You're Chasing The Wrong Things | Artificial Intelligence | Week 4

the next week of our Artificial Intelligence series, and I wanna start out with a Bill Gates quote, because he seems like he knows what he's talking about when it comes to AI. He says this, this is pretty harrowing. He says, of all of the things humans have ever created, I want you to think of all the stuff that we've ever created, AI will change society the most. He says, hey, it's already disrupting the economy, jobs, healthcare, the market, just like every area of life is being disrupted, and he says the disruption's just getting started. He thinks it's gonna change things faster than the world is even prepared for. And so if you've been paying attention to this, and you don't have your head in the sand, you kinda know there are three prevailing theories for what AI is gonna do to our society. Number one, AI is gonna take away all of our problems, do all of our work for us, and we'll just be able to sit at the beach and enjoy life. Amen, somebody says, all right. Option two, life stays the same, it's more efficient, we'll have more tools, but it's kinda like the iPhone or the internet, it's just gonna be normal, a little bit more efficient. Option three, AI takes all our jobs, builds robots, and we all die. Now, quick show of hands, okay, who's going option one?

We're gonna all be living on the beach, just show of hands. Hey, we got a couple of optimists in the room, I like that, I like that. Option two, just life goes on as normal, yeah, yeah. Who thinks option three, we're all gonna die? Just show of hands, oh, there we go, yeah. You guys think we actually have a choice in this, it's already been pre-decided, okay? I've seen the matrix, I know how this thing is. But I wanna go all the way back to option number one. Just want us to imagine the best case scenario. You got AI agents doing all the work for you, barely have to lift a finger. You got AI robots, they're doing your laundry, doing your dishes, running your errands, it sounds amazing. And so we can spend the rest of our lives sitting on the beach, watching the sunrise, lowering your handicap, collecting shells, living the dream. But my question for us this morning is, what if the dream isn't actually the dream? What if the thing we think will finally satisfy us leaves us emptier than we've ever been before? What if living the dream leaves you with nothing to live for? There's an interview years ago with Tom Brady. At the time, he had won multiple Super Bowls, he is at the top of his career. He's living the dream that millions of people, they would trade their life for his life in a second.

And in the middle of the interview, he says this, he says, why do I have three Super Bowl rings? I still think there's something greater out there for me. Looks up, God, there has got to be more than this. The interviewer looks at him, says, well, what's the answer? And Brady just looks off in the distance, he goes, I wish I knew, I wish I knew. That's the tension. Now, it doesn't really matter for him because we know all patriots go to hell, okay? So that's just a, let's just throw that out there. And if you're a patriots fan and you leave, we're happy to see you go right now, okay? I will accept that right now. But for a guy like Tom Brady, he's not a guy who almost made it or who came up short. This is a guy who got every single thing that he thought would satisfy him, and it doesn't. 20 years later, look at it. His marriage ends, comes out of retirement, retires again. He's still publicly searching. Two decades later, he still doesn't know. And just look at what those decades cost him while he was looking. But this isn't just about Tom Brady because we've all experienced something like this. Thinking just a little bit more money will solve our problems. If I just get this promotion, then everything is gonna be better.

And even though we know these aren't the answers to what's happening in here, we still continuously strive for more. There's a study out of Harvard University that tracked people over decades, and what it found is the key to a fulfilling life was not success. It's actually the sense that their life actually mattered to someone else. I just want you to imagine for a moment, I stood up here and I just told you, hey, the key to happiness and the key to fulfillment, you make as much as you can, you climb the ladder as far as you can, you be as successful as you can. You would know that's ridiculous. But at the same time, if you look at what we spend the most time on. on what we worry about the most, what we sacrifice for the most, many of us are following the advice we would never give ourselves. Your P&L is not gonna attend your funeral. Your sales numbers are not gonna attend your funeral. Your hunting trophies aren't gonna attend your funeral. The only thing that's gonna stand over your casket are the people who care about you. And we say we're doing it for them, right? You probably said that. I've said that.

This is all for them. I work so hard and I travel so much and I miss so much of their lives for them. But then when I come home to them, I just sit on the couch, I crash, fill the time with hobbies because I'm just so tired of working for them. And when they get in the way, watch out. What I'm doing for them just ends up landing on them. And that's the tension. We say it's about them, but if we're being honest, it's actually about us, right? Look, I'm not saying money is the problem, okay? I think you should make as much money as you can, but making money and living for a purpose are two different things. You can make $10 million and not have purpose. You can have purpose and be making $10,000 a year. I've talked to both groups of people and I've heard stories about people making more money than we could ever imagine making, feeling like their life actually doesn't matter, and people who make barely anything knowing that they're living for a purpose. Now, there's nothing wrong with trying to provide for your family. There's nothing wrong with that. But let me be honest with you. For most of us, it's actually not about the money. It's about trying to prove something to ourselves.

We're trying to prove that we're enough, that we're better than the other guy in the company, that we're not who that person told us we were when we were 10 years old. And so we chase money, we chase identity, we chase something that's gonna tell us that we're actually enough. I'll tell you what it looks like for me. It looks like trying to prove myself to my dad. Like if you just strip it all away, what's going on in the back of my mind is wanting to prove myself to my dad. And I want him to be proud of me. And can I tell you, like we all have these little boys, these little girls that live inside of us that still have some needs that need to get met. And for me, this little boy inside me doesn't just want my dad to be proud of me, he wants my dad to be impressed with me. And so I push and I achieve and I try to climb the ladder because I want my dad to be impressed with me. But some of you guys know this. My dad passed away 15 years ago. He'll never be able to tell me that. He'll never be able to tell me this side of heaven, he's proud of me. And I know that, but I'm still pushing for it. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and assume I'm not the only one in the room trying to prove something to my dad.

But what our dads think of us, if you would resonate with that, I just need to tell you what our dads think of us, here's the truth. That's actually not about us, that's about them. And honestly, I just need you to hear this. And honestly, I just need you to hear this from me. If your dad isn't proud of you, that's on him, that's not on you. Because healthy dads are proud of their kids. And if they're not, it usually means they're just trying to fill some hole that their dad created in them 50 years ago. And so if you're still chasing his approval, I just, I gotta let you know, you can let that go. That is not yours to carry. And I wanna make sure that you hear this, okay? You have a heavenly father who loves you, who's proud of you. He's seen what you've walked through. He's seen how hard your life was. He's seen the trials that you've overcome. He's seen every different part of your life. He understands and he is proud of you. Now here's the reason this matters. It's because if you don't know who you are, you will spend your whole life trying to prove it to somebody else. Some of us, we're carrying something, a divorce, a betrayal, an addiction,

something that we did that we can't undo. And the way we've been told to be okay again, it's perform our way back, earn our way back, hide our way back. fake our way till we make it. And Jesus gives us opposite advice. He says, you cannot earn your way back, you need to lay it down. And all of humanity is trying to create identity. We're trying to create meaning. We're trying to create a purpose to live for. But here's the problem. You don't create purpose, you discover it. You don't find your purpose. And if you don't find your purpose, you will create an artificial one. You'll try to build it out of your career, your success, your money, your reputation. And for a long time, it's gonna feel like it's actually working until it doesn't. Now, I don't want you to miss this. We have run this experiment before. 3,000 years ago, there was a king named Solomon. And if you've been around church for a while, you've probably heard of him. He was a king of Israel. He was the richest, wisest man who ever lived, okay? Like, the amount of money we're talking about, think about modern day Elon Musk without the Twitter account, okay?

And he basically says this. If meaning can be found anywhere under the sun, I'm gonna find it. And so he runs this scientific experiment. He says, I'm going to just try anything I can to see if anything truly satisfies. And he literally says this. He says, I denied myself nothing my eyes desire. I refused my heart, no pleasure. If he saw it, he did it. Anything you've said, if I just had that, then I'd be good. He got there, then he kept going. And so he starts with pleasure. Not like a Friday night out. I'm talking no budget, no limits, parties, entertainment, laughter, music. Your best attempt at throwing your best party would look like a preschool birthday party compared to Solomon. One time he provides 22,000 cows, 120,000 lambs just for the celebration. Over the top, weeks on end. If it felt good, he tried it and it doesn't work. He says, okay, maybe it's not pleasure. Okay, I'm smarter than that. Maybe it's building something great. And so he builds houses and palaces and gardens and parks. These projects that people would travel the world to come see.

He's saying, hey, if building something or if legacy's the answer, I'm gonna outbuild everybody and I will prove that I'm enough, but it doesn't satisfy either. And so he goes after wealth and gold and silver and treasures, more money than he could ever, ever spend. Not like set for life money. This is unimaginably rich. Wealthier than anybody could ever imagine. And at the end of it, he still feels empty. He goes, well, if money's not the answer, then maybe I'll go for status. Power, I want people to respect me. Then I'll feel better. He got to the point where kings and queens would travel the world just to sit at his feet and listen to him talk. He was the guy that everybody else wanted to be. And still he says, this doesn't satisfy me. And finally he says, I've tried everything else. Maybe, maybe the answer is found in sex. And so he pulls together hundreds of wives, hundreds of concubines. He has sex whenever, wherever, with whoever, anything you've thought of. I just experienced that. He did it and he's emptier at the end of it. He says, it just doesn't work. So Solomon ran further down the road than you ever will.

He exhausted the limits of wealth and sex and pleasure and power. And where does all that leave him? He says this, yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done, everything I had toiled to achieve, everything I've worked so hard on, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind. Have you ever felt that way? Like everything that you did, everything you've been working on, everything that you have, it actually doesn't matter in the end. Like you got there and you hit the goal, you built the company, you sold the company. You finally got the time, the money, the freedom. And instead of feeling full, you just feel flat. Or you look around and you're like, I hate this. Or you look around and you're like, I've got the spouse, I've got the kids, I got the house, I got the job. This is the life that I was chasing. But why does it feel like something's missing? You're like, I don't have a bad life. It's not like life's bad. It's just not enough. Or maybe that's not you. Maybe that's not your story yet. Maybe you're. Not on the other side of success feeling empty, maybe you're on this side of it, and you're still working and you're just afraid,

because you're deep down afraid of what happens if you don't get there. You're afraid of what happens if you lose what you built, because there's a voice deep down just telling you, you know, if that goes away, do you even know who you are anymore? And if the job goes away, if the income drops, if you don't get the promotion, if your kids leave the house, if your ability changes, if nobody knows your name, you wonder, would I still be okay? This showed up in my life a couple years ago. I was on a sabbatical that our church provided for me just a couple months off that was a gift to rest and to refresh and to refocus and to come back stronger. Only two months in, I was not feeling rested and I was not feeling recharged. I was anxious, I was spinning, and I was trying to figure it out, and I was praying, and I was reading, and I was talking to my therapist, and he just stops and he says, and he puts his hands together. I don't know why they put their hands together like this, but he's just like, he's like, Jesse, I wonder if you're having withdrawals from some of the things at work that you've been building your identity on. That's not at Harv, of course, that's a stupid idea.

Of course it's not that. And I go on a hike and I'm trying to sort this out because he got me, and in the middle of the hike, I'm passing this family, and they pause, they say, wait, are you Jesse from Flatirons? We love Flatirons, we love the church. And guys, I'm embarrassed to tell you how good that recognition felt. It was like a ray of sunshine on a winter day. I was just like, oh my gosh, can we not leave this moment? Like, do you need prayer for anything? Can I pastor you? Do you wanna start a church service right here? Like, please don't let this moment end because I was not getting a lot of recognition and not getting a lot of affirmation from my teenagers at home, okay? You're a great dad. You're doing a great job. Dad, thanks for telling me no. I really appreciate, like I'm getting no affirmation from my kids at home, and I realize my identity had been built on a constant wave of affirmation. And a couple months without it, and I was starting to feel empty and starting to feel like I wasn't myself. I was using my performance as a way to make me feel valued and make me feel like I was enough.

Does that sound familiar? In the moment that that was taken away, I was struggling with myself and I didn't really know who I was anymore. I had built my identity on things that could be taken away, and as long as that's true, we will always be one loss away from not knowing who we are. And so Jesus tells us this. He says, whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. In other words, if you spend your life trying to protect it, build it, secure it, prove it, you will lose it. But if you give it away, if you surrender, if you stop trying to make it all about you, that's when you actually find your life. And Jesus, he shows us what it looks like. He said, I'm not just gonna tell you, I'm going to show you what this looks like. In Mark 10, 45, he says this, for even the son of man came not to be served, but to serve and came to give his life as a ransom for many. So think about that. The person in history who actually deserved to be served more than anybody else, he chose to serve. And the person who had everything at his disposal chose to give it all away. And the apostle Paul describes it this way. He said, who though he was in the form of God,

he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant. He had the entire universe at his fingertips. And instead of holding onto it, he let go. So if Solomon is showing us what happens when you build your life on taking, Jesus shows us what it looks like to build your life on giving. And here's the truth. You'll find your life's greatest meaning by serving a purpose greater than yourself. And I have a, I can imagine what's happening right now in your heads. For a lot of us, we're nodding our heads. Like, yeah, I agree with you, Jesse. But at the same time, that's more of a line we'll tell our kids than something we'll actually build our life on. Because there's part of us that we're just not sure that it works. The reason we feel like it might not work is because everything in our culture is telling us the opposite, telling us get more. more, build more, achieve more, protect your life. You look out for you. But if you talk to people who actually make it to the top of that climb, they get everything that they thought that they wanted, anything that you and I would look at, go, if I just had that, I would be okay.

They're the ones who come back, shout down from the mountaintop. They say, it's still not enough. The New York Times author, David Brooks, he talks about this. He studied people for decades, and he says, people spend the first half of their lives chasing success, achievement, recognition, and getting to the top of this mountain. And then they get there, and they realize, for one reason or another, they are still not satisfied. And so he says, then they have a second mountain to climb. That's the name of the book. It's called The Second Mountain, and it is a, highly recommend this book. But he says, the second mountain is building a life that's built on service, on giving, and building something bigger than themselves. So you got a New York Times author, Harvard scientists, the wisest man who ever lived, and Tom Brady all telling us the same thing. Success is not bad. It's just not enough to build your life on. And this is how we tend to get stuck. When I've gone to visit Africa, there's a way that hunters catch monkeys. And this past week, I was in Africa, and I got to see it. There's a picture right here of what it looked like. And some of you guys, that's an AI picture, okay? Like, that's not real.

Some of you guys are like, oh my gosh, look at that monkey, so close to him. When the glasses come back. Come on, guys, we can't trust anything that we see anymore. But here's what happens. Here's what these hunters do. They take a coconut. They cut a small hole in it, just big enough for the monkey to slide its hand in. And inside the coconut, they put something sweet, something that it really wants in there. And so the monkey reaches in there, grabs it, makes a fist, and then can't get its hand back out. The only thing it has to do to be free is let go. But it won't. So it stays there, trapped, not because it's stuck, but because it won't release what it grabbed. And isn't that our story? We grab onto success, identity, money, approval, a relationship. We think this is what's gonna make us okay. And the whole time we're stuck, not because we can't be free, but because we won't let go. And Jesus steps right in the middle of this tension. He says, if you try to hold onto your life, you'll lose it. But if you can let go, you'll finally find it. And that's where you find your life's greatest meaning, by serving a purpose greater than yourself. Let me show you how your life was designed to work. It's in one of my favorite passages,

Ephesians chapter two, verse 10. And it's one verse. It's gonna give you a picture of how God designed you. It says, for we are his workmanship, which means that God created you for a purpose. We were created in Christ Jesus for good works, which means he wired you to do some specific things. Then it says, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them, which means he has placed you right where you are, right now, in this season, for a reason. So look at this. God created you with a purpose. He wired you with a calling, and he placed you in an assignment. Your purpose is why you exist. We all exist to serve a purpose greater than ourselves. Then your calling is how you're uniquely wired. Okay, your strengths, your passions, the things that come alive in you, when those things overlap, that is your calling, how God has wired you up. And then your assignment is where you are right now, not where you wish you were, not where you used to be, where you are, this job, this family, these kids, this house, this is my assignment. And this is where a lot of us can end up having a hard time. Jesse, I hear you talking about that, but I work at a coffee shop.

I'm in this job, but I feel like I'm called to more than this. This job just feels like a waste of time. And right now, I wanna talk to my millennial and Gen Z brothers and sisters, okay? This is for you. God is using your current assignment to prepare you for your next assignment. This one might be boring. This one might feel meaningless, but he's using it to prepare you for your next assignment. But the mistake is treating your current assignment as if it doesn't matter, as if it doesn't really matter till you get to the one that you really want. It's just a stepping stone. Because when you do that, you fail at your current assignment and you never get to your next one. So this is for Gen Z, this is for millennial, this is probably for some boomers who need to hear this as well. Work your current assignment like it's your only assignment. Your current job like it's the only job that you'll ever have. Because here's the truth, there is no wasted time in the kingdom. God will not waste your time. God will use anything, but we can waste our time.

You can waste your potential, you can waste your life, you can waste your time, but God won't. Here's a question that some of us may be wrestling with as well. Jesse, okay, I hear you and I'm doing this, I'm trying to be faithful right here in this assignment. I'm looking forward to the head, but right now I'm being faithful. But what happens when it still feels like it's not working? What happens when the doors don't open? When the promotion goes to somebody else? When the relationship doesn't work out? When it feels like you're doing everything right and it still feels like you're falling behind? Your life doesn't look anything like you thought that it would. This is where, being honest, this is where most people quit or most people settle. But if you're in a season of disappointment, if you're in a season of trying to figure out why things aren't working, if you're in a season of trying to figure out why these things are happening, if you're in a season of questioning, if you're in a season where your dream has died, you need to know this, if your dream dies, your purpose doesn't. If your dream dies, God's plan doesn't.

And if you feel like you're just in a season of wandering in the wilderness of disappointment, well, take heart, good news, that's where God does his best work. And he's gonna do that in your life. This past week, I was in Africa. I really was in Africa, okay? I know that I showed the AI picture, but I was in Africa and we were doing some field work with some of the partners there and they were long days, waking up at six, going to bed about 10 o'clock at night, just visiting some of the different partners that we have at Flatirons. And the final day, we're gonna go on this evening safari. And this whole week, I've been praying, God, would you just speak clearly to me? I got some things that I'm confused about. I got some things that I'm disappointed about. God, would you just speak to me? And I don't know what it is. I feel like God speaks clearly to me when I'm in Africa. I don't know if, I don't think he's speaking louder. I think I'm just tuned in and listening more. But the whole week, I'm praying, I'm walking, I'm listening, and I'm getting nothing. I don't know if you've ever had that season where you're just praying and praying and praying and you feel like you're just getting nothing. I'm getting nothing and I'm going,

maybe I'm gonna come back and just continue it, but I'm not gonna hear from God in Africa. So anyways, the final day that we're there, we're doing this field work and we've got this safari at the end of the day, this evening safari. But the field work is taking a lot more time than we thought that it would. We're getting delayed visiting some of the villages and visiting some of the homes and working on some of the projects. And so we're starting to run out of time. And so we start driving back on this dirt road. It's not even a dirt road, it's like a dirt bike road that we're driving a car up and we get a flat tire. So we get this flat tire, we're trying to fix this flat tire in the middle of the African wilderness. There's no cell reception, there's just nothing. And we are running out of time. And the driver eventually just starts driving as fast as he can to try to get us to the safari. So hopefully we can get there before the sun sets and hopefully we can see a lion. He's like, I want you guys to be able to see a lion. We're like, we'd really like to see a lion, that'd be awesome. And we get there in the sun setting and our driver's driving. We drive a couple miles into the park and we turn this corner and we don't see a lion,

we see five lions. And the five lions are attacking 10 elephants. I promise you, this happened, okay? This is not a, like these five lions are trying to attack these 10 elephants and the elephants are fending them off. And for like five minutes, we're just sitting there like, this is incredible. The driver says, he's like, this is the coolest thing I have ever seen in Africa. Like this is blowing me away. And we're just blown away. We're like, God, thank you so much for like, we were asking for one lion, you gave us five lions, 10 elephants. This is more than we would ask or imagine. And then I started to realize. Likewise, had we gotten here an hour earlier, we would have missed it. We would have driven past it. Had we not had the delays, had we not had the disappointment, had we not gotten the flat tire, we would not have gotten here at just the right moment. God actually used the delays, God used the disappointments to get us right where we needed to go. And it's as if God was telling me, hey, Jesse, you don't worry about those disappointments, you don't worry about those delays,

you don't worry about those things dying inside you because I am going to get you exactly where you need to be at exactly the right time. And maybe he wants to say the same thing to you, that in the disappointments and in the delays, in whatever you feel like is getting in your way, the Lord is guiding every single one of your steps. The relationship that didn't work out, maybe that is God's kindness, saving you from a marriage that would have never worked. The job that you didn't get, maybe that's God's protection from a career that would have pulled you away from everything in your life that actually matters and you would just focus on that job. Maybe it's God's protection. Proverbs 16, nine says this, in his heart, a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps. In Romans eight, it says, hey, if God is for us, then who can be against us? He who did not spare up his own son, but he gave his son over for us, how will he not graciously also give us all good things? God has good plans for you on his timing, and I gotta be honest with you, his timing is better than our timing, but he has good plans for you. And so this is where we've gotta decide what we're gonna do.

Because when we're sitting in these seasons of disappointment, we can either let that define us or we can let it form us. Because if you don't decide this now, what happens is we start building our life around something smaller than what God created us for. And I'm begging with you, Flatirons. Don't settle. Don't settle for comfort. Don't settle for just getting by. Don't settle for a life that revolves around a paycheck or a weekend or a vacation or a person. The pain that you've gone through has got to mean more than that. Your story has got to mean more than that. Everything that God has put inside of you, your gifts, your drive, your experience, even your disappointments, they've got to mean more than just earning a living. Last week when I was at Musana, I saw this lived out in a way that it put some things in perspective for me. While we were visiting our partners at Musana and Life in Abundance, we got to drive through villages and we got to talk to kids and we got to see them eating meals that were packed right here at this church. That were packed right here at this church a year ago.

Who was a part of the Million Meal Pack Challenge? Like the meals we packed are in action feeding vulnerable children and keeping them alive in the middle of Africa right now. We got to see that happen. We got to see some women's empowerment centers that are giving women jobs so they don't end up being trafficked on the streets. And then we got to Musana, we spent some time with Andrea and her reel, The Founders in Musana. And the story of Musana is this, 18 years ago, Andrea was a junior at CU. She's studying finance, so she's got a great career ahead of her. She, hedge fund, investment firm, whatever it is, she's got a great career in front of her. And in the summer, she says, hey, before my senior year and I move into the workforce, I'm gonna go do an internship in Uganda. So she's there doing an internship, doing microfinance, and she visits an orphanage. And she sees 80 kids who are starving, and they're being exploited and trafficked just to survive. Meanwhile, the people who are running the orphanage are pocketing the money because nobody's coming in to check on them. What would you do if you saw that? So Andrea, she changed her plans completely.

She doesn't really have a plan, but she fights like hell for these kids. She starts facing death threats from people in the county because she's ruining the thing that they've worked so hard to take advantage of. She's got no plan, no safety net, barely any money. She just knew those kids deserve better. And the city finally, after a year, Weeks of battling, they turn these kids over to her. And so she's got 80 kids, enough money for two weeks meals, and now she has a completely different future than she planned. And when she called back to tell people that she was staying in Uganda, people thought she was crazy. They're like, what are you doing? You've got this whole life ahead of you. You're throwing it all away. Fast forward 18 years now, now Andrea and Heryl went from 80 kids to serving over 6,000 kids in Uganda. That's just a picture of some of them over there on the screens, but somebody was trying to tell her that is a wasted life. You're telling me that's a wasted life? We're walking through bunk houses of the kids at the orphanage, they're row after row after row of beds, and I'm looking at the mattresses, I was just struck by them like there were better mattresses in the orphanage than the hotels that we were staying in.

Like thick, comfortable, they had memory foam mattresses in the orphanage in Uganda at Musana. And I was like, Andrea, how did you guys get these? And she said, well, the owner of Denver Mattress believes in what we're doing. And so last year they sent us a gift, 2,000 mattresses. I don't know those guys, okay, but these are not the leftovers, not defects, they sent the best, and I don't know those guys, but I know this, they found their purpose. Their purpose isn't selling mattresses, their purpose is selling enough mattresses so that they can send one more to a kid in Uganda who needs it. So my question is what about you? How is God calling you to use where you are to make a difference in this world? We're all in different walks of life in this room, but I wonder if some of you were planning to retire this year, and you've saved up and you've worked hard, now you have worked hard to be able to retire, and you could step away at this point. But what if you didn't? What if you pushed it back a year? Not to get more, not to save more, but you said, I'm actually gonna, I'm going to take a year of my salary that I don't need, because I've already saved up, and I'm gonna give it away.

What if every day you woke up and you went to work, not for a paycheck, not for a vacation, but so that kids don't starve, girls get rescued, and a generation hears about Jesus? Or maybe you're in the middle of your career right now, and things are going well, and you got a team, and you got influence, you got a title, and every decision that you make is talking about the next goal, the next bonus, the next step, but what if you took a moment to just pause, and you said, hey, what if this position isn't about me, and isn't about trying to climb higher? What if this position and this influence that God gave me is so that I could lead differently? So I wasn't just building the company, I wasn't just building results, I'm blessing people, and what if you looked at your job and leadership as a blessing to others? Some of us, you know, I've been through a lot of this, some of us in the room, we're moms, and we're gonna celebrate you guys next weekend, but you've spent years pouring into your kids. Every schedule, every decision, everything revolves around the kids. And now they're growing up, and they're becoming more independent, and some of them are leaving the house, and you're starting to ask, like, hey, I've been working, but I've kind of built my life around these kids, and I don't know who I am without them,

and I don't know what I'm gonna do without them, and what's my life even about without them? And then you got this other group who, and you're in the middle of it, and you got those kids who are toddlers, and every part of your life just feels repetitive, and it's just like the same meals, and the same bedtimes, and the same diapers, and the same argument, and it just, it feels like it doesn't matter, and every day it's the same. And I just wonder, what if you've got the mom who's been there, and the mom who's in it, and mom who's been there is trying to figure out, like, what's my purpose? There is a mom who's in it right now who just needs to hear, hey, you are not screwing this up, you're doing a good job, and your kids are gonna be okay. What if you could offer that to them? Some of us, we're in college now, I graduated at CU over the weekend, and you're trying to figure out what your life's gonna be about. What if you decided that now, it's not gonna be about building something for you, it's not gonna be about chasing a title or a lifestyle, but you say, whatever I do, I'm going to get it. Give my life to something bigger than myself. Because the reality of the matter is one day we are gonna stand before God.

Hopefully long after we're old. I just want you to imagine that moment. You're standing in front of God and there's no distraction, there's no noise. It's just you and it's Him. And you feel the weight of it and the holiness of it and the reality that this is the moment everything in life was pointing to. And He looks at you and He says, I gave you your one and only life. What did you do with it? I built a successful business. I worked really hard and so now I got a pretty low handicap. But I got to travel the world. I just kept on looking for the next thing. Guys, I'm telling you in that moment everything will become clear. All the things that we thought mattered don't. All the things we chased don't. All the things we built for ourselves don't. And we won't wish that we had more. We'll wish we had given our lives to something more. And the Bible says that in that moment we're gonna lay our crowns before Him. Which means we're gonna lay our hopes, our dreams, our successes, our plans. We're gonna take them and we're gonna lay them down at His feet. And we're gonna realize some of us

have been clutching those crowns our whole lives. And Jesus is gonna be standing in front of us, looking at us, not with disappointment or shame, but He's just saying, I've just got something so much more for you if you'll just let it go. And so today, rather than wait for hopefully decades from now for that moment, what if we decided to do that right now? What if we decided in this moment to let go right now? And we'll sing a song in just a second that's a response moment and a surrender moment because we've been white knuckling these things for a very long time. Whether it's control or image or success or approval, a relationship, a job, this version of your life that you thought you just had to have. And Jesus gives an opportunity right now. He says, this is too heavy for you to carry on your own and this is too big of a burden for you. You can let it go. Imagine laying down the pressure of having to have it all together and being the perfect mom, never dropped the ball. You can just lay that at His feet, say, I trust you, Jesus. You love these kids more than I do. Imagine laying down this constant need to just prove you're more successful than the person next to you. Prove that you've made it, prove that you're enough.

Imagine laying down the thing that you're just running to to cope with the disappointment. You know it's not helping, but you just can't help it. Imagine laying down your need for everybody to like you, approve of you, validate you and affirm you. Imagine laying down the control you've been holding, the comparison that's been stealing your joy, the pressure to prove something to somebody who may never give you their approval. I think the words that the band chose for this next song are fitting. They're my prayer today. They go something like this, Jesus, I'm letting go and so you can have my heart, you can have my will, you can have my soul and my hopes and my dreams, my entire world, you can have them all. I'm gonna lay them down with joy because they're too heavy for me to carry on my own. They're not gonna give me what I think they are. And Jesus, I'm casting my crowns in front of you. You can have it all. And so in this moment, as we sing, I just wanna invite you to have a moment of surrender. And all of our campuses, let's stand for this final song. And I just wanna invite you to take a posture of thinking about that thing that right now, you're like, I just, if I don't have this, I'm not gonna be okay. That relationship, that promotion, That friendship, that approval, whatever that thing is,

would you just hold that tightly in your hands like this? And as we sing this song, I just wanna give you an opportunity. When you're ready, just open your hands. Say, God, I can't keep on carrying this anymore. God, the things I thought would satisfy me, I know they won't. I trust you. I'm giving it to you. You are in control of my life, and I give myself over to you. Flatirons, what if we did that? Knowing that if we seek him first, all those things will sort themselves out in due time. So God, we come to you right now, and God, we acknowledge the things that we've held onto. God, these things that make us feel safe and make us feel comfortable and make us feel like we're enough. God, we bring our disappointments to you. These questions wondering, God, I thought life was gonna be this way, and it's not. God, would you help us to realize that we will only truly find satisfaction in you. We will only find meaning in you. And so God, these things that we're holding onto, God, we just open up our hands and we say, you can have them all. You can take them. We're done carrying them on our own.

God, these are for you to carry. And God, we trust you because you are strong. So God, we thank you and we worship you as the king who is pulling all of us together, as the king that has good plan for us. God, you've got better plan for us than we could ever imagine for ourselves. So we let go of our plans and we grab hold of yours. It's in Jesus' name that we pray, amen.