What an incredible time. If you missed that last week, we celebrate. We celebrate what's important and that decision, that decision to say, I am all in with Christ is everything. And well we're we're doing a series here right now, just like Jesus. And if you were here two weeks ago, you you heard that we talked about really praying like Jesus and that just the idea of having that relationship. And that is the baptism is a visual of that relationship, going, I'm I'm all in, just like I wear a ring from my wife that I stood in an altar in Knoxville, Tennessee, 22 years ago and said, I'm I'm all in. I'm all in. And that that visual is that relationship. The first we could talk about praying like Jesus in a simple prayer. He prayed, Father, and uh ask boldly. And uh if you were here, especially in the first service, it was one of the highlights of 30 years of speaking because during one of the times, if you weren't here, I'll just describe it very quickly. I there's one of the just learning to ask boldly and how children ask boldly, and God just decided to take over. There's this 14-month-old little girl that walked up uh just to the steps, and then everybody's looking like, what is she doing there? And and she came up and I looked down at my notes and I'm like, God, I I can't I can't fake this stuff. This is amazing. And I picked her up and I said, Guys, don't miss this. It says, Do not hinder the little children to come to me, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these. And and that's the way God wants us to come. To come boldly, but to ask boldly, but to surrender completely. And that that concept, and then last week we talked about how did Jesus think? What did he think, and how was he thinking every day? And he was thinking of the presence of the Father with him and the truth in him and through him. And and this week we're gonna look at if you've ever had to make a decision of any kind in any category, this is today. We're gonna talk about what the way Jesus lived and how he lived through those decisions and how he made those decisions. And if I can be so bold, there's uh if if you haven't been here, I'm gonna give you the quick synopsis of the idea that the Old Testament, everything before Jesus was uh it's a bow tie. This is the this part of it, and then the knot is Jesus, and then everything after him in the New Testament, that's that's the bow tie. That's it. Jesus is the center of that. And there's an incredible verse in Micah, and I'm gonna look at two different passages that put together and I'm gonna share some other verses with it. But if you want to open your Bibles, this verse, this verse is the decision verse. If I'm making a decision in life and I've got these three decisions in one simple verse, it literally answers everything when we know Christ. It's how Jesus lived on a daily basis. And the best way I can uh describe it is really just he says, this is what's required. I'll share the verse in a second, but if if I can tell you a brief story, I have uh several friends from college. My best friend was roommate with another friend of mine who was engaged. He was older. Frank was a junior, and uh his fiance was a senior, and yet I had a class with his fiance. She was a senior, I was a freshman in college. We had freshman history together, and I got to tell you a little bit about Lynn before I tell you what happened in our class. But Lynn was one sweet girl, athletic, pretty, just a wonderful person, godly woman, and she was just fun to be around. She's also fun to mess with. And my best friend and I just had this kind of unconscious connection where we knew what to say, when to say to mess with somebody. And Lynn had come by to say bye to Frank. Frank was at a class and she was going home for the weekend, and she came by his apartment. My best friend was his roommate, and she goes, Is Frank here? And we're like, no. And she goes, Well, what are you looking for? And she goes, Well, I'm about to head home for the weekend. Just want to say bye before I left. We're like, oh, okay. And we just clicked, me and my buddy, we just clicked, and we knew this was the time. We need to mess with Lynn. So we said, Well, you know, it's a it's a long drive. Did you get gas? And she goes, Yeah, yeah, I got gas. Have you changed your oil lately? Because you know it's important. You got to change your oil. She goes, Yeah, I changed it a few weeks ago. And we're like, Well, did you when's the last time you changed the air in your tires? And she was like, What? I said, What do you mean what? When's the last time you changed the air in your tires? She goes, I haven't changed the air in my tires. We're like, You have never changed the air in your tires? Are you kidding me? I'm shocked they haven't rotted off your car. That's that's dangerous, is what that is. And she's like, What? You guys are you guys are ridiculous. And she goes, Well, tell Frank, I said, bye. I'm gonna I'm gonna run an air and I'm gonna I might swing back by. So she leaves and she comes back, she walks in, Frank's there, and she's mad. She's like, You don't have to change the air in your tires. And I was like, and her fiance's like, what are you talking about? She goes, Well, I went to the gas station. I said, Hey, will you check the oil and fill up the gas and check, change the air in my tires? Like, you don't have to change the air in your tires. And she was like, Oh, that's good. So this is a running joke. I mean, this was 20 years ago. We still talk about that. But Lynn, Lynn would miss details of what's it meant to be required. She was in my freshman history class, and after three or four weeks, I'm like, Lynn, we were in a uh kind of a Bible study, weekly Bible study together. I said, Why are you in my freshman English class? And she said, Well, I don't really like history. I'm sorry, it was history, not English, history. She goes, I don't really like history, and I just thought maybe they'll forget. And I said, So you're in your last semester of college and you're taking a freshman history because you thought they would forget. Yeah, that's what's so called a requirement. They kind of don't forget those things. So she had to take that class. Well, here's the deal. When the truth says this is required, and when God says this is required, it's it's not passive. It's like, hey, it's not something I want you to do so that you can get. It's something that's within you that if you want to experience life to the fullest, joy completely, peace, and all the great creation that I have for you, this is required. These are the requirements for that. And in Micah chapter 6, verse 8, it's this one verse that literally the rest of the Bible enhances and just extrapolates out. And it says simply this He has shown you, O mortals, what is good and what does the Lord require of you to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. Will you pray with me for just a minute? Father, I pray as we look at your truth, that you would individually and intimately speak to every one of our hearts with whatever decision we're going through, and that we would see clearly how you long to interact with our lives right now and show us how to make these decisions today so that we can experience what you have for us. In Christ's name. Amen. Well, the first the first decision we have to make if we want to experience life abundant, and I'm gonna also look at Matthew chapter 5 from this point forward and look at how God extrapolates. Jesus Himself says, This is how I just extrapolate, how I multiply, how I amplify these simple decisions. The first one is simply, we see it in there, it says, What does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to do what's right. General Swartzkopf, the gentleman who was the general over the Iraqi war, which was a phenomenal success, was asked one time, you have all these resources, you have a very dynamic situation. How do you decide what is right and when? And I'll never forget his quote. He says, the truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it. And I was like, wow. And what God would say to you and I is, hey, I'm gonna make it very clear what is right. But here's the deal: if I really look at what is right, I start to come at a realization of who I am and that I don't always do what is right. Too often in our society, I feel like we are living this comparison game. There's a bell curve, and well, I'm I'm more right than most people. I'm more right than most people most of the time. But am I right? Am I just all the time? Do I stand up for what is right no matter what the consequences, no matter what the benefits, do I step up? He puts it this way I've got to come to the point where I reconcile. A few weeks ago we talked about praying boldly, and I mentioned the prayer of Jabez, where he says, Lord, bless me and bless me indeed. Well, Jesus takes this concept of right and says, Well, I'm gonna show you how to be blessed and how to live justly in Matthew chapter 5, and I'm just gonna read these. You can go back and see the benefits of them. But it says, Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Well, see, here's the deal: it's not just those who are poor in spirit. That's not going, oh, poor pitiful me, I'm just nothing. That's not poor in spirit. Poor in spirit is the realization of what is right in its perfect form and where I am in my flesh and imperfection. When I realize I'm not capable of doing what is right all the time and sustaining it on a regular basis in and of myself. Oh, I'm better than most, maybe. I'm better than the bell curve, but I'm I'm talking about doing what is right completely always. When I come to the point where I realize and I look at my past, and I'm telling you, if you saw my past, you'd be like, that ain't right. And when we come to that honest point, like these people who got baptized said, you know what, I'm I'm not there. I can look relationally where I've failed, vocationally, where I've fallen short. I can look financially where I've made mistakes, I can look at that and go and I'm fully capable of doing what is not right. And I've suffered from that. But Lord, here's the deal. I realize even when I can do what is right, I can't sustain it all the time. And being poor of spirit says, you know what, I know I can't sustain it. Those who mourn, it's not a I'm sad all the time. It's more of the looking at our society and looking at the evil that is in our society and the wickedness that prevails around us and realizing our world is hopeless apart from that which is right. And we don't have the capacity to get to what is right. I'll give you one example of what is right. We have a country that was founded on biblical principles. And it's it's just when humans get involved and we can't sustain what is right, and then we start doing what we think in our definition is okay, not right, but it's okay. And you know what? It's the best that I can do at this moment, and then it's the best that we can do, and then we're gonna start playing to the populace versus what is right and what is truly best, and then we kind of go out of control to the point where I'll give you the financial example instead of saying, hey, I'm gonna live within our means, we're gonna deal with the tough issues, we're gonna do that. We just started spending more than we had, and now we have over 20 trillion in debt. That's not right. Instead of dealing with what is true and right. And that's just one example, we can do a million of them, but when I mourn, it's to say, you know what, that's not right. What can I do? What do I need to be doing? It says, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Bless those who are meek, those who say, you know what, I I am acting right, but I'm gonna have the power under control. I'm not gonna oppress others with that which is good. I'm going to literally continue to seek what is right. Hunger and thirst, more important than water and food, is to do what is right. When I get to that point, I realize, you know what, I need help with this. It's a direct dependence on a divine assistance that I have to have in order to move. That's what's right. It says when you make that decision to do that and to seek me in that, then the next is to love mercy. Love mercy. Another way to put that would be to live selfless or to to love kindness. I I wish I could tell you that that's something I do all the time. If you were here last week, you you heard me say, I love to give mercy to those who deserve it. And that's kind of a contradiction because mercy is unmerited favor, and I get that. And in Matthew chapter 5, it says, Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy. It's those who say, you know what, I I realize my depravity and I know I need help. It's those moments of life that I cannot do. Now, I don't know if I I love to watch movies, but I don't really recommend a lot of movies. But my wife and I went to see one this past weekend, and it was kind of the right heart behind it, and they were able to remove the cheesiness out of it, and it's actually an incredible movie and story and love story, and and it's just amazing. It's called I Can Only Imagine, based on the song, but I I never knew the story. And it tells the story, and I'm not going to give away the whole movie, but there's this one pivotal point about a man who is broken because a father who was broken and a family that was broken. And it comes to this pivotal point where the son and the father and the father is broken and really is asking for mercy and forgiveness. And the way that plays out is a beautiful example of what we can't do on our own. It's worth seeing just for that one storyline within the movie. But then I go back to seeing mercy and kindness. To ask that, do I love kindness or do I just like it when I get it? Do I love kindness? Do I look for opportunities to be kind, to help, to get outside of myself? Am I living in that world? It says this in Philippians 2, 3, and 4. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, rather in humility, value others above yourself, not looking to your own interest, but each of you to the interest of the others. Am I looking for that situation? This past Friday I had lunch with a couple friends. And I one of my buddies, I'll call him Andy, because that's his name. And Andy, Andy is just one of my favorite people. He's just every different direction, but man, he gets this concept of just kindness. And it wasn't in a religious way. It wasn't in a I want to tell you something way. It was just in the most real, genuine, precious way. We're at uh at Buffalo Wild Wings, we're watching some March Madness. I love March Madness. And uh Briley was our waitress, and she brings out our wings and and uh she goes, You guys have anything else? And my buddy Andy says, Riley, can I ask you one last question? She goes, Yeah. He says, We we always we always pray and ask God to bless our food. Is there anything that you want us to pray for? And it was very genuine. It wasn't like, hey, I'm gonna share Jesus, I think you're a sinner. It was not, it was just very genuine. What's on your heart? Can we pray for anything? And she said, Well, I just I just got a new job at a new restaurant at Buckhead, and I really hope it goes well. And he goes, We'll pray for you. That was it. I thought, what an amazing gift of kindness. But then there's different pieces of kindness, there's that proactive kindness that we can be showing and looking and saying, God, will you show me the opportunity to show kindness to somebody? But then there's there's other levels of it. The movie shows it incredibly well, but this idea of mercy, one of the greatest examples of mercy is forgiveness. And as I sat there at lunch with my buddies Dan and Andy, they were telling me about a men's retreat they had been on. And he says, Kenneth's a very small retreat, it's only about 30, 35 guys, and they're from all over the Southeast. Nobody knew anybody. And he says, it's just a time to pour into each other. He says, but one of the sessions is on forgiveness. And we kind of do the talk and then we give guys the opportunity. Is there anything that you want to just share with us that has God laid on your heart to forgive? He says, There's this one gentleman, he stood up, he said, big strapping guy. He said, and and he just big teddy bear of a guy, but he stood up, he says, you know what, I've been harboring this for over a decade. There's an African-American gentleman, and he says, I I went on a peace march up in Forsyth County. And it was just, we're gonna march on a Saturday. We're just gonna walk and and have a peaceful march. And he says, and people lined up, and he says, What they yelled at us was amazing, and they they literally threw rocks at us. And he says, I could not get, I cannot get over this. And he says, I have to let this go. I have to forgive these people. I've been carrying it with me, and I have to let it go, and I want to let that go today. He said, A gentleman in the circle stood up. He says, It was a short, quiet, sweet man who served at his church, and he walked up to him, and he began to get choked up, and he said, I need forgiveness. He said, I was there. And I was on the side of the road. And I threw rocks. Amen. He said, You can just, you can just feel that moment. And this man just leaned in and he said, I have felt such conviction from that day till now, and I've longed for an opportunity to ask for forgiveness. And he said he just he said the big fella just said, I forgive you. And he scurried out of the room. And they thought, how overwhelming was that. They thought he just needs some time alone to process what he's been forgiven for, but that wasn't it. He came back two, three minutes later with a bucket and a towel. And he walked over to the gentleman and he washed his feet out of just a moment of, I've been shown mercy. And that's what that's what this love of mercy, love of kindness is. It is contagious in the best possible way. It's it's unfair, it's unmerited, we don't deserve it, and yet when it's shown, it changes everything. And in that loving of mercy, I see this idea, and God's beginning to convict me of this concept of okay, love mercy. And part of that is discipleship. And I was at another conference a couple weeks ago, and a gentleman shared this question, and I cannot get it out of my mind, and it's hit me between the eyes, and he said simply this can we be a disciple of Jesus if we are not discipling others? Oh he says, Go and make disciples. That's all he asked. Am I a genuine part of passing on his truth? Am I getting his truth? Are we in discipleship? Are we doing this life about Jesus, towards Jesus together? I used to say this all the time. God's convicted me of it. I used to say, do not follow me. Don't follow me. Because I know my past. And I know where it is. And if you saw it, you'd be like, don't worry, we're not. But see, the point of Jesus is saying, hey, I want you to be pouring your life into others. Share your failures, share your past. Show where I've redeemed you. Follow me because as you're following me, others are going to follow with you to me. It's not what you've done, it's where you're going. It's what you're allowing me to do. And I realized this this past week. I was at a track meet. My daughter and my youngest son were in this track meet, and there's a young man there who was in fifth grade, and he was just at the stadium, and he was dressed. Now, his parents are both from the South. He was born in Georgia, he lives in Georgia, and he's a huge Buffalo Bills fan. He had on a Buffalo Bills hat, a Buffalo Bills t-shirt, Buffalo Bills short, Buffalo Bills socks. And I knew this young man. I said, Hank, it's good to see you, buddy. I said, So you're a Bills fan? He goes, Oh yeah. Do you know why he's a Bills fan? Because my oldest son, I'm not going to tell you the story of why he loves the Bills, but he loves the Buffalo Bills. And he babysat this kid several years as growing up. And he was so excited, and he was so big of a Bills fan. This kid was like, I don't know why I just want to be a Bills fan. And now he has everything Bills. Because he followed somebody who was on a track. And see, when we love mercy and we are showing kindness and loving and being real and seeking Jesus and loving mercy received, and we're giving kindness and mercy. It is contagious. And people are gonna go, I want that. Had a waitress one time stop me and she goes, What's your sign? I said, I I don't I don't know. She goes, When were you born? I said, September 23rd. She said, Oh, you're a Virgo Libra, you're on the cusp but I'm Like, okay. She goes, I knew it because there's something different about you. And I said, What do you mean? She goes, You're just you just exude kindness, and I just I just want to be here. I said, Well, that's that's not my birthday. She goes, You lied about your birthday? I was like, No, no, no, not not that. I said, It's not my it's not my uh sign. It's I I shared with her in 30 seconds, I said, you know what? I I don't deserve what I what I have. And I've been shown mercy and I've been shown grace, and I'm not supposed to be here, and God healed that. What what you see is not a sign, it's it's Jesus in me. And it's just kind of coming through more and more the more I let it. She said, I knew there was something different, and I want to be that more and more, and I'm not as much as I long to be, but I want to be it more. And I find that if I make that decision to, I want, Lord, I know I can't, but I'm gonna strive. I'm gonna hunger and thirst for righteousness to do justly. I'm gonna love mercy. I'm gonna look for opportunities to be kind. I'm gonna look for opportunities to be merciful. I need to show mercy, and I can't show it until I receive that mercy. And when I look at doing justly and where I fall short, mercy is all I have hope for. And then finally, he says, and to walk humbly with your God. Walk humbly. I I look at the greatest decisions of my life, the greatest decisions that worked out for the good. And every one of them came through a trial to a point where I literally sat before God and said, Help. I've messed it up to where I can't, I've done all I can do. One was a negative in relationships. I had I had blown apart more relationships than I can count. One day I was just overwhelmed with how many times I'd failed there, and I finally came and I'm like, Lord, what do I need to change? What do I need to do? And I asked for his wisdom, and he gave it without making me feel ashamed, and he began to show me his truth where I needed to change, and and that ended up meeting my wife and the greatest relationship, humanly speaking, I've I could have ever dreamed of and beyond. I was in work, I was in the top five in sales in a Fortune 500 growth company, and and yet I was walking with the Lord, but it just got to this point where I'm like, Lord, it's not fulfilling. Help. And then I went through two years and eight months of just letting it go, going, Lord, I'll I'll dig ditches. I just want to know I'm walking with you. And that humility of saying, Lord, I don't know what's missing, and that led to what I've been done for the last 28 years that has just been the greatest fulfillment of my life. It's this walking humbly to say, Lord, I need your help. It says this in Matthew 5. It says, Blessed are the pure in heart, those who seek God's purity, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness for doing what is right. He's saying, Hey, no matter what your circumstances, I'm going to bring you through it. Jesus lived, live like Jesus. This is the way the writer of Philippians put it in chapter 2 about Jesus. Jesus, who being in the very nature of God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness, and being found in an appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God exalted him in the highest place and gave him a name that is above every name. If I want to experience the greatness of this life, it starts with walking humbly. He puts it this way in 1 Peter 5, 6. It's our choice. Humble yourself, therefore, under God's mighty hand that he may lift you up in due time. He says it this way in James 4, 6. But he gives us more grace. That is why the Scriptures say God is opposed to the proud, but shows favor to the humble. Can I tell you I've seen a direct correlation between fulfillment and wisdom and humility? A direct correlation. I found that I go to Home Depot fewer times to complete a project when I humble myself while I'm there and say, well, there's three words, and they're the some three of the most difficult words in the human, the English language, and mostly for men, because in our DNA and our our physical structure, there's been studies that our tongue does not move in the way it should to be able to say these words. And the the first three words are I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I've been Home Depot sitting there, and the guy's explaining it with all these assumptions. Well, show you, okay, well, you do this and this, you know how to do this, right? And you know how to do this, right, and this is this, and well, you just it's easy to just do this. And for me to stop and just go, I got no idea what you're talking about. You lost me that nail, okay? That that's I that's about as good as I get. And you know what I found when I humble myself in situations, almost a hundred percent of the time, people go, Oh, okay, well, let me help you. And if they do that, how much more is God going? I'm just I'm just waiting for you. Waiting for you to say, I don't know, because I do, and I'm gonna help you. And just I found that I where a normal project would be five trips, I'm down to about two trips now to Home Depot because it's like, yeah, I I don't I don't even know what you might as well be speaking French because I have no idea what you're talking about. But I really do want to do this project. And I don't want to hold you up, but if you got two minutes, if you can just share this, oh well, yeah, we need this. Do you understand what this one means? Yeah, I know what that one means. Okay, this one I'm like, I nothing. Well, you just take sandpaper and you do this. I'm like, oh, that's what that means. Okay. And I've just found as I get older and my hair is proof that I'm getting older, it's turning gray and turning loose at the same time. I'm not enjoying that at all. But I'm taking advantage because here's the deal: I now know a whole lot of what I don't know. And I know that I don't know most of what I thought I used to know. And I know my wife knows that I don't know. I think. And I'm learning to say, you know what, I don't know. And another one that I just I found such power, and it goes back to mercy and it goes back to doing what's right instead of defending my point and defending where I am and hoping and thinking. I just say these three words a whole lot more recently. I was wrong. I was wrong. Man, I missed it. I I'm sorry. I'm even asking my wife this on a regular basis now. I asked her last night at dinner. I said, honey, I it's just us. Is there anything you wish was different about me? What do I need to change? And she's so gracious. And even in the midst of frustration, I'll ask her sometimes, I'm like, Am I getting any better at that? Because I really am trying. And she'll be like, Yeah, you're not as bad as you used to be. And I just and she's so gracious and so merciful. But here's the deal: I can't change your circumstances. I can tell you, if we make these decisions, God begins to work. And he's already working. It says, Blessed is, not blessed will be. It's already within us, it's already there. He wants us to discover the poor in spirit that we are, discover that our world is messed up, discover mercy. He wants us to discover the blessings that are there. When we do, we will discover joy, peace, fulfillment, significance, everything that our bodies and minds and hearts long for. I want you to notice a couple words as I wrap up with these few verses. In Hebrews 12, it says, For the joy set before him, Jesus, he endured the cross, scorning at shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Now I've seen the passion of the Christ, I've heard depictions of the cross. If there's one word that does not come to my mind, it is joy. And the cross was not joy, but because of joy, he endured the cross. And what God is saying for you and I, the way Jesus lived, I'm gonna endure whatever this world has to throw at me, but I'm gonna do what's right, and I'm gonna love mercy, and I'm gonna walk humbly, which was the culmination of the cross. And to that he discovered joy. The joy that's gonna come from these people getting to experience how I lived. It says this in Galatians 6 9, let us not become weary in doing good, for the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. It says it this way in James 1. Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, when you face trials of many kinds. Because God says it is our opportunity to decide. Am I gonna decide to do what is right? To do justly? Am I gonna decide when I've been hurt to love mercy? Am I gonna decide to walk humbly? When I do that, it changes everything. Let me pray for us and let me encourage you about next week. Father, thank you so much for the simplicity of your story. Over thousands of years, Jesus, they talked about you and then you lived it and enhanced it, and we talk about you still, but we can experience you. Help us to know you more intimately by doing justly. Every time we do justly, Lord, it is evidence that you are moving in us. Lord, and help us to love mercy and forgiveness and kindness. But Lord, every day it's this freedom to just walk humbly with you, to turn to you and say, God, I don't know what I'm gonna face today, but I know I'm gonna need your help. So, Lord, will you just be with me all day long and humbly submit to that? Father, when we do that, we experience you and we thank you for it in Christ's name. Amen. If I will actively be dependent upon him, closely and attentive to him, and constantly seek him, then I will discover what he has for me in life. These three weeks have been awesome. Pray like Jesus, think like Jesus, live like Jesus. Next week, there is one word that just makes it, it gives it the power. And it's different than every other word we could use. And I'm gonna tell you when you hear it, you're gonna go, I needed that. And when you hear it unpacked, it will be life changing. Don't miss next week. Elon's gonna be incredible. Go ahead and stand up and let's wrap up.