Bad Advice – Don’t Drift

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

For more information, visit Access.tv.

All right, let's get to work, everybody.

Today we are in a series called Bad Advice.

And I know some of you may this might be your first time and you're like, I didn't come here for bad advice.

I feel you.

We we've got good advice for you, but it starts by unprogramming some bad advice that maybe you've heard somewhere along the way.

The last three weeks we've been talking about different types of bad advice, like we got to work for the weekend or follow your heart.

If you've missed any of the messages, you can always go to our website, access.tv slash messages, and you can find all the messages archived there.

Today I've got a message that doesn't have one piece of bad advice.

It's got like four or five pieces of bad advice, and I think God has something exciting for all of us.

To get it started, last Sunday I had one of the weirdest days of my whole life.

I don't know if you've ever had a day like this.

I had one of my best moments and I had one of my worst moments all on the same day.

It started for me Saturday night.

Saturday, I drove down to South Florida, to the Fort Lauderdale area, and I was going to be preaching at a large church on Sunday, and I was excited about it, and I had talked to the pastor.

I said, here's four topics I love to preach about.

And he picked one of the topics and I was excited.

I had a good message locked and loaded, ready to go.

And then we went to dinner Saturday night and we got to talking, and he goes, you know, I was thinking about it.

I actually think this other topic that you're not prepared to preach on would be a better topic for our church.

Do you mind doing that?

And I said, Huh, sure.

And I thought to myself, imagine doing the most stressful part of your job in front of thousands of people every week, and you're given no warning whatsoever on what the topic's gonna be.

So I had a terrible night of sleep, tossing and turning, figuring out what I was gonna preach about, got it together, and it went awesome.

I was so happy with the day and how everything turned out.

And then had this awesome moment, so exciting, preached like 4,000 people.

Get in my car, start driving home.

I'm on the turnpike, this is important, in the middle of nowhere, and on my drive, I took a picture on my phone celebrating the fact that my car had just hit 100,000 miles.

Now that's gonna be an important detail in a moment because I had a warranty that ended at 100,000 miles.

I'm on the turnpike in the middle of nowhere, 20 minutes to be exact from nowhere.

I had one bar of cell phone signal, I had my daughter with me, and my car started making a rumbling sound.

I thought, no big deal, my stomach does this all the time, I'm good.

And then a warning popped up that said, electrical system failure, but I'm like, there's power in the blood of Jesus, I'll be fine.

And then it kept getting worse because it went from electrical system to engine overheating, turn off engine immediately.

And I thought, I'm in the middle of nowhere, what do I do?

So I pulled off to the side of the road and put my car in park, thinking maybe it would cool off.

Instead of cooling off, it turned off, and to this day still hasn't turned on.

Seven days.

I'm in the middle of nowhere, I don't know what to do.

I'm disconnected from everybody, disconnected from any city whatsoever.

I didn't know what to do, so I called, made some calls, got a tow company to come out and tow me.

How bad was it you asked?

They had to tow me 111 miles at$6 a mile, meaning my total for towing was$600.

Get behind me, Satan.

And then I told you my warranty had just expired, so I'm on the hook for whatever this is.

It's probably thousands and thousands of dollars.

So the ushers are coming forward, we're gonna receive an offering.

Come on, man.

No, I'm just playing.

Just playing.

Relax, let go of your wallet.

This is a safe place, okay?

I'm in the middle of nowhere, no cell phone signal, and I my car dies.

And I have these thoughts flash through my mind.

See if any of these resonate with you.

I thought to myself, why me?

God, I just preach like in front of thousands of people, your word, why me?

I thought, why now?

Like, middle of nowhere, why this moment?

Why couldn't it have broken down in Lakeland?

Anywhere closer?

Like, why the middle of nowhere?

What should have taken me an hour and a half to get home took me over four hours to get home.

And then I thought, how did I get here?

Like, how did this happen to me?

Like, I take care of my stuff, I take care of my car.

How did I get here?

I don't know if you've ever thought about this in your life, and I want you to think about these questions for a moment.

Do any of these questions feel like how your relationship with God might feel right now?

Why would you allow me to go through this?

Why now, in this season of my life, would you allow this tragedy, this difficulty?

Or maybe this is the one I want to talk about today.

How did I get here?

How did I just seem to drift so far away from you?

I want you to do, take a moment and don't raise your hand to this question.

I want you to do an internal audit.

Is anyone in the room honest enough to think to yourself that maybe there's been a point in your life when you felt closer to God than you feel now?

Like, don't raise your hand.

But maybe there was a point in your life when you self felt so close to God, so connected, so intimately connected to Him.

And maybe the truth is you still love God, but you just feel like, How did I get here?

Like if you were to do an honest assessment, you've just slowly drifted away.

If this is you, today's message is for you.

Heard a story about a couple that was celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary.

And the wife had this interesting observation.

She said, When they had first got married, she would drive in her husband's pickup truck with him, and he had one of those pickup trucks with a bench that sat across the front.

And so she would shimmy over to him, and he would drive with his left hand and put his right arm around his bride, and they'd be so close.

They'd cuddle as they drove together.

But they reached their 20th anniversary, and he had a similar pickup truck with the bench, and she said to her husband, Why is it that we've been married 20 years, but we're not as close as we used to be?

And the husband looked back coily at her and said, I've never moved.

I'd like to submit this to you.

If you're here and you might feel distant from God, far from God, he hasn't moved.

We move.

A.W.

Tozer said that you're as close to God as you choose to be.

His desire is to be close, his desire is to be near.

So we have to be the kind of people who make this decision that I'm never going to settle for drifting, but I'm going to be intentional about pursuing God.

Now, Jesus talks about this one day, and he told the story about a farmer sowing seeds.

And to everyone listening, this would have made perfect sense to them, no different than if I were to say, there was a person who went to Target, there was a person who went to Disney World.

You would understand what that means.

He tells the story about a farmer sowing seeds, and he says the seed landed on four different types of ground: a path, a rocky place, among thorns, and among good soil.

And what Jesus is going to teach us, and I want you to see this in a moment, is all four of these places that the seeds would fall determine the fruitfulness of the seed, but he also compares these seeds to the condition of our heart.

So again, I'm going to do an honest assessment, but as we read these verses, I want you to try to identify which of these places feels like your heart.

Here's the verses.

Jesus is speaking in Matthew 13.

He says, when anyone hears the message about the kingdom, the place where God rings, and does not understand it, the evil one, Satan, comes and snatches away what was sown in their hearts.

This is the seed sown along the path.

So imagine farmers throwing seeds and some land on a path where there's no real ground for them to dig into.

And he says this, he says that what happens is whether it's the evil one comes and snatches it away, or just imagine that this is a place where they're going to get scorched, or birds are going to come and pick it up, there's going to be no real fruitfulness from it.

Maybe this defines some of your spiritual condition right now.

You come to church and you just get enamored by the light, so you just kind of check out on it.

Your relationship with God feels distant and far.

And so you come to church and like nothing feels like it helpedful, nothing feels like it sticks.

Maybe it's because your heart feels like the seed sown along the path.

The second one, he says this.

He says, The seed falling on rocky ground refers to someone who hears the word and at once receives it with joy.

They're excited to hear the message of God.

It says, But since they have no root, they last only a short time.

When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away.

Jesus compares this person almost to a weed.

You ever pulled a weed out of your yard?

Sometimes weeds can spruit up really high, but you pull them and there's no root system grounding it whatsoever.

So maybe this defines your relationship with God.

It feels like your relationship with God has joyful, exciting moments.

But man, anytime you face any sort of challenge, it just like rips you out altogether.

The third one, he says this.

He says, the seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful.

Maybe this one defines you.

And you're good with God.

You love God, you worship God, you serve God until it feels like life is falling apart on you.

You love God, worship God, serve God until it feels like your bank account's running out of money, or you get the bad diagnosis from the doctor, or you lose the job that you love so much, and you're good.

As long as the things of this world, the worries of this life, choke out the word.

So what it tends to happen is you say you love God and trust God until you're required to actually trust him.

But then there's a fourth level, and this is where I hope all of us get to.

He says, But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it.

This is the one who produces the crop, yielding 160 or 30 times what was sown.

So Jesus says there is a fourth level, and this is where he wants all of us to be.

It's a heart that's receptive to the word of God.

And what you need to understand is when planted, Jesus says it can return a crop that yields so much.

In fact, here's the numbers he uses 30 times, 60, or even 100 times.

Now, this may mean nothing to us because we're not farmers, but in Jesus' day, people lived on what they grew.

So everyone would understand this.

If you were to plant one seed and get 30 times or 60 or 100, that would be a miracle.

And Jesus wants you to understand that when you have a heart that's receptive to hearing from his word, a heart that seeks to understand and put it into practice, not enough to hear it, but to be the kind of people who live it, you're gonna receive a reward in your life of fruitfulness that's gonna outpace the seed many, many times over.

So here's the question.

Here are the four different soils.

Which one are you?

Which one are you?

The truth is, many of us at one point in our life would probably have thought to ourselves we are a good soil, but over time something starts to happen.

I would say it to you like this.

I was in Fort Lauderdale last weekend before my car exploded on me.

And I asked the pastor, I said, Man, living this close to the beach, you must go to the beach all the time.

He goes, now.

I said what?

He goes, When you live close to the beach, you don't go very often.

And I grew up in the West Palm Beach area, 30 to 40 minutes north of there.

And it's true, we almost never went to the beach, but if you've ever been to the beach, you know that there's this interesting phenomena.

You ever set your stuff down, you set up a tent or a little canopy, you set you set down some beach towels or a tarp or some chairs, and you put all your stuff there and you go out into the water, and you swim 30, 40 yards out in the water, and you're drifting and bobbing along and you're having a good time, throwing a frisbee, throwing a ball to your friends, and you don't pay attention, and 20 minutes later you look up, and your chair that used to be right there is not right there.

You ever had this happen where you look up and you don't even know where you are anymore?

You're like in a different zip code.

Did you do it on purpose?

No.

What happened?

You drifted.

The author of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 2, verse 1, said this.

Hebrews 2:1

He said, We must pay attention, pay most careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, the word of God.

And here's the reason, so that we do not drift away.

Like we have two choices.

We can either be intentional about following the way of Jesus, but if we're not intentional, what will happen is we'll take our eyes off.

And it's not on purpose, it's not like we want to hurt God or break God's heart.

It's just slowly over time we drift.

So that today I want to talk to anyone who's drifted.

Today I want to talk to anyone who would say there was a point in my life when I felt so much closer to God than I do now, I just don't anymore.

If this is you, I want to give you four pieces of really bad advice.

Pull your message notes out.

These are how to drift from God, okay?

Four pieces of advice for how to drift from God.

Number one is this neglect your time with God.

Why does this matter?

Well, time is one of your most precious commodities.

We think it's money, but the truth is you can always get more money.

You can't get more time.

Now, I would argue that time is not actually your most precious commodity.

I would actually argue that your attention is your most precious commodity.

But your time is connected to your attention because what you give your time to shows what your focus is on.

Saw this interesting report this week that showed that the average uh time spent of someone in their early 20s.

And it said that in your early 20s, if you were to divide your time up, you spend roughly a third of your time sleeping.

If you have a job, you might spend roughly a third of your time at work, and that leaves one third of your time.

That one third of your time gets divided up doing chores, running errands.

That third of your life gets divided up doing things that you have to get done.

But what was overwhelming and surprising is the percentage of that third that people in their 20s spend addicted to their screens, to their phones, to their Instagram, to their Twitter, to their TikTok, to whatever it is that has their attention.

Now here's a question Is there anything inherently wrong with those things?

No, it's not sinful.

I mean, it can be, but it's not inherently sinful.

The problem becomes when it has all of your time, it gets all of your focus.

Okay.

If you want to drift from God, give anything but God your focus.

In the book of Psalm, David is in a desert.

He says this, Psalm 63, verse 1, he says, You God are my God.

Psalms 63:1

Earnestly, like with all of my heart, with all my passion, I seek you.

He says, I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you in a dry and parched land where there is no water.

Imagine being in a desert.

Imagine being isolated, far from any sort of water or source of life, and finding a cup of water.

He said, That is what my soul longs for you like, like a person so parched from being in the desert, how they long for water.

Can you say that this is true for you?

If you can't, today's the day when we choose to stop drifting.

Second piece of bad advice when it comes to drifting away from God is you need to hang around the wrong people.

Every business leader will tell you that we become the sum of the five most influential voices in our lives.

Now, this is important for you to understand because there are people in your life, and if you surround yourself with the wrong people, you will become like them.

If you surround yourself with five smokers, you will become the sixth.

If you surround yourself with five people who love to get blackout drunk and do stupid stuff on the weekends, you will be the sixth.

If you surround yourself with people who like to cheat on their spouse, you will be the sixth.

But conversely, if you spend your time with people who are pursuing the things of God, you will become the sixth.

Why does this matter?

Our friends dictate our direction and they dictate our future.

The book of 1 Corinthians, Paul says it like this, 1 Corinthians 15.

It says, do not be misled.

Bad company, bad friendships corrupts good character.

So you can have the right intentions and the wrong friends, and you're gonna get the wrong results in your life.

We've got to see this differently.

So this is important.

You need to pay attention to your circle of friends because they dictate the quality and the direction of your life.

Bad advice number three if you want to drift from God, you need to give into temptation.

Now here's the funny thing: there's nothing wrong with being tempted.

The problem with temptation is it often leads us to evil, it often leads us to sin.

Giving into temptation is saying, God, there is something in my life that I desire more than you or your best for me.

The book of James, this is the half-brother of Jesus, James 1, 14 and 15.

He says, Each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed.

Then, after desire has conceived, I want you to watch this pathway, it gives birth to sin.

And sin, when it is full grown, gives birth to death.

All of us were created by God with cravings in our soul.

Cravings for meaning, cravings for intimacy, cravings for influence.

God put all of those desires in us, but the problem is those desires, even when they're only five degrees of derivation away from your purpose, they can lead you in a path of unrighteousness.

So pay attention to those.

If you want to drift from God, give in to your temptations instead of paying attention to what God's desire is.

Number four, if you want to drift from God, love this world more than you love God.

Now I want you to see some strong language in 1 John.

John, who was close to Jesus, said, Do not love the world or anything in the world.

For if anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them.

This is so strong.

Let me say it to you as kindly as I can.

There is nothing wrong with loving your life.

In fact, read the scripture in totality.

God wants you to love your life, enjoy your life, have fun.

Enjoy a walk on the beach, enjoy a beautiful sunset, enjoy holding hands with your spouse, enjoy eating a great meal, enjoy slow dancing in the rain, enjoy your football team, because I can't this season.

Enjoy your life.

Right?

Enjoy it.

Hear me.

But may none of it take the place of the throne of your heart, which was designed exclusively for God.

Okay.

Now, if any of those things feel like your life, I'm gonna give you one more piece of bad advice.

Do this.

If you feel like you're far from God, just fake it.

Here's the funny thing.

This is terrible advice, but this is what all of us do at some point in our lives.

We feel so far from God.

In fact, I would say it like this no part of our lives feels like it is honoring God's best for us, but what do we do?

Come to church and put on a show.

We know when to lift our hands, we know when to sing, we know when to clap, we know when to say amen.

We know when to give, we know all the games to play, but all we're doing is we're giving God lip service.

We're saying one thing with our mouth, but we're doing the opposite with our lives.

It's like we become these part-time Christians.

We're Christians when it's convenient for us to be Christians, but when it's not, we do our own thing.

God was speaking in the book of Isaiah to the prophet Isaiah some 700 years before Jesus.

And he says, the Lord says, These people come near me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.

Why does this matter?

Because if you're faking it with your lips, you might fool the people around you, but you never fool God.

I want you to get this.

You never fool God.

So don't fake it.

So stop playing games.

So stop showing up to church and doing all the things that look good for people when your heart feels far from God.

In the book of Revelation, John writes this.

This is God speaking to one of the seven churches in Revelation.

God says, I know your deeds.

You have a reputation of being alive.

People think you're alive and following God, but you are actually dead.

Like it's possible to put on a show, it's possible to go through the emotions and all the emotions.

But for God to know the truth about you, which is that your heart is far from him and it's actually dead.

Now, if there's any part of you that hears a message like this, and you're like, geez, man.

Like I get it, I understand, but I this doesn't feel good.

Like this doesn't feel I don't like how I feel in a message like this.

I want to be careful that you understand the definition of two different words: condemnation and conviction.

Condemnation is not from God.

I want you to hear this.

John 3.17, the verse after John 3.16, the most known verse in the Bible, says, For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that through him the world might be saved.

Condemnation is a work of the enemy to make you feel like you'll never be able to get God's love, his blessing, and his favor.

It's the voice of the enemy in your mind saying, You'll never get past this, you'll never get over it, you'll never heal.

God could never love you.

That is condemnation.

Some years ago I preached the message on racism.

And it was in the height of 2020 when the whole world was going crazy.

And I preached the message on racism that I would preach today to any audience in the world.

In the message, I basically said that racism is sin, it is of the enemy.

Uh, racism must die in our generation.

We were created to love one another, all of us created in the image of God.

Beautiful message on racism, beautiful message.

And after the message, I got one of the ugliest responses ever from a person who said, I've been in church my whole life and I've never heard a message more condemning.

You just want to say back to them, is it possible that you've conflated the words condemnation and conviction?

Condemnation is from the enemy, conviction is from God.

I want you to hear this.

Conviction is a gift from God.

If you're here today and you're like, I just feel far from God, and everything you've said pointed it out to me, it's a gift.

Why is it a gift?

Because it's your opportunity to stop drifting and to choose intentionality.

So, what do I challenge you to do?

So simple.

Return to your first love.

What does this mean?

Some of my favorite Christians are the Christians who are brand new.

Today we've been to baptize so many people and so many of them choking back tears.

So grateful for God's love, the fact that He saved them and changed their life.

I'm watching parents baptize their kids and they're crying.

These are special moments.

It's funny because when you're first in love, everything's new and beautiful and special.

When you're in love with God, what tends to happen is we're like, God, I'm all in.

We spend time with Him in prayer.

We spend time reading His Word.

Getting to church is a joy, and we come with joy in our hearts.

We give sacrificially, we serve ferociously.

Like it is fun.

But over time, if we drift, we miss it.

So here is what Scripture teaches us to do.

Again, John in the book of Revelation to a different church.

Revelation 2, 4 and 5 says, You have forsaken the love you had at first.

So here's what I want you to do.

Consider how far you've fallen.

Do two things repent and do the things you did at first.

Let me tease out what you're to do.

If you feel far from God and you're like, How did I get here?

Number one, John says that we are to repent.

Now repent feels like a word that's heavy.

If you grew up going to church, that was like a Bible thumping, beat you up or you would leave, feeling beaten down, not built up, this word feels heavy to you.

But repent is a beautiful word.

Repent is a gift.

Repent means this.

It means to be going one direction.

And to repent means to turn.

It means to change directions.

So here's what God is saying.

If you feel like you've drifted far away, if you feel like there was a point in your life where we were once so close, but you've moved.

Repent.

What does that mean?

I mean saying, God, at one point I was chasing after the things from you, but I've gotten off course.

Today I'm turning back to you.

So simple.

Number two is this is do the things you did at first.

Can we challenge you?

This is right from scripture.

I challenge you to give God the first of everything you've gotten.

Ready?

Give God the first of your day.

Before you get on your phone, before you check what's happening on Instagram or whatever you get on, give God a few minutes of your day.

I challenge you to give God the first of your week.

Make being in church a priority.

I challenge you to say, God, make my heart good soil, the kind of place where you plant your word, and what happens is fruit comes out of my life as a response.

Challenge you to put God first in the area of serving, the first of your time, first in the area of giving, the first of your finances, and watch what happens.

Okay, let me get real strong with you.

You have two choices in a message like this.

You can choose to stay on the path you're on, which, if it's going drifting from God, you're gonna get the same kinds of results.

But you have another option.

This is so important, ready?

You can also choose to repent and return to your first love.

You can literally turn back to God.

I'm gonna ask you all across this place, would you bow your head and close your eyes?

I'm gonna pray with you, but I'm gonna ask you first to do a quick audit of your heart.

Would you say that you are the closest you've ever been to God right now?

If yes, awesome.

But if not, this moment's for you.

If there's parts in your life where you feel like your life is not the good soil that Jesus talked about in the book of Matthew, right now we're gonna correct it.

We're gonna repent.

So I'm gonna lead you in a prayer, but I want you to say, God, I repent, I turn back to you.

So God, in this moment, that is our heart.

For those of us who feel like we've just become these fake part-time Christians, we repent.

For those of us who feel like we've turned our hearts away from you unintentionally, we've just drifted, we repent, we turn back to you.

God, I pray for a dose of supernatural courage to flow through the people here today.

God, my prayer is that we will grow closer and closer to you.

May we never ever settle for drifting, but may we pursue closeness, intimacy, time with you, intentionality in our relationship with you.

God, we did that at one point in our life.

May we never stop pursuing you because you are what matters.

Thank you for that, God.

With everyone here, still with your head bowed and eyes closed, if you're here and you don't even know if you're right with God today.

Maybe that means you've never started a relationship with God, or maybe you just feel like you've walked so far away from your relationship with Him.

If today you need to start, or honestly, maybe you just need to restart your relationship with God, this moment's for you.

If you say, Jason, that's me, I need to restart or start with God.

Would you raise your hand right now?

I want to pray with you.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Wow.

It's like this every week here.

I love this so much.

If this is you, I'm gonna ask you to pray this prayer with me and hear me on this.

Praying a prayer only changes things if you pray this and mean it with your heart.

Would you say today, Jesus, I give you my life?

Would you be my Lord and my Savior?

Jesus, I believe you're the Son of God who came into this world and paid the price for me by dying on the cross in my place.

Jesus, I believe that when you did that, you once and for all bought my salvation, my freedom from sin.

And because of your gift of salvation and grace, I can be made new.

So, Jesus, today I choose to give you my life for the rest of my life.

From this day forward, I surrender to you.

I will follow you all the days of my life.

And it is in your name I pray, Jesus.

Amen.

Church fam, look at that man.

We just had people all over the place.

Pray to make that decision.

What a moment.

I love it.