College Students' Impact - 2 Timothy 2:1-4 - Make And Multiply

All right, good morning. Hey, can we just thank God for that video and what God is doing? Hey, if I haven't met you, my name is Pastor Bobby, and we are going to be in week three of this sermon series Make and Multiply. If you are not here the first two weeks, we've been passing out booklets we have for the sermon series. So, as you can see, our volunteers are here.

Just pop up your hand and they'll get you a booklet if you don't have one. Hey, I am looking forward to today because here's what we're going to do today. We're going to celebrate what God has been doing in our college ministry as we see in that video. The other thing that we're going to do, we're all going to be challenged to ask the question, what does it look like to be all in for Jesus?

What does it look like to live a life that is all in for Jesus? You see, God has done so many amazing things in our college ministry over the last 12 years. Almost 700 college students baptized, which is unbelievable when you think about it. About a third of everybody that we've sent out of our church on mission, missionaries, church planters, you name it, have come from the college campus, and God has really done an incredible thing. But the thing that makes that go forward is what you just saw on that video, that our college students would say, Jesus, I'm all in for you.

And so that's what we're going to be talking about today. You see our college students, that age group, you know, 15 to 25, is so unique and it's one of the greatest assets for the mission of God. Because when you think about it, most movements all around the world kind of start on the back of college students, because there's something unique about that stage of life that allows them, good or bad, to say, I'm going to be all in on this thing that I'm doing. I recently heard a story, a guy by the name of Don Graves, he's 100 years old, and he fought in World War II on the island of Iwo Jima, 600 miles off the coast of Japan towards the end of the war, one of the deadliest United States battles, and 400 people in his company hit the island and 38 men from his company got off the island. And he was one of those. And, you know, what he was talking about in the interview, like everybody they were fighting, everybody that was in his company, they were all young people, you know, they were all 18 to 22 years old. And he made a statement that just struck me. He said, only young men can fight wars.

And his point was, you're not going to convince, you know, a bunch of 41-year-old men to fight that war. There's something unique about the heart of young people, movements both good and bad all around the world. And so today what I want to do is, one, celebrate what God is doing among the young people here at Mercy Hill, but then also encourage all of us, hey, what God is doing here is extremely unique, and, you know, through this whole deeper initiative, would we continue to invest in what God is doing among our college students?

Because there are so many churches that beg God and pray and ask that God would even bring young people to their church. And the fact that at Mercy Hill there are hundreds of young people that God has given us to steward, to take care of, to help to give towards that ministry so that we could see them sent out on the mission of God. We're going to be in 2 Timothy chapter 2 today, verse 1 through 4. And it's funny, after our Thursday night service, somebody came up to me and said, hey, any time you preach at Mercy Hill, they always give you the really weird passages. And today is a really normal passage.

So I don't know what that means, but I'm like, okay, thank you for a normal passage today. So 2 Timothy chapter 2, verse 1 through 4. Here's why I'm excited about this passage.

So it's one of the only places in the Bible that it specifically kind of has a message for young people. Like, it's noted in 2 Timothy, so Paul, Apostle Paul, is towards the end of his life. He's in jail.

He's not going to be living that much longer. He's run the race, you know, like he's getting to the very end. He's writing to Timothy, the super young leader in the church, super young guy. But also, Timothy's been given a lot of responsibility in terms of his leadership and what's going on in his life. And so Paul is writing to him to say, hey, this is what it looks like to be all in for Jesus.

You know, this is what it looks like to truly live out your faith. One of the reasons this excites me so much, because when you think about Mercy Hill, I did the math on this about two months ago. You know, that weekend at church, we maybe had 33, 3400 people attend. And I did the math, and I think a third of those that attended that weekend were 21 years or under at Mercy Hill.

So wrap your mind around that. Around 1100 people at our church that are 21 years and under. Like I said, so many churches pray that God would bring them young people, and we have so many of them at Mercy Hill. And so, man, I just hope that we would steward them as a church, and we would even follow their faith of being all in for the mission of God. So that's what Paul is going to do today. He's going to paint the picture for all of us of what it looks like to be all in on Jesus.

And here's the big idea. Following Jesus requires us to be all in for Jesus. I know sometimes we think there's this kind of halfway following Jesus, but what we're going to see today is like, hey, no. Like following Jesus requires us to be all in. It's going to be challenging today, not because I'm challenging everybody, but because the Bible is challenging all of us in terms of what it actually looks like to follow Jesus.

It's funny, a couple days ago, my son, my youngest son, Jude, I have three boys, my youngest son, he's eight. He said, Dad, what are you preaching on? I said, I'm preaching on what it looks like to be all in for Jesus. And he goes, oh, like Pastor Andrew? And I was like, that's awesome. That's so honoring for Pastor Andrew.

But then I was like, hey, bud, what about me? Pastor Andrew, the first person that comes to mind, you think of somebody all in for Jesus? But when he said that, he kind of betrayed something we all think, which is people that are in ministry or people that are pastors, they're the ones that are all in for Jesus.

And the rest of us are just kind of a little bit more chill with the whole thing, you know? But what we're going to see in the Bible is, no, there's only one way to follow Jesus, and that's being all in on Jesus. So if you want to write this down on the front of our sermon, we're going to kind of take three turns today, and it's going to be this.

We're going to look at our strength, then we're going to look at our mission, and then we're going to look at our identity. It's kind of the three turns in the passage. Remember, when Paul's painting this picture, what does it look like to be all in for Jesus?

These are the three turns this text is going to make, and then we're just going to have one big takeaway today. So let's go ahead and jump into the text, 2 Timothy 2, verse 1 through 4. Paul says this to Timothy. He says, You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that's in Christ Jesus.

And what you've heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, I want you to entrust to faithful men who are going to be able to teach others also. Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus, and then verse 4, No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. So as he's painting this picture of what it looks like to have a life that's all in, in verse 1, he says, Be strengthened by the grace that's in Christ Jesus. So the first takeaway here is our strength comes from the grace of Jesus. So you can imagine Paul saying, Hey Timothy, hey college student, hey Mercy Hill, if you want to live the life that I've lived, you know, Paul has seen a lot of amazing things, but he's also seen a lot of horrifically hard, tough, bad things in his life, and he's kept the faith.

He's now sitting in jail. Hey, if you want to live that sort of life, the point that he's making here in verse 1 is you're going to have to find a strength that's outside of yourself. You're going to have to find a strength that's outside of yourself, because here's the thing.

Timothy was probably experiencing this because he had a lot of people that were questioning his leadership and all this different stuff that was going on. Leadership can be hard, ministry can be hard, just life in general can be hard, and we're all going to get to a point in life where we just have this moment. I mean, you could be in kindergarten and have this moment where you realize life is requiring for me more strength in this moment than I have.

So what do we do in that moment? I think a lot of times the human experience is we do one of two things. Number one, what a lot of people do is we just try to cope with that, right? I have fear, I have anxiety, I have this trauma from my past, whatever it may be.

I have this heart, I'm suffering physically, mentally, emotionally, whatever it may be. I have this thing going on in my life, and so I got to figure out a way to just kind of numb it, cope with it, just kind of, it doesn't solve it, right? Like when you're coping, it doesn't, hey, I got to have two drinks before I go to bed at night, otherwise I can't sleep because of all the stuff that's going on in my life. We got to figure out a way to cope with the problems in our life, but a lot of times coping leads to this kind of negative spiral, right? Where you have an issue, maybe you have anxiety or depression, now you add a second issue with what you're doing to try to cope with it.

And this is just the reality of the world we live in. I read a stat one-third of college students and teenagers are on antidepressants and in counseling. There's a lot of trying to deal with what's going on in our life in the world. And so there's some healthy coping stuff we can do, obviously, but a lot of what people do is just really unhealthy coping to try to forget about for a couple hours, forget about the hard stuff in my life. Well, the second thing that people do, and I'm just, we're all humans, I mean, we all understand this, there's a lot of these type of people at Mercy Hill. The second thing that we do, we're like, okay, I'm not strong enough to deal with life, so I need to get stronger. I got to figure out a way to overcome what it is that life is throwing at me, right?

These are the type A sort of personalities in the world, right? I'm going to listen to some podcasts, read some books, have some more motivation in my life because I got to have stronger shoulders to deal with whatever it is that life is throwing at me, right? We've probably all been down that road. I've certainly been down that road.

I would just ask this question, though, thinking about strength. What do we do when neither of those things are enough? What do we do then when no amount of coping is enough and we're not strong enough to overcome whatever it is that we're dealing with? I'll be a little transparent with you all today. You have to make me a promise, though, okay? Before I share this with 3,000 people, you would be willing to be honest and vulnerable with yourself, with what you have going on in your life, maybe something that you're having a hard time with. So at the beginning of this year, four months before, I had just turned 40, right? And, you know, sometimes people, there's a weird biological clock where people start dealing stuff when they turn 40.

I don't know if this is just a problem with men or I don't know. But I had not thought about this idea one day in my life until the beginning of this year, living my life and then just starting to realize, like, I'm more irritable, I'm more tired, I'm more fatigued. Like, what is going on? And then I suddenly had this light bulb moment and I was like, I'm having a midlife crisis here. You know, this is four months after I turned 40. I was like, oh, my goodness, never even thought about a midlife crisis before. So what do I do?

I go to Google. Seriously, true story. Why do men have midlife crisis at 40 years old? And a YouTube video pops up, you know, and this guy has made his whole YouTube channel, millions of followers, on why men have midlife crisis. I'm like, that's perfect.

That's who I need. Watch the video. It's like 10-minute overview video, okay? The video is like, man, three reasons why men have midlife crisis. And this goes from kind of, you know, funny and lighthearted to not funny and not lighthearted. Reason number one, he's like, a lot of times when you're 40, you've gotten to this age where your parents are beginning to really struggle with their health. And I'm like, man, you know, my dad three years ago, 67, he's a mountain of a man, green beret, special forces, swam across the English Channel, 67, diagnosed with Alzheimer's. You know, and watching him and then watching my mom go through this, I'm like, all right, check, box number one.

Well, then he makes the point. He said, hey, a lot of times at 40, just how life works, if you have kids, the problems you're dealing with, it's not dirty diapers and sleepless nights anymore. You're starting to deal with some real stuff with your kids, stuff that you wish you can go back to sleepless nights and dirty diapers.

Because these are real issues that are going on. And I'm like, all right, box number two, check. And then he's like, you know, if you're blessed in life to have leadership and to have a good job or vocation, you know, when you're in your 20s, like you didn't have a ton of responsibility.

You were an intern or whatever. Well, a lot of times you get into your 40s, you're starting to get to sort of the height of your career. And even if it's really great stuff that's going on, it's a lot more on your shoulders than you were dealing with 20 years prior. And I'm like, check that box. I'm having a midlife crisis here.

Oh, my goodness. And what I learned through the experience is, you know what a midlife crisis is? There's more going on in life than you have strength to handle. You don't got to be 40. You could be 10. You could be 40.

You could be 90. Any time that we're faced with something in life where, hey, there's more than I can handle, it's like, okay, what do we do with that? Coping's not enough.

Trying to get stronger is not enough. Well, he provides for us here in verse one a different way to deal with that. And what does he say? He says, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

What does he mean by this? A lot of times we think of grace, we think of this unmerited favor, okay? And that is one of the primary ways that the Bible uses grace. This would be Ephesians 2.8. For by grace you've been saved through faith.

This is not your own doing. It's the gift of God. So we can't earn our salvation, right? We can't work hard enough.

We can't be good enough. That's what grace is. It's totally unmerited.

We did not earn it. God was willing to give us that gift through Jesus dying on the cross for us. So grace has unmerited favor. But the second way the Bible uses grace, and hopefully this will really kind of open our eyes to what this passage is talking about, the second way the Bible uses grace is grace as this supernatural power that's working in our life.

The supernatural power to deal with difficulty, to deal with suffering, to just deal with what's going on in life. Some of you may remember this passage from 2 Corinthians chapter 12. Paul is talking about having this thorn in his flesh. We don't exactly know what it is, but it's one of Paul's kind of great difficulties in his life. Paul's the one that's writing this to Timothy. And he's asking God to take away this thorn in the flesh, but God won't take it away.

And in fact, what God tells Paul is this. My grace, is this a different use of the word grace? My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. And then Paul's takeaway from that is, man, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then I'm content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. And then he says, for when I am weak, then I am strong.

What is he getting at? When we surrender our weaknesses, our problems, the stuff that's going on in our life, and we say, God, I don't have enough strength. There's not enough coping that I can do. There's not enough overcoming that I can do. God, I have this thing that I don't know how to deal with it without you. I can't stop being anxious.

You know, maybe college students. I can't stop partying. I can't stop worrying. Maybe I'm addicted to pornography.

Right? I can't deal with being lonely anymore. I have this trauma from my past that feels like it just keeps haunting me. I can't deal with this stuff.

And I would just say, you're right. You can't deal with it. And that's the point here that I think is being made, that you have to find the strength outside of yourself when your problems become too big for you to deal with. You've got to surrender your weakness to Jesus. Here's the thing.

God doesn't help people who are strong but people who are weak. This is hard. It's hard as Americans. It's hard as type A sort of people that when something's wrong, I want to fix it.

Right? I want to get better. I want to deal with it. I want to find things that we can't deal with without this supernatural grace that Jesus offers us. And to live a life that's all in on Jesus, I promise you we're going to come to the place where we realize I'm not strong enough to actually do that. And I just pray that we would tap into that supernatural grace in that moment. The second thing, the second turn here in these verses, to be all in for Jesus is to be on mission for Jesus.

Look at what he says. What you've heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, I want you to entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. Our mission is to share our faith with others. We want to complicate this.

It is not complicated. What he's saying is, hey, at some point, you know, somebody shared with you, so I want you to go share with somebody else. Do we understand what he's saying?

Hey, he talks about this in chapter one. Timothy's grandmother was a believer, and his mom was a believer. You know, so we see the importance of, you know, discipleship and talking about our faith within our home. And he's basically just making the point, hey, Timothy, you know, you heard from your grandmother, you heard from your mom, you heard from me, right, in front of many other people.

What you have heard, take that and go share that with somebody else. You could preach multiple sermons on this, right? You could talk about church leadership and being a pastor and leader in ministry and all this stuff. But the most simple version is, hey, as believers that are all in, we need to simply be sharing our faith with others. And we may feel like, I don't know the Bible, you know, I'm not trained to do that or whatever.

I'm not saying that stuff's not important. But at the very heart of it, we just gotta share with other people what God is doing in our life. Man, this is how Jesus has changed my life, has affected me, has changed my heart, and we just share that with other people. That's how the gospel has been going forward for 2,000 years. That is how God has uniquely been working in our college ministry. When Mercy Hills started, we met at Burmill Park, if any of y'all know where that's at, you know, in North Greensboro, a long way away from any college campus. And we launched the church 12 years ago there, a little bit more than 12 years ago, and college students started coming. And at first it was just a couple, and then it was a lot, and you'd be shocked at how many people can fit in one car when you're a college student. And they would begin to show up, and they're just like pouring out of the cars, and it's like, what was happening? Right? They were starting to get baptized and like real supernatural life change, and they were sharing with one another.

That's it, right? Not the most trained, not the most like, I know the whole Bible, no. Like God was doing something in them, and they were sharing that with their friends. That's how the gospel goes forward. And even recently, God has been doing a supernatural work in our college ministry.

I mean, we can't get over this. Two weeks ago, 38 students in one week were baptized in our college ministry. And I asked Pastor Dan, I said, hey, try to, can you just like simplify for me what you feel like is going on? Like, what is happening?

That ministry has almost doubled in the last year. Like, what do you feel like is going on? And he said, here's the deal. I feel like our students believe that God wants to save their friends, and they believe that God wants to use them in helping to do that. Like, that's it.

That's what's happening. That's why 38 students get baptized in one week. And that is this passage, right? Man, I shared with you, go share with somebody else. And if God is commanding us to do that, believe that God wants to do that.

You know, I understand. I have felt jaded at times of sharing and not seeing life change and not seeing people believe, but if God's commanding us to do it, you know God is gonna work through that and you know that He wants to do that. I remember the first time that I was really struck by how all-in college students can go. You know, I was a teenager when I became a Christian, and this was in college and I had a friend of mine that he mentored and discipled me. I had never been on a mission trip before. And he said, hey, I want you to go on this mission trip with me.

This was 2003. I said, awesome. He said, we're gonna go to Afghanistan.

Seriously. He's like, we're gonna go to Afghanistan for the week. We're gonna do a one-week trip to Afghanistan right in the middle of the war that's going on there. And I was like, all right, let's do it. I was young, didn't even think anything about it. A 41-year-old me, I think, would have some bigger reservations now.

And that's just the reality of life. I was like, let's do it. And we get there and we go to northern Afghanistan.

If any of you have ever seen the movie 12 Strong or read the book 12 Strong, we're in that exact area. And we were at this nonprofit, basically. These missionaries were working. And there's a bunch of college students there. And I met a group of them that were, in the next couple of days, they were driving to sneak themselves across the border of Iran to go share their faith in Iran.

These are 19-year-old, 20-year-old college students. And it just struck me. I'm like, I don't know that there's many people that you could convince to go do that.

And it just struck me. This is a picture of, man, they're all in for what they feel like Jesus is calling them to do. And so I would just say, for all of us that are part of Mercy Hill, man, let us really finish Deep or Strong to be able to invest in our college ministry. Because when I think about my own personal finances and what God has given us, I'm like, I can't think of a better investment than investing in that. You invest in a college student who comes to Christ and wants to leverage their life to be all in. What is the return on that?

What is the impact on that across the next 50 years? And so I would just encourage all of us that we would think about, man, how am I investing in the next generation? All right, the third turn that we see in this passage, and this is where we're gonna spend the rest of our time together, is this. Being all in is being a soldier of Christ Jesus. Our identity is that of a soldier of Christ Jesus. Look at verse three and four. He tells Timothy this. Sharon's suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.

No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. All right, we're gonna camp out here, and I'm just gonna ask that all of us would ask God and have the Spirit to say, God, would you open our heart and would you open our eyes to this truth that's in the Bible here? This isn't me challenging you.

This is the Bible challenging all of us. Because look, here's the reality. We all know this. We live in a very soft world. We live in a very cushy world.

We have Amazon, we have the internet, we have air conditioning. It's a very soft world compared to the last 5,000 years. This image that Paul is using is not a very soft image.

It is as far from the opposite of that as you can imagine. But it's as true for us today as it was 2,000 years ago. And that's why I say we need God to open our hearts and open our eyes to hear what it is that God is trying to teach us. So why does he use this image of following Jesus is like being a soldier? One, for many of us, following Jesus is like being a member at the YMCA. We go when we want. It offers us some value. Maybe we meet some great people there, helps us get more healthy in life.

It's really as simple as that, right? This is not the image of being a YMCA member that Paul is giving here. He's giving this image that living for Jesus means being all in the way that a soldier is all in.

What is unique about being a soldier? When you're in, you're all in. How often? All the time. Are you ever not in?

No, you are all in all the time. Can you be a civilian and a soldier? No, you cannot be a soldier and a civilian.

You cannot be both of these. I remember when I was in college, I kind of came to be an adult when the global war of terror started. This was September 11, 2001. I was a freshman in college when that happened.

Obviously, the U.S. was at war for the next 20 years after that in Iraq and Afghanistan. I remember very early on, I had a good buddy in college. He went to the University of Florida. I went to the University of Central Florida.

His name was Greg. He was just a regular college student, but he happened to be in the National Guard. I remember him telling me, he's like, hey, I think they're going to send me to war. My 19-year-old mind, I'm like, there's no way.

You're in a fraternity, you go to football games, you're just a college student. There's no way. There's no way they're going to send you to war. Well, two months later, he's on the border of Kuwait about to drive a truck into Iraq. And why do I bring up that point?

Because it paints the picture of the image of what a soldier is. If your wife's pregnant, do you get to delay going overseas? Nope.

About to get married? Nope. Have you kids? Nope. Something going on in your life?

Nope. When you are in, you are all in all the time. Being a soldier means that you've signed your life over.

That is the reality that he's trying to get us to see. And obviously, that starts with following Jesus for the first time. Because when you follow Jesus for the very first time and you believe for the very first time, here's what you've got to believe. Jesus, I believe that you died for me, you were buried for me, you were resurrected for me. I don't deserve that because I have all this sin and stuff in my life, but you're willing to exchange places with me. You take my sin and death, I take your righteousness and what you deserve for eternity, and this trade happens.

Right? But to step into that, you have to step into that by saying, I fully believe Jesus and I'm giving my entire life over to you. That's why when we baptize people at Mercy Hill, the questions we ask them, do you believe that Jesus has done everything necessary for your salvation? Yes. Will you go wherever he tells you to go, will you do whatever he tells you to do? That's the starting place to follow Jesus. If you've been in the military, right, you're like, Roger that, I got the image.

Like, I got the image. This is very clear. There's a 100% absolute submission to the military. And I think as we think about being a soldier, just sort of an aside, I really truly, this is totally an aside, I really don't think we thank the veterans of the United States enough. I mean, like I said, I kind of grew up on the global war on terror. 7,000 soldiers over that 20-year period lost their lives in war, right? 150,000 took their own lives through suicide. Another 150,000 have died through drug or alcohol overdose.

So 300,000 in the last 20 years, I'm like, I don't understand why all politicians are not talking about that. That's the toll, that's the cost for many of them because they go all in on being a soldier, and because America's been at war for 20 years, that's had some pretty serious repercussions. It paints a pretty serious picture of what being all in means. And then he notes this. We all got the image of what it means to be all in.

Then he notes this. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. So to be a soldier means to be all in. There's these wants and desires that can be pictured as civilian pursuits, just all the things in life, the worries and family and job and money, just all the things that we all deal with all the time. What Paul is saying is you cannot be primarily focused on that and primarily focused on being a soldier.

Something has to take priority. What is actually going to be first in your life? Here's the way that Jesus paints this picture. If you're ready to be offended, you're going to be even more offended, okay? In Matthew 10, what does Jesus say? We always think of Jesus being so passive. It's like, man, whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. It's coming out of the mouth of Jesus. Whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take his cross and follow me, he's not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it. Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

Here's the point that it's making. When you are a soldier, Jesus is first. It's not saying all these other things aren't important, your kids, your marriage, finances, everything, but something in your life has to be first. And the picture that is being painted is to follow Jesus, he has to be first. You don't have a choice but to be all in.

I remember when my wife and I first started following Jesus, we had people around us, and maybe you've experienced this, they were like, it's awesome you found religion. You're going to be good people, it's great, you're getting some morality in your life. They're like, just don't be too serious about it or too radical about it. And at the time I was like, I don't know a whole lot about this whole thing, but I don't think there's a big choice here. I think you're kind of like all in or you're not all in, right? Can you imagine saying to a soldier, like man, be a soldier, but man, if they're going to send you to the desert, make sure they send you in the fall, because it's pretty nice there in the fall.

And the fighting kind of stops in the winter because of all the snow, so just make sure you don't get sent there in the spring or the summer. It's like, well, I don't think it works that way. I think there's a pre-commitment when you're in that you're all in, right? That's the commitment that you make. And let me say this about following Jesus. I don't want us to think, oh, this is just duty or whatever. It's like, no, we get to make the choice.

We're not drafted into Jesus' army. Every single one of us needs to determine in our own hearts, is that the life I want to live? Has Jesus done enough for me in his death, burial, and resurrection that I'm going to put him first over everything else? I have a wonderful wife. I have wonderful kids.

I love the people that I work with. I love the life that God has given me, and am I going to put Jesus in front of and first among all those things? That's basically what he is asking us to do. We need to evaluate who Jesus is to us and decide, are we going to choose to follow Jesus? And the thing is, once we say, you know, we had a lot of people respond two weeks ago when Pastor Clayton was here to the gospel for the first time. Once we begin to follow Jesus, he's going to call us on that pretty quickly.

Are we truly and really all in? I remember when I went on that mission trip, my first mission trip to Afghanistan, everything about it was scary. You know, we flew there on Afghan Airiana Airlines. Everybody called it at the time, Scaryana Airlines. The plane was donated from India to Russia to Afghan Scaryana Airlines.

All the seats were different colors. When you fly into the airport, why they do this, I don't know, I don't even like to fly, but why they do this, all the planes that have crashed over the last 50 years, they don't remove them. They just scoot them to the side of the airport. So you're landing and all you see as far as you can see is crashed planes everywhere. I'm like, this ain't a great look, right? I mean, if you're trying to upgrade the image of the airline, I don't think this is a great, you know, just everything about it.

I mean, story after story of just how crazy it was. But for me, it's such an image because I remember when I said, man, I'm going to do this. I didn't think nothing about it. Then, of course, everybody around me was like, this ain't not a good idea. You shouldn't do that. It's not smart that you would do that. It's not wise that you would do that.

All stuff we would say. And I had to determine for myself at that point in time am I trying to please my parents? Am I trying to please my boss? Am I trying to please my family?

Am I trying to please these friends around me? Or am I trying to please Jesus, who is first? He's going to call us on it real quick when we say that we want to follow him with our whole lives.

So here's the big takeaway today. Untangle yourself from the world and go all in on Christ. Untangle yourself from the world and go all in on Christ. Some of you are here today, maybe at one of our campuses. Maybe you're a college student. And you maybe were like I was in college. You know, those first two years, it was like I believed. I believed Jesus. And I had been baptized.

I really, truly did believe. But day to day, the way that I lived, I wasn't all in. I was struggling with all the stuff that you could struggle with in college, partying and all this other stuff. It was hard. It was so hard because I had all this stuff that I knew I knew was not right. You know, like I couldn't party and have peace in my heart the way my friends did.

Some of this was just their party, and I even think twice about it. Because what was happening, I had one foot in that civilian world and I had another foot trying to follow Jesus. And so if that's you today, I just want to encourage you, like, man, you got to pray that God would give you that strength, that supernatural strength to go all in. Some of you today are maybe in that category because you have something going on in your life and your heart that nobody knows about and you know deep down that you are living a lie.

Right? It's a deep sin struggle that you have that is having victory over your life. And if you were honest, what's going on is you got one foot in the world, one foot trying to follow Jesus.

So you got to ask God, would you please, that supernatural grace, would you please, please, please help me and tell somebody else, hey, this is what's going on in my life. I want to go all in. I want to surrender my sin, my problems, what I have going on. I want to surrender that to you, Jesus, and go all in.

I'll promise you this. From the point that I made that decision in college, I have never for one second regretted following Jesus. And I know anybody else in here that has gone all in on following Jesus, you probably have not regretted for one second making that decision.

Some of you are here and you are all in. Maybe God has done something pretty amazing in your life over the last 25 months. There's so many amazing stories of what's happened in our church over the last 25 months. People adoption, foster care, starting to lead a community group, starting to share their faith, just starting all these amazing things. Here's the thing, though. Maybe in this upcoming year, man, maybe Jesus has another thing that he wants you to step forward into, right? Because this is not a static thing.

It's a dynamic thing. I remember later on, once my wife and I were married, before we moved here to help start Mercy Hill, we had this moment. We had just had a baby.

We're about to move here. And we had this moment. My wife's not a crier, but I've seen her cry 10 times maybe in our whole marriage. We've been married for almost 20 years.

Had this moment. We were sitting across from one another and she's just so upset. She's like, I just, I'm scared. I'm fearful.

Like, we have a newborn. You're not gonna have a job. I'm not gonna have a job once we move.

Like, what are we gonna do? And we couldn't see what God was gonna do. And if any of you saw the video that we showed last week about the Ridge story, we did move here to Greensboro and within just a month or two, her primary concern was work and money, right? Within a month or two, for whatever reason in that merger, they were like, we really want Bobby to come on staff. And in that moment, it was like, man, we couldn't see that, right?

We couldn't see that before we moved. God was asking us to step out into faith without seeing the outcome, without seeing the result. And then immediately God was like, man, I was in this the whole time.

Like, I was in this the whole time. And some of you are here today and that's what you're gonna have to do. You're gonna have to step out without seeing what God is gonna do. And I just know in this upcoming year, God is probably gonna be calling many of you to many things like that.

All right, I wanna close like this today. I know most of you here today, you wanna live this life, right? And if I asked you to raise your hand, I'd say 80% of you would say, I wanna be untangled from the world and I wanna go all in on Jesus.

I mean, there's some of you maybe that are just, you're struggling with your faith, you're newer and it's like, man, we want this to be a place you could come here without judgment and continue to decide what you wanna believe. But some of you are here today and you're like, I for sure want that. Like, I want that for my life.

I wanna be untangled for the world. It's hard, right? It's so hard. You have a million things always coming at us. I mean, thank goodness we're not getting those political text messages anymore. Every day, all day.

That's a picture, right? Of just like all the stuff in the world just constantly coming at us. It's so hard to be untangled, right? But we want to, like we wanna be all in for Jesus and here's the question I wanna close with that I wanna ask you. You may feel like this is a left turn but I promise you it's not. Are you giving to the mission of God? So if you would honestly say, and I didn't trick you, okay, this isn't a Jesus juke or anything. If you would honestly say, yeah, I want my heart to be all in.

I want my heart to be all in. Then the question I think you should be asking is am I giving to the mission of God? Why do I say that?

Why do I say that? Generosity is one of the primary tools to disentangle us from the world. This is not Bobby's wisdom or Andrew's wisdom. This is what the Bible teaches. This is why Jesus talks about money so much.

Have you ever thought about that? More than heaven, more than hell, more than salvation. The thing that Jesus taught about more than anything else was money and resources.

Why? Because of what Matthew 6 21 says. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

That's what we're talking about today, right? Is our heart all in for Jesus? You would think our treasure would follow our heart.

Wouldn't you just naturally think that? But what is he teaching? Your heart will never be all in if your treasure is not all in. You tell me that's not a beeline to the heart.

Because money and wealth is the thing that we use to control our circumstances in the world. And if Jesus isn't first in that, then Jesus is not first. That's the point he's making. So like I said, this isn't some guilt thing or some trick thing. This is between you and God to say, God, am I really all in? And I'm so thankful that God has used this in my life, right? Because when I'm starting to get tangled into the world by investing your treasure, your time, talent, and treasure into the mission of God, he'll use that to disentangle your heart from the world. And so I just want to encourage you with that. If you're looking for a very simple tool tomorrow, we've ended on a very simple tool to disentangle your heart from the world and to be all in on Jesus.

Let me pray for us. Lord, God, we all feel that this is a hard text. This is a hard truth that you are challenging us with. But Jesus, this is why you tell us to carry our cross and to follow you. God, we know that Satan wants to steal and kill and destroy. But Jesus, we know that you have come to bring life and you have come to bring life to the fullness. And no one that has given up house or money or mother and father won't be repaid a thousand times over in eternity. And so, Lord, I pray that you'd help us to believe that as we sing this song, I surrender. Lord, would you give us grace to be able to fully surrender our lives to you? And I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.