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And church, it is good to see all of you today. It's good to have everybody join us on our campuses and everybody online. And uh I don't know if you realize this, but this is kind of like the beginning of our ministry year. So our fiscal year, but our ministry year starts in in August. And so a couple things I just want to like just celebrate for a second. If you weren't here last week, you missed out. Like you literally missed out. It was one of the best Sundays. I I had so much fun just watching. It was a baptism weekend. A bunch of our students had gone away to camp and our kids, and they had made decisions to come back, and we uh gave them an opportunity to get baptized, but then we opened it up to the whole church, and 109 people across our campuses got baptized. And that that was just incredible. Now, that's after the ministry of the year last year, the previous 52 weeks, there were 805 baptisms. That's 914 people in 53 weeks that made a first-time decision to give their life to Christ and to be baptized, and that's something to celebrate. And so, super excited about it. And I would say if you haven't made that decision, man, you should. Just that is the beginning. We're gonna talk a little bit about the next steps in our life today, but that's the beginning. That's where it starts. We place our faith in Jesus, and the Bible says that we respond by participating in the death, the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus. That's the picture of baptism, and it was so fun seeing the smiles on people's faces, seeing the families that were gathered together at our campuses. Um, it was just a great day. I'll give you another number that's really cool. Over the last 52 weeks, over our last ministry year, we had 790 people or families that gave for the first time. And here's why that mat that number matters. Like that number is not just 790 people, that represents either individuals or families. If you take all that together, that's a little under 2,000 people who have said, those 914 stories, I get to be a part of that. Like I'm just you realize, like my wife and I, this is what we look at when we give generously to the church, which God tells us we should. And so for us, we we look at that as when income comes in, generosity goes out. That's the first thing we do. But we look at it like this there is nothing else in this world that has a better ROI on our investment, our return on our investment, than looking at when we give, we get to be a part of 914 stories over the last 52 weeks. I mean, that's that's pretty incredible. And so I just want to say if you're one of those people that jumped in and joined us here and said, I want to be a part of the mission of what God's doing, and you gave for the first time, man, thank you. We are so grateful. And on behalf of those people who made that decision, thank you. You're a part of making that happen. And if you've not done that yet, I would encourage you, man, jump in, join us, and uh let's get on this mission together because this valley's got six million people. It's got six million people, and there's a whole lot of churches, but we got a whole lot of work to do in our areas next to our campus. So keep inviting, keep giving, and let's keep making a difference. All right? I want you to get to Luke 9.23. We're gonna be there in just a little bit. It's kind of our verse. We'll talk about that um in just a while. But before we get there, how many of you have seen, if you're on social media or maybe you maybe been on YouTube, whatever, how many of you have seen the viral reflex challenge? Have you seen this? It's like it's kind of gone viral everywhere. People have seen it. Um, what it is, is it started off as an arcade game, and then also it physical therapists would use this. So physical therapists would use this as kind of like a um a reflex challenge when people are having issues with recovery and nerve endings and trying to get things to connect. And so they would use this, and what it looks like is you stand in this kind of semicircle. So you stand this semicircle, whether you're at a you know an arcade or at a physical therapist, you stand this semicircle and it has this bar around the top that has sticks that have magnets on the end of them. There's about 10 or 12 of them, and they're all attached around. And you stand here just like this, and all of a sudden they start dropping randomly at different times. And you're testing your reflexes to be able to reach out and to grab them. Now there's that kind of um, there's that kind of large game like that, but then they also have one that is like one you would use in your house. Okay, there's just like six, you know, little sticks with magnets, and you can do that. Now, this thing went viral because people like Caitlin Clark, WNBA, started posting videos of themselves. Caitlin Clark, Shaq, influencers, all kinds of people would post videos of themselves failing miserably like at doing this. And so it's super fun. So I I thought this last week. I was like, you know, how hard can it be? Right? But I mean, how hard can it really be? We got some good athletes around this place, so I threw out a bit of a challenge. So it was Tuesday afternoon, I threw out a bit of a challenge to our lead student pastor Justin, to our Gilbert student pastor Josiah, and then to this, this, these guys are excited about that. Then then to this former senior pastor guy that a few of us may know. And I challenged him to be there on Wednesday night at Central Students, which, if you're a student or you've got a student, like that's the coolest place to be on Wednesday night. We showed up, had a little bit of competition, and this is what happened. I'm gonna try really hard. I'm getting a little nervous too. Man, yeah. I mean, how hard can it be? Apparently a whole lot harder than I thought, right? We showed up. And now one thing I would say is uh Justin and uh Josiah, I think they practiced all day. I think they practiced all day. The guys that were running this for us said, hey Sean, do you want to practice? And I literally said no. I said, if Cal doesn't get to see this, I don't get to see it. So we did it the very first time, and I'm telling you, if you've done this before, you step up there and you're ready to go. Like you're ready to go, and your mind's telling you, like, as soon as these things drop, I got this, I got this. And as soon as they drop, my mind was like, I got this. And that was it. I mean, it would just, it's your reflex time. It just is so like you see it, but it's gone before you can actually grab it. And isn't that a whole lot like life? Aren't there a whole lot of things in life that we're looking at that we believe that if I can just reach out and grab hold of this, if I can just grasp this, if I can just grab that, it's gonna give me a little more what I'm looking for. It's gonna give me a little bit more hope, it's gonna give me a little bit more peace, it's gonna be a little bit more purpose in my life. If I could just grab that marriage that I'm shooting for, and if I could just grab that family that that's not just surviving, but actually is thriving, man, that retirement number, that financial number, or that promotion, or and we just keep reaching for it, we want it, but in the end we don't have a whole lot to show for it. Or when we grab it, it doesn't actually produce the feelings of hope and joy and peace that we're actually looking for. It's interesting. In the Old Testament, there's a book called Ecclesiastes. The guy that writes it is Solomon, and it's basically an experiment. Solomon was the wisest man in history. Jesus even said that, the wisest person who ever lived. He was also one of the wealthiest people who ever lived. So when it talked about running this experiment of trying to reach after anything and everything in life and to see if that more that we're reaching for actually satisfies, he had no budget restrictions. Everything was right at his fingertips, and Solomon went after it all. I mean, we're talking all of it pleasure, purpose, money, wealth. I mean, he went after everything, and he gets to the end of this experiment. Ecclesiastes chapter 2, verse 10 and 11, he says this here's the result. His conclusion is I denied myself nothing my eyes desired. I refused my heart no pleasure, my heart took delight in all of my labor, and this was the reward for all my toil. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was what meaningless. Everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind. Nothing was gained under the sun. As I said, Solomon had no budget restrictions. He was the leader right then of most of that area, the known world. He was the wealth. I mean, people came from far and wide to see his wisdom, to see his wealth, to see the things that he had built. I mean, he had done everything. And Solomon gets to the end of it, and what is his conclusion? He says this word. The word is meaningless. Thirty-eight times in 12 chapters, he uses that word. He even puts it back to back sometimes. He says, meaningless, meaningless. It's a chasing after the wind. That word meaningless in chasing after the wind is the idea of chasing after a vapor. It's like trying to grab a vapor, think smoke, think steam, think your breath on a cold morning. You see it, it's there, but you can't grab it. Like you reach out and it just goes right through it. You're just grabbing it. It's like you're grabbing nothing, and you can't grab hold of what you're trying. That's what he says it's like in life. We have all these things that we are chasing after, we are grabbing after, that we think are the more that's actually gonna give us a life that we're chasing after, yet when we reach for them, it just doesn't satisfy. It's not something that gives us the life that we're actually chasing. That's why we're doing this series. We're gonna be in the next six weeks. We're gonna be in Luke chapter 9, verse 23, and some other verses. And we're talking about this idea of just the life you're chasing, because every one of us is chasing something. Every one of us is chasing something. And what we're doing is most of the time we don't have a lot to show for it. And so this series we're gonna go through, we're gonna dive in and we're gonna look at our values. Our values. Now, if you've been around Central for the last year or two, you know that our values are Jesus first, people always, made for more. And those might just sound like slogans that are on the back of a t-shirt, right? Here's the reality: there's so much more. You want to talk about the life you're actually chasing? Like the answer are those values. The answer is those values right there. And all of those values come straight out of Luke 9.23. It's interesting, a thousand years after Solomon, Jesus stood before his followers through a before a small group of his followers, and he said these words. Luke 9 23, he says, Then he said to them all, whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves, take up their cross daily, and follow me. Now, if you're new to Central at any of our campuses, you're watching online and not familiar with us, you might actually like drive by our campus and you would be like, Man, why is that cross on its side? Like, what's the deal with a cross on the side? I've never seen a church with a cross on its side. Honestly, before I had come to Central, I'd never seen a church with a cross on its side. Now you step back, that verse is the reason right there. Because you could say it this way there are two crosses in life. If you step back 2,000 years ago, you see Jesus' cross. Jesus was placed on a cross that stood there vertically, that his sacrifice for our sins reconnected us with God. And then his sacrifice, his perfect life that was spent on the cross for us was the penalty, it was the payment for everyone. You think vertical think horizontally across the entire world. It's a picture of the cross. Across the entire world, that people, when they give their lives to Christ, when they place their faith in him, that he is the Son of God, that he is the savior of their sins, then they receive forgiveness, they receive grace, they receive their eternity set with him. That's Jesus' cross. But if you step back from us, from that, there's another cross. That's our cross. And Luke 9.23, Jesus says to his disciples, if anyone wants to come after me and to be my disciple, what do they do? They pick up their cross. They pick up their cross of surrender to me and begin to follow me. And what's really interesting about Luke 9.23, I want us to kind of tear it apart today. Most people look at Luke 9.23, it's a very familiar verse, but they don't actually understand the context of in which Jesus says this. And if you're going to understand something in scripture, you have to understand the context. They would say it this way context is king, and if you're going to understand the context in interpretation of the Bible, one of the best ways to do that is to look at what's immediately before and then what's immediately after. So Luke 9, verse 18. Let's check it out. Here's what happens. Jesus is with his disciples. He's praying with them, like he does so often. And it says, Once when Jesus was praying in private with his disciples, they were with him, he asked them, Who do the crowds say that I am? They replied, Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and still others that one of the prophets long ago has come back to life. But what about you? I mean, Jesus takes this moment and he just kind of punches them, just like he does, he just takes it a little bit deeper and he looks at them, he says, What about you? Who do you say I am? Just imagine in the moment, he just kind of looking across, looking at all the guys. He locks eyes with Peter, and Peter responds and says, God's Messiah. Man, Peter nailed it. Like it's that moment, like if you've ever been sitting in a class and your teacher looks at you and they say, What's the answer to this question? Looking you right in the eye, and you're just like nervous, but you say something, they're like, Great job. Peter in this moment, he said, God's Messiah. You know what the word Messiah means? Anointed one or chosen one. The Messiah was the one that the prophets for hundreds and hundreds of years had been prophesying who would come, who would restore Israel, who would redeem Israel, who would save the people. There was a spiritual context, save the people from their sins. But honestly, Peter, he nails it in this moment, kind of. Because he's not thinking about the spiritual context. What Peter's thinking about is the political context. Like he steps into this moment and he's like, You are God's Messiah. And underneath that, when you look throughout the gospels and you see three or four different times when the disciples are walking along together, and what are they arguing about? Who is the greatest? Or when Jesus becomes king, right, of a political kingdom in their mind, who's gonna get to sit on the right and who's gonna get to sit on the left? Who's gonna have the really important spots in his kingdom? And that's what that's what Peter's saying right here. You are God's Messiah, who's gonna take down Rome, who's gonna restore Israel, and is gonna hand me the life I've been chasing of importance and wealth and provision and connection. And what Jesus does in that moment is he just gives a gut punch to that idea. Jesus comes back in verse 22. We won't read it, but here's what he says: He says, the Messiah, understand, Peter, the Messiah will be persecuted, he will be rejected, he will be tried, and then he will be killed. But on the third day, he will rise. Understand, Peter, you're saying this political kingdom, understand, I didn't come to set up a political kingdom and for you to sit on my right or my left. I came to set up a spiritual kingdom in which you follow me and begin to live the life that I live. And that is the context, because that's the context that Jesus says, Luke 9, 23, which is very interesting because you think about the people in Scripture who came to Jesus, that's what they were wanting. Peter, the disciples, the crowds, the the crowds that came that were hungry, that he had he fed the 5,000 and the 4,000. The people that came with their mats and and were paralyzed, and and people brought them to Jesus. They were coming for Jesus to hand them the life that they were hoping for. The sick, the blind, the mute. Jesus says, I'm not here to hand you something. I'm here for something that's much harder, but is much, much better. And that's the context in which Jesus says, Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves, take up their cross daily, and follow me. It's interesting. I want to break down verse 23 over the next few minutes. You know, Jesus dives into this passage and he just gives a picture of you want to find the life that you're chasing? Let me tell you what that looks like. And let me tell you how to actually grasp for that and grab hold of that. And he says, Whoever wants to be my what? My disciple. Like if you step back just for a second, church terms. Like when you think of it right now, in in our modern context, that word disciple, it's a church word, and we would define it, like most of you, if I asked you what a disciple looked like, you would say, a church member, right? Yeah, it's kind of a word for a church member. You know, a person who goes to church and and a person who might like volunteer, and that is so far from the idea. So far from the idea, the first century idea that people in Jesus' day had of the idea of disciple. John Mark Comer, famous pastor and writer, he writes a book called Practicing the Way, and he defines disciple as apprentice. Like an apprentice, a person. So in that day, a disciple was a person who followed a rabbi. It was actually the highest honor for a young adult male in those days. So it would be one who had been educated and educated when they were younger. They were some of the best of the best, and a rabbi would actually choose them. They would declare that they wanted to follow a rabbi, they would get close to a rabbi, but then a rabbi would see these people, kind of like Jesus saw Peter and said, Come follow me. James and John and Matthew and others. But they would see the best of the best, and then they would invite them to come follow them. And understand, this is not like modern day, somebody's like signing up for seminary and they sign up for classes at GCU or Arizona Christian or somewhere else. This was the idea that a disciple was an apprentice that was a person that was with their rabbi 24-7. Like they they basically left their families, they left their jobs, they left everything, and what they did is they went where the rabbi went. They ate where the rabbi ate. They stayed where the rabbi stayed. They followed this person 24-7, literally on their heels as a rabbi would walk through the countryside on these dirt roads of Israel and would just teach them. Teach them about the law. Teach them about how the law was applied. Teach them how they should live, teach them these ideas that they had in their mind. They would just, and these people would follow them. It was interesting. When these young adult males would go to follow the rabbi, there would be a blessing that was given by whether their family or someone else would be given to them. And John Mark Comer writes and he says, the blessing was this may you be covered in the dust of your rabbi. Isn't that awesome? Like this beautiful picture. It's this beautiful picture of proximity. Like this idea, you were covered in the dust of your rabbi because when a rabbi walked down the roads and they had their five or six or seven or ten or twelve students that were following right behind them, and their teaching as they followed so closely behind them on these dirt roads, their sandals, the sandals of the rabbi would kick up dust. And the dust would just flow on the sandals of the young men and on their clothes and on their hair and on their skin, and they would be covered. In the dust of the rabbi because they were so close to the rabbi. Let me just ask you for a second. Are you covered in the dust of your rabbi? When it comes to following Jesus, are you covered in the dust of the rabbi or are you covered in the dust of the rat race? Are you reaching and grasping for so many other things that you just, yeah, you got a whole lot of dust on you, but it's not Jesus' dust. Or are you a person who is a disciple, who is an apprentice, who is covered in the dust of the rabbi because you are close to the rabbi? John Mark Homer breaks it down and he says that people who are disciples, people who are disciples of Jesus, like modern-day disciples, if we were to think it of it in that terms, they are people who are with Jesus, people who are becoming like Jesus, and they are people who are doing what Jesus does. Like I love that. He says it's simple. It is a lot, but it is simple. It's just the idea of people who are with Jesus, who are becoming like Jesus, who are doing what Jesus does. And if you take those, they correlate almost perfectly to our values. When Jesus says, if anyone wants to be my disciple, what he's saying is, you have to be with me, which is our Jesus first value. Like it's the foundational idea of us not just showing up in church and sitting in a seat on Sunday. That's being a church member. You want to see your life change. You want to find what you're actually chasing after, whether it be in any area of your life, your marriage, your parenting, your relationship. Where it starts is putting Jesus first and being close to the rabbi, setting aside intentional time. Intentional time to connect with Jesus, to get into scripture, to find time for prayer, to find time to just begin to connect with Jesus so we begin to understand if we are following the rabbi, then what are the teachings of the rabbi? And if we're going to put Jesus first in our life, we should be connected with him enough where we begin to know what he says. Know what he says about our beliefs, what he says in scripture about even our culture ideas, and it becomes not my truth, but it becomes his truth. Because if he is the designer, he gets to define. And what Jesus does always is he defines what is best for you in those areas. So we get close enough to Jesus where we are able to see and know what Jesus says we should believe and also in our character. And then you just step back. When you're close enough to Jesus that his dust getting on you, then what happens is you start becoming like Jesus. We start becoming like Jesus in the way we love, and that's our people always value. You think about our world right now. What is one of the biggest problems we see in our world is the lack of unity. Everybody's angry about something, and everybody's angry with everybody else that disagrees with them. Everybody says, man, be about tolerance, but man, here's the deal. We are intolerant of people who believe differently than us. And what did Jesus do? Jesus came and he said, Hey, here's the, I'm here to give you the best life possible. But then he looked at people who were sinners. He looked at people who are prostitutes. He looked at people who are tax collectors that were so looked down on in that day. He looked at, you just name the different people that you would look at in this life that say, Man, they're different than me. Jesus walked into this world and he loved everyone equally. Why? Because he created every one of them. And because he created every one of them, he wanted them to be with him. And what he did is he puts you here so you and I could be the ones that share his love. Not leverage his love, but share his love unconditionally with others. Because at the end of the day, we're all broken, messed up hypocrites. And so many people look at Christianity and say, Well, I wouldn't be a Christian because they're a hypocrite. You know what? Every single person in this world is a hypocrite. And that's why Jesus came and died on a cross so we could be made pure before God. We'd be with Jesus, Jesus first. Then we become like Jesus. People always, and then you just look at this beautiful part of scripture where he says, he says, man, then you start doing what Jesus does. And that's our made-for-more passage. That's our made-for-more value. Like, do you realize that Jesus actually said in John 16 and 14, he says, Look, I'm going away, and it's better if I go away, because when I go away, I'm going to send the Holy Spirit. And if you accept me, if a person accepts me by faith, the Holy Spirit will come into their lives, and he says, You will do what? You will do greater things than me. And I'm like, greater things? Greater things than walking on water? Greater things than feeding the 5,000 or the 4,000? Greater things than healing? What Jesus was saying there was, you will do greater things. He said, because my ministry has been located in one spot with one group of people, what's going to happen is you will do greater things because you will take this, all of you together, in this thing that I'm going to call the church. You will take this to the entire world. Do you realize that you are not a church member? If you are a follower of Jesus, you are a disciple who has the Holy Spirit in you that has been placed where you are. That you are made for more. You are made for more just showing up. You're made for more than just sit in a seat. You are made to heal, to love, to care for, to do the things that Jesus did to bring unity and kindness and love and transformation to this world. You see, what John Mark Homer says is he says, hey, here's the thing. You, if you're going to be a disciple, you need to be covered in the dust of the rabbi, and to be covered in the dust of the rabbi means that you are close enough that you become, you be with Jesus, you become like Jesus, and then you do what Jesus does. Luke goes on, and he writes and says that he says for us that we, whoever wants to be my disciple, must deny themselves. Disciple, be covered in the dust of the rabbi, then deny. Nobody, we don't want to deny ourselves anything, do we? We don't. We want things when we want it. This whole idea of deny is not that Jesus is looking at us to say, I want you to have less. It's actually the idea that Jesus says, I want you to have more. And the way you have more is that you got to let go of some of the things that you're reaching for. Like it's this idea, this idea of denying ourselves, submitting ourselves to God. Here's what it is. If you are reaching for the wrong things, like if you are reaching for and white knuckling something here, you can't follow the rabbi there. Like if you if we are supposed to be close to the rabbi, what Jesus is saying is what you have to do, if you are white knuckling your paycheck, if you're white knuckling your title, or this these things that you're grabbing at, what we have to be willing to do is submit those things to God, let go of those so we have an open hand to actually be able to get close to and grab hold of the rabbi and stay close to him. Like may just ask you this what is it that you are so chasing after right now that is keeping you from being close to the rabbi? Because here's the thing when you're white knuckle in this, man, you still are following. But the problem is, is you're following from the back row. You can see what's happening, but you're never close enough to start becoming what you see in the rabbi. And so what he's saying is it's just like that game. You're trying and you're missing, you gotta start grabbing hold of the right things. You gotta start reaching for the right thing. What is the thing right now in your life that you are reaching for, holding on to, stuck on to, that's keeping you from being close to Jesus and becoming what he's calling you to be. Luke goes on, and it's interesting. He says, Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross what? Daily and follow me. It's interesting. Matthew and Mark quote this same saying of Jesus. But Luke is the only one that puts the word daily. Matthew and Mark, they say, hey, you gotta you gotta deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me. Luke adds this word daily. He says, You gotta deny yourself, take up your cross daily and follow me. You if you want to be a disciple, you gotta be close enough to get the dust of the rabbi on you. If you want to be a disciple, you gotta deny yourself, meaning let go of this to begin to grab hold of this. And then what you've got to do is you've got to do that every single day. What does he mean daily? Well, here's the thing: when you think about your salvation, salvation is not something you renegotiate every day. Like I have some of you that you'll come talk to me and say, Man, I just, Pastor, could you pray with me? Because I'm really worried about just my connection with God because I've really messed up. Do you realize that we all mess up? And when you mess up, it does not mess with your salvation. Do you understand that your salvation, the book of Hebrews, the book of Romans say was accomplished 2,000 years ago at the cross? When you sin, Jesus does not have to die over and over and over again. He died once and for all. When you place your faith in Jesus, you ask him to be your Savior, ask him to be the forgiver of your sins, you are forgiven. Now, do we confess our sins and pray to him on a daily basis? Yes, because it it's healing for our soul. It's accountability for us to name out loud. There's something healing that happens in us, but you don't have to renegotiate your salvation every day. Now, control, man, control? We have to resubmit that every single day. Every single day. That's why Luke says daily. Because you step back in, what does that look like, you know, the other six days a week? What it looks like is pretty simple. It's nothing dramatic. It's five o'clock, 5 30, 6 o'clock, 6 30, whatever time you get up in the morning, you know what the alarm goes off. Coffee's not made, you haven't had your coffee yet. Anxiousness starts coming up with you know the to-do list, then you start hearing one of your kids or teenagers yelling about, can't find their, you know, shirt that they're gonna wear today or whatever. Thinking about the meeting you're gonna have later, what house is thrashed. What it is is just daily in the moment before the feet hit the floor, you just say, God, not my agenda but yours today. God, that meeting I've got, that relationships that's a little bit difficult right now, this conversation that I'm gonna have, God, not my agenda but yours. Show me what you want me to know and show me what you want me to do, and then just an ongoing prayer throughout the day. It's not dramatic, it's just resubmitting every single moment, every single, and realizing that the Holy Spirit lives within us. You see, what Jesus says is to be a disciple means to let go of this so you can grab hold of him, and then to do that every single day. And what happens in Scripture, Scripture says that with the Holy Spirit inside of us, what happens is this big church word, big theological word called sanctification. That the Spirit miraculously, the closer we get to Jesus, the more dust we get on us, the more we're in scripture, the more we're with people, the more we share our faith, the more we practice being close to Jesus, the spirit uses those reps and just supernaturally begins to transform us into a person that is more and more like Jesus. And if you want to know how do you transform a marriage, how do you transform your parenting, how do you transform, whether it be your financial life, your relational life, your man, you just get close to Jesus and ask Jesus to begin transforming your life. And then what Luke does, what Jesus does in this moment is he doesn't just leave us and say, here's all what you do, he gives us a promise. Luke 9, 24, he says, For whoever wants to save their life will lose it. If you keep grabbing and you keep thinking this is all on you, you will lose it. You will miss. Just like that game. It's a chasing after the wind. But whoever loses their life for me, whoever lets go of here just chases after me, what will you do? You find it. You find it. You go all the way back to that game. Man, I stood there and I'm like, I'm gonna I'm gonna catch these things. And I don't know if you saw, but I miserably failed at the beginning. Miserably failed. Now at the end I did a little bit better, but the end I knew what I was doing. I knew what I was grasping for, I knew how to do it, and I did a little bit better. What's interesting in our spiritual life, same thing, is when you know what you're grasping for, and when you know how to do it, you might just actually find something that other people look at and say, man, how is that happening? This seems impossible. Quite a few years back, I was a youth pastor in St. Louis, and one of the things in youth ministry is you realize you're doing all the things that that's happening all over the church. You got small groups, you got worship stuff, you got camps that are happening, mission trips. I mean, you got all of that. And so you need a ton of volunteers. And I ran into this guy named Scott Supple. Scott was a deputy fire chief in the area, and I realized really quick, man, firemen, like these firemen and women, they have resources. Like these people know what they're doing, they can fix anything, they know everybody in the community, they can make just about anything happen. And so Scott and I were great buddies, we got really close, and he's like, hey, I'd love to help you out in youth ministry. And so we started doing all these events together. I remember we had a mud volleyball. He'd bring a tanker out, and we'd till up a bunch of ground, make four or five volleyball courts. Um, the largest we are, we had 400 kids one night for mud volleyball. I mean, you won't talk about a mess that we had to clean up for ages. Yes, it was crazy, but it was so fun and a blast. One of my favorite things we did is we did like a water Olympics type thing. Scott comes out, we're doing all these you know obstacle courses and fun, and we got this big field out in the middle. And over the whole night, I mean, this field is just soaked. It's slippery, it's muddy, it's crazy. We get to the very end, and he's like, all right, and he's in charge of the whole thing. I'm just there, you know, organizing people, helping out. He's like, all right, guys, we got one more challenge. I need all my all my guys that want like out, they want a manly challenge, and I had all these, you know, big boys that come up there, and and I'm standing there with him, like, oh great, I know I'm gonna end up having to do, I don't even know what this is. And he takes the hose off of the tanker, stretches it out into the field. It's stretched out there like, you know, a couple hundred feet, and then what he does is he's got the end of the hose cut off, so the nozzle. So all it is is big cloth and plastic hose. He goes back and he grabs a flag. It's this little red flag, and he ties the flag on the end of that, then hits the water, just puts it full bore. And that, if you've ever seen this happen, that hose stood up like 35 feet in the air. I mean, it's just up there, and you know what happens. I mean, it's just all that pressure, it's going just like this all over the place, and we're like, holy cow, what are we gonna do? And then he turns around and he explains, he's like, okay, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna send you out one at a time, one at a time. And you go out there, and whoever can wrestle that thing down and get that red flag off of the end, you win this prize. I watched guy after guy go out there. Now, ladies were way too smart to do this, but I watched guy after guy go out there and just get the snot beat out of them. I mean, the big old kids, you know, like wrestling this thing down, they get to the last 10 feet and it's just going like this. Then they get the last two feet and it's going, you know, just beating the snot out of them. Just red white. You could never do this now. I mean, I'd get in big trouble. We go through all these boys, and there's a couple of them have gotten really close, but they're just getting, I mean, welts all over their faces, and they finally let go. And then Scott turns around and everybody's like, ah, nobody can get any of those. Okay, last one of the night. Sean, you're up. And I'm like, I did not volunteer. I did not. And he says, No, you're up. And so he, I'm standing there, I'm going, Scott, I am gonna get embarrassed. He's like, Well, they all did, but he says, Here's what you do. He leans over, he whispers in my ear, he says, You run as hard, you run like you're running to second base. You just round it first, you're heading for a double, you're heading to second base, you head first dive, get the get the hose right here under your arm, and just slide. Just slide. And so I took his word for it, and then he said, When you slide past that thing, you just grab the end of it. So I ran and kind of pushed that thing down as I was running, and then I hit full board, just sliding into second base, slid right past, grabbed that thing like it was nothing, walked, stood up, walked away, like, what's you guys' problem? Right? And the reason I caught that flag was not because I was faster or stronger or smarter. It's just because somebody had helped me know how to do it and what I was supposed to be grabbing for. And that's the same thing. That's the same thing. That's why we're doing this series because I believe with all of my heart that Jesus just laid out a plan for us to say. For those of you who are sitting there today saying, I'm struggling in some area, it doesn't matter what area it is in your life, if you want to be able to actually grab hold of something that's meaningful in your life, then what you got to grab hold of is Jesus. And the way you do that is through these values that he just lays out plainly with Luke 9.23, Jesus first, people always made for more. You want to find something that's worth grabbing hold of, man, you be here the next five weeks. Because what we're gonna do is we're gonna tear these apart and we're gonna get really practical. What does it mean to put Jesus first? What does it mean to be people always? What does it mean to be a person who's who's made for more? And then what we're gonna do is just say, hey, as a church, let's do this. And I think, actually, I don't think, I know because I've seen it in my own life with my own family, in places we were missing. I've seen we've got something now that's perfect, purposeful, that's meaningful, that's hopeful, that brings peace and joy and love. And it's not perfect. But the more and more we get the dust of the rabbi on us, the more and more we begin to find something that really matters. And man, we want that for you, and not only for you, we want that for people you know. And so this next week, be here. Bring somebody with you and together, let's reach out, and I think we might just find something we're looking for. Let's pray, Father. You're so grateful. I'm just so grateful. I know it's really hard when we look at this and like how to actually reach out, but you actually just make it really simple. Father, help us to deny ourselves, help us to see ourselves more than just people who sit in seats. Help us to see ourselves as people who are following you, and following you is where we're gonna find life. So, God, over these next five weeks, open our hearts and open our minds, and Father, infuse us with your spirit. Father, give us something that we're really searching for at last. God, we love you. We thank you for Jesus. It's in his name we pray.

unknown 42:08

Amen.