Vision Sunday

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Summary

Pastor Safrit focuses on Luke 10:27 during Vision Sunday, emphasizing the importance of centering our lives around Jesus. He outlines the church's mission to preach the word, practice hospitality, and penetrate darkness in the community, while encouraging members to fully commit to Jesus in their words and actions. The sermon calls for a renewed focus on gratitude and living out faith in everyday life, challenging the congregation to make Jesus the center of all they think, say, and do in the coming year.

Welcome and Housekeeping
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You have a child who wants to be dismissed at Children's Church. That's available at this time. If you find your place in your scripture that you have, it'll be Luke chapter 10 this morning. Luke chapter 10, verse 27. We're just going to look at one verse this morning.
Hopefully, by just using one verse this morning, I won't be too incredibly long, but you never know how that's going to work out. We're just excited to be in the Lord's house today. Glad you're here, and that's always an exciting time.
I was telling our young people this morning that there's nothing special about the New Year's. You have special fireworks and things. I said the New Year, it's the flip of a calendar.
You go from December to January, and one number changes on the top of your calendar, but there is something exciting about a new year and resolutions and thoughts of change and aspirations of doing things differently. Hopefully, this morning, as we preach this morning, this will be a challenge to you.
Over the last two first Sundays of the year, I have preached on the mission of the church and the core values of the church.
We're going to recap on those, and this morning, for those who may have not been here or maybe you're unfamiliar with it, we're going to recap what our mission and values are.
And then this morning, the third installment, we're going to do the vision of the church, where the church is and where the church is heading and how we can be a part of that. It's there listed in the opening of your bulletin there at the top of the notes.
It is there as live our lives for Jesus as he is the center of everything we think, say, and do. And so that's going to be our vision for the church. And so if you have your places there, we'll stand and read one verse and open in Scripture prayer.
The Bible says Jesus was talking to some Pharisees, and they came and they were trying to stump him, and they asked him, what is the most important law of all the commands that were given? And he answered them and said,
love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.
Lord, we love you. We thank you for what you've done for us. We thank you for your blessings. I pray that you have your will and way this morning in your service.
In your name we pray. Amen. You may be seated.
As the new calendar rolls over and you pull off December and you go to January, maybe you have to buy a new calendar and you put your new calendar out, most of us do not start the new year by going into your house and throwing everything inside your house away.
Okay, now we did a little spring cleaning and we took bags of old things that were out. Most of you in here this morning would not walk into your house and take a little bit of fuel, gasoline,
and pour it all over your house and say, you know what? It's a new year. Strike a match.
Let's burn the house down and we'll just start fresh. Most of you would not do that. Now, there may be someone in here that may do that and maybe for good reason.
Most of us would check the foundation, right? We're going to go around and we're going to make sure that everything is set in the right time to get ready for the winter. Hopefully, you've already done that for the winter.
Most of you are going to inspect the things around your house to make sure there's no termite damage or there's nothing that's wrong around your house.
Most of you are going to continue living in the same house that you're in and you're going to inspect what matters the most, the center of everything that's going on. A couple, five years ago, we had the opportunity to build a brand new house and Stephen just went through this process.
They have just now got occupancy in their new house and maybe you've built a house in here before. Maybe you were in this process and I dare say that any of you in here, and this was not the case for us and I don't think any builder would do this.
No builder is going to sit down with you and say, okay, the Safer family, you're wanting to build a house. What color do you want the walls to be on the inside? Very first question. That's not going to be their very first question.
That's going to be the last question near the end of their whole walkthrough. They're trying to figure out things. That's the last thing they figure out but oftentimes, this is sort of where we start. We start with the end and we don't lay the good foundation.
The builder comes in and he says, okay, we've got to build the foundation to make sure that it's right for the house and we're going to have out lines and we're going to lay out plans and we're going to make sure everything aligns right.
I was telling Stephen this past week as we were meeting,
I said we were doing a walkthrough of our house as they were building it and I was there every day taking pictures and helping and doing what I could and I walked into the kitchen area where we have
an island and I noticed that the island where they had spray painted where it was going to be, they already drilled the holes. I said, Allie, this is in the wrong spot. She said, James, you're not a builder. You don't know what you're talking about.
You don't, just don't mess with me. I said, Allison, I know, I've not done a lot of building. I know how to read a blueprint
and I know for sure this island is not in the right place. I can see, like there was no room for you to even open the dishwasher and the fridge. Like one of the two would never have opened because one would have hit the other.
I said, it's in the wrong spot. She was like, James, don't make a fool out of yourself. Please don't do this.
I said, I'm calling the builder tomorrow. I've got to figure this thing out. And so I called him the next day and I said, hey man, I think his name was Randy. I said, Randy, something's not right.
I said, the island's in the wrong spot. And so he said, we know how to read a plan. I said, okay, I trust you.
I'm just telling you where I'm seeing things aren't lining up. He called me back later that day. He was like, hey, good call. You caught our mistake. We fixed it.
We moved some things. But when we go into building things, when we go into figuring out life and figuring out a physical building, you've got to look at plans and alignments and make sure things are right.
Importance of Truth
The danger of starting a new year is this. We don't necessarily need to forget what we believe. We have a belief system.
We know what we believe. We know that the scripture is the final authority of faith and practice. We know that we believe that God is good and he is sovereign and he loves us and he sent his son to die for us. But the danger is that we can drift away.
We can begin to drift from that truth. And I've preached a couple of messages on what it means to drift and how to avoid that drift. And it's slow and it's something that sort of takes us off of our bearings.
And until we're anchored in the right place, we can drift far away from what God has done for us. And churches can drift as well.
Churches are the same way, not only physically with each other, but as a corporate body, we can drift from our very design and intentions.
We don't drift by denying truth, right? We know the truth.
We know that Jesus is good. We know that he is the son of God. We know that there's a trinity.
We know the truth of scripture and we don't necessarily deny that, but we can assume it and forget about it and sort of put it in the back burner. And I want to challenge us to not reject the mission, not neglect the mission, but begin to ask yourselves, how are we upholding it?
This morning, I'm not here to reinvent the mission statement.
I'm not here to reinvent what we've preached the last couple of years. What I am here to do is to remind us why we exist,
to remind us how we're to live our life and to remind us where we're going and what God is going to use this church for. The same mission, the same values, but a clear vision of what God has for us.
And at the center of all that, at the center of everything we do, Jesus Christ has got to be the center.
Jesus has to be the center of everything we think, say, and do in our life.
And so as we, by way of introduction, give some brief introductory starts of our mission, the very first thing we look at, sort of why we exist, the recap of this.
Our mission statement is this, and I've got it on the screens for you. We've looked at it before, and if you go to our website, you'll see it there as well. But our mission is to preach the word, to practice hospitality, and to penetrate the darkness in our community.
That's our mission. Our mission is a threefold thing. We exist to preach the word. At the center of everything we're going to do, we're going to have a faithful proclamation of Jesus Christ.
As I was reminiscing and thinking about my upcoming trip, I'll be leaving at the end of the month to go to Israel, leading a group there. I'm excited about that.
But as I was thinking through that and talking to our group leader, my mind went to our very first stop, which was Caesarea Philippi. Caesarea Philippi is where Jesus, with his disciples, stands around and he asks them, who do men say that I am?
And Peter, several responded, but Peter says that you're the son of the God, you are the one that's going to be the Messiah. And Jesus looks at him and says,
upon this rock, upon the statement that you just said, I'm going to build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. When you look at that, Jesus is saying upon that proclamation,
upon that preaching, that Jesus is the Messiah, that he is the son of God, that the gates of hell are not going to prevail against it, and that he is going to build his church.
Preaching and Hospitality
When we faithfully preach the word, Jesus says he's going to build his church.
It's not up to Pastor James, it's not up to Terry and how well he can play the piano, it's not up to anyone else of how well we can do things, but it's up to Jesus and how he wants to build his church.
And all I am doing is just an under shepherd to sit back and say, Lord, I'm going to preach your word, and I'm going to allow all the results to be up to you.
And when we begin to allow ourselves to just faithfully preach the word and say, this is what I'm going to do every day of my life, I'm going to go out and I'm going to tell others, and I'm
going to witness to this person, and I'm going to tell this person about Jesus and faithfully preach the word.
This is where the Lord begins to work in our church. Number two, the second thing here, we exist not to preach the word, but also to practice hospitality. The second phase of this is to simply be a gospel warmth before the gospel words happen.
Oftentimes people, and I've said this before, people care more about how much you love them more than how much you know.
And they don't care as much as your wisdom and your knowledge is until they know how much you care about them and how much you love them and have affection toward them.
And so this is this practicing of hospitality and saying, how can I reach out to my neighbor and love these people that are around me and love my neighbors and love my family and love my friends and love the ones that are the unlovable around me?
How can I practice hospitality around me and show gospel warmth?
Show that God cares about them, that because Jesus loves them, I love them, and I may not agree with everything you think or say or do, but because you are a creature of God and because you are made in his image, I love you and I care about you.
And we can put some things aside and we can love them because we care about them. So we practice hospitality. And then number three, we penetrate the darkness in our community. Light belongs in dark places. Light is not to be given.
The Bible says, as Jesus was telling his disciples, no man takes a candlestick and hides it under a bushel.
He says, no, you are to take your candlestick and you are to take it into the dark places. You're to take it into the world so that you can bring light into the dark places.
This happens and starts locally. It starts right where we're at, right here in our town, right where we have been given to go into our dark places and say, Jesus loves you and I care about you and I'm going to come to bring light into your dark world. We all struggle with darkness.
We all struggle with difficult times in life that need light in our life.
As I was telling our young people this morning, I was teaching for Carrie and I said, listen, there are going to be times where you're going to have joy and sadness all at the same time. It's hard to even understand this.
It's hard to even process this and I sort of gave a couple of fun illustrations to our young people. I said, in a couple of years, five to six years,
the ones that were in that room, I said, you're going to be walking across the stage and you're going to turn your tassel and you're going to graduate.
I said, each and every one of you have more days that you've spent in school behind you than you have in front of you. And I said, and on that day, you're going to walk across that stage and you're going to be so excited. You've got all this adventure coming ahead of you.
You've got plans ahead of you. I said, you're going to be overwhelmed with joy and you're going to look out in that crowd and you're going to see mom and she's going to be bawling her eyes out.
She's going to think, and I said, all of them are firstborn. I said, you're the firstborn.
You're the baby of the family that made them a mom and a dad and they're going to look up, they're going to say, my baby, my baby's leaving me and they're going to be bawling and crying. You're going to be excited.
They're going to be in tears. Sadness and happiness can exist together. And the same thing happens in our life. Sadness and happiness can happen.
And we get to come into people's life and we get to say, listen, I want to share with you the light of the world. I want to share with you this glorious salvation that God has given me. Yes, there's going to be sorrow.
Yes, there's going to be pain, but there's joy in all that we do.
We get to go through as the church is a mission to preach and practice and penetrate the darkness. As we look at our mission, this doesn't require a new mission, but it requires us to renew our obedience.
And to ask ourselves, how are we doing these three things as the mission of the church? Secondly, we look at as our values, our core values of the church.
Core Values Overview
There's four of these. There's the first one is glorify God.
We glorify God by taking everything that we have and we say, God, I want to begin and end everything that I think, say, and do with you in mind by glorifying you.
I want to take everything that I do and I want to glorify you. Jesus says that he is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end.
And everything that we should do should be in this mindset of how am I bringing worship and glory to the Lord? How am I leading well?
As we go through our life, as we go through our church structure, as we go through our events and we look at our event calendar and we ask ourselves, am I glorifying God in my events? Am I glorifying God in everything
that I am saying and doing? And really the question I have for us this morning as we look at this is, how is your worship?
How is your worship to the Lord? Are you glorifying God personally? And I want to give a challenge to the dads in the room because dads, family worship begins with us. It begins with us leading our homes well.
And if we don't have strong homes in the church, then our church will not be strong as in and of itself. And so we must ask ourselves, how am I leading in the family worship and the family style of worship?
I'm not saying you take a 30 minute message that I preach and you preach a 30 minute message at home. No, but simply just sit around and say, hey, how is life doing?
Can we look at this scripture? Can we play this worship video on the screen? Can we just have a time of worship as a family to build our strength of our family as we glorify God?
The second way we do this, our core values, is we grow together. Spiritual growth is personal.
When we grow together, this is something that we have to do individually and personally, but it also requires us to be done together.
Part of the way we do this at the church is through our Sunday school classes. And I'm thankful for Vicki Hsu, who started a new Sunday school class today for our college and career class. And I think they had a wonderful time.
I talked to a couple of them and had a great time in there as we begin to grow together in our Sunday schools, but also our small groups on Wednesday night as we'll be starting those back up in
a couple of months in February as we begin to look and say, how am I gathering together and growing together and pouring my life out to those that are around me to say, hey, I'm struggling in this area.
I need your help. I need your guidance in these areas because I can't do it alone. And God created us to be in community with one another.
And so I challenge you, find ways you can grow together through our Sunday schools or small groups or other ways that we may start this year to where we can begin to have different meetings, maybe once a month
where we gather together and just have a group of guys or a group of ladies that just pour their hearts out to one another. Begin to ask yourselves, how are we growing together? Number three, the core value number three is to go and serve.
Begin to ask yourselves that when God saves us into his kingdom, he does not save us to come and sit in a pew and exist there for 80 years and then die and go to heaven.
Serving Others
He saved us so that we could come and worship him but also leave this place and go and serve other people.
So I'm so excited about in a couple of weeks as we ordained Stephen to go into the ministry, this is a young man who saw the counsel of the Lord and followed the obedience and said, God, I don't
know where you're going to send me, I don't know what you have in plan for me, I'm just going to step out by faith and I'm going to go and I'm going to serve you whether it be here,
whether it be there, whether it be across the world, I don't know where, I'm just going to faithfully do what you called me to do and we get to be a part of sending that but we get to
be a part of praying for him but also saying, Lord, I want to also serve you.
Lord, what is it that you have for me in my local place, in my place of work, in my occupation, in my home, in the people that are around me, how can I serve those that are around me? And then number four in our core values is to give generously.
God's work moves forward through hands that are willing to serve,
hands that are willing to give, and people who are willing to invest their time, talents, and treasures.
We need to ask ourselves, how are we giving to the Lord? How are we giving of our time?
How are we giving of our talents? How are we giving of our treasures, of the outpouring of what God has given us? How are we stewarding that back to the Lord and saying, God, it's yours first. I'm giving you your offering back to you. I'm giving you your sacrifice back to you.
As we look this morning in Sunday school in the book of Ezra, Ezra, as they were taken out of the Babylonian captivity for 70 years,
they went to Jerusalem and they began to set back up their homes, and it says that before they built their homes, before they built, even the temple, before they built the church, before they built anything,
it says they walked into Jerusalem and they built an altar and they sacrificed from what they had to make an offering to the Lord.
It was a beautiful picture because the first thing they didn't do, they didn't come in and build a church. They didn't even worry about their house. They said the first thing we've got to do when we get to Jerusalem is sacrifice and worship the Lord. I've told our young people, I said,
you guys don't really know what that looks like, but there's going to be a time where worship involves sacrifice.
And sacrificing to the Lord is where we truly begin to worship the Lord in our hearts that are broken, in our minds that are broken. We get to say, God, I want to worship you through this little bit of offering. I know it's not much, God.
I know it's not as much as I wish I could give, but Lord, I'm giving you of this little bit of time, of these talents that I've been given or the money that I've been given, I'm going to give it back to you. And God looks at us and says, little is much
when you just give it to me. Little is much when you begin to just faithfully, every single week, begin to faithfully give your life to me in ways that are so valuable to the Lord.
These values, they shape the culture of the church and they guard our direction to make sure we're heading in the right way.
Vision Statement Discussion
Which leads us today to our vision. I want to spend the next 15 minutes talking about our vision of Luke chapter 10, verse 27, as where are we going?
Where is the Lord leading us? The vision statement that I've written out is live our lives for Jesus as he is the center of everything we think, say, and do.
This morning church, I'm not rolling out a new program. I'm not rolling out some fancy thing that we're going to, that we're going to roll out. I'm rolling out a way of life.
A way of life that Jesus himself says in his passage, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind. This morning church, if we can put Jesus in the center of everything we think, say, and do,
we can put Jesus in the middle of everything in our family, in our way to work, in our way to school,
in our way to a ball game, in our way to a family member's house, in our way to wherever it may be. If Jesus is in the center of that and we put him in the middle of everything that we are doing, I promise you, your life, your family will begin to grow in ways that you never saw fit.
This church, in a blessing of overpouring of our families doing this together, will begin to see spiritual blessings upon spiritual blessings if we would just simply say, God, I want to make sure that me personally, that I am
living my life so much so that everything I'm thinking, everything I'm doing, everything I'm saying is all about you. It's all about Jesus and everything we do. The first way we do this is by fully committing to Jesus in everything, to fully committing to Jesus in all that we do.
If Jesus is center, this is not optional. If Jesus is the center of everything we think, say, and do, then by committing to Jesus, this is not an option. This is a mandate from him that we must practice what we preach.
We must get to the point where we say, God, I am committing everything to you and when I begin to walk, when I go here, when I go and do this, everyone around me is going to see what
Jesus is doing and hear what Jesus is doing and see what Jesus is doing in my life. There's a song that Carrie Underwood put out years ago. My wife likes Carrie Underwood.
I like male singers. It's just going to be honest. Her song was Jesus Take the Wheel. All right? Is Carrie Underwood saying that? Yeah, she knows. Carrie Underwood sang Jesus Take the Wheel, right?
And we know the song. I'm not going to sing it for you. I sing hard, bad enough as it is.
But the song is Jesus Take the Wheel and this is the thought that many people want to be in the car. They want to drive the car and they want Jesus to be in that car advising them on what to do. Hey, when you get up here,
my aunt, she is the direction giver for my grandma and my step-grandpa.
Whenever they go somewhere, she's in the back seat and she says, hey Jack, at the next stop sign, you're going to take a left. And so he drives the next stop. She's the advisor in the car.
Oftentimes, this is us in our life. We're in the car, we're driving and we're like, hey Jesus, will you just sit in the back seat and tell me what to do?
And we like that. We like when people tell us what to do.
What we don't like is this, when Jesus says, hey, I don't want to tell you what to do. I want to get in the driver's seat. I want to drive the car and I want you to sit in the passenger seat and just trust me. Because what requires us to do this is
Jesus takes control of our life. And Jesus says, I'm going to take you to this destination and when you get there, this is what I want you to go out and I want you to go and be a witness for me. And we're like, Jesus, I don't really like going to that destination.
Well, too bad, I'm driving you there. I'm too bad, this is what we're going to do. And you're like, well, I'm going to hesitate, I'm not going to listen.
Living with Jesus as Center
I want you just to consult me, Jesus, I don't want you to have control.
And Jesus says, if we are going to be a church on mission for him, we must live our lives as Jesus is the center, as Jesus is everything around us that he is controlling and he is living our lives through us.
We are, as one person said at one time, a jacket that is put on top of Jesus and he is the one moving everything around us and we're just the jacket on top of it. We can't do anything without him, but yet we are now allowing him to work through us.
There's two visible ways, visible ways we can do this.
Fully commit to Jesus in all of our words. Begin to ask yourself, what is your speech?
How are you living your life in your words towards Jesus? Our speech should be marked by truth.
Our speech should be marked by grace. Our speech should be marked by compassion. Our speech should be
controlled by restraint. I often say, if the Lord would give me a speed bump from my head, from my brain to my tongue,
if there would just be a small speed bump that would be there, that would just slow down some of my thoughts before I could say them, it would be a wonderful thing. Sometimes I say things, I say things to my kids, I say things to my wife, and I'm like,
why did I say that? I didn't have to cut them down in that way. I didn't have to say it that way. And oftentimes, if we can just say, God, give me control, control my words, control my thoughts, control my actions, so that what I say with my words will be conversations that reflect you.
That will be conversations that are going to draw people closer to you, that are going to be conversations that are going to be wholesome conversations, that are going to be Christ-honoring, glorifying conversations.
This is the part of, as we glorify God, as we live our lives for Jesus, as he's the center of everything that we think in our lives, and everything that we say in our lives, those first two statements, but then also,
not only is it that Jesus is committing to him in all of our words, but also in our works. Also in our works. This is a difficult one because this is one that requires obedience and intentionality. We don't like to be,
we like to do our own schedule, right? We like to plan our own schedule and we like to say this is what I'm going to do and when our schedule gets interrupted,
we don't like it, right? We're going somewhere, we've got our time planned out,
we get on these wonderful things called interstates and no one ever rides on interstates so you're never going to have a traffic jam and you get on this interstate and you're like, this is so wonderful, there's no cars out here, I'm going to get there 20 minutes early,
things are going to be great and then all of a sudden everyone decided to get on the interstate at the exact same time. All of North Carolina
decided that I-40 toward Winston is going to be the best path to go and now you're gridlocked and you're stuck and you're like, okay, I'm going to be 10 minutes early, we're going to be good,
I'm going to be 5 minutes early, I'm going to be rushing but it's going to be okay, I'm going to be 30 minutes late, I don't like this, I don't like what I'm doing, I don't like what I'm
seeing, all of a sudden we get visibly angry, people around us begin to get visibly angry, you can see these things in our life, the Lord says in all of your works even when it's not the way you planned, I'm challenging you in your works to have faith and obedience in the daily faithfulness that God has given us.
One commentator said it like this, belief that never changes behavior has never yet reached the heart. Belief that has never changed behavior has never yet reached the heart. I want to explain it like this,
you believe that you love your girlfriend, you believe that you love your wife, but until your behavior changes and you say, you know what, I'm going to the store and I'm going to invest thousands of dollars into a ring and I'm going to show her that I love her by proposing to her,
all of a sudden everything about all of your actions and everything that you're doing is now changing because now you are realigning your life to them. And this is the idea when we begin to follow the Lord is, I believe the Lord is good.
I believe the Lord is faithful, but until our behavior has changed and we are doing things different than the way we did them before, it's not reached our heart. It's only a mind knowledge of knowing who Christ is. And we begin to ask ourselves, am I living that way?
Am I living a way of behavior that my life has been so radically changed that I have to do things for the Lord?
My question I want to ask you this morning is if someone were to build a picture of Jesus and they were to look at your life and only your life over this last year of 2025
and they were to take everything that you think, everything that you said and everything that you did and they were to build Jesus, would they have a clear picture of him? Would they be able to look at that picture and say, that's someone who sacrificed. That's someone who loves me.
That's someone who cares about me. That's someone who has compassion upon compassion that I will never understand. Or are they going to look at that and they're going to say, that just looks like a bunch of blobs of nothing. Nothing is intertwined.
Nothing is together. And we're not putting a full picture of Jesus out to the world because our words and our actions and our thoughts are completely different than what Jesus has laid out for us. How is our life living? Number two, as we go quickly, are we faithfully carrying his name well?
You see, we represent Christ where we go. When we go to our homes, we represent Christ. When we go to our workplaces, we represent Christ. When we go into our community, we're representing Christ everywhere we go and are we faithfully carrying his name. The name of Jesus deserves careful, consistent witness.
Whether we are in a grocery store, whether we are in a workplace, no matter where we go, we must be on mission and telling others about Jesus. The way I want to illustrate this is by simply saying this. When I worked at Chick-fil-A, I had a mandatory uniform.
If you've ever been to Chick-fil-A or really any workplace, they begin to roll out uniforms and we had to wear a specific shirt, a specific pants,
even down to our socks had to be a specific style of socks, shoes, belt, everything had to be that specific way.
Just because I put the uniform on doesn't make me professional. Just because I put the uniform on doesn't mean I'm going to be the best Chick-fil-A worker ever and I'm going to go out and I'm going to say my pleasure every time someone asks me to do something.
Just because I put the uniform on doesn't mean I represent the identity of that company. When someone wears Christ's name,
we should expect that person to be Christ-like and their life to be consistent and their life to be God-honoring and their life to be carrying his name well and oftentimes we put on the name of Jesus
the same way we put on a work uniform where okay from nine to five I'm going to represent Christ well but the moment I take the uniform off I don't have to represent Christ anymore.
Jesus says that when we follow him it is a 24-7 life in consistency life in a God-honoring way where we are following him and we are living for him and we are carrying his name so well
that even when we stump our toe Jesus comes out.
I've said it before as you begin to fill your life up and you begin to fill your water bottle of your life up you're going to get jostled and things are going to happen and what comes out is what you put in.
How often are we putting the things of Christ in our life so that when we are bumped and we are bruised and we are pushed in a way where we don't think we're going to be pushed that Christ comes out? Are we carrying his name well?
Does my daily life make the name of Jesus attractive toward other people?
Or do they look at my life and they say that is confusing? And I don't know which way is up or down with you because you are living your life so many different ways.
Impact of Our Actions
When people watch us and people are watching you I promise you they're watching you. Your life is an open book and they're looking at what you do.
How are you living your life so they can look at you and say this is the way I want to live my life. I know I'm going long on time but I want to illustrate it like this.
When I was 18 years old I was at church as a young teenager and I was helping set up for vacation Bible school and football practice was about to start and so I'm going to football practice and I
go to the church and I started working a job at a cabinet shop and there was a day where every single day of the week I was at the church and I was helping paint cardboard and I was
helping paint things and I didn't really realize that people were watching what I was doing and school had started and we were in the middle of the first couple of days of school and a young guy that I
played football with came up to me and he said hey do you not go to that church anymore over there gospel light and I said yeah I'm there all the time what do you mean I don't go to
church there he said well every day in the summer when I rode by your jeep was in the parking lot he said and lately I've been riding by and your car hasn't been there
like you're watching where I'm at he was like well yeah you were there all the time and I was there because we were helping do things and we were helping work and we were helping do things for the
Lord and because my schedule changed and I couldn't be there every day because school started and work started and football started and people began to notice that I wasn't where I was normally at
and they began to challenge my own thought began to challenge my life to say people are watching me whether I like it or not whether I think they're watching me or not and how am I living my life
to bring Jesus into their life so that they will begin to follow him with what their life is going through number three the last thing live with continual gratitude to God
church this morning a thankful church is a healthy church the more we are grateful for what God has done the healthier we will be gratitude guards us against pride gratitude fuels worship and ultimately gratitude keeps our eyes on
grace and not on the things that tear us down and we have to ask yourself am I thankful in everything that I do not just in a season of time I know Thanksgiving is a time where we reflect
but am I thankful in the middle of March when things don't seem to go the way they should be going when when life is hard and life is crazy against me am I consistently faithful in everything we do
as you ride in your vehicle there's there's two big things that you've got to worry about as you're driving the first is your front windshield
the front windshield this massive windshield that's allowing you to see out and see everything in front of you there's also this little bitty square in the middle of your front windshield that's called the rearview mirror have anyone ever
heard of the rearview mirror okay couple people the rearview mirror is very vital for you to see what just happened behind you maybe there's an accident maybe there's a police officer Josh Green who's coming up behind you and
he's going to arrest you because you were speeding this is allowing you to see what's behind you if you spend all of your time staring at that rearview mirror you're eventually going to wreck if all you do is
stare at what's behind you your life is going to go in a very disastrous way the same way if all you ever do is look at what's in front of you and you never look at what's behind you
you're going to not remember the good things that God provided for you and the same thing in our life we must be looking in the rearview mirror and saying God I'm thankful what you did yesterday I'm thankful what
you did last year I'm thankful that you delivered me from these things I'm thankful that you saved my daughter I'm thankful that these things happened in my life but Lord I'm thankful for the place that you're taking me
I'm thankful for the road that I'm on as I'm going down this road as I'm allowing to see the disasters ahead of me and avoid those things and direct my family away from danger I'm thankful for those things
as well when we go through our life when we begin to live in gratitude it is living both in the rearview mirror but also in the front windshield and saying God you'll direct my path but also thankful for
what you've done for me in the past my final question as I Terry wants to come and play is when people hear you speak do they hear more gratitude for the grace that you've been given or are they
hearing more frustration over the circumstances that God's put in your way oftentimes we get into the way where
Christians we're really good at prayer requests that are gossip and long long-winded prayer requests right would those prayer requests turn into be gratitudes
would those prayer requests become more of gratitude of thanking him for his grace and thanking him for his goodness in our life and when we live in a continual state of gratitude of everything that God has done in
our life as the new year comes that brings new schedules new challenges and new opportunities it doesn't require a new savior we've got Jesus he's the same yesterday today and forever he'll never change the Bible says he'll never
leave us nor forsake us but what it does allow us to do is refocus our mission refocus our values and set a clear vision for our church and our family the question before us is this what kind of
year will this year be what and who is going to be at the center of it as you begin to evaluate your family begin to ask yourself who is going to be the center of my family is it
going to be God is it going to be sports is it going to be work is it going to be but whatever it may be in your life what are you putting at the center and what are your
children looking at you and saying this is the most important thing in your life dad I can tell because of your time I can tell because of your actions and fathers are we leading our families so well that
they're looking at us and saying I know Jesus at the center and I want him to be the center of my life as well because if Jesus is truly at the center your words are going to reflect it
if Jesus is the center your works are going to follow him and if Jesus is the center your witness will honor him everywhere you go as we step into this new year let's not simply attend church this year
let's be the church let's be on mission for the church and say God everywhere I go every person I interact with every every young person every old person every person that I see I want to be fully committed
Closing Prayer and Mission
to telling them about Jesus and I want to be on mission for you everywhere we go and I pray that would be our mission today our vision today that Jesus would be the center now and Jesus would be
the center always of our life as we go throughout this next year Lord we love you we thank you for what you've done for us Lord thank you for your blessings thank you for your goodness and I pray
that you would help us to put you first and foremost in everything in this moment of invitation before we go into our time of business conference Lord help us to just put everything aside take a moment where we
just focus on you and re-evaluate and say God I want to make sure that everything I think say and do is all about you Jesus help that to be our prayer this morning in your name we pray
amen thank you again for taking your time to listen to the sermon audio of Ploving Grove please subscribe to get our latest sermons each week