B (5:03)
Who's gonna be the one that directs and leads in your life? You or God? And every day, moment by moment, you are making that decision. When you choose to make yourself the manager of your own life, it causes conflict, it causes confusion, it causes stress, and it Causes a lot of turmoil in your life. God says, why don't you just relax? That's the first step to stress relief and let Christ be the manager of your life. Look at this first verse, Job 22, verse 21. Read it with me. Stop quarreling with God. If you agree with him, you will have peace at last and things will go well for you. I want you to underline or circle two things in that sentence. Peace at last and things will go well. Peace at last and things will go well. How many of you would like to have in your life peace at last and have things go well? Can I see your hands? That's what I figured. Everybody would like to have it well. He tells us, stop quarreling with God. We say, God, I don't like the way you made me. You made me too tall or too short, too fat, too skinny. Why didn't you give me different parents? Why didn't you give me different talents? I don't like the way you made me. And God says, I made you because I have a unique plan for your life. And I made you that way so you could fulfill the plan I have for you now. The stress comes when you try to be the manager of your life and you don't understand the way God made you. And so you start trying to plan your plan for your life. You get under stress. You do not let go and let God. And you're uptight all the time. God says, I made you, and if you'll let me, I will manage you in the way that makes the most of what I made you to be. Because God knows how to make the most of your life more than you do. So you need to relax. You need to let go and let God. Notice this next verse, Matthew 16:24. I love this. In the message paraphrase, Jesus says, anyone who intends to come to me has to let me lead. You're not in the driver's seat. I am. I like that. You're not in the driver's seat. I am. Now, here's what Christians do. We know that when we become believers in Christ, we say, okay, Jesus Christ, you take over the driver's seat. We then promptly hop into the back seat and do backseat driving. Oh, yeah, Jesus is in the driver's seat in my life. But you're reaching over his shoulders going, no, no, turn this way, turn that way. Wait, go forward. Faster, slower. Oh, I wanna go that way. I wanna see that side. Jesus said, am I the driver or not? You have Jesus in the driver's seat, but you're constantly giving him advice from the back seat, saying, this is the way we ought to go. Now, I want you to circle a phrase in that sense. Let me lead, let me lead. Do you do that? Do you let God lead in your life? On a day by day basis? Are you still trying to lead? Many years ago, Kay and I took dancing lessons from Arthur Murray Studios. We're special. And the Arthur Murray Studios dance instructor told us that one of the biggest problems couples have is who's going to lead. And when they both try to lead, they just step on each other's feet all the time. And it doesn't look very pretty. Your life doesn't look very pretty when you're trying to lead with God. At the same time, you just need to let God be God and make Jesus the manager of your life. Last year, Kurt and Jerry went on an African safari, and they learned a lesson about following the instructions of the guide. One day, a guide took them out to find an elephant herd. But he made them promise in advance to obey his rules before they even went out. And he gave them some very specific rules. He said, first off, he said, if I say run, you run. Don't pause, don't stop, don't take a picture, don't smell the roses, don't think you can hide, don't drop to your knees. You run. Law number one, he said, number two, when you run, when I say run, you follow me. The guide exactly. Put your feet and my footprint, follow me step by step. Don't try to forge your own trail because in a panic you'll get lost in the jungle. Or number two, you'll step on things you wish you hadn't stepped on. So he said, you run when I say run, and you follow my steps exactly. Well, sure enough, they came on an elephant herd and it stampeded. And the guide said, run. And some of the people froze in their tracks from fear, from panic. And the guide said, again, run. And Jerry said, at that moment, in spite of my fear, I had to move forward. I had to go forward. If I hadn't obeyed, I would have been trampled. If I hadn't followed exactly in the footprints of the guide, I might have stepped on something or I might have gotten lost. But the point was, she said, I had to make a decision to obey before I was in the circumstance. Now, if you wait until you come to the moment of temptation, say, now I'm gonna do what God says or not, you're already a goner. Maturity, spiritual maturity, is deciding in advance to Obey God. God, you're the manager of my life. You created me. You formed me. You shaped me. You're the potter, I'm the clay. And so I'm gonna trust you. And so I'm already telling you up front, I'll do whatever you ask me to do. If it says go here, I'll go there. If it says do this, I'll do that. But you make it in advance. There's an old hymn that goes, trust and obey. For there's no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey. You need to do that. You need to make Jesus the manager of your life. Look at this last verse. Give yourself to the Lord, trust in him, and read the rest with me, and he will help you. Now, when it says give yourself, what's it talking about? It means to abandon yourself. It means to let go. It means to surrender, to submit, to say, you know, I'm all yours, God, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna bend with you. It's kind of like the trees in my backyard. Kay and I live out in the canyon, and our home is out on a point of a canyon that it's unobstructed for about a quarter of a mile. And so the gale winds come down and hit our home at full force quite frequently. 60, 70 miles or more an hour. And I've had different kinds of trees in my backyard. We've lived there about 10 years, and some of them break and some of them don't. The difference is, do they bend when the wind comes? There are some that are rigid. When the wind hits them, they refuse to bend. And as a result, they pop off, they break. We lose branches, we lose limbs. Some have got uprooted, some have, because they are stiff, they're rigid, they resist. On the other hand, the trees in my backyard that bend with the wind, they're the ones that last. They bend, they give into it. They go with the flow. Now, in your life, you can be rigid and you can reject the winds of God. Go, I'm not gonna go that way. And you're gonna break. Eventually, you're gonna break. On the other hand, if you give in and you submit and you say, God, you know what's best for me anyway, and you love me, I'm gonna trust you. Then you will last throughout the lifetime without all these breaks and hurts and pains in your life. It says, give yourself, and it says trust. You know, in many ways, life is kinda like riding a roller coaster. Now think about this. In a roller coaster, it's got a beginning and an end. And between those twos, there are a lot of hills and valleys. And between those two, there's some times when it speeds up and there are times when it slows down, and you don't have control over either of those. And your life is a lot like a roller coaster. What you need to do is you need to let God strap you into the roller coaster and just go along for the ride. Now, I used to worry and be afraid of roller coasters, but I'm not anymore because I know it's not just a machine. There is an operator, an unseen operator behind that roller coaster. And they've got cameras pointing on all angles of it. And he's in control the whole time. And I don't have to worry because the unseen operator knows where I started, knows where I'm going to end, and he's going to get me safely to the end. There may be some twirls, there may be some ups and downs. There are a lot of times in my life where I feel like it's out of control, but it's not. There are times on a roller coaster you may feel like this is out of control, but it's not. There is an unseen operator pulling the switches and doing and gonna make sure that you start right, you end right, and you go safely through the journey. There is an unseen operator in your life. His name is God. He knows the beginning and the end of your life. And he knows. Yeah, you're gonna have some flips in life. You're gonna have some twirls, you're gonna have some mountains, you're gonna have some valleys, some fast and slow times. But he's in control. So you don't need to worry. You need to just sit back, get strapped in, and enjoy the ride. What is that called? It's called meekness. It's called letting go and letting God. And that's the first step to reducing stress in your life. Make Jesus the manager of my life. Number two. The first E in meek stands for Establish God's word as the authority of my life. I make Jesus the manager of my life. Number two. I establish God's word as the authority of my life. Why is this a stress reliever? Because if you don't have an authority in your life, you're gonna listen to all different kinds of conflicting opinions, and one day you'll decide this, another day you'll decide that, and one day you can't decide. And indecision causes stress. But if you decide that God's word is gonna be the authority of your life. It's real simple. It simplifies decision making. We all need authorities in our lives for our own health. Last Wednesday night, after the pastors conference that I'd been teaching this week, my family decided to go to the beach at about 9:00 at night. Now that's real typical for the Warrens. We'll kind of, hey, let's go do this. So at 9:30 at night, we're down at hole in the fence, Capistrano beach, frolicking in the ocean at 9:30 at night, running up and down in the waves and having fun. It's almost pitch black, couple street lights out there. We're just having a great time. And then all of a sudden somebody in our family, I think it was Kay, saw this little tiny sign that was posted in the sand in Spanish and English that said, contaminated water. Stay out. Okay, now that sign represents an authority. It is saying, don't you dare put your feet in this water. It's contaminated. Now why was that law posted? There is an authority there. And why was that law posted? To ruin my fun, to make my life a big bummer. Why was it there? It was there for my own health. Now how should I react to that authority? How should I react to that sign? Well, I have a lot of options and you have a lot of options when you react to God's authority. The word. I mean, I could say this is a stupid sign. I know better than this sign, so I'm gonna go ahead and play in the water anyway. And I just reject the authority. It's dumb. I don't like it. It's dumb. So I'm going to do my own thing. Or I could say this sign is out of date. It was for another time and another age and it really doesn't apply to me because it's out of date, I'm sure. Or I could say this sign doesn't really mean what it says when it says stay out. That's just your interpretation. I interpret the word stay out as meaning go right ahead. Go right ahead. That's just your interpretation. Or I could say, I'm sure God would want me to ignore this sign because God wants me to have fun. Now all through the Bible, God has said things like, don't have premarital sex. Well now he said, you know, that's out of date, it's wrong, I don't like it. That's your interpretation. It doesn't matter. It's still the truth. And why Does God? Why was that sign set up there on the ocean? To keep me from disease, from danger, and possibly even death. It was for my own benefit. Now, the Bible is filled with all kinds of rules, commands, and things. God says, do this, don't do this. Make sure you do this. Why does he do that? Because he is a loving God. And everything that's in this book is not there to make your life miserable. It's there to protect you. It's there for your own health. It's there for your own good. A loving God who knows more than you is saying, here's the rules for life. If you ignore them, you only get hurt.
