Childish and Childlike

TRANSCRIPT 

So what I want to talk about this week is the journey from childhood to adulthood entering into becoming a mature follower of Christ. Because if you don't learn to move away from your c childish ways into a adult life, things get really, really bad for everybody. Everybody. Now, I don't know about you.

But sometimes life just gets on top of me and I just feel like I just want to throw a wobbly. I want to chuck a hissy fit. I just wanna let it all hang out. I want to do what toddlers get to do every so often. So have a look at these couple of toddlers here. This give you an idea about how I feel at times.

And you might feel the same. These couple of toddlers. No. No. Yeah. Tomorrow

You wanna go to the pub? Yeah. Pub shut.

That sounds like our staff before 9:00 AM but don't you just get to the point where sometimes you just, you, you just wanna lose it. You just wanna just. Oh, you get so frustrated. Anyway, there's a, there's a famous story of me losing it. And, and when it happens with adults, and you look at it, you can see it in a teenager in a little title, but when you're seeing an adult, it's kind of got, it's kind of more gripping.

So I thought I'd let you have a little look at this. You've seen it before. It's really funny about an adult that is losing it. And of course it's John Cleese out of something called Faulty Towers. So have a quiz at this. That's it. You on just fights too off. I right? Well, don't say I am, warn you.

I've laid it on the line to you. Tired, but I tired again. Right. Well this is it. I'm gonna give you a damn good trash.

Now the reason, if you've been around for like 10 years or more with us here, the reason that's so funny is 'cause I actually did that with a whipper sniffer once I lost it. Seriously, this whipper sniffer, I was trying to start it, it started to go for like five seconds and stopped. Did it for about three or four times.

And I was in the yard yelling at that whipper slipper, exactly like that in the, and then I got a shovel and I smashed it, and then I got a hacksaw and I. Sorted in half and I stuck it in the bin and I said, you will never cause me to sin again. At that moment, up over my fence comes my neighbor who doesn't know Christ going, praising the Lord.

Today. Are we pastor?

Ever done something, ever said something ever? Oh man, I wish I could take all of that back. You know, like it was just one of those moments, but you, you kind of feel like that. But it's tied to childish behavior. So I want us to interact a little bit about this. I haven't done this for ages, you guys online as well.

Get your phones out. You're gonna get a QR code on the back of your seats or it'll be up on the screen. 'cause I want you to. Answer this for me because I want to see what we think about this together. What do you consider to be childish behavior? What do you consider to be childish behavior? And as the cool thing about this is as you begin to actually put your answers up, that'll start to come up in there and form a word cloud and we'll get to see what do you think is childish behavior.

Now, while you're doing that, I'm gonna just consult with the, with the highest form of Knowledge on the land today chat. G P T I. I asked him that and I said, well, what does chat D p T say about childishness? So we'll see how we go with chat. G P T. So what do we go up there? Revenge tantrum, self-centeredness or tantrums?

Number one, pop music. The silent treatment. Yelling. Okay, well here's what chat chief, he's got temper tantrums. It's up there. Whining chat. T says whining. You know? It's like, oh mom, we've gotta have this. I've gotta have this. And me. I've gotta have it. And it gets higher, mom. I gotta have it. I gotta have. It gets higher and higher until it escalates.

Until they get what they want. Refusing to share is another one. That's a good money. What's the favorite thing outta that? Outta the movie Nemo? Mine. Main Mine. It's mine. It's mine. It's mine. I love it. Dexter comes at me the other day and go, uncle, happy, you've eaten my ice blocks. I said, I bought them, buddy, but they're mine.

It's like we've gotta learn to share. But no, it's part of childish thing, you know, like lacking of empathy, tension seeking impulsiveness, impulsiveness. Look at all these ones up here. Passing the blame, impatience, walking away, throwing toys. Tantrums are still up there, not talking about it. Yeah. Pestering.

Yeah. Manipulation, blame shifting. There's a lot involved in this. It also goes on chat says defiance is another one. Don't you tell me what to do. I know I shouldn't walk off that cliff and it might hurt me, but I'm gonna do it anyway. Just spite you. Difficulty with self-control. I dunno if you watched the news last night, but something had happened and a guy on his motorcycle has got off his motorcycle and he's beating up a 90 year old.

He seriously, he's laying into this guy now. I can guess what happened. The guy probably cut him off, but instead of the guy going, oh, praise the Lord, I'm still alive. I didn't die. Now he feels he needs to get out there and beat the 90 year old to death. It's ridiculous. It's childishness difficulty with self-control, immature conversation.

If you have had someone, you try and talk to 'em, they're going, you know, it's like, yeah, they're pulling face. This is ridiculous. Preference for fantasy over reality is a part of childishness resistance to routine and a stubbornness, an inflexible stubbornness that you will not change. Not for you, not for anyone, not even for God.

Now the question is how many of us adults are seeing our results up there on the screen or on chat? D b t You heard it, that you say, oh, that sounds a little bit like me at times, if I don't get my way. Here's the thing, when it comes to this area, you have got to choose to exit childishness. You've gotta choose it, and you've gotta enter adulthood.

That's one of the things you'll hear around here. If you do something that's a little bit freaky, you know, someone will go, I think you need to e h s that, and you go, what does that mean? What does it mean to e h s? It means there's something going on in you that maybe is not quite right and you should go and fix it up because you can't be spiritually mature.

And while you're remaining emotionally immature, and that's the whole purpose of Enter the Divine mentors, they're there to teach us, they're there to train us, to show us what maturity in Christ. Looks like now, if you're online here and you haven't given your life to Christ, it's free pass for you today.

You just, just carry on, just keep being childish. It won't work out too well, but you've got, you've got a free pass at the moment, but if you follow Christ, then you don't really have a free pass on this one. So anyway, we're gonna look at the book of First Corinthians that Paul's writing to the church.

Obviously this was a problem in the church, so he's trying to address this immaturity issue. Now, what I wanna say about this before I go to this text is this, there is a phenomenon today that started in the 19 hundreds, late 19 hundreds, and it really took off during the twenties. And it's another stage of life that was never meant to be in the Bible.

It's not in the Bible, it's never anywhere else, but it just turned up. Does anyone know what it is? Teenager who? Teenager. Okay. And what do you call that then? Extended adolescence. Adolescence. It was never put a part of it when you were growing up in Bible times, they treated you as a child up to 12, 13.

You went through a year's process of where they gave you some kind of rite of passage and you were then treated as an adult. But we have this adolescence that has come and extended adolescence. And it gets bigger and bigger and bigger until you've got people in their forties that are still behaving like children chopping up their whip snippers.

So anyway, here's how Paul handles it. When I was a child, I talk like a child. So there's a language that goes with being a child. I sort like a child. Well, yeah. Okay. That's, I'm thinking like a child. It's all about me. Everything's about me. Doesn't matter what it is, as long as it's about me. I'm cool. I reasoned like a child.

My faculties were such that I did that. Then goes on, he says, but when I became a man or a woman, I put the ways of childhood behind me.

You have to have a demon defining moment where you make the decision. I am exiting childish ways, I'm exiting childhood. You're gotta choose to exit that behavior and choose maturity in Christ. Do I need to switch this mic out? It's popping like mad here. Have we got one here? Let's go on this one. Okay.

Okay. There we go. There we go. So God asks us to surrender to him, and as we surrender to him, his spirit begins to work on the scriptures to conform us to the image of Christ. The mentors in there teach us, they show us the way, but how do you move from this? What is the main thing that's involved with moving you from childishness to maturity in Christ?

And Paul wrote about it again. To the Romans, there must have been a lot of immaturity going on in the churches 'cause he keeps having to write to them and explain to them what they need to do. So this is what he says. He says, I urge you brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice.

Now, I just wanna show of hands here, how many of you do something in life that doesn't involve your body? You are in some activity, but you leave your body at home or something like that. You've got some other thing going on. Now. It doesn't happen, does it? So, This is to do with all of life. All of life, all of living.

He says, make it a living sacrifice. Now a sacrifice is dead. That's the idea. It's been sacrificed. It's dead. So what he's saying, this is the journey. This is the point. When you offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, consider yourself dead to this world and alive in Christ. Things begin to change. You move from everything being about me to everything being about.

God and what he can do through you, and he says, a living sacrifice. Holy and pleasing to God. He says, this is holy and pleasing to God. What's holy and pleasing to God. You becoming a living sacrifice. You maturing, becoming an adult, are turning away from the childish ways. Then he goes, this is your, what does it say true and proper.

Worship. Now, I love worship and I love singing, but singing is only that much of what worship is. Worship is huge. Worship is your living sacrifice. It's when you lay down your life and you serve other people on God's behalf. Those of you that are gonna pick up and say, you know what, I can go and do a backyard blitz for this woman's sanctuary, this domestic fines, that's worship.

When you give something to someone that inconveniences you, you've laid down your life for someone else that is worship, and he says, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice. He's saying, offer your whole life to this process. That's pleasing to God. It's worship. And then he goes on and says, now don't conform to the pattern of this world.

The pattern of this world is everything that we just wrote up on the board and everything that we got in chat, G p t, it's the sinful patterns of the world that come out of our sinful flesh where everything is all about me. He says, get away from that. And you do that by dying to it, becoming a living sacrifice in Christ.

And then he goes on with the Trump card and says, renewing your mind. Renewing your mind. How do you renew your mind? Well, we're right back to entering in to soap devotions, allowing the scriptures to enter into you so that you're conformed to the image of Christ. It's about becoming a living sacrifice.

This is what maturity is all about, and it's pleasing to God and it's our proper proto and proper worship. Yes, we love to sing songs. I could sing for hours on end, but that is only one part of what worship. Worship is what you do when you wake up in the morning and decide whether you are going to do what you want for the day or whether you're going to be available to God to do what he wants throughout the day.

It's, it's about Galatians two 20. My life verse, I have been crucified with Christ. When I received Christ, I was crucified with Christ. It's no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me. He's doing his work in me. That makes you a servant of all, that makes you a living sacrifice. That moves you away from me, me, me, me, me, me of childishness towards maturity in Christ.

But as I said before, I don't always get it right. Sometimes I'd like to go back and have a little temper tantrum. Now I want to touch on one thing here. We've talked about extensively a number of weeks back around this area of purity. Psalm 119 says this, Psalms is one of the poetic books out of Israel's covenant.

It says this, how can a young person stay on the path of purity? How can they, by living according to your word? I says, I will seek you with all my heart. Do not let me stray from your commands. So purity once again is entering in. You gotta enter in so that you step into the conversation and the story enters you and then you are conformed to the image of Christ.

So you've heard me say at different times When it comes to sexual immorality and things like that, what's permissible? Like some people are so amazing, they go, I wonder how much I can actually sin before I actually go to hell. That's a pretty flawed question. Like, how close can I actually get to hell without getting burnt?

It's like, hmm, why wouldn't you ask the question? See, that's a childish question. That means how much can I get away with? How far can I push the limit before I get a, he goes, wouldn't be a better question to say, wow, am a living sacrifice. I wonder how close I could get to Jesus that people might see him and experience him in me.

So we know what the scriptures say. It says, young men treat young women. As sisters with absolute purity. So there's, there's the target. If you're not comfortable doing it with your sister, it's out of bounds. If you are comfortable doing with your sister, we got a whole other course for you. Whole other course.

So that's one thing to remember. Now, there's also something from Remember called Sewing and Reaping. Sowing and reaping, which means that however you sow, if you sow to the flesh, you reap. It's really, really important. 'cause I wanna tie this to this whole here of growing up. We have to grow up. Let me ask you a question, because we have to learn to honor our bodies and honor the bodies of people around us as ones that are actually promised to a other person, to one person.

Jesus himself said, marriage for me goes right back to the garden with Adam and Eve, an exclusive relationship. So all sexual activity outside an exclusive relationship like that is causing you damage. So we now, when we approach scriptures, we run it through the filter of whatever the government tells us or whatever someone else tells us, or whatever the school tells us, or whatever the law tells us.

Now, I want you to think this through, 'cause this is really important for young people and for all people. When were Adam and Eve married, remember when were they married? Were they married when they signed their governmental documents to say that they were married? Were they were married when they could afford a fancy wedding dress, some shiny rings.

Is that when they were married? Were they married when they could afford a flashy, big hotel with hundreds of guests and maybe some fireworks and all that kinda stuff? No. When were Adam and Eve married from God's perspective, when the two became one, when they entered into sexual union. Now, stay with me on this.

When you enter into sexual union with another human being, God considers you married and he expects you to grow up and fulfill your marital obligation. If you refuse that, you are literally divorcing that person and then going to another one. And then to another one, and to another one, and the law of sowing and reaping will create havoc.

It will destroy you. Some of us did this because we knew no better. We knew no better. So therefore we went across and it's like, oh, well it happened before I, I didn't know. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that I didn't know. It's a principle. The principle of sowing and reaping affects you, so you gotta decide.

If you are going to enter into sexual union with someone, you are considered married as far as God is, and you have an obligation then to man up or women up and face it, and you say, oh, but, but, but what if I, what if I choose afterwards that I don't love them? That's your problem. You made the choice, man up.

Stop behaving like a child. It's not about you. You wanna play in the marriage pool, be then be the marriage man and woman. So part of this is part of helping to address some childishness. 'cause there is a real childlessness going on in our nation now in this area where you feel like you can flip from one to the other, to the other to the other.

And it's not gonna hurt you. Every relationship that you ever enter, that the two become one, the two become one, can never be undone. And so you end up carrying baggage with you from relationship to relationship, and you think it's fun at the time, but trust me, I'm 61 and it took me a bucket load of years to deal with this in my life.

So I wanted to put that in there because it's part of growing up, it's part of accepting you're not a child, you're becoming an adult, and you need to accept responsibility. Accept responsibility and that's why these mentors are here. But if you don't read, you won't know. And because you don't know, you can say, well, God, I didn't know it's not my fault.

Well, that's bad luck. You walked into the minefield. I catch up road down for you. You made the decision. You could put it on yourself. You're gonna have to live with it now. You gotta figure it out. And I know God's gracious and I know God's loving and he forgives you of all your sins and all else of that.

I get that. I get that because I've experienced it, but I also know that the law of sowing and reaping can still continues on. So you might get you, you, you might feel like, oh God, I'm forgiven. But the stuff that you've created by the childish ways will still outwork until you sow some good seeds eventually and do good things.

So that's what sub devotions is about. It's about entering in so that the scriptures enter us so that we mature and we grow up in who we are in Christ. Otherwise we go from disaster to disaster. And Paul and the other apostles had to deal with it all the time. Now we can for time, I was going to Anita, are you gonna chat to Bethany?

You still wanna chat to Bethany for a second? Okay. Bethany, come up here. God over there. Slightly impromptu here, ladies and gentlemen. I wanted Anita just to have a chat with Bethany. 'cause Bethany Wrote something during the week about the soap devotions, and I said, that is so good. But then, and I just wanted to chat to her a little bit further.

So have a look at this and then I want to come and talk to you about another side of childhood that you do need to this. So this one you gotta put off. So you mature into, into Christ. The next one you're gonna have to put on. So, but after this, so during the week I put up a post in the family page and just asked people to share how their soap devotions had matured them.

And I put it in the youth leaders chat also, and Beth texts me separately and I just loved her response. So, do you want me to read what you said, or do you just wanna share it? I'll share it if you, yeah. Yeah. Cool. So I said that Doing my devotions is, is life changing for me because it either validates or challenges my choices that I have to make and Like, I know that ultimately God is speaking through his word in the Bible.

And so it's a way for me to have direct access with him beyond praying and worshiping. And I think that it's contributed to my growth. Because without it, I would have no structure in reading the word. So when we do soap devotions, we observe and we ap apply and then we pray. And for me, I think without this I would just sort of read and go, oh yeah, that's cool, but you actually have to apply it.

And that is where the life change comes. Yeah. That's so good. We, Kevin and I spoke at Youth on Friday night and they are in a series called Table of Context, looking at the context of the scriptures and it ties in so well with what we're doing here on Sundays. And I bought my old. Bible in from my own youth days, and it had my very first Bible reading plan in it, which is actually the same plan we do here now from 20 years ago.

And I was saying, I said to Beth, I started soap devotions in 2003. Well, you were even born yet. And she goes, I was three. I was three. I'm like, oh my goodness. But how it just highlighted to me that. It can, it, soap devotions is something that can carry you across a lifetime and it's certainly grown me up.

And we wanted just to highlight today, I wanted to ask you a second question about soap. How have you noticed it growing you up from childish ways, like you started soap. Probably when you first came to youth here as a teenager Yes. And then now you are a young adult just recently got married. How have you noticed that soap devotions has been a key in growing you up out of childish ways into maturity?

I think for me A lot of what I guess the childish ways for me was I was really doubtful and I've struggled a lot with anxiety through my whole teenage years, all through high school. And, but for me, especially since being married, I think it was a big journey for me and I was in my soap devotions And I noticed a big theme of it went from you know, hope in the Lord and don't be fearful about anything and, and all of that.

But now it's actually changed into, I. Being confident in the Lord. And for me, it's been life changing because I'm in this new season of my life, which is scary. It was scary, but now it's not. You know, I was really, I was quite anxious about it before and now being in it, I know that God's faithful and I know that he has come through for me and tie in our marriage.

And so, I am now just on this journey of being an authentic person. I think that has been the biggest thing for me at the moment, is authenticity. Like I wanna be the same person in every situation that I'm in, and I wanna be confident in who God's called me to be. And I think I also used to just sort of, you know, I guess I would change my answers for people and I would change how I acted around people because I wanted to relate to them.

But, Yeah. That's not what it should be like. I, I need to be confident in what I know God has called me to do and who he's called me to be. And so that's been a massive thing for me in this season. Yeah. I love that. Thank you so much for sharing. Yeah, that's okay. Thank you. Thank you.

I love that. The when Anita was telling me she had tears in her eyes late, Bethany was only three when I started doing devotions. Look at my wrinkles, you know? So devotions for us from the day that I discovered it with Pastor Wayne Cordero and I, I heard how he had spent a decade having the Holy Spirit teach him how to piece this together so that you read under the old, but you apply what's in the new, so you learn from the old.

You know, you can be inspired by it, but if you don't see it come through the cross into the new, then don't apply it because it was for Israel. So that was such an important thing, but it's gonna be equally as important till Jesus returns. It's because that's the reality and, and the, the reality is the world is gonna shift more and more.

Every single value that we hold dear, that God holds dear is being challenged and being undermined and being changed. And it's being done under a very clever veil of just tolerance and being loving and all the rest of that. And so you can't preach enough sermons against, in fact, if you even tried to preach sermons against it, they shut you down.

So what you've gotta do is keep upholding, you gotta keep teaching, and you've gotta keep helping people to read the scriptures for themselves so that they can enter into it. So when they hear lies, they know that they're lies and they can do something about it. So we gotta get exit childishness, but here's not something you've gotta enter into as well.

And that's child likeness. Child likeness. You gotta stop being childish. You know, used to think like a child. Behave like a child. You decide to put that away now. Now you're gonna grow up into Christ. You're gonna accept responsibility as a man and a woman. You're gonna grow up. But then you've got Jesus on the other hand that is saying this in Matthew chapter 18.

He says, I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. So there is a coming out of childishness. And growing up to maturity in Christ, which the scriptures will help you and the Holy Spirit will help you. And then there is a stepping into child likeness, which is what Bethany is really talking about, where she's learning to draw her confidence and her trust from God not in herself.

Did you hear what, when she said, when, when she was trying to do it within herself, she became this duplicity of a person. It's like, well, I'm one thing over here to please these ones and I'm one thing over there and, but now she's got the person like, no, this is who I am. This is what I believe. This is what I know to be true, and I don't care what anybody else says.

I will not be moved off. What I know that's the maturity, but the reason Jesus is saying this, you've gotta become childlike, is because as adults, We are too skeptical. We get skeptical about everything. We lose the ability to wonder and to dream and get excited about stuff. We stop trusting. We stop having fun.

We stop faith because now it's all about responsibility. Facts now speak louder than faith. And then we start not just aging, but we start growing old, which is horrific. It's terrible. You should never grow old. You can't stop aging but should never grow old. So Jesus saying, if you want to engage with me, you're gonna, you come in as a little child.

So there's a child likeness, but it's an innocence of child likeness, of trust and of love, and it's like you just, wow. Whatever dad says, run out in the middle of nowhere. Sure thing, no problem. Off I go. But I gotta tell you, for me, this has been a bit of a problem in the last probably six months or so, again because.

Changing a church and rethinking a church the way that God has had on the journey has away from unhitching, from the old covenant and fully becoming what Jesus had in mind was. Hard work. Difficult work, and there were lots of changes and it. Took a huge toll and we still have a certain amount of debt that I inherited.

And so God's just started whispering to me over the last year ago, Hey, listen, first 10 years was about rebuilding, you know? Yeah. I said, yeah, good with that. It was great. Good job. And he goes, now, the second 10 years now, and this is about, now you've got a new wine skin. That's a new wine. You know, this is about the vision one church in multiple locations and multiple expressions and, and he's talking to me all about this.

And so you gotta get ready to move and you gotta get ready to grow. And I'm going, I just want to sleep, you know? And so I find myself like reverting to childish kind of even ways with God, just like whining. Oh, that's not fair. That's not fair that pastors go to church. He doesn't have no debt on his church.

It's not fair. Look at those ones over there and what about this? And look at what they're doing to us here and now we've got no parking, it's not fair. And I'm having a big whinge around this whole thing. And then I get demanding, well, if you do this well then I'll do that and that doesn't work. And then eventually he just lets, God is so, we have a very unique relationship.

God and I, like I did my little thing here, have my little tent to tantrum, and he goes, oh. Are you done? And I go, yeah, who's building the church? You are? Yeah. You design for the ride. Okay. So how about you start being a little bit more childlike again? I said, well, do you mean I can, I can give you another building like that if I want to give you another building.

I can figure these things out. You haven't gotta worry about all that. You've gotta just trust in me. I go, yeah, but you, somebody has to worry about it. We, no, no one has to worry about it. I, I've got it all taken care of. Yeah, I heard that from Ann again last week. Give it to God, give it to God. Give it to whatever that means, you know, she's got this thing going on.

Give it to God. Give it to God. This is amazing. We, we lay in bed at night and I'm thinking about all this stuff and she's there going, ah, just give it to God. She goes, I'm gonna sleep now and then I have to wait for an hour just listening. Is that you, God,

she's on, she's online something. I'm gonna pay for that later.

So we gotta, we gotta put the childish ways away. We have to grow up, take responsibility, be an adult, but. You've gotta also at the same time, remain childlike and not lose the capacity to wonder. Wonder what's going on in your kids. Watch them learn from them. Some of the childlike things that they do, they teach us so much as well as the bad stuff.

But you start to wonder, wonder what God could do. Well, God took 12 guys and overcame the empire and the old religious system, and these guys were amazing. Totally uneducated, apart from a couple of them. And they, they did the most amazing things. Why? Because they, they just had this excessive faith and love and trust and wonder and believe that God could do it, so God was gonna do it, and they just stepped into it.

So you've gotta make sure you don't lose that. So you've gotta be able to assess yourself all the time. Is this a childish thing coming at a, me, me, me, me, me because I want to control things? Or is this. Now this is a childlike faith. Lord, I'm gonna trust you in the midst of this. I don't need to revert back to that.

Don't need to revert back. So now that you know, this is excellent, 'cause you can choose what to do about it now you can change a little bit. Change a lot, change, nothing. It's up to you. You can change or you can not change. But here's the deal. Whatever we do, we're free to choose, but we're not free from the consequences of our choices.

That law of sowing and reaping happens, and it happens consistently. So I say to you, spend time with the divine mentors. Get with a few other people. Read together. You get a collective revelation. When you come together. Allow the Holy Spirit to draw you into the story so that the story can enter you, so you can change, be conformed to the image of Christ You.

You grow up out of childish ways and you step into child likeness with a faith that is just so incredible, so incredible. Can you imagine if everyone lived like that? If we all live like that, man, there'd be no broken relationships around the place. Everybody would be so happy. So much fun. I mean, certain doctors or areas might be struggling because some wouldn't be so many stress people, so many anxious people, so many depressed people, but that's okay.

They'll find another way of making some dollars. Business owners, they would love it. Imagine running a business where there's no conflict. All of my team just gets something like Angels and they're all in the same place. Do you know I have, I have conversations with pastors. That all they wanna do is whinge about how bad their people are.

Oh, this one says this. And they're doing that, and someone's over here and they're trying to undermine them and they're trying to do this and they're trying. And How's your team? Ours is great. That's great. But why? Why aren't they trying to, why? Why aren't they trying to knock each other off the perch?

And things, like I said, because we're servants. Our servant, our leadership model is servanthood. We pick up a talent we serve and we love, and we care and we give. So, So leadership is actually a journey down, not up. They're in the wrong lift. You don't have it? Nobody. No, nobody's, nobody's trying to assassinate the cleaner.

And when was the movie you saw where someone was out? You know what? Let's assassinate the cleaner. Let's take him out. 'cause that's gonna really topple the whole kingdom. Now they're always going for the president, the big fella. But when you grow up, churches run on this. We used to run on this. What happens the higher you go up the leadership ladder, less positions.

So then you gotta figure out, if I want to go further up the ladder, I gotta figure out how to get someone out of a position. And it's amazing the things that you can prefabricate to get yourself up there, childishness. But if you're a servant, you lay down your life, you let go of childish behavior and enter into childlike relationships.

Oh, everything begins to change. I. And everyone around you is rewarded because you carry something of the presence of God. You carry a strength. You carry something that they know they don't have and they won't get inquisitive about it. Like, why do you handle this so differently to everybody else? Why aren't you falling apart at the seams?

Why aren't you worried and striving to do this, that and the other? No, because God, if God wants me to do that, he'll work out a way to do that. I'll just pick up a towel and I'll serve and I'll love, and my whole life will be a sacrifice of worship. 'cause I know that's pleasing to you, that speaks to people, and I'll trust you to do whatever you want to do.

So we gotta enter in. We gotta end to in, let's pray together. Father, I just thank you that you, you help us put away childish things. You put away behaviors that just keep hurting us and damaging us. And, and Lord, we choose to let those patterns of go, which are from the world and they're from our sin, nature, and that.

And we enter in, we choose to enter in childlike faith, enter in to relationship with you. We choose to allow the scriptures to speak to us. And when they speak to us and the revelation comes, we choose to apply it so that we may become more and more like Christ. Father, we just offer our bodies a freshs as living sacrifices holy and pleasing to you, which is our proper form of worship.

And for ones of us, maybe lords particularly out that area of purity where we're going, oh man, I just mucked this up so bad. I'll guarantee you, you haven't mucked it up as bad as me. And for those of us that have feel like that, Lord, there's grace and there's mercy, and there is love. Sure. We may still have some sowing.

I'm recommend some consequences to live through, but we can experience your love, your grace, your peace, your life as a child coming, just a child coming to a mom and dad and it's like, man, I'm all beaten up and covered and mud and the same way, three in a bath. Clean you up. You can do that. There might be some consequences, but Father, I pray for those 'cause I understand what that's like.

I've been through that. I've walked through that. But I know once I knew that I was forgiven by you and I had a deposit of your spirit within me, I knew everything would be okay. Even those circumstances still were yet to change. Lord, help us to remember that you. You had this written down for us so that we, we would know what your will is.

We don't have to guess it. It's right there written down for us. So father, we just thank you for the way that you just love us so passionately. You understand the brokenness, you wade it into the brokenness to help us get out. You understand that we can't fix ourselves. It's just us that have to come to that realization.

We can't fix ourselves, so we surrender our lives to you afresh and say, Lord, you fix us. You conform us to the image of Christ. We will love you. We will trust you instead of trying to figure this out ourselves, as always ends in disaster. So we thank you for this time together in Jesus' name, amen. Don't be conformed to the pattern of this world, which is based on childishness and me centeredness.

Be conformed to the image of Christ and where you have entered into things and there are consequences. I need to tell you what my wife says to me, and it might help you when there's things that you've just done, some things you shouldn't have done, and there there's some consequences and she just says, Honey, suck it up, princess.

Put your stilettos on and suck it up. Princess. That's how it is, man Up or woman up. She's, she's a wonderful counselor and trust God that he'll fix it up.