40 Days To The Rest Of Your Life

If you have a copy of the scripture, we're going to be in John chapter 20. You can make your way there now. But just as we get going, just to recognize where we are in time and as a church in this season that we're in. If you're new, welcome. Thank you so much for coming. We're glad that you're here. It's a special morning to have you with us. And we had just finished as a church, 21 days of prayer and fasting that culminated on Good Friday. And then as a church, we have been studying through seven mortal, seven deadly sins in an incredible series called Killing You Softly, where we learned just how easy it is to become overwhelmed by the things of this world and to fall into idol worship and to let the cares of this world just take the driver's seat. And man, such a powerful thing to learn that so many of these sins are disordered love. I just, I'm going to take that with me forever. And I hope you do too. And then of course, that was in the rear view mirror. And what's coming up starting next weekend is a brand new series here at Fresh Life called Love is in the Air.

And we're inviting God to teach us in relationships. And we're excited for that. And so that kind of leaves us like, okay, we've got this back here. We've got this over here. But what about today? What about this weekend? There's no casual Sunday at Fresh Life in the house of the Lord. There's no just sort of a shoulder Sunday. Every Sunday could be a brand new believer's first day in the faith. Could be a day where God grips your heart and a day that God breaks chains on your life. So there's no just average Sunday when we're talking about the risen Lord Jesus Christ, who is alive. But this day has some fun and interesting history to it. It was a very important day in the Christian calendar. This is the Sunday following resurrection Sunday, which we celebrated last week. It has many different names. I wanna share with you some of them. One is known as Low Sunday. One is known as New Sunday, Divine Mercy Sunday, White Sunday. We got that name White Sunday because this was historically the day that the new Christians celebrating Easter would be baptized.

They would attend their service, their worship gathering in all white. Okay, here's another one. I have a hunch this might ring a bell for you. It's known as Quasimodo Sunday. Some of you will get that on the drive home, but that was a solid joke. It is though truly known as Quasimodo Sunday. You might be like, oh, did the Hunchback of Notre Dame character get its name from Sunday or did Sunday get his name from the character? The truth is the story, if you're not familiar, it was this baby that was left on the doorstep, right? Unwanted by its parents. And it didn't have a name, but these people at this mission found him. And the day was known as Quasimodo Sunday, which meant new baby day. Which again, this new believers tie in from Easter, they gave this character the name, Quasimodo Sunday. But it also has another name, and that is Thomas Sunday. Today, happy Thomas Sunday to you. It was October 27th, 1996, when the world learned of a mysterious person who had been secretly kept hidden away from public view in an attic. Kept in such secret that its own siblings

didn't know it existed. Its parents were so ashamed of who this person was, they didn't even tell their own kids they had a sibling. They didn't even tell their son he had a twin. And that twin's name was Hugo. And that was Bart Simpson's twin. Fed only fish heads and kept hidden in an attic. For 12 long years. And today, I intend to show you that even if you're an only child, you have a twin. His name is Thomas. See Thomas all throughout scripture, we read about him doubting Thomas, he's got many names, but he was called Thomas the twin, or Didymus, but nobody knew who his twin was, still unknown. Who's Thomas's twin? This guy. And maybe you as well. Thomas, of course, famous. is called Doubting Thomas. And can you imagine like you made one comment and now that's who you are known as for the rest of history. He makes one comment in John chapter 20 and that's how he's known, but that is not the Thomas of scripture. And I'm excited to walk through the life of Thomas on this special day and encourage you to live like him, believing Thomas.

And that's really the end from the beginning. It is the life of Thomas as a believer that we are talking about him today. So hopefully you've had a chance to make your way to John chapter 20. We're gonna put these verses up on the screen. We're gonna read together starting in verse 24, reading right down to the end of verse 31. Okay, here we go. Now Thomas called the twin, one of the 12 was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore said to him, we have seen the Lord. And so he said to them, unless I see in his hands, the print of the nail and put my finger into the print of the nails and put my hand into his side, I will not believe. And after eight days, and you might hear the record scratch right there and go, wait a minute, it was only seven days ago that was Easter. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, today is the eighth day, Thomas Sunday. His disciples were again inside and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors being shut, poof, and stood in the midst and said, peace to you. Then he said to Thomas, reach your finger here, look at my hands, reach your hand here and put it into my side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.

And Thomas answered and said to him, my Lord and my God. And Jesus said to him, Thomas, because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed. And truly, this is John now, truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name. Let's pray. Lord, we welcome you here. We thank you for your living word. We thank you that you rose from the dead and here eight days later, we're celebrating the most important moment in human history that you were once dead and are now alive. God, we ask that you animate us today, fill us with your Holy Spirit and send us out with your gospel on our lips and in our hands. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. As I was preparing for this message, and I say for, because I felt like I had like, I was telling my wife this, I feel like I have like a lot of raw material like in the backyard, but I don't know what to, didn't know what to do with it. It was like, I'm honored to be invited to preach and share the word together,

but I'm also like, but what do I say? What do I do? And knowing that it was Thomas Sunday, that was kind of in my heart and in my head and just visiting with a friend, they expressed, they had gone on a walk with a friend and had felt in some way, just disappointed and ashamed that they didn't stand up for Jesus in a conversation. And then in an honest moment, even shared, this is a lifelong believer, someone who's followed Jesus a long time, said, I just have doubts. You know, sometimes I have doubts. And if that ain't real talk, you know, how many of you feel like Thomas at times where it's like, I just need to see it to believe. You can be honest here in church. You can say, I just need to see it. I need to understand it. I need more than just someone saying, believe for belief's sake. There's a man in scripture that says, Lord, I believe, but help me with my unbelief. It's like, I can relate to that character. If you're engaged with your faith, if you're being intellectually honest with what you believe, you should and will come across things that causes you to wonder and to doubt and to be curious and to be unsure, maybe not even yet tested in that. As a church in youth,

we studied at the beginning of January, four or five weeks actually, going through the Bible and asking this question, wait, what? Like reading crazy things that happened and going, wait, what? And we had all the youth have these little flags. They were white flags and they had to raise the white flag when we read something that caused them to say, wait, what? That kind of thing. You should, as you read scripture, come across things feasting on scripture should. cause you to go, hold on a second. Do I really, do I get this? Do I believe this? Am I ready to live this way? Well, allow me just with this sort of stage being set to give you the title of our message today. And that is this, 40 days to the rest of your life. The cure to that tension, the answer to this unsure vibe feeling that we carry sometimes, I think can be found in the life of Jesus. He had these two remarkable 40 day bookends to his three years of active ministry on earth. He had 40 days of wilderness, wandering, desert, tempting, testing, purifying, all of these things that are happening.

That's 40 days. And together as a church, we just went through 21 days of prayer and fasting and laying waste to our sin and leaning on Jesus for strength in a new way. Hopefully you're marked and carrying that with you forever now. You left this 21 days of prayer and fasting like Jesus forever on mission with his eyes like flint toward the cross. That was the first 40 day movement of Jesus. And then we have after he rose from the dead, hallelujah, we have 40 days of him appearing to people here on earth yet again, sort of like runways to his public earthly ministry, take off his wilderness and wandering and landing is his appearing to people after he rose from the dead. And we see in Matthew chapter four, just a brief window into what Jesus went through in this period when he was called to the desert by the Holy Spirit, after he was baptized by John the Baptist. And what I think if you struggle or wrestle or are just not feeling, I mean, we learned just last week, this sloth experience of feeling backslidden or just not motivated to live for Jesus. I wanna help you with that today. To call you first, what I believe God wants to do

is call you to leave the world for just a moment. What we saw in Jesus's time spent in 40 days in the wilderness was that the noise of the world was cut out and God's voice was supreme. I mean, this is the thing like God's voice is described as still and small, but it is not silent. God's voice is not silent, but man, the things in my head, the things in my heart, the things all around me, the things on my screen, the things, just the chaos and the frenzy of life has the tendency to get ahold of me and drown out his voice. So what can happen as you draw away with God, it's like the bow drawing the arrow back. He's bringing you to a place where you fully rely on him. That's where Jesus said, man can not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes out of the mouth of the father. And the thing is, it is so good. God wants you to spend time in the secret and in the silence with him, because that is where he can remind you of who he is, of how capable he is for caring for you, for carrying the things that you are being held by, for breaking chains and crushing addictions, for speaking life over you and into you, for relationship. John Eldredge wrote this book, it's called Fathered by God. And one of the weirdest like parts of the book was, you're like a man's man reading this book and you read that God wants to romance you. I was like, that's kind of an interesting take. God loves you so much, he wants to woo you.

He wants to win you. He wants your soul that he made, that he breathed life into, he wants to demonstrate that he is capable of carrying you, that he designed you to be dependent on him. I remember somebody saying like, I don't believe in God because I feel like that's a crutch. I'm like, that is not a crutch, it's a gurney. It's so much more, faith in God is so much more than a crutch, it carries me in all of my ways. I can't just limp along with Jesus on my side. I got nothing if I don't have him. And that's what you gain in this secret place, Jesus calls your prayer closet, the miracles that God wants to work in your life, you can pour everything out to him. And when you have relationship, then God can do work through you. And you're poised to be used in a new way. You're changed, you're marked. You have relational equity with God when you spend time in the secret place as you leave. and the voices of this world. Some of you may know, my oldest son, who's 19, joined the Air Force this last summer, and there's nothing like seeing him now. I mean, I'm in awe of this man. And it was crazy to see, like I was looking at some old videos of just what he was like before he went to basic training and after, and he's awesome.

But even I watched a video on like the day he left, MEPS is what it's called, it's in Butte, Montana. He swore his oath and his shirt didn't quite fit right, and he's got a lot of hair, and his eyes are this big. But he had courage, he had courage. And basic training is like about 40 days, it's like 42 days. And, well, I got a video for you. I want you to see what I saw on graduation day as a picture of what happens and what God wants to do in you as you move out of the world and into intimacy with him, check it out. ♪ Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah ♪ ♪ Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah ♪ Man, what a stud. Isn't that cool? I remember seeing that and, you know, your whole life as a parent just comes flashing to your mind of like all the life that he had. And there he is, he's a man. He's changed, something to his constitution is different. He's prepared, his mind, his heart. And his character, his character. And that to me is the biggest thing. Like when you retreat from the world and you go to a place of intimacy with God, you will be changed. Your character will be changed. Your conscience will be changed. Your soil of your heart will be tilled.

But it is not just there that God wants to take you because trust me, you could spend an eternity in time in solace with God and it is so beautiful, it's so fulfilling and it's so rich. But the temptation is to just stay there and not reach the world. But God purposed us to be used by him, just like we saw with this picture. He didn't know his training yet, but he was ready to learn. He was ready to grow. He was ready to be used. And that's what I believe God wants for each of us. I wanna share just a couple of verses for you. Just at the heart of the father, Jeremiah 33, three, call to me, I will answer to you and show you great and mighty things which you do not know. Trust in him at all times. This is Psalm 62, eight, you people, pour out your hearts before him. God is a refuge for us. James 4, eight, draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Matthew 11, 28, this is Jesus. Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, I will give you rest. Hebrews 4, 16, let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy

and find grace to help in a time of need. Man, when life just gets ahold of you and you're like, I need grace, I am in a time of need, go boldly to God. He wants you there in that place. But then what I love is we see in the life of Thomas that he forms you as well. So we leave the world and then we are allowing God to form us, form our hearts, form our minds, form our character, form us through our beliefs and struggles and doubts. If we go back to John 20, verse 25, it says, the other disciples therefore said to him, we have seen the Lord. I mean, that's like a crazy statement. And so he said to them, unless I see his hands in the print of the nails and put my finger into the print of those nails and put my hand into his side, I will not believe. And that's a wild thing. That's an important thing. I underlined it in my Bible because that is a demonstration of Thomas's posture. It wasn't like, I'm struggling to believe that, bro. That's crazy. It wasn't like, cool, you saw the Lord, whatever. It was, I will not believe. That is active doubting. And there is a difference between active doubting and passive doubting.

I wanna say it was Bono, don't quote me on quoting him, but I'm fairly certain I read a quote from him that said, indifference is the greatest form of hatred. And we see Jesus kind of refer to that in Revelation 3 16, he says, so then because you are lukewarm, neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of my mouth. Jesus basically is saying that your passivity makes him sick. That's crazy, right? Is that anybody else like, wait, what? Like that is wild to think that Jesus would rather you have an opinion against him than not really have an opinion at all. Dude. Well, I think that what we see is that if we just read, we'll skim real quick here for verse 26, we see Jesus comes, the door's being shut and stood in the midst, poof, peace to you. Then he says to Thomas, reach your finger here, look at my hands, reach your hand here, put it into my side, do not be unbelieving, but believing. Jesus wants to take us from a position of unbelief to a position of belief. But I love that it doesn't say like Jesus was like listening in, you know, like, oh, I don't know what I'm gonna tell Thomas. No, no, no, he knows your thoughts. He knows your heart, he knows your struggles and he is capable of fulfilling those things. He is someone that can prove himself to you.

Just to think, like we could be thankful for Thomas, actually, in his doubt, because if it wasn't for that, we wouldn't have a verified body that was alive that had wounds that were to kill him, right? He shows us that this is not just some other replacement person, fake Jesus, right? This is the Christ who was on the cross. Thank you, Thomas, because that helps me. His belief now helps mine. And I love that Jesus is capable of doing that. He was able to take Thomas cold, you could say, feet frozen, I will not believe. And he's like, bet. Let me show you. And what happened next in the life of Thomas is he very much did not have frozen feet. He was called and did many mighty things we'll talk about in a moment. But I think the enemy here is passivity. Own the things that you struggle with and take them to the Lord. Talk to your pastor, read your Bible, do the due diligence. The enemy wants to hang you by your hangups. He just doesn't want you to address them because he knows the danger is when your doubts are confirmed. And this is such an important piece. I don't know if Jesus rose from the dead. Okay, let's help you see that he did. Because then what?

Your feet will get to moving. You can't not, right? Something will take place. And he says in verse 28, Thomas answered him, my Lord and my God. Just a couple of verses after I will not believe where he will be forever known. He is like the coolest sentence. Well, it's actually not the coolest sentence that Thomas says, I'll read that in a minute. But this one's like top two coolest things. My Lord and my God, the confession that he gives to Jesus. And then of course he says, Thomas, because you've seen me, you believed, but blessed are those and he's talking to you and to me now who believe and have not yet seen. And as I mentioned, this next movement. So we've taken time to just retreat from the world and be won over by God, to be in relationship with him, that he would form us in our beliefs. And then he sends us out. God is calling you and me to go. Go, go to your workplace. Go to your friends, go to your neighbors, go. I think it's crazy to think that an angel taps these guys on the shoulder after they witnessed the ascension of Christ and he's like, tick tock, dude, like get after it, you know? And maybe they believe something that we don't hold strong enough.

And that is that Jesus is coming back. And that day is, or night is coming when no man can work again. That Jesus is coming like a thief in the night. And it's demonstrated in the way that they responded to the great commission, which was Jesus in Matthew 28, verse 19 and 20. He says, go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all the things I've commanded you to. And lo, I am with you, even to the end of the age. I think they believed him when he said, I'm coming quickly. And if all of us in this room trust Christ for salvation, and one day we're spending eternity together, I think then we're gonna realize just how quick Jesus was coming back. And you might be like, well, it's been 2000 years, but it could be today. Hallelujah, it could be today. Jesus could come back today. I'm for it, how about you? Yeah, it could be today. And I wanna live like it could be today. But even if it's in 10,000 years, compared to the weight of eternity, it will be like in an instant. And that should do something to you. Somebody had the courage to answer the call of God and proclaim the gospel to me

when I was a freshman in high school. His name is Pastor Don. He's actually right here in the audience this morning. He shared the gospel with me, a freshman in high school. And I heard the word of the Lord. I heard the gospel, the good news of Jesus who was dead and is alive. And he did that for me, and then I can have hope, a real hope, not a wish, not like a, gosh, I sure hope so. Not like that kind of hope, but hope like if you're in a disaster and a helicopter is descending on your home to rescue you. That's the hope I felt hearing the gospel of Jesus. So that's the thing I think the enemy wants to keep us at, passive, pathetic, soft, and even just not really a care in the world. I can see now why Jesus said you're neither hot nor cold. You're lukewarm because a fiery faith gets our feet to step in. That's what we see in Luke 24. We studied this at Easter just this last Sunday, when Jesus is visiting with the two on the road to Emmaus saying, this scripture, all of this is me. Now go, he sends them out. And that's exactly what happened to Thomas. Thomas is known for spending the rest of his life on mission in India, where over 5 million people called Thomas Christians today still trust Jesus because of Thomas. We called him doubting Thomas, but he was believing Thomas.

And I think what's so crazy and powerful and special is this sentence. This is the top thing that Thomas said, John 11, verse 16. He says, then Thomas, who's called the twin, said to his fellow disciples, let us also go that we may die with him. And it's interesting that extra Bible text outside of scripture says historically that Thomas was martyred by the very thing that animated his faith, spears. That he went to his death and the one thing that it took for him to believe is the one thing that they used to take him out. He's now marked by the very thing that he first doubted. And I think that's just interesting and special. My last story is this with the remainder of our time. Here in the Flathead, I grew up with this giant wooden cross in Big Fork. You might've seen it. If you're here locally, you know it. My house growing up, you could see all of Kalispell from Lone Pine, where we live, a big picture window. And I could see all the way down into the valley, this little white light cross. And it was so special. And if you've been to movement conference in years past, we had movement conference down in Big Fork. You would drive right past this cross, it was awesome. And these big giant red letters were written on it. It says, Christ died for you, will you live for him?

But then in December this year, just 52 years after it was put up, wind took it over, took it down, and blew it to the ground and destroyed it. And I remember thinking like, that'll be the easiest fundraiser ever. We could get that thing built today, probably. I mean, it was so beloved, right? It was like an icon of the valley. And it was kind of interesting and maybe a little bit, even I feel frustrated a little bit by, was that the family declined the donations. They actually said, no, thank you. But they had a request and I received this myself and I hope that you do as well. They said, rather than building a cross on a mountain anymore, we wanna challenge the believer to live a life of bold faith. Because what they know is what the enemy is afraid of, that your testimony and your boldness for Jesus will change the world. And a cross on a hill is beautiful to look at, but one of the most powerful things that you have, that God gave you. is your personal testimony. And I encourage you today to be like Thomas, to go, to let God move through you. It will change your faith to live publicly for Jesus. And it'll change your perspective and the stranglehold that the world can have on us

if we were to just be more like Thomas, our friend. I wanna pray and recognize there's two types of people in our room today, those that struggle with doubt, but believe and those that don't even yet believe. So first, I'd like to pray for those, if you would bow your heads and close your eyes. I'd like to just pray for those that believe, but struggle with their belief, that have doubt and have too often let the doubt have you and want to today, repent and to move forward in faith with Jesus. If that's you, would you just flip up a hand so I can pray for you? I wanna bless you and pray for you. Those online, you can also put your hand up in the chat. I wanna pray for you. Father, thank you for all of these that are just being emotionally and intellectually honest with you. That we don't wanna be lukewarm. We wanna be hot, on fire for you. Lord, would you, in your perfect way, bring them into your presence. In your perfect way, bring them peace where they struggle with doubt. Will you know their thoughts and their heart and bring them to a place where you can speak over them and into them. Lord, that they would find you in their searching for answers.

You can put your hands down. Now, of course, for those that are in our midst, we welcome you. If you don't even yet know what you believe of Jesus, like Thomas, you needed something. Well, here we are just eight days after the resurrection of Jesus. A person who was taken to his death. And there in the tomb, laid until Sunday morning, last Easter Sunday, and took up his own life again. And appeared to many saying, I am he. If you today would like to repent from a life living for yourself, I wanna turn and live for Jesus. And be saved and be washed by his blood. And to be sinless. But to also know that God has a plan to allow yourself to be used by God, like Thomas. I wanna invite you to pray this prayer with me. And as a church I ask that you all repeat after me, just to signify we're all in this life together. I want you to pray this prayer. Say, dear Jesus, thank you for dying on the cross and rising from the dead. Help me to follow you. Help me to trust you as savior. Use me, forgive me, wash me white as snow and send me out to be a messenger of faith in Jesus name.