Who Do You Work For?

Jesus's name that we pray and God's people said amen, you may be seated. Can I ask for some participation today? Just say yes if you're okay with that, all right. I'm going to ask for two things.

First off, raise your hand.

If you've got Instagram, okay, if you have Instagram, I want you to grab your phone right now. I'm going give you permission to do it right now. I wish she still had the pad or something like that. They're not going to play music in the background.

I give you permission to ignore some of the things I say over the next one minute.

If you can open your phone, go to Instagram and if you don't follow us, you can type in orbit, Orbit Church, and you'll find it. And you should follow us so that you can get more and more information every single day when you're scrolling incessantly through Instagram rather than doing something productive. But that's okay. It can be productive if you follow us on your Instagram.

But the thing I really want you to do is, when you go to that page, I want you to look at the event: the Easter egg helicopter drop event.

It's super colorful. Created that for us. It looks, it looks really good and it's catchy, right. So I want you to click on that and it might have music.

It might have music on it, so you might need to turn the volume down on your phone, but when you click on that, what you're going to see is you're going to see the love button or like button, then you're going to see the message button- no, I don't know what you're going to see in between, but then you're going to see this little arrow looking button.

When you press that, it opens up on your Instagram all your friends, family members and people you follow, and all you have to do is click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click and it sends it to those people who could probably benefi of Easter, and so I want to encourage you: if you have Instagram, follow us and do that at the same time, and I'll give you permission for the next minute just to click all 50 people that it will let you do. You can even pick and choose. It's like I don't know if they'd like that. Well, this person would click on them, and this is some very easy way that you can invite people into a connection with God.

I know you guys are like this: what's a preacher doing, being that practical at the front of his sermon, telling me to use my Instagram for Jesus, it's like it's very practical, right?

It also increases Us in the algorithm, so more people will see it. So you should, you should, totally do it. The second thing I want to encourage you to do, we've been in a series- it's not really a series, I just we call the month of March March Madness because we want to encourage people to challenge themselves and attend for five weeks in a row, be it here in town, be it out of town at some random Church where they take notes and bring us back feedback from that church so that we can get better or just feel bad about ourselves. And then the third thing is, you can watch online if you're sick, or unable to go to a church, those are three options and I think that consistency will bless you.

And since we've called it March Madness, I've just been thinking crazy a little bit.

You know what I'm saying, so I thought it might be crazy for us to do something really practical, and I did not send my Scripture text, this week intentionally, because I'm going to. I got a Scripture text. But I want to encourage us to utilize either our physical Bible or our phone, and so this is going to be very practical. But if you have a physical Bible, I going to have you open up to John chapter 5.

If you have a phone Bible, I'd encourage you to go to the Bible app, and open up.

You can change translations if you want to. If you want it to be easy on yourself, today, you can click the NIV translation and you can go to John chapter 5 on your phone and follow along with what we're about to read. I know it's crazy. I didn't make it as easy for you today, but it's March Madness, so I'm giving myself permission to do whatever I want.

Y'all aren't laughing.

Second service would be laughing, yeah, hey, no, I, speaking of I. They might not, who knows, just depends on who shows up that day. But I want to thank you. I want to thank you for for coming first service, because you're providing space for people who are coming for the first time.

In the second service, we have a lot more first-time guests usually in that second service, like I said when we, a couple hours after, we put that Easter event up and people could register.

We had over a 100 register and a huge portion of them said they're going to come to church the next day, which is really exciting, and you can guess which service they chose. So, anyone who is sitting in here, I want you to know you're valued by me and you're loved by Jesus. I don't know what measure above, but you're still loved by Jesus. Thank you for providing space.

John, chapter 5, and we are going to begin in verse 24.

I got to give you just a little bit of context before we begin. What has just happened is Jesus is in Jerusalem and he healed a man who had been lame for a number of years. He healed him next to the pool of silom, and it happens to be on the Sabbath. And so Jesus begins talking to his disciples, the Pharisees, Sadducees and everybody who was around, and he begins a.

I call it one of John's monologues.

I don't mean that negatively, I mean it positively, that Jesus self-d discloses. For a little bit, and it would be like 20 verses that I was going to give to you, but I decided to hone it in starting in verse 24, and here's what he says. Jesus says very truly, I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him, who sent me, has eternal life and will not be judged, but has crossed over from Death To Life, life very truly. I tell you, a time is coming, and is it has now come, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live.

For as the father has life in himself, so he has granted the son also to have life in himself and he has now hear this, given him authority to judge because he is the son of man.

Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out. Those who who have done what is Good Will Rise to live and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned. But I'm but myself, by myself I can do nothing. I judge only as I hear and my judgment is just for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.

Now.

I preached a message last week from John, chapter 6, where Peter makes a proclamation to Jesus after a lot of his followers leave him. What he says- and this is really kind of the like real motive of this series. What Peter says is: where else would we go or to whom else would we go? You hold the words of everlasting life, and he says this at the end of this long speech from Jesus.

And what I just read to you indicates something: that Jesus is mimicking the work of the father on the earth and that God, the father, has given Jesus all authority to operate and to provide Supernatural blessings and life abundantly.

What it says is: he who hears my voice talking about Jesus's voice will live, and those who do not hearken to or hear his voice will not live. He's speaking about eternity, that the prescription for you to have eternity with God is to listen to The Eternal words of God as presented through Jesus right here. It is clear, and while while last week I talked a lot about where we could go to hear words other than Jesus and I like really kind of communicated to the people who were here and those who watched online- like Jesus's words are the only ones who give life, I want to kind of add a little bit of color to last week's message by talking not just about the voice and the Eternal words of Jesus, but his authoritative position. Let me say it this way.

For all of us, there is someone we're looking up to as our Authority, and it should be Jesus.

But for many of us we struggle to look up to Jesus because we've got so many other little Gods, little authorities, little bosses who are guiding us and we're listening more to them than we are to God. And so I guess, if there's a running sermon title for today, I would ask this question: who do you work for? I was going to say it differently earlier, but I felt like that one felt more spiritual. I was going to say: who's your boss?

And My Hope by the end of this message would be for all of us to leave here really leaning into Jesus as our authoritative figure in life and allowing all of these other authority figures, while present, not be the priority.

Does that make sense? To everybody say Amen, all right, we're going to dive into it. And what I want to do today is I'm going to pull out my handy dandy notebook. You know what that's from anyone?

Remember that?

Blues Clues? Oh man, I watched that when I was a kid. That tells you how old are you. Who do you work for?

And there are various groups, people, authorities in life, none of whom we would probably say out loud: or as powerful as God, as helpful as God, as peaceg giving as God, .

But we lean into those because they feel more relevant than God often, and so I've got four of them and I want to give them to you. I hope they're helpful. The first one is: , for many of you, Society is your boss now. When I talk about Society, I talk about the, the world in general, but cultural norms, trends that people follow, the things you see on Instagram or or Tik Tok, the way that your specific country or city tells you to act, Society might be your boss now.

Obviously, that's not a great thing, because Jesus should be our boss, but we often let Society be our boss, anyone here willing to be honest about something that Jesus is going to redeem?

About the fact that they're a people pleaser? Just a couple of you. I don't believe you for a second. How many of you are people Pleasers?

Come on, let's be real.

In this place, even I'm a people pleaser. I don't look like a people pleaser, do I? Maybe I do. I'm sorry if, if I do, I just I thought y'all would think that I'm way more bold and challenging than I guess you think I am.

But even I'm a people pleaser, right?

People pleasing can be something very small. It's like I just don't like confrontation, so I'm going to do like what is kind of the easiest route to no confrontation, which might be just going along, like going with the flow or hang, just not saying anything when something's happening that I don't necessarily agree with. Or just living life in such a way that the people around me are are pleased with how I'm operating. If you're on the inogram, you might call yourself an achiever.

If you're a people pleaser, I want them to be proud of me, whether it's your family members, close friends, employer or random people on the street- that you really shouldn't care what they think, but for some reason, you really care what they think.

People pleasing is something that I Think Jesus is trying to redeem, but in order for him to redeem it, you have to put him as the main Authority in your life. But if Society is your Authority, you're going to, you're going to live your life constantly frustrated. There's something that I've experienced since I've moved out here to Phoenix now, just if you didn't know me already: I grew up in Arkansas. I was born in California, so I got that, but I grew up in Arkansas, which is what you guys can all tell I'm from.

Y'all don't think California when you hear me, you think Arkansas.

So I grew up in Arkansas and I traveled, I mean, I moved around quite a bit when I was younger and then, as I became an adult, I moved to a couple different locations and at those locations I never really tried to chase clout, if you will. I was a people pleaser. But I never really found myself in the position where I'm trying to be something that somebody else wants me to be, until we started this church. And what you realize when you start a church is it's supposed to be all about God, but a lot of people are looking at you first to see if your version of God is the one they're trying to hang out with.

And so what I realized when I got out here was there was a lot more me than I wanted to be publicly proclaimed.

You know what I'm saying. It's like I like: is my hair good today? Did have I lost enough weight? Like, have I worked out enough to look swollen enough?

Maybe I should get some tattoos because people think tattoos are cool.

And I got into this place- I don't have any tattoos, by the way, so I didn't like succumb to, that trial or temptation, but those thoughts I they still sometimes come to my head. If, if I did this, maybe people would. Or or if I acted like this, maybe people would think differently about me. And that's the position of you find yourself in and that's not what Jesus wants.

He wants you to think like, how does God want me to operate?

But we think, how do people want me to operate? And if you are in that place, it is very hard for you to enjoy several components of life that Jesus wants you to enjoy now. The solution- and it's a difficult thing to do- is to prioritize Jesus so much in your life that you're thinking: what does he want me to think? What does he want me to say?

What does he want me to do?

How does he want me to interact with other people? What does he want for my future? Right, this is me daily, over a long period of time, saying: Jesus, you're first, so I'm going to ask you, as my authority, what you want from me. It takes time and, since many of us have, never even experienced Jesus or have experienced Jesus but haven't taken the time to sit under his authority.

We're still people pleasing, we're still looking, looking at the trends that are happening in the world and saying: let me dance like that.

There's nothing wrong with doing a dance Trend. I don't care, I'm not going to judge you. There might be something wrong with the dance Trend depending on the type of dance. You know what I'm saying.

I remember when cardi B was putting out stuff, I was like y'all don't need to copy that why he, bro, brought up cardi B in his sermon.

Get over it. I'm sorry, we're moving on. I'm not trying to be a people pleaser here, but when, when you look at the trends, it's not just people pleasing, it's looking and saying that would be cool to be a part of. And if, if you're living your life under the authority of what the next trend is, you're going to be unhappy every day.

You know that feeling of, of dopamine hit or serotonin loss.

I don't know. My wife knows the science behind it- something with serotonin and dopamine. I don't know. All I know is I feel bad when I start scrolling Instagram and looking.

You know that feeling.

It could be that that you're in that place while you're scrolling and you see someone living a life that at least looks on the public front on Instagram-, their highlight re, if you will. It looks like they're living a better life than you, and so now you feel a certain way. Why? Because you are constrained by the authority of society in your life.

But if you can move in that moment to saying there's more important things than the trend, there's more important things than just pleasing people, then I get to the place where I look at Jesus.

I fix my eyes on him. He's the author, he's the perfector, he's the one who sanctifies me, he's the one who forgave me, he's the one who saved me, he's the one I'll spend all of eternity with. And since I know that, I look to that first, I Look to that consistently, I Look to that daily. I keep hearing from him receiving the words of eternal life.

And then I look at Instagram.

That's right, and I'm like: whatever, no big deal, like. There's some Scriptures that I want to give you. Romans chapter 1. It says: do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, which means, if you're in Conformity with the World by following Trends are simply people pleasing, then there's something about you that might require some more sanctification from the spirit of God, .

In Acts, chapter 5, he says: obey God rather than men.

In Galatians, chapter 1, Paul says himself: if I were trying to please man, then I would not be in a regular position of pleasing God. That's right. If Society is your boss, you're going to be missing a crucial component. Jesus needs to be first, and I want to ask you this, if, if Jesus would, was asking you to do something that was in contrast to what people are doing around you, be it family, friends, employee like your, your employment, whatever, what would it take for you to do what Jesus called you to do, above and beyond what people would expect of you?

That's a good question to ask yourself, .

CS Lewis has a quote. I'm been quoting him a lot over the next couple of weeks. He says: when the world is running toward a cliff, the one running the opposite direction might appear to be going crazy, but that doesn't mean they're crazy. And so for you.

If you're running alongside everybody else by people pleasing or Trend following, you might be governed by Society rather than your savior, Christ Jesus.

I'm not saying it's never going to happen when you've trusted in Jesus. I'm saying it is a regular thing to ask God to sanctify you in, and so I want to encourage you. Consider what that looks like. Number two: , your employer is your real boss.

Now, obviously, your employer is your boss.

If they tell you to do something at work and you don't do it, that's not a good situation to be in. Right, like you, anyone, you should probably do what your boss tells you to do in general, unless it's illegal, unethical, or immoral. Right, you should. Probably.

I don't know, I don't know what.

Where you work, there are some things you probably shouldn't do, no matter what. But for many of you, your employer is who governs your life. Now, I want to be empathetic. Before I'm emphatic, let me be empathetic.

I get it like: this is how you make money.

This is how you earn an income. This is how you put yourself in a position to provide for your family. This is one of the most important things in your life, and if it's not the most important thing in your life, it still takes up the majority of your life. Your job is extremely important.

Not only does God want to use it for his purposes.

But it's something you have to do, even if you're not even thinking about God and- and for many of us, we're walking through life and our employer, legitimately, is our primary Authority. When they tell you to do something, you do it. When they tell you not to do something, you don't do it. In fact, your conversation with God comes subordinate to your conversation with your employer.

Now, the thing I see on the regular is: I can't do this because I got to work.

I see that all the time, and there's a level where I understand it and there's a level where it's like: let's stop using excuses and put Jesus at the priority, regardless of what external circumstances are causing me to maybe excuse, like my own, lack of growth and that I was going in the right direction, but then I screwed up the way I was saying that to where it wouldn't be understandable. Here's the truth. We use work and our employer as an excuse, to feel good about not growing closer to God sometimes. And what I want to encourage you to do is: your job is not the problem.

Your employer is probably not the problem, it's your perspective, and so here's what I want to be emphatic about your employer is not as important as Jesus.

And so what we need to do when it comes to our jobs is say: Jesus, how do you want me to excellently operate in this world, at this company or under this employer, or doing this hobby or around these people, how do you want me, Lord, to seek you first so that you would add the proper things in my life? I've seen some examples in my life of how this has worked out well, but again, I want you to know- I know it's difficult-, there was one time where, somebody couldn't make church for like, not not here, but at one of my past churches- for like months. Well, they didn't make church for months and, initially they were having some really great strides in their faith and then, you know, something happened with their job and they didn't come for another couple of months, and I remember lamenting the fact that you know what God was doing was super powerful, but being wise enough to recognize that God can still do that while they're working and not here. I recognized that, but when they came back, it was as if their entire Faith Life had been derailed, and I remember someone telling me.

They said, hey, man, it makes sense, it's.

It's just hard sometimes, and while I was empathetic with it, there was another part of me that said: but does it have to be that way? I, I'm a firm believer that when you seek God, everything else will be added. The Bible says this, in case you didn't know, that when you seek God, he provides for you, and so, rather than seeing work as an obstacle to your faith, I would see working excellently as an opportunity to embrace Faith around other people who don't have faith. I wrote down this and I don't know if this is the right way to put it.

Well, here's what the Bible says in Proverbs 16:3.

I got to give you context. It says: commit your work to the Lord and your plans will be established. Let me say that again: commit your plans to the Lord, or commit your work to the Lord and your plans will be established. What that means biblically is that as you commit your life, your work, your everything to the Lord, then he's going to establish for you?

U what you might be hoping for or what you might be waiting for.

As I'm obedient to God, he does what's necessary, and I wrote this down. I said, like a lot of us, we see them in contrast and so we're kind of a crappy employee. And then we- I'm scared to do this, but I've seen it so many times- like you go to work and work is just your work and you don't do it excellently, you don't do it as if unto the Lord, which the Scriptures tell us to do all the time. And since you're not doing it-, of the Lord, you don't get the opportunities and promotions and experiences that you want.

And so you look at your employer as someone who who is inhibiting you from the life that you want.

But the reality is, if you would just live excellently, as God called you to do, then the opportunities would unfold before you. This is what the Scriptures say. And then when you come to church or when you go to your time with your family or you go to spend time with God and his word, and you're like: I don't have time for this because I'm so stressed over here, the question I want to ask- and this is not always the case, but about 80% of the time I've seen it is the case- it's like: did you do your work as unto the Lord in the first place and if you can do your work as unto the Lord, chances are the Bible passage is going to be fulfilled. He will establish your plans.

All things will be added to your life.

If you do it is unto the Lord. But what most of the time happens is you don't do it is unto the Lord, and then you go to that one thing during the week which happens to be Church, the one time where you decide to get spiritual, and then you, you look at that and you, I can't even do that. I'm being harsh here, Hannah. Where's Hannah?

Can you look at me?

Just to make me feel more confident about this next statement: excellent work is what the Lord expects of us and if we work excellently in the world, then they're going to look at us and say what is causing them to work excellently. And when they look and ask that question and we get to tell them it's because I've got a center that is more important than my employer, more important than my family, more important than all of these things. I serve Christ Jesus and because he's my God I work excellently. And when I work excellently and then they see it is your employer.

This is, I mean I.

Again there's there's always some people out there who, who, who miss the boat and there going to be employers out there who don't treat you well, and you need to ask the Lord to give you wisdom in the midst of that difficult circumstances, a difficult circumstance. But most of the time, if you're honest with yourself, you're not working excellently at work and so your ability to serve God is hindered at home. But I would encourage you to live excellently. Hudson Taylor says this: God's work done in God's way will never lack God's Supply.

God's work done the way God wants it to be done will never lack God's Supply.

So if you feel diminished in your life, look at yourself and say: how am I operating in relation to God? Am I doing my work in the way he's calling me to? Following God requires us to be better. We're supposed to be a lamp in this world, where they a light to the world.

The Bible says we're supposed to be a light to the Nations.

But many of us go in there with lazy work and we're dim and they look at us and they're like: why would I let you do this when you're not working excellently in the first place? I'm hitting y'all too hard. I'm done with that. I'm so sorry, but I just I see it so much.

God wants us to be excellent in this world.

Number three: your family might be your boss. My, my wife's my boss the vast majority of the time. She controls my schedule. Sometimes I got to put my foot down and say we're not going to that game, we got church.

Just kidding, she never does that.

I ain't trying to make her look bad. We never skip church, except in Iceland, that one time I couldn't understand the language I made that. See, look at me making excuses. Anyways, we're going to move on.

Your family might be your boss.

You can imagine that I've experienced, over 15 plus years in min, a number of excuses having to do with. I couldn't grow in my faith, or I couldn't read the Bible, or I couldn't come to church, or I couldn't serve, or I couldn't do this, or I couldn't do what God was calling me to do, that. I had mentioned because my family member, or because I had this, or because we had a lot of family in town, or because we had an argument that morning, or because the kids were really struggling, or because I'm late in my faith. And since I'm late in my faith.

I've got kids who are older and don't understand why we're going to church now or doing this. There's a number of excuses- having to do with your family, but God has not called us to put our family as the most important thing in our lives. He's called us to put him as the most important thing in our lives, and I'm just going to quote what Jesus says to his disciples, lest you think I'm just trying to go hard on you guys. He says: whoever loves family over me is not in a good position.

He says: whoever doesn't hate his family cannot be my disciple.

Now he's using- he's using hyperbole or emphatic language here to communicate a point. Obviously he doesn't want you to hate your wife or your husband or your kids, but what he's saying is: in contrast to your family, there is one that stands above. There is one that offers life, there's one that gives you abundance, there's one who actually provides for your family, and it's not you. You're not the one who put a roof over your family's head.

You just earned some money based on the job that God allowed you to get, based on the life experiences that you had.

That did not prevent you from getting that, like you see people all over the world who don't have the opportunities you have. Yet we stand and say: I got myself, I pulled up my bootstraps, got this job, put myself in this position. I'm the one who did it. No, you're not.

That's right.

You were born in a country that enabled you to do it. If you were born in a different country, I promise you would not have the same opportunity or luxury that you currently have now. I think that you should be proud of yourself for the things that you broke in your family's- in this generation of your family lineage that were maybe inhibitors for your parents or your grandparents. I think you should totally be proud of yourself.

But the position you're now in is not because you were authorit.

Authoritative, it's because God is, and he loves you enough to put you in a position of success, and the fact that you're sitting here right now now means that he has an opportunity in front of you to trust him at a deeper level. That's what he means when he says: whoever does not hate their family cannot be my disciple. What he's saying is: if you can't prioritize Me Above All Things, then you're not going to be able to follow me, and I know I hit on the family thing a lot. It's because that is one of the things in our lives that we like.

We excuse ourselves from the call of God because family, and don't nobody in your family, want to be blam for you missing out on God's calling on your life.

So let's just stop doing it. This is what what Jesus says. We also see in the Old Testament. He says: honor your father and your mother.

And I had this interesting thing that happened and we take that to say I've got to do exactly what they say.

But sometimes your parents tell you to do dumb stuff. Amen, it's true, and God wouldn't want you to do it. Sometimes it's just stuff you shouldn't do- maybe not dumb, maybe culturally reasonable, but you still shouldn't do it. And I was always torn by what God Said in the Ten Commandments where he says: honor your father and your mother.

Right, we always took it as: obey your father and your mother.

Didn't y'all take it that way when you were grown? Obey your father and your mother. That's what my mom and dad used to say. Bible says: obey your father and your mother.

And then I got wise to it and realized what it really meant.

And what I realized, and I asked my mom about this: what honor is, is it is living in such a way that when people look at you-, they look at your family members or whoever you're you're honoring, and they look at them positively because of the way that you live your life. And so I looked at my mom one day and I said: hey, Mom, when people look at me, what do you think they think about you? That was a weird position to put my mom in, but at the same time it was a real mindblowing, mindboggling concept for me that honoring my father and my mother is living in such a way that God's called me to live, so that when people look at me, even if they were terrible parents, they think they're awesome. And when, when people look at you, are you honoring God in such a way that if they were to interact with anyone in your family that they would think positively because of how you were honoring God.

I'm just looking at what Scripture says.

It says: train up your child in the way he should go, and when he's old he will not depart from it. How you going to be training up your kid if you don't prioritize Jesus in your life, people. I'm just telling you what I've experienced, and people will come to me and say: I don't know what to do with my kids. I don't know what to do with my kids and the first thing that I want to tell them I'm gracious and I'm nice with it, but I'm up here right now and so I can say it CU.

I'm not looking at anyone individually.

Here's the truth. If you follow Jesus consistently, over time your kids will see it- amen, and when they're older they'll remember it. That's right. But if you live right now in such a way that doesn't prioritize Jesus, that sees him as an option rather than the main thing, then that's what they're going to remember when they remember when they get older.

And if you want them to have a relationship with Jesus when they're in their 30s, then right now you need to have one with him.

Right now. You got to have one with him right now. Is there anyone in here? I'm just addressing a couple of these areas.

Is there anyone in here who's maybe formerly Catholic?

Or has a family that's heavily Catholic. Just raise your hand real quick. I got a question to ask because I want to celebrate something. Was your family happy when you showed up at a Protestant church for the first time?

No, they weren't.

I. I know the answer to that question. For the most part some people are generous with it, but for the most part, when you grew up Catholic and you show up at a Protestant church and you tell your family about it, they're like, what did you do? And some of them they think they think you're in a terrible position, doing something that's spiritually going to send you to hell, like that.

That's sometimes how it works and in that context, what you have is you have what you believe is the call of God, yet family questioning that call, and I'm not- I'm not saying there's not room for conversation, but that's a very clear circumstance for many people in this room- that you had to choose God over your family, and so what I want to do is- I want to do this- nothing bad on any family.

I just want to celebrate those of you who showing up here caused a problem in your family, but you did it anyway, because Jesus is more important. You could have said: well, it's hard to deal with my family if I do this, so I'm just going to do something else. That's lesser than the call of God, but it makes it easier during the week. But you, you chose the hard way and the Bible says that the narrow road is the road that leads to life anyway.

So kudos to you for making that call.

Number four, your boss could be the present. Your boss could be the things happening in your life right now that inhibit your view or perspective of the future, or the greater picture. Here's a Scripture from Matthew 24. It says: Heaven and Earth will pass away, but my words will not.

I want to pull you to Daniel 7:14.

If you want to go there. I've got it saved right here in my Bible, so I'm going to pull it up. Daniel 7:14 says this: he was given Authority, glory and Sovereign power. Talking about who Jesus is, all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him.

His Dominion is an everlasting Dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

But many of us, like we, struggle in the tyranny of the Urgent- what is right in front of us, what is seen, not necessarily what is unseen. And for for for many of you, your boss is what is right in front of you, and if that's the case you might be missing a greater perspective. My wife and I- it's a funny thing- we watch TV differently, we read books differently. In fact, we, we just completely experience life differently.

Hannah, can you hear me?

She, she's over there, she's going to come over here and sing in a second. I didn't tell you I was going to talk about this, so forgive me up front. If you want shoes or a coat or something like that, just let me know. The way I watch TV is like a normal person, so I watch TV and TV.

I don't really care what happens, as long as I have a good experience and maybe I can think afterwards, right.

So if there is a movie that I'm thinking about watching that got a decent score on Rotten Tomatoes, I'm going to go watch that movie and I'm not going to do a bunch of research on that movie other than, like, I want to know the content and try to, like you know, avoid movies that are just not good to watch. So I don't do a lot of research. Why? Because I want to experience the full extent of the movie.

So I'll go in and I'll sit down.

I won't know anything. My favorite movie was Slum Dog Millionaire and I had no clue what it was about and I sat and I just experienced the movie and it's- it was amazing, Interstellar, one of my favorite movies I just went and experienced it. Had no clue what was going to happen in it. Even movies where I know it's probably going to be sad at the end.

Now, the way my wife watches movies is she wants to do a bunch of research to determine whether the movie is worth the watch, and so what she'll do is she'll actually pull up a plot synopsis and read through the entire movie to see if it's something she wants to watch now.

As a normal person, I think why would you do that? Now? There's no surprise. There's nothing crazy happening at the end that, like you, you experience the end before you even start the movie.

Why would you do that?

But that's what she does. She'll read it U most of the time. It happens when I want to watch a movie and she's not sure about that movie, and I like movies where someone like Dies at the End. Sometimes it's not because I'm a terrible person, yeah, anyone like movies where it just makes you feel emotionally connected to the characters if they die at the end and you get to the end of the movie and someone that you thought was going to die didn't die.

You're like huh, but she reads it and she's like I'm not watching that movie.

I say why I'm not going to tell you the full story, but someone dies at the end. Now, when it comes to our lives, I think there's something valuable that we can take from the abnormal movie watching habits of my spouse, and it's that we know the ending. We know that eternity is governed by one Authority, by Yahweh, the God of the universe, the one who created all things, the one who, in the end, will come on a white horse and will redeem us from all of the things that are bad in life. We know that the future is good for those who have heeded the words of everlasting life.

There's no surprise there for those of us who have trusted in Jesus, we know.

But the tyranny of the present and the Urgent Keeps Us bogged down. But you can choose. You can choose to recognize that when you've got something that might feel de pressing, you can. You can zoom out a little bit and recognize in eternity what's going to happen.

There are a lot of things that I struggle with in starting a church.

You might feel the same way if you've started the business. There are fears and concerns about what's going to happen tomorrow or the next week, and even though Jesus says, don't worry about what tomorrow is going to bring, CU, God's got you covered- it's still hard. You're still thinking about what could be happening. You might be thinking about the things that make you insecure.

You might be thinking about the things that are going to pull you or pull provision away from you.

It is hard to zoom out, but when you do recognize that there is something Eternal behind what is physical and right in front of you, it, it inevitably changes your perspective. When you think that what's right now is the most important thing, you're going to make the wrong decision. Regularly, I give- I'll give you an example- at church, like when it comes to church, there are decisions that I'm called to make. Those decisions have to do with eternal values, yet it's really easy to get bogged down in the decision of what to do with a stage or a worship song or a pipe and drape, or how to get more people to show up, rather than thinking about the eternity that each one of you was going to spend.

It is easy to focus on the wrong thing when I've not zoomed out enough.

And I guess I say all that to say my wife watches movies better if it were a spiritual thing, because she knows what happens and it impacts the way she operates. Now, and I'll go waste my time on a two-hour movie and then hate it and she's like could have told you. And there are people all throughout this world living their life in the now and they're miserable, they're frustrated, they're anxious, and most of us in this room, many of us in this room, we already read the end and we can tell ourselves and we can go tell them. Hey, we know the ending and we can give you some perspective, and there's some of you in this room.

You need to desperately heed the voice of God.

I want to give you this from 2 Corinthians, chapter 4. Paul says this in the midst of a difficult season for him. He says: for this light, momentary Affliction, life is preparing for us an eternal weight of Glory beyond all comparison, as we look not only to things that are seen But to things that are unseen. I want to invite those of you in this room who have never heeded the words of Jesus to confess with your mouth today that Jesus is Lord, to become a true follower of Christ, because what you see right now is not all there is.

What is unseen is eternal, and that's what God has built you for.

And in order to do that, we've got to listen to the words of Jesus, without which is condemnation. So if everybody would bow their heads and close their eyes, I want to give you an opportunity to trust in Jesus. We do that simply here. We pray that alt together out loud, for the benefit of those who may be praying it for the first time.

So if you would repeat after me, I would be ecstatic.

Repeat: say God, I believe, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Jesus Christ is of God. I believe. He died on the cross and Rose from the grave.

Rose from the grave, forgive me of my sin.

Forgive me of my sin. I take your words in. I take your words in and I will follow you for the rest of my life. It is in Jesus's name that we pray and God's people said, heads bowed, eyes closed.

There's somebody in here who just made the confession that'll change their entire eternity, and I want you to raise your hand at the count of three, just to let me know and we'll help you take your next step toward God.

So if that was you and you just trusted in Jesus for the first time, shoot your hand up at 1, 2, 3, come on, come on. All right, all right, can we celebrate those who just trusted in Jesus?