Hey, this morning it is my privilege to introduce Jeremy
Martin. Now, this fighter comes from
Stanwood, MI. You know where Stanwood is,
right? Suburb of Big Rapids.
No, you guys look to me like we're in the world.
It's it's just South of Big Rapids.
And Jeremy is the men's group leader at Res Life in Big
Rapids. Did I get that right?
Am I close? No, you'll correct it.
He's going to get up here and re say everything I'm saying
anyway. But I'd like to pray for him
this morning. We're thankful for him and in
the fella last week, Josh. And there are other people that
are coming to us from Big Rapids right now.
We're relying on them pretty heavy.
Would you stand with me as we pray?
Father, we thank you so much for Jeremy and Ashley to be with us
today. We thank you for their
commitment to you, their commitment to the church, and
their willingness to be here. And I just ask that you would
surround them with your presence, that you would fill
them with the power and the anointing of your Holy Spirit,
and that that would just flow through them and that everyone
would sense your presence. So be with us today in Jesus
name we pray and all God's people said, Amen.
You can be seated. You can start your thing man.
He's he's full of it, love it. He asked me first thing he asked
me. He comes in, he says, hey, so
how much do you weigh? Yeah, that's not happening, bud.
I was proud of it. Maybe, but I'm not giving you
that kind of information since I said you just introduced me as a
heavyweight. If that's what you're trying to
do. No, but you know, it's a
blessing to be here. I thank you guys for welcoming
us in. It's, it's been, it's, it's kind
of cool because I'm at Res Life Big Rapids and I've been on
staff there for almost 2 years now as a men's director.
We've got a church that is, is this is what it looked like when
I was a kid. I've been in this church since I
was young and this is bigger than what it was when I first
started going there. And as I grew, the church grew a
little bit. And then in the last, I don't
even know, 10 years or something, it like something
happened, like a movement of God happened in the church exploded.
But there's a core that has been there since the beginning.
And when I look at a church like this, I'm like, man, you guys
have the core and it's just a matter of when the explosion
happens and how are you going to be ready for it?
Because I got a feeling like I know God's on the move and I
know he's on the move in Big Rapids.
And I can assume he's on the move in Gaylord because I think
he's on a move across the world. So, you know, I, when I see
groups like this, I'm like, this is awesome because this is the
core of the church. This is what the church is going
to rely on when it does explode because it's coming.
People are searching things out right now in this world.
They don't know what direction they're going, but there was
this really big Gray area, you know, at a point when I was
younger, I feel like, and I feel like nowadays as I'm getting
older and maybe it's just my age, I don't know.
But it's like the Gray area is getting smaller and either
you're following Christ or you're following the enemy.
And there isn't a lot of middle ground anymore.
It used to be an area where you can kind of blend in with a
crowd and you could do a lot of Christian things, but you can
hang out with some other people and it wasn't like horrible.
Nowadays I feel like there is a, there's a division down the
middle where it's black and white on the lifestyle you're
living and it's becoming more and more obvious every day.
So a little bit about me, my wife Ashley, I've been married
19 amazing years, probably 6 pretty good ones for her if you
were to ask her. So I had a pretty good stretch
in the beginning where I, I asked myself all the time.
I don't know how she made it through it or why she did it,
but praise God that he put her in my life because I don't know
if there's a many other women in this world that would have stuck
around, but she's been my rock. When I knew Christ, when I
didn't know Christ, she was always in my corner cheering for
me and I'm very grateful for her.
We have three awesome kids, 19 year old McKenna, 17 year old
Lexie and our 11 year old Reset Jayden.
He was our start over. We had our first two young.
We got together in high school. We both had dreams of our own.
We were athletes, we were standouts.
We're both going to college. We had opportunities and we got
together in high school. We've been friends since
kindergarten. So we've always known each
other. We were always friends.
We were dating other people. We would still have
conversations as friends and like I'd ask her about girls and
she'd ask me questions about guys and never knowing that it
was just going to end up being us anyway.
So it didn't matter. But we had a kid.
We got we got pregnant our senior year and we had McKenna
in September after we graduated. And that the choices that we
made, the LED into that had us to both to a point where she
wasn't going to go play softball because being pregnant your
senior year is kind of hard to get your scholarship that you
had already had conversations with.
And I couldn't go on to play football, which is what I want
to do because how do I watch her sacrifice what she wanted to do
and then go do what I want to do?
I just couldn't do it. So I went to work and we got
married after. McKenna was here for just over a
year and been riding the wave of life ever since.
So Lexi came into the world. She's Spitfire.
She's it is. It blows my mind how you can
have kids and every one of them be so different.
None of them are the same. They don't live life the same.
They don't think the same. And they can all be amazing in
their own ways. And that's a that's a blessing
that we get to experience right now.
Proud that I could say that all my kids are Christ followers.
You know, they've given their lives to the Lord, chasing it in
their own way. Thank God we all have our own
journeys. And, and I'm, I'm happy and I'm,
I'm grateful for each one of my kids and what God's going to do
with them. So I have been working for
myself for five years. I'll give you a little backdrop
on who I am. I worked construction for a lot
of my life, grew up on the poverty side of things.
We weren't poor, but we weren't, we were definitely not rich.
So I always had this dream of my life of having all this, the
things that you never have when you're a kid and, and you chase
that for all the years. And I got into road
construction, which then led to building construction.
And I got in a company right before, I don't even know, 2015
or something. And I started traveling for work
and I traveled the country doing big builds for a company that
had a lot of room to grow. And I chased that growth and I
chased that fame, I guess you'd call it, or the corporate
ladder. And I sacrificed a lot of our
families time and we began to travel for work.
And the first move, we moved to Texas when Jayden came into the
world, I think he was like 1, maybe not even right around
1:00. We moved to Texas and lived down
there for a year. And that was the first time we
ever left our community. He said Stanwood, nobody in here
knew where that was. He kind of described Big Rapids.
A few of you might have heard of Big Rapids, but we're from a
small town. You know, if you're not Amish
and you're not a farmer, you probably have no idea where it's
at. So it doesn't, you know, it's
not real appealing. So when we moved away, it was it
was literally moved away from everything we ever knew.
We had just got to a point where we had kind of made an imprint
into the church we were serving in the youth.
We were doing the things and we got we got the call to go to
Texas. We left.
We didn't realize what we were signing up for.
I knew what I was kind of signing up for.
It was a chase of the money because that's what everybody in
the world does and went down there and started working seven
days a week. So when you work seven days a
week, you don't go to church on Sundays because you don't have
Sundays off. And your wife is a stay at home
mom with the kids in a community where she knows no one.
And she does homeschooling because you don't trust the
community that you're moving into because you don't know
anybody. And she basically raised the
family by herself for that whole year.
And then I got a call to go to Pennsylvania.
So we moved from Texas to Pennsylvania and she continued
to be a stay at home mom that raised kids by herself.
We put our kids into the school there because it was kind of out
in the middle of nowhere. So it made us more comfortable,
if that makes any sense, because that's what we were from in
Texas. We were in Grand Prairie, which
is right between Dallas and Fort Worth.
It's huge area. So we just, we just couldn't
find peace in that. And on that dream and that
corporate chase to climb the ladder.
Anybody that's ever been in corporate knows that if you want
to climb the ladder, you have to bump elbows with people who are
above you on the ladder. So that led to, I was in
management at that time, that led to a lot of late nights
hanging out with the high ups. And when they flew on the
corporate jet, you take them out and you guys, you drink
together, you party together, you bump elbows, you build
friendships, you climb the ladder.
It's, it's simple, right? It's not about what you know,
it's about who you know. And that lifestyle led me into
something that I had gotten away from, which was heavy drinking,
drug addiction, which then leads to a depression because you
don't really understand your purpose.
So I ended up climbing the ladder.
Things were good. We finally got to a point where
our kids were getting ready to go to school and it was time to
move home because we knew that when our kids got to like 7th,
8th grade, we wanted to be back where we grew up.
And they'd always told me, when you're ready to go home, we'll
send you home. So we come back home and home
was your kids stay at home and we need you in Detroit and we
need you in the UP and you still sleep in a hotel, but you're in
Michigan. So that's kind of cool.
So we got our kids back home and we put them through school and
we're doing that whole journey. So then it got to a point where
I'm only working five days a week.
So you got two days a week. You can actually have some kind
of a life, but the only life that you know at this point is a
party life because that's all you've been doing outside of
work is partying with the corporate leads.
So then that led into a spiral journey of heavy drinking and
drugs and poor choices that come with those.
Everybody knows that you don't do those two without having some
poor choices mixed in that that are above and beyond that.
And it took me down a dark path. And I struggled with depression
a little bit in high school, but not to a degree that it grew on
me. And we'll pray and we'll get
into that. Givenly Father, I just thank you
for today. I thank you for what you're
doing in this place. I thank you for Gaylord.
I thank you for the family of believers that that meet here
and are doing life together. And I thank you for the
leadership that's here, that is selfless, that is just serving
you Lord and serving you faithfully.
I ask that this message glorifies you in every way.
I that anything that is of me falls to the wayside.
I pray that their ears are open to hear the word that you have
for them. I pray that their eyes are open
to see you and everything that that we go through.
And I just pray that you soften their hearts to receive the word
that you have in Jesus mighty name, Amen.
So I started hanging out with a group of people that I had known
before we left, but we got closer when I came back because
I partied harder than when I left.
And this group of people partied hard and they were the nicest
people you've ever met. They would do anything for you.
They would give you the shirt off their back.
They loved well, but they never knew Christ.
So there's things that they would do that would lead you
away from what you know you're supposed to be doing.
My best friend at the time, we, I mean, we live life together.
We snowmobile, we fish, we hunt, we, we literally spent every
weekend of our lives with our families together.
We had seasonal campsites. We all, I mean, it was as close
knit as you could get. And the lifestyles we're living
make it hard to stay married. As I said, my wife, she's, she's
been amazing to stick through the lifestyles we've lived
because a lot of our friends are divorced.
My one best friend, he was going through a divorce at the time
and he was in a place where he didn't know what he's going to
do. So we offered up a room in our
basement to get him off, you know, just to give him somewhere
to be for a time. And the day he was supposed to
move in to our house, he committed suicide.
So when he committed suicide, that brought a dark, a darkness
over all the families. I mean it, it brought in
something that I had dealt with depression, but not to this
degree to where it would drag you into a place of just misery.
And everybody knows if you're not living a Christ life, the
best way to deal with depression is by drinking more and doing
more drugs so that you can mask it.
And that was the life that that I had lived to try to mask that
for a pretty probably a year of my life.
And it was the darkest year I ever lived through.
And I got to a point where I knew that I had to do something
different. Like I said, I was raised in the
church. I knew of God.
I didn't know who God truly was, but I knew that I had to do
something different than what I was doing or as it wasn't going
to work. So we started going back to
church and made it a pattern again in our lives and just
started to try to be present in the building.
So I always get a huge shout out to youth pastors.
Alex is doing things right now and those are that couple.
They're, they're amazing and they're, they're planting seeds
in our youth that will never truly understand until you get
to see what grows from it. So I walk in the church after
being wayward hard for a good period of life.
And as I walk in the church, my youth pastor is the first one
that comes and chases me down. It is so good to see you.
And he could see it on me that I was not in a good place.
He had knew that my friend had committed suicide and he could
tell that I was wearing it. And he he come and he searched
me out and he's like, man, I got this thing I would love to see
you do. And I'm like, OK, well, let's
hear it. I'm I'm all ears.
And he says, well, there's this, there's this event that I went
on. It's a men's event.
It's called the road map.org and it's a men's encounter.
It's so amazing. It'll change your life.
I'm like, OK, I was like, let's hear it.
It's four days. You just separate from the
world. And as soon as he said four
days, I'm like, not happening. There's no way I'm taking four
days off of work. For one.
It's going to compromise everything that I've been doing
for the last, you know, six years at this point to get to
where I'm at. And if I'm taking a vacation,
I'm not taking a vacation to just go sit with a bunch of
random dudes for four days. It's not happening.
And he pitched it harder, though.
I mean, he did a good job. And he gives me the name, and
I'd play the game and I'd put it in my phone and I act like I was
going to do something with it. And I walked out the door.
The next week, I come back and he says, did you sign up for
that event? I said no, he's like, dude, I'll
pay for it, I'll pay for it, you sign up right now, I'll pay for
it. I said OK, what was the name of
that address? I punched it in my phone.
I walk out that door that day. Not happening.
Dude. This went on for literally like
months and finally one day he come up and he's like, hey, what
do I got to do to get you on this van?
And I looked at him. I said, dude, you have pestered
me so much, I will literally just go on the event to get you
to leave me alone and thank God for his faithfulness though.
And it was his consistency as that youth pastor of just like
pressing and he knew God put something on his heart.
He knew what he had to do. And I'm so thankful he never
gave up on me because if he would have never, never made it
to where I'm at right now. So I go on this event and it's
four days where you pretty much turn in like electronics, all
the things and you just disconnect from the world and
they make a table to where you sit in the presence of God for
four days. You, you can take away as much
or as little as you feel. There is no pressure, no
nothing. But they put you in a position
to where you can truly meet God. And I'd always thought I knew
God. I prayed, I did the things, but
I never truly understood the Father that he is until this
encounter. And when I walked out of that
place, it shook me to my core. It it changed my outlook on
life. It changed the way I thought.
And, and that was one of the things that once you've been
free, it puts a desire in your heart to want to see other
people experience that freedom. When I came home that week, my
wife picked me up because I didn't know, but I guess you can
drive yourself there. I thought you had to get dropped
off. So she dropped me off and it was
probably for the best thing because the first day I probably
got my vehicle and left. And she picks me up when we're
riding home and I'm a talker. So we're on our way home and I
haven't said a word. And mind you, I haven't talked
to her in like 5 days. And we get almost home and she's
like, how was it? Like what, what, what happened?
Like what happened? What's going on?
And I kind of snickered and I looked her.
I said, I'm still processing it. Like one of two things.
Either people are going to think that I've completely lost my
mind in four days or they're going to think that I found
Jesus and there's nowhere in between.
And I just like it took me weeks to process everything that I had
learned about who God was and I had found.
But in that finding that new freedom, it it put a desire
inside of my heart to want to serve and serving is important.
People don't understand it. And I see in the head like the
volunteer sign up up there. We're called to serve.
They should not have to be reaching out to be able to
serve. We should be as a church
congregation. We should be serving and we're
not serving this church. We're not serving, you know, an
individual, we're serving God. When you sign up to to do the
youth or the VBS or, you know, for your, whatever you're doing,
you are serving the living God. You're not, you're not serving N
life church. It's way bigger than that.
And a lot of people, I think I have a hard time understanding
that, but I see not we, we pulled in this morning and I see
we're sitting in the in the parking lot and I don't know if
you guys know this. You guys are a little bit late
risers. I'm kind of like you guys at our
own church, so I'm not going to throw stones.
But we're sitting there and we're watching this guy and he
comes out there and he's got this leaf blower and he's
blowing like the parking lot. Like, all right, that's
different. You know, blowing parking lot
off. They didn't see him doing the
sidewalks. And I'm like, that makes more
sense. But you realize what time Kurt
gets here in the morning to blow the parking lots off.
And then I come to find out this guy's got like, he's got so many
jobs in this place. And I'm like, you're the same
guy blowing the parking lot lot off in the mornings.
Like, come on, hey, there's some youth in this room.
Get up and serve. Get up and serve.
You'll find, you'll find so much fulfilment and doing the
simplest things when you're doing them for God, it'll blow
your mind. It doesn't even make sense, but
it's real. So it, it gave that desire to me
to serve and I started serving on these events after I went
through it, I made this commitment with God that I
didn't know I was signing up for.
But in this time, I'm out there and I'm walking around and I'm
like, you know what Lord, this is the last day I'm out there
and I'm, I'm walking, I'm praying.
I'm like, Lord, if you send a family member or a friend
through this event, I'll serve it.
It's an easy one, right? I serve that event for almost 2
years. Every single event after that,
because either a family member of mine or one of my best
friends have gone through the event and literally I watch God
change lives over and over and over and don't get it mixed up.
It's not the event that changes lives, it's the encounter with
the living God that changes your life.
There is no like recipe, but once you've been in the presence
of God, you can't help but have it change your life.
And as I started serving that, there was one time where I'm
serving it and I got to a point in my life where I could, I
could have like I called it my 2.
I could have two social drinks and then shut it off, where all
the rest of my life I could never shut it down.
Once I had two, it was like that was too many because there was
no stopping after that and it just changed who I was as a
person. And I started noticing God
giving me a little hints because I could have the two and then it
would almost pull a filter off of my life of where I would say
things that I wouldn't say if I was sober, but it wasn't so
hurtful or bad that it was like I'm a lot better than I used to
be. It was one of those like in
betweens. And I was I was praying one
night and the Lord spoke to me as audible as he ever had.
And he said, Jeremy need to quit drinking.
And I'm going to tell you I had every excuse in the book.
I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
This is not to be a drunkard. I can have two glasses of wine
and not be a drunkard. And I can be sober minded to
steal and all the things. And he said you need to quit
drinking. I said what in the world?
Oh Lord, why do I have to quit drinking?
But everybody else can still drink.
And you know, it doesn't change. You know who they are and all
these things. I went back and forth and back
and forth. And he finally said to me, he
says if your son's life depended on it, would you quit?
And it froze me. Of course I quit my kids life
depended on it. He never spoke to me again about
it. So then I got this process into
my mind. I'm like, what does that mean?
Does that mean my kids going to be an alcoholic if I keep
drinking? Does that mean that like
something happened to him? Like what does that look like?
And it bothered me for a year straight.
And I was putting together a message for our men's group and
I'm writing this down about this encounter I'd had with the Lord.
And he comes back and he finally gave me the second-half.
And what he told me was, was if you quit drinking for your son,
how much more important are my sons and daughters?
And this is before I was ever a men's director.
And he spoke to me, said, how are you going to stand in front
of people and tell them that they can quit doing something
that you've never quit? How can I rightfully get in
front of a guy that's struggling with alcoholism and say, hey, I
know you can. You can quit.
I know you can do it. I've never done it, but you can.
So that was God that's given me. It was the foresight and being
obedient in it. It allows me at this point in my
life to to sit with men that have this struggle and say, Hey,
God took it from me. He can take it from you.
Live in testimony, dude. You can quit anything you want
to quit. I've been sober for, I don't
know, three years or something now and drug free for five, I
think 5 or 6 years now. And praise God, absolutely
praise God. So for that it opened my eyes up
and it was like, what are we called to do?
So I'm a landscaper by trade. I own a landscape company down
in Stanwood. And I walked into the church a
couple years ago and one of the administrative pastors comes up
and says, what are you going to do?
And God calls you the full time ministry.
I don't know, you better talk to God about that.
I didn't know what I was doing when I started a landscape
company. So he just kind of chuckled in,
you know, I never understood what my calling was going to be,
but I started to understand that it was beyond the church
building. You know, we're called into the
streets. We're called into Gaylord for
you guys. You know, we're called into Big
Rapids, where we're at. We're at college to campus.
There are kids walking around lost everywhere, you know, and
when you think of the church, everybody has a tendency of
thinking of, you know, this place right here or for us, it's
Res Life Church. But I was sitting in church one
day and I, I'm looking at one of the screens.
I know Josh had all kinds of cool stuff you guys look at.
That's not my gig. If you wanted me to build you
like a block wall or something, I could have done that and put
it across the stage. But as far as the PowerPoint
presentations, that's not my thing.
But I'm looking at 1 and it says it said church on it.
And it the part that stuck out to me on it is in the center of
the church are the letters. You are because you are the
church. You are the living examples of
the church. When you walk out of this
building, you may be the only church anybody ever experiences.
It may be an encounter that you have with somebody.
It may be a conversation that you have with somebody, but it
might be it. You might be the one shot that
we have to bring somebody to Christ.
So I was like, OK, well, that's that's a pretty big deal.
That's a lot of weight to carry. So what is it supposed to look
like? You know, what are we supposed
to look like? How are we supposed to be living
to be that example of the church when we come across people and
you know, I believe that we've been called the just love and
lead. So if you get your Bibles out,
how many got actual Bibles? Come on, pick them up.
Let's see them. Oh yeah, all you phone and iPad
guys. I see you guys out there.
So our pastors on us about having a paper Bible.
I don't know if Josh told you, but he if he if you don't have
one, he'll give you 1. He is about the Bible and at
first when he started talking about him, I'm like, what's the
matter? I've got, I've got a Bible on
like 7 devices, right? I mean, I can pull Bible up on
my watch if I wanted to, I think.
But at the end of the day, if we lose power, you live, you lose
your sword. Are you willing to take that
opportunity of not having the living word of God in front of
you because it's on your phone? And his big thing is, is what
are you going to leave your kids when you pass away?
You think anybody's going to pick your old iPhone up and go
through it and read what you had to say on a Bible app.
It's not happening. But if there's a day that they
take your Bible and they start opening it up and seeing what
you put in there for notes and what you have highlighted and
the things that you've already gone through, you can save them
years of trials by reading what you've already been through and
seeing what you found to be the truth.
So that's why I believe it's important to have your, your
Bible in front of you. So we're going to go to second
Peter 1, verses 3 through 8. And it says by his divine power,
God has given us everything we need for living a godly life.
We've received all of his, all of this by coming to know Him,
the one who called us to Himself, by means of His
marvelous, glorious, and excellence.
And because of his glory and excellence, He has given us
great and precious promises. These are the promises that
enable you to share His divine nature and escape the world's
corruption caused by human desire.
In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God's
promises. Supplement your faith with a
generous provision of moral excellence and moral excellence
with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and
self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance
with godliness, and godliness with brother, brotherly
affection and brotherly affection with love for
everyone. The more you grow like this, the
more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of
your Lord Jesus Christ. So when I read that, I feel like
godliness is what jumped off the page to me.
And when I first thought about it, I'm like, what does
godliness look like? Godliness is the truth of who
God is in US. Godliness is a transformation of
the heart that leads to a transformed life.
So godliness should be something that is seen on you.
It should be something that you wear your walk with the Lord
should you should wear that everywhere you go.
What godliness is not godliness is not checking the box and
saying I went to church on Sunday.
Godliness isn't learning foreign languages of Christianese to
where when you're hanging out with the right people, you know
the right things to say, you know how to act, and then when
you leave there, everything changes.
Godliness is not a performance. Godliness is something that is
true to who you are inside and out, no matter what the
situation is and what that looks like in your life.
You know the quality that I listed.
Those are great lukewarm Christian qualities.
If you find yourself act in two different ways, I would I would
say you need to measure yourself up.
People want to be saved from the penalty of sin, but have no
desire to be saved from the power of sin in their daily
life. I believe that's where the
struggle comes in. You want to be saved in the long
run, but I don't want to be saved today.
I don't want to have to change anything because it makes me
uncomfortable. I want to keep living like I'm
living, but I do want God to save me from eternal damnation.
You know, that's where the problem comes in.
That's where the the bad name on the church comes from.
I know growing up, I remember watching people go to church on
Sundays and then be pulling out of the parking lot.
You see that mire flipping somebody off and road raging on
the way out the door. And you're like hypocrites, you
know? And that's how I grew up.
And that was one of the things that pushed me away from church
so much is like, yeah, I had pastor on stage and then he's in
Meijer parking lot and he's ready to fight somebody in the
parking lot. And it's like I thought, what do
I go to that for? That's, that's just two faces it
gets, you know, and I think that's where the church had that
bad reputation. And, and the reality of it is
they're not hypocrites. They're humans.
And humans all have a flesh that we're all fighting.
There's no, I'm telling you right now, this message is for
me as much today as anybody in this room, because we all have a
battle. We're fighting, you know, we
serve the same God. We all have a Goliath in our
life. There's no getting away from it.
It's just the reality of it. We all are battling some kind of
giant. It's just, what does it look
like? You know, one person's giant.
It's definitely not the same as another person's giant, but we
all have the same enemy. So with that, you really got to
dig out the root. What is it?
The change inside of your body is more than an outward
expression. There's something inside of you
that you have to dig out. There's a root that causes you
to do the things that you do, and when you're chasing down
God, God can tend to point you to the root.
What you do with that root is up to you.
If you want to cut the top off of it like you're out in your
garden and just hope it don't come back.
Anybody that gardens knows that's coming back, it might
come back bigger than it was before.
You got to do the work in your heart to dig that out and pluck
that root from the ground and that's where the transformation
begins to change. Your character begins to change.
Godliness produces Christ like qualities such as love,
humility, integrity, patience, mercy, and self-control.
It's typically real clear on how somebody treats somebody else.
You can tell where they're at in their walk.
It sounds extremely similar to the fruit of the spirit.
The fruit of the spirit, Lovejoy, peace, patience,
kindness, meekness, goodness, faithfulness, self-control.
The difference being fruit of the Spirit is what grows inside
you, and godliness is the life that reflects that growth.
How do you carry that fruit out? How do you express that fruit?
Do people see it? You know, it's not just a show,
you know. Are you the same person at home
as you are here? Are you the same person at work
as you are here? Do people notice that you don't
blend in with the rest of the world?
Is it something that is temporary or is it a permanent
lifestyle choice? You know, that's that is truly
the easy representation of telling where you are.
So godliness is one of those things that it shines its
brightest under pressure. You know, so when you leave here
and and you have that guy going on the highway that you don't
even know why he's so mad. But obviously, you know, 7 over
in fast lane wasn't enough and he drives by you and he flips
you off. What's your immediate reaction?
You know, I can tell you my past life that I lived wasn't good
there. There was, it was a clear line
in the sand that said that dude right there, he's not godly.
Ain't nothing. Now, I'm not sure if there's
anything good in that guy, you know, but what about when you're
on the family vacation and you blow a tire?
Everybody's already, you got somewhere to be.
You're trying to get somewhere. The pressure's already on stress
levels a little high. I got the kids in the back
street seat screaming. You blow a tire and you're on
the side of the highway. How do you react there?
Because when you're under that pressure, it tends to bring out
the true qualities of what you have going on in your heart.
So we were in the UP last week on a family fishing trip.
We do it every year. It's a time where we get all our
kids and my parents and my wife Ashley's parents and we all go
together. Glory to the Lord.
It is amazing. It probably sounds stressful to
some of you, but we have been blessed with in laws and parents
that they've mesh really well. And it was a great opportunity
to go up there. And we're up there and we're
headed back from a fishing day and we got the boat on and
everything's going well. And all of a sudden I hear to
quote thump. And I'm like, oh, mercy.
I look in my mirror and it's after the evening fish.
I look in my mirror and I can see sparks tumbling down the
road. I'm like, that's not good.
I don't know what I just hit and I don't know how I didn't see
it. And then the light kicks on on
the dashboard and I'm like, for real.
And the air pressure starts dropping like a rock, like, OK,
pull it over. So I pulled over and my
father-in-law, he's just like, oh, because he was with us that
day. He said, oh, that's about as bad
as it gets, you know, what do you do?
So I'm going to prepare like I prepare for the worst and then
pray for the best. But if the worst happens, I'm
ready for it. So I've got like bottle Jack in
the back of the truck. I got impact wrenches, tools
like you're not going to catch me, not ready for it.
So I get out and you know, I'm changing this tire on the side
of the road and I mean 10 minutes with different spare
down, new tire on the truck, whatever.
And we get done and we get back in the truck and he looks at me
and he goes, man, I don't know if that could have gone any
better. I don't know if I got to change
the tire in my garage that fast. And I just kind of laughed and,
you know, in the back of my head I'm thinking, and I just put
that tire on like not even a month ago.
And it's a three quarter ton truck.
So nobody, you know, truck tires aren't cheap.
And we had a conversation on the ride home and he's just like,
don't even get like, you don't even get upset about it.
Nothing you're going to do about it.
It's already done. I mean, how mad are you going to
let that get you? You're going to ruin a whole
week over a blown tire. Does it stink?
Absolutely, it stinks. But he just came to Christ here
in the last couple years and he grew up in a household that
didn't exist. So he knew what his reaction to
that would have been. But then he had an opportunity
to see my reaction and he knew me since I was a kid and he knew
how hot headed I was and how my temper would flare and how I
would have reacted before. But he got to see the difference
that God's made in my life to where it's OK.
You know, I'm not going to worry about the money God provides.
I'm not going to get stressed out about the situation.
It's going to be OK. It's not, it's not that big a
deal. It isn't, it isn't life
threatening. Big deal.
So for me, that blown tire, you could view it as an
inconvenience or you could view it as an opportunity to show
what God's done in your life. And if that's the one thing that
my father-in-law got to see what God has changed in my life and
it cost me 3 or 400 bucks, praise the Lord, that's a great
investment. It's a great opportunity to show
my father-in-law what change can happen in anybody's life that's
willing to submit and just follow the Lord.
So, you know, you got to be willing to view things
differently as a Christian. I was talking to Bob this
morning and you know, Bob's got a lot of knowledge, a lot of
wisdom. And he's telling me and he says,
he says, you know, if you just live according to the word of
God, things go good. It's easy.
It's it's like a recipe for success.
And I kind of chuckle because I'm like, I'm the advocate.
I kind of like to poke. And I said, what about Job?
So what job do wrong? You know, and he's just like,
that's one I never really understood.
You know, Bob and he's just like he's got all the reasons behind
it. And I said, you know, it's
really not so much about the recipe to having things go your
way all the time because they're not going to when God, you know,
it's more about how do you view your problem?
How what are you going to do with it?
How do you view it? You know, Job could have viewed
it as I've lost everything. I got no reason to live.
God must hate me, but he never steered that way.
Everything can go wrong and that's just opportunity for
growth. So all my friends always tease
me because like James is my book.
I love James. And when they heard that I was
coming up here, they're like, So what book you preaching out at?
What are you going to preach out of James this week?
And I said, well, whatever. So you know, James 1/2 through
4. This is for the guys at home.
Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your
way, considered an opportunity for great joy, because you know
that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.
Let perseverance finish its work so that you may become mature
and complete, not lacking anything.
So if you can change your mindset and twist it to when
trials come your way, praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord, because without those trials, you don't get to
be complete, you don't get to be mature, and you're going to be
lacking something. So when trials come your way,
you have to just be willing to accept it and say, you know
what, Lord, what's the lesson in this?
What can I learn from this trial?
What can I do differently? What is this here to mold me?
What are you going to use this for?
Because anything that's that the enemy is going to use for evil,
God's going to flip it to good. We got to be able to walk in
that. We got to be able to walk in
that in everyday life, everything that we're doing, you
know, every conversation. And that's that's the hardest
thing I think to get through is to understand that bad things
happen to good people, but God's still going to use something in
that to better that person. We're never done growing and our
purpose is never done. I got to meet Jerry.
I don't know. I'm sure you guys probably know
Jerry this morning. And he says, Yep, survived
another heart attack, open heart surgery.
And he's telling me all about it.
And he's like, I'm just blessed. And I said, yeah, you are just
blessed, but you're not done. And he says, oh, I don't know
what else are, you know, he's 8088 years old.
He says, well, I don't know what else I'm supposed to do.
I said, I don't know what you're supposed to do either.
But God's not done with you. That's why you're still here.
You know, at the end of the day, when you're done, you'll be the
first one to find out, you know, praise, praise the Lord for for
guys like Jerry, though, you know, he's, he's sitting in
here, you tell the first thing he's so proud.
And he's telling me about four generations sitting in the
church. Man, I tell you what, that's
something to be proud of. That's, that's doing something
that's, that's treasure stored in heaven.
You know, if there's nothing else, Jerry knows he's got his
family where they're supposed to be, but he's I just don't know
what else I got to do. I said, Jerry, you've been at
this church long enough. You're not done.
You're not you're going to continue to walk with this
congregation and lead by example.
Praise God for guys like Jerry. You know, I pray that that
there's a day in my life where I can say the same thing and and
just be that living example. But walking in godliness is a
fine line because people people get it twisted because if.
You're doing things in the wrong order.
It tends to put off the wrong vibes.
And then people don't want to hear nothing at all from you.
You know, there you start to get the holier than thou.
And I think a lot of that comes from the way we deliver what
we're delivering. And the way we deliver a message
is extremely important. So this is something that that I
find to be extremely valuable in my own life and it's something
that I've continued to grow in. Godliness is neither harsh truth
without compassion or gentleness nor kindness without conviction
expresses truth with gentleness and conviction with humility.
So, you know, pure facts delivered without empathy can
crush somebody. That's not going to help them if
you're just bringing the facts because you need to hear it.
And I'm here to tell you that's not going to bring anybody God,
it's probably gonna get him to separate from you because it's
going to hurt them. And then they're just going to
push away from the things that hurt.
So then they're not going to receive anything from you.
But then on the other side, it's, it's a tricky balance
because being nice just to avoid conflict means that you're
abandoning what's right and true.
And that leads to to shallow and powerless faith because you're
not even going to bring it up to them.
You're just going to let them say the things that are going to
lead them down the wrong road. And you're just going to let
them figure it out on their own. And that's not fair either.
So, so there's this in between that, you know, the, the power
of gentleness. It implies that soft delivery
doesn't mean weak truth. Instead, gentleness makes the
truth easier for a heart to receive it.
So delivering in a place in a manner that people know that you
actually care enough to have a conversation with them is really
the key. It's about having a firm spine
and a soft heart, and it echoes in the Bible from Ephesians 415,
and it's speaking the truth in love.
You know, something that we always say is nobody cares how
much you know if they don't know how much you care, you don't
have access to everybody's life. But if somebody gives you access
to their life, you have to, you have to carry that extremely
gentle and you have to, you have to handle their heart in a way
that God would be proud. So that's something that as a
parent, I know I continue to learn because for some reason,
kids don't understand how much you care to a degree because
they don't understand how much you love them.
You know, I think as a parent, it's really tough because you
want to see the best for your kids and you know, the roads
that they're walking down and, and you see it coming from a
mile away, but they don't understand how much you love
them because as a kid, you just can't.
You can't even exceptionalize how much a parent actually cares
about you. I know I never did.
I never understood how much my parents cared about me until we
had our first kid. I didn't know what love was.
I thought I did. I told girls I loved them.
You know, it worked, but as far as I actually know what love
was, you know, I didn't, I didn't know what love was.
I didn't, I didn't know how to love.
Well, you know, but when you're when you're speaking out of
love, it's the truth that provides the direction and the
love provides the motivation. Our friend group, we always, we
always tell each other because we have access to each other's
lives and, and we do life together with our group that we
do now. And we always when you hear
somebody come up and they tell you, brother, I love you enough
to tell you, you know, they're about to put something on you
and you're like, oh, what did I do?
How, what did I do wrong? What do I got to change?
Because that's that's a great way to open.
I love you enough to tell you that you need to stop doing
this. Or I heard you did that or you
know, and, and we just call each other out.
But but you know that they care about you.
They don't want to see you get sucked back into the world.
It's the easiest thing to fall back into.
We always, we always laugh because you know, 1% off isn't
bad, right? 1% off ain't bad.
If you can live your life in a godly fashion and only be 1%
off, it doesn't seem bad. But if you're traveling across
an ocean and you're 1° off, when you get across the ocean, you're
not going to be anywhere where you, where you thought you were
headed. You're not even going to be in
the same country, you know? So if you're 1° off and you're
walking with God two years down the road, 3 years down the road,
you're going to look over and be like, well, I was walking beside
God. I don't even know where God's at
anymore. I can't see him, can't hear him,
can't feel him. What happened?
You know, it's really easy to get pulled back into the world.
So true godliness is the life sincerely oriented towards God,
expressed through having Christ like characters and everyday
integrity. True godliness is growing rather
than perfect, authentic rather than staged, and produced by the
spirit rather than self manufactured.
When walking in the spirit, mature when walking in spiritual
maturity. You should do it naturally.
Don't hear what I'm not saying. Naturally doesn't mean
effortlessly because it takes effort, but there's two types of
natural and if you're a brother or sister in Christ, 1 is a new
nature because the world and the flesh that you were born into
and then becoming a Christ follower is all new nature, all
new. Everything inside of you should
change every thought, every, every action.
It should continue to be new. But there's a point where it
becomes second nature when you're walking it out so long
that you begin to do the things naturally, just like a
professional athlete. You know, professional athletes
don't get there because they just were in the presence long
enough and they just showed up. Now it comes from strength.
Strength training, conditioning reps over and over and over and
over. And that's our life.
We're getting reps over and over again.
Are you going to do the Rep the right way?
Are you going to do the Rep the wrong way?
But you don't get to become a professional athlete because
you're doing things the wrong way.
It's consistency and living life consistently and doing the
things you know you're supposed to consistently and now a lot,
not allowing the enemy to veer your practice.
You have to continue to make it to where when bad things happen,
your natural reaction is something that got to be proud
of. Your natural reaction to a bad
situation, to when money's tight, to when your vehicle
breaks down, it's got to be a natural reaction to.
I can't wait to see what God's going to do with this.
And that's where we got to continue to grow to.
And I don't think that you grow to that without being put
through the trials. So, you know, I met a guy in the
UP. How am I doing on time?
I got a little carried away. The last one, just a quick one,
rabbit trail met a guy in the UP and we were at the boat launch
and we come in and he's standing there and he's got his veterans
hat on. And anytime I see anybody
wearing a military of any kind, I go up and I just have to thank
him for their service and what they've done and just tell them
thanks for for us to be able to live the lives we live because
of their sacrifice, because it's a sacrifice.
And his was Vietnam. And I have a handful of friends,
parents that were there and they all have the same mindset.
And when I told him thanks, he looked at me and said, I don't
understand why I made it out. That was his one comedy that he
made back to me. And I said, you know, the best
part is you don't have to understand.
But at the end of the day, God's not done with you.
So whether you served, whether you didn't serve, if you're in
this room today, God's not done with you.
You got to continue to walk in the Spirit and to continue to
grow because the God's not done. And he looked at me and he
didn't even know how to react to it.
And he's just like never, just kind of like it was like all new
revelation too. And I'm like, you know, like,
OK. And I asked him, I said, you got
kids. He goes, Yep, I said, you got
grandkids. He said, Yep, that's why you're
not done. I said, God left you here
because there's something that you're supposed to teach those
kids and he ain't taking you until until you do what you're
supposed to do. It's your choice.
And and he kind of received that and he wasn't sure.
And the weirdest thing, two days later, he shows up in the exact
same fishing hole on that. And I'm like, OK, I was nice to
you once, now you're in my fishing hole.
So no, he was actually getting ready for a tournament and we
had to have, we ended up having a great conversation and I got
to be that church to him that day.
And I pointed out a bunch of fish that I left on the beds for
him so that he could win his fishing tournament the next day,
hopefully. But it it turned into a
conversation where I ended up helping him load his boat back
up. You know, he was 80 something.
And I see him out there and he's trying to load a boat by
himself. I'm like, can you use a hand?
Of course he needs a hand. So I ended up helping him get
the boat out. And he sat there and we had a
conversation afterwards. And he's just like, I don't know
if I've ever met anybody quite like you.
And I thought to myself, praise the Lord, you know, this is this
is that encounter that maybe that's what God was waiting for.
Maybe he was waiting for you to have a God encounter and to just
be loved. Well, you know, but well, what
are we? Are we in too big of a hurry to
be that person for somebody because this world has happened.
It's so fast. It's so easy to get in such a
rush to not be that example of Christ when we have
opportunities to. And I'm not saying that I
stopped for every person with a blown tire on the side of the
road. But if I feel a tug in the
Spirit, you do, you know, and I believe that that walking in
that spirit is something that we have to really be able to dial
in on. You know, it's a it's a daily
habit. It's walking in step.
It's being intentional on growing the fruit that's inside
of you so that you can feel it when you're called.
And I think that's the one thing if you could take away from here
today, it would be to continue to grow in the Spirit of God and
understand when you're hearing from him, because once you
understand when you're hearing from God, there's nothing that
can stop you. So I'm going to close out
dearly. Father, I thank you for today.
I thank you for an opportunity to come to Gaylord and just
bring your word. Lord, I pray that you continue
to do what you do here in Gaylord and use this church to
continue to spread your greatness across Gaylord and to
continue to be the church outside of the church, the Big
Sea church. Lord, I pray that you get you
begin to pour your spirit into everyone in this room and and
give everybody just the boldness it takes to be the Big Sea
Church everywhere they go. Lord, as I pray today, I just
feel, I feel a stirring and I felt it in first service too.
And I just feel like I got to ask if there's anybody in this
room that struggles with any kind of depression.
I just ask that you look up here anybody that struggles with
depression. Yeah.
Have you guys committed your life to the Lord?
Yeah. OK, So I just come together
right now and I come against the power of the enemy.
I come against the whispers of the devil that that try to tell
you that he has you in a place because of the truth of it is is
in Romans. It tells us that that we have
the life giving spirit inside of us and it has freed us from the
power of sin that leads to death and sin has no hold on us.
We come against any kind of demonic realm that is trying to
whisper into the ears of of God's children.
We come against you right now in Jesus mighty name.
We silence you in Jesus name. You have no authority in their
lives and I just pray that you begin to open their eyes to see
who they are in you. Lord, we pray that you open
their ears to to hear your voice clearly, to overpower the voice
of the enemy. I pray that you soften their
hearts to continue to to mend and mold into who you've called
them to be. And I just pray that that you
just continue to fill their bodies with your spirit Lord,
from the bottom of their feet to the top of their head.
Let your spirit flow through them.
And I just pray that that any voice of the enemy just begins
to just be binded in Jesus mighty name.
And I just pray that you begin to lead them down a path and put
them in front of the people that they need to be surrounded by to
bring them out of a darkness that the enemy is trying to
isolate them to. I just thank you Lord, for the
spirit that is in this room that is the strongest, it is the the
mightiest, the greatest, the holiest.
We just thank you for that spirit that you trust us with
Lord. And we just thank you for for
just being there. Lord, we just pray that you
continue to to lead and guide every one of them.
I just, I just asked right now if there's anybody in the room
that has not given their life to the Lord, just raise your hand.
Anybody in the room, all sons and daughters, praise God.
We just thank you. Lord, we thank you for this
opportunity. We thank you for what you're
doing. We just ask that you continue to
lead and guide us and all that we do.
We, we just give it to you. Lord, lead us.
Let us be servants and let us be faithful and let our spirit
continue to grow In Jesus may name, Amen.