that we bow, we will stand, that when culture or something or someone demands our worship, we will stand for you.

And God, I just see in both of these stories that when we have your back, you have ours.

So, God, we thank you.

We praise you for that.

I'm gonna invite you at all of our locations to look up at me for just a moment.

In a moment, we're going to worship God one other way, which is through communion.

And when you came in today, you should have gotten a communion cup.

I'm gonna grab mine.

I want to give you a moment, and I want you to understand what this is about.

Communion is a time when Christians are reminded.

We're reminded of what Jesus did for us.

There's there's a wafer in the little cup you got.

And if you're joining us at church online home, go go grab some sort of juice or drink and grab some bread and join us for this moment.

Here's what it is when we eat the bread, that this wafer it, we're reminded of Jesus' body broken for us.

And when we drink the juice or the wine, we're remembering his blood that was spilled for us.

It's because of his body broken for us that healing is available to us.

It's because of his blood spilled for us that salvation can be a gift that we receive.

According to the Bible, because of our sin, we should have had to pay the price, and the price was death.

But Jesus gave his life for us.

And so in a moment, we're gonna do this.

In the book of 1 Corinthians, chapter 11, I believe it is, Paul says there's an unworthy way to take communion.

1 Corinthians 11 · chapter mention

There's two different groups.

The first group is unbelievers.

If if you're here and you're not in a relationship with God, if if Jesus hasn't saved you and changed your life, I'm gonna give you a moment to make things right with him.

But don't do it if you're not following Jesus.

The second group is for Christians, people who've made the decision to follow Jesus, but maybe you're living with some sort of anger, some sort of unforgiveness.

Maybe you know in your heart that you are just living with sin that you haven't repented of.

In either case, I want to give you an opportunity to make things right with God.

Would you just bow your head one more time?

And if you know that you're not right with God, or maybe you need to make things right with God, I'm just gonna lead you in a quick prayer.

Saying the prayer doesn't change anything unless you mean it with your heart.

So would you pray this with me?

If you just need to make things right with God's God today, I just give you my life.

Confess that I've sinned.

I confess that I am a sinner who needs a savior.

So would you save me?

Jesus, I believe that your body broken for me and your blood spilled for me when you died on the cross is what you used to pay the price for my sins.

So today, Jesus, I receive your gift of salvation.

Save me, change me.

Make my life new.

From this day forward, I'll follow you.

Thank you for your love.

Today I choose to love you and to follow you all the days of my life.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Hey, would you look up at me, Church?

Would you grab your communion and just undo that top layer and grab that wafer?

Jesus said, When you take the bread, I want you to remember my body broken for you.

It is because of the broken body of Jesus that our bodies don't have to live in brokenness.

I want to say something to somebody.

Jesus had a crown of thorns placed over his head.

It pierced his head, pierced his skull.

And I believe when it happened, it was more than them mocking him.

I believe it was prophetic.

It's that the same broken body that brings healing to our broken bodies.

It's a picture that even your mind, if you're riddled with anxiety or depression, the healing is available to you.

Jesus said, When you take this bread, break it and remember my body broken for you.

Would you take this and break it with me?

So, Jesus, we pause and we remember, we say thank you for your body broken for us, and we eat.

Jesus says, We do this for anybody who's dealing with any sort of mental illness or any sort of dis-ease, disability, sickness in their body, would you bring healing to their body?

And we thank you for it.

Would you eat this with me?

And if you'll open that juice.

According to scriptures, we should have had to pay the price for our sins, which was death.

But Jesus, you came and gave your life for us.

So today we drink this and we remember your blood spilled for us.

What a gift and what a savior you are.

Would you take this and drink with me now?

And if you'll just set that to the side for a moment, let me pray for you.

Jesus, we pause.

We say thank you.

Sometimes words feel like they fall flat, like they're insignificant.

But our whole lives were designed to be worshiped to you.

We worship you for your goodness.

We worship you for your love.

We worship you, Jesus, for your sacrifice for us.

May we never get tired of living a life that worships you.

And God, today we said it, but we mean this that we are going to be people who worship you with our lives.

And when the world around us and culture around us wants us to bow, may we have the courage to stand because you are worthy of it.

We thank you for it, God, in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Would you put your hands together and give God thanks, everybody?