What’s Really Shaping Your Life | Wisdom | Jordan Howerton

CCTV, we're so glad you're here. We're going to sing a little bit. Would you stand or would you join us? We sing together, this is. This is a song of gratitude from all your sons and daughters. This is a song of gratitude from the children to our Father. You keep pouring out your goodness. We keep pouring back our praise. You have no shadow of turning. So till the end of days we'll cry. Cry, thank you. I'm a father, faithful one. We'll cry, thank you. For all you've given, for all you've done. We say thank you. Hey. For all you've done. They say. This is a song of gratitude from all your sons and daughters. This is a song of gratitude from the children to our Father. In our lives now we can see it. Deep down we always knew. We are vessels of your glory. Bringing glory back to you. Sing it. Thank you. I'm a father, faithful one. We'll cry, thank you. For all you've given, for all you've done. We say thank you.

For all of this and so much more. For what has been and what's in store. We praise your name forevermore. We're saying thank you. Thank you. For all of this and so much more. For what has been and what's in store. We praise your name forevermore. We're saying thank you. Thank you. We sing. Thank you. I'm a father, faithful one. We'll cry, thank you. For all you've given, for all you've done. And thank you. I'm a father, faithful one. We'll cry, we'll cry. Thank you. For all you've given, for all you've done. We say thank you. We thank you for all you've done. Because this is a song of gratitude. Grateful for your love, Jesus. What a gift. What a precious gift that he is undeserved. And yet, we were the joy before him. What a friend. What a friend. What a faithful friend he has been.

To wear my sin and clothe me with his righteousness. Behold the Lamb of God. Blameless. When I was nigh, He came to take my sin and shame away Behold the Lamb of God Oh, behold You, God And what a love, what a perfect love God with us, sing praise, praise the worthy One He is my King, my confidence Behold the Lamb of God Blameless when I was nigh, He came to take my sin and shame away Don't you hold me, holy man, holy divine Cleansed me with His sacrifice He rescued me and bought me with His blood Behold the Lamb of God You alone are worthy Don't you see it on the stone Worthy of it all We sing worthy, worthy Worthy is the Lamb of God Worthy You are Worthy, worthy is the Lamb of God Worthy He is, worthy Worthy is the Lamb of God Worthy He alone, worthy Worthy is the Lamb of God Behold, behold the Lamb of God Blameless, blameless when I was nigh He came to take my sin and shame away Holy, holy man, holy divine

He cleansed me with His sacrifice He rescued me and bought me with His blood Behold the Lamb of God Psalm 100 verses 4 and 5 says this Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise Give thanks to Him and bless His name for the Lord is good and His steadfast love endures forever and His faithfulness to all generations After my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer and had surgery she had to go through some pretty intense chemotherapy She doesn't live close to me so the night before she went in for her first treatment I gave her a call just to see how she was feeling about it all which might be a dumb thing to ask somebody about to go through that but she's trying to be a good son and I'll never forget what she told me She said, honestly I'm really scared I don't know what's about to happen my whole world is about to change my body is going to change and things will never be the same and honestly all of this might not work but I do know this that every single day I wake up is another day that God has given me to give Him thanks through all he's done for me. And no matter how I feel each and every day, I choose to give him praise for who he is. Because today might change, but he never does. Every single person who walked into this space today is carrying something different. Your joys, your sorrows, your burdens, your anxieties. But you have a chance today, a choice,

to surrender all of those things to the feet of Jesus and give him thanks for the ways he's been good in your life currently and the ways he will continue to be good in your life. So together as we sing, would you give him your heart? That's all he wants, just your heart. And would you surrender to him as we sing? As we sing. ♪ We surrender all to you ♪ ♪ All my words fall short ♪ ♪ I've got nothing new ♪ ♪ How could I express all my gratitude ♪ ♪ I could sing these songs as I often do ♪ ♪ But every song must end and you never do ♪ ♪ Thank you ♪ ♪ Hallelujah, hallelujah ♪ ♪ I've got one response, I've got just one move ♪ ♪ With my arms stretched wide, I will worship you ♪ ♪ Yeah, so I throw up my hair and praise you again and again ♪ ♪ Cause all that I have is a hallelujah, hallelujah ♪ ♪ And I know it's not much, but I'm nothing else fit for a king ♪ ♪ Except for a heart singing hallelujah, hallelujah ♪ ♪ Oh, hallelujah ♪ ♪ So come on my soul, don't you get shy on me ♪ ♪ Lift up your song, cause you've got a lion inside of those lungs ♪ ♪ Get up and praise the Lord ♪ ♪ Come on my soul, don't you get shy on me ♪ ♪ Lift up your song, cause you've got a lion inside of those lungs ♪ ♪ Get up and praise the Lord ♪ ♪ Come on my soul, don't you get shy on me ♪

♪ Lift up your song, cause you've got a lion inside of those lungs ♪ ♪ Get up and praise the Lord ♪ ♪ Oh, yeah ♪ ♪ Get up and praise the Lord ♪ ♪ So I throw up my hands and praise You again and again ♪ ♪ Cause all that I have is a hallelujah, hallelujah ♪ ♪ Hallelujah and I know it's not much ♪ ♪ But I have nothing else but for a king ♪ ♪ Except for a heart singing hallelujah ♪ ♪ Hallelujah ♪ ♪ Oh hallelujah ♪ ♪ So I throw up my hands and praise you again and again ♪ ♪ Cause all that I have is a hallelujah ♪ ♪ Hallelujah and I know it's not much ♪ ♪ But I have nothing else but for my king ♪ ♪ Except for a heart singing hallelujah ♪ ♪ Hallelujah ♪ Thank you. Thank you. God, we thank you so much for your goodness and your faithfulness at work in our lives. Whether we see it right now or not, you are working and moving and we give you the glory and the honor and the praise for that. You were faithful before and you'll be faithful again. And just because right now might change, you never do. Thank you for that hope. Jesus, it's in your name that we pray and we sing and we worship together. Amen.

Amen. Thanks for worshiping. Right now, we're gonna enter into a time of communion. This is where we take the bread and the juice. You remember the sacrifice that Jesus made for us on the cross, dying for us and raising again and giving us hope for eternal life with him. So together as one church, let's take communion. Thank you. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Hey, CCB, I trust your summer's off to a great start. And I hope this series we kicked off last week, walking through the book of Proverbs, a book about wisdom is speaking into your life in a certain area where you need God's wisdom. Last week, Mark talked about living a life of worship and how obedience is the highest form of praise. And this weekend, we get to hear from a pastor who's been on our staff for over 10 years, Jordan Howerton. Jordan's a graduate of Ozark Christian College. On our staff, he leads all of our worship and production teams. So of course he's a gifted worship leader and musician, but Jordan is first and foremost, a pastor. He loves people, he loves God's word. And I believe God's going to speak. through him to all of us today.

So get your notes out. Let's open our hearts. And would you help me welcome Jordan as he continues our series, Wisdom. I was a sophomore in college. And I was asked to sing some songs that I had written at a house party. And probably not the way you thought I was gonna start out a message, huh? And I gotta tell you, I was doing a sound check and if ever I've nailed a song, this song in this sound check was perfect, or at least it was in my memory. And at the same time that I was doing this sound check, my friend's sister had just gotten home from volleyball practice. Now, the volleyball practice thing is an important detail because she was looking better than I was sounding. And I finished the sound check. And again, I was nailing this song. And I kind of did this thing, maybe you've done this before, where I had my back to her. I knew she was there, but I didn't wanna let her know I was trying to play it cool. And so I had my back and I just said, oh, hey, I didn't see you there. No aura, no aura at all. Guys, she looked at me and she said, sounds good. And then she turned around and walked away.

That was it. As a sophomore in college who wrote and sang songs, I was not used to that response from girls. Let's just say this, the pursuit was on. The rest of the night, any chance that I had to be in her line of sight, I was there. I tried to just follow her in a non-creepy way, but kind of a creepy way now that I think back on it. I just wanted her to notice me, just see that I exist. And I was invisible to her. Every time over the next weeks and months that my friend would invite me over to his house, he didn't even have to finish asking the question. I was out the door and on my way there. I was persistent. I would have dropped anything to spend time with that girl. And eventually my opportunity came. She asked me to help buy a gift for her brother's Christmas present. And I said, well, if I had your number, I could text you some ideas. Slid in there, you get that? If you're single here today and you need some help, not a bad line. Don't do the first one I did, do the second one I did. I would have dropped everything to pursue that girl. We started to text, we went on a few dates, and over a couple of years, we fell in love.

We got married almost 18 years ago today, and we have four kids. Yeah. Here's the thing, the pursuit still continues today. And she's still just as enamored with my music today as she was the day that we met. Here's a little tidbit of behind the scenes for you. The house that we were at was actually Mark Moore's house. That's where I met her. The girl that I married is actually Mark Moore's daughter. I'm the crazy guy that married Mark Moore's daughter. And I got to tell you, as we step into week two of this series on Proverbs, I am so grateful for a man like Mark. You guys get to see him as the preacher. I get to see him as the grandpa. And as the dad. And as the father-in-law. And not just for Mark, but also for Ashley. And for Dave Stone, men who frequent this stage and teach the word of God to us. As we talk about godly character, every single one of those men exemplify godly character, as we're gonna learn in Proverbs. And I'm grateful to have some time on this stage to be able to share with you today. Here's a crazy thing that I learned in the pursuit of my wife. My pursuit of her changed and shaped so much of my life. The way that I spent my time, my priorities,

even my relationships were shaped through the pursuit of my wife. And I learned this. What you pursue shapes who you become. Think about that. In more ways than just your relationships, it's true of all of us. And in deeper ways than just simple relationships. What you pursue shapes who you become in the way that you think about success. What have you been willing to lay down and abandon in order to just climb that next rung at work? It's true for us in the way that we pursue approval of others. What have you been willing to compromise about yourself to just get those likes? Or to just allow somebody to be able to say that they like something that you did or something that you said? What have you been willing to sacrifice for the pursuit of comfort, the desire to provide or be provided for? For some of us, it's even deeper and it's an issue of control. We're pursuing control. If I can just manage and manipulate my own little world things will be fine. No matter what it is for us, we realize that what you pursue shapes who you become. Which means whether we realize it or not,

we are all becoming something. If you're breathing, you're becoming. It's a rule of nature. And you are not the same version of yourself today as you were a year ago. You're not. Life has happened. Circumstances have happened. I'm not just talking about physical change. I'm talking about emotional change. I'm talking about the person that you are today is not the same person that you were a year ago. And in a year from now, that person won't be the same as you are today. Until you stop breathing, you will not stop becoming. Every one of us marked by our pursuits and our relationships and the things around us. And some of you know that all too well today. Your life is in shambles as you walk in here. It's just been stacking one bad decision on top of the other. You don't even recognize the person that you look at in the mirror. For some of you, it's transition that has you being really cognizant of the fact that life is changing around you. You just graduated. Congratulations, by the way. You just moved to a new place. You just started a new job

or you just got into a new relationship. For all of us, this is true. It's possible to build a life that everyone sees as success and fail to become the person that God created you to become. Because God is far more concerned with your character than your resume. So here's my question for you. What are you pursuing in your life? What are you pursuing? And how is it shaping who you're becoming? What if I told you that there is a pursuit that would actually help you be the best version of yourself? Proverbs 3 gives us a picture of what a life shaped by God actually looks like. If you got your Bibles, you have your apps, I'm gonna open up your notes. I'm gonna invite you to open those up to Proverbs chapter 3. This chapter and a section of verses are actually gonna be our roadmap today. Let's dive in. Verse 3 of chapter 3 says this, Let's dive in. Verse 3 of chapter 3 says this, let love and faithfulness never leave you. Bind them around your neck. Write them on the tablet of your heart. Then you will win favor and a good name

in the sight of God and man. The message translation says this, you'll earn a reputation for living well in God's eyes and the eyes of the people. Who doesn't want that? Now I wanna camp out here with this passage for a second because this description of God and his faithfulness is not just a couple words that Solomon wrote. These are foundational truths to the core of who God is and to who God's character is defined to be. Love, let's talk about that word. It's this Hebrew word, hesed. It sounds like I'm clearing my throat when I say it. I know, I'm okay. It's hesed and that's the word for love. It's God's loyal covenant love. And the word for faithfulness is emet, which is God's unwavering reliability. And when you put these two words together, you get a picture of God's character. That's how Solomon and anyone in Israel who would be reading these words would have understand these words to be. In fact, this is exactly how God, love and faithfulness describes himself when he appears to Moses before Moses writes the 10 commandments for the second time in Exodus chapter 34. This is core love and faithfulness to who God is and it's core to who he created us to become.

Here's what Solomon is saying here. Never let the character of God get away from you. Never let the character of God get away from you. How do I never let something get away from me? I pursue it. We're charged to never let the character of God get away from us, but instead to do this, to bind them around your neck and to write them on the tablet of your heart. Bind and write. These are action words, words of pursuit. Don't just wear this love and faithfulness externally, but allow it to transform you from the inside out. Here's the big thing. Let the character of God become your character. This isn't behavior modification. This is heart transformation. And speaking of heart, that's arguably the most important word in this entire section. Heart is critical here. The ancient Eastern world that would hear the word heart was not thinking about the emotion factory. It's not the place that you get butterflies when you see your crush. The heart as Solomon is writing it here is the core of a person. It's the command center of your entire life. What the modern world would call self, the Bible calls your heart. Your heart is the driver of your life.

And hear me say this today, God cares more about your heart than your actions because your heart determines your actions. You can modify behavior temporarily, but if the heart never changes, you'll always drift back to who you really are. Jesus talks about this in Luke chapter six, verse 45. When you see the word heart, I want you to say it out loud with me, okay? The good man brings good things out of the goods stored up in his heart and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart for out of the overflow of his heart, the mouth speaks. The fruit of your life will be evidence of the good in your heart. God says this in Isaiah chapter 29. We read it last week, but we've got to bring it back because it's too good. These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Please hear me say this. God isn't after your performance. He's after your heart. That's the invitation of Proverbs three for us today. When you pursue the heart of God, he forms his heart in you. Proverbs three is gonna give us three ways to shift our pursuits from what we want out of life to who God is trying to shape us to become.

Now, here's a warning. Some of these are gonna sting a little bit, but that doesn't mean that this isn't the greatest pursuit that we could set out on. This is an endeavor worthy because it's an endeavor that will lead us to fruit that we would never have on our own. Proverbs three, verse five and eight says this. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all of your ways, acknowledge him, submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and shun evil. This will bring health to your body and nourishment to your bones. How do I pursue the heart of God? Number one, you lay down control. Control feels safe. I would know that. It's one of my vices, but it's actually exhausting. Let me ask you this. What does control actually look like for you? Think about that in your life. How has control played out for you? Maybe it's carrying anxiety that you were never meant to carry. Maybe it's trying to force an outcome in a relationship or a circumstance by manipulating the narrative and the way that people view one another

or the circumstance that they're in. Maybe control for you looks like refusing to ask God because you're afraid he'll say no. A few years ago, my oldest son and I were at a park, and he was really little at the time, and he wanted to do the monkey bars. And as he was getting on the monkey bars, I went to wrap my arms around his legs to help him across, and he stops, and he looks at me defiantly, and he says, I do it myself. All right, big man, go for it. So he gets on the monkey bars, and I situate myself kind of back a little bit where he can't see me any way that he looks, so he really feels like he's doing this on his own. And he gets to the first rung, and I'm expecting something to go wrong, but it actually goes really well. He actually goes to the first rung, no issues at all. And I'm kind of thinking to myself, we have a prodigy on our hands. We have made it. This is our ticket. He gets to the second rung, but this one starts to get a little wobbly. He gets to the second rung. And then it was somewhere between rung three and two that he kind of like extends one, but he's not ready to fully commit yet. And I see his arms start to do this.

He starts to go shaky. And then he kind of starts moving his head around to see if I'm around, but he can't see me because I'm kind of standing where he can't see me out of his line of vision. And then he kind of starts like, you guys know what this is. He kind of like swinging his whole body around. He's like throwing his body around to see me, and he can't find me. And then eventually his body just goes limp, and his arms are holding on, his little weak little arms. And I don't know that he got tired or he realized how far he was from the ground, but he's holding on and he just goes, dad, help. I was laughing so hard, I could barely hold his little body up to get him down from where he was at. We've all done that though, haven't we? God, I know you're here, and I know that you're willing to help, but I'll do it myself. And then we get into the decision that we made, the relationship, the circumstance, the situation, and we start realizing this isn't as good as it could be. This actually feels off. And you start looking around for God, where is he? I can't find him anywhere. Start to freak out a little bit more.

This is really getting bad. And then eventually we'll finally just stop and just say, God, help. We have this tendency to make decisions by leaning on our own understanding and through the wisdom of our own eyes and then asking God to bless it. But how would the journey be different if we asked God what he wanted and then stepped faithfully towards the direction that he leads us? It says, submit your ways to him and he will make your path straight. But we're so defiant to do that. When we lay down control and choose to trust the Lord with all of our heart, he becomes more of our pursuit because we're more dependent on him. And the amazing thing about God is that as we lay down control for him, he will actually work through our relationships and through our businesses and through our situations and our circumstances better than we ever could have on our own. What you try to control shapes who you become. But when you lay down control and trust God, he forms his heart in you. Verse nine says this, honor the Lord with your wealth, with the first fruits of all of your crops, then your barns will be filled to overflowing

and your vats will brim over with new wine. The second way that Proverbs three shows us to pursue the heart of God is to loosen your grip on what's in your hands. Now, for some of us, the grip of what's in our hands is money, but not for all of us. For some of us, it's our plans, it's our comfort. We're holding tightly to our future. It's the things that we've quietly convinced ourselves that we can't live without. We have a tendency to take God's provision and make it our possession. One of the easiest lies to believe is that what we have belongs to us. This is my house. This is my money. This is my time. These are my resources. But the longer we hold something, the easier it is to confuse stewardship with ownership. And the problem with believing that we own it is that we start clenching it and depending on it. Because whatever you believe is yours, you'll eventually trust more than God. Or even more scary, you'll try to withhold it from Him like a kid unwilling to share their toys. What you grip the tightest is often where you trust the least. Where is that for you? Over 10 years ago, my family moved here from Missouri,

and we were trying to, in the midst of the move, make some really good financial decisions. And so we started doing the Dave Ramsey cash-only system. Some of you have heard of that. Some of you have used it. Some of you are still using it. After this story, you might not. Every Saturday morning was dad and donuts time at our house. We had two little kids at the time. One was roughly five, one was roughly two. And I don't know if you've ever tried to get a five-year-old and a two-year-old buckled into a car and head somewhere on time, but it's like an Olympic sport. It really is. It's incredibly difficult. I'm getting my kids, and in the rush of trying to get them out of the house, instead of grabbing just a 20 out of the Dave Ramsey envelope that we have, which has all of our money, all of our cash money for the entire month's worth of bills in it, I just grabbed the whole thing. I put it on the roof of the car, and I start buckling the kids into their car seats. You already know where this is going. I'm buckling them into their car seats. I get it finally closed, and I just hop in the car, and I drive to the donut shop. I get to the donut shop.

I get inside. The kids are looking at all the sprinkled donuts, all the eclairs, everything that they could possibly want in there. I want a bear claw. I want this. I want that. What's mom want? I'm not sure what mom's favorite thing is. And we eventually get to the register. We've got too many donuts, and they say, this is gonna be this amount of money. And I said, I think I left my money in the car. Let me go right back out to the car real quick. It wasn't there. Poof. The entire month's worth of money. Gone. Somewhere on Jomax road. So I take the kids back home, and I feel just completely defeated. So much of what we've been saving for, so many of the decisions we've been trying to work towards are just gone. I just ruined it. I messed it up. And I'm walking on Jomax for hours, literally, guys, in the heat of the day, just looking under rocks and in ditches that did maybe it blow off,

and God let an angel just carry it and lay it peacefully down somewhere, and I'm gonna come find it. And it was gone. And a friend of mine, a new friend from the neighborhood, texted me, said, what are you doing walking down? in the heat of the day, I'm like, I'm new here, I know. And I loosely told them what was going on. And in that situation, what actually stands out to me the most wasn't how much money I lost. What stands out to me was how tightly my heart held onto it, that money was like a security blanket for me. Because when something you trust disappears, you find out how much security you were actually drawing from it. The next morning I woke up and I walked outside and there on my front step doormat was an envelope with darn near the amount of money that we had lost the day before. Quiet generosity, no one to get a Instagram post, no one to get a shout out. I was standing in the middle of Proverbs 3. Somebody honored God enough to let loose the things that he had put in their hand and they blessed me. I was the recipient of someone else trusting God enough to hold loosely to what they had. So whoever you were, I think I might know who you are, but I've never told you this, thank you. My life was marked by your willingness

to allow the character of God to shape your heart and hold loosely to the things that he put in your hand. What you grip so tightly shapes who you become. But when you loosen your grip of what's in your hands, God forms his heart in you. And he forms his heart in others too. Verse 11 and 12 says this. My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline and do not resent his rebuke because the Lord disciplines those he loves. As a father, the son he delights in. Guys, I really, I've got to be honest with you. I tried to find ways to not put this in this sermon. It's deeply convicting. And I knew it would be for some of you too, but I have to be true to what God's word says. The third way that Proverbs 3 shows us to pursue the heart of God is to let God shape you. What do you do when you're corrected? Do you get defensive? Do you try to justify? Do you try to blame or explain? Couple of years ago, I got a text from my wife, just kind of out of the blue. She said, you got a ticket. And in my house, that's not so uncommon, I'm embarrassed to admit, you got a ticket. And my quick response was, no, I didn't. I didn't get pulled over. There was never a moment where I've done anything

that I can think about that I needed a ticket. And she said, well, your license plate is on here and you were in Paradise Valley on this day at this time. And I said, I don't even remember ever being in Paradise Valley. That wasn't me. I think I actually, you know what? I remember letting some of my friends borrow my truck. I think that that's what it was. I think that somebody had my truck in Paradise Valley. I'm gonna reach out to them and find out what it was. She said, no, I know for a fact it was you. Like, what? This is weird sleuth stuff. Like, how do you know all this? And then she sent the picture. You know what I'm talking about. Left hand on the steering wheel, right hand with a coffee in my hand, cruising through an intersection way too fast and when the light was pink. I still stand by that. I was caught, I was busted. Red handed, it was me. I couldn't deny it anymore. I actually had to go to driving school. Has anyone ever been to, actually, you know what? You don't have to confess that. That's okay right now.

There are like little bugs on the hood of a car telling you how to drive better. If you've ever had to go to the Arizona driving school, those who were laughing, I found you out. I know who you are. It's horrible, it's brutal. That was the discipline that had, my wife actually calls me the valedictorian of driving school. Seriously though, none of us like to be told that we're wrong or that we've made a mistake. Comfort more than conviction, that's what we want. We want approval more than honesty. We tend to view discipline as rejection, but Proverbs 3 says it's actually evidence of love. The Lord disciplines those he loves. In other words, God loves you too much to leave you unchanged. Discipline is not a sign that God has abandoned you. It's a sign that he loves you. In the Bible, there's a story of a man of power and there's this moment where he stopped pursuing the heart of God and he started pursuing his own sinful desires. He sees this woman that he thinks is beautiful and he's gotta have her. So he summons her to his house and they sleep together. She gets pregnant. And in order to try to cover up his sin,

he tries to manipulate and dictate the situation a particular way that he'll come out scotch-free, the husband of the woman will actually think that it's his child and everything's gonna be great, but the husband didn't play along nicely. So instead, as his plan started to go awry, he wound up sending the woman's husband to the front lines of the battlefield and essentially signing his death warrant. Once he got signed that his adversary, this woman's husband had died, he took a big sigh of relief. I manipulated my way through it. I explained my way through it. I don't have to deal with the consequences of my sin. But God loved this man too much to leave him unchanged. And he sent a confidant to him, a trusted advisor who went to him and said, I know what you've done and the Lord knows what you've done. Repent or the consequences will be greater than anything you can imagine. And this man had a choice to make. Do I let the discipline of the Lord shape me or do I run? And he chose the first option. He leaned into the discipline of the Lord. He didn't allow the sin that entangled him to continue to shape his heart, but he allowed the Lord to be able to extract the sin from his heart and start to make his heart brand new. And for some of you today, you're hearing this story

and your stomach is sinking because hidden sin has been quietly shaping your heart. Your story does not have to end there. Now the consequences of your sin are going to be painful, but that's a decision that's already been made. The discipline of the Lord will begin to shape your heart. Your failure does not have to define you. The way you respond to the discipline of your failure could actually be your greatest story. You're not done yet. God's discipline is not rejection. It's an invitation back to him. Remember, discipline is not a sign that God has abandoned you. It's a sign that he loves you. The way you respond to discipline shapes your heart and it also shapes the hearts of those around you. Wait a second, what do you mean? Shapes the hearts of those around you? The man in this story was David. As Bible calls him, a man after God's own heart. After his repentance, after he allowed the Lord's discipline to shape him, he had a son with this woman. The first child died. David married Bathsheba and she moved in with him and they had a child. Do you know who that child was? Solomon, the man writing this note to his son and he said, if you want God's character in your life,

let his discipline shape you. What hangs in the balance for you with allowing sin to quietly shape your heart is far more than your heart. It's the change that you might unnecessarily and unknowingly pass on to someone else. The future of your kids or people in your life could be changed by your willingness to let the Lord shape you today. You could be the first in a line of men and women who has the guts to lean in to the discipline of the Lord and allow him to shape your heart. What God does in you today could shape generations after you're gone. When you let God shape you through discipline, he forms his heart in you. We are all on this journey of becoming and out of all the pursuits that we could give our lives to, the one that bears lasting fruit is the pursuit of the heart of God. Because at the end of your life, what will matter most won't be the accolades you accumulated, it won't be the money that you made, it won't even be the decisions that you got right. What will matter most is who you became. And Proverbs says that when God's love and faithfulness are bound around your neck and written on the tablet of your heart, God will form his heart in you.

When we take it all in, Proverbs 3 actually shows us that pursuit often looks like surrender. Surrendering control. Surrendering ownership and surrendering pride and sin. Remember, the heart is the driver of your life. You can modify behavior temporarily, but unless the heart changes, you'll always drift back to who you really are. What you pursue shapes who you become. And when you pursue the heart of God, he forms his perfect, loving, faithful heart in you. I have three questions for you today, and I only want you to pick one of them. The first is this, where do I need to lay down control? What am I trying to control that's getting in the way of pursuing God's heart? That's for some of you today. The second is this, where do I need to loosen my grip on what's in my hands? What am I holding for me rather than releasing for God? And the third is this, where do I need to repent? Where do I need to let God shape me? When we pursue the heart of God, he will form his heart in us. There is no greater pursuit. There is no greater endeavor in this life than that. And you don't have to do this alone. God sees you, and he is with you. And he wants to form his heart in you.

And you have people around you, even in this moment right now, who want to walk this journey with you. At the end of every one of our services, we actually have people come down front, willing and able to pray with anybody who needs prayer. And for some of you today, that's gonna be part of the response. Others of you need to have a conversation with a pastor, and if you go to any of our Next Step centers, you're gonna be able to do that. We have pastors there that are ready to have a conversation with you. May we continue to be people of godly character who are shaped by the heart of God. Let's pray. God, we love you. We're grateful for your kindness and for your grace. We're grateful that you've given us the opportunity to be able to not just know about you, but do this life with you, to be transformed by you. And we pray that you would give us revelation, show us where to lay down control. Show us where to loosen our grip on what's in our hands. Show us where it is in our life that we need to repent, so that we can make more room for you in our heart. May you be our pursuit, God. And as we pursue you, would you form your heart in us? It's in Jesus' name that we pray, amen, amen. Thanks for being here.

We'll see you back next week.