So hey there, good to see you and have you with us, that’s always true but especially true if you are brand new (to all of our online friends out there too) and we really do hope you have an experience with God here today that makes you want to come back and do this all over again with us real soon. If you haven’t been with us we are in the third week now of a series called Build Your Core chasing after making 2020 a different kind of year, a better year for each and every one of us. We’ve talked about how church alone is not the answer and neither is deciding to change. Nothing changes until we commit to change. Then last week we talked about how our actions, what we do really does reveal what we truly believe, how compensation and medication never lead to real change and transformation, and ended with a question. What’s one step I can take, change I can make when it comes to this physical body piece of the core of who I am? Hope you are staying with that question. See, God started telling his people thousands of years ago that they were to love him with all of their body, mind, and spirit. Jesus later repeated it and called it the greatest commandment of all. That’s a holistic core and that is what we are after in this series. So we’ve talked about our bodies. I want to spend our time together today talking about this mind piece.
ILLUST> So my dad was a volunteer high school basketball coach when I was born. If you know anything about basketball you may remember the name Wes Unseld. He was a force to be reckoned with in the NBA for years. My dad coached him when he was in High School in Louisville. Yeah, that didn’t go so well for my dad and his team. Anyway, from the time I was walking I was dribbling. I didn’t dig for the photos but there is a photo of me with my first basketball at Christmas when I was 6 months old and another photo of me dribbling at practice with my dad when I was about 2. So back about 20 years ago my dad was being recognized and honored for his coaching back in the 1960’s. The problem was he was living in a nursing home after having suffered a debilitating stroke and was battling dementia. So, Stacy and I went to our high school to accept the award on his behalf at halftime of a game. It was a small Christian school with a small gym that was packed that night. Hanging on the wall on one end of the gym to the right of the stage was a large sign that said this. This is straight out of the King James version of the Bible. As we were sitting there at halftime the gym got quiet as they started to talk about my dad. In a moment of silence, Sloane our 2nd daughter, who was about 8 at the time looked up at that sign and said pretty loudly “mom, what’s a ye?” Half of the gym busted out laughing.
Sometimes the stuff in this book is not all that easy to understand. If we hang around church world at for any length of time at all we begin to understand that it is important, but really reading it and understanding it can be a real challenge for most of us. Last week we read where God says that change comes as we renew our minds, as we learn to think differently about God and ourselves. A part of renewing our thinking is replacing those old thoughts with what God says is true. The best source is right here and yet the statistics tell us that even a high percentage of us in church world don’t devote much time to the Bible, much time at all to reading or studying this. That’s not judgment or condemnation, it simply points to this. A high percentage of us are missing a significant piece of our core, the very core that we have committed to building this year. So, let’s jump into this and spend the rest of our time together today talking about that.
If you brought a Bible we are going to be in Psalm 1 today. If you don’t have a Bible they are back on the back tables that you can grab right now if you would like if you close or on you can always grab one on your way out. As always you can hit our app or the YouVersion app too. Or you can ignore all of that and read along with me on the screens. So here we go Psalms chapter 1 beginning with verse 1…
1 Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers.
Okay, so we are going to focus on just 3 verses today and take them one at a time. Let’s start with the first word blessed. If you think about it, it’s a word that gets thrown around a lot especially in this thing we do called church. There’s this idea floating around out there that if I do what God asks me to do life will be easy for me, I will win the lottery, all I touch will turn to gold, something like that. Yeah, this word “blessed” is not that. When we study the actual Hebrew word here it actually means we enjoy more of the spiritual joy and peace that comes from a real personal relationship with God...not the accumulation of more and more material blessings. So how do we walk into that? Watch this now, not by anything we do. It’s actually more about what we choose not to do. God says we have to be careful who we walk, stand, and sit with. When we look at that progression here is what we see. Our ability to be influenced increases with each step. So, knowing that, before we even get to what’s happening with our minds, there seems to be another question, a preliminary question for us to pause and ask ourselves here. It goes like this…
WHO OR WHAT IS REALLY DETERMINING THE QUALITY AND DIRECTION OF MY LIFE? ILLUST> As I was thinking about that this past week two specific examples in my own life came to mind. Right out of high school I didn’t initially go to college. I was a watchmaker. I eventually had a small shop in the back of one of my client’s jewelry store. My client had two sons about my age who worked there and loved to cook. They would cook lunch almost every day in another back room of the store. Fried pork chops, French fries, fried anything. You name it, we ate it. It was awesome. There are sat all day long fixing watches, which I was good at but didn’t enjoy at all. Lunch became the hi-light of my day. So eventually I went to the doctor because I wasn’t feeling well. You know what I discovered? I had gained over 30 pounds in about 9 months. It wasn’t muscle. There it is. My friends didn’t make me eat but over the course of time they helped me determine the direction and quality of my life. Something similar happened when I graduated from law school and became a prosecuting attorney, actually something much worse than gaining weight. Stacy and had been married for about 10 years and our two daughters at the time were 2 and newborn. Stacy was in management at UPS at the time in a very demanding job that required 60 hour weeks and wasn’t a great job for a mom, especially a mom with a husband like me. After a long week in the courtroom most of the prosecutors liked to go out for happy hour on Fridays. I decide I needed that and would often be out really late leaving Stacy to deal with the kids after a long hard week of work herself. I’m not proud of that. It’s just true. It makes me sad when I think about it. It ultimately began to lead to some real problems in our marriage. When I think back today on my greatest regrets in life, I’ve got a bunch, most of those are very public around here, when I think back about those moments that I wish I could delete and undo, all those moments happened as I was doing life with people I considered to be friends. They weren’t and aren’t bad people, they cared about me, and they didn’t cause me to do what I did and make the mistakes that I have made. I am not saying that. I am saying this. They did influence the general direction and quality of my life. That’s the way life works. Our friends, the circles we run in, will ultimately determine the direction and quality of our lives.
Now, am I suggesting to you that you break all ties with people who don’t share your values, absolutely not. There are circumstances where that might be necessary for a time but as a general rule NO. Love those people, have compassion on those people, and stay connected to those people. You might be their only connection to Jesus and God may want to use you in an amazing way in their story. That’s a part of the live to rescue piece of our mission statement here. But we need to get this and understand this. Our lives will ultimately be most shaped by the people we spend the most time with and the things we spend the most time doing.
That’s why this hill we die on, this core value of Family is so important here. We want to be a large family made up of smaller tribes or families of people doing life together. It will never be perfect. A small family made up broken people will never be never be perfect. We can’t expect that. Every family has a cousin Eddie. It doesn’t have to be perfect to be extremely helpful. Are you spending any real time with anyone who is chasing after what you want or say you want out of life? Who or what is really determining the direction and quality of my life? Is God, or life with God really a part of that at all? No judgment or condemnation, we just have to start with that question. Then, we need to consider this...verse 2…
2 but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night.
So, rather than walking with, standing with, and sitting with a lot of the wrong people we should be delighting in what God says is true, his law, his words and meditating on that day and night. Let’s just be honest. That’s not all that appealing to most of us. What does that sound like? It sounds like the life of a Monk. Most of us have no interest at all in that. Again, when we study the Hebrew here it suggests that our desire should be to study and give some thought to not what others say about God but what God himself says is best, right, and true. So, question, how are we doing with that? Think about the prevailing voices and influences in your life. Let’s dial this in, be honest, and answer this question...
AM I BUILDING MY CORE ON WHAT _______ SAYS MORE THAN WHAT GOD SAYS? ILLUST> We live in a world where it seems like every single day there are more options and alternatives right at our fingertips every single day. You can listen to podcasts and sermons from your favorite pastor, almost any pastor anytime you want. I’ll just be honest it’s a little bit intimidating. Some of you listen to sermons from some amazing Godly communicators on a regular basis. Some of them are much more ripped and cut, more educated, more articulate, and look so much better in flesh colored skinny jeans than I do. Two of my elders like to read Tim Keller and Richard Rohr. They recommend and give me books. Those two authors are brilliant, it’s deep water, I can’t help but wonder what our elders think about my theology and preaching when they read those books. I love listening to Andy Stanley, my buddy Jim Burgen up at Flatirons, my buddies Morgan and John at Ransomed Heart and their podcasts. There is so much out there and it so good but here’s the question. Am I building my core more on what they say than on what God says is true? Even if you like to listen to me that should always be the question.
So, we hear things like God will not give you more than you can handle, suffering always comes from sin, obedience always leads to financial blessing, and God helps those who help themselves. Here’s the problem, sounds good but none of that is actually in here. We need to learn to measure everything against what God says is best, right and true.
ILLUST> The good news is that it is so much easier now than it used to be to read the Bible itself. If you don’t have the YouVersion on your phone you need to download it today. You can do it right now if you want...not really...but you should do it today. There are so many versions of the Bible. The Message translation is on there which is super easy to read. There are Bible reading plans. It makes things so much simpler than they used to be. So I started attending a Christian school in 6th grade. We were required to memorize and recite 2 verses a week during the school year. It drove me crazy back then. I will be honest, I hated it. My buddy John and I used to sneak into the classroom during lunch recess and check verses off the teacher’s gradebook for ourselves. Kids do what I say not what I did. Let’s be honest. Most of us would call that stuff anything but fun when we are doing it...me too. Here’s the thing, don’t think that there is anything that I lean more into or that helps me more than the scripture that I have learned over the course of my life. That’s not just because I am a pastor, it’s true for you too.
We opened the service today with a song...it’s called Who You Say I am. I am who you say I am. Here’s the question. Who is that who for you? You are who who says you are, your mother, father, boyfriend, spouse, ex, your boss. Do you even know and understand all that God has to say about you? There are over 120 direct statements in here about who you are. You were not an afterthought. God created the entire universe with you in mind. You need to read this. When you do you will discover an incredible God who is madly in love with you. There is no substitute for reading this for yourself and building your core on what God himself says is true.
The book of Psalms sounds a lot like our lives. Time and time again as the author finds himself in a bad place he turns to God’s word for the answers. Here’s just a few of the things that he says about God’s word. It sweeter than honey, better than money, our delight, our source of hope, a lamp for our feet, a light for our path, our comfort, our prized possession, our rule of life, our resource for strength. I don’t know about you but I spent the vast majority of my life living as if none of that was true. So question. Am I building my core more on what ________ says or what God says is true? Let’s finish this with what it looks like when we decide to pursue God’s direction for our lives. Here it is...verse 3…
3 That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither – whatever they do prospers.
Prosper here is not a promise of name it, claim it or of health, wealth and prosperity. It’s a promise that we will continue to move forward, continue to grow, continue to make steady progress, continue to bear fruit make more of an impact as we continue to dive into this. As we look around in the world there are lots of options, lots of things that seem like they would lead us to a better life. I’m not saying they won’t or can’t. What I am saying is this. As we think about building our core this year, body, mind, and spirit we need to get back to this...
JESUS ALONE LEADS ME TO THE LIFE I AM LOOKING FOR. That sounds like the answer you would expect to hear in church but here it is, the answer we are all looking for 3 weeks into this new year and decade has not changed one bit from years and decades past. The answer is I need to know and experience Jesus more. There are lots of ways that we can pursue that and do that. God says that the best path is this. I need to be a person with a desire for more of this, more of a commitment to experiencing Jesus through the words of his Father, that were handed down to and written by men who walked with him and talked with him themselves.
ILLUST> We want to do everything that we can to help you with that this year. Let’s talk about a few of the options that are in front of us. First, we already mentioned it. Download the YouVersion app, commit to finding a version of the Bible that is easy to read and start a reading plan for yourself. Second, we teach the Bible every week in this place. We do not decide what we want to say and then find a verse or two to add to it. We start with the Bible. It drives the message every single week. We’ve said that nothing changes when we decide to change, things begin to change when we commit to change. So commit to being here more often than not. Third, commit to attending Trailhead, Incline, and Summit here at DCC. You can attend Trailhead today or next Sunday and Incline will launch in February. In Incline you are going to be exposed to what the Bible is, what translation is best to use, how to study it, and how to know what to believe, why communion, worship, prayer, and baptism are so important, and who Jesus really is. We are going to spend 2 -4 week sessions helping make the Bible, this book that can be a real mystery, come alive for you. Last, a pastor friend and former seminary professor just released a book called Core 52. It’s a 15 minute daily guide to build your Bible IQ in a year. One key Bible verse a week for 52 weeks. 52 key verses in your life with God. We will have some at the store soon or you can hit Amazon if you want to go ahead and get started. There are all kinds of ways for us to build our core, learn to renew our minds, to love God more with our minds in 2020.
There is no substitute for spending time in this story. It’s different than every other ancient creation story out there. In all of the rest people are slaves to the gods. In the Bible, we are made in the image of God himself. We are all sons and daughters, kings and queens, created not to be slaves, but because what this huge creator God desires more than anything else on earth is to have a deep love relationship with us. We see his heart every step of the way as we walk through the story, in everything He’s made, in everything He says, in everything He’s done. Nothing we have ever done or can or will ever do will ever separate us from his love. Yes, He is beyond our ability to completely comprehend and understand, but this part of story is crystal clear, through all of our failures and pride He never stops chasing our hearts. He never, ever, ever stops pursuing us. He created the world with the end in mind, with you and me in mind. There is no substitute for spending time in this story. I am hoping that a part of our commitment to build our core this year will be to do just that. Let me pray for us.
