Train In Godliness - 1 Timothy 4:6-10 - Mercy Hill

Hey guys, welcome to all of our locations today. Man, I don't know about you, but one of my favorite weekends of the whole year is these kindergarteners and seeing them get to go off into school and the parents that we have here. Man, this was cool. Thursday night, one of the kids, as he was walking down, he was like, bye everybody.

So I thought that was pretty good. But man, we love that. Hey, if you're one of these parents or awesome grandparents, man, take joy in a day like today. God is developing these kids and we can't wait to see what he is going to do with them. We are going to be in First Timothy chapter four today. As you guys are turning with me to First Timothy chapter four, let me go ahead and do this. We did this last week. We're going to do it again this week. All of our campuses, can we welcome back our college students?

All right, half of them got back now. So guys, we are a very, a church that sees a lot of, a tremendous amount of value in college students. And if you are a college student, especially a high pointer at Clifton, right now, as I speak, I want to make sure you hear me. We believe that God has a huge plan for your life and we want to help you get there. All right. Church, you guys know this, over a third of our sent ones, missionaries, we meet on the college campus. All right. And also they raise the spiritual fervency of our church in incredible ways.

And so man, be praying for them. If you are a college student, August 27th is the launch of College Live for this semester. So you don't want to miss that. You want to fill up your car and take people there and all of that. I also wanted to celebrate this today. Guys, we planted a church two years ago in Waynesville, North Carolina. Okay. I don't know if any of you guys have been to Waynesville, but they're really suffering for Jesus out there.

Okay. In Western North Carolina. No, it's an awesome place. Gateway to the mountains, right? But they are relatively near, not like right on top of, but 20 or 30 minutes from Western Carolina. And they had their sort of big launch last week. Western Carolina moved in.

Guys, check this out. Two years later, 70 college students attended their service. Isn't that awesome?

Over 150 in attendance total. And so God is not just growing things here, but there as well. So we're excited for them. All right. First Timothy chapter four, back to school weekend. Man, we try to do this maybe once a year, twice a year. I just want to bring the message of, hey, what are we here for? What are we trying to do? Why are we here?

Okay. And what we're going to see today is that we are here because God wants to glorify Himself with our life. And that happens when we get saved, but it also happens when we train in godliness.

When we become in practice what He has already declared us to be in truth. If I said to you today, why are you here? I don't know what would come to your mind.

I know this though. The word why is probably one of the most powerful questions in the English language. And the reason is because you can get to the bottom of your, I mean below the bedrock of your philosophical understanding of anything, of the world, of what's going on if people just ask you why a couple of times. Okay. I don't know if you ever thought about this.

I'll give you an example. A few years ago I was riding down the road with one of my kids and they said, can we go to Chick-fil-A? I said, no. They said, why? I said, because they're closed. They said, why? I said, because it's Sunday. They said, why? I said, because I don't know why it's Sunday.

Okay. Why is it Sunday? I don't know. You're gonna have to ask God why it's Sunday.

I have no idea. Four whys, and we're already at the very bottom of something that there's no way that I could write. Why is a very strong question. The question I have for you today is, why are you here? I don't mean here at this church necessarily.

I just mean, why? Why are you here? What is the purpose for your very existence? God has created you for some reason, right? Well what we say at Mercy Hill, we get this from the scripture, is that God has created you and he's walking with you through this life so that you would bring glory to him. I hope you understand this. You were made for more than possessions and promotions.

Your kids were made for more than straight A's in soccer. College students, you were made for more than parties and eventual paychecks. There is so much more for us in this Christian life that God has called us to, and we really can't even find joy until we have found the very purpose for which we were created, right? We were created to bring glory to God, and the way that that happens through the course of our life, this is what we're going to talk about today, is that we grow in our godliness. And I don't know about you, if you've been a Christian for very long, but you're going to understand this. Guys, you do not fall backwards into godliness. Godliness don't just happen in your life.

Maturity don't just happen in your life. Christian maturity is something that we apply ourselves to and God is gracious to grow us in. It's not something that happens by accident, but it is what God has for us. Here's the big idea today, y'all, godliness is something that you train for.

It doesn't just happen. You know, one of the things in the Christian church like Mercy Hill, we would say this, in terms of your salvation, man, there's not like this, I worked a little bit, God worked a little bit, and boom, I got saved, okay? In terms of your salvation, man, God snatched you inside out. He turned you from death to life. He pulled you out of the pit and put your feet on a rock. It was all his work. But here's what's awesome about the Christian life.

Whenever we are saved, we get a chance to join God in this mysterious work, and it really is mysterious, where we get a chance to apply ourselves and God is moving in our life and this is how we get a chance to grow in the Christian life. And that's what I want to talk to you guys about today. Listen, it's back to school weekend. It's time to reset some rhythms. The summer's been all out of wax, been crazy, people been traveling, all that. Okay, now we're back and it's time to put the big rocks in and let's grow together.

Guys, you grow in the Christian faith very similar ways that you grow in other things in your life. If you're a business person, if you're an athlete, you're going to understand this, okay? It's inputs and outputs.

It's lead measures and lag measures. It's the things that you focus on here to get where you want to get there. I don't know if, okay, let's just say I wanted to run a marathon, which I don't, okay?

And I don't know if any of you do, but whatever, all right? If I wanted to, which I don't, okay, I don't wake up every day and think about the end game all day long. I don't think marathon, marathon, marathon, marathon. What I do is I wake up in the morning and I think I want to get to the marathon. Today is the three miler. Today I'm doing sprints.

Today I've got to do this workout routine. It's inputs and outputs. And this is what I want to talk to you about in your Christian growth today.

You know, if you want to grow, if you want to be different in a year than you are now, what we need to think is, I want to grow. That motivates me back to the inputs, to the lead measures, to the things we're going to do day in, day out to get a different outcome in our life. And I think we get an awesome picture of this in 1st Timothy 4. Let's just start walking through this, all right? Here's what it says, now the spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and the teachings of demons.

This is serious. Through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer. The first thing that we see here, and I just want to do a 30,000 foot for a second, okay, because this is what 1st Timothy 4 is all about. If I want to boil this whole thing down, I would say something like this, if you want to grow in your life, you need to be devouring and consuming the truth. The inputs are, how are we putting the truth in our life? Look what it said here, some depart from the faith by devoting themselves to lies. The dangerous part here is that we would end up getting off track because we do not have a good steady diet of truth.

I want to kind of set up a silly illustration here, okay, and I know it's silly on the front end, but I think it actually helps this thing pop. What Paul is engaging here and writing to Timothy about is this idea, there are those who are taking lies, deceit, teachings of demons, they are disseminating it among God's people, and because of what they are doing, people are getting led astray. There are people who are doing this on purpose.

There are people who are peddling in mistruths and deceit and teachings of demons. Here's the illustration, I want you to imagine your late night TV, you're driving down the road, you hear an ad on the radio, you guys hear stuff like this, and here's what it says, it says the new latest greatest workout plan, build muscle, lose fat, get to your ideal weight, and it's eating nothing but processed sugar and drinking soda. Okay, this is the ad, we can help you build rock-solid muscle, you can lose everything, here's the diet, you wake up in the morning, it's a bowl of nerd gummies. If you haven't had them, you should try them, okay? All right, you know, what is lunch? Lunch is Twinkies, okay? What are we doing for dinner?

Oh man, for dinner? Well, we got ice cream sandwiches for dinner, and then the big thing is, in the workout plan, you got to down an entire two liter of regular Coca-Cola right before bed, okay? So you got to drink it, and then you get into bed, and oh by the way, they're also telling you that this is a great plan, and it will also rock, you know, rock hard muscle, you're going to lose weight, and it builds back tooth enamel.

So if you got any teeth problems, you're good to go. Now, I know I'm being a little bit silly, but I want you to think about the early church, where there are some people coming up, and they are selling something that is not true. They are selling people on what our heart already wants to do. Guys, at the bottom of this, what they're selling is, you still need to work for your salvation, which is how every one of us are wired.

I mean, we like the idea of, I can be good enough to get to heaven, I just got an interest on me, you know, or I'm not as bad as everybody else, we love that one. So they're peddling in, here, eat all this sugar, you're gonna like it anyway. Here's the problem, and this is what I want you to see, and this is kind of, I know it's silly, but I think it helps. If someone was deceived by those lies, and by that way, if you went way down the nerd gummies and Twinkie road, okay, for a long time, what is the only thing to do? What is the only way back? I'm going to tell you what it is. The only way back is to stop going down that road and start eating what is right. So start drinking water, tracking your macros or whatever, okay? That's it.

There's not a whole lot else. If you're going down that road, you gotta stop, and then you turn yourself to the truth. Now, what am I saying here? Well, I think this is a good 30,000 foot way of understanding 1st Timothy 4, if you want to write this down. Stop devouring the lies and start devouring the truth. Stop devouring lies and feast on truth.

Now, could there already be some damage done? Maybe, but it's still the only way out. The only way out is to apply yourself to truth, and that's what we want to get into today. The inputs of applying ourselves to the truth so that we become a different person, practically speaking, if you're saved, God has already sees you as that, but you match that practically in your life years from now. Now, let's go back through this and just kind of walk through a little more verse by verse. Now, the spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to the sequel spirits and the teachings of demons.

That's very serious. They depart from something and they devote to something through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared. There are people that are peddling these things. Now, what is the lies? The lies are, so this is the nerd gummies and the Twinkies, if you will, okay? Essentially, what they're going to say is, add some stuff to the gospel.

What do they add into the gospel? Sounds a little foreign to us. Who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. Some of you say, well, that doesn't sound like something that would be appealing to me.

No, the appealing part is setting up a bunch of things that you can win in and you can put yourself up in front of other people. Well, I don't, at least, you know, I'm, hey, we don't do marriage in our sect of the faith, or we don't eat that like you guys do, or making ourselves better than everybody else. For everything created by God is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and by prayer. Now, verse one and two here, we see it very simply. There are those that will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to lies. There's a hard truth. There's a sobering truth. You've been in church your whole life, or this is your first time. You're one of our campuses today for the very first time.

Man, we shoot it straight, okay? Here's the deal. A lot of people are going to start down this Christianity road and not everybody's going to make it. There's going to be people that on the outside, the trappings of their life, man, I want to get a little better. I want to start down this road. I'm going to start reading my Bible.

I want to come to church. But actually, they don't, they do not have the inner change that we talk about. They have not fully submitted and surrendered themselves to God. And over time, that will out itself by them departing from the faith by devoting to lies. There will be things that they still want so bad in the world that they will eventually depart. Is this passage saying that people lose their salvation?

No, it's not. What it's saying is if someone is saved, they will always be saved if they were saved. But there's a lot of people that start down this road. Maybe even people that say that they're one thing and they're not. They depart from the faith, and what does it say? Look, people depart from the faith by devoting to lies. This is why at its core, a church like Mercy Hill is a word disseminating organization. The centerpiece of what we do is teaching the Bible. I mean, people are, you know, what does the church do about this social issue? What does the church do about this social issue?

I'm gonna tell you what we do. Generally speaking, we try to teach the Bible so much that individual people think rightly about stuff. But a lot of churches have gone down this road of, forget teaching the Bible, just get way more into social activism and all that. And they leave what we are supposed to be doing and what we're called to do.

Why? Because when people depart from the faith, it's because they devote to lies. So what we must do is put forth a diet of not nerd gummies, twinkies, but steak and potatoes.

It's got to be the meat. You could say it like this. Y'all, we live on a diet of truth. We feast on spiritual food that nourishes us and keeps us locked in to our purposes so that we don't become ones who are distracted and eventually departed from the faith. We've got to get into the word and teach the word. This is what we do at Mercy Hill. Listen, we come together every single weekend. We push people.

You need to be here, man. Like, you know, a podcast is not the same thing. You need to hear the word in community with other people. And then at three sessions a year, then we go into our groups and we break down what that word was practically for us in our life. We call it lecture lab. This is how we teach the word and disseminate the word.

And I don't know about you, but there's other things like this. We do family devotions in the home. We read our Bibles individually. You know, I've told you guys this before. Some people say, well, no one ever taught me how to read the Bible so I don't read the Bible. That's an excuse.

And you're living as a victim. Okay. I teach you how to read the Bible every single week. We take a chunk of scripture and we ask three questions. What does this mean?

What is it like? And what does it change? That's it. You read three chapters of the Bible every single day.

You will get through the whole Bible in a year. All right. So this idea of, well, no one ever taught me. Okay. Well, I just gave you some pretty good handles. Read three chapters of the Bible. Take you 15, 17 minutes.

All right. And ask those questions. And what does this mean?

Are there any illustrations? What is it kind of like in my life? What do I need to change because of what I read?

You got some pretty good handles now. My point is this. Now we preach, we do, you know, family devotion.

We do group. It's all in service of this idea that we would be people who are feasting on the truth. Now verse one and two, look what it said. It said that, you know, there's these deceitful teachings and, and a deceitful spirits and teaching of demons.

Look what it said in verse two. Through the insincerity of liars who are seared. There are people who pedal these things that pull people astray and they don't feel any kind of way about it because they've been seared. You guys ever seen something that is seared?

I mean, just seared. I, I don't want to throw my wife under the bus here. Okay.

But I'm about to. All right. So we, uh, I'll take Anna to a nice, she knows what I'm saying. I'll take Anna to a nice steak.

We go to Ruth, Chris, something like that. Oh yeah. She'll order that baby. Well done. And ask for ketchup. Okay. It's very embarrassing. You could take, you could take Powdersville, South Carolina.

You can take the girl out of Powdersville, South Carolina. Okay. No, I it's, it's funny to me, but you think about something that's seared. Okay. Maybe a little more seriously. You ever been burned before you ever like touch the stove or you, right.

You get burned and it hurts obviously, but whenever it starts to heal and it becomes what calloused seared, you don't feel anything anymore. And that's what's going on with these liars. They peddle false doctrine. They have no feeling about leading the church astray. They're peddling and pushing a sugar diet.

They probably know it. It will destroy your health. It will destroy your spiritual health. These lies and these demonic teachings abound.

Now I want to talk for just a minute about what this probably is. Look what it says in verse three again, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with Thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. Now for us, that's a little weird because in our, in our us, you know, in our day and age, the, the legalism, I know it's a churchy word, I'm gonna explain it.

The legalism probably doesn't look like you should ever get married and you're not allowed to eat this or that. Okay. Because I mean, it's just, it just looks different for us today, but I want to explain what this is.

All right. What they're pushing is this concept. Yes, Jesus. Yes. The cross. Yes. His substitution for you. Yes.

His blood. And you better be a good person by doing some stuff. And some of those things are, hey, forbidding marriage.

You've heard people say this right now. Paul talks about this. If you can stay single for the kingdom, stay single. But if you burn with passion, man, you, you ought to get married.

And the thing is, it's not bad. God created marriage. God created intimacy.

God created sexuality. I mean, this is, this is not something bad. It's something good that we can distort. I understand that. Food is the same way. All right. What they're, what they're saying is, well, we don't eat this.

We don't eat that. And what they're saying is, Hey, we are bet our group is better than your group or I am better than you because I choose not to eat this or choose not to eat that. And therefore I'm sort of at the head of the line. You know, what's at the heart of legalism. The heart of legalism is this idea that there is a giant list, a giant kind of line of people that one day God's going to let in his kingdom, but it's sort of like a baseball game at the grasshoppers. Only the first 500 get the prize.

They go in the gate. So I got to posture myself up against you by not getting married here, by eating certain foods there, by doing a bunch of moral stuff so that I'm in front of the line and I'm better than you because God's going to accept me, not just on the basis of what Christ has done for me, but he's going to accept me on the basis of Christ plus my works. Legalism is this, the reliance on conforming to morality for salvation. Salvation in this understanding is not a free gift of God because of Christ.

Salvation is yeah, sort of a gift and I'm a really good person. And so this is the things that it looked like. The legalist needs rules to be better than everybody else. Now I started thinking about groups of people that do this. I have a mentor kind of in leadership, a good friend of mine and here's what he told me one day. He said, man, people that are like CEOs or C-suite type, you know, business people, they're horrible about trying to out discipline one another. I said, I was like, what do you mean by that? He said, oh you get in a room with me and here's what you're going to find. Well, they'll start saying, well I get up this early in the morning. Oh well, I work till this time of night. Well I, you know, I spend this much money on my own personal coaching or I spend this much money on I don't eat this or I don't eat that and I mean it's just, you know, it turns into this constant sort of I'm out disciplining you.

I'm getting in the front of the line over you. And I thought about that and I was like, man, that ain't just CEOs. Anytime I'm with a group of pastors they're doing that. I mean in a lot of ways it's like, man, I mean maybe they don't mean it but it's sort of like, well I read this many books. How many books do you read? Well I get up this early in the morning.

Why? I, you know, I preach this amount of sermons and then I thought, okay, well CEOs and pastors are pretty jacked up. Then I thought, wait a minute, no, we all sort of do this in different areas, right? I mean we could do it in so many areas. I mean we got young families. How many of you have been in a conference?

No, don't raise your hand, okay. How many of you have been in a conversation that was sort of like it was about what someone's doing with their kids schooling but it kind of turned into they're making sure you know that they're doing something better than you, you know, or that they see as better than you? Well we're doing this kind of schooling. Well we're doing this kind of schooling or our kids would never have that much screen time, you know, or somebody says like, man, I, you know, in the Christian church, well I would never do that or I would never go on a trip like that because I give too much or I would never drive a new vehicle because it's pretentious or it's ways of posturing. You know what my favorite one is?

How many of us have seen this? People want to post on social media that they're taking a break from social media. I mean I'm taking a break but I need all of you to know that I'm better than you because I'm no longer gonna be on this platform or whatever. I mean, you understand what I'm getting at, right? The heart of wanting to posture up over someone else is the same heart of the legalist. Now, and legalism it's a little bit bigger deal because we're talking about salvation, right?

But it's kind of the same idea. It's saying Jesus plus I'm gonna get in the front of the line by doing this, not eating that, not getting married, whatever it is, and I think that we can be ones who do that too. Y'all, legalism isn't the only deceitful and demonic lie. There's cheap grace on, you could, you know, other lies, cheap grace, radical individualism, false political saviors, happiness over holiness. How many of us have heard that before? Well, God just wants me to be happy and so therefore I'm breaking all this stuff that doesn't have anything to do with the Bible but I'm living this way but I know God's blessing it because he wants me to be happy.

It's like we hear this kind of stuff all the time. They're deceitful lies and demonic teaching. Now, there are two parts to this passage, okay, and I've done the one. The one is in the books, okay? The first part is what are we talking about with the the diet of lies and things that hurt us? This is what we've been talking about.

Now we switch. If you've gone down the nerd gummies road, now you got to start devouring what is right and good for your health and that's what he says in verse six. Look what he says, if you put these things before the brothers you will be a good servant of Jesus Christ.

Christ Jesus, what is he saying? Put them before the brothers. Teach the brothers these things. There are lies. There's stuff about forbidding marriage. There's stuff about not eating things that God has made clearly for the good of of humanity. Those are lies and he's saying you need to put them before the brothers. Being, this is our word for today, being trained training in the words of faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed have nothing to do with these irreverent and silly myths. These things that people are saying that are not biblical they're not in accordance with the teachings of Christ have nothing to do with them and then he says the phrase that almost knocked me out. I mean I've read this before obviously but this is the part that just kind of knocks me out of the chair this week. Train yourself for godliness. Man we got to break this down.

There's a lot that we could talk about here but I think at the 30,000 foot level it's pretty much this. Guys if you want to come back from devouring lies or if you want to to guard yourself from the heartache and brokenness and all of that that will follow departing the faith from lies then you need to devour the truth and one of the ways he says kind of that idea of devouring the truth is training in godliness. Train in godliness. It will protect you from all these lies. So for some he's going to say hey train others and then he's going to say actually also train yourself.

Okay you train others and you train yourself. The doctrines of the scripture, the word is so important. Why? The bible gives us right answers to wrong doctrines. The wrong doctrines want to lead us to stray astray. The wrong things want to tell you hey it's okay to drink that two liter soda right before bed and you're going to be fine and it's not true and we know it's not true and the bible is here to help us understand what is true and to devour what is true. I keep using that word devour or nourish and train at the same time. You know why?

Because they're kind of a little bit overlapping. All right it's a little bit like training is a little bit the same kind of boat as this idea of taking in nourishment and so it's this idea man train on what is right. Now what is what does it mean to train? Okay it's funny the English language has got to be hard to learn as a second language because when I thought about this I was like what does it mean what does train mean? Well you can ride on a train. You have a train of thought. You can have a train of a robe.

How do these things have anything to do with each other? Okay and then the fourth one is the one we want to say today is we train. What does it mean to train? Training means to teach a particular skill or behavior through instruction over a period of time and we're going to just interplay this the rest of my time. We're going to talk about training others and training ourselves but but I just want to make sure we understand. All right we're not talking about salvation. We're talking about the part that comes after salvation which is the maturing process, the strengthening process, the training process, the becoming fully who God wants us to be process and he said you train you dedicate yourself to behaviors to things that will get you a skill that you can adopt that you can that you can learn that can become kind of part of who you are. This is what training is and I think for us we got to understand this today. I think some of us don't maybe get this but guys Christians are equally equally saved. I understand that but they are not equally trained.

The foot of the cross is level. I get that we are all saved like if you're a believer if you put his faith in Christ admit your sin believe in what he has done confess him as the lord of your life you're a Christian. I get that but a lot of Christians stay untrained and what we want to say today is no back to school weekend big rocks go in family group group commit yourself back to the flywheel get in the word are we training and one of the things I think we've got to say here is this y'all this about knocked me out of my chair when I when I was really kind of thinking about this because and I actually saw another passage today in Ezekiel that's very similar to this but here's what it says rather train yourself for godliness. I'm going to talk about training our kids here in just a minute but the first thing that I think we've got to get into is this idea every single person at our campuses as well I don't want to I'm not intentionally trying to rub people the wrong way today but if that happens a hit dog will holler as they say okay here here's what I here's what I think is very important for you to understand the bible is calling you to have the attitude and the hunger and the desire to say I want to be different in the year than I am now I want to be trained train yourself is what it said and I think we live sometimes in this victim culture that constantly wants to shirk responsibility and throw it on somebody else and here's what I mean how many of you heard this before well I was part of a church that just never discipled anybody you know my parents didn't they didn't disciple me I mean you know the people you know I I was part of that church but the preacher man he didn't you know he didn't he didn't I wasn't getting fed right I just I wasn't growing I'm not growing I didn't get this the church didn't do that and all this kind of stuff and what I want to talk to you about for just one minute today is okay that's fine they didn't they didn't they didn't there is no excuse for you not to grow spiritually there is no amount of it's somebody else's fault what you've got to do is take responsibility for this mysterious relationship that we get to be in with God almighty as he is growing us man he planted us he gave us a new heart he saved us if you're a believer and now over the course of our life and I don't care if you're third quarter fourth quarter or overtime there is no shelf life on this we are people who get a chance to grow and train in godliness and become more effective for the mission and more Christ-like every day every month year after year I know there's setbacks there's setbacks in any kind of training that you do people get injured people fall into I mean there it could be a stair step but over the course of our life do you take the responsibility to move forward when I when I talk like this I'm telling you when I talk like this what happens is some people get mad and other people get serious some people get mad they're like man I don't want to be I don't want you know I don't want all that responsibility thrown back on me I kind of like it better when it's everybody else's fault if I'm not growing right and people get mad and here's what happens you get mad you leave our church you go find some other church that'll tell it to you in a little softer way takes you two years to connect and by then you're not in the same place you are now you're further behind or you can get serious and what getting serious looks like is saying man I want to take and own the responsibility to have the attitude and apply myself to the inputs to grow spiritually to train for godliness so here's the application this weekend y'all it's very simple train for godliness train for godliness there's obviously an athletic analogy here when he gets into verse eight here's what he says while bodily training is of some value godliness is of value in every way as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come what he's saying is very simple the body matters okay like we don't just treat our body any kind of way but the spirit matters even more and what god is saying to us through this passage is train your spirit godliness train in godliness now here's my question for you today you know if you if you're like hey you're awakening and a desire god is awakening this through the word today i want to train i want to be hungrier i want to have drive for godliness man i want to want to read my bible and all this kind of stuff okay then what do you do because this is where this is where we got to make sure we understand some answers to that might be well it's the football coach it's already come out at me today it's like well you got to find a way you know make a way when there's not a way or whatever man i'm gonna tell you that that if you're like i want to want i want to train but i just how do i do that all right you know you're not really going to be able to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps forever like that what you need is for god to do something in your heart and he has set up a system by which our heart becomes warmed to him and we can grow it's not just do better try harder okay actually you know it'd be like this many of us might even be living like this you ever seen a balloon that's blown up with air what do you got to do to get it to fly you got to smack it boom you hit it up in the air and it's flying high and then it starts to fall and then boom you hit it again it goes way up in the air then it starts to fall many of us live our christian life like that you know boom we hit it up in the air when we come to church on sunday and i'm flying high for about a day and a half and then i start kind of floating back down and then boom i got to do something else i gotta i gotta try to guilt myself shame myself fear myself you know what if what if god i'm trying to get myself up on my bootstraps and boom and it's just kind of this ever up and down up and down up and down of course the other way to do it is to take the air out of the balloon put the helium in the balloon and just sort of let it do what it does and that's what i want to talk to you about if you want to grow and you want to be one who wants to train spiritually and get better than what you do you don't just say i got to do better what you got to do is look at verse 9 8 right here and realize this here's what it says godliness is of value in every way listen as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come what is that what are the promises for the present life and for the life to come see what i want to tell you to do is don't just try harder and get better what i want you to do is think about the promise that god has given us in the gospel you know one of the greatest promises that jesus ever gave us and this is one of my i grew up with this my whole life my dad's favorite bible verse john 10 10 jesus came to give us life and that more abundantly the degree to which you devote yourself and believe that what god has come to give you in the gospel is the fullest life the abundant life in this life and in the one to come if you believe that it will bleed back into a desire to want to do the stuff that's what it is man i'm not doing all this stuff so that one day god will accept me and i'm afraid that he's going to kick me out if i don't do it no no no i believe that the abundant life of walking with god in a purposeful mission is so good that it bleeds back into the things that i do today and tomorrow and the day after that i you guys watched the olympics i'm sure i was watching one of the track athletes she won a gold and what she said i think her race was like on august 14th and she said for the last year of my life everywhere i look i've written two numbers 8 14 8 14 if i look at my journal 8 14 if i look at my phone 8 14 when i wake up in the morning on the mirror in the bathroom 8 14 in her mind she was setting this thing up to say everything about what i'm going to do today is because of how awesome that day is going to be when i stand on the podium now here's the cool thing the potential of her winning bled back into her training but you and i don't have a potential of winning we have a promise about the abundant life now and the abundant life that is to come for all eternity man jesus christ came he took the penalty of our sin on the cross he gives us the opportunity by his life death and resurrection to come into a relationship with him man we admit that we are sinners separated from god we believe in what he has done not us and we say god you're going to be the lord of my life we confess him as the lord of our life and we become saved now we have a promise of the abundant life here and the one that is to come and to the extent of which we believe that we will be motivated to all of the input so two things that i'm done all right the first one is this man are you training yourself do you believe about that abundant life here and the one is to come so much to this it's it's it's i want to i'm going to train myself i want to be in the word man i want to grow in my christian life at mercy hill we call this the axe to fly well i want you guys to see it gather group give go what we say at mercy hill is this christian growth uh you know is simple that doesn't mean that it's easy something can be simple and also difficult okay but it ain't complicated man if we gather together two services not one man come serve one attend one don't teach your kids to receive without giving all right let's let's come to two services on the weekend let's be in a group let's talk about hey we're going to be in a relationship with other people let's learn to give of our time talent treasure and and let's be on mission man let's think about signing up for a mission trip let's serve at some of our local partners here let's think about inviting people strategically to church because we love them and we're friends with them you do these things and you will move in the current now some of you and especially millennial and gen z okay some of you are like but some of those things i don't feel like doing every single day and if i don't feel like it then it's not authentic well let me tell you all right i guarantee that athlete that had 814 written everywhere there were days in the wind and the rain and the soreness i guarantee you there were days she didn't want to get up and go all right something about that end goal though it provided it here's my point sometimes even these things for me can be duty until they are delight all right and and if you need to apply yourself to the duty part of it i mentioned that with running okay um so you know people that run a lot they love to run okay i bet the first run they ever did it wasn't that way they they love that over time people talk about the runner's high i never quite got there i've done nothing but runner's lows okay um so i never got all the way there but i do i do think this i i thought about this okay when i was a kid eating meatloaf was a total duty okay i don't know about you guys now that the greatest meal in all the triad is the meatloaf from lucky 32 okay i'm gonna tell you right now but you got to know when it's there because it's seasonal to which i've always asked what season is a meatloaf okay i don't know how that's seasonal you take a little bit of that meatloaf and you put it on your head and your tongue will slap your brains out okay it's that good i it's a delight now it was a duty at one time some some of us admit okay i'm gonna get up tomorrow and read here's what i want you to see these veteran wiley christians that you need to know in this church that have been walking with jesus for like 30 years 40 years you know what some of them is you know what the best part of the world is some for them some of the most sweet fun the best 30 45 minutes of their day is the part that right now you might call duty but for them it's delight because god has moved in their life and they become more mature so i would tell you man it's not this whole thing i'm in authentic or whatever no and sometimes you got to apply yourself to the inputs even if you don't love it that day and over the course of time and god will bring you the delight and the love and the love and the course of time may god will bring you the delight in these things second thing final thing are you training others now we could talk a lot about training others okay but i think it's important for us on back to school weekend to turn this thing y'all we had 150 kindergartners across all of our campuses today we praise god for every single one of them and the families that they represent this church is bursting with young families which is awesome for us to see all right so here's the deal let's talk about training kids for just one second parents you're training yourself do you have that desire okay what about training them i do this illustration about once a year and it's uh it's awesome it helps us it's also a little bit depressing i'm gonna tell you that right on the front of it okay but here's the deal many of you guys know where i'm going with this because you've seen this before when your child is born you have about you have about 936 weeks with them every rock represents a week it's all the right numbers you have 936 weeks until they move out and go to college i mean i know not everybody's gonna do that but let's just say you know that's the track for them all right it's a lot of weeks weekend week out what are we doing with those weeks you know if your child was just in kindergarten today they were one of these commissioners you know how many you got left you ain't got but 676 weeks that are left with them before they move out are we redeeming the time are we buying up the time that we have with them let's just move on down the line here it gets more depressing as we go okay um you know sixth grade 364 weeks ninth grade 200 weeks guys if they just started their senior year you get i mean do the math you ain't got the 52 weeks until they're out until they're gone until they go to college now i know listen we parent our entire life okay i fully understand that if you're a parent man i get that so it's not like they're gone forever i mean i don't but the deal is are we going to redeem these weeks that are right in front of us last week's gone next week's coming please make it make a plan visit the parent resource center on our website do your family devotion man get them involved i want you to think about you know what you want to say well how do i redeem these weeks i'm going to tell you how put them in the house put them in the flywheel they need to be here on the weekend man they got a ball tournament be here on thursday i mean do do something you know figure it out like make it a priority in in your life they need to have christian friends i think sometimes parents feel a little weird about trying to help their kids in that area don't it's part of us guiding them man let's try to put them around the right people teach them to give have a get i don't care if your child's 10 12 years do they have a give envelope when they make money when they work around the house are they giving things away let's get them on the mission and teach them about the mission i think some of us have this approach i'll finish with this some of us have this approach where we think like man the christian life is these big hail mary throws it's these big dazzling things you know it's really not the football analogy it's the handoff right up the middle pound it right up the middle play after play after play it's taking a little bit of ground every single day that's the approach um there were you know in night in the early late 1800s early 1900s there was a race to the south pole and uh the guy who won the race was a guy named runald admussen uh at munson all right and he was a guy that man he was an explorer south pole no this was crazy i mean you're talking about 600 miles into the you know into the antarctic and all this stuff there were two different approaches one team approached it like this if it's a really good weather day we're going to try to make like 60 miles i mean we're going to bust it as hard as you can the whole time and when it's bad weather we're going to sit we're going to rest so it was very like go stop go stop right not admunson admunson said no what we're going to do is we're going to make 20 miles a day no matter what the weather is if it's a clear day and we hit 20 and we feel great doesn't matter we're going to stop and if it's a horrible day and it's a blizzard and you can't even see we're going to grind it out and we're going to make 20 miles and had munson got his people all the way to the south pole in 34 days the other team never even made it the reason i bring that up is this hey we get a chance to be motivated by god's grace to come into the weeks that are coming next week man it's one of these rocks and how are we going to leverage the time with these kids that we have in our house we got a week coming right so let's leverage that time 20 miles a day ain't got to be more all right let's just go day after day after day let's pray father we come before you and lord we ask right now god that you will just bless our prayer time here and father i pray that our church would be incredibly motivated by your grace we do have a role in training ourselves and lord i pray that we would all have a desire to hunger to be different people in a year from now than we are now in christ and we pray amen well hey guys in all of our campuses today man i think you probably understand what we're going to do in our prayer time but our prayer time together today is going to be hey if you're if you got a family if you got kids man let's let's let's let's try i know there's going to be different campuses different space issues but the best we can man let's bring those kids down here and let's pray over them they're going into high school they're tough they're facing tough things man let's pray that they can be a light let's let's pray and commit that we're going to train them in godliness so you guys can come forward and do that during our last during our last song on all of our campuses let's stand together