(upbeat music) - Hey new life church, Brunson Duke here. Thanks for listening in. The heart of our church is that you would know Jesus, that you would walk with Jesus, if you would learn how to live like he lived. We hope this message equips you and empowers you on your journey walking with Jesus. All right, Jubo's back everybody, Jubo's back. Get up for Jubo. (audience applauding) I'm sure at Sampone we'll have her share a little bit of her missionary journeys, but she's back in the building. So listen guys, today we have a special treat. We have pasta and cruzy in the building. Give it up for Aaron Cruzy. He's been faithfully serving his church on the campus development team and in just so many different areas and helping to hold church and shape the church in all his different campuses. So we're so excited for him to be here this morning. But before he comes up here and teaches from the word, let's all, if you have a man standing up for the reading of God's word, we're gonna be in Daniel six. So if you wanna be real long, let's all stand up for the reading of the word. Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day, he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before. Then these men went as a group and found Daniel praying and asking God for help. So they went to the king and spoke to him about his royal decree. Did you not publish a decree that during the next 30 days, anyone who prays to any God or human being, except to you, your majesty, would be thrown into the lion's den? The king answered, "The decree stands in accordance "with the law of the Medes and the Persians, "which cannot be repealed." Then they said to the king, "Daniel, who is one of the exiles from Judah, "pays no attention to you, your majesty, "or to the decree that you put in writing." He still prays three times a day. When the king heard this, he was greatly distressed. He was determined to rescue Daniel and made every effort until sundown to save him. This is the word of the Lord. - Let me see the eye. (laughing) - You may be seated. Let's take a minute, let's pray. Jesus, thank you for this morning. Thank you for your word. And the way that your word instructs and teaches and shapes emolds us. God, will we have ears to hear this morning? Will we have eyes to see? We just believe that you have something in store for us that we will be different because of what you wanna do inside of us. And so I just pray that each one of us will prepare our hearts for everything that you wanna do in and through your word in us today. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, good morning, everyone. - Good morning. - I have to take a minute and honor the leadership of this church. I'm so thankful for Bronson and Callie. They are getting some much needed family time right now. So they are hanging out with their family on the beach, which is a blessing. And I'm so thankful for Morris and Jess and their leadership. You guys have people who love you and who pray for you. And we're so thankful for the way that they help lead this church. As I said, my name is Aaron and my wife, Angela and I, we moved to Arkansas back in 2009 for New Life Church. We had never really even been to Arkansas. So this was an adventure for us. We'll have some pictures up on the screen. When we moved here, we literally been married about a year and we didn't have any kids. We didn't really have anything or know much of anything. But it's amazing how God's faithfulness is so evident over the years as you walk with Him. This is Obadiah. I knew that was coming. But we look up now and we've married over 16 years. And we have five kids, nine and under. Our oldest, it turns 10 tomorrow. And he's here in the house, this is Malachi. (audience applauding) And honestly, it's interesting. Like kids' birthdays do something in you as a parent, but there's something about having a sun turning 10 that has been kind of intimidating to me. It's like a new stage of responsibility and a new invitation as a dad to step up. And so you can pray for me because I've been feeling a little bit of that of like, oh man, we're about to have a 10 year old. As Mariah said, my role here at the church, I get the chance to oversee our campus development team. So we have a team that supports all of our 18 campuses around the state. We help with buildings, we help with processes, we help with environments. We've actually been serving and supporting with VBS a ton in the last couple of weeks because I think we've done 15 rounds of VBS in the last two or three weeks. And so we're helping with check-in stations and ministry safe and all the things. And so I'm incredibly thankful for the team that I get to work with. My wife, Angela, she was a nurse for many years, actually right down the street here at Children's Hospital. And so that was her world for a whole long time. And now she is a full-time, discipling and homeschooling mama of our five kiddos, which is a full-time job and more. And I tell people all the time that there's nobody in the world that I would rather have my kids spending the majority of their time with than my wife because she loves Jesus, she's a hard worker and she's a ton of fun. And so they're learning so much just in the day-to-day with her. And so that is her world. But Malekai's our oldest, he turns 10 tomorrow. He loves to read, he loves to play tennis. His current thing that he's studying is coin collecting. So if you find a chord on the ground, he'll take a look at it and tell you something about it. Augustine Jackson's our second born, he is seven, and he is probably the most encouraging young person that I know. The way that he uses words to build people up is just in him, it's just who he is. Maybe he actually just got baptized last weekend, which is a super special moment for us. Big moment for our family. Evelyn Justice is five and she is full of life. And that's our way of saying she's spicy. And she loves to sing and dance and she probably has given her youngest baby brother about half of the bottles in his life because she just wants to help. She's just like a little mama. And then Obadiah, who you saw the picture of, he is three and he is a ball of joy. And his favorite past time right now is going room to room and just destroying everything. I don't know if that's just a stage or, but that's what he likes to do. Recently, we were hiking as a family and he did awesome. He made it like a mile out and then his little legs got tired and I had to carry him on the way back. And so I was carrying him on the way back and at one point he's got his head on my shoulder and he kind of looks down my shirt and he goes, Daddy, those are your butt cheeks. (audience laughing) I said, no, I think we have some anatomy work to do buddy but I don't think that's what those are. And then Oliver is our six month old and he is a joy and a delight. He's been a blessing for our family and we've just decided he's gonna have to be tough. With this many older brothers and sisters, like he has no option, he's gotta be tough. But Bronson updated me as I was chatting with him about this morning that you all have been in a series this summer studying the book of Daniel. And he talked about it with the language of this is the summer of consecration and what does that look like? I love, I went back through the last two messages that you all have been studying and I love the way that he framed out this idea that as we are in a culture that is toxic or a culture that looks nothing like the things of God, we have three options. We can either separate, we can pull ourselves out of it completely or we can assimilate which means to become like it, to actually be changed into the likeness of culture or the third option that he talked about that was so powerful is or we can radically integrate. So we can inject ourselves as people of faith into culture and radically and actively serve the people around us to bring the kingdom of God to bear in every place that we set our feet. And I'll be honest, as I read through those messages and I look through my temptation, I know what it is. It's to separate, in my flesh, my tendency would be to say, hey, I've got these five kids to steward and to equip, let's pull away from the world. But man, I was challenged even with the messages you guys heard to say no, my calling though is to equip them to then radically integrate to be change makers, to bring the kingdom of God to bear wherever we're called to go. And so my hope for you today, as we stay in the book of Daniel, is that we can actually learn from Daniel in Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, how we can do that and how we can build healthy guardrails into our lives so that even in the midst of a culture that wants to take us out, we can live for the long term and finish our race well, walking with God because the Lord knows that is not easy to do. And considering that we had Father's Day last weekend, the truth I'd like to share is that this is the conversation, so what we're teaching today, what we're studying in God's Word, ideally this is a conversation that happens in the home and comes from a Father. So if your Father had these conversations with you growing up, the things that we study today, I would ask you, take some time this week and call him, would you tell him thank you for teaching you these things? And if you realize as we're digging into this, that potentially you didn't have a Father or your Father didn't teach you these things, my hope would be that you'd allow me to step into that role for a brief time as a spiritual Father to impart these things to you, that you can grow in them and then hopefully teach your kids and potentially teach your grandkids so that this can impact your multi-generational legacy. With this subject, I will be honest, we could teach a six-week series on it and so my hope for this morning is not to cover all six weeks. Amen, but to do just a basic foundation that you can take from today and begin to apply to your life. And I also wanna say this before we fully jump in, if there's any area we talk about today that you feel some shame start to creep in, I want you to know this, even if you've blown it in any of these areas, that there is forgiveness and there is healing available at the cross, that literally like the Lord wants to meet you in that place and begin a new chapter of your story even this morning and we'll spend some time at the Empraying into that. So, what is a guardrail? So according to the Cambridge Dictionary, a guardrail is a bar along the edge of something steep such as stairs or a cliff that prevent people from falling off. So clearly this could be a physical cliff, this could be a spiritual cliff or moral or even financial. So there's different areas in our lives that we come up to cliffs and these guardrails are designed to keep us from going over the edge. And to paint this picture, I want you to go on a journey with me. There's going to be a picture on the screen so you can either close your eyes and visualize this or you can look at the screen, whichever you prefer, but go on a journey with me. So we're going to walk up to one of the tallest buildings in the world. As you get to the base of it, you look up and you kind of have to shield your eyes because it is so high up there. We're going to walk in, go through the lobby, push the button on the elevator, it dings, we get on the elevator, we go all the way up to the top, it takes forever 'cause this is a tall building. So as we get to the top floor, we actually walk out onto the roof and as you look out, you can see for miles, unbelievable view. And as you begin to walk out onto the roof, you realize that there's actually nothing on the edge of that building. There's nothing that would keep you from going thousands of feet to the concrete below. So my question is out on that roof, the wind is blowing, how comfortable are you? Are you willing to play a game of soccer with your friends up there? Are you willing to go right up to the edge? You'd be like, this is awesome, thousands of feet. Not at all, I would assume none of us would be comfortable with that. Now I want to rewrite the scenario, now you come out on the roof, same view, but then you realize that there's 20 feet of glass all the way around that building and it's two feet thick. There's not a single gap that gives, that makes you vulnerable to going over the edge. All of a sudden, now I want you to picture, are you willing to hang out with your friends up there? Would you sit and have dinner? Would you play a game of soccer with your friends? You probably would because those guardrails changed everything about that experience. That which you placed around the top of that building completely shifted your perspective. So why is this topic mission critical for you today? Honestly, it's because unfortunately it is rare for people to finish well. It was rare for people to finish well throughout the course of scripture and it's rare for people to finish well today. So when you look through the God's word, the only 30% of the primary individual studied in scripture actually finished well. So for all of you math majors out there, that leaves about 70% that did not. So when you think about that, even just in the model that we're given in scripture, the 70% didn't finish well. The truth is when we think about where we are, we've all heard stories in the news, politicians, business leaders, pastors, who've fallen to moral failure or legal failure or financial collapse. And in fact, in the last few weeks, we've heard of a number of high profile church leaders who have had significant sin exposed to the public, which are devastating. These are devastating to those local churches and they're devastating to the local church as a whole. And I strongly believe that none of us want that to be our story. That none of us get up in the morning and think, man, what I want to do today is ruin my life, right? Like I just want to tarnish the legacy of the last three generations of my family name. Like none of us think us, think that way. We all want to finish well. And so for us to find ourselves at the end of our story, many years from now having run our race with perseverance, I believe there's significant work that we need to do today to prepare for the path that God's called us to, to make sure that we're ready to go to live out that life fully. Because if we're off in how we build our foundation today, as things stack up on that, eventually, that foundation is going to crumble. And speaking of being off recently, I was on the way home from church with little Obi. And I was asking him questions about our family. I was just quizzing him on where he was at. And I said, "Obe, how many brothers do you have?" And he said, "Two." Said, "No, that's not right." And then I asked him, "Again, how many brothers do you have?" And he said, "One." I said, "Obe, you have three brothers." And he goes, "Oh, like it was like the first time "you'd ever heard of that." I was like, "Oh." And then I asked him, "Obe, how many sisters do you have?" He said, "One." Or he said, "Two." I said, "No, one." So once again, we're off. And I said, "Obe, what's your sister's name?" And he said, "Conan." I said, "No, your sister's name is Evelyn." So obviously, it's not just anatomy training we have for him. We've got some work to do, even on the family here. But as Bronson has been teaching you all, we live in a culture that's trying to actively get you to be off, right? There's an intentional assignment on our lives to make sure that our foundation isn't right. This culture wants to erode our character and our integrity and our purpose in life, even our sexuality. The culture wants to erode all of these things. So there are two big moments in the book of Daniel that are gonna help us put together a significant picture into, "Hey, what does this look like when big temptation comes?" And then how do we begin to lay a foundation to be ready when those temptations come to dishonor God or to walk away from God's calling? And I know some of these Bronson may teach over the next few weeks. So our goal is just to hit a high-level overview and then apply them specifically to this topic. And so to set this up, I wanna give you a little context for Daniel 6. We read a little bit earlier out of Daniel 6. So in Daniel 6, Daniel has been put in charge of an entire nation. He's one of the top three or four leaders over literally tens of thousands of leaders leading millions of people. Like he is at a high level. This would be almost the equivalent. If you think of our country to be like the president's cabinet, he has been put in charge. And he's doing an incredible job. He's faithful. And because of that, they continue to promote him. They continue to give him influence. And when I think about being in charge, I think about Malachi here. Recently, we had a road trip. And because we have five kids now in a minivan, which is a lot of humans in a small space, he has to ride right in the middle. And so historically, he always got to ride in the back. But now, he has to ride in the middle. Why? Because we need someone to help all of the other children, right? Whether you're distributing food or activities or whatever you're doing on the road trips. So he probably gave all over about 10 bottles over the course of several days. And he was distributing all the different activities and food and did a great job. We had moments of impatience, didn't we, buddy? But after we got done with the trip, I just grabbed him. And I took a moment, put my forehead on his forehead. And I said, buddy, good job. I know that was hard. I know there were moments of impatience, but I'm proud of you. And he looked at me and he goes, it's really hard to keep everybody happy. (audience laughing) And I said, yeah, that was a glimpse into being a parent. Am I right? That's how we feel every day. It's like, it's so hard to keep everybody happy. But Daniel honestly was doing an incredible job of keeping everybody happy. That's why they continued to promote him. Except for the other people who were leading. Because they were getting jealous. Because it seemed like at every turn he was getting favor. At every turn he was being promoted. And so they began to conspire against him. They began to realize if there was any way for them to take him out, it would have to be connected to the laws of his God. Because it was the only thing that they could potentially target him with. And so they present to the king, hey, king, you need to make a new law that says anyone that prays to anybody but you for the next 30 days, they get thrown the lions then. King signs it into law. And that's where we picked up Daniel versus 10 through 13, which we read a moment ago. And that is when we read, just before we started that Daniel continued to pray. And the thing I'll note, I won't read the whole scripture because we read it a moment ago. But the thing I want to read is this. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed. Giving thanks to God just as he had done before. But right before that it says his upstairs room where the windows were open toward Jerusalem. You realize he didn't close the windows. He didn't do this in secret. He knew, hey, this is what I'm called to do. And I'm going to continue to do it with boldness. And there's so much in this passage. Even with the risk to his life, he was faithful. And that we're going to look also at a little bit at Daniel three. And we're going to talk about Myshek Shadrach and Abednego. They're in a similar position in that they've been elevated in their leadership. At this point, they're in a country of Babylon and King Nebuchadnezzar is the king. And they're serving their faithfully leading at a high level. And all of a sudden the king says, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to build the biggest gold statue you've ever seen. And I'm like everybody bowed down to it. So he does so. He builds a giant gold statue. And he says, hey, when the music plays, everybody's got to bow down. And they look out across the field and who's standing? Myshek Shadrach and Abednego. So they call him over to the king and they explain, you realize what's going to happen, right? So this is Daniel three, six. Whoever does not fall down and worship will immediately be thrown into a blazing furnace. And then their response, literally, the last couple of times I've read it has moved me to tears because their response is this in Daniel three, 16 through 18. Shadrach and Abednego replied to him, king Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us and he will deliver us from your majesty's hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know your majesty that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold that you have set up. And what moves me is not just their boldness, but just their honor. They still honor the king while holding strong to their convictions. They do it with respect, but they're clear. And I'm telling you what I feel like the Lord highlighted from me reading through these two stories is that these big moments, they inspire us. The moments of Daniel's and the lines then. The moments with Misha Shadrach and Abednego and the fiery furnace, they inspire us. But that's not where the big decisions are made. The big decisions are actually made in the small decisions earlier on in their story where they put conviction and they put guardrails in place in other smaller ways, so that when the big decision came, it wasn't even a question because they had built a foundation and they had built guardrails in key areas of their lives. And so you guys studied Daniel 1 a couple of weeks ago. So we need to go back there in review and get a glimpse of how they did this. So if you remember from Daniel 1, these young men had been literally taken as captives from their homeland. So they had been abducted from Judah and taken to Babylon. At that point, they were given three years of training. You guys studied this, like I said two weeks ago. And the purpose of that training was a few things. Number one, it was to introduce food that would shift their value system and shift their culture. It was to rename them, to give them a different identity, an identity that was aligning with a different set of gods and a different set of values. And it was also to educate them, to educate them in the ways of the Babylonians. This was an effort, as Bronson talked about, of total indoctrination. The goal of making these young Jewish men leave behind their Hebrew God and their culture and their values. Undoubtedly, King Nebuchadnezzar was saying, hey, I want you to look to me for everything and not look to the God of your people. Calvin wrote that Nebuchadnezzar knew the Jews were a stiff-necked and obstinate people. And he actually would use the sumptuous food, the food of the king, to soften them up, to begin to erode their values, to prepare them to make other, more compromising decisions as they went. And what's amazing is that the enemy does the same thing to us today. Literally, he has a plan and a strategy against believers today wanting to indoctrinate us into the world system. So he wants to identify us, to shift our name, to shift our identity in reference to the world. He wants to feed us what the world offers, and he wants to educate us in the ways of the world. And yet we see these four young men from a very early age, from a very early experience, beginning to make key decisions. And you guys studied this a couple weeks ago with food where they said, "No, don't bring us the king's food. "Bring us vegetables and water, "and then see in 10 days whether we are healthy, "healthier than all the other young men in training." And when the leader came back, he saw, "Man, these guys are healthy." And he allowed them to hold the line in this key area of conviction that set the course for who they were going to become. We also see in the way that these young men were described throughout the book of Daniel. If you get a chance, read the whole book. It's not that long. But you see glimpses of the way that they established guardrails in other areas and how they impacted the people around them. For example, in Daniel 6, this is how Daniel was described. At this, the administrators and the satraps tried to find grounds for charges against Daniel in his conduct of government affairs. But they were unable to do so. They could find no corruption in him because he was trustworthy and neither corrupt nor negligent. Man, doesn't that tell us something about who he was? He had an excellent spirit that was inspired by God in the way that he had crafted his life. And so these four young men understood in a powerful way that if they wanted to live a life of integrity for God for the long term, they had to establish these key areas of guardrails early on. And so for us, my question today is, what areas do we need to consider establishing guardrails? And I believe one of the most important that we need to look at is your pace and your schedule. From the very beginning, one of the most important things God modeled for us, even in the creation story, is creating and building for six days and then establishing a principle of Sabbath. Sabbath was designed to be a beautiful gift to humanity, a rhythm-changing pace that showed us the heart of God, not a set of rules and regulations, but an invitation to live differently. So my challenge to do is to think about, hey, what is your rhythm? What does your weak look like? Are you honoring and protecting moments of rest? Are you living out an intense, busy life constantly seven days a week? In Mark 2, 27, Jesus tells us clearly that the Sabbath was made for man. It was a gift to us. It was on our behalf, he knew we would need it, not man for the Sabbath. We weren't designed to create just to honor the rule. It was created to change the way that we lived. He knew we would need a weekly rhythm of rest and reflection, time with him and time with those we love. It was one of the biggest, in fact, it was one of the biggest resets. When you think about God's people coming out of the promised land back in Exodus or coming out of Egypt and heading towards the promised land, one of the hardest things for them to get was that they weren't supposed to work seven days a week because for generations, all they had ever known was working seven days a week. So the Lord's like, hey, you have to reset this. You have to live differently. You can't live the way that you lived and the culture that you lived in before. And because here's the thing we have to understand. Fatigue is a powerful force that pulls us away from wisdom and making God honoring choices. How often when you're tired, do you think back and you're like, man, I never would have done that if I wasn't so tired. Like the things we're willing to consider doing in a place of fatigue are so different than if we're rested, we're stressed and we're connected to the Holy Spirit. And so I would encourage you, are you rested or are you fatigued? Where's your pace and are there guardrails in place in this area? Another area to consider creating guardrails is where we go. I think about the young man in Proverbs seven, it says this, at the window of my house, I looked down through the lattice and I saw among the simple, I noticed among the young man a youth who had no sense. He was going down the street near her corner, walking in the direction of her house at twilight as the day was fading, as the dark of night set in. He was literally walking into a trap. Where he was going was a setup for failure to erode his integrity and to challenge who he was gonna become. And so my question to you is this, does someone know where you are at all times? Are there gaps in your schedule where there's vulnerable moments where no one knows where you are? For me, I have multiple people who always know where I am. People who have visibility into my schedule and visibility into my location. Because for me, it's one more layer of just knowing, hey, there's never a point where I'm gonna be somewhere and no one knows where I am. It's just one more layer, it's one guardrail that say it protects and it guards where we go. And not just where we go physically, but what about where we go digitally? What about what we put in digitally? I would ask you, what are you putting in? Just like Daniel and the guys, they were concerned about what they put in, for them it was in their mouths, but they knew, hey, what goes in us can change who we become and what we do. And so my question for you is in the areas of digital media, so say social media or movies and shows or music, what you read, the sports you watch, what are you putting in and are there guardrails there to make sure that the things that are going in bring you closer to who you're called to be in Christ. They inspire you to be more like Jesus instead of taking you away from his ways and away from his wills, away from his will. And then have you considered using tools, digital tools, whether it be covenant eyes or a tool called canopy or X3 watch. Have you considered using digital tools to create guardrails, to protect your eyes and mind and the eyes and minds of those that are in your home? To make sure that digitally where we're going is actually producing life, is actually leading us to a place of long-term integrity. Another area you may wanna consider is finances. Do we need to have guardrails in the area of our finances? Because Jesus tells us in Matthew 621 that where our treasure is, there our heart will be also. So if we're gonna guard our heart as the wellspring of life, do you think we have to guard our finances? Is that an area that needs protection in God's ways? For me, one of the best litmus tests of finances is simply this, when I think about money, what comes out? Is it anxiety or is it peace? I would challenge you if the moment you think about money, there's that meat and anxiety that rises up, that would be an indicator, hey, there's no margin and there's no guardrails. Because when there's margin, when there's guardrails in the area of finances, okay, these aren't mine anyway. I'm a steward, I'm simply a steward. God, what would you have me do with these? This being of finances recently, I was getting in the van with the kids after church and Malachi got in the van and he said, "Dad, you know what, it's crazy." I said, "What buddy, what's going on?" He said, "Inflation is even hitting the kid life store." (audience laughs) He said, "I used to be able to get this Lego set "for 50 kid life dollars, it is 75." (audience laughs) I said, "But as exactly what inflation is, "you get the same goods or services and it costs you more. "This is the devaluation of the dollar, "hard at work in the kid life store." (audience laughs) We had a great conversation about it, but that's what happened, listen, it's a real deal. So finances. And then I would ask on the last one you could consider in terms of guardrails is in the same way that these young men were considering what they put in their body. I would ask you, are there guardrails in the area of food for you? What are you putting in your body in terms of health and nutrition? Are you stewarding the temple that God's given you so that you can live out the long term? Because when we look at Daniel's life, what's amazing is he served through multiple administrations, multiple nations, and he was healthy and strong throughout. That doesn't happen if he doesn't have a healthy body, if he doesn't intentionally make decisions early on about what he puts in so that he can be healthy throughout the duration of his lifetime of service for the king and his lifetime of service for God. And what's interesting too is that guardrails are not just about what we don't do. So guardrails are not just about hey, I'm gonna avoid this thing and I'm gonna avoid this thing. Guardrails are also about what we install as rhythms that we do do. So think back to the story of Daniel in the lion's den. We just read that in Daniel six. Daniel was willing to die to protect his rhythm of prayer. Have you ever thought about that? The thing he was willing to die for was his prayer pattern. Sometimes we're like, I'm hungry, I'm not gonna pray, right? Like we're willing to give up our prayer pattern for like a cheeseburger. And he's like, no, I'm gonna hold the line because he knew for him to lead at the level he was called to lead. For him to do the things every day he was called to do, he knew I have to get with Jesus three times a day. I have to spend time on my knees or I'm not gonna make it. I'm literally willing to put my life on the line because if I don't honor this rhythm that's installed, this guardrail, which is prayer, I don't honor this. I'm not gonna make it. I'm literally willing to put my life on the line for it. So guardrails are not just what we don't do, but they are also the things we install and say, this is a non-negotiable for me. I'm not going over this line. This is what I do, come hell or high water. We're doing it. So what are the tools we need? Here's the most powerful tools that we have in our arsenal as we set up these guardrails. Number one is this, a thriving relationship with Jesus. We'll dig into each one of these. Two is taking the time to be intentional and developing your personal guardrails and writing them down. And three is establishing and fighting for true accountability in these key areas. So let's talk about each one of these. Number one is a thriving relationship with Jesus. So as we bow our knee to Jesus and we make him Lord, as we enter into the relationship he's designed us for, it's amazing because he creates this refining process in us, using conviction and using care to mold us into who he wants us to be. He will actually begin to tell you what guardrails you need. Because the truth is your guardrails may look different than mine and that's okay because each of us have a different story as we walk with him. But that's why we have to be connected to the source. We have to spend time with him and having a relationship with him. And just like any good father, when we connect with a good father, our desire will grow to please him and to honor him, which will inspire us to put the right boundaries in place. And as we daily stay connected to his word and his people through the local church, we will grow to love what he loves and reject the things that will separate us from him. So that thriving relationship with Jesus is mission critical. The second tool is building your personal guardrails and writing them down. You have to understand that no one else is going to frame these out for you. And even if they did, it wouldn't work because these have to come and flow from your personal conviction and your personal craving to create space in these areas to honor Jesus. And so your homework this week, if you choose your mission, if you choose to accept it, is this. I'd like you to take 20 minutes at some point this week, take a journal and a pen. And I want you to go through some of these categories we've talked about this morning. And I want you to start writing down, hey, I think I need a guardrails in this area and then ask Holy Spirit, what would that look like for me? And take some time and write it down and spend some time talking to Jesus about it, asking him about it. What does he want for you? What's he inviting you into? Because honestly, summer is the perfect season to be resetting these guardrails. We have to understand the seasons we're in and summer is a great season to be doing this. As I thought about seasons and preparing this, I was thinking back to when we had all of our back in Christmas, around the Christmas time. And we, it felt like we had like eight layers of grandparents, can anyone relate to that in the holidays? Like one set comes and they leave and the other set comes and then another set comes. It feels like there's family in your house for like months at a time. And so normally Obadiah is an incredible eater. But over the course of about five weeks with grandparents, all of a sudden we looked up and every meal he was asking grandparents to feed him. He's almost three years old, they're literally feeding him every bottom of them. What happened here? And at one point, my mom is walking through the kitchen and he goes, help me, help me feed me, feed me. I'm like, okay, and that's where I drew a line. I was like, this is not okay. Like we're not gonna have a three year old who can't feed himself. Something's gotta change. But so often in areas like this, don't we want someone to do it for us? Don't we want someone to be like, just tell me what I need to do. It's like, no, that's not how this works. Like these have to come from you. They have to be your layers of guardrails and accountability. So I would challenge you, take this time this week and do it. And then the third element of it that works with that is establishing true accountability. So for me, this has been huge in my life. I feel like as a young man, I just didn't understand how powerful and how important accountability is. And so over the last several years by God's grace, I've been able to find someone who's older and wiser than me that I get to meet with about every month. And we just sync up, we check in, we work through the areas of accountability and then I have someone else who's about my stage of life who I'm also checking in with every four to six weeks. And so what does it mean to be accountable? It just means to, this is the definition. It just means to be obligated to explain, justify and take responsibility for one's actions. And to answer to someone such as a person with more authority, in order to be in accountability with someone, you have to give them the authority to ask hard questions. You have to commission them to say, I need you to check on me in this area. I need you to dig in. When you ask me this question and I'm not answering, it doesn't seem like I'm answering truthfully. I need you to ask more questions. I need you to care enough about me to dig in in these areas. And so some of the things we check in on, you can create your own framework for this, but we check on, hey, how's your pursuit of the Lord right now? How's it going as you're spending time with him? Are you creating room for him? How's your pursuit of your spouse? Is your spouse doing well? Is her heart full? Is she feeling pursued? Is she feeling cherished? What's the biggest blessing and the greatest challenge in your life right now? What are the areas that you see God showing up? We check in on purity. How's the purity of your eyes? How's the purity of your mind? How about your media? What you're taking in, your relationships? Are they pure? We check in on stewardship. How is the stewardship of your time? Your time is the greatest gift that God's given you. It's the most, it's the least renewable resource you have. Is your time? How are you stewing it? How about your resources? How about your talents? And then we just ask this question at the end. Are you satisfied with your walk with Jesus? Like is he speaking to you? Are you in a place that you're thriving there? Or do you crave more? And as we think about these areas, as we think about the areas we're creating these boundaries, these guardrails to help protect us and create space, I want you to understand when you're most vulnerable and there's a couple points I wanna hit with this. Number one, we talked about earlier, fatigue is one of the biggest vulnerable spots. When you get tired, it's amazing what you can justify. And so I would just encourage you, be aware of how tired you are and when you need guardrails when you're tired. Two is when you're hungry, let's be honest. When you get hangry, we make bad decisions. It's like I really shouldn't have eaten that, but I was so hungry. Three, discouragement. Man, if you're battling a season of discouragement, just know in those moments, your guardrails become even more important because it's amazing how the enemy will try to go after you when you're discouraged. And the fourth is this is after a big victory. I know that may seem strange, but a lot of times after your big high moment, your mountaintop moment, it's one of the most vulnerable moments when the enemy's gonna test some of those guardrails to say, "Hey, are they gonna hold to their convictions?" Do they really believe this? Is this really important to them? So I'd love to take a minute right now. Go ahead and everybody bow your head. Close your eyes. If you know right now, even just over the time, short time we've spent together, that the Holy Spirit was moving on your heart, that there was an area that God was stirring in you and he was prompting you to upgrade the guardrails in your life, I would just love for you to raise your hand. I wanna pray for you. If you know, hey, there's an area right now, I know that I'm supposed to upgrade this. Lots of hands going over on, yep, lots of hands. People saying yes, I've got areas that I know God's asking me to upgrade the guardrails. Let me pray for you all. Jesus, I just pray for each person in this place, every person that raised their hand. Pray that you would make it abundantly clear, not just the areas that they need to create these guardrails, but I just pray that you'd speak to them about what that looks like. And then would you meet them in those moments to help them frame those out? I pray the Holy Spirit, they would feel so close to you and so affirmed by you as they do this, knowing that their desire is that they would spend the rest of their days following you and that they would finish their race well, that they would look back at the end of their story, just confident that you were at work all the way through. You can go ahead and put your hands down, leave your heads down and your eyes closed, because if, I believe there's also some other people potentially here this morning that if you realize, as we talked about that first point, that if you realize you don't have a thriving relationship with Jesus, that's the place that we have to start, because without that, none of the rest of this will hold. And so if you're still on the throne of your life, if Jesus isn't Lord for you, the Bible indicates that ultimately you would spend eternity apart from him, because the book of James is clear that man, when we've broken God's law in even one place that we're guilty of breaking all of it, and that the wages of sin is death, which is just eternal separation from God, and eternal separation from heaven. The word makes it clear the only path to eternity with God is the shed blood of Jesus. Y'all, Jesus really existed. He was really born into our world in a manger. He lived a perfect life, and he went to the cross to pay the price of death that we ultimately deserved for our sin. He was in the grave, he overcame death and hell, and he rose again three days later to purchase for us the opportunity to be forgiven, to be set free, to be healed, and to be restored in relationship with him now, and for eternity in heaven. So if you sense right now today, if there's that stirring in your spirit, that that is the decision you need to make, that you are saying, man, I need to surrender my life to Jesus. I need to make him Lord and Savior. I would just ask you to look up at me. I'd love to know who I'm gonna pray with. If you know that's you, you're saying, "Hey, that's me, I see you, I see your eyes." Look up at me, make sure I make eye contact with you. If you're saying, "Hey, that's the decision I need," I need a thriving relationship with Jesus first. Yeah, I see some eyes. Thank you for having the courage to look up and just say, "Hey, that's me." I need to make a decision to surrender my life to Jesus, to make him Lord, to bow my knee. Hey, would you pray with me, those of you that are making that decision in your heart of hearts, just pray, Jesus, we need you. I acknowledge my sin, I confess that I have done things to grieve you, I've broken your law at a thousand place and I acknowledge that that is ultimately what I have done. But this morning, I choose to turn, to repent, to receive your forgiveness, to receive your salvation, and I step off the throne of my life. And I surrender all that I am to you. I confess that you would come and fill me with your spirit. Begin to transform me into your likeness and give me the power to walk out your kingdom purpose for all of my days. Pray these things in Jesus' name. Hey guys, thanks for listening in. I hope that this message blessed you and it helps you in your journey with Jesus. If it did, leave a comment, leave a review, things like that help us spread the message to Jesus. If you want to connect with us, the best way to do that is to follow us on Instagram and @NLCDowntonLittleRock to follow along with a life of our church. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]
