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[00:00:24] Speaker B: We're in a new series for our Christmas season. We're talking about your Christmas playlist. Now, I don't know what your favorite songs are during the holiday season, but I hope we'll be able to hit on a few of them as we go through this as we move toward our Christmas Eve services. Now, last weekend, Pastor Scott got the ball rolling as he talked about Silent Night. And he talked about how there are those times in our life when God seems silent, when you pray and you don't feel the response or you reach out to God and you don't feel that he's receptive or even when he does respond, he doesn't respond in the way you thought he should or the way you thought he could or the way you thought he would. And so you have those moments when God appears silent. And so this weekend I want to continue the series by talking about something that everybody in the room is affected by some way or another. In fact, the great song that I've selected is probably one of the most festive and one of the most joyous songs of the holiday season. It is the most wonderful time of the year. Now, I don't know how many of you grew up watching those Andy Williams Christmas specials. Did anybody do that other than me? Yeah. Thank you for that. I don't feel like I'm a hundred years old because you were all very young that responded. And so those were great. They were. They were really great markers for the season. When Andy Williams would come on the Osmonds and he'd have all these people who were very famous in that day and it was just a festive, it was a fun of, really got your heart and mind set in that direction. It is the most wonderful time of the year. And of course, later on in life, Andy Williams went and he bought his own theater and he would do shows. And Cindy and the kids and I, we went, actually saw one of his Christmas shows and it was really good to see a legend like that in action. And he, of course, did that signature song. I think it came out in about 1963. It is the most wonderful time of the year. Well, I thought about that and I thought, is that really what most people are feeling this time of the year? And sadly, when I read statistics and I read studies that have been done, that's not the emotion that a lot of people are feeling this time of the year. And that's what I want to deal with because it's a tragedy that we don't feel that way oftentimes, especially during this season. In fact, if I could do a little play on words for most people, I would say the song would be more like this. It is the most stressful time the year. I'm probably over the target with most of you whenever I hit that. Because, yes, it's joyous and yes, it's fun, but it's also stressful. Listen, Christmas is the only holiday, when you think about it, that has a countdown.
I mean, it's just, you know, 16 more shopping days till Christmas, right? Tomorrow will be 15. Now, I don't know how many of you that. That stresses you out. To think about it. I was married to a girl for 42 years before she went to heaven. That, that would stress her. Her out. It would stress her out. I'm like most men, our official shopping day of Christmas is not till Christmas Eve, right? We don't even think about it till we get over about right there. Then we're like, you know, just tomorrow, maybe I ought to do something, right? But that's not the case. Cindy was most like. Many of you ladies like the story of Mary and Martha. You remember when Jesus goes to the house and Mary is sitting at the feet of Jesus, just chilling, enjoying hearing him talk about stories. Not Martha. Martha is stressed to the max. She's in the kitchen, she's trying to find something to eat. She's worried about how her house looks. I mean, after all, Mr. Perfect is in the living room now. Jesus and I wasn't ready for him. I didn't know he was coming. You don't bring uninvited people, or at least people to your house that you don't give the wife a heads up. And Jesus just did a drop by. He did a drive by, he did a fly by. He just pops in on her and she's stressed. That girl is stressed to the max. And finally Mary, Martha says to Jesus, would you tell Mary, would you tell my sister to get up and come in here and help me? Now I'm telling you, when you're stressed, it is a blessing to you stressful people to have somebody to stress with you. Doesn't it help you a little bit just to have somebody that shares in your stress, that at least understands you. Yes, sweetheart, you are right. You're right to be stressed. And they're wrong not to be stressed. Well, that was Mary's attitude. Jesus, tell my sister to get in here, help me stress with me. And I love what Jesus says in the story. It's a beautiful story. When you read the Bible, you don't get inflection, right? You don't know how he said it. But I love it because the Bible records Jesus saying this. And I think he might have said it something like this. I think he would have said, martha, Martha, bless your heart.
He said, you're worried about many things. You just need to be focused on one thing. And let's just spend some time together. I mean, just a sandwich will do. What do you got in there? I don't need anything. Just bologna and cheese, right? I mean, just. Let's wear yourself out about that. I just wanted to spend time with you. But yet Martha was so wrapped up and she was so stressed out that she almost missed the significance of the moment. And I just say that as I do this message this morning. That's what I don't want to happen to any of you.
I'm not dogging you about getting stressed because you have a high bar. You have a standard. Believe me. Cindy made Christmas very special. Our kids are grown with kids now, and they would tell you, she set the bar. She made it happen. It was festive, and it was festive because of her, because she had to force me to help her decorate. I was like, dear Lord, it's not Thanksgiving yet, and we're pulling the tree down. Are you kidding me? Anybody married to a girl like that? And. Yeah, I understand. And it was just. But it was beautiful. I always loved it. I always enjoyed it. And all those memories are made because of her. And I'm just saying. That's why I'm not. I'm not getting on you about this, but I'm saying oftentimes with Cindy, she will become so stressed about everything being right that she almost missed the significance of the moment, of really enjoying it as much as she could have and should have. And that's what I want you to do. I want you to have a high standard. I want you to decorate to the fullest, and I want you to have all of those things that you want. But can you do it without being so stressed that you don't enjoy it? And I think you can. And I think I found some Principles in God's word that might help you do that. But there's a financial side of it that most of the men can relate to. There's a stress. Someone said, jingle bells after the first of the year becomes juggle bills.
And I think we can all relate to that. And really, what's sad about it, there was an NBC News survey that was done, and I found it was interesting. After the survey, 45% of the people surveyed said that Christmas is more stressful than enjoyable and that most of them said that we're looking forward to getting on the other side of Christmas. How can that be? When I read that stat, I said, well, if that's true, 45% of the people said it's more stressful than enjoyable. And I can't wait to get over it or get past it. Then I gotta tell you this morning, folks, we're doing something wrong. We're doing something wrong. I read a psychologist who said there's a new psychological term for the Christmas season. Are you ready for this? It's called festive stress.
It's got its own title, festive stress.
That people are so stressed up in the Christmas holidays, they've actually identified a syndrome that is just simply unique to the Christmas season. I don't want you to have to deal with that. Stress any time of the year can be harmful. The number one killer of humans, the number one killer of Americans particularly, is heart disease. And it's interesting that one in five that struggle with heart disease say that it is related, or the doctors say it is related to stress. It is related to stress. I don't know how many of my cardiac brothers and sisters I have in here this morning, but I'm in that merry band of people. And I had my cardiac issues in 2010, and I've got some stents in my heart. And I remember my cardiologist telling me at the time, at the time, I was running five miles a day, I was in probably the best shape of my life and still had a heart attack. And I asked the cardiologist, I don't get how that can be. He said, bill, I've got a young doctor over at Baylor who is a marathon runner. I forget what his BMI was, was very low. And he said he had a heart attack. He said, it's genetics. Now, all of the other factors that can go into it obviously impact it as well, but a lot of it is genetics. And he said. Then he told me, a lot of it is stress. And he said what I would tell you to do is you need to find a way to eliminate a lot of the stress in your life. And I remember looking at him And I said, Dr. Thelman, how do you do that? You know what he said to me? I don't know.
I loved his honesty. I don't know. And can I tell you, as a pastor now standing before you, I still don't know. And I don't know how to advise you to how even how to do that. I'm just saying we're all struggling with that. It is something we deal with is how do you mitigate. How do you deal with the stress that we all have in our life? We have to find a way to do it. And I found some principles in God's word. If I can get a ladder and climb up high enough to see the bottom of it, I'll try to join you and try to attempt to do this. But I find a good illustration in the Bible of a man who dealt successfully with stress was the Apostle Paul. I mean, the Apostle Paul found a way. Think about the stress he was under. The Apostle Paul, when he wrote the little book of Philippi, of Philippians to the people of Philippi. He was chained between Roman soldiers. He was facing death. They were going to behead him. And in just a matter of hours, he would die. And yet he wrote. The theme of the letter that he writes to the people in Philippi was joy. Joy.
I don't know, man. I'm thinking if I'm gonna have my head cut off, and I've just got a few hours to live, and I've got some things that I wanted to say to the people who know me best and love me most. I would have been struggling with finding joy. I don't know. That been the theme, you know, I would have been a little more introspective, I think. I think I might have been a little more desperate. I might have been saying, do you guys have any connections with SEAL Team 6? I mean, I would have been. I would have been funny. You know what I mean? I mean, help a brother. This is not good. And yet the Apostle Paul found a way. In the book of Philippians, a little letter to the Philippians, he found a way to describe the secrets of his joy, how it. How he learned to mitigate the aspects of stress. And I want to identify four things that I think are important, four things that I think are significant, and four things that Paul obviously learned how to do that helped him be able to deal with stress and define joy. Look at our text in Philippians 1. I just picked out three verses here. The whole idea I'm going to be sharing with you is out of this first chapter. But in the first three verses are the three through six, I should say. Paul said, I think my God upon every remembrance of you. Now keep in mind, as far as Paul is concerned, this may be the last communication he has with anyone. And he's letting them know it's about you. And I'm thanking God for the remembrance, the memories I have of you. Always. You're in every prayer of mine, making requests for you. Note with all joy for your fellowship in the gospel. From the first day until now. Being confident, I want you to know this is the one thing that he who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. Paul said, if I die, if I pass on the scene, that doesn't mean the work of God ends. Just because the worker goes to heaven, it doesn't mean the work of God ends. Just because one star falls from the heavens doesn't mean the sky's going to fall. The God that started the work in you will complete it. And that's the thing Paul wanted the people to know. And he's writing with them, to them with great joy. Down in verse 12, I think I found the first principle. Number one. Paul had a perspective. A perspective to live from. A perspective to live from. What brought him joy is he had the right perspective. How he saw the things that happened to him. Look at it. I want you to know that the things that happened to me have turned out or actually fallen out for the furtherance of the gospel. Get that perspective. Paul is saying, I've come to a point in life where I realize that the negative things that I've experienced, the heavy things that I've experienced, the hard things that I've experienced in life, I've been able to let go of them.
The term is they've fallen out. And I've let them fall out of my life for the furtherance of the gospel. One of the things that will stress us out, ladies and gentlemen, is when we start carrying burdens God didn't design us to carry.
When we start bringing into our life things that are completely out of our control. I've shared this with you before. There's two things you should never worry about. First of all, don't worry about something that is within your control. Because if you can fix it, just fix it. I've gotten up in the middle of the night before. Cause I couldn't sleep about Something I was worried about and actually developed a game plan to address it. I've done that many times. It just, it's keeping me awake and I can't sleep. So I just, okay, I'm not gonna fight this. I'm just gonna get up, I just go in there and I start writing down, okay, here's the problem and here's some possible things I could do to begin to mitigate the problem. Well, it was something that I could do. So if I'm stressed about something that I can fix, then I need to get a game plan and go fix it. Here's the second thing you shouldn't stress about. The second thing you shouldn't stress about, you shouldn't worry about are things you can't do anything about.
I mean, if you get up in the middle of the night and you've determined this is something I can fix and here's the game plan, this is the strategy, this is what I'm gonna do, wonderful. But if in your assessment of what you're stressing about, it's a matter of something you can do nothing about, then you have to develop the perspective of the apostle Paul and you have to give this to God and let it go. You have to say, God, I'm not in control of this.
I can't control, I can't control. Martha, Jesus just popped in. It is what it is. No, you didn't have a chance to vacuum. It is what it is. No, everything wasn't done. It just is what it is. Yes, if you had known he was coming, you would have baked the cake. You would have done all. Yeah, but you didn't know. It is what it is. And so a lot of the perspective, ladies and gentlemen, we have to develop in life if we're going to alleviate stress and embrace the joy of the season, is we need the right perspective to live from.
Ask yourself a couple of questions. Is this something, Is this stress that I'm feeling right now something that I may have created? Is it self induced? I talked to you a while back about ways to evaluate some of the things you're going through and asking yourself, is this a season that I'm going through or a cycle? Some of you may remember that a season is something that's out of your control. You can't do anything about seasons. Seasons come, seasons go. You may hate winter, you may not like cold. Some of you are tropical people and you're going outside right now, it's a little rainy and it's cold and you're hating it. Right now, others of you winter people that hate those old sweaty, hot summers we have here are going, thank you, Jesus. I love the cold weather. Well, here's what I know about all of that. None of that is in our control. I can hate it, be stressed about it, love it, hate. You know what? I can't control it. You are absolutely out. So that is a season. Seasons are things that are completely out of my control. So again, you come back to say, is this something out of my control? There's a verse in Lamentations 5, verse 7, where the people are lamenting. Jeremiah, called the weeping prophet, wrote the book of lamentations. It's an entire book about people. They're away from God and they're lamenting. It's an old expression to mean to weep. He wrote a book called weeping or Sorrow. And the lament of Jeremiah in Lamentations 5:7 is, Our Father sinned and we're bearing the reproach, meaning we're dealing with something that was out of our control.
We're having to handle a problem we didn't create. That's a season. Now, sometimes, guys, you get a stressful situation dropped on top of you, on top of your family, and it's something that you did not create. It is a season. And the good thing about seasons is they'll pass. They'll pass. Now, you know, it may be like a, you know, a kidney stone. It may be rough, but it eventually will pass. And you're gonna get through this and you're gonna get on the other side of this because it is a season. Now however, if it's not a season, it may be a cycle.
A cycle is something you and I are in control of. You remember the law of holes? The law of holes. You heard the law of holes. H O L E S. You know what the law of holes is when you're in one? Quit digging.
And so many times we get in a hole and we just keep digging. And there's certain cycles you go through. For example, I'm saying, if you go through the same thing, you stress about the same thing over and over again. Evaluate it. Is this a season or is this a cycle? Could it be A lot of my stress is self imposed, and if so, I can do something about that. And what I need to do about that is to change my perspective. I need to change the way I am looking at this situation. I need to look at it in a different. I need to see it from a different point of view. Down in verse 13 and 14, here's what Paul said about his affliction. He said, in my bonds. So that in my bonds my desire is that Christ might be manifest in all the palace.
I want God to be manifested in everything that I do. And he said, I want to be able to speak the word of God without fear. What was Paul saying? Paul was saying, I'm seeing my circumstance chained to these guys, facing the loss of my life as an opportunity to share my faith with people I might have never encountered otherwise. Boy, that's a perspective.
Realizing that God has uniquely placed him in a position to share his faith with people that he would not otherwise had that opportunity to share his faith with. In fact, later. And I can show you a passage where Paul, when he was writing, he said, the people of the household of Caesar salute you. Meaning that Paul had led some people that worked for the. For Caesar. He actually had influence and had led them to Christ because he said, send them greetings from us, Paul. So Paul obviously had led people, many soldiers that he was chained to, many people that he was dealing with while he was being imprisoned. He had shared his faith to such an extent that he had led many of those folks to Christ.
I can go back to Acts 26 and tell you one time, he's brought before King Agrippa, and King Agrippa had the power to put him to death. And what did Paul do? He used the opportunity because his perspective was right. He used the opportunity to share his faith. And King Agrippa was so moved by the story of Paul, by his conversion and his experience with God, that King Agrippa said in Acts 26, 1, Paul, you've almost persuaded me to become a Christian. What a powerful thing. What am I saying that's tied to. I'm saying, guys, that's tied to his perspective, how he saw the things that he was going through. So perspective is the first thing I would give you. So not only did he have his perspective to live from. Notice number two, he found a priority to live by, a priority. He lived according to priority. Look at Philippians 1, verse 18. Only that in every way, whether it's in pretense or in truth that Christ is preached. And in this I rejoice. Yes, and I will continue to rejoice. Paul said, the priority of my life. The priority of my life is to share the Gospel, to share the love of Jesus with other people. He made that the priority. What am I saying? I'm saying two things that helped Paul mitigate stress was he had the right perspective and he had the right priority we live, as we've talked about, according to our priorities. You say, bill, I don't know how to set priorities. Well, I can give you five biblical priorities. The first priority is God. The Bible opens in the beginning. God. Now, that doesn't mean God in relationship to your religion. It means God in relationship to your relationship. I had the opportunity to lead a person to Christ just a few days ago, and they were telling me, you know, I was raised in the Catholic Church. I said, well, I was raised in the Baptist Church. We have a lot of things we have to get over, don't we? And I said, but that's not really what I want to talk to you about. That's your religion. And I understand religion plays an important role in everybody's life. And I get that if you're religious or you're irreligious, it doesn't matter. I said, but let's set your Catholicism aside for a moment. Let's don't talk about your religion. Let's talk about your personal faith in Jesus. If you never went. If you never went to Mass again, if you never went to confession again, if you never went to a church service again, if you never stood through another stanza of justice, I am in the Baptist Church.
If neither of those things ever happened again, none of it ever happened again. You're exiled on an island. You're in the top of a mountain. There's nobody out here. There's not a church in sight.
Just you and God. Set that religion aside. What would you. How do you stand? How is your relationship with God?
They said, you know, I don't know that I really have ever established one. And I said, well, that's what I'm driving at. I said, the most important relationship you can have in your life is a relationship you have with Christ. And that's simply of you just inviting him into your heart and into your life, acknowledging that you're a sinner. He's the Savior. He went to the cross to die for you. And if you'll receive him, he'll save you. Now, have you ever done. No, I don't think I've ever done. You want to do that? I think I do. And so right there had the opportunity to see this man pray and receive Jesus as their Savior. It was a wonderful thing because the first time in his life, he wasn't relying on his religion, he was relying on his relationship to Jesus. And let me tell you, all of a sudden, that was the priority of his life.
So when I say God is a priority, I Mean God in relationship to your relationship.
Nothing to do with church. God in relationship to your relationship. And then the second thing he established in the garden, if you'll notice, he has established the home, the family, your spouse, that significant other. And he established that, and he blessed the marriage. He said, for this cause, the cause of marriage, will a man leave his father and mother be joined to his wife, and they too shall become one flesh. You leave, you cleave, and you receive all the blessings of God. He established the marriage covenant. The third thing he did was he blessed the family with children, and the children were a priority.
The next thing he did was he told him, he said, take care of this place. Keep the garden. He was told to be a good steward of all that God had created. Meaning that he told him, I need you to work. You need to work. Somebody said, well, Bill, if sin hadn't entered the picture, we wouldn't have to work. No, reread it. We worked before sin ever entered the picture, God created us with purpose to do something. God has designed you. Even if you're retired, there's still something he has for you to do. Somebody said, retire just means I put new tires on and go a different way. You're into something else. You've retired. And everybody in the room that has had that opportunity to retire, you found something else to do. Found something. Be a greeter at Walmart. That's all right. God bless them. Find something. Help us around here. We can put you to work doing a lot of things around here. Many of you work at the crc. You're in that retirement. I'm just saying God designed us to work, to be. To stay as long as you're physically able to stay busy. And it has a lot of effect on you psychologically and physically to stay busy. So you have work. Now. Sin, when it entered the picture, made work more difficult. Make work harder. But I'm saying God designed us and told Adam and Eve, take care of this place. And then the fifth thing he did, when sin did enter the picture, he established a form of worship. The altar. Build the altar. Bring me a blood sacrifice. So you could put there and argue there that that that was symbolic of church, of your worship. Our worship should be there. Those are five. You could add six. Being your friendships or your relationships. You could add your own priority. But I'm saying, at some point, guys, if you're gonna deal with stress, you need to ask yourself the question, am I living according to the priorities that I've established for myself, or am I Living according to the pressures that other people are putting on me. And if you don't live according to priority, you will live according to pressure. And people will pressure you. If you don't take charge of your life, somebody else will. And you'll be bouncing around like a ball and a pinball machine, bouncing off of one request, off of the next request and responding and reacting constantly. And you have to learn when you live, priorities by priorities. You have to learn how to say no. And you can say it sweetly and diplomatically, no, I love you, but no. And for some, sometimes you have to say, that's gonna be a hard no, right? You say that sweetly and lovingly, but you have to or you'll be a people pleaser. And when you get home at the end of the day, you've made everybody happy but yourself and you're the most miserable human in the world. What am I saying? Go back and reestablish some priorities. Just say there's some things that have to fit into this grid. And if they don't fit into that grid, I'll get to you when I can. But you're not in this. You're down here about 12, right? And Paul found the priority that he could live by. Here's the third thing. He found not only the perspective and the priority, but number three. He found a power to live on. A power to live on. Look at verses 19 and 20. I know that this will turn out for my deliverance through your prayer and supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. Now let me stop. Say Paul knew one way or another, God's going to deliver me.
He either is going to save me from this death and deliver me in that way, or he's going to deliver me into his presence and I'm going to heaven. God's going to answer the prayer one way or another. Verse 20. According to my earnest expectation and hope that in nothing I shall be ashamed. But with all boldness, as always, so now also will Christ be magnified in my body. Note now, whether it be by my life or by my death. Paul had a power to live on. What was the power that he had? He had the power of the Holy Spirit living within him, energizing him and enabling him to do everything God had called him to do. Someone as well said, unless you have within you that which is above you, you will succumb to what is around you, and eventually you'll fall into what is beneath you. We need a power to live on. We need a power to live on. And the power that Every child of God has is the presence of God's spirit living within you in this moment, at this time, the presence of God. That's why Paul said in Philippians 4:13, I can do all things through Christ, who gives me strength and I love what he wrote to the believers in Ephesus. He said in Ephesians 3:20, to him who is able, note now to God, who is able to do immeasurably, immeasurably more than we ask or imagine how, according to his power that is at work within us. Paul said, God has the ability to do incredible things through my life, according to his power that is at work within me. So you need a power to live from sometimes, man. You faced with all the problems of life and you faced with the pressures of life, and I'm telling you, you need to rely on the Spirit of God. There comes a moment in life where you just need to surrender. You need to say, God, I can't, but you can. Lord, I can't love them, so love them through me. God, I can't face this, so help me. Give me the energy that I need to go through and to get through what I'm going through. God, I'm relying on your power. So he had perspective. Paul had priorities. He had power. Here's the fourth and the final thought before we go. He found a purpose to live for a reason, a purpose to live for. Philippians 1:21. Here was Paul's purpose. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain man. That's my purpose. It's all about doing God's will for my life, finding purpose. And we talk about this a lot because most people really need to be aware of this. You are immortal until God is finished with you. The reason you're in this room and the reason you're watching online right now and the reason you'll watch later or you'll listen to a podcast. The reason all of that is true is God's not finished with you.
He has a purpose and a plan for your life. So begin to try to discern. Okay, God, what is it that you want me to do when we wake up tomorrow morning, Lord willing, as we wake up, we want to be able to face a brand new Monday morning and say, God, why have you given me life? Help me to find purpose. Help me to discover the reason you have left me here to make a difference in the life of someone else. What it will do when you begin to understand and live life that way, it will help again mitigate the stress in your life, because it's not about you, it's about others. And Paul's life was not about the pressures he faced, but about the purpose that he lived for. And he saw it differently. He said, God, you've left me here for a reason, so I'm gonna try to discover the thing you've left me here to accomplish. That beautiful passage in Ecclesiastes where he says, to everything there is a season, there's a time to every purpose under heaven. You'll go through seasons and you'll go through difficulty in life, but it all ties back to your purpose. So what is the purpose? Paul said, for me, for me personally, for me to live is Christ. And then he said, even at the end of the day, if I should die, he said, I should die in vain. I mean, I should die as unto the Lord. It's a gain. In First Corinthians, chapter 9, verse 26. I love this. Let me kind of close here. He said, I don't run like someone running aimlessly. I don't fight like I'm shadow boxing. Paul said, I'm. I'm running with purpose. And then in chapter 10, verse 23, he said, I'm living life according to an expedition. It's like an expedition life. Paul said, it's like an expedition. What is a. What is an expedition? An expedition is a journey with a destiny in mind. People who climb Everest, I don't know why they would do that. But the people who climb Everest go on what they call an expedition, right? It's different than a hike. I've hiked and I like to hike, but I'm not going on it. I'm not climbing Everest. That has not happened. This fat boy is not going up there.
Listen, I'm not even going to try to do that.
I don't have any interest in that, okay? I'm just simply saying I go on hikes, I don't go on expeditions. And I can tell you what I know about what I've read about people who've actually hit the summit of Everest. None of them ever said, I was just going on a hike.
And I followed these guys in these bright glowing outfits with oxygen masks on, and I thought, that looks like fun. I'm gonna join in behind them. And the next thing I knew, I'm standing on Everest on the summit. That's. That's. That's never happened, man. They spend money. I read the other day, the thousands, tens of thousands of dollars people spend to train and prepare. And then you travel and you. And you know, you do all that they do to have that experience. I'm not poo pooing it. I'm just saying I don't understand it. I'm not wired that way. But they do, and they hit the summit. But I'm just saying none of them have ever achieved that goal unless they set their heart and mind and were willing to sacrifice in order to achieve it. I'm just drawing that back to what Paul said. He said, life is an expedition. I'm willing to sacrifice. I'm willing to do what it takes. I'm willing to discipline myself. I'm willing to work hard every day so that I can achieve the thing God has designed me to achieve. That's it. And when you began to look at your life like that and you began to see God's purpose for your life, oh, man, things began to make so much more sense. You began to realize that I'm here for a reason. God's got me on this planet for a purpose. For some of you, the highest priority. Again, back to the some of you, the highest priority might be to serve your family. I mean, to love your children. I mean, you only, you're only. We only got them for just a little window anyway before they're out and on their own. And, man, your priority are those kids. And once you've done that, I mean, then you can kind of shift your priority and say, you know, I'm looking even at my career. I want to do well in the career and make a difference in my business. Some of you own businesses, and I want to do well in my business. I want to be able to help people and bless the people that work with me. And so that's part of that priority. You found purpose, right? And others of you say, you know, I found my church and I feel like I'm contributing and I'm a part of this. So it's fulfilling that spiritual need in my life to be. So you're finding purpose. And, man, you'd have to agree with me when you're in that zone, it's fulfilling and it does help to mitigate the stress when, you know, at the end of the day, I'm where God wants me to be. I'm doing the thing God wants me to do. I can tell you in my own life, that was one of the great blessings of being able to do what I'm doing now is I was able to find purpose in what God had for me personally to do. When I was very young, I remember, man, my dad was a pastor. And so a lot of it, I aspired to be because I idolized my dad. I wanted to do what he did. So I had to be able to separate, you know, Is this just me wanting to please my dad and kind of fall in that track, or is this something God wants me to do too much to tell you to explain how I discerned that. But over a series of events and over a period of years, I've been able to realize this is what God wanted me to do. Not just the track that I was following my father in. But I'm saying, as a child, man, I'd have. We lived on a farm out in the country and we'd have animals die. And as a 6, 7 year old kid, I'm preaching the funerals for these animals that died.
I mean, literally, my parents have a picture of me with a shoebox and I had a cat that died, Which I wasn't sad about that. But anyway.
No, I'm just kidding. I'm kidding you. Cat people don't send me any emails. Cat people.
I'm just kidding about that. There's a place, I'm sure for cats somewhere. But the point is, I didn't have to fake sympathy. But I do remember the cat dying. The dog would have devastated me, but the cat, I put it in a shoebox out on our patio and I had my mom and dad file by and my mom said, I told him, look sad when you go by this cat.
Now I'm telling you now, don't profile me here if you're with the FBI. But I had a pet cemetery between our barns out in the. Is that creepy now, looking back at it, what kid has a pet cemetery? But I did because I grew up in the church and we had funerals and I went to, you know, all that sort of thing. And I remember my sister played the piano and I would get the TV stand and it was my pulpit stand. She would play and sing. And this is before my brother discovered America. And then I would do the sermon and then I would get upset with her if she didn't come forward and get saved again. Right? I thought, that heifer needs Jesus. I mean, she needs Jesus. I know my sister, she needs Jesus. And she wouldn't play along with me on that one. What's my point? My point is, from a child, I kind of was in, you know, I kind of was figuring out maybe what God wanted me to do. And as I got older, it began to, you know, it began to fall into place. And so I'm just saying, personally, I know the fulfillment that comes when you feel like I'm really in the zone. And I found what God wants me to do and now I've been doing it. This next year will be my 50th year in full time ministry. So I'm in that zone, you know, and so thank you.
I know when I say that, everybody says, well, you should be better at it than that by now. I understand that. But I'm just, I'm just saying as I close this morning, find that purpose. You're unique. God has something. It may not be what he's called me to do, but you've got something to do.
Find that purpose and you'll find that as you fulfill that purpose, God will begin to do things in your life and affirm you in ways that are indescribable, unimaginable. And you'll know at the end of the day it'll help mitigate any stress because you can say, hey, I'm in the zone. I'm doing the thing God's called me to do and I'm going to stay at it until he calls me home. Let's pray together.
Father, thank you for these amazing people who are here on this Sunday. As we talk about this truly being the most wonderful time of the year, not the most stressful time, so help us to consider the principles that Paul has taught us to make certain that, Father, these principles are present and prevalent in our life. And I pray for my friends who may never have trusted you as Savior. Just as a story I shared of that one who gave their heart to you a few days ago, I pray this might be that moment, that epiphany when they just simply humble their heart now and say, lord Jesus, with all that I know about me, I now embrace and receive all that I know about you. Come into my heart. Forgive my sin. And Father, I'll ask this in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:36:29] Speaker A: Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you have any questions or prayer requests, please contact us by visiting metchurch.com so that we can follow up with you this week. We look forward to seeing you next week.
