back to indexBAM WINTER RETREAT 2020 SESSION 1
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Thank you. That's good. So it looks like you guys have thoughts to share. All right this morning then, we're gonna continue on in thinking through, you know, this idea of the very common experience of our lives. And how oftentimes, as we go through those experiences, it poses a problem for us. 00:00:29.000 |
It causes sometimes a great amount of anxiety for some, and a great amount of stress and frustration for others. 00:00:36.000 |
Well, let's take a look at 2nd Rebubbles, over in Deuteronomy chapter 8. 00:00:40.000 |
And what I'd like to do is just read the first portion of it, and then we'll jump into thinking through the topic together. 00:00:50.000 |
Deuteronomy chapter 8, verses 1-5. And it's the Word of God says, "All the commandments that I am commanding you today, you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the Lord swore to give to your forefathers. 00:01:10.000 |
You shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. 00:01:24.000 |
He humbled you, and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. 00:01:40.000 |
Your clothing did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell these forty years. Thus, you are to know in your heart that the Lord your God is disciplining you, just as a man disciplines his son." 00:01:55.000 |
Our God, we pray that through the exposure to your truth, you would help us to have greater faith. 00:02:05.000 |
Lord, that there would be greater knowledge and understanding of the realities of our lives beyond what we can see with our human little eyes. 00:02:13.000 |
And I pray, Father, Lord, that you would grant to us a spiritual understanding of not only what we are doing in our lives or how we are to walk, but God, that our sights would expand to the knowledge of God. 00:02:25.000 |
And Lord, that we would be considerate of you, mindful that although we do not see you, we see your very hand. 00:02:31.000 |
And what's more, we see your fatherly love, teaching, assuring, and guiding us. 00:02:41.000 |
Let's do it a second time so that we don't do it too long. 00:02:51.000 |
So, really fast, as an introductory way of thinking about this topic, that our lives can be a grind. It's a grind for sure. 00:03:03.000 |
And my little subtitle to the series was going to be, "You need much more than coffee to get through." 00:03:11.000 |
Now, as cheesy as that may sound, there is the pivotal point in thinking through, okay, here is the problem, here is the grind. 00:03:19.000 |
And the whole thing about me bringing titles and subtitles to this is to kind of focus your idea on, what's the solution? 00:03:27.000 |
What's the solution to us making sure that we have the ample energy and sufficiency to get through difficult times, right? 00:03:35.000 |
And so what we're going to do is, again, we're going to meditate on the topic, I'm going to try to give to you as much as scriptural conviction, even personal wisdom, all kinds of things to think about a solution to our life, what's going to be a life-long struggle of walking through difficult times and seasons and on. 00:03:55.000 |
And so I want you to understand that if currently, here and now, you came to this retreat already feeling like work is a grind, maybe you've been in your specific job already six, seven years, maybe you are one of those individuals who have a job, maybe like accounting or something, where you're on the screen eight, nine hours a day, sitting the whole day, and there's this kind of monotonous work day. 00:04:22.000 |
I don't know. We have lots of different experiences. 00:04:25.000 |
But you and I both know, all of us know, that this grind is going to be just one piece, is literally one phase of a life-long trajectory of things that will be difficult for you. 00:04:38.000 |
Whatever next season you have, it's going to be all the more. 00:04:43.000 |
And so what I did was I took a moment to describe the grind for us, meaning I wanted for us – the first point really is just to look at the problem itself, how we think about it. 00:04:55.000 |
I wanted to see what other people thought about it, so I Googled "What is the grind?" And that's a bad idea. Don't ever do that. 00:05:04.000 |
And I was like, "The grind is a provocative dance dance." 00:05:11.000 |
I should have done better and just asked one of you guys, "Hey, what's hard in your life? What's difficult?" 00:05:16.000 |
Okay, now, as I did talk to some people, people would say, "You know, what's really tough sometimes is when life – your own word – and the thing about it is people feel like they don't have a lot of time, and the reason why is because the week goes by fast. 00:05:31.000 |
And the reason why the week goes by fast is because nothing different really happens. 00:05:35.000 |
And the next thing you know, it's like two months can go by. What's new? 00:05:39.000 |
Nothing. Right? It's like nothing happened except for what normally happens, and so that becomes a grind. 00:05:46.000 |
And so, again, I mentioned how sometimes that repetitive nature of a work life, for some, they love it. That's what they want. 00:05:54.000 |
They're there because, "Oh, I chose to do this, right? I chose this job because that's what I want." 00:05:59.000 |
And therefore, it's not so much the repetitiveness when I talk to some people. It's more so the thought that your work is fruitless. 00:06:07.000 |
My work can be repetitive, yes, but it's incredibly difficult to persevere in the grind when you think it doesn't matter much. 00:06:18.000 |
When it's not worth something to you or to other people, and there is a fruitlessness to your job, then all of a sudden, why even go in the next day? Right? 00:06:29.000 |
Or, some of you have elements in your life right now where, yes, you are being fruitful. You are doing the things that you think are worthwhile, but it's so stressful because there's too much. 00:06:41.000 |
So, whereas the fruitlessness is you're working, but you don't really actually feel like nothing worthwhile is being done, the other side of the grind is there's so much to be done, you just feel stressed every day. 00:06:54.000 |
That's a fact, yes? Where you feel like, "Oh, I might be working and working, but I'm always behind the ball. There's so much to do." 00:07:02.000 |
And then what you end up realizing is you're stressed because you feel a bit like a failure. What's more, you come home from work, and you don't feel like there's any time left for you. 00:07:11.000 |
And sometimes, you even don't remember to put in time for God. 00:07:16.000 |
So, when I talk to people, I ask them, "Hey," I ask some of you guys, "To you, what is the grind?" 00:07:21.000 |
Dude, the day just goes and goes and goes, and there's no end to the work. 00:07:26.000 |
And then, there's some of you, as soon as I ask, "What's the grind?" 00:07:29.000 |
The first thing that comes out of your mouth is, "Oh my goodness, working with these fools. My office is full of incompetent people who don't know what they're doing. I have no idea how they got their job, and one of them is my boss." 00:07:42.000 |
That's sometimes the grind, where you have to put up with the ineffectiveness, you have to put up with the lack of competency of the people around you. 00:07:56.000 |
And some of you is like, "I have all four. I have every single thing that you listed right now." 00:08:04.000 |
Now, as I look at some of you guys, I already know, because I've talked to you, that we're in a generation where some people, they have one facet of their lives that dominates their lives right now. 00:08:30.000 |
Some of you guys have one single element in your life that's just dominating, right? 00:08:36.000 |
Whether you are in an intensive school right now, and you took that track where it's just like boom, boom, boom, and you got to go, go, go. 00:08:43.000 |
And you just genuinely feel like, "I am being dominated by this one facet of my life." 00:08:49.000 |
And so therefore, that weighs very heavily on you, okay? 00:08:54.000 |
It actually wears you down quite a bit, right? 00:09:00.000 |
But, the important question to this is not just simply have you identified what are some of the things that are difficult for you, that is taxing on you. 00:09:10.000 |
But here's an important question I have for you right now that you need to think about. 00:09:15.000 |
And I'm going to give you one minute to jot it down in your notebook, which is, so far, have you dealt with it? 00:09:27.000 |
Do a quick word association and jot down three words. 00:09:35.000 |
Many of you have straight up turned to, "It's coffee, coffee all day, every day." 00:09:45.000 |
You just drink so much coffee just to keep you going. 00:09:50.000 |
And I know many of you are looking at me like, "What about you, Russ Martin?" 00:09:58.000 |
Funny thing, you don't know how many people have come to me these days and asked me, "Is it okay to use cannabis?" 00:10:05.000 |
Because dealing with stress when you get home is a tough thing. 00:10:11.000 |
Interesting thing, question of our generation. 00:10:18.000 |
Some of you guys just come home and you venge. 00:10:21.000 |
You venge, you watch stuff, you watch shows that you don't even like. 00:10:27.000 |
You just watch it because you want to drown out the stress or whatever. 00:10:31.000 |
Some of you guys are always on the verge of quitting. 00:10:35.000 |
Sometimes I talk to people and it's just like you're constantly in a state of, "I quit, I quit, I quit, I quit." 00:10:46.000 |
As soon as we hit that wall or you feel like you, you know, you just start quitting, okay? 00:10:52.000 |
And it doesn't help that this world, this generation has voiced to some of you guys. 00:10:57.000 |
Again, don't listen to radio, talk show hosts and all that kind of stuff because it's just going to fill your mind with junk. 00:11:03.000 |
I've heard so many times, like, "Your life is short. It ain't worth it to me. Just quit." 00:11:09.000 |
It's like, you know, "It's not even worth it to me." 00:11:14.000 |
Like, if I genuinely, this is the only life I have to live, I have to make the most of it and I have to enjoy it, then yeah. 00:11:23.000 |
Why do I have to deal with the incompetency of my boss? 00:11:28.000 |
And what I think is incredible is, again, I do not believe that this world mantra and the culture's voice is neutral. 00:11:39.000 |
And I even read, sometimes I read about politics, groups of people who are like, "We should not have to work a job I don't like." 00:11:48.000 |
The whole political party is based on, "I should not have to work a job I don't feel inspired to do." 00:11:54.000 |
And I'm like, "Dang. I'm going to go say that to our previous generation." 00:11:58.000 |
Like, my parents sold T-shirts to twin fighters. 00:12:08.000 |
But that's the mantra and sentiment of our day. 00:12:15.000 |
And we say, "Hey, we've got all these different struggles." 00:12:18.000 |
And then I ask you an important question to that is, "What have we done?" 00:12:22.000 |
As we think about the problem, and not just simply what is the grind for you, 00:12:27.000 |
we understand, again, that every single one of us, the second point of it is, 00:12:32.000 |
every single one of us is going to go on a continuous pattern of struggle. 00:12:38.000 |
And what we're going to see is your response to it. 00:12:44.000 |
Every single portion of your life, you're going to experience a struggle. 00:12:49.000 |
And what you're going to see is your response to it. 00:12:53.000 |
At that point, I'm just going to go over it pretty quickly because you know that to be true. 00:12:58.000 |
There are people who put in the time to become excellent professional athletes, 00:13:06.000 |
They started earlier than anybody else, and they achieved the highest echelon of being an athlete. 00:13:15.000 |
Pro athletes making news, like, "Oh, my gosh, it's such a good practice. 00:13:23.000 |
You know, whether it be professional athletes, musicians, there is a grind for every single individual, 00:13:29.000 |
no matter what stage of the process you may be in. 00:13:32.000 |
You may feel like right now you're at the bottom of the totem pole, working your way up. 00:13:38.000 |
First year in school, you feel like, "Oh, my goodness, it's the longest road ahead of me." 00:13:43.000 |
Whether you're there or you finished and then you had your job 00:13:46.000 |
and then you had some success and an accolade for it, you still have a grind. 00:13:52.000 |
And what you're going to see is your struggle through all of that. 00:13:55.000 |
You're going to see your response to all of that. 00:13:59.000 |
What's going to be important is this question. 00:14:03.000 |
If I know that that is the trajectory, what should be my perspective towards it? 00:14:12.000 |
Am I supposed to see it with this frustrated, like, "Oh, my gosh, you don't know how bad I had it." 00:14:18.000 |
You know, yesterday I had you guys score your fatigue and then you guys competed with each other. 00:14:22.000 |
Honest, favorite pastime of working adults is to compete who's got it worse. 00:14:28.000 |
"You think your boss is better? Let me tell you about my boss, okay?" 00:14:33.000 |
"You think your office is small? Let me talk to you about my queue." 00:14:36.000 |
You know, like the competition of who has it worse is like a favorite pastime for working adults, okay? 00:14:42.000 |
Now, is that perspective what you're going to have the rest of your life? 00:14:53.000 |
What you got to know in terms of that question is we're talking solution, right? 00:14:58.000 |
So let me prep the point and then give it to you. 00:15:02.000 |
We're talking like solution, right? Problem solution. 00:15:05.000 |
You know that solution number one typically from the scriptures is to give you knowledge 00:15:10.000 |
so that you can see your problem appropriately, right? 00:15:15.000 |
Scriptures regularly in terms of its solution, its first step, it'll give you practical application, 00:15:20.000 |
it'll give you steps, but the very first step is always to open your eyes and broaden your scope 00:15:26.000 |
so that you can see it the way God sees it, right? 00:15:30.000 |
So step one, or you can think of this, this is the next point, but this is solution number one, 00:15:35.000 |
is you have to know that it's all a test, okay? 00:15:41.000 |
You have to understand that right now that incredibly annoying project group at your school 00:15:48.000 |
where you feel like you're the only person getting work done, 00:15:53.000 |
you're sitting in your cube and you feel like you're just a monkey, like, "No, no, no, no, no, no," 00:15:58.000 |
and you're just typing all day and you're just worried like, "I'm going to develop this hunchback of Notre Dame 00:16:03.000 |
because I just hunched over my keyboard all day long." 00:16:06.000 |
You worry because you're so scared that you're not going to finish this program. 00:16:11.000 |
You worry because you feel like you're always going to be the stepping mat in your office 00:16:15.000 |
where you're at the bottom of the totem pole. 00:16:18.000 |
This is all a test. It's a test for you, and that's the perspective that you have. 00:16:25.000 |
I want you to understand that a test is supposed to assess and evaluate. 00:16:31.000 |
It's going to check and see what is already in your mind. 00:16:35.000 |
It is going to expose what you're able to do with your hands. 00:16:39.000 |
It is going to help us see for yourself what is also in your heart. 00:16:45.000 |
A test is to actually show you what you have. 00:16:49.000 |
And this might make you feel very uncomfortable, but do you understand that regularly through your lives, 00:16:55.000 |
you are going to receive performance tests on how you fare in the midst of struggle. 00:17:03.000 |
Let's go back to our passage in Deuteronomy chapter 8. Let's read that again, what he said. 00:17:09.000 |
All the commandments in Deuteronomy chapter 8, verses 1 through 5. 00:17:13.000 |
Keep your finger there, you're going to be there for a while. 00:17:16.000 |
All the commands that I have commanded you today, you shall be careful to do, 00:17:20.000 |
that you may live and multiply and go in and possess the land which the Lord swore to give to your forefathers. 00:17:27.000 |
You shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years. 00:17:34.000 |
Some of you guys have been working like one year. 00:17:37.000 |
Some of you guys have been working like twelve years. 00:17:39.000 |
Ten years, we have a big range of different working environments. 00:17:44.000 |
These individuals have been walking, they have been walking, walking through the desert with their family in tow, 00:17:52.000 |
with almost a million people through the desert in circles. 00:17:58.000 |
You guys have seen the Sinai Peninsula, right? It's a small piece of real estate. 00:18:05.000 |
Some people estimate that if they just made a beam line, a beam line across the Red Sea to Atlantic Canyon, 00:18:17.000 |
And then he says, during those forty years in the wilderness, God led you and He said that He might humble you. 00:18:32.000 |
To know what is in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. 00:18:42.000 |
He fed you with manna which you did not know. 00:18:45.000 |
Nor did your fathers know that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone. 00:18:52.000 |
But man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. 00:19:00.000 |
It does mark to know in your heart that the Lord your God was disciplining you just as a man disciplines his father. 00:19:15.000 |
God purposely allowed them to be frustrated to the degree where they would have hunger pains. 00:19:21.000 |
And the frustration would be like, I'm hungry to see what they would say. 00:19:27.000 |
So quickly, for those of you guys who walked through the Old Testament not too long ago, you remember what they said. 00:19:58.000 |
God wanted to see that God was leading and teaching. 00:20:03.000 |
God was causing them to have certain moments of weakness that they would know and understand. 00:20:11.000 |
It is also an uncomfortable performance test. 00:20:20.000 |
Or are you going to be pointing at your reasons, excuses, and circumstances? 00:20:30.000 |
Like I try to disciple many people in our church. 00:20:36.000 |
I can't force people to be like, I want you to starve for a little while. 00:20:42.000 |
Now, with my own children, I might be able to do some of this in terms of, they might need help. 00:21:24.000 |
This generation of the people in Exodus, I want you to understand so we can appreciate what's going on. 00:21:30.000 |
The people, like earlier I mentioned, they not only walked in circles, right? 00:21:35.000 |
They wore the same clothes day in and day out. 00:21:44.000 |
Others of us are like, oh my gosh, they wore the same thing for 40 years. 00:21:49.000 |
Let me ask you a funny interesting thing, right? 00:22:02.000 |
Just to show you, like, indicative of how feeble these people were. 00:22:06.000 |
And then also it like convicts us of how feeble we are. 00:22:09.000 |
Sometimes our greatest struggle on certain days is like, oh, when am I going to eat that much? 00:22:24.000 |
The people initially when the manna fell, they were like, yeah. 00:22:31.000 |
I told you I'm going to give you enough for that day. 00:22:33.000 |
You hold what's enough for that day because I'm teaching you a valuable lesson. 00:22:54.000 |
You think about that, it's like, oh, my gosh. 00:22:58.000 |
Like thousands of people in that generation die. 00:23:06.000 |
Straight up complaining about the food that fell and showed up on the ground when they woke up in the morning. 00:23:23.000 |
Now, if you're a good student of the Bible, you may be thinking, you have to be thinking, hey, but this is a narrative in the Old Testament. 00:23:30.000 |
We don't read narrative like this is what God is doing for you, right? 00:23:34.000 |
Unless you see God doing this many, many times throughout Scripture. 00:23:38.000 |
Unless you see God doing this in the New Testament as well. 00:23:41.000 |
Unless this is a part of God's character and the normal operating way by which He treats us as father, to son, and daughter, right? 00:23:51.000 |
You don't have to turn there, but just for the sake of example, even from the moment that the people started to come out, God was testing them. 00:24:01.000 |
Why in the world did God go through the drama of sending Moses and Aaron to Pharaoh and back again and coming back again? 00:24:11.000 |
Even in Exodus 15, it says, "Then he cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree. 00:24:16.000 |
He threw it into the waters, and the waters became sweet. 00:24:19.000 |
There he made for them a statue and a regulation, for there he tested them." 00:24:34.000 |
Moses said to the people, "Do not be afraid, for God has come in order to test you, in order that you may fear Him, so that you may not sin." 00:24:45.000 |
Later on, when the Scriptures evaluate what the people were doing, when the Scriptures even evaluate the judgment of the nation of Israel, the nation of Judah, under the hand of Babylon, this is what he says. 00:24:58.000 |
"Even in the matter of envoys of the rulers of Babylon," so again, envoys of Babylon that came and destructed, 00:25:05.000 |
"who sent to him to inquire the wonders that had happened in the land, God left him alone, only to what? Test him, that he might know that all that was in his heart." 00:25:16.000 |
And so this idea repeats itself over and over again. 00:25:22.000 |
Now look at your passage in Deuteronomy chapter 8, and take a look at verse 16 and 17. I want to highlight something for you. 00:25:28.000 |
Verse 16 and 17 says, "In the wilderness, he fed you manna which your fathers did not know, that he might humble you, that he might test you, to do good for you in the end. 00:25:45.000 |
Otherwise, you may say in your heart, 'My power and the strength of my hand made me this." 00:25:52.000 |
I want you guys to take this moment to think about this, okay? 00:25:56.000 |
And the way I want you guys to think about it is this imaginary conversation with God. 00:26:01.000 |
In a moment, you as an individual, you experience hardship or frustration going through work, and sometimes you might sit there and say, "God, I feel like I want to quit." 00:26:13.000 |
And God is going to say, "Well, why Mark? Why?" 00:26:21.000 |
And then you might throw up a little complaint, like, "Oh, I thought you were going to help me." 00:26:26.000 |
And then God says, "You need to go through this." 00:26:32.000 |
And then God says, "Because I want to teach you humility." 00:26:36.000 |
And then if it's me, I would say, "But why can't you just give me humility without making me go through all this manipulative stuff?" 00:26:43.000 |
And then God would be like, "So you want me to just put that in there?" 00:26:55.000 |
And God would look at me and say, "But if I do that, you'd be arrogant." 00:27:03.000 |
"I have to train you as my child to teach you as you walk. Otherwise, when you have it, what happens?" 00:27:20.000 |
You're just hoping for an alternate universe where magically you have all the stuff. 00:27:27.000 |
And it's like, "Ta-da! Mark Limb. Humble. Hardworking. Fruitful. Never ever goes through just difficulties." 00:27:40.000 |
But understand this. God says something really, really emphatic and so important. 00:27:46.000 |
If you're highlighting Bibles, you should highlight verse 16 where He says, "Yes, He is humbling me." 00:27:53.000 |
And if instinctually you felt like, "That seems kind of jacked up." 00:27:56.000 |
You may have done that to another human being. 00:27:58.000 |
If I was trying to train you and I was like, "You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to make you jump ropes." 00:28:02.000 |
"I'm going to make you jump through this hoop and I'm going to light it on fire." 00:28:08.000 |
But God says, "Do you understand what I'm doing? To do good for you." 00:28:16.000 |
This people who for 40 years have been complaining, has been accusing God, "Are you even here?" 00:28:26.000 |
Wow. If someone said that and I were God, I mean, my imagination would be like, "Wow, there are so many ways I could kill you right now." 00:28:44.000 |
I'm sorry. You should look at your grind. It's a grind. It is a test of the previous point. Yes? 00:28:49.000 |
But you should add to this next point, this grind is to build you. 00:29:01.000 |
A really familiar passage that some of you have memorized. Good. 00:29:09.000 |
Use that to broaden your perspective on when you're suffering, when you're having hard times, when you're in the grind. 00:29:15.000 |
For this is what Scripture says. James 1, verses 2-4. 00:29:20.000 |
Scripture says, "Count in all joy, my brothers, when you meet various trials of various kinds. 00:29:36.000 |
For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and that steadfastness hath its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." 00:29:49.000 |
Guys, these various trials, the difficult corridors, the boxes you can't stand, all of these things, the incredible boredom that hits you when you're sitting at work. 00:30:13.000 |
If this is a build, there is a preliminary status which is this. 00:30:22.000 |
You have to understand what needs to be done. 00:30:26.000 |
If you're writing notes, this next point is simply this. 00:30:34.000 |
For the nation of Israel, I ask you what is being revealed through their grind and their testing of walking through the wilderness because for sure that was a test. 00:30:51.000 |
When it wasn't going well, they were incredibly disobedient and complaining. 00:30:59.000 |
When it wasn't going well, all of a sudden they turned to idols. 00:31:04.000 |
When they thought like, "Oh, my goodness. What was this? This is gone. What shall we do?" 00:31:09.000 |
The craziest thing. You read that passage and it's so odd. 00:31:19.000 |
Many of you may be thinking like, "Okay, I go through the grind, but no, I'm not abusing drugs. Okay? 00:31:28.000 |
I'm not going home and kicking dog viciously. 00:31:32.000 |
I'm not going home and doing all kinds of wild, wretched sin." 00:31:43.000 |
So not only heinous, wretched sins, but what weakness do you see? 00:31:49.000 |
Did you notice what it said in James chapter 1? 00:31:53.000 |
God's desire is not for you to avoid all wretched, heinous sin. 00:31:59.000 |
God's desire for you in James chapter 1, verse 2 through 4, if you put it in another way, paraphrase, 00:32:05.000 |
is that you would be perfect, complete, and lacking nothing. 00:32:14.000 |
You know, again, I think it's really interesting, right? 00:32:17.000 |
Most of us, if we see clear, undeniable, objective fault, we'd be like, "Okay, my fault." 00:32:26.000 |
If we see clear, intentional sin, we'd be like, "Okay, I'm sorry I sinned." 00:32:32.000 |
But when someone pushes you, you're already working hard, you're doing your job at work, 00:32:36.000 |
and someone pushes you, you're like, "What in the world? 00:32:42.000 |
That little space right there, when we see deficiency for perfection, we're so defensive. 00:32:48.000 |
But let me tell you now, all the tests of your life are going to reveal not just the heinousness, 00:32:55.000 |
but all the ways by which you are lacking, even in weakness. 00:33:01.000 |
So I ask you this, what kind of weaknesses have you seen in the grind? 00:33:08.000 |
Are you an individual who has no idea how to deal with boredom? 00:33:13.000 |
You always constantly have to be entertained. 00:33:17.000 |
Are you an individual who, yes, you're pretty mature, but you don't know how to maturely 00:33:21.000 |
operate under somebody who happens to be incompetent and ungodly and unreasonable? 00:33:27.000 |
Clearly, some of you guys are some of the most skilled people I've ever met. 00:33:31.000 |
I want to just use you for some of my work, because I'm like, "Dude, you're so skilled at that." 00:33:37.000 |
But sometimes, we have this immaturity where we may be so skilled, but we don't know how to work 00:33:46.000 |
I am asking you this question, what immaturities do you see? 00:33:49.000 |
And in order to help you, this is the next point, there are three kinds of weaknesses. 00:33:53.000 |
Not just heinous sins, but areas in which we are simply deficient. 00:33:59.000 |
Scripture says, "Test, expose the content of our mind." 00:34:04.000 |
The way you understand scenario, your belief, your wisdom, how you are judging the scenario, 00:34:10.000 |
these are all things that are areas of weakness. 00:34:13.000 |
And that's why you recall in Romans chapter 12, Scripture says, "There needs to be a constant 00:34:21.000 |
When we see arrogance, when we're in the midst of a struggle and all of a sudden our arrogance 00:34:25.000 |
comes out, you understand that first, arrogance starts in the mind. 00:34:29.000 |
When you, in your own little world, you think you're huge, you become arrogant. 00:34:36.000 |
A little boy who was in his room, flexing in front of his mirror, he thinks, "Look how buff I am." 00:34:46.000 |
Because all of a sudden his worldview has changed from my little room to where other 00:34:52.000 |
Arrogant people have small minds and small space. 00:35:08.000 |
Scripture says that we are fickle of heart because we want everything and everything 00:35:14.000 |
Scripture says in James chapter 4, "Why is there quarreling among me?" 00:35:18.000 |
Is it not your desires that wage war against one another? 00:35:21.000 |
You want it and so you murder, you complain, you're willing to kill, and it breeds all 00:35:29.000 |
And that's why Scripture says some of the things that you have to wrestle with is just 00:35:36.000 |
Another area of weakness is your action and habit. 00:35:44.000 |
Hebrews chapter 5 verse 14 says this, "Solid food is for the mature who because of practice 00:35:50.000 |
have their senses trained to discern good and evil." 00:35:58.000 |
Now, how many of you guys were here for the summer retreat where I did the Identities 00:36:06.000 |
So if you guys have ever been to retreats before, I like to give out free dating advice. 00:36:15.000 |
And this is also especially for the ladies, okay, because I say it a hundred times. 00:36:22.000 |
Ladies, you are in a vulnerable spot where you are the prey. 00:36:27.000 |
People are coming after you and it is your job, your job, okay, to decide, "Do I want 00:36:40.000 |
Dating can be simply summed up as this, "It is your job, especially for you ladies, to 00:36:46.000 |
see and observe, then evaluate and judge a man's character." 00:36:55.000 |
So if you've been dating for six months and they come to you and say, "Hey, Jane, what 00:37:00.000 |
And you're like, "Ah, well, he seems like a nice guy." 00:37:07.000 |
If that's the only thing you know, you're not doing your job. 00:37:16.000 |
But the reason why I say this is good dating advice is because how do you judge character? 00:37:22.000 |
Some people are in a loss, like, "Oh, you know, everybody seems to have potential." 00:37:26.000 |
That's just telling you you don't know what you're looking for. 00:37:32.000 |
I just gave you three areas by which you build character. 00:37:37.000 |
See how a man responds to a really incredibly tough day at work and see the way he describes 00:37:44.000 |
If his mind is full of exaggeration, "This is the worst ever!" 00:37:50.000 |
And he can't believe, like, "My boss scolded me." 00:37:55.000 |
"I came in 30 minutes late, just scolding me for nothing." 00:38:05.000 |
You know, ladies, it is pretty evident what a man wants in his life. 00:38:16.000 |
Certain men very clearly want to build a church in the people of God. 00:38:26.000 |
They only come out and enjoy themselves and are happy when people are playing. 00:38:35.000 |
Look at a guy who's accustomed to what he's accustomed to. 00:38:38.000 |
If a guy hits hard times and all of a sudden he's complaining to you, he's like, "Oh, 00:38:41.000 |
Jayden, this is like the hardest thing I've ever, ever experienced. 00:38:53.000 |
You don't have to sit there and be like, "Oh, you told me." 00:38:57.000 |
Don't call a man and think you're doing him a favor. 00:39:22.000 |
Because knowing that suffering produces endurance and the endurance produces a character and 00:39:43.000 |
Now, I'm not saying that the man you say, "Hit me," right, has to be perfect. 00:39:51.000 |
I'm telling you, every season of your life, you're going to see weakness. 00:39:59.000 |
And maybe you're maturing so that you're not doing the vile, overreaction to everything 00:40:06.000 |
We start cutting out the ignoble practices that we had and we start maturing. 00:40:14.000 |
If he's way over here and his reaction to hardship is all kinds of, you know, exaggerations 00:40:21.000 |
Guess what he's going to do with you the next time you mess up and you hurt him? 00:40:30.000 |
I am protecting you from these because you are in a vulnerable spot, right? 00:40:38.000 |
What is the guy going to do when his heart's desire is not for you? 00:40:46.000 |
How in the world is he going to serve you when you're so much far less glorious than God? 00:40:52.000 |
If he cannot serve God Almighty, he's never going to serve you. 00:40:56.000 |
If a man is not accustomed to training his hands, you may think he might have potential. 00:41:03.000 |
And then all of a sudden, you're just, right? 00:41:12.000 |
But you guys remember I told you how important this question is. 00:41:27.000 |
I just gave to you three different areas that you can assess. 00:41:39.000 |
How did I interpret this scenario and communicate that to my friend? 00:41:48.000 |
And unfortunately, BDOT has to carry the most of it, right? 00:41:51.000 |
After a rough day, my initial non-sanctified response comes out. 00:42:08.000 |
I was going to use the coffee peasants thing. 00:42:14.000 |
Sometimes your initial fleshy interpretation comes out. 00:42:19.000 |
My question to you is what do you do with that? 00:42:24.000 |
We're going to see weaknesses, but what do you do with them? 00:42:30.000 |
I saw what came out and realized, oh my goodness, that's a fleshly thing." 00:42:39.000 |
As soon as he says to you something, it's like, "What? 00:42:43.000 |
Do you understand how much work I have to do?" 00:42:53.000 |
Is this going to be the rest of my life forever? 00:42:57.000 |
I'm going to have a meaningless existence in this cube, and people won't even know 00:43:06.000 |
Some of us, we have resorted to turning off our parts, and we become drones. 00:43:12.000 |
This is where I want to talk to you guys because when our group, for our team, logistics, 00:43:18.000 |
and different service team leaders came together to make this topic, we said, "The danger 00:43:23.000 |
for us in MC is we get into this grind, and in order to rethink that one solution for 00:43:30.000 |
us to survive the grind is to become a drone, to have our hearts just not care, to just 00:43:40.000 |
make sure we operate and function, and so long as I am functioning, I'm fine." 00:43:50.000 |
God our Father is training you up to create passionate people who, yes, work tiring, 00:43:57.000 |
grindish jobs, yes, to create passionate, loving, incredibly empathetic, Christ-like 00:44:07.000 |
individuals who are working frustrating, stressful jobs. 00:44:12.000 |
You don't have to resort to the world's wisdom, and you don't definitely have to 00:44:20.000 |
That's what I want you to hear, and if you've done that, you need to be the first 00:44:34.000 |
Sometimes I talk to people, and I ask this question, "Do you understand that God is 00:44:41.000 |
testing your character within this struggle you're going through now?" 00:44:48.000 |
And sometimes people ask this question, "God, why are you doing this? 00:44:55.000 |
Because, "Why are you doing this?" just throws up a blanket statement, "I don't 00:45:02.000 |
He's building you, and I'm convincing you of that. 00:45:05.000 |
That's what He's been doing all through the generations with all of His children, 00:45:08.000 |
and that's what He's doing with you in your life personally. 00:45:16.000 |
Now, the better question to ask is, "Lord, what are you teaching me?" 00:45:24.000 |
Ask that question, "What are you teaching me?" 00:45:30.000 |
Imagine you tell me, "Tomorrow I'm taking this huge, massive, Lord exam. 00:45:39.000 |
"God, have mercy on this soul who is studying, state of late nights, and just give this person 00:45:49.000 |
Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask, "How did it go?" 00:45:52.000 |
Imagine if you said this, "I took this test, and the professor looked at the film." 00:45:58.000 |
Because I asked, "Professor, what are you teaching me?" 00:46:04.000 |
You cannot be taking a test and ask, "What are you teaching me?" 00:46:14.000 |
It is revealing what's already contained in you. 00:46:17.000 |
So you need to do the job of asking and evaluating yourself and see the results. 00:46:35.000 |
Brothers and sisters, if anything, the stuff that I'm saying right now, it's not new to you. 00:46:55.000 |
And if you feel like you're a new Christian and you don't have Scriptural base, ask somebody who knows Scripture. 00:46:59.000 |
And ask Him, "What do you see in me that's deficient in Scripture?" 00:47:09.000 |
Brothers and sisters, if you're taking away anything from this sermon, take this. 00:47:37.000 |
And asking you, "What are the things by which you need to learn through this process of the grind for easy tasks?" 00:47:45.000 |
We are all the set with the weakness Scripture says. 00:47:51.000 |
And in the midst of the grind, God wants to show you what is contained already. 00:47:59.000 |
And now, if you are hearing my questions and you start thinking, "But I'm a new student." 00:48:06.000 |
Scripture has a very interesting passage for us that I want to walk through. 00:48:19.000 |
What's very interesting is that this New Testament passage comments on the people that we are looking at as examples for us today. 00:48:26.000 |
The nation of Israel in the Exodus generation. 00:48:30.000 |
The nation of Israel in the Exodus generation, the wilderness wandering generation. 00:48:37.000 |
That generation, it's good for us to study, to observe with a humble heart. 00:48:49.000 |
So this is a longer paragraph, please make sure you follow along. 00:48:52.000 |
It says here, "For I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, 00:48:57.000 |
that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea." 00:49:02.000 |
Immediately, you know, oh, wilderness generation in the Exodus. 00:49:06.000 |
"And all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. 00:49:10.000 |
And all ate the same spiritual food, O man, and all drank the same spiritual drink. 00:49:16.000 |
For they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them, and the rock was Christ." 00:49:30.000 |
It says that these people were walking and a spiritual rock followed them. 00:49:35.000 |
And that that rock they drank from was Christ. 00:49:44.000 |
"Nevertheless, with most of them, God was not pleased." 00:49:56.000 |
Guys, sometimes when you read passages like that, just take a moment to pause. 00:50:02.000 |
Anytime you, because when Scripture tells us this is the way God thinks, 00:50:10.000 |
Some of us are not willing to expose our weaknesses in the midst of struggle. 00:50:21.000 |
But the feelings that we get when people are displeased with us is very heavy. 00:50:29.000 |
If God was genuinely in our presence, and you had the humility to ask God, 00:50:35.000 |
"What do you think about my response to my grind right now?" 00:50:39.000 |
Can you imagine a scenario where God would look at you and say, in person, audibly, 00:50:53.000 |
But for fear of that, we can't sit in hiding. 00:50:59.000 |
We have to be absolutely vulnerable to weakness in God's eyes. 00:51:04.000 |
Next, "For they were laid low in the wilderness." 00:51:08.000 |
Remember, the wilderness generation, many of them died ever before entering into Canaan, 00:51:16.000 |
Verse 6, "Now these things happened as examples for us, so that," look at this, 00:51:22.000 |
"we would not crave evil things as they also craved. 00:51:26.000 |
Do not be idolaters as some of them were as written." 00:51:31.000 |
He is classifying as evil the stuff that they did. 00:51:34.000 |
He is classifying as idolaters the stuff that they did, right? 00:51:38.000 |
"The people sat down to eat and drink and stood up to play." 00:51:45.000 |
I just told you, He just classified their actions as wicked, wretched, and idolatrous. 00:52:02.000 |
These people walked the wilderness, and in their impatience, could not wait for God. 00:52:24.000 |
They turned to whatever little piece they had with them. 00:52:32.000 |
For those of you who struggle with calling your heart, because you just want stuff, 00:52:40.000 |
the next thing, or this next thing, or that next thing, 00:52:45.000 |
If you see that as a mild, obsessive personality, 00:52:51.000 |
if you see that as something like a mild distraction, 00:52:56.000 |
Verse 8, "Nor let us act immorally as some of them did, 00:53:04.000 |
Nor let us try the Lord as some did, and were destroyed by the serpents. 00:53:08.000 |
Nor grumble as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer. 00:53:12.000 |
Now these things happened to them as an example, 00:53:20.000 |
Therefore, let him who thinks he stands to heed that he does not fall. 00:53:25.000 |
No temptation is overtaking you, but such as is common to man. 00:53:29.000 |
And God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, 00:53:34.000 |
but with the temptation will provide a way of escape also, 00:53:46.000 |
I want you to understand, I'm pressing pretty hard, 00:53:52.000 |
on whatever responses that you see in the ground, 00:53:56.000 |
I want you to be the first one to look at it. 00:54:02.000 |
I'm going to confess, when I experience a hard time, 00:54:05.000 |
my knee-jerk reaction is to look at that hard time and be like, 00:54:11.000 |
And then I want everyone else to see how tough it is. 00:54:25.000 |
But most importantly, our Heavenly Father is thinking, 00:54:36.000 |
we're going to learn, then, how do we navigate? 00:54:40.000 |
"Okay, I'm just going to be calm and then..." 00:54:42.000 |
How do we make sure we do that? It's coming up next. 00:55:02.000 |
But God, would you help us to have that desire 00:55:06.000 |
to absorb and learn the things that you desire to teach us? 00:55:09.000 |
But what's more, to exercise even a greater servanthood, 00:55:17.000 |
where we are evaluating ourselves to the holy standard of your Word. 00:55:21.000 |
And whether it be something that is little skewed, 00:55:25.000 |
God, we would with great dedication desire to grow. 00:55:29.000 |
And I pray, Father, that you would give to us a learner's heart. 00:55:33.000 |
For we know, God, that you are a wonderful teacher 00:55:50.000 |
We apologize and repent for complaining over it. 00:55:53.000 |
Father God, we absolutely want to repent over even accusing you 00:55:59.000 |
like you're doing something to inflict us with it. 00:56:02.000 |
When we see you, Lord, rather you're actually trying to grow us 00:56:06.000 |
to be stronger, to be more mature according to your likeness. 00:56:10.000 |
We thank you, Lord, it's in Christ that we pray. Amen.