We Are Convinced Of Better Things Concerning You

So this morning, I'm going to take one more week away from the book of Deuteronomy. Eric's going to be preaching next Sunday. And so I wanted to take one more week before we get back into it. And that's because as I've thought about our congregation and our needs, it seemed like a number of us are struggling in one way or another. Tired, grumpy, worried, sick, fearful, angry. You know that we live in a time when everything happens very fast, very quickly. You ever feel like life is like pulling you along, like to the next thing? Hurry, you gotta come to the next thing. And it's just day after day after week after week after, and all of a sudden you look up and you're like, wait, that was five years ago? What you'll often find is when you have the perspective to actually realize that that's what's going on is you just start feeling drug through life.

You realize that that's what's going on in your mind, but that your body doesn't move that quickly. It often stores the tiredness and the anxiety or the fears, and then they just kind of seep out in other areas of life. You kind of overreact and you start, why am I so upset or worried or fearful? My response seems to be disproportionate. Oftentimes that's because of the speed of which we go through life. A lot of things get missed when you go through life quickly. And so what I want to do this morning is I want to take some time and slow down and talk about some of the stuff that's gone on that I'm aware of in our congregation, but also just to make some room and to give us a different perspective on what God's doing and what he's at work accomplishing in our congregation. If you've not been here a while, some of these things may not seem as familiar to you, but having been the pastor here for a number of years, I know what many of you have.

born with and carried over years. And these things do weigh on us and on our bodies and on our minds, and they do shape us. If we were to just look at the last couple of weeks, you know, it was two weeks ago we were dealing with Charlie Kirk's assassination. And our hearts and our minds and our whole society is all like this. And then there was the memorial service, and there was a big response to that. And then earlier this week, Votie Bauckham. went home to be with the Lord, having had years of heart complications. I don't actually know the exact cause of death this time, but I know that he's had heart issues. And so he's gone home. And it's like, do we even have time to think about it? Other than to put a little blurb up on social media about what we appreciated. And then it's like, well, then you have to be on to the next thing. Because there's so much to be on to. Many of us have just started back to school. Our children, we're homeschooling. We're kids settling into new routines of getting our kids to and from. We have sports going on.

Others of us are having had babies just recently and are feeling the pressure to get back up to speed. Some of us are about to have babies and have no idea how that's going to affect our lives. There's tension in our extended families. Multiple of you are dealing with conflict in your extended families, serious, deep conflict. Others of you are buying and selling homes and renovating homes. Others of us, cars aren't working. Some of you are considering career choices in the future. And all of these things are just on top of the normal, ordinary, day-to-day responsibilities that you have. It's a lot. It's a lot. Not every culture functions like ours does. I've been to Mexico and Canada, but I've never been too far. I've never been to Europe. My wife's been there, and life is very different over there. Things are slower and more relaxed, she tells me. If you've been there, maybe you can confirm or not and say whether that's the case. But it seems to me that...

In America, and especially among young people, things go very quickly, and there's never time to slow down, to process, to reflect. It's just on to the next thing. And so this morning, I want to take all of that and say we all see it and acknowledge it. I want to take some time to look at something outside of that. When life gets busy and it gets stressful, it's very easy and common for us to lose sight of everything else, particularly what the Lord is doing, what he sees, and what he thinks about us. And so my hope this morning is that I would be able to encourage you and strengthen you to continue to serve God each day as busy as you are. The goal is not to tell you the busy is wrong or bad, but to give you hopefully some encouragement to be able to persevere in it and to be able to say no sometimes. There are things that are good to say no to. Our text this morning is going to be Hebrews chapter 6, verses 9 to 12. Would you please stand as we read the word of the Lord? Hebrews 6, 9 to 12 says,

We are convinced of better things concerning you and things that accompany salvation, though we are speaking in this way. For God is not unjust so as to forget your work and love, which you have shown toward his name in having ministered and in still ministering to the saints. And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you will not be sluggish. but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherited the promises. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. As I was thinking about this, I was debating what passage to preach on, and it was either going to be this or Philippians 1.6 or surrounding verses. But we're going to be going through Philippians in Sunday school, in adult Sunday school starting next week, so I decided I would preach from Hebrews instead of Philippians.

So if you think of Hebrews 12, if you know what goes on in Hebrews 6, especially what's gone on just before these verses, it's one of the most fearful warnings in Scripture. It's a passage that talks about apostasy. In verses 4 through 6, just before... the ones we've read, it says, for in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put him to open shame. And so there's this idea being put forth in those verses that there are those who are unredeemable, irretrievable.

who have come and been exposed to the gospel and have in some way manifested faith and belief and obedience to it, though in the future their true character and nature has come to rise. And this passage says there's no hope of reclaiming them. And that's a scary thing, a fearful thing. And we have to remember that this is being written to, it's the book of Hebrews, it's written to those who have... are of Jewish descent. It's not exactly clear where they were, whether they were in Jerusalem or somewhere else, but they were Jewish converts. They were those who knew the Old Testament law, who understood the stories and the heritage and the lineage of the Old Testament. And Hebrews is a long debate, argument, reasoning back and forth from the Old Testament and the Old Covenant into the New. As these people were suffering, and being persecuted for their faith, primarily for their conversion. They weren't being persecuted because they were Jews. They were being persecuted because they had come to faith in Jesus. And so they were facing serious temptation, serious pressure to deny Jesus Christ upon pain of death. And so then in that context, you get this warning that there are those who have demonstrated their love and their trust and their faithfulness to obedience. And you're like, I think he's talking about them.

And then he says, but if those then fall away, there is no hope for them. And it's like super intense, scary, not the sort of thing you'd think would be said to Christians. And yet there we have it. And so right on the heels of that, we have this encouragement. He says, but beloved, we are convinced of better things concerning you. You realize that there was a lot of, if they were responding appropriately to the warning that's just been given, they're going to be fearful. They're going to be stirred up. They're going to be paying attention because they're like, you mean if we fail at this point, our hope is gone. And so when he says, but we are concerned of better things concerning you, he's assuaging these fears that have arisen in response to what has just been said. It's worth noting that when we hear the warnings of scripture or when we're warned by those who love us, whether those be our parents or our spouses or our pastors and elders,

We ought not to brush aside those warnings saying, well, you don't know what you're talking about. We ought to listen to them. We ought to have a disposition as Christians to hear and receive and find ourselves and find value in those warnings given to us. We shouldn't just go, well, that's not, yeah, that's not about me. It's good here that the author of Hebrews is the one telling them, but we're convinced of better things concerning you. It would be a dangerous thing to always be saying that about ourselves to ourselves. But I'm convinced of better things concerning me, better that someone else would comfort us in that way. We talk a lot at our church, I talk a lot and preach quite a bit about being aware of our sins and how we fall short of God's glory. The goal of me preaching that way actually is not to make you miserable or to make you hopeless. It's really not the point. And if that's generally how you come away from,

that sort of discussion, we need to figure out why. It could be because I'm bad at my job and that's actually just what's coming through. And sometimes that's probably the reason. It may also be because of your disposition. You're just, you know, I'm looking at Timothy. Timothy's like, well, it's always my fault. I could have something bad happen in my life that Timothy had nothing to do about. And when I tell him about it, if I was like, and I think Timothy, you could have prevented this. He'd go along with me. He'd be like, you're right. I could have kept that from happening. And some of you are that way.

Right? So we do have to figure out how we interact with knowledge of our sins, realizing that that sort of talk in the broader American church today is not the normal way it's talked about. Typically, we're finding messages of comfort, messages of like, we're just going to tuck you back into bed and tell you everything's going to be okay. Or we're going to give you an emotional cathartic experience when we come to worship. And so when you come, and you're regularly fed a diet of having a mirror held up and having things pointed out in the mirror regarding your own sins, there is actually a danger that you would come to believe that that's all you are and that you're worthless, you're despised, that God's whole goal is just to make you feel miserable about yourself and that that's somehow a godly thing. That's not actually the point. The point of showing us our sins is to discipline our pride and to evoke humility and repentance in us and faith. Yes, those are good things. But really the point of us seeing our sins clearly is meant to help us discern the Lord's will for us going forward. If we just bumble through our lives in the busyness and in the pressures that are always coming at us,

we can't figure out what we're doing or why we're doing it or what's important to us and what we need to say yes to and what we need to say no to and what the Lord thinks about all of it and us anyway. It can be very disorienting, very confusing. And so the goal of seeing our sins, the goal of having that picture come into focus is so that we know what to repent of. We can see what our weaknesses are and we can go, ah, death and hell. That's where that goes. I want away from that. And so the goal of preaching, as we do, is to bring clarity to us regarding our repentance, but also clarity to us regarding God's disposition toward us. I think oftentimes when we're told of our sins or we're having them pointed out or pointed out repeatedly and we may be disagreeing or frustrated that someone would think such things of us, what gets lost in all of that is what...

what is God's disposition toward those that he shows their sin to? Meaning, is it a good thing, a kind thing, a gracious thing for God to show us our sins? Or is it better for us to just kind of be kept comfortable? I think a lot of modern Christianity is really just like hospice care. It's like, it's terminal. We'll just make you comfortable. But that's not the message of the gospel. The message of the gospel is not there's death and nothing can be done about it. It's that there's life through Jesus Christ and repentance and faith and rest and comfort through his victory over the grave. And so we ought to be, amongst our nation, we ought to be the most lively people, the most alive. But Satan gets into our heads and takes the reality of our sins and he uses it just to...

beat us down and push us back into a corner such to where we actually believe that's where we belong and that that is what God's purpose in all of it is, is just to make us miserable. It's not. So how does God view you? Do you think when you look on your life over the last five years, the last 10 years, I don't know if you haven't been a Christian that long, then since you've been in Christ, what do you believe about how God views you? Is he, are you just like, A tough piece of meat he's just tenderizing, like he just keeps just smacking it with the spiky hammer. Is that how you think he is? Is he like that cruel taskmaster who's got the carrot on a stick and it's just like always, you know, you're just reaching for it and reaching. You never can get it, but you're just reaching for it perpetually. Are you inclined to think, to wake up and think, I'm just worthless. I'm so full of sin that there's nothing.

Good in me. How do you think about yourself? Well, that's not true. None of that stuff you're saying is true. And I agree with you, it's not true. I didn't ask if it was true. I asked, do you think it? I've been known to believe lies before. Have you? So these are questions you have to actually ask. What do you think God sees in you? Or maybe another way of asking the question is, if God has saved you, do you believe that he is pleased with you or that he is going to change you? Or did he save you just so you could feel? In full effect, the awfulness of who you are. I don't believe that for a second, that that's why he saved us. What do you do when people encourage you? Do you brush it off? Are you a yeah, but kind of guy? Yeah, I'm watching all of you going, uh-huh. If you all looked around, you'd realize by half of you are going, that's not Christian. If they're flattering you, then you respond to that differently. If they're trying to stroke your pride, that's one thing.

But if someone comes to encourage you and your response is to brush it off, that's an unchristian response. It's not biblical. It's not right. And the reason is because it doesn't give any glory to God and it testifies to your belief that God doesn't work and change and do any good stuff in you or through you. And that's not biblical. It's just not true. If someone came to you and said, there's these warnings that you need to be aware of, but beloved, we are convinced, I'm convinced of better things concerning you. And you just go. Nah, that's a faithless response. And so in Hebrews, he says, but beloved, we are convinced of better things concerning you and things that accompany salvation. What is the purpose of that statement? Why is that recorded for us? It's not a mystery and it's not a trick. It's meant to be encouraging. It's meant to comfort you. It's meant to bind you up where you're broken apart.

That's the purpose of it. And we as Christians have to learn to receive those things and hear those things. Notice what it says next. The text says, we're convinced of better things concerning you and things that accompany salvation, though we are speaking this way. What's he referring to in the though we are speaking this way? That's the warning that just came before. Though we are being this intense with you, we are... We both believe you should hear these things and consider these things. And you should also hear that we are convinced the better things concerning you. And you feel like you're just on a roller coaster and it's like to the left and to the right and up and down. But the point is that they would be encouraged. And then he says this thing about God. He says, for God is not unjust. So as to forget your work and your love, which you have shown toward his name. What is your aim in life?

Is it not to love and to honor and to obey Jesus Christ? If you're a Christian, is that not what you want to do? So then I come back and ask you, have you done any of it? And if you're like, it's my heart's desire, it's what makes me feel the most alive is when we talk in these ways, how then can we come back and say, but I've done none of it? Both of those things can't be true. They both can't be true. If God has saved you and given you his spirit and made you alive, It's impossible for you not to do these things. And I know some of you are like, well, but I don't do it as often or as well or as willingly as I should have. Granted. But would you have done it at all if God hadn't been merciful to you? Where would you be? Can you point to a point in your life? I know you guys are young. But there will be times in your life, and maybe you can already point to a time where you go, you know what? There was a fork in the road. There was a choice to be made.

And I chose this way, and that's what got me here. But if I had chose the other way, I would not be here. I know I wouldn't. I don't know where I'd be, but I know that road didn't lead to where I'm at. And I realized that in reading this passage from Hebrews, and we're talking about people who are supposed to be girding up their loins to join that cloud of witnesses that had gone before them, some of whom had been sawn in two. Like the persecution was intense and I realized none of you were facing that level of danger, bodily danger for your faith. But what is it that this passage teaches us? It teaches us that God doesn't forget our obedience. God doesn't forget our obedience. Even if it's imperfect, God doesn't forget it. In fact, this passage tells us it would be unjust of God to forget the things that we've done in an effort to love him.

Do you think that the ones who were the original recipients of this letter loved their neighbors perfectly? Do you think every one of them did it? Inevitably, there was some imperfection in their love, and yet we're told that God remembers their love. And so you have to think for a minute. The humble way to think in this moment is to go, what love have I offered in God's name to his saints? And you should be able to answer it. And it's not proud for you to answer it. It doesn't steal away God's glory for you to answer it. Because when you did it, you were doing it to honor Christ. Otherwise, you wouldn't have done it. Here's an example. Because I know you're all wondering, what is he talking about? Here's an example. When I'm out and about in society, talking to friends, people, neighbors, whatever, there's a few things about my life that are remarkable to them. One of them is all our kids, right?

Everyone's like, pick their jaw up off the floor, you know. But here's one of the other things that's remarkable is they go, you know, when they think, well, there's something weird behind that because you don't just fumble into 11 kids, right? And once they get past asking if we're a blended family and these sort of like, they're just trying to make some sense of it. Then they'll say, oftentimes, well, are you a Catholic? No. They're like, are you a Mormon? No. No one's really asked if I'm a Muslim, right? But I'm an Arabic, so. And I say, no, I'm a pastor. Just of a Christian church. Just boringly normal Christianity over the centuries. I'm a pastor of that kind of church. And then they ask about my church. And they say, well, what's your church like? And I say, oh, it's like 130, 140 people. Tons and tons and tons of little kids. I said, actually, I'm one of the old people in my church. I'm 43. I'm way past the middle.

in terms of age. I said, my church is full of young people. It's like, if you're 35 in our church, or if you've got a child in kindergarten or above, you're in the older half of our church. I don't know if you realize that. If you have a kindergartner, you're in the older half of our church. You're old in this group. And you don't feel old, and you don't feel experienced, and I'll grant that you're not. But... And you've done something. One of the things that people will know when I start telling them that, I'm like, our church is full of people and they got married in their early to mid-20s. They have kids. It's loud. There's lots of job security for me because they don't have any idea what they're doing. I jokingly will tell them these things because you guys don't know what you're doing with your kids yet. You got ideas and they're not working and they're disruptive and all these other things. And we need to mature and we need to grow.

Now, we could harp on that. Remember, this is an example. This is where I can go and I can say, here are the failures and all the imperfections and all the you're not theirs yet, and you're not, and you know that. Or I can say, you do realize that the things you've endeavored to do and have done are really sweet and pleasing to God. Why is it that you decided to get married instead of fornicate? Why is it that you decided to have children instead of wait? Why is it that you decided to want to have another child instead of wait? Is it because it's easy?

Don't come tell me having kids is easy. It's not easy. And they didn't have to have 11 kids to figure that out. It's a lot of work. It changes your life. And how can you prepare for it? How do you prepare for having your first baby? You just have it. You think, you think, and you talk, and you read, and then you have your baby, and it's like all bets are off. Why'd you do that? You do realize most of our society that your age is not living your life. Like I'm weird because I have 11 kids, but you're weird because of how young you are. What is the average marriage age in America today? For men, for women, 30-ish, give or take. Depends on men and women. When do people have their first child? How many people do have children? You do realize you're already off the normal beaten path of the people you're around. And so we have to come back and say, why did you do the things you did? Was it because you love Jesus Christ and you wanted to honor him?

Did you decide to have another child because you were just like, it's just, we just need the tax credit. Is that why you did it? I mean, you do have to learn to think in another way and say, actually, we did this because God's commanded it. We think that it pleases him. And we really need his help in doing it because we're not equipped for it. So does God see that and remember that? Or does he just go, yeah, you're supposed to do that. You were supposed to do it better. It is true that we can do it better. And we ought to strive to do it better. And as we come through our passage, you're going to see that's actually the end result is that encouragement should lead to perseverance in pursuing the good things and not giving up. But that's just one example of what you've done to serve God as a congregation generally. And it's an encouragement and it doesn't go unnoticed by God. The desires of your heart to serve him, to love him, to raise up a godly seed for him, he doesn't forget.

He smiles on it and is glorified by it. And I think in the midst of all of the difficulty and all of the pressures and all of the tiredness, you should be told that God is pleased by your efforts toward love and service to him and to one another. He's pleased by it. It glorifies him. Do you ever think about your job and you think, I bet that there's a better place, like with better hours or better pay or better... something, you know? And do you know pastors do that too? We think about it, just like everyone else. We're like, what if my life was different? What if my life was different? And I know a number of pastors and interact with others, you know, online or whatever. And you hear what goes on in their churches and you see the kind of things they deal with and the sort of constraints that they are under. And I've just thought, I wouldn't make it.

And I'm not saying that's because of the churches. I don't know that I've got the maturity and the grace to deal with some of the stuff these other guys I've read have to deal with. But what I often come back to is being very thankful for this church and this congregation and for your willingness to be led, your willingness to be taught, your willingness to be rebuked. And you don't always handle it well, right? I'm sure you've all been mad at me or one of the elders or at some point you've been like, they don't understand. How could you say that to me? Because we love you. That's how we can say it to you. We may be wrong sometimes. Inevitably, we are wrong sometimes. But the fact that we love you, that's not in question. I wouldn't want to go somewhere else because I've seen over the years the work that God's done in you and through you, and it's an encouragement to me. And we live in a society where because everything is so fast-paced and there's no collective memory, we don't remember last week or last month or last year.

It's a really strange thing to make an argument and say, but that person 10 years ago did this thing and it settled my opinion about them. I trust them. I love them. I'm loyal to them. Not because they don't sin or haven't sinned against me since then. Inevitably they have. But I remember. I remember them. That ability to remember, to be comforted by it, to be helped by it, is a Christian virtue. And something that is said of in this passage, God does. It would be unjust for him to forget. And therefore, it would be unjust for us to forget. We ought to be the kind of people who remember. Who remember. The Lord's faithfulness, but also other people's faithfulness to us. As they were serving the Lord by loving us. We really have to do away with this, what have you done for me lately, kind of mentality. Or, Well, he's done these things, but he did these things. And it's always like the scale's always just kind of teetering, you know, in our minds. Because when we allow that to happen, what happens is inevitably it's always dropping on the side of forgetfulness. And so if it would be unjust for God to forget our work and our love, which we've shown toward him, then it would also be unjust for us to forget those things.

If God remembers, we should remember. And that's what the passage goes on and says. He says, and we desire that each one of you show the same diligence. What diligence are we talking about? The diligence of God to remember the past. We desire that each one of you show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end. What is it that you want to do when you get overwhelmed and tired and, you know, there's too much going on? After it's all said and done, what do you want to do? We just want to quit, right? You start thinking, what can I just lop off out of my life? And sometimes it's people. It's never the things that, it's often not the things we should lop off. If we were going to take a machete to our life, tiredness doesn't help us cut off the right things. We often go to cut off the wrong things to give more room to the things that would do well to be trimmed. But when you're overwhelmed, when you're forgetful, what you tend to do is want to quit. And so here we're told,

It's our desire that each one of you show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end. What is it that fuels you to keep going? Is it not hope? Is it not hope that the things you've given your life to and in their context for, that God will bless it and that it will be pleasing to him? Behind all of the day-to-day decisions and busyness and things not going the way we wanted them to and other people screwing things up, like, Isn't it at the end of the day, when you're all done, you say, I hope that the life I've led in pursuit of serving God will give him glory. And that when I'm dead, people will say of me, whatever else was true of him, he loved Jesus Christ and he endeavored to serve him. And so the point of this encouragement is to help you persevere and to continue. It's our desire that each of you show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope.

what that means is that if you're struggling and you're wanting to quit, if you're kind of like all tied up in a knot, and I don't know what exactly you're tied up in a knot about, but it's my sense that there are a lot of knots going around right now. Me too, not just you. But there are a lot of knots going around. And what we're lacking is hope. And the way to find hope is to remember. If we wake up in the morning with no memory of God's faithfulness, then we have no foundation to operate from. And it's a really fearful place to be, and you'll want to quit all the more. So when we consider our lives, when you wake up in the morning and are looking for reasons to do the right thing today, you have to consider what God has done for you, how he's provided for you in the past. And you really do, Christians really do reason, and it's biblical to reason this way, because God did this for me, I trust that he will care for me now. And the question is settled. He will provide for me.

It may not be the way or the time or however I can conceive of it, but I trust that he will provide for me and I'm not going down the road of whether he will or not. That's a settled question in my heart and in my mind. And so now I'm free today as opposed to constrained today to serve him. We desire that you show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end so that you will not be what? Sluggish. The Christian life is not supposed to be sluggish. It's not supposed to be this like, I've got to go do that thing.

I got to go have that conversation. I got to go cook dinner. Oh, I got to go do the laundry. I got to go spank the kids. That's not how you're supposed to go through life. If you feel that way, hey, spiritual doctor here, something's wrong. That's not health. When you think of your past life, you're not only to think of the ways that you've failed. That's one thing you do look for, right? you do look for areas where you've fallen short, but you also look for places where God has been faithful to you, places where he's been gracious, where he's been kind, where he's filled up what was lacking. And it's true that it would have been better for you to have realized it sooner than then, but it's better to give God glory and express our thankfulness later rather than not at all. And so you and I are never without things to praise God for and to thank him for, so long as we remember.

But if we don't remember, then we despair. So what good things has God given to you? And because he's given those things to you, do you believe that he will supply you with the things that you need today? That's the question. I think the Christian life in America has been, I think we all have an appetite for it to be sensational, for it to be incredible, for it to be noteworthy, something you'd want to put on social media or have a story, a book written about. That's not the Christian life. Charlie Kirk's life, his gifting as an example, was extraordinary. The work that God called him to and enabled him to do is extraordinary. He's not the only person that goes onto college campuses and talks about the gospel. He really isn't. There's lots of people who do that. And in God's providence and his wisdom, he raised up Charlie Kirk's ministry and gave him a voice that was public.

But there's lots of people that have done that work and been faithful in it. And one of the dangers in looking and sort of sorting all of that out is to say, oh, well, I should be like Charlie. I should be like Charlie. I need to do what Charlie did. Why? Do you think that's normal Christian? Do you think that's like the benchmark for faithfulness? You have to have a national ministry and you have to be shot for your faith. Like that's when we can say, hey, look, you actually loved somebody. Well, that just sets you up for a lifetime of failure because are you doing that? No. Are you actually even pursuing that? No. So what are you pursuing in terms of loving God and one another? It's probably just in your house most days. That's probably where most of that energy is spent. It is spent in trying to figure out how to get your kid to sit quietly through the dinner or at church.

It is trying to figure out how to not slip into the same old ruts of discontentment and frustration when you and your spouse are talking. That's where you're going to express your love for Jesus Christ is with the people who are closest to you. And that's not less glorifying to God than the martyr. It's really not. If it is, then we could use the same logic to say, well, actually, the widow's mite really was just worthless. And Jesus was lying when he said that she gave more than everybody. So do you think he's lying at that point? No, we can say that. Do you think that he's displeased then by the efforts you make each day to serve one another and to love each other in your homes and in this community? If you do, then you have to ask the question, why do you do it then? Do you just have an appetite for wasting time? Is that just what you love to do is things that you don't believe are of any value?

Like, no, I think there is value to it. And I go, well, good. Then do it. Pursue it with vigor and not with sluggishness. And trust that God sees it, even if no one else sees it. And realize that in those things that you're doing, the vast majority of Christians who have entered their rest and are sitting with their Lord now, that's what they spent their life doing. We have a hall of faith. later on in the book of Hebrews. But how does the fall of faith end? What does it say? It basically says, I'm out of time. There's so much more I could tell you. And they would be the extraordinary cases. But there have been countless, only known to the Lord, Christians who've gone before living their lives, doing simple obedience each day, seeking to raise up a godly seed for the Lord and asking for his help to strengthen their weaknesses. And he was pleased by it and he remembers it because it glorified him.

And that's what most of you are going to spend your life doing. And that is not less honorable. It's not less valuable to God than the martyr. We really do need that perspective, don't we? Because it gives some meaning and some value and some life to what we spend our days doing. The things you do at work, if you serve your boss and your company and you're faithful and you don't steal time and you care to do a good job, why do you do that? Don't you despise the people who don't do that that you work with? So why are you different? Is it not because you're a Christian and you want to work hard? You want that to glorify God? Or you're just made that way? You're just a hardworking guy. You just happen to be lucky that way. Well, shame on you if that's your motivation. You should do it to honor Jesus Christ. The Christian life, a Christian life, is built one day at a time. You can't build it any faster than that.

Just one day at a time. Today, you'll build for Jesus. And tomorrow, you'll build for Jesus. And you'll look up in a week and go, what did I build? And it may take longer than a week for you to even be able to see it. And that's okay. What you're not able to see, God does see. And he remembers. And so you ought to be encouraged by it. We ought not to live as though everything we're doing is not enough, not good enough. It's not perfect. But if the standard is I have to do something perfect before God will even see or like smile at me a little bit, then we have a really deficient view of fatherhood. Because you who are fathers or who have had a father at some point looked at you and you didn't do it perfectly and he went, son, I love you and you did a good job. I'm pleased with you. And it's not because you did it perfectly. It's because he's your father. He's your dad. He's your mom. Like they love you. They're inclined toward you.

And so when life's swirling around you and you're not sure where to invest or what to care about, you do need to step back. We need to step back and find the things that God has specifically tasked us with. Because none of us are sitting here going, God's not giving me anything to do. What has God specifically tasked me with? And that's where you should focus your time and your energy, trusting that God will see and remember and bless those efforts. All right? In time, the things we pursue by faith, They will become sight. So what are you working on and what are you working towards? That's the question. Do you trust that God sees it and will bless it? Or do you think that he's just a far off waiting to see you stumble and fall? If he does, then we'll pray that God will change your heart and your mind. Because that's not who he is. It's not who he is. If you're his son, if you're his daughter, he loves you. And he remembers the sweet, good things that he's worked in your life for his glory and your benefit.

And it's a really nice place to be if we can get to it and stay there. And so we ought to seek it. Let's pray.