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You know, I always look forward to speaking to the staff because you guys are my family's favorite part of camp. And so, as a dad, I feel indebted to you. I feel grateful, I feel blessed by you. I almost feel like I owe you, like I owe you something because of the way that you bless my family. Each summer is special and unique, so that we look forward to coming back every single year because of the work that you do. So I'm really happy to be here, but I'm also super tired. Is anybody. Are you tired? I heard that go, like, gets tiring for the campers. We really, we. I want you to turn in your Bibles, if you're able. If you have your Bibles, turn to Second Thessalonians, chapter one. There's just two verses, and this is really my prayer for you and. And hopefully an encouragement to you. I didn't give the tech team any slides, so I've got nothing to show you on the screen. This is all old school. Second Thessalonians, chapter one. I'm going to start reading in verse 11. Second Thessalonians, chapter 1, verse 11. In view of this, we always pray for you that our God will make you worthy of his calling and by his power, fulfill your every desire to do good and your work produced by faith so that the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified by you and you by him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. If you wouldn't mind, would you just take 20 seconds to pray with me? And here's the question. If you want to ask the Spirit this, ask him. Lord, what do you want to say to me right now, this morning, before Tuesday begins, really, with the campers? What do you want to say to me? Would you take a moment with me? And I'm just gonna. I'm praying this also. Heavenly Father, you are good and we love you and we need you. You've been kind to us. Your extravagant kindness, in which you've been patient with us and gentle with us. Always, always being patient with us, making allowance for our wrongs and faults and weaknesses. We know that you understand our weaknesses. We know that you've been tempted in every way that we've been tempted. We know that you look at us with eyes of compassion and mercy and that there's no one else like you. Holy Spirit, would you speak to us? Would you speak to our hearts? Would you do a supernatural work in this room as we've lifted up your name and sung out to you? We cry for more, a deeper sense of your truth and your spirit. Would you please speak to us? We know that you have something to share with us this summer through this work, through the calling that you've given each of us. And so would you help us to have ears that hear and eyes that see? I pray in Jesus name. Amen. I'm going to read the passage just one more time. 2nd Thessalonians 1, verse 11. Paul's writing to this church at Thessalonica. He's encouraging them. He's happy about them and what they're doing. He realizes he needs to answer questions for them. Because this is a group of believers, not completely unlike us, just a group of Christians that need wisdom, that need insight, that need encouragement. It's not easy for the Thessalonicans. They were not like the Bereans in different ways, the people that were in their town. So the people surrounding them weren't very encouraging to Christianity anyway. He tells them, in view of this, we always pray for you, that our God will make you worthy of his calling. What's crazy is God has called each of you to serve this summer. And I know that Ambush always says this phrase. He's like, we're never more like Jesus than when we're serving. Right? Some of you have heard that. I see you're very enthused about that this morning. But it's true in many ways. I mean, you're never more like God than when you're loving, when you're gracious, when you're serving, when you're sacrificing. Those are characteristics of God that's been true since the beginning. Even before he created the heavens and the earth. It was in his mind and in his plan to suffer and die for us. We started off as his enemies. He knew that we were sinful. You know, you read the first few pages of the Bible and you realize how bad people can get. A brother killing his brother, the first man and woman doubting God, being suspicious, believing a lie, thinking that God's not really good, that he doesn't really want good for us. Anyway, we always pray for you. My prayer for you as campers this summer is that God will make you worthy of his calling, that he's called you to something. And by his power to fulfill your every desire to do good and your work produced by faith, you need supernatural power to do God's work. There is no way that you're going to be serving like Jesus if you're not full of the Spirit and if you're not walking with the spirit. You're going to be satisfying the desires of the flesh. And the flesh stinks. The flesh wants food, entertainment, attention, bad attention, bad entertainment, I guess. Bad food. I think ice cream is good, but too much of it's bad. You know, the enemy is not your only enemy. There's a little bit of our desires within us that want what's wrong. And we need his power to fulfill our every desire to do good. And the work produced by faith. When you do things just based on faith, there's something that you're doing this summer. You're going to be thinking about things you're doing and you're going to have this. The Holy Spirit is going to be speaking to you. And as you grow in your faith, you learn to hear the spirit in better ways. You learn to notice his voice. And he's going to be speaking to your heart, speaking to your mind, encouraging you. And you're going to have to do that work based on faith. You're going to have to trust him. You're going to have to know that you can't do it, that you don't have the power and that you're relying on the spirit. And the end result is so that the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified by you. That you will be able to lift up Jesus, the one that you love. You love Jesus. You love. You love him because he first loved you first John. You genuinely love him. Now you may not always feel like you love him. I mean, you never think you don't love him. But you know what I mean? Like if for me recently there was a video game, this dumb game that I got that I started feeling convicted about. I couldn't really play it with my kids. Cause it was mature themed. And I was like, man, I shouldn't play this game. And I knew that God was telling me not to do it. And I have a Nintendo Switch 2. I hardly ever play it, by the way. I'm super busy in my life. I play it like two hours a month. So it's not like I play it a ton, but I really want to play this game. And I sensed that the Spirit was telling me not to play. And I was like, man, this is the worst. I really want to play. It's not a sinful game. It's not like it's sin, but it's a waste right now. And God's trying to tell me not to do it. And I don't know if you ever get stuck on your phone or socials and games and different things like that, but you just get trapped into it. And you're like, oh, I think God wants me to not do it. But maybe that's not God. Maybe I just need to be more disciplined. And so you're like, I'm gonna do it at certain times. And I know you guys like lights out taps at 11, I think. And this environment is a little unique. But you know what it's like in regular, everyday life where you just feel just like your attention is so easily grabbed. And I knew that God wanted me to do it. And I didn't give it up for weeks. I didn't give it up for weeks. I was in disobedience. This is like a month ago. This just recently happened. And I knew that God was telling me to put it down and I wouldn't. It's not like I didn't know I loved him. I love God. But that whole first John 4:19, that whole idea of, like, we love him because he first loved us, like, Jesus would suffer and die for us. That's why we love him. I didn't grow up loving God. I know some of you, maybe you were raised in church. I was not raised in church. I was raised in a broken home. Divorce, drugs, adultery. I wanted to join a gang at 12 because I lived in Detroit, Michigan, and was angry at my parents. And my dad didn't live with me for years. My dad didn't even speak to me for years. What's crazy is my dad is at this camp right now. My dad became a Christian, like, 10 years ago, was discipled by a dude for seven years, and then moved to Kansas, which we actually have a lot of Kansas people here this week. Yeah. Amen to Kansas. But even Kansas people know. Like, not everybody knows Kansas. I mean, like, have you ever been to Kansas? Like, no. No. Like, most people haven't even flown over Kansas. And I've been living there. My dad's never even stepped foot in Kansas. And he moves there to be around us. And God's doing such a great work. My dad didn't talk to me almost my entire teenage life until I was in my 20s. My dad didn't call me on my birthday. And so I was angry and just broken. I didn't grow up loving God. And when I found out about what Jesus did for me, a sinner that doesn't deserve blew my mind. I've never gotten over it. But a month ago, I wouldn't give up a game. Or this past year, I really. My YouTube feed is full of chess videos and random do it yourself videos. There's this chess player, Carlsen. Anyway, Magnus Carlsen. He plays chess. Anyway, this year is a weird year for him. Things are going down. I love that stuff. I'm not good at chess. I just love it. I could play chess and lose a hundred times in a day and be smiling the whole time. But I had to give up because I was, like, on chess.com all the time in my spare time, not giving attention to my kids, which is a bad idea. If you have children. Just FYI, for the future, don't be a loser. No, I'm just kidding. Don't ignore your kids. Sorry. Anyway, as believers, you're going to have desires to do good. And God has a calling for you to do work. But you're going to have to have faith. You're going to have to trust him. You're going to have to give stuff up. You will need good friendships. You'll need good friendships. In Proverbs 27:17, it says, as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. It's not just for men, but Proverbs 27:17. Just like iron sharpens iron, one person sharpens another. You're sharpened by one another. We need Christian friendship that is going to sharpen us to do good work. Now. We want to pray for one another, that God will give us the power, that we will be worthy of the calling. But you know how easy it is to get lost and distracted. And you know you're in your own head. We need good friendships to really accomplish this. And I want to encourage you with your friendships that you have right now, the people around you right now, this camp. We live in a world that teaches us to swipe, scroll, and move on the moment something feels hard. That's the world we live in. You just move on. Everything is seconds long. Relationships have become disposable. If it's awkward, we bail. If it's challenging, we withdraw. If it requires effort, we ghost. We just decide. We're not going to do that. We're not going to be around them. Technology has given each of us this illusion of what friendship really is. Technology makes friendship seem like something that's public and social, not something that's hard and deep and intimate and people that truly know you. That mindset will never produce Christian friendship, brotherhood, sisterhood. That sharpens the church. Iron doesn't sharpen iron by sitting next to it. Iron sharpens through striking, through force, through resistance, through heat, through pressure. There's sparks involved, which means real friendship. Is going to feel uncomfortable at times as a lead pastor, as a father, even as a husband. You know, my wife's with me all the time in ways, but it's easy for me to isolate. It's easy for me to feel like I'm on my own. I don't share well, I do. I have chosen. Years ago, I chose. I'm going to be. I'm not going to be a perfect preacher. I'm not going to be that Christian that everybody thinks, oh, he's got it all together. I'm going to openly tell people I have weaknesses today. Not last year, not in the past, not chapter two and now I'm in chapter 12 and I'm awesome. I have weaknesses right now. Today I have to relearn every lesson it feels like I've ever learned. I have to relearn giving up a game, a video game. I had to relearn that in this last month. I had to relearn how to not give in to attention to my phone and be ignoring people. Even though I Learned that lesson 10 years ago, I'm having to reapply it over and over. I have committed to being open about my weakness. But that's not the only thing that I've done. I have also chosen to be in Christian fellowship and community, vulnerable community. Every Tuesday of the entire year, minus vacations. Every Tuesday I meet with a group of four other guys and we ask a series of questions. I wrote them down. I'm gonna say them if you want them. I could send them later to somebody, but these are the questions me and the guys talk about every single Tuesday. How is your one on one time with God? How is your personal time with God going? Have you spent daily time hearing from him? Bible reading is not a spiritual to do list. Bible reading is. Imagine like a kid saying, I love my father and I want to hear from him. I want to talk to my dad. I want to hear what he has to say. He cares about me. He loves me. How have you been doing in your Bible memorization? That's a whole different topic. But filling your heart with God's word, memorizing God's word. How are you doing in prayer? Being open with God? Being vulnerable with God? How? Have you or have you entertained any flirtatious, lustful or tempting thoughts, actions or attitudes? Have you exposed yourself to any material which would not glorify God? Have your words built others up or torn them down? Have you contributed to gossip or slander? Have you taken a day of rest in the Lord? We have this acronym, me and my buddies. It's rest. It stands for something, but every day. I don't follow the Sabbath. The Sabbath is on Saturday in the Jewish calendar. It starts on Friday night. Twilight, three stars in the sky. It ends Saturday night. That's Sabbath. That's the Old Testament law. Very familiar with the Old Testament. Sabbath is a law, the New Testament. There's still a time of rest. Where we were designed, we were built one day a week. You rest. And rest does not mean veg out. Rest does not mean binge Netflix or you know, do nothing and sit around in pajamas. A day of rest means you commit your heart and your life to Jesus. You spend extra time in prayer, talking with him, grateful to him, enjoying his gifts. Rest. You remember the gospel. You are thinking about what God has done for you. And you spend intentional time. You enjoy God's blessings, what he's given you, family, food, work, hobbies, things. Enjoy it in the Lord. You know, thank God for it. You stop working. That's the S. And then the T is your treasuring. You figure out ways to treasure the God you spend time worshiping. On Spotify. I have a list that's always growing of worship songs, of just singing out to God. Have you taken care of your body through regular physical activity? It's really important. Proper eating or protein maxing, you should do it. Adequate sleep. Question 6. What are you anxious about? And have you surrendered those concerns to God? Philippians 4. Are you making the most of your time and labor for God's glory, using your gifts to serve his kingdom? 1st Peter 5, 2nd Thessalonians 1, Colossians 3, 23, 24. How are you using your downtime? Are you just entertaining yourself to death during your downtime or are you giving your heart to something? Have you been completely above reproach in your financial spending for you? What are you spending your money on for me? I'm just gonna be honest with you. I still to this day, I get tempted to spend money and not tell my wife about it. I feel so bad about that. Even telling you. I feel immature. I feel like, dude, I should be old enough, I should be mature enough. Why do I still feel tempted to do this? Here's the truth. I still feel tempted to do that. I have done that in the last year, I think, or at least the last two years. I have hidden something from my wife. You are never gonna be mature enough to not be tempted. You're never gonna be like, oh, I've graduated from that. I don't struggle with that anymore. That's never gonna happen. And you need real Christian community iron that sharpens iron. You need people around you in which you're inviting them. Hey, when you see, I want you to challenge me. I wanna invite you into my life. I wanna have a kind of friend that's I want to pursue Jesus with my whole life. Are you in it with me? Will you encourage me? I'll encourage you. These are not like religious, law abiding, legalistic. Oh, have you read your Bible today? Check. This is like, I know that your commitment is to spend time with God and I'm going to ask you, like, how are you doing listening to the Father? Have you taken responsibility? Responsibility for your sins and your offenses? Repenting and asking God for forgiveness. That's a big one. Matthew 6 talks about this forgiveness thing, but also taking responsibility for your own sins. Have you shared the gospel with an unbeliever this week? And I say this week. This is so surprising. I meet with mostly ministry leaders throughout the year, but every Tuesday I meet with pastors or missionaries in this group of five. There are pastors and missionaries in this group and we still have to challenge each other. Have you shared the gospel with an unbeliever this week? And there are some weeks where we'll be honest, be like, no, man, I've been doing, I've been in the grind. I don't even think I. I mean, I'm sure I saw a lost person. But no, we don't want to live our lives not sharing the good news with people. And so we ask each other, I know you're committed to this. Have you done that this week? And you know that question, you'd be surprised me with a bunch of mature ministry leaders. Some of them say, you know what? Because of this group and we meet every Tuesday, I am more thoughtful when I'm out. Like, I'm thinking, man, am I sharing the gospel when I get the opportunity? Are you actively making disciples anyway? Iron doesn't sharpen iron by sitting next to it most. There's going to be moments where a friend, a Christian friend, calls you out not to shame you, but to strengthen you. And we want to be encouraging, but don't miss it. You know, there were times when Jesus was tough with his disciples. He turned to Peter and said, get behind me, Satan. He rebuked them, he challenged them, but it's out of love, you know, challenge is not unloving. You want to be encouraging as much as you can. You know, what's the rule? Like, say 10 encouraging things for every one challenging thing. You know, if you really want to build people up, Ephesians 4:29. You know, don't. Don't let all corrupt talk and speech, things that tear people down, things that are poisonous and, you know, wrong. Let all that leave that out of your mouth, but only say what is good, what builds others up, what gives grace to those who hear it. We want to do that. But challenging is not bad. You know, there's going to be moments when a friend calls you out, not to shame you, but to strengthen you. Moments where the truth cuts deeper than encouragement. It's like surgery. Moments where you don't feel applauded, but you feel exposed. And I want to encourage you as a brother in Christ. That is when real, deep roots and growth is going to happen in your life. It is not the fun, silly moments that are going to carry you through deep water. Fun, encouraging moments are so essential. It's like a good diet. But you need good friends around you that are going to encourage you to what's right. Most men and women settle for friendships that protect their comfort instead of confronting their complacency. We want friends who will laugh with us, agree with us, but never challenge us. But those kinds of relationships don't sharpen, they soften. You don't need more people telling you that you're doing great when you're coasting now. You do need people that are encouraging you and telling you you're doing great when you are. But you don't need people telling you that when you're not. You need friends who love you enough to say, hey, you were made for more than this. And here's my prayer for you. That you would be worthy of the calling that God has called you to, and that God would fill you with his power and you would be able to do every good work that you've committed your mind and life to, that you would be able to fulfill the good work that you have that's produced by faith. So here's the question, the last 90 seconds. Do your friendships sharpen you or just support your comfort? When was the last time a friend challenged you? There's a list of verses I'll end with. Zechariah 8, 16. These are the things that you shall speak the truth to one another. Render in your gates judgments that are true, and make for peace. Proverbs 4:24. Put away from you crooked speech, and put devious talk far from you. Proverbs 5, 12, 13. You say, How I hated discipline and my heart despised reproof I did not listen to the voice of my teachers or incline my ear to my instructors. Proverbs 12:17. Whoever speaks the truth gives honest evidence, but a false witness utters deceit. Proverbs 12:19. Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue is but for a moment. 13:10. By insolence comes nothing but strife. But with those who take advice is wisdom. Proverbs 15:22. Without counsel, plans fail, but with many advisors they succeed. Proverbs 19:20. Listen to advice and accept instruction that you may gain wisdom in the future. Proverbs 27:5, 6. There's actually a funny story to this. Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, profuse are the kisses of an enemy. Years ago, with my staff at our church, I read a book called Creativity, Inc. It was written by Ed Catmull. He was the original producer of Pixar. He's like the head guy. He made Toy Story. Back when Toy Story was awesome. I thought number five was good. I thought it was fine. But one through three is like the trilogy. Anyway, I love Toy Story. And don't pretend you're better than me. You love Toy Story. Toy Story is good. It was so good anyway. And I cried so hard at number three around the fire. I don't know. I was a man. I was a grown man crying so hard in the theater. Anyway, I read Ed Catmull's book. It's about leadership, Creativity Inc. It's one of the best books I've ever read. That wasn't a Christian leadership book. One of the best books. And Ed Catmull talks about how he built Pixar and how he created a team in which people built one another up and sharpened each other. And he uses things like, listen, you just get all the ideas out as quickly as possible. You don't care if they're bad. You have to have an environment of friends around you that are willing to hear bad ideas, that you're willing to say, hey, I need grace, just like you. Here's what I'm thinking. You need friendships where you can be wrong in front of each other. You can make bad ideas. So everything in that book is so good, it has Christian principles behind it. But anyway, there's this term he uses called gracious candor. And he talks about it. He's like, listen, people in the business world, they don't want to be honest. They don't want to be transparent. They don't want to be vulnerable. You use those three words and you've lost over 50% of the business world. But if you use the term candor, people are pretty chill about that. They're okay with candor, you know, be truthful. And so I shared it with my staff. I want to have a value called gracious candor, where we're honest with one another, even if it hurts. There's this idea of like, ouch that hurts, or sorry. Instead of ouch that hurts, it's ouch that helps. And so we started this, this thing. And one of the verses I used was Proverbs 27, 5, 6. And I was telling them, I was like, better is open rebuke than hidden love. Like, if you're honest with your brother, sister, and you tell them, listen, I feel like God is doing this in your life. I want this for you. It's better than hidden love. Like, oh, I love them. But you're not saying the truth. That's not real love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, right? Faithful are the wounds when someone hurts you, but they're your friend. They love you. They give you a hard word, but it's for your best. It's because they care about you. Faithful are the wounds of the friend. And then the last line. Profuse are the kisses of an enemy. And I'm a Bible teacher. I know Greek and Hebrew. I'm like, I feel like I should know stuff. So I'm saying this verse. I didn't study it first. That was my problem. You have to study the Bible. Don't think you know what it means until you study the words. And all that sounds like, profuse are the kisses of the enemy. You know what it's talking about? Profuse are the kisses of an enemy. And people are kind of looking at me around the table, and they're like, profuse. I'm like, yeah, you know, profuse. You know, kisses of the enemy. Like, oh, they kiss you, but, ooh, it stinks. It's profuse. And one of the guys on our staff is like, is that what profuse means? And I was like, well, the way you say that, I don't know, we look it up. Not at all what it means. I was thinking of refuse. Like, stinky refuse. Like garbage, poop, you know, I was thinking of, like, stinky stuff. You know what profuse means? Many, many are the kisses of the enemy. In the middle of me trying to share this value with my staff, I humiliate myself. I embarrass myself. I don't know what. I didn't take the time to study I just thought I knew what it meant. I share this verse. I'm humbled in front of them and it ended up being a Hallmark moment to where I still get teased for profuse. But it demonstrated in that moment like, you know what, I was wrong because I didn't take the time to study. And it created this gracious candor that's tied to this value. So we have this verse tied to this value. You want friends around you that are going to be honest with you and sharpen you, and that does not come naturally. You have to build that. That is not going to happen automatically. I know many people that are your parents, age Christian people that end up having affairs, getting divorced, losing their jobs, all kinds of things. Not because they're bad people, but because they were loners, they were isolated. They have been going to church since they were a baby. They knew every Sunday school answer. They could tell you how old Methuselah was. They could answer all the Bible trivia. But because they're alone, they make mistakes. I've known Christian speakers, popular, famous guys that lost their ministry, lost their reputation because, oh, it's lonely at the top. They stopped being vulnerable and open and having real deep friendship. I want to encourage you. Don't give that up. Don't miss the reality that in this, in every stage of life, you need Christians around you that are going to challenge you and it's really good. Anyway, thank you for letting me share with you. I truly mean this. I love you and I'm grateful for you and I pray for you every single day at Gull Lake. I pray for you outside of the time, primarily before I get ready to come to Gull Lake around May. I'm praying for you and I'm so grateful for you and I hope you have good Christian friends around you. You will need that the rest of your life. Anyway, thank you.