LIFE IS SHORT

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

Would you mind just lifting up your guidebook?

Would you bring it up there?

If you need a new one, or if you need one, you've never had one, there should be one in this on a seat next to you.

This is our guidebook for the next six weeks.

It's got everything in it you need our sermon notes, devotional, small group curriculum.

We spent money on this.

Use it.

Thank you so much.

And I've been loving to hear how you've been using it, uh, by the way, because um I've been hearing, like diving into um the devotional and then bringing it, uh, hearing how small groups are using it.

It's really exciting.

So uh this is really fun.

Now, if you're new and you're going like, rooted, okay, what is rooted and why do we have this real fancy, nice guidebook?

Well, let me share that with you.

Here's what rooted is.

Uh, rooted is uh two things.

Rooted is a season of deepening our faith and preparing a ministry home for the mission God has entrusted to us.

Uh, it's two parts.

First, it's a six-week teaching series through Psalm 90.

Psalm 90 is a prayer of Moses, the great leader and liberator of Israel.

And Moses knew what it was like to lead a people on the move toward a future home, setting up, tearing down, wandering through the wilderness, consistent and constant change, living with uncertainty about what tomorrow would bring.

And in Psalm 90, we discover six foundational truths for a deeply rooted life.

And rooted is also a two-year generosity initiative to raise five million dollars towards securing and preparing a permanent ministry home for awakening.

And as we begin, I want to draw your attention to a couple pages in the guidebook, if you have them, to answer a few kind of top questions that come to mind uh when we're talking about rooted.

The first is like you see that five million, like how in the world will we get there?

And so would you um flip to page 109?

109 has this gift chart here, and there's nothing for us to do with this today.

I'm not asking you to do anything, so just relax for a second.

Uh one, what this is, is I think this is an incredibly helpful tool.

One for us to see how together we can do more together than we ever could apart.

Uh, it's not about uh equal gifts, it's about equal sacrifice.

What we want to see is 100% participation of those who call awakening home to help us move to a future home.

The other is that it really allows you to see, okay, what part can I play?

Like when I see this, uh immediately my mind and I draw to a number, and I'm like, oh, I think that's about where we could land.

And the invitation to ask is just begin to pray, God, what part do you want me to play in this?

One of the things that is um a part of this that's gonna be, I think, pretty uh uh significant is because we have such a large tech base.

In fact, I've met so many Apple employees.

Um I know there's a lot of others, but uh we seem to have a lot of Apple employees.

But most people don't know that you can actually give stock directly to Awakening.

And a major way that compensation is given in the value is through stock, and you can do that.

In fact, next week, uh Jesse Lounsbury, he's the treasurer of our um uh of Awakening Church on our leadership council.

He's a CPA, financial advisor, and planner, uh, and he'll be doing a QA on all that right after our services because that's a significant way um that makes I'm not a tax guy, but it I guess it's the most efficient tax way to give and uh have impact as well.

So that's a big, big deal.

Now, the question, I think, outside of that is why?

Okay, Ryan, thank you very much.

But why are we stepping into this rooted season?

We said this last week that it's time to move from a potted church to a planted church.

Uh, you know, we get that, okay, this plant isn't designed to live forever in this pot.

It won't become all that it's intended to be, that God intended this uh tree to be in a pot.

It needs to be planted.

But honestly, Ryan, well, why do we need to be planted?

Why can't we stay here forever?

And real simply, we can't stay here forever because uh, well, this isn't a forever solution.

This is a high it's it's forever a high school uh right now, uh, but not a church.

So if you would turn with me to page nine, I believe it's page nine.

Let me make sure, yeah.

Uh page nine.

And let's just cover, I want to talk about why now, why we're talking about this in a few big areas.

The first is just Sunday limits.

Uh shared temporary and changing uh rooms uh make it difficult to create consistency, uh consistent Sunday environments where people belong and grow and find their place.

Uh you may not know this and you can go to the next slide that a team shows up every Saturday at 9 a.m.

uh to set up this space and the other spaces.

Sometimes we don't have it at 9 a.m.

and sometimes they're setting up at 9 p.m.

from 9 until 11 p.m.

Then another team shows up on Sunday morning uh for our production, for our cafe, for other spaces at 7 a.m.

to prepare the space.

It takes an incredible amount of work uh to do that.

Um, and then we tear it all down uh after that.

Oh, actually, also at 9 a.m.

on uh Sundays, we pray together.

We pause and pray.

So if you want to show up at 9 a.m., we'd love to have you join us and pray together.

Uh you'll notice all to create a space where people can have, I'm gonna move this over.

It's like right in my stuff.

There we go.

Um, for people to have a life-changing encounter with Jesus.

And every single week we deal with different things.

I don't know if you notice um that the men's bathrooms closed uh this week, right over there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

If you're a man, you noticed it maybe.

And um, we were told originally that it was gonna be um just a week, and we uh now it's they're saying through the end of the year.

Yeah, now you want a building.

Uh right?

Uh we and over the summer we didn't have access to the gym to do our kids' rooms, and we made adjustments.

These things are happening consistently.

We're constantly adjusting uh to create uh space.

Um it takes a dedicated crew, rain or shine, hot or cold, week after week, to create a space for people to have a life-changing encounter with God.

Um, some people have heard this like, but it one of the great parts about it, Ryan, is because we're doing this, and you know, our it our whole church gets to serve.

And that's why we're staying here.

I said, Well, that's fantastic.

I would love for our whole church to serve.

Um, and and we have a lot of our church that serves.

Actually, encouraging 55% of you on our survey serves, and that is so exciting.

And in this temporary setup space that we're at, we actually need more people to help be able to create space for people to have a life-changing encounter with God.

And I want to take a moment for all those that set up and tear down.

We'd love to have more linger space after this service so we could hang out and just uh help people uh walk with Jesus.

Can we just thank those people that serve in such a significant way?

All right, a few other reasons why we can't stay here.

One is roots for this generation.

Kids, students, and young adults need dedicated space to connect, grow in faith, and put down roots.

Uh, I snapped this picture uh a few weeks ago.

I'm a terrible photographer, by the way.

But this is Brittany Ransom.

She's amazing, serves in all sorts of different capacities.

Here she is leading our kids in a song while she's holding her baby girl in her arms.

And our team does such a great job taking these high school spaces and turning them into kids spaces that are safe and fun and great environments, and yet we need spaces that are just for kids, for first-time families to feel just safe and confident.

Our junior high utilizes the office space.

Um, Jeff and uh it's it's amazing, and they're maxing out the office space.

Uh Jeff and Amy Watson open up their home every single Sunday for our high schoolers to meet, which is incredible.

Yes.

College meets at the called up home, downtown San Jose.

Young professionals meet in homes.

We just need spaces for each of these uh uh groups to be able to have, like, oh, this is our space where we can grow and learn, uh, where uh you're able to find Jesus and grow in him.

Uh ministry all week long.

Our offices can no longer meet the growing needs for groups, pastoral care, leadership development, worship, prayer, and mid-sized gathering.

This is a picture from our vision night a few weeks ago.

And it was special, it was powerful.

It's a group of a little over a hundred of us that are part of leading and serving uh here.

A week and a half before the event, we had no idea where we're meeting.

Because we don't have a space where we can meet a hundred plus with a hundred plus people.

Uh Central Christian graciously opened up their home uh space to us and we were able to meet there.

Um but we need spaces to be able to do those worship nights, those times, those gatherings together.

Here's another picture of um this is Jenny and some college girls praying because all around the room we had just groups gathered in prayer.

And I remember sitting up front with uh Say and Shadi, just like I was starting to just cry because I was like, oh Jesus, I want to do this.

I want us to be able to have family, to have unhurried space, to be in your presence, to meet with you, and then be sent out by you.

And like our worship team just got to show up, plug in, and practice and play.

It was awesome.

Um we have a girls' college small group that started meeting at Paris Baguette that grew from a few to 10 to 20.

It's not really ideal for 20 plus college girls to show up at Paris Baguette and do a Bible study anymore.

And yet our office space is being utilized every day of the week.

We don't have space.

And then just energy for mission.

Weekly setup, tear down, consume time, energy, and creativity that should be invested in people, discipleship, and mission.

To fill the mission God has entrusted to us, Awakened needs more than a Sunday gathering space.

We need a permanent ministry home where people can belong, deformed, and put down roots in our ministry capacity to be sent out.

A place of rootedness in a transient world, that we would be rooted in Silicon Valley for this generation and for generations to come.

And our prayer for awakening is that God would establish us as a strong, mature, life-giving church for generations to come.

Over here, you have these uh little uh things that we put up, and we're gonna keep them up.

This one says our prayer for rooted, and this one says dreams for our future home, and we have some pens and we're gonna have them out uh wherever through the weeks.

I would love for you to just write your prayers.

God, what's your prayer for what uh you long for what God to do through this season and through awakening?

What is your dream of like, God, would you use awakening in this way?

What's your dream for even a future space?

I don't know what if we're gonna be able to get it or not, but let's dream together.

God, what do you want to do?

I love uh one uh we've been having some of these meetings in one small uh young little kid, I loved his dream.

He's like, I long for our new building to have a gym.

And I was like, Amen to that.

I would love a gym too, like just the dream.

And so I began praying more specifically, intentionally for a gym in our new space.

But would you just take time?

We'll have them out over the next several weeks to be able to just begin to communally write our prayers and dreams and bring those to Jesus together.

Now, here's the question we're asking in this series together.

How do we become a deeply rooted people in a transient world?

Because if we're honest, we feel like this tree, a little beat up, feel easily shaken, oh boy.

Like it wasn't, it won't take a whole lot to just knock us over.

We're kind of holding our breath, hoping we can just make it through.

And if something hits, boy, I'm not really sure.

How do you become, how do we become deeply rooted in a transient, ever-changing, fast-paced, high pressure, AI-driven world?

Uh the Psalm 90 gives us these six foundational truths.

Last week we said the foundational truth, God is great.

A rooted life begins with the greatness of God.

The permanence your heart longs for can only be found in the presence of God.

Week two, foundational truth number two, is this God is great, life is short.

God is great, life is short.

Say that with me.

Life is short.

One more time.

Life is short.

Life is short.

And in the world we live in, I kind of feel like uh life is going by faster and faster.

It's October, by the way.

Did you know that?

Where did 2026 go?

There's only two and a half months left in the year.

We get so caught up trying to get our lives together, just make a living, keep our heads above water.

We rarely stop to ask some of the bigger questions.

There's this poet, Mary Oliver.

She has this great poem, The Summer Day.

I love it.

You should go check it out.

She closes it this way.

I shared it a few years ago.

She asks this question.

What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Like, what is it that you plan to do?

Those are the questions you ask in the younger years, and then somehow life starts happening, and you just get into the grind and you just try to make it through, and you're just trying to keep up.

But what is it that you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

You only get one.

Yellow.

And Moses is going to draw our hearts and remind us to live a deeply rooted world, uh, life in the midst of a transient, ever-changing, fleeting world.

We must recognize, embrace, and as a result, begin to live our lives in such a way of this reality, life is short.

Notice how he says it.

Psalm 90, verse 3.

Psalms 90:3

He says, You turn people back to dust.

Saying, return to dust, you mortals.

Like dust we began and dust we return.

And let me grab some dirt just so we can get going here.

Like life has a nature of like, oh, eventually it just kind of turns back to dust.

There's well, a thousand years in your sight are like a day that's just gone by.

In light of eternity, in light of God, our days are so fleeting and so brief.

You sweep away people in the sleep of death.

They're like new grass in the morning, and in the morning you have so much strength, so much vitality, so much hope, so much future, so many dreams.

But by evening it's dry and withered.

The hot, harsh sun just begins to beat down and weariness.

Well, be blessed.

Have a great Sunday.

We'll see you next week.

Here's what Moses is going to help us understand, and we need it today more than ever.

A rooted life begins with the end in mind.

A rooted life begins with the end in mind.

A rooted life keeps the brevity life in view.

The reality is, is we believe like we have all the time in the world.

Maybe we don't believe it, but we just act like it.

We ignore the reality.

In our culture, we push off the reality of death.

We don't live in it.

We ignore it.

In fact, we have some that are trying to delay it forever.

And Moses says actually, to live a rooted life, you have to think about it and understand it so that you'll live today differently.

I just have three words.

It's the sermon in three words, if you will.

Uh and it's simply this clarity, urgency, and eternity.

We say that with me.

Clarity, urgency, and eternity.

Beginning with the end in mind, understanding, okay, this life is fleeting, this life is short.

I wish this life just goes by faster and faster.

You blink.

I have a daughter that's graduating college.

My 30-year high school reunion is on the horizon.

But I just graduated high school.

It feels like not that long ago.

How in the world?

Like all of a sudden you look up and you're like, wait a second, where did the time go?

I was saying, we have to understand life is short.

It brings clarity, it brings urgency, and to live in light of eternity.

Clarity.

Clarity asks the question, what really matters?

Embracing the brevity of life changes how we live today.

Life is short, it brings clarity to what matters most.

Even in Moses' day, it was easy to live as if you had all the time in the world.

Just a few verses down, he says, Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

We're going to talk about that in two weeks, that wisdom is essential for a rooted life.

But teach us to number our days.

Teach us to recognize that our days are limited, that we have a precious few days on this planet.

I did the math for me, by the way.

I'm 45.

And so I the average age of a male in the U.S.

lives to 76.

I rounded up to 80.

I'm feeling optimistic.

So approximately I lived around 16,500 days.

And if averages are correct, I have about 12,775 days left.

I've lived more days than I'll live in the future.

Life is short.

It brings clarity to what matters the most.

When we encounter the reality that life is short, when it interrupts our days, it's amazing how what really matters all of a sudden rises to the front.

Rises to the top.

Some of you know how quickly your priorities can change: a phone call, a diagnosis, an empty chair at the table.

And the things that once consumed our attention yesterday suddenly lose their grip.

The things that you kept putting off become the things you wish you could do.

The thoughts that mattered so much really don't matter all that much.

A few weeks ago I was playing golf and I I love playing it, and I just often just go out by myself and end up kind of paired up with a group, and it's fun because I like I feel like God always opens up kind of these divine appointments.

And um, so I'm with this group and this guy who's I think he was 63 years old, and we start to get talking.

And through the, I mean, this is happening on the golf course, and he just all of a sudden stuff begins to open up, and he says, My mom died two months ago.

Suddenly, and it rocked my world.

He was on a trip, and so he wasn't able to come back.

He wasn't able to say goodbye even.

And he began to talk that she had faith and he hasn't.

And then he said this line.

He's like, Ryan, it's as if for 63 years I've been asleep walking through life.

And I Finally, I feel like I'm awake.

And it's no accident, by the way, that he has this moment, and God put a pastor in his group to begin to talk about faith.

But oh friends, if we don't understand that life is short, things, the urgent will take us over, the constant grind of life will drive us, and we will be as if we're asleep walking through life.

And my prayer is that it's not too late because the thing, oh gosh, the thing I hear more.

I wish I would have done this differently in my twenties.

I wish I would have done this differently in my 30s.

In my 40s.

Stephen Covey and his seven habits of highly effective people, he he has this practice, this kind of um exercise, if you will.

It was really impactful for me.

I remember first reading this book in my twenties.

I just want to kind of talk you through it, if you wouldn't mind.

And if you're comfortable, you can just kind of take a deep breath and settle in.

If you even want to close your eyes, you can.

And what he does is he says, imagine that you're walking into, let's say, like a church, music is playing, and you realize this is your funeral.

You're actually showing up to your own funeral, and family has gathered, friends have gathered, coworkers have gathered.

And the pastor at the front opens up the time for whoever wants to share, to share.

And one by one they walk up, and close family members, maybe it was a spouse, uh parents, a child, brother, sister, and they begin to speak about you.

Then some of your friends get up and they begin to talk about you.

Your coworkers, people that you've invested your life in.

What do you hope they would say about you?

What are the words that you hope they would say?

In fact, go ahead and just jot two or three of those down.

As a pastor, I've gotten to spend several moments with people at the end of their life.

And looking back, you know what I've never heard?

I wish I worked more.

I wish I made more.

I wish I had more.

I haven't heard those.

What I have heard echoes with this sixty-three-year-old.

I wish I woke up sooner.

I wish I invested my life into other people.

I wish I shared Jesus with my friends and my neighbors and my coworkers.

I wish I would have been present to the people that God put in my life.

I wish those are the things that matter because life is short and it brings about a clarity, friends.

And most of us are just sleepwalking through life.

My prayer is that Psalm 90, this moment, would be a wake-up call for us.

To live for what matters most, to organize our lives in such a way that we look back and go, oh man.

I'm so grateful.

So let me ask you, where is God inviting you to invest more intentionally?

Clarity.

What really matters.

Life is short.

It brings clarity to what matters most.

And as we get clarity to what matters most, then what it produces is an urgency.

An urgency.

The question, an urgency, asks, what am I postponing?

Life is short, it brings an urgency to live for what matters most.

We live in a culture that's constantly rushing.

And unfortunately, we put off some of the most important things.

We rush to meetings, but put off the conversation that could heal a relationship.

Respond to notifications immediately, but keep delaying something God has been asking us to do.

We tell ourselves, when things settle down, when the kids are older, when I have more money, when I have more time, and yet our lives keep moving.

Embracing the brevity of life awakes us to a holy urgency.

Not just a rushing for rushing sake, but a holy urgency because you recognize, you know what?

That counting that I did, I'm not guaranteed the next 12,775 days, but I am guaranteed this moment.

May I live with a holy urgency.

A holy urgency is a readiness to respond to God today.

Not someday, not one day.

God, what do you want to do in me through me?

What do I need to be aware of?

Who do I need to be present to today?

It's not adding more to your calendar, it's being more aware of God's presence in your calendar.

It's as simple as this, by the way, the holy urgency.

You if you just ask this one question, your life will change.

You'll see God show up in such significant ways, and you'll just start telling stories, and you're gonna look back on your life of like, as you begin to tell that story of like, gosh, the shade of my life, the life-giving, like tree of my life has been able to bless so many other people simply because I began to ask one question.

It's simply this Who can I bless today?

Who can I bless today?

You know what question we often ask, and it's a fair enough question, uh, but it just keeps us in the grind.

How do I get through the day?

How do I just make it?

I get that.

Your day, your life will radically change.

You just begin to ask, who can I bless today?

It's not always the big.

I think we think it's some big thing.

It's simple, it's momentary, it's little.

Uh, my daughter was um uh moving in earlier this year in Jenny uh to college, that is, and Jenny went down to help her move into her room, and it was one of those fool seasons for us.

She drove down for a day, helped her move in, and was driving back.

Uh I was actually teaching over in Santa Cruz.

She's trying to meet me there.

She's leaving from Santa Barbara to meet me in Santa Cruz, and she's tired, she's exhausted, and she stops to get gas, and I get this text from her.

ETA is 1115.

Good to know.

That's when she was going to show up in Santa Cruz.

I stopped in Paso to use the bathroom, and I felt like God wanted me to talk to this homeless girl who isn't much older than our daughter Ella.

Tess and her dad are homeless.

And as she stopped to talk to her, she knows she only had one tooth and a dog.

I went to and bought her food and drinks from the gas station Minimar.

I felt like God wanted me to tell her that God sees her and that he's close to her.

And when I came back to give her food, I could tell she'd been crying.

Please pray for Tess.

Living with a holy urgency is allowing God to interrupt your day and being present to the people he puts in front of you.

It's as simple as that.

Please pray for Tess.

We live in such a rush that we rush past people, we rush past moments.

And if I could do like parenting all over again, man, there's so many things that I thought were important that just took up my time, that I just would have been more present.

A deeply rooted life begins with the end in mind.

Life is short.

Clarity, what matters most?

Urgency.

How do I live today with a holy urgency?

If I truly believed life is short, what would you stop postponing?

And finally, eternity.

What will last?

Life is short.

Eternity's long.

So let's start living like it.

Life is short.

Eternity is long.

Dus life is.

Oh, sorry, queening.

Ah, shoot.

Okay, I made a little mess.

But this is it.

But eternity is long.

Invest your life in what will last for eternity.

And Psalm 90 places our brief lives before the eternal God.

And that raises the question we all have to face: what happens when our days here are done?

And Jesus spoke directly to that question.

His friend Lazarus had died.

He'd been dead for three plus days.

And he shows up onto the scene.

And one of the things that I love about Jesus, who he was showing up and he was gonna raise Lazarus from the dead, but he shows up in the middle of grief, in the middle of loss, in the middle of the great brokenness of our world.

And he sees it.

And the shortest verse in all of Scripture is so beautiful as Jesus wept.

That when Jesus shows up in the middle of your pain, in the middle of your grief, in the middle of the areas that you're walking through, that you're struggling to make it through, where you're feeling shaken and broken and you're not sure what's going to go, he first hurts with you.

And Martha says, Lord, if you had come sooner, my brother would still be alive.

And then Jesus says this I am the resurrection and the life.

The one who believes in me will live even though they died.

All of Christianity hinges upon the resurrection of Jesus.

And if he rose from the dead, then we have the greatest hope.

In fact, if he really did rise from the dead, then ultimately everything will be okay.

In this life, grief may follow you all the days of your life.

And there may be moments where just that pain is overwhelming.

And if Jesus rose from the dead, then here's what I got news for you: Death does not get the final say.

Jesus did and does.

And it's a reminder.

Both that we have a God who suffers and who conquers.

You have a God who understands everything you're walking through and more, who lived with open hands, that he gave his life stretched out for your sake.

No other religion has that.

The God who suffers, but he didn't just suffer, he conquered.

And so we put our hope, our faith, and we live not for this life.

We can invest this life because we have eternity.

We have a conquering king who defeated the grave.

So I want to invite you to the table.

I want to invite you in this moment to bring to him the We hope you are blessed by this message.

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