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Welcome to Mariners Church Weekend Message Podcast. Inspiring people to follow Jesus and fearlessly change the world. Discover your purpose and get connected by visiting MarinersChurch.org or click the link in the show notes. Foreign.

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Welcome to Mariners Church. I am so honored to be with you as we get to join the online community for this weekend. I hope that your Christmas and this week between then and now has been beautiful that you've been able to spend time with family and friends. One of my favorite things to do when I get a little time off with my kids is to get outside. I love being on the trails and here in Southern California we have some beautiful trail systems and I love to get back there and go on long runs or if I'm honest, slow jogs where I get to just be outside. And what's so fun is when you get up to the top of these hills, you get these beautiful views. In fact, here's a photo I took recently after I climbed up one of these hills is about 1200ft up a few miles back. Got to just see where I started way down below and made it to the top. Now, if you've been hanging out with our online community for a while, you probably know Justin Herman, our online discipleship pastor, and him and I recently went on a trail run. And I don't know if you noticed, but he's. He's pretty far behind me. I had enough time to get to the top of the hill, pull out my phone and take a photo of him on the struggle bus. Then as we got to the top of the next hill, there was a bench conveniently waiting for him where he took the time to sit down and I took a selfie. And so maybe right now would be a good time to just encourage Justin in the chat, letting him know that it's okay, buddy, we got your back. Not everyone's a good runner like Jared, you know, it's all good. But I did enjoy going on that run with Justin. I love getting outside, but there is something that is always attention for me that I Like being up, out and being able to see far. But the problem is you can't actually do that while you are running because the trail system is inevitably going to have a rut or a root that you have to watch out for. And so every single step, you have to watch where your foot is going to go. You cannot watch where you're going while enjoying the great views at the same time. It is impossible. Now, I know all of us want to be great multitaskers. You probably have multitasking as a headline on your LinkedIn profile. But the reality is, and research now shows that multitasking is a myth, your brain cannot actually do multiple simultaneous things. Cal Newport and some of the great research that he has provided says that you're not actually multitasking and you are rapid task switching, which means your brain is switching from one task to another in rapid succession. So while you think you're doing multiple things at once, you're actually stopping one to start another. And in fact, what he says is, is if you're trying to attempt deep work, when you switch from one task to the next, it actually costs you 25 minutes of deep focus every time you switch. Now, if that's the case, I've never experienced deep work in my entire life. I don't feel like I've ever been able to focus 25 minutes straight on one singular task. And yet that's exactly what I want to talk about today. I want to talk to you about this thing that tends to be a reality in our spiritual life that you and I want to be people of faith. And yet we live in a world that invites us to worry about all the time. And when you and I switch from faith to worry and worry to faith back and forth, it gunks up the system. It messes up our ability to have the deeply formed life in the person of Jesus. Now, the good news for you and I is that we're not left just dealing with this, this, this tendency to switch back and forth and it messing up our spiritual life because Jesus himself made a promise to us, a promise that when we focus on him, we'll get to experience the life of faith that he has for us. And so today we're going to be in Matthew, chapter six. This is the Sermon on the Mount, one of the most comprehensive pictures of teaching that we have of Jesus. He's sitting on a hillside and there are many people listening to this text. And so I want to share with you what happens right in the middle of this sermon that he has written. So this is Matthew, chapter six six. And we're going to start in verse 25. So Jesus says, therefore I tell you, don't worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Isn't life more than food and the body more than clothing? Consider the birds of the sky. They don't sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Aren't you worth more than they? Can any of you add one moment to his lifespan by worrying? So this section of text that Jesus has for us is going to talk to us about this life of worry and what the antidote might be for you and I. Now, I've kind of pulled out three problems with worry. Three things that I think worry causes in our life. And the first one is that worry feels productive, and so we keep on doing it. What I mean by productive is that when we worry, we feel like we're doing something. We feel like we are engaging in it and we're having some kind of positive effect. You see, when you wake up in the middle of the night and you're concerned about something, doesn't it kind of feel good when you lay there and you sort of problem solve it? You think about it, you rehearse that response you want to give somebody, or you think about that email you're going to draft in the morning. You feel productive as you're worrying, but eventually you slip back to sleep, you wake up in the morning and you have forgotten all of it. It felt productive, and yet it really did nothing but rob you of sleep. Worrying is this thing that feels good in the moment and yet accomplishes very little. It's kind of like the horn in your car. Now, I don't know about you, but I'm not really somebody that uses my horn very often. I just don't really see the purpose of it. But perhaps you're like some of the other people that live in my neighborhood or are on my local commute. You enjoy your horn. You think you're doing something. I'm not against the horn. I just wish we had two of them. I wish that the left button did one and then the right button did the other. Now, what if we had two horns and one of them was like the cordial polite because they're too slow on the green light or they're kind of merging into your lane and you just want to give them a little hey, just a little hey, hey, I'm here, right? You just want to warn people that you're there. And then there would be a second horn. And that is the full blast, like getting in someone's face. I would never use the second horn. I would do the polite horn all the time because I am a Christian. No, I'm just kidding. If you are somebody who honks your horn, you only have one. Therefore, it is full power all the time. And the problem is, is you think you're doing something. When you honk that horn, it is not actually accomplishing what you think. Oftentimes I hear people will tell me, I lay into that horn because I'm trying to teach them something. I'm trying to give them a lesson. Let me tell you something. No one has ever changed their driving because you have honked at them. They have never had a moment of contemplation and reflection where they said, you know, that guy's right. I really should pay more attention. I really should probably go back and retake my driver's test and, and really learn how to pay attention to traffic signals and, and signs. No, not at all. All they do is look at you and think you're a jerk. So we're not really accomplishing anything. Worry is kind of like that. When we worry, we think we are doing something, and yet it is actually doing the opposite of what we want. Jesus himself actually talks about something where he says, can you really add any more to your life by worrying? And the irony is about. For most of us in America, we are trying to figure out how to elongate our lifespan. We wanna find the solution to longevity. We wanna be around happy and healthy as long as possible. And yet when you worry, you are taking away hours off of your life. There are great research articles out there that will show you that chronic worrying is doing the exact opposite of what you wanna do. Worrying about your life is taking away from your life. And so we still do it because we think it's productive. And I understand the desire is not always wrong. Wanting to try to solve the problem, being concerned and trying to feel productive is not the problem. But it does take us away from paying attention to the giver and the sustainer of life. What does he want for you? What might he have to say about what you are experiencing in your life? I guarantee he wants to show you his word and his kingdom. And so the promise for us follows the command. When we're told, do not worry. The promise is that you can know your worth. Aren't you worth more, is what Jesus says. I never want us to sacrifice our worth by getting caught up in. And sadly, I think many of us has compromised our own sense of worth because of being caught up in worry so often in our life. When my wife and I had our daughter, this is the theme verse that we chose for her life. I never wanted her to confuse her worth and worry. And I want that for you too, that you might experience the beauty of a life of faith so that you don't have to waste any time on worry. Now Jesus goes on, this is what he says in verse 28. He says, and why do you worry about clothes? Observe how the wildflowers of the field grow. They don't labor or spin thread. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all of his splendor was adorned like one of these. If that's how God clothes the grass of the field which is here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, won't he do much more for for you, you of little faith? So the second principle that I want to pull out here is that worry clouds our vision, which causes us to think our problems are bigger than they actually are. Those flowers of the fields, Jesus says they don't labor or spin, which sounds kind of stressful. They're not stressing out about their own safety and security, therefore they have to labor and spin. No, they're not really worried about it. We tend to have a lot of problems in life, and your problems are almost as big as you allow them to be. Now please hear me. I am not diminishing or excusing real life. Pain, trouble, struggles. I'll talk about that in a few minutes. We have real things that are happening in our life. But there is a tendency for me, maybe for you as well, where we'll have some things going on in our life and they are as big as I allow them to be in my life. It's kind of like your hands. Everyone, real quick, just take your hand and extend it as far as you can. Your hand looks like a hand. It's out there and it's kind of far away, but it looks right size. Now slowly move it closer to your face and eventually everything surrounding starts to get smaller to the point where all you can see is your hand. This is what we do when we worry. We take an issue and we pull it so close that our field of vision cannot see anything else, including Jesus. We pull it straight into our face. We lose perspective, and all of a sudden that pain, that problem, that worry, that concern becomes all consuming. Now then, what happens when you do that is you allow the dreaded what if syndrome to start taking place now. The what if syndrome, I completely made it up. Don't Google it, but this is what happens. It involves Google. I'll show you. Imagine you have some sort of ailment that you're feeling in your life. Like I was on a run a couple of weeks ago and I noticed that a couple of my toes started to a little bit numb on my run and so I just sort of put that in the back of my mind as a concern. Well, on the rest of that run I started evaluating what else in my body is hurting, what else is wrong with me. And as soon as I got home I had to do some searching and so I started googling what might cause the numbness in my toes. And I got to tell you, I have a really serious issue now. And I found this because I did some Google searching and I self diagnosed. I got onto WebMD and it is a very big deal. It's either blood clots or it's some sort of chronic heart disease. It's one of the two of those. I had to share it with my wife. I updated my will and family directive. I got really far in about 45 minutes because I obsessed over it. I was convinced and then I talked to a physical therapist and he's like, you just need to stretch a little bit more. It was really all it was. And so isn't that crazy how quickly though when we start to allow the what if, what if it's something more what if I just did a quick Google search. What if I subscribed and became a Premium member of WebMD? You can get yourself into some serious trouble, my friends. And ultimately, while you may have something very big going on and that should be taken care of and you should pay attention to those things, what I can promise you is if you allow the what if to take you down a path of worrying, it will always lead to towards pain. It will lead towards a life of distance from Jesus. He wants to be with you no matter what is going on. By the way, he's already aware. And so what might it look for us in our worry, in our concern to engage with Him? This text talks about if we engage with him, guess what? We get much more. We get much more now in the relationship with Jesus, in the Christian life. What does it mean to get much more from Jesus? You actually get much more of Jesus. He is not promising to give you every hope, dream and desire of your life, but he is promising to give you more of himself. The more you want him, the more he's going to give himself to you. This is the much more that is promised for us. So then Jesus finishes up this passage in verse 31, and he says, so don't worry, saying, what will we eat and what will we drink and what will we wear? For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things, and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you. Therefore, don't worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. The third principle that I want to provide for us about the truth of worry in our life. And then I'm going to give you one invitation, one picture of hope. The principle about worry is that it distracts us from the mission that God invites us into. And because it distracts us, it may diminish our life's impact. You see, he talks about Gentiles in that passage. Just briefly, Gentiles in the early first century would have been really anyone outside of the people of God, anyone who is not yet following God. Those would have been Gentiles. And what he's essentially saying is they all have lots of opinions about how to live your life. And not much is different today. There are so many voices in our life. Whether it's where you get your news, your social media, the people that you spend your time with, Everybody has an opinion about how you should live. And the real question is, what voice is the loudest? Who are you allowing to have the crystal clear voice in your life? Jesus calls out three really important things and I'm going to draw some connections. He says, eat, drink and wear. Really? That is about am I safe, am I secure, and am I significant? These are like the three root needs that every one of us has. Safety, security and significance. He's talking about, are you safe? Like, do you have what you need to live another day? Do you have the life sustenance in order to carry on? The safety piece is all about. I'm sorry, the security piece is all about, do you have what you need for your future? Is everything established and prepared for where you are going? And then lastly, are you significant? Am I significant? A wrestle that we have, Is my life full of meaning? Do I actually matter in this world? If those are three questions that you're wrestling with, Am I safe? Am I secure? Am I significant? Do I have what I need to live? Do I have my foundation established for my future? Do I matter? Those are three very important questions. And so who are you listening To. To help answer those. Where are you turning? To find the answer to those questions? Because the invitation is to lean into Jesus. It is to ask him. Because where you point your attention, where you look is where you are going, where you place your time, your attention, what you are considering in your life, about how you want to get somewhere, how you are allowing something to inform and shape you, that is inevitably where you are heading. And so Jesus is saying, why do we worry about all of these things? That is what the Gentiles do. That is what others do. But not you, child of God, not you, follower of Jesus. Those are real things. Those are good voices out there. At times there are some good things out there, but are they built on the foundation of God's Word? That's what you and I should be looking to now. There's an illustration that we get from the life of Peter. You see, Peter showed us that where you look is where you're inevitably going. And it's a story that comes out of Matthew, chapter 14. Jesus has just finished feeding the 5,000 people, and he's wanting to get onto the other side of the Sea of Galilee. And so he puts his disciples in a boat and he kind of pushes them off, and he says, I'm going to go up on a hill and pray. I'll meet you on the other side. And so the disciples end up in the middle of the Sea of Galilee, and a great storm arises. And the wind and the waves pick up. And then off in the distance, they can see Jesus out in the distance in the midst of the wind and the waves, there he is, walking on water. And so look at what it says in Matthew 14, verse 29, climbing out of the boat. This is Peter seeing Jesus saying, if that's really you, call me out there. Peter started walking on the water and came towards Jesus. But when he saw the strength of the wind, he was afraid and he began to sink. He cried out, lord, save me. And immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught hold of him. Now, this is a powerful picture. And I actually took this passage and I put it into an AI Art Image Generator. Look at this. Look at this picture. This is what AI believes that scene looked like. You've got Jesus off in the distance with this warm glow behind him. Look at the size of those waves. And then there is Peter. I don't know if you noticed this, but of course, Jesus is right in the middle. Wind and waves on either side. But Peter is not looking to Jesus in this moment. His gaze is turned in one direction. He has taken his eyes off of Jesus. See, faith got Peter out of the boat, but worry caused him to sink. The minute he took his eyes off of Jesus and he saw the very real waves that were surrounding him, his worry got a hold of him. He began to sink. Now, in this moment, as Peter is going down, the water is up to his shins and his waist. It's closing in on him. He had a decision to make, and so do you and I, because I don't know how 2024 went for you. I don't know what kind of pain or struggles, what kind of doubts or distractions you dealt with. But the question really for us to reflect on is, as you think about this last year, did your worry compromise anything in your faith? Did it get in the way of the depth that was available and you were invited into? Did it distract you from the life that Jesus has invited and called you into? You see, there are so many things in life that can cause worry and concern. Doubt and distraction could be challenges or struggles, addictions that we're facing. It may be unforeseen circumstances that you were just unprepared for. How did you handle those in 2024? And then as we look towards this next year, what might we do different? What would it look like for you and I to be proactive about the one invitation that Jesus has for us in this passage? Because if the principle is where you look is where you're going. What happened to Peter is that as he was looking at Jesus, he was making progress towards Jesus. But as he got halfway and was overwhelmed by the wind and the waves, he turned his eyes away from Jesus and he got caught up in worry that caused him to sink. Now, there's a beautiful thing that happens. You see, Peter doesn't try to swim. He doesn't turn away from Jesus and try to get back to the boat. He doesn't make his best effort to save his own life. Instead, he cries out to Jesus. And what I love about Jesus in this picture is the minute that Peter cries out to him, Jesus closes the gap. He runs to Peter, he reaches for his hand and he pulls him out of the water, delivers him back to the safety of the boat. Jesus did the saving. And so no matter how this last year went for you, if you can turn your eyes to Jesus, even in this very moment, you cry out to him, he will rush to you just like he did Peter as he was sinking. Reach out your hand, and he will be the one who will pull you out of the waters. He will deliver you to safety. He will remind you of your worth, the worth that he sacrificed his entire life for. Where are you going to turn your eyes in this year? The promise that Jesus has is he says, seek first the kingdom and his righteousness. Being proactive in this next year could look like you and I. Rather than making a bunch of New Year's resolutions, rather than putting a plan together for our physical health and the reading plan you're going to put yourself on and all the things that you want to do to better your life, what would it look like for you to you and I to be proactive about seeking first the kingdom and his righteousness? His kingdom is a picture and a reminder that you and I, no matter what country you live in, as a Jesus follower, you are a citizen of heaven. That we have dual citizenship, one that is now and one that is everlasting. This picture of eternity, of a kingdom that will never fail, those that will come and go, the one that you and I are a part of, is eternal and it is in the presence of God. And so being proactive is to have eyes to see and ears to hear, however possible, to remind yourself that we were not made for this world, but we have been redeemed and rescued and we will have life in eternity with Jesus. But it doesn't just stop there. It doesn't just mean good for you. You are saved. Just wait for heaven. It says also seek righteousness. Seek his kingdom and seek righteousness. So I want to talk just for a couple minutes about how you might pursue him proactively in this next year. Thankfully, at Mariners Church we have so many ways to help you seek righteousness. Seeking righteousness, really? I'm using the text to try to talk to you about this kingdom behaviors because you and I live in the Kingdom of God. What might look like to live in in the Kingdom of God means that we might make some proactive steps towards understanding what life in the kingdom is now. One of the greatest things that I think we have here at Mariners Church is rooted. This 10 week spiritual group where we get to be together and talk about what it means to connect with God, understand our purpose and connect that to life here in the church. If you've never done rooted, I want to challenge you to sign up. We're going to start in just a couple of weeks. Now. Perhaps you've done rooted. You turned into a life group, but for lots of good reasons. It's okay that maybe your group didn't go on. I want to help you too. That we might be able to help you get into a group. Because we really believe growing together is what God designed for us, that we might be in relationship and biblical community together. This is about seeking his righteousness. Another way might be committing to the annual read that we might be in God's Word every single day together. That we might enjoy this beautiful book that Warren Wirsby put together that we can see God every day through the year. That rhythm of daily devotion, which is honestly, it's part of rooted as well. Daily devotion allows us to start our day in his word so that it might guide our steps for the remainder of the day. Or perhaps it looks like being committed to joining us for the first couple of weeks or first several weeks of the new year. As we dive into on the table, we're going to be having some great conversations about the big questions of life and God and really what it looks like for us to engage proactively with our Christian faith in the world around us. Because when we seek first the kingdom and his righteousness as we live in his kingdom, we're not going to disregard the world around us. We're going to engage in a Jesus follower way with the world around us. We're going to be his hands and feet wherever we go. And then it says, all your needs will be provided. Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and then all your needs will be provided. This does not mean again that all your dreams are going to come true, that he's going to allow you to manifest your own destiny in life and all those things are going to be provided. It's not really what it's saying. What it's saying is seek him first, trust him and allow him to fill in the details. Because he is the Great Provider. He is the One who will allow you to have everything you need for the life that he has called you to live. One last verse before we close. This is honestly what I've been praying for you as I think about this next year. Jeremiah 29, verse 13 says, you will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. You will seek me and find me when you search for me with all of your heart. This is an invitation from God to be with him in a relationship where he will be found when you search for him with all of your heart. When my kids were little, we had a small apartment that we lived in and we would play hide and seek all the time. And they would enjoy finding little cracks and crevices in the house where they could hide. And as A dad. I gotta be honest, they were not very good at hiding. You'd see my son hiding behind the curtains and his little feet would be hanging out, unaware that they were seen for everyone. Or you'd hear my daughter giggling behind the couch. But as a. As a good dad who wanted to play with his kids, I pretended like I couldn't find him. I would walk around the house and I would open up cupboards and I would move chairs and I could hear them giggling off in the corner. I knew exactly where they were, but I wanted the anticipation to build. I didn't want to ruin the game immediately. Let me tell you, when I read Jeremiah 23rd, 29:13, I'm shown that our heavenly father is not very good at hiding. Either he actually wants to be found. His invitation to you and I is that we, when you and I prioritize, we be proactive and we search for him with all of our heart. He will be found. He is not hiding from you. He is not withholding from you. He actually wants to be found by you. And so this next year, what would it look like for you and I to lean into that truth, to seek him, to seek his kingdom, to seek his righteousness? Because I can promise you, the one thing that you will find is Him. When Jesus promises much more, what he is promising is much more of Him. There's a great old hymn that I just want to close with. There's some beauty in these old hymns because there's such rich language that are drawn from God's word. They have stood the test of time. And this one is called turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look at what it says. Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in his wonderful face, and all the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace. Where you look is where you are going. Who you look to is who you are becoming. Let's look to Jesus this year. Let's search for Him. Let's seek Him. Let's become more like Him. My prayer, as I have said I've been praying for you, is that this next year we would build the firm foundation that we can stand on so that no matter what comes, no matter what doubts or distractions or challenges or unforeseen circumstances, no matter the size of the wind or the waves, that we would keep our eyes fixed on Jesus. All right, extend your hands, please, and let me pray a prayer of blessing over you as we go. Jesus, I pray you'd bless your sons and daughters this week, that you would remind them that you were gentle and approachable and that you love them, cause your face to shine on them. I pray they will experience your mercy and your joy this new week. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen. Go in peace. Have a great week.