Alright, we're at the inspirational moment time.
This is the opportunity to share with us how the Lord has been working in you this week.
What have you read in the scripture?
How did you encounter God in prayer?
Remember that's our prayer emphasis, our focus is on prayer for the sixth month.
And if you have something to share, Zaden and Arianna have a microphone.
They're going to do this from now on so people can hear good.
If you've got something you think you should share by God, then you want it to be heard.
Not only in this room, but now it's wherever we get the opportunity to share it.
So I have one prepared because really the Lord touched my heart about a certain scripture
that goes all the way back to when I was a young Christian this morning.
But if you have one, I'll let you go first.
Alright, let's get you a microphone.
Alright, here we go.
So on the way here, I'm going to share with you a little bit about what I've been doing
on the way here.
I wasn't planning on joining to play the praise team.
I feel pretty good physically, but I've been suffering with some physical ailments lately
that's stopped me from playing.
But I felt pretty good today and I felt like I could have played, but I wasn't going to
because I haven't practiced or played in a while and I didn't think it was fair to do
that.
Then I heard a pastor preaching on the radio on the way here and he was saying that every
opportunity to serve God should be looked upon as a gift from God.
Amen.
Good word.
And that right there took it out of my hands.
And I knew that I had to play because I had to take the opportunity to receive this gift
from God.
So I'm really glad that he spoke to me this morning.
That's awesome.
I'll take that one step further.
Brother, how can you give us a gift from God that you've already passed it on?
Praise the Lord.
That's wonderful.
Amen.
You're on the tackle.
I was going on the way to Paybills the other day and this lady was trying to get across
the street and she couldn't get across the street with a wheelchair.
And so I talked to her and she said, can you take me home?
She said because there's something about you that anybody else I can't.
So I took her home and all the time I took her home, I get her home.
She read a couple Bible verses for me and she says, I've been a Christian too.
And you know, it was just, you know, taking her home and feeling comfortable that she
felt comfortable with me and everything like that.
Thank you.
That's good.
I guess we've got the theme for today, don't we?
Good word.
Okay, I'll share mine real quick.
So I had a similar instance of what you had, Brother Tim, right there.
And I was going down Woodville Road.
I was actually on my way to Larry's house.
We had a little bit of a crisis there and we were getting it taken care of.
And as I was on the way there, it was just slightly raining.
This was yesterday, just slightly raining.
And it was cold and it was windy.
And as I was driving down Woodville Road, I saw a man walking down the sidewalk and
he was carrying a baby carrier, the kind that he was strapping in the car.
And he had the baby covered up in there with some blankets and he's walking down Woodville
Road.
He was between Sanoclo and Woodville Road and Navarra Park.
So there's really nothing there.
And he's walking down the road and I'm thinking, it's cold.
It's cold to be walking down the road at all, let alone cold to be walking with a baby and
the wind blowing and a little bit of just sprinkles coming down.
And I thought, and I drove past him as I saw him, I thought, maybe I should turn around
and go back.
And I felt the Spirit say to me right away, yeah, you should turn around and go back.
And you know what Woodville Road is like, right?
So you don't turn around on Woodville Road.
You get in a turn lane and then you turn and then you come back and turn back on Woodville
Road, right?
And then in time, the Lord provided this huge gap in traffic and I was able to do a U-turn
on Woodville Road, turn around and go back the other way.
And then another U-turn, no traffic coming at all, another U-turn around, pull over and
park beside him on the side of the road.
He got in, put the baby in the back seat and then I drove.
Now he was only going about a half hour, half mile, two quarters of a mile down the road
off Willard Street over here.
So it really wasn't that far.
And then I was talking to him about God for that short period of time.
And that reminded me of a verse, which I think what you guys are talking about, from the
book of Esther.
Now you know the story of Esther, I'm not going to get into the details really heavily,
but Esther became queen of the nation that they were captive in, even though she was
a Jew and she was an undercover Jew.
Nobody really knew.
And then there was a guy and he got a law passed that all the Jews would be killed.
And Esther's uncle, who had been close to the king at one time, went to Esther and asked
her to intercede on behalf of her people.
And she wasn't going to do it because she was scared.
Because if she went to try to go to the king when he didn't summon her, he didn't tip
his scepter or she would be killed immediately.
And Mordecai then said to Esther, do not imagine that you in the king's palace can escape any
more than all the Jews.
For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from
another place.
And you and your father's house will perish.
And who knows whether you have not attained royalty for such a time as this.
In other words, he was saying, God puts you right where you are for right this moment
to do what you're supposed to do, what God's calling you to do.
And a lot of times, it doesn't matter what age we are, how smart we think we are, how
much we got going for us or whatever, a lot of times I think we forget that.
And it reminded me of how, like, I'm just being transparent.
I was tired.
I was busy.
When he called me, I wasn't even in Toledo.
I was coming through Mommy.
And I was assured that I was going to do it.
The Lord led me to go there to try to help him, which I was able to do by the grace of
God.
And then on the way there, I ran and I got to know what happened to you, the trouble
that you went through yesterday might have been.
So that baby and that man can get a ride.
God is putting us exactly where we need to be to do exactly what he desires us to do.
And he's made us able.
Even when we think we're not, he's made us able.
And I'm not going to lie.
I'm not going to lie.
We have been talking about becoming a fanatic and we continue today in part four.
You'll see the title up there on the screen.
I'm here now.
Before I go any further, I want to give you an illustration of something that happened in my life.
I was driving my car, my little Datsun V210.
It was probably my favorite car I've ever owned.
It was a little stick shift.
It was a 1979 Datsun V210.
That was the last year they made the Datsun.
I went to Nissan the next year.
It was a little four-cylinder.
It was an all-metal car.
It had plastic really on it, maybe some trim pieces.
I was driving on the expressway coming through Toledo into Oregon.
I come down 280, probably past where the church is.
You can see the church over here going over the hill.
I just went past Navarre Road.
As I was driving, I had a flashback in my head.
I remembered an instance.
Now, it wasn't a fighting instance.
It wasn't an explosion instance.
It was PTSD.
It wasn't anything like the tragic incidents that some people might face.
It was a moment in time in which I had said something really mean to somebody that I deeply cared for.
I forgot that I was driving.
In my head, I was reliving the moment in which that had happened.
I totally forgot that I was in the car.
Now, it was raining lightly.
Just as I forgot that I was in the car and I was thinking about what I was experiencing,
kind of like flashing back, if you will, just as I was doing that, I hit a patch of black ice.
When you hit a patch of black ice, you got to respond pretty quickly.
First of all, you don't make any drastic changes.
If you start to skid to the right, you steer into the skid to the right,
even though it seems counterintuitive, but you steer the way that you're sliding.
Then if you start to slide the other way, well, I didn't do that.
I didn't do that because I wasn't in the car.
I was in the driver's seat, had my hands on the wheel in fourth gear,
which I was the highest gear it had, cruising along on the expressway.
But in my head, I was back at that moment in time at which I had said that thing
that had hurt that person that I cared deeply about.
A second later, praise God, I snapped to reality.
I bounced off the guardrail once, spun the car completely around,
bounced off the guardrail on the other side of the vehicle.
In the front, the bumper was pushed to the right, like about maybe 10 inches.
In the back, the bumper was pushed to the left.
As we go down the road, the bumper was like this, the bumper was like that.
I'm going straight down the road, but my bumper is slightly off in both directions.
Then I got the car kind of under control, and I skid over to a stop on the side of the road.
It was then that I remembered that what had happened was I was remembering
that tragic event where I had hurt that person.
I had said something, and even in my mind, I thought, that's not me.
That was so mean. That was so useless.
In that moment, I was not being who I was supposed to be.
But the fact is, the moment I almost got killed on the expressway,
I was actually back in time regretting what I had done.
As we talk today about what it means to be a fanatic,
I want to encourage you that we have two great enemies to being a fanatic for Jesus,
and they are regret and worry.
They are regret and worry.
They are the great enemies for living in this moment in time as the person that you are supposed to be.
They are the greatest enemies that you will experience because they will affect you, not on surface level.
Someone might punch you. Someone might physically punch you in the face,
and that may or may not stop you from being the person you're supposed to be.
But the truth is, if your intellect, if your brain, if your heart is wrapped up in where you were in the past
and you're regretting something or worried about where it's going,
in the moment, that's who you are.
You're going to be stuck there, worrying about the future, regretting the past,
and not able to be alive in the moment doing the things that you're supposed to do.
So we're going to take them in time order.
So we're going to talk first about regret.
Should we? Can we? Is it okay if we regret?
Now let me say to you that this is theoretically in time order.
Why do I say that?
Because we studied a few months back about how when we become Christians,
the moment we got saved, God could see us walking into heaven in the end.
So you're truly saved in Christ. If you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior,
you go to heaven in 10 years or 50 years or 80 years for some of our youngest people in here, right?
God is already there and can already see you and experience you.
He's already ready to give you that hug, already ready to proclaim you forgiven.
There we go.
Already He's there, right? Because God is already at all times, always, right?
So that event that's at the end of the road has already happened the moment you got saved.
So when I say theoretically we're taking it in order, it's exactly that.
From our perception, from our memories, what we've experienced,
regret is about looking back at the things that happened in our life
and kind of wishing they hadn't happened or kind of wishing things had been done differently.
I started watching this show and so far I've been able to watch it with only skipping a few scenes.
There's very, very, I haven't really seen any foul language in it at all,
but there's been a couple of like intimate scenes and I don't watch those.
And I don't encourage you not to do that either.
Not that anybody's been naked, they don't do that. It's a rated PG show.
The show is called Being Erica.
And the idea of the show is she's a 30-something and she kind of was living in a dead end life,
never made anything of herself, didn't really have any.
She had once that best friend and no boyfriends and no prospects for marriage,
no kids and her family also are just stuck and she was jumping from job to job and that kind of thing.
And she starts with this counselor who, and this is where it becomes sci-fi,
who allows her to travel back in time and experience the things of her life again.
And so she can change things. She can't change people per se and she can't save lives,
but she can change the way the events unfolded.
She's living a life of regret and he gives her the chance to go back to the moments that she regrets
and to experience them again.
So from our perception, the order of events, how they happen, is it okay for us to regret what happened?
Now I've already told you that regret is the greatest enemy of you living in the presence.
So before we say it is okay to have regret, we need to nail down exactly what we're talking about.
If you look, I did this five years ago, I regret having done that.
Someone did this to me five years ago, I regret that they did that.
According to the Bible, those things just happen.
There are a couple of examples. We're not going to go there and read them, I'm going to rattle them off.
In Genesis 6 verses 6 and 7, it says that God, not a man, but God himself regretted that he had made men.
And in 7 it says not only that he had made men, but that he had made all the creatures to fill the earth.
And you know what story? It started there, right?
That's the beginning of the story unfolding, the story of Noah and the ark.
And God, through that story of Noah and the ark, shows us God's grace, his redemption process,
and how he can work through one man to save all mankind.
And that's what he did with Noah. Noah is a messianic figure pointing to Christ.
And the family that was saved there became the family.
So if you go back, you're great, great, great, great, great, great, everybody's great, great, great, great, great, great, you're back far enough.
You're going to get to Noah and his wife. That's where you're going to get to.
And if you went all the way back to the beginning, you'd get to Adam and Eve.
So we all are related, all come from one human race.
It doesn't matter your skin color, your location where you live, or your situations.
But in that moment, it says that God regretted making man and all creatures.
So if God regrets, then we know that regret itself is not a sin, because God does not sin.
So that means, can you, are you allowed to regret? Yes.
In 1 Samuel 15, 11 and 35, it says that God regretted making Saul king.
So these are examples of regret.
In the New Testament, however, in 2 Corinthians chapter 7, it says that Paul regretted writing a letter to the Corinthians that caused them to regret.
But then he goes on to say that he no longer regrets having written the letter that caused them to regret, because their regret had the proper result.
And so now we see, yes, it's okay to have regret, and it is an enemy of our present day life, the way that we're living, the thing that we're trying to be, or supposed to be in Christ, right?
If it is not the right kind of regret, if it is not regret the way God intended to use it.
See, God had regret, so it wasn't sin for him. So clearly, it resulted in the right kind of action for God.
That's what made it not sin. Same thing with Paul.
He regretted writing the letter, but his regret resulted in the right kind of action.
Their regret at receiving the letter resulted in the right kind of action.
So regret can lead us to places, okay? And one of those places is not allowed.
And that is, regret leads us to destructive bitterness.
So in other words, we look at the way someone treated us in the past and we're bitter toward them because of what they did.
That's not acceptable. That is not the kind of regret that God would allow.
Certainly not the kind of regret that God would experience.
There's another destination of regret that leads us to repentance. It leads us to turning to God.
And when Paul says that he regretted writing that letter to the Corinthians, he says he now does not regret it
because he sees that they had godly regret which led them to repentance. They turned to God.
So it was the right kind of letter at the right time to bring about the right result for God.
So if your regret is the right kind of regret at the right time to bring about the right result for God,
which would be repentance or turning to God, then it's okay.
But the problem is most people in the world regret things incorrectly.
We regret them like, oh, I'm mad, I'm upset, I'm sad. Wait a minute.
Now we said regret was okay. Regret leads us to sorrow. Not necessarily okay, right? Why?
Because again, that is the threat of you in the moment being who you're supposed to be.
So here we have regret as a problem, regret as a blessing. It can be either way.
Real quick before we go on while we're talking about regret, I'm going to read that passage of Scripture,
at least I hope I am, from 2 Corinthians chapter 7. And it's short, but here we go.
2 Corinthians chapter 7. Now I'll begin in verse 5. For even when we came into Macedonia, our flesh had no rest,
but we were afflicted on every side, conflicts without, fears within.
But God, who comforts the depressed, comforted us by the comfort of Titus,
and not only by his coming, but also by the comfort with which he was comforted in you.
As he reported to us, your longing, your mourning, your zeal for me, that I rejoiced even more.
For though I caused you sorrow, or regret, by my letter, I do not regret it, the sending of the letter.
Though I did regret it, for I see that that letter caused you sorrow, though only for a while.
I now rejoice, not that you were made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful to the point of repentance.
For you were made sorrowful according to the will of God, in order that you might not suffer loss in anything through us.
For the sorrow that is according to the will of God, produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation.
But the sorrow of the world produces death.
For behold, what earnestness this very thing, this godly sorrow, has produced in you.
What vindication of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what avenging of wrong,
and everything you demonstrated yourselves to be innocent in the matter.
So we'll stop there. The point is this.
Yes, God gives us regret or even sorrow for a purpose.
But it is not to interfere with the present day who you're supposed to be.
God died so that you can be who you're supposed to be today.
He didn't then cause regret or, listen, does anybody have anything to regret?
Is there anything that's ever gone on that you want to go, oh man, I wish that hadn't happened?
I wish I hadn't been abused. I wish there was a psychological abuse.
I wish there wasn't criminal activity. I wish there wasn't lies.
I wish I didn't lie. I wish I didn't do this. I wish I didn't do that.
I wish I didn't get into this because now I'm stuck there.
I caused this problem over five years. Now it's going to take me years to fix it.
Is there anything to regret? Absolutely.
But what is the solution? What is the answer? What is the godly way to deal with regret?
You turn to God and say, okay, God, now in this moment, right now, what am I supposed to do?
Now the problem is our tendency is to find a solution in a plan.
Right? So then that leads us to the second great threat to our present day living for God,
and that is worry. Worry is the next one.
So worry is when you think about what's coming in the future.
When you stand before a king and he asks you questions regarding who you believe
and he asks you to denounce Christ, for example, and he says he'll kill you if you don't,
the thing that is getting you is fear, anxiety, worry. If I don't renounce Christ right now,
he's going to kill me. He may kill me and my family if I don't renounce Christ.
This could go on for a long time. He could persecute tons of people.
It would all be because of me. And all of that is worry about what comes in the future.
It's anxiety. We've got now a diagnosed of anxiety,
and everybody could probably be said to have anxiety at one time or another.
Literally everybody. But out of control, anxiety is nothing more than out of control worry.
Now, it becomes a medical condition, and I'm not saying people shouldn't get the help
that is provided by God through doctors and counselors and so on. You should.
But Jesus has another take on worry, and we actually saw part of it last week.
We're going to read it again. It's in Matthew chapter 6.
This is what it says, beginning in verse 25.
For this reason I say to you, do not be anxious for your life as to what you shall eat
or what you shall drink, not for your body as to what you shall put on.
Is not life more than food and the body than clothing?
And so, by the way, if life is more than food and clothing,
then it's also more than your entertainment, it's more than your money,
it's more than your temptations, your distractions, etc. There's so much more to that.
So we're so busy, worried about dealing with what's going on that we forget
that there is something that's a much higher calling of God right now.
Verse 26. Look at the birds of the air, he says, that they do not sow,
neither do they reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.
Are you not worth much more than they? See, he's basing this in our worth.
You're worth so much to God. You may think I'm just one human being out of billions,
but the truth is, if you were the only human being that needed saving,
Jesus would have gone to the cross for you. That's how much you're worth to him.
And when we start to worry, we are divorcing ourselves of our understanding
that the God of heaven loves you. He's on your side. He died for you.
He's willing to step in and make a difference.
Now, will there still be sorrow? Will there still be suffering? Yes.
Will it be a sorrow that is godly that leads us to him? Well, that's our choice.
Hopefully it will be. Will there still be suffering even after that? Yes, we will face suffering.
But God has it in hand. He's going to take us through.
Verse 27. In which you, by being anxious, that's worrying, having anxiety,
worried about what's going to come, which of you, by being anxious,
can add a single cubit to his lifespan? In other words, this little bit,
from the elbow to your finger, how much could you add to your life by worrying about it?
Are you going to make, if you worried so much that you changed your lifestyle,
and then you worried and changed it some more, worried and changed it some more,
you might, the lifestyle changes, you might actually add to your lifespan.
You might cut out smoking. You might cut out drinking.
You might cut out eating too much food or eating the wrong foods.
You might change all of those things. But the whole time you're doing that,
the worry and the anxiety involved is shortening your lifespan.
You cannot add to your life by worrying about what's going on.
You can only add to your life by doing and being who you're supposed to,
and what you're supposed to. And why are you anxious about clothing, he says?
Observe how the lilies of the field grow. They do not toil, nor do they spin.
Yet I say to you that even Solomon, in all his glory, did not clothe himself like one of these.
God is able to do it, even if we cannot. Verse 30.
But if God so will raise the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace,
will he not much more do so for you, O men of little faith?
He's challenging us to have faith rather than to have anxiety and worry. Verse 31.
Do not be anxious then, saying, What shall we eat? What shall we drink? With what shall we clothe ourselves?
For all these things the Gentiles eagerly seek.
See, even everybody in the world knows that tomorrow is possibly coming, probably coming even,
and they're all worried about what's going to go on tomorrow.
They're all worried about what's going to go on next week, next month, next year, ten years.
Will I still be this in ten years if I don't make drastic changes?
Will I still struggle with this? Will my life fall apart?
I experienced this when I was having the massive fatigue, which I'm day four of not having massive fatigue,
so I'm hoping it holds, but in the meantime I spent weeks of having all this fatigue.
And I'll be honest, I began to think that I was dying, that there was a very good likelihood that I was reaching the end of the road.
The doctor told me my lifespan could be cut short if the fatigue continued, and it was getting worse, not getting better.
And I'm going, oh my goodness, this is something. But today you do what you can do today.
And if you worry about tomorrow, you're divorcing yourself with an understanding.
Everybody does that, but God's people don't have to do that because we have somebody who's already there.
Verse 32 says, For all these things the Gentiles eagerly seek.
For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.
This is the verse that we looked at last week.
But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.
Verse 34, Therefore do not be anxious for tomorrow.
For tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Now what's interesting about all of that verse, everything I just read to you, is that it starts with a four.
It starts with a four. If it's a four, it's a because.
When you see a fourth being a verse, it's a because. So there's a command or a reminder that goes before what we just read that we must not miss.
Because verse 25 says, For this reason I say to you.
So something went right before that, that Jesus was telling them everything that I just read to you.
And the something that goes right before that is, No one can serve two masters.
For either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will hold to one and despise the other.
You cannot serve God and mammon.
Because, because this is true, for this reason I say to you, Do not be anxious for your life.
This is what happens. Worry, and I'll say to you the wrong kind of regret as well, they become masters in our life.
And you've got to shake off the yoke of your masters if you're going to be a fanatic.
You've got to say, It doesn't matter who thinks they have control of me. God is the one. I'm for God.
I'm a follower of Jesus and no one and nothing can stop me from doing that. My goodness.
If the Lord so wills, we make our plans and we look at the future if the Lord so wills.
James, the brother of Jesus writes in James chapter 4, we shouldn't say we're going to go there,
live there for a year and make a plan to sell and do our business. We should say, If the Lord so wills.
See, if you say, If the Lord so wills, when you're starting to worry about tomorrow or next week or next year,
what's going to happen, if you say, If the Lord so wills, I'll still be here and I'll still, I'll eat better
or I'll get away from my addictions or I'll show up when I'm supposed to or I'll keep my word.
If the Lord so wills, right, then that takes the worry out of it because it's now in God's hands.
But to do so, you have to make a decision. Bless you. You have to make a decision.
Let's say you said, for example, If the Lord so wills going forward, I'm going to be honest.
I'll tell the truth from now on. And you made that commitment. That's now on God, right?
For your part, for everything you say you're going to do, you're going to do what you're going to do.
So if God doesn't stop me, bless you again, if God doesn't stop me, I will be honest tomorrow and next week and next month.
The problem is that if we don't do it in God and we say, I'm going to do it, whether God wants me to do it or not,
then in our minds and in our hearts, we know we're resisting God.
You're tempting fate. You're looking at being judged. You know that the Bible says that we reap what we sow.
God is not mocked. God has a plan and our plans should align with His plans.
And our plans that align with God's plans do not include getting stuck in regret
or being washed over by worry and anxiousness about the future.
Jesus said to them in Matthew chapter 10, you can go there and read it if you want.
We're not going to rewrite this second. Jesus said to them in Matthew chapter 10 that you'll be brought before kings and brought before governors.
Who is He talking about? He's talking about people who actually live as a fanatic for Jesus.
When you actually live as a fanatic for Jesus, people will say of you, there's something different about you.
You'll be dealing with them and they'll be wondering why the heck you're weird like that.
Why is everything about God for you? How can you relate French fries to God?
How can you relate vitamins to God? How can you relate every story you've ever read to God?
Why is everything in your life about God? You're a fanatic!
And when you're a fanatic like that, people want to know why.
They have a question about why and you wind up in front of people who have that question.
And the truth is you'll face atheists, you'll face people who have very good arguments why they know God is not real.
You'll face people who have very good arguments why they interpret the scripture differently than Jesus interpreted the scripture.
Or why you can't just take it for what it says and you've got to be a fanatic and live in the moment and say,
I'm not worried about it. I know what it says. I know who He is. I know He keeps His promises.
I belong to the God of the universes.
The bottom line is this, plans that work don't actually work unless they're plans based in God's plan.
And so when you start to think, well I think tomorrow I'll get out of bed and I'll start exercising.
I'll start eating right. I'll start telling the truth. I'll start giving up my spare time to serve the Lord a little more.
Plus I'll give a little off. I'm going to increase my giving a little bit.
I'm going to go on mission for God. When you start making those plans or decisions,
about what you're going to do tomorrow or next week or next month,
you're literally contradicting what God says unless it's God that's getting you the plan.
Can anybody give more? Yes. Anybody can decide to give more.
But if you decide to give more and it's against God's plan, when it comes time to do that, you're not going to be able to do it.
Or it's going to be worse than that. You're going to try to do it and it's going to result in some very negative results for you.
I've known people that did it. I've known people that gave beyond what God was telling them to do
and they wound up in a place where they were suffering because of what they did.
Now, God brought them out of that place and they were fine and that suffering may even have been an act of love for God
and ultimately they may be rewarded beyond what I can imagine because of that and that's fine.
But if they suffered outside the will of God, then they blew it. They weren't doing what God wanted them to do.
They were just doing what they wanted to do. They're just trying to make themselves look good.
I can't tell you how many people have come up to me over the years and said,
hey, just want to make sure you know I gave a little bit more or I did this or I bought this. I donated that.
I showed up. I worked. Did you see me there?
And they're looking to be noticed doing what they believe God would want them to do.
But the truth is, when you set about to do what God wants you to do,
what God wants you to do is just what God wants you to do.
So let's ask ourselves for a moment, shall we? What is it that God wants us to do?
Now, understand there's a different plan for each person's life.
The plan for your life going forward is different from the plan for somebody.
They may die within the next 24 hours or within the next week or the next month.
And all the things that you did to fill your time, the wasteful things, the non-God things,
the things that entertained you, the things that filled you, the things that made you feel better about yourself,
all of those things, they'll all be wasted.
If you lose your life next week, the 40 hours you spend this week, Jason,
you spend 40 hours on video games this week, if you lose your life next week, God forbid,
that 40 hours will be wasted. It's not going to get you any money in kingdom.
It's not going to get you anything in the storage vaults of heaven.
So the question is, what is it that God actually wants us to do?
How much can we simplify it? And it comes down to the wisest,
probably wisest man who ever lived in his writings in the book of Proverbs.
So if you're following along, you can go with me to the book of Proverbs.
We're going to go to Proverbs chapter 16. Proverbs chapter 16.
It's not a very long passage, so I get there quick so you don't miss it.
Proverbs chapter 16. Proverbs chapter 16.
We'll just begin in verse 1. We're targeting 3 actually, but we're beginning 1.
The plans of the heart belong to man. So what is he saying?
He's saying what you want. Your entertainment. Your sustenance. Good and bad.
How are you going to get your clothes? How are you going to get your food?
How are you going to take care of your house? What job are you going to work?
What games are you going to play? What hobbies are you going to get into?
What work are you going to get into? The plans of the heart belong to man.
If you make your decision based on what's inside you, that belongs to you.
But the answer of the tongue is from the Lord.
All the ways of a man are clean in his own sight.
Everybody thinks they're pretty much doing the right thing.
Until they get caught doing the wrong thing and it comes up and somebody mentions it
and God brings it to your attention and now you realize, hey, I wasn't doing the right thing.
And when does that happen? Do you instantly in the moment realize?
Now it's a few seconds later usually, right? It doesn't happen.
If it happened as you started to do it, just the moment you started to do it
and you knew it was wrong, you'd probably stop and you wouldn't do it.
Wouldn't that be great? And the Holy Spirit does do that some as he's teaching us
all the things that Jesus commanded us. But the bottom line is this.
He says all the ways of man are clean in his own sight.
We always think it's going to be okay, but the Lord weighs the motives.
God wants to know why you're doing what you're doing and guess what?
He does. He can know why you're doing what you're doing.
He wants your heart to be right. And he died on the cross to pay for sins
so that people's heart can be right. And now we're in verse 3 and now comes the plan.
This is it. If you work this one verse for the rest of your life,
you will win the game of life if you're a Christian and also work this one verse for the rest of your life.
Now the truth is some people work this verse even though they're not a Christian
and they're doing pretty darn well. It's a pretty good recipe for living.
And it is this. Verse 3. Commit your works to the Lord and your plans will be established.
Now let's take it backwards. Established means made firm or sound.
Plans means what you think you want to do in the future.
The steps you're going to take in the future. You're building those things today, right?
Your works. They're the things you do. When? Now.
Can you do anything in the past? No. Can you do anything in the future? No.
It's what you do now. Commit your works to the Lord means do now what it is that you know God would want you to do.
So whatever just happened to you, you can spend time regretting it, but it's endangering the plan.
It's endangering the way God wants to do it, which is to do now what it is that God wants you to do.
That's it. That's what you actually, you can't even guarantee you're going to be breathing in 30 seconds.
Nobody can. You can't guarantee you're going to be eaten next week for sure.
You might be in heaven eating the great fare of that kingdom, right?
You can't guarantee you won't get hit by a car or shot in the head in the next 24 hours.
You can't guarantee you won't die of a disease next month.
You cannot guarantee your, so all these people who say, well, I'll get around to that procrastination is about regret and worry combined to make a baby.
That's what procrastination is. And you go, well, I know I should do this, but I'm not going to do that because I have this good life of excuse for reason over here.
I'll put it off and I'll do it tomorrow. Tomorrow I'll stop doing some of the things I shouldn't do.
Tomorrow I'll start doing some of the things I should do. Next week, next month, after I talk to my counselor, my parent, my father, my friend, after I commit, after somebody gives me whatever,
when my ship comes in, when I'm making a little bit more money, that's when I'll start doing things that I know I'm supposed to do.
But the plan as Solomon saw it, and I realized this is not a promise from God. Proverbs is not full of promises from God.
Proverbs is this is how it works. Solomon observed that the universe, mankind, people who live on the world do it this way.
This is how it works. When you take what you are doing right now in this moment and commit it to God, then your plans for the future become established.
It works. When you put A and B together, you will get C if A and B are right now, right here, and according to what God says.
Verse four then, which we'll finish up with this, says the Lord has made everything for its own purpose.
So what was the purpose of regret? To bring about repentance, the turn to God. What's the purpose of worry?
Well, worry is for people who don't know Jesus. Worry is for people who aren't following the Lord.
Worry is for people who do not establish their future plans by in the moment, right now, doing what they're supposed to do.
And if I were not a Christian, I would be worried, assuming my eyes and ears were open, because hell is on the way.
Don't you understand? We have to understand that if we are not following Jesus, if we have not had Jesus as Lord, that ultimately we're going to spend eternity away from God.
Whatever that looks like. You want to say it doesn't, it isn't like the Bible describes it, like a burning fire for eternity.
If you want to do that, that's your problem. The Bible says like a fire burning for eternity.
That's where we're going to be for eternity. It says it clearly, multiple places.
And so I think you should be worried about that if you're not having a solution already.
So what is the solution? Is it, I'll believe in Jesus before I die? No, that's procrastination, which is regret and worry having a baby.
And now you're procrastinating, I'm going to follow Jesus eventually, right?
Like Emperor Constantine getting baptized on his deathbed because he wanted to make sure that all of his sins as he got older would all be erased.
That's a load of crap. Jesus says you get saved, you get baptized, so that you can tell everybody who you're living for now.
But we're all worried about what the future is going to bring. We're all regretting what the past is like.
And I want to be honest with you, I think this is what's happening in America.
I think that we look back, right now let's talk politically, because I'm not the south political master, let's talk politically.
There's everybody regretting who was elected and worrying about who's going to be elected.
And nobody is solving the problems of the world. And so the world's problems persist.
Let's talk about schools, right? Everybody's regretting how the school system has had all these problems built up over the years,
and it's not necessarily teaching the kids things they need to know, and things are being crept in.
They're teaching kids that we don't want them to know, nobody wants them to know, and they don't need to know it,
because they should have innocence, at least until they're of the age of innocence.
Everybody has been taught in first and second and third grade and whatever.
So we're regretting that that ever started to happen. And we're worried about the fact that it's only going to get worse.
But nobody's doing anything about it now. And the list just goes on. I regret that I spent that money.
I'm worried that I won't have enough money. But nobody's doing anything about it right now.
Oh, we're going to have to, before the bill comes to, I'm going to have to do something about getting that money.
But I'm going to put it off as long as I possibly can, because regret and worry are making their babies in my back pocket,
and I'm living my life procrastinating doing the things that I should be doing.
When do you get around to just doing right now what it is that the Lord would have you to do right now?
Oh, no, but I'm going to wait until this situation arises, and this works itself out, or that happens.
Jeremiah chapter 17, Jeremiah also was a wise man.
They call him the weeping prophet because he had such a rough life as he was serving the Lord.
In Jeremiah chapter 17, you'll find these verses. If you're following along, go there now. If not, that's fine.
I'll read them to you in a second. And we're going to read verses 7 to 10, according to my notes.
Jeremiah 7, Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord and whose trust is the Lord.
Now, let me get this right. It does not say, blessed is the man who used to trust in the Lord or who will one day trust in the Lord.
It says blessed is the man who, and you can put this word in there, right now in this moment trusts in the Lord,
who actively trusts in the Lord and whose trust is the Lord.
We trust what God says he'll do, his promises, and we also trust God himself.
Verse 8, for he will be like a tree planted by the water that extends its roots by a stream,
and he will not fear when the heat comes, but its leaves will be green, and it will not be anxious in the year of drought.
So no matter how bad it gets, I'm not worried about where this is going because I know who the captain is,
because I know who the engineer is. I'm not worried about where this is going because God is already there.
Nor will that tree, which is like a tree planted by the water, right? Nor will that tree cease to yield fruit.
Listen to me. The fruit that you yield when life is going well probably isn't worth very much.
The fruit that you yield when you're in trouble and you still do what it is that God wants you to do when you're in trouble,
when it's difficult, when you're tempted, distracted, facing trials, that's fruit, baby. That stuff glows. It shines.
It's the shining apple of fruit. It is everything that we want. So what are we going to do?
Wait around until life gets tough so we can be faithful? No.
We learn to be faithful when the sun is shining so that we will be extra faithful when the rain is falling
into every life some rain must fall. By the way, when you hear that quote, it's mostly misused
because for them, rain was the good thing and sun was the bad thing. Sun scorches and burns crops.
Rain makes crops grow. You've got to have rain for your crops.
If they had a drought and didn't have rain for a month, they'd eat nothing in the fall.
So when it says into every life a little rain will fall, it's talking about the good stuff.
God will bring you the good stuff and when he brings you the good stuff, he expects you to stand firm
and do what it is you're supposed to do. So if you get 10% more, then you give more.
If you get 10% less, you give the same. You don't back down in the moment.
You do what it is that God would have you to do and if you do that, you will be like a tree planted by the water
that extends its roots by a stream. You will not fear the heat that comes. Sounds like a fanatic,
but its leaves will be green. Your leaves will be green. People go like, I don't understand.
If you're in pain all the time, how are you still serving the Lord the same way?
If you're running out of resources, how are you still giving? If you're running out of strength,
how are you still serving? Why are you not worried? Don't you see where this is probably going?
And you can say, no, I'm not worried. I understand this is the year of drought,
but I'm not going to cease to bear fruit. And then in verse 9, he says,
the heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately wicked. Who can understand it?
I, the Lord, search the heart. I test the mind, even to give each man according to his ways,
according to the results of his deeds. Listen to me. God does not care what your plans are.
God does not care what you promise in the future you will do.
God does not care what step number seven of your growth plan is as a Christian.
God cares what you do right now. Are you here? Are you doing what it is that God would have you do?
Later on this afternoon, if we all make it there to 2 p.m., God will care what we are doing at 2 p.m.
That's it. God wants to know what you're going to do now with what he has blessed you with now.
That's what God wants. And when you do that, the plans of the Lord that he has for you,
your plans will line up with his, and then you will begin to see his plan coming to fruition in your life.
But the thing is, people get a little, and then they start thinking,
well how can I get a little more? And they worry about what tomorrow is going to be like.
But what you really need to do is, what you really need to do is do what you're supposed to do right now.
Remember the verses from Esther chapter four that I read during the inspirational moment?
If you are not willing to do what you are supposed to be doing right now,
do not think that God cannot carry out his plan by another,
but you and your household will suffer accordingly to your unwillingness to work the plan
that God has laid out for you. And then God will still do what God wants to do.
That's what we're called to, to be here right now, being the person that God would have us to be,
doing the things that God would have us to do.
One last set of verses, I think this is my very last verses for the day, it is.
And it's in Lamentations three. If you're following along, you're welcome to go there with me.
Maybe I can find it. Here we go, Lamentations chapter three.
Now Lamentations is a lament, the whole thing is a lament.
And it's Jeremiah recognizing how bad things have become basically.
And in chapter three, verse 22, this is what he says,
Thou didst call as in the day of an appointed feast my terrors on every side,
and there was no one who escaped or survived in the day of the Lord's anger.
In other words, it got really bad. I'm sorry, it's 322.
So now we'll actually read 322. It says, The Lord's loving kindness, loving kindnesses indeed never cease.
There we go. The Lord's loving kindnesses indeed never cease.
Even if it got that bad, they never cease. For his compassion never fail. 23.
They are new every morning. So let me get this right.
When are God's compassion? They are new every morning. When are they?
Are they in the past? Are they in the future? They are right now, new every morning.
God knows exactly what you need today. He knows exactly what's right for you today.
And it may not even be connected to yesterday.
You may actually have to walk away from what you were yesterday completely.
God may say, you got saved, now you're this person, and there could come a day.
It could be a certain calendar day, a certain moment in time.
He says, now I need you to take a leap of faith and trust me and go and do what it is that I have for you to do today.
And I'm going to bless somebody. I'm going to save somebody. I'm going to save souls.
I'm going to change hearts, change lives. I'm going to win a nation.
People did it. Paul was stoned, beaten within an inch of his life over and over and over again.
And every time right after he got up and served the Lord, the one time they stoned him, checked him.
Yep, he's dead. They all left, went back into town.
After they left, he got up, walked back to town, and started preaching the gospel again.
It gets bad. The Lord's loving kindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassion never fails.
They are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness. There's our song.
Verse 24, the Lord is my portion, says my soul.
Therefore I have, present tense, I have, in this moment, I have, right now, I have, as I stand here, I have.
Not I will have, not I used to have, but I have hope in Him.
The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the person who seeks Him, right now.
Here is the point of all of this then. We're talking about becoming a fanatic.
Hear me when I say your yesterday is gone.
It came, it was spent, and I'm going to say to you, probably most of it spent it less than efficiently,
even after we became a Christian, even after we started serving the Lord, even after we knew what we should have done.
We spent that day, and it was spent somewhat inefficiently.
Your yesterday is gone, and your tomorrow is not yet. It's not here.
And it is only based on your today, inasmuch as your plan is in line with the plan that God has for you.
Not your plan tomorrow, but the plan that you're living right now today.
Your yesterday is gone, your tomorrow is not yet come, but your right now is right now.
Right now, you can choose to do something in line with what God has for you.
Commit your works and see God establish your plans.
Your plans are never more than a combination of your works anyway.
That's the best you can do. If you write a really good plan, you have five steps.
I'm going to do this, and then I'm going to do this, and then I'm going to do this.
And each step, you go, if I do this, it should have this result, and then I'll do this, and it should have this result,
and then I'll do this, and it should have this result.
By the time you get on step five, you're going like, if I've gotten past all five of those, I should have a full cake,
or I should have a full job, or I should have money in the bank, or I should have retirement ready,
or I should be able to win somebody to Christ, or whatever, because I did all five steps,
and if each one works, then I should get this. That's all it is.
And you can't do them all in one moment anyway. So just do the one now.
Do now what it is that God has for you to do now.
And then if we make it another hour, in that hour, do what it is for God then.
What it is that He has for you then.
This day, this moment, it matters.
If you waste it, you will be sinning against God.
That's why in the very same passage in which He says, we should say, if the Lord so wills,
we'll go there and do this or that. That's James 4.
And that very same passage ends this way.
For he who knows to do good and does not do it, present-day, not plan to do it,
not regret that he didn't do it, but those who know to do good and don't do it, to them is sin.
Because this is the moment in time. This is the time at which you can choose what to do.
So you must say, I am here. This minute matters.
I matter. I matter more than the lilies of the fields, more than the birds and the bees.
God is for me. This minute matters. And I matter.
And I am going to, as a person who matters to God, make something out of this moment.
And as you do that, the plans of the Lord begin to get established in your life.
I get it. We're torn apart by this idea that, man, it's going to be so much to get there.
It's going to take me so long. I was driving in the country.
I had a van full of kids. I was going to camp.
And I had the GPS up on my phone. And I, you know, I'm not great at following GPS.
Right? I'm just being transparent here. And so, okay.
And it says turn left. And I'm going and I'm going. It says turn left.
And I'm still looking. It's like, it's got to be a while yet. Right?
And then all of a sudden there's an intersection. I'm supposed to turn left.
And I didn't turn left. Just right on through it.
And I'm going, uh oh, it's okay. It'll recalculate. So it recalculated.
And when it recalculated, the bottom number, how long it's going to take to get there, right,
went from like an hour and six minutes to an hour and 35 minutes.
I just missed one turn. What in the country? It's like that sometimes.
Because sometimes you got to go like 20 miles to get back where there's nowhere to turn.
Coming up, or even a five mile to the next turn or whatever. Right?
And I'm driving the church van. And I'm thinking to myself, like,
I missed my turn. Normally, I wouldn't turn around and go back.
I'd just take the next turn. Because I'm a city boy. And I just take the next block.
It's no big deal. Like one minute max wasted. No big deal.
I'm going like, holy cow. This is a one and a half lane road.
One lane bridge ahead. There's a car coming. And I'm slowing down.
And I'm going, what am I going to do? I do not want my getting there to take an extra 25 minutes.
Or whatever it actually was. Right? So I waited for the car to go by.
I waited for the guy to pass me. Another guy passed me. Another guy passed me.
Blair in his horn. And I turn left on the one and a half lane road.
And a 15 pass of your van. And I backed up. And I turned left again.
And I backed up. And I turned left again. And it took like three left turns.
It wasn't a Y turn. It was an asterisk turn. You know what I'm saying?
And I got going the right way. And I went back. And I turned right.
And the moment I started heading back, the time to get there dropped by 25 minutes.
Now if I was too regretful over having passed that left turn,
and unwilling to turn around and go back and go the right way,
if I was unwilling to make this moment about going the right way,
I would have not gotten to our SH4 over 25 minutes.
Which probably wouldn't have killed me any.
But the nine kids in the back were ready to be there.
They were like, are we there? Are we there? Are we there?
They were like, clearly we're not there. We're in the middle of the cornfield.
They were ready to be there. And they were really great non-minders.
I didn't want to kill any of them because I thought that would be against policy.
So I thought I better turn. And they're like, what are we doing?
And I'm backing up. What are we doing? I'm like, we're backing up.
I go forward. What are we doing? I said, we're turning around.
We're backing up. We're still turning around.
And they all had to have an explanation.
I'm like, I missed the turn. We're turning around.
And then you hear them telling you, we missed the turn. We're turning around.
We missed the turn. We're turning around.
We're like, 15 people had to say we missed the turn. There were only nine kids.
15 people said we missed the turn. The point is this.
Sometimes regret should lead you to godly sorrow, which should make you go,
look, I wasted yesterday or an hour of yesterday or minutes.
And that leads you to turn to God and say, how do I spend this minute, this one, this 60 seconds?
Are you here? Do you matter to God? Does this minute matter to God?
You don't well better believe it does. If it didn't, he just shut it all down.
He's literally holding back the end of time. Literally.
As soon as he stops, the moment he says, OK, that's enough, it's all gone.
But he's holding it back. And he's not slow as some men count slowness, Peter writes.
Rather, he is patient with us that all men might come to repentance.
You got to get after it. Get after what? Get after a certain plan.
Make a plan. Procrastinate. Stop procrastinating. What? What am I telling you?
I'm telling you to live. I'm telling you to live in this moment and do the thing that God has for you to do.
Your yesterday is gone. Your tomorrow is not yet. Regret has a purpose to turn you to God.
Worry about tomorrow really has no purpose whatsoever because you can't control a bit.
You can't add anything to your life. All you can do is say, OK, I'm going to live this moment and not waste it.
I'm going to share Christ. I'm going to serve God and serve others.
I'm going to love. I'm going to be who God has made me to be.
And when you do that, you will be a fanatic. You will stop wasting time.
People go like, you don't do that anymore? You don't engage in that activity?
If it's not for God, if it's a waste of time, no, we don't engage in that anymore.
Which means there are certain things that we want to do, right?
And if you want to do them, you better figure out how to do them for God
or otherwise realize it's just a plant of your heart and God will tear it apart.
This concludes the sermon and we have an opportunity to respond today.
I'm asking you to respond correctly to your regrets and to put them away once and for all
and to live this moment for God.
I'm asking you to respond correctly for your worry, which can be only to repent of it
and to let it go and to live this moment for God.
And according to what the Lord says, it's OK to regret as long as it leads you to Godly sorrow,
which leads to repentance, but it's not OK to worry. He says, don't.
John 14, he says, be anxious for nothing.
You're here. You're important. This moment is important.
Now let's do what it is that the Lord would have us to do.
And be the person that the Lord died, created all of this, frankly,
then entered it and died a sinner's death and rose again so that you can be
blessed. Praise to you to come forward.
And the Lord has spoken to your heart in some way today.
You need to respond. You'll be able to go ahead and do that.
We're going offline now.
But if you're online with us, you can always respond to the comments as if you're still there.
As you usually let them go.
Sometimes we think we have the Lord's plan.
We start doing one moment after another what we think we're supposed to do.
And because we're a little bit off, it doesn't quite go right.
And then we start thinking, OK, well, I was off.
Do you regret that I was off the Lord's plan?
There's worry that I'm not on the Lord's plan currently.
All you need to do is repent and say, Lord, put me on the plan right now in this moment.
And then do it. It's very simple, really. Almost childlike.
Did you know that psychologists say that children identify with their current action?
In other words, if a child's running and you tell them to stop running,
you're telling them essentially to stop existing because they identify with their current action.
Now, we think that's childish, don't we?
But wait a minute.
I'm just thinking about the message that we just had today.
Maybe we got it right and we got it wrong.
As adults, we say, yes, I love the Lord.
But right now, I'm busy. I want to do this. I don't want to do what God wants me to do.
But I do love the Lord. I'll get back to loving him. I'll get back to doing the things he wants me to do.
Or we say, well, I know I'm supposed to give or serve,
but right now, giving and serving is extremely inconvenient to me.
It's not going to work out. I can't see how that's going to...
I'm not going to have what I need or I'm going to struggle or suffer.
And so it seems unwise. God doesn't want me.
God loves me and I matter to him, so he doesn't want me to struggle or suffer.
So now I'm not going to do the thing that God wants me to do because I have good reason.
God didn't expect me to just ignore my mind, ignore my understanding.
So I'm not going to do right now what God wants me to do.
So then we think we can identify with not doing what it is that God wants us to do
while we say we're a follower of the Lord, which means he tells us what to do and we do it.
So as adults, we created a duality.
That we're doing something and that that doesn't identify us.
But the truth is, maybe it does.
It certainly identifies which plan you're on, yours or his.
And our plans blow up and fizzle away.
And his plans are to prosper us and give us a good life, an abundant life even, and then turn it into heaven.
I think we need to get on his plan and stop being, as adults, stop giving ourselves that permission
to not be what we actually are.
So at this moment, I'm not going to be what I actually am.
That doesn't make any sense.
When you're running, the truth is, in that moment when you're running, you're a runner.
Except I'm overweight, I can't run, I couldn't run in five feet, it doesn't matter.
In the moment that you're running, you're a runner.
When you're talking, in the moment that you're talking, you're a talker.
That's what children do.
And as adults, we'll be talking and we'll be saying, well, I'm not much of a talker.
I don't really talk much, right?
And you're talking. You're talking, you're a talker.
So if you're a follower of the Lord, you're a follower.