Pre-Decide: Part 4 - I AM DEVOTED
SERMON TRANSCRIPT
I wanted to ask this as we jump into our sermon this morning. I want to ask this. Have you ever felt disappointed in life? Have you thought, man, by this time in life, I thought I would have more? I thought my life would look different. Maybe it's your job, your car, your living situation. Have you ever just thought, man, I thought this would be better? Or I thought maybe by this point in life, I thought I'd be doing something more significant. Maybe you've gotten to the place where you've gotten those things. You've got what you wanted. you've accomplished whatever you set out to do, and then you start wondering, "Is this all there is? Is there anything more to life? Is this all worth it?" And so that question of, "Is there anything more after getting everything that I wanted here on Earth, the spoil..." Oh, the answer is spoiler, yes, there is more. There's absolutely more. And that's what we're going to talk about this morning, about how when we live our lives, we should revolve around getting closer to God. We're gonna talk about pre-deciding, about getting closer to God. Would you pray with me one more time? God, thank you again for our morning together so far. We pray that through your word, we would be encouraged and empowered. And God, that we'd be drawn closer to you. Our desire this morning is to learn more about you so after we leave our time together, that we could go out and be your representatives in this world. So we give you all the glory and honor. We pray this in your name. Amen.
Alright, so again we're in our series Predecide, and we're talking about how when we predecide, those decisions that we make can positively affect the direction of our lives. And the direction is determined by the quality of our decisions. We talked about how when we get into challenging situations that inevitably come in life, those stressful and difficult moments, we're not the best decision makers in those moments. And so we want to, instead of waiting for those challenges, we want to pre-decide everything beforehand as much as possible. We're going to pre-decide now. We're going to pre-decide how to best follow God and honor God in whatever comes up. And so we have this situation that we've been going through which is, when faced with whatever you're - fill in the blank for you - whatever you're going through, whatever you foresee happening in your life, you're going to pre-decide, follow, you're going to make a decision to say, "When this happens, I want to be ready. I'm gonna honor God, I'm gonna live like Jesus through that situation by doing the following. So far we've talked about being ready. You guys ready to do this? We're getting this every week now, you ready? So say, "I am ready." I am ready, good. I am consistent. I am consistent. Yes, you guys are, good. And so today we're talking about devotion. With God's help, we can be devoted in all that we do. And we're not just talking about being devoted in our eating habits or our spending hats or our workout regimen. But as Christians, we need to know who we're devoted to, what it means to be devoted, and how we live a devoted life, and also when do we live this devoted life. It's the classic who, what, how, when. We covered the why last week, and so if you don't remember that, go ahead and listen to that sermon last week. But let's go ahead and start with the who. As for the who, as followers of Jesus, this one might be pretty obvious. We are devoted to Christ. We are fully devoted followers. If you are a Christian, you are a fully devoted follower to Jesus.
Let's go ahead and read Matthew 6. This is Jesus talking, and he says in verse 33, "But seek first His kingdom, God's kingdom, and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." Jesus is telling us to seek God first. When we're devoted to God, we're devoted to His kingdom, to His way of life, then we will experience the truest and fullest, the deepest sense of fulfillment. When we live according to Jesus, then this question of "Is there anything more than this on earth?" we don't even have to ask that question, because we'll experience true fulfillment living the way that God intended us to live. No matter what our worldly circumstances are, as great or as challenging as they might be, seeking first the kingdom of God is for everyone. So from this, this is going to be our umbrella theme for today, is we want to seek first the one who matters most. We want to seek first the one who matters most. Paul had his own way of saying this in Philippians 1:21, he says, "For to me," this is Paul speaking, "For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain." All this life, all that I do is for him. I want to seek him in everything. Jesus is looking for and truly demands all of our devotion. As much as we may love other things in our life, our spouse, our children, our family, our best friends, our job, our money, whatever situation we're in, we may love that. But first and foremost, we must be fully devoted to God. That's the who. All right, so now what does it mean to be devoted to Jesus? Well, the disciples do a great job of showing us what that looks like. I want to give you the setting here. We're going to be in Acts. Jesus has spent three years with his disciples, mostly the twelve, but there's other followers of him. And then as we know, Jesus died on the cross, and he's buried, and then three days later, he is raised from the grave, and that's when we celebrate Easter. And then when he's raised, he's 40 more days with the disciples. And then he ascends into heaven to be back with the Father, and he leaves the disciples in charge of what he had begun. He had been prepping them, He'd been training them, teaching them, discipling them. And so what do the followers of Jesus do? Well, they continue the work of Jesus, and the early church comes to life. And we read this in Acts 2:42, verse 42, it says, "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship and to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles.”
So the early believers, they devoted themselves to the teaching, which is the reading of God's Word, Jesus's interpretation of the Old Testament, they were learning God's instructions for humanity. Also fellowship, just spending time with each other, intentional time with each other, the body of Christ, so whenever they had their church services to throughout the week, just fellowship with each other. It says the breaking of bread, meals, communion, specifically communion, remembering, taking time to remember what Jesus had done on the cross, and also hoping in what he was going to do in the future. And they did this out of obedience to Jesus' instruction at the Last Supper, and then also the prayers. This is communing and talking and listening with God, listening for God. This could be in a communal setting, but also just the daily individual time spent in prayer. This is what devotion to Jesus looks like. And while some of these things might look different over the years, over the centuries, church, we're still doing this today. All these things. This is what we devote ourselves to. Teaching. Well, we have our Sunday sermons, we have our Bible studies, community groups. Fellowship. We have things like Morning Blend, family meals, community groups. hanging out with each other outside of church, breaking bread when we do our communion Sundays, anytime we're sharing a meal with each other, and then prayers, we pray in our service, we pray for each other through those monthly emails that go out of how we can be praying for each other. We pray, hopefully you're praying on your own. So followers of Jesus today are still devoting themselves to these things. The word here for devoted in the Greek conveys this, that their devotion is ongoing. It continues, they were continually devoted. And so we see from the disciples, the followers of Jesus, they had one thing on their mind, and it's this ongoing pursuit of Jesus. Now, that was the disciples back then, the early church.
What would a book about today's Christians sound like? Or at least a book about those who call themselves Christians today? What would the world describe Christians as today? If we were brutally honest, it might sound something like this. Christians today are devoted to themselves, continually and passionately pursuing a self-centered life of comfort and ease. Christians in the year 2024 wanted to be liked, they wanted to be comfortable, adored. They want to finish school, have a job they love, marry someone, have a nice house, travel the world, and at the end of their life go to heaven. Now if you didn't like the sound of that, good. That's not what we should be known for. Those things in and of themselves aren't bad, but are they the first thing that we are pursuing in life? Are they what we are devoting ourselves to the most? It should make us think and reflect, Are we devoting ourselves fully to Jesus? Are we seeking first the one who matters most? Would people ask this question to yourself, would people in your life identify your love in pursuit of Jesus first and foremost as a characteristic of who you are? If so, great, good job. Keep living in the spirit and if there was any conviction through the spirit then bring that forward to God. Say, "God, how do I change this?" How do I change being known from this to being known by you? We today as followers of Jesus can take our cue from those early disciples. We need to have an ongoing pursuit of Christ and have one thing on the forefront of our minds before anything else, and that's following Jesus.
Pastor Groeschel has an example that I think is really helpful. We're going to do it today. So I have a tape measure here. I hope this works. I've tested this. So I'm going to measure out-- OK, we're going a long ways-- 156-- OK, right here. Did I do it? Stay. Stay. Uh-oh. I'm not going to touch it. OK. Nope, I got the measurement wrong. Got to touch it again. 168. My bad. OK. Stay. Good. There we go. Sorry for those watching at home. Yeah, I can't see anything. There's a tape measure down here, and I measured 168. If you want to do this at home, go ahead. Go grab a tape measure. Put it out there in front of you right now. All right, so we have in front of me 14 feet, 168 inches. And this represents one week of our lives. If you can do math really quick, there are 168 hours in a week. So we have, for every inch here, we have an hour of our lives. OK? I want to show us how much we spend in devotion to different things in our life. Now, this is general. I didn't do any research here specifically. This is general numbers. OK? So your life may look very different, how much sleep you get, how much you work. But this is generally, we have-- OK, I got to start over here. This is one. Generally, we spend 56 hours a week, a third of our week sleeping. Some of you are like, I don't get enough. And some of you are like, well, hey, I get lots. And I'm way over there. That's great. But generally, 56, a third of our week is sleeping. We go another 56 inches, another third. This is work or school, whatever you're in. Generally, we're about here. So we're about 2/3 of our week sleep and work. Here's a surprising one. The average person spends 17 hours a week on social media. So now we're over here. Oh my goodness. Conviction yet? I know that was-- I was like, that's for sure me. I'm definitely doing that for church work, obviously. Obviously for church. That's-- no. So that leaves roughly 39 hours of our week. But we haven't yet factored in other things you guys are doing. So things around the house, chores, cooking, spending time with your kids, commute, working out, fill in the blank. But let's say we fill the rest of our week up and we're really close to the 168. And what we haven't factored in yet is how about our devotion to God? So let's say you guys are here, you spend one hour at church at least. So we'll dial it up right there. And we're really, by the way, 168 is right at that tape measure. So we're at the end. Our week is very full. And how much can you get from something that you're only giving one hour a week to? I won't ask that. There's a lot of things we can't control. You have to work. You have to sleep. But there is a lot of time that you do have some freedom in. If you invest only one hour a week into something, you're not going to see any significant growth or improvement. So one hour of exercise in a week, probably not going to be at peak health. One hour of time with your spouse, you probably won't have the healthiest relationship. One hour of study for the whole week, you probably won't graduate top of your class. The point is, if we are only partially devoted to God, only spending a little time with him each week when it's easy or comfortable, when there's nothing else to do, so you're like, "Hey, I finished everything else, might as well try to read my Bible right now." If we treat it in that way, if we treat our relationship with God in that way, then it's no wonder that we'll struggle with reoccurring sin in our life. It's no wonder that we don't often share our faith with other people. It's no wonder that we care more about what people think than what God thinks of us. And it's no wonder you find yourself only partially bought into a faith of living like Jesus. Partial devotion isn't going to help you have fulfillment in your life. It's not going to help in your pre-decisions of honoring Him in every area of your life. And it's not going to help you understand who God is and what He wants of you.
So then the question becomes how? If we want a fully devoted life to Jesus, it's not going to happen accidentally, it must be an intentional decision. You're going to have to pre-decide to live this ongoing single-minded pursuit of Jesus. And Jesus tells us how to do that in his Word. So if you want to turn with me again or look on the screen to John 15, Jesus, I'll start in verse 5, it says, "I am the vine," this is Jesus speaking, "I am the vine, you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing." So here in this verse, we have Jesus as the vine. Think of that as the trunk. It's the main one. And off of that, you have all these branches, and those are believers. So when we are abiding in Jesus, devoted to him, connected to him as the branch, then we will bear fruit. We're abiding with the source of life. What does that fruit look like? Well, that's love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, self-control, the fruits of the Spirit. These things are evidence that one is living life with Jesus. If you see that in a person, if you've ever encountered someone had an interaction and you're just like, "Man, there's just something about them," maybe because they're showing the fruit of living with Jesus. I was talking with someone this week who's losing their mother, she's passing away, and this person I was talking to does not have a good relationship with their mom and is struggling in this process because, by their words, their mom was not a very nice person. And they said, "I've never ever seen the fruit of the Spirit in them, and so I don't think they're a believer." And that saddens her. They want the mom to believe, but she just, I loved her process, she was like, "I don't think she's a believer because I've never seen any fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit, the fruit of abiding with Jesus is the evidence of faith. And so church, hopefully people see and experience some of the fruit of the Spirit when they experience you. When you are not living as the branch, when you're disconnected from Jesus, not devoted to him, maybe only spending one hour a week with Jesus, how do you expect to bear fruit in your life? Do you remember that question that I asked at the beginning? Do you ever feel like life seems a bit empty, meaningless at times? Well, when we devote ourselves to Jesus, when we live as the branch connected to the vine, when you dwell in him, life will start to feel full. Because again, This is what truly matters, and this is what truly lasts. This is what we were made for, to be Jesus' representatives in this world.
The author of Psalms, one of the books of wisdom in our Bible, says this about abiding and dwelling, remaining in God. It's Psalms 1 verse 1. It says, "How sit is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers. But the light is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night." And this is the part that I want us to just envision this in your mind. "He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yield its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither, and whatever he does he prospers." We want to be that tree. If we imagine Jesus as that river, as the source of life, we want to be the tree that's right next to it, always getting the nutrients and the nourishment that we need. And when we live right by the source of life, Jesus, then we will be exactly who we're meant to be. We will yield fruit. In our passage back in John with the vine and the branches, there's a word that appears a lot, 11 times in this chapter, so therefore we know it's very important, and it's the word remain. I'll just read verse four, right above verse five. It says, "Remain in me," again, Jesus speaking, "and I also remain in you. "No branch can bear fruit by itself. "It must remain in the vine. "Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me." This Greek word for remain is meno, which means to abide, to live and to dwell. And so that's not just one hour a week with God. This is constant, ongoing, full devotion, being all in to the one who matters most. And if we think of a vine and a branch, the branch needs the vine. The branch cannot survive without the vine. If the branch loses the vine, it dies. It has no life source, it won't get what it needs, and over time it will wither and die. It's the same for us. Jesus is the vine, you are the branch, so be the branch. Know who you are. Pre-decide to be devoted to Jesus. And make the decision today, "I will seek first the one who matters most." Alright, so we have the "who." We have what it means to be devoted, what a life of devotion looks like, and you have the "how," which is abiding in Jesus. And now I want to get to the practical. What's our game plan to make this a reality in our lives? How are you going to seek first God in your life? Like we said, it's not going to happen by accident. Not going to stumble upon a life of full devotion.
So, I have a plan. I have to reveal this plan to you. And I love how this is coinciding with our community group. We're talking in our community group, which meets on Wednesdays, about solitude and spending time with God. And so if you're in that community group, you're going to hear some similar things right now. I have three things for a plan of success for you. First is to pre-decide time. You gotta know when you're spending time with God. Are you gonna do it in the morning? First thing when you wake up? Or is it on your commute to work? Is it after the kids get dropped off at school or daycare? Is it at the end of your day? When you know that your mind is gonna be able to focus? You need to find a time that works regularly and has very little interruptions or distractions. And you need to decide how long. Are you spending 10 minutes, 15 minutes, a half hour, an hour? What does that time look like? Predecide. Don't go in it with like, "I guess I'll just go until I feel like it," because that will not work. You will fail. It's not going to go well. Predecide a time. When in the day and for how long? Secondly, predecide a place. You got to know where you are going to work best in a relationship with God. Is it that like perfect that couch with like your coffee table and the lamp, you got your Bible and your coffee setting is sometimes more important to some. I know for me I got to, everything's got to be right. I got to have the lamp on so I can see real up close and I got to have the coffee. Or maybe is there, is it on the back patio? Is it in the bathroom where you're just like, I can close that door, no one will bother me. This is my place of silence. Whatever, you know, whatever works. Is it in the laundry room? Is it in a park? Are you walking? Are you just moving? Are you in the car again in the commute or just like once you get to work you park and like before I go in I'm spending 15 minutes right here So find your time find your place and then pre decide a plan You got to have a plan for what you're spending if it's 15 minutes an hour know what you're gonna do Are you gonna be praying? How are you gonna be praying? Are you praying for people for other people? Are you? Praying through Scripture. Are you reading through the Bible? Are you listening to worship music? Is it a combination of things? I'm gonna spend some time here and then I'm gonna do this and then I'm gonna do this. I want to say this too. Remember to leave time to listen to God. We often have this need of getting caught up to fill the silence with noise. We don't like being quiet with God. And so we're just like as soon as we pause like, "Hmm, maybe a song will be good." Or, "Maybe I should talk some more. God, do you want to hear some more of my thoughts?" He knows your thoughts, by the way. It's good to express them, but you have to listen. It's got to be a two-way street. You talk to God and allow Him to talk back to you. Sit in silence with Him. So those are the three things. A time, a place, and a plan.
And I want to just mention a couple other things. If you are put in, I encourage you, put this into practice this week. But I want to give you a heads up. There's something called the J-curve. And if you've been in our Bible study, you've heard about this. But the J-curve is, and this is true of anything outside of spiritual practices too, if you just start a new hobby, or you try something out, you may experience some initial success. You start in this place of like, "Wow, this is going great, I'm actually, I can do this. I'm kind of good at this maybe." Maybe if it's devotion with God, you're like, "Man, that prayer time, that was awesome. I felt great after that, I felt close with God." But the J curve is studies show that over time, in the next week or two, you're going to be discouraged. And that is going to get really hard. And this new habit, this new thing you're trying to do, your feelings about it are going to go down. You're going to be like, "This is not working out anymore. I thought it was good, but I'm just struggling. It's challenging. I don't like it. I don't feel like it anymore." But studies also show that if you stick with it, in that downward turn, you will come back up and you'll go higher than you were before. So they call it the J-curve. You start off with maybe initial success, you like it, you get discouraged, but stick with it, and then you will experience more success. And so that is true of anything outside of spiritual practices, but it's very true in starting a new spiritual practice. So if you have all these things already down, you have a time, you have a place, and you have a plan, good. Be encouraged, continue that. You are living out a life of devotion. If this is new for you, then don't be discouraged when in the next week or two, it gets a little tough. That's okay. And I want to remind you of this too. The success in this quiet time, in this life of devotion, is not what you are checking off the list or gaining from this time. Some people go into this quiet time and they'll leave and be like, "I'm just discouraged. I didn't feel anything. I didn't feel God's presence. I didn't hear from him. I don't know if this is really working." But success in a life of devotion is showing up day after day. Just constant devotion to God, that is success. God loves it when you keep prioritizing Him day after day. That's what we talked about last week, is being consistent.
Be consistent in your devotion. And then also this, you've got to realize that your time of devotion, especially, I would encourage you to try to do at the beginning of the day, you are gearing up for what that day holds. This life, as we talked about two weeks ago with Pastor Lauren saying, "We need to be prepared. Are we ready? Because we will face resistance to our relationship with God." The enemy does not like when we spend time with God. The world does not really allow for us to spend time with God. It's going to try to distract us. It's going to try to pull us away. And even our own flesh. Our minds can be racing when we enter that time of solitude or that time of devotion. And So you have to know that that time is so important, you are gearing yourself up with the Spirit to face whatever happens that day. It is an essential time. Jesus practiced this, and so I think we should practice it too. If Jesus had to do it, we should definitely see that we have to do it too. So, our last question is when? If you have a plan of abiding, of spending time with him, but when? And we see our - I want to bring out our tape measure one more time - we see all this. Well, if we do those times in the day, that's still like only this much, right? If we were - only had a couple hours left, it's still maybe if you do 15 minutes, I mean, you're not - that's not - what about the rest of the week? What about the rest of the hours? I know maybe this is - here's where the perspective shift comes, all these 168 hours that you have in a week, God wants all of them. God doesn't just want the time where you're intentionally spending time with Him, He wants that too, but He wants all of your life. Through everything we face in a day, we should be talking with God, listening for God, and aligning our hearts with God. We want to be seeking God first, the one who matters most in every situation in life. He's not just some segment, some hour of our to fit in when it works for us. God wants all of our life. Seek God first. When something unforeseen comes up, when you are abiding in Him, you can hear from Him, He'll direct your steps, He'll give you the wisdom you need, He'll guide you through that, through His Word, through community, through prayer. You will have the wisdom to navigate life in the most God-honoring way when you are abiding in Him through everything. God doesn't want your leftovers. He wants all of you. God wants all 168 hours of your week. So, pre-decide, church, pre-decide to be devoted, to seek Jesus first and to let him impact every hour of your life. Whether that's at work, whether that's in how you spend your money, whether it's through parenting, relationships, whatever it is, abide in him while you are doing it. Remain in him. him, be devoted to him. So be ready, be consistent, and be devoted to God. Seek him first, the one who matters most, and devote all of who you are, your heart and mind, to Jesus.
Let's go ahead and pray. God, thank you again for your word, thank you for your example through the life of Jesus to show us what devotion looks like. And God, we pray that you would, through your Spirit, reveal to each and every one of us, because it may be different, how we can live a life that's more devoted to you. God, it really is a joy to know that you want all of our lives, you want every hour, and you're not satisfied with just a a little bit of every day, well that's essential and that's important. You want us to see that it's all of us that you want. You want all of our lives. So I pray, God, that you would help us to come before you, to hand over the burdens that we carry, to hand over the mess that we may feel our life is, and to surrender it to you. And to be before you with open arms, humbled, and say, God, use me. God, through your Spirit transform me. God, that's our prayer that you would continue to do work in us and through us. We are so thankful for all that you have done, for all that you're doing, and we know and trust that you will continue the good work that you have started. Be with us today and for the rest of our days. We pray this in your name, Amen.