Transcription
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.)
Thank you for that. It's always a privilege to be able to step in and do this. I don't know about you, but I could have just sat here and worshipped a little bit longer.
You guys are always good, but this morning was just exceptionally good. So I got a phone call. Well, first of all, I got a text message from our dear Aubrey.
He said, Jim, he said, no, can you fill in? I'm really feeling, I'm struggling this week. He said, can you, can you be on standby? I said, absolutely. I got you.
I said, I'll just dig into the archives. I'll pull something out and I'll dust the dust off. It will do something.
He's all right. He says, can I let you know tomorrow, meaning Friday? I said, absolutely. I said, you could call me at eight o'clock Sunday morning and tell me, and I'll, I'll gladly jump in.
So he texted me. He said, look, I'm not getting any better. So, so he said, could you step in? So just a side note, let's, let's really lift him up in prayer this week.
Right? He's been carrying a lot and physically he's just really, really struggling. So, so I told him I would go into the archives and, and so I've done just that. I've gone in, I brought out my favourite book.
What? You don't all have this on your nightstand? What's the matter with you guys? So this is Webster. Webster was, was printed in 1968. I was eight years old.
I know, I know I look too young to do that yet, but that's true. I was eight years old when this was printed. It took them 20 years to put this together.
20 years. So in 1948, they started working on this book. It took them 20 years to put it together.
It's, it's 750 pages of light reading. If anybody's interested in picking up a copy. And, and there's probably about 42,000 words in here.
And, and so I thought just for fun, we would start at A. No, I'm kidding. But I used to use this all the time when I was teaching high school students. We would, I would always have that sitting beside us.
And if we ever came up with a word, right? Because sometimes, you know, when kids are younger, you throw words and they're like, what is that word? Right? And so I had Webster there and we would look up Webster. So somebody would come up and volunteer and look up Webster to see what Webster had to say. So, so it's, it's been in my archives for a long time.
Thankfully, now we have Google, right? Hey, man, we don't have to carry around big encyclopaedias like this anymore. We can just say, what is the meaning of, you know, and type in the word and we get all the explanations, all the meanings. And, and so it's, it's a lot easier to dig into the archives.
It's a lot easier, but it's valuable to know that, that there's resources like that, right? Because words are important, aren't they? Right? We use words every day. Yeah, that's okay. You're allowed to engage with me.
I love it when you do that. So we use words every day to communicate, to express. And if we're unclear on words, the typical Canadian thing to do is just nod our heads and agree anyways, isn't it? Right? Even if we don't understand what they're saying or the word, oh yeah, that sounds good.
Right? Because we don't want to look, you know, like we're ill-intelligent, you know, we don't want to look like we got a lack of knowledge or a lack of a database. So we just kind of nod and agree. And, but truthfully inside we're, we're unclear of the meaning because one word, you know, if we ask the lawyers in the house, one word could be interpreted different ways and could change the whole understanding of something.
So it's important that we, that we look at words and understand words and challenge ourselves, you know, challenge yourself to read a book like that from cover to cover. You'd be amazed at what you would pick up and you'd be amazed at the words that you pick up. I have a mentor, his younger daughter, as they were growing up, that was the thing that they did.
Every day they would introduce a new word to themselves and they were jealous of themselves to look at the root of the word, where it came from and the meaning of it. And, and he said by the time she got through high school, her vocabulary was just off the charts because they were just, and his was too, because it challenged him to look up new words. The thing about words is, is we can, we can say things outwardly and convince most people most of the time of the truth of those words.
How many of us have been churning on the inside, really struggling and challenging with somebody and somebody comes up says, how are you doing? I'm fine. It's all good. Anybody ever done that? Or are you the only one? Oh, I got a few honest people here this morning.
That's good. But it's true, isn't it? We can use, we can, we can speak out words, you know, I guess the term is little white lies, but we just, we're just untruthful with them. We're just saying, no, I'm fine.
Everything is good rather than being honest. But the truth is that internally, there's a couple of ways that our body interprets those things, right? Because we can't lie to ourselves. We can lie outwardly.
We can lie to other people, say, yep, everything is fine. Everything is rosy. Everything is peachy.
Everything is 100%. Inside our body's going, no it ain't. And we start to manifest, you know, stomach pains and all kinds of aches and ailments and stuff because we can't lie to our bodies.
And the danger is the words that not only that we use, but it's the self-talk that we use. Sometimes the words that we use on ourselves, we would be slapped silly if we use them on anybody else, wouldn't we? Right? Because we can be really negative with our words and the way we interpret or the way we speak to ourselves. So it's important for us to examine how we communicate externally and internally because it'll affect it.
Do you know the number one cause for people growing old and just manifesting that and just walking out in that? It's here. It's all mindset. It's the words that they say to themselves.
They've done studies year after year where when they change the dialogue, the inner conversations that are going on in elderly people, that their health changes. Amazing, right? Just changing that dialogue, changing the way we think about ourselves, change the way we feel about ourselves. But oftentimes we get so used to just having a low image of ourselves, a low self-esteem that it just becomes natural language that we repeat over and over again.
So it's important that we look at the words that we use and how we communicate with ourselves, especially, and commit to changing that. And again, I'm using this in a broad sense. I don't care if you're 10 years old or 100 years old.
It applies to us. We can all continue to look at the way we talk to ourselves, the way we talk to others, the way we're never too old to learn. We're never too old to pick up Webster and pick up a new, you know, just open it at random and poke at a word.
I've done that a couple of times and it's taken me five minutes just to say the words. Some of the words that are in there are just incredible. You know, I was thinking, part of what I want to share with you is I'm working on a new book called The Necessity of Effort.
And in this book, the whole, the heart of the book is, is if we put 100% energy into all our relationships right from beginning to end, imagine what our life would look like. Think back when you first fell in love, right? When you first met someone, you would do anything for that person. If they said to you at 10 o'clock at night, could you drive over to the next city and pick up my favourite hamburger at that favourite hamburger restaurant? You would say, absolutely.
And you'd be gone. Five years into the relationship, 10 o'clock at night, can you go get me that favourite hamburger at my favourite place? Well, there's a cold slice of pizza in the fridge. Will that do? Right.
It changes. We don't put the same effort into those relationships. We don't put the same effort into the relationships in our work, in our businesses, in our personal lives, right? The beginning of the year is always the time where people start with new plans and new goals.
And we've got a whole year ahead of us. Let's get started. What's the first thing everybody wants to do? They want to lose weight and get in shape, right? How many had that on their list? Come on, be honest.
A few of us had that on our list. We're going to eat healthier. We're going to start getting to the gym.
We're going to start exercising. We're going to go for a little walks. We're not going to use the remote all the time.
I'm going to get up at least once or twice a day and turn the TV on and off manually, right? Just doing something to engage in something. But what happens? A month into it, we're not putting in that same effort. And then two or three months go down the road and we're back into just using the remote all the time.
Kids, go get me a bag of chips, right? We're just sitting there just using that remote again. We're not putting in the same effort. So I thought, well, what if we did that in life, in business, in our spiritual walk, in anything that we journey through? What if we put the same effort into it at the beginning, the middle, partway through, and towards the end? And so that's what this whole book is about.
So I want to read some of it tonight, this morning. So I apologise in advance for reading. Typically, I don't read everything, but I want to read something because I want to make sure that I get it.
So look at it as a kind of a pre-narrative of the book. Is that okay? So when we look at life, we can sum life up in one sentence. Most of us, if not all of us, are either moving away from pain or moving towards pleasure.
I'll let that sink in for a minute. Think about it. If we go back to the health goals, right, where the pain is, we're overweight, we're out of shape, we're out of breath every time we get up to go to the kitchen.
So we know we want to do it. That pain is there, that we're uncomfortable with our health decision, uncomfortable with our diets, and all that stuff. The pleasure that we want to move towards is getting to the gym and eating healthier and doing that kind of stuff, right? So to sum up our lives, we're either moving away from pain or we're moving towards pleasure.
And it's the same in the spiritual journey, right? God recognised the pain, he saw the pain, and he brought in solutions. In relationships, the pain could be constant arguments, emotional distance, feeling unheard or unappreciated. Anybody been in a relationship pain like that? It happens from time to time, right? The pleasure is we want connection, we want understanding, trust, and feeling like a true team, like a true partnership.
So the action is that couples or individuals, we search out for counselling, we start reading books, we get coaching, we do something to improve the closeness, to restore the closeness, to restore the connection and the communications. In career and business, the pain could be burnout, long hours, inconsistent income, lack of clarity or fulfilment. Anybody ever felt that kind of pain in a career or in anything that we do? The pleasure is we want to move towards freedom.
We want impact, predictable income, and work that aligns with our purpose, right? That's the pleasure. So the action that we need to do is we need to start to get people into our lives that can coach us and mentor us in that. We start building systems, we clarify what our goals really are and start moving towards that so we can make choices.
We start seeking that out. If we're in a painful environment of work, for example, right? We're not going to stay in there for 10 or 20 or 30 years, I hope. We want to look for meaningful employment where we're treated well and we're looked after.
Health, right? The pain is low energy, chronic stress, poor sleep, declining health, right? We feel that from time to time, don't we? So the pleasure is we want to move towards vitality, strength, confidence, and peace of mind. So what do we do? We take action by investing in fitness, nutrition, mindset coaching, and lifestyle changes to feel better physically, mentally, and emotionally. Did you know that the health industry is a multi-billion dollar a year industry? It's incredible the amount of money that we pour into that because we want to get away from the pain and move towards something more pleasurable.
Personal growth. The pain is feeling stuck, feeling invisible, undervalued, or unsure about our direction. You ever had that kind of happen? The pleasure is we want to move towards confidence, clarity, self-respect, and a strong sense of identity.
So the action we take is we start to pursue personal development, mentorship. We start journaling and then we look for ways to grow spiritually and reconnect with those things that support that. Communication and visibility.
So the fear around that is the fear of speaking up, the fear of being misunderstood. Oh, how many times does that happen, right? We're afraid to say something. Well, I don't want to say that.
I might be misunderstood. Or staying hidden despite having value. You wouldn't believe the number of people that I have conversations with on a daily basis that have so much value, but yet they're so afraid to speak it out because they're afraid of what others would think.
They're afraid of being misunderstood. So the pleasure that we wanted to move towards is being seen, being heard, being respected, and making a meaningful impact. So the action we take is we do personal development.
We might start writing or journaling, start speaking, start learning to step up and communicate. These are all ways that we move from pain into pleasure. And I want to encourage us as a congregation because we're moving into a step, a season where we're looking for a new pastor over the next year and a bit.
And so the communication is going to be really important around that, isn't it? As a congregation expressing what it is that you want to see, how you want to see this role fulfilled, what are your expectations around that. Begin to speak to the committees and the committee members need to begin to step up and speak out. Articulate, communicate.
You may need to write things out a little bit. Oftentimes we're afraid to communicate because we're afraid that we won't get the words out in the right order. So we thought, well, rather than looking silly, rather than fumbling and trying to get my words, I'll just keep it to myself.
So part of just writing something out, just maybe dictating it, recording it on your phone so you can hear what it is you're saying, then you can refine it until it sounds a little bit more articulate and then you can share it. Does that make sense? Because that's one of the biggest fears. One of the number one fears is the fear of public speaking.
And it's not so much the public speaking. It's just the being prepared for the public speaking. If we're prepared to do something, we'll do almost anything.
But when we're unprepared, we feel ill-equipped. And so we're not willing to step into that. People will rarely change because they should.
They change when the pain of staying the same outweighs the fear of change. I want to say that again. People rarely change because they should.
They change when the pain of staying the same outweighs the fear of change. I've seen this over and over again. A couple doesn't wake up one morning excited to book counselling.
They do it after the silence gets louder than the arguments. After fine stops feeling fine. An entrepreneur business owner doesn't suddenly decide to hire a coach for fun.
They do it when burnout replaces passion, when long hours produce less joy and less clarity. People don't invest in their health because it's trendy. They do it when their energy disappears, their sleep suffers, and their body starts sending warning signs they can't ignore.
Writers don't finally share their story because it's convenient. They do it when staying invisible becomes more painful than being seen. Here's the truth most of us avoid.
Pain is often the invitation. Pleasure is the promise. Pain shows us what's no longer working.
Pleasure points us towards what's possible. Growth happens in the space between the two. If something in your life feels heavy right now, your relationships, your work, your health, your sense of purpose, maybe it's a sign that you're not, maybe it's not a sign that you're failing.
Maybe it's a sign that you're being called forward. You don't need to overhaul your whole life today. You just need to take the next honest step because the moment we choose movement over stagnation, everything begins to shift.
I believe that God allows some things to come in our lives in order to cause change. I don't think he sits up there spinning his wheel going, I think I'm going to throw this at that guy to make him move it. I don't think he necessarily does that.
We take Job for example. The enemy wanted to test Job because Job was the most righteous, the most influential, the most everything. He had everything he wanted and the enemy came to God and said, the only reason Job loves you is because you've given him so much.
So let me take everything away and let's see how much he loves you. He had to ask God permission to do the stuff that he did. All the things that we read about in Job, he had to ask for permission to do that.
So God I don't think necessarily causes everything. Some of the things are just out of the consequences, right? Like if we jumped off the balcony, if one of our balcony people jumped off the balcony and broke an ankle, would that be God's fault? Is that something God caused to happen? No, it's just a logic conclusion of a consequence. You jumped off a balcony, you broke an ankle.
So sometimes the things that happen are just purely consequence, but it doesn't mean that God can't use all those things for good. God can use all those things together for good. So I talked about moving from pain towards pleasure.
We're either moving away from pain or moving towards pleasure. Paul introduces something else and he talks about this thing called contentment. We're going to read that in Philippians 4. I know you were wondering when the scripture was going to come into this.
So here it is in Philippians 4 verses 10 to 13. It says, I rejoiced greatly in the Lord that at last you renewed your concern for me. Indeed, you were concerned, but you had no opportunity to show it.
I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need. I know what it is to have plenty.
I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well-fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want, I can do all this through him who gives me strength. So of course, I went to my good friend Webster, looked up content, and basically just get these words, happy, satisfied, pleased. Not something that we associate with pain, is it? Not something we associate with going through struggles and challenges.
But Paul is saying that I've learned to be content in all situations. Doesn't mean he's happy with everything that's going on. Maybe when he looked at his life, he was, what was it, five times he received 40 lashes, less one.
Three times he was beaten with rods, once pelted with stones, three times shipwrecked, spent a night and a day in the open sea, was imprisoned, yet he was content. Because he learned that moving from the pain to the pleasure wasn't necessarily the thing, but being content in all those situations was. He had a choice to be happy, to be satisfied, to be pleased, to be all those things.
And you and I have that same thing. Do you know that it's nobody's responsibility to make you happy? It's not your partner, not your spouse, not your family, not your friend, not your boss, not your minister, not anybody. Nobody's responsibility to make you happy is any others than yours and mine.
Not that I'm making you happy, for me to make myself happy, or make that clear. But we have the choice to be happy. We have to choose to be happy.
We can choose to sing in the midst of the struggles and the challenges, or we can allow that pain to consume us. And what happens when we allow pain and challenges and struggles to consume us? Anxiety goes up through the roof, doesn't it? Pressure, blood pressure goes up through the roof. Our stomachs start churning, again because we can't lie to ourselves.
We can say, I'm okay. But inwardly, we could be churning and having all kinds of things. So when we choose to focus on just the struggles and focus on the challenges and focus on what hurts and focus on what's else, that increases.
Paul could have easily done that, couldn't he? I mean, there's not one of us in this room that could probably say that we spent a night and a day in the open sea, floating around on a piece of driftwood, kind of like, who was it? The Titanic when Rose and I forget the characters in there were floating around on a piece of wood, right? You imagine being out in the open sea just floating around for a day and a night, not knowing what was going to happen, but choosing to be content in the midst of that. So what does that do as believers? As believers, it shows that there's nothing on the external that can really separate us from the love that God has for us. Paul, again, tells us that over and over again, nothing can separate us from the love of God.
Only when we choose to focus on it, we choose to pull ourselves into that place of just wallowing in the pain, just hanging out in the pain, just kind of petting it, just stroking it a little bit, rather than choosing to be happy. It was interesting when I looked up the word content. The first definition I got was content.
The content of the bucket was broken seashells, right? It was content. And I went, wait a second, did I spell the word wrong? Why am I getting this definition? And then I looked down a little bit further than the next explanation was, you know, being happy, being satisfied, and being pleased. I thought, oh, it didn't click.
Content and content, same word, just different meanings. But then I got thinking, it's the content that we allow to fill our minds, that we allow to fill our hearts, that conditions are directly involved with the content that we have. If we allow our minds to be filled with negative, if we allow ourselves to be filled with the woe is me stuff, and it's easy to find that, isn't it? Anybody that watches news, you know, you're going to get all the negative stuff.
They thrive off that stuff, they feed you that stuff, and we can get sucked into that stuff. So we can fill our minds and our hearts with all kinds of content that's distracting and taking us away from being content. So my simple reminder to us today is to learn to be content in all things, whether we're moving away from pain or moving towards pleasure, learning to be content in that whole thing, the whole process.
Because again, as the world looks at the church, what do they need to see? Do they need to see people running around frantic and waving their arms and going all over the place and worried and stressed? No, they need to see a people that are living a different life. They need to see us walking with that peace, with that confidence, being content in all situations. Years ago, I worked at a factory, and at the factory, you know, you get all kinds of characters, let's put it that way, in a factory.
And I was always challenged because, you know, as a Christian, I'm always trying to, you know, be mindful of my language, being mindful of my attitude, being mindful of how I approach and how I do things in the midst of all the, you know, the cussing and all the stuff that goes on in a factory world. And I remember one guy saying to me one day, he says, how can you be so peaceful all the time? He says, you're not married, are you? I said, oh, I'm married. I got a wife.
He says, you don't have any kids, do you? I got two kids. You don't have any debt. I got a mortgage, and I got debt.
He could not figure it out. Finally, I said to him, I said, it's just the peace that I get from having a relationship with God, choosing to be content in all those situations. The blue is mine.
That's what the world needs to see when they look at us. They need to see a people that are content, not pleased that all the bad things are happening, but being content, being mindful of his presence, regardless of where we go. When Aubrey texts me through the week, asked if I could step in, I said, yes, of course I could.
I'm in the midst of building a rather large project. And so I've been really deep in meetings and consulting and doing all kinds of stuff, and working probably way too late in the evening as I should, and getting up way too much earlier and working on the project. And so when he called me on Thursday and said, would you be able to fill it? I said, absolutely.
I said, just let me know. He said, can I let you know Friday? I said, yeah, you let me know Friday. So I got working away on my project and just kind of going at things, just got to get everything going.
I kind of had some half-fixed things. Anybody ever leave things half-fixed, half-done, half-complete, not quite complete? Just one of those things, right? So I've got this website that we're building. It's half-done and half-not-done, and I'm trying to bring all the stuff together.
I had some errands to run on Friday afternoon. So I thought, well, I'll just shut it down, go run my errands. I had to do important things, like get my hair cut.
You didn't mention that. Does my hair look OK today? Nobody complimented. We always compliment women on their hair, but guys never get compliments on their hair.
Why is that? So I did all that stuff, and I came back, and it was about quarter to five, and I see a message from Aubrey. He said, Jim, I can't do it. He said, can we talk? So I got on the phone.
We had a chat, and I said, look, I'm happy to step in. So I thought, well, I'll get something ready for Sunday. That'll be a piece.
But I'll just finish these little unfinished things on this project. So I went to the site where I've hosted all my things for a couple of years now. I open up the thing, and it says, your account has been suspended.
I've been here for two years. I've never had my account suspended. I pay for my account regularly.
My account has been suspended. So of course, it's quarter to five, so I thought, well, I'll call support, see what's going on. Is there a glitch? Is there something that I'm not seeing? Like, what's going on? I get this message, because it's Friday afternoon.
We go home early on a Friday afternoon. We're happy to connect with you on the next business day. Next business day is Monday.
I haven't got that kind of time. I need to get this done now. So it got suspended, but what that did was it caused me to go, all right, there's no amount of worrying, stressing, or anything that's going to change that thing and unlock it.
There's no staring at the screen going, change, open, commit, connect. There's nothing that. I could have wasted all that kind of energy.
Anybody ever done that? You're looking at something thinking, move, change, get fixed. We're looking for answers. We're looking for solutions.
We're looking for all these things, but no amount of energy that we pour into worrying.