Slide 1
“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Romans 12:2

Slide 2
“The full Gospel is this: Jesus came in flesh, died on the cross, and rose from the dead so that your sins could be forgiven and you could spend eternity in heaven.”

Slide 3
“Kenneth Peters, the principal of Beverly Hills High School, announced today that the entire high school faculty will travel to Sacramento next Thursday for a colloquium in new teaching methods. Among the speakers will be anthropologist Margaret mead, college president Dr. Robert Maynard Hutchins, and California governor Edmund ‘Pat’ Brown.”

Slide 4
“Margaret Mead, college president Dr. Robert Hutchins and California governor Pat Brown……”

Slide 5
“Next Thursday, the high school faculty will…”

Slide 6
“There will be no class on Thursday.”

Slide 7
“Jesus lived a perfect life, died on a cross and rose from the dead to forgive us our sins and make a way for us to live with him in heaven.”

Slide 8
“If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” Matthew 27:40

Slide 9
– Crowd: “Prove you’re superior by doing what’s best for you.”
– Jesus proved he was superior by doing what’s best for US

Slide 10
Jesus died so that we would all live as he lived—not for our own selfish interests but to advance the Kingdom of God

Slide 11
“And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.”
2 Corinthians 5:15

Slide 12
– Christ didn’t die so you could go to heaven; he died so that you would bring heaven to earth
– Life isn’t about obtaining personal comfort in eternity
– Life is about fulfilling your divine mission on earth

Slide 13
Golgotha
Headline: Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead
Lead: Jesus died so that we would all live as he lived
Point: God is putting the world to rights through the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus and has sent his Holy Spirit to empower us to remake the world, inviting us to participate in building his new kingdom

Slide 14
Luke 9:6:
“So they [Jesus’ disciples] set out and went from village to village, preaching the gospel and healing people everywhere.”

Slide 15
Luke 9:2: “[Jesus] sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick….”

Slide 16
Jesus didn’t die just so that your life would be saved; he died so that your life would be invested.

Slide 17
Titus 2:9-10
Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them, and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted…..

Slide 18
Titus 2:9-10
Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them, and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.

Slide 19
The Gospel is about salvation (John 3:16)
The Gospel is about service (Matt. 6:33; 2 Cor. 5:15)

Slide 20
“Endure hardship…discharge all the duties of your ministry.” (2 Tim. 4:5)

Slide 21
“Because you made vows before God. Because you want your kids to have an intact home. Because God is using even your wife’s tiresome aspects to help you grow. You have been digging deeper into your faith in part because of the way you’re being mistreated. This doesn’t make it easy, but it makes it worthwhile.”

Slide 22
If you live primarily for yourself you are not living the Christian life.

Slide 23
William Law: “If you abuse this great calling, you are not false in a small matter, but you abuse the precious blood of Christ; you crucify the Son of God afresh; you neglect the highest instances of divine goodness; you disgrace the church of God; you blemish the body of Christ; you abuse the means of grace and the promises of glory…”

Slide 24
“There is nothing more to be dreaded than the neglect of our Christian calling which is not to serve the little uses of a short life, but to redeem souls unto God, to fill heaven with Saints, and finish a kingdom of eternal glory unto God.”

Slide 25
And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
2 Corinthians 5:15

I thank you for joining us this morning. I also wanna welcome those who are joining us online. Could we begin with the word of prayer? Please. Father, you know, as we have talked before this, I just pray that you would choose that remnant, Lord, that you would plant your word deep into their hearts. Maybe young person, their teens or twenties, maybe middle aged floundering, maybe a senior, and you want them to rethink retirement. Lord, whoever you’ve set apart to particularly hear this word, I pray your spirit would do his work. Be our counselor, our teacher, and our guide. Pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen. I grew up hearing a lot of lies that everybody believed because everybody said it, but now we know decades later they were lies. Maybe you heard some of them. How many heard this growing up that margarine is better for you than butter?

That’s was, was gospel truth. I remember my mom buying this plastic thing that said, I can’t believe it’s not butter for the record. I could, and nutrition scientists would now say it wasn’t even as close as healthy as butter might be, or this one, you have to wear a hat because you lose most of your body temperature through your head. But it’s, it’s not true. There’s nothing special about your head any more than hands or whatnot. It’s great to wear a hat, but you’re not gonna lose more body temperature through that than any other part of your body. Or this one that really frustrated me when I was a young boy. You have to wait an hour after eating to go swimming. We all heard that, right? Or you’d get cramps. The thinking was that when you eat, your blood flow goes to your digestive system, which deprives your extremities.

So if you go out swimming right away, you might get cramps and end up drowning. Mayo Clinic says that’s foolishness. There’s no medical science behind that at all. Or this one. How many of you heard if you crack your knuckles, it causes arthritis? Remember that cracking your knuckles does not cause arthritis might cause a divorce. I kind of think it might be a disgruntled spouse trying to get their spouse to stop, but it won’t cause arthritis. Now, these are relatively harmless. We probably didn’t eat that much margarine. It’s not a bad idea to put on a hat. And so you missed a few hours of swimming. That’s not a big deal. But this morning I wanna talk about spiritual lives that can be devastating to our spiritual health. That if we believe them, they can change the course of our lives and help us miss the purpose of life.

Spiritual rebirth. What it means to become a Christian is so dramatic. It’s total. It should change everything about us, what we love, what we value, what we pursue, what we give our hearts to. But as a pastor, I’ve seen too many people who are spiritually reborn. They get wet in baptism, but they’re not mentally reborn. They’re not thinking through what does this mean for my life, for my purpose, for what I believe in, what I put up with. And Paul warns about why we must resist the lies of our age. In Romans chapter 12, verse two when he says this, do not conform to the pattern of this world. Now that word world is Aon in Greek, it could also be translated age, which I think is true because every generation just think through the past generations. Every generation has an agenda for us. And it’s not to grow closer to God.

It’s not to seek first his kingdom. And and every generation says, this is what you will believe in. This is what you will value, this is what you will prioritize. And the image Paul gives us is that if we don’t push back mentally, we’re gonna be shaped into the mold of this world. We’re gonna live the life that this world wants us to live. Paul says, that’s a tragedy. Don’t let this happen. And so how do we fight back? He says, we are transformed by the renewing of our minds. We have to think through these lies, see that they’re lies and embrace something entirely different. That’s why I wrote the book called The Life You Were Reborn to Live, dismantling 12 lies that Rob Your Intimacy with God, the the Christian Light isn’t just about the mind, but what we believe unlocks what we practice.

And if you believe a lie, you will live a lie. And we’re to be people of the truth. We are reborn to live an entirely new way of life, live according to the truth. Now I, I’m not gonna go through 12 lies. I pretty much believe that the best sermons make one point. And so I wanna deal with one very common lie. But frankly, I heard in the church growing up, and it’s this, the full gospel is this. Jesus came in the flesh, died on the cross and rose from the dead so that your sins could be forgiven and you could spend eternity in heaven. Like how? How? How was that a lie? Well, let me stress. Every word of that is true, but it’s not complete. And that means it’s misleading. It’s what I call a self-centered salvation. The gospel does begin with salvation, but it doesn’t end there.

And sometimes facts can mislead if we don’t know the full context. Here’s an example. Back when the Soviet Union was a thing, they had a state newspaper called Pravda. And it was infamous for the way it made every news story look like Communism is best and capitalism is worse. And they’re always in competition with the west. Here’s the classic headline from Pravda. Soviet runner finishes. Second American runner is third from last. There were three runners in this race. What does that mean? What is third from last when there’s three runners, the American won the race. And that’s sort of the joke here, that you got the facts technically true, but outside of the context and the point, it’s misleading as to what would happen. Spiritual fulfillment and Christian obedience depend in large part on us not just understanding the facts of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

But the point, what does that mean? How does that impact us Journalism students have to learn, one of the most important things is how to write a strong lead. The lead is the first sentence in an article. And the reason they wanna stress the good lead is because nobody cares about the facts. If they’re not reading the rest, if the lead doesn’t grab your attention, if it doesn’t tell you why you should care you, you probably just won’t read the article. And so journalism is about starting with the strong lead when professor was trying to teach this to his students. So he gave him a series of facts and the assignment was, okay, I want you to go ahead and write the article here. Here are the lead. Here’s the facts, here are the facts. Kenneth Peters, the principal of Beverly Hills High School, announced today that the entire high school faculty will travel to Sacramento next Thursday for a colloquium in new teaching methods.

Among the speakers will be anthropologist Margaret Mead, college President, Dr. Robert Maynard Hutchins, and California Governor Edmund Pat Brown and Simon is all right, those are the facts. Go write The lead. First student suggested this Margaret Mead, college president Dr. Robert Hutchins and California governor Pat Brown. He goes, ah. He goes, that’s not the lead. The second student tried next Thursday, the high school faculty will. He goes, no. He cuts ’em off. And student after student is trying to take these facts and write the lead. Everyone got it wrong until the professor said, all right, I’m gonna tell you this is the lead. There will be no class on Thursday <laugh>. It’s the whole point. The student, if the teachers are gonna be gone, there’re gonna be no class. If there’s no class, you don’t have to attend. Now we need to know what the lead is on Golgotha.

If we miss the lead on gha, why the facts matter. We miss everything. There’s things we can debate and get wrong. You, you might be wrong about who wrote the first five books of the Old Testament. All right, you, you might be wrong about whether Moses’ flood was local or universal. But if we’re wrong about glg, Gotha, everything else about the Christian life will collapse. And Jesus demonstrates for us what the lead is about. His death when he was in the process of dying, picture Jesus on the cross, his arms stretched out. He is being tortured. It is agony beyond belief and the spiritual travail feeling like his heavenly Father has forsaken him, having the weight of the world sins put on his shoulder. If ever anybody would want out of that situation to get off of that, cross it, it would be him. In fact, he’d even prayed that he didn’t have to go through with it.

And while he’s doing this amazing work, the crowd is jeering. Adam, we read in Matthew 27 40, if you are the son of God, come down from the cross. Now I, I don’t mean to get sexist here. I think this could be true of women in general, but guys, you’ll get this. This shows such divine restraint. If I know I can do something and somebody says, oh, I bet you can’t, don’t you wanna do it just to show ’em? I could imagine being up there, oh wait till they see this and you jump down ’cause you could and just to see their faces. Oh yeah, in your face you think I can’t. Here I am. Because the crowd’s view was if he could come down from the cross, he would. Why would anybody stay up there if they didn’t have to? But Jesus stayed up there because he was the son of God.

It was proof of who he was not canceling out. See, the old way of thinking is why would you do something that hurts you, prove you’re superior by doing what’s best for you? Jesus proved he was superior by doing what’s best for us. He lived by a whole different line of thinking and through that we can understand the lead of why he stayed on the cross. Here’s the lead. Jesus died so that we would all live as he lived. Not for our own selfish interests, what we think is immediately best for us, but to advance the kingdom of God. Now, who am I? I can imagine anybody online or in here saying, well who are you to write that lead? I’m not sure I’d buy that and I get that. That’s fair. But I didn’t actually write that lead. I’m quoting the apostle Paul, much wiser than me writing by inspiration.

And he said in two Corinthians five 15 that this is the lead of gha. Let’s see this two Corinthians five 15 and he died for all. What’s the next word that, what does that mean? Because this is why he died. That those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. So the point is that God is putting the world through rights and Jesus died on the cross so that we could be forgiven and so that he could send his Holy Spirit and with the Holy Spirit empowering us, we would be doing what Jesus did, living for the glory of the kingdom of God. That’s the full gospel. Christ didn’t die just so you could go to heaven. He died so that you would help bring heaven to earth. It changes the way you look at your life because life isn’t about obtaining personal comfort in eternity.

That’s the self-centered view of salvation. It’s all about trying not to lose my salvation, trying to make it into heaven. But life isn’t about obtaining personal comfort in eternity That’s done by Jesus. We don’t have to worry about that. Life is about fulfilling your divine mission on earth. So if we put it all together, the headline of Gha, Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead. The lead Jesus died so that we would all live as he lived. And the point God’s putting the worlds to right through the sacrifice of Jesus, sending his Holy Spirit we’re forgiven and then enlisted to do his work. Now if you grew up as I did thinking that the full gospel is this, Jesus lived a perfect life, died on the cross, rose from the dead so that our sins could be forgiven and we would live with him in eternity in heaven.

If that’s the full gospel, what do we do with Luke chapter nine, verse six. Look at this. So they the disciples set out and went from village to village. What’s the next phrase? Preaching the gospel and healing people everywhere it goes without saying, Jesus hadn’t died yet Jesus didn’t raise from the dead yet, but they’re preaching the gospel. So what’s the gospel that they’re preaching? Well, four verses earlier gives us a clue. Luke nine, two. Jesus sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick. The gospel for them was a new world has come. God is breaking into this world in a new fresh way. We can be empowered. We can be forgiven. Look at the evidences of God breaking into not just preparing eternity but breaking into now, breaking into history so that we no longer live the small petty lives about ourselves. Now we are sold out to live for him.

See, people have restricted the gospel to God will save you. But Paul talks about a gospel that would be described as God will enlist you. Now they’re both will are true, God will save you. But the point of that is so that God will enlist you if it’s just God will save you. All you say is Christ died for us again. True. But God will enlist you, means we live for God. Christ died for us and we live for God. A full gospel preaches both. The gospel does begin with salvation. It just doesn’t end there. There’s a theological term called election and theologians will think this is obscene the way I’m making it in an analogy so earthly, but I think it’s helpful. I wanna look at election as the NFL draft. Big fan of football. And every year they have the draft and they’re choosing players not just to be on the team and not just to wear the uniform, but to play a particular position.

In 2025, the Broncos drafted Jeremy Crawshaw. Here’s a picture of Jeremy when he was playing for the Florida Gators. Okay, I want you just to look at his legs. How many think he was drafted to play on the offensive line? Anybody who knows anything about football knows no chance he would be run over by a defensive lineman. It would be a very long day for Bo Nicks if he was trying to stop a defensive lineman. He was drafted to be a punter. In 2024, the Broncos drafted Nick Gargiulo. Here’s a picture of Nick again. If you know football, how many think he was drafted to be a cornerback? Not a chance. Every wide receiver in this league would get behind him. The opponents would score 20 touchdowns a game. He was drafted to be an offensive lineman. Now he’s been injured, hasn’t played a lot, but they’re really thinking he’s gonna be a very valuable member of the Broncos and they keep him around because he’s gonna be a good offensive lineman.

Now the same thing. God elected you when you became a Christian. He didn’t just save you. He drafted you. He created you with a purpose for his kingdom. It’s not just to put on the uniform. I’m a Christian now, is not to sit on the bench and cash a check. Get into heaven. God has a position for you to play. You never understand your Christian life. It’s not just about your salvation, it’s about the position you’re called to play. Jesus didn’t die just so that your life would be saved. He died so that your life would be invested. You see the difference? The reality is the Christian life is far more radical than most contemporary Christians will believe it. It really is. It is all about the kingdom, not exclusively about us. And the apostle Paul got this. I think one of the reasons he got it went well.

He saw Jesus on the Damascus road, but two, he was brought up to the third heaven. What does that mean? He got to see a picture of eternity and and and being caught up and seeing how everything ends. So entrance, Paul, that he’s thinking these small little battles we fight don’t mean anything. They’re petty. It’s a waste of life. We wanna live for this kingdom. This is so glorious, this is so incredible. This is worth giving our lives to. It’s why Paul would give up being the persecutor and becoming the persecuted because he realized it doesn’t count when you think of the glory that we are called to. And because of that, if we don’t get Paul’s kingdom focus, some people they hate the writings of Paul because he doesn’t put individual rights and comfort. First, lemme give one of the biggest examples. This is where Paul really gets even hated by some Titus nine, Titus two rather nine through 10.

You’ll look a long time if you’re looking for Titus nine. All right, Titus two, nine through 10 Paul says, says, teach slaves to be subject to their masters. I can’t believe, Garrett, you’re going there. Yes, the New Testament is inspired. I’m not ashamed of any of God’s servant’s words. Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything. To try to please them not to talk back to them and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted and just really bother. Some contemporary Christians gonna say, why doesn’t Paul try to tell him to rebel? Well, they would be killed if they did. There’s no chance in the first century that they’re gonna overturn that social order. Secondly, it’s important to point Paul’s not talking about chattel slavery, the abominable race-based slavery that we have in this country. And and third, when Paul wrote to Philemon about his slave Onesimus, Paul made it very clear, Hey, Onesimus is your brother in the Lord.

He’s not your slave. He taught an ethic that said it is totally reprehensible that any Christian would think they could own another Christian. And Paul’s method, his goal was that everybody would become a Christian and there would be no slaves because a Christian won’t participate in slavery. So Paul is very clear. He taught an ethic that undercut slavery. The New Testament does not support slavery. It’s a subversive message to empty it out. But as he writes this, he explains why he tells those that still must participate in slavery, why they act this way and here’s why they do. Here’s the second part of that that is so key so that again, you have the that because in every way they will make the teaching about God. Our savior attractive. Paul was bold enough to say something matters more than our comfort, our happiness, and even our freedom.

The kingdom of God. Whatever situation I find myself in, how do I make the kingdom of God sound more attractive? Because that’s more important than me and my own comfort. And you’ll never understand Paul, if you don’t get this kingdom focus. Everything he wrote about marriage and gender roles and parenting and lawsuits and church life and your slavery, it all falls under that rubric. And if we wanna understand Paul, we have to realize that a brilliant life, a brilliant church marries salvation and service. Some churches say No, the gospel is only about salvation. No, it’s about service. No, it’s about salvation. It’s about service. And here’s the challenge. They all have verses to make their case. You wanna say the gospel is just about salvation. Read John three 16 pretty clear. But if you wanna say the gospel is just about service, read Matthew 6 33.

Seek first the kingdom of God. Read second Corinthians five 15, which we have all ready. Red. The full gospel is both service won’t save us, but salvation leads to service. And why do we stress this? Here’s the application. If you are a son or daughter of God, there will be a time in your life you are led to endure something. You put up with something. It is painful and it hurts. And there may be well-meaning people around you saying you need to come down from that cross. It’s not good for you to be up on that cross. This is painful. That can’t be God’s will for you. He wants you to be happy. Come down from that cross. You don’t have to put up with this.

I talked with a doctor I studied at John Hopkins. So she graduated with hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical debt. She loved being a doctor. She believed God created her to be a doctor, but she was just kind of unloading about the stresses that she faces. She’s in a practice that that wants her to see like 30 patients a day and it drives her crazy. She’d like to give more individual care. Half the patients who come to see her already have di diagnosed themselves online. They’ve gone on WebMD. They know what they have and they think she’s just sold out to this. Why don’t you just gimme this supplement? This is what will make me. Well, she deals with the regular drug addicts who know what symptoms to present so that she’ll prescribe them opioids. And when she sees through, they can get angry and even violent. She lives under the constant threat of one star Yelp reviews or malpractice lawsuits. She’s got such a good heart. She volunteers several weeks a year in Africa providing medical services for free. And yet she reads the articles that attacking her saying You just have a white savior complex.

Everything she does gets questioned and called out and she’s attacked. And she says, Gary, I love practicing the medicine. It’s what God called me to do. But I’m tired of this. I can’t stand that. I don’t wanna live in this. And and it’s good to to vent and I can empathize. But sometimes as a pastor you, you have to point toward the other scriptures. I said, I get this. But if this is what God has called you to do, the verse I wanna leave you with is what Paul said to Timothy in two Timothy four, five Timothy, endure hardship, discharge all the duties of your ministry. Paul warn Timothy, furniture’s gonna fly. You’ll be persecuted, you’ll be hungry, you’ll be attacked. You’ll be questioned to me. Don’t you dare come down from that cross. Your calling is to endure the hardship and to discharge all the duties of your ministry.

This week is texting with a good friend of mine. He works for a company that isn’t the best. It’s a tough company. They don’t always make the right choices. And he said, Gary, to me, working here feels like Babylon and it’s getting darker. By the day I struggled to be more like Joseph held in captivity, but being a light in the midst of it all. And I had to tell him, look, I know why it feels like it’s Babylon because it kind of is. There’s some dark things going on there. But if God has called you to this, I said, I admire your courage and I admire your perseverance. And I’m saying businessmen or businesswoman endure the hardship. Discharge all the duties of your ministry. ’cause I’ve spent most of my life working in marriage ministry. I hear all the time when there’s one spouse trying to keep the marriage together and their heart is breaking as they feel like it’s impossible for them to do it. And years ago, a husband with his wife divorcing him, felt like he was the only one fighting for his marriage and to keep his family together because he was. And you keep doing that and you decide to do it and there’s another slap in the face and another disappointment. And he finally vents a little bit and he just sends me a text, Gary, why am I fighting for this marriage? Nothing is ever good enough for her.

And I texted this back, why he’s fighting for his marriage. I said, because of this, because you made vows before God because you want your kids to have an intact home because God is using even your wife’s tiresome aspects to help you grow. You’ve been digging deeper into your faith in part because of the way you’re being mistreated. This doesn’t make it easy, but it does make it worthwhile. I know you feel like you’re alone, but husband, sometimes you have to endure the hardship. You have to discharge all the duties of your ministry as a still husband and as a father. Now let me stress, there may come a time when God calls you to leave a dark place. If your soul is being destroyed in a company, if it is truly doing evil, there may be a time where God says, I want you out of there.

And and even working with marriages, I have helped some women as the pastor on the end, affect safe separations when there’s abuse in the marriage. You gotta be careful. You work with an experienced counselor because if a husband’s been physically abusive, your wife talks about leaving. He can escalate it at that point. It’s a tricky thing. And this church supports women getting into safe places. I had a husband screaming at me. He had been unfaithful to his wife for 11 of the 12 years. Multiply unfaithful. He says, A pastor, you have to demand that she stay. He said, I can’t take away what Jesus gave to her. Those are cases where this church will stand behind and help people heal and go to a safe, healthy place. But you know what that phrase come down from this cross, there are so many marriages that have been broken up because somebody, they’re not using those words come down from the cross.

There. There are women or men who hear from friends, from relatives, sometimes from counselors. You can do better. Listen, come down from the cross. There are biblical reasons to end the marriage. You can do better is not one of them. See, without this understanding of the gospel, if it hurts, it must stop. That’s what I think. And yet Jesus says, take up your cross. What daily and come follow me. That doesn’t mean you always stay in a painful situation. It does mean you don’t leave just because it’s painful. It does mean that the gospel is not just about waiting for heaven. And I’ve had people excuse what they’re doing. Well, I know it might not be right. I know God may not like what I’m doing, but he’s gonna forgive me. I’m still gonna go to heaven. So I’m still going to do this. But someone who understands the lead of gha says, no, because I belong to God. I will bear this cross. I’m gonna say something. It it, it might seem harsh, but it’s true.

If you live primarily for yourself, you’re not living the Christian life. I’m not saying you’re not a Christian. God knows that that’s between you and God. But you’re not living the fullness of the Christian life that God has called us to. You’ve been called to something far bigger and more glorious and wonderful than, than a little kingdom. Whether it’s your own kingdom of acquiring wealth or happiness or the happiest family on earth or your own pleasure or reputation, we were called to seek first the kingdom of God, Matthew 6 33, and to know the facts about gha but not live the truth about gha. It’s one of the greatest tragedies of all time. It’s Christians that don’t get the point. William law attacked this 300 years ago when he said this. If you abuse this great calling, he’s talking about not just salvation, but God’s call on our life.

If we ignore that, if we abuse it. He says, you are not false in a small matter, but you abuse the precious blood of Christ. You crucify the son of God afresh. You neglect the highest instances of divine goodness. You disgrace the church of God. You blemish the body of Christ. You abuse the means of grace and the promises of glory. And then he adds the paragraph I really want you to hear. There is nothing more to be dreaded than the neglect of our Christian calling, which is not to serve the little uses of a short life, but to redeem souls unto God to fill heaven with saints and finish a kingdom of eternal glory unto God. Now listen, Jesus didn’t go through the travail on the cross spiritually and physically. He didn’t endure all of that on GLG Gotha, just so that we go to church an hour a week and give a little bit of a money to God.

That is such an obscene view of the gospel. It is atrocious. Jesus wouldn’t give up all of that for so little. He claims all of us, our passion, our money, our time. I, I’m not suggesting that means we all go into full-time ministry. I I’m saying the opposite. I talk about a doctor, I talk about a businessman. I talk about a husband. Paul said, discharge all the duties of your ministry. Whether you’re a coach, a stay at home mom, a first responder. It’s what does this mean to build God’s kingdom instead of my own? The gospel begins, but it doesn’t end with the personal forgiveness of our sins. If we believe in a self-centered salvation, it’s all about saying Jesus’s Lord, so that my sins are forgiven and I can wait for heaven. We’ll waste our whole lives. We’ll miss the point of what God calls us to do. So as we’re wrapping this up, I’m gonna ask for a favor. I know people don’t always like to do this, but would you please just close your eyes? I want this to be a time where God can speak to you individually.

Very likely there’s something in your life that hurts and you want it to stop. And I get why you do. And there may be people whispering in your ear. You gotta come down from that cross. This can’t be God’s will for you. It’s okay to ask God to let you come down from the cross. But what if you hear God saying right now through the Apostle Paul that for this season his will is that you endure hardship and that you discharge all the duties of your ministry. Are you going to come down because it hurts or only because God says, now is the time to come down. Second, what are you living for your kingdom or god’s? What is your passion? What are you investing in? What gets you excited? Is it all about just add a little bit of salvation and weight? Or do you live to seek first the kingdom of God? Are you living the little uses of a short life or are you trying to finish a kingdom of eternal glory unto God? You can open your eyes. I believe you were reborn to live the best life years ago. Young people would talk about fomo, the fear of missing out. This is the biggest FOMO in the history of fomo. What I don’t wanna hear is when I see Jesus face to face, as you’ll see Jesus face to face as everybody watching online will see Jesus face to face. At one moment. I don’t wanna hear Gary, Gary. Gary

Spent your entire life fighting for things that don’t really matter and you miss the one thing that does well. I believe I’ll still be forgiven. I don’t wanna enter eternity knowing that I have wasted the one life on earth that God gives me.

You know the facts about gha, do you get the point? And my prayer this morning with the Lord, right before church was that God would call a remnant. Between two and 3000 adults will come in here and and and watch online today and say, God, would you just give 10%? Where maybe a young person says, I gotta redirect the rest of my life. And they have 40 years to do this. A middle-aged couple that’s floundering ’cause they’re trying to find satisfaction living for selfish ends and it’s not working. Somebody in retirement that thinks I can just coast well, no. Maybe God is calling me to something else. And it’s why I wrote the book and I know I’m embarrassed. It’s such a megachurch thing that a pastor is selling a book and whatnot. I just wanna make it clear we’re selling it half price and then all the proceeds of the sales today go to greater things.

And if you can’t afford it, ask my wife for the friends and family rate that’s free. Look, I’ve been here three and a half years. You are not customers to us. You are brothers and sisters in Christ. If you think this will help you, we want you to have it. And this is just one of those 11 lies. So let’s read Paul’s word together. This is the point of gha. Would you please read it with me? Two Corinthians five 15 And he died for all that. Those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and was raised again.