Why Can't I Get My Life Together?

Hey everybody, how you doing? Good, good. Grab somebody by the shoulder next to you, tell them you're glad they're here, say hi if you haven't yet. It's good. Hey, real quick, before I jump into the book of Proverbs today, if you have a paper Bible, you can put your finger in Proverbs, that's where we're gonna jump into. Again, this week, but before I do that, I wanna let you know, especially for our church family, that coming up in three weeks is Legacy Maker Sunday. And we lay out a vision for our church every year in January and November 15th is the provision for the vision where we believe God to help us do some of the things, not only for our own church, but around the world that he's put in our hearts to do. And so, just two things about that. One is that this year, the focus is just gonna be on soul winning, it's gonna be on causes that we support, that tell people about Jesus, and how we can do that better in our own communities. And secondly, just ask our church family to begin to pray about how God might ask you to give or be a part of what he's doing. And so, every year, we give people a few options on how to give, and I'm not asking you to give out of obligation.

I'm not asking you to skip that weekend if you don't wanna give. I'm just asking you right now to pray, and just ask the Lord, maybe if you're single, what should I do if you're married, pray together with your spouse. And I always tell the church the acronym of plow, just plow your heart. Pray, listen to what God might say. When he speaks, obey. And whenever you pray and listen and obey, there's a watch for the while that comes at the end of God answering that prayer and working through you. And so, all I'm asking you to do today is just to position your heart to hear from the Lord. And so, just wanted you to give a heads up. I wanted to give you a heads up, and I want to mention it and I are praying about it. We've been talking about it, and want to make sure that it's on your radar. If you have a Bible today, we're in Proverbs 29, and then I'm gonna jump back to Proverbs 4, and then Proverbs 6. And so, this is a very familiar passage for some people, which is Proverbs 29 and 18. It says, "If people can't see what God is doing, "they stumble all over themselves." That's the message translation. Many of you would be more familiar if I read it where there is no vision people perish.

Or where there is no prophetic vision, people cast off for strength. And I just want to give a little course correction, 'cause this verse has been used a lot to maybe cast vision for a church, or cast vision for your life, or cast vision, if you have a Christian business. But what this verse is actually really teaching us is if there's no prophetic vision, what is prophetic, what God is doing, if there's no view of what God is doing, then we stumble all over ourselves. And this is actually, there's some Christology to this verse, even in the book of Proverbs. What is Christology? We can see Christ in it. Because what the Bible is actually saying is if there's no prophetic vision, what was the vision of the prophets? The vision of the prophets was that God was gonna send a son to die for us. For our sins, why? Because one of the prophets wrote, "We were like the blind, groping along the wall, "stumbling all over ourselves, "not knowing how to save ourselves, "how to deal with our own condition." And so the prophetic vision ultimately is a picture of Christ. That when our lives,

and we can't see that God sent his son for us, and Jesus didn't come just to forgive our sins, but to give us a path to live an abundant life, we stumble all over ourselves. Sin messes up our lives. But when we attend to what he reveals, another translation I believe says, "When we follow God's laws, we are blessed." So ultimately it's a picture of becoming more like Christ. But we can look at it, and look at our own day-to-day lives, and say when we're attuned, or when we pay attention to what God is revealing to us, we won't stumble all over ourselves, but we'll live a blessed life following God's path for our lives. And so I give you that verse, 'cause I wanna give you a message today entitled, "Why Can't I Get My Life Together?" Anybody ever had an area of your life that you feel like I cannot get this part of my life together? I just can't make it work out, and all of us are failing in some area of our life, so praise God. We're still standing, but there's also times where we look at our lives, and we say, I'm not where I intended to be, or my life is even dysfunctional or chaotic beyond what I believe God wants it to be. Today, over in E-Kids Elementary,

where our kids are getting Jesus on their level, it's wanna be Sunday. And so if you see any kids running around dressed like certain things, they're dressing like what they wanna be. All three of my kids dressed up like me. It's the craziest thing. (congregation laughing) They were just like, Dad, you are just everything that we want to be. I know. Yeah, no, they didn't. None of them, not one. Instead, we have a cheerleader and an asteroid from how to train your dragon. And Harry the Woodsman, which is my son's hero from Kids Camp. I guess he had to be there. But I thought it was funny. You ask a kid, what do you want to be when you grow up? And they'll give you a picture. And I've just realized, there's some adults. You can be 30, 40, 50, 60, and you can still ask them, what do you want to be when you grow up? And sometimes, that means they still have a goal out in front of them. Sometimes, that means that we haven't quite grown up yet. And I just know that you can grow up beyond your kid years and still be in a state of wannabe. And I think about when I was younger, I remember getting so mad at my siblings one day.

And I was like, I can't-- all I want to be is out of this house. I need to get out of here. Then I'll truly live, and nobody tells you about paying your own bills and taxes or men. I just want a car. If I just had a car, I would have so much freedom. And then you're putting the gas in it. You're thinking, this feels not totally free anymore. Or I just want a house. If I could just get into a house, then that would be the thing. Or I just want to be in my career so I can have a salary. And pretty soon, it's like, well, I don't want to be in my career. Now, I want to be retired. It's not funny how the goalposts just keep moving. Or I just want to be married. Or I just want to be a dad. Or I just want to be a better Christian. Or I just want to be more successful. We can continue to kind of live in this state of having things or having the thing we wanted. And it never quite being enough. And continually living in a state of want to be, whether it's in our physical health, or our emotional resiliency, or our spiritual maturity, or our relational connectedness to people that we care about. Sometimes you can be 40, or 50, or 30, or 60, or 70. And say, man, why is it that I still

feel like I'm at square one? In this place where I feel like I should be so much farther along. That can be a discouraging place to be when you realize that you're having to kind of start from the beginning again. Because it can feel like everything you built up to that point maybe didn't matter, which might not be true, but it's the feeling. And especially if you've been measuring your life by how far you've come and how much you've accomplished, when you have the humbling experience of having you go back to square one, things can really fall apart. Even internally. Because square one can feel a lot like failure. It can feel like, man, by now in my life, I wanted to be financially stable enough to be taking vacations. And instead, I'm living out of cash and envelopes trying to get out of debt. It can be like, man, I've known Jesus for 25 years. And yet I'm going to Alpha and I'm learning foundations of my faith that I should have known a long time ago, I feel like I'm at square one. It can feel like my marriage is 20 years old. And yet we're having to go get some counseling or some help. And just to do the basics again, because it feels like we're at square one just trying to save it. It can feel like I'm 30 years old, and I thought I'd be more disciplined by now.

But I still just find myself putting off that godly discipline. Every one of us, in some area of our life, if we're honest, consistently struggles to make progress. It can be an area where we've always struggled, it can be because of a challenge, it can be because of a situation that didn't go the way that you expected. And my thought today is, what if one of the reasons we keep ending up at square one isn't because we don't want our lives to change, but because we don't want to change the way that we're living? Because we lack prophetic vision. Christ-likeness. Maybe in something that we're doing. Proverbs, again, the book of wisdom says in these areas of life, the beginning of wisdom is this, get wisdom. Wisdom is practical in its application, isn't it? Wisdom, like if vision is the target, wisdom is the root to get there. And so wisdom is saying, the Bible says get wisdom. Even if right now you're at square one and you're 50 and you never thought you'd be at square one at 50, even if it costs you everything you have at 50 and you should have it at 25, get understanding. Like be okay being at square one because if you're here, you still have time to build something better. and become more like Jesus or become, and this is not a self-help message.

My goal today is not to tell you how to build a more successful business or how to set better goals for your life because the reality is that some of us have built our lives that way and you've still found yourself lacking. The center of the scripture is around prophetic vision around capturing Christ revealed to us and in us and following Him in every area of our life, not leveraging our own strength to be successful on our own in every area of our life. Though it costs you everything maybe at this point in your life, get wisdom. If you want your life to change, wisdom would say you have to change how you live. Even if for me just this week, I had this thought and I was like, man, the way I see myself in my ability to manage that situation does not align with who Christ says that I am. And so I would characterize that as a limiting belief. If the biblical reality of how I can live as a follower of Jesus is outpacing my personal experience, I have a limiting belief. And that means that I need to deal with that limiting belief by having more faith, by trusting God. And so when I realize that I'm thinking in a way that doesn't line up with God's word or doesn't line up with who Christ says that I can be in Him, I have to deal with that. I have to get into the word and I have to find a promise. And every time that thought comes up,

I gotta replace it with the promise of scripture. And right away it feels like nothing's happening, but then day three, day four, day five, you're like, okay, I'm getting my claws into this thing. Like that limiting belief is starting to change. And honestly, I just walk, I recognize that belief in myself and I thought, man, God, I'm pretty established in my ways, I don't know if you can get in there and change that. Oh, come on, you're guilty too. And I opened up to Psalms and I started reading, God led me to a passage that said, nevertheless, you're always with me. You take me by the right hand. I mean, I was literally laying in bed, putting one of my kids to sleep, and she was holding onto my right hand. And I read that scripture and it was like the Lord saying, "Nope, I'm in that too." And I'm gonna help you see it differently and I'm gonna help you experience me differently. That's what I'm talking about. When you lay hold of, I know that my personal experience does not line up with biblical reality. So I'm not gonna change the Bible to align with my experience. I'm gonna change my experience to line up with the truth of scripture. This is where the idea comes from. If you can't see what God is doing, we stumble over ourselves,

but when we attend to what he reveals, when we open up the word and God speaks something to us, when we hear something and it convicts us, when we know that something in us needs to change and we attend to it, what is attend? The root word is tend, not just put a seed in the ground and walk away and hope that something comes, but like a garden, I'm gonna tend to that truth. I'm gonna tend to what God is doing. I'm going to tend to what the spirit of God is speaking to me and eventually something good is gonna grow out of it. I'm going to attend to what God reveals. I'm telling you, there's so many people. God speaks to you, he puts seeds of truth in your hand. You drop it on the ground and you walk away and then you come back and you're like, "I need more seed, I gotta try that again." Attend to what God is speaking to you. Attend to what he's saying. See wisdom means attending to what God has revealed to you. Being faithful with what he's shown you. And I just wanna lay this foundational principle and challenge a thought that might be in the room even today. I firmly believe you cannot get your life together apart from Christ. Truly. And some of you are like, well Pastor Jeff, I have a really good life. I have a comfortable life. I have a resource, I have freedom.

I have, so let me challenge the thought in two ways. One is just because the outside of the cup looks like you have it together doesn't mean that you're put together on the inside. And unless the Bible is searching and knowing your heart and testing your thoughts, you don't really know if what's in you is being held together. Unless it's Christ in you holding things together. So there's many people that it looks like they have a great life. It looks like things are good on the outside. But it's just on the outside. There's this, yeah. Jesus said it to the Pharisees. You clean the outside of the cup, but what's on the inside isn't good. I would also challenge that thought well my life is pretty good. I can put my life together apart from Christ. There's people who live good lives and they're not Christians. My second challenge would be what about when life isn't good? What about when crisis hits? What about when you run into something that in your own strength you can't fix it? What about when one of your kids rebels? What happens when you don't have the resources or the wisdom to navigate the crisis?

I don't believe you can get your life together if you're trying to build it apart from God. So that's just the foundation. Now I wanna open up Proverbs 6 and I want to attend to the wisdom of Scripture of how we can build godliness in our lives and our lives don't have to feel chaotic and out of control. If you have a Bible, I'm in Proverbs 6-6, it's one of my favorite passages of Scripture. It says this, take a lesson from the ants, you lazy bones, don't you just love it when the Bible calls your names, you know? It's just this, take a lesson from the ants, learn from their ways and do better, get stronger, no, become wise. Learn from what they're doing and become wise yourself. Though they have no prince or governor or ruler to make them work, they labor hard all summer. They gather food for the winter. If you wanna make it through winter, you gotta make good decisions in the summer. But you lazy bones, how long will you sleep? When will you wake up? A little extra sleep, a little more slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest and poverty will pounce on you like abandoned scarcity, will attack you like an armed robber. Now listen, Solomon is not saying you slept nine hours last night, you lazy bones, it should've been eight.

That's all that you needed. Scripture isn't saying, wake up and do more work. What Scripture is saying is confronting the kind of person who keeps choosing comfort over the responsibility God has given them. It's the person who keeps choosing convenience when responsibility is calling. He's not saying wake up to the world and do more, he's saying wake up to wisdom. Like if you want your life to change, you might have to change how you're living your life. He's saying wake up to wisdom. If you wanna live through winter, you're gonna have to have wisdom in the summer. See, I said it to you already, but this is important. Vision reveals the destination. What's the destination? I wanna become like the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ in me, he must become greater, I must become less. Ultimately, that's what it's all about. Vision reveals the destination, but wisdom plots the route. And lots of us have vision. God's gonna change my life. I'm gonna be different person in a year. I got these New Year's resolutions. But the Bible doesn't say you lack vision. It says when there is no vision, you have people cast off restraint,

but it's saying you lack wisdom. It's saying get wisdom. Because it's not just about having a vision of becoming like Jesus. It's not going to church on Sunday and feeling inspired in that vision. It's walking it out every day and letting wisdom take you there. And some are stuck with great ideas about what you wanna do or how you wanna serve Jesus, but wisdom is not plotting your route right now. So let me just give you a couple of lessons from the ante. Here's the first one. Godly wisdom means you gotta take initiative. It means there's areas where you're passive right now, where you need to take initiative, where you need to be obedient. An area where maybe you're waiting for somebody else to do it, but God is called you to do it. You're waiting for somebody else to initiate, but God is called you to initiate. It's Proverbs six. They have no, the ants have no prints, no governor, no ruler, pushing them or making them work. And yet they wake up and they go to work. They wake up and they go to work. And they don't just take one route. They go out and get some and bring it back.

And then they get more and they bring it back. They take initiative on their own. I was thinking about illustrating this message and I thought about Pastor Kyle. I was thinking about somebody who just takes initiative. And I was thinking about all the areas of his life where I've watched him take initiative. Like he's recently been more of unlike a financial wisdom kick. And he's been talking about the wisdom in his own life of how he manages his finances and the goals and what it means to honor God in little decisions that he makes financially and been helping other people make those decisions. I watch how he takes initiative and the gifts that God has put inside of him. Come on, there's other people that are just as gifted as Pastor Kyle Joris, but they don't take initiative in their gifts. And he does it in his workplace. He's respected for it. But I also know that a lot of the content that he creates that kids all over the nation are hearing and listening to is being made at two in the morning when the baby and the wife are asleep and he's up in his studio. He's one of our pastors on our team. I'm not honoring him because it's Pastor Appreciation Month. I'm honoring him because he's in the place of authority that he's in because he's stewarded what God has given him. It's a model to follow.

See, taking initiative means taking action where you were previously passive. And so really, the question is, what responsibility in your life are you waiting for somebody else to address? Waiting for somebody else to do it. But God has called you to do it. How can you take initiative? Where have you been passive? Where God has asked you for obedience? Or God has asked you for action? Now, it's not just initiative that you've got to build on initiative. And godly wisdom means being diligent. Lots of us have taken initiative. You've had a moment. You went to unique conference, and God spoke something. You went to now youth conference, and God spoke something. You went to church, and God spoke something. And you're like, me. You're like, I'm going to take initiative. God put it in my heart. That moment was emotional. It was inspirational. It's supposed to be, because it moves your heart. It compels you, right? And then you get to Wednesday, and people ask me, Pastor Josh, what did you preach about on Sunday? And I'm like, I can't remember. And you were the same. You feel that inspiration, or you get challenged,

or you go, and you have this moment of taking initiative. And then when it really comes to living it out day after day after day, it just takes three to five business days. And we lose track of it, right? I have probably 20 journals. I'm going to start journaling. I'm going to start writing stuff down. 20 journals with the first 10 pages filled. Come on, anybody else? So it's not just initiative, but it's also the diligence. See if initiative means creating a budget for finances. Diligence means keeping it. If initiative is, I realize the spiritual gift that God has given me, then diligence is practicing it and using it. Diligence is the daily stewardship. It's not doing it when you feel like it. It's doing it when you don't feel like it. See, I love the analogy from John Maxwell. They said diligence is like chopping down a tree. And many of us, we take initiative, and we think today that tree is coming down. And we get our best acts with sharp blade. And we go and we're like, this marriage is getting better today. These kids are getting better today. I'm becoming a mature Christian today. And after a period of time, you're no longer swinging a sharp axe.

You're beating a tree with a dull axe and no change is coming. And so many of us fall, and then we get discouraged. We walk away, and we think maybe a different day. But diligence says, wisdom says, today, I'm going to walk outside with my sharp axe, and I'm going to swing at that tree. I'm going to walk back into my house. I'm going to sleep and rest my body, sharpen my blade. And tomorrow, I'm going to walk back out again, and I'm going to swing that axe. See, if you open your Bible and think I'm becoming a mature, I'm reading the whole book of Genesis today. But if it's not, I'm going to pick it up every day. I'm going to ask the Holy Spirit to reveal Himself to me. I'm going to swing. Maybe something great will come. Maybe something won't. I'm going to pick it up the next day. I'm going to step out, I'm going to swing. I'm trying to change this behavior in my kid, trying to teach them what it looks like to appropriately respond to something. It's day by day. It's not one lecture. It's not harsher consequences all the time. It's like it's the daily leading, the daily diligence of stewarding what God has put in your hands. The ant labors hard all summer. They gather food for a different season. They get up and initiate hard labor every day

for a reward that will not matter until a later season. That is maturity. That's diligence. See, Proverbs 13 says lazy people want much as well, but they get little. But those who work hard will prosper. Again, this is not self-help. This is the diligence of Christ. This is the diligence of doing the right thing. This is the diligence of obedience every day as you follow Jesus. And so my question is, where have you allowed your feelings to determine your faithfulness? because I don't feel like it. Where do I know the right thing to initiate but I don't feel like it? And now, instead of my faithfulness to God, dictating to my feelings how I'm going to live, my feelings are now dictating to my faithfulness. I'm gonna follow Jesus when it's convenient. I'm gonna follow Jesus when I feel like it, which really is not being faithful at all. So where have you been needing to? Here's, I wish that discipline was a fruit of the spirit, don't you? I receive Christ and I receive the ability to be disciplined. Praise God. It's not listed because discipline is a muscle that you develop. And again, this is not self-help.

I'm not, well, I get up 5 a.m. every morning, I eat my eggs and I journal. (audience laughing) I go work out and then I go do my job. Great, there's a lot of things that you can succeed at that in the kingdom carry no weight. I'm talking about becoming like Jesus, the prophetic vision of becoming like Christ, the diligence of building a life of following Him. So take initiative, be diligent and then be forward-thinking. The last lesson from the ant is that ants, godly wisdom means having foresight. It means being able to see what's ahead. I've told it to already, but the ant prepares for a season in front of them that they're not benefiting by preparing for now. How does it, what does this look like? If I want to be in great relationship with my wife, this coming Thursday, I have to have the foresight to know there's some things that we have to do today and tomorrow in order to thrive in that next season. And so, Jenna and I have a rhythm because godly wisdom doesn't wait till it's too late. We have a rhythm on Mondays, it's called Taco Mondays. I know most of you will do Taco Tuesdays, but it just works out in our schedule better to do Taco Mondays. And I show up in this great little taco place. We're about 11, 45, every Monday.

They pretty much know my order because I'm becoming diligent in it. $22, get the taco combo with one extra taco. And I grab that bag of tacos, I drive it back to my office and Jenna and I sit at my conference table and we open our computers and we go over our budget and we go over our schedule and we go over decisions that we gotta make. Because if we talk about it on Monday and somebody spends money on Tuesday, we're not gonna fight about where that money went. If we talk about it on Monday and we need a babysitter Thursday night, we're not gonna get to Wednesday and go, "Oh my gosh, we're supposed to be going on date "and connecting and loving each other "and now we're fighting about a babysitter." I know you're all looking at me blankly, but some of you fought in the car on the way here because of lack of planning around going to church together today. And so it's having the foresight, it's having the wisdom to say, "What's coming? "How can I be diligent with it?" And it's not just that. I mean, I just respect my wife so much and she lives this out so evidently and she led a conference,

massive women's conference, hundreds of volunteers. It wasn't that she had an idea a week before, we should do something for God. It's day after day, week after week, praying, putting the seed in the ground, reaching out to people, putting plans in place, having the integrity to follow up. It's not just our family planning, meaning she's having conversations with our kids proactively about their bodies, about changes in their bodies, about who they are as people, about little things that they say where we're like, "Oh, that's not gonna stand our kids' identity, "we're gonna disciple that out of them," like very proactively. And it's often her that's grabbing me by the head and going, "I need your attention over here." Like, do you see what our child is going through? And I'm like, "Oh, nope, "I was kind of a head was in the clouds "but I will give that my attention." And she's talking to me about next school year, about what we're doing for our kids. And I'm like, "Let's just be present, you know, right now." (congregation laughing) But if I could be a little cliche, it's Proverbs 31, she considers a field before she purchases it. And there's a diligence and initiative that she's taken in her life

that now is giving her the foresight and I'm just watching her grow and influence and authority with people and with our kids. And they trust her with stuff and they come to her. children, but in everything that God has put in our hands. What do you need, what do you know you're going to need tomorrow? That if you don't store it up today, you're going to wish you had. The Bible actually says, "I hide God's word in my heart, so I might not sin against him if I could add emphasis later," because usually when you're hiding God's word in your heart, you're not being tempted. And usually when you're being tempted, you're not hungering to hide God's word in your heart. So some of you are going to go through a real difficulty in your life in the next year. And are you storing up time in God's presence, being faithful to him, sensing his nearness now so when it feels like God is distant, but he shows up in a little way you go, "Ah, God has his presence." Are you preparing now in this season for what God has for you in the next season? Proverbs 29, 18, let me just give it to you one more time. They attend to what he reveals. What does God want to speak into your heart? Where is God asking you to take initiative? Have you been erratic or sporadic where God is asking you to be diligent? And what does God have in the future for you, for your family, for your own walk with the Lord? Some of you need to decide in your heart today that when connect groups open the first week of February, you are in one, realizing I need people around me. I need to grow in this place where I feel like I'm at square one. Let me give you one more revelation from the Scripture. It says in Proverbs 6, 10, I don't know if you caught it the first time, it says a little extra sleep, a little more slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest.

I've told you many times when the Bible says something three times in a row, you should pay attention. Nobody plans for their life to get out of control. Nobody's in financial crisis today and said, "Yes, right where we meant to be." Everybody's married 20 years and realize that the marriage is breaking down and goes, "Finally, we've arrived." And it's usually not a big crisis or a big chaotic moment that makes people feel like their life is out of control. You watch people go through really terrible things and yet they're stable. They can walk through it. What it is is it's a little bit of compromise here and a little lack of initiative there and a little drift over here that eventually leads your marriage to a place you didn't think it would go, your finances to a spot you never thought you'd be in, your job to a place that at risk where you never thought you'd be, your priorities, what you're spending your time on thinking, when did we lose set of that and start doing this? It's a little more spending than you can afford, a little more scrolling instead of sleeping, a little more avoidance of difficult conversations, a little bit more neglect of your marriage, a little more procrastination, a little less time with God. Guys don't fall apart in a moment, they fall apart little by little by little. And one day you wake up or you have a fight or a kid makes a declaration and you think how did my life become so chaotic and so disordered? But the good news is if your life can go off course little by little by little then one little decision today can send it in the right direction. Let me just help some of you, you don't have to chop down the whole tree today. You don't have to change your life today. In fact, you should always come forward, ask for prayer, ask God to do a miracle when you need his help, but there's also sometimes where perhaps God is going to continue to allow you to walk through something so that you don't jump over the character and the perseverance and the Christ likeness being developed in you by God just eradicating that thing.

Because if God did that for you, you would fail to develop the character and the perseverance and the Christ likeness that he has meant for you. So if you're in a struggle, if there's a tree that you need to chop down and God hasn't just taken it down for you, then your only response is to sharpen your axe every day, walk out there and take a swing. Hoping you know what one day I'm going to wake up. I don't do what I used to do. I don't think with limited beliefs in this area anymore. And I'm just trying to help you with like the we serve a miracle, working God. And we also serve the God that when you're alone and you feel like you can't overcome who says I take you by the right hand and I walk you through it, I'm trying to help you with your take up your cross daily and follow Jesus. Take up your cross daily and glorify Him in what you do. And here's, you know, if you're at square one and you're discouraged, you're not at square zero. You're at square one. There's a foundation, if you messed it up before, you know which way not to go. You have something to build on. Whether you're 16 or 60, you're here hearing this message because there's still time for you to build, for you to have a godly vision. That's why the Bible gives the illustration of the ant, doesn't it? Little by little by little. I want the elephant, you know, just like, let's move the heavy thing, done, move up. But this next season of your life will be easier if you do some heavy lifting today. If you make the right decision today, you're not going to get your life together in a day. But you can make some changes to what you do every day. Somebody said it this week, we overestimate what we can do in a day, but we underestimate what could happen in a year. So, I just want to lead you in a moment. First of all, if you're here today and you've never had the prophetic revelation that you've

been stumbling, that you've been casting off restraint because you haven't seen Jesus and God's plan to send Christ for you, but then to raise Christ in you for you to be Christ-like in the way that you live, then today is the day of salvation. Today is the day to put your faith in him. If you're here and you're like, "Yeah, Jesus has saved me, but he's not my Lord." Today is the day. I feel faith right now in the room that there's some things you've wrestled with. There's some of you that you've not given God control and you've been trying to build and trying to build and trying to build, and trying to build. Praise God if everything crashed so that you would realize your strength is not sufficient. There's faith in the room for you to say, "Jesus, I'm giving it over to you. I'm trusting you." Maybe you're here today and God is going to drop a thought in your heart or in your mind of where you need to become wise, a little thing that you can do to demonstrate a little bit of wisdom that eventually is going to have a major change in your life. I give this analogy all the time. If you don't think a little bit matters, the next time that your wheels are not aligned on your vehicle, drive to Fargo, and I'm telling you, you will end up in Sioux Falls, a little bit matters, little by little by little. That's the point where I'm going to stop talking. I'm going to ask you to close your eyes and invite Holy Spirit to speak to your heart if he hasn't already or to give God your yes. You in faith come into agreement, not with the lies of the enemy or your own understanding, but to let God give you faith to trust Jesus, like God give you faith to bring things that are in chaos back into order, to let God give you self-control that would lead to the development of discipline in your life. Maybe it's a moment of you resolving in your heart. I know where I've needed to take initiative and I've been waiting for somebody else or delegating it to somebody else and it's on me. And I'm going to step out, I'm going to be bold, and I'm going to do what Jesus asked

me to do. Come on, just talk to him, resolve it with him right now. (ominous music)