Embracing Ambition

Good morning, my name is Georgia Unzucker. I've been able to call church home for 14 years now. Today's passage comes from Romans 15, 17 through 22. In Christ Jesus, then, I have reason to be proud of my work for God, for I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me, to bring the Gentiles to obedience by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God, so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Elycrium, I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ, and thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else's foundation. But as it is written, those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand. This is the reason why I have so often been hindered from coming to you. This is the word of God for the people of God. You may be seated. Romans chapter 15, if you have not already made your way there, it's in the New Testament, Romans chapter 15. We're in kind of like an in-between week here. If you've been with us, you know that we just finished out our series going through the book of 2 Corinthians, where we watched the Apostle Paul kind of faithfully carry out his ministry that God had entrusted to him, especially toward the church at Corinth. And then next weekend, Pastor J.D. will be back, and he's gonna be beginning a series through the book of Nehemiah. Nehemiah is a book about a man who doesn't just feel called, but a man who feels driven to rebuild something very specific for God. And so starting next weekend, what we're gonna do is we're gonna spend several weeks around this idea of calling. But what I thought we could kind of do as this bridge week, before we talk about where God might send you, what I wanna talk about is specifically what drives you. Because see, underneath every calling is actually something deeper. It's ambition. Ambition. And I know for some of you, that word ambition, it's a really exciting word. You feel like the church doesn't talk about it enough. If that's you, I'm kind of in that camp. But for others, that word ambition kind of makes you uncomfortable. Because you assume ambition is only for certain personality types or for certain types of Christians. But I wanna tell you, whether you call it ambition or not, every single person here this morning is being driven by something. And in Romans chapter 15, the reason we're gonna go here is that the same Apostle Paul that wrote 2 Corinthians, Paul is gonna show us not only where God has called him, but he's also gonna

give us a glimpse into what drives him. His holy ambition. To kind of illustrate this, I was actually thinking about kind of my own journey to here, right in this place. I've shared a good bit of my story with you guys before, but if you rewind, kind of short version, February 2008, I'm a junior in college and God miraculously saves me, changes my life, and opens my spiritual eyes, rips out my heart of stone, gives me a heart of flesh. I become a true disciple and follower of Jesus. Well, fast forward about a year to 2009, early 2009, I get married to the same girl that actually led me to Christ a year earlier. So the joke I always make is I got a nice little buy one, get one, got Jesus and a wife is a good little package deal. So we get married March of 09. And about six months later, that fall of 2009, we are at a Christian music concert. We're at a Hillsong concert in Atlanta at Hi-Fi buys amphitheater. And thankfully we were under kind of, we were kind of toward the front up under this overpass because it was pouring rain that night. And man, I'll never forget that night for so many reasons, but one of them, it was just cool. It's like, here's Hillsong worshiping. And I turn around and those that were not under the overhang, it was awesome watching all these believers that just love Jesus. They're like in the pouring rain. It's like thundering and this, you know, Australian bands on stage leading worship and people are out there just worshiping. And man, I'll never forget this. In the middle of that worship service, I just remember taking a seat in the middle of a song. And as if I'm face to face with one of you today, it's one of the first times that I feel like God spoke to me almost audibly. And I just remember him saying, Curtis, I'm calling you into full-time ministry. You're going to be a pastor. And specifically, you're going to be a preacher of my word. And it was while worship was going on. It's not like, you know, some Australian dude with an awesome accent got up there and was like, who's going to give their life for God? And I was like, me. Like it wasn't anything like that. And I just remember like finishing out that concert. And we actually had a buddy that came with us. And so we dropped him off after the concert and he got out of the car and shut the door. And before we took off, I looked at my new bride of six months and I said, Hey, I need to tell you something. So I think God is calling me to be a pastor and calling us into full-time ministry. And I'll never forget. She looked back at me and she just smiled and she said, I know. I was like, what, what do you mean, you know? And she was like about a year and a half ago, I told Jerry and Kathy who are our mentors. She said, I told Jerry and Kathy that I thought God was going to save

you. We were going to get married and he was going to call you to be a pastor. I was like, what else has God told you about my life? That would be nice. Well, man, that led us on this journey beginning of 2011. We packed all of our stuff in our little car and that's why we moved up here ultimately for me to go to seminary and learn how to be a pastor and a preacher. And man, I wanna tell you, we left Atlanta, loaded up our car, we hopped on I-85 and we drove up. Man, we didn't know anything. We didn't know anybody. We ain't got nothing. But all we had was this holy zeal and this ambition and this desire to go preach Christ and grow as preachers and as a pastor and get into ministry. And so, man, we came up 85 and we had never been to Raleigh-Durham in our life. Knew nothing about it. We just knew God had called us here. And so we drove up 85 from Atlanta. We got off 85 in Durham at 98 and we took 98 all the way into Wake Forest proper. And we were like, I guess this is Raleigh. Like what a disappointing town. It's just this two lane road that's super backed up all the time. But we were like, we just know God has called us here. And that first year, man, I wanna tell you there were a lot of ups and downs when we were here.

But one of the strangest things that kept happening, it was like, man, just this ping pong ball going back and forth is, you know, I come up here and I'm just ready to go. Like I'm a guy who's gonna raise my hand. I'm getting involved in everything. God's called us to this, let's go. And I remember there were a number of people, some really well-meaning people that were like, hey man, just slow down. Like, let God do work in you. You need to grow. You need some experience. And I was like, I know, but I'm just ready to go. I think there were some godly wise men, especially that spoke into my life in that way. But then there was this whole other group of men. And I'll never forgot, they were just like, hey bro, you gotta chill. Like you need to tone it down. Like this whole ambition, this zeal you have, this calling you have on your life. Like, you know how ambitious pastors, you know how it ends for them. And I just felt like they were always trying to snuff out this zeal and this ambition that I had for what I felt like God had genuinely called me to do. And then I heard this quote from a pastor in Charlotte. I don't remember if it was a sermon, I don't remember if it was a book, I have no idea.

But I heard this quote, look at it with me. He said, I'm taken by this because there is nothing I want more than for my life to matter. I wanna be used profoundly by God to be seized by his great and mighty hand and thrust onto the stage of history in order to do something significant. With as pure of a heart as I can muster, it's not about fame or prestige. It's about wanting my life to count where it is needed most. And then he had this line, stuck with me ever since. There's a great movement of God that has been set loose in this world and I wanna be on the front lines. Y'all, that quote puts something to words that I had been feeling, but I didn't quite know how to express. It puts steel in my spine and it fanned this flame of what I felt like God had put into my heart. And so this morning and this kind of in-between week, what I wanna do is I wanna talk to those of you who've been taught that godliness means wanting less instead of aiming higher. Those who have been wondering if that burning drive or that burning desire inside of you is supposed to be fueled by faith or if it's supposed to be snuffed out to avoid sinful pride. See, somewhere along the way, I think Christians got really nervous

talking about ambition, right? Like we'll talk about calling all day, but ambition feels like it's dangerous, like it's self-promoting, like it's impossible to be ambitious in life without also being prideful. And sure, I wanna be fair, the Bible certainly warns against selfish ambition, but scripture does not call us to kill our ambition, it calls us to rightly aim it. See, the question is not whether we're going to strive towards something, the question is what we are striving for and why. In other words, as our church friend, John Tyson, who's also gonna be preaching at our men's conference, if you haven't got your men's conference ticket and you need to get it and you're like, I tried and Capitol Hill is sold out, well, guess what? There's still tickets available at the Alamance campus. And I wanna remind you, we're all gonna be preaching live and worship's gonna be live and everything's gonna be live, so the excuses are gone, go ahead. So neither here nor there, but this is what John Tyson says. He says, we are not at war with ambition. He says, as followers of Jesus, we're at war for ambition, a holy ambition. See, as followers of Jesus, y'all,

we don't need to lose our ambition, we need to redeem it and aim it at the right target. And so what I wanna do this morning is I wanna walk through the passages that you just heard, and then I wanna share four ways that the gospel shapes ambition, all right? So meet me back in verse 17, Romans chapter 15, beginning in verse 17, the apostle Paul says this. He says, in Christ Jesus then, I have reason to be proud of my work for God. Now, we're always trying to teach you how to read your Bible. And so anytime we've told you, you see the word then or therefore, you always look to see what it is there for, right? Well, then Paul says, is a conclusion drawn from the previous verses before verse 17 that we did not read. In those verses, what Paul does is he discusses his mission to the Gentiles. Gentiles just mean non-Jews. This mission began back in Acts chapter nine, where if you know the story, God miraculously knocks the artist formerly known as Saul off his horse, he blinds him, he saves him, he calls him into ministry, he simultaneously gives him this calling to very specifically go preach to the Gentiles where Christ has not been named. Which if you know anything about kind of church

or Bible context, this was nuts because up to this point, Paul was this insanely zealous Jewish Pharisee. To call a Pharisee to go preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles would have been unthinkably insane because to the Pharisees, Jesus was a fraud and Gentiles were at best, they were like muggles, okay? Yet Paul is not just simply obedient to this call, look what he says. He says, I am proud of this work. Other versions, your version might say, I glory in this work, I take pride in this work, I boast in it, I'm enthusiastic about it, I exult in it. Y'all, this isn't Paul bragging, but Paul is definitely boasting here. But the key to understanding his boasting is that little phrase at the beginning of verse 17. He says, I'm proud, I'm boasting in Christ Jesus. Paul's boastful attitude isn't about what he's done, it's about what God is doing through him. This is joyful boasting, not prideful self-promotion. And we know that because Paul continues in verse 18, look at it with me. He says, for I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience. Paul's like, man, if any part of my ministry does not stem from God's work through me, I don't even wanna talk about it. Like it's not even worth mentioning. I just think back, if you remember back

to 2 Corinthians chapter 12, which Pastor JD preached a few weeks ago about Paul's thorn in his flesh. In that whole amazing thing about Paul's thorn in the flesh, Paul throws in this little thing where he talks about a vision that he got as he was taken up into the third heaven. Paul is literally taken up into God's throne room. I mean, think about this. Paul has a vision of heaven, yet he barely wants to talk about it. He's incredibly coy about it. He almost like brushes right over it in 2 Corinthians 12, because he wants to keep the attention on Jesus, not on himself. Now, Paul's super holy. I just wanna tell you guys, if your boy gets taken up and given a vision of heaven, guess what I'm preaching on next time I'm up here, okay? Y'all are hearing about it, all right? Like I'm telling you about it, God took me, Curtis Andresco, pastor, visionary, mentor, like this is what I'm doing, right? It's just wild. But Paul says, if it doesn't stem from God's work through me, I don't even wanna talk about it. My five-year-old son, who's the youngest,

we have four kids, youngest five-year-old, we just signed him up for his second season of baseball. I should say baseball, because Little League, if you've ever been to a Little League baseball game, it's not so much baseball as it is just kind of like a live social experiment amongst kids. It's basically what it is. But man, if you've never been to a Little League baseball game, if you have never experienced an inside the park home run at like a five, six-year-old baseball game, you are missing out in life, okay? Because basically what happens is you get these kids, like my son played T-ball one season, now he's about to do coach pitch. But even in coach pitch, what happens is these super cute little kids get up there with all their armbands and they look all cool and their eye black. And half of them, their helmet's like over their eyes, the other half, the helmet's like sticking up like a shark and they look all cute. And they get up there and they just whiff and they whiff and they whiff at the plate, like 10 times, they just keep. So a lot of times what happens is the coach has to bring the tee out and they set the tee up. And man, these kids get up

and they think they're about to just hit a dinger, right? Like they're about to go oppo. And what do they do? They don't keep their way, they don't know. And so they go up and they swing with all their might. They do like the wee, like they go like that. They do like the spin swing. And like the bottom of their bat, like barely caresses the ball off the tee and it rolls like three feet. And then just chaos ensues, right? Like every kid on the field, it's like a dog pile. The kid who just hit it is just like standing there and like his dad's yelling like, run to first base. And this kid's like, what is first base? This is the first time I'm learning about this. And so the kid finally takes off. And then finally, you know, some masculine kid comes out of the pile with the ball and they're like, throw it to first. And he throws it to first and the first baseman's like, and it just goes this way. And so the coach was like, keep running. So he keeps running. And then they're yelling at the right fielder who's out there, you know, some kid named Brad, who's like picking his nose and like, Brad, get the ball. And so Brad finally gets him like, throw it to a cutoff. And he's like, I don't even know what a cutoff. And Brad's starting to cry

because he's out in right field. So he finally, and the kid, man, the kid who hit the ball is still like turning the bases. Like he is running and mom is screaming like crazy. Like it is game seven of the world series, right? And this ball is just getting thrown all over the place. Like the ball is nowhere to be found. And so finally the kid turns third and he's headed home. And the ball is like, it's not even in the field of play at this point, but he's hustling. Like he's about to win the world series. And for absolutely no reason whatsoever, because there's no play at the plate. He goes and tries to do a slide, right? He almost like breaks his leg and tumbles over. But then he gets up and like, you've seen this. Like he dusts himself off and he goes like peacocking over. the dugout and he's like, I did it, I hit a home run, right? And everybody's cheering and they're going crazy. And in one sense, technically, yes, he did hit a home run, but it's far less about what that kid did and it's way more about what everybody else did. See, here's my fear. I think so often our testimonies sound far less like Paul in Romans 15 and far more like a five-year-old yelling, I did it. That's how ridiculous we look when we try to take credit for things

that God does through us. I mean, y'all, even me up here, when I preach, you know what I do? It's like, I come up to this little, you know, tee ball, like a pulpit, and I just try to hit a dinger every single time. I come in up here and instead it kind of dribbles off the tee and I go run around after 40 minutes. So a lot of times, like what I feel like is the worst sermon I've ever preached, that's when it like, it impacts you the most, which usually means you realize, like if you think I'm a bad preacher, you're hearing me. If you think I'm a good preacher, that is God speaking through me. That's kind of how this works. Yet I come up and I hit a little thing and I run around and I'm like, yep, crushed it. Like that's kind of what happens. What Paul says is he says, I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me. Not because he's embarrassed of this work to the Gentiles. No, he just refuses to take credit for God's work through him. Never once does Paul say, hey everybody, look what I did. He always says, look what Christ has done through me. In fact, the only time Paul ever wants to insert himself in the story is to tell about the parts

that God has used him for. Paul says, I'm proud of my work because look at the end of verse 18. He says, because that work resulted in the bringing of the Gentiles to obedience of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And then he goes on to give three ways that Christ accomplished that obedience through him. Paul says first, Christ did this by word and deed. By word and deed. Listen, the gospel travels along kind of two rails. The first rail is proclamation, that's word. We proclaim the gospel. The second rail is demonstration, that's deed. Proclamation is the word. It's the preaching of the gospel. It's not just what I do up here. It's what you do when you're sitting across the coffee table from somebody sharing about the testimony of what Jesus has done in your life and offering that same gift of the gospel to somebody else. Proclamation, what it does is it makes the gospel message intelligible. However, proclamation must always go hand in hand with demonstration because demonstration is the deed. It's how your lifestyle validates the message that your mouth is preaching. So what proclamation does is it makes the gospel message intelligible.

Your word makes, or your deeds make the message tangible and believable. I love the way missionary theologian, Leslie Newbigin used to always say it. He used to always say, the word without the deed is empty, but the deed without the word is mute. All he's doing is getting exactly at what the author, James, used to say when he said, faith without works is dead. We need both. So that's the first way Paul says, Christ accomplished this through me. The second way that Christ accomplished this through me, Paul says, verse 19, is by the power of signs and wonders. Now we're not gonna go into a whole theology of signs and wonders, but what you need to know is that signs and wonders are just visible manifestations of an invisible reality. I absolutely love the way one commentator calls it. He calls signs and wonders the fingerprints of God seen here on earth. See, signs and wonders in scripture are not just for spectacle. They were intended to confirm the truth of the gospel and to demonstrate God's power over creation and sickness and evil. And so God used signs and wonders through Paul to accomplish this ministry. And then third and last, Christ accomplished this through me, Paul says,

by the power of the spirit of God. This is the most important one. If you've ever read your Bible and you wonder how God used Paul to do so much, how Paul was so successful, this is it. Paul was filled with and empowered by the Holy Spirit. He understood that without the spirit, all you and I have is Christian activity, but we cannot produce any fruit. We can do the right things. We can preach the right words, but without the spirit, we are just a bunch of busy Christians, which is good news because that means that the Christian life, y'all, is not powered by grit. It's powered by dependence because we recognize that if God doesn't move, nothing lasting or eternal is gonna be done through us anyways. See, the work of God can only be done by the power of God. And the power of God works through the people of God in the form of the spirit of God indwelling those same people and working through them. And see, the same spirit that empowered Paul is the same spirit that raised Jesus Christ from the dead. And if you have confessed your sins and placed your faith on. Jesus, that is the exact same spirit that lives inside of you right now. God wants to use you in so far as you will be dependent on him.

And so Paul continues. He says, God's done all this through me. Look at the rest of verse 19. He says, God's done all this through me so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum, I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ. Now this region, I'm not gonna put up a map or anything, but this region from Jerusalem to Illyricum was approximately the distance from Raleigh-Durham to Denver, okay? So think about RDU to Denver. This region in the Bible was approximately 37 major cities with about half a million people, okay? Yet at most, we know at this point in time when Paul writes this, this area from RDU to Denver only has about a dozen churches in it. So about 12, 13 churches and less than 500 believers, okay? 500 believers out of 500,000 people, at least in my estimation, is not great gospel advance. Yet Paul says, I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ. How in the world could he say that? See, he could say that because he knew his calling. Look at verse 20. He says, and thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel. Not where Christ has already been named lest I build on someone else's foundation. Paul's very specific calling was to take the gospel specifically to Gentiles

and specifically to where Christ had never been named. And so Paul's standing back and he's like, half a million people, but there's 500 believers, about 12 churches here. He's like, my work's done, time to move on. See, Paul had his aim. He had his ambition set on Spain where Christ had not been named yet. And see, I tell you that because just like Paul, God has something very specific in his kingdom for you. That's what we're gonna be looking at over the next several weeks. We're gonna ask you to consider what does God have specifically for you? But before we jump into that in this Nehemiah series, before we ask what God might call us to do, we first need to ask how the gospel reshapes what drives us in the first place. And so with the rest of our time, here's what I wanna do. I wanna show you four ways that the gospel reshapes our ambition, all right? Four ways the gospel reshapes our ambition. Here's the first one. Holy ambition frees me from the need to prove myself. Holy ambition frees me from the need to prove myself. This is Paul's entire foundation for being ambitious and proud of his work. If you go back to verse 17, look at how he begins. He says, in Christ Jesus, then I have reason to be proud of my work.

See, Paul's pride, first and foremost, came from his identity in Christ, not from his activity for Christ. It came from whose he was, not from what he's done. I told you guys a few months ago, I used an illustration about how ridiculous we try to make ourselves sound on our resumes. You remember this? Like we try to make ourselves sound super important. And a bunch of y'all have told me some awesome things that you've written on your own resume. I kinda wanna revisit that for a sec. If you're a high school student right now, listen to me. If you're working at like a restaurant and you were a dishwasher, on your resume, just put dishwasher, okay? That is respectable, good, hard work. That tells an employer that you're willing to do the dirty stuff. Just put that. Don't feel the need to put like you're an underwater ceramics technician. Just put, I am a dishwasher, all right? See, a resume is something that you constantly update, right? Like when you get a new accomplishment, you add it to the resume. You get a new job, add it to the resume. You win something or get an award, you add it to the resume.

Because you're building a list of reasons that you matter. If at any point you stop updating that resume, you probably start to look a little less significant. See, contrary to a resume, a name badge, on the other hand, is different. See, a name badge doesn't list what you've done. It just tells who you are. Here's what I think. I think most of us treat ambition like a resume. It's this thing that we come before God and we come before our brothers and sisters in Christ and we try to add to it and we try to achieve and we try to prove ourselves, hoping that we're finally enough, that God will finally receive us, that people will think we're this good little Christian. But see, the gospel, what the gospel does for us is it gives us a name badge. It doesn't say, here's my list of achievement, God. Here's what I've done. No, our name badge simply says Christ or Curtis Andresco in Christ Jesus. And see, when identity comes first, what that means is ambition doesn't disappear. Our ambition actually gets freed up because now I'm no longer working for approval. That's a resume. I'm working from approval. That's my name tag given to me in the gospel. Christian ambition doesn't necessarily mean less activity.

It just means our identity is the foundation for our activity. And see, most of us don't reject that truth. We just reverse it a little bit, even when we don't realize it. And when we don't realize it, what happens is we attempt to use our activity as a way to form our identity. And when that happens, when our ambition functions more like a resume than it does a name badge, a few things begin to very practically show up in your life. For some of you, what happens is you become dependent on other's praise and really defensive when you don't have it. For others, man, you'll struggle to really celebrate other people because you're always gonna be comparing yourself to them. This plays itself out at work where you become a terrible coworker because you see everybody else as competition instead of allies. Some of you, you're gonna end up starting to justify compromise in the name of results because you're trying to build your resume. You'll end up confusing busyness with faithfulness. Yet no matter how much you achieve, you'll never truly feel settled. Listen, some of you wear ambition like a badge of honor

because you think it shows how much more driven and how much more dedicated you are than everybody else. But the reality is that some of you are not ambitious because you love God. You're ambitious because you're afraid of being insignificant. That's not ambition, y'all. That is slavery. And the gospel frees us from that. It heals us from that. Because when your identity is secure in Christ, you're no longer striving for self-worth, you're striving from the worth that has already been given to you in Christ Jesus and his finished work. So that's the first thing that holy ambition does for us. Here's the second. Holy ambition changes what winning looks like. It changes what winning looks like. Paul says in verse 18, look, he says, man, I'm not gonna venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me. See, when you read this, Paul's not being, like he's not being falsely modest here. I mean, if winning were about platform and popularity and personal achievement, this would be Paul's moment to list his resume because he's got a good one.

But instead he's making a deliberate choice to brag about what counts as truly winning in the kingdom. See, he understands that winning in the kingdom isn't about what I've accomplished. No, for the believer, winning is about what Christ has accomplished through me as I am evidenced through obedient faith because followers of Jesus, y'all, we play a different game and we play according to a different scoreboard. I often get asked how y'all can pray for me. And I genuinely appreciate that. And one of the things I know, this is gonna be my second sports illustration, but I love sports, especially college sports. So over the next six months, kind of leading up to fall college football, here's how you can pray for me, okay? Full confession. I'm a Florida State fan, all right? If you don't know anything about Florida State football, things are not going great in Tallahassee. Let's just say that, all right? To put it in perspective, we have not won an away game in over two years. Florida State football over two years. We went two and six last year in a, let's just say a very underwhelming conference. Yet, this is what's crazy. Florida State not only led the ACC in total offense,

we were six in the entire country in total offense last year. We averaged over 475 yards per game. But think about how ridiculous it would be for me to try to convince you that Florida State was a good football team last year, simply because we always had more yards than the other team, even though they always had more points on the board. This is like the super arrogant player that you always see when they're losing by like 30, right? And they make like a good catch and they get up in somebody's face and the other dude just points at the scoreboard, right? Like, they do that because they're focused on the wrong scoreboard. Here's what I'm afraid of. I think a lot of Christians never find the peace or joy that Jesus promises because they're too busy winning on a scoreboard that's different from the one that Jesus uses. You wanna know where Jesus' scoreboard is found? Matthew 23, verse 11. Jesus says, the greatest among you shall be your servant. You wanna be great? You go be a servant. For Jesus, winning is no longer about how many people can serve us, but by how many people we serve. See y'all, when ambition is reduced to my comfort

and my wealth and my preferences and my peace and my truth and my success, if your ambition is all about you and building your little kingdom, you will be perpetually dissatisfied because you are over there winning at things that God has never promised to bless. You're gonna keep winning or keeping score in this worldly game that won't actually matter in light of eternity. And see, here's the good news. If Jesus really does get to define greatness in winning, then what that means is that some of the most ambitious disciples of Jesus are actually the ones that the world will never know. Notice, here's who I'm talking about. I'm talking to you stay-at-home moms and caretakers who spend your days showing up again and again with no platform and no praise and no thankfulness from anybody and no gratitude from any child that you serve. Can I get an amen? Yet you continue to serve out of an overflow of the way that Christ has served you. I'm talking about those of you who wake up early every single day to spend time with Jesus. You go on to work 50-hour weeks in order to provide for yourself or your family or your aging parents, and you come home exhausted but still ready to wake up and do it again

and serve the next day because you know that's the calling God has on your life right now. I'm talking insanely practically about John Bartuska, one of our elders here at the Capitol Hills campus who for decades has used all his PTO time every single year to take that PTO and not go on vacations but go on mission trips to just love on and serve and encourage our missionaries. John, who retired last week, and you know what him and his wife Anne are doing to celebrate their retirement? They're spending the first six weeks of retirement overseas encouraging our missionaries. They're not retiring down to Florida to sip on fruity drinks and play golf and collect seashells. No, John and Anne know that because the mission never stops, they will never stop. They're giving in, they're investing in a kingdom greater than theirs. Y'all, I'm talking about you volunteers who show up here every single weekend to park cars and hold doors and seat people and point cameras and serve behind the scenes and hold babies so that others can encounter Jesus. And I wanna tell you, if that is you, you are winning on the scoreboard that counts. That is not small ambition, that is holy ambition. And you might not look or feel impressive to the world, but you look faithful to heaven and heaven is full of celebration for obedience

that nobody else on earth will ever notice. Y'all, winning in the Christian life is not about ability or number of followers. It's about availability and dependence and service to others. That's what holy ambition does to winning. That's our second thing. Here's our third. Holy ambition looks to join what God is already doing. These last two points, they'll be pretty quick. I just wanna make them incredibly practical for you. Because I don't want you leaving here thinking like, okay, ambition, great, that sounds good, but like, how do I get it? Like, what if I don't wake up with some burning desire in my soul? Well, here's the good news. I want you to know that holy ambition is not something that you have to conjure up or invent in your heart. It's actually something that you can align your heart with. Because see, holy ambition simply joins in where God is already at work in the world. And where we find out where God is at work in the world is by opening up the scriptures. Notice what Paul says in verses 20 and 21. Look at what he says. He says, and thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else's foundation.

Verse 21, here it is. But as it is written, and then he goes on to quote Isaiah 52, 15 from the Old Testament. He says, as it's written, this is how I know I'm called. Those who have never been told of the Savior will see, and those who have never heard of the Savior will understand. When Paul wants to confirm the desire God has put in his heart, he goes and looks and confirms that in his word. Paul doesn't say, man, I've got this ambition because of a powerful experience on the Damascus road. I've got this ambition because I went to a Hillsong concert and I got this vision from heaven. And so get ready, believer, your huge mystical experience with Jesus is coming and he's gonna make insanely clear your calling. Like he didn't go on a wilderness retreat and he's like, hmm, God, what excites me? What fills me up? Like God, what's my spiritual love language? I just wanna be like, it's none of that. No, instead he says, what does scripture say that you are doing in the world, God? And how do I give my life for that? And for Paul, those who have never been told, those who have never heard, for Paul specifically meant go preach to the Gentiles in places where the gospel has never gone. Listen to this real closely.

If you want to align your ambitions with God's, begin by looking at his word. Again, super practically. This means that you don't have to wonder where to aim your ambition because God has already told us. For instance, Matthew chapter 28, literally called the great commission. That's not something for pastors. That's something for every follower of Jesus. God says, go therefore and make disciples of all nations. You wanna know where to aim your ambition? Aim it to the nations. If that's you, maybe this year you go on your very first short-term trip ever. You can go to our website and see a list of all the trips. Maybe you, like John and Anne. use some of your PTO to go on a short-term trip. Maybe you're like, man, that's just not feasible right this second for me. You can join one of our ICP, our International Church Planning Catalyst. We do them once a month. I think they're over at the Briar Creek Campus, where once a month, one night a month, we gather together with any of our missionaries that are stateside, and we just come together, and we hear them tell stories, how we can be praying for them. You can meet them. And then the way you are engaged in missions

is now you partially know a missionary, and when they go back overseas, that's how you are engaging in missions. You are praying for them, and the gospel advanced through them. Maybe for some of you, as that video of Pastor Carlos played in Miami, maybe that's where God is stirring your heart, to church planning. How do I know that aligns with God's word? Matthew 16, Jesus says, I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail upon it. And you're like, well, I don't know about Miami. That's okay. Guess what? We are planting churches this year in Charlotte, Atlanta, Chicago, Orlando, Manhattan, Cincy, or Denver. Put your yes on the table. Let God put it on the map. For some of you, you're like, man, I know God has called us here. Maybe the way you need to get involved is through pregnancy support centers that we help support. Proverbs 24, 11 says, rescue those who are being taken away to death. If that's where God has given you an ambition and a calling, you can just go to the Next Steps area

at all of our campuses, and they will let you know how we, as a church, are involved in pregnancy support centers. Man, if you're a college student, don't waste your college years. Acts 1, 8, God says, you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and to the ends of the earth. What that means for the next four years is you will be His witnesses on your college campus. If you're not involved, Summit College, come to SC United, Summit College United, next month, March 4th, at the Briar Creek campuses, a gathering of all of our college campuses together. Last but not least, you're like, man, I'm just kind of strapped. I need kind of an entry-level thing. Here's what we can all do to engage in the mission of God, where God is already at work. We can be a people of prayer. 2 Chronicles 7, verse 14, God says, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, if they will pray, if they will seek my face, if they will turn from their wicked ways, God says, I will hear from heaven and I will forgive their sin and I will heal their land. Y'all, maybe we could spend less time on cultural commentary and more time on bombarding heaven so God might heal our land

instead of us just criticizing it all the time. You wanna be engaged in prayer, download our app, Daily Revival. We have prayer stuff for you right there. Right now, we have people in what we call boiler rooms praying over the very service right now that God would move. What I'm telling you is you wanna know where God is at work. Open your Bible and God has promised to open your eyes. Ambition clarified by the Bible radically simplifies your life because you simply join in on what God is already doing in the world. And when you do that, it leads to the fourth thing that God does through holy ambition. Holy ambition helps us say no without guilt. I don't know if any of y'all need this last point, so I'll just preach it to myself and if it blesses you, so be it. But one of the most freeing and practical things that holy ambition does is it helps you say no without guilt. In Romans chapter 15, Paul is writing to the church at Rome. And yet look at how this section ends, verse 22. He says, this is the reason why I have so often been hindered from coming to you, church at Rome. See, Paul wanted to get to the church at Rome, but he kept getting diverted. This reason was that he kept finding out

about all these places where Christ had not been named, so he'd go to those places instead of continuing on to Rome. In other words, Paul had to say no to Rome in order to say yes to his assignment. See, Paul knew exactly what he was called to do and because of that, just as importantly, he also knew what he was not called to do. He wasn't distracted. He was focused and focus requires limits. I mean, y'all, I don't know whether it's my age, whether it's my kids, whether it's the spirit of God, it's probably some combination of all three, but man, the older I get, the more I come to realize my human limits, my limitation. Like there's only so much of me, so much energy, so much time, so much bandwidth. I just only have so much of myself I can give, which is really hard for me because I'm quite the people pleaser. And then even more than that, more than I want your approval, I just don't want to disappoint you. About two years ago, I was listening to this podcast of a really well-known pastor, you'd know his name if I said it, and he was getting ready to retire. So his podcaster just asked him like, hey, you've been in ministry about 50 years, what would you go back and tell your 20-year-old self?

And he said, my 20-year-old self, man, I was just always constantly frustrated because I felt like somebody was always disappointed with me. Like I couldn't please everybody in the church. And he said, and it wasn't until I had an older, wiser man tell me one time, he said, hey, why do you think you can never have anybody disappointed with you? He basically explained, he said, you realize right now somebody's disappointed with God. At all times, throughout all history, somebody has been disappointed with God. And he said, so why do you think that you can have nobody disappointed with you when somebody is disappointed with God? What makes you think you could do better? See, I just wanna tell you, when you live out your calling, there's gonna be people who are disappointed with you. There's gonna be people who feel like you're not giving them enough time or like you're not meeting their expectations. There's gonna be people who think you're wasting your potential. There's gonna be people who think you're being unreasonable. There's gonna be people who have tell you you have changed, but hear me, they think that because they don't understand that faithfulness in one place always limits availability in another. And so you can look back at them without guilt and say,

hey, I'm not choosing you less. I'm just choosing Jesus first. I'm not rejecting you. I'm responding to God's call on my life. Holy ambition means that you are willing to be misunderstood and disappoint some people in the name of obeying God. And holy ambition helps us do so without guilt. Y'all, Paul knew how to turn down good ideas for the sake of focusing on the God ideas for his life. What we're gonna start seeing next week is how Nehemiah wasn't called to rebuild every wall, only the wall that God assigned him. For me in this season of young kids, that means God has called me to invest deeply in my family and be present with my wife. That means that there's some good things that get a no from me right now. There's some hobbies and some extra opportunities and there's some trips. There's even some relationships that I would love to engage in, but right now they're not my assignment. And that's gonna disappoint some people. For you parents of young kids, your calling right now is probably simply to faithfulness and investment at home. And so saying no to more activity or to the extra hours of travel sports, or even saying no to the job promotion that might mean more time away from home.

Y'all, that's not selfish or unwise, that's obedience to the season God has you in. Some of you singles and young adults, your calling right now might be more about formation than it is acceleration. Saying no to rushing into the next relationship or the next job or the next city or the next opportunity so that you can build deep roots in community and holiness and skill. And I wanna tell you, that's not wasting time, that's building a firm foundation on Christ. You empty nesters, your calling might be to say no to comfortably sailing off into the sunset, but instead might be to mentor and raise up younger leaders by opening your home and leveraging your wisdom and your resources and your time for kingdom multiplication. Some of you students, I don't care how old you are, what your calling is right now, it's to be a good and godly student, to be salt and light at your school, that's it. And so saying no to getting ahead of yourself and becoming a ball of anxious anxiety, like that's not lack of ambition, it's trusting that God has you exactly where he wants you and he wants to see if you'll be faithful in this season before he reveals the next one. Saying no in obedience is not failure, it's focus. Here's what this all means. It means church that you are not accountable

for the entire mission of God, but you are accountable for the assignment that God has given you. See, and I know that because that's how Jesus lived. In John chapter 17, Jesus told the father, he said, I've finished the work that you've given me to do. I mean, if we're being honest, when you look at Jesus's life, at least the way I see it, by the world standards, it kind of feels like Jesus left a lot on the table. Up to the resurrection, it really doesn't look that impressive. He doesn't write a bestseller, he doesn't start an official organization, he doesn't travel to global cities. Like from a worldly perspective, it looks like Jesus could have done a lot more with his power and his influence and his wisdom and that whole God in the flesh thing, but he did exactly what the father gave him to do, and that was enough. His aim, his ambition was to please his heavenly father. See, all the gospel is not at war with ambition, it's at war for it. It's at war for an ambition that frees us from having to prove ourselves, an ambition that measures winning the way that Jesus does, an ambition that joins in what God is already doing in the world, and an ambition that knows when and how to say no

without any guilt. And so father, I pray that we are those type of people. I pray that the people of the Summit Church, we would be people who never boast in anything except the cross of Jesus Christ. God, I truly want our lives to matter. I truly believe that there's been a great movement that you have set loose in this world, and I want the people of the Summit Church to be on the front lines of that mission. And so father, would you fill us, would you guide us, would you use us? Would you take the people of the Summit Church and would you light a fire of holy ambition inside of us? And would you use us for your kingdom? We pray, we ask in Jesus name, amen and amen.