Cohort Week 1+

Good morning everybody.

How's it going?

My name is Ian.

I will be the captain of this flight for this time.

If you look out to the left hand side, you will see, our right wing.

And instead of the left hand side, you see the right wing.

No, if you look down there, you'll see a parachute.

That's me.

Well, let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day.

We thank you for this gathering of people who are hungry to know you more, more about your ways.

And Lord, we ask you to put your hand of blessing on us all.

Lord, I pray that you will help us to persevere and to stick with this program.

And so that we will learn all of the lessons that are prepared for us for this next year.

I pray God that you will prosper us and you'll bless us.

You'll enable us, God, to juggle our schedules and to make room for this in our lives.

And we say thank you in advance for sure shaping us into vessels that will bring you glory.

We pray this in Jesus name and all of God's people said amen.

Amen.

Well, welcome.

We are about to launch this rock ship.

And how many of you have been here before in a master's appearance classes raise your hand as high.

So let's just let the new people know it wasn't that bad.

I mean they came back for so long.

So, we graduated 25 students last year and we believe we're going to do more this year.

We have 30 people signed up right now.

And so I believe everybody this year is going to finish this thing and the Lord will help you to finish what you started.

And so any questions at this point before we start?

Let me just do some anthem before I dive into some teaching.

Any questions on sign up?

Everybody is signed up here.

Somebody's still drinking up to making up their minds after this class.

Remember this, by noon you have to be signed up or will happen is I will flush out names out of the school app for everybody who's not signed up.

So you have to be financially, you know, you have to put your credit card pay for it because that way we keep the space just for us instead of people that are still looking and trying to figure out if they want to join us.

And that way the conversations are going to be here.

If anybody makes a notation or a conversation, it's going to be based on what we are learning that week as opposed to just stuff in general.

So that will help us all to stay focused.

the rules for the Community is very simple, you know, no self promotion.

You know, we are there for this purpose.

And there's other places for you to promote, to do your stuff.

So have fun, enjoy.

Because this is a true privilege to be together.

And we had no problems last year.

It was just a great environment to be in.

And we have some, you know, there's a point system.

Every time you make a comment, your points creep up.

And, so you will see some people already at level five because they are in this second year, so they're going to be a little bit ahead.

But as you break through different levels of your score, you will get new ebooks that are released, some books that I wrote, and that may serve to edify you and your loved ones.

So it's just a little bit of a system to keep you engaged and keep you going.

And so every time you comment or say, thumbs up to what somebody said, that little machine keeps on rolling up and new things, new magical things begin to appear in your inbox.

So hallelujah for that, right?

And so why bother with this stuff, right?

I mean, life is busy.

We have kids, we have family, we have work.

Life is really, really complicated.

And so why are we here?

when Pastor Will and I first got together about maybe, like, maybe like 18 months ago to talk about this, he says, I want to do this because, I want to fill in the gaps.

there's only so much you can learn on a Sunday morning and Sunday morning service.

Okay?

And so, and then really a lot of it is geared towards some addition, some, Some.

Maybe for some.

Some surface level, because you have to service babies or seekers through babies, through people that have been there a long time.

I've been a, minister for 41 years.

Some of you have been in ministry longer than that and been in the faith longer than that.

So when a pastor preaches on a Sunday morning, you understand he's preaching for babies and seekers all the way to seasoned saints.

It's really hard to go super, super deep.

And also it's really hard to engage everybod at all of their levels.

So that's the unique function of, a pastor.

You have to be able to reach people wherever they are developmentally, and also let the Holy Spirit do what only Holy Spirit can do, and that is to shake people.

Scare.

So, what sometimes happens when you become a Christian?

Anybody here that has been a Christian since they were children, okay.

And then some of you, anybody who became a Christian after 18.

Okay, quite a number of you, and then anybody has Been a question.

After 30.

All right.

After 40.

All right, wait a second.

Now you're going to trick us into divulging our age.

Come on, stop.

But the point is, is that, if you grew up in church, you probably went to Sunday school, you probably did a lot of memorization.

you probably did a lot of different things.

And so.

But if you got saved a little later on, sometimes, wherever you got your faith and got, started in your faith, they didn't have the time to, to let you go in deep and learn some more things.

So.

So that's the purpose behind this.

You're just trying to address that gap and see, okay, how can we help people fill in the gaps in their Christian education, their training as believers?

Okay.

It says in the Word, my people perish for lack of knowledge.

So knowledge is important.

faith is important, but knowledge is important, too, because you can make emotional decisions based on how you see God, how you see life, and not realize that you just didn't have the information.

Now, information doesn't solve everything.

Today we have AI and people are still lost.

So, information can lead to consternation, but revelation will lead to transformation.

So we need Holy Spirit to come and breathe on us as we work our way through this material.

And this is what happened to our students last year, is that as we worked our way through the materials, Holy Spirit began to breathe on some coals in our hearts and kindled the fire in us.

To know him more, to be more engaged, to be more involved, to be kinder to people that we meet in the world.

Those people, you know, those people out there.

And, to.

To have more compassion to me, be more empathetic.

So as we look at this, we need to work with the whole person.

We need to make sure that you are holistically trained and prepared to engage this world and also to be ready for the Lord's return.

Because it says that the foolish virgins, you know, Matthew 25, they were wise virgins, foolish virgins.

They were both waiting for the Lord.

Both groups were waiting for the Lord, but one group inadvertently was not prepared.

And so it says in second Timothy, two, verse 15, it says, study or be diligent to present yourself a proof to God, a, worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

So even when the truth comes to you on a Sunday morning from Pastor Will and he explains it to your application, you still need to take that word and go work.

It fleshed out this next week.

And so when I was a senior pastor for about 10 years, a lead pastor.

I.

I was very, very diligent to make sure that when I finished my message that there was some practical steps for people to go and do this next week.

I always gave them something to do, because faith is not just knowledge.

It's not just your head.

It's also your head and your feet in your heart.

You know, you have to go out there and you have to go and embody what you've learned.

in this next week, it's.

It's always funny how when I preach on forgiveness, sure enough, somebody will tick me off.

And sure enough, somebody, you know, the great.

Yeah.

I'm just expecting I'm going to be tested at my study materials this week.

So just be aware that as you work through materials, that.

That the Holy Spirit will come and begin to.

To stir you and to show you and to pull you out of your comfort zone.

That is one of the things that I want to encourage you to be open to.

It's not just to expand your understanding, but expand your reach and begin to get involved in stuff that you've never been involved with.

Chris over here went to a retreat, didn't want to do it.

Then she went, and it changed her life, changed a lot of things in their family.

Judith, so happy.

She was such a mean woman.

Let me just see.

She was such a mean woman.

Well, I'm very confident.

I'm, telling the story right now.

Thank you very much.

So the point being, I'm just playing, of course, but she began to stretch into areas that she didn't stretch in before, and she began to reap the benefits of that.

And now there's a certain momentum to it.

And now, you know, she's doing even more things.

So the same is true for each one of us.

Nobody here is special in the sense that we are, going to be excluded from God's blessing.

God wants to bless you regardless of where you are, maybe specifically because of where you are.

The Lord has a plan for your life.

He shaped you in your mother's womb.

You're alive today because God has a plan for you.

And so you are here this morning because God has called you to be here.

And so I want to encourage you to dive in.

there was one lady who gave her feedback on the year's study, and she says, you know, initially, I just started to kind of, like, multitask while I was listening to the classes.

But then I realized that I was missing out.

I was missing out on Some things because I didn't give it my attention.

And so I just want to encourage you that there's a lot here.

And at first it may seem like it's a lot of time, but realistically, 15 minutes a day listening to the recordings.

I know it's an AI voice, but it's a pretty good AI voice.

I've heard some pretty bad AI voices.

and we'll read it for you.

And the pacing is kind of okay.

Last year this time we had an AI voice that was kind of like stumbling over the scripture verses.

It was very funny.

And, as soon as they were like, you know, John 3:16 through 2016, 20 know, it's like it really jumped.

But the technologies become, better.

So why didn't you read it?

by the way, if you record something like that, that's an hour long, it would take four to six hours to produce it.

So we have over 200 lessons.

Can you imagine how many years I'm going to spend reading all of that one by one?

So that's why I'm not reading those.

Okay.

It's going to take a long time to read, edit, clip it back and forth.

It's a lot of work.

So that's why we want to make it available to you though, because we could have just given you text, but we decided why don't we make something available with technology at our, disposal.

So let's look at this.

What is a whole person?

The whole person.

How do we shape a whole person that's faithful in the things of God, who was consistent in the things of God?

And this is kind of a little bit of a review.

Now usually I won't do reviews, on these cohort meetings.

This today will be a.

Will just be a vision casting a little bit, but.

And I will review some of the stuff you've done, but usually I will teach something adjacent in addition to, what you learned that week.

So don't worry, I'm not just going to repeat and regurgitate what you learned the week already.

So it's going to be good.

So the whole person.

How do we help the whole person?

So we came up with this scheme with five different areas.

the first one deals with systematic theology.

And that just basically shapes your own view of God.

If you talk about God, you say, well, God is good.

Well, you just made a theological statement.

If you say God is absent, you just made a theological statement.

If you say God is dead, you just shared with me your theology, your view of God, how you See, God, work in the world.

So everybody has a theology.

Even atheists have a theology.

That's how they view God.

And, how you view God is kind of important.

And so I'll dive into that a little bit more.

The second one deals with, understanding.

Understanding, not just understanding God, but remembering God's faithfulness.

In other words, this God that's good, who was good back then, is he still good today?

Has he been good through the years?

has he been faithful through the years?

And so we need to establish his track record beyond scripture, because we don't live in Bible times.

I don't know if you noticed, you know, we don't have, you know, staffs and doing different things like that, you know, sticks and chasing after sheep and living in.

And so we're not doing that right now, but we're living in the modern age.

So how does this, this faith show up?

And when my life is in the shambles, how can I still depend on God?

Well, this is where history, his story is so important.

What is God's story?

I, don't.

You know, it talks about the Acts of the apostles.

I really think it's the Acts of the Holy Spirit through the apostles.

But that's okay if that's how it's positioned, because it really is the work of the Holy Spirit through his church, through the ages.

And if God waits to come back and get us and take us all to heaven, all of us are going to die before the year 21, hundred.

what is it?

2100.

But, maybe some of you will still live in 2100.

I don't know.

But the point being is that if Jesus tarries and he comes for 10 generations from now, they will also have to study theology in their space station.

You know, in this spacesuit.

They will have to.

They will have to still wrestle with who is this God who shaped this world out there that we looking at?

And, how does that impact me personally?

So church history is remembering God's faithfulness.

And Christian leadership then says, okay, how do I then take this goodness of God and begin to spread it to other people and share with other people?

How do I influence people to be open to God, to receive from God, to represent God?

How do I influence people?

Say, well, I'm not a leader.

Well, you are.

If you exert, influence.

If you're a mom, you exert influence.

If you're a dad, you exert influence.

If you're a single adult, you exert influence at work, at School, wherever you are, you are exerting influence.

How you use that influence is very important.

And, we've seen what happens when leaders go bad through the years, haven't we?

And so when leaders go bad, you don't want to work there, you don't want to be there, you want to get out of there.

you know, so please understand leadership.

How you use your influence is super, super important.

And how do you learn to do it right if you are the leader?

Well, daily habits.

Okay, so how do you practically work this out every single day?

The only way you're going to do it is to reinforce the good in your life by studying the word, praying, doing all the things that we sometimes see as additional things.

if you don't have a daily habit, what happens is habits are imposed by the world.

I think sometimes people look, at life, you know, you know, how you look at your life areas.

You have your pie, you know, and there's the pie.

This is virtual, and this is physical, and this is career, and this is that.

The problem with that way of thinking is that we very often, make a very thin size for spiritual.

And I would suggest to you that spiritual is actually the pan that the pies in.

And so we are spiritual beings that have emotions and intellect and emotions, but we also have a physical body in which we manifest all of God's goodness and what God wants us to do.

So we are spiritual being first.

So you need to view your spiritual life, what we're doing even in this class, as the pan at which you will begin to exercise your daily habits.

It undergirds, it supports its primary, and everything else fits within that.

And if you neglect the pie pan, the pie is going to end up on the floor.

Amen.

So that's my little illustration there.

And so that's your practical Christianity.

And you got to find a way to make it work.

If you can go to the gym and work out, you can go to your Bible and work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

Amen.

And so it's very, very important.

So, and then how do you then make decisions?

That's your ethics.

Things like, what do you think about murder?

What do you think about war?

What do you think about euthanasia?

What do you think about if you have to make decisions that pull the plug?

If you have to make decisions about, infertility and having to make decisions about having children or not having children, how do you make those decisions?

You need to have a sense of, what does it say in The Bible.

That's how you learn to make good decisions.

And so some of us have children.

We have been the children who made some really dumb decisions.

And the reason why we made the dumb decisions is because we didn't have a strong systematic theology.

We didn't have a sense of God's faithfulness.

We didn't have a sense of our influence and stewardship, and we didn't have practical habits.

And therefore, we made some stupid decisions.

How many have made stupid decisions?

Thank you for joining me.

Thank you so much.

And so very, very important.

So the integration goal is ultimately for us to be faithful.

Faithful to God, faithful to the Word, faithful to do what we need to do every single day.

And how do you get.

How do you live a good life?

By being faithful one day at a time.

And if that is too much for you, then do it one hour at a time.

If that is too much for you, make it one minute at a time.

Just walk it out day by Day.

So 41 years of ministry.

I know I look like I'm 29, probably because my hair is going away, but the point is, how do you live a good life one day at a time?

So how do we go then about working this, making this happen?

So the first pillar of building this kind of a life is the mind.

So you have to go and fill your mind with a great understanding of who God is.

So when we study God, we move from scripture and his work into every single day of our lives.

So every thought, like I told you earlier about God, is theology.

So you're already doing it.

When you think about God, when you go through a hard time, maybe you're going through a suffering moment.

And then it gives you an interpretive lens.

Your theology will impact everything that you do.

it's the story you tell about God every single day.

Maybe something horrible happens to one of your children or to your wife or to your husband, and now you're suffering.

And then you begin to say things like, well, God, where are you, God?

Why didn't you protect him, God?

Why, why, why?

If you don't have a really, really good sense of, who God is and that God is a good God and that he's a merciful God, what happens is you begin to cast him in a narrative where he is bad, he's absent, he doesn't care.

And now you just want to abandon him because he seemed to have abandoned you.

So you.

If he rejected you, then I'm going to reject him.

And so many people are in that because they did not fill their minds with a, great sense of who God is.

So you have to understand, this is why many of our loved ones are struggling and even making decisions that are not very great, because they don't understand who God is.

And he's the same yesterday, today, and forever.

So he's consistent.

He's not flaky.

you know, he doesn't fluctuate.

There's no shadow of turning in Him.

He's good.

And so when you understand that and when you study that and you make that your lens and the narrative that you use to talk about God.

So let me explain this way, the stories we make up in our mind about everything.

I can be in one situation, and you can be in the same situation, and we can make two different stories up about them.

We can go out on the freeway.

It's like the freeways are never good.

The freeways are always horrendous.

I hate the freeways.

I hate the freeways.

and you're just frustrated.

That's your story you're telling.

It's always this bad in this town.

Fresno's traffic is always bad.

I go in there.

I'm fascinated, man.

What's going on?

This is nuts.

This is amazing.

I wonder if I can maybe turn on a podcast.

I wonder if I can turn on my study from Masters of Pramvist.

I wonder if I can.

What can I do right now?

Maybe I can call my mom.

I haven't talked to my mom yet.

Instead of being frustrated, you just change the narrative and your perspective and your attitude and even your blood pressure is better because you have a better narrative.

So when you look at God, if you have a positive view of God, even if you don't like God's people, which is possible.

even if you think that God's people can be flaky.

Yes.

And so is everybody else in the bar.

So we're all, you know, flaky people.

So wherever you go, you find flakes and, you know, hypocrites.

So, yeah, they're church.

They're at the bar as well.

So when you begin to reframe how God is and what he does and what.

How it works, you can go from spare to hope.

And I think I want to choose hope every single time.

Because when I'm hopeful instead of full of despair, my, whole countenance is better.

The way I engage with my job is better.

I don't show up and tell that boss to go to heaven and make a U turn.

You know, I don't do any of that ugly, stuff.

Amen.

Why?

Because I have, filled my heart with hope.

Because God is sovereign.

God is behind the scenes doing amazing things.

I may not see it yet, but God has never abandoned me yet.

So I'm going to believe for good things.

And so that's why theology is so important, because your mind needs to be filled with a sense of, you know what?

This God I serve is going to take care of me.

He's on my side.

So, we have to study God in scripture.

That's where we have to look at Him.

Okay?

Not just our opinions.

What did anti say about God last year?

what did they say about God at the funeral?

No, what does the scripture say about God?

And then, we have to begin to shape a mental picture of God.

Let me ask you this.

When you think about God the Father, as opposed to God the Son, as opposed to the Holy Spirit, do you see God the Father as an angry old man hanging over the banister of heaven, shouting, cut it out.

Or do you see him like Jesus portrays him when he runs out towards the prodigal son and embrace him?

So your picture of how you view God, if you see God as vengeful and angry all the time, instead of redemptive, redeeming, restorative, willing to embrace rather than reject, all of that changes how you view God.

I told the class last year about.

I had this.

I grew up in a church where we were constantly talking about, Jesus is coming soon, which is great, and you have to be ready for Jesus coming today.

but it created the fear in me as a youngster.

Okay, so.

And it was a little bit legalistic.

So, you know, I would think, like, if I was mad at my sister and, you know, I'm still mad at her, I still haven't forgiven her.

And Jesus shows up, then I want to be left on the pavement and everybody else is going to take off and.

Because I did still did not forgive her, and I'll be left behind.

And, I built this narrative in my head.

I said, God, if I ever have an accident or anything like that, you know, like laying there bleeding on the asphalt, and I'm about to leave, can you just give me, like, 30 seconds to just get right here just in case I miss something, God, because I don't want to go to hell.

I want to go to heaven.

And one day the Lord interrupted me in my heart and he just said, is that really the way you think I am?

And by now I have my own children, you know, My own sons.

And he says, is that what you do with your sons?

That you just change their last name because they did one thing wrong?

you know, this evening, there's no food for you.

No food for you, fool.

You know?

You know, do you think that's the way I am?

And I had, to be honest, I said, yes.

And he says, okay, well, let's go research that.

And so I started to dig in, and started to see where Jesus is.

When you see the Father, you see me.

I'm not saying that it's just the Father and he came in the shape of Jesus.

No, there's three distinct persons, and we'll go into that.

But the point is, whenever you see Jesus being kind to children and to people and to sinners, that is what the Father is represented as.

Jesus is, when you've seen the Father, you've seen me.

So his heart, his attitude, his concern, his compassion, his willingness to suffer to see, us get reconciled.

That's who your heavenly Father is.

But if you have the wrong perception, the wrong narrative in your head about God the Father, you're going to always see him as this angry, vindictive God who wants to throw everybody in, you know, make us all crispy critters and throw us in hell, at a moment's notice, as opposed to somebody who's patiently waiting for us as we are potting down and going for the pigsty and finally show up at the front door.

And he runs out before any of the neighbors can stone me.

He runs out towards me and he embraces me and he says, son, welcome home.

Look, I have a robe for you.

Look, I have sandals for you.

Look, I have a ring for you.

And come on in.

And who protects me not only from the community, but also my Christian brothers and sisters who are not too happy of me getting the fatted calf when they've been living in church for a long time without getting any special treatment.

you know, and so you deal with those dynamics.

And so I had to just grow in my understanding of God the Father and really make a study of him.

I love Jesus.

You know, I see him kind of as a good shepherd, and I'm the little lamb And he's holding me as a little kid.

That's how I saw him.

Jesus loves the little children.

and Holy Spirit is kind of like, so I can learn about Holy Spirit.

So that's what theology does.

It changes your perspective on who the God it is and how they operate in the church, how they operate in the world and how that all works.

And so you have to understand how this works.

And so, the second thing I want to say is that if you're going to do theology, you need to have the right attitude.

And, you cannot have a chip on your shoulder.

You cannot be cocky.

You cannot be looking down on people who don't agree with you because they're not as enlightened as you are.

Because when you deal with the things of God, sometimes I feel like I'm one of six blind men trying to explain an elephant.

You know, no, the elephant is elephant.

It's like a tail.

It's a switch.

It flies with it, you know, so you have the tail because I can't see the elephant.

I can just try to see this elephant by feeling.

it's more like a trunk.

The elephant is a trunk.

No, you see parts of the elephant.

And so in the same way, we must have this humility, we must pray and invite the Holy Spirit's illumination.

We need to have that humility that says, you know what?

I have an incomplete understanding.

Jesus says to his disciples, there are many things I've yet to tell you, but you're not ready for them yet.

But in due season, you will receive, you know, impartation or revelation to understand that.

I guarantee you, you're going to get to heaven one day.

You're going to see some folks there that you didn't expect to see there.

you know, some folks that you thought would be there is not going to be there.

And some things about God that you thought that you had nailed down is not going to be right, and God is still going to love you.

And so it's not this issue of, I have perfect knowledge and everybody else is an idiot.

It's more like, hey, at best, this is incomplete.

But what I have is enough for me to put my faith in Jesus.

Amen.

And so that humility is super, super important.

Because if we get a chip on our shoulders and we begin to look down on people, we actually are against the very thing that this is about, which is humility and submission and saying, we're all in this together.

We're just trying to learn.

we have not figured it all yet out yet.

how are we gonna get from here to heaven one day?

TWA traveling with angels?

I don't know.

All I know is I want to get in heaven, wherever heaven is, whether it's up or down or wherever, I don't know.

But I'm gonna be with Jesus.

And so There's a lot of things, folks, that we can't explain, okay?

And Jesus did not explain every single bit of, heaven the way it's going to look, the size of the rooms, the size of the, of the buildings.

You know, we know some things, but we don't know everything.

So that's what I'm talking about.

And so understand that there's a certain attitude, it needs the right part, posture.

And secondly, thirdly, we need to employ our reason and say, you know, God puts things in orderly places and we need to understand how those things work.

when I go and see the king of Swaziland, or Eswatini, as it's called nowadays, there's a whole protocol.

If I go see the King of England, there's a whole protocol I have to follow.

There's an order to things.

The same with God.

God has an order to things.

And you have to understand the order to things in order to understand the one who put the order in place.

At first, if I see famous, is it Andrew Lloyd Wright?

Is it that guy?

He is an architect, right?

And he makes beautiful buildings.

But I learn more about him by studying what he's designed.

An artist, da Vinci, all these various people.

You learn more about the person by, looking at what he's designed.

So the order of God's truth reveals things about him and then also community, villain from one another.

You know, things I don't know.

And if I keep that second point in part, which is humility, I can learn from you, I can learn from Ron, I can learn from Lena, I can learn from, from Jen, I can learn from all of you.

If I can just stay in a posture of humility and say, tell me more.

Tell me how that works for you.

Let me learn from you.

And we all want to be experts, but you learn much more by being a novice than being an expert.

Because it's a hard attitude to say, teach me, show me, talk to me.

Community is where a lot of that happens.

And then what is the response?

Worship, of course.

So we go out there and we see God at work in nature and we worship him.

I sometimes look at my dog and I just worship God.

It's like this thing.

I don't know how it works, but this is amazing.

Guys, look at the systems.

You know, the blood, you look at the stomach, you look at this, you know, the nerve system.

My dog, dog right now has a back pain and he can't jump up.

He yelps.

And so how does he know to yelp?

You Know, I couldn't program that with a computer into it.

I'm sure by now somebody strike, but you know, it's just wonderful.

So there's this sense of awe.

Hopefully you will regain the sense of awe in God by the time that you are done here.

So systematic theology organizes scattered truths into a coherent doctrine to protect against confusion.

That's why we have.

And when we go through the church history part, you will see there's a lot of different thoughts that came up throughout history that had to be addressed.

Thoughts about who Jesus is, thoughts about the Holy Spirit, thoughts about the Trinity, interesting dogma about the end times and what's going to happen and, you know, special people getting saved and other people not getting saved and all kinds of cray crazy stuff.

Because why?

We are human and we are creative.

We make stuff up as we go along.

And so we need all the help we can get.

So let's talk about church history, which deals with the memory.

We have the mind, but let's talk about the memory.

Let's learn from what other folks just like us have gone through.

So the problem is, is that forgetting leads to drifting.

Why do we come to church every Sunday morning?

Don't you already have a Bible?

Don't you already know how to pray?

Can't you already sing in your car?

Why do you come to church for somebody to come and remind you of what it is that this is all about.

You want to be reminded because if you don't get reminded, because our, brains are constantly processing information, we can't come to a place like this and be trained and reminded by Pastor Will or maybe by something somebody says over here.

that reminds me of what God did for me back in 76, you know, so reminding is very, very important.

Remembering sustains confidence in God.

Listen, if God can help believers through the Second World War, God can help us now.

Amen.

If God can take people through all of the things that has happened in church history, the persecutions, the being put in front of lines and being burnt at a stake, so that the word of God can be printed in our language, you know, all of these things that have happened, if God can see people through that, then he can see us through whatever is coming our way.

And in a sense, by knowing the past, what happens to us is we can face the future.

Amen.

We can face the future.

Nothing is going to come to us that other people have not already overcome by the grace of God.

So what does it give us?

It gives us confidence, you know, in God's ability to preserve the church despite persecution.

It also leads to discernment when we begin to see the same old thing begin to rear its ugly head.

And people are beginning to have some strange doctrines and stuff like, that's kind of like that, that, that that sect that happened in 1500s, you know, and the church had to deal with that, or this crazy thought that the Catholics had back then or the Protestants had in, you know, in Zurich.

All of these things can actually just repeat because Solomon used to say, there's nothing new under the sun.

It's like things tend to show up again.

And so when it shows up again, you can just go like, well, that's kind of like back in the day.

And here we are again, deja vu all over again.

Right?

So.

And it also creates a humility.

It highlights and strengthens and help us with the blind spots of every era.

It highlights the strengths and blind spots of every era.

So you may have, an era in church history where there's great missionary expansion, but then there's some cray cray theology that goes into that, you know, Jesus is coming on October 28th, you know, and then Jesus doesn't come on October 28th, and then they drink Kool Aid.

And you know, different things happen, all kinds of stuff in church history.

And so you can see that there are blind spots.

Human beings have blind spots.

And there are cycles to things.

Populism, like before Hitler's regime and in Italy under Mussolini.

Populism is where people begin to rise up and say there's too much disparity between the haves and the have nots.

And so there are cycles in history.

If you understand the cycles, you can begin to see the approach and go like, that's.

That kind of a storm is coming.

Because it's already happened before, it's happening again.

This is what we can expect in the markets.

And you're not over one by it, because Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.

Amen.

And so history is so good.

And also this inspiration, ordinary believers displaying extraordinary faith.

People that are just common folks, sometimes women, young children saying, I will not deny Christ.

And then they face lions and they face bears and they get killed by gladiators and all kinds of stuff.

And they say, no, I'm going to stand on my faith.

I know who I am and I know who I believe and nothing is going to take this from me.

And you go like, wow, that's pretty awesome.

Martin Luther standing up to the, to the mighty Catholic Church saying the indulgences is wrong.

And, you know, saying, no, you need to return to scripture alone, sola scriptura.

And he stands and he's threatened by his life, but he has the courage to stand up and say, this is wrong.

All right?

And so that's why church history is important.

And I love church history because I just laugh because we are still the same people that used to be right about at the time of Jesus.

For me, as a kid, I always thought of history like black and white film.

Like nobody had any color.

You know, everything was black and white.

You know, just black and white movies, Castablanca, just black and black.

You know, just.

Why don't black and white film?

But the truth of the matter is they look like us, they had different clothes, they had our brains, that our eyes and our skins and.

And they were just like us.

And they were trying their best in their context to.

To live out their faith in God.

So just know this, that you are just like all of those folks were back then.

And yes, it was in color.

So if when they rode those ships, they was colorless.

The sea was blue when they were rowing their ships.

So I'm sorry, I'm a little excited about history because I really, really like, now, once you have a sense of that, how do you influence your loved ones?

And there's some thoughts that we shared in our classes.

We can.

We'll continue to share that.

And that is that leadership is influenced.

You can have a great vision, but ultimately you need to be able to impact people regardless of whether it's good or bad.

And Joseph is our example of that.

Leadership is not just a position.

Leadership is influenced.

Joseph was a slave, and yet he was able to influence his.

His owner to become top of the household.

He was a prisoner.

He was able to.

To live by character and do everything that's right and get on top of the prison, right underneath the warden.

And so then ultimately he is given access to the.

To the palace.

So you go from the pit to the.

To the.

To slavery, then to the prison and false accusation, and his character stays solid.

I pray to God that each one of us can be as solid as Joseph.

You know, regardless of how deep down, you go in hidden places that you will still walk with character and still do the right thing and not compromise.

And so there it is, the palace, which is public influence.

You know, he's at the highest level.

He's making a difference at the highest level.

Many of us will not make it to the palace, but each One of us in our own home has an opportunity to represent God and how we act with our children, how we act with our spouses, how we act in church, how we act in our community at work.

And so we have an opportunity to represent Jesus.

It says of the disciples that the Sanhedrins saw that they are simple men, but that they've been with Jesus.

And I think that's, that is the biggest compliment that you can ever get.

that somebody says, I can see you've been with Jesus and may the Lord help us of that.

But that's Christian leadership.

It's all about influence.

Influence more so than position, character more so than visibility, and even small seasons that are filled with faithfulness.

Can you be faithful when nobody's watching?

And when your life is small, although you know you're meant for greatness, can you be faithful?

Jesus says you are faithful over little.

Therefore I, will expand your life and I will give you access to what is much more.

And so that long term obedience, excuse me, is super, super important.

And so maybe we'll be challenged with that.

Amen.

Because, people are really watching.

This is the thing that is very interesting to me.

I listen sometimes to people talk about Mr.

Rogers.

Mr.

Rogers is very interesting to me because, you know, we all know him as Mr.

Rogers neighborhood.

And you, know he did the things for the kids and plays the piano and did the puppets and he was always working towards kindness.

But a lot of people don't know this, but that, he was a Presbyterian missionary and his mission field was children.

And so he went into public television and tried to instill Christian principles by virtue of media and to try to build that sense of kindness.

And when people met Mr.

Rogers, I've heard another guy just the other day, he says, I had an opportunity to interview Mr.

Rogers.

And he says it was the weirdest thing because, you know, I just went in there and it was like he knew me.

And his kindness just, just so overwhelmed me.

I was just a changed person by being of Mr.

Rogers.

And that's influence, folks.

That's when you're anointing the mashah.

You know, the Hebrew word for anointing is mashak.

It's the rubbing off of the anointing.

It rubs off of you onto other people.

There's an anointing in your life.

What is the anointing?

It's the burden, breaking burden, removing power of God in your life to accomplish your assignment.

But when people encounter you, your integrity and your influence begins to rub off on Them and you know, that same glisten of oil on your skin, which is the Holy Spirit begins to rub off on them and they begin to carry a little bit of that.

And so I bring up Mr.

Rogers example because you can be a leader who brings influence with a soft voice.

You don't have to yell, you don't have to enforce things and make people feel bad, but just a quiet presence.

You can change things and begin to move things in the right direction.

Amen.

So long term obedience is a very, very important thing in the Christian faith.

It's really, really hard.

If you look at some of the guys that have fallen, major ministries that has fallen in the last five years, many of those guys, sad that that happened.

But many of Those guys were 60, 65, 70 years of age.

This is at the end of their career.

And then something horrible happens to them and the enemy is patient if he's anything.

And so for us to do well over a lifetime is a real challenge because we are frail, we are human, we make mistakes and it's that long term obedience.

How do we get to long term obedience?

One day at a time, one hour at a time and just, and just walk it out and believe God and serve God, faithfully.

So we have to practically work it out, right?

So we need to have some habits on a daily basis.

So we have to work, see what we repeatedly do shapes who we become.

Consistency is more important than perfection.

for me, consistency in the right direction always beats perfection.

Because the problem of perfection is you're always trying to feel superior to somebody else when you're, when you're perfectionist, right?

Well I can do better than them.

I can still do.

Maybe you're putting yourself down, but you know what?

The one that you have to compare with, if you're ever going to compare, compare with Jesus.

And then you realize, okay, I'll never measure up, so why don't I just do my best instead of being a perfectionist.

So we have to repeatedly do so that we can become so it's consistency over perfection.

So to have structural integrity in your life, your faith life, you have to continually put in the bricks, the load bearing bricks that can handle the roof of your life, that can handle everything that comes your way, the storms of life.

So truth without habit has no transformational power.

if you don't make truth your habit, if you don't wear it, almost like the priest, you know, they put all the habit they put on, you put on that habit you put on the clothing.

This is what you clothe yourself with every single day.

What happens is you forget.

And when you forget, you become despondent, you become depressed, you begin to not do what you're supposed to be doing and start learning new habits.

Because here's what you will do.

If you don't do the right thing, the wrong thing will always show up and encourage you to do that.

Right?

We've all wasted time, we've all done the wrong thing.

We all know how that works.

We're not children.

But if you don't fill your time with the right thing, the wrong thing will come knocking at the door.

So what are some actionable habits?

We talked about sitting some regular prayer times.

Make it short.

I would prefer people instead of praying for an hour every single morning and just kind of grind it out and maybe fall asleep because they can't make it through an hour of talking to God, not answering with an audible voice, right?

So why don't you build short bursts of prayer, of communications, say, lord, I praise you, Lord, I love you, Lord.

Thank you for food today, Lord.

Make short bursts, short burst communications with the Lord.

And that way you pray throughout the day.

That way your life becomes a prayer.

It's a very practical way to get in the habit.

I have a habit.

I had a habit of my boys when we lived down ocean side.

I would take them to school.

When we got in the car, we prayed.

We couldn't get through the gate until we finished our prayer.

So, you know, it was a short prayer.

It was where they can handle it.

But we asked for protection, we asked for provision, we asked for God's, presence to be with us in everything we say and do.

Lord Jesus, be with us today.

Amen.

All our boys shouted in Jesus name, amen.

And then when we ate, we prayed, and when we walked through certain doors, we prayed.

So it just becomes a habit when I go through a door.

I gotta pray.

I gotta thank for what I'm leaving behind and what I'm entering right now, where I'm going to.

Lord, thank you for that.

I look at my watch, thank you Lord for my day.

Thank you for your goodness.

Make it a habit to talk to God throughout the day rather than trying to just talk to God at a time of the day.

Now you still want to have that time.

I don't want to take away from that.

So nobody needs to send me emails about that.

I still want you to do that.

But get in the habit of, building prayer into everything you do Am I missing something here, Lord?

Am I going to this meeting?

Lord, please help.

You don't have to speak it out.

You can say it in your head.

You can read your mind.

It's okay.

But sit regular, short prayer times five minutes, morning prayer, and then you just have it over and over.

Set your watch to beep every hour, and then when it beeps, you say, thank you, Lord, for this.

In the old days, we had, you know, like clocks that go ding, dong, ding dong, ding dong, dong dong, you know, but we don't have that anymore.

So, build those things into your life and find a way to, to put God in the fabric of everything you do.

Rather than this religious duty.

Make it a relational delight where you are just laughing and enjoying God.

And, and even if somebody does something really stupid, you laugh and say, lord, you know, bless.

Bless their hearts, Lord.

And, you know, you know, sometimes people just do dumb stuff.

It's not like you're looking down on them.

It's just like, what, what am I going to do, Lord?

I want to laugh.

And so, so integrate scripture reading, into your routine.

You know, find a way to, to incorporate it.

And so whether you have three by five parts or whatever, just, just have something for the day.

I do my scripture for the day off of the youversion Bible every single morning.

I get that one.

I also get it in an email form, so I'm reminded of it later when I open up my emails.

if it's a really good one, I write it down and I carry it with me in a little card in my pocket or my little, my little book that I write my, my notes in and then.

And I take it out.

yeah, that's a good one, you know, and thank you, Lord, for that.

Just build it into your life because that way it's practical.

It's not this burden, It's a joy, it's a delight.

And then, when you go to bed at night, you're laying in your pillow, just reflect on, one act of obedience each evening.

You know, Lord, I added value to Billy Bob.

And he called.

Thank you for that opportunity.

I, always want to go to bed every single night knowing that I've added value to someone.

I need to know that, I call so and so and I connect him up with that thing.

I did something for so and so, not so I can have kudos and feel good about myself, but so that I feel like my day amounted to something.

And when I get to the end of the day and I Cannot say that.

Then I make a commitment to do it for at least two people tomorrow because I'm trying to catch up here.

You know what I'm saying?

again, not out of religious duty, but out of a sense of responsibility.

And now my life begins to run on this.

On this automatic flow of prayer and Scripture and adding value to people.

And now I become a conduit rather than a swamp.

Because here's the problem of a lot of Christians.

You load all of the stuff in here and you don't bring it to somebody else.

And there's no outlet for it.

Now, you all know, in Israel, there's like the Sea of Galilee, and then the Jordan runs down to the Dead Sea, but underneath the Dead Sea, there's no river going out of the Dead Sea.

That's why it's the Dead Sea.

There's no outflow.

If you have no outflow, your inflow is going to become a swamp.

And so just begin to look for ways that you can bless other people.

Okay, so the habits, what we repeatedly do, shapes who we become.

Consistency needs to be pursued over perfection.

All right, so let's go look at Christian ethics.

What are Christian ethics?

Basically, your decisions.

Maybe you have a business situation and, they ask of you to fib a little bit on some points.

Or maybe I call it fibbing.

Like, the vegetables will have a whole episode on fibbing.

It's not a good idea if you ever grew up on the Veggie Tales.

I did it, but my kids did.

So I had to watch all of the Veggie Tales talking about fibbing.

but, you know, when you have to lie, in order for a certain contract to go through, when you try to sell certain things at work, and certain benefits that, you know, your company is not going to pull through.

how do you.

How do you make a decision that what you're going to do here.

And because the world is going in an opposite direction, how do we distinguish ourselves?

Daniel says, I'm not going to eat food that's been presented to idols.

So, we're just going to eat vegetables and, you know, check us out.

In a few weeks, we will probably be better than everybody else.

So you have to shift from, Is it allowed to.

Is it Christlike?

Is this something that Jesus will have himself being involved?

And that's a difficult one.

Okay, so the function of ethics is to connect our beliefs to our actions.

So it's not just an abstract theology.

yeah.

God is good and God is righteous, and God Always does the right thing.

But I'm going to act like a hooligan and do whatever I want to do because you know I can.

Or God is graceful, so I have to forgive.

No, you connect your belief to your action and also develops discernment.

And you begin to ask questions.

What is going on here?

I call them ghost notes.

You know how when somebody makes a presentation, they sell something?

you really want to distinguish yourself.

Don't just look at what is on the slides, ask what they've been left off the slides, what have not been discussed, what are some of the things that I need to ask questions about?

So when you look at things in life, you need to begin to ask questions and say, how would the Lord deal with this?

What is the wisdom here?

How do I go about this?

What am I missing here?

Please, God, help me to make the right decision.

Right.

Discernment.

Discernment.

Discernment.

Discernment says, I know that there's a difference and I can see it for what it is.

Wisdom.

So it, guides wisdom.

It shapes your speech, your spending and your power.

Remember how we talked about influence?

Leadership is influence.

Well, that influence is power and you have to use it, right?

If you use your power to trample people underfoot and not to do it in a Christlike way, you're dealing with a problem in your life and you have to really go and investigate that.

So now we know that's not easy.

How many of you know this is not easy?

This is the most difficult piece of our study because you have to really go and weigh things and ask the Lord for wisdom, how to make certain decisions in your life.

So that's what Christian ethics is about.

We're going to have some really, really difficult topics discussed and some controversial issues discussed.

And if I want to do anything for this section in, in, in our study is this, you have to think further.

You can't just go, this is black and this is white.

No, get, look around you.

Is the whole world black and white like I told you, like a black and white movie?

No, the world is colored.

There are multiple use.

There are multiple things that are playing a role.

Everything is not as simple as you think it is.

So you got to really go and think things through.

You got to know your Bible.

Somebody say, know your Bible.

And you also have to be committed, to the truth.

There are many facts and facts constantly change.

the fact is that it's right now 10:01 on Sunday morning, in two minutes.

It's not going to be a fact anymore.

It's going to be 10:03.

So facts are changing, but truth, constant.

So very, very important to know how to do that.

So, the whole thing then is how do I make ethical decisions?

Do I have a framework for this?

so then there's a question from your studies.

Is this question, is it permissible?

In other words, is it, aligned with Scripture's moral standards?

Is this permissible?

Secondly, is it wise?

does it promote long term good and sound judgment?

Or is it something that is going to fizzle out and die?

It's not a wise move.

Is it loving?

Does it reflect my self sacrificial love?

So this is not an easy thing because if you look at, the prodigal son story, the brother says, hey, he squandered everything.

So those are facts, right?

But the father operated at another level of forgiveness and he wanted to bring the son back.

It's about reconciliation.

So you got to find out, is there a self sacrificial love issue at stake here?

And does it reflect Christ?

Does it demonstrate the character of God in action?

does it demonstrate the character of God in action?

So, and you know, when you do these things, you are going to go against the grain of culture because Christianity is not the same as our culture.

Our culture is against Christ.

It's against those things.

And so when you begin to do this stuff, you may have to make some tough decisions that will take you out of contention for the next promotion.

It may impact, other things.

But you know what?

You will never outgive God and God will always take care of you.

But you have to be able to say, okay, so I know who God is.

I know what God says in his Word.

How am I going to live my life in this?

Because there are crossroads.

We have to make decisions.

Okay?

so very, very important.

So all of these things need to work together.

Okay?

if you have only theology, then you're like in what I call the ivory tower Christians, they sit in fancy rooms and they talk about high esoteric things.

You know, how many angels can dance on the edge of a pen, you know, all of that kind of stuff.

or if you're only into history, then you have a nostalgic Christianity.

back in the good old days, you know, back then it was pure, it was a pure Christianity.

But now it's all messed up.

No, you need to still have the sense.

I'm going to go make history right now.

If it's leadership only, it can become influence about character.

There are people that are great influencers.

They are very charismatic, but they have no character.

They don't have that sense of theology that kind of anchors them.

This also, it's only practice only.

It's almost like the guys in the, monastery.

And they do all of the spiritual practices, but many of them are not, out there making something happen beyond the monastery.

And so you can't just have habits without any depth in your life.

And finally, ethics only when you're only talking about, this is right, this is wrong, but you don't make decisions, because guess what?

You can talk about your ethics for 10 years in a row, but if you don't make a decision, I'm not going to know what your true heart is, and I'm not going to know what your theology is.

So it's very, very important.

You can't have any of these pillars missing.

You need to have them in place to keep the roof of your faith together.

so I help.

I hope that helps.

And so this is why we, we, we talk about this.

You know, we are trying to build bridges, bridges to modernity.

So how do we live our faith out today?

So let's look at AI, let's look at euthanasia, let's look at various technologies in hospitals.

and people have to make ethical decisions about that.

How do you make those decisions?

You got to find a way to take a faith that was established 2,000 years ago, that was lived for 2,000 years.

And now we're entering the space age.

How do you make all of that work with science and everything?

How do you make it work with technology?

How do you make it work?

And so the core theme of what we're doing here is faithfulness over impressiveness.

Listen, we can talk a big deal.

We can have fancy, high, fulfilling words.

We can sound all scholarly.

That's not the point of this group.

I told Pastor when I started, I said, let's keep it simple.

Let's keep it at 8 to 10th grade education level.

Let's bring it down.

Let's make it simple.

Let's make it practical.

I'm not interested in just talking about stuff.

I'm more interested in us living it out practically and talking about that and, and sweating, walking it out every single day.

And in culture is to appear impressive.

Dr.

So and so and Dr.

So and so.

I have these credentials, but the public goal is to grow in faithfulness.

the doctor is fine, but if a person's not faithful, it doesn't help.

So if you Want to get knowledge, great.

But you have to be faithful.

So faithfulness is consistency in believing, remembering, influencing, practicing and deciding.

And growth leads to formation, and formation leads to Christlike character.

I'm almost done.

So what is the manifesto for faithfulness?

Belief.

It's theology.

Know God clearly and shape your mental picture of God.

It's trust.

It's the history.

Trust God deeply.

Listen, if you don't trust God.

I told the group last year that Proverbs 3, verse 5 and 6 on the wall back there.

I spent the whole year on that scripture because I was going through a really, really tough time.

And I, I realized that I was struggling to trust God.

And I, I parked on one scripture over and over.

I memorized it, I said it over and over.

I looked at it, I studied it, I preached on it.

I spent a whole year on that.

to move my trust down the road and to get more trusting of God.

You must trust God to gain confidence for, from his past faithfulness and then influence leadership is to influence others wisely.

steward your sphere.

Watch what you say.

Watch how you react to different things, how you respond to different things.

This is where you live your life.

You have a home.

You have people that look up to you, that depend on you, that come into your home and look to you for advice.

They may not say it sometimes, but they are actually looking for advice.

Especially if you have adult children, you'd always know.

My children are now moving an adult age.

So it's a really difficult transition for me to know when to hold my advice and my instruction and just, and just to wait and just to pray until they ask for it.

You know, the practices, you know, live faithfully daily.

It's, it's.

If you can just fill every day with that time where you point your, your yourself towards God and say, God, I.

I need you.

And you do it throughout the day and you do it with the word of God and do it by serving other people.

You build transformation through small little acts and finally to make decisions shaped by scripture.

All right, Can I pray for you?

Because we need to go to church.

Father, we thank you for this day.

We thank you for your love, kindness.

We thank you for all of these lovely people.

I thank you Lord, that each one of them will finish what they're starting here today.

And that you will give them resiliency and excitement and joy in learning more about you and learning from each other.

We pray this in Jesus name.

And all of God's people said.