Good morning.
It's so nice to be with you again.
I'm going to see if I can move this forward a little bit.
There we go.
So I don't have to lean in too much.
I have been absent for a long time,
and that's going to be part of my testimony actually today.
So I'll tell you more about that.
But the last time I was here, I don't know,
does anybody remember what I preached about?
Anybody?
It's been so long.
It's no wonder.
I talked about resting in Jesus, coming to Jesus moment
by moment.
It was a very transformational realization for me
when I learned that we can come to Jesus any moment.
When I'm frustrated, when I've just sinned,
even if it was the 10th time today,
and he just wants us to come to him and not distance ourselves.
That's how we discipline, right?
We're like, you go to your room.
Time out.
Jesus is now coming to my arms.
OK, just talk to me about it.
Yeah, I know you're frustrated.
Just tell me.
And so this is kind of building up
on that, what I talked about last time.
I want you just to talk to maybe the person in front of you
or beside you.
If you're by yourself on the pew,
maybe you can find someone close to you.
I want you, in 30 seconds, just to tell your partner,
what person do you respect the most and why?
What person?
Not outside of God.
What person do you respect and why?
OK, does anybody want to volunteer?
Just the person and why they respect that person.
OK, Bella.
Oh, by the way, I'm going to get mad at you.
That's awesome.
So for the sake of our online audience,
this young lady says her mom because she gets mad at her.
So she respects her for towing the line, I guess it is, right?
Anybody else?
Somebody else brave enough to?
Yes.
OK, so Darren says his dad because he watched him walk
from alcoholism to the point where he gave his life
to the Lord then.
And right to his death, he was somebody
who was always improving himself.
So praise the Lord.
What are the qualities that people have that we respect?
What are some of the qualities you could just
yell out a quality?
One word.
Integrity.
Sincerity.
Caring.
Honesty.
Selfless.
Yes.
OK.
Are they usually authority?
Can they be authority figures in our life?
We listen to them because we respect them.
So what does that have to do with our relationship
with Jesus?
Do we respect Jesus as an authority in our life?
When someone says, OK, now I want
you to be honest about this, OK, when someone says,
I want to be, I want to Lord over you,
I want to be Lord in your life, what's
the first thing that happens?
How do you feel?
It's like, oh, OK, cool.
Sure.
No.
I don't know about you, but I get this little pit.
Excuse me, but I'm Lord over my own life.
I really don't need you to help me out here.
And you know, it's how little teenage you're feeling,
I guess.
When you're facing your parents and they say something,
you're like, I can do, I can think for myself or whatever.
And sometimes even with God, right?
God speaks to us.
And we're a little bit like, oh, but I
think I'm doing just fine.
I don't want to do that.
But I want to submit to you that God does not
ask us to do anything he hasn't done first.
God knows what it means to submit.
And we're going to talk about that today.
We're going to explore what it means
to honor Jesus as Lord of our lives.
Let's bow our heads again.
My Father, please send the Holy Spirit
to teach us from your word today what
it means to honor you as Lord of our lives.
In Jesus' name, amen.
So before we figure out what we're supposed to do,
I want to look at how Jesus, what his relationship was
with the Father.
So let's look at John 5.30.
John 5.30.
It says, I can, this is Jesus speaking,
I can of myself do a few things, nothing.
OK.
So Jesus says he can do how much by himself?
Nothing.
OK, think about that.
Sometimes we think, oh, Jesus does this because he's God.
But he says, I can't do a thing by myself, right?
As I hear, I judge.
And my judgment is righteous, because I do not
seek my own will, but the will of the Father who sent me.
So how does he judge correctly?
Right, he hears, right?
It says he's hearing.
As I hear, he's hearing the Father.
He's following what the Father is telling him to do.
He does according to his Father's will
and not his own will.
Here we see a God who is submissive, right?
Submissive to his Father.
Let's look at John 4.34.
One more, just across the page for some of you.
Jesus said to them, my food is to do the what?
Will of him who sent me and to finish his work.
Now, if I say my food, so let's say you say, my food is soccer.
OK, what does that mean?
Yeah, it's your life, right?
You live it, you breathe it, you watch it.
You know if somebody, if there's something going on,
if the World Cups are going on, you know who played who.
You know who's winning.
You know who's losing.
You know who's been not deleted.
What do you call them?
Removed?
Yeah, whatever.
I don't know the lingo.
As you can see, it's not my food.
It's my kid's food.
But yeah, my food means it's just everything
that I live for, right?
And he is saying, my food is to do the will of my Father.
Wow, that is something.
I want you to think about it, that Jesus, the God,
he shared the throne with his Father.
And yet, when he here on Earth, he
submitted to the will of his Father.
He surrendered to the Father every moment of his life.
And so I want to look at how Jesus surrendered specifically.
And of course, I'm going to look at it
in three periods of the day, and that will help.
So the first one is in the evening.
How did Jesus surrender to the Father?
Let's look at Mark 1, verse 35.
Excuse me, verse 35.
Now in the morning, having risen a long while before daylight,
he went out and departed to a solitary place.
And there he prayed.
So what does this passage tell us about Jesus?
What did he do?
OK, specifically, in this passage, he when?
OK, he got up early, right?
And it said he went where?
He went to a solitary place.
And what time in the morning?
It's before daylight, so before sunrise.
He went to a solitary place, and he spent that with his Father.
OK, I want you to keep this verse in mind
when we go back to Isaiah.
Let's look at Isaiah chapter 50.
Isaiah chapter 50 and verse 4.
Isaiah 50, verse 4.
Now as we read this, I want you to think,
who is speaking in this verse?
Is it Isaiah?
Or who's speaking here?
So the Lord God has given me the tongue of the learned,
that I should know how to speak a word in season to him who
is weary.
He awakens me morning by morning.
He awakens my ear to hear as the learned.
OK, so who is the me in there?
He says, God gave me the tongue of the learned
so I can speak a word in season to him as weary.
And he awakens me in the morning.
He awakens my ear to hear as the learned.
Who is speaking?
How do you know?
Oh, OK, if you have a New King James,
that's what I love about the New King James,
is they do put all the pronouns are capitalized.
Yeah, so it's capital M. So we know it.
But how would we know it if we didn't have that?
Hint, hint.
Look at verse 6.
What was that?
Say it again.
Context.
Context, exactly.
If you look at verse 6, it says, I gave my back
to those who struck me, my cheeks to those
who plucked out my beard.
I did not hide my face from shame and spitting.
And we know that Isaiah is the messianic prophet.
And so a lot of Isaiah's writings are messianic.
And they're pointing forward to Jesus.
And so here, this is Jesus.
So I want you to think about this.
This is Jesus speaking.
And he is saying, God wakes me up morning by morning.
He awakes my ear to hear as the learned.
Now, think about this.
According to this prophecy, God is waking up God.
I guess somebody's going to go out and check that car.
Somebody's going out there to check the car
to see if it's one of ours.
Oh, what color is the car?
Oh, it's stopped.
I guess somebody who had the keys figured that out.
That was probably Carolyn's car.
I know her car's red.
I just take every opportunity to goad her.
Anyway, OK, so here, this is awesome
to think that even Jesus didn't even consider his time his own.
He let God wake him up because God knew
what he was going to face that day.
He knew how many people he'd have to heal that day, who
he was going to talk to that day.
And he woke him up to spend time with him.
The same with us.
Do we know what we're going to face in a day?
But God loves us so much.
And he's actually waiting.
Can you imagine?
He's just asleep.
So he's waiting.
I can't wait till Medina wakes up.
I can't wait till Jennifer wakes up.
I can't wait till Cliff wakes up.
He is thinking of us constantly.
And he says, OK, now's the time.
I'm going to wake them up.
The same love of the Father that woke Jesus up
to spend time with him.
He says, I know how much time you need with me today
because you're going to face some people today.
And so it's a beautiful thing.
This is a challenge for you to ask God every evening,
God, wake me up.
I'm giving you permission.
You can read Isaiah 50, verse 4, and said, you woke Jesus up.
God, wake me up at the right time.
If it's 3.30 or if it's 5.30, you know how much sleep I need.
And you know how much time I need with you.
And he wants to have unrushed time with you.
I mean, I spent time with God all my life, pretty much.
I mean, after I became a Christian,
I tried to spend time with God every day.
And of course, there were days I rushed out the door.
I didn't have time.
But it was on my terms.
I got up and said, OK, my five minutes of devotion.
Dear God, bless me with my kids.
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
You know, let's get ready.
Let's get out the door.
But God says, no, no, no, no.
Don't rush.
You know, I don't want to be rushed with you.
I want to spend time with you to be able to.
So you can get my word to you, and you can talk to me.
Let's look at how else Jesus surrendered.
Look at Philippians 2, verses 5 to 11.
Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who,
being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery
to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation,
taking the form of a bondservant
and coming in the likeness of men.
OK, I want to pause here, because this
is a little convoluted, and especially
for some of our younger crowd to say, what does it mean to say,
it didn't consider it robbery to be equal with God?
Can anybody just explain that in a few words?
What does it mean that he didn't consider it robbery
to be equal with God?
Selfish ambition?
OK.
He didn't consider it equal to be equal with God.
OK, he says equal, but he didn't consider it what?
He didn't mind stepping down, right?
He didn't consider like, OK, I'm not
going to be equal with God, because I am now
becoming what?
I'm a man, he said, you know, and I should be like,
we're on the throne here, and then you're telling me
I'm going to step down and be a civilian?
You know, and that's, God is even more than that, right?
It's like, he says, no, it's OK.
I don't mind stepping down.
Yes?
Go ahead.
May not be as well as the suppose.
And so we're supposed to be also servants, right?
Yeah.
That's a very good point.
And we don't.
We often don't think of this.
This is not an attractive part, right?
Like, we don't want to be like God in this sense, right?
So it means that Jesus basically stepped down,
and he became a man.
And now let's look at the next verse.
This is verse 8.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death.
So he died.
We're all going to die, right?
So he died.
But it goes further.
Even the death of the cross.
He didn't just die a regular death.
He went to the death of a criminal.
And so he basically became the basest of human beings.
Like, he accepted, not in his character,
but he accepted the fate of the basest of human beings
at that time.
And criminals were put on a cross.
And so if you think, I'd like to do actually a little analogy.
And so I need two people.
And I'm going to ask, oh, where did Caleb go?
There he is.
Caleb and Riley to come up.
Caleb and Riley, come on up.
I'm going to do, we're going to do a little role play.
So come right up.
And you can just stand right here in front of them.
And I'm going to tell you what to do.
So these are co-directors of a company.
They are equal.
And they own this company.
They call the shots.
They do everything for this company.
Now, Caleb, he says, I wonder what it feels like to be
one of my employees.
I think I'm going to be an office employee.
So he comes.
I'm just going to have you sit down just for the illustration.
So you come over here.
And you sit down.
And you take an office job.
And Riley is now the only owner.
He's the only director, the CEO, all by himself.
And so Caleb says voluntarily, I think
I'm going to be one of your employees,
just to see what it feels like.
And so he's here.
And he's working.
And he says, hmm.
And he's looking around.
He says, oh, I wonder what it's like to be
an assembly line worker.
So he comes over here and just do something,
wrote or whatever.
OK, good.
Yeah, that's good.
So he's an assembly line worker.
He's putting things together.
OK.
And he's like, wow, this is really the same thing every day.
And Riley's just doing all this stuff at the company.
But Caleb is there in the front.
And he says, oh, I wonder what the janitor feels like.
So he's kind of sweeping the bathroom.
And you're sweeping away.
And he becomes a janitor.
People are noticing this.
People notice.
Hey, that guy used to be CEO.
He's pretty much devoted.
He must have done something wrong.
So they start mistreating him.
They start mistreating him.
Now you're on the floor.
You're scrubbing the floor.
Oh, I know.
Sorry.
We've got a broken foot.
I'm sorry.
Do I?
OK.
He's scrubbing away.
And people mistreat him to the point
that they leave him to death.
And at once, you were a co-CEO.
And this is the one thing that Jesus did at Volcantero.
He did not say, somebody didn't take him out of there
and put him in the seat.
He put him here.
He went down.
Thank you so much for helping me out with that.
I might call on you again.
Not right now.
But I want to draw your attention to Gethsemane.
Because Gethsemane was, here, Jesus is overwhelmed.
He's carrying the weight of every sin committed,
whether the person was going to accept his gift or not.
Every sin, including yours that had not been committed yet,
he is carrying the weight of it all.
And notice what he prays.
Abba, Father, all things are possible for you.
And everything's possible.
I mean, you can take this cup away from me.
There's nothing impossible for you.
You can take this cup away.
And how does he end?
He says, but.
What does he say?
But?
Not?
Not my will, but your will be done.
Three times he wrestled.
Did Jesus want to live?
He wanted to live.
His humanity, in his humanity, he
wanted to live.
He did not want to die.
But he said, I'm not going to do what I want.
I'm going to do what my Father wants.
And he submitted.
And he surrendered all.
And because of that, we have a chance.
We have a chance for the kingdom.
Did Jesus ever draw a line at surrender and say, well,
I'm surrendering up to this point.
Here's the line.
I'm not crossing over.
Jesus didn't draw a line.
He surrendered everything he was.
He surrendered everything he had.
And he even surrendered his attitude.
And so the second part to this is the morning.
When you wake up every night, what do you do in the evening?
What do you ask God to do what?
Wake you up in the morning, right?
Just spend an unrushed time with him.
And then in the morning, you wake up and you say, Jesus,
I surrender all.
I surrender all I am, all I have, and the hardest thing
of all for me, even my attitude.
You can even have my attitude today.
That is hard.
It's really hard.
But that is what Jesus did.
And he can give us the power to do that.
OK, I have a lamp.
I need someone who's going to help me out with this.
This lamp.
Colton, do you want to come up here?
Oh, Velma, you want to come?
Colton, I'll get you next time.
OK?
Well, she's cheery today.
OK, I want you to make that lamp work.
There's one, just one thing is you can't plug it in,
but try to make it work, OK?
What's the problem, Bella?
Can't you make it work?
I'm trying my best.
I had confidence in you.
No, I'm just kidding.
Actually, I'm sorry.
I love Bella.
Actually, OK, this is just, thank you.
It's just an illustration.
But obviously, why is this not going to work?
It is not plugged into what?
Electricity, which is what?
The?
It's a source of power, OK?
This needs an outside source of power.
OK, it's kind of duh.
Glenn, are you?
Yeah, it is duh.
But do we do this in our spiritual lives often?
Are we plugged into power?
Are we trying to shine our light without being plugged in?
Let's look at John 15, 4.
You remember when Jesus prayed, in John 17, actually,
he prayed.
He talked about his source of power.
He said, the Father and I are what?
One.
One, right?
He said, I and my Father are one.
I'm in the Father, and the Father is in me.
And here in John 15, this explains the relationship
that Jesus wants with us, which is very similar to his Father.
John 15, verse 4, it says, abide in me and I in you.
As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself,
unless it abides in the vine, neither
can you unless you abide in me.
And so it sounds mysterious, right?
Abide in me and I in you.
And then you'll bear fruit, and then you'll have power.
So I'm going to go ahead and plug this in.
And so you tell me, where is the power?
What is this power thing here?
Where is that?
Where is the electricity and the power?
I mean, most of us don't think about it.
Yeah, but essentially, where does that come from?
Yeah, there's a, like, out there somewhere,
there's this big ocean of electricity, right?
This big, we don't even know.
I mean, most of us know, oh, yeah, OK,
there's a wire that goes there to the pylon that eventually
goes to, do you do hydro here?
Hydro?
We call it the hydro.
In fact, in Canada, we call it the hydro bill.
That's our electricity bill.
We always say the hydro bill because we
have hydroelectricity.
Niagara Falls, I guess.
So we don't even really understand it.
We don't understand necessarily where it all comes from,
but we know that there's this big power source.
And so this lamp, as soon as it plugs in,
it's abiding in the source powers, right?
It's abiding in the electricity.
And then what happens?
Where does the electricity go once I
turn this little switch on?
Yeah, it comes in through the wire.
So the electricity is abiding in the lamp as well.
The electricity is inside the lamp,
but the lamp is plugged into the big source of power.
And that's what it's basically saying.
You abide in Christ, but Christ is in you.
He comes as soon as you abide in Christ.
He's coming in, and he's helping you shine, right?
He's helping you shine.
So that's the relationship that God wants.
I have one more verse here, Colossians 1, 27.
And that is the secret of the Christian life in three words.
And so as we read it, I'm going to read it,
and I want you to tell me what the three words are.
Colossians 1, 27.
And of course, this is Paul, so it's
part of this long paragraph.
I'm coming in the middle of a paragraph, one of his sentence
paragraphs, right?
And it's talking about the mystery.
I'll start from verse 26, because it'll
be easier to understand.
The mystery which has been hidden from ages
and from generations, but now has been revealed to his saints.
To them God willed to make known what
are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles,
which is, what is it?
Christ in you, the hope of glory.
And so while you cannot resist temptation on your own,
if you have to be plugged into that power,
but Christ is in you, once you plug in, he is in you.
He has gained the victory over every temptation
when he was here.
And when you plug into him, you give him the authority
to resist temptation.
You have no strength to overcome your bad temper,
to overcome your lack of patience,
to overcome whatever it may be, but you can do all things
through Christ in you.
Maybe you struggle with an addiction.
Maybe you struggle with the spirit of unforgiveness,
but Christ in you exercises his authority
to free you from what you cannot free yourself.
And so the kingdoms of the world,
when they say, when they want authority over you,
what do they do?
What is their attitude?
What's that?
Yeah.
Pointy fingers are, it's a little bit like this, right?
Looking down at you.
But when Jesus wants authority for you, he says, oh, sorry.
I'll go back here.
When Jesus, God's kingdom, when Jesus uses his authority,
not against you, but he uses authority
in front of your enemy, in front of those temptations,
those addictions, those unforgiving attitudes
that you so much want to get rid of.
And that's where he exercises his authority
to help you to do what you cannot do yourself.
The leaders of the world say, serve me.
But Jesus says, I will serve you.
Think about that.
It's a totally different reason.
When we submit to God, we submit to someone
who loves us so much and wants to work on our behalf,
but he will never use force.
He will never make us do anything we do not want to do.
He waits for us until we're ready.
And when we submit to him, he says, OK,
I'm going to wash your feet.
He says, I am going to be the authority in your life
to help you with all those things you're struggling
with, whatever it is.
I want to give you an illustration here.
I need someone who, just a second.
I need someone who always wanted to drive a sports car.
And I think that's Colton back there,
wanted to drive a sports car, right?
Come on up.
So do you know where the driver's seat is?
OK.
So Colton, go ahead, sit in the car.
Get comfortable.
Hands on the wheel.
OK, this is a real fancy car.
OK, you're driving along.
Having a good time.
OK, this is us.
This is representing us in our life, right?
We're driving.
We're in charge of our life.
But then Colton says, oh, I want to give my life to Jesus.
So what is he going to do?
Is he going to keep driving?
Is he going to keep driving the car when
he gives his heart to Jesus, if that's his life?
No.
Where are you going to go if Jesus is driving for you?
Where do you need to go?
What seat are you going to sit in?
Yeah, maybe.
Yeah, go ahead.
So you're going to give up the wheel.
I know this is tough, especially for someone who's probably
dying to drive already.
Yeah.
So he's given up the driver's seat.
Jesus is driving now.
OK, but I have a question.
What if it's just not going fast enough for him?
Or maybe he's not really going where he wants to go.
You know, he's saying, Jesus, ah.
And so what could he do if he's in the passenger seat?
Well, what can you do?
Has nobody ever done that?
And you're in a car, and then you see somebody bearing.
Yeah.
You can very easily, from the passenger seat, like, wait.
Or haven't you done that for your spouse?
I have to do something.
Can you just hold the wheel for a second?
Or if it's not fast enough, you're like, put the gas on.
You're moving your foot over.
So the passenger seat might not be a great place to be.
So where should he go?
If the passenger seat is a little bit too, say it louder?
Too close?
You mean, oh, and he puts, well, he would have to, yeah,
he would just kind of, from the passenger seat, you know,
he grabs the.
So here, he wants to be, yeah, more submissive than that.
He doesn't want to be in a position where he can, you know,
change the speed or grab the wheel.
So where is he going to go?
Back seat.
I guess you're going to have to go sit in the back seat,
where you'll sit probably right now.
OK.
So is it totally safe now?
He has no influence over his, what's that?
He's got to, oh, that's OK.
He almost doesn't need that anymore.
Does he still need one?
Maybe.
I don't know.
But oh, you do.
OK.
Well, what can he do now?
Does he have any influence?
Oh, I see people doing this.
Yeah.
You ever heard of the backseat driver?
OK.
Hey, Jesus, no, no, no.
Watch that corner.
Oh, no.
Turn left.
You're going way too slowly for me right now.
You know?
No.
And so where are we going to go?
Truck.
There he goes.
Oh, somebody who's at the trunk.
Bravo.
Yes.
Yes, Jesus probably, if we surrender to him totally,
we're in the trunk.
We're lying down.
We can't see where we're going.
You know, when Abraham was told, you've
got to leave your father, your mother, your whole family,
everything you have ever known.
I have a place out there for you.
And by the way, you're going to be living in a tent for a while,
so get your tent.
And he goes out.
And it says in Hebrews, he went out not knowing
where he was going.
And so he was basically lying in the trunk, right?
Abraham was lying in the trunk saying, I have no idea.
And he didn't even ask.
He didn't ask, can you give me some more details
about the place and the people there?
He just went.
Thank you, Colton, for being a great driver and non-driver.
I have a short testimony before we end.
So I have been gone for so long.
I was not gone from College Dale.
I did go for I had one mission trip in November or December.
And then I came back.
And I had to move because the person where we were renting,
they were selling their house and moving along.
And so we were renting from in the same,
it was a duplex type of situation.
So I ended up moving, just to be really short in the story,
four times until I am where I am.
And I finally found a place.
But I had struggles with my car.
And there were just different things.
And it was discouraging for me in some ways.
And I kept saying, OK, God, I'm going to trust you on this.
You have never let me down.
I'm going to trust you on this.
And actually, in probably the last two, where I am now,
I moved there the beginning of April.
So it's been, what, four months or so?
But I realized, looking back, I realized
I have gotten very lazy.
And I was going to church.
Because of my car situation, I was walking to church.
I lived very close to College Dale Church.
And then now where I am, I'm far out.
I can't walk anywhere.
I'm in northern Ottawa.
And then I just got really lazy.
I just didn't go to church.
I was turning on my online sermons and listening
and very comfortable at home.
And I started to, God was working in my heart.
And I started praying.
I said, God, you know, I'm not really churched.
I don't go to my home.
My home church is actually College Dale.
I don't go there anymore.
I don't know if you know, but they've also lost their pastor.
They lost two pastors, actually, the Connect Pastor
and the main pastor at College Dale Church.
And so I was just praying and praying.
And then I thought about Ringgold.
And I said, man, I haven't been there in so long.
And I actually have cards, prayer cards.
And I started to go through.
And I was praying for y'all.
Because I go through all the different churches
I've been to and the people I know.
And so I was praying.
And then Kevin sent me a text just out of the blue.
He said, oh, we lost our pastor.
We need someone who wants to, who wouldn't mind preaching.
Would you preach on?
And they gave me this date, not knowing at all
that it was my birthday or anything.
And it's very significant because God
does special things for me on my birthday.
And his word to me has always been light.
I'm going to be your light.
And I feel like it was like a little glimmer of light.
And I said, yes.
I prayed about it.
But in my heart, I already knew pretty much.
And I feel God is saying, I want you back in church.
You got to stop hiding out.
You got to get up and take a shower and get dressed
and look nice and go to church, not sit in your grubs all day.
And so it's something I surrendered to him.
And that wasn't easy because I like
to do what I like to do.
And I feel like I can have very spiritual moments by myself
in my prayer room in my house.
And I love my times with God.
But God is saying, no, but you also need community.
And so this is something I had to surrender.
Very simple, very tiny little thing for some people.
But it's actually very huge in my experience.
And so this is my first day of many Sabbaths
that I have decided I want to worship in community
and not just by myself.
I want to surrender that.
I need a couple people to help me with something,
going to pass out some things up here.
So give everybody a piece of paper.
And you can go down this side and go down this side.
And you can go down the, and actually, why don't you,
are you going to help?
OK, here, you can go down the other side.
And I'm going to ask Riley, just to give everybody a pen,
if you don't have one.
OK?
You take one side and one paper per person and a pen,
if they don't have it.
And I'm going to explain to you.
So if you think of it in terms, this
is going to help you remember is that in the evening,
you ask the Lord to wake you up the next day.
And His terms, in His time, you surrender that,
just like Jesus did.
And then when you wake up, you surrender everything,
like Jesus did.
Everything you have, everything you are, even your attitudes,
surrender to Jesus.
And then finally, during the day,
you keep plugged in to your source of power.
And that means constantly asking God, moment by moment, God,
please, God, help me.
That sister just did this to me.
And I feel like calling her and telling her off.
Please, God, help me have the victory over this temper I have.
Oh, God, that addiction I'm suffering.
I just can't.
I do this 10 times a day.
Help me, God.
This is how we abide in Him, is just constantly.
And it's not how many times you fall.
Because that beautiful verse that says,
seven times, and God keeps, He will keep getting up.
God keeps lifting Him up.
And seven is just, doesn't mean it's only seven times.
That's just the complete verse.
It's a complete number.
It means whenever, however many times.
And so everybody with this, I want you to draw.
And actually, I should have drawn one myself.
But I don't have a marker.
Anyway, I want you to do a T-chart.
You know what that is, where you draw a line this way,
and then you draw a line down the middle.
So just draw a line with a little space up here,
and a line down here.
And on the left side, you're going
to write, what I have surrendered to Jesus.
Or you could just write for short, surrendered to Jesus.
Surrendered to Jesus.
And I want to mention, this is between you and God.
Nobody's going to see this.
You're going to tuck this away in your Bible,
and you're going to put this by your bed stand,
or in your bedside table, or whatever.
And this is between you and Jesus.
No one else will see this.
So you write, surrendered to Jesus.
And then you can put a little crown there.
A little crown to show that that is surrendered to Jesus.
He is Lord over these areas of your life.
But on this side, you're going to write,
not surrendered to Jesus.
What is not surrendered to Jesus.
So on the left side, a little crown.
Surrendered to Jesus.
On the right side, what is not surrendered to Jesus.
I'm going to say a short prayer.
And then I'm going to give you a few moments to fill this out.
This is only between you and God.
And you don't have to look at what your wife or husband
are writing.
This is really something that we're
going to ask God to reveal this to you.
So let's bow our heads.
Heavenly Father, I just want to make
a short prayer asking you that whatever
is in the heart of each person, Lord, first of all,
to give them kudos, those things that they have surrendered,
Lord.
But then also to look deep down and see
is there bitterness or hatred or lust or love for anything
or anyone that replaces Jesus as Lord of our life.
Lord, reveal that to us.
We know it might be just one thing.
You don't reveal to us all the tools we have in the box.
You reveal to us only one.
So Lord, help us bring at least one thing
to mind that is not surrendered to Jesus,
that we want to surrender to you.
Amen.
So I'm going to give you just probably two minutes or so.
You can complete it at home.
But I'll give you a few moments to fill that out.
In Ezekiel 36, the most beautiful promise for us,
he says, from verse 25 to 27, he says,
I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean.
And I will cleanse you from all your filthiness,
from all your idols.
I will give you a new heart and a new spirit within you.
I will take the heart of stone out of your feet.
I will give you a new heart and a new spirit within you.
I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh
and give you a heart of flesh.
I will put my spirit within you and cause
you to walk in my statutes.
And you shall keep my judgments and do them.
That's a beautiful promise.
And so you can take this home and spend time with Jesus.
Or when he wakes you up in the morning,
maybe that's when you want to spend time surrendering that
every day until it's so totally surrendered it doesn't even
come into your mind anymore.
It'll be, it just becomes like it's a non-issue for you.
But it's something that you can surrender each day
to practice that.
And so the challenge is every evening,
what do you do in the evening?
You're asking God to wake you up in the morning, right?
For un rushed time with him.
And in the morning you do what?
You go out of bed.
Before you look at your cell phone, challenge.
Big challenge.
Before you look at your cell phone,
you tell God, I am surrendering even that cell phone.
I'm surrendering everything, my electronics, my technology,
my attitudes, everything I have, everything I am.
And then finally, during the day,
you are going to Jesus moment by moment,
plugging in to that power and abiding in him.
Let's bow our heads.
Heavenly Father, thank you so much for being our example
and surrendering all.
And Lord, we want to follow you.
We want to follow you.
We want to surrender all.
And Lord, we want to surrender what
we don't want to surrender.
We have things in our life that we really
don't want to.
And so Lord, we thank you for your patience and your love,
and that you will eventually help
us to take care of those things too,
to surrender them all to you.
Lord, I ask that you cut out anything in our lives
that replaces you as Lord, whether it's bitterness,
whether it's our hurt, whether it's love for anything
or anyone that's above you in our lives.
Lord, give us a new heart.
And we pray this in Jesus' name.
Amen.
You can be seated.
I just have, I made little cards.
And at the back, it has these three written out
to remind you so you can think about that and how to surrender.
And so if someone would like to come up and help pass these
out, I see I have my ready workers.
Yeah, go ahead.
And Avery, maybe you want to help too?
Can Riley come because I have more things to pass out.
I also have, I don't know if she wants to come,
one for every person, OK?
And also, sorry, this is Pastor McLaughatty's latest book.
It's pretty much fresh off the press.
It's called God Still Lives, Even When You Wonder.
This book is an excellent sharing book,
in particular for people who are not churched.
This is a book where he gives his experiences that
show how God really does live.
And he gets quite vulnerable in this book, closer to the end.
My favorite chapter is chapter 15,
where he talks about a time he had
to forgive that was very difficult in his life.
And it shows how he was able also
to surrender his unforgiving spirit
and show how really God still lives.
So I would definitely want to make sure you have at least one
per family.
If you'd like to take more, like one per person,
that's fine.
And you want to take the box around.
And just go ahead and grab one or two.
And if you want more, because he is very willing to,
he gives these for free.
This is his ministry.
If you want more, please let me know.
After reading this, people will say, oh, can you
give me some more of these?
I have so many.
X, Y, Z. My uncle, who doesn't want to hear a thing about God,
and he knows everything there is because he grew up
as an Adventist or whatever.
But he will read this.
And I've had already several people come to me and say,
so-and-so in my life didn't want to know anything.
But he's now curious, and he wants to know more about God.
So thank you, and have an awesome Sabbath.