Build a Life That Lasts
241 | “Under Construction” | Seven sermon summer surfin’ spectacular
Build Your Faith Beyond Quick Fixes
Welcome to our "Seven Sermon Summer Surfin' Spectacular"! Our first sermon comes to us from Ryan! This week, we're all spiritually "Under Construction" and living in the messy middle of God's DIY project. But when is it wise to pause our busy lives to "sharpen the axe" instead of just producing? Are you reaching for spiritual "duct tape and aspirin" when you really need a foundational fix? And how can you be a solid support for others if you're not standing on firm ground yourself? Join us for a fun-filled way to spend our summer break, looking at our ongoing spiritual renovations!
Takeaways
The Big Idea: God wants us to do good work, but first he wants us to work on ourselves.
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Ryan: I had in the trunk a thing of duct tape and I just, you know, just everywhere, you know, let's put this everywhere. It's like the whole car was held together by duct tape. But it got us to Phoenix, not very much further though. Well, that was different everybody. Thanks so much everyone for tuning in to the seven sermons summer surfing spectacular here on the Bible Geeks. We are doing something a little different. where we're dropping a couple of sermons and teachings and old style conversations.
Bryan: We've had on radio programs and whatever here while we take a little bit of a break. So this is the first sermon of our seven sermons summer surfing spectacular and we're really excited on this one to
Ryan: tell we were preachers, you can just notice the alliteration and know
Bryan: It's so
Ryan: it's all happening. [laughter]
Bryan: It's all alliteration man that we've got a potpourri of preaching a smattering of sermons here. We are we're getting into a sermon that Ryan gave a few years back called under construction and this one, you know, I don't know we're going to get into this. We're going to play this sermon for everybody.
We'll talk about it a little bit afterward. But boy, like when you were talking in this one about your DIY like living in a construction zone, I felt that so hard because I felt like for the last how many years that you lived in Phoenix your house was like a complete project for that whole time.
Ryan: It never settled in. And we just, yeah, you were in our concrete floor, bare walls, you know,
Bryan: I don't ever remember not having a concrete
Ryan: yeah. I mean, it was beautiful at the end. And I don't even know if you ever went in whenever everything was completely done, because that's when we sold it. But, you know, the idea of choosing this sermon as we talked about, hey, what kind of ties in with where we ended up in our Square One series that we just ended up, is, you know, we talked about the idea that we're all still under construction.
We're all a work in progress. And, um, you know, that we have to continue this progress after, hopefully, you lead someone to Christ with that series. The work is just beginning. And so that's where we're going with this particular
Bryan: Yeah, and the work in progress nature. I think you really highlight that a lot and give some real practical advice here. So excited to get into this one. We'll We'll play the sermon.
here for everyone to hear if you haven't heard it already and then afterward we'll come back.
We'll talk a little bit about it.
So here it is under construction from Mr. Ryan Joy.
I don't know why sometimes these periods come where you start thinking about different people. I've been thinking about my dad. This is his hammer. And there's like no other symbol that more captures my dad than this big old hammer that he would always have whenever we were working on remodeling different things.
And for just about every Saturday, at least a couple Saturdays a month, for about 10 years in our first house in Phoenix, we were working on some project, just constantly remodeling. And this goes back to, actually, I came by it honestly because my dad growing up was always working on our house. And it was hard on my mom, but it was fun for me.
Because I remember one house where we had this, between the kitchen and the master bathroom, there was, the concrete was all broken and there was a six foot hole into the dirt and you could see the pipes through. And he had put like a two by 10 or something across, like a plank across. And I could be Luke Skywalker fighting against Darth Vader in Cloud City, walking across there, thinking I was something really cool.
And living in a remodel, it just is challenging. We would have people over while we're in the middle of this. Every month we had what we called first Fridays. And we would try to clear out the space and say, okay, come on in. But you know, they're looking at bare walls with just two by fours showing. We did a lot of demolition.
There's that same hammer in the wall. There's my dad working, probably putting up some insulation in this extension we did. And this is that same room that we extended out and made into a bigger room. This is while we're still working on the outside. We redid all of this as new. And you can see the paper, brown paper up on the wall there as we're working on it.
But eventually we finished up right after we got this job and decided to sell the house and move here. So we finished the house and lived in it for like two weeks. And then someone else got to live in this house. We'd been dreaming of what it could be. What would be our ideal house and building for a decade or more?
And I know it was hard on Adrian as well to just be constantly working on stuff. You want to have your home that you can settle into. But the fact is you in your life are living through a remodel. Your whole life, if you're doing it right as a disciple, is working on projects within yourself. You want to just settle into a home that just, "Okay, I finally got it all figured out.
I know who I am. I know what I can do. I know what I want my habits to be. And I'm done. Finally." But that's not what discipleship is. The whole idea of being a disciple is learning and growing and training to be like Christ. You are under a process. You are undergoing inner renovations. In Philippians chapter 1 and verse 6, we read that God who began a good work in you, God began this work, will bring it to completion.
He's not giving up on you, but you're not done. You're not a finished product. God started this work whenever He called you to Himself and made a way for you to come to Him. And He has big things in store for you, for you to be like Jesus. And He's going to keep working on you. Does that mean that it's all going to be taken care of by God like a zap?
No. In chapter 2, verse 12 of Philippians, a little bit later in the book, he says, "You continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling." But then the next verse, he says, "For it is God who is at work within you to will and to work for His good pleasure." It's a partnership, but God is working in you, and you need to keep working.
Because Paul says in verse 12 of chapter 3, the next chapter, "I haven't obtained it yet. I'm not complete. I'm not perfect. But one thing I do," in verse 13, "I strain forward. I'm reaching," this is a metaphor of a race, "I am giving all of my, straining all of my muscles, giving my last ounce of strength to reach for that goal.
I'm striving for it. I forget what's behind, and I look forward to what I need to become and where I'm going to go and where the end of my story is. And I'm looking towards that." And he says in verse 16, "If you're mature, think this way. And if you're not, if you don't think this way yet, then God will reveal that to you.
Only don't fall backwards from where you are. Keep holding to what you've obtained and moving forward." It's a constant process of continuing to grow. Paul uses this interesting metaphor in 2 Corinthians 5, 1-10, of this earthly house, the body and our life here, like an earthly, it's like a, he says, it's like a tent here.
This is just temporary. But we're not going to go unclothed, but someday we're going to have a house, our resurrection body. But while we're here in this earthly house, in this, in this work that we're doing, we need to keep pressing forward towards that final destination. And it's kind of like life as a house.
You don't really want everyone to see this in-progress work that you are. You want for everybody to see, "No, I've got it all figured out." You invite them over to your house and there's sawdust on the floor and there's beams showing, but that's who we all are. Everyone you know is a work in progress. You ever go to a store, maybe a supermarket, and they're in the middle of a remodel and you have to, it's kind of a hassle, you've got to go behind a pallet to get your cereal and you're working through everything, and they have these signs up.
I used to make these signs at the ad agency I worked at, did a lot of signage for supermarkets, and they would say something like, "Pardon our dust while we renovate. Pardon our dust. Please excuse us, but we are designing something better for you for the future. Maybe, maybe we should imagine that everyone around us, the preacher, definitely, our elders, our deacons, your parents, kids, your heroes, everyone you know is wearing around their neck a "Pardon our dust" sign.
We need some patience with each other. As Paul says in Colossians 2, 12 to 14, we need compassion and patience and forbearance and forgiveness, knowing they're not yet what they ought to be. That's a phrase that Paul uses a lot. He uses it in 1 Corinthians 3, 2 and 8, 2 when he says, "You know, you are not yet what you ought to be.
You are still carnal in your mind. You're not yet what you ought to be." Or in 8, 2, if anybody thinks he knows, then he doesn't yet know as he ought to know, but knowledge puffs up and love builds up, but the one who loves knows God and is known by God. And so what he's saying is he's saying to these Corinthians, "I'm done with you.
You are not what you ought to be." No, he's writing a letter to them because he loves them. He's going to write another letter later. He's going to cut. He is investing in them because he's saying there's a whole world of difference between not what you ought to be and not yet what you ought to be. See the hope?
See the forward-looking progress? You're not yet there, but you're getting there. You're on your way. And that's where we all are. There is hope for the Christian because it's not just us on our own. God is working in us, and together we are building a house that is our life, that is who we are meant to be.
So we need to be patient with each other, but patient with ourselves as well, knowing. I'm not saying settle. That's the opposite of this message of the lesson, but know it's true. You're not there yet. You've got work to do. You've got work to do. So the key
is not to stop the work. The real problem isn't having an incomplete project, but when there's a work stoppage and the project isn't underway anymore. Whenever, like Hebrews 5 and 6 talks about, whenever by this time we ought to be teachers, but we stopped growing. We stopped moving forward. We need to keep reaching, keep being, as 2 Corinthians 3.18 says, transformed by the image of the Lord.
And so I want to talk about four steps in this process of construction, four different steps that we can take. And the first one is to sharpen the edge. These are works, this is a project that we all need to individually do. Today's lesson isn't about working on your spouse or working on your friends or your brother that you see all kinds of problems.
"Boy, he is under construction." This is about you. You are under construction. And so what do you need to do? I'm challenging you to look inward, to sharpen your edge. What an interesting phrase, sharpen the edge. This comes from Ecclesiastes 10.10, which says, "If the iron is blunt and one does not sharpen the edge, he must use more strength, but wisdom helps one to succeed."
It says to sharpen the edge. Think of an axe you're using, a saw, a knife, and you sharpen the edge. Whenever you're using a circular saw and you're cutting boards and it's not getting the bite that it used to get anymore, what do you do? Well, you reach into that Home Depot bag of replacement blades and you sharpen the edge.
You put a new blade on it, right? You need to, it's a moment away from cutting, right? And sharpening takes time. We may want to stop. We may want to avoid sharpening because it seems like you're not being as productive when you're sharpening. You're not cutting anymore. But what the preacher is saying here is you have to use more strength.
If you don't sharpen, the work is harder. You don't do as well. You're not as fruitful and productive. And so wisdom helps one to succeed. The wise thing is to, as our parents used to say to us, "Work smarter, not harder." And that means making time in your life, saving energy for just you to get better. How much are you investing in getting better at developing skills that you don't already have?
Not saying, "Well, that's just not my gift," but saying, "How can I develop a new skill that I can use for the Lord?" I'm not a teacher. Well, maybe you never will be, and that's okay. Not everybody is. But maybe. I wasn't always a teacher. No one was born a teacher. But you can learn. Maybe you would love to cook meals for people that are needing meals, but I'm just not a cook.
I don't know how to do that. Well, maybe you could learn. What can you learn? What can you develop? When was the last time that you read a book, a spiritual book, just for the purpose of growing? You weren't teaching a class. You weren't doing something that necessitated it. It wasn't part of like a, "Okay, this is required reading."
It's just something you say, "I need to grow, and I think an area I need to grow in is my prayer life. I'm going to read. I've heard that this book is a really edifying book on prayer." How's your time in the Word? How's your daily Bible reading or your Bible study, ongoing Bible study? How is your prayer life?
See, the point is, as we are under construction, we need to have the wisdom to grow our productivity, to sharpen the edge, because that will make us more fruitful. But secondly, we need to do, this is an even deeper work, the work of squaring ourselves up. So my dad, with his hammer, always had the speed square with him, and it was just like muscle memory.
Slap it down, mark the pencil, cut constantly, making sure everything, what this does, makes sure it's, what you're cutting is square. Or you take a level. Is this, is the bubble in the middle, is it plum? Is this wall plum? Amos talks about, metaphorically, holding up the plumbob in the string to make sure that Israel is upright.
There's this word in the Hebrew, "yosher," and what this word means is straight. It can refer to being plumb, like the upright frames for the tabernacle in Exodus 36 and verse 20, being straight up and down vertically, or it can talk about being horizontally level, like in Isaiah 26 verse 7, God will make a level, something level, and it means being straight in Isaiah 40 verse 3.
And in all of those senses, there's this idea of being square, like in the builder's definition, being square. But what God wants isn't just a square building. What he's saying is, he wants you to be straight. What he's saying is, there is a standard that you measure up to, that you measure upon, and make sure that you're not crooked.
And whenever we're building something, if you have a crooked wall, then grab it, there's laws in the universe that physics aren't going to allow that to stand unless it's designed to do so, and it could crumble. And so we make things according to the laws that God has created. Well, the same God who made an orderly universe with laws that make sense teaches us how to be upright within us, and that involves rules.
Rules. I think people sometimes think, "Oh, Christian people, they're so obsessed with rules. What's the big deal?" As if there's some kind of amorphous spirituality we're going to have that has no standard, no sense of uprightness, even though all of us know that honesty matters, that love matters, that rightness, holiness, truth, all of these things matter.
God shows us the way, and he gives us his rules, not because he just loves bossing us around, though he would have the right to do that, but because he wants to show us the way to live rightly so that our house doesn't fall, so our life doesn't crumble. And so using the same word, Yosheir, the same word as the upright and the level and the plum, the psalmist says, "I will praise you with an upright, Yosheir, heart, when I learn your righteous rules."
What makes us upright as we praise the Lord, as we come before him with holy hands praising him? We learn his righteous rules, and we level our lives, and we constantly check, "Is there some way that I am being a little bit dishonest in the way I'm dealing with this? Maybe even dishonest with myself. I'm justifying myself.
I'm finding people that agree with me on this. Is there a way in which I'm being selfish in the way I'm dealing with this particular person? Is there a way in which I'm kind of trying not to look at God's law about this particular thing and putting this one little part of my life, this little crooked part, I'm kind of building up some dirt around it so nobody has to look at it and I don't even have to look at it?
Is there a way in which I am not straight and level and plum and square?" And the Christian is, in our very, the fundamental part of who we are, able, because of God's grace, to look honestly at ourselves. I mean, I am not saying it's easy, but this is a constant process we go through, because God says in 1 John 1, 8-10, that what He wants us to be with Him is honest.
I just want you to be honest when you come before me, because if you're not honest about your sin, about where you're not upright, if you're not looking truly at the bubble, then you can't change. Then you're denying what is real about yourself and about God's standard of what's going to show us the way.
And so we have to look and say, "I acknowledge this. Whoever says that he's not sinned, he's a liar. But if we confess our sins, then he is faithful and just to forgive us." And so we look at ourselves and we look at God's word and we make sure that we are square. About character. But the third step is to secure.
I love going down the fastener aisle of Home Depot, because there are, man, there's probably 8,000 different kinds of nails and screws and bolts and ways to attach things and hold it together. And you look and you find the right one. And if you have these fasteners, then the ceiling, we're not worried the ceiling's going to fall in, that that wall's going to crumble, that this thing is going to collapse, because it is securely fastened.
It is attached. But we need to be securely fashioned as well. Securely fastened to the Lord. So we're not coming apart. You ever felt that way? Like, "I am just coming apart right now." And the opposite of that is being grounded. And we just need to find our way constantly back to our faith in the Lord, our confident clarity about our faith and our relationship with God.
So that we can say with Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 58, looking at the resurrection, we are steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. There's a passage I like about this. Again, most of these are from the Psalms, because it's about heartwork. In Psalm 112, Thomas says, "For the righteous will never be moved."
They are secure. They are solid. They are attached. He will be remembered forever. He is not afraid of bad news. That is a kind of security we all need these days, always have. His heart is firm, solid, attached. What are we attached to? Our confidence that we are strong enough to get ourselves through anything?
No. He is trusting in the Lord. That is why his heart is firm and his heart is steady. And he will not be afraid. We don't need to live in panic. As Isaiah says in Isaiah 7, "Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, but put your trust in the Lord and know He is strong. The one who holds history in His hand, the one who holds you in His hand, the one who brings a good end to all things, his heart is steady.
The one who trusts in Him is steady and will not be afraid." Then he goes to an interesting place. He says, "He has distributed freely, is given to the poor." Well, what does that have to do with being secure?
Paul quotes this passage in 2 Corinthians to encourage giving when he's talking about to the Corinthians about exhorting them to boldly give to the needs of the Judean church in 2 Corinthians 9 and verse 9. Why is this related to a firm heart? Because in order to be truly generous and to give consistently, we have to trust that the Lord who has given in the past will give in the future as well, that He is the source of our blessings.
And so we can give knowing God will continue to bless. We don't have to hoard. Hoarding is the opposite of this. And hoarding and fear and that kind of selfishness comes from an insecure heart who is not grounded and rooted in the Lord. And finally, we need to sweep. The end of every project is cleanup.
And so I remember my dad was very, very intent on making sure that Adrian was not annoyed by our project still being, her house being thrown around. And we'd get out the shop vac and get out the broom and try to clean everything up and make it look as good as we could in the midst of the project.
And the Bible talks about cleaning, being internally cleansed a lot. David, in his famous Psalm, Psalm 51, that many of us have spent hard times praying to the Lord ourselves, his prayer after his sin with Bathsheba, he says, "Behold, ye delight in truth, in the inward being. Purge me with hyssop." Hyssop is the plant, the shrub that had this shrub-like leaf structure that would be like a brush and dip it in blood and sprinkle it.
It would hold it like a brush and you could sprinkle the blood or the water at times, but usually the blood to cleanse, to cleanse things in the temple, to cleanse whatever needed to be cleansed. And he says, "Cleanse me, purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Let me hear joy and gladness." Notice he's making a prayer, but he's also stating his confidence that God's grace will be enough. "Purge me, and I will be so white. I know I will be pure. Let me hear joy and gladness. Blot out all my iniquities." But then he prays something different, something in addition to cleaning and sweeping everything up and making it, removing the mar, removing the brokenness and the dirt and the filth of our sin.
He prays for God to create something. And this is the same Hebrew word as is used in Genesis 1 when God created the heavens and the earth. This is a different act of creation. "After you cleanse me, create in me a clean heart. Renew a right spirit within me. Take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation."
This idea of cleaning, this idea of sweeping is not complete if we stop and just clean up. There's a lot of things going on in this strange parable that Jesus tells in Matthew 12, but there's a connection to this idea that I think is helpful. Matthew 12, 43 to 45, Jesus talks about this man who has this demon, and the person is talked about like a house.
And he says the demon is removed, this unclean spirit, and he goes around wandering around in the wilderness. And the man sweeps out the house. He empties it. He cleans it. He sets everything in order. And almost as if demons like a clean house, almost like whenever we were about to move out of our house, I was talking about in the beginning, we fixed it up and made it nice for the person who's about to move in.
This man had cleaned and ordered and made everything perfect. And the demon out in the wilderness says, "Let me get seven of my best demon friends and come back and we'll all move in." And so the state of the house is worse than the first state. And there's lessons about Israel. There's lessons about different things there.
But one thing we got to get is it's not enough just to clean out the old. We're going to fill ourselves. And what Jesus is wanting us to fill ourselves with is Him. If He is present in the house, then the demon can't enter. He is the strong man. Fill ourselves with His way of life, the way of the cross, the way that He shows us.
Fill ourselves with the Lord, and then we will be in a better state than we were at first. Clean out the old and fill ourselves and let the Lord create in us something new. I have been known to use duct tape to fix up a house. I've been known to use it to fix up a car. I remember one time I was driving from Kentucky to Phoenix and I broke down somewhere in the middle of New Mexico and there were hoses spraying things out.
I know nothing about cars, really. And I had in the trunk a thing of duct tape and I just, you know, just everywhere, you know, let's put this everywhere. It's like the whole car was held together by duct tape. But it got us to Phoenix, not very much further though.
And then you have to actually deal with the problem.
See, I think that we have a tendency sometimes to want to try to fix ourselves up, like with duct tape. There's a whole section of books called "Self-Help." There's good self-help books. But if we're just trying to do some fixes on our own, or we're trying to even worse, just busy ourselves and not notice the problem, or distract ourselves, or try to orient ourselves in the wrong ways and fix ourselves up as with duct tape, we are missing the point.
God's point, which is I want to heal you. I don't want to just give you some aspirin and go to bed. I want to heal you of this problem. The sin problem. The death problem. The problem of your lostness. And that takes a work of grace that only God can do. He sent Jesus Christ, his son, to die, to heal us. He rose from the dead, defeating death, defeating sin, defeating Satan.
God knows exactly who you are. Can't hide it. You don't need to hide it. What he wants is for you to honestly look at yourself, see who you are in the light of who he is, and turn to him. Say, "I can't do it, but I know you can. I know you can actually heal and fix and build a life, a house that will stand."
Jesus said in Matthew 7 24, "He who hears these words of mine and does them, he'll be like a man who built his house on the rock, and whatever comes, all the storms, all the problems, he will stand. His house will stand in the end."
Bryan: So thinking about your conversation there. This is really powerful points, especially the the practical nature of like what it means to be under construction. I think a lot of times at least for me, it's it's easy to think in the abstract about, you know, needing work to do or like being growth minded
Like it's hard to to really nail that down to some practical stuff. So I felt like this was a really good exploration of just some of those ways that we partner with God in this messy ongoing work of becoming more like
Ryan: Yeah, and that is so core to you and me, our personalities, our podcast, and everything we're doing. I think it really is true to what we're trying to say here throughout, you know, all the work we do is keep pushing forward, as Paul says, press on towards the goal and keep growing and keep moving forward.
And I've always found that passage in Ecclesiastes, like an interesting, thought provoking, weird statement that just makes you pause when he says, "If the iron is blunt and one does not sharpen the edge, he must use more strength, but wisdom helps one to succeed." And that was the first point that I talked about.
It's like, what did he just say? What are we talking about? Why is this in the Bible? But if you think about it, it's become a a saying that people talk about, I think, from Stephen Covey to sharpen the blade or here, sharpen the axe, I think, is the idea of the Ecclesiastes proverb. And it's hard to justify in our minds sometimes stopping producing to get better, stopping doing to grow and to do the work on yourself rather than doing the work in the world.
But that's exactly, I think, what the preacher there is telling us to
Bryan: and that's hard, right? Because to see maybe all of the things you used to be doing or that you have been doing for a period of time and then to like to see that kind of be put on hold for one reason or another is visibly to the outside world just a very clear sign that like some danger, you know, something is wrong.
And it's like, no, no, maybe this is a good time for me to step back. It reminds me of so many of those times where Jesus went off to be alone, right? It's like, shouldn't you be out there in the middle of people? That's your job, Jesus. Go out and be with them and teach them. It's like, no, sometimes you need to go and find those moments to rejuvenate, to sharpen, to, you know, get your get your edge back and then get back out there and and get to the work.
So I think it is a challenge because it's easy to it's easy to look on those moments as like negative opportunities in my own life. I know I know I've been there for sure.
Ryan: Yeah, you know, it's it there's a term that has become kind of a cliche in my mind, like I'm self-conscious even using it, that term self-care and like there's an old quote from Parker Palmer that I always like that says that self-care is not a selfish act.
It is a stewardship of the only gift we have to give. And, you know, we're talking about growth, but we're talking about working on ourselves, tending to ourselves, you know, which includes carrying the weights that we have on our shoulders, the burdens, the anxieties, the guilt, everything before God and prayer, as you talked about, or taking a moment to just go and make some space to walk in nature and and reflect and meditate, to do the work of having open, difficult, but but enriching conversations with people in your life that can let you work through different issues.
And the more we do those things, then we have something to give to others. We are sharpening the saw. We are allowing ourselves to be more effective when we do get to work. And Ecclesiastes has this other idea elsewhere of the two hands and the the idea of having one of our hands we're working, but with the other hand, it's open, it's open to receive.
It's not clutching with both hands. We are trying to balance these things so that we understand by doing a little less. Sometimes we can do a lot more. We can be more effective and productive as we approach things a little
Bryan: It's interesting, you know, as you're going through, you know, talking about some of these ideas that you were that you were landing on. And I like the idea of securing. I think that was a really powerful like like we need to be solid. We need to stretch for that goal. Like, of course, we we like Paul will be able to say that we've not attained yet to the perfection that we're trying for.
Like we're we're not there yet. We haven't arrived. But like to be securely in place, immovable, you know, unshakable, all of those ideas, that is not an easy thing for a world that is like constantly, as I think we read about a lot is like tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine. It's like we're so easily shaken by just the smallest amount of news or the smallest change in our daily routine or something like that.
you know, that idea of stability I think that's a sleeper in being under construction, because you can build the most amazing structure.
It can look awesome. It can, you know, function perfectly. But if it's not going to stay there more than a day, I mean, what really good is it? And that for me is a good reminder that like I've got to I've got to put those things in place that like really do anchor me down.
Ryan: those are the people that make the big impact on your life, right? Are the people who you would describe as solid. You know, there's just some people that, you know, you can count on them. You know where their priorities are. It doesn't mean they're perfect. Doesn't mean they don't get tossed every once in a while around.
But there are certain things that just have their life affixed to the Lord and to the things that are most important. You know, they're not going to be they're not going to be shaken away from it. And it gives all of us that much more of a sense of security and stability in life. It's interesting. We closed our Square One series with you and me making a commitment, both of us, to that idea of endurance, perseverance, consistency, stability, you know, those kinds of things.
And I loved the thing that pulled this all together. The point about security to me was Psalm 112, where it connected that being firm in the Lord with being generous with others, being able to help others. Because only as we have confidence and security in our faith can we then pour out and give and make ourselves vulnerable, make ourselves, you know, empty ourselves, whether it's of money or forgiveness or service of time, of, you know, letting ourselves be seen clearly with faults and all, you know, all these ways that we show up for others.
We mourn with them. You know, it's that takes something. We rejoice with them. Maybe we've gone through some hard times, but they're having something good happening in their life. And we can show up and rejoice with them because we know the Lord is going to get us through this. We're just happy for them in that time.
And so, again, you know, like the idea of when you're sharpening yourself, you're preparing yourself to serve others in the same way when you're securing yourself in the Lord, you're preparing yourself to give to others, which I think ties with this whole theme together. It's a self-focus on growth in order to be more effective towards others.
Bryan: I think that's really well said. There's so many ways I want to take that. But one of them is just clearly like I never really think about how solid I have to be to then be able to turn to somebody else to help them. It's like, of course, you know, if if a blind person is leading a blind person that no one's going to wind up in a good spot.
Like if I'm not solid, if I don't have things clear and focused and, you know, I'm not on a firm foundation, then I'm never going to be able, like you said, to turn to others and support them. I think it's one of the reasons why in the model prayer, Jesus is talking about as we've been forgiven, we turn and forgive other people.
It's like when I when I understand this solid ground, I'm standing on with God through Jesus and his forgiveness. I mean, then I can really from a place of generosity, turn around and provide that to other people. So that's like right off the bat is what I'm hearing and what you're saying there. But then this idea that you close this sermon out with, I think is one of the most like visceral pictures for me is like the idea of duct tapes and aspirin, aren't I just the kind of person who wants to go grab the quick fix, the one little hack and thing and put it in place.
And it's like, you know, my I'm I'm on my deathbed or whatever, and I just want to take an aspirin to like feel better or, you know, the car is falling apart and I'm like wrapping it in duct tape It is so hard to not gravitate towards those types of things and then to allow instead the deeper and more substantive changes to take hold.
And I feel that a lot in like a discussion about joy. It's like I can manufacture joy for a day, but can I like start up the generator internally for the internal factory of joy that should just be going constantly all the time or, you know, band-aids versus real solution?
Ryan: Yeah. I love that. The internal factory of joy. I mean, that is that is what the Lord gives us as a generator. I mean, he is he is pouring his love into our hearts, as Romans 5, 5 says, or like the picture in Luke 6 of as we are pouring out forgiveness and love and generosity and all these things to others.
He's just filling us back up and it becomes this stream that the way to block it up is to not forgive others or not be loving to others. And now I've stopped up the flow And so I think that's a really cool picture that we are tending to maintenance of this internal machine that God is is creating in us and running in us.
And so it's realizing it's not because of guilt that I haven't done enough that I go to God in prayer or I go to the word and spend time there. It's because that is where I find the flow of his goodness and his love and his joy and his peace. That's where the real solutions come from. That's more than duct tape and aspirin
And instead realizing I guess not that there's no place for guilt, but instead realizing this is the source of everything. And I'm drawn to it because I see the good that he is going to continue to do in me.
Bryan: Well, and with so many things, it's just hard to see that that eventual product that consistency brings about. And in anything, it's the saving for retirement. It's the going to the gym. It's the anything that requires effort that you don't immediately see a result for. And our spiritual growth is that way.
And so I think this really does, I think, tie into pretty well that very last conversation that we had in square one. And that's why we really wanted to latch on to this one. I love, you know, an opportunity to hear your sermons. And so hopefully people have enjoyed this as well. Also, it is fun to hear Ryan's preacher voice.
It doesn't show up on the podcast very much, but it does show up, as I'm sure mine will at some point in this series. So that has been very cool. Thanks for sharing that sermon with us.
Ryan: Absolutely. Yeah. I'm excited about this series. And next week we've got our special guest
Bryan: Special guest.
Ryan: of Summer Spectacular Surfing Series that we're stoked to say special things about.
Bryan: All right.
So this has been our seven sermons, summer surfing spectacular sermon number one of that series. And we're really excited to have you on the board with us for this summer. And until we come back next week for another episode, may the Lord bless you and keep you.
Ryan: Shalom.