Words to Live By VI, Remains In Me, And I In You

It's like a little too much horsepower. Can we move some of these? I mean, I know I'm, you know, voice is a little spent this time of day, but I don't need five microphones. That's great. Yeah, well, you guys get a lot more going in the summer than we do on Sunday morning. Give me a short message. I'll see what I can do with that. Yeah, this is great. You know what, Mike, give me one of these that works. It's my Bible, but I also have a big stack of these things, too, that might... Yeah, another thing that we're going to kind of get upside down on is the outlines. This is the outline for tonight, so if you somehow didn't get one of these, don't feel neglected. No one got them, so that's what I'm going to be talking about. While you're receiving those, I want you to watch the screen up here, because I'm going to be talking about what you're passionate about. And this week, somewhere in the neighborhood, I hear the statistics are that 10 million people are going to be passionate about this. Watch. For some reason, you're not amongst the 10 million that see it this week. You can say you saw it and had enough to really get a feel. You know what's kind of weird about that is it's a little bit almost retro for me, because I remember taking my kids to the first ones, and now they're taking me to this, and I'm trying to figure that one out. But I guess it's going to be a pretty good show. Who knows? The hype is certainly the greatest I've ever seen for a movie. Somebody I read today, they're expecting to make $2 billion. We're so easy, you know. We're just so easy to hit on. Well, I'd like to pray, and I want to share this word with you tonight and ask God to meet us. Lord, thank you for the opportunity to be with your people. I thank you for community, as several have said tonight. We need to be together. We need to be drawing from each other, Lord. We need support in life, and I thank you that you have such a heart for us. You care about us passionately. Help us tonight as we look at your word to see what that means to us and how we're to respond to it. In Jesus' name, amen. Now, the driving force behind everything lasting in life, whether it's art, literature, drama, architecture, anything great that's lasting is passion. Nothing of lasting significance comes to pass without passion. Passion is what takes the mediocre and makes it incredible. Passion is what makes men go to war and lay down their lives for something that they may not even fully understand. Passion is what equips athletes to break records and accomplish goals, what enables scientists to work tirelessly to find cures for diseases that we all fear. Passion is really the stuff of life, and tonight I want to talk about that because what I believe about you all is that deep inside, you're people of passion. Even though in our culture that word can be singularly used in a lot of different contexts, I believe that every one of us have been designed and created to be expressively passionate, and without it, I'm not going to amount to much. Rightly channeled and focused, passion radically changes your life. God wants you to know that he's passionate, and he made it very clear he's passionate about you. When Jesus was asked, this is a great question, you know, people say, I'd like to ask God one question. A couple of people went up to Jesus and said, what's the Bible? I mean, can you summarize the whole Bible in a sentence or two? Great question. Look at the top of your outline. Here's what the Lord said, and I want you to catch the passion of this couple of verses. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. And love your neighbors as yourself. There's no greater commandment of these. When he says all of your heart and all of your soul and all of your mind and all of your strength, he's talking about everything that you, he's talking about your total being. The message translation, which I often read to put a little bit of seasoning in my Bible reading time, says this, love the Lord your God with all your passion, all your prayer, all your intelligence and all your energy. In other words, don't come and believe that you're going to get the most out of God if you sort of half-heartedly go after him. Over the years of being in ministry, which now are approaching 25 years full time, I've had people come to me and say, you know, I tried the Christian thing. And when they said that to me, I know immediately what the deal is. The deal is that they gave God a section, a portion of who they were for a while and kind of held back. And when they did that, it disappointed them. I want you to know if you're living your life kind of partly toward the Lord, but you got a lot of other things going, you're not going to get out of it what God intended. You're not going to be fulfilled. And you're going to kind of wonder, is this really what it's all about? And the answer is, if God says he loves you passionately, the only way you're going to get the full measure of his grace at work in you is to return that love to him. Now, when the Bible talks about passion, it uses the phrase, all your heart. If you're a note-taker, you might want to jot these things down. It should be up here on the screen. These are all verses that say, with all your heart. It says to seek God passionately, or in other words, with all your heart. Love him passionately with all your heart. Serve him passionately. Obey him passionately. Even trust him passionately. And then Paul writes in the book of Colossians, as if to cover everything, he says, whatever you do, that's the last three blanks, whatever you do, do it with all your heart. In other words, God is not into us living life sort of casually laid back and maybe giving God, you know, a tip. It's not what it's about. It's about wholeheartedness. Never be lacking in zeal, the scripture says, but keep your spiritual fervor. Now, in America, what's been kind of fascinating for me to watch over the years is that we're given permission to be passionate about some things. In fact, it's cool to be passionate about some things. In fact, if you're not passionate about some things, you're not really considered to, you know, to really get it. We did a little man on the street survey about what are people passionate about. And so again, I want you to watch the screen. We just stopped up here in Wexford Plaza and asked a few people passing by Food for Less, what are you passionate about? Here's some of the response we got. Oh, you'll see a couple people you might even notice recognizing it. Let's just watch this. There's four people what they what they're passionate about, something that they're passionate about. Your words. What are you passionate about? Tennis. My wife. Your wife. What about you? Anything. Making my friends happy. Romantic evenings. Giant eagle. He's very passionate about one thing. It's like kind of driving force. Girl. What's one thing that you're passionate about? Grandma's cooking. Bengay. What's one thing you're passionate about? Your car. Number one over girls. Is this your car? Oh, I don't know. I can't right now. Martha Stewart. We're asking people if there's one thing in their life that they're real passionate about. I guess my kids. I don't know. One of the things in my life that I'm really passionate about is my work. Synchronized swimming. Besides that, I'm very passionate about my children. How many kids do you have? Three. That you're passionate about? This might seem strange, but I really get a kick out of helping other people. I'm old and I've found out in life that that's what you get, the pleasure. Jay Sermons. Say in your life that you're passionate about. I have to say my wife. Why? Why? Because if you're putting this on the screen, she's going to hear it. I'm passionate about fishing. Fishing. What kind? Fresh water. But the other thing I'm passionate about is my music, using my music to lead people to Christ. How about the guy just sitting down there? No, I don't know. My wife. There's a guy with a real purpose. He's just really moving forward. But what one did you hear more than any other? There was one that came out through work. Because at work, you're expected to be wholehearted about it, especially if you're in a climbing kind of role. Otherwise, they don't want you. But you see, what's interesting to me is that the contrast here is that passion is somewhat expected in most any discipline. Take sports. I mean, if you go down to the Penguin game, is it when they play next? Monday night? I mean, you could, you could, 730. I know exactly where you're going to seat 4B. You can clap, shout. I mean, you could, you could jump around and twirl if they make a goal. You could cry your eyeballs out if they lose the game, drop out of the playoffs. You do any of those kinds of things, and you're called a fan. You do one of those things here at Kairos or in church in America today, you could be called a fanatic, you know, because you're clapping. You're excited. You're emotional. Well, yeah, why? Because God, the creator of all things, is in my life. And he's someone to get passionate about. I mean, the Penguins are not, as far as I'm concerned. It makes more sense to sit there and just kind of watch them, you know. But that's the strange contradiction about spiritual things in America today. Jesus said, you know, if you're going to follow me, it's going to be with all your heart. God created us for this. This isn't something you have to work up. And by the way, this isn't a personality thing. Some of you might be thinking, well, you know what? I'm sort of a reserved person. I'm sort of introverted. It has nothing to do with it. It has nothing to do with birth order, which I know something about. Nothing to do with your temperament. It has to do with how God's wired you. Ever watch kids? Ever watch little kids? Little kids, I mean, they're just all the way out there. They get up in the morning, what are we having for breakfast today? Cheerios? Cheerios! Great! You know, and they go through the day, and oh, look, a butterfly! And then they come in, it's bedtime. No, not bedtime, no! And they, you know, it's just, they go on. And if you haven't had them, you're going to get a lesson in wholeheartedness. That's where they are. They just, but over time, what happens over time? That sort of innocent living life to the fullest slowly gets just drained away. I remember back when you graduated from high school. For some of you, a few years ago. Some of you, it's been a little longer. For me, I can't remember that. But I do remember my kids graduating not that long ago. And you know, on that day, and it's going to, just a couple weeks away for a lot of kids here, you see a lot of passion. You see guys hugging guys, like, oh man, we made it out of jail. And life now is going to go on. And you see people thinking things like, wow, now I can really do something with my life. Now I can make some bucks. Now I can take on the world and prove what I can do. And all these sort of thoughts come about life. I'm not taking things, you know, pedal to the metal. Here we go, go get them. And then what happens? They get into real life. They go off to school. They get a job. And things just slowly get into a grind. They realize it's a lot more difficult than they thought. They've come to discover how good they had it in high school, right? And didn't know. And life slowly starts to drain off. And if you get that going for too long, pretty soon passion evaporates. And I've seen this probably hundreds and hundreds of times. Life gets predictable. Even your faith, which maybe was important to you, can start to get a little routine. Dreams don't materialize. And pretty soon, you're not even sure why you're getting up in the morning. I want to share with you here on your outline, really quickly, five what I call passion killers. Five things that you need to look out for lest you lose your passion, all right? I don't know, did we get that overhead thing going? Great, looks like it's up and running. Now if I could just find my outline, I'd be in good shape. Where'd we put that thing? Yeah, let me borrow one here. See if I can remember the blanks. First one is an unclear purpose, okay? An unclear purpose. Now this wouldn't be something you'd normally think of right off the bat. But I've found that one of the most important issues of life is knowing what your purpose is. Living without purpose, to me, is the most common reason that people lack passion. It's kind of like sailing without a wind. Well, let's go out and sail raining, but there's no wind. And what happens? You just sort of rock there and don't go anywhere. And then life can be that way. Maybe it's that way for some of you tonight. You know, you're still relatively young thinking, man, I should be moving somewhere and I don't have any real idea where I'm going. And when you get into that mode, you kind of say, well, why am I getting out of bed? You know, I've been there, done that enough. I don't want to keep just going through the motions. And yet you don't know what to do about it. The longer you go without knowing God's purpose, and I'm talking about his specific calling in your life, the less likely you are to maintain your passion. You can fill it in for a while with success. And a lot of people throw themselves into their career for the first five or ten years. And then maybe they have some accomplishments and get a few letters beyond their name and make a few bucks. But you know what? In the end, that does not satisfy the deepest need of your soul. And you've got to find out what your purpose in life is about. You've got to know what God put you here to do. I had dinner just, I think it was Wednesday night or Thursday night, with Tom and Sue Walker. Some of you may not know this, but six or seven years ago, we sent out about 100 people over by the airport and started a new church. And it was a satellite church in North Way. It's called West Ridge Christian Community. And Tom and Sue are the pastors. And we were just talking about it. Tom said, well, do you still love doing what you're doing? I said, it just came out. I said, Tom, I get up every morning just as excited, just as expecting, just as pumped up about what I'm doing now as I did 18 years ago when we first started this thing. I'm more excited about the future than I am about the past. Because I believe the best is yet to come. And the reason that's true is I know what I'm called to do. I know what God wants me to do. And you know what? God wants you to have that same clarity, that same confidence that you know your purpose. Look at Isaiah 49, 4 in your outline. Have you ever felt this way? I have labored to no purpose. You ever gone weeks or months and said, what am I doing this for? I have spent my strength in vain and for nothing. I don't want to end your life and have that said about you. I sure don't. I want to say, man, I ran the race. I did what God called me to do. I knew what my life was about. And I pray that whatever happens with you, you make that a priority. Know your purpose. And you know, the bigger the purpose, the more powerful the passion. If it's a little dinky purpose like, hey, I'm living for me. Ooh, big deal. You know, you're not going to be able to sustain your passion just satisfying your own desires. But if you get God's purpose, I mean, the huge kingdom of God kind of thing in your life going, it's enough to sustain you through anything. God's purpose for all of us, you know, healing, broken relationships, restoring hope in lives, the kind of caring things that Shelley was talking about, where you make a difference in somebody, affecting young people that are coming up behind you. These kinds of things that are even eternal, folks, those things, those give you passion. I believe being a part of the kingdom of God is the most significant call a person can have. It's the only thing that really lasts. I mean, you know, we get passionate about the stock market. Well, great. Let's ride the stock market and make a lot of money and see where that all goes. But in the end, you know, you don't throw that in the U-Haul and take it with you when you die. It's only the things that God gives us that last eternally. And for me, that's the driving thing in all of my life. What's been exciting to me lately is to see that more and more people, young people are coming up and they're on fire because they're catching, you know, they're getting from their parents that, hey, I missed it. There must be more to life. Did you all see three weeks ago, some high school students, and I know Mark probably knew about this and Aaron and Dave and some of the guys who work with the senior high school. There was a thing up in the Silverdome up in Pontiac, Michigan. 70,000 high school kids met just to declare that they were going to follow Jesus 100%. Do we have those? Is that on the PowerPoint or not? We had some pictures of that. 70,000 kids just to stand up and declare, I'm following Christ. I'm in business with the Lord. And those kind of things. You know, most of the music that you sing here at Kairos and some of the stuff we do on Sunday mornings, that's all come out of a renewal in, you know, the next generation of young people in England. There's a real thing going on in the United Kingdom right now. And we're benefiting from all that. Because see, God just isn't working with people, you know, that are 70 or 60 or 50. He is working. There's a shot of the kids. I mean, this was a big deal. I mean, this is just one about what I think is going to be a number of these things all around the country. 70,000 kids pumped up and saying, I know what my purpose is. I'm living for God. I don't know about you, but that gets me excited. There's some shots of that thing. All right. Second thing in your life that can be a passion killer is an unemployed talent. An unemployed talent. Do you know what God's gift in you is? Has someone helped you discover your spiritual gift? Do you know what God wired you up to do in a unique way? And you know what? He packaged it in you because you're the only one that could deliver it the way it was supposed to be delivered. I read a statistic recently that 70% of Americans are not happy in their job. Now, if that's you, you're wondering, well, what am I going to do? Well, your job isn't everything. And by the way, nobody's going to get 100% satisfaction with the job because God wants all of us to be using part of our giftedness for the kingdom. So all of us should be doing something beyond just our job because there's going to be some gap of fulfillment if you're not doing that. Sadly, lots of us don't know what our spiritual gift is. And I have to tell you, I'm really committed to doing this. In the next months, we're working at the staff level to help create a new process for us to discover spiritual gifts. Look at the verse on your outline. Each one... You might want to circle that. Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms. In other words, your gift is an instrument of grace. Your gift helps other people get empowered to do God's will. But you've got to know what it is. And just two things to write in that blank underneath there. Number one, in the next months, we're going to have very specific processes in place for you to say, hey, help me find my spiritual gift because I feel stuck. We're going to help you find it and then you can start to use it here at Kairos or whatever part of the community you're in. And number two, and this is a tough one, if you're in a job where you feel stuck, if you're in a job that's going nowhere and you absolutely lack fulfillment and don't feel like you're at all being fulfilled, here you go. I'm giving you permission to bail out of it. Get out of it. You say, well, you know, that's easy for you to say, but I've got bills to pay and things to take care of. And well, you know, I didn't say quit tomorrow. I just said, don't get yourself stuck in a job that's going nowhere, that's draining the life out of you. Get a plan together. Take a year. But one year from now, make a commitment that you're not going to be stuck in the same rut because, listen, life just doesn't get better if you hang on. You have to come up with a plan to move yourself forward. And God wants to lead you to use your talents to his glory. All right, number three, third passion killer is an unbalanced schedule. Now, this is the one a lot of people would have put first, an unbalanced schedule. How many feel like your life's pretty crazy? I remember reading distinctly in Megatrends, John Naisbitt wrote years ago. He said, by the turn of the millennium, we'll all be working 24-hour weeks because technology would have improved so much that we'll be so much more relaxed, that we'll be able to accomplish so much more. 24-hour weeks. Anybody work 24-hour days? I mean, it feels like, huh? I mean, our lives are crazy. We're going all these... And actually, technology has kind of added to the options of our lives, so we do more than we've ever done. But the problem is, if you don't maintain balance in your life, passion drains out of you because you're either overextended and just unable to keep all your commitments, or you're underpotentialized and bored. And you know what? I'm willing to say in a group this size, we've got people in both of those extremes. If you're overextended, you're about to face what we call compassion fatigue. Some of you really are serving too many places and giving too many hours, and you're just drained off and can barely survive. And there's some of you who are on the other extreme, and all you really do is just kind of wait for the next meeting so you can sit and gain some more insight. You're just getting fatter and fatter and fatter on teaching and conferences and all those kind of things. I just pray you understand the need for balance. Physically speaking, we've come to discover if you want to be in shape, just dieting isn't enough, just working out isn't enough. You've got to balance those things, right? Now, if you're 25 and you're sitting there kind of smug, saying, hey, no problem for me, man. I eat whatever I want. Like I stay in shape just by getting up in the morning. Well, hang in there. You will find that there's this thing called gravity that starts to work and just pulls everything in the wrong place. Right, Mike? I know, okay. So the only real way to keep going on and keep your body relatively fit is by balancing exercise, diet, rest, appropriate kinds of supplements and so on. And then you kind of keep on course. Well, it's the same way spiritually speaking. I want to give you five little things that I think are absolutely indispensable. Indispensable if you're to keep yourself balanced. Here they are spiritually speaking. Please write these down. Five spiritual exercises. The first is worship. I make a commitment every week to be at worship. Now, I know that may not be real popular for people. So, hey, it's a nice day. I don't think I want to go to Kairos tonight. I just rather hang out at the park or ride around in my little convertible. Well, worship, being with God's people is a priority to sustain life. Hebrews 10 says, don't forsake the assembly of the saints. Be together. Next one is fellowship. That's the small group component. And it's great that you're developing more and more small groups at Kairos because that's where you just gain by being together face to face with other people that are going through what you're going through. The third is Bible study. Now, that might happen in a small group that you're part of. It might be something you do at another time. But studying the word of God, other than just having Dave or someone else preaching it, you need to study it and talk about it. Next one is ministry. That's where you are serving somebody. Friends, listen, until you realize that you have something to give, you start opening the door back out. You're going to stagnate. One of the most incredible physical sights I've ever seen is the Dead Sea. I was over there. I've been over there twice. It's the only body of water where you literally... Well, there's actually one other one in the world where you can lay prostrate and read a newspaper and not sink, even if you weigh 500 pounds. Because the mineral content of the water is so great that you just float. And the reason is because water keeps pouring into the Dead Sea, but there's no outlet. But the interesting thing is that the water now has become so laden with minerals as the water evaporates and the minerals get more and more intense, the water level is starting... You'd think it would mount up, but it's starting to deplete by evaporation. And pretty soon, they're not even going to be able to use it because it's going to be so thick with minerals that they can't use it anymore. Well, that's what happens if you don't serve. You've got to have a ministry component. You've got to have an outlet. And finally, outreach. Outreach. God designed for all of us to participate in the challenge of reaching the world. Now, look around you. Okay, just take a look. How many seats between you and the next person? About 15. Now, here's a great challenge for Kairos. I mean, it'd be great if we had a nice, more intimate room that this group would fit into. And I think we'd all probably feel a little closer to each other. And you wouldn't have people who, you know, felt like they had to have 14 seats between them. But why not see this as a challenge? Why not say, hey, I bet there's a thousand other people in Pittsburgh that could benefit from this community. Because I have to tell you, I know that's true. There's a lot of people, once they found this community, once they discovered how great the people are here, they'd want to be part of it. It's just a matter of us being committed to sharing with others. So those are just five simple things. Now, you could be minus maybe and all. Here's what I want you to do. Just put an X by the one you most need to work on. Would you do that? You know, maybe cover your paper up so no one sees it. But which one, if God could come in and just really change one of those, would it be worship? Would it be Bible study? Would it be outreach? What would it be? All right. Third, passion. Let me move a little more quickly here. Unresolved conflict. Conflict with God. You know, something that'll kill your passion in a hurry is if you're guilty. If you're doing stuff that separates you from God, if you've got a habit that you can't break, if you've got something, some repeated sin pattern in your life and you're living in guilt, you can't live with passion toward God. Look at the scripture. My guilt is overwhelming like a burden too heavy to bear. I'm bowed down and brought low. Friends, somebody that's bowed down isn't living passionately. When you see somebody, you can read it in their eyes if they're living with guilt. It can be guilt related to God or it can be conflict related to another person. Resentment destroys the soul, it should be read, and jealousy kills the simple. If you have a conflict with a person at home, a person at work, a person in your extended family, how many of you know that can create a fixation in your mind and rather than living expectantly during the day, you're just wondering, man, what's going to happen? What's going to happen when I'm... And you start just getting life pulled out of you. I've had people tell me, interestingly, a number of times in the last few weeks, this is what they've said. Quote, I just can't live like this anymore. Like what? The way they've been living, which is in conflict with a spouse, with a friend, with a co-worker. It's, I just can't live like this and I can't keep doing it. And you know what I say to them? I say, good, I want to hear that because that's what it takes many times to motivate people to deal with the conflict. When they say, I just can't live like this, it's taken the life out of me. And I just want to encourage you, if that's where you are, take a step, trust God, reach out and do what the Bible says and resolve your conflict and your spirit will be lifted. Finally, fifth passion killer is an undernourished spirit. In other words, at its root, the lack of passion is an issue of your heart. I wish I could give everyone a pill and that would just pump you back up into full health and passion. It doesn't work that way. It's a matter of your heart being regularly nourished. And the good news is that tonight we're going to take communion and Jesus will meet you in those elements. Those are a means of grace. In other words, God's literal power comes into you as you take communion by faith and gives you the strength to begin to see that passion renewed. We get into these passionless seasons because we don't nourish our spirit. Every single day, do you think the world every single day is a tough place to be? Are you going to get up tomorrow and go into a really competitive situation where maybe people are looking to get in your way and maybe even be critical of you? Are you expecting some tough times in the week ahead? Most of us do. The world's a tough place to be. There's criticism. There's disappointment. There's judgmentalism. There's problems. There's pain. There's even crises and sometimes fatigue. All of these work to drain out our passion. So we need to deal with that. Our spirit shrivels up and, you know, I can look at you in the face and you may look normal and maybe even happy, but what really matters is what's on the inside, what I can't see. And only you know, is your spirit slowly shrinking or is your spirit alive and enlarging? Are you growing in expectation? There's an antidote. If you feel like you're losing life, here's the antidote. Look at the next scripture. Just as you trusted Christ to save you, trust Him too for each day's problems. Live in vital union with Him. Let your roots grow down into Him and draw up nourishment from Him. And see that you go on growing in the Lord and become strong and vigorous. This is Paul exhorting us. Don't just let yourself slowly die on the vine, to use a John 15 analogy. I wish that God somehow created us with some sort of little warning thing, that we could look each other's forehead. I wish I had actually someplace I could see, like maybe on my forearm. I don't even drive cars that have a low fuel warning light. You know, when you're going along, you don't think about it, and all of a sudden in my car, and how the light flickers at first, it'll come on for a little while. And then if you go up a hill, it seems to go back off. And so you figure I got a couple of gallons left. If you go on another 20 miles, then what happens? Well, then the light comes on. And if you go about another 20 or 30 miles, guess what happens? You're dead, man. You're stopped. You're on the side of the road. Or cars used to have like voices that came on, and said, you know, fuel level is low, idiot. Get off, get some gas. We call those things idiot lights. That's what they're called. If we had one of those sort of design, we could look and say, well, you know, in my spirit, I'm kind of low. I haven't been nourishing. But unfortunately, we don't have that. So we've got to do the proper thing, the right thing, the preemptive thing. And that's every day. Just get our spirit filled up. Spend some time before the Lord. Look what the Bible says. God wants to be in communion with you. Look at this. You must worship only the Lord, for he is a God who's passionate about Pastor Dave. Is that what it says? What does it say? Well, if it says that, boy, it's a different Bible than mine. It says he's passionate about his relationship with you. Listen, does that do anything for you? That the God who created a day like this, and the spring flowers that we've seen, and the, you know, the fragrances, and the colors, and the incredible beauty that we're living in, that God is passionate about you. If you've come in here today and you wonder, you know, what's up with my life? What do I have to offer? How come people don't seem to... God says he's passionate about you. And I don't know, you know, what else he could say. I sometimes think that God probably looks at us and says, you know, what more can I do? I've created all this, and I've told you it's