July 27

Transcript

(Transcribed by TurboScribe.)

Has it started yet? Did I miss anything? I got my popcorn, I got my coffee. This place is great. You guys got everything around here.

Is the speaker any good? Have you heard him before? I've heard he's okay. Some say he tries hard, but I'm just grateful to be here. I mean this is amazing.

You guys got so many things just to make it so exciting. I think I got everything. Yeah, I got everything.

Okay, this is going to be great. Well, hey everyone. Good morning.

I'm so excited to be here with you all today because I've got a message. I've got a message in my heart that I believe is really going to encourage us, but you might be wondering something right now. Why are we watching me on video when I'm literally sitting right over there with a bag of popcorn? That's a good question.

You see, I just didn't want to miss the show, so I grabbed a bag of popcorn and sat down there and recorded this so that I didn't mean miss the show. I mean, that's what church is, right? We walk in, we grab a coffee, maybe some water, we pull up a chair, we get comfortable, wait for the lights to dim, and then boom, church begins. I mean, some people get up, they sing a few songs for us, and someone will get up and pray, and someone gets up and talks.

That's me, by the way. Sometimes we laugh, sometimes we check our phones, sometimes we even take a nap, just saying, and then we pass a plate around, and if we like what we heard, we might toss in a few bucks. Week after week, we watch the show, and then we go home.

But is that really church? Let me tell you about another group of people. This group of people, they show up early, they stay late, they serve, they give, they care. They're not just attending, they're pursuing, because they understand something.

God is not looking for spectators only. He's looking for seekers. He's looking for those who are pursuing Him, that want a relationship with Him.

Jesus said, ask and it will be given. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened.

Well, that's not passive. That's not a sit back and see what happens kind of a thing. That's pursuit.

Church was never meant to be a show. It's a relationship. And relationships grow when we leave in, when we lean in and pursue Him.

So, is this a show? It's not a show? Well, Jim, if that's true, you better get up here and straighten this out. Okay. All right.

So go on, get up here and get to work. All right. I'm coming.

I'm coming. All right. Now, I know on a day like this, you'd probably be really excited if that was it.

And I said, good morning, see you later. Everybody be excited when they're right. Just kind of make it short and sweet and to the point.

But the truth is, have you ever had a message speak to you like that? Where it's just something that you hear. It's a song that you hear maybe on the radio, or something on YouTube, or something on your Spotify. Something comes up and you go, wow, I just needed to hear that.

Or a message like this, where something just speaks to you and you go, I needed to hear that. Has anybody ever had that? Where it just seemed like God just orchestrated, just tailored it just for you, just in that moment. Well, you know, when we come to church on Sunday mornings, we can sometimes treat it like a show.

I mean, I was joking with it a little bit, but the truth is that sometimes we do treat it like a show. We just come in. How many got their favourite pew? Come on.

I've looked around enough to see y'all in the same spots just about every morning. But we got our favourite spot. In fact, I remember one time I went to a church and I didn't realise I was sitting in someone's favourite spot.

And I was reading the bulletin and I was just aware. You know, you ever been in a moment where you're just aware that somebody's staring at you? You can just feel their beady eyes just burning a hole in you. And I was sitting there reading the bulletin and I was suddenly aware that I was being watched.

And I said, good morning. You're in my spot. Oh, I didn't see you sitting here when I sat down.

I always sit there. Oh, I'm sorry. And I got up and I had to move because this person just said that was their spot.

But the truth is we come in and we sit in the same spot. We get comfortable, right? We're in a time in an era where we want to be entertained, right? The average North American watches about eight hours of television a day. Not that you do that.

The average person scrolls three to four hours a day. Not that anyone here does that. But we're in an era where it's so easy to get information.

It's so easy to draw from things and we expect that everywhere we go. And we can expect that when we come into church, can't we? Just sit back, relax. I've had a busy week.

I've had a busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy week. So I just want to sit. No, I don't want to serve.

I don't want to help out. I just, I've had a, I've had a busy, busy, busy week. I just want to sit.

And so we sit, arms folded, wait to be entertained. Chad and the group gets up and plays a few songs for us. And it makes us feel good in the moment, doesn't it? How many enjoyed worship this morning? It was great.

And then someone gets up and prays and we feel inspired. We feel connected with God again. And then someone gets up and they try their best to deliver a sermon to keep us awake and to keep us from falling asleep and rolling out of the pew.

Cause that's really embarrassing when that happens, right? When that happens, when it's a full nod or a snore, that's embarrassing. But we, but that happens. You know, we come in and we take in the light.

And then jokingly, I said, we pass around the plate, but that's the truth. And we go, we pay for the show. She said, well, this isn't a bad place.

I like coming here. I like the coffee. I'll put in a few dollars.

I'll keep the, you know, just keep the door on them. Just keep the lights on just to keep people going in here. And so we, we put in a few dollars and then we get reports where we're falling behind.

I thought when the two of you came in, I thought he was your bodyguard at first. I thought, well, this is going to be a bad report that Scott is bringing. He's bringing in an armed guard to, to keep the crowds from, from rushing them.

But we get those reports on, on how, you know, how, how much it costs to, to keep the show going. But what if we shifted? What if we shifted that mindset from just coming on Sunday mornings and wanting to be entertained, wanting to be inspired just for this moment? What if we actually shifted, shifted our mindset, shifted our attitude and started walking out day by day? And that's what we're going to talk about this morning. We're going to talk about, we're going to continue on a little bit further in Matthew.

Matthew, last week, we talked a little bit about in Matthew, about seeking first the kingdom of God. And we're going to go on a little bit further. And our scripture verse this morning is in Matthew seven.

I think you have it up there, Grace. Matthew seven, seven to 12 says this, says, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find.

Knock and the door will be open to you. For everyone who asks, receives. The one who seeks, finds.

And to the one who knocks, the door will be open. Which of you, if your son or daughter asked for bread, would give them a stone? Or if they asked for fish, you would give them a snake. If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father in heaven give good gifts to you, to those who seek him, who ask? So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you.

For this sums up the law of the prophets. You know, when we look at that scripture, it encourages first to ask. Ever hung around little kids? I just spent a week with my granddaughters, three and five.

How many know that three and five-year-olds have a lot of questions? Endless streams of questions. I don't think chat GPT or Google could come up with questions as fast as a three or five-year-old kid can. But they ask questions because they're curious.

They want to know how things work. They want to know why things are the way they are. They don't just accept everything at face value.

They got to challenge it. They want to know. And that happens all the way through our lives as we go through school, and we go through training, and we get discipline.

And then all of a sudden, what happens? We stop asking why. We stop asking for things. We start just getting things, right? We start working so we could earn money so we can get things.

So we don't have to ask for things. We don't have to ask dad for allowance. We don't have to ask mom permission to go buy some candy.

We don't have to ask permission to go buy a new outfit. We can just earn money, and we can just go get it. So we stop asking.

But what Jesus is saying is start asking. And not just for stuff. I mean, we read last week about how Jesus knows.

You know, he says, I know the things that you need. I know that you need food. I know that you need clothes.

I know that you need all those things. That's a given. Seek first the kingdom of God.

Those things will be added unto you. I will provide those things for you. But what he's saying is ask.

So what do we ask for? What if we ask for more knowledge? Who could use more knowledge, right? Again, we're in a day and age where we could just Google things so we don't have to learn. We don't have to do anything. We can just ask for answers.

We ask Google. But what if we started asking God? What if we asked him for more wisdom and insight? How many recognise that there's some crazy things going on in the planet right now, right? Politically, economically, with leadership. There's a lot of crazy things going on.

How do we pray for those things? We don't know how to pray for those things unless we ask. I don't have an answer to how to pray for those things. I don't have an answer for where everything is going.

But what if we started asking, asking for wisdom, asking for insight, asking for understanding? We could be like my three and five-year-old granddaughters and we could ask until the cows come home, as the old expression goes. And we could never out-ask God. We could never out-ask the things that he wants.

But we need to continue to ask. We need to start re-asking questions so that we can understand and we can grow into the depths of things so that we know how to pursue him. We know how to build relationships.

We know how to do it, what to do, where to do it. We can figure all these things out. Rather than just going and taking a class or taking a course and trying to figure it out, we can ask him.

And then things would open up. He would open up on knowledge and understanding. How many would agree that he's infinite wisdom? We could ask questions for a thousand years and we would never get to the bottom of the wisdom that God has.

But Jesus said, ask for that stuff. Ask for the wisdom. Ask for the knowledge.

Ask for understanding. Next is to seek. To seek him.

How many played hide and seek when you were kids? We all played hide and seek. And it was fun, both for the one seeking and the seeker, right? It was fun to do the counting and then try to find who you were looking for. And it was fun being the person hiding because, you know, man, I've got the best spot.

Nobody's ever going to find me. I'm going to grow old in this corner because nobody's going to be able to find me, right? So it was fun to seek. But as we grow older, we stop seeking.

We stop doing those things. We stop playing games, for one, but we stop seeking. Even on Sunday mornings, we can come morning after morning, month after month, week after week, year after year, come to church.

But are we really seeking to know truth? Are we really seeking to know the God that we sing about? Are we really seeking to know the God that we we're learning about? Or are we just coming and just treating church like a show? Just taking in what we can get, saying, boy, that feels good. I got charged up. I did my religious activity for the week.

I feel good. I can go on and continue on through my week, right? And we can just step out and just wait until the next show. But seeking Him means, okay, I'm going to take this knowledge and I'm going to apply it.

I'm going to start doing something with it. And that's really what Jesus is after. He's after ones that are actively wanting to pursue a relationship with Him.

Not just show up at a show and just take and run, but just engage in relationship with Him, begin to pursue Him, deepen our understanding, deepen our knowledge, deepen our insights on what we can do, how we can use our gifts. How many realise that you all have gifts? There's no one on the planet as uniquely wired and gifted and created as you. You're as unique as your thumbprint.

You're as unique as your footprint. You're unique because of the experiences, because what God has put inside of you. But so oftentimes we just go through life thinking, okay, this is just another number.

I'm just going to trek through life and I'm just going to take what I get. And I'm not going to ask for any more. I'm not going to seek.

I'm not going to ask. I'm just going to go through life and do nothing more with it. But what if we step back and started to seek and ask and say, Hey, God, what do you got for me? What kind of gifts, what hidden talents have you got inside of me? How can I use those things? How can I better serve? So seeking Him is something strongly that He's asking us to do.

And then knocking on doors. How many have ever had to knock on a door for an interview or something like that, right? We've all been through that process where we've had to knock on a door. When we were kids, we would go next door or a couple doors down and we would knock on the door to call on our friends, right? We all did that.

And we would wait for someone to come to the door and either come out and play or invite us in. And that's the image that we have here is that Jesus is saying, knock on the door and it'll be open to you. Knock on the door and I'll open up the wisdom, the knowledge, the understanding, all the things that you're pursuing, all the things that you're looking for, and then some.

There's three things that happen when we come up to doors. One, we come up to a door and we knock on it and we wait for someone to invite us in, right? Kind of like your neighbour next door, your friend next door. Some of you may have had open door policies.

Anybody had those when you're a kid or when you're younger, maybe even now? You just have this open door policy with a friend. You don't knock, you just go in, right? I mean, there's probably some of those, but for the most part, we knock on doors and we wait for someone to open up, wait for someone to invite us in. The second is a door that's really kind of open within operating hours, like let's say the library, for example, across the road here.

If you go in operating hours, you don't have to knock on that door, right? You can just open it up and go inside and just take advantage of all the wisdom, all the knowledge, all the stuff that's inside that building. So we don't have to wait for someone to invite us in. If it's operating hours, we can just step in.

The third way is if a door is locked and we need to get into it, right? We've all watched movies perhaps where they call in SWAT. Anybody ever seen a SWAT movie where they're calling in SWAT to break down the doors because there's some criminal activity, there's something going, there's a mastermind on the other side of that door that they want to capture and incarcerate? And so they go up and they breach the door, right? They get the address right and they breach the door down. Now two things happen when you breach a door.

One is either there's nobody home or they surrender and they come peaceably or open gunfire, everything breaks loose and then there's a war going on. Now we need to be careful because this is where the seeking and the asking comes in place when we're knocking on doors because we want to enter into areas that we're called to go into, right? You may have heard the expression, new levels, new devils. Anybody ever heard that expression? It's a term that we know that through scripture it talks about the principality.

So there's levels of stuff in the spiritual realm around us. And so when we're stepping in and starting to pray and do warfare and intercede and do these different things, we need to be mindful that there's things, there's opposition that doesn't want us to succeed. How many understand that the enemy does not want you to succeed at anything that you do, right? There's a resistance of the enemy wanting you to succeed.

So we need to pray, we need to ask, we need to seek for discernment so we know what areas to go into. But so often we just accept the areas that open up easily. And too often that is sometimes just a distraction.

The enemy will open up areas, right? Because you recognise that the enemy has freedom over this world, right? Jesus battled with the devil. That's why he did the 40 days and 40 nights out in the desert, in the wilderness, struggling and wrestling with them because he was the prince of the air, it calls him, right? It's the prince of darkness, the prince of the air. So there's realms and there's stuff going on in there.

So we need to be aware of those as we're going in. But oftentimes as believers, we just shrink back. We don't ask, we don't seek, we don't look for knowledge, we don't understand, and we don't step into the fullness that God has for us.

But as we do this, we need to be aware of the doors that we're knocking into, right? Because you don't want to start kicking down doors and opening up a hornet's nest that you're not equipped to fight. Does that make sense? So we need to be mindful of the areas that we go into. We need to be mindful of the things that we're knocking down or trying to knock into.

We need to be mindful of those. The bottom line is that God is looking to have a relationship with us. That's why he's saying ask.

Ask for direction, ask for purpose, ask for meaning, ask for understanding, ask for discernment, ask for wisdom, ask for insight, ask me all those things. He already knows that you need the other stuff, right? He knows that you need a new car, you may need a new apartment, you may need, you know, a million dollars. He knows that you need all those things.

But those things, you know, we can earn and we can trade off for. But the deeper things of the kingdom that God is calling us into, those are the things that we need to ask for. Those are the things that we need to seek.

Those things we need the discernment for. You know, on a day like this, so oftentimes we look for motivation and inspiration rather than the discernment and the discipline that it takes to craft skills or to hone these things in. So oftentimes we pray and if the prayer isn't answered, in our opinion, then we stop praying.

If we ask God once for something and we don't see an answer, we stop asking. If, you know, he counts to a hundred and we try to find him and we don't find him right away, we give up. The truth is it takes effort to walk and to be disciplined, right? To get motivated lasts for a moment, that's external, right? That's just rah, rah, rah, shish, kum, bah, you can play loud music, you can rev people up, you can get all excited, you feel motivated and conquer the world.

Anybody had a moment in time like that where you just kind of hear the right song, you hear the right speech and you're just motivated, you can conquer the world. Two hours later, you're flat on your back having a snooze, right? The motivation is gone. But when we discipline ourselves to seek, to ask, to knock on doors, to ask God for direction and purpose and meaning and discipline ourselves to daily walk that out through reading scripture, worshipping, you realise that, you know, we can worship outside of church.

It's a neat thing, right? We can do that outside. We can read the Bible outside of the church. We can pray outside of the church and that's what Jesus is inviting us to do.

He's inviting us to seek him, to ask for him, to knock on doors and to build that relationship with him. But so often the church, and I don't just mean us, I mean the church as a whole has just got into this place of entertainment. They've tried to make it sound a little bit more attractive by using the term edutainment.

You've ever heard that term before? Edutainment is taking education and entertainment and putting it together. Because we're in such a fast-paced scroll on social media, go through YouTube, get all the stuff we want, spend hours on Netflix and Prime Video and everything else that we've come to the place where we need to have these merged to keep us excited, to keep us motivated, to keep us moving on. Where Jesus is saying, look it, seek me and everything else will be added unto you.

But there's a transition that needs to happen in order for that to to take place. Now a couple of things are going to happen here this morning. One is I'm going to freak some of you out by opening this up inside and holding it over my head.

I'm really tempting fate, aren't I? Now some of you may be quivering inside because you might be a little superstitious. You know what superstition is born out of? Fear. That's all superstition is.

It's just born out of fear of not knowing, of not understanding, of not seeking, of not asking for truth. We just accept what superstitions people have passed over. The superstition with the umbrella, it's interesting.

It happened in the early, in England when they would open these up indoors, there were big clunky things and they would hit people. They would knock things over and that's where the superstition started. But we've adopted going, oh no, you can't open an umbrella inside.

You can't be under an umbrella inside a building. Nonsense. But that's one thing that I wanted to address.

But the other is this. When we're born, we're born into this world under the umbrella of sin. Because the relationship was severed with Adam and Eve, remember in the garden where God said don't eat of this fruit, they ate of the fruit, right? And that relationship was severed.

After that we were born under that umbrella of that broken relationship. And most of us operate out of this broken relationship our entire lives, even people that come to church. Say it ain't so.

But really people just operate under this. They can come to church, they can say all the right things, they can do all, but they're still under this umbrella of this broken relationship. What needs to happen is an exchange.

We need to exchange that relationship. What needs to happen is we need to come out from that umbrella of broken relationship and come under the umbrella of God's provision. That's why Jesus said seek first the kingdom of God.

You need to step out of that broken relationship into this new kingdom that I am announcing, that I am bringing forth, that I am paving the way for in order to really understand righteousness, to have that right relationship again. But there needs to be a transfer from that old umbrella, that old covering, to this new one. And that's a decision and a choice.

And that's what Jesus is really getting at the heart of. This is really cool underneath here. I'm blinding all the lights.

I'm probably driving the camera guys crazy because they probably can't see me, but it's fun. But Jesus is inviting us to pursue a relationship with him, to step out of that old into the new. Does that make sense? Does it help to see a visual? Because so often we try to operate even as Christians under the old umbrella, the old way of doing things.

We think that the only way to get something is to work really hard. And I'm not against hard work. I've worked hard all my life.

But we can't earn the things in the kingdom of God. We need to step into that and accept it. And ask for wisdom.

Ask for understanding. Ask for discernment. Seek the things that he has for us.

Do you know that God's hidden things? He's hidden gems. He's hidden things all over the world, all over the place, in the natural and the supernatural. And he's inviting us to seek him to discover these things.

Because there's so many mysteries of who God is, of his love, of his presence, the depth of his love, the depth of his wisdom. There's so much in there. And he's inviting us to seek that.

And we do that by knocking on the doors. And God does that in all of our hearts. He knocks on the door of our hearts.

And the three things that I talked about? He's not going to breach it. He's not going to kick the door of our hearts in and force his way in. He's not just going to grab the handle and open it up and step in.

He's knocking, waiting for that invitation. Waiting for us to say, I want to step out of that old umbrella, that old covering, and step into the new. That's the invitation that comes from asking, seeking, and knocking.

Because God wants us to actively pursue him, to be in relationship with him. And each one of us have a calling on our lives. Each one of us, from the time we were born, you know, I get the privilege of working with people all over the world today that have gone through all kinds of experiences.

They've trained as lawyers and doctors and all kinds of other things, mechanics, and all the way through life. And only to discover 20, 30 years into it, it wasn't their real purpose. It wasn't the thing they're really passionate about.

They started out with passion and it served them well. But they discovered that there was more that they wanted to do. And you may be in that place in your life where you're like, there has to be more.

There needs to be more. I think I'm called to do more. I want to invite you and encourage you to ask.

Just say, hey God, what else you got for me? Because this ain't working all the time. This gets a little bit daunting. This is a little frustrating.

This is not using the fullness of my gifts. Well, how can I step into something where I'm using my full gifts, my full talent, and blessing and honour you? Because we are blessed in to do what? We're blessed to be a blessing. We're not blessed to ourselves, which is the old way of thinking, right? Just work, save money, keep everything for yourself, just get, take, and keep.

The new way is to give it all away. Be generous. As you give, you receive more.

You make more for God's provision. You make more way as you give stuff away. And that's the invitation that God has for each one of us, to step into the purpose.

You know, they say there's two exciting days in a person's life. One is the day they were born, right? That's an exciting day. If you've got children, you know that's an exciting day.

If you celebrate a birthday every year, that's an exciting day. Some of us have celebrated more birthdays than the rest of us, but that's an exciting day nonetheless. I mean, you've celebrated over a hundred birthdays and you probably still get excited about them, don't you? Absolutely, because it's great to celebrate.

So our birth is the one thing. The second day that's most exciting for us, most important day, is discovering why. Why we were born.

Why we're on this planet. Why God has provided us. Why God has allowed us to live in a country with the freedoms and the opportunities that we have.

And not saying, well, I've struck it. I've got it made. I'm just going to sit in the front row with my drink and my popcorn and watch the show.

No, it's what can I do with the gifts? What can I do with what you've given me? How can I encourage and inspire others? How can I encourage this next generation? How can I encourage my generation? Because the truth is that I don't believe there should be any such thing as retirement. I know I got a lot of sour faces all of a sudden, like, are you kidding me? I work hard. I want to retire.

I want to do nothing. No, that's not a biblical thing. To step out of the main thing that we do is wise.

That's smart. I mean, I ran a renovation construction company for 30 years and at the height I was putting 60, 70 hours a week. I ain't doing that anymore.

So there's stepping out of that is one thing, but we're never to sit back.