Back On Track with My Health - Saddleback Weekend Service

♪♪♪ Come on, let's sing. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Yeah! ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Come on! ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Come on! ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Come on church, let's sing. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Come on, let's lift our voices church, for joy! ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Come on, let's give Jesus praise today! We want to bless the Lord today, for he is worthy of our praise. He is worthy of our song. So come on, let's lift our voice to him as we sing.

Worthy of every song that we could ever sing today. Worthy of all the praise we could ever bring. Worthy of every breath we could ever breathe. We live for you. ♪♪♪ Jesus, the name above every other name. Jesus, the only one who could ever say. Worthy of every breath we could ever breathe. We live for you. We live for you. Sing holy. Holy. There is no one like you. There is none beside you. ♪ I do, open up my eyes in wonder ♪ ♪ Show me who you are and fill me with your heart ♪ ♪ And lead me in your love to those around me ♪ ♪ Oh, you're worthy, Lord ♪ ♪ Worthy of every song we could ever sing ♪ ♪ You're worthy, Lord ♪ ♪ Worthy of all the praise we could ever bring ♪ ♪ Worthy of every breath we could ever breathe ♪ ♪ We live for you, we live for you, Jesus ♪ ♪ Jesus, Jesus, the name above every other name ♪ ♪ Jesus, the only one who could ever sing ♪ ♪ And worthy of every breath we could ever breathe ♪ ♪ We live for you, we live for you, holy, holy, holy ♪ ♪ There is no one like you, there is none beside you ♪ ♪ Open up my eyes in wonder, show me who you are ♪ ♪ And fill me with your heart and lead me in your love ♪

♪ To those around me ♪ Jesus said, when we build our life on rock, we will not fall, we can stand. So come on, let's lift our voice to him. I will build my life upon your love, come on. ♪ Oh, I will build my life upon your love ♪ ♪ It is a firm foundation ♪ ♪ I will put my trust in you alone ♪ ♪ And I will not be shaken ♪ ♪ I will build my life upon your love ♪ ♪ It is a firm foundation ♪ ♪ I will put my trust in you alone ♪ ♪ I will put my trust in you alone ♪ ♪ And I will not be shaken ♪ ♪ I will build my life upon your love ♪ ♪ It is a firm foundation ♪ ♪ I will put my trust in you alone ♪ ♪ And I will not be shaken ♪ ♪ Holy, there is no one like you ♪ ♪ There is none beside you ♪ ♪ Open up my eyes in wonder and show me ♪ ♪ Who you are and fill me with your heart and lead me ♪ ♪ In your love to those around me ♪ ♪ Holy, there is no one like you ♪ ♪ There is none beside you ♪ ♪ Open up my eyes in wonder and show me ♪ ♪ Who you are and fill me with your heart and lead me ♪ ♪ In your love to those around me, yeah ♪ ♪ Hallelujah, praise the one who set me free ♪ ♪ Hallelujah, death has lost its grip on me ♪

♪ You have broken every chain, there's salvation in your name ♪ ♪ Jesus Christ, my living hope ♪ ♪ How great the chasm that lay between us ♪ ♪ How high the mountain I could not climb ♪ ♪ In desperation, I turned to heaven to find you ♪ And spoke your name into the night And through the darkness your loving kindness Tore through the shadows of my soul The work is finished, the end is waiting Jesus Christ, my living hope Who could imagine so great a mercy What heart could travel such boundless grace The God of ages stepped down from glory To wear my sin and bear my shame The cross has spoken, I am forgiven The King of kings calls me his own Beautiful Saviour, I'm yours forever Jesus Christ, my living hope Hallelujah, praise the one who set me free Hallelujah, death has lost its grip on me You have broken every chain There's salvation in your name Oh Jesus Christ, my living hope Hallelujah, praise the one who set me free Hallelujah, death has lost its grip on me You have broken every chain There's salvation in your name Jesus Christ, my living hope Then came the morn that sealed the promise Your buried body began to pull

Out of the silence the roaring fire Declared the grave has no claim on you Are you grateful today? Come on! Then came the morn that sealed the promise Your buried body began to pull Out of the silence the roaring fire Declared the grave has no claim on you Jesus, yours is the victory Hallelujah, praise the one who set me free Hallelujah, death has lost its grip on me You have broken every chain There's salvation in your name Jesus Christ, my living hope Hallelujah, praise the one who set me free Hallelujah, death has lost its grip on me You have broken every chain There's salvation in your name Jesus Christ, my living hope Jesus Christ, my living hope God, you are my living hope by hitting the link in the description down below or to the Saddleback app, just be sure to select online community as your campus when you go to the app and you'll be able to find the message notes there. Well one event that we would love for you to know about is called Activate and it's this Sunday January 11th and it's the best first step that you could possibly take to get more involved here at Saddleback. You can register by looking at the link and the information on your screen but we would love to get to know you and have you meet some more members of our online community so we hope to see you there. Well here at Saddleback our goal is for every single person to say yes to Jesus and his purposes for their lives and one of the ways that we accomplish that is through small groups. Small groups are a great way for people to find community and belonging and to pursue growth in their relationship with Jesus and our dream is for every member of our church

to be a part of a small group but we can't make that happen without having small group leaders so that's where we need people just like you to sign up and register and be trained to lead a small group. We're having online community small group leader trainings all throughout this month that you can be a part of to be ready for our small group semester launch in the spring starting February 7th and 8th so if you're interested you can text the word lead to 83 000 or you can find small group leader trainings on the Saddleback app as well. I'll be at all the trainings and I can't wait to get to know you and to help you be the best small group leader that you can possibly be. Well pastor Andy is going to talk about a few resources during his message one of them being the we'd love to know you prayer card and so you can access all the resources that he'll be talking about on the Saddleback app in the for you section so go ahead take a few moments scroll through and find those resources so that when he talks about them you'll be all set and ready to go. Well church family speaking of pastor Andy let's go ahead and join the rest of our church and hear from pastor Andy as he shares his message this week. Well it is so good to be together church family I do want to say welcome to those of you who are joining us online all of our campuses all of our extensions all over the world so good to be together we are in the second week of a message series called back on track and we're looking at how do we get our lives back on track with God back on track and relationships and we're going to talk in just a few moments the five big areas that this whole series is about but one of the things that we're stepping into at the beginning of this year is a conviction and I want to share it with you we believe that God does things when we pray that he doesn't when we don't and there are times in our lives where maybe there's a deep need that we have in our life that we hold on to and we're like oh God will somehow figure it out well really God invites you to ask him and bring that to him and one of the ways that we're doing that this year is we're saying God we're leaning in with prayer at a deeper level so we're going to kick off in two weeks from now 21 days of prayer some of us will do fasting I'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment but it's really crying out to God now in your hands at all of our campuses you have a little card and that card we're inviting people to fill that out this month and what I want from you is I want to know a prayer request in your life not your dog's life not your grandma's life your life that you're saying God I need you to move in this area of my life now in all of our campuses we've been taking these cards bringing them before God and praying for miracles in people's lives this year and I want to encourage you there's going to be time throughout

the service when my sermon is boring just grab your card write down a prayer request and at the end there's going to be an opportunity to turn those in now I believe today God wants to move in a powerful way as we continue this series now we're looking at five key areas and I want to invite you if you will to pull out your notes five key areas that we want to get back on track at the beginning of the year so the first one last week we talked about our faith or our relationship with God so if you weren't with us I want to encourage you to go back listen to that second week today we're going to talk about our health and getting back on track with our health and the third week we're going to talk about our finances getting back on track with money and the fourth week we're going to talk about our relationships namely the most important relationships in our lives and then finally the last week we're going to talk about our work and sometimes we lose purpose and focus with our work so that's where we're headed but I thought at the beginning of my message today I might be a little vulnerable with you about an area of my life that I've gotten off track I have to say this is an area that I didn't struggle with before coming to Saddleback and I just want to ask for your permission to be vulnerable is it okay okay thank you few people said it's okay at this campus my name is Andy and I'm going to share a story with you right now and let me share this okay so if I go back a few years when we first came to Saddleback I want you to see a picture of our family part of our family I shouldn't say the whole three of us now I want you just to Notice my hair in that picture, okay? So I want you to notice where the part begins on the right side of my head, okay? So it's on the far right, all the way at the edge, okay? So if you go to this next picture here, you're gonna notice that that part starts to drift a little bit. It's moving to the left. And then if you go to this next picture, about a year later, that part is just that, that whole shaved kind of fade is moving a little bit to the left. It's getting off track.

Now you go a little bit further, here's another one. Oh goodness, it's even more off track. My barber tried to tell me about this and I wasn't listening. And then finally, this happened. I was at the barber and here it is. It's way off track, folks. The line is now in the middle of my head. I know, it's embarrassing. It's really unfortunate. So now I'm on this journey with my barber over the next two times to get back on track with my hair. So thank you for that freedom to be vulnerable with you. Happens to the best of us. Now there are areas in our life that are comical, but sometimes there are deeper areas for all of us. And I'm gonna share one more with you later. But the big idea today that I want us to think about and really dive into is this. God's divine design leads to a healthy life. So God's given you a body. God's given you a mind. God's given you hands, feet, words that come out of your lips. All of this, God has designed to work in a way that leads to a healthy life. So if you go all the way back to Genesis before the fall, God had an intent with the physical body, with relationships, all of that leads towards a healthy life.

Now oftentimes what can happen is over time we get less healthy. And the truth is this physical body at some point is gonna die. Your physical body is gonna die this side of eternity. But God's ways, God's design, God's truth, God's principles give us the best ability to live according to his design and live a healthy life. So if you go to Proverbs chapter four, I want you to see Solomon is writing about wisdom here. And he helps us understand how God's wisdom transforms our physical bodies in the way that we live. Listen to what he says. My son, pay attention to what I say. Turn your ear to my words. Do not let them out of your sight. Keep them within your heart. And then if you do this, they are life to those who find them and health to one's own body. This is important. In your notes you can just circle that phrase, health to one's own body. So God designed life to work. Sin has a way of eroding God's perfect divine design, but God gives us a chance to live in alignment with his design and it leads to a healthier life. Now I wanna encourage you as you consider this, we have such a range in terms of age. Some of our bodies are breaking down more than others.

And the reality is there's a lot of pain in these physical bodies. So what we're doing on this side of eternity is submitting to God to say, God, I want more of a healthy life the way that you designed for life to work. Now we are going upstream when we do this though, because culture really in many ways is grinding against God's divine design. I read a book. I shouldn't say I read it. I skimmed a book called Dopamine Nation. And maybe some of you guys have heard of this book before. But this lady who writes the book, she has this powerful premise, skimming was enough to get the big idea. And the big idea that she says is that you and I as human beings have a tendency to run towards things that we think will give us energy. And our physical bodies are designed by God. She doesn't make it spiritual, but I am. So it's designed by God. That your body responds to certain things and drops dopamine into your brain. So she gives examples of sugar. She says that in addition to sugar, you've got screens, pornography, alcohol, and then just nonstop input from news and media. And what we have a tendency to do is crave that dopamine.

So this is why you might find yourself scrolling on Instagram and scrolling on Instagram and scrolling on Instagram and scrolling on Instagram and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. And there you are. You're like, I've wasted an hour and a half and I feel horrible. Anybody ever have this happen before? Out of curiosity, you don't wanna confess? That's okay, raise it up high. I see those hands. And you're like, okay, why did I do that? Because your brain is searching for that dopamine hit. Like you're looking for it in your mind. So what she says is like, you're not designed to sit in front of a screen for seven to eight hours a day. Like that's not God's divine design for you. You are not, I'm not designed. This is what studies show us right now. We eat 17 teaspoons of added sugar per day. So we're not designed by God. It's really quiet in the room right now. Maybe somebody had their cookie before coming to church today. But there is this sense in which it grinds against God's divine design. We're not designed to sit sedentary and to not move. You know, the biggest muscle God has given to you

is your gluteus maximus. And every muscle God gives to you, he intends for you to use. And so the design that God gives to us is to be in action, to be moving, to have minds that are engaged, to not stare at screens, to look in the eyes of other people. So much about God's design is beautiful. I mean, I could go on about this. This could be a whole message series. It could be a whole book. But have you ever noticed that the tear ducts, your tear ducts are in your eyes? Why did God do that? Because when you cry, you're making eye contact with another human being. Have you ever noticed that God gave you nostrils right above your mouth so that you can take in the bacon right before you eat it? It's like, it's just beautiful the way that God has made us in his divine design and his goal is that we would lead a healthy life. So how do we do that? Like, what does God's words say about this physical body that he's given to us? And I want us to look today at Romans 12, one and two. I love these two verses. There's so much that the apostle Paul gives to us. And he says this,

"'Therefore, I urge you.'" Let me start again. All of our campuses, Anaheim, Brea, the South Bay campus. Let's read this aloud together. Romans 12, one and two. "'Therefore,'' let's start. Let me start. Sorry, you got ahead of me. Okay, ready? One, two, three. "'Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, "'in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies "'as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. "'This is your true and proper worship. "'Do not conform to the pattern of this world, "'but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, "'and then you will be able to test and approve "'what God's will is, his good, pleasing, and perfect will.'" This is the word of God. And the apostle Paul says, God gave you a body. So God gave you a physical body that is a gift from him. Now, oftentimes, we get confused. We have a tendency to go to extremes. And there was this ancient belief that the body was bad and the spirit was good. Well, what Jesus did when he came along, and really the teachings of the Bible, God gives us a body that is a gift to be stewarded from him. Like, this is what he designed and created. So it's not bad.

It's not evil to be punished. It's a gift to be stewarded. And what Paul says is that with your body, what you can do is you can offer your body as a living sacrifice back to God. So God gives me a body for worship. Think about that for just a moment. God gave you a physical body to use that you can worship him with. And there are so many ways that we can worship God. You know, you can be in a worship service and be singing your praise to the name of Jesus and lifting him up with your heart and your voice, just declaring his worth and his value. You could lift your hands in his presence as a way of just saying, God, I love you. I surrender my life to you. But there's so much more that you can do to worship God. You can worship God at work. You can be at your workstation and turn it into a worship station. You can use your hands on a keyboard as you're sending an email to encourage or text somebody. You can use your time to come alongside somebody, put your arm around them, sit, make eye contact over a cup of coffee and love and care for them and pray for them. You can use your physical body to listen to your daughter at the end of the day as she tells you about her day. You can use your physical body to wrestle with your sons.

You can use your body in worship to help an aging parent and take care of them. You can worship God in all these ways. You can worship God watching the Rams play football. You can worship God watching the Chargers play football, but you cannot worship God watching the Raiders play football. I mean, there's like, but there are so many ways that you can worship God with your physical body. Now this is worth writing down. Everything in life is spiritual, but it's not only spiritual. So there are times in your life where you pray for God to heal your headache, but you take an Advil. And the reality is everything is spiritual, but it's not only spiritual. So God gives me a body that I can worship him with. We have a tendency to go to two extremes with it. The first extreme is materialism. And by the way, is materialism an issue in Southern California? Out of curiosity. Yes, I think we could all agree on that. Not you, of course, but lots of people struggle with materialism. And what materialism says is that you get. some material physically to ultimately satisfy your soul. And if there is some kind of desire of something you want,

you get it and you please this body. And what happens with that is we have a tendency then to start to worship our bodies. This is also worth writing down. God did not give me a body to worship. Like God did not give you a physical body that should be worshiped. God gave me a body for worship, to worship him. So what materialism is, is this ultimate exaltation of the human body oftentimes over God. Now another way that we treat the body is neglect. So we're just like, you know what, I'm just gonna live my life and at the end, have a bunch of cheeseburgers and then go see Jesus. It's gonna be awesome. My body loves tacos and so I'm gonna eat as many as I can this side of eternity and then at some point when I die, thank God I know I'll spend eternity with Jesus. So there's some folks, the denomination I grew up in, this was kind of the tendency and the denomination. Nobody smoked or drank but everybody ate a whole lot of ice cream and cheeseburgers. And they were, that was like, it's funny to me but you guys don't think it's funny. But it's true, the denomination I grew up in. And that's a neglect of the human body. So what we're after is bringing those two together and it flows out of this perspective that my body is to worship, for worship of God. Now in First Corinthians, the apostle Paul

gives us another framework around this same concept and he says this in chapter six, verse 19. He says this, do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who's in you, whom you have received from God? So what this means is if you are a follower of Jesus, the spirit of the living God is on the inside of you. So all throughout the Old Testament, people would go to this place of worship, the temple. They would bring their sacrifices and three times a year, Israelites would go to Jerusalem for big festivals. So if you lived far away, you'd be at the temple three times a year, they'd have local synagogues but they looked at the temple and it was the place where the presence of God dwelt. And what Paul is saying is now in the New Testament, it went from God being in a temple to God being in the human flesh, Jesus, God among us, to now the spirit of the living God dwelling on the inside of us. What that means is wherever you go, God is with you. And the presence of God, the same power that brought Jesus from death to life, if you're one of his followers, is on the inside of you. So your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. That's one reason why we steward our bodies. So every part of my body, when I treat it a certain way, I'm treating it that way and God is literally, God is literally on the inside through the power of his spirit living within me.

So I want to honor and what Paul says is therefore, understand this, you are not your own, you were bought with a price, therefore honor God with your body, with your physical body because Jesus purchased us with his blood that he gave on a cross, we bring our bodies back to him as an act of worship. Now there's a lot of things that we do with these bodies that are not worthy of God's worship, ultimately not the acts that we would want to give worship to God. And what Paul is saying is when you understand this, we take care of our bodies not only because that's where we live, but because it's also where the spirit of God dwells on the inside. And I love this concept because it then brings me to the place to say, okay, how do I use my body to worship with work, with relationships, with conversations, but also there's something so beautiful about dedicating my body back to God. To say, God, I give you my body. This is why I begin my day in prayer and reading the Bible because I say, God, I want at the beginning of the day to dedicate this physical body to you to be used for your glory. This is why as a church family, there are a lot of different things that we do. But again, this is why we're starting 21 days of prayer in just two weeks from now. Because there's something so beautiful about a church

gathered together in prayer to say, God, we need you and we're dedicating our lives to you. And I wanna invite you in two weeks from now on Monday morning at 7 a.m. at all of our campuses, we're gonna pray and we're gonna ask God, move in our midst. We're dedicating ourself to you. We're bringing our lives, our church, our family before you as an act of worship two weeks from now that's starting. But also one other way that I wanna encourage you to start thinking about how you can dedicate your body, your life, everything that you are back to God is through our return gathering. That's happening February 18th through 20th. It's at the Lake Forest Campus. And we're gonna gather together as one big church family in a sacred assembly, seeking the heart of God, returning to him with everything that we are based on Joel 2.12. of return to the Lord with your whole heart. And we did this last year, and we saw so many lives changed. Students transformed, marriage is healed. God did miracles in our midst, and we believe he's gonna do it again. And we're inviting you to be a part of that. Now, last year it filled up. If you came, it was packed out. We anticipate that that's gonna happen again.

We wanna encourage you to go ahead and sign up and be a part of that gathering and come with expectation that God's gonna move. There's something that happens in multiple days together. You know, our students go on retreats and they have their summer camp. And oftentimes, don't we all as adults feel like, what about us? Like, we're missing out. What about this season of life? We have those great experiences. So we're bringing that together with our students. Students will be in the room, kids will be in the room, and we're asking God in a short period of time to move in our lives through the return gathering. So those are two very practical ways that we can respond to this truth. But the other part that I want us to see from this passage is that God also gives me a mind. And he calls me to direct my mind in order to train my body. So he directs my body as I train my mind. Let me say it that way. So God calls me to direct my body by training my mind. You can worship God with your mind, of course, but your mind is an instrument that God gives to lead, to guide, and to direct your body. And Romans 12 too says it. Paul says, do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed, how? By the renewing of your mind.

So as you renew your thoughts, your life begins to move in the direction of God's purpose and plan for your life. So I've noticed this. This is worth writing down. My lips and my feet follow what happens in my mind and my heart. My lips, I'm pointing at my feet, let me start again. My lips and my feet follow what happens in my mind and my heart. So if I want a different outcome, I start in my mind and say, God, where does my thinking need to be renewed? So where do I need to be transformed by the renewing of my mind to come back to truth? So this is a discipline. It's really saying, God, train my mind with your word and with your truth that I might live a different kind of life. In 1 Timothy 4.8, Paul says physical training is of some value, but training for godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come. So what he's saying is when you train your character with your mind and you say with my heart, I'm gonna move in a different direction, it changes all the course of our life, every area of our life, not just bigger muscles. It's a different life when I let God shape my mind. So how do I do that?

Well, Paul says very practically how to do this. So Ephesians 4, verse 22, very simple, practical image that Paul gives. He says this, you were taught with regard to your former way of life to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires and to be made new in the attitude of your minds and to put on the new self created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. So notice those two phrases. One is to put off and the other is to put on. So he's saying once you take a behavior, the best way to not go back to that behavior is to put on a new behavior. So if I'm gonna stop, he says in verse 25, stealing, he says, or speaking falsehood, therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor for we are all members of one body. So he's saying put off an old way of life and put on a new way of life. And this makes me think of a time a couple years ago, I got in the car, I was taking the boys, this was before they could drive. They both got in the car and my oldest, he's up front and he's got pajamas on. And I'm like, dude, I'm taking you to school. Like, we don't wear pajamas to school. And he's like, no, everybody wears pajamas to school. So I get to the school and I'm like,

dude, all these kids have pajamas on. And like, apparently the new cool hairdo is just like, wake up and it looks like you just rolled out of bed. And I'm like, man, get some jeans on, bro. Like, wear some slacks, but pajamas, what if I preach in pajamas? I mean, how would that go over? Anybody else, like, say amen, come on. It's like, let's move away from pajamas as the new garb that we wear everywhere. But you know, the reality is a lot of us spiritually are walking around with pajamas on. And it's like, there's an old way of life. It's like we just rolled out of an old way of life and we're just living in that same way of life. And the invitation from God is like. Get those pajamas off and put some new clothes on. Put on a new way of life that is filled with joy and peace. I'll give you a very practical way that this happened to me this year. So every year at the beginning of the year, I take about a week and I go away and I pray, seek God's heart, I ask God to renew my heart, I ask God to give me fresh vision for the year, I ask God to give me direction, to help me in my leadership at home with the church, to help me step into the fullness of what he wants to do this year in my life. So this year went away and oftentimes God will give me like one area to focus on per year and I just need like one big thing to go after. And sometimes that big thing for me is something that Stacey's been trying to talk to me about for a long time. And there's this one area for me and it's complaining. And I have a tendency to complain.

I have a tendency to complain at the end of the day. And so what will happen is we'll both be getting ready for bed, washing our faces, and I'm just complaining, going on and on and on and on. And then we'll lay down, I'll immediately fall asleep and Stacey's like, you're asleep and now I'm thinking about all the stuff you just complained about. And I was like, yeah, that probably needs to change. Now she's been talking to me about this for a while and the Holy Spirit really convicted me and said, Andy, I want you to train your lips to stop complaining. I want you to use your mouth to build up. I want you to speak words of faith. So for me, what I have to do is I have to get a new verse or a new perspective in my mind and tell myself a new story. So I have a tendency, just like you, I have a tendency to walk into the story that's in my mind. So you and I end up living out the story that we play over and over and over again in our minds. So I'm complaining at the end of the day, I'm going on and on and on and on. Then I step into that story. So I need to rewrite a new narrative with the scriptures in my mind. So God gave me these verses this year. I'll tell you, my three to four verses that God really put in my heart around complaining. Psalm 103, let me quote it to you. King David is speaking, listen to his words. He says, bless the Lord, oh my soul. Bless the Lord, all my inmost being. Bless the Lord and forget not all of his benefits. He who saves you from your sins, he who heals all your diseases, he who redeems your life from the pit, crowns you with love and compassion and satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles. It's harder to complain after you said that.

It's harder for words to be coming out of your mouth that are tearing your life down when you're saying, God, I bless your name. You saved me from my sin. You redeemed my life from the pit. I don't have anything to complain about. I deserve to spend eternity apart from you. And you died on a cross in my place. And you rose again from the dead. And you put your spirit on the inside of me. And I've seen you do miracles and your satisfying desires in my life. I will not complain because I will use my lips to lift you up. And there's a difference. You see that. It's when you put off and then you put something new on that you start directing your life in a different direction. So the question is, what do you need to put off and put on? We're going to talk about that in just a moment. But I got one last component to this message and it's God wants to renew my health ultimately by using my mind and body to accomplish his will. So something happens with a life that's moving towards the will of God. You know, there are all these purposes for which we could live here on planet earth. But when we get our eyes fixed on the will of God, the purpose of God, the plan of God, something shifts in our life and all these other things that we wanted to give our bodies to all of a sudden they start to pale in comparison to a bigger vision. This is why for men in their mid-40s that are listening to me at all of our campuses that are kind of like in my season of life, what you need is not a new boat. What you need is not a faster motorcycle or a new wife. What you need is a bigger vision for your life. What you need is to understand that God made you for more and that he has a plan and purpose for your life that when you bring your life to him wholeheartedly, you surrender your

body and your mind to God. He gives you a bigger vision. So when Paul says, then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing and perfect will. It's on the backside of you saying, God, you have my body, you have my mind. I surrender it to you. So God gives you a. physical body to live out your heavenly calling here on Earth, and you cannot live out your heavenly calling without an earthly body. Let me say that one more time. You cannot live out a heavenly calling without an earthly body. So this physical body that God has given to you is a gift that he's given to be stewarded. It's a tool that he wants to use to accomplish his plan here on planet Earth. So again, practically, how do we do that? So I'm gonna give you just a couple of practical ideas and then I'm gonna lead us in a response time. I'm gonna ask you at the end of our services at all of our campuses to make a decision that you're gonna renew. Some of you, for the first time, are gonna commit, but you're gonna bring your life and your body to God and say, God, I'm giving it to you. But just a couple of really practical ideas. One is to put off and put on one thing. So what's one thing that I can put on and put off? Put off and put on the one thing.

So it might be your words, it might be the way you're relating to people, it might be something you're doing at night after your wife's asleep, it might be some food that you're consuming, it might be getting more sleep, but there's something that God has for you. Second is to tell yourself a better story. So what's the story, what's the narrative in your mind that God wants to rewrite and put a new story in your mind so that you can move in a different direction? A third one for me, I'm moving kind of fast through these, but a third one is make a scorecard. So instead of being so focused on the end product, rather than like, okay, well, I'm gonna have 10% body fat by March 31st, it's like, actually, I'm gonna walk 10,000 steps a day, and I'm gonna eat healthy, and I'm gonna do the things that I can control in my jurisdiction. So on my scorecard are things like date night with Stacey, time alone with each of the kids, my time with God each morning. It includes things like the number of calories and macros that I eat, and all these things like number of steps I take per day, and how I steward money, and how much we give away, and all of that's on a scorecard. So once a week, I'm looking and saying, okay, did I do the things that I believe God is asking me to do?

And I'm moving my body, I'm moving my life in direction of what God's already told me he wants me to do. So that's a very simple thing that we can do. And then the fourth one is to get around healthy people. So it's way easier to be healthy when you're around healthy people. You know, I know people that are trying to quit smoking, and if you keep going out with all your buddies on smoke break, it's gonna be really hard to quit smoking because they're all smoking. And that's the reality in every area of our life. We wanna get around healthy people that can move us in a different direction. So all of these, I want you to just look back at them, put off and put on one thing, tell yourself a better story, make a scorecard, get around healthy people. Now I have one more, I'm not gonna tell it to you because I know once you write that last blank in, you stop listening. So I'm gonna hold that last one, and I want you to look at those four and say, what's the one that God's really pressing into? And I wanna ask you for these next few moments of my message to try to your very best to listen to what God might be saying to you. So God's speaking right now. The spirit of the living God is at work in your heart. And this is not just a sermon I'm communicating.

He knows what you need, and he's able to meet you right now in this moment. So I wanna ask you just to let him reveal to you what's the thing that he's asking you to do. Some of you, it might be for you to take a step, go to activate this weekend, and say, I'm gonna learn how to put off and put on. That's why we do activate, is to help. Some of you, it might be to get into a group or start hosting a group, and we're gonna look at an example of that in just a moment. But I want you just to search your heart, and we're gonna watch this short video of someone who said yes to God to get around some other healthy people and let God use their life. Let's watch this together. One of my personal training clients, long time Christian and member of Saddleback, and I just started asking him questions because I knew that he was a Christian just from the stories he had told me. And Larry gave me evidence to look at. Started going to church. I accepted Jesus, so I had my faith all in. I finished my master's degree in kinesiology and discovered that this is my purpose in life, helping people through fitness and taking care of their bodies. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna do this.

And taking care of their bodies is something I think God put me here to do. One of my goals is I wanted to do something fitness-related with the church. I saw that they were encouraging people to join small groups and even lead small groups. They talked about how it could be anything you're passionate about. Well, that's perfect. I gotta do like a Bibles and Barbells. I gotta do a fitness group. It's gonna be great. The way our meetings go is we usually meet first and sit down and do a daily devotional, read a Bible passage and talk about it. And then we talk a little bit about faith and fitness and how they intertwine. And then we'll pray and then we'll go do our workout. I didn't know exactly what I was doing. My first time leading a faith-based group and I just took it one day at a time. every day about it. I had the help of the leaders at Saddleback and one step at a time, one day at a time, just learning as you go, little by little, and you just grow. You know, I've had a couple of people in the group that were newer than I am to Christianity and they have questions, and so this kinda helped me to be able to answer their questions more

and really has pushed my faith in that manner, which has been a blessing on my journey with Jesus. Surrendering to Jesus and letting Him guide your life is like, it's brought just, I can't even describe it, like just unbelievable joy to my life every day. I'm relatively a new Christian, and so I never really imagined myself like leading anything like faith-based. It's been great, because I've got to intertwine my passion of working out with my new faith journey with Jesus. How awesome is that? Some of you today, there's a string in your heart, there's some gift, there's some passion that God's put inside of you, and that can be used by God for a small group this year. Just saying, God, I wanna step into letting you use my life to help other people along the journey, and I wanna encourage you today, you can sign up to host, to lead a small group. You really only need to be like one step ahead of the other person to kinda lead them on the journey that you've been walking, and so today, through the app, you can take that step, and in just a few moments, we're gonna have a campus host that will walk through the next steps for us and just kinda help us finalize what we've talked about today, but I do want, with this last moment, I wanna make some space between you and God,

and that last blank that I have for you today is to ultimately dedicate your body back to God, so it's a decision that you're gonna take your physical body, your mind, your eyes, your ears, your hands, your feet, you're gonna take your body, and you're gonna dedicate it as an act of worship back to God, and if we're honest with ourselves, there are some things that we've been using this body for that we need to turn from, and there might be some of you right now that perhaps there's guilt and shame that you're carrying, maybe there's something that you've been engaging in with your body, maybe it's a relationship, an extra marital affair relationship that you've been going to, maybe it's something that you just keep going back to chemically, it could be a phone, it could be something that you've been using, deeper level that you've been addicted to for a long period of time, that you need to just bring it back to God and say, God, I've been using my body for this, and I'm done with it today, I wanna turn back to you, and what I love about moments like this, as the Spirit of God is working in you right now, is that we come to a living God, he is, he's alive, he's moving, he's powerful, and there's grace for you today. The grace of God is available to you, and here's why,

because Jesus, the Son of God, died on a cross for your sins. He paid the price so that all of those things in our lives, God knowing that Adam and Eve all the way through would use their bodies for things that they should not, God already provided a solution so that you can come to him and be forgiven. He was crucified on a cross, he was placed into a grave, and on the third day, he rose again from the dead. He's returning, he's coming back, and you and I will stand before him, giving an account for our lives, and the thing he will ask is not whether or not you were perfect, he'll ask, did you receive the gift of salvation into your heart, into your life? Some of you have received that gift, like you've already said, yeah, Jesus, my life is yours, and you might today need to just take that step to rededicate yourself to God, to come back to him, maybe even get baptized at the end of the service today, but to say, God, I'm going in, I'm putting my life on the line. And others of you today, it might be for you to come to God and say, God, I'm leaning in wholeheartedly to you, and say, I'm gonna surrender my life to you. Now, I wanna ask you, between you and God right now in this moment, just to say, God, I'm bringing my whole heart to you.

The reality is that you and I could just move on, and maybe you got a few cool passages of scripture to go home with and all that, but there's something deeper right now that God can do in you, if you will make yourself available to the Holy Spirit right now. So I wanna ask at all of our campuses, if you'll close your eyes with me, and I'm gonna lead us in a moment of response back to God. And I'm just gonna do a couple of things. I'm gonna pray here at Lake Forest, and then in just a moment, I'm gonna pass it back to the campuses, and then I'm gonna stay and lead through a couple other things on stage here. But first, I just want to invite you, if you will, just right in front of you, if you're comfortable, just to open your hands as an act of surrender. And you might even just, in those hands, imagine what is that part of your life? that you need to put back in God's hands. And right now, you can just tell Him. Maybe it's a relationship. Maybe it's your finances. Maybe it's something you've been doing at work. Maybe there's something in your life today that the Spirit is just putting His finger on, and you just need to say, God, I'm giving it back to you.

Could be like me, your words, complaining. I wanna invite you, Holy Spirit, just to come. Thank you for your presence in our midst. Come, Holy Spirit, come. I wanna invite you, if you will, in this moment, if you wanna dedicate yourself back to God, you could be a follower of Jesus, could be the first time. I just wanna invite you out loud when I pray this prayer just to repeat after me. Just say, dear God, if you wanna dedicate yourself back to God, just repeat after me and say, dear God, today I rededicate myself to you. I put my life into your hands, the best I know how. I surrender myself, my physical body, to you. And Lord Jesus, we thank you that as we surrender to you in this moment, Lord, that you take our lives and you move us towards you. God, I pray that you would help us use our bodies to worship. And Lord, we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Well, before we join the rest of our church family in another song of worship, I wanna take a moment and invite you to fill out the We'd Love to Know You prayer card that Pastor Andy mentioned. Filling out this card will give you access to the prayer resource that Pastor Andy talked about, but it'll also give us an opportunity to connect with you

and pray for you as well. We're gonna be taking all of the prayer requests that we received from this card and praying for them as a church family during the 21 days of prayer. And so we'd love to pray for you specifically. So go ahead and fill out that card when you get the chance so that we can be praying for you. In addition, if you call Saddleback Church your home church, I would love to invite you to give of your tithes and your offerings in this moment. You can do that by texting the word GIVE to 83000, by giving on the Saddleback app or by scanning the QR code to give that way as well. Well, as you partake in those two responses, let's go ahead and join the rest of our church family in a song of worship. ♪ And I pray over my heart and mind ♪ ♪ I am healed by your stripes, your blood ♪ ♪ Declares that I am free in the mighty name of Jesus ♪ ♪ I pray calling on the power of heaven ♪ ♪ I proclaim every weapon formed against me ♪ ♪ Oh, it must break in the mighty name of Jesus ♪ ♪ And I draw from an inbound rely ♪ ♪ The enemy has no right to come near my family ♪ ♪ We declare it today ♪ ♪ No scheme could ever undo God's plans ♪ ♪ No, no matter the circumstance ♪ ♪ The cross has sealed my destiny ♪ ♪ Is in the mighty name of Jesus ♪

♪ I pray calling on the power of heaven ♪ ♪ I proclaim every weapon formed against me ♪ ♪ Oh, it must break in the mighty name of Jesus ♪ Church, let's sing this together. ♪ And I will not fear, I will not fear ♪ ♪ When the enemy comes near ♪ ♪ On the dawn frame of my life ♪ ♪ It's the blood of Jesus Christ ♪ ♪ I will not fear, I will not fear ♪ ♪ There's a army of angels here ♪ ♪ I'm protected on all sides ♪ ♪ By the blood of Jesus Christ ♪ ♪ And we sing in the mighty name of Jesus ♪ ♪ I pray calling on the power of heaven ♪ ♪ The power of heaven, I proclaim ♪ ♪ Every weapon formed against me, oh it must break ♪ ♪ In the mighty name of Jesus, in the mighty name of Jesus ♪ ♪ Oh I know, all the power of fear and darkness ♪ ♪ It must go, in every key to every victory, yes ♪ ♪ I hope, in the mighty name of Jesus, we give Him praise today ♪ Thank you so much again for joining us for church this weekend. I wanna remind you one more time, if you need prayer for anything or if you wanna take a next step in your faith, you can let us know about both of those things on the Saddleback app. You can also fill out the We'd Love to Know You prayer card so that we can know how to pray for you best. Well, Church Family, we're so grateful once again

that you joined us for church and we can't wait to see you back here again next week. We'll see you next week.