The Church of Eleven22 - Why Call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and Not Do What I Say? - When He Asks - Wk 1

Episode Date: November 18, 2024

God loves you. When you receive and believe that love through Jesus, how we live our lives and the fruit we bear changes forever. - The Church of Eleven22® is a movement for all people to discover and deepen a relationship with Jesus Christ. Eleven22 is led by Pastor Joby Martin and based in Jacksonville, Florida, with multiple campuses throughout Jacksonville and the surrounding areas. To find out more about how God is moving at Eleven22, go to CoE22.com

Amen, amen. Amen. Good morning, church. Hope you're well. I'm Pastor Britt. I get the opportunity every so often to open God's word and share it with us when Pastor Job is away. And I'm going to do that today. I'm glad to do it. We're going to be in Luke chapter 6 in the New Testament if you want to start making your way there. It is child and family dedication. We can hear at the church of 1122 and to all the parents. I would just say good for you. Direction to determine its destination, not intention. And you have taken a significant step in the direction of raising your child in the gospel and being partnered with your church. in seeing one more generation believe and receive the gospel. We believe that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation for all who hear and believe. It says this in Romans chapter one. We believe that there's nothing more powerful than the gospel of Jesus Christ, nothing more formative or gripping.

And so parents, good for you and being committed in this way. And good for you, church, for partnering to pray for and be a part of the process of seeing kids and students grow in their relationship with the Lord. As we've dedicated these kids this weekend, one of the things I've been thinking about, and praying on is the truth that there's something we want to get deep down in the hearts of young people. And we want it to be deep in the hearts of parents. We wanted to be deep in the hearts of grandparents. We wanted to be deep in your heart. And it is a truth. And the truth that we want to be foundational to your life is the truth that God loves you. God loves you. And I love you. And you go, well, thank you, Pastor Britt. I appreciate that. Looking at you, I'm not exactly sure I want

to receive that love, but I do love you. And I hope that you find that encouraging. That said, the fact that I love you probably doesn't grip your imagination. It probably doesn't have any altering effect on your life. But when I say God loves you, that's a different statement altogether because of who we're talking about. We're talking about God Almighty. We're talking about the one who hung the stars in the sky and he knows each of them by name. The one that the earth is his footstool. He's omnipotent. He's omnipresent. He's omniscient. We're talking about the God. God, the all-powerful sovereign God, who did not begin when the beginning began, but began the beginning. We're talking about God. God loves. And he doesn't love in some finite, conditional way like I would

love you. He loves you. Agape is the way the Bible talks about it. It is an unconditional love. He loves you with a for God so loved the world. He gave his only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life kind of love. He loves you in a he who knew no sin, became sin so that you could become the righteousness of God through faith kind of love. He loves you with I know the plans I have for you, plans not to harm you, but plans to give you hope and a future kind of love. When we say God loves, it's a different statement, but he doesn't just stop at God loves. It says that God loves you. He loves you, the real you. There's like the Instagram you and the TikTok you and there's like the fake you, there's like the work you, there's like the hobby you,

but I'm talking about the alone you. I'm talking about the one. I'm talking about the one, when it's just you and nobody else is around. That you, God loves you. The you that often feels shame in those moments of your life that have created shame in your life in those moments when we were doing things that were leading somewhere we didn't want to go. God loved us then. God loves us now. There's nothing more powerful. There is nothing more gripping or possessive than the truth that God loves you. It has power unlike anything else. God's love is what we're going to wrestle with today. When we receive and believe God's love for us through Jesus Christ, we become possessed by it. All questions of significance, all questions of relevance, the real life-defining questions,

are all some version of the question, who do I love? My wife came to me a few years ago, and she said, babe, why do you love me? And I sat there and I thought about it for a few minutes, and then I said, well, honestly, when we were dating, I sat down, and I ran the numbers. And I took the sum of your character traits, and I took the sum of my character traits, and I added them together, and the percentage chances that we were going to be compatible

were pretty high. I thought, I said, well, you know, I looked at your family history, and I looked at my family history, and I thought we could probably make better than average babies, so why not? I thought, you know, of all the things that you bring, You know I didn't say any of this, right?

And so it's like, babe, I ran a pros and cons list. And of all the options I had at the time, your pro list was longer. Like, nobody answers the question, why do you love me this way? Why? Because love's not logical. It's not calculated. It's something deeper. It's something more gripping when the Puritans used to preach the good news of Jesus

Christ. And someone would hear and by faith, to the good news of Jesus Christ and they would surrender their lives to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. The Puritans would explain this and they would say that this person has now been seized by the power of a great affection. They've been seized by the power of a great affection. Have you? And how would you know? That's what we're going to talk about in Luke chapter 6 today. We're in a new series called When He Asked, where we're looking at different questions Jesus asked through his ministry and we're going to pick up in Luke chapter 6 verses 43. Jesus says this.

for no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit. Jesus would often talk about truth, and he would talk about it like a seed. And I have some soil here. And Jesus would say that in order for the seed of the truth of God's love to grow in someone's life, it has to hit good soil. The primary place he talks about this is known as the parable of the sower. And he says that there's four different types of soil that the seed of the truth of God's love can land on. One, is surfaced soil and that oftentimes that truth goes out and it lands on the surface of the ground and Satan comes and steals that truth before it ever has time to take hold in somebody's life. That is true that God's truth has an enemy and the enemy does not want you to believe that God loves you.

And he doesn't want you to believe that God loves you because if you believe that God loves you, then that will begin to define everything about you. And the enemy doesn't want you to find by God's love. He wants you defined by normally. He wants you be dislave to shame and sin. He wants you to be a prisoner of darkness, not to be free to walk in the light of God's love. And so Satan steals the truth before it ever has time to take root. The second soil Jesus talks about is a rocky soil.

He says that sometimes the truth goes out and it lands on rocky soil. And what he means is that sometimes truth will land on people and they'll hear it and they won't disagree with it. But it never actually takes root. It never really produces love and joy and the things that grow from a godly life. It just is a truth that they heard that they don't disagree with. And the point is this, that not disagreeing is not the same thing as believing. Those are different things. The third type of soil, the third type of soil, he would say is, what's the third type?

Hold on. I have notes. Thorny soil, you're welcome. Among thorns. And when the seed of truth lands among thorns, what happens is that the cares and the possessions of this world matter more than God's glory in the advancement of the gospel and that market share and that the worldly possessions and that kitchen renovations just mean more in this life than God's glory and the advancement of the gospel. And Jesus says that that is a life that is a thorny life.

Weeds grow and they choke out anything good. But then he says there's a fourth type of soil and it's a good soil. And I got some good soil right here. This is mineral rich high dollar home depot soil right here. This is the real thing. Now let me ask you a question. If I were to plant a seed in this soil today, do you think it's reasonable that we would come back tomorrow and there would be a tree with fruit on it? No, why? Because it takes time for healthy things to grow. Make no mistake about it. Who hears testimony is this? God is patient. Amen? God is patient. God is kind. God grows good things in our life over time. It doesn't happen overnight. It is not reasonable to think that we put a seed in here and just immediately fruit would start to show itself.

And I know there's a lot of people who call 1122 home that you are new to following Jesus. You are new to having a relationship with Jesus. And I just want you to know, we're so glad that you're here. We're so glad that you're here. I'm so thankful and I'm so excited about what God's doing in your life. And you may say, Pastor, look, I'm new to this thing, but when am I going to, when's everything going to be different? And what I think you mean is when am I going to start to feel different?

And here's what I'd offer you today. I'd offer you, instead of thinking about your feelings, think about the God who made your feelings, and over time, you will begin to feel differently. If you just think about what you feel, then things are going to grow really, really slow. But if you think about the God who created those feelings, then all of a sudden things will begin to change over time. Right. So it's not reasonable to think that it's going to grow quickly or overnight, but it is biblical to think over time, fruit will show itself. Fruit will show itself. And so Jesus says, a good tree bears good fruit and a bad tree bears bad fruit. verse 44 he says this for each tree is known and you want to underline that for each tree is known by its fruit

for figs are not gathered from thorn bushes nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush on one hand this is pretty self-explanatory you say thank you jesus obviously grapes grow on grapevines but what is he getting at and it's in this phrase is known for each tree is known by its fruit what does it mean to be known well the only way i can really help us understand that is this is in the context of family. How many of you have raised kids in your house or are currently raising kids in your house that you know this, you know which kid is coming down the stairs based on the sound that they're making, right? What about sneezing? Isn't that fascinating? That if you are in a family with somebody, you could be in a crowded room and you could hear

them sneeze and you'll know exactly who it is. What about laughing? My mom died when I was young. It's been more than 30 years now. And I can still hear her laugh. And I can close my eyes and I can go into a memory and I can hear her laugh in here almost like it's right here. Isn't that amazing? Sounds, this is how we know. It's subconscious instincts we begin to form when we're around each other. Do you know the sounds of the Father?

Do you know what the sound of the voice of the Good Shepherd sounds like in your life? What about smells? Who here, you walk by a bathroom in your house and nobody needs to tell you who is just in there. Huh? The Bible says that we can be so near to Christ that we can take on the aroma of him. What does it mean to be known? It sounds. It smells.

When you begin to love something in that way, you begin to take on their characteristics. Jesus says, for figs are not gathered from thorn. or grapes picked from a bramble bush. My wife and I, we started gardening a few years ago. And by we, I mean she, and ultimately she does the gardening and I lift heavy things. And so that's how that goes. But we grow stuff. We have pineapples. We have peppers. We have okra because we're from the south and we drink sweet tea. And we do all the judges if you want. That's fine. But one of our favorite things to grow and what we've been growing the most of lately is that we grow orange trees. And so I brought with me my favorite orange tree that we've, we've

we've been growing at my house. And here it is right here. This orange right here, if you took a bite of this orange, it would change your life. Your taste buds would thank you immediately. We love growing orange trees. And you would say, Pastor Britt, you have lost your ever-loven mind. That is not an orange tree. That is a two-by-four stuck in soil that you nailed fruit to. And I, but I, it's an orange tree. And you go, Pastor Britt, that doesn't make any sense. It is obvious that that is, a piece of wood stuck in the soil. You were being silly, and I would say you're absolutely right, and that's the point. And this is how silly it is to pretend to be a Christian and not actually love Christ. This is the best religion has to offer, is for you to grab some habits that

look religious and stick them on your life and be like, I must be all good. That's all the best religion can ever have is that a two by four with some fruit stuck on it. But isn't it good news that Jesus didn't come to get you to subscribe to his religion, he came so that you could have a relationship with him. In John chapter 15, Jesus Christ says, if you abide in me, I will abide in you and you will bear much fruit. It's most of the time in our life, we're not talking about a fruit issue. We're talking about a root issue. Do you love him? Do you love him? Verse 45, Jesus says this, the good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good. And the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil. For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. How do you know

what you love? What's what comes from the inside out? How do you know what you love? Fruit is how. Jesus says words are one example of that. Galatians chapter five says the fruit of the spirit, the thing that God is at work growing in us from the inside out when we've placed our faith in Jesus Christ, what begins to spill over out of our life, the fruit of the spirit is love. joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control, that these things are beginning to take over our life. God's love does that. It changes us from the inside out. So for the next few minutes, what I want to do is I want to help us get a framework for how love grows and matures over time. And I didn't come up with this. I encountered a theological OG some time ago

named Bernard. And he died about a thousand years ago. But before he did, he wrote a paper called on loving God, where he provides what I think is a very helpful way to think about love, what it is, and how it grows and matures in our life over time. So I need you to go ahead and put your thinking cap on because I'm about to jump in the deep end. And I need you to put your listen fast devices because I'm about to unload pretty good. You ready? Let's go.

All right. Bernard says that there are four degrees of love. And degrees is a great way to think about it because love is not like you level up in a video game or you're climbing a ladder. It's like a fire burning within you, your affections and your desires. And that as our affections and desires attach themselves to things, it fuels the fire. And so based on what the fire is attached to, determines the significance or the dominance that that fire has in our life. And so these affections can grow and grow and dominate us or they can dwindle and dwindle based on the things that they're attached to.

So there are four degrees of love. The first degree, Bernard says, is this. It is the love of self for the sake of self. This is what I call a broken love. You see, love is a natural human affection. It is a part of being created in the image of God to have the capacity to love. We do have affections. We do have desires and we will attach them to something.

Something will have priority in our life. Something will have decision making control over us. That's what it means to have the capacity to love. But sin upended what was pure love and changed just object and objective. It went from the object of true love. being God for the purpose of filling the earth with His glory to being centered on human desires for the purpose of a self-defined freedom. Humans love themselves for their own sake. Our definitions and desires are perverted from sin. So this capacity for love terminates on self and it always pushes

outside its created boundaries into the desire for excessive pleasure. Thus, the enemy of the satisfied in God's soul is the lust of the flesh. It is love. It is love. in that it is affection and desire fixated on someone's ultimate good. Just in this case, it's broken because it's fixated on self. It is operating from a lacking and a broken definition of ultimate good, which can, by design, only terminate on God because he's the only one capable of being full of good. Think about it in the term of parenting and marriage.

This is often what makes parenting and marriage difficult. When I gave myself to my wife and to my children, what I did was I committed myself to a selfless, self-giving love relationship. And anywhere that my selfishness rubs up against the requirement for me to be self-giving, it makes the act of being self-giving feel like a burden instead of a blessing. Because there's a part of me that loves me first. That's what Bernard is arguing. You are not designed to be your primary interest,

and the fact that we are our primary interest is the result of the fall, that we read about in Genesis chapter 2 and 3. The second degree of love, Bernard says, is a love of God for self's sake. This is an adolescent love. You see, God gives himself to us in order to be loved. Loving God is each of our highest good. We look around our lives and using different words, we begin to ask questions of significance and purpose and meaning, and we begin to realize that there is something wrong out there. And if we pay attention by God's grace, we begin to realize that it's not just wrong out there. There's something wrong in here that I actually have. great need, that I am a sinner and that I need someone else to do for me what I could not do

for myself. I need someone to have the power to forgive sins in order to forgive my sins so that I can have a right relationship with God. That self-reliance will only take me so far and it will never take me into right relationship with God. And I want to be in a right relationship with God because I want to spend eternity with God in heaven. And without intervention from the outside, that is not where I'm going to end up. I'm going to end up apart from God in hell. And so I see my life and realize in it of myself, I can't fix myself. I need someone else to do it for me. And in here somewhere, we hear the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ, where we learned that Jesus did for us what we could never do for ourselves. He lived the perfect life. He died

our death instead of us, paying the full penalty for sin. And then he rose from the dead three days later. And through his resurrection, when we place our faith in him, we become adopted into the family of God. And we get his resurrected life. This is. the beauty of the gospel. We need him. Almost everyone who comes to faith, everyone who comes to faith in Jesus Christ does so initially from a needs-based place. I need someone to do for me what I could not do for myself. But in this process, my affections begin to shift toward another. I begin to attach myself to someone else. And this is when I began, but make no mistake about it, I initially come for what I get out of the deal. The second degree, a love of God for God's self,

how do you understand this? Well, when my kids were smaller, they were a bit more adolescent than they are now. We used to sit at the dinner table and I would ask a question regularly. I would say, all right, kids, tell me one thing that you love about your mother. And the younger my kids were, the way that they would answer this question, they would say, I love mom because she cooks for me. I love mom because she cleans up for me. I love mom because she, takes me places. Is this love? Well, yes, in an adolescent sense it is. There's a need, there's an exchange, there's a dependency, and so as far as my kids can articulate at that point in their life, that is love. It is just not a mature love. It is an adolescent love. The third

degree of love is this. Bernard says that it is a love of God for God's sake. Love of God for the sake of self, third degree, love of God for God's sake. This is a true, true love. Often my kids would flip that around on me and they would say, okay, dad, you tell us something that you love about your mother, you love about mom. And I would say, well, in my most aware moments, which God knows we're few and far between. But in my most aware moments, I would answer their question like this. And I would say, well, I love the way your mother breathes. I love the way she moves across the room. I love the way that she stands on her tippy toes to reach something high. I love the intensity with which she loves you. Do you see it? It's just a different kind of love. I know their mother

in a way that they have yet to know her. And if my kids don't mature or pass an adolescent love, they will go through their entire life and they will never really enjoy their mom, nor will they ever really know their mom. Their mom's existence on their life will just be a character in their movie, and what a waste that would be. I mean, think about it. Is God a character in your movie or are you a role player in his? The third degree.

Love of God for God's sake. We go through life and we see God come through and prove himself faithful time and time again. Over and over again, we struggle with sin and he reminds us of Calvary's Cross. Over and over again, we feel defeated and the Holy Spirit of God

reminds us of the empty tomb. Over and over and over again, we step in faithlessness, to be reminded that even when we are faithless, God remains faithful. And as we draw near to him through trusting in his faithfulness, we begin to learn more about him and how faithful he really is. And we begin to join in with the psalmist and say, not just that God is good to me, but we say, give praise to the Lord for he is good. Not just that he's been good to me. We're growing up. Bernard writes it like this. He says that we now love God, not for our God.

our necessity, for we ourselves have tasted and know how sweet the Lord is. When we love God in this way, his commands become beautiful to us. His lordship over our life becomes our way of life. Bernard says that the third degree, loving God for the sake of God, is the beginning and middle of true love, but it's not the end. The fourth degree is this, and I call it a divine love. Bernard says it is the love of self for God's sake. Let me ask you this. Do you trust that God has plan for your pain. Do you trust that God is truly at work in all things, working all things together for the good of those who love him and who are called according to his purpose? Do you believe that God really loves you? Do you believe that God can use even the most broken parts of yourself

for his glory and his fame? Do you love how loved you are? And is it the most important thing about you? To love ourself, for God's sake, is to be completely aware of our needs, of our desires, of our tendencies, of our falsities, so that we can take them captive in a moment's notice, and we can empty ourselves of them in order to solely and wholly attend to God and his wants. In order to know who you truly are, it takes a tremendous amount of trust to surrender the fake you, and the love of self for God's sake is total surrender. How can I surrender if I don't know what I'm holding on to? If I'm not willing to do the work of what's going on in here and what's going on here and I try to live my life on the surface of everything, how can I truly

be totally surrendered? In order to be totally surrendered to God, I have to know everything about me and offer it up to him knowing that he loves every bit of me. Do you love who God created when he created you? Do you love how he has wired you and the great purpose for your life? To truly love yourself for God's sake is to love who he is created in you, your gifts, your talents, your past, your future, to love who God has created in you, but to all. also, and maybe more importantly, love why he created you, which is for his sake. God created you for himself. This is really, really good news.

This is the statement of all that, all those many words I just said in like nine and a half minutes. Here's what I want you to get. God loves you because it makes him happy to do so. Think about that. God loves you because it makes him happy to do so. and because he's happy, so are we. That's what Bernard's talking about. Bernard says that this kind of love is like a little drop of water poured into a large vat of wine.

The water seems to entirely lose its own identity as it takes on the taste and the color of the wine. For an illustration to help this make sense. I got some wine here. Pastor Brick got some strong drink. Okay? Some of y'all are like, Pastor, is that really wine? Well, one, relax, you legalist. Everything's going to be fine, right?

I'm not going to start passing it around for everybody to have some, okay? Some of y'all are like, is that why? It's like, it is about noon o'clock, you know? Relax, you lush. We're going to be done in a minute. All right? So this water bottle right here, this is you. This is all you, man, all your junk, all your stuff, all your sounds, all your smells, all your past, all your present, all your future.

This is you. your wiring, your wants, your desires, your best moments, and your worst. Just hanging out in this bottle. Right? If I shake this water bottle up, what comes out? Water. Right? So this is you.

This jar of wine here, this is representative of God's love. And let me show you this. What happens? What happens when I pour you into God's love? All right, let me ask you a question. Is that still water that I just poured in there? Is what I poured in there still water? Yeah, it's still two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen.

No doubt about it. But is it now? Not so much more. Do you see it? When we pour ourselves into the love of God, we began to take on the character and the nature of God in the same way that this water has now taken on the character and nature of this wine. Let me ask you this question.

Could I ever get that water back out of here in the same form that it went in? absolutely not it is changed forever it has changed forever that's what bernard is talking about let me put this back over here before we have an accident that we regrets okay hate to spill that it's real possible that i would it be a Greek tragedy so here we are Luke chapter six verse 46 this is the question we now have a framework by which to think about how God loves us and how we're supposed to grow and mature, how we can grow and mature in our love for him. We can move from loving him just because we need him to loving him because he's better than anything else. And we want to be completely lost in love with him. This is the question Jesus asks. And this is this week's

question of the When He Asked series. All everything I just did was just set up. I'm actually going to start preaching now. Okay. I do have the record for the longest sermon ever preached at 1122, just in case you were wondering. I got lost on the clock. I didn't know what time of is I'll never live it down, but here we are. Today will not be the longest. Here we go. 46. Jesus asks this and it is a serious question. Here we go. Why do you call me Lord, Lord and not do what I tell you? What a question. Why do you call me Lord and live like a financial atheist? Why do you call me Lord and live like a sexual agnostic? Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do what I tell you? Don't you know that I have come that you would have life abundantly? You can trust me.

don't you know that I said seek ye first the kingdom of God with your time with your talent with your treasure with your temple seek first the kingdom of God and then all of these things will be added into you don't you know that you can trust me this is Peter sitting by the charcoal fire we studied it last week when Peter sits in front of Jesus he's saying to you and to me just like he did Peter lean in here hey look come here do you love me do you love me because to know Jesus is to love Jesus and to love love Jesus is to trust him. Why do you call me, Lord, Lord, and not do what I tell you to do? John chapter 14, verse 15, Jesus says, if you love me, you will obey my commands. Verse 47, Jesus says it like this. He says, everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he's like. He is like a man building a house who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against it, against the house. not shake it because the house had been well built. But the one who hears my words and does not do them

is like a man who built his house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell and the ruin of the house was great. There's two men. This analogy, there's two men and they both want the same thing. They want to build a home and often in biblical teaching a home is representative of a life. And so they were looking for places to build their life. And one chooses the easiest path, which is to build on the surface. He doesn't want to dig deep. He just builds on the surface on shifting sand.

It's the way that it's explained in another text. That he builds on sand. And when the storm rises, the house falls over. He took the easy path. And inevitably, what happens is that life's not easy. And one day, the phone rings and the doctor's on the other side. and maybe he has hard news. One day, that business venture that was going to fix everything

doesn't go the way that you thought it would, and now you're left to reconcile the feelings of it all. One day, that relationship that was going to make you fully and finally happy, you realize that it didn't. See, when you build your life on easy and on the surface and on shallow, inevitably things that aren't easy will happen. What do you do then when your illusions of control are revealed? But the other man, he built on.

the rock. Some would say he dug down deep in himself until he got to rock bottom because God meets us and does his best work when we get to the end of ourselves. And this man found rock. And the rock that he found was God's faithfulness. God's promises. All of God's promises are yes and amen into Christ Jesus. The rock is the trust that he had in God because of the love that God has for him. And so I could preach about this on and on and on, but I think it may be more meaningful for you to meet my friend Steve. And Steve is in a situation where the stream is rising. The storm has come in his life.

And I think his testimony is going to encourage us today. And so church, meet Steve. This is his story. Well, went in for a routine colonoscopy. Some 47 years old, and that's what you do. Joked around with the doctor. like it was like, ain't no thing, right? And the doctor walked in and said,

I don't know how to tell you this. You have cancer. We don't know to what severity it is, but I've done this long enough to tell you that it's not good. It's like what you see in the movies. It's like the grenade went off in the room, the ringing in the ears, and you can't really hear the words anymore.

You just sit there and you're like, They just said cancer. They just said cancer. It was my biggest fear becoming a reality. And when the MRI results came back, it's when I got the real story. That's when they said that it was a stage three colon cancer that has basically spread into the regional lymph nodes. I felt all the feels. Right?

I had the moment where I sat and stared and didn't know what to do. I had the moment where I was driving down $2.95 screaming at the top of my lungs because I had to just get it out. I had the moments feeling like, God, this is not fair. I did all the things. I lost 124 pounds. I live a healthy life. I ran marathons. I do all these things.

I treat my body right. And then this. It's not fair. Where do I put my trust? Do I put my trust in the ways of this world, the things of this world? Do I put my trust in the one who created the world? I choose to say, Jesus, you've never let me down. You're not going to start today.

Jesus is my firm foundation. Jesus is the rock in which I stand. And even though the night might be dark, and even though the waves might be great, I know that my foundation, as long as it's built in Jesus, that it will stand. It will stand the biggest storm. It will stand the darkest nights. And it will stand the darkest diagnosis. The world's been a whirlwind since September 10th.

And I'm nervous, but I'm also ready. Ready to fight. Amen. First, Steve, man, we just want you to know as your church family, we're praying. for you and we're believing that we serve a God who heals and that he's going to heal you. We're believing that in Jesus' name. And we also say that Jesus is our Lord and we want to do what he says. And Jesus tells us that whatever we bind on earth will be bound in heaven.

And so in the name of Jesus, I bind up cancer that would come against you, Steve. I do. I bind it up and I cast it as far as the east is from the west. And Jesus also says that whatever we loose on earth will be loose in heaven. And so, Steve, in your life, I lose healing, I lose wholeness, I lose peace and I lose the kingdom of God over you, brother. In Jesus' name, in Jesus' name. I love what Steve said. Steve said, he said, look, the storm rose, man. The storm's rising in his life. He just started chemotherapy. The wind's blowing. The streams beating against the house. And I love what he said. He said,

look, he said, I got questions, but then I dug a layer deeper. I'm afraid. But then I dug a layer deeper. Life's not fair. The wind's blowing. The tree's shaking. Life's not fair. But then I, by God's grace, dug a layer deeper. And I love what he said. He said, am I going to put my trust in the circumstances of this world or am I going to put my trust in the one who made this world? What happens when the storm shakes the man of God? What happens when the storm shakes the woman of God? What falls off? Well, Steve's testimony is that the fruit of faithfulness is falling off his life. When God's love grabs us, it takes possession. I'm going to end with this story.

My daughter, I have two daughters, and my wife, we all went to the Keys on vacation a few months ago. And I'd never been to the Keys before. And I know some of y'all are Keys people. I'm going to be honest. I don't get it. But whatever, you do you. So we're down there. pretty nice, but we're inland for the first couple of days, and it's pretty windy inland,

but we didn't think much about it. It just made it nice. And so one day we decided we're going to go out snorkeling. And so we pay and we get on the boat, and we realize that what is kind of nice when it's windy inland is a completely different experience when you're out on the water. Right? And so this is, it was so windy, and the conditions were so rough this day. We probably shouldn't have gone out, but the company that sold us the snorkel tour was, just trying to make a buck and we were the suckers, they happened to do it on that day. And so we get out on the boat and we go out there and it's not just like choppy waters, it's rolling and it's pretty windy.

But we're on the boat, we're there, and so we put the flippers on and we put the mask on and the snorkel and the life fest and we go to jump in the water. But here's the thing, my oldest daughter, she's a swimmer. She's a competitive swimmer. She swims thousands of meters every week. She is familiar with the water. She is at home in the water. when she's 12, 13, 14 years old, in the summer months, she will wake up before the crack of dawn

in order to get up and to go across town and to swim for hours. Why does she do this? Why is she so committed to swimming? It's because she loves it. And what we love, we're committed to. And she, so she's out there and she hits the water first, and she swims toward the buoys where the reef is, and she's gone, man. Like, it's just almost like the water's a lake.

She doesn't even notice. just cuts right through it. She's looking under the water and she's seeing all the stuff she's never seen before and experiencing all this beauty and life that she didn't have a category before that. And here's what was obvious in that moment is that right after her, I jumped in the water and within seconds, do you know what everybody could see? That I'm not a good swimmer. I'm not a good swimmer. I don't like the water. I don't love the water. I never have. I mean, I can kind of make it around, but I don't enjoy it. I'm not committed to swimming. Never in my life have I thought about, you know what, I want to be a good swimmer. Never. And so within seconds, water is filling my

mask and is filling my snorkel. And I'm just like, this is not happening. And I just go right back to the boat and I get out of the water. My youngest daughter sees me in this process and she sees that I'm a little panic. And so she follows me back up into the boat. And there I am, I'm standing on the boat. And I'm watching my oldest just shred out there, just live in her best life. And as I'm watching there, you know what I felt? I felt a little bit of regret. Not because I give a ripless under the water, but because I love my daughter and I would have loved to share that memory with her. Now, I didn't feel enough regret to get in the water, but I often feel like isn't that where a lot of us can live? There's people around us who seem to be enthralled with God and with his love.

We're just kind of standing on the boat watching. People who seem to be at heart. People who seem to be at home in their relationship with God. We just kind of sit on the sidelines and watch. And the invitation to you by the Holy Spirit of God and by the grace of God today is that you can jump in the water, man. You can jump in your relationship with Jesus. And you would say, well, how do I do that? You trust him.

You do what he says over and over and over and over again. My youngest daughter, she gets out with me and then she's standing there on the boat next to me for about 10 minutes. watching her older sister out there just have the time of her life. And after a couple of minutes, she looks up after me at me and she says, Pastor Britt. She didn't call me Pastor Britt. That'd be funny if she did. She says, hey, old man, that's what she says. She says, dad, can I go swim with my older sister? I was like, yeah, absolutely you can. Absolutely. So we get her dressed back up. And right before she goes to jump in the water, I'm like, are you sure you want to do this?

Like, you feel like you can handle the conditions. She's like, yeah, she's strong kid. She's, she's athletic and she's like, yeah, I can do it. And then right before she jumps in, she looks at me and she says, Dad, don't worry, because if I get scared, I'll just grab on to my older sister. And off she goes and she swims and they go out and have the time of their lives. Here's the thing is that when the storm rises in our life, when the winds blow, when the circumstances change, and it's very, very difficult, when we are swimming in the love of God

at any moment we can reach over and grab on to our superior older brother Jesus Christ and know he has us. Right? That when the spirit of fear comes against us and tells us lies from the pit of hell about who we are and about what God wants for us,

we can grab onto our older brother Jesus and say, I trust him regardless of my circumstances. So here's how we're going to respond today like we always do. We're going to pray. And as you pray, I would ask you to consider this question. is there any area of your life where you're saying, Lord, Lord, with your mouth, but you're not doing what he says? It's a straightforward question.

Is there any area of your life where it is obvious you are not trusting in God's love for you and that he has the best plan for you? And then we're going to sing. We're going to sing true words about God and about the firm foundation that is God's faithfulness in our life. And then we're going to bring. We're going to respond to God through our ties and our offerings because God gave us his first and best through Jesus Christ. And so we respond to him in ties and offerings with our first and best because he has loved us. We respond in love with him. So we're going to pray.

If you would stand with me across all of our campuses, I'm going to pray for us and then we're going to respond. Father, we love you. Jesus, I pray that right now, Holy Spirit, that as we enter into this moment, that if there's anywhere in our life so that we are saying one thing but living another, will you show that to us, make it obvious to us so that we can surrender that to you? so that we can confess that and we can turn from it. Will we be people who live totally surrendered to you? God, would we love that we're loved?

Would you increase our capacity to be loved right now? Father, I pray for my brothers and sisters that as we've wrestled through truth and through love, I pray that by the power of the Spirit of God, that their minds would be convinced, their hearts would be convinced, that you love them, that Jesus is the proof, and that's the most important thing about them.

Father, pray that you'd meet us in this place and that we would leave here differently than when we came in. And we pray this all in Jesus' name, and all God's people said. Amen. Let's respond together.