Living Life Wholeheartedly
In today's message, Pastor Gene discusses what it might look like to live wholeheartedly in our relationship with the Lord and by extension, with those around us.
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good morning welcome if you're new here among us my name is gene i serve here at c3 church as your lead pastor yeah pastor it's an interesting thing on a sunday morning a lot of you probably sit there and go i don't think i'd want to get up there and speak in front of everybody so part of my job as a teacher the other part is a pastor and then there's all these other different jobs you're called to do in the church but you kind of wear a couple different hats and the real hard part is to get those two things to come together just right because sometimes pastors get a little too preachy a little too emotional right and then sometimes yeah you've accused me of this getting too teachy right getting too technical and so you gotta get into people's minds and try to get that stuff to go through the greatest journey the longest trip that's six inches to the heart right so how do you do that time with god you spend a lot of time in the word his word and a lot of time with him in prayer and so that's what i do on saturdays i spend time with my family i devote myself to them in the lord i spend a lot of time praying no offense but before the the service i get away from you guys and i go up to my own little room and i just pray when i was praying over the weekend praying this morning lord kind of talked to me a little bit so there's a little off the cuff but it's okay we'll live i got the feeling that the enemy is causing us to argue with one another not just as a church but don't raise your hands but over the last couple days maybe on the way here maybe you had an argument with somebody there's been a little bit of tension in fighting i could just be speaking to one person but something came into my household this morning and i realized what it was you see when the church starts doing really great things satan hates it he hates it he hates it when you start doing good things in your household he hates it he hates it so what is he going to do he's going to attack from within he's going to find the weakest no offense if you know he's going to find your weaknesses in the church he's going to find the weakest members he's going to start talking to him something's wrong right and it could be anything oh the worship team wasn't on point today you know i'm leaving the church over that right they need a drummer why don't they have a drummer i'm done you know i'm out right so so just just here's the thing this is pastor gene talking to you right now here's what we're going to do today i'm going to preach the word of god today ignore all the distractions knowing that if you're sitting here today and you've been here for a while you know that i love you and i know that you love me and so let's just keep those things in mind as the enemy attacks i'm going to tell you why too a part of what we're doing besides getting the gospel message out to a lot of people i often call this a like a live studio audience because we broadcast it and if you follow me on social media it goes out to an awful lot of people i just posted a video at 6 30 this morning and it went out to over 3000 people 3 000 people 6 30 in the morning right so that's a great thing but aside from all that what we're doing in the community we have the cafe and we're getting prepared to open it monday through friday serving great coffee the proceeds are going to benefit our community in tremendous ways we're talking to mission partners in the community coming up with intelligent strategies of how to give people a real hand up and help them in the community the conversations on the back end that we're having with people like collier county homeless coalition they're amazing the strategies we're coming up with are amazing all from a cafe a cup of coffee and today if you've been here for a while you know we serve food after the service i like food a lot and so sometimes we serve foods that i like today it's a food that i really really like ethiopian food so if you smell something really good that's what that is all right so it's going to be awesome and this is a cultural experience if you've never had it before you have to try it so em and paul are from there they're actually going to show us how to eat it yes there's a way you eat it it's amazing so join us in that and again remember this the enemy hates when you bring cultures together when you disrupt and destroy evil like racism right stuff like that he hates it and so if you're feeling under attack you're in the right place let's get rid of that we're gonna stuff satan today he's not catching a win not on my watch amen so pray for me though i need it anyway and you know we do have pastors in the room former pastors or people who have preached you get it you know you know what's happening and so you're like okay stick with it pastor so you can pray for me right now keep going keep going i'm not letting him catch a win this weekend has been one of those where most pastors are like why do i do this i do it for you so i've got a question for you speaking of jobs has anybody else here ever been fired from a job and anyone else said not now listen no excuses right like they just let me go or here's my favorite when you've had to fire people because that happens you have to fire people they go i quit you know you're like you were just about to get fired dude cut it out you know like come see me and they know and they're like i quit so right not that no like you got fired so here's the thing if you know me really well you know i've only been fired from one job in my entire life so i was an oxymoron that is a professional musician those who tried to do that know exactly what i'm talking some people are successful you know like denny he's good but he's got the kill so he's got his own thing if you know denny that's really funny but i couldn't make a lot of money at it so this is going back about 30 years yes i'm that old so about 30 years late teens early 20s trying to make a living doing that impossible so i got a lot of different jobs so you'd hop around to these day jobs and you didn't always do them well because you're a little tired from the gig last night right we also lived in a house with too many people so that's what you do when you're really poor so i was in and out of homelessness living on couches living in homes with like 20 people so it's like a raised ranch if you're from north you know what that is and you pack like 20 people in there you shouldn't even be getting that many people on a raised ranch and you're living like that oftentimes my bed was a couch that's what i slept on i don't have too much stuff but i'm getting these jobs and these very interesting people are influencing me right so that's how you go hey man come work with me get a job all right so i got a job with one of these very interesting people that i was living with was let's just say probably not a great influence on me at a department store and so it was the kind of place that sells everything in a mall like an anchor store and they sell refrigerators and clothing just everything but here's the thing of course they're not going to put me out on the floor they put me in the back where i belonged at the time a little rough around the edges so working in the back doing stuff like lifting a lot of boxes storing stuff or a lot of nothing operating a forklift stuff like that they call me out on the floor when they need something moved we need gene we've got to move something heavy so here's the routine you go to work and you punch in remember when you used to do that i don't know if anybody does that anymore it's probably an app you punch in and then you have your own like card you put your card back where it belongs and then we go to the back room where we belong we go up into the rafters and we'd make a fort so that we could sleep think about it i just did a gig i'm tired being honest here probably a little hungover and so i need a nap disclaimer especially for the young people nothing i'm saying in this story i'm not condoning anything in it okay if i laugh it's because i have the habit of laughing things that really aren't funny like if you get hit in the head with a dodgeball i'm going to laugh at you it just it's not right but it's me okay that's that's it i'm a sinner right so if you fall out of your chair something like that it's going to be immediately funny to me and i'm going to use all my pastoral training not to laugh at you if you're like that you belong here you're you're exactly in the right place so if i laugh during this it's not because i'm condoning it kids like just don't do what i'm telling you i did 30 years ago right bc before christ so anyway anyway punch in build the fort take a nap then it's lunch time gotta remember to punch out we punch out and then we go to this place that served something called a texas mug that is 32 ounces of something that you shouldn't be drinking before you operate heavy machinery use your imagination right so you have your texas mug and then you go back to work and you punch in you go nap in the fort you punch out really important right so this routine just keeps going punch in make the fort nap in the fort punch out for lunch time texas mugs punch back in take a nap remember to punch out same thing easy to remember right so one day a friend asked me to help him move so i didn't have much stuff we all had like a backpack full of stuff that's it and then all your musical gear professional musician equals five thousand dollars in musical gear 500 car to go to a 50 gig that's how you do it doesn't make any sense at all but your backpack with some clothes maybe a toothbrush if you have that and a bar of soap that's what you use to get everything clean including your teeth but anyway this friend he was a little more well off and had stuff that we actually had to move right so i asked my boss i went to work before the texas mugs said i went to my boss and i said can i help my friend move i want to leave early today yeah no problem great punch in make the fort take the nap punch out texas mugs punch back in ah time to help my friend move so i go to help my friend move i come in the next day my boss calls me into the office and says we're gonna have to let you go and so now i don't know if you've been here you know you did a couple things wrong right so you're not going to admit anything because you might get the wrong one and now they have twice the reason to fire you right so was it the texas mugs like no it's because you sleep on the job all day you know so you're just quiet you know you do that dumb kind of look like you know you just wait right so it gets awkward it's probably 30 seconds but it feels like 10 minutes and so finally he goes yeah there's no need for you to punch in today because yesterday you forgot to punch out i got fired for stealing company time so yeah well that's a real thing that's a real thing so maybe it wasn't the texas mugs but indirectly it could have helped me to forget to punch out so today we're going to be talking about talking behind people's backs doing things behind people's backs that we ought not to be doing and not doing things wholeheartedly not doing things wholeheartedly today we find ourselves in the rest of the story if you're new here we love god's word so we are looking at the entire bible it's a really great thing a little sad along the way because i get a lot of people have been christians their whole lives and i'll go through an entire section of the bible sometimes four chapters and some of them when they're being honest they'll be like i've actually never read that before and that's tragic right bad so we want to honor god's word here it is his words this is amazing that we have it what god has to say for us definitely right to us definitely some people come in and their prophets and they make things up great but no no we know for sure and we test everything against this we know for sure that this is god's word and so here at c3 we honor that amen we love god's word so every bit of it not just the little parts that we like right and make us feel good no that's not the way it works you know hit pause on god so we're going through this series if you want to get caught up you can do so through the app online there's a bazillion ways you'll be told about it during the announcements see you in three years it'll take a while there's a lot of material here but that's a good thing the bible's a big book or set of books so last week we looked at jehu and we saw that jehu didn't have that problem of doing things half-heartedly he did things a little too wholeheartedly he took it way too far and if we're being honest we could say he went way out of bounds there are going to be some consequences here he killed someone he should not have killed all right so he saw that he killed a heziah judas king and now that's going to lead to the one and only wicked queen who's running without a king i wonder if how many people knew that all right see in judah they had a queen queen athalaya and she's really wicked a lot of people like i didn't know that yes they did so today i'm going to show you another chart i knew that was coming no i didn't draw the drawing you guys know why but i did make the chart and so here we have certain books of the bible running in parallel so the bible's made up of a whole bunch of books 66 and the protestant canon a little bit more and other canons up to 14 more books in the old testament but anyway some of them run parallel like the four gospels some of them run parallel but they're going to give like certain details that one might leave out not a contradiction just different things in there this is what we have going on here in second kings and second chronicles they're running in parallel so i'm going to kind of put it together for you putting this together was actually very difficult because i'm not sure if you've ever had to like explain your job to someone or teach anyone anything sometimes it's in your head but getting it out of your mouth so that they can understand it's like crazy so that's what i have my wife heather for i'll bounce things off of her and she'll be like no go back do that again i don't know what you're talking about and so i realized that i was kind of floating ideas i wasn't getting a lot of a response and i was like oh no you know so it's difficult because as we're gonna see it kind of jumps in and out of time hops around a lot there's some people again with the same names so it's going to get a little bit confusing so i'll try to help you a little bit with it but if you're not getting the names don't worry i'm barely getting the name sometimes so here another confusing things is that where we left off jehu had died he's dead just like okay then in his rain and that's it it's over but the things that are happening now are happening during his reign so he's alive so it kind of goes back in time and so you have here is like there's judah there's israel and so meanwhile in israel meanwhile in judah and that's kind of what's going on here so although jehu died jehu is still alive in israel and so this is like meanwhile because of what jehu did in judah this is what's going on i hope that makes sense if you've been following along so here we have the wicked king again jehu killed a heziah so ii kings 11 1 when athaliah the mother of king ahaziah of judah learned that her son was dead she began to destroy the rest of the royal family but ahaziah's sister jehoshaba the daughter of king jehoram or joram so it gets confusing took a heziah's infant son joash and stole him away from among the rest of the king's children who were about to be killed so she's going and killing the dynasty so she just gets to be the one and only queen she put joash and his nurse in a bedroom and they hid him away from athelia so the child was not murdered joash remained hidden in the temple of the lord for six years while athelia ruled over the land so that's basically like some of you leaving your kid in the kids ministry for six years forgetting to come back to church right so we're just gonna the pastor's gonna take care so just imagine that right so he's in the temple it's a little bit nicer than this church no offense but in the temple for six years and so here is what happened now parallel second chronicles 22 it's kind of weird it runs 22 through 23. it's the same ish so we're just going to stay on second kings i'm just going to summarize this for you so i'm not flipping all over the place on you guys so what happens is johanna decides like year 7 decides to take the kid out of the kid's ministry and he's going to make like actually there's some mercenaries there's some palace guards some people they make a pact basically i'm going to show you what i got i'm going to show you the kid i got a king here but you got to swear notes they swear packed an oath it's kind of cool they get like this little swords and shields from david's time it says because they're in the palace and he forms a guard he's very careful and calculated about it around the child around the palace and now they're going to anoint him king so they anoint him king and people start celebrating athaliah hears it and so she comes in and says treason jehoiada's like nope killer but don't do it inside the church the temple take her outside and do it kill her and kill anyone who tries to stop you now he runs some religious reforms he kills matan the he's like the priest of baal so they get rid of this baal worship it's false god worship and stuff they destroy all of that and he imposes these religious reforms so if we go to second chronicles and you turn the page chapter four second kings 12 are about the same we're staying on satan kings right now and we get more here about joash it says he reigns 40 years but it's in the seventh year of jehu's reign so that's why it's like wait a minute didn't jehu die again meanwhile in judah now things are happening slowly it says it takes like 23 years for things to get going the priests are getting money but it seems like they're even jehoiada's dragging his feet on the whole thing that's basically putting it all together for you and so he says all right now we're going to collect money for the workers so not just like the levites now they're not going to get money you don't take money we're going to give it to the workers and this is going to expedite all of these temple repairs and more religious reforms so second kings 12 and this is interesting like it's even more confusing it ends with joash's reign a summary of his reign and his death his assassination actually but if you're still in second kings it won't tell you why so it's confusing you have to hop over to second chronicles so this is why we will second chronicles 24 15. jehoiada that is the priest i stuck that in there lived to a very old age finally dying at a hundred and thirty no thanks ain't got enough wrinkle cream for that he was buried among the kings in the city of david because he had done so much good in israel for god and his temple but after jehoiada's death the leaders of judah came and bowed before king joash and persuaded him to listen to their advice they decided to abandon the temple of the lord the god of their ancestors and they worship asheropols and idols instead false gods because of the sin divine anger fell on judah and jerusalem so jerusalem is the capital city of judah yet the lord sent prophets to bring them back to him the prophets warned them but still the people would not listen then the spirit of god came upon zechariah son of jehoiada the priest and he stood before the people and said this is what god says why do you disobey the lord's commands and keep yourself from prospering have you abandoned the lord and now he has abandoned you you have abandoned the lord then the leaders plotted to kill zechariah and king joash ordered that they stone him to death in the courtyard of the lord's temple that was how king joash repaid jehoiada for his loyalty like killing his son zechariah's last words as he died where may the lord see what they are doing and avenge my death so if you're really in the word this is a different zechariah than the son of barakaya the book of zechariah it is in between what haggai and malachi you can say it very good you got it did you get that so anyway different zechariah it can be very confusing if if you're in the word so we can see here how listening to bad advice can make us do bad things bad influences so that's kind of been a theme here so jehoian is the one think about it if you didn't put it all together he's the one who stashed him away in the kids ministry took care of him made sure he was okay well the woman did but anyway then makes him king and he turns around and kills the guy's son when he's dead wow so when the priest is not watching or when he's dead jehoiada isn't sorry there joash isn't acting wholeheartedly joyous the priest even i have a hard time keeping it together he's ungrateful so we see this theme here and i'll easily suede he is now this is where it gets very very complicated so i'm just going to put both together we're not going to put them on the screens because you guys are going to get confused so in 2nd chronicles 24 it says in the spring of the year the aramean army marched against joash so they were helped to do this because the lord helped them to do this it's a punishment so they invaded jerusalem and judah and they killed all the leaders of the nation then they sent the plunder back to damascus now if you hop back to second kings it says about this time king hazel of abram went to war against gath and captured it then he turned and attacked jerusalem so here's what happens joash decides to collect all these valuables up that the kings before him had gathered and basically just pay hazel off go away and that works but ii chronicles tells us more it says the arameans withdrew leaving joash severely wounded furthermore it says but the people close to him decide to conspire against him and assassinate him for killing zechariah that's jehoiada's son so he gets assassinated in his own bed and says he's buried in the city of david but not in the royal cemetery now ii kings gives a similar account but from second chronicles you get why it happens why he's assassinated so then it'll move on to joash's son amaziah but we're going to talk about that next week so we'll just hop right over there but if we go back to second kings it's kind of like meanwhile now in israel this is what's going on second kings 13 1 jehoiah has the son of jehu began to rule over israel in the 23rd year of king joash's reign in judah he reigned in samaria 17 years but he did what was evil in the lord's sight he followed the example of jeroboam son of nebat that's the first king of israel continuing the sins that jeroboam had led israel to commit so the lord was very angry with israel and he allowed king haziel of aram his son and his son ben had to defeat them repeatedly now if you've been following along this is weird because hazel was appointed to kill ben haydad but then names his son ben haydad weird wicked people we can say that he's strange so jehovah has he's under this pressure from the aramean army he prays and so the lord protects him to a degree but greatly it says just diminishes his army and kind of that's it it says he's he died he's buried in samaria then his son jehoiah or joash becomes the next king and here's where it gets really confusing second kings 13 10 jehoesh or joash it's just a variant spelling son of jehoiah has began to rule over israel in the 37th year of king joash's reign in judah two kings with the same name he reigned in samaria 16 years but he did what was evil in the lord's sight he refused to turn from the sins that jeroboam son of nebat had led israel to commit so there's another example things kind of not in order so moving ahead not exactly chronologically but second kings 13 14 when elisha remember him the prophet was in his last illness king jehoshaphat israel visited him and wept over him my father my father i see the chariots and charioteers of israel he cried elisha told him get a bow and some arrows and the king did as he was told elisha told him put your hand on the bow and elisha laid his hands on the king's hands now you're going back this is exactly exactly what elisha said to elijah before they were taken up they were separated by that chariot and elijah was taken up and elijah my father my father i see the charioteers of israel so what is he saying here the king is saying to him we're going to be separated you're going to die so he says open an eastern window and shoot an arrow out the eastern world it's going to be prophetic prophetic stuff here so he says this is the lord's arrow an hour of victory over aram that's hazel for you to completely conquer the aramians at affect he says now pick up the other arrows and strike them on the ground strikes them on the ground three times elisha gets upset and he says why didn't you do it five or six times then you would have completely destroyed them now you're only going to be victorious three times that's this prophecy and elisha dies now i want you to hang on that i'm just going to summarize the next couple of things quickly for you and then we'll move on to our application today so it goes on to give kind of a strange account the moabites were raiding in israel in the spring because that's when you go out raiding so just that's not a suggestion guys we shouldn't go out raiding but some israelites see them they're scared they're trying to bury a dead body so they don't have time to bury it they throw it in elijah's tomb and when it hits elijah's bones it like the guy comes back to life kind of strange but it just goes to show he's a powerful prophet even in death that's probably why that's there but then he gives the fulfillment of his prophecy it says that indeed king hazel they're only victorious three times over him it fulfills that so question what's the application there have you ever changed yourself like the king did i'm sure we can all think of times when we've short changed ourselves you see what happens here is jehovah asked he shortchanged himself with elijah elijah because he wasn't wholehearted we see that from the kings they don't always do things wholeheartedly okay great yeah three times whatever he was half-hearted and that's what these kings do joash's reforms were short-lived and shallow wasn't much to him if he was so easily convinced by these people to go and worship false gods he wasn't wholehearted so for some this should raise a question what would it look like to live life wholeheartedly really what would it look like in our relationships maybe some of us have been doing half-heartedly like in our marriages if you're married in a relationship how many might be punching in and punching out without any passion just checking off the boxes going through the motions with no emotion punching punch out maybe in our jobs we're just not into it we don't appreciate it i don't know punching in napping texas mugs no don't do that i told you punch out punch in punch out but not wholeheartedly in our families both ways like to pick on the kids but both ways parents wholeheartedly with emotion not like anger all the time but love yeah dad gives me lots of emotion i get tons of that but with love passionately like can you remember i even remember this with a dog but i remember this with my child do you remember how long it took you to get from the hospital to your home like with me it's like you're driving like 10 miles an hour right this love for this new new life that you have we even did it with our first dog joe if you if you understand where i lived all the way to long island so that was a really like long long long drive for me but remember you know we gotta be really careful because i love this little creature but then like a few years later i'm like oh just die you know like if you bark under my feet and sneak up on me again i'm going to kill you right but where did it go i told you i can be inappropriate come on you thought it too where did it go i'm not going to say that about the kids that will get me in trouble where did it go what happened or what is it like to date your spouse where'd he go you see also here's the thing just like joash there might be people interfering with those relationships what's the first thing i talked about today right subversion division people would get in there and they act on behalf of the enemy that happens in the church if you've been in church for a long time you're like yup it does it does that's what he does he'll send somebody in got the wrong heart and they'll start dividing they'll start saying things what do they always do first raise suspicion raise suspicion really but he does this now as a church okay that's that's corporately right we know that so we know we got to look out for that kind of thing love one another if you have an issue come to me ask me don't gossip about your friends and start backbiting come to me but he does that in our relationships too he'll do that at work right did that to me i was very susceptible at the time but right no no no no just take a nap they're not paying us enough here to do all that they're complaining about boss raising suspicions bringing stuff up now you're gossiping about them instead just going to the person right no we don't want to do that and chipping away at our weakness what about our spouses never do that ever has friends that just want to get you to commiserate that's what they want to do they don't want you to be happy and have passion in your marriage because they're not so they just want to complain say things behind their backs complain about them all the time all right it chips away at you you have to remove those influences kids happens a lot with kids you get the wrong kind of friends all your parents are too strict maybe you're just going through them no whatever just get them off your back by doing you know the five minutes and 30 seconds of chores they ask you to do complain about it all right chip away bad influences your parents don't know what they're talking about right and maybe that influence is leading you it could be you and some of these areas to a lack of gratitude that should be the real attitude we have you see josh think about it he should have been so grateful right you saved my life like seven years made me king showed me how to worship the lord properly he wasn't very grateful after he died killed his son but you see we should be grateful to these people in marriages you should be grateful hey let me be honest some of you married up just saying put myself out there i have a very beautiful wife but you know we should be grateful to that thank you for marrying me i'm a real pain in the neck she might say a different word like this is nothing like when i'm left off the chain it's just like a stream of just craziness it's like living with tigger i've been told it's crazy whatever thank you because i'm a pain sometimes thank you for supporting me listening to me thank you that's the right attitude all right none of us should be thinking we can do better because that better if it was better how much better could it be if that better wanted to be with you while you're going to cheat on your spouse how much better is that or leave for another person and how are we any better than if we even think about that thank you should be the appropriate response thank you kids thank you thank you thank you for supporting me putting a roof over my head working right feeding me not leaving me in the child care area at c3 church we should be grateful to our employers thank you for paying me right lucky to have a job at all this is wonderful our society has a major attitude problem now it's crazy thank you thank you not listening to yeah shut up stop it get behind me satan this is good i have a job i can make money this is awesome every job i've ever you know i listen i'm transparent throw myself right under the bus i told you how and why i got fired okay so i'm not talking myself up here but any of my employers will all tell you like i ask for raises and i try my best to go above and beyond in everything i do everything i was at least taught that be grateful that you have a job and if you want a promotion earn it earn it and you know what show some loyalty by being there for a while not like three months i need to ruse no years years i started at this church as a member i was a business person making quite a bit more money than i make now the lord brought me into ministry i cried because i knew i was going to be involved but i put my time in side by side with my overseer right so i was the worship leader guy but at the same time going through schooling for it working doing the pastoral work so i'm not talking myself i'll tell you why i got fired not perfect but here's the thing trying to lead by example good work ethic my dad did a lot of things wrong with the thing he did right good work ethic you work you don't ask for a raise you show someone you deserve a raise and wait for them to give it to you because it's a test remember that if you're younger people here i'm going to teach you something you're being tested all the time it's a test wait wait show him you deserve it so here's the thing let's go to the word of god and look at what it says in these relationships we're going to go to colossians colossians 3 18 wives submit to your husbands as is fitting for those who belong to the lord do not stop there too many people husbands stop right there read the next slide husbands love your wives and never never treat them harshly oh there's the other end of that one husbands love your wives and never treat them harshly children always obey your parents for this pleases the lord fathers do not and there's the other end of it fathers do not aggravate your children or they'll become discouraged see why we've got to read more than a verse there's a lot of balance here slaves for today's application employees obey your earthly employers or masters in everything you do try to please them all the time not just when they're watching you serve them sincerely because of your fear of the lord there's that again your fear of the lord work willingly this is complicated i bracketed it i talked to my great teacher about these words they're complicated but it's kind of like heartily but way more than that with a single heart like a simple unfolding true heart it's really beautiful in the greek that's the best way i can explain it to you just a simple like single-minded unfolding true heart the heart of god do all this with everybody right your husband's wives kids employer with the heart of god transparently honestly perfectly be like jesus and here's the thing and whatever you do you got to do it as though you were working for the lord rather than for people remember that the lord will give you an inheritance as your reward and the master you are serving is christ the employer you are serving is christ the spouse you are serving is christ the parent you're serving is christ jesus says this it's how you treated the least of these that you did it to me watch yourselves he's always watching now in these relationships i do want to add we are to be working at them wholeheartedly and also honoring them behind their backs as the text says not just when they're watching you that's like eddie haskell stuff if you laugh you're older than me or you got like nick at night but eddie haskell stuff right going behind telling them one thing lip service and when they're not looking me me me that's just done to me all the time right but you don't like it do you so don't do it to other people don't do it to your boss don't do that to your spouse it's very dishonoring are we doing things behind our spouse's back they don't know about they might not want to see what are you looking at on the internet no the lord sees it tape a picture of jesus to your laptop might make you stop or you're gross right so but think about it he's watching you he can see you important so if we keep reading we find out the why because we kind of wrap things up here so before the text that i read to you it says this colossians 3 16 let the message about christ in all its richness fill your lives teach and counsel each other with all the wisdom he gives sing psalms hymns and spiritual songs to god with thankful hearts and whatever you do or say do it as a representative of the lord jesus he's not just talking to titus and timothy here he's talking to you all you of the lord jesus giving thanks through him to god the father if we keep reading after the text i showed you before colossians 4 5 live wisely among those who are not believers and make the most of every opportunity that's the way we're supposed to see it they're opportunities let your conversation be gracious and attractive so that you will have the right response for everyone one of the things that got me over the weekend if you know me you know i have a passion for spreading the gospel that's it when it all boils down to it that's my job i can do a whole bunch of other stuff as a pastor but spread the gospel i'm an ambassador for christ make disciples right but when i see people calling themselves christians do these passive-aggressive posts condemning specific sins and not talking about their own i just got to tell you it bothers me like tremendously tremendously and so they'll pick their favorite sins and say god hates this you know like yeah god hates what you're doing too including hating other people drives me nuts nuts it's ugh we are not supposed to judge those outside the church we're supposed to love them and we are supposed to judge those inside the church when it's your job but lovingly at all times at all times oh i jilted i was aggravated i'm like why did i disobey that calendar reminder that came up that says don't check facebook on your sabbath my fault stupid move but it's so sad that i can't terrible it's about winning people over it's about serving the lord wholeheartedly that is serving people that is real worship we're going to learn a few weeks i'm going to show you from the prophets what they say about this real worship that's in romans 12 hebrews 13 new testament two real worship is serving other people just simply loving other people the lord looks at that as worship he sees it that way he also sees it as a negative when you don't love other people kind of negates it how can you not love other people and that person went into church the next sunday and singing a bunch of lies that's what's going on there's no way you can mean any of this stuff if you just go and do stuff like that hypocrite you know people get on there and they're posting like a bunch of pharisees and then you know of course all the other christians they get in there like it you know it's like come on people you're making us all look like jerks so i just want you know if you're new here we're not like that yes i'm going to be very clear with you yes but we're not going to do that to you no we're going to bring you in with love so just some encouragement let's use this text not to like think of a negative let's use this text to think about what it might be like to live life to its fullest in the lord to live with this attitude of gratitude for what jesus has done when we sing these songs think about what jesus did for us how do we respond to that how do we respond to that right jesus loved us so much he died for us on a cross something i mean most of us would never fathom experiencing wow i better get out there and like do the bare minimum to love people right so yes jesus died for me here's that reality sing about it in church but i can't wait till he's done why did i check my watch three times that's sad because i got to get to lunch and be really mean to my waitress and then post about it on facebook people do that they do that i see it all the time people pray at lunch and i'm like don't no no don't do that because then they treat the waitress but i'm like now they know you're christians and we're jerks thank you but seriously love to get out and love people we're gonna like five minutes over you're not gonna die go eat the ethiopian food and then go from there be grateful you have it but then love everybody man i can't believe god would do that for me that's the right attitude listen by not living wholeheartedly in the lord not only hurting other people you're hurting yourself it doesn't make much sense because of what jesus has done for us we should live joyfully in the lord so i want to give you permission to do that as if you needed it it all boils down to it it's all about our passion for jesus and our compassion for those for whom he died amen okay god bless you thank you you