Finding Spiritual Fulfillment Through Prayer

For me, if it was up to me, I probably wouldn't wear it, but it's more for you once I figure out how to turn it on. Power, thank you. Megan. And then, does the red light come on? Awesome. Needless to say, I don't get to do this all the time, so there's a few things that I'm not used to doing. How am I doing, Megan, okay? It's always good to have helpers, and I might venture away from the podium here, so I probably need to wear this. My name's Rusty Rinkle, and we're going to be looking in Ephesians chapter 3. Let me share with you a little bit about my life in my journey with Christ. We cleaned out my mom's house when she passed away in 2007, and there was a little green Gideon's Bible that said June of 1963 was the first time I committed my life to Christ. And so, 1963 was a while ago, and so I've been on this journey, and I've done a lot of things. I've always been pretty sensitive, and I think, you know, when you come to Christ at age six, there was a lot of things I was afraid of and different things, and I was an only child, pretty much. I had a sister that was 13 years older than I was. My parents had a rocky relationship. I can remember one time they were separated for a while, and then they managed to stay together until I was a senior in college and ended up getting a divorce, and that kind of turned my life upside down a little bit. Fortunately for me, in those many years as doing my best to be a follower of Christ, I developed a pretty good relationship with Christ. And so, as I was going through school in our small little church where Helen and I met in Fountain, Colorado, I developed a lot of family, friends through the church. And the church was one of those things that kind of helped hold my life together. After my parents got a divorce, there was two other guys, Helen's brother Ron and Larry Henderson and I went off, and I didn't really know what to do. When your life is based around your parents and you're a single child, and that kind of falls all apart, and my relationship with my parents went south, I still had a relationship with God. My mom had spent time with me when I was young, and I memorized the 23rd Psalm. So, whenever I'd get in trouble or I had problems in my life, I would refer back to that, the Lord is my shepherd. And he's done a good job with me, I haven't always been the best little lamb running around, different things. But my life did kind of go to pieces because I had, my family was a big part of that. But my church family stepped up, and so I went to school for a while because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but I knew there were some spiritual things in my life that I needed to get right. And sometimes when bad things happen to you, you think it's all your fault. And I don't know if many of you have had divorced parents or not, you think, wow, what in the world did I do wrong? And it caused some conflict with my mom, and eventually she, I was living there and she didn't think I was doing things right, so she wouldn't let me live there anymore. So, there was a short time that I didn't have a place to live, but God always took care of me. And so, I've learned through this journey, there's some things that God's been teaching me even lately. After you do things the way God wants you to, you have a certain amount of success in whatever venue you are. I was a football coach, head football coach, I've been a principal, I'm an assistant principal now. And so, God seemed to always be putting me in leadership positions, not because I was better than other things, other people and things, but the difficulties that I'd gone through in my life, he'd helped me get through those in a positive way. And I'd seen people that had difficulties in their life, when they had family breakdowns or whatever, they turned to negative things, and God was always able to direct me to the way he wanted to do things. And so, that's kind of what we're going to be talking about a little bit here today. And then, I am an educator, so I'm always reading books about different things, and usually when I read things, I try to figure out, what's this person saying that aligns with the way God does things? And so, we're going to look at that a little bit today. Let me pray for us before we start. Father, we thank you for another opportunity to come and study about the life that Jesus lived before us. About how Paul taught about how we can grow spiritually, and the things that are involved with our spiritual life, how we can have spiritually driven lives in this world that's so physically oriented. And so, as we look at scripture today, we do ask, Lord, that like Paul prays that you'd open the eyes of our heart, that we'd be able to be spiritually sensitive, that your spirit would guide and direct us this morning. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. So, we're in the third chapter of Ephesians, and one of the things that I try to do is, I spend a lot of time, I know as you do, working. And one day I calculated, you know, I spend like 16 hours a day doing expectations, and then I sleep. How much time do I really spend trying to find out about spiritual things? So, I've really challenged myself the last, I don't know, it's been quite a while. Actually, Doyle's the one that helped me with this. But, I try to read a lot of books, and Timothy Keller's one of my, the guys that I like to listen to here lately, and he has a book on prayer. And as I was studying about prayer, one thing stuck out to me is that when Paul prays for churches, he doesn't ever pray to change their circumstances. And so, as I look back on my life, a lot of times, I really didn't want my parents to get divorced. I didn't want to have to quit playing college football. And so, there was a lot of things in those circumstances that I would have changed, but as I look back on it, it made me a much stronger person. It made me a stronger follower of Christ, because one of the things that we know from the Bible is when we have idols in our life, God doesn't like those. He doesn't like any competition. And so, a lot of times, he'll remove those idols in our lives. And so, football had kind of come that to me. And so, I couldn't go back to school. I wasn't on scholarship, necessarily, because they didn't give full scholarships to where I was going. And then, I went to work for a while. I went to school for a while. I was struggling, but I learned the more I concentrate on what God wants me to do and get my spiritual life right, the better the rest of my life tended to go. And so, that's Paul's praying for the Ephesians. Although it's a book of prayer, about prayer he wrote, it's really about the Christian life and how to be motivated, driven, and we're going to talk a little bit about that this morning. But we'll look at this prayer for Paul. We'll talk about a couple ideas, and we'll look at how it plays out in Jesus' life and the example he lived, and I'll share with you a little bit out of my life. So, read with me starting there at verse 14. Paul's praying for the Ephesian church, which, like most churches, has people, and so it has problems. He says, That's how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. And to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine. According to his power that is at work in us, in him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. And so Paul starts out with this idea, For this reason I kneel before the Father. How many of you like, and you don't have to raise your hand if you don't want, how many of you like to kneel when you pray? There's still some people. I know there's a lot of people growing up, you hear stories of the great prayers. They would have, you know, wooden floor by their bed. They had knee prints in there. And when things get really bad, a lot of times I do pray just because I feel comfortable. But I think the idea is more about your attitude than your position. I used to, and even still some churches, I went to the First Baptist Church in Dallas for a while. They have the part where you can kneel down. I thought that was kind of silly. And then I got old and I thought, man, that feels a lot better on my knees when I kneel down. So there's a lot of reasons for kneeling and not kneeling. But I think the attitude's the most important. For whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. And so that's kind of the first point. One thing that we have to come to in order to have a relationship with Christ is you have to have that, you have to be part of something. But it's different about having a relationship with God than it is necessarily than joining a club or being on a football team or being a Democrat or whatever you might be. There's a guy, he wrote a book and it's kind of an educational book. It's called Driven. I don't know if you've written it. But his name's Daniel Pink and he talks about three ideas that are important for people that are the most successful people are driven by these three things. The first thing is called autonomy. And that's something we all have to come to. And like I said, when I was six, the first thing I can remember is not that I went forward but that I was baptized. There's something in all of us that we're creating God's image and until we find God in our lives, there's always things that draw us to different things. But at an early age, because we went to church all the time, I was drawn to have a relationship with God. And that's what autonomy is. There's something in all of us that makes us want to do things our way. And until a person comes to that point and says, I want to have a relationship with God and I want to do things his way, the rest of it's kind of irrelevant. Because until you have that relationship, you can try all the things you want and you're not ever going to find fulfillment or find the answers that really satisfy you in your life. God's built that into all of us. That's how children learn to do things God's way. Have you tried to help them do something? What's the first thing they do when you give them a pencil and then you try to help them? They say, I want to do it. Or you give them something to play with, they want to do it. And God has built that into all of us and if we direct that in the right way, that's how children learn to do things God's way. Because all of us are creating his image and there's certain things that God puts in us, even though you may not be going to church, you may not have a personal relationship, but you're going to have that drive in you to do it my way. How many of you like to do things your way? Raise your hand. Come on, come on. That's just God inside all of us saying there's something autonomous in all of us and that's why Baptist churches, we only listen to what we think is right and everybody else can be wrong. There's something about being autonomous. The key thing is that we find what God wants us to do and until you get that figured out, you're going to have a hard time with things that drive your life. I went to school, I was a pretty good student. God had blessed me with athletic ability. I was a really good athlete. I went to college with the intent of getting an education. My parents instilled that within me from an early age, but also I can remember one time we went on vacation and I was going to get the perfect attendance award in Sunday school. I did not want to miss church. So I pastored my parents until we found some church in Texas that we could go to that would sign a piece of paper saying Rusty was in Sunday school this morning. And so I not only pastored my parents, I pastored the teacher to make sure I got that. I was motivated to make sure that I had perfect attendance. And so God starts that on us when we think something's important, it's important. Now, how many of you are Denver Bronco fans? Oh, that's tough. Too bad. Okay, all right, we got a couple of believers here, but that's how that works. There's people all over Great Bend that go to a different church than we do. And I understand that. It's not the things that make us different that are important. It's that autonomous relationship between us and God where I follow God. And when you're with a group of people that think like you do, believe like you do, and you work together, that's the important thing. And so eventually God gets you in a relationship with him and you're gonna find a group of people that have similar relationships with you. But until you get your life together and you figure out how you're gonna let Christ lead and direct you, the rest of it, I'm not gonna say is irrelevant, but it causes problems that you're not driven like you need to. And so that's what Paul is praying for here to the Ephesians. Look at verse, after he says, in heaven and on earth drives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power and with spirit in your inner being. There's lots of things and sometimes that's kind of hard to understand, but as Doyle kind of led me to direct a book by Dallas Willard, he explains it this way. Our whole life is like a giant circle. And then the Bible tells us we need to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. If you substitute spirit there, the idea is all those things together, your mind, your heart, your spirit, that's your soul. All those things that fit together, that's you. And that autonomy that we have is related to our soul. All the things that we do that make us us, God loves that. And so there is a period of time when you're growing up as children, young adults, and even I'm still trying to figure out some things in my life, but that's your soul that the Bible talks about. That inner part of your life that coming to church, those things help you understand that autonomy you have in your soul with God. And God's going to help you with those things. And without that autonomy and understanding those things, it causes us all problems. And that's why Paul is praying for their inner strength. And so Jesus was a great example of that. If you'll turn over to Matthew 4 real quick, Jesus gives us a great example of that inner strength. And it kind of seems there's some things in the Bible that we don't understand. But Jesus was just like we are in that he had human, physical part of his body. And you know this story because it's when Satan comes to tempt Jesus. And I used to think for a long time that God put Jesus in the weakest situation so that he could show how strong Jesus was. But Jesus went and fasted so that he was probably at his physical weakest spot, but he was spiritually strong. And so the lesson is this. In order sometimes to strengthen our inner being or our soul, we have to get away from this world that's so physically driven. You watch on TV, it talks about if you get a new car, you're going to need a newer car. If you get a new watch, you're going to need an iWatch. All those things is the world drives by getting the next thing, a better thing, a bigger house. It's even gone to, whether it's MTV or whatever, they'll want you to get a better husband or a better wife. All those things are driven. And guess what? You might be able to find one if you're looking that direction. The way of the world wants things. But God and Jesus showed us a different way that we have to separate our physical life so that it doesn't overwhelm us. Because you know, unfortunately the first thing I think of when I get up in the morning is not reading my Bible and praying. And so it's very easy to get those things out of perspective and out of whack. And so that's what God is talking about. And that's what Jesus shows us as an example here in Matthew chapter 4, the temptation of Jesus. Notice what he says here. In verse 4, Satan says, if you're the son of God, tell these stones to become bread. Jesus answered, it is written, man does not live by bread alone If you tell people that have never read their Bible and don't understand who God is, they'll have no clue what that means. And for a long time, I didn't really understand what that meant. Is that you can live your whole life and you'll say, my life is just fine. But you come to a point in your life like I did when my parents got a divorce, I had to settle down and say, what's the most important thing in my life? Is it playing college football? I was captain of the football team my junior year. We were going to be a lot better my senior year. We practiced and worked so hard. My freshman year, we didn't win a single game. The next year, we'd won about the same. And then my junior year, we won more than we lost. We were going to be really good my senior year. But I had to come to a decision about what I wanted to do in life. And God made it pretty clear to me, I didn't have a whole lot of options, but he made it clear to me that I had to do what he does. And notice that Jesus responded with the Bible. He didn't say, although he's the son of God, he could have said, I'm the son of God, I don't have to do anything you tell me. He responded, and that's actually out of Deuteronomy 8. One of the advantages that Jewish children had over our children is, before they were 13, they had to learn the first five books of the Bible. That was a big advantage. And so you have to be autonomous, but you also have to be competent. And so when this guy's talking about people that are really successful, you have to be competent in your spiritual life. Satan's going to get you in a position, Jesus hadn't eaten, I know he was hungry, but he knew what God wanted from him. You need to be competent spiritually. I can't tell you the scriptures to read, but I know they're in the Bible. And when we come and meet on Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, that's a good start. And I did that for a long time, but then I felt the need to learn more. Doyle would say things I'd have no clue, so I'd go and ask him, and he'd give me a big book about this big. And I'd say, man, I don't know if I want to read that. But I wanted to be successful spiritually. How competent do you want to be spiritually? Because eventually, it's not only our relationship with God, I do with God, it's a relationship we do with God as a church. And I started, when I first came here, Helen and I started coming, Terry Riebel said, hey, you want to help me with RAs? I'm like, well, I work with kids all day. I guess I could. I grew up in RAs. I knew about RAs. I went and helped them. I had the first thing to know about that, but I knew that God wanted me to not only help myself, but help other people, because that's the commandment we talk about. Love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love people as ourselves. How competent are you with that? When God says love him with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, that's kind of all we have. How competent are you with that? How much time and energy and effort do you put in on your relationship with God? That's what I was challenged with. I can sit and watch football film for hours, trying to figure out the best way to do things. I can sit and watch football for hours. So God challenged me, how much time and effort am I putting on there to become more competent in my spiritual relationship with him? There were still things in my Bible that I didn't understand. When my parents got a divorce, I went to school in Dallas for a while, to a Bible college, and I asked the pastor a question one time, one of our teachers, and I was using the King James Version. He said, get an English Bible you can understand. I'm like, this is English. Well, he meant a translation I could understand. And so there's lots of different translations of the Bible, and when I went to Ottawa, my first college, it was an American Baptist college, the professor started talking to my New Testament class about where those books of the Bible came from. I don't know what I thought. I just thought they magically appeared, but they come from a lot of different sources, and that was affecting my faith. So I dropped out of that, my first semester of New Testament class, because I didn't have a good understanding. God brought that back to me and said, we're going to teach you how to read the Bible. There's a lot of things in the Bible that you don't understand, you need to get more competent about understanding the Bible. And I don't know who the oldest person is in here, but there's a lot of us that have been Christians for a long time, and I bet if you talk to Carl and Virginia or Wayne and Joanne, there's still some things in their Bible that it takes a while to get to know and understand. There's a competency, I can drive pretty well, I can do some things pretty well, but there's always situations you get in that you wish, man I wish I was better at something than I am. The Bible and what spiritually drives you is that. And so I didn't want to just talk about prayer, because prayer is one of those things, I want to learn how to pray better, but until you put that into your life, and we'll talk about it in the next section, you have to get competent at a lot of things before you get really competent at prayer. Because if you're anything like me, it's very easy for me to just pray for Rusty or my family. And so one of the things that changed my life was when I was in college, my good friend Mark Roy that I played football with, we went on a mission trip to Apache, Oklahoma and worked with some Indian children. I prayed for them for like two years, because I saw how different their life was, and how blessed my life was. When you drive up to a house that has a Cadillac parked in front of it, but no door and windows, there's a little bit skewed about that family and that relationship. I got to see how other people live that don't have a good understanding of who God is and how he wants us to live. It changed my perspective. So one of the things that's going to happen when you start developing your competency is that God's going to change his perspective, and age has done a lot of that for me. And so Jesus tells them, man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God. That's from Deuteronomy 8, 3, where Jesus is explaining the reason that Israelite people wander around in the desert was so God could teach them to be humble. You don't have to raise your hand on this one, but how many of you need a little help with being humble? Do you feel like you're wandering around the desert sometimes? That's spiritual competency. You have to figure out what's the most important thing now. What's God want me to do? Because things can be going wrong in your life. Things can be happening that are negative. Jesus was in the desert. He hadn't eaten in a long time. Here's Satan tempting him at his physically weakest point, but he had the inner strength to say he knew the Bible and he knew the principles of the Bible, not just be able to quote scripture to other people. He knew that the Israelites wandered around for 40 years. God gave them food in the morning and the evening. What else would you want? Well, maybe some quail. So they complained God gave them some quail. God was trying to get them to understand and have a better relationship with him spiritually to develop their spiritual competence. They never got it, and God let them get all the way to the promised land and then had all the other people that passed away. I don't want that to happen in my life. God doesn't want that to happen in your life, but if you feel like you've been wandering around in the desert, there's a spiritual component in your life that God wants to be better. He wants you to be more competent that way, and that's why we have great children teachers, preschool teachers, or adult teachers. We have great teachers of the Bible. Doyle is a great teacher of the Bible, because one thing about competency is that the principles are the same, but how they apply in your life is different. I can help you to a certain point, but eventually, once you're autonomous and you're competent, guess what God's going to do? It's in the next section. Jesus always gives us that example, but there's things that he did in his life that helped him so that he was prepared for every situation. Let's see where we are. In verse 18, he says, and I pray to you to be rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the saints to grasp the width and how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the measure of all fullness of God. If you don't have that passion about your autonomy, what you want to be in life, and then you don't have that passion to develop that competency, just like the Israelites, there's a chance that you're going to wander around a long time. And the bad news is that's where sin and addictions come in. I have good friends that I grew up with, went to church with, and they were wandering around and they got off on the wrong track. Jesus tells us that there's two paths. There's the narrow path and there's the wide path that leads to destruction. Now, I don't believe my friends are going to die and go to hell, but I do know their life's been destroyed by some of the choices they've made, chasing the wrong things. We used to go play softball, and Helen and I played on a co-ed softball team, and I had another friend that played on our team, it was a men's team. When we would all leave and go home, they would go to the bar. And all the guys in that group that went that way ended up getting divorced. And so you have to be careful about which way you're going, what's driving your life. And that has to do with the autonomy and the competency, but it has to do with your love. And that's why the first place I heard this analogy was Doyle. He said, if there's a burning building and a policeman came up and held a gun to your head and said, I want you to run in there and save, there's a lady in there, I want you to run in there and save her, you might run in there as far as you could get until they were out of aim, and then you'd probably run away. But if there was a policeman out there and it was your wife or your husband or your son or your daughter that you love desperately, they'd have a hard time keeping me out of there. I don't think they'd need a gun. That's the difference between just loving something and saying you love it and having passion and being driven about it. That's the way God wants us to be. And this next story talks a little bit about that. It's in John chapter 4. It's another familiar story about the woman at the well. And so you know this story. Jesus sent the disciples in. He has the conversation with the woman at the well. She comes to understand that he is the Messiah. The disciples come back. Now, if there were 12 people closer to Jesus in the world, you wouldn't know it. It was the disciples. But they still weren't competent in their relationship with Jesus Christ. For one thing, they didn't have the Holy Spirit. The other thing is they were just starting in this deal. They had some things that they thought were right. And they were set on that. You see it over and over in Peter's life. Let's look when the disciples come back and what Jesus says to them. Verse 27. Jesus, it says, just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked. What do you want? Or why are you talking to her? Then leaving her with her water jug, the woman went back to town and said to the people, come and see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ? They came out of town and made their way to warn him. Meanwhile, his disciple urged him, Rabbi, eat something. But he said to them, I have food to eat that you do not know about. Then his disciples said to each other, could someone have brought him food? Is there a McDonald's around the corner? What's going on here? He says, no, my food is due the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Do you not say for months more, four months more and then we harvest? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields, they are ripe for harvest. Even now the reaper draws his wages. Even now he harvests the crop for eternal life so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying, one sows and another reaps is true. I sent you to reap, but you have not worked for, reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work and you have reaped the benefits of their labor. He had food they didn't know about. There's people around you every day at work that have food that drives you that they don't have any idea about. Paul talks about that as that's what we do as a group. When we get together and we're all competent, the last thing is a purpose. They didn't know Jesus' purpose. His purpose wasn't to have lunch at McDonald's or eat good food. His food, spiritual food, was to do God's will. And until you get there and direct in your whole life, love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, until you get to that as the number one purpose in your life, you're going to be wondering, what do I need to eat or what else do I need to buy or what else do I need to have? What's the next job I need to have? But if you have that purpose in your life, and fortunately God had put that in my life and I figured out that my life was messed up mostly because of the things I was doing. Football was more important to me. There was times I'd sleep in on Sunday morning and wouldn't go to church. There were a lot of days I didn't read my Bible. I wasn't doing the things that helped me grow spiritually. So just like when Paul went through the conversion, he went for 40 days and he had to kind of catch up on things. I had to spend some time getting my life back in order. And I still struggle with that and we're all going to struggle with that because of the world we're in. But if you're not focused on loving God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, you're going to miss out on some of that food. The disciples didn't get it. So you have to be autonomous. You have to have that drive in you that I want to do what God wants me to, but you have to be competent because even as hard as I try, sometimes I do things wrong. And if I'm looking at the people around me that say, why are you making your son go to church on Sunday morning when he's supposed to be playing shortstop on the baseball team? I didn't say anything. I was a coach. I just said, no, we're going to church. Because I learned in my life, I didn't get those priorities straight. Given the choice, I would have gone and played baseball or football or whatever. So I try to teach my children, and it was a sacrifice for them, that it is spiritually more important to be in church, to have spiritual things here in your life. Because if you don't, the world is going to convince you and me and everybody around us that what they say is more important. But that food that Jesus had drove the passion to do things that God knew we couldn't do. He died on the cross for our sins. When my parents got a divorce, I was an only child. All my friends were gone to college. It was a pretty lonely place. And if you get to a lonely, depressed, troublesome point in your life, that's kind of the crux of it. Where are you going to turn? And I don't know if all of you have been in that situation, but I was at ground zero. Then I got really sick. I had chronic hepatitis and I couldn't work. But I did learn that there's some spiritual food out there that no matter what situation you get in, God's always there for you. You may not have cell reception, but you've always got God right there if you've got that relationship with Him. And He's always waiting on us to respond to Him, and then He responds to us. In general, the problem's not God, it's us. And so Jesus told him, my food is to do the will of God who sent me to finish His work. Run out of time. The 23rd Psalm, which I memorized, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. What's He do? He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. If you're not resting and spending time with God, if your life is so hectic every minute of the day that you have to be doing something, that's a problem spiritually. Because the Good Shepherd puts us in place where we can sleep. Do you have problems sleeping at night? It's probably because you're not following the Good Shepherd. Are you in troubled places? When you're supposed to be resting, God has a place for you to go. And He restores our soul like nobody else can do. There's people out there that are having all those problems. The last part and then I'm going to finish. Back to Ephesians chapter 3. It's about the church. Verse 20, it says, Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever, Amen. We can have success autonomously. We can be really successful. God wants that. But He wants the church to be successful. He died for us and we're the bride of Christ. He warned the Israelites about that in Deuteronomy chapter 8. He said, I'm going to give you a great blessing that comes with a great curse. I'm going to make you really successful. And many of the Israelites, they moved to a land filled with milk and honey. God's going to lead us to those places where you have all those things you need. That's what the 23rd Psalm is about. God is our shepherd. We're not going to have wants and needs. He's going to take care of us spiritually. But with that success comes responsibility as a church. Are we being responsible as a church spiritually to not only love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength? But do we love the people beside us? The people around us? That's where it changes. That competency. I can't be a good insurance agent. I can't be a good FBI agent. I can't work on automobiles. God's put me in Larned Middle School to make a difference in my life, the lives of the teachers and the lives of the children. That's where God's put you. God's put us, our church, right here in the middle of a bunch of sinners like we used to be and changed our life through our relationship with Him. We've become more competent in the things we know spiritually. And then He gives us purpose. If you don't have purpose in your life, you're going to come to a point in your life where you're like, why am I living? As I get older, I can't run anymore. I can't jump anymore. I used to be strong. I'm not very strong anymore. All those things you can be proud of. But the Bible guarantees us we may fade physically day by day, but spiritually we can grow every single day. As individuals and as a church, what's our church challenge for this next year? I know in school, we start over every year in September. And so we just had promotions in our children's and youth department. Some of us are getting closer to that promotion to heaven. What's your relationship with God like? Are you getting more competent spiritually? Are you here every chance you get on Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday? Now there's times we can't always be here. Are you reading and praying every day? Do you have people you pray for that are outside your family? People at work? People you see that have problems? They look like physical problems, but guess what? The root cause is a spiritual problem. Are they going to know anything about spiritual food? Probably not. You may not know a whole lot about it either, but just the basic saying that I feel better when I go to church. I feel better when I pray. How about you come to church with me and I'll pray for you? Or how about I'll just pray for you? God does the hard part. Last story and then I'm done. I'd gone through FCA for my whole life in school. I went to FCA in college, get to Great Bend High School. There's no FCA group. I thought, man, we ought to have an FCA group. I thought, I've never been a leader in one of those before. God put it on my heart. I said, well, God, if we're going to do this, I'm going to need some Bibles. I had them pray. Gosh, an elderly lady sat back right there. She walked to the front and said, here's the first $5 for Bibles. Guy walked up to me. I didn't know him very well. It was Carmen Schmidt. Gave me $100 for Bibles. I'm like, well, that was kind of easy. We bought a big red box of Bibles. I think they still use the Bibles at Great Bend High School. Started out with just a few people. God sent some motivated school students. I couldn't really talk to people in school. They kind of frowned on that, but we could post things. These girls, as it were, went out and got all these other people to come. Before long, we started having a difference in people, places, houses. We grew from a group of three or four or five. One time I said, hey, does anybody want to go to a Bible study? I can't go. They're going to teach you how to study the Bible. It was at Camp Webster. It was something put on by the Southern Baptist Convention. Thirteen high school students said, well, yeah, we'd love to skip school on a Friday. I'm like, okay, well, they're skipping school on Friday. But they went and learned how to study the Bible in small groups. They came back and led those small groups. We ended up with 65, 70 people. I didn't really do anything. God did it all. But I was there. I tried to model before them all the time the relationship between me and God. I tried to be confident. When I stood up and said something, just like I've had a couple weeks to prepare, Tim didn't get as much time to prepare for his sermon, but I don't get to sit in office, but I think about what God's been doing in my life and what I can share with you. I read a lot. This guy's sold millions and millions of books, but it's God's principle. Without autonomy, your personal relationship with Christ, you're not going to be driven. If you're not competent in spiritual things, you're just going to wander around in the desert. And believe it or not, man, I got old after a while. You have to get to a point where you're competent spiritually that you not only help yourself, you help the people around you. That's your purpose. Jesus said, all authority in heaven and earth is given unto me that I'm going to give it to you. But you've got to go wherever you go, wherever you work, wherever you teach, wherever you visit. You got to be teaching them, baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit and teach them everything I've taught you. You're only limited by your knowledge. You can't teach them anything you don't know, that's kind of obvious. Teach them what God's done in your life, and that's what I've shared this morning. I've had a lot of problems in my life, I've gone through a lot of difficulties in my life, but God was always there for me. And he's driven my life, even though I didn't really want to go sometimes. He's helped me become more competent, but that takes a lot of time and effort. And we've been going to this church almost 20 years. And so I'm finally starting to get a handle on things. But God loves you where you're at, he'll love you when you go to wherever you need to, but you've got to learn to be competent and you've got to have purpose that drives you, and it's God's purpose, it's not our purposes. We have to get those as a church going the right direction. I would imagine somewhere along that continuum, that's where you're at. So if you still don't have a personal relationship with Christ, you don't have that one-on-one relationship, you're not going to make much progress until you get that right. Doyle and I are going to be up here in the front in a minute, we'll have an invitation. If you want to come share that with us, that would be great. That way everybody can know and we can pray about it. If you don't feel like that's something you want to do, that's okay. You may have that personal relationship and you're wondering about how I should progress, how do I become more competent? Doyle's a great research person, he can help you with that. You could Google it, it's not quite as helpful though, and you have some great Sunday school teachers and leaders in our church that'll help you, whoever you have a relationship with. But more than that, once you have that relationship with Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit comes and lives in your life, just like Paul prayed, that's what empowers you. But you have to be ready to let go of the world and say, I'm going to spend the time and effort it takes to become spiritually fed. And that's what the 23rd Psalm is talking about. That's how God restores your soul, who you are. And then as a church, we've got some work to do. We're always in need of leaders. God's talking to you today about what he wants you to do next, or what he wants you to do also, or what he wants you to do more. But that purpose is what drives you. You could leave Great Bend, America today, and you could go somewhere in the world. world, that purpose will still be the same. God's purpose is going to be the same for you throughout your whole life. Number one, to love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, to love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus is a great example. You read the New Testament over and over again, he gives this example of spiritual food and different things. So Shelly's going to pray for us. We're going to have an invitation. If you'd like to come share with us, that's great. You can do that right there in your seat. But if you make a decision today, it helps a lot if you share it with somebody, so that they can encourage you and pray for you. So as Shelly starts to play. Thank you Shelly, if you'd please stand. I'll pray for us as we're dismissed. I think Denise is going to come up and lead us in a final song. Father, we do thank you that you're the kind of person that loves us in spite of who we are many times. We thank you that you sent Jesus as an example for us. That we can get the food that we need if we'll just put the time and effort, ask you for that help that you give us in your Holy Spirit and then be willing and courageous enough to follow you. We just ask Lord that you would be with us this week. We thank you for the great love that you've shown for us and we ask that you would continue to watch over us and guide us. We pray this in Jesus' name.