The Marks of a Maturing Christian

Come on, aren't you glad to be in church today?

My goodness, I got my summer shirt on today.

I got surfboards.

I don't live near the ocean, but I'm excited.

Any day we get to gather in the house of God together, it's a good day.

Amen?

Amen.

Well, I want to make sure we do this.

This is not just here in Walla Walla today, but as many of you know, we are one church in many locations.

So I want to make sure a couple of things.

We shout out all of our amazing family sitting in that high school auditorium in Pendleton.

and then a shout-out to all the men at the pen, Department of Corrections.

Hey, I want to shout you guys out really quick to say this.

I know many of you got your SPLs throughout the day, and you're running back, and you're like, man, I want to take a shower, but then I might miss church, and you skipped it.

You skipped taking the shower.

You came, and God's going to bless you for it, and so we're glad you're online.

You can take a shower tomorrow.

Come on, church.

Can we give it up in our online family?

Let's give it up for them.

Well, I'm excited today to continue on in our series that we have titled There Is More, where we've been journeying through the book of Acts.

And, you know, I commiserate with something that Pastor Bob said.

I think this has honestly been one of my favorite series that we've probably done.

And where I get to pick up today is right where Pastor Bob left off.

If you didn't get to watch last week, make sure you get on, check it out online.

But he talked about this amazing conversion moment where even if you're probably new to church or

you're around church as a kid or something, you've probably heard about this guy named Saul who gets kicked off of his donkey on the way to Damascus, and he's blinded and all that kind of stuff.

And then he literally gets like scales come from his eyes, and he begins to live for Jesus.

And here's where I want us to pick up from is right after this radical conversion, we're going to go to the very next part of the text in Acts chapter 9, and it says this.

And immediately he proclaimed Jesus in the synagogues.

Here's what I want us to see today is that even if today is your first day of journeying with Jesus, you can go right out and begin sharing Jesus with somebody.

You don't have to wait.

You do not have to wait.

Well, what do I tell him?

You can tell him everything we're about to talk about in the next few minutes.

How about that?

How about this guy that got radically changed like myself today and all that kind of stuff?

And he said this, that he is the son of God.

And all who heard him were amazed and said, is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem of those who called upon this name, being Jesus?

And has he not come here for this purpose to bring them bound before the chief priests?

Verse 2.

Verse 3.

I mean, I don't know about you, but as a grown man being told by your buddies, you need to cram into this infant's basket right now or else you're gonna die.

I'm gonna be like, are you serious?

I'm like, it's that or death.

I just don't imagine getting in my frame into a little bassinet.

Anyway, I just love, I read the Bible for that.

I just love seeing things in scripture like that.

And when he had come to Jerusalem,

He attempted to join the disciples, but guess what?

They're like a little timid about this guy.

And they were all afraid of him for they did not believe that he was a disciple.

But Barnabas took him.

His name literally means son of encouragement.

We all need a Barnabas in our life and we all need to be a Barnabas.

Somebody say amen.

That's another message for another day.

But he took him and he brought him to the apostles and he declared how on the road he had seen the Lord who spoke to him and how at Damascus he had preached boldly in the name of Jesus.

So he went in and out among them at Jerusalem, preaching boldly in the name of the Lord.

And he spoke and disputed against the Hellenists, which were like Greek-believing.

They were Greek believers.

They were Jews, but they were Greeks.

But they were seeking to kill him.

And when the brothers learned this, they brought him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus, his hometown.

So the church throughout all Judea, I love this.

The church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up and walking in the fear of the Lord.

And in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied.

If I were to put a title to this portion of text, I would call it this.

I would call it the process of Paul.

Because what we see is Paul gets radically converted, but we slowly begin to see this process that God takes all of us on, by the way, and it's this thing called maturing.

That here in this text, Paul began, and I want you to actually look at this verse that we just looked at, but I want to highlight it again.

It says, but Saul increased all the more in strength.

That word increasing in strength literally means that God is the one who is strengthening him.

This is not just, oh, then Saul got a gym membership and started getting gains.

Hashtag gains, swole, hashtag all the things, right?

No, this is actually an empowerment by the Holy Spirit where he doesn't just, I will say this, he becomes an evangelist instantly as we read, but he does not become an apostle overnight, right?

That God takes him and he models to us, and what I want us to see from the text is that God takes all of us on this journey of maturing to where Paul, he actually later writes this about him recognizing that a commitment to Jesus actually is a commitment to growth.

And that commitment to growth is a process called maturing.

That he writes this later to the church in Colossians.

And he says this.

Everyone, and there's the word, mature in Christ.

For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.

He says, I'm literally writing to you and I've been encouraging you and I've been toiling with all my strength and the work of the ministry is that I can present you mature to Christ.

I want you to grow up.

Here's this series we've called There Is More.

But can I tell you this?

The only way that we can experience the more of there is more is if we mature.

If we're going to experience the more of what God has for our lives, we're going to need to mature.

This is where you can turn to your neighbor and say, grow up.

You can do that.

You can blame it on me.

You can blame it on me.

Some of you were a little too stoked to do that, okay?

Back here, back here.

One, two, three, eyes on me, okay?

Here's what I wanna do today.

I want, from the text, I wanna look at four marks.

of a maturing Christian.

And my hope and belief and prayer is this, is that we would walk out of here encouraged, challenged, believing that the Holy Spirit is maturing us while simultaneously pointing out any areas of immaturity in our life.

Can we do this journey together?

Can we do that?

Okay.

First mark of a maturing Christian is this, is they learn to embrace the process.

They embrace the process.

I want you to look at this verse again that we just read where it talks about Paul.

It says this, and when many days had passed, the Jews plotted to kill him.

Now, here's what's interesting about this is you just read that at face value like we did.

We just thought, oh, he's there for a week, couple weeks, maybe a couple months.

No, it's actually this many days that passed is actually three years.

And we know that because Paul writes about it later.

He says, I did not immediately consult with anyone, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me.

But I went away to Arabia and returned again to Damascus.

And here it is.

Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, which is another name for Peter, and remained with him for 15 days.

Now that's at least three years, but there are many Bible commentaries that believe that the three years, actually what Paul references later in Galatians, we're going to look at it, is actually in addition to these three years, that it's actually a total of 17 years.

So when he says after many days, it could be up to 17 years.

And he says this, then after 14 years, I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me.

So the debate is whether the three is added into the 14 or subtracted from it, but here's what we know conservatively.

Between his radical conversion and his first missionary journey, it's at least 11 years.

It's easy for us to look at Paul's life and be like, man, this guy was an overnight success.

Of course he got to write a chunk of the Bible.

I mean, look at him, and he immediately begins preaching and all those things.

No, there was actually a season of development.

There was actually a time in his life where he had to learn the process of what it is to follow Jesus.

And you see this in the text as he begins to go out time and time again.

And if you look through the rest of his writings, you see that in that period of time, God's teaching him one lesson after another, one lesson after another.

And by the time he gets to writing some later scriptures, the tone you can tell is different because he's been through a process.

And here's what I'm telling you today.

The part of following Jesus is you have to learn to embrace the process of God on your life.

There is no magic wand of maturity.

If there was, in all my years of youth ministry, I would have used that thing all day long.

You know how much I could have sold that to some of you parents for?

You can rent it for a half hour for five grand.

I better have it in a half hour.

Go tap your kid and come right back.

No, it's this thing, this development, this process of maturity that God does and works in our lives.

For David, it was 15 years between David was anointed and before he actually experienced his coronation.

Joseph has a dream that everybody's bound down to him.

And 13 years later, it happens, right?

If these guys, the mature followers of Jesus that we see in Scripture, go through these seasons of development, then how can we not see it's true of our own lives?

But here's what I know from my life.

Maybe it's different for you.

Here's what I've known from my life.

When I was more, I would say, immature in the faith, I made it all about calling.

Calling, calling, calling, calling.

And then I began to get into scripture and I began to see the development process that God was doing in my life.

And I began to come to this conclusion.

Hmm, it's interesting.

God actually cares a whole lot more about character than he does about calling.

That he wants to mature us.

And we don't like this because that maturing and that developing often includes this thing called waiting.

Waiting.

And we don't like to wait.

We are Americans.

Impatience is our middle name.

We order something and we're frustrated that it's not already in our hands.

When are they developing that technology?

It should be here already.

We don't like it.

And I've said this before, we live in a microwave culture but we serve a crockpot God.

Like he likes to let it marinate, but we don't like it.

And so we do what I call the three W's of waiting.

First one is we worry.

It's like, God, what are you gonna do this?

How are you gonna do this?

Second one is we whine.

God, no.

I'm pretty good.

This is a good impersonation of my kids.

I told my mom when I was growing up, she was like, stop whining.

And I'm like, I'm not whining.

I'm just stating my opinion in a tone of voice that's different than my normal.

That's not whining.

Yes, that's whining.

Or we just wonder, we get lost in the wonder.

I wonder if this, and I wonder if this, and I wonder if this.

And meanwhile, God's got something right in front of you.

Can I tell you the W that you need to focus on as a mature Christian?

Is God, what are you doing?

I want to be a part of what you are doing.

I don't want to miss a moment.

God, what is it that I can be a part of?

I, this, this analogy is gonna date me a little bit, but actually not too bad, okay?

So I had this earth science class, the high school, I believe I was in junior high at the time, and the teacher would teach, and I remember there was two doors at the front of the classroom, and one of them, when we were in like, you know, chemistry and different classes, he would open up this one door, and we went one day before class, kind of experiment, like looking into that room, and it's like where they had all like, you know, the pig's,

in a jar and all that kind of stuff for like biology and all that kind of stuff.

Well, one day we noticed the other door that the teachers never went into that door.

And so one day before class, we go on that door, we open the door and it's just super dark in there.

We go to flip on the light and all that comes on is this really dim red light.

And then a teacher comes around the corner.

We're like, oh, busted, man.

But he was a really cool teacher.

And I was like, we're like, man, what is this room?

And he's like, it's called a dark room.

Like we used to have like a photography here at the school.

And what would happen is students would like take these pictures and they come into this room and there's like all these different tanks laying around.

And I remember there's like string hanging from the ceiling.

And he was like, what they do is they would take the

The pictures they take in them, they slowly develop them by putting them different chemicals.

And they have to keep them here in the dark room.

That's why this red light's on here because it gets overexposed and it ruins the picture.

And I'm like, I have no idea.

Like, we got this thing.

You know, now we got this thing.

We got our phones.

All that kind of stuff.

Somebody help me where I'm going today.

That God will do the same thing in your life.

That when he's trying to make you into the image and likeness of his one and only son, he has to take you through seasons of hiddenness so that you don't get overexposed.

He's got to use the red light of the blood of... See, now I'm just getting nerdy and kind of cheesy on you, but...

That God will put you in a season of hiddenness to get you to understand the realities of waiting, maturing us.

So here's what I would say to you today.

Listen, I just implore you, I plead with you.

Don't waste the waiting.

Mature believers learn to not waste the waiting.

Now, we look at that word wait in Scripture, and we often misconstrue it because we love these Scriptures.

We have these Scriptures, you know, magnets on our refrigerators.

But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength.

They shall mount up on wings like eagles.

They shall run and not be weary.

I love this.

One of my favorite ones, Psalm 27.

Wait on the Lord.

Be of good courage.

He shall strengthen your heart.

Wait, I say, on the Lord.

Those are great Scriptures, right?

But if we're not careful, we look at that word wait and we think it means we just sit here and not move and wait for God to do everything else and we're just not involved in the process.

But nowhere in the original language does this ever imply passivity.

In fact, it literally means this, to look forward with confidence to that which is good and beneficial with a focus of anticipation

This is not waiting in anxiety on what God's going to do.

In fact, the Hebrew language actually talks about that this is a binding or a twisting together, which is a beautiful picture of how we're so knit to the Lord that whenever he moves, we move.

That's how much eager expectation.

That's how much we wait on the Lord.

And before I get to the next point, let me help you one last little bit because I really want to motivate us and activate us in this.

Let me give you another picture for this type of waiting.

I don't want you to think waiting and just sitting there.

I want you to think of waiting in the context of a waiter.

Now, I don't know if you've ever been to a fancy restaurant before, but I've been to one, one time.

One time I'd been to a fancy restaurant where they had a server and there just wasn't one waiter.

There was three waiters.

There was like a head waiter and there's two assistant waiters.

And so you order your food and it's like everything's all a car.

Everything comes in stages and phases.

Everything's super expensive, but everything's really nice.

You got to eat.

We had to like literally look on our phones which thing to use on what thing that we're eating with.

Like it was crazy.

I mean this is put this put a redneck out of all kinds of sorts but here's what was cool about it is we're sitting there and I noticed that one of the assistant servers never left our table stayed there the whole time and it freaked me out the first time this happened but I remember specifically like drinking you know water from these bougie glasses and it got to about half full and out of nowhere this arm just sticks out and fills my cup all the way back up again

Like normally you're kind of like making loud noises, you know.

I was a waiter for a while.

The thing that was really frustrating, people would jiggle their glass with ice in the bottom of them.

And I'm like, I'm coming.

I'm a little busy.

You're not the only one I'm waiting on.

But they just stayed there right there with eager anticipation.

That is the picture that I want you to have when it comes to waiting on the Lord and not wasting the season of waiting.

God, what are you doing?

I want to be a part of it.

Here's, I love this scripture.

I always have loved this scripture.

Okay, it says this.

Behold, as the eyes of a servant look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid servant to the hand of their mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God till he has mercy upon us.

Kings and queens of old, they would literally train their waiters to just, they just simply moved off of hand motions.

If they did this, it meant that's when I grabbed the plate.

I wanna be like that with God.

I wanna be so leaned in and not wasting the waiting.

God, whatever you have, I wanna see it true in my life.

Can I get an amen?

I just, I have the pastoral impetus in my heart to speak to somebody who's single.

I know what it feels like to wait.

I know the waiting season.

I do.

Here's what I would say.

Number one is this.

Listen to me.

Do not compromise.

That's first.

Don't compromise.

Don't compromise.

And second thing is this.

You might not know when, and you definitely don't know who,

God's going to bring.

But I do know this, that God is faithful and God is diligent and God knows your season and situation.

So I would lean into God and let him just work in the season of you, development, and do not waste the waiting.

Can I get an amen?

We got to move on.

Second characteristic mark of a maturing Christian is this.

They learn to look at trials differently.

They learn to look at trials differently.

I'm going to be completely honest with you.

I don't even like preaching this point.

It's probably not good preaching etiquette to be like, how about this point?

I don't even want to say it.

I'm being honest with you.

Like, I don't even know if I like this reality, but I will tell you this from scripture.

I can say it experientially, but I want to show you from the word of God that this is the reality of the Christian walk is that there are trials that come.

And Paul shows us in these contexts.

Do you notice this?

Two different times he gets a hit put out on his life.

And then another time there's people that are completely afraid of him.

But the Bible doesn't say that he cries about it or whines about it.

He just simply learns, begins to learn the realities of the mature Christian walk is one that embraces trials because trials are a part of our life.

And it's not just me.

Look from the words of Jesus himself.

But here on earth, you'll have many trials.

He promised it.

It's not me.

Don't get mad at me.

Don't email me.

Talk to Jesus about it.

But I love this.

But take heart for I've overcome the world.

This one, another really popular one.

Consider it pure joy.

One translation says, consider it a gift.

What's our gift?

I can't wait to open it.

Dear brothers and sisters, when you have trials, guess what I got you for your birthday?

A trial.

Oh, how did you know?

I've always wanted one of those.

And you put it on the shelf where there's a hundred more of them already.

Because you know that the testing of your faith is really what it is, produces perseverance, and perseverance will finish at work so that you might be, uh-oh.

I mean, I told you.

I don't even know if I want to say this out loud.

Not because I'm superstitious or anything, but just because I know the reality of it, and it stings a little bit.

But I'll just say this.

What is it about trials that just seem to bring pain?

The best and the worst out of you leads to a maturing and a growing in God.

Like there's challenges change us.

They just do.

Challenges change us.

They bring something about in our lives.

And you look from this text that Paul's going through one after another.

And the Bible says that he just got bolder.

He's preaching boldly and then he goes through that moment and the same guys that used to be on his side are now hating him.

And his response is just to preach Jesus all the more because a mature Christian has to learn to embrace that trials are just part of the journey.

And what I love about him preaching bolder is it tells us that he's learning that he's not being dictated by the fear of man anymore.

that he's actually learning that I'm going to listen to what you have to say, God.

I'm going to lean into what you have to say about me.

That that insecurity begins to get moved off of your life when you recognize that the people that are persecuting you for homeschooling your kids or making fun of you for breaking Christian values, can I say this?

Just open the gift of joy and put it in the credit column of God, knowing that God's doing a greater work on the inside of you.

And can I tell you this?

At the end of the day, it will be a greater witness than you can ever imagine in this season for it to be.

God's going to work it in your favor.

I want to encourage somebody today with this.

Because we see this in scripture.

that it's interesting that Paul, that every time he's preaching, that after every time he preaches, we see this significant change, and not just the person he's, in fact, the next three stories in the book of Acts, to the end of chapter nine, is somebody's preaching the gospel, either him or Peter, and not only does a single individual get changed, but after a single individual get changed, scripture notates that everyone else radically encounters God.

Here's what I want to say to you today.

Could it be, as we see from scripture and many other texts, look at the Israelites all the way through the book of Acts.

There's so many other people that we could reference.

That opposition in your life is actually an indication that you're walking in the will of God.

If you're popular with everybody, friends, that is not a great thing.

But I'd rather be popular in heaven than popular on earth because I want to walk out the will of God in my life.

Somebody say amen to that.

Next thing is this.

I have four points, not three.

Hold on.

They recognize the importance of having the right voices in their lives.

Paul, two different times has a hit put out on his life.

One other time people say, hey man, we're afraid.

Isn't this that guy?

And guess what happens every single time?

Somebody comes to his side.

Somebody comes alongside of him and vouches for him.

Can I tell you this with 100% certainty?

I would not be on this stage today and I don't even know where I'd be in life if it wasn't for the people that I have in my life.

I ran into a gentleman the other day, just randomly said hi to him and began to talk to him.

And I could tell he was distraught and downtrodden.

I was just trying to encourage him.

And he said one of the most disheartening things.

He says, you know what?

I don't have anybody, but at least I have myself.

And I said, buddy, you can't make it in life alone.

God never designed it to be that way.

And here Paul realizes this and recognizes it and recognizes that if I'm going to mature, I got to have the right people in every season of my life.

I need the Barnabas is speaking into my life because I don't know about you.

I don't even know how I can get through the trials without people.

But I've said this, I don't even know how many times I've said this before.

I don't know how people do it without people, godly community like I have.

I don't even know how people do it.

Most people don't.

They go to a bottle, they go to whatever else.

They try to just somehow numb the pain.

I don't even know how people get through what I'm going through without people.

And then there's a reality of this in scripture.

A friend loves at all times and a brother is born for adversity.

We need people for the trials and season.

It's who God brought in to Paul's life.

And what I love is in verse 28 of that chapter nine that we read, it says that he stayed there and he went in and out amongst them.

Why?

Because he recognized the value of godly community.

It doesn't say that he left because they didn't play his favorite worship song.

It doesn't say that he left because he didn't get on the worship team.

He doesn't say that.

But instead he stayed with them.

What's cool about the life of Paul is that you're going to see from this point forward when you see him, other than when he's in house arrest, and even when he's in house arrest, he keeps bringing people with him.

From this point forward, he always has somebody with him.

Why?

Because he learned the value of it.

He knew the value of community and knowing that he couldn't grow without it.

Man, I've said this before to people who are checking out our church.

This is one of my favorite things to say to them.

So if you're checking out our church, you're watching online, checking it out, I'm going to say this to you.

You cannot put a dollar value on the godly community that you get at this church.

You can't.

You can't.

Our kids, our kids are thriving.

Our kids are thriving.

My marriage is thriving.

My heart is alive.

Why?

Because of the godly community that's here.

I'll never forget when we, and I have four kids, 10, eight, and the twins are four.

The twins were born premature, so we had that stint in the NICU.

And I'll never forget when we're leaving and the nurse walks you out and makes sure that you know how to do a car seat.

And I'm like, I'm a grown man.

I know how to do a car seat.

Actually, can you help show me how to install this car seat?

Because I don't want to lose my mind in front of you.

I want to take my kids home.

And I'll never forget, you know, because we got two babies.

That's like two for the price of one pregnancy.

And so she can even tell, like, are you guys ready for this?

And I'll never forget what she asked me.

She goes, man, I hope you guys have family nearby because you're going to have your hands full.

And without skipping a beat, my wife and I said, we do.

And we don't have family nearby.

Right?

She thought we were talking about, and we knew she was talking about our immediate family.

No, our immediate family, they live hours away from here.

But we instantly replied, of course we do.

Why?

Because I knew the people in this room were going to stand beside us.

Oh, we got family, all right.

Oh, we got all kinds of family.

Because he recognized, he knew what it meant.

This interesting thing that Barnabas, after he vouches for Paul, it says this about Paul.

He begins to preach boldly.

Some of you need to get in community and not just come on Sunday, but get in a life group.

Our life groups are just getting going.

You need to sign up for a life group today on your way out.

Get online.

Sign up.

There's directories out there.

Just get in one.

Why?

Because when you get in godly community, it's crazy how it draws purpose out of you.

You find it in the house of God.

It was like once Barnabas vouched for Paul, Paul's going out there and just preaching even harder.

He's like, I got buddies at my back.

They see the call of God in me and they want to release me into more ministry.

You should leave church fired up.

You should leave life group fired up.

You should leave out of here.

Anytime I get lunch with some of you, that's how I feel when I leave and we're just encouraging each other, Lord, I want to just have fired up.

Man, one of my favorite things this year about coming out of men's camp is just a new passion for the brotherhood that I'm seeing and you're just fired up encouraging one another because that's

How you grow as a Christian.

Now I couldn't unpack this point without flipping the reverse of it and saying this.

Probably the number one stunting of growth in God is when you don't have the right people.

Some of us have been going into juvenile detention every week and having conversations with them.

And every time some of our conversation, every time we've been in there, it comes back to this.

Hey, do you know what the Bible says about your friends?

That bad company corrupts good character.

And I love to do this.

How many of you would say you're in here because you had the wrong friends?

You know, because it's not cool to raise your hand, right?

Everybody.

Everybody.

Friends, I'm telling you this.

I just need to encourage somebody.

Maybe the reason you might be stunted in your growth is because you got the wrong voices.

You got to get the wrong voices out.

Got to do what Paul did because the people that used to love him now hated him, but he still preached to them because he learned as a maturing Christian this.

He learned this value.

I need to maybe distance myself, not cut them off, but I need to distance myself until I recognize I can be more of an influence to them than they're influencing me.

And he learned it in community.

And I'll tell you what, the growth that Paul saw has encouraged me.

Because I just, I've just made this commitment in my life.

I want to die rich.

And not financially, because I kind of hope to die empty.

I just want to like give it all away, right?

But I want to die rich.

In fact, this happened the other day.

This probably happens to some of you too.

I'm looking at our refrigerator and it's just covered in wedding, you know, invites and graduations and baby showers and all this kind of stuff.

And then you look at our calendar, it's all littered through all that.

I literally said out loud when I looked at all of it, our fridge and our calendar, I literally out loud said this, we're rich.

We are rich, man.

Having godly community and recognizing what real value in this world, it's having the right voices that help you grow and mature in God.

Can I get an amen?

Last thought is this.

The mark of a maturing Christian is they live reliant on the leading of the Holy Spirit.

They live reliant on the leading of the Holy Spirit.

So Paul says,

He heads from Damascus because he has an encounter on the road on the way to Damascus.

Then he goes to Jerusalem.

And then he gets led to Tarsus and doesn't ever complain about it.

Saul learned really early on that if you're going to have the walk with Jesus, maybe my life is not my own.

And if you look through the rest of the journey of his life, in fact, there's twice later in this same book, Acts, I think it's like Acts 16, that twice he writes down that two different times the Holy Spirit stopped him from going somewhere.

In fact, there's a part in scripture where his buddies grab his belt and bind him up with his own belt.

And they're like, you can't go.

And he's like, what do you mean?

I'm willing to die.

I'm willing to suffer and even die for Jesus.

So they let him go.

What did he learn?

As a mature Christian, my life is about the leading of the Holy Spirit.

That's all I live on.

I live on where God wants to take me.

I love this out of Matthew.

Then Jesus said to his disciples, it's us, if any of you wants to be my follower, look at that, you must give up your own way.

I'm a self-made man.

Nobody tell me I'm American, not an Americant.

Your life is not your own.

I love this verse in Jeremiah.

I know, Lord, that our lives are not our own.

We need to stop doing whatever we want with our lives and asking God to bless it.

That's the immature Christian.

See, it's funny, because in this world, and I'm trying to teach my boys this, in our natural life, maturing is about taking on responsibility and ownership.

But part of the maturing as a Christian is relinquishing ownership.

It's the kingdom where we give it over to the Lord.

That's what Paul learned.

So we're giving things over to him.

You're not your own.

You were bought with a price.

When you gave your life to Jesus, you got drafted.

You've been grafted and drafted.

You're in.

So you're not your own anymore.

Your opinion, it's not your own anymore.

In fact, can I tell you the sign of a mature Christian is mature Christians learn to, you know, watch their mountains.

Because it's not our own.

And here's Paul.

He could have complained, oh, I gotta go there.

I just got here.

Tarsus?

I don't even like it.

It's like how some of us talk about our own hometown.

I don't ever want to go back there again.

They're like, we got to put you on a boat to Tarsus.

Tarsus, no.

That's how some of your kids act.

Go take out the trash.

You're like, trash brings seizures out?

But he just goes.

Why?

Because a mature Christian recognizes that living for God means you live an interruptible life.

I call them the God disruptions.

Do you live an interruptible life?

Last week, talked about long shots.

God, will you help me to read to long shots?

And he puts somebody on your mind and then you feel in your heart to call them.

And you're like, God, not now, I'm busy.

And I think sometimes God's up there and he's like, just answer in the prayer.

Sometimes we don't want to be interrupted because it's uncomfortable for us.

But friend, let me tell you something very straight, and then we're just going to conclude.

You can either choose Jesus or you can choose comfort, but you can't choose both.

That's not the way of the cross.

That doesn't work that way.

And by the way, while I'm at it, comfort is a horrible leader in your life.

It's a horrible leader in your life.

Because as Christians, I was telling my boys this the other day, as Christians, and Paul learned this, as a maturing Christian, you realize this, that you don't do what's easy, you do what's right.

That's what matured.

It's not about my comfort.

It's about the cross.

So Lord, send me.

Anywhere, anytime, any cost.

That we learn to embrace and enjoy the adventure of being led by the Holy Spirit.

I want to pray for us today.

Two prayers, because I love you.

Same prayers, by the way.

I always respond to my own altar calls before I ever give them.

The first one is this, that God would expose any areas of immaturity in our life.

And the second thing is this, God loves.

that you would mature me.

Mature me.

I've been asking myself this question recently.

God, how would the mature me handle that email?

How would the mature me respond to my wife?

Can I say, it's not been very good.

For my flesh anyway, it's been great for my heart.

I want God to mature me.

Holy Spirit, we thank you for what you're doing in the room today.

God, we ask that unequivocally all across the room or watching online.

We say today, would you mature us?

God, mature me.

God, will you grow us up in you?

Will you help us to push off comfort?

Will you help us to not get caught up in the trials and tribulations?

And God, will you help us to see the everyday leading of your life?

God, we want to be interruptible.

We want to even today going at lunch not be so focused on our agenda and our task and our to-do list that we miss what you have for us.

God, help us to be.

the mature me thank you God that you expose any immaturity in our lives help us teach us guide us because we say God we're willing in vessels for whatever you want to do in our lives now with every eye closed everyone across the room and watching online you're here today and you maybe heard this story this radical story about Paul and you're like man I might not have the friends

And I might not know my situation and circumstances are gonna change, but Caleb, if there's hope in Jesus, then I need that Jesus.

That you know today coming here that the reason why you came to church is because you don't want to leave the same way you came in.

You need a Damascus Road experience.

You were on your way.

You were just going down 9th Street and you had a 9th Street encounter.

You pulled in and God met you.

And friend, it begins today by simply surrendering your life.

Your life is not your own anymore by surrendering it over to Jesus.

If you're in the room today, I want to pray with you and you know you have not given your life over to Jesus, but you want to today.

I just simply want to do this just so I know who I'm praying with because we're going to pray in a few moments.

If that's you in the room, I just want you to lift up your hand right now and wave at me.

Say, Caleb, that's me.

I need to give my life to Jesus.

If that's you and you want to give your life to the Lord right now, just wave a hand at me anywhere in the room today.

I want to make sure I see you.

Thank you, bro.

Anybody else?

Thanks, man, right there.

I'm just slowly waiting as people are putting up their hands.

Thank you right there.

Thank you so much.

See your hand back there, bro.

God sees you.

More important than me saying it, God sees you.

Thanks, man.

Chilling back there.

Thank you.

Dude, that smile is only going to get bigger on your face.

I'm telling you right now.

I promise you that.

I don't regret.

There's a lot of days I regret before Jesus.

There's not many I regret after.

I just wish I would have known him earlier in life.

There's another hand over there.

Anybody else?

There's another hand right there.

Anybody today?

I want to make sure.

That when we pray, that today begins the great adventure of following Jesus.

Let's do this together.

Life Church, can we pray with our friends together out loud?

Let's pray like this.

Say, Jesus, here I am, a sinner in need of a Savior.

I'm sorry.

I repent.

I give up and I give over.

I'm yours.

My life, not my own anymore.

It's all in your hands.

Jesus, from this day forward, I'm yours.

In Jesus' name.

And everybody said amen.

Come on, friends.

Can we give it up for people making that decision today?