No Pain, No Gain // 1 Timothy 4:1-16

You just heard from James and Tracy. We have known them for a few years now. They are from North Carolina, but for the last eight years, they have been living in South Asia. And much of their ministry is done amongst the unreached. This is those who have no Bibles, there's no believers, there's no Christians. And their vision there is really the same as our vision here at two cities. They want to make and mobilize disciples. They're just doing that in South Asia. And we have such confidence in James and Tracy and their team that to start this year, because of your generosity, we gave them a gift of $25,000 to help them go further faster. (audience applauds) I want you to know this, this is important. Our church is and will continue to be a church that is dead serious about sending funds towards missionaries, towards churches, towards organizations that are the tip of the spear in pushing back darkness locally, nationally, and globally. We love to give, but we also love to go. You heard from James that video, he said, "I'll see you at the airport." And so I want to encourage you to go to our missions website, look at our short-term opportunities, and I want to encourage you to take a step of faith, go on a short-term trip. I promise you that if you go on one of our short-term trips,

you will be so grateful that you did. And so I want to take a moment to pray for our missionary partners, and then we're going to jump back into our series in first Timothy. So let's pray. Father, thank you for James and Tracy, and for many like them. They have put their yes on the table. You have put it on the map in South Asia, and I just want to pray a blessing over their ministry. Would they continue to see just an incredible amount of fruit in South Asia? Lord, I want to pray for our own missionaries, members of our church who are serving overseas. I want to pray for our family in Southeast Asia, pray for our family in the Asian Pacific Rim, and then also want to pray for Luke, Tatum, serving in Mexico City. Lord, help each of us to continue to consider what our role is in fulfilling the great commission. We pray all this in Jesus' name, amen. Well, how's your New Year's resolution going? You know, I know you started this year. You wanted to shop less on Amazon. You wanted to go to Starbucks less. You wanted to eat a little healthier. Some of you wanted to declutter your house. You wanted to read the Bible more, but for most of you, that hasn't happened.

Well, how'd I know that? Well, there are studies that show that roughly 80% of New Year's resolutions fail by early March. Well, what do you think that happens? Well, there's a lot of different reasons. Sometimes it's because our goals are not specific enough. Sometimes it's because our goals are unrealistic, but I believe that the main reason that these goals often fail is that you and I lack discipline. You and I lack discipline. Discipline is giving up what you want now for what you want most. And this is so hard, isn't it? Because our brains are wired for immediate gratification. The most obvious example of this is with food. When you're at Chick-fil-A, what do you want now? Well, you probably want a 12-count nugget meal with fries and a sweet tea, and you also now probably want one of those new banana pudding milkshakes. Can we try this? It's frustrating how good they are. That's what you want now. What do you want most? Well, you probably would really prefer to not have preventable health problems in your 40s. You probably would prefer to have the energy and the health to play with your kids and to play with your grandkids. We have to give up what we want now

for what we want most. And here's the truth. All of us, in all the different dimensions of our lives, really just have two options. The options are this. Discipline or disaster? Discipline or regret? And what Paul's gonna do in 1 Timothy 4 is he's gonna talk to us about how to discipline or to train ourselves for godliness. So if you got your Bibles, go and grab those. Flip to 1 Timothy 4. We're gonna be in 1 Timothy 3 next week. But what we're gonna see today, Paul is gonna tell us, his message is gonna be very simple. He's gonna say what you need to do is you need to grow in godliness and use your gifts. Grow in godliness and use your gifts. I wonder how many neglected gifts are in this room right now? You see, I really believe that the reason that some of you are not doing well, the reason you hate your job, the reason you're not happy is because you might be neglecting the gifts God has given you. You might be neglecting what God has been calling you to. And so Paul's gonna talk about this, but the first thing he's gonna talk about is he's gonna talk about how we grow in godliness. And so we're gonna start in verse six. The summary of the first five verses is that Paul is gonna say we live in a world

of spiritual junk foods. And he's gonna talk about false teaching. Pastor Kyle taught on false teaching in this series just a couple of weeks ago. And what Paul's gonna say is he's gonna say false teaching should be expected. But what we're gonna see in verse six is he's gonna say before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Jesus Christ. Being trained," that's an important word, "in the words of the faith and of good doctrine that you have followed." A few things here. So what Paul is saying in verse 6 is he says, "I want you to be so familiar with the truth that it is easy for you to identify lies and false teaching." I love what D.L. Moody. He was an evangelist in the 1800s. He said about this. He says that the way that you show a stick is crooked is not to denounce the stick or to spend time arguing about the stick. The way that you show a stick is crooked is to lay a straight stick beside it. The point is that the more familiar we are with the truth, the easier it's going to be for us to correct and identify lies. And what Paul tells Timothy is he says, "What I want you to do is I want you to put these things before the brothers." He says, "I want you to put the truth before the brothers." And here's what he's saying. "It is not enough for you to believe the truth privately. You must promote the truth publicly." That's what we are all about here. If you've been around for any length of time, you know what I'm about to say is true. And if you're new, it's helpful for you to know this. The pastors and leaders of this church, and it starts with Pastor Kyle, are completely committed to the adventure of telling the truth. We're dead serious about it. We want to do it graciously. We want to do it lovingly. We only want to do it as it arises in Scripture. But we feel a great burden to communicate and promote the truth publicly. Why is this? Well, it's probably because our culture today, they will basically say something like this. It's okay for you to believe whatever you want in the privacy of your own home. You can even believe what you want when you're at church on Sundays. But don't you dare bring those beliefs into the public square. And we are just committed here to promoting the truth publicly. Well, you may think, "Well, I just work a normal job. How do I promote the truth publicly?"

What if when you're at the break room or when you're around classmates or friends or whatever, and you hear them promote something that's not true, what if you just warmly and winsomly say what you believe to be true? With the understanding that as you do that, it's going to correct lies. It's going to expose what is actually true and what is actually not. It's not enough to believe the truth privately. We must promote it publicly. And then we're going to see what Paul has to say about training or discipline in verse seven. Look with me. He says, "Have nothing to do with irreverent silly myths." The Greek word for irreverent silly myths is Facebook, right? Look it up. You can check me on it. He says, "Rather, train yourself for godliness. For while bodily training is of some value, godliness is a value in every way as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come." The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. What Paul does here is he gives Timothy a negative command followed by a positive command. The negative command is he says, "I want you to have nothing to do, Timothy, with irreverent silly myths." If something is irreverent, what that means is it does not honor God. And then silly myths are things that are not rooted in reality and they're a waste of time. So the big idea here is do not waste your time on silly things that do not honor God. And so we should not waste our time doing things like binge watching tons of shows on Netflix. It's a silly. It is silly to spend 45 minutes writing a Facebook post about politics. It's just silly. And what Paul seems to say in this verse is he also seems to suggest that it is silly if bodily training is not valued appropriately, which is really interesting because the Bible actually does not talk almost at all about bodily training or exercise, which is sort of interesting because when the New Testament was written in Roman culture, bodily training exercise was actually pretty popular. But what Paul says is he says bodily training is of some value. I want you to notice there's two things he does not say here. On one side of things he does not say bodily training is not valuable. What this means for us is that we should value exercise. We should value stewarding our body as well. We could talk about this forever. But the benefits of exercise are so obvious. It will improve your physical health. It will improve your mental health. It will improve how you feel about yourself. It will decrease stress. Probably most importantly, exercise will give you more energy to serve your family, to serve the church. So we should prioritize exercise. That doesn't mean that you have

to train for triathlons. But just maybe two or three times a week going on a walk. Maybe it's planes, pickleball, playing some tennis. I don't know. But we should value bodily training. Now he also doesn't say bodily training is extremely valuable. post about it on Instagram stories and yes, we know that you don't skip leg day. We know. We are so proud that you don't skip leg day. But we notice, I mean, we see you when you're wearing a tank top when no one else is wearing a tank top. I like to joke with some of our college students. We've got some very fit college guys and I tell those guys like guys, there is no reason why I need to be able to do a muscle up. Some of you're like, what is a muscle up? Don't worry. It doesn't matter. You don't need to know. But the point is that working out bodily training, it should not control our lives. When you're, when you look at your calendar, your calendar ought to show that you understand you are not going to spend forever in this body. We need to not spend so much time thinking about our bodies that we forget about our soul. What we should all hope for is that we would be more known for our spiritual maturity than our physical fitness. So Paul says, has nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. He says, bodily training is of some value. And then the positive command he gives is he says, train or discipline yourself for godliness. Here's the big idea. There is no godliness without discipline. It doesn't happen. What we need to do is we need to put in some spiritual sweat. We have to put in hard, consistent, repetitive word. Work. Something that I found myself thinking about often is why exactly are the people who are the best at things the best? Well, there's usually a lot of different reasons. A lot of times it's because they're naturally gifted. A lot of times it's because they have access to resources that most other people don't. But almost always, the best of the best are extremely disciplined. Extremely. Tom Brady, many of you know Tom Brady is. He's played in ten Superballs. He won seven of them. He's widely regarded as the best quarterback of all time or the best NFL player of all time. And I like to listen to videos of him talk about why he was the best. And he'll basically say this in the videos. He's like, you know what? When I woke up and I did not feel motivated to watch game film, I did it

anyway. He said, when I woke up and I didn't feel motivated or my body was tired and I didn't want to work out, I did it anyway. And I hear him talking about how hard he trained for football and I just think to myself, we need to be training like this for godliness. Why would we not? DA Carson, he says this so well. He's a well-respected theologian. He says, people do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. He says this, he says, we drift toward compromise and we call it tolerance. We drift toward disobedience and we call it freedom. We drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the end discipline of lost self-control and we call it relaxation. You say we have to understand that there is a connection between discipline and freedom. Well it's really interesting that sometimes people will think that you can't have both at the same time. They'll think I'm either going to be disciplined or I'm going to have the freedom to do what I want. It's like that's not how it works because if you are not disciplined, you're not free. You're actually just a slave to your impulses. Always giving yourself over to what you want now. We have to understand that discipline is at the root of freedom. Freedom is the reward of discipline. Think about it this way, the only it is only the person who has disciplined themselves to memorize Scripture that is going to have the freedom to quote it and reference it to others. It's only a person who's disciplined themselves to read the Bible regularly and study it consistently. Only that person is going to have the freedom to explain it to other people. Discipline is what will often lead to freedom. There is no godliness without discipline. Let's keep going. I want to reread verse 7 again. It says this. Have nothing to do with irreverent, sillyness. Rather train yourself for godliness. So what Paul's going to do here in just a second, he's going to talk to Timothy about how to lead other people. But the first thing he tells Timothy is he says, you need to lead yourself. Most of your leadership energy needs to be directed toward you leading yourself because you are the hardest person to lead, right? Before you talk to other people about growing, you

need to make sure that you are growing yourself. And if we want to grow in godliness, we really just need two things. These are pretty simple. We need time and we need training. Both of these are super important if we want to grow in godliness. Time. So this is obvious. This is the idea that This is the idea of consistency over compromise. This is leaders do consistently what everyone else does occasionally So you need time, but you also need training and I want to talk for a second about how exactly I want to make this very practical How exactly do we train ourselves? Regardless well, we need to cultivate two specific areas the first area we need to cultivate is we need to cultivate our communion with Christ Well, how do we do that? Well, it's very actually very simple We recommit or commit to the first time to the spiritual disciplines We don't need to reinvent the wheel here. This means reading Bible regularly. This means Sabbath prayer Worship evangelism we have to recommit to the spiritual disciplines. We have to become readers This past summer We had our staff retreat and we brought in a guy who's one of the pastors at the fastest growing church in the US And he's a pretty intense guy and he was talking to our staff And he was talking about how to to grow and how to develop yourself and he said he looked at us. He said guys You must become readers He said you need to read read Read read read and he said well some of you may say well I don't like to read and he looked at us. He said who cares Who cares? We must be a people that goes to the word of God for a word from God even if this means listening to audiobooks Whatever means we have to be consuming the word of God. We have to be consuming encouraging and helpful content When it comes to cultivating a communion with Christ, I always love to ask these two questions I heard these years ago and I love them. I just I don't think it gets much better We should ask ourselves these two questions all the time Question number one what stirs up my affections for Jesus for some of you This is listening to worship music. This is spending time with certain friends. This is journaling This is going on a walk whatever it is. What stirs up your affections. The second question is what robs you of those affections?

For some of you it might be going to a specific place It might be hanging out with a certain person For some of you might be the kind of music that you listen to and what I encourage our college students to do All the time as I was like guys get out a note card and I have them on one side Write down what stirs up your affections for Jesus Write those down by the grace of God do your best to do more of those things And then on the other side it's like all right write down what robs you and by the grace of God Would you try as hard as you can to not do those things? This is how we can cultivate our communion with Christ. The second thing we need to cultivate is our character The reason we cultivate this is because your character obviously is with you everywhere that you go Which is different from our status. It's different from our reputation which changes from place to place This is one of the reasons why we encourage DNA groups here because we believe that everyone needs to be discipled We believe everyone needs nurturing We believe that everyone needs to be held accountable which is why the DNA group can be so helpful in cultivating your character because the way that you you grow in your character It's by confessing your cracks and it's becoming more familiar with your weaknesses So two very simple ways cultivating communion with Christ and character now what Paul's gonna do next is He's gonna remind Timothy of our motivation for discipline and godliness. Why should we bother to grow in godliness? Well, he's gonna tell us here in verse 10 he says this for to this end we toil and strive He's saying we work hard. We give effort. Here's why because We have our hopes set on the living God who is the Savior of all people especially of those who believe We see an extremely important truth here and that is that the gospel the message of the gospel is not against effort The message of the gospel is against earning It's very important. You cannot earn your salvation The reason that our hope is in Christ is because he earned the full approval of God for us By living the life we couldn't dying the death we deserve on the cross in our place rising from the dead And it is Jesus's perfection what he earned That is credited to us when we repent and like we see in this verse when we believe and so Paul tells us the ultimate reason

We do all of this is because we are in doing it in response to the gospel message We train for godliness because of the hope we have in Christ and then he says this to Timothy in verse 11 He says this command and teach these things So Paul knows that Timothy is insecure about his age and he knows that he's a young man And so he says this in verse 12 Let no one despise you for your youth Well, Paul's saying to Timothy here. It's very simple. He says Timothy. Don't be insecure about your age [BLANK_AUDIO] Something I've thought about a lot recently is I think that all of us, to some extent, are insecure. Aren't we? Just a couple of weeks ago, I was listening to a podcast from Craig Grochiel. He leads the largest church in America, 76,000 people. And on this podcast, he confesses to feeling insecure often. And I hear this, I'm just thinking, "You're the pastor of the biggest church in the United States, and you feel insecure, but we feel insecure about all kinds of things, don't we?" We feel insecure about how we look, and we feel insecure about our laugh, and where we live, and our jobs, and what people think about us. Why exactly do we feel insecure? I'll tell you the answer, and it's actually not very easy to hear. Insecurity is rooted in self-obsession. The person who is extremely insecure is thinking about themselves all the time. The opposite is also true. Think about the person you know who is the most comfortable in their skin. They are completely secure. Are they thinking about themselves constantly? Well, probably not. Well, what's the solution to insecurity? Well, good news. The solution to insecurity is the gospel, because what the gospel does is it causes us

to focus outward, which he says in verse 10, he says, "Set your hope on the living God, something else." If you're here and you struggle with insecurity, I would encourage you to ask one of these two questions, which is probably all of us, or it's really one question with two options. Can I change what I'm insecure about? If the answer to that is yes, if you can change it, then I would encourage you to confront your insecurity. Maybe you need to work on your social skills. Maybe you need to invite some feedback into your life. You just confront it. If you cannot change what you are insecure about, I would encourage you to just embrace it. This is a word for some of you. Some of you need to embrace how the Lord made you. You need to embrace the season of life that the Lord has you in right now. Don't take yourself so seriously. Try to laugh about it if you can, but we have to just embrace the season of life we are in. He says, "Don't be insecure." He says, "Let no one despise you for your youth," and then look at this, what he says in verse 12. He says, "But set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity, until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching." Now we don't know exactly how old Timothy was when this was written. Most scholars think that he was either in his late 20s or early 30s, and in Jewish culture, who were not considered just a grown man until you were 40. And so what Paul is saying to Timothy is, he says, "Timothy, your authority is not going to come from your age." And so what you need to do is you need to set an example with your character so that

these people will respect you. And then he lists those five things. Why do you think that he lists those five things? He said, "Set them an example in speech, in faith, in love, in purity, and in conduct." Why do you think it's those five things? It's because those five things are things that young people tend to have a very difficult time doing well with. Right? I mean, can you imagine if all of us came up here and with a microphone just shared the dumb things we did in high school, the dumb things we said, it would be terrible. It's like our worst nightmare. And so he says, "Set them an example in these five areas." I'm going to walk through each of these because I think they're important. The first is speech. Why do you think speech is first? Well, it's because your area of greatest usefulness is also the area of greatest possible downfall in your life. It's your speech. The Bible says that both death and life are in the power of the tongue. Your speech is important because words create worlds. They can build people up. They can tear people down. So he says, "Set an example in speech." And then he says, "Set them an example with your conduct." Parents, your kids need to see what they ought to be. Something we need to be asking ourselves all the time is, "Does my conduct match my convictions?" The reason this is such an important question is because you can have the best theology in the world, but if your conduct doesn't match it, I mean, who cares, right? A husband can quote Ephesians 5 to us until he is blue in the face that husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the church.

But if he's disrespecting his wife in front of his kids, if he's constantly belittling her, his good theology means nothing. And so Paul says, "Set an example in your conduct. One of the things we say here all the time is that love is fighting for the highest possible good in the life of someone else. And if you actually commit to doing that, fighting for someone's highest possible good, I promise is gonna be an adventure. Because doing that is gonna lead you to have some hard, delicate conversations. It is not gonna be the path of least resistance. But he tells Timothy, he says, you need to out love them, you need to outlast them. And then he says, set them an example in faith. J.I. Packer, he's a theologian. He says that faith is self-abandoning hope in the person and work of Jesus. And so if you're a young person, what would it look like for you to set everyone around you an example in faith, in your trust in Jesus? And then last, he says, set an example in purity. Now, whenever we hear purity, all of us normally think of sexual purity. And that's important, and that's part of it. But purity in the Bible is actually much bigger than that. Purity, this is really interesting, I found this out when I was studying. Purity is actually connected to reverence for God.

The person who is living a pure life is doing their best to live above reproach. They are trying to just understand that sin has consequences. Well, how do you know if you're living a pure life? Well, it's very simple. If I were to come out to you in the lobby, or someone would come up to you in the lobby after the service and say, hey, guess what I just heard about you? Or you'll never guess, guess what I just heard that you did. If someone asking you that question causes you to freeze up and get tense and anxious, well, it's probably evidence that you're not living a pure life. But Paul says you need to set an example in all these things, speech, conduct, love, faith, purity. Up to this point, what Paul has done is he's told Timothy how to grow in godliness. He says, grow in godliness, you need to cultivate your character, you need to tell the truth, set an example, don't be insecure. Now, with the rest of our time, what we're going to see is that Paul tells Timothy, he says, you need to use your gifts. It's what you need to do. Look at this in verse 14. He says, do not neglect the gift you have, which was given to you by prophecy when the counsel of elders laid their hands on you.

Paul says to Timothy, don't neglect the gift that you have. If you are neglecting something, that means that you're not showing the appropriate amount of care or concern about what's important. And if you look in the New Testament, you'll see that neglecting your gifts is actually a pretty big deal. Jesus actually has some really harsh words towards those who neglect their gifts. He would actually say that to neglect your gifts is not just laziness, it's actually sin. And the gift that Paul is telling Timothy to not neglect is the gift of spiritual leadership. You see, Timothy, he was called to full-time vocational ministry. And I want to talk about this for a second because being called to full-time ministry can sometimes be a confusing topic. I mean, how do you know if you are called to full-time vocational ministry? Now, just be clear. I believe that every Christian is called to follow Jesus and help others find them and follow Jesus. I believe that if you are a Christian, it's not a matter of if you're called to the mission of God, it's only a matter of where and how you're called, but we have to understand that some people are now in this room called to full-time vocational ministry. So how do you know if that's you? Well, you need three affirmations.

I'm going to walk through these. The first affirmation need is you need internal affirmation. The person who is called to full-time ministry will have internal affirmation. This is what most people are describing when they say they feel called to ministry. It's that the Holy Spirit is just tugging you in a certain direction. I met with a guy this week, a younger guy, he feels like he may be called to ministry. He said, "I feel like the Holy Spirit is just gnawing at me." I was like, that sounds like it. This is when you're reading the Bible, you feel tugged or you hear a worship song and you feel a tug. This is internal affirmation. The second kind of affirmation is external affirmation. This is when people who love you and love the Bible, your friends, your family, they affirm the giftiness that they see in you. And so this might be them saying, "Hey, I could really see you going into ministry someday." Or this might be them saying, "I really am uniquely helped when I hear you talk about spiritual things." Now, of course, this isn't Aunt Susie who loves it when you pray at Thanksgiving. That's not what I'm talking about. By the way, there's a difference between external affirmation and encouragement. This is very important.

Encouragement is what Aunt Susie does when she's proud of you for praying at Thanksgiving. External affirmation is what someone gives to you when they're also the kind of person who will give you feedback that's probably hard for you to hear. So internal affirmation, external affirmation. And then the third one is the one that people don't really think of very often. It's opportunity affirmation. And if you are called to full time location. are just finding you. This is the person who's having doors opening to them that they're not even knocking on. They're just getting asked to do more stuff in ministry all the time, more responsibility in the church setting, more responsibility when it comes to community group leadership. This also might be the kind of person that people at work are asking you spiritual questions all the time and it's just getting opportunities to you. This is opportunity affirmation. The person or the man or woman who is called to full-time ministry ought to have all three of these affirmations. So if that's you, what do you do? Well, Paul tells us in verse 15. He says this, he says, "Practice these things. "Emmerse yourself in them so that all "may see your progress. "Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching.

"P persist in this for by so doing, you will save both "yourself and your hearers." What Paul tells Timothy, he says, "Timothy, "you need to be growing in such a way "that other people can see your progress. "And the way that we grow in godliness "is by practicing and immersing ourselves "into the things of God." So my question to you is what in the spiritual realm do you need to be practicing? For some of you, you may need to be practicing sharing the gospel. You need to practice sharing your testimony, which is why a short-term trip will be so incredible. Others of you, you need to practice talking at community group. We know that you have thoughts. So just say it, at community group, practice talking. Some of you might need to start practicing praying in community group or with others. I can remember back when I was at UNC Chapel Hill, I was a sophomore and I met with my mentor at the time, his name is Mike. And we met for like 45 minutes and then after we met, Mike looked at me and he said, "Well, Spencer, why don't you just close "and prayer for us?" And he cupped his hands, bowed his head, closed his eyes, and I just thought, "What?"

It's like, I haven't prayed out loud in years. Well, what had happened is that I needed to practice. My heart was just beating out of my chest, but I needed to practice. Some of you, what you need to practice is you may need to practice generosity. For some of you, there is no consistent rhythm of giving to the kingdom of God, and that is something you need to practice. You need to start somewhere. Others of you, you may need to practice hospitality. You may need to open up your home once a month or so. Welcome people in, love on them, encourage them. And then for some of you, and I understand this is not most of you, but some of you, what it means for you to practice these things is you need to prayerfully consider committing and stepping toward going into full time vocational ministry. In verse 15, when he says, immerse yourself in these things, there's some other versions that will say, give yourself entirely to the things of God. Did you know that we actually have a shortage of qualified pastors in the United States? There was a study done a couple of years ago that showed that out of evangelical pastors, 15%, one five, are under 40 years old. Very few. In North Carolina, right now I found this out this week, there are 3,500 NC Baptist churches.

Guess how many of them are in need of a senior pastor? They have an empty pulpit, 500 of them. We are in a series right now called Next. What we must do as a church is we must care about and raise up the next generation of pastors, the next generation of missionaries, the next generation of gospel ministers. I hope and pray that it is some of your sons and daughters. Can you imagine that? What are some of our future pastors and future missionaries that we send out on this stage in the years to come are your daughters, your sons? How incredible would that be? And so what would it look like? So what are some practical things that you can do if you feel like you might be called to full time ministry? I'm gonna give you a handful. One would be to consider our residency program. I know that I am biased, but I really just feel like we have the best residency program there is. It is absolutely incredible. Pastor Steven leads it. It is a season of development for a lifetime of ministry. It is a two year formational program where you get your seminary degree, but you also get meaningful ministry experience. This might be something you need to consider now or you might need to consider doing this in two years, three years, four years, whenever it's a good season for you.

Some of you, you might feel called to be a lead pastor of a church, senior pastor. If that's you, you may need to consider our fellowship program. We're launching this in August. This is gonna be more of a finishing school. It's a two year program for those who are gonna be planting churches or revitalizing churches. And in some of you, what you might need to consider A couple of us were meeting with this leader of a missions organization and he was talking with us and he said, "Do you want to know the number one reason why people do not go to the mission field? It's because no one asks them to go. What I'm asking is for those of you who are feeling called to ministry to consider putting your yes on the table. As you put your yes on the table, as you step toward ministry, you're going to have to do so with the understanding that you're going to have to give up some things because that's just how it works. I went back and forth on whether or not to share this example because I don't want to make it about myself but the topic of going into full time ministry is very personal to me because just a couple years ago I was called out of a career in medicine to work here at two cities full time as a pastor. And all the time, literally all the time, people come up to me and they'll ask this question. They'll say, "Do you miss working as a PA?" And truly, I appreciate it when people ask that question. I think it's very thoughtful. I think it's very kind. And I always answer the same way. I say, "Yes, I do miss it." It was a great career. I really enjoyed it but I'm certainly grateful to be doing whatever I'm doing right now. Well, as I've been preparing this message, I've been given a lot of thought to that question. I've been thinking about it a lot. And as I've thought about it, do you really want to know deep down what I want to say in response when someone asks me the question, "Do you miss working as a PA?" I want to respond by saying this. Does it matter? Does it matter? You see, what we want is we want saying yes to God to come without any kind of sacrifice. We want to be able to say yes to God without experiencing any kind of loss but that's not how it works. Some of you, you are called to go into full-time ministry and what that means is that you might lose earning potential. That's just how it goes. If you go into full-time ministry,

are you going to be able to send your kids to the schools that you always wanted to? Maybe not. Are you going to miss out on some things? Absolutely. James and Tracy, you saw them in that video earlier. They are in the late 50s right now. James and Tracy have two kids and they have four grandkids. I want you to guess how many of those four grandkids were born here in the U.S. while they were serving on the mission field in South Asia. All of them. All of them. But God called them there and they said, "Yes, now I want you to think about this." I asked them this this week. I said, "How many people have been baptized as a result of your ministry in South Asia? One thousand and sixteen. Because of their willingness to say yes. Because of their willingness to go wherever the Lord asked them to go. This is what we say when we baptize people. Do you believe that Jesus has done anything necessary to save you? And are you willing to go? This is a question because when God calls you, there are no regrets. What is the Lord calling you to do? Pray with me. Father, your word says, for to this end, we toil and strive. Because we have our hope said on the living God who is the savior of all people, especially those who believe. Lord, I thank you because right now you're doing what you've always done. You're calling people to take steps of faith. You're calling people in our church right now to open up their home and be hospitable. You're calling some to consider foster care or adoption. You're calling some in our church to consider stepping toward full-time ministry. You've given them the affirmation. Lord, I want to pray for those people that you would give them the courage. To say yes. To put their yes on the table, regardless of what they may have to give up, regardless of what they miss out on, would I pray that you would help us? Help us to not neglect the gifts that you've given us. Help us to grow in Godliness. We need your help. Would you just remind us of how worthy you are of everything we may give up for you. Would you use us as your instruments to bring healing and hope and help to those around us in the name of Jesus. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]