Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there.
We are so glad that you are in our lives and that you're with
us today. And our moms are amazing in 1000
different ways. I want to tell you a story about
my mom. So my mom was the executive
director for the Advocacy Network for Children, which is a
nonprofit that helps kids who are victims of abuse.
She got to do this for 18 years and got to help hundreds and
hundreds of kids. But when she was 63 years young,
she decided to go back to college.
She went back so she could get her masters because she wanted
to do more work to help parents. See, she didn't stop caring
about kids. In fact, she realized that the
very opposite was true, that she could help more kids in the
future if she not only treated the outcomes of abuse, but
targeted the source of it. And in the same way, today as we
wrap up this sermon series on marriage in the family, I want
to say that I'm speaking primarily to moms and dads, to
husbands and wives, because your marriage is the foundation for
your family and your family is the foundation for your kids,
and your kids are the foundation for the future.
I want to welcome all twelve of our locations, those joining
online and inside. We are so glad that you're with
us. And I'm so thankful to be a part
of this church, and I hope you are too.
That's doing everything that we can in this region to try to
help people find an intimate personal relationship with Jesus
Christ. He is awesome and there is power
in his name. And I pray that you meet him
today, if you haven't already. And if you're new here, we love
it that you're with us. And we'd ask you to stop by the
new Hero booth at the conclusion of the service so that we can
meet you. So if you haven't been with us,
we are wrapping up a sermon series called Lovers and
Landmines, trying to help families in our church and in
our region to navigate the difficulties that come along
with life in proximity with one another.
And today, in this final sermon, I'm not going to add any
landmines to the list of things to avoid, to watch out for.
Instead, this sermon is a call to action.
Tell your neighbors. Say get ready.
Tell your other neighbor he's talking to you in this message.
It's a challenge for all of us to adopt A certain kind of
mindset, a mindset that will successfully lead us through the
minefield and on the other side, leave a legacy of faith for
generations to come. Are you ready?
So you're a soldier. You've got a land.
You've got a field full of land mines in front of you.
You've been trained how to recognize these hidden
explosives. So how do you start to go
through the land, through the minefield?
You don't run. You know that that wouldn't be
smart. You don't get distracted with
other things, and you don't assume that you're safe just
because nothing has exploded yet.
You're always on the ready. Every step is calculated, every
movement is intentional. But what is going to kill you in
a man, in a in a landmine field is when you get careless, when
you lose that sense of urgency and you get distracted with
other things. Your actions get reckless and
even your passion for making it through the minefield fades
away. And what I want to suggest to
you today is that the greatest threat to your family is not the
land mines themselves, but it's your tendency to become passive.
It's the problem of passivity. I want to paint a picture for
you, but of what passivity looks like.
And I'm going to do it starting with Proverbs chapter 31, one
and two. I'm going to read these two
verses to you. And at first it might sound
like, wait, what? I'm not following it, so just
follow with me, OK? It says the sayings of King
Lemuel, an inspired utterance his mother taught him.
Listen, my son. Listen, son of my womb.
Listen my son to the answer to my prayers.
So why did I pick these verses to start out with?
To talk about the problem of passivity in our homes, well,
it's Mother's Day and we all know the incredible role that
moms played in our lives. And without them, we would not
be the people who we are today. But look at this verse here.
If you don't know the book of Proverbs where this comes from,
let me tell you a little bit about it.
Proverbs is a whole book of wisdom.
It's just wise saying after wise saying about how to live a godly
life. And it was written by King
Solomon. If you don't know about King
Solomon, he was the wisest person to live because God had
given him a supernatural gift of wisdom.
Not only that, he was also the greatest king to ever live.
He was this, he was the king after David, but in terms of the
expanse of his empire, he was the most powerful king in
Israel's history. So here you have the most
powerful king and you have the wisest king.
And he ends his book. He caps off his book on wisdom
saying it all comes down to what my Mama taught me and what did
his mom teach him? Started with grabbing him by the
shoulders and saying Son, my son whom I love, my son whom I
prayed for. Listen to me, listen to me,
listen to me. Why did she have to say?
Why is God saying to us? Listen, listen, listen, moms,
you could preach this part of the sermon because you know that
unless we really get your attention and you're going to
miss it. And God knows that.
Just like Tyler mentioned last week when he talked about the
role of parents in the four to 14 years, he said dads are
especially prone to be apathetic, to be careless, to be
passive. And so God is saying listen,
listen, listen. And guys, we're the ones who are
most prone to be passive, aren't we?
We're the ones who say I'm good, I got this.
We're the ones who say I don't need to ask for directions,
honey, I know we'll get there. And guys, right now, I know that
you're probably sitting there thinking I'm good, my family's
good. I don't need help navigating
this minefield. Like I'm doing pretty good.
My marriage is pretty good, my faith is pretty good.
My kids, they're just fine. This isn't that big a deal.
But God is grabbing us by the shoulders and he's saying, come
on, listen, listen, listen. God has had you here.
You've been hearing these sermon, these sermons on how you
need to be a leader in your family.
Let's do something about it. But King Lemuel, which is
probably a nickname for King Solomon's mom.
And God knows that men sometimes we're not passive in other in
other areas. There are certain areas where in
fact we spend too much time. And so the word of God goes on,
and it says, do not spend your strength on women, your vigor on
those who ruin kings. It's not for kings, Lemuel.
It's not for kings to drink wine, nor for rulers to crave
beer, lest they drink and forget what has been decreed and
deprive all the oppressed of their rights.
We're not passive sometimes in the areas where we shouldn't be.
Men, are you paying more attention than to pornography,
than to your wife and to your kids?
And The thing is, it will SAP your strength.
It will leave you no energy left to be devoted to your home.
You know, the Bible doesn't say the drinking itself is wrong,
although drunkenness is. But it's sure hard to be
intoxicated at home and still lead and manage your family
well. And it's not just these two
areas where we get distracted from leading our family through
the minefield. It's other things that pull our
attention away and we forget what we're doing.
Gaming. Are you more engaged in gaming
than you are in guiding your family towards Christ?
Have you made more plans for buying your next truck than you
have for building your family on the foundation of God and His
Word? Do you know more about your
hobby than you do about your wife and kids?
Listen, listen, listen. Some of these other temporary
pursuits are not bad in and of themselves, but they're a
secondary thing. And for some reason, we get
attracted to those things instead of pouring our passion
into the primary thing that God has given us and an eternally
significant pursuit of raising up our kids, of preparing them
for the roles that he has in the family, in the future, in the
Kingdom, and in society. There's something that I want
you to understand as we think about what is passivity look
like? And it's this passivity isn't
about your personality. It's about initiative versus
inaction. You know, we're all different.
Some of us are really outspoken, some of us are really quiet,
some of us are extroverts, some of us are introverts, but all of
us are called to be the people who are leading our homes for
God. So just take some of the
planning that you already do for work and direct it towards your
family. Take what you already have
passion about in your hobby and put it towards your home.
Take whatever interest you have in your favorite sports teams
and start to direct it towards your wife and your kids or your
husband and your kids. Another thing about what
passivity looks like is that it's a cousin to laziness and
procrastination. Look at what it says in the book
of Proverbs in chapter 24. It says a little sleep, a little
slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will
come on you like a thief, and scarcity like an armed man.
Guys, how many were at Uncommon last year?
If you were there, you probably remembered the first message of
Uncommon. Matt Proctor came and he drove
from Missouri, and with him he brought two things.
He brought his lazy boy from home and he put it on one side
of the stage and he brought some combat boots and he put them on
the other side of the stage. And he said, men, the most
dangerous position in your home, the most dangerous place there
is the easy chair. So get out of the chair and put
on the boots. And guys, uncommon registration
for 2026 is open now. So don't be passive.
Sign up today. Sign up early.
Get the early bird ray. Passivity is not a sudden bomb
that will destroy your family. It's a rot.
It's a slow, silent killer made-up of 1000 missed
opportunities. It might not be so much what
you're doing, but what you're not doing.
It's the accumulation of little moments when you chose comfort,
you stayed in the chair, you kept the remote in your hand,
you kept scrolling. You stayed out in the shed
instead of choosing inconvenience, Clayton said It
one of the other sermons that stuck with me.
He said if you're not loving your wives and leading your
family in a way that's selfless and sacrificial and painful,
you're not doing it right. Passivity not only leads to
destruction in the end, but it also leaves you with a bitter
cup of regret that after your kids have left the home, you
realized you never discipled them.
You realize you never opened the Bible with them.
You never told them about what Jesus did for you and what it
what he means to you. You never warned them about
Satan's tricks. You never prayed with them.
You never asked them how you could pray for them.
You never modeled forgiveness by apologizing to them.
You were going to, but you said, I'm going to do it next time.
Not this week. We're really busy this week.
I'll get to it next week. In the fall, you said I'll do it
in the spring. In the spring you said I'll do
it in the summer, and you never did.
Let me talk about passivity in marriages.
Passivity in marriage can sometimes create conflict
because one spouse, not always, but some, a lot of times is that
the man is passive and the woman is dying for the guy to lead.
And so then sometimes she starts to lead or she starts to nag and
he doesn't like those things and it creates conflict.
But other times passivity can be contagious and both spouses are
guilty of it and it's leading to a marriage that merely exists.
Check this out In the 1990s, family therapist and researcher
Doctor John Gottman studied thousands of marriages and found
out that couples who avoided discussing serious relationships
problem relationship problems. They were passive in their
marriage. They didn't have better
marriages. Let me say it again.
Those who avoided discussing serious relationship problems
didn't have better marriages, but they had divorces that took
longer to happen. Pay attention here, guys.
Do not become a statistic. His research showed that
unresolved issues in marriage don't disappear overtime.
No, instead they go underground. And then they surfaced later as
criticism, as contempt, as defensiveness, and as
stonewalling. Couples who thought that they
were keeping the peace by not addressing problems were
actually creating the very conditions that would lead to
future relationship breakdown. Their passivity LED them
straight into the landmine. Gottman Studies demonstrator
demonstrated this. Check this out.
Marriages with higher conflict levels but better resolution
skills were more stable than marriages where couples avoided
conversations all together. Conflicts.
Not bad. It can even breed closer
intimacy if you have the resolution skills to be able to
handle the conflict. And here's where Satan can trick
us because we might think that we're doing the right thing by
being patient with our spouses sin, but we're actually being
passive by not addressing what needs to be addressed.
There's that thing in your marriage or in your family that
you can't talk about. That's passivity.
And instead of using your energy to address that thing, you use
your energy instead to coach everybody else in the family how
not to set off mom or dad. Instead of trying to do that,
use your energy to address the problem.
It's like you're using your energy to avoid the landmine
when you could be using your energy to remove it safely all
together. Don't let passivity masquerade
itself as godliness. It's good to address things in
your family that need to be addressed.
Remove the landmine. And here's the thing, you get to
choose. We get to choose between the
pain of difficult conversations because I realized that
addressing some of those things are going to be uncomfortable.
It's going to take maybe many conversations, late nights,
maybe you got to go to counseling.
Maybe it's a season of discomfort in the relationship.
It'll be painful. I recognize it.
We all know that's true. But do you want the pain, pain
of difficult conversations now, or do you want the pain of
something like divorce in the future?
It's going to hurt either way. So tackle the problem now
instead of a lifetime of regret and a wake of heartache later.
And I bet some of you are saying, look, I've tried and
it's just not working. Like I'm, I'm addressing these
things, I'm bringing them up and I just feel like it's no more
use. It's not working.
Don't give up, continue and if you need to try it from
different angles, if you need to, just committed to prayer, if
you need to bring somebody in alongside you to help you
navigate through it, do not give up.
Now we see what passivity is like, but I want to tell you the
good news today. The good news is this, that if
you're a Christian, you have everything in you to not be
passive because passivity is contrary to the nature of God,
and therefore it's contrary to the nature of a Christian.
God is not a passive God. He wasn't passive when he
created the world, He wasn't passive when he developed the
plan of salvation, when he sent a global flood, when he parted
the red seas, and the list goes on.
And Jesus, our Lord and Savior, was not passive when He came to
this earth on a mission to die for our sins.
There's a great line in Luke chapter 951 and it says this
about Jesus. As the time approached for him
to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely said out for
Jerusalem. Jesus knew what awaited him in
Jerusalem. It was no surprise.
He knew he had land mines all around him.
He was going to be betrayed. He was going to be arrested.
He was going to be mocked and abused.
He was going to be beaten, He was going to be crucified, and
he was going to, on the cross, bear the wrath of his Father,
not because of his sins, but because of all of ours.
And he went anyway. He did not avoid the land mines,
He was not passive to remain distant from the plan of God,
but he went through it with every step calculated and depend
upon God in prayer. In the Bible describes it, it
says he resolutely set out. It's a more descriptive
metaphor. Or in the original it says he
fixed his face to go to Jerusalem and that same
determination that was in Jesus. Rest in each believer in Jesus
Christ. You may not realize what you are
capable capable of, but I am here to tell you.
In Second Timothy chapter one verse 7, it says this.
For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but
He has given us a spirit of power and love and
self-discipline. If you're a Christian, you have
the Spirit of God living inside of you.
And that means that even though you and I might be people who
are naturally fearful and I want to avoid conflict, we might
naturally be timid and not want to approach a difficult
conversation. We might naturally be passive.
You do not have to be ruled by your own nature if you're in
Christ, because you have a new self created a new in Christ
Jesus. It's the Holy Spirit's nature in
you. And he can work through you and
he can give you his power and his love and his
self-discipline. You have his power to overcome
your fear, you have His love to move you to action, and you have
his self-discipline that's greater than any motivation to
move you past your laziness. You may not feel like you can
experience that kind of work in your life, but God is telling
you, and I'm here to tell you and I'm asking you to believe
that it's true and to you to lean in and to listen, listen,
listen, listen to what God says is true about you.
I want to read another place in Ephesians chapter 1, verses 18
through 21. It says, I pray that the eyes of
your heart may be enlightened. Everybody say enlightened in
order that you may know. Say you may know the hope to
which He's called you, the riches of His glorious
inheritance and His holy people, and say this with me, His
incomparably great power for us to believe.
That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when
he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right
hand. In the heavenly realms far above
all rule and authority, power and dominion, every name that is
invoked, not only in this present age, but also in the one
to come. This is a prayer, and it was a
prayer that Paul prayed 2000 years ago, and he was praying it
for some Christians who lived in a town called Ephesus that some
of our friends just got to see. And he was praying it for moms
and dads, for husbands and wives, young and old alike,
because sometimes we as Christians, we're in this
position where we don't realize who we can be and who God's
called us to be in every resource that he's given us
along the way. And so I'm asking you to take
this prayer for yourself and to believe it.
And I'm telling you as well, this is God's prayer for you.
He wants every person here today that in Christ you have the
power to be active in your home, you have great power to forge a
new path for your family, and you have incomparably great
power that's in every Christian household to create a legacy of
faith for generations to come. And so today, I'm asking you to
take an action step. This is a day of decision.
One of the reasons why I think that we stay passive in our
homes is because we don't know what to do.
It's like, OK, I might feel like hey, I should do something, but
what do I do? I'm going to tell you 4 things
to do and right now I'm asking you to write it down.
Take out your phone, take a note, take out your phone, take
a picture of the screen, but do something.
Don't be passive. Do something.
Because if we spent the last five weeks talking about all
these land mines and all the things that we want to do, but
you don't take a step, then it's all for not.
So here we go. 4 things. You can pick one, you can pick
4, whatever you want to do. The first thing is build
yourself up spiritually. If you're trying to lead your
family spiritually and you're not there yet, then just start
with working on yourself. And there are all kinds of ways
that you can do that by coming regularly to church, by reading
the Bible. All these things, I would
recommend you joining ADBS at your location, a Discovery Bible
study. And the reason is because it'll
give you a group of people around you where you're doing it
together and you're learning together, you're learning from
each other and you're holding each other accountable.
And I think about a guy who, after last year's Uncommon,
joined my DBS group and he came and he was very open about he
wasn't where he wanted to be as a man.
He wasn't where he wanted to be as a husband.
He wasn't where he wanted to be as a dad.
And nine months, ten months later, this guy, every aspect of
his life, life has changed because of that support and
because of that pursuit that he had to step out and just take
one step, joining the group. Second thing, build your, build
a plan for your family. Do you have a vision for your
family? I mentioned Matt Proctor earlier
from Uncommon last year. Do you guys remember if you were
there? He has a vision for his family
that was built on like an acrostic of his last name, like
Proctor in each letter represented something that he
wanted his family to look like. What do you want your family?
You could do it that way or you could just write down what you
want your family to look like in 5 to 10 years from now.
Write it down and then write down a routine.
If this is where you want to be in five to 10 years and you're
here now, what's something that you can do on a day in, day out
basis that is going to move you closer and closer to that
vision? And literally again, write it
down. It's like this is where we're
prone to be passive. Like I'll just remember it, I'll
think about it, write it down and discuss it with your spouse.
Third thing is start a prayer journal.
So first of all, if you need, if you don't have a journal, buy a
journal. And here's what I would
encourage you to do. Ask every member of your family,
what's one thing that I can be praying for you about and write
it in that journal. You can also take your vision
that you wrote and your routine and write it in the journal.
And every day, grab your journal, go to a place and spend
some time praying every day. I'm telling you the
accumulation, just like on the passivity side, the accumulation
of little things will lead you into a landmine.
The accumulation of little action steps will lead you to
the realization of your vision. And the fourth thing is you can
lead your family in a Discovery Bible study ADBS there in your
home. So right now you can take out
your app and one of the first few messages that you'll see on
it is a summer family DBS. We thought, hey, we're coming
out of this series. We're heading into summer.
This could be a great time to equip our families and our
church to do something to live out what we've been talking
about. Just go there.
And if you're like, hey, I don't know how to leave the DBS, you
just click on the link you and it tells you, hey, if you know
how to lead a go for it. If you don't know how to lead
it, click here. We'll take care of the rest for
you. Now, 2 tips that I want to give
you as you begin an action plan. And this is super important.
Number one, don't despise small beginnings.
So you know, if you've never played golf before and you go
out today, you don't expect to shoot par.
Now probably you're like, hey, I've been golfing for 20 years
and I go out today and I don't expect to shoot par.
I got you. All right.
Take another example. You, you've not, you've not been
working out. You go out today and you go and
you hit the gym, you expect to be tired, you expect to be
gasping, you expect to be weak. And tomorrow you expect to be
super sore. The same thing is true as you
start this with your family. Look, guys, I've been in
ministry for a long time and I remember the first times that I
tried to start leading my family in these ways and I felt like I
was a green one. I just didn't even, I'm
stumbling all over myself for some reason, it's easier to
preach to a bunch of people than to have a little devotion with
my family. And so do not despise that.
Like you're going to expect that it's going to be hard at 1st,
that it's, you're going to stumble through, but keep going.
And the second thing is give lots of grace.
And Clayton said it before up here on the stage too.
He said his most contested hour of his week is his family.
DBS, right? That's the hardest part.
So that's why we got to give ourselves lots of grace.
Like, you're going to get upset sometimes and you're going to
screw up. Give yourself lots of grace,
apologize, learn from it and keep going.
Your kids or your family, they're going to do things that
that's going to screw up. Give them lots of grace, learn
from it, and move on. If I told you right now today
that in your backyard there's a landmine, what would you do?
If I told you today that there's a landmine in your living room,
what would you do? And what would you think about
the person who knew that and did nothing about it?
God has called us to be the protectors of our kids and of
our homes and the providers, not only materially but spiritually.
I want to review with you real quick the four purposes of the
family. And you might want to write this
down or take a picture of it as well so you can add it to your
prayer journal if you're doing that.
God has called us to be those who are preparing our kids for
godliness. That they would be people who
know Jesus, love Him, and follow Him and know his ways are the
best ways. That we would be preparing our
families and our kids for future roles in the family.
That they would be set up to be the kinds of husbands, fathers,
moms, and dads that they should be.
That they would be prepared for future roles in the Kingdom,
being part of a body of Christ that's serving and giving and
connected and who is making disciples, and to be prepared to
live as salt and light in this Dark World in society.
Over the past five weeks we have gotten some great advice and
tons of biblical wisdom about what to do and what not to do in
our marriages and in our families.
But today is the day of decision.
I'm wondering who will get out of the chair and put on the
boots. I'm wondering who's going to
listen, listen, listen. I'm wondering who is going to
fix their face to leave a spiritual legacy in their home.
You have the incomparably great power of God in you to prevail.
Will you kick Satan out of the driver's seat and take the wheel
of your family? Because God is not giving us a
spirit of fear and timidity, but of power and love and
self-discipline. We're moving to a time of
decision. I want to speak a minute aside
from the family in the marriage context to you as an individual.
If you are here and you do not have an intimate personal
relationship with Jesus Christ, will you hear me out for just a
minute? The Bible says don't put off
what you can do today because you don't know what tomorrow
holds. And my guess is that you're here
and you've probably heard about Jesus before.
You've probably heard how God loved the world so much that he
sent his only Son to die for the sins of the world, for your sins
and my sins, and that you can never out sin the love of God
for you. He loves you so much, He wrote a
book to tell you about it. He sent his son to demonstrate
it. And we're here today.
His Spirit is in US and He is calling you.
He is orchestrated this day-to-day to say this is a day
of decision. Not just a day of decision for
moms and dads, for households, but a day of decision for you to
stand before God and to stop running away from him.
To stop putting off and being passive spiritually and putting
it off and putting it off and putting it off.
And I know you're probably saying, but that's not me.
I don't know that I can become that person.
It's just not who I've been and people don't know me to be that
way. Guess what?
Me too. And guess what?
Every person who's ever followed Jesus Christ before has that
story. And here's the beauty of the
gospel is that you can't do it yourself.
But when you relinquish yourself to Him, would you lay down your
life? When you put your faith in Jesus
Christ, He does it for you. He washes your sins away for
you. He gives you a new life and a
new purpose and a hope. He does it for you.
He gives you His own Spirit inside of you to replace your
own so that He can do it for you.
But you have to receive the gift of salvation in the way that He
calls us to receive that gift. He says repent and be baptized
for the forgiveness of your sins, and you'll receive the
gift of the Holy Spirit. Put your faith in me and your
life will be built on a rock that will never be shaken.
In just a minute, people are going to come to the steps and
pray as we sing the next song. And I want to encourage you, if
that's you and if you're ready to stop being passive
spiritually, but to receive God and to step into what he has for
you. There's somebody who's going to
be right over there underneath the screen by the baptistry.
And you can go talk to them and tell them, hey, I'm looking
forward to what this looks like for me.
And they'll guide you through it.
And we will celebrate with you, and we'll be in your corner, and
we'll be armed from in arm with you as you journey that through.
And for those of us who are Christians, what do you need to
do that you have not been doing? What are areas where you've been
passive, lazy, procrastinating? Maybe it's just in your own
personal life, maybe not just your home.
That too. But maybe in other ways, God's
been calling you to do things. He's been pulling on you for
this or for that, and you keep just ignoring, ignoring,
ignoring. Today's a day of decision.
Today is a day where you can come and say, God, give me the
strength and the power and the love and the self-discipline to
stop putting you off and to start doing what you're calling
me to do. Or maybe there are things you're
doing that you need to stop doing.
God will give you the strength. As you come this morning, repent
and say, God, I believe that you can do it for me.
My eyes are open to know the power that you have to work in
me. So God, I'm just trusting you
that you're going to do it. And mom's, it's Mother's Day.
I know that this can be a hard day for you.
Maybe you wanted to have kids and you didn't.
Maybe you lost a child or maybe you'll you lost a mom and that
could be the same for all of us. Maybe mom's not here today.
So this is a time to step into that tender moment as well, that
broken moment as well, and give that to God.
Bring it to him this morning. Maybe you want to circle around
your mom or your wife and pray for her this morning and thank
her and bless her and ask for God to bless your family.
Why don't we stand as we pray? Father God, I am praying that
what it says in the Bible, where it says the Kingdom of God is
not a matter of talk, but of power.
And God, that's what I'm asking you would unleash among us is a
real work of your Kingdom, not where we just talk the talk, but
where we walk in, where we live it out in our day-to-day lives,
God. And we're all in different spots
and we all have different steps to take.
But I pray, God, that nobody here would remain where they
are, but that everybody would have some sort of work in their
lives that you would do by your grace and power.
And in the mighty name of Jesus, I pray.
Amen.