Discipline | The Farmer - 2 Timothy 2:1-7

So yeah, First Wednesday Worship is coming up this coming Wednesday, and we are so excited about that. We're gonna have three of these this fall, we're gonna have three of them in the spring. And in case you're new around here, there's a whole bunch of new folks around here. That was born out of a simple reality, and it's this, worship is war. Worship is war, and so we only do three things at First Wednesday Worship. We sing our faces off, we praise His name, we pray a lot, and we read scripture. There's no sermon, so don't be afraid. Like, I don't wanna listen to another sermon from you, so I get it, those are only on Sundays. That's all we do on Wednesdays. And I was born out of a place of just going, listen, our lives are really, really hard, our hearts are often in pain, and we just need to defiantly worship alongside of God's family. So that's what we do on the first Wednesday of those months this fall semester, and I specifically wanna challenge the men in our church. Men, look right at me. The condition of this church, the health of this church, can never exceed the health of your own heart. It's true for your family, too. So you have an opportunity right now to set a priority, to put a line in the sand for your family to go,

we're gonna be at First Wednesday Worship. If you got some pain in your life, you need to be at First Wednesday Worship. If you got something you feel ill-equipped for, you need to be at First Wednesday Worship. If you've got a wife and kids, you need to be at First Wednesday Worship, all right? So set that priority for your family in that tone this fall. All right, that's the sermon before the sermon. Y'all got extra today. All right, so here's the next one. If you got your Bibles, go ahead and go to 2 Timothy chapter two, verses one through seven. We're gonna be in the same place that we've been for the past few weeks as we wrap up this little three-week series that we've been in. Here's your key word again on discipline, all right? We've been setting the tone for this fall with the word of God and what the word of God has to say about discipline. Let me just remind you of what discipline is. Discipline is consistent training that produces a desired result. It's something that you do repeatedly over time so that you can get a desired result. Like, it doesn't work if you only do it once. You gotta do it consistently over time and eventually, you get the desired result. And we've been looking at this through the lens

of this little letter that Paul wrote to his understudy, someone he saw as like a son to him, named Timothy, who was located in a place called Ephesus. We've been exploring these seven verses. These are seven verses, by the way, that are super easy to memorize. So if you haven't done that yet, I challenge you to memorize these seven verses this week. Let's unpack them again. You then, Timothy, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus and what you've heard from me in the presence of many witnesses. Man, entrust that to faithful men who'll be able to teach others also. Here was our first picture. Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus for no soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits because his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. Connor did an excellent job last week of looking at this second picture. An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. And here's where we're going today. It's the hardworking farmer who ought to receive the first share of the crops. Think over everything I say for the Lord will give you understanding in everything. Now, these are easy metaphors to understand, and they're intentionally easy metaphors to understand, okay?

They were not hard math in the first century. They're not hard math for us today. The reason that he could paint a picture of a soldier is because everywhere they looked in Ephesus, there were Roman soldiers. They saw some soldiering going on. The reason he could talk about athletes is because they had their ancient version of the Olympic games that everybody loved to go watch. There were athletes all over the place. They totally got that. The reason he could talk about farming is because it was an agricultural culture. Everything was farmed to table back then. Everything was organic, you know what I'm saying? The distance between the farmer's hand and their mouths was not much at all. This was all stuff they could resonate with, and so today we look at the hardworking farmer. Now, this will shock and amaze you, but the second job that I ever had where I got paid real money was I was a farmhand, okay? You're like, I didn't see that one coming. I totally understand. I didn't either, because what happened was my senior year of high school, I felt like God was calling me into ministry, and people were telling me, well, then you gotta go to Bible college, and I was like, well, I got a problem with that

because I had already been kicked out of a Christian school. I was not excited to go back to a Christian school. I knew Jesus loved me. I just wasn't so sure about Jesus' people. Anybody got that story, all right? So I was not super excited to go to a religious place, and I was like, man, if I'm a preacher, does that mean I have to wear pleated khakis and a polo tucked in for the rest of my life? Thank you that I've been able to dodge that bullet, by the way, all right? And so I went up there with all these expectations. I didn't know what it was gonna be like and all that kind of thing, and I didn't think I'd fit in, and truth be told, I did not. I did not fit in, but one of the things that I learned really quickly. is that we were expected at the end of each year to get a summer internship at a local church. And so I was like, oh, interesting, what's that? And they're like, that's where you go work for a church, they pay you like next to nothing and work you almost to death, that's what happens. And so I was supposed to do an internship with a friend of mine who had grown up in Southland, but was doing ministry at a church way out in Owensboro, Kentucky. And he was like, yeah, man, you can be my intern next summer and I was like, great.

Now, the communication between that date and the end of that school year, my freshman year, was minimal. And here's why, because it was the 1900s, all right? I had a cell phone that resembled Zach Morris' from Saved by the Bell, any Saved by the Bell fans out there, all right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We didn't use them much and it cost a whole bunch of money to use them. And I think I might've had email, but everything was like dial-up back then. You know, there was like a hamster and a wheel inside of computers back then. And so there was not a lot of communication. We got all the way to like the day I was moving out of my dorm and I hadn't heard from this dude. So I get on the phone, I call the church and I actually get ahold of him. He answers the phone, I'm like, hey man, just trying to find out like what day do you want me to show up and what do you want me to do and how much are you gonna pay me and all this kind of stuff. And he's like, yeah, about that. He's like, the elders won't let me have an intern, man. Sorry. I'm like, okay, great. Hang up the phone, drive from Cincinnati down I-75

back to the house that I grew up in, go to my mom's door and go, can I live here this summer? She's like, yeah. And so then I was faced with this reality, I gotta get a job, man. And so I'd heard about a man in our church, he's actually still a part of our church to this day, his name's Don Wessner. And he had bought a piece of property up in Georgetown and he was, I had heard, gonna be hiring like a work crew of young men who were gonna work on that farm that summer. And then he told me, he was like, hey, I'm also paying, this sounded awesome to me. He's like, I'm paying $7 an hour cash money. My previous job was minimum wage, which was I think $4.25 an hour. So I thought I was gonna be rich that summer. I was like, yes, let's do that. And so I signed up to be Don Wessner's farm hand on this work crew. I show up day one and guess how many people were on the work crew? One, this guy right here, that's the only one. I spent the whole summer doing stuff I was unqualified to do and I didn't do a good job with out in the hot sun. And all that to tell you, well, here's what I learned. Farm work is not for the faint of heart. Some of us know that really, really well.

Now again, this is not hard math. What is Paul trying to teach us through these three pictures? Week one, we talked about the enemy of a soldier is distraction. A soldier cannot get entangled in those civilian pursuits. He has to have one sole purpose. You please the one who enlisted you. In this case, it's Jesus. What did Connor talk about last week? What is the enemy of an athlete? Well, taking shortcuts and cheating. That's the enemy of an athlete. This week, what's the enemy of a hardworking farmer? This is easy. This is probably the easiest one. Guess what it is? Laziness. Laziness. Now, this is again, this is not rocket science. This is something if you've been doing the discipline challenge, you're like, oh, we've already read a lot about laziness because we've been reading Proverbs and the discipline challenge and you've already come across this. Go to the ant. I love this. Arise, oh sluggard. I'm bringing sluggard back, all right?

Because I got a 13-year-old son in my house who doesn't like to get out of the bed. So next time I'm dragging him by his ankles out of his bed, I'm gonna say, arise, oh sluggard. All right? Consider her the ant's ways and be wise. That's like a big theme in Proverbs. Have you noticed? Be wise, don't be dumb, you know? Without having any chief officer or ruler. In other words, she didn't have an authority telling her what to do. She's just disciplined. She prepares her bread in the summer, gathers her food in the harvest, and then he asks this question. So how long will you lie there, oh sluggard? When will you arise from your sleep? Because here's what's gonna happen. A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber and want like an armed man. The enemy of a hardworking farmer is laziness. And if you're a lazy farmer, you go broke real fast and starvation's not far on its heels, right? Not only do you not have enough for you and your family, you don't have enough to sell at the market, there's gonna be absolutely no profit.

Now here's my question, all right? If in a culture where everybody could understand like an agricultural system, laziness was still an enemy, even though starvation was a possibility, how much more so is laziness an enemy for us? Anybody remember, like anybody old enough to remember 2020 and how hard it was to get everybody to come back to work? Everybody's like, no, I like working in my jammies and day drinking on Zoom calls. Like that's work, let's keep doing work in our sweat. Pants. People didn't wanna come back to work. Now, before I continue a launch on laziness, an attack on laziness, let me just say something. There are a few things that if you, like if you called me lazy, we might square off. There's a few things I despise more than laziness, and you wanna know why? Because there's laziness in me. We often despise the things that we know we struggle with the most. I am lazy in some places and in some ways. And so as we dive into this today, this is rubbing all up against me as well. Let me give you an example. I'm often lazy with my family. You know how easy it is as a preacher to just go, you know what, they probably heard my sermon. I hope my kids listened to my sermon,

but to do the hard work of sitting on the edge of their bed and looking them in the eye and actually helping them navigate through life, that's hard work. So sometimes it's easy for me to be lazy with them. Do you know how much easier it is for me to be vulnerable in front of you all than it is to look my wife in the eye and go, you were right, I was wrong, I'm sorry, will you forgive me? Y'all, that's way harder. I can be lazy with my family. I can be lazy with my emotions. I don't know if y'all have noticed this or not, but this is something that men tend to struggle with. Generally speaking, we're not great with emotions. Women, you're way better with emotions, generally speaking. And I know, like, listen, just so you know around here, we have the audacity to believe something around here, and here it is, this is crazy, this will blow your mind. Men and women are different, all right? Now, I know the WNBA is still trying to work that out. Like, they'll get there, they'll get there soon when our guy Enos is dunking on everybody, you know? I know they'll catch up to reality. The reason we know that is because we have two eyes and we have the scriptures and we can see reality and we have experiences that make it really clear that God intended for men and women to be different. Praise Jesus that he intended us to be different. And one of the big ways that we're different

is men, we have trouble accessing our feelings. Like, I could give you a million examples, but let me give you one of my favorites. Have you ever noticed the distinction between the way women greet one another and the way men greet one another? You're laughing, there's a reason why you're laughing. Let me paint an even more vivid picture. Let's say you got a young couple, they just got engaged, okay, and the young lady sees some of her friends for the first time since her engagement. What does that look like when that happens? What does it sound like when it happens? Why are you laughing, right? She does this and there's jumping up and down that happens, there's a bunch of hugging, there's crying, there's tears, there's eye contact. They might sit down on a sofa, fold their arms and legs and look right at each other and say, tell us all about it. There's engagement with feelings and emotion that's just happening in that moment. And then there's the dude, when he runs into his buddies for the first time since he got engaged, what happens? Nothing, literally, at best a fist bump, maybe a bro hug, maybe, right? Oh, that's cool, man, all right. Hey, are we eating chicken wings for lunch today again? Yeah, all right, cool, that's what happens. And here's the deal, okay, I'm 46 years old, taking me a long time and a lot of really hard work

to get to a place where I can even recognize the emotion that I'm feeling, do you understand? Most young men, here's what we do, we walk around feeling a bunch of stuff that we don't even know we're feeling, we don't even acknowledge, we have no understanding of, and everybody else feels the consequences of our feelings, but we're unaware, so it's all coming out sideways. It takes a lot of work to get to a place where you can go, okay, and I've had people teach me this, I'm scared, I'm angry, I'm sad, I'm happy, excited, tender, whatever those things are. You know what's even harder beyond just acknowledging it? Speaking to that and explaining that to someone who loves you. Let me give you an example, all the time this happens, like I'm sitting on the porch in a rocking chair, my wife's on the porch in the rocking chair next to me, and I'll be really, really quiet, because I'm an introvert, my job requires a lot of words, which means often when I get home, I'm all out of them, okay? No more words, she'll go, what are you thinking? And like a middle school boy who's been picked up by his mom who says, what happened today at school, what'd you do today, what do they say? Nothing, what do I say? Nothing, which is not true, because I'm not dead, I'm thinking something, but it sounds like real hard work to say, well, here's what I'm thinking about right now. I tell you all that, just to simply say,

as we dive into this thing called laziness today, it's not just an enemy for some of us, it's an enemy for me, it's an enemy for all of us. So let's dive. of these scriptures, 2 Timothy chapter two, verse six. It is a specific kind of farmer, hardworking farmer, who ought to have the first share of the crops. Lazy farmers go broke fast. And here's what's interesting in our culture. Hard work has fallen out of fashion, have you noticed? Anyone gone to a casual dining establishment recently and just felt like the workers were really mad at you for showing up with money in hand to exchange it for goods and services they're supposed to provide? Anybody, just show of hands, have you had that experience? Yeah, here's why. And I had somebody explain this to me. This is a young preacher who's a friend of mine. I was listening to him preach recently. He's at a church down in Nashville and he was telling a story. He's got a lot of young people in his church. He was telling a story about how he was playing basketball with a few different young men in his church and he was schooling them. I mean, he was just killing these guys. He was killing them left and right. Listen, you don't have to worry. We play one-on-one, you're gonna win, okay? Because I'm way too old to play one-on-one.

All I do is play horse in the driveway these days and my boys make fun of me the whole time. My 20-year-old the other day is like, dad, why are you shooting a set shot? I'm like, I'm not shooting a set shot. He's like, well, you're not jumping when you shoot. And I'm like, that's because I don't believe in jumping anymore, man. That leads to injury. Like, I'm not into that. But jumping's an important prerequisite for basketball. But my friend is still really athletic and young so he's just schooling these dudes and they're getting frustrated and they're getting mad. And he said, so one of them after he whipped him like for the third time, he actually kicked the basketball and called him a name. And here was the name. He looked right at his preacher and went, man, you're just a try-hard. Like, that's a derogatory term? I thought that was the whole point. We're supposed to try hard. Apparently not. Some of you know this really, really well. Actually, the pressure in our culture is to not try hard. To keep your head down, to be unexceptional, to go with the flow, and it's very frowned upon if you try hard. So working hard, as the scriptures articulate,

is like antithetical to our cultural flow. Has anybody noticed that? And there are even some Christians out there who will do some theological gymnastics to try to position hard work against the gospel as if they can't coexist. But here's something we have to frame up in our hearts and our minds all the time that I always wanna remind us of, and it's this. The gospel, listen, is opposed to earning, not effort. You are saved by grace through faith in Jesus in Christ alone, through his work alone on your behalf. You didn't do anything to get it. You didn't earn it. It was a free gift of salvation. That's the immeasurable riches of his grace. And once you have been saved, the Bible tells us to roll up our sleeves and get to work. Not for our salvation, but from the position of our salvation. And I happen to notice that my Bible says over and over again things like this. Whatever you do, whatever your vocation, whatever your calling, whatever your business, whatever it is that you do, man, work heartily. That means with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, like Jesus said, as for the Lord, not for men, knowing that from the Lord, you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.

And I also notice when I look at the life of Jesus, he had this work thing figured out. He was in ministry for three and a half years, and he poured himself out for others. What did he do prior to that? He was a carpenter, man. Which means he was working in the woodshop for the glory of God. Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as though working for the Lord and not for men. And the problem, one of the many problems we have in our culture is the wrong people get ahold of the right books. They get kind of mismatched. So there's this book that's been a bestseller, right? The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. But the problem is is all the people it was intended for don't read it. And the people who don't need to read it do because they got a lot of time. And so it turns into the ruthless elimination of anything resembling hard work in their life. And that is not what we are led to by Jesus. What does Jesus actually lead us to? I don't know if you knew this or not. Jesus wants you to get stronger. Which is really good news, because again, that's why you're here today. You didn't get out of bed and go, I wanna go to church so I can get weaker.

No, you got something going on, you got something you think you're gonna face that you're like, man, it might be a good idea for me to put this discipline in my life to be in a place with God's people worshiping defiantly. So you wanna get stronger, and the good news is Jesus wants you to get stronger, and Jesus demonstrated for us what it takes to get stronger and all you have to do is read about the life of Jesus to see that he embraced these two things that if you embrace, you will get stronger. Resistance and recovery. Resistance and recovery. This is quite evident in all three of the pictures that Paul is painting for us, isn't it? I mean, how does a soldier get stronger? One of the ways a soldier gets really strong is you just pick up a heavy thing and you carry it until someone tells you you're allowed to put it down. Right? And you put it down, you sit in the mud, and you go to sleep. Resistance and recovery. You gotta have a balance of both of those things. How about an athlete, man, you gotta hit the weight room. You gotta train and get in the ice bath at the end of the day. Farmer, how do you get stronger? Man, you throw hay, you drive fence posts, you wrangle cattle, and then at the end of the day,

you call it a day and you head to the house. Resistance and recovery have to both be embraced. So here's the thing I think we have to understand. I don't think the problem is hurry. The problem is not hurry. The problem is priority. The problem is what comes first in your life. What is best and what is preeminent? The issue is the priority. There's a famous passage, if you wanna feel really good about yourself today and go, I can hold two places in the Bible at the same time, you can flip over here. It's Luke chapter 10. It's a really famous passage that I think often gets misunderstood, but this is Jesus, and it says, now as they went on their way, this is Jesus and his disciples, they entered a village, it was a village called Bethany, and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house, and she had a sister called Mary. Watch what she did. She sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was what? Distracted, we learned about distractions week one, that's the enemy of discipline, with much serving, and she went up to him and said, Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me. I love the audacity of this. Like, hey, Jesus, while you're busy preaching over there,

could you work into your sermon to get my lazy, contemplative sister to get up off her tail and come help? That'd be a great sub point in your sermon. That's what she's saying. Here's Jesus' response. But the Lord answered her, Martha, Martha, now listen. This is for free. Jesus says your name twice, you better listen. He does, like, truly, truly, I say to you, when he says things twice, it's because he wants you to lean in. He said her name twice, Martha, Martha. You're anxious and you're troubled about how many things, about many things, but how many one thing is necessary? And I think Jesus is leaning in, like, going, Mary's chosen the good portion, which will not be taken from her. And here's the problem as we approach the Bible. We often don't want to acknowledge the tension we have with it, so we don't wrestle with it. And I'll just be honest with you. I'm team Martha. Anybody else, like, you don't have to raise your hand, but I know you're out there. You've heard this for years, and you're like, I don't like this story, because you're kind of a type A person, you're a get after it person, and lazy contemplative people that you have in mind right now get on your nerves. Some of you, you're getting anxious right now

about Thanksgiving, because you can see it from here. You're like, man, this is called every Thanksgiving for me, because you're like, I do all the work, I do all the dishes, and then my contemplative sister-in-law sits over there sipping wine by the fire all night long while I do all the work. So there's a whole bunch of us that are team Martha. And I want you to notice something about Martha. Was she doing a bunch of bad things? She's doing good things. There's at least 12 people in her home, at least. Somebody's got to do the dishes, somebody's got to cook the food, somebody's got to take care of the house, somebody's got to make sure everybody gets enough, all the things. But she was distracted with many good things. And how many times have I said this? I'll say it 1,000 more times, but when a good thing becomes an ultimate thing, it becomes a destructive thing. All good things that she was doing, but they pale in comparison to the reality that she had the creator of the universe in her kitchen. So in that instance, maybe, just maybe, the dishes can wait. In that instance, actually, the laziest thing to do is to keep doing the dishes. Listen, sometimes it's easier to keep a well-ordered home than to sit at the feet of Jesus

and allow him to order your heart. That's called distraction, with good things. So the personal implications of this are all across the board. But there are some corporate implications of this as well. I mean, talk about a simple series that we've been in, right? I mean, these three pictures of all the same word, all disciplines, soldier, athlete, farmer. As we've just, this past couple weeks since fall kickoff, we've just had packed houses across all of our campuses, and I just wanna be really clear, because I don't wanna bait and switch anybody, about the corporate implications of this for us as a church. So to anyone and everyone who loves to engage, and if you're a part of the Bible Belt, you've seen this your whole life, maybe you've been a part of this your whole life, but there is a sport in the Bible Belt called church hopping, anybody notice that? And some people even, they don't hop from one to the other, what they do is they treat churches like a buffet. Like I go to that church to get a little bit of that, and I go to this because I go to that church to get a little bit of this, and I just accumulate the things that meet my preferences at each church, and I put together this like smorgasbord, like I've been at the Golden Corral, of everything I need.

And I just wanna gently but clearly say, if that's you, pick a church. Because if you are a follower of Jesus, that church, and listen, I don't care what church it is, I really don't, in fact some of you is like, yeah, you should pick another church, you know, just joking, just joking, kinda sorta. It's not about what you need, you've already been given something, if you're a follower of Jesus, that church needs you to actually follow Jesus in that church. So I just wanna be really clear about the implications of this moving forward, and they're massive. So let's dive back into this text and think about this together. Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus, no soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, it's the same as the police wanna enlist at him. Consequently, at Southland Christian Church, we are building an army, not an audience. Do you see the distinction? What's an army do? An army stands ready to fight, ready to go, ready to move, ready to take ground. What's an audience do? An audience sits down and eats popcorn and spectates. We're not spectating around here. We're an army, we're ready to move,

we're ready to contend. If you wanna fight against the spiritual forces of darkness, if you wanna prayerfully fight for your family, if you wanna take back ground that the enemy has stolen, if you wanna contend for your children and their children's children, in an age and in a culture that just assaults them at the level of their identity at every given moment, if you wanna fight against the enemy who has a simple objective to steal and kill and destroy, if you wanna advance King Jesus against the gates of hell, you are in the right place and this is your church. But listen to me, if you're still just going, well, I don't, you know, I don't really like the songs, no one cares, we're not singing them to you or for you, we're singing them to King Jesus, it's all for him. So there's big implications of this, we are building an army, not an audience. An athlete's not crowned unless he competes according to the rules, consequently, we are building a team. We are building a team, not a fan base. Do you understand the difference between those two things? It's always funny to me, and it's no big deal, but I mean, this is kind of funny to me when we go to sporting events to watch and we wear the jersey, you're not going in, you're not checking in, coach Pope's not looking at you going, get in the game, that's not gonna happen, okay? The big difference is there's a whole bunch

of consumer Christianity stuff in these parts where everybody wants to wear the gear but nobody wants to get in the game. Everybody wants to like do the, I call it coffee cup Christianity thing where it's like it's all nice when you poach the scriptures out of context and put them on a coffee cup, like, as a deer panteth for the water. You know what that's a picture of? Near death level desperation. Do you thirst for Jesus and his word so much so that you would say I'm like a deer about ready to die? Or were you hoping to come in here and get a little coffee cup Christianity, a little health, wealth, and prosperity, tell you how to get some money in your bank account, some better teeth and a nice car? If that's what you're wanting, you're just in a wrong place because here at this place, we're not interested in conforming the scriptures to our opinions, we're interested in living under the authority of the scriptures regardless of what they say because we literally believe every word of this and we're not ashamed of it at all. So if you were hoping to be pandered to, man, you're not gonna be pleased in this place. But if you were hoping to be a part of a place that will reach one more lost and broken person,

if you wanna put points on the board for the kingdom, if you wanna see people move from death and into life and get into the watery grave of baptism and be raised to new life, if you wanna live to see one more person come home to the father, man, then you are in the right place. It's because we are building a team around here. We are not building a fan base. It's the hardworking farmer ought to have the first share of the crops. So consequently, we're building a work crew, not a consumer culture. Really what this comes down to is simply this. Do you believe Jesus when he says it's more blessed to give than receive? I mean, it's his words, not mine. And some of us, we're just like, no, no, no, no, I don't believe Jesus. I just want to receive, receive, receive, receive. I don't want to give anything. I want to be a cul-de-sac, not a conduit, but we are called to be conduits of the grace that we've been given so that others can experience the amazing grace of Jesus because hell is hot and forever is a long time. And so if you want to be a part of a place that will storm the gates of hell and take back lost and broken people and celebrate with all of heaven

when they step from death into life, then man, you are in the right place because we are building a resilient church to reach one more. That's who we are. Now, you get to decide if you want to be a part of a place like that or not because corporately, that is what we're doing. We are not going to slow down. We are going to keep pursuing what Jesus has for us as a church. Together, that's the goal. Individually, here's the challenge, and I'm about to give you a challenge that literally is gonna sound like the most churchy thing you've ever heard come out of my mouth. Like for those of you who are old enough to remember, you're gonna be like, I think I saw that on a T-shirt in family Christian bookstores in 1995 next to the crumb of bread and fish shirt. You know what I mean? So here it is, and I'll explain. Work hard and pray hard. Work hard and pray hard. We've been entrusted with something, and it requires all of us to be in for it, which means that this fall, as we continue to see God and trust us

with lost and broken people, we all have to roll up our sleeves and go to work, man. Go mentor in our schools. Do you understand? Our government schools have given us an invitation to come mentor kids, and I don't have the time to talk about it today, but I'm gonna talk about it on the podcast. You can listen to it later this week about the massive difference it makes in the lives of students when we just show up on a weekly basis and mentor in the schools. Go serve in children's ministry, student ministry, our prayer teams. Go get in the parking lot and help one more person find a spot. Go greet people, listen, who come in here every week. There's somebody who comes in here who's had the worst week of their life. When you greet somebody around here, they're not always gonna smile back, and if they're honest, they're gonna look at you and go, well, actually, I just buried someone I love this week. And that's an opportunity for you to say welcome home and surround them with prayer and help them find a seat. Go usher people to their seats so they can hear the word of God. The ways you can serve around here are literally limitless. So let's work hard, but let's also pray hard. Look at what Jesus said to his disciples.

So if you're here today and you're like, I'm a disciple of Jesus, do you understand that a disciple of Jesus doesn't just consume things? A disciple of Jesus serves people. Because what did he say? He said, then he said to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful. There's one more is out there everywhere. There are lost and broken people everywhere. The harvest is plentiful. What's the problem? But the laborers are few. We need more workers. We need more laborers for the kingdom. So Jesus says, in light of that reality, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few, the workers are few. Therefore, what should we do? Pray, pray, pray. Pray how? Earnestly, desperately. It means to wring out your heart before the living God, to the Lord of the harvest, to send out laborers into his harvest. First and foremost, as we pray hard, we should plead that he will make disciples who make disciples who make disciples. We need more laborers because the harvest is plentiful, but time is short.

And also, we should be fighting for one another in prayer. So let me just ask you a question today. Do you, do you have someone in your life who they're near to you? The problem is they're far from God. When's the last time you fell on your face before the Father for them? Do you have someone in your life who is trapped in some sort of demonic level of addiction? When's the last time you hit your knees and you pleaded before the Father for them? Is there any parents in here who have a prodigal son, a prodigal daughter who you've pled for them to not only just come home to you, but your biggest prayer of desperation is they will come home to the Father through the son Jesus. Is there anyone here today who there's someone in your life who is sick physically or mentally? When's the last time you pleaded for them, you hit your knees in prayer and you prayed hard for them? Students, how many of you, you've gone back to school and you've just been overwhelmed by the reality that you have so many friends who don't know Jesus? When is the last time you just prayed, you just poured out your heart and your soul for them? How many parents, you just dropped off a child at a college campus and you cried and you just prayed all the way home because you're like, Father, I don't wanna see them walk down the path of the college experience,

which is just code for regret and shame and wounds and scars. But you wanna see them walk in the way of wisdom and follow Jesus through their college time. We all have someone, if not many people, that if we're honest, we're desperate for. I know I do. So here's what we're gonna do. This has already been really powerful so far this morning across all of our services. You may not be able to see it from where you're seated, but in front of all of our stages down front, we have these rugs out here. And as soon as I'm done, I'm gonna give you an opportunity that if someone or many people came to your mind, this is going to be your opportunity to move, come down front, hit your knees and pray. Pray to the Lord of the harvest for that person to be reached through the power of the Holy Spirit today and this week and this week to come. If I'm the only one who pleads with the Father down there, that's just fine, but I'm gonna hit my knees and I'm gonna pray and I'm gonna plead. Here's the other thing I need you to know. This is not just for today. This is from now on. One of the things I'm deeply convicted by is the reality that when we unpack the word of God, it's on us to respond to the word of God, which means at least a few things.

Number one, we need to praise the God of the scriptures. We need to praise the God who created us. We need to praise the God who sent his son Jesus for us. The second thing that I'm just convicted by is we gotta pray, man. We gotta take some time and pray. We gotta plead before the Father and do some business with him. And so this space is gonna be available to you from now on. And prayer team people will be off to the side, but they will not bother you during this time. This is a sacred space for you to do business with the Father. We're gonna praise and we're gonna pray as a response. And I want you to notice what is not a part of the response, the parking lot. Man, you've got a few minutes left that you can spare to praise and to pray. So I'm gonna begin our prayers here in a second. So I'm gonna invite everybody to stand. And if you've already been provoked in spirit to pray for somebody, you can start moving right now to come pray and plead before the Father. You don't have to wait for me to say amen as we pray. Father, you loved us first. You moved to us before we could even know to move to you. We were dead in our trespasses and sins. We were on the side of the road, beaten bloody and broken. There was nothing we could do for ourselves, but you did for us what we could never do for ourselves.

And you've given us amazing grace. And Father, we so desperately want to see that extended to those that we love. We're near to them, but Father, they are far from you. Father, some of us, we are parents and you are a good father. And so we just want to desperately plead before a good father on behalf of our kids. Father, some of us, we have friends and family who are lost in addiction, but you love that person more than we love them. And so we wanna plead before you on their behalf that your Holy Spirit would meet them even right now, wherever they may be, and somehow, some way, they will know that there is an army of people who've been raised up and they are pleading with you for them today. And somehow, Father, would you put someone in their life who will draw them to your son, Jesus? Father, we want to wring our hearts out before you today as we praise you and as we continue to pray. In Jesus' name, amen.