Sermons tagged with Influence

Good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks so much for making grace a part of your Sunday. This morning, as we were getting ready for the service, I looked at the chairs and I went, it's the summer months, crowds are going to start to dwindle. I don't want people to show up in the room to feel cavernous. So I took a chair off of the end of each row. Yeah. And then I was talking with Shane and Phil, who've been here longer than me. And they said, hey, next week, maybe leave all the chairs in there. And I said, yeah, I'm going to consult with you two before making any more rash decisions about this. So I'm as surprised as you are that it's crowded here. And my standard joke is if you had a hard time finding a parking space, or if you had to make your own, you know what time it starts. So that doesn't feel like it's my problem. Welcome to Grace. Several years ago, I was at my previous church. And at that church I served essentially as an associate pastor, but one of my roles was to serve as the family pastor. Hang on, this is driving me nuts. I was not the IT guy, just the family pastor. One of my roles was to serve as a family pastor and in a larger church staff, it was a larger church at the time, the family pastor oversees the children's ministry and the student ministry and the people who run those ministries. So in that capacity, I had a guy that worked for me named Alan. He was a youth pastor. And Alan, it was getting to be the summertime, and we told him that he could hire some interns for that summer. And one of the guys he hired was a kid named Aaron. And I don't really know. Aaron was young, in his early 20s. I don't really know how he found the church. I think he just kind of started coming and volunteered and wanted to get involved in the youth ministry program. And Alan wanted to hire him as an intern. And so I heard that he got hired. And so I kind of went and met Aaron. And he was one of these guys that just immediately upon meeting him, I thought to myself, I don't like this dude. I like this guy. I don't like him. I don't like the way he chooses to present himself to the world. I like the way he looks. I like the way he talks. I'm not going to describe any of those things, lest I offend some of you. But the biggest thing I didn't like about this guy that rubbed me the wrong way was that everything he did, everything he did, he may as well have worn a t-shirt every day that said, please like me. And he was one of these people that had gotten involved in youth ministry because in my estimation, he had never been around people that liked him a lot. And he thought, well, then I'll shoot fish in a barrel. I can win middle schoolers over and get them to like me. So it was like he was in ministry as his own personal ego project to make himself feel better about himself. So he wanted to be cool. He was never cool. So I'll go into youth ministry so kids will like me and I'll feel cool. And I'll be honest with you. I've been at this a while. It takes one to know one. Early on, I had to repent of that same attitude of I just want to be respected and I want people to like me. And I think a dirty little secret of being in professional ministry and all I did is go pro with my faith. Okay. That's all I did. We're all supposed to be ministering. We're all supposed to be Jesus's ambassadors. I just decided I'm going to take my talents to the professional level and get paid for this. Okay. But everybody's supposed to do the same thing. And a lot of the people who get into ministry early on, it's an ego project. I want to feel important and respected, and God sanctifies that and massages that out of us. So hopefully we can minister out of a gentle and contrite spirit and a humble heart and genuinely want to usher people towards Jesus and towards his kingdom. But what I sensed in this guy, Aaron, was that he was off the charts, look at me, like me guy. And I thought it was gross and I didn't like it. And I went to Alan and I said, dude, I said, I like that guy. It doesn't need to be around youth ministry. Nothing nefarious was going on. I didn't suspect anything nefarious. I just suspected that his motives for ministering were wrong. And I didn't want that around our ministry. That's not why we get involved in what we're doing. I was like, I don't like him, not comfortable with him. You need to get rid of him. And he kept defending him, but all summer long, he was just one of these guys that immediately when I met him, I didn't like him. And it makes me wonder if when I start talking about people that you just don't like, if any of you can think of somebody right now that you just don't like. And I would ask you, besides the older gentleman that greets at the front door, Ron Torrance, that's mine that I'm thinking of right now. So y'all aren't allowed to pick Ron, you have to pick somebody else. I think everybody in this room has somebody they can think of when I say, who's somebody that you just don't like? And now maybe immediately our minds will go to celebrities or people that we've never met, but we've seen in different medias and we just don't like them. I'm not talking about them this morning, although that is an ancillary application of this. I'm talking about people in your life that you know that you don't like. Now, some of us are like Kyle. This morning, I asked Kyle for some sermon research before the service. Hey, man, can you think of anybody that you just don't like? And he was like, I'm sure if you gave me a minute, I could come up with somebody, but no. And then there's other people I talked to this morning were out of nowhere. I was like, hey, don't you know so-and-so? And he says, he's a good buddy of mine, and he says to me, yeah, I do know him. You would not like this guy. I can't stand him. So there's people on different, and I said, you're going to like the sermon this morning, dude. There's people on different ends of the spectrum, but no matter where you sit on that spectrum, we can all think of people that we've met in our life that we don't particularly care for. Sometimes very justified, sometimes small, silly reasons. I don't like their attitude, whatever it is. I don't like the cut of their jib. Whatever it might be, we have people that we don't like. And because that's a reality of life, because the reality of life is from time to time, we will meet people, we will be surrounded with people, we will be in close contact with people that we don't particularly care for. A co-worker from time to time, our spouse, our parents can rub us the wrong way sometimes, our children can rub us the wrong way sometimes. But there are people, those people we kind of bring back into the fold because we need to, but there's some people that we will just write off. Like, I just don't like that person. Don't want to deal with that person. A neighbor that is your mortal enemy, whatever might be going on in your life, we have those people that we simply don't care for. And a question that has come up often in my life as a Christian is kind of this theoretical question, is it okay as a Christian to not like someone? Is that all right? And so that's really the opening question of the day. There will be some people you simply don't like, but is that okay? There will be some people that you simply don't like, but is that, as a Christian, is that okay? Now this comes in the middle of a series, or This is actually the last part of the series called In Light Of. We've been going through Romans since February. We went through the first eight chapters, which meticulously build a case for humanity's need for Jesus. And then there's the culmination of those chapters in Romans 8, where we do need Jesus very much, and then promises are made to us that nothing can ever separate us from his love. And in light of this wonderful truth that Jesus accepts us, loves for us, paved a way for us to spend eternity in relationship with Almighty God, how should we then live our lives? So every week we've been looking at a different chapter in Romans 9 through now 15. In light of that truth, how should we live our lives? And so this week we come to Romans 15, and I believe it asks this question, or at least it answers this question, one that we deal with from time to time. As Christians, is it okay for us to have people that we simply don't like? Now, if you're here this morning and you're not a Christian, thank you so much for being here. And I have good news for you. I'm not preaching to you this morning. If you're not a believer this morning, you are free to not like whoever you want. You do not have to hold yourself to the standards of this. But if you're a Christian, that may not be our answer. So to that question and to the unavoidable reality that from time to time there are people in our life that we simply don't like, is this okay? Are we allowed to do that? Paul writes this, Romans 15, verses 5 through 7. May God, who gives endurance and encouragement, give you the same attitude of mind towards each other that Christ Jesus had, so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 7. Accept one another then, just as like people? And sometimes it's for very justifiable reasons. But as we approach Scripture and say, is it ever okay for a Christian to simply not like someone? This is the instruction. Accept others as Christ accepted you. What does he say in verse 5? He wants to give you the same attitude of mind towards each other as Christ has towards you. So in two different ways, when we ask the question, is it okay to have people in my life I simply don't like? And I want to be very clear here. Obviously, obviously, we're not asking the question, can I be openly mean to them? I don't like them. Therefore, I feel like it's my right to ridicule them and belittle them in the workplace until they quit in shame. We're not preaching against that. I'm going to assume you know that. If you don't know that, there's a great fourth and fifth grade class right over there that might be on your level. Obviously, we know it's not good to ridicule people, to treat them poorly because we simply don't like them. Hopefully, we are of an elevated morality and sense of character that even when we don't prefer somebody, even when we don't like somebody, we find it within the magnanimity of our generous character and spirit to be nice to them from time to time. We have probably executed that. That's how we get around in society, is we learn to at least be cordial to people, even if we don't prefer them. And we tend to think as Christians that this is an okay model. As long as I'm not a jerk, then I'm fine. But that's not what Romans says. What Romans says is we should have the same mind towards others that Jesus has towards us. That we should accept others as Jesus accepts us. Which is different than if you just don't like somebody, try to be nice to them. No, no, no. We should think of them as Jesus thinks of us. So let me ask you this. How do you think Jesus accepts others? Do you think that Jesus is in heaven? And when some cranky old lady dies, he looks at Paul and he's like, Paul, I can't think of a name that's not offensive right now. So I'll choose one that is. Karen just died. Paul, you're welcome. Thank you for being the foil for that joke. Paul, look at this. Karen just died. And both Jesus and Paul go, oh, geez, this is going to be a handful in heaven. Do you think there are people that pass away that Jesus is like, I was really hoping that they wouldn't accept me because they were going to be Satan's problem. And now there's eternity with this person. I'm going to talk my ear off. Do you think Jesus does this? Don't you think he likes people? Don't you think he likes you? Do you think that when you get to heaven, you'll be like, Jesus, man, that I could be. I've already given the example of Aaron, and we're going to come back to that story and redeem it a little bit. But you think I'm going to get to heaven and be like, Jesus, like, for real, dude. Aaron, he was the worst, right? And you think Jesus is going to be like, I know, thanks for bearing that burden for me, brother. No, no, obviously Jesus likes everybody. And some of my Bible scholars in the room may go, well, hang on, he didn't seem to like the Pharisees very much. And I'll give you that. He was stern with the Pharisees. But we also see a Jesus that when one of them came to him in John chapter 3 named Nicodemus and wanted to talk with him and ask him more questions, and he asked to meet Jesus at night. Why? So that his Pharisee peers wouldn't see him meeting with Jesus and so bring shame upon his good name. He wanted to meet with Jesus in secret, and Jesus knew that. And what did he do? He didn't say, no, I don't care for you. I don't like your kind. You want to talk to me? You talk to me in the middle of the day in front of everybody. No. He said, all right, let's talk. And he had an open, honest, generous conversation with Nicodemus. Well, he didn't seem to like the Pharisees very much. Okay, well, he was stern with them from time to time. But do you not think that Jesus wanted to see them in his kingdom? Do you not think that Jesus knew who they were inside and out and wanted to see them come to faith and use the influence that they had been given to usher other people into that faith? Do you not think he saw the best in them and wanted the best for them? I think it's a really, really difficult argument to make that Jesus simply doesn't care for some people. That Jesus has an attitude towards people of, you know, I really don't like them very much, but I'm going to be nice to them if they're around. I'm going to try to think positively of them, which should really inform the question for us, am I allowed to simply not like someone? Well, all I know is that we're instructed in Scripture to have the same mind towards others that Jesus has towards them. And we're told to accept people as Jesus accepts them. So let me bring this more personal, if we're still having a difficult time with the concept, and ask you this question. How did and does Christ accept you? This is a really important question. Because you're here this morning, it's a Sunday, most of you woke up and showered, you put on decent clothes, you're presenting yourself. This is an environment in which it is imminently easy to be liked. All you have to do is shake the hands of people who look at you. If someone says good morning, you say good morning back. If someone says, how are you doing? You say, good, I hope you are, or good, how are you doing? It's really easy to put on the facade. Just be nice to everybody, you'll leave likable. It's harder with the people you see every day. It's harder at home. And it's harder for the people who know you the best to like you the most. That's why we love to be fully seen and to be fully known. To be fully seen by your spouse and to be fully known by them is this great picture of love, to really know your kids and know what they're capable of and understand all the ugliness in them and go sweep it aside and love them deeply anyways. And for people to offer you that is exceptional love. And it is very rare for someone to know us deeply and yet still like us. That's what makes friends and spouses so deeply important and meaningful in our life. But even those people who know us the best don't know us completely. They don't know every racist thought we've ever had. They don't know every pretension that we hold. They don't know every time we look down on someone else and so elevate ourselves. They don't know what we really think of that person that posts that thing on Facebook. Even the people who know us the best don't know everything that's happening in us all the time. And the reality is that for most of us, we think and feel pretty confident that if they did, they would not still like us. Jesus knows all of those things. And Jesus likes you, accepts you completely. He knows what's worst about you. He's been with you through the Holy Spirit. His presence has been brought into your lowest moment where no one else was and that you never talk about. And Jesus is excited for you to come to heaven with him. He likes you. So I would ask you again, those people in our lives that we don't like, we're told by Scripture to accept them as Christ accepted us. So how did and does Jesus accept you? And I love thinking about this. Jesus accepted you when you accepted him, knowing everything that you would be and become after that, the good and the bad. And he still likes you. He still wants you around. So that's how we are supposed to accept other people. This is difficult, right? And I know that some of us might go extreme with this. Do you mean that Jesus really likes the terrorists from 9-11, Nate? He really likes them? I believe that Jesus loves them. I believe that Jesus was hurt deeply for them. I believe that Jesus saw impressionable young men that were deceived by evil and led to believe things that were fundamentally untrue to a place where their life was defined by hate, which is the exact opposite of what Jesus wanted for them. So I believe that he grieved for them, that he did love them. Many of us in our life have people who have hurt us deeply. Nate, it's easy for you to say that I'm not allowed to not like somebody, but you don't know what my dad did to me. You don't know what my mom was like. You don't know what my ex-husband did. You don't know what my ex-wife did. You don't know how awful my brother was growing up. You don't know that. I have a right to my disdain. I have a right to my dislike. You probably do. You probably do. All I can tell you is that Paul prays that we will learn to accept them as Christ accepts us. All I can tell you is that Paul tells us that we should have the same mind towards them that Jesus has towards us. Now here's, and I want to say this before I move on. I believe those extreme examples are the exception, not the rule. I believe when I asked you to think of somebody in your life that maybe you just don't care for, that for most of you, that answer was not from some place of deep wounding and hurt. For most of you, it was an answer similar to me. I didn't like this guy. He just rubbed me the wrong way. I never did prefer him. But for both examples, how do we find a path towards that generosity and magnanimity of spirit where we can actually find a way to like people that we don't like? Well, I would like to invite you to learn to ask what I think is a very important question. What are their actions telling me they really need? When I see someone acting in a way that I don't like, what are their actions telling me they really need? When I was looking at Aaron and I immediately decided I didn't like him, not Aaron Gibson, our worship pastor, I still don't like him, but Aaron from the example, the youth intern. And I immediately, I decided I didn't like him. Why did I not like him? I didn't like him because he was trying to get approval from kids and that's not where you should get approval, man. That's not the reason to get in here. So you need to get your fragile ego out of here. I didn't like him because he wanted approval and acceptance. Because he wanted to feel like he was enough. He had never felt before in his life like he was enough. And he didn't, And here's the thing. Everybody wants that. Everybody in this room wants that. Everybody in this room might as well tattoo across their chest or across their forehead, am I enough? We all wonder that. So how could I not like somebody for asking the same question that I do? It's just that some of us figure out how to get that question answered in more socially acceptable ways than he did. But if I would have stopped and just said, what do his actions tell me that he needs and wants? I would have very quickly arrived at, Aaron just wants to be enough. And that's not really something worth condemning him for. Maybe I should show him instead of withhold from him. I've seen clips going around recently about people losing their minds in public places. Groups of people losing their minds in restaurants, yelling at waiters, yelling at owners, throwing things in Chipotle, yada, yada, yada. And it's easy to watch that and be like, those people are completely unlikable. And that's the most mild way I can summarize my thoughts in that moment. We have every right to disdain them and their behavior. But if you ask this question, what do their actions show me that they need or want? What their actions show me is that they want to feel respected. They want to feel like they have some sense of control. They want to feel like their needs are valued like everyone else's. And for whatever reason, something's happened in their life to make them think that nobody cares about them. And so rather than sit back and quietly take it, they're going to be vocal about demanding it. Who among us does not want to feel in control from time to time? Who among us doesn't want to be respected? Who among us is happy with taking a backseat to everyone else if that's the paradigm that we feel like we live with? And so when we ask this question, what do their actions tell me that they need? It gets us to this place of empathy and understanding, which kind of paves the way to liking them. And so I want to ask you this question. What would happen if we chose empathy over disdain? What would happen if we chose empathy over disdain? If when we see somebody that, and we go, I don't like them. I don't like people who vote that way. I don't like people who post that way. I don't like people that agree with that, that are of this political party. I don't like people who whine about this or carry on about this. I don't like high maintenance people. I don't like low maintenance people. I don't like tough people. I don't like weak people. Whatever it might be, the people that we don't like. Stop when we feel ourselves not liking someone. I want you to test this out. For some of you, it's going to happen very quickly. You're going to be leaving the aisle and the person in front of you is going to be going slow and you're going to feel rage well up within you. Why are they moving so slowly? Pause. What are their actions tell me that they need? Time, you jerk. That's what they need. They're old and they need time. And you will be too one day and you will need time. So relax. Next time you feel yourself tempted to not like someone and give in to that, pause. What do their actions tell me that they need? And is what they need really that condemnable? With the people that have hurt us deeply, what do their actions tell me that they need? Some of us, I'm sure, and I don't want to speak too lightly about it, but what we know from research and experience, some people grew up with a dad that was violent. What do those actions show you that he needs? He probably needed a good dad too. He probably didn't have that either. He probably needs to be understood. He probably needs somebody to love him enough to sit him down and say, hey man, this is not the way you should be, but he's never had anybody who loved him enough to say something. I'm not trying to excuse away abusive behavior at all. I'm just saying that there is a way to begin a path towards empathy by asking ourselves, what do their actions tell me that they need? And then beginning to understand what motivates the bad behavior, not defining them by the bad behavior. At the end of Aaron's tenure, he finished being an intern, and he wanted to come on as a youth assistant in a full-time capacity. And I wasn't going to let that happen. And so he asked to meet with me to know why we chose not to hire him. And I told my youth pastor to take the meeting. I didn't want to do anything. No, I'm just messing around. I took the meeting. And leading up to that meeting, I thought to myself, you know, I have to love him enough to tell him the truth. I have to respect him enough as a human to tell him the truth. And we met and he said, why can't I move forward at this church? And I said, and I told him, I said, man, here's what I think. I think that you need to take a break from youth ministry because I don't, I don't think that you're really happy with yourself. And I think that you're in this to try to gain the respect of others, but getting the respect of some students is really not going to make you feel okay about yourself. So I think that you need to get involved in a small group of your peers. You need to let God speak to you. You need to pause and consider whether youth ministry is really the career that you need to take or if you're just doing this for selfish reasons. And once you've reconciled with those things, I think you should move forward with whatever path God gives you. But right now, I think you're trying to get into ministry for the wrong reasons and you're going to end up crashing and burning. And he thanked me. And he went on and he, honestly, he followed my advice. He did what I told him I thought he should do. He took some time off, got involved in another church, met a nice girl, decided ultimately to go back to school to get a Bible degree and to get into ministry. But he called me years later and he said, I just want to thank you for that conversation because you were right. And God did have some work to do on me. Now here's what's really important. That story works out like I'm the hero, but I never tell those stories because I'm not. Here's where I failed him because I let my dislike get in the way. I could have had that conversation with him in May. And I could have been a part of helping rehabilitate him, helping him grow through that. And in September, he didn't have to experience the rejection that I imposed on him because I refused to love him enough to tell him the truth about himself. And because I was a coward, and because I didn't love him enough, I was happy to just sit and dislike instead of asking myself, what do his actions tell me that he needs? And then acting according to that empathy rather than disdain. I withheld from him. And the other way I withheld from him, and this is awful, nobody needs my approval. Nobody cares what I think about them. I'm not here to claim that. But if you just think about the dynamic, here's a young 20-something kid, he's 21 years old. I'm at the time 36 or 36. No, I was 34 or 35. And I had, by all measures, accomplished what he wanted to do with his career. I was what he wanted to be. Now, that's just a position. It's not me personally. It's just the position. We understand the dynamics of someone early in their career, seeing someone that's progressed in their career going, I want to learn from that person. Meaning because of my position, realizing that all he wanted was to be told that he's enough, I could have gone to him and I could have said early on, hey dude, Jesus loves you. You are enough. I think you're going to be great. Here's your challenges to what greatness could look like. Here's where your character may be getting in the way of what God wants to do with you. But I believe that if you're willing to be open about that and move on from them, that God can do some powerful things with you. So you stick by me and we're going to tackle this together. How much better does that look than just simply choosing to not like him for justifiable reasons for the five months that he was in my care? What does choosing to not like him win me? What did I prove to him? What did I prove to myself? What benefit is it to us to have people that we've simply reconciled to ourselves? We're not going to like them. None. But here's the benefit if we do. I'm skipping two points in your notes if you're following along. The last thing is the result. Verse 7, complaining about. The result of refusing to dislike someone, even when it's justifiable, but offering them grace and searching for empathy instead and seeking to understand what their actions tell us that they need and loving them for what motivates them, not judging them for their behaviors. The result of that is that people bring praise to God. The result of that, if we can practice that here, is to create an environment where everyone feels loved and everyone feels accepted and everyone feels like they're part of the church and everyone feels like they're welcome here and everyone wants to be a part of what they are. And because they're so accepted here, they will accept other people. The result of that is not just about grace. It's about the kingdom and the community of God. What if God's children would quit seeing it as an option to simply not like people because we can and we don't want to? But what if the kingdom of God took upon itself to see people with grace and with empathy and to understand what lies behind the behaviors and to love the person that has the same motives we do, to like, to be loved, to be known, to be respected, to be cared for? What if we began to see people for that and how we were instead of seeing them as the world was and looking for reasons and excuses to disdain them? How much more attractive and fragrant would our faith be? How much more praise would be brought to God if we would simply quit letting ourselves dislike people for reasons that ultimately don't matter and start making ourselves ask for God's empathy, for God's acceptance of them, for Jesus's mind towards other people that Jesus has towards other people. What if we started becoming people like that? What if the kingdom of God started offering empathy like that? How much more praise would be brought to the God that we all serve? So let's stop not liking people. Let's knock it off. Let's find paths to empathy so that we can accept everyone with the same mind that Jesus does. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for these seniors that have graduated and are moving into a new phase of life. God, I pray specifically that you would be with each of their moms as they worry here for the next several months, probably in a continued way. Give them your peace of spirit as their children go and step into these new phases. Lord, I pray that we would be a people who like folks the way you do. That we would find paths to empathy and understanding so that we might think the best of them. So that we might love them well as you do. God, where there are roadblocks to this, where there's difficulty there, where we just have a person that we just can't get around to liking, I pray that you would help us begin to break down those walls and show them your love and your acceptance and your grace and your goodness. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks so much for joining us. I'm making grace a part of your Sunday morning. If you're watching online, wherever you are, whatever you may be doing, thank you for joining us in that way. We are beginning our new series, or we're continuing in our new series, called You'll Be Glad You Did. And the idea is to take the wisdom of Proverbs, proverbial wisdom, written by King Solomon, who the Bible claims is the wisest man who ever lived, and to look at some of his wisdom and say here at the top of the year, if we confront ourselves with it, if we listen to it, I bet, I bet that by the end of the year, you'll finish 2026 being glad that you listened to the wisdom of Solomon here at the top of the year. You guys will have to forgive me. We've got a small contingent of Bills fans in the church, and they're all sitting in the front row with, I even forget the name of those pants, but there's a particular, what's the name of those kinds of pants, do you know? Zubas, yes, that look like zebra stripes, and then Susie's got on the best fan shoes I've ever seen in my life, so I just need to say that out loud before I can continue as if there's nothing happening right in front of me. But we're looking at this proverbial wisdom, and one of the reasons I wanted to do it, and one of the reasons I wanted to spend a month looking at the wisdom of Proverbs is because one of the best things I've ever done is to take very seriously reading the book of Proverbs. You've heard me say, hopefully multiple times, that the greatest habit anyone in their life can develop is to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and time in God's presence through prayer. And I still believe that to be true. And there was a season where for three years, every day, I read a Proverb dated as just read a chapter. It's a great place to start. And if you want to read your Bible and you don't know where to start, you don't know how, that's where I would encourage you to begin. If you are someone who reads your Bible, I will tell you that most days for three years, I read whatever proverb was commensurate with that date, that day, and then read whatever else from the Bible I wanted to read that day. And those were some of the richest three years of my life. I immensely enjoyed it and never got tired of reading those Proverbs. So that's a good place to start. And if you hear nothing else from me today of any value, but you leave here and you go read Proverbs every day for the next year, I promise you, you'll be glad you did. This morning, we're going to look, did you like that, Tom? This morning, we're going to look at a proverb about generosity. And I said this in the Gracevine this week. I send it out. And if you're here and you don't get the Gracevine, you don't know what that is, and you would like to receive it, just please fill out a connection card or email me, and we'll get you on that distribution list. But I said in the Grace Find this week that we were going to be talking about a proverb on generosity. And those of you who are my church friends and church people, you know that generosity is pastor code for give us some money. Generosity is code for I'm going to preach a sermon compelling you to give to the church because we need to get some stuff done. And I want to ally that fear this week. Maybe that's why it seems a little bit more thin this week than last week is because I sent that email out. Those of you who have been here for a long time can attest to this. I've never preached a sermon trying to get you to give to grace, nor do I think that the New Testament teaches that you need to give 10% to your local church. I don't even think the New Testament teaches you need to give 10%. I think it just is a good marker based on something that happened in Genesis with Melchizedek and Abraham that we'll talk about later. But I don't even think the New Testament teaches you that. So you'll never hear me preach a sermon trying to compel you to give to grace. So that's not what we're doing this morning. But what you will hear me do, hopefully, repeatedly, is preach sermons on generosity. And the sermon on generosity would make particular sense this morning as it relates to the strategies and desires of grace, because you guys are well aware, we just had a big push towards this building campaign, and we're're hitting go and we're going to try to be in there by the end of next year. So that's particularly relevant to our church. But that's not what I'm preaching about this morning. I can tell you that next week one of our elders, David McWilliams, who's faithfully operating the camera back there, is going to give us an update. We had end of the year giving. We have some very good, exciting news to share. He's going to give us an update. We just want another week to get all of our numbers together so that what we present to you will be the most accurate thing possible. We don't want to talk in what ifs and hypotheticals. We want to talk in precision. So David's going to do that next week. By the way, David has been serving with Jim Adams for a year now as elders, and we still have yet to bring them up here and pray over them because I'm not good at planning things like that. Also, just while we're here, Wes and Doug served for six years, and I was supposed to bring them up here and pray for them too. I've not done that yet either. So Wes, David, Doug, Jim, sorry. But as we think about generosity this morning, I think this proverb allows us to frame it up in a very robust, encompassing way so we can think about the idea of generosity from a more holistic view. So let's look at Proverbs chapter 11, verse 25, which simply says this, a generous person will prosper. Whoever refreshes others will be refreshed. I don't think that we think about generosity the way that Solomon frames it up here. First of all, he says, a generous person prospers. And we should be careful there because we're tempted to kind of fall into a health and wealth gospel that says, the more that I give, the more that will be given back to me monetarily. The more money I give away, the more God will bless my bank account. And that's really terrible teaching, and it ends up making poor people poorer. So that's not what we want to do. So we have to understand what prosper is. And we have to open ourselves up to maybe it means more than just prospering financially. And one of the ways that we prosper is what follows. He who refreshes people will be refreshed. The people who refresh others will be refreshed themselves. I think that opens us up to what prosperity there actually is. But I like this verse because it doesn't tell us how to be generous. It just tells us to be generous. And that the more you give to other people, the more you refresh others, the more you restore the souls of others, the more you look out for others, the more you care for others, the more your soul will be refreshed. And I think that's a really helpful and valuable way to think about generosity. And the truth of it is, God has always wanted his children to be characterized by generosity. God has always wanted his children to be characterized by generosity. All the way back at the beginning of the Bible, beginning in Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy, where the laws are meted out for the ancient Israelites, for the ancient Hebrew people. God is very diligent and fastidious about making sure that his children are generous people. He says, care for the widows and the orphans and the aliens and the sojourners, which means care for those who can't care for themselves. Care for the widows because they have no way to make money and no one's paying for them. They need your help. Care for the orphans because they have no way to take care of themselves. Take care of them. Take care of the sojourners, the aliens, the people who are foreign, who are coming to your country from other places. We should always have a heart for them and their plight. So take care of them. And God gets so specific as to give this law in multiple places in the books of Moses. When you harvest your fields, leave the corners there, healthy, ready to be picked. For who? For the widows and the orphans and the aliens and the sojourners. Leave that there so that they can wean from your crop. That ethic, that ethos is there from God at the very beginning of the Bible. And then we see again, Abraham meets the king of Salem, a mysterious figure, the most fascinating figure in the Bible to me, Melchizedek. And he, upon meeting him, gives Melchizedek 10% of everything that he has. And this 10% law becomes called the tithe, and it gets written into Jewish law, Hebrew law, which we inherit in the New Testament. And it was so extensive that they gave, those who were being as righteous as possible, would give 10% of everything that they owned. They would literally empty the pantry and give 10% of the cream of mushroom soup can that they had and give 10% of the spices. They would give 10% of everything. That's how important it was to God to write it into law to do in that way that his people would be generous. Then we get into the New Testament and we see Jesus teach generosity over and over and over again. And listen, almost every time it's taught, it's taught to be generous in order to care for the have-nots. It's almost always taught as don't tithe to be obedient, don't tithe to be blessed, but give what you have to give to take care of the people who don't have something to give. This is the story of the widow's mite, where the rich man gives a bunch and the widow gives all she has, and it's two pennies. And Jesus says she just gave more than he did to the kingdom of God. We cannot argue with the idea that our God has always wanted his children to be characterized by generosity. With that in mind, I would like for us to consider how we can be generous. We're going to swallow the frog and do the obvious one first. We can be generous with our finances. We can be generous with our finances. This is the obvious one, and this is where our brain goes when we think about generosity. And so I'd like to talk about this, but then spend the rest of our time on other ways to be generous. But I was listening to a book recently, and some of you guys like to judge people for listening and not reading, because you're stuck up. And it was by an author named Scott Galloway, who is, it's difficult to define what he does. He sits on boards, he runs companies, he's a professor of economics at NYU, and he's someone that I find interesting and thoughtful. And he wrote a book called Notes on Being a Man, and that's something I've thought about a lot is I've got a son named John who's four and a half. And I don't know why the half matters. He's four. I'm a grown up. And then I have a daughter named Lily who's going to turn 10 here in a week. And I think a lot about what is it that I want to teach to John that I don't want to teach to Lily? What is it that Jen, my wife, should teach to Lily that she doesn't teach to John? And I don't have a good answer for that. And I would invite this, if any of you have answers for that, I want that discourse. Particularly if you're a little bit longer in the tooth than me. Then I really want to hear that. If you're shorter in the tooth, maybe just relax. But he wrote a book, Thoughts on Being a Man, and I would, the only criticism I have, I'm not recommending it to you. There's cuss words, so as a pastor, I cannot recommend it. But the only critique I have is I really think it would better be titled Thoughts on Being a Human. Because the things that he was espousing in there didn't feel to me like things that only men should think about. I think women should think about these things too. And Scott is a devout atheist. He has respect for people of faith, but he's not a person of faith himself, and he's open about that. But in his book, and he's become, by any stretch of the world's measure, very successful, all right? He's in his mid-50s, really successful dude, flying on private jets when he goes places, that kind of thing, all right? But here's what he said, and this is what I thought was interesting that I wanted to share with you. He said when he started his career, it was all about accruing for himself. It was all about what he wanted to get. It was all about getting rich and getting more for himself and just build, build, build, build, build. But that one day, once he felt like he had enough, there was this seismic shift in his mindset. And he became a lot more interested in being a generous person than being an accumulator. He realized it made him feel good. This is wild. It made him feel good to buy dinner. In his words, it made him feel like more of a man. In my words, I would say it made you feel like more of a grown-up. But the way that he phrased it was, it made me feel like more of a man to buy dinner for my friends, to take my friends on trips that I could afford and let them come. It made me feel like more of a man to give things away. And again, I'm not trying to be over-masculine here. I think it really makes us feel like more of a responsible human. But he said that there was this shift, and after that shift that he made this decision, that he made it his goal to give away more money every year than he spent. Not more money than he made, but give away more money than he spent on himself. And he said, in doing this, it makes me feel better about myself and about who I am. Makes me feel like a better human. This, to me, and if Scott were here, he might push back on this, but this, to me, is an atheist nodding towards the way his creator inclined him to be. What he was saying in his book was, when I refresh others, I am refreshed. And I realized it made me feel better to give away my resources than it did to accrue them for myself and my own selfish ends. And my challenge or my thought to the church this morning, because this is a room of largely church people, is if an atheist can stumble upon the simple joy of generosity and find in his own experience that he is refreshed by refreshing others, then can't we as Christians learn from that lesson and be people who seek to be generous? I told you the story a few weeks ago of the former student that I have, a kid named Alex. He's not a kid anymore. He's in his 30s. He graduated in 2010, and he and I haven't had a ton of contact since then, but I've always thought very highly of him and been glad that he's been in my life and that I had the opportunity to be in his. And he had a tough story and ended up not going to college. He had to watch his brothers when he was 19 years old. But he found a way and he became a general contractor. And some of you know the story, but just by way of refreshing, he reached out to me a month or two ago, and he just said, hey, I'm making good money now. That's not what he said, but that's pretty much what he said. I'm making good money now. I want to be generous. I want to give. I want to honor God the way that he's blessed me. I want to bless others. What can I do? And he, to answer that question, drove. He had a job in Charlotte. He lives in Atlanta. So he drove the day before the extra two and a half, three hours from Charlotte to Raleigh, met me, took me to Sullivan's where I got a bone-in filet, which is really great. And then we met in my office and I said, hey man, here's six nonprofits that I know of whose founders I know very well, who I trust and love. Let me just tell you what they do and you tell me where, and then you just do whatever you want. I don't need to know, but then you can kind of figure out where your heart's led, which ones of these capture you, yeah? And that conversation led to him having breakfast the next day with the founder of one of the non-profits and then giving that founder the largest single donation they've had in the history of that non-profit. That's cool, isn't it? Now listen, Alex also told me in that conversation, in our discourse about wanting to be generous, that out of this desire to simply be generous, he had a job in downtown Atlanta. They were building a building or they were refurbishing one or whatever. There was a job with a fence and the things and all the stuff. And he would go there every day. And he said on his way there, he would go to the ATM and get out cash. And keep it in his truck. Because there was homeless people surrounding this job site. And he would make sure to go around and give money to every homeless person that was there. Because he felt like he had the opportunity to do that and he wanted to do it. Now here's where our brain goes. Okay? And here's where mine went. Dude, that's not wise. There's a better way. I love your heart. There's a better way to give money than to do that. And that's why he and I were having the conversation. Let's think about a wise way to do it so we can make sure that that money's going to God's kingdom. We can make sure that's an effective expenditure. But here's why I tell you this story this morning. It's to say that what I truly believe, and this is just my opinion, you may disagree. What I truly believe is the spirit of generosity that led him to give in both situations, whether it's a large donation to a responsible nonprofit or smaller multiple donations that we really don't have any control over, in God's eyes are the same. Because it's not about what we give. And I don't even think, and I'm careful when I say this, because I do think we need to give to God's kingdom. But it's not about what we give, and I'm not always convinced it's about where we give. It's about the fact that we just give. So we should be generous financially, whatever that looks like for us. We should also, I believe, be generous with our time. This is not a way we think about generosity, but it is a way we think about our days. And the story that I will share about being generous with our time is actually critical of me, which is what I would prefer. I'd much prefer a story where I look bad than to tell you a story where I'm the hero. So I'll tell you a story where I look bad. In November, we went home for Thanksgiving, and I needed to preach that upcoming Sunday. My dad is a CPA. He has his own firm, and he was going into the office on Tuesday morning, and I said, hey, dad, can I come into the office with you? Excuse me. I said, can I come into the office with you on Tuesday? I need to write a sermon. I've got a couple things to do, and I'd like to get that done and be done with it so I can just focus on family this week. He said, sure. So we rode to the office together. And on the way to the office, I'm thinking about, and I think some of us can relate, I've got a lot of work to do. I have a very important task to write a sermon for 145 people to listen to. This is the most important thing happening in the whole world. Thank you for the laughter over there. That was what was intended. But that's where my head's at. I have to get this done. I have to do this. And there was some other things I needed to do. So I was really focused and I was in what we call in my family task mode. Like I'm not interacting, engaging. I'm just trying to get stuff done. And so we get to the office and we're walking in and dad stops. There's a car pulling in and he stops and he says, oh, that's so-and-so. And he kind of steps back. Like he's going to wait on so-and-so to get out of her car and come see us. And this is where, if you'd like to be disappointed in me as your pastor, this is a great place to start. I looked at dad and I said, what difference does it make? And he went, okay. And we went inside. Because my thought was, dad, this is just practical brain, okay, I'm sorry. Practical brain. I'm never going to talk to this lady again in my life. I don't know who she is. She only knows who I am because I'm your son. I don't want to talk to her. I have a job to do. I need to get done quick because my wife has the kids with her mother-in-law out on the town. And she'd really like me there as a buffer, frankly. She'd like me to be there. I need to go. So I need to get this done as soon as I can. I need to get in the car. I need to drive to Monroe and go to some stupid store I don't care about so that I can hang out with my family. That's what I need to do. That's the pressure that I feel. So when dad says that so-and-so, I think, who cares? What's it matter? And so he's like, okay. So we go inside. My sister works for dad and she had brought us Chick-fil-A biscuits that morning, which are the worst of all the biscuits. And they really are. They're the worst. And she has the Chick-fil-A biscuits, but I am grateful it's free biscuit, fine. And I said, Dad, where can I work? What conference room or cubicle are you going to tuck me into? And he says, well, you know, you can, one of those down there. He goes, but don't you want to eat first? And I said, again, practical brain. No, Dad, I'm visiting you for three days, all right? I don't need to have breakfast right now. I'm going to go eat the biscuit while I write the sermon and get my important work done. And so I said, no, Dad, I'd really just like to get to work. He's like, okay. So I go get to work, and I write the sermon. I text Jen. I'm done. Where are you guys at? I go to the thing, and we do the things. And then, this is why I'm telling you the story, that evening, Dad snaps at me about something that was pretty innocuous. And those of you who, I have a good relationship with my parents, but Dad and I can get on each other's nerves. And those of you, Kristen's nodding her head as she sits next to her dad. All right, perfect. Let's just unpack this right now, Sartoriuses. If you have grown kids, you know you can get on their nerves. If you still are fortunate enough to have your parents, they know how to get on your nerves, you know how to get on them. We got on each other's nerves. And I thought it was silly. And I finally, I didn't snap, but I just kind of said, I don't know what you want me to do. You know, we were talking about whatever. And I just, like, I needed to go. So I stepped away. And I came back after a calming down period of 72 hours. And it was like 15 minutes later, I said, hey, Dad, I'm sorry. That's not how I want to handle that, but here's what's upsetting me. And he said, I understand. And we started talking. And here's what I learned, and this is why I'm sharing this story. He said, son, essentially, you matter a lot to me. I talk to you a lot. I talk about you a lot to my employees. And it would have meant a lot to me for you to have taken the time to have met them and to be gracious with them. But you were too self-important and you couldn't. And that's why I'm upset. And I went. What a lesson. What a lesson. I don't like saying this, particularly on a permanent record. But he was right, and I was wrong. I was so focused on my tasks and what I needed to get done that I couldn't see the value in investing my time in people. And so I missed a chance. How much better would my afternoon have gone if I would have simply been generous with my time and honored my dad? How much more refreshed could I have been by taking the time to meet the different people that he wanted me to meet. How arrogant of me to think that I have nothing to benefit from small talking and exchanging pleasantries and shaking hands and learning names. What, honestly, what a jerk. And so it was a lesson. Be generous with your time. How many of us have opportunities throughout the week when someone imposes on our time and we have a task or we have a thing that we want to do, but this coworker has texted us, this coworker has popped in, this person has emailed us, this person has called us, this friend needs us. It might be dinner time, but they don't normally call at this time, so what are they calling about? How often do we have opportunities to be generous with our time that we miss for whatever reason? Maybe your reason isn't task-oriented self-importance like me, but maybe it's something else, but how often do we have the opportunities to be generous with our time that we miss because we don't think of those times as opportunities for generosity. We just think about them as impositions on our schedule and on our tasks. I'm reminded as I think of this, every time I read through the Gospels, I am amazed at Jesus' generosity with His time. Those of you who have read through the Gospels, can you recall the amounts of times that Jesus finishes an arduous day or week of ministry? Does the Sermon on the Mount, heals people, speaks to people, casts out demons, teaches, combats with the rabbis, and then once that's done, it says Jesus went off to a quiet place to pray. He went off to be by himself and to rest and recruit. And here's what stuns me is how many times in the gospels it says after finishing a day like that or an event like that, Jesus goes off to pray by himself and on his way to do that, someone says, Rabbi, can I talk to you? Will you talk to my mom? Will you come meet my son? They need you. And Jesus always, sure, what do you need? Yes, I would love to. Yes, let me talk to you. Yes, let me pray to you. Jesus is the greatest example of someone who is generous with his time. And I think, I suspect, that we can probably all be more generous with ours. The last idea about generosity I want us to consider is that we can be generous with our spirit. We can be generous with our spirit. We can be generous with our disposition towards others, with our assessment towards them, with the benefit of the doubt we are willing to give them. I had a friend in college named Paul Honeycutt. Paul Honeycutt and I, we played on the soccer team together and we did the landscape crew together. We were in charge of keeping the grounds of Toccoa Falls College pristine and we did great. It was a fun job. I got to do the zero turn mowers and the weed eaters every day and I loved it. And Honeycutt was this really interesting guy because Honeycutt was cool. Everybody liked Honeycutt. Everybody did. He had all the friends in the world. And at this stage in life, try to remember, you know, I've been in high school and now college and cool people are cool. Cool people, they make friends easily. They make friends well. And they tend to be a little bit exclusionary in the way they move through the world. If you're not as cool as them, they're not going to give you their time. They're not going to be as nice to you. It can get to be exclusive, right? And so that was my experience of cool people. And Paul was cool. Everybody liked Paul. But Paul was unique in that he was kind to everyone. We ran in the same circle, and I watched some people try to get into the circle, and other guys in the circle would kind of hold them in arm's length. I don't know if you're going to cut the mustard. I don't know if I like the cut of your jib. What a great phrase that is. But I don't know. So they kind of hold them away. But Paul was always the first person to welcome them in and to make them feel like a part of things and to be a good host and to be a generous person with his spirit. And I remember asking him one time, this is now 25 years ago, I think, and I still remember the conversation. I asked him something to the effect of, Paul, you're so nice to everybody all the time. How are you this nice to everyone? And Paul said this simple phrase to me, and I'll never forget it. He said, Nate, if they're cool to Jesus, they're cool to me. Isn't that great? If they're cool to Jesus, thanks Jeff. If they're cool to Jesus, they're cool to me. If Jesus likes them, I do too. And here's the problem for us Christians. Jesus likes everybody. How inconvenient is that? I don't know. I've thought about this over the years and I'm not going to make any declarative or definitive statements this morning. I really don't know how much space there is for us to choose to not like somebody. I don't know how much space there is for that. I don't know how much space there is for us to just hold a grudge against somebody. I don't know how much space there is to think the worst of somebody and write them off. Now listen, I want to be very careful. I'm not asking us to trust everyone and to make ourselves vulnerable to everyone and to return to painful relationships when they've burned us in the past and it's hurt so much. I'm not asking you to be unwise. Scripture says that we should be as innocent as doves and as shrewd as vipers, and I think that that absolutely applies. But what I am saying is, I'm not sure how much space we have to just choose to not like someone and write them off. If they're cool to Jesus, they're cool to me. And unfortunately, Jesus likes everybody. So I think maybe you don't have something to learn from my buddy Honeycutt, but I still do. And here's where I would say this too, and I say this carefully. Our country is very divided right now. We know that. By simply saying that statement, everybody in this room just tensed up about 25%. Here's my estimation of part of that division. Is that we are not generous in spirit towards the people who don't vote like us. And what I've noticed is our tendency is to think and assume the worst of them. But what if we would be more generous in spirit and assume the best of them? Not just politically. People who think differently than us. People who don't share the values that we do. People who don't root for the bills. What if we started to view generosity as being a way to assume the best of others, to believe the best of others, and to give them the benefit of the doubt whenever we could? Let me tell you what would happen. Not just on a church level, but on a personal level. It is refreshing to refresh others. This series is called You'll Be Glad You Did. If you will listen to the wisdom that Solomon wrote down, you'll be glad you did. This week, we have an opportunity to consider what kind of people we are in regards to generosity. And my main point is, how refreshing would it be to spend this year being more generous with your resources, with your time, with your spirit, with your demeanor towards other people. And here's what I would challenge you with. If you think about these things, and there's other ways to be generous as well, but if you'll just think about these things. How can I this year be generous with my finances? How can I this year be generous with my time? How can I this year be generous with my spirit towards others? I highly doubt you'll finish the year and think, I wish I'd have kept more of it for myself. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for this church body, for this family. Thank you for the love that we share and the community that we have. God, all of us in this room have been given resources. From your fullness, we have received grace upon grace in different ways. And I pray, God, that you would increase our heart and increase our desire to be people who are characterized by generosity. May we be people who are happy to give, who are happy to refresh others, and in so doing find that you refresh us as we do. Give us the eyes to see and the ears to hear opportunities for generosity. And give us the willingness to step into those. In Jesus' name, amen.

Thank you for being here. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors and I get to preach the sermons. And so I'm grateful that you're here and I'm grateful that you've made grace a part of your morning if you're watching online. Thank you for doing that as well. But I will say up front that I'm going to be a little bit more brief than normal because I have a high degree of respect for the fact that many of you are here this morning to see your grandchild, and that's done, and now you're just thinking about lunch, all right? So I try to pride myself in reading the room, so loud and clear, all right? But we do find ourselves in a series, here we go, a wassailing, where we're focused on Christmas carols and looking at where they come from in Scripture and seeking through that understanding to imbue them with a greater meaning so that as we sing them as a congregation and as we sing them in our cars and listen to them, I've shared with you that Lily and I have a Christmas playlist that we listen to on the way to school in the mornings beginning November 1st. And so as we hear them and as we sing them and as we celebrate them, if we focus on them this Christmas season, maybe they can be imbued with greater meaning for us. And so that's what we're doing is we're looking at different Christmas songs and understanding them from a biblical perspective or what the thrust of them really is. The song that we're looking at this morning, and Jen and I, I want to personally apologize to you, Jen. Jen's my wife. She's sitting right there. We have laughed in our house, and I don't know if y'all have heard this phrase, but we hate it when someone says, and if you've said this, we don't hate you. We just think this phrase is ridiculous. This thing is giving this thing vibes. This is giving this vibes, right? We've heard this phrase. The song this morning gives buying presents for your parents vibes, okay? And I'm sorry to say that, but there's not a better way to structure it. And here's what I'm talking about, and you guys are probably familiar with this. Every Christmas, you need to buy your parents something, right? Like that's the nice thing to do. And it's always difficult to buy presents for your parents because they're richer than you. Mostly. I saw a clip of Dwayne the Rock Johnson and the interviewer asked him, you just bought a house for your mom. And Kevin Hart was next to him and he said, yeah, about time, a billion dollars later, he bought a house for his mom. But most of us in the room are not positioned to buy houses for our parents. And so what's probably true of you, though I don't know, but what's probably true of the majority of us is that when it comes time to buy gifts for our parents, if they want it, they would have it. And if they can't afford it, neither can you. Maybe my dad wants a nice new car. Well, that's not coming from me. I'm not putting the bow on the Lexus. Also, before I just keep going, I have to say this. I have to, because he deserves some credit. Cason Smith, Carter's son, who takes after his mom and his dad is not in the room. He's the worst. Y'all couldn't see him because he's a fifth grader and he's one of the taller ones. So he was back here. But when they started practicing, Cason moved away from everybody else because he needed room to explore the space and to dance and to perform. And if you could peek through the heads, and you didn't know to look for it, no, you couldn't know to look for it, but if you could peek through the heads, you would have seen him back here just getting after it. And if you missed it, I'm so sorry. And because he was going at it so hard, I just wanted to acknowledge him that Kaysen's the best every year when we do this. All right, what was I talking about? Yeah, buying gifts for your parents is hard. I think over the years, the two best things I've ever gotten from my parents is my mom, all she wants, every now and again, they will facilitate a vacation for our whole family. My family will go. My sister's family will go. Everyone will go on a vacation to the beach on a cruise or whatever it is. And the only thing she wants as a thank you for this, and this is the gift that you give to her, is to participate in family pictures. And my whole job, which I fail at, is to have a good attitude during pictures. Because pictures are the worst. But the best thing I can do for my mom is just not be a jerk about it and take the pictures and smile. And we went on a cruise in August that they facilitated and they wanted to do the family pictures. And it was time for Nate and Jen's pictures. And the photographer was like, do this pose, do this pose, and like look at each other longingly in this way. Laugh and giggle. And it was a degree of physical affection that Jen and I have not shown in public for 15 years. And I finally went, that's enough. We're squared away. Thanks. We're all good here. And he goes, I'm sorry. And I go, yeah, you are sorry. We're done. You've got enough. We're not going to buy any of those anyways. And then the best thing I've ever gotten from my dad, and I don't know how many of you remember this, but if you grew up in evangelical church, particularly Baptist church, in the 80s or the 90s, just raise your hand if you know what special music is. Do you know what special music is? Yes. There's a few hands raised. All right. Here's what special music is. It's not the way we usually use the word special. All right. It's different. Here's what it is. In the 80s and 90s, there were Christian songs that were not, they weren't praise hymns or choruses that you sang in the church. They were just songs that you listened to, like on the radio or on a cassette tape. And the really popular ones would have a cassette tape with a side A and a side B. And side A was the song, Ray Bolt's Watch the Lamb. If you don't know that one, can't recommend it highly enough. That's the best. Ray Bolts, Watch the Lamb. And then you'd flip it to side B, and it was just the instruments and no vocals. And so what they would do in church is after normal worship, after the choir sang, then one select person from the congregation who was gifted above and beyond everyone else in the voice department would get up, kind of like Jordan, would get up and sing to the track. So they'd play the track, they'd turn on the music, and then that person would sing. And when I was growing up, my dad was the special music guy. There's other people that dabbled around in special music in like May and June. But dad got Christmas and Easter. All right, he was a big deal. And I used to sit in the third row and mouth every word for him in case he forgot because I loved it so much. And so one year I made, and I don't know how many years ago this was, but it was long enough ago that I burned a CD. Remember that? And I made him Dale's greatest hits. And I gave him that so that he could listen to it and replay the glory days in the car because nobody cares about him anymore. He doesn't do anything special. But it's hard to get gifts for our parents because more often than not, they're taken care of, and we don't really know how we can celebrate them in such a way that's going to be impactful. The song that we're looking at this morning is a song called Little Drummer Boy, and when I say that, you probably have the same reaction that Aaron had when I told him a few years ago I wanted to do Little Drummer Boy. And his response to me was, I don't know how to get a room full of adults to sing the words parumpapumpum in a worshipful way. So maybe let's not. But in his first year here, Gibby did not know me well enough and was not yet secure enough in his job to tell me no. And I took advantage of this. And coming into the Christmas service, I said, hey man, I really think we need to do Little Drummer Boy. And he gave me the pushback of, I don't know if I want to do that. I don't know how to worshipfully sing the words parumpapumpum. Like, I don't know if I can do that. And I said, well, I really need you to do that. And here's the funny thing, If you remember last week's sermon, and most of you don't because your grandkid wasn't singing last week. Last week, I said I asked him to do the third verse of a song and that I kind of like, hey, dude, we need to do this and that I never, ever do that. And now here I am two weeks in a row telling you stories about times I told Gibby he had to sing a song. But I think these are the only two. I really do think so. We'll see, he just said, for those of you in the back. And so he did it. But in planning to do the song, it was very important to him, and I think that this is actually a wonderful quality to have in our worship pastor, and it's one of the reasons why I think he does such a good job. It was really important to him that he wanted this to be worshipful for the congregation. He wanted to try to connect it, not just be performative, but can we sing this together and be worshipful together? And so he was trying to connect those dots so that he could make it impactful and help us step into it. And as he was trying to do that, I believe it was his wife Tamara that pointed out to him, Aaron, you're the drummer boy. And he paused, and he communicated this to me the next day, and he communicated it to the church through tears tears and I've always found it very moving. Because here's why. Psalm 50 tells us this is God speaking I have no need of a bull from your stall or goats from your pens for every animal of the forest is mine and the cattle on a thousand hills. So we serve a God who needs nothing from us. All the animals in the forest are his. All the cattle on the hills are his. What are we going to give him that he needs? What are we going to give him that flatters him? What are we going to give him that worships him? And as we enter into the Christmas season and we do all the things and we seek at Christmas to honor our God and to worship our Jesus and to adequately celebrate the birth of Christ, what do we bring to God? Gold, frankincense, and myrrh? I seriously doubt. I have no idea what heaven's like, but I don't think that there's a frankincense shortage for Jesus. I think he's got plenty if that's what he needs. He's not looking around for myrrh, trying to find a good deal on it. Like, what do we bring Jesus to adequately celebrate him? If he has everything that he needs already, what could he possibly want from us? And I think that the point that Tamara made about Gibby being the drummer boy is a profound one. And I think it's true for everyone. So just so we know, let me tell you what the lyrics are in case you've forgotten. I'm going to leave out the parumpapumpums. All right, let's just assume there's a lot of those. And I'll read the normal words. It says, little baby, rumpumpumpum, I'm a poor boy too. I have no gift to bring that's fit to give a king. Shall I play for you on my drum? Mary nodded. Go ahead. The ox and lamb kept time, which I find dubious, because they are the least rhythmic of the farm animals, and we all know it. I played my drum for him. I love this. I played my best for him. Then he smiled at me, me and my drum. Now here's what's great, okay? And this is why I'm getting emotional over Little Drummer Boy lyrics. All right, hopefully you'll be there with me in a minute and not think I'm a crazy person. Here's the point. Gibby has nothing to offer his Savior in gratitude for what Jesus has done for him. He has nothing that Jesus needs. He's just got his drum. He has been gifted, though it is hard for me to say, with some talent. He could, I think, play any instrument up here that we needed him to. When he sings, he manages to remain on key from what I can tell. He has been given a gift. And what his wife was telling him was, use that gift to glorify your God, the one who gave it to you. And use that gift for what it was intended, which is to usher everyone else in the congregation into worship. Go play your drum. Go do your thing. Go do what God created you to do and use the talents with which he imbued you to point people towards me. Go play your drum. I remember years ago, I took over as a student pastor at a church. And the youth group was large enough that they were able to furnish their own youth band. And there was a girl who was, I think, a junior at the time, maybe a senior, named Kelsey. And Kelsey was this 4'11", tops, tiny, tiny girl, and just very shy. And at the time, I had this tradition when my mama was alive called Mama Mondays. And every other Monday, I'd go to Mama's house at 1030 in the morning because I was a youth pastor. I didn't have anything else to do. And we would have coffee together. And I would just listen to stories. And Mama was a small, diminutive woman like Kelsey was, and she was very shy, and she felt very outshone by the other people around her, and so I began to draw these parallels between the two, and that developed within me a real affinity for Kelsey, and I wanted to look out for her. And Kelsey sang in the band. And I wish, I wish like heck, because she's a children's pastor in Florida now, and I wish like heck I could get her here for one week and just let you all hear her sing because she's incredible. You would never expect this voice to come out of this person. But when she would sing, she was timid. And I remember going to her and pulling her aside and saying, hey, Kelsey, God gave you a voice. He gave you a gift. And when you use it, Holly, when you use it, and for the purpose for which it was given to you and you invite people into praise with your boldness in how you use your voice, you're doing exactly what God intended with that gift. And because of that and because I watched her, not because of what I said, but just gradual comfort in the environment, I couldn't make it through a worship set without tearing up because I was so moved by Kelsey using her gift for her God to usher people towards him. She was playing her drum. And now here's the thing. You all have a drum. You all have something to play. For most of you, it would be great if you were not up here singing. We don't want that, and that's not what I'm preaching towards. We're pretty happy with our current arrangement, but you have a drum. I was reminded of this verse in Isaiah 51 that's quoted in 1 Peter, brought up later. But it says this, And when Peter extrapolates in in this in 1 Peter, he talks about Abraham and the great things that Abraham did. And you don't have to be very versed in Christianity and biblical knowledge to understand that Abraham sits on the Mount Rushmore of Christian figures. He sits on the Mount Rushmore of God followers. And what he did was amazing. And it echoes and tumbles down through the millennia. Abraham was impressive. He did amazing things. But Peter quotes Isaiah and tells you, do you know the quarry from which you are cut and the rock from which you are hewn? You're made of the same material. You have the same gifts. You have the same input from God. He's bestowed similar blessings upon you. And what I want you to hear this morning as we think about the song Little Drummer Boy and the stupid words, pa-rum-pa-pum-pum, that are actually pretty fun to sing. If you're not a stick in the mud, they're actually great. Is you've been given a drum too. Here I play for you. I played my best for you. And he smiled at me. You have a drum too. Maybe your drum is kindness. Maybe your drum is compassion. A few years ago, some friends of mine heard about a man that was disabled and shut in in essentially public housing, for lack of a better term. And he was a mess and his apartment was a mess. And upon hearing of his predicament, they went over on a Saturday and spent eight hours cleaning up what was unpleasant. That's compassion. They were playing their drum. I saw a picture, came across on a social media feed, of a mug that said, it's actually pretty funny, it said, help, I've become very important at my job and it's ruining my life. We have some people here who have influence in their space, who are leaders in their company. God's given you a drum to influence those people towards Christ. Play it. Use your influence. Show people what a Christ follower looks like and point people towards him. We have teachers in the room. You have a drum to play in front of those kids every day. We have people in this room who are incredible at gathering folks, at getting people together, drawing together community. And that's not a talent that everyone has. Chris is terrible at that. That's not a talent that we all get. But maybe it's yours, and maybe you do draw people together well. That's your drum. Play your drum. Maybe you're a good listener. Maybe you're a good friend. Maybe you're good at business. Maybe you're good at garnering influence. Maybe you can sing. Maybe you can teach. I'll tell you, it's a bummer to be given the drum of teaching because you have to do it every week. It's kind of a hassle. But maybe that's your drum. I don't know what it is, but here's what I know for sure. You have one. And if you want to honor your Jesus at Christmas or any time, play it. Play your best for him, And he will smile at you. Play your drum. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for the kids that played their drums. For the way that they honored you. Thank you for a worship team that plays theirs. Thank you for a church that wants to go and play for you as well. Father, we pray that we would honor you in this season and in these weeks and that we wouldn't lose sight of what we're celebrating. God, if we don't know what we're good at, maybe we're simply good at humility and help us play that one well too. But I pray that we would all go and play our best for you and that you would smile at us. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thank you so much for joining us this morning. If you're joining us online, thank you, or catching up, thank you for doing that. Clearly, you're all getting in your pre-Thanksgiving Sunday because you intend to skip next week. So let's make the most out of this week, and thank you for being here. As we finish up our series in Daniel, we arrive at the third very famous story. So in the first week, we talked about the Daniel diet, Daniel choosing not to eat according to the dictates of the Babylonian empire, but saying, hey, can I set my own standards in what we talked about for holiness for myself? And so we looked at that first week about choosing holiness and choosing our own standards. And then we had a morning of worship. And then last week, we looked at Abinadab, Mishael, and Hananiah, better known as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and the fiery furnace and this idea of even if faith, even if God doesn't do what I expect him to do, I will continue to remain faithful to him. And now we arrive at the last famous story of Daniel, and there's more famous stories. The handwriting on the wall, that phrase comes from the book of Daniel, so there's other famous stories there, but Daniel in the lion's den may be the one that it's most known for, and so that's where we find ourselves this morning. And so as we approach that story, a couple things. When we plan out series as a staff, I kind of have an idea of where I want to go each week. And as we planned this one, I knew where I wanted to go with Daniel and his diet. I knew the holiness, choosing holiness in Babylon. And I knew where I wanted to go with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, even if faith. And I write up a document for the people who make the graphics and for the people who make the videos and for Gibby as he's attempting to assemble worship music around what we're doing. And I kind of summarize everything. And week by week, I'll give a summary. And for this week, I said, I don't know, but I'll figure it out. So I didn't know where I wanted to go with Daniel and the lion's den. And it's probably not where you think I'm going to go this week. Because there's a lot of angles that you can take. Consistent devotion. And I say all the time, the most important thing anybody can do in their life is to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and time in God's presence through prayer. I say that all the time and I try to remind you guys of that because I believe it to be true. You can go with character and what you do behind closed doors is who you are. You can go with when you're alone in the lion's den, God is still with you. There's a lot of approach angles to the story and things to take away. And I don't think that what I'm going to talk about this morning is the only thing to take away, but I think it's what grace needs to take away. And because I want you to understand how we're approaching the story, I want to tell you about two different conversations. One was with a friend of mine, a very good friend, who's another pastor of a church in Georgia. His name is Ken Sermons. For some reason that I don't remember, I called him Keith Hermans. And we went to a pastor's conference together, and I registered him for this conference in Orlando a few years ago, and I him as Keith Herman's and so he had to wear a name tag that said Keith Herman's the whole time which delighted me and then we went to Star Wars the Star Wars area of Disney World together where I had bought us matching t-shirts and we also happened to wear the same color shorts and there's a picture if you look at my Instagram of us in Orlando together and it I don't think at first glance you would assume that we were two pastors just going to a conference together okay but I remember going to that conference with Keith and we sat in the auditorium of the church that was hosting the conference and it was this big monolithic auditorium 3,000 seats stadium seating lights and camera and screen and stage and all this production and so many people in the room and they're doing at, at pastor's conferences, you have to do worship. Whether you want to or not, you have to stand and sing. It doesn't matter. They treat us like we treat you. Stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down, sing this song, and then we're going to preach. This is what they do to us too. And I remember leaning over to Ken because his church is about the size of our church. And I just said, this is so far from everything I love about being a pastor. It's so impersonal. It's so produced. And there's no way as a pastor you can stand up and know the people that you're preaching to. Because it's 3,000 people. And I'm not critiquing those churches at all. They're serving a purpose in the kingdom. But as for me, I don't enjoy that. Every week, whether you realize I'm doing this or not, I call out names. Amel, Jeff, freaking Tom. I call out names. Alice Ann, hello, from Tennessee. Wonderful. Because we're a family. Because we're close. Because the way that I get to pastor you is familiar. Mayor Steve. I get to do that. And I don't want to not do that. And if you're a visitor here, I was told at my last church that when I preached, when I preached at my last church, there was however many people, 650, 700 people in the audience. And then we were simulcast out to three other campuses, two other campuses. And so I was told, don't say anything that a first time guest will not connect with. Don't use names. Don't say anything that they don't have context for. And I've just chosen a grace that I'm going to celebrate when Jan O'Sullivan and Ann Erb are here and they're with us and we've set out your special chairs for you that we set out every week because we love you. We're going to celebrate that. And we're going to be a family. And if it's your first time here or your second or third time here and you're like, I don't know about grace, just know we love each other. And as part of that, I'm going to talk to us as people and as individuals. So here's another conversation that I had. This one was with my dad. And my mom gives me flack because I talk about my dad more than I talk about her. So, Mom, Donna, I'm sorry. I love you. I love you. I love you more than Dad. You're far less annoying than him. Okay? But as we've gone through this building campaign that we've been languishing in for five years, we're going to have a meeting about it on December the 14th. I hope that you can come. I'm tired of it, and you are too. So let's see if we can't get to the end of this joker. But as we've gone through it, my dad has been on boards and has piloted efforts and campaigns to get buildings out of the ground for churches. And we've talked a couple of times. And when we'll talk, he's like, have you considered this? Have you considered this? Have you considered this? Do you need to do this? And he's giving me his advice and counsel, which is warranted because he has more experience than me in this space because he's done it a few times. But every time he asked me if I've considered this, I say, yeah, dad, we, we, we put a committee together. And on that committee, we have two career, um, corporate real estate agents. We have another career corporate real estate agent that we're calling on for advice, but they're not sitting in the committee, but we're talking to them. We have a corporate banker that is in charge of corporate loans at his bank, which is a pretty good bank. We have two general contractors who are advising us because they've done this professionally. And dad quickly realizes, which is very difficult for him to do, that the expertise in the room is beyond his. And at every turn at Grace, when we need to make a decision or we need to do something, what I realize is I'm surrounded by leaders. I'm surrounded by experts with influence. And one of the things, I share that story because then my dad says, how do you get all of these people to come to this church? And I say, I have no idea. I think it's the music. Or the children's ministry, which thanks to Kyle is great. Aaron's old news. This is wonderful. But here's my point. I have been aware of for a while that we have an unusual confluence of influence in this church. We have an unusually high capacity church. There are more of you per capita. If we were to go to another church and compare just per capita, what are your direct reports? What are your professional accomplishments? What kind of manager are you? What kind of CEO are you? What kind of leadership do you exhibit in your life at Grace? And this is just true. And this is why I shared the story of Ken, of, hey, that church is so far from what I want to be because it allows me to know you. And here's what I know about grace. And this is why I'm approaching the story this way this morning. We have an unusual confluence of influence here. We do. We have more people who are high capacity than if you were to just randomly gather 225 folks per week into a room. Our potential here and our influence here is outsized compared to that. And that's honestly, so what? Who cares? But it is also true. And so I want us to acknowledge that we have, I'm talking as I look out, I'm talking to many people who have direct reports, who there's an org chart and your name is on it and under it there are more names. I'm talking to people who have started businesses. I'm talking to people who have developed leaders. I'm talking to people who have been to leadership conferences and care deeply about that. And as I say that, that we have an unusual confluence of influence here, as I say that, there are some in this room who would check out and go, well, I'm a stay-at-home mom, so this one's not for me. Do you not think you're influencing those kids growing up with you? Do you not think you're influencing the people that you are in a small group with? Every person in this room has influence. At different capacities and for different reasons. And we find ourselves at different rungs on the ladder. But every person in this room has influence. I was, this is a funny right turn, I was on the streets of Istanbul in March with my friend Ru. And Ru had just done a session with Iranian pastors. Ru trains pastors who serve in countries where faith is illegal. Christian faith is illegal. And we were going back and forth on leadership and what it was. And we arrived at this definition of leadership. And those of you who have been to leadership conferences and have thought about it and have read books, you can try this on for size and see what you think. But here's what we concluded. Leadership is intentionally deployed influence. Leadership is intentionally deployed influence leadership is intentionally deployed influence it's acknowledging I have influence over the people around me I can impact the people who are here I have direct reports and I can influence them and this works vertically and. Maybe I have a vertical position where there are people below me and I can influence them because their job requires me to allow me to influence them. Or maybe it's horizontal. I have people on my team. I have no authority over them, but I can exert influence with them and through them. So leadership, I believe, is acknowledging that we have influence in different places in our lives and then intentionally deploying that to an end that we desire. There is the context that I want you to have as we approach the story of Daniel and the lion's den. Here's the story. Many of you know it, but let's review. Daniel was taken captive by the Babylonians, we assume in his late teens or early 20s. And he was put in with a group of other captives to be trained for service in the Babylonian government. And he served under King Nebuchadnezzar. And then Nebuchadnezzar was succeeded by Belshazzar. So he served under Belshazzar. And then Belshazzar was slain by King Darius, who is the king of the Persians and the Medes, who took over the Babylonian empire and set up the Persian empire. And even if you have no idea what the Bible says about anything, if you're a student of history, you know that Darius was a big deal and the Persian empire was a big deal. And that's where Daniel finds himself. And so we find Daniel likely as an older man who spent his life in government service. He's been doing it for a long time. And when Darius takes over, when he kills Belshazzar and claims the throne for himself, he looks at Daniel and he says, you're good. I want to keep you. It makes me think of Jen's dad, John, who was a VP of something or other at Bell South and then AT&T bought them out. And every vice president except for John from Bell South got fired. And then they put him in charge of all the AT&T properties over all the world. He was on the phone at 4 a.m. one day because there was a flood in Hong Kong. That's what he was doing. He was the one guy they kept. And so Daniel was the one that got kept by King Darius. And there was, it says, the text says there was 120 satraps, which is a foreign word to us. We don't know what that is, but that's essentially a governor. We're going to divide up the Persian Empire into these different provinces, and a satrap oversees that province. And then over the 120, there was three satraps. And then over the three, there was one. And it says that Darius wanted to make Daniel that one. He essentially, in our terms, wanted to make Daniel the managing partner of Persia. This was a big deal. He had garnered and gathered a lot of influence over the years. He had shown himself excellent. And he wasn't just rewarded by the first king, Nebuchadnezzar, by the second king, Belshazzar, but the third king realized his talent and elevated him. Darius made him the managing partner of Persia. And the rest of the satraps got jealous and the administrators and the governors. And so they went to Darius with this ploy, with this plot. And they said, hey, for 30 days, let no one in our empire worship anyone or anything but you. And if they do, let's throw them in the lion's den. Listen, this is just an aside. Why do kings have lion's dens? What are they doing with those? Seems like a lot of upkeep. You need a zoologist of some sort. Probably a veterinarian. You know. I don't know what you have to do to take care of lions. But he had a lion's den. And they said, and it was well known apparently. And they said, if people don't worship you for the next 30 days, put them in the lion's den. And then there was an edict released. This is what they said. This is what they said to Darius. Just so we're on the same page in the text. Daniel chapter 6 verse 6. And satraps went as a, issue the decree and put it in writing so that it cannot be altered in accordance with the law of the Medes and the Persians, which cannot be repealed. So King Darius put the decree in writing. So they went to him with this ruse and they appealed to his ego. And they said, may you live forever. You're the best. Let's put in writing that for the next 30 days, everyone has to worship you. And if they worship anybody else, they're going to be put to death in the lion's den. Put it in writing so it's true. And he did. They appealed to his ego and he signed it. And it went into practice. As soon as the decree was issued, the very next thing in the story is Daniel goes to his house. He goes to his room in the city and he opens the windows. And he opens the windows so that he could face Jerusalem. And you may not know this, and I did not know this before I went, but in 2013, I had the opportunity to go to Israel. And one of the things I learned over there was that all of the temples in Israel are built facing the temple in Jerusalem, the temple. And there is some sort of orientation within every temple that exists on the planet that faces it towards Jerusalem. So it's a very Jewish thing to face Jerusalem where God is. At this time, there was still the Holy of Holies. It was the presence of God. And so Daniel opened his windows, not to show that he was praying, not to be bold in what he was doing, but because he wanted to face the very presence of God. He was a man of humble faith. And so he opens the windows and he prays. And the jealous satraps see him doing this and they go to King Darius and they say, your servant Daniel has refused to worship you. He's worshiping his Hebrew God. And Darius is in a pickle. And to his credit, he's torn about this. He realizes his decree and what he needs to do. But he also loves Daniel. But he goes and he gets Daniel and he puts him in the lion's den. And it says that he had a sleepless night because he was hoping for the heart and the health of Daniel. And he says he wakes up the next morning and he rushes to the den and he sees that Daniel is healthy and alive and intact and in joy. He says, remove the stone. And he calls Daniel out and he celebrates with Daniel, and then hear, Darius, Cyrus, Daniel persists. His leadership persists. His influence persists. And when I read this story to get ready to preach to grace, the thing that jumped off the page to me, and this is why I have this story of the conference at the beginning and what it must be like to preach to 3,000 or 4,000 people and how much I love preaching to the people of grace. The thing that jumped off the page to me was not to reiterate devotion, was not to reiterate consistency. It was the juxtaposition. Knowing that we are a people of influence, knowing that we are a high-capacity people that impact the lives of others when we leave this space. It was the juxtaposition between how Darius and Daniel used their influence. Darius used it to point to himself. They came to him and they said, oh king, may you live forever, which is stupid. No one lives forever. That's just a silly thing. The fact that your ego needs that is automatically ridiculous. But they said, may you live forever. And then they proposed that everybody should worship you for 30 days. What kind of a leader wants that? A sycophant. It's kind of unbelievable. But he used, Darius was a man that had incredible influence. Absolutely incredible influence. He was a leader. He had intentionally deployed influence. He was someone that impacted millions of people. And what did he use that influence for? To point to himself. Worship me for 30 days. And so the juxtaposition of Darius and Daniel, to look at Daniel who had garnered influence over the course of four different kings, four different reigns. I don't know what your experience is in the corporate space, but if you've had four different bosses, you know how difficult it is to ingratiate yourself to a different person after a different person after a different person and to be one that rises above that means you must be someone of great potential and so that's what Daniel did and then he had an opportunity to use his influence and how did he use it by opening his windows and praying and pointing himself towards God. And pointing other people towards God. In Darius, we have someone of great influence and impact who uses that influence to point people towards himself. In Daniel, we have someone of great influence and impact who uses that influence to point people towards his God. And so the question before us this morning is, how are you going to use your influence? With your direct reports, in your career, in your company, in your school, on your team, with your clients, with your children, with your family, in your small group, with your friends. You have influence. How are you going to use it? Are you going to use it like Darius to point people towards yourself? With your grandkids? Or are you going to use it like Daniel to point to God? How are you going to use your influence? And that question would be enough of a landing zone, but I think it begs another. How do we cultivate that influence? How do we become the kind of people who impact the people around us towards God? If we can acknowledge that we have influence in various lives and in various ways, and we want to use that influence, not like Darius, but like Daniel, how can we use it to push people towards God? And how do we develop more of it so that we might push people closer to God. Here's what I would say. Influence is developed by displaying character over time. Influence is developed by displaying character over time. Character, I've been told since I was young, is what you do when no one can see what you're doing. What do you do alone? Do you pursue God? Do you pray? Do you do the little things, the small acts of kindness to someone that you have nothing to gain from except to be kind to them. This influence in our lives and with the people around us is developed by small acts of character over time. Think about your workplace and the people you work around. Think about the people that you trust the most. Think about the people that you respect the most. If you think about the people that you respect the most, isn't it true of them that what you've seen is over time they make the right choice over and over and over again? They say the hard thing when it needs to be said. They do the honest thing when it needs to be done. The people that you respect the most, haven't they over time displayed character? And every time you display character, isn't that a little bit of money in the bank on what influence is? One of my heroes in my faith and in my life is a man named Israel Gonzalez. I can feel it now. I might get emotional as I share his story. Please excuse me. Israel is a hero of the faith for me. He's a hero in life. From about 2008 to about 2013, I got to take some trips to Honduras. And in Honduras, I met Israel. Israel is a pastor. And he's an immigrant to Honduras from Nicaragua. And he married a woman who's a doctor. And Israel felt compelled to plant a church. So he planted a church called Christian Community Honduras. I don't know what it is in Spanish. I don't speak Spanish. Andrew, you could help me out with that. I have no idea. Or probably Doris. She's more reliable than you. And out of Christian Community Honduras, he discipled a young man. And he trained him and he raised him up to be a pastor. And he sent him out to plant a church. And the way that you plant churches in Honduras, which is a deeply traditionally Catholic nation and is also always in the bottom three of poverty in the Western Hemisphere. So he's in a city called Ciguarapeque. And in the mountains and hills surrounding Ciguatapeque are these villages and towns. And he goes into those villages and towns. And you have to literally, this is foreign to us, this sounds weird to us, but you have to ingratiate yourself to the town elders. And so to do that, he throws parties. And if you go on a mission trip, that's what you do, is you throw a party in these towns. And you serve hot dogs and you serve ice cream and you hang out with the kids. And I would go and get out of the van and throw a soccer ball up in the air. And 40 kids would come running and you just play soccer for forever. And then the other people who speak Spanish would minister to the parents and to the grandparents and to the adults in the village. And it was a wonderful experience, but he was doing that to gain traction with the village elders who would then approach him and say, we'd like a church here. They would have to ask for a church. And then he would take someone he had been training at his church and send them out to be the pastors of those churches. And this is his model of ministry. The other thing he would do, and this is incredible, the other thing he would do to ingratiate himself to the village is in Honduras, because of the poverty, they're cooking on open flame indoors, and that would cause smoke inhalation and cause people to die of lung cancer at accelerated rates. So Israel, and this is true, invented a stove, invented an oven that reduces smoke inhalation by 90%. He had it studied by Duke, and he had it studied by the University of Indiana, and he got a patent for a patent for it a patent thanks Tom I'm just looking at you helped he got a patent for it and you can give to Israel an amount of money that will allow him to buy the materials and build a stove and they go into these villages into the favored mothers of the. And they take out their old stove and they rebuild this new stove so that they don't have to breathe in smoke. And he does this to ingratiate himself to the villages so that he can build churches there. So that the gospel can go out. He uses his influence to point towards God. And here's a couple amazing things about Israel. If he did that in America, we'd put him on podcasts. We'd put him on stages with a thousand people. We'd make him famous. We'd give him money. And oh, by the way, with the extra money that he gets from the stoves, they built a clinic and his wife left her practice and she practices free medicine on the people in Ciguatapeque. Not for nothing. If he did all that here, he'd be a celebrity. But because he doesn't on Honduras, he's nobody. And I can't wait to get to heaven and meet more people like Israel. But let me tell you about his influence and what character does. These small acts when no one else is watching. One visit to Honduras, it was the last day, so it was R&R day. And you guys who have been on mission trips know that Americans demand at least one day of tourism at the end of serving God. You have to do it. Otherwise they won't come the next year. So we did our American day of tourism and we went to a waterfall. The waterfall was an hour away from Ciguarpeque, outside of what I would anticipate Israel's range of mission to be. And there wasn't enough room in the van, and so I ended up riding in the car with Israel. And we had a good conversation. I don't remember the conversation. It was his broken English and my non-Spanish. But we talked. And at one point he said, hey, brother, I have to make a pit stop. I hope you don't mind. That's fine. I was actually, I was really ticked. I was like, Israel, we've got to get to the waterfall. But no, he said, I need to make a stop. So we pull up. We're in this kind of community. And if you've spent time in third world countries, you know that that homes kind of double as bodegas. Sometimes homes are homes and their residences and their places of business. And this was one of those places. And we pull up in front of a home and the garage is open. And you can see the garage looks like essentially a makeshift convenience store. And it's over there and Israel's in the driver's seat and I'm sitting right here and he rolls down my window and he yells something at the proprietor. And the man looks and says, oh, hello Israel! And then turns and he yells something into the house. And immediately this kid, this teenage kid comes out of the house. And the first thing you notice about this kid, that any of us would notice about this kid, is that they were extremely special needs. So this special needs kid comes out of the house and sees that Israel's there and begins to make noises of excitement. And then get this, goes to the cooler, opens it up and gets out a Mountain Dew. He knows Israel's order. It's funny, but catch that. Israel's been there before. He's got a lot of Mountain Dews here. This kid's excited to see him. And he walks to the car with a Mountain Dew, and Israel gets out and he hugs him. And they have this moment in excited Spanish that I don't need to hear the words to understand. And I'm sitting there, sorry, in the passenger seat, marveling at this man who has made friends with a kid who lives an hour away from him, who will never give to his ministry, who he will never train to be a pastor and send out into the villages, who he has absolutely nothing to gain from. An hour away. He's not making a show in the middle of the city and going, hey, everybody else who can see me, look at the way I love. No one will ever know about that. And if I weren't in the car, 100% chance Israel stops there anyways. What kind of man is it to use your influence like that? To love like that? To point people towards God like that? In the story of Daniel in the lion's den, I see a picture of two men using their influence in different ways. I believe at grace we have an unusual confluence of influence. And I believe that we can use it to point towards God. And I believe that we can use it to be the kind of man that Daniel was, that Israel is, and that with what we have here, we can deploy all of our assets to point people towards God and who He is. Yeah? Let's pray. God, thank You for Your servant Daniel. Thank You for Your servant Israel. Thank You for this room and this body of people that does have great influence. And God, I pray that as we consider our influence, that we would use it to point people towards you. May our coworkers be better, be more inclined towards you because they worked with us. May our employees be closer to you and more inclined towards you because they worked for us. May our families desire you more because they were in a family with us that you assigned us to. Father, use us. Pull us towards you. And help us bring people with us. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thank you for joining us at Grace. I was late into the service this morning. Anecdotally, I'm just indulging myself. This has nothing to do with anything. I was just happy with the moment. When I was growing up, I got in trouble at church all the time. Me and my best friend, PJ Smith, we got kicked out of every ministry that ever existed at our church because we were troublemakers. And my senior pastor, a guy named Buddy Hoffman, used to, in Sunday night service, back when we encumbered our pastors with having to preach two sermons on one Sunday, he would call me out, Chris, stop talking to Karen, or do I need to get Donna to come down here and sit between you two? Like that kind of stuff in the service. And as a 12-year-old, that's mortifying. And I just remember that as what my pastor did. And I was next door refilling my water and getting ready to come over here. And there was a kid that got a little sideways. And the teacher had to pull him out. And the kid wasn't really listening to the teacher. And so I had to crouch down and get real stern with said kid and say, you're going to get right. And he says, she's not my mom. And I said, yeah, you're right, but she's your teacher. And if you don't listen to her, I'm going to go get your mom. And it was just like, and she said, thanks, Nate. I was like, you're welcome. Also, Carly, it was your, no, I'm just kidding. It was not, it was not, it was not. This morning, we're in our second part of Daniel, where we're going through the first portion of the book, the narrative portion of the book, and looking at these stories and asking what we can learn from them and what they have for us now. This morning, we arrive at the story of the fiery furnace, one of my favorite stories in the Bible, in the Old Testament, and I'm thrilled to arrive at it now. It's a story about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, but years ago, I went to Honduras on a mission trip, and I got to know a man named Mark Searcy, who's a custom home builder in western North Carolina. But in his teenage and 20, in his late teens and 20s, he was a missionary to Haiti and has this missionary background. And he's really southern and really. And one of my favorite humans I've ever met. And he's, he told me that, uh, that I'm not going to tell him what, I'm not going to tell you what he calls, uh, Nebuchadnezzar. I'll tell you if you ask me after the service, I'll tell you, but I'm not going to tell you from here. Uh, he, and he said that Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego are the demon names for those boys because their real names were Benadab, Mishael, and Hananiah. Those were their Hebrew names that all meant some sort of praise to God. And they were renamed by the Babylonian government, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, what we know them by. And those are their demon names because those give praise to the Babylonian gods. And I'm not sure how convinced I am of Mark's perspective, but I do think it's interesting that there is, that there have been a dad, Mishael and Hananiah. Those are their God given, the names given by their Jewish parents that give praise to God. And I do think it's good as we remember the story to know their real names. But in the Bible and in the story, they're referred to as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. So we will refer to them as that. And here's the situation. Last week, we talked about the exile and basically Jewish slaves being carried to Babylon to serve in their court and that they took some of the elite, the cream of the crop, young men, and they installed them in the government. They put them through a training process and then they installed them in the government and gave them different roles. And so Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego have been prepared for that, and they've now been installed in their roles, and they've reached the upper echelons of government. And as such, they've made their peers jealous of them. So there are native Babylonians that are now working with them or even under them that have become jealous of their progress and of their success. And that's the environment. And in the midst of this environment, there's an edict that goes out. King Nebuchadnezzar erects a gold statue of himself. And there's an edict that whenever music is played, and in the Bible, this is where in Daniel chapter three, I'm going to look at some verses in a minute. So if you have a Bible and you want to turn there, that's where we are. But it says in the Bible that whenever these instruments, the lyre and the harp and the whatever, and the trumpet and whatever are played, then you should bow and worship the golden image or just bow towards the golden image and worship Nebuchadnezzar, who has now deified himself. And Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego don't agree to this. Whenever the music plays, they don't worship. And I was thinking about this as I was rereading the story and reacquainting myself with it. It's difficult to believe that they would stand in the city center obstinately going like this and saying, we're not going to worship. It's more easy to believe that they would discreetly and respectfully move off to the side and just kind of let everyone else do their thing. I certainly don't know what the situation was, but I seriously doubt they made a big show of not worshiping. I think they just didn't worship. But some of their peers noticed this and told on them. They went to King Nebuchadnezzar and they ratted them out. They told on them. And this is a lesson for all the, everybody, if you're in here and you're under 15, raise your hand. Snitches get stitches. All right. That's a real thing. Don't do this. Don't tell on people. That's for you. They told on them. And they said, hey, whenever the music plays, these people aren't worshiping you. They're not honoring you. And the text says that Nebuchadnezzar was enraged. He was an emotionally volatile man from everything we can tell from the text. Nebuchadnezzar was enraged, and he calls them in. And he's furious at them. And he says, I've heard you guys. I've brought you in. I've supported you. I've trained you. I've elevated you. I've progressed you. I've given you success. I've given you affluence. And as a thank you, you refuse to worship me. He's furious at them. He says, if you don't worship me, I'm going to play the music. I'm going to turn on Spotify. And if you don't worship me, I'm going to burn you in the fiery furnace. That's the threat. So that's the situation and that's where we are. And this is their response to King Nebuchadnezzar. And I think it is a remarkable response. Daniel chapter three, verses 16 through 18. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego replied to him, King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we. That's the most important phrase in the story. But even if he does not, we want you to know, your majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up. So he brings these young men before him. He's this enraged king surrounded by guards. And he says, if you don't worship me, I'm going to throw you into the furnace. I'm going to burn you alive. And their response is, we do not need to defend ourselves against you in this matter, which is difficult to parse out. And different theologians would say different things, because with this limited story we get from the text, it's difficult to know exactly what their intent is. And so this is a guess. But my guess is that they believe that Nebuchadnezzar knew of their faith. That they believe that he knew, like, hey, we're worshipers of the Hebrew God. We're not worshipers of other gods. We don't need to defend ourselves against you. I don't think it was defiant. I don't think it was, no, no, no, I'm not going to talk about that with you. You don't deserve that. I'm not going to answer that question. It was, it was more of, I believe, you know who we are. You know who we worship. That's not going to change. And that God that we worship is going to protect us. Throw us in there. He'll protect us. And even if he doesn't, we're going to continue to believe in him. And we will not worship you. That's their response. When they responded in that way, Nebuchadnezzar is so angry that he looks at his guards and he says, make the furnace seven times hotter, which is a hilarious command. Because if you're on fire, you're on fire. You know, does it get worse if it's seven times? Like if your arms on fire and then you make it seven times hotter, is that a worse fire on your arm? Like I don't understand that. And I also don't understand in ancient Babylon how you gauge what seven times hotter is. But that's what he says. Make it seven times hotter. And it was so hot that one of the guards that bound them and threw them into the furnace burned up himself because he got too close to the flame, which is a really tough way to go. But that's what happens. And he throws them into the flame. And then he's watching them in the flames, expecting to see them burn up. I don't know if there was like a bulletproof, like double-pane glass that was heatproof that he could see through, or if it was just like an open furnace. I don't know how it worked, but he's looking in and he's seeing them, and he notices something. And this is what the text says, Daniel 3, 24 through 26. Then King Nebuchadnezzar leapt to his feet in amazement and asked his advisors, weren't there three men that were tied up and threw into the fire? They replied, certainly, your majesty. He said, look, I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods. Nebuchadnezzar then approached the opening of the blazing furnace there three people in the house, but only are there three people who are unharmed, but there's a fourth. And the text just says he looks like a son of the gods. And here's a thing that I like to do with the Old Testament. We don't know who that was. We don't know who the fourth person was in there with them. It could have been an angel. Some people think it could have been Jesus himself. And here's what I do as a highly trained theologian. Whenever... Shut up. That's great. I'm a very lowly train. I'm not a pastor, theologian. That's crazy. Anyways, just the snicker from the 26 year old was deserved. It was deserved. Whenever we have the opportunity in the Old Testament to put Jesus in a place, we should. So maybe it was an angel. But I think it was Jesus. I think he showed up with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And he said, I'm with you. You have faith in me. I'm with you. And he protects them from the fiery furnace. You can extrapolate that out however you like. But I think Jesus was there. I think Jesus was there in the form of Melchizedek when Abraham showed up in Salem and gave a tithe to him. For me, it's just cooler to allow Jesus to show up wherever it seems like he does. So who knows who is there? And who knows who wrote Hebrews? But let's make guesses. And I think that was Jesus there in the furnace with them. When Nebuchadnezzar sees this, he calls them out. Come out right away. And the ties that bound their hands were done. They were burned up, but they were unharmed completely by the flames. And his response, if weadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who sent his angel and rescued his servants. They trusted in him and defied the king's command and were willing to give up their lives rather than serve or worship any god except their own god. Therefore, this is important, I decree that the people of any nation or language who say anything against the God of them must be cut to pieces and their houses be turned into piles of rub is, if you honor God, you will get a promotion. He sees what happens. Also, that's false. He sees what happens and he calls them out. And he says, he gives praise to this God that he was moments ago committed to defying. Do you see? And so that's the story. And then God gets the glory. So that's the story of, and that's all the rhyming I'm going to do. That's the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and the fiery furnace. And it's a wonderful story. And typically, when I preach a sermon, I'm really, whether you've noticed it or not, doing my best to try to get us to like one point to think about. I'm trying to drive the ship to this one thing for us to consider. And I'd love to do that with this story, but here's the problem. It's too grand of a story to reduce to one point. I've also been your pastor now for eight years, and this is the first time I've preached on it. I don't see myself getting back to it anytime soon. So instead of just saying one thing, I want to pull out three things from this story that we learned for us to consider this morning. And I would encourage you to weigh them with equal weight and to decide and determine this morning. We don't have the capacity to apply three things to ourselves and do three new things in our lives and all the things. So one of these three things, I think and I hope and I and I pray will connect with you. And I would invite you to just grab onto the one that does. And maybe you'll get to the end of them and be like, is there a fourth one? I don't, none of those mattered, but hopefully one of these three will be something that relates to you. So the first thing we see in this story is simply this. Holiness matters. Holiness matters. It matters in life. It matters to God. It should matter to you. Holiness matters. Last week, this is what we talked about. We talked about Daniel being trained by the Babylonians and being offered this new diet. And with this diet, he was encouraged to eat stuff that was outside the purview of the Jewish laws in which he grew up. And so he said, I'm going to refuse that and choose this vegetarian vegan diet. And let's just see how it goes. So he chose holiness. And when I say holiness, here's what I mean, because this is what the Bible means. The word holy means different and more accurately, it means other. So when we say holy, and when God said, when we say about God, holy, holy, holy, what we are saying is different, different, different, other than us, set aside from us, not the same as us. And so when we say we act with holiness, we pursue holiness, what we're saying is we're pursuing being different. And what we talked about last week is we're pursuing being different from the society in which we find ourselves entrenched. We are not citizens of the United States. We are not citizens of North Carolina. We find ourselves residing here. We are aliens in those places, and we are citizens of heaven. And so our behavior and our standards should be not in line with the given standards of North Carolina or Raleigh or North Raleigh or wherever it is you find yourself. Our standards for ourselves should be in line with what scripture says and who God tells us to be. That's what holiness is. Now, I had lunch with a friend of mine this week. And, excuse me, and he he was saying how does a leaf get up on this stage like all the way in looky there I had lunch with a friend of mine and he was saying that he enjoyed last week's sermon but that he wanted when I got I got to the holy part, to the diet, he wanted to say, what's the diet? Give me the standards. Tell me what to do. He's like, I don't know how everybody feels, but sometimes I like to get kicked in the teeth on Sunday morning. Like, make me feel a little bit bad. Like, ruffle my feathers a little bit and tell me what the standards should be. Tell me what we should watch and what we shouldn't watch. And tell me what we should think and what we shouldn't think. And tell me what practices in my life, like get on to me a little bit. And I said, I'll never do that. I'll never do that. That's not what I'm here to do. Because holiness, this is going to sound odd, is gray. It's different things for different people. I'm never going to get up here and tell you what it looks like to be holy as if I am that. You guys are smart, responsible adults with the gift of the Holy Spirit. Most of you. I believe in your capacity to decide what holiness is for you. I'm not going to sit up here and list standards off by which you should live. I'm going to trust you to establish those for yourself. And here's one of the reasons. I've given this example before. Years ago, I found myself, and I still do, as a big fan of NBA playoff basketball. I hate the regular season. I think the mid-season tournament is one of the dumbest things I've ever encountered in my life. That joke's going to land with 5% of you, but you know who you are. But I would watch the NBA playoffs because I like it. I like sports. I watch all the sports. And I like the playoffs. But the playoffs would keep me up because of the West Coast games until 1, 1.30, 2 o'clock in the morning. And by watching them every night, I was getting up later than I needed to. And sometimes it would cause me to either miss my quiet time, which you've heard me say a hundred times. The most important habit anyone can develop in their life is to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and time in his presence through prayer. You've heard me say that over a hundred times, if you've been here for any length of time and by staying up late and watching those games, it was causing me to wake up late and either have a truncated quiet time or none at all. And so it was impacting me spiritually. So it became unholy for me to stay up watching basketball games. But I'm not going to stand on this stage and tell you it's unholy to watch sports. That's how it's great. You have to determine how your behaviors impact you and how they push you to God or not and what diet is right for you. But here's what I know based on this story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, is that holiness matters. Here's the second thing I know from this story. God is always working for his glory. God is always working for his glory. You see in the story that they get into this scenario where they've been told on. It's a bad scene. And they could have justified their way out of it, couldn't they? They could have said, God, I'm going to bow down to Nebuchadnezzar so I don't die. And so that I can remain in this place and influence in the right way. I mean, if I die, they're just going to replace me with a godless Babylonian. You don't want that to happen. So like, I'm just going to do this. I don't mean it, but I'm going to bow down. They didn't do that. They were in a tough spot. And they had this standard because they chose holiness of I can't bow down to Nebuchadnezzar. And at any point, God could have intervened and saved them. But he waited until the very last minute to save them in the fiery furnace. And so they were in this predicament that was preventable, but God didn't prevent. He allowed his servants to continue to suffer. And what we see at the end of that is that God was working for his glory because what's the result of the story? The result of the story is Nebuchadnezzar declares, no one will ever blaspheme the God of the Hebrew people. No one will ever blaspheme the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And by allowing them to go through this difficult phase and rescuing them at the very last minute, God made his own name great. Do you see? It was declared throughout Babylon because of that. There's an edict that went out that we will honor this God now. So it's important for us to hear from the story that whatever God is doing, he's doing it to work his own glory. I have a friend who, when he graduated, he got in with an accounting firm. And he began to just work and work diligently and work hard and do what you do in that stage of your career and kind of rise in the ranks and yada, yada, yada. And he ended up making partner with two other folks. And so now he's a partner with two other people, but he feels a sense of injustice because they don't work as hard as he does. They have this kind of mentality that once you make partner, now you have employees to do the work and you get to make the money off of what they do. And he felt like, no, you have to outwork your employees. And then he looked at his partners who he viewed as lazy and they are not working as hard. And this frustrated him and it caused years of frustration. And then eventually what happened was, and he's, by the way, going to church, he's a deacon at his church. He's, he's one of these people and he's getting frustrated with the situation because it feels unjust and it feels unfair. And he's like, God, I'm honoring you. Why are you, why is this happening? And then there's a personal fallout and he actually gets kicked out of the partnership and he has to start from scratch. And so he finds himself in his mid-30s with children starting from scratch and going, God, how is this happening? Why is this happening? This seems unfair. But he starts from scratch and he builds a new company and develops new partners. And you fast forward another 15, 20 years after that, and his firm exists and gives 20 to 30% of their profits to nonprofit organizations building God's kingdom around the globe. And he has people on his payroll whose entire job is to do the finances of nonprofits for free. He had to go through a hard time and be recalibrated. But it was to be recalibrated for God's glory. So that this person could be, so that my friend could be used to bring glory to God in his kingdom in a greater way. Some of us in here may find ourselves going through times that seem hard and seem preventable. God, if you wanted to fix this, you could. God, if you wanted to rescue, you could. God, if you wanted to restore, you could. If you wanted to repair, you could. If you wanted to heal, you could. And maybe he's not. But God doesn't work in days. He works in decades. And he works in centuries. And here's what I know about God based on this story and many others. God is always working for his glory. And he will involve you. In that path. If you stick with him. Like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. So God is always working for his glory. Here's the last thing. And this one. I said consider them with equal weight. But this is my favorite one. And I stole this one from a friend of mine who I hadn't talked to in years. And I actually called him this week and I said, Hey dude, he's a guy, his name's Alan Smith. He's on staff at my last church. He's still there as a campus pastor. And he and I worked together. And I remember him preaching this sermon. This was the first sermon that he preached. It was on Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego when he had a chance to preach at the last church. And I called him this week and I said, dude, I'm preaching that story. And I remember the point you made. And I'm totally stealing it. But I'm going to give you credit. Like just so you know, I'm not going to pretend like this is my idea and my insight. and we had a good catch up and whatever. But this is not from me. This is from Alan. Not that Alan. This is from another Alan. Here's the question that I come out of with this story. And this is the thing I want to leave you with. Do you have, even if, faith? Do you have, even if, faith? I told you those words were the most important words in the story, and I told you that we were going to come back to them. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego said, Nebuchadnezzar, O king, if you throw us in the furnace, our God will protect us. But even if he doesn't, we will still worship him. Do you ever see the power of that? I believe my God can heal my dad. But even if he doesn't, I'm going to worship him. I believe my God can repair this. But even if he doesn't, I'm going to worship him. I believe that my God can make this better. But even if he chooses not to, but even if he doesn't, I will remain faithful. Do you know how hard it is? Many of you have walked through it, and you know what even if faith is. Do you know how hard it is to feel let down by God and say, but even if he lets me down and he doesn't do the thing that I think he's going to do or that I want him to do or that I need him to do or that I'm desperate for him to do or that I'm weeping for him to do, even if he doesn't do it, I will still choose him. That's even if faith. I had a conversation this last week and it made my week, man. I used to be a high school teacher. And Honeymoon is a football coach, Mike Devine. And I got really close with a particular class. And there were some of the kids, some of the guys that I got really close with. So close that I'll tell you this. One of my greatest regrets, this guy's name's Alex Williams, and we went to the lake. I took them to my in-law's lake house. And we were joking about getting tattoos, and I don't have any tattoos. We were joking about getting tattoos, and Alex said, I'll get a matching one with you. And I said, what do you want to get? And we decided that it would be great to get 100% awesome written on our butt cheek. I wish I had that tattoo. Golly, what a miss. That would be great. But I don't. But Alex and I were that kind of close. And in his junior and senior year, Alex's dad was dying of cancer. And I have a vivid memory of bringing in some of the other men and dads from the class into my classroom. And we gathered around Ron. And we prayed for God to heal him. And God did heal him. He just healed him in eternity. He didn't heal him here. And so Alex lost his dad. After losing his dad, his mom, understandably so, kind of went off the rails. And his two elementary age brothers had to move in with Alex at 19 years old. And he found himself as the caretaker for them. He had a hard go. And Alex always loved Jesus, but this was a hard season. And I lost touch with him for a while. I would see him on Facebook. He's got a wife. He's got a young family. He seems to be doing well and be thriving. And I got a Facebook message, which I don't check very often because it was two weeks old. But he reached out to me and he said, hey, I'm doing okay in life. And I want to give to people who need it. How do I do that? And so I said, this is a great conversation to have, dude. Let's talk. And we talked and he said, and this is, you guys will find this funny. Um, and it's sad that it's true. He said, you're the fourth pastor I've talked to. I'm involved in the church. I've talked to three other pastors. Can you guess where they told me to give my money? And he said, I knew you wouldn't do that, so I called you. And I said, 10% of everything we give goes to you. We had a great conversation. We caught up. We shared stories about the time I got too excited as a football coach and punched him in the stomach in the middle of a game. Not because I was mad, because I was pumped up. I was like, let's go get him. And I accidentally hit Alex. Anyways, it was a wonderful conversation. And he's coming to Raleigh. He's doing a bid on our church. He's a general contractor. He might build our church. Who knows if that's what God is orchestrating. But he's going to come here, and when he comes here, I'm going to lay out in front of him six nonprofits that I know of and say, whatever God directs your heart, get involved in these. But these are good people and they're doing good things. And I'm so thrilled to be able to do that. But here's the point of that story. That's even if faith. Isn't it? Even if you don't heal my dad. Even if my mom goes off the rails. Even if I adopt my brothers at the age of 19. Even if I have to go through trials and I can't go to college. I will find a way, and when I do, God, I'm going to honor you. As soon as you give me the means, I'm going to honor you. That's even if faith. So that's the question that I would leave you with today. Do you have even if faith? Let's pray and we'll take communion. Father, thank you so much for this morning. Thank you for this wonderful church and group of people. Thank you for the way that you allow us to love you and one another. Thank you for speaking to us through the stories of the Old Testament and this morning, hopefully, through the story of Ben-Hadad, Mishael, and Hananiah. Thank you for your servants then and your servants now. God, as we move into this time of communion, we just pray that we would reflect and be grateful for the way that you love us, for the way that you're always working for your glory. I pray that we would pursue holiness and that we would, if we don't have it now, progress towards an even-if faith. It's in your Son's name we pray these things. Amen.