Well, good morning. So at the 9 o'clock service, I was caught off guard because I I didn't realize we were going to show that video. I think Nathan had mentioned it to me, but I'd forgotten. And I was like, oh, I wasn't thinking about coming on stage after that. And anytime, anytime you see something like that or just reflect on what Jesus really did, it changes, at least for me, very much the idea of what love really is. Because we say I love you or I love things very flippantly often, right? I love my son, I love my daughter, I also love Moose. Right? And so we can say that so often that when we hear, no, Jesus loves us, we're like, oh yeah, that's good. But but no, Jesus loves us. And it's a love that he poured out. And it's amazing, and I think it's worth singing about for sure. Nathan mentioned the men's getaway. We had Fearless, our men's adventure this weekend. Uh I came back late last night from that. It was a great, great time. I know we had three three guys get baptized. One guy gave his life to Jesus last night, which is really amazing. I backed into my friend Pete's car. That was great. Right as I was going. That was awesome. Um man, it was an amazing trip. Guys, if you weren't able to make it, uh definitely come to the next one. Only one thing I'm a little bitter about is the very first night, Friday night, I was lied to by some dear friends. I was told that sleeping in a hammock outside is this magical experience. And you just feel free and the wind is there, and it's awful. It's terrible. I know a lot of young guys that like to sleep in hammocks because they're young enough that their back can be in the shape of a banana all night long and they don't feel it the next day. But 5 a.m. I gave up, went in my car, and slept. It was bad. It was bad. But other than that, and you're not forced to sleep in a hammock, guys. So next year, it's an optional hammocks are optional. Um, got a few things I want to let everyone know about. Next week is gonna be a great week. We have baptisms next Sunday. We're so excited about that as always. If you would like to get baptized, if you're ready to take that step in your relationship with Jesus, we have a sign-up table in the lobby over by the source. Just sign up, we'll give you all the details. You can pick whichever service you'd like to get baptized at. And then next Sunday, as soon as we're done in here, we'll have a little 10-minute get-together right afterwards. It's a get together called What Now. We don't want to waste anyone's time. We don't want to waste your time at all. And we want you to know as soon as possible, if you're new, whether or not this is this is your church. This is the place you want to say, okay, I'm home. I want to be here. We just want to give you a picture, a little bit of a behind-the-scenes look about what makes us unique as a church, what our vision really is, why we're here, and what it looks like to be part of this place. It'll take 10 minutes tops. I promise I'm gonna time it 10 minutes, no more. I won't ramble like I'm doing right now. 10 minutes, I promise. And if you do have some questions, I'll stick around afterwards and answer any questions for you. But I'm really excited about that. Hope you can make it. It's gonna be a great, great time. Let's uh let's pray together and let's jump into what we're gonna talk about this morning. Jesus, thank you so much for uh for your love. Thank you for your grace, for forgiving us of everything we have ever done or ever will do, for giving us what we couldn't earn for ourselves. We are grateful. We love you. And right now, we just ask that you would speak, that you would speak through your word right into our hearts and tell us something we need. We ask this in your name, Jesus, amen. Well, we are on week three of our series on the book of Esther. Esther is an incredible story. It is the story of the power of our choices. A few weeks ago we asked a question how many of us need some miraculous results in our lives? We need some things to change. We might say sometimes that we need a miracle, and God can do miracles, God does miracles. When miracles happen, get excited. But oftentimes when we say, I need a miracle, what we actually need is a miraculous result. And if God wants to give that to us with a miracle, great. If he wants to give that to us by another means, so be it. Because what we really need is the result. We need miraculous results in our lives. And God is God. One of the good things about being God, I suppose, is doing things like you want to do things. And oftentimes God's choice, his way of working, his way of accomplishing miraculous results in our lives and in the lives of people around us is to honor the faithful, bold, wise choices of his people. God accomplishes miraculous results in the story of Esther, but he doesn't part a sea, fire never comes down from the sky. It's all done through the power of choice. We're gonna spend this morning in Esther chapter two, so if you have a Bible, you can follow along there. If you have a phone, they have Bibles on those, I guess, and you can use that as well. Esther chapter two. Last Sunday we met a man named Xerxes. Xerxes is the king of Persia, very, very powerful man, and he is obsessed with himself. He's obsessed with his wealth, with his power, and he loves to parade it in front of everyone. We got to see a 180-plus day party last week that was all about Xerxes showing the world how great Xerxes was. And at the end of this really long party, full of a lot of drinking and showboating, Xerxes has this idea. He says, Hey, I want to get my wife Vashti, who is gorgeous and amazing. I want to get her to come to me and stand in front of me and all of my drunk friends so I can nudge them and go, hey, check out how hot my wife is. Look at her, right? And for some weird reason, Vashti doesn't like that idea. That doesn't sound like a good time to her, so she says something to Xerxes that he hasn't heard in a long time. She says no. No. Men, get this. Xerxes has probably never heard his wife say no. Think about that. Okay. My wife says no, I'm like par for the course. I know, I know how to respond, I know what to do in this situation, but Xerxes, he can't handle it. No, what do you mean, no? How do I respond to that? So he goes to some advisors who have also been drinking with him and he says, What should I do? And they tell him some interesting advice. Uh they say, here's what you ought to do, Xerxes. Banish Vashti. Send her away, get her to leave the kingdom, never even look at her again, and that'll send a message to all the women that they should do what we say. Maybe what Vashti wanted was to go away. See? Never thought about that. But Xerxes, in his state of mind, agrees to this. And it's it's amazing, though. It's amazing the power of bad advice, right? Because he goes from a moment of saying, I love my wife so much, I think my wife is so beautiful, so amazing, that I want all of you to see her, to the very next moment going, I never want to see my wife again. Later on, Xerxes regrets that decision, not surprisingly. And we have to take a moment and just give major props to Vashti. We talked about her last week. She's only in our story for a short time, but she makes a big impact. I like Vashti. Because Vashti made an amazing choice. It's the choice that we focused on last Sunday. In that moment when she said no, she told Xerxes, right now, you're not my king. My standards, my values, what I believe is right, I'm gonna let that be king of my life instead of you. And I love that choice because I think it's one that we have often in our lives. Who are we gonna crown king of our life? Is my boss my king? Is my money my king? Is my my ambition and my career and what I want to see happen in my life? Is that my king? And the good news is that we already have a king. We have Jesus, and he's a good king. And he'll never put us in a position to compromise our beliefs, our standards, what is right. We can live with and trust our king. We don't have to settle for a lesser king. So last week's choice was pretty simple. Choose your king, choose Jesus. We're gonna pick up in Esther chapter 2, verse 1. It says, But after Xerxes' anger had subsided, he began thinking about Vashti and what she had done and the decree he had made. So Xerxes is second-guessing himself. And I'm sure he missed her. And so he he does what he normally does. He goes to his friends, these advisors that said, Hey, banish Vashti. And he's probably wondering, was that the right decision? And here's what it says in verse 2. It says, So his personal attendants suggested, let us search the entire empire to find beautiful young virgins for the king. Let the king appoint agents in each province to bring these beautiful young women into the royal harem at the fortress of Susa. Hagi, the king's eunuch, is in charge of the harem. He will see that they are all given beauty treatments, and after that, the young woman who most pleases the king will be made queen instead of Vashti. And this advice was very appealing to the king, so he put the plan into effect. He's missing Vashti. He was thinking about Vashti. But there's no way these advisors are gonna let Vashti come back because they're the ones that said Vashti should be banished. So if she returns, they're in a lot of trouble. And they're not gonna have that. So they come up with this really sick and elaborate plan to give Xerxes what he wants. Xerxes gets advice from his friends, but it's advice that pleases him, not advice that challenges him. And it's at this point in the story where we first meet our heroes, we meet Mordecai, and you might have guessed it, Esther. Mordecai is Esther's uncle, but he's raised Esther since she was young. He's more like her father. She was an orphan. And Mordecai and Esther are both Jewish. They live in this capital city of Susa. And we know that even though they were Jewish, even though that was part of their heritage, they probably were not extremely devoted in their faith. We know that for a few reasons. Number one, they live in Susa, not Jerusalem. In 600 BC, this man named King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon conquered Israel, and he told all the Israelites they had to leave Israel. They were exiled, they became a dispersed nation. But when Cyrus of Persia, who happens to be Xerxes' grandfather, conquered Babylon, he let the Jewish people go home. And most did. Especially those who were really devoted, who cared very much about their faith. They went back to Jerusalem to rebuild the city, to rebuild its walls, to rebuild the temple, but many stayed behind. For a lot of these people, decades and decades had passed, and they'd become totally enmeshed in the culture of their captors. They had no reason to leave. Mordecai and Esther fall into that category. We also know that very few people know they're Jewish. And that's that's kind of a hard thing to do in this culture. See, in the Old Testament, God chose the Jewish people. He said, You're my people. Jesus has expanded that circle to anyone who will believe in him. But God said, You're my people, and I want the world to know it. One of the things I love so much about God is he likes to show off his people. Jesus said, You're the light of the world. You're like a city on a hill. I want to show you off. I want your love for one another to show this whole world what I'm really like. And God wanted the whole world at that time to know who his people were. And so they lived very different lives. They ate different foods, they worshiped very differently, they dressed differently. Everything they did was to reinforce the fact that they were a different people, set apart by God. And it would have been impossible to live your life that way, to follow the basic rules of Judaism and not have anyone noticed that you were Jewish. You couldn't do it. Mordecai has been able to rise to a pretty prominent position in the government with very few people knowing where he comes from. And I say all of that, this is kind of a rabbit trail and a side, but stick with me for just a second. Because we might often feel like God cannot use us or will not use us because we haven't been devoted enough, we don't know enough, we're not the right candidates. If you look through scripture, you'll see a lot of people that God calls to do something great, and their first response is, You got the wrong guy. I believe that God calls all of us at different times and different seasons to do something great for his kingdom. And it might be something great that a lot of people know about, it might be something great that only one person ever experiences, but it's important. And there will be voices in our head, there will be other people in our lives sometimes that say, You're not the right candidate. But when God says you can, you can. We are not qualified to live for God and to do things for his kingdom based on what we have done. We're qualified based on what Jesus has done, and he points to you, he wants to show you off, and he says, I choose you and I choose to empower you. That is why you're qualified. Mordecai and Esther are not qualified to be the heroes of this story, but they are, and God uses them to do something amazing. There is a miraculous result. So if God ever tells you you can, just remember that you can. Okay, we'll go we'll go back to the story now. That was an aside, but I felt like that was important, and some of us needed to hear that. Esther chapter 2, verse 8. It says, As a result of the king's decree, Esther, along with many other young women, was brought to the king's harem at the fortress of Susa and placed in Hegai's care. Heggai was very impressed with Esther and he treated her kindly. He quickly ordered a special menu for her and provided her with beauty treatments. He also assigned her seven maids specially chosen from the king's palace. And he moved her and her maids into the best place in the harem. Now, if it sounds like Esther has won some sort of all expenses paid vacation, it sounds like she's at the spa. That is not what's going on. We have to understand the absolute deplorable position that Esther and these other women have been put into. We've got to understand the gravity of the circumstances. Oftentimes the story of Esther is told and it's framed by saying that Esther gets to compete in this big beauty pageant. It's like Miss Persia, 480 BC, right? And the grand prize for winning the beauty pageant is becoming queen. That is not what's going on here. These women are not gonna put on fancy gowns and line up on a stage and have King Xerxes come and go, I think she's the prettiest, she's the queen. That's not that's not the situation. They are taken from their homes. They are kidnapped, they have no choice in this matter. Many of them were likely engaged to be married. That doesn't matter. They're brought to the harem, and we need to understand they will live the rest of their lives there no matter what. They belong to the king. It doesn't matter if they want to get married, it doesn't matter if they want to have children, they are now the property of the king. These girls are not gonna line up on a stage, they're gonna spend one night with the king, and that that includes everything it implies. And that is how he's gonna decide who he wants to be his queen. They are not beauty pageant contestants, they are sex slaves. This is about as awful of a situation and as evil of a circumstance as you could possibly imagine. That is where Esther is. I want to stop for just a second and chase one more rabbit. Um we'll get back to the story, I promise. God does not put Esther in this position. Sometimes there are people, and I know they mean well, and they will tell us that the terrible circumstances that we deal with, the tragedy, the loss, the pain, the heartache, this is something that God has done because he wants to teach us something. He wants us to grow. And I understand where they're coming from when they say that, but that is not who God is. I love my son. I love my daughter. I don't wake up in the morning and say, hey, how can I make today really hard for them? Because I want them to learn and grow. I don't say, hey, Megan, what if when they woke up we just weren't here? I mean, there's no better way to see how ready they are at four years old and seven months to take care of themselves. No. God is not like that. He is a father. Jesus said, Jesus said that if your children ask for a loaf of bread, you give them a stone. Absolutely not. And then he said, God's a better dad, a better parent, and we could ever hope to be. These terrible situations that happen to us in life, what's what's happening to Esther, it's not God doing it, but God can do something with it. My wife loves competition cooking shows. You guys ever watch those on TV? They're all the same. You have this master chef, and they're given terrible ingredients, almost like they're like, hey, wouldn't it be hilarious if they had to cook a meal with this stuff? And somehow, in some way, they're able to take these awful ingredients and make something you would pay money to eat with, right? It doesn't make any sense, but they can do it. They don't need good ingredients to make something good. They would never choose those ingredients to work with, not at all, but they can do something with them. Romans 8.28 says that we know God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. Everything means everything. It means the good that happens to us, it also means the bad, it means the heartache, the tragedy. Isaiah 61:3 says that to all who mourn in Israel, we might say, to everyone following God who's who's having a tough time in life, he will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing instead of mourning, festive praise instead of despair. It'll turn our morning into dancing. God can take the awful ingredients that we've been dealt with in life, that we've been given in life, he can take those and make something beautiful. So the aside here is to remember that God is not the one that chooses for you to have to deal with those things, but if you give them to God, if you take your brokenness, your heartache, your shame, your pain, your guilt, you can take that to God and say, God, can you do something with this? And he will say, Yes, I can. And he'll give you something beautiful back. Okay, that was an aside. We're gonna go back to our story. I just thought it was important, and maybe one or two of us needed to hear that this morning. Esther chapter 2, verse 10 says that Esther had not told anyone of her nationality and family background because Mordecai had directed her not to do so. Every day, Mordecai would take a walk near the courtyard of the of the harem to find out about Esther and what was happening to her. Mordecai is really wise. He knows the king, he knows the political scene, and he recognizes that the king is very unlikely to choose a queen who he knows is Jewish. The Jewish people were not looked upon favorably by the Persians, they had a lot of enemies. It wouldn't have been a politically smart move for the king to choose a Jewish queen. And Mordecai recognizes that and says, Esther, keep your heritage under wraps. Esther chose to listen to Mordecai. And in verse 15, it says, when it was Esther's turn to go to the king, she accepted the advice of Heggai, the eunuch in charge of the harem. She asked for nothing except what he suggested, and she was admired by everyone who saw her. Esther was taken to King Xerxes at the royal palace in early winter of the seventh year of his reign, and the king loved Esther more than any of the other young women. He was so delighted with her that he set the royal crown on her head and declared her queen instead of Vashti. To celebrate the occasion, he gave a great banquet in Esther's honor for all his nobles and officials, declaring a public holiday for the provinces and giving generous gifts to everyone. So, in this terrible situation that Esther is in, the only silver lining, the only thing that's that's like a glass is half full, perspective is that one of these girls will become the queen. That is their only hope of escaping the harem. That's it. And Xerxes chooses Esther. He chooses Esther. We shouldn't give too much credit to Xerxes. Because Esther actually makes a choice that leads to her being the one chosen. Esther makes this incredible choice. It's a choice that all of us have the opportunity to make. It's a choice that can be the difference between disaster and blessing in our lives. Esther chose the right people to listen to. Xerxes loved getting advice. He just chose terrible people to get advice from. He chose to listen to people that told him what he wanted to hear. He chose to listen to people that made him feel like a better person instead of challenging him to be a better person. But Esther chose the right people to listen to. She chose to listen to Mordecai. She chose to listen to Heggai, these two men that knew the king, that knew what was going on in Persia. And as a result, she was ahead of the pack. She is chosen as queen. So the question for all of us this morning is who do we listen to? Who have we chosen to listen to in our lives? Back in July, we we did a series on wisdom. And the first message that we did is that it was seeking wisdom. One of the parts of seeking wisdom is choosing who to listen to. So whenever I got to Esther chapter two, I'm like, oh no, we already talked about this. And I feel like sometimes there should be a 12 month limit on how often we should talk about something. So we've hit the quota, can't talk about this again. But I also know sometimes that when God repeats Himself, it's probably important. So maybe we need to look at this from a different angle. Who we choose to listen to makes all the difference in the world. In college, I had a good friend named John. Love John. John was a lot of fun. John was also the most, excuse me, disorganized person I have ever known. Now you need to understand the context of that statement I just made. I am not an organized person. I've had situations happen to me in my life as a result of my lack of organization that you would not believe. I once had ants in my car. A car is a mobile, it it but yet my car was so dirty, ants in my car. I was driving one day, ants all over the steering wheel. That same car, actually, Nathan, my good friend Nathan's up here with the sling. That's not how I should identify Nathan. He's so much better than his arm. But Nathan, Nathan hit a microwave in my car for a year. A year. It was in the back of my car, I had all this garbage and stuff on top of it. I was unloading stuff one day, and I'm like, why do I have a microwave back here? And it had been so long that Nathan had forgotten about it. And so he's like, oh, we put that in your car like a year ago. Don't worry, I have great organized people around me all the time. So things are pretty well taken care of here. But uh, for me to say someone is the most disorganized person I've ever seen, you need to understand what I'm saying when I say that. John was the most disorganized person I have ever seen. One night while we're in college, John calls me up and he says, Justin, I need a favor. I need you to log on to my bank account and look up how much money I have. So he gives me his username, his password, not a wise thing to do. I was not tempted though, because I saw how much he had in his bank account. And so I told John, I'm still on the phone with him, John, you have $20. That's all you've got to your name. And John said, I'll never forget his words. He said, Sweet. And then he said, I've got enough money for this pizza I just ordered. Okay. About two years later, John called me again. We'd both graduated and I hadn't seen him in about a year. And he said, Justin, I want to talk to you, man. I got a new job and I'd love to meet with you. I'm a financial advisor. And I just love to sit down with you and talk through ways that you can use your money wisely. And I said, John, I love you. No. Anyone who thinks it's a good idea to take 100% of your money and put it in a pepperoni, that is just not, that's not someone I'm gonna listen to for advice. I love John, but I'm not gonna be like Xerxes. Right? I want to choose the right people to listen to. Because it matters. There are not many things that I could point to in my life and say, hey, do what I do and it'll work. I really can't. I've got a lot of things I could point to and say, don't do this, and you'll be in great shape. Paul said, follow me as I follow the Lord. I would love to be able to say that one day with confidence and in every area of my life, say, hey, just I'm following Jesus, follow me, we'll get there together. I'm trying. There are a few areas though that I have seen results, and I would stand in front of anyone and say, look, do this and it will work. One of those is choosing the right people to listen to. From the time that I was young, 15, 16 years old, in every season of my life, I've had someone that I have given permission to tell me what to do. Someone that I have recognized wisdom, leadership, qualities that I desire in my life, and I've said, hey, I'm yours. Tell me what to do. One of those people is a man named Will Goodwin. Will is a pastor in Canton now. I love Will. He was a teacher in my high school when I was about 16, 17 years old. And at 17, Will really took me under his wing. When I was 18, I felt like God was calling me. That's a word we use in the Christian world, calling me. Sometimes calling means what I want to do, but I'll say God's calling me to, and everyone will agree with me. But in this situation, I really felt like God was calling me to be a pastor, to speak. I love to talk. I'm thinking, hey, there's an option, right? Talk about God. No one's gonna stop you then, right? And I told that to Will. I said, Will, I really feel like I want to be, I want to be a speaker. That's what I want to do. And Will got really excited. He said, I think you can do this. I want to help you with this. I moved away to college, about a thousand miles away from Will, and while I was there, I had this bad experience at a church. It wasn't like some scandalous thing. I just had a frustration with the way a situation was handled, and I left the church, and I used that as an excuse to stop pursuing that dream. And so Will called me up. I've been out of school for about a year, and I was working at this marketing firm. I was the vice president of marketing for this company. Hold on, though, before you're like, wow, there were three of us at this company. So I just need you to understand what it means to be the vice president of marketing at a company with three people. What it means is we all had really cool titles, but they didn't mean anything, okay? It was the president, the vice president, the director of, I mean, we were all just three people making things happen. So I'm working at this company. I liked it. I felt like I could do something with that. And Will called me one day and he said, Justin, what are you up to? I said, Well, I'm doing this marketing thing. I'm the vice president of marketing, this three-person company. Um and Will, I'll never forget it because it made me mad. He said, That's not what you're supposed to do. You know what you're supposed to do. And see, I had I had wrestled with that thought. I had put it to rest, I had moved on. Megan had tried a few times to remind me what I believed I was supposed to do in life, and I had just said, no, I just heard wrong, and come on, I want to do this instead. But something about Will, this person that I respected and admired, and had given permission to tell me what to do, saying, You're not doing what you're supposed to do. It affected me. About a month later, Will called me. He said, Hey, there's this church. You need to call them. There's this guy named Doug who's here today. Hey, Doug, you need, you need to call Doug. I think you might be a good fit at this church. And that church is this church. It's his hands. That was eight years ago. And being here has been the greatest blessing in my life, but it wouldn't have happened if I hadn't had someone in my life telling me what to do, someone I loved, someone that I would listen to. And I just want to say thank you for a second to everybody who has been part of getting us to where we are now and who will be part of getting us wherever God wants us to go. And I believe that's a great place. Because since I was a young person, the greatest dream of my life, I guess, has just been to be part of something bigger than myself. To be part of something much greater than me, and that is this church. And all of you who serve on teams, who invest financially, who invite friends, you guys are the reason that this place is greater than any one of us. And you're the reason I'm so excited about the next 20 years. So thank you very much, everybody. All right, back to Esther. See, Esther decided to walk with enough humility to recognize the need to ask for help. Esther decided to be humble enough to recognize that she needed help navigating the situations that she was in. And I don't care how successful we are, how wise we are, how much life we've lived, we all walk into situations that we have no compass for. We don't know what to do. Choosing the right people to listen to is a difference maker. It's the difference between navigating those situations successfully and falling flat on our face. Jesus in Luke chapter 14, verse 11, Jesus says that everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. See, please understand in this moment that God wants to show you off. God wants to lift you up. That's what exalting something means, lifting it up. Does anyone feel like you need to be lifted up this morning? Can we look in our lives and say, yeah, I need to be lifted. My marriage needs to be lifted. I need to be lifted up at my place of employment. I need my boss to see how hard I'm working, to see how well I could do if I was given more opportunities. I need to be lifted up. If you feel that way, you have a lot in common with Esther. She needed to be lifted up, to be lifted out of the situation she was in. And Jesus, God Himself, says that anyone, and anyone means anyone who humbles themselves will be lifted. Will be lifted up. God will lift us up as much as we choose to be lifted up. God will lift us up as high as we choose to be humble. And if we humble ourselves and choose people, wise people, to identify and say, tell me what to do. Come alongside me, help me. We will go so far. In the business world, there are these things called strategic questions. I hate strategic questions, but we we ask them a lot here. Strategic questions are really annoying because they can change everything you do. If you answer them honestly, which requires humility, in a moment, all of a sudden, you have to do everything differently. And so they might be questions like, is what we're doing really working? And if the answer is no, then you gotta do something different. Start from scratch. That's a hard, it's a hard place to be, but it's important. And I would love for all of us for the next few moments to be like Esther and walk in absolute humility and be willing to answer some strategic questions in our lives. Can we do that? See, at nine o'clock, people said something. So I'll take your silence as yes, yes, okay, good. Um I'll start with a big one. And before I ask this question, I would love for you just to think about one part of your life, one area of your life that you would like to see some immediate change? What aspect of your life would you like to see different now? Don't think about all of it. That's that's overwhelming. Just think about one area that if it was very much different, much improved, your whole life would see incredible benefits. So here's the strategic question. Do you have an advisor in that area of your life? Is there someone that you go to specifically for help in that area of life which you have identified you're struggling with? I have a friend that's really into golf. I have tried to be really into golf. I have given that up for the Lord. And uh my friend, my friend said that one time he was golfing and he saw this PGA tour professional practicing in the practice range area, kind of taken aback. That's a PGA professional golfer. He and his friends went to play 18 holes of golf, which takes a ridiculous amount of time. And when they got back, that PGA tour professional was in the same spot, still practicing. They got some courage up and talked to this guy and they asked him a really good strategic question. They said, What makes you different than the other guys who are just really good? What's the difference between you as a pro and all the other guys who are just really good golfers? The man's answer is amazing. He said, Oh, that's easy. The guys who are really good, they come here to practice a lot. And they practice for hours. They practice what they're good at. So if they're really good off the T, they just hit drive after drive after drive. He said, We, those of us who are professionals, we come here for hours and we practice what we're not good at. When we give someone permission to advise us in an area of our lives that we struggle in, it is like practicing your weakness. And if you practice your weakness, your weakness can actually become a strength. Do we want our weaknesses to become our strengths? So if you answered that strategic question, do you have someone to advise you in the area of life you would like to see the most immediate change? If that's the area of your life you want to be the most different, do you have someone telling you what to do if your answer was yes? I have a few follow-up, very short strategic questions for you. I'm sure some of us said, Yeah, actually I do. Is it the right person? A great way to identify if it's the right person or not is really simple. Are they good in the area of life you need help with? There's a tendency we have to go to people for advice that have the same struggles we have. And I get that, we get a lot of encouragement, we get a lot of support, we feel better. I'm not the only one, we have those kind of thoughts. And while that's really nice, are we gonna get much that we can actually use? Probably not. So if you have an advisor in that area of your life, are they the right person? Have you given them permission to tell you what to do and to hold you accountable? Can they look you in the eye and say, Don't do that anymore? Do this instead? Have you given them that kind of freedom in your life? And if you can take any of those questions and right now the answer is no, and you flip that to a yes, it's gonna solve so much. A good friend of mine used to say, fix what you know is broken and see what else it fixes. And I have found that that works. Now, some of us, if we're honest and humble, which I know we all are, some of us answered that first question, no. No, I don't have an advisor to help me in an area of life that I'm struggling with. Now, if that if that's your answer, that's great. I've got a few follow-up strategic questions for you. Do you know someone who is good in that area? Do you know anyone that has a marriage you would like to have that raises their children in a way that you would like to be able to raise your children? Anyone who's healthy, who who eats right, who exercises in a way that you would like to do, do you know anyone who's good at the area of life you'd like to be good at? Have you asked that person for help? As human beings, there's nothing we love more than asking people for help, right? We we live for that kind of thing. And I know that there are a few there are a few reasons we may have not asked. Maybe we just never thought to. Good news, now you've thought to. That just happened. Problem solved. Maybe we're worried about how that's gonna go if we go ask them. What's that gonna be like? So here's a question: if that's your thought, will they be offended? I mean, if you go up to someone and say, hey, you're an amazing parent, I'd like to learn from you. What's their reaction gonna be? Excuse me? What what what'd you say? No, they're not gonna be offended for you recognizing something they're good at. Most of us enjoy being good at the things we're good at. It'll bless them. Why have we not asked? If it's pride, if it's pride, we've just got to put it aside. There are a few things that will stand in the way of what God has for us, like pride. Just like there are a few things that will help us get to where God wants us to be, like humility. Pride just is not worth it. It's not worth it at all. James 4, 6 says, God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. And again, in Luke 14, 11, Jesus says, Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. Do you need to be lifted up this morning? Do you need your life to be lifted? If the answer is yes, Jesus is saying, you just need to humble yourself and ask. That's our choice. Choose the right person to listen to. Choose to listen to Jesus. I listen to Jesus. I listen to Jesus by knowing his word. I listen to the Holy Spirit. Don't let that be an excuse, though. Don't ever say, oh, well, I listen to the Holy Spirit so well that I don't need to listen to anybody else. Sometimes I hear from the Holy Spirit very clearly, I know exactly what to do. Sometimes not so much. I hear from the Holy Spirit, maybe. And a great way to handle that if you're in that position is just do what you think the Holy Spirit is telling you to do. Making sure that it lines up with Scripture, because the Holy Spirit inspired all scripture. He doesn't like to argue with himself. Making sure that it's something that is loving, something that's representative of the ways that God has asked us to live our lives. The fruit of the Spirit, love, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, self-control, those kind of things. But if it lines up with those things and you think the Holy Spirit might be telling you to do it, do it because worst case scenario, you stand in front of God one day and go, hey, I'm really sorry. I thought that's what you were telling me to do. I believe God would be okay with that. Versus, you know, yeah, I thought you were saying that. But then I got to thinking. Start to do what you believe God is calling you to do, and you'll learn to listen better. But but don't let listening to God be an excuse not to listen to people, because God has chosen to work through people. In fact, he decided to become a people, a person. I know that wasn't grammatically correct, but that's okay. See, we look at the life of Jesus, he was exalted, he was lifted, but he had to be humbled first. Philippians says that Jesus did not consider equality with God as something to be clung onto, to be held onto, to be grasped, but in humility he became a person. And if Jesus humbled himself to be lifted up, we can follow suit. We can humble ourselves and expect God to lift us up. We're gonna worship for just a few more moments. But I want to read one more piece of scripture from Esther. Esther 219. Says, even after all the young women had been transferred to the second harem and Mordecai had become a palace official, Esther continued to keep her family background and nationality a secret. She was still following Mordecai's directions just as she did when she lived in his home. Even as the queen of Persia, Esther chose the right people to listen to. There was never a moment in her life where she said, okay, now I'm good. No more listening. This was not a one-time decision for Esther. It is the way she lived her life. And as we're gonna see, Esther, oh man, we we couldn't pick a better person to emulate. You want to know how to handle a really tough situation? Look at Esther. Because she made the choice to listen to the right people. We can make that same choice. Find someone, ask them for help. Start asking God for help every single day. And you will see beauty for ashes, morning turn into dancing. You will be lifted up. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, thank you so much for uh for who you are. Jesus, thank you that you love us. Thank you that you desire to lift us up. You could have come and lived your life, Lord, and and simply pointed to yourself and showed us how great you were, but you actually showed us how great you think we are. You showed us how much you think we can accomplish if we listen to you and if we humble ourselves. Give us the courage, God, because I know it takes that, to walk in humility, to be truly humble people who are always seeking the right person to listen to. Bless our weeks. Help us love our families, love our friends, help us love the people we work with and that we're around, help us give everyone we can a taste of God's love for them. And we ask all this in your name, Jesus. Amen.