Seek First The Kingdom

Let's pray. Jesus, thank you so much for this day. Thank you for the spirit that I feel in this place, the beautiful music, Lord. Lord, thank you for all that you do in our lives, Lord.

Lord, I just pray that your hand be on everything we do here today. Um that the message bless the people here and that we go into our our respective lives um changed and ready to to make a difference for you, Lord, in this city. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.

Have a seat. So, I didn't know these people were coming, but um 2 weeks ago, probably, I went to Florida for a few days. Um and I and I've changed my game with going to Florida. I now get like Uber rides down there rather than drive my car, park it, haul all my stuff.

It's just easier having them drop you right off at the thing. Well, he drove me, Jeffrey, um and he started talking about Jesus, and so we got in a great con- I'm in 40 minutes and he starts talking he asked about a question about uh Revelation. You know, I like I love talking about that, right? So, I'm like, "Man, you got to come to our church and everything."

He didn't come last week, so I'm thinking, "Yeah, you know, most people don't." But here he is with his sweet family. Um this week, I don't know if you know in uh Lawrenceville that little place called the Little Red Barn, I think it's called. You know, they have these biscuits.

Man, so I went through there this week, okay? Um the country ham was like that thick. I didn't know country ham could be that thick. Like, I'm used to Bojangles where you you know, you barely whatever.

But as I'm going through the thing, the guy says, "Hey, yeah, have a you're having a good day." And I'm like, "Yeah." I'm smiling. He goes, "I want to compliment you on something."

I said, "Okay. Okay, what? You know?" And he goes, "The speaker back here is so bad, you can barely hear anybody, but you are very clear and succinct in your ordering, and I just want to thank you for that."

And I'm like, "Okay." As I drove off, and I was smiling for 10 or 15 minutes. It was the simplest little compliment, right? It was nothing, you know?

I ordered I spoke clearly. I mean, that, you know, but um but it just goes to show we don't get compliments enough, you know? And we just need to always be aware of other people, not just my mired in ourself, and and try to catch them doing things good, and just and just build them up, you know what I mean? That I think that's really pleasing to God.

That's loving on others. Um so, it's a side note there, but we're on a journey here, guys, and um my goal is to get you guys battle ready, okay? Easter Sunday, we talked about God's plan for your life. Look at this.

I don't have to turn around. Glenn got me a new thing. It's got enough room for my stuff, so I'm not like I'm so blessed. And So, the week after that, we talked we learned that through prayer, we are co-creators of this life, okay?

That the future is not set in stone, all right? That our prayers we can impact things with our prayers, okay? So, they're powerful. And then, last week we talked about money, and I shared the rules of money, and the first one was Matthew 6:33, seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added unto you.

What things? Your needs, okay? Jesus in Matthew 6:25 says, "Don't worry about your life." And then he goes into describe not worrying about clothes, not worrying about food, but it's really anything, right?

Relationships, companionship, love to serve. The key to getting all of it is summed up in Matthew 6:33, seek first the kingdom. And that's today's message, seek first the kingdom. Seek God today.

Seek him tomorrow. Seek him next year, okay? When you first wake up, before you go to bed. All right?

And and all through the day, let God handle the details. You just seek him. That is the plan. Jesus calls us to a life of simplicity.

He says, "My yoke is easy." In Matthew 11:30 okay? We are the ones that make it hard. Let me repeat that, okay?

Jesus calls us to a life of simplicity. We are the ones who make it hard. By the our choices, by our distractions, by what we give our attention to, okay? Luke 10 34 38 through 42 gives a great example of the way we typically act and the way we really should act, okay?

And so, I'm going to read for you now. This is Luke 10, verse 38. Now, it happened as they went that he entered a certain village and a certain woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister him being Jesus.

And she had a sister called Mary who also sat at Jesus' feet and heard his word. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she approached him and said, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore, tell her to help me."

And Jesus answered, I say this to my kids a lot "Martha Martha Martha you're worried about so many things, troubled about many things, but one thing is needed. And Mary has chosen the good part which will not be taken from her, okay? So, you got Mary. What's the one thing she's doing?

It says here in verse 39 um she sat at Jesus' feet and heard his word. Okay? That's all she did. And Jesus actually says that's only one thing is needed.

That's the one thing that's needed, okay? Compare that to Martha running around trying to control everything, trying to get everything right. Was Martha doing anything wrong? She was serving Jesus, right?

She wasn't doing anything wrong. She wasn't doing We're not doing things wrong when we run around like a chicken with our heads cut off. We're just not doing it the way Jesus says, which is go to him and then let him handle a lot of those details. We're trying to control everything, okay?

Jesus said Mary made the right choice not to go to this thing okay? For our word, we should go to this thing for our word, okay? Caitlin's testimony a couple weeks back we had baptism. Caitlin's testimony she talked about how she talked about how she was disappointed that me and her mom had divorced and that her prayers weren't getting answered and she was very uh destroyed about and she said she said something very powerful that it was powerful to me.

She said she took it to the internet, okay? Her disappointments there. And what happened was they were validated and celebrated. That's that's pretty pretty profound actually okay?

And that got her off track and it took an act of God working in her sister and interrupting that rabbit hole to get her back because this this cell phone can get us down a rabbit hole, okay? And it always happens. Even when you're watching a Christian podcast, they can't control the ads, right? So you can have a half-naked model coming across the ad when you're listening to a preaching sermon.

And if you struggle with adultery, I mean with uh um what do you call it? Pornography or something, that could be very troubling and you you went online for something good. I promise you there's no half-naked pictures in this book. Even the kids study Bible doesn't have any bad pictures in it, okay?

It's a good place to be. And it always happens, no matter what, even if you're listening to a good thing, it's still a distraction from the word, the word of God. If your choice is this cell phone, okay, over this Bible, it's it's an inferior choice. You're not doing bad if you're listening to a podcast of some preacher or something like that, but you got to be careful because you don't know what the unless you take it back to the word to test it, they could be talking about stuff that's off base, okay?

Very much off base. This phone is a distraction, a disruption, and it's busyness. The average American spends 7 hours a day looking at a screen. Isn't that crazy?

7 hours and 3 minutes. Looking at a screen. What if that time was spent here, right? Or even a half hour of it was spent here.

When we read this book, it's God speaking to us. Okay? He's actually speaking to us. You we should read it like a book.

When we're reading it, what does this mean to me? Be thinking like God's talking to me cuz guess what? He is. This is the sword of the spirit.

It's the word of God. This is how the Holy Spirit is going to communicate to you. He's doing it through here. When you if you're reading this and you start reading what we just read about Mary and Martha, you might hear God whisper to you, you're too worried about stuff.

That's actually God speaking to you. He's speaking to you. He did it through this, okay? This is where it where where you got that.

That's the creator of the universe speaking to you. So, we should we should come to this thing, okay, and read it to learn what he's saying to you. Andy Stanley and all these podcast guys are fine, they can motivate you, but they don't know the depth of your heart. They they can't possibly know.

I I know you pretty well, much better than if we were in a mega church cuz I get get to greet you and everything, right? But I don't know the depths of your heart, but God does. And he knows his plan for your life. And he knows how to fix the issues in your thing.

So, why would we go anywhere else? Why would we go to anywhere else than right here, okay? This is his tool. Don't read it passively.

Read it as if he is talking to you. Every day we have choices. Those choices make or break us. Every day we can sleep in, okay?

Or we can wake up and get into the word, okay? Back when I was um I graduated college, most of you know that I wake up very early every day and I studied scripture and I've been doing that for 20 years, but when I was in college, I wasn't an early morning person okay? Um but when I graduated college, I had a job with a company called Spinnakers, which is up in Knox- or was up in Knoxville Tennessee. You can't live in Knoxville and not like the Tennessee Volunteers.

It's like impossible. They're even more crazy than the Georgia fans towards their football team. They really are. You know the third string players like on the team and everything about them.

But anyway, so I'm there and of course this they were open for breakfast. The new managers, the rookies, had to do the morning shifts, which were the worst shifts. So, you're waking up 4:00 in the morning, going in there at 5:00. A lot of action happens in restaurants in this country, you know, there's there's shipments and deliveries happening early morning, you know, and you're re-packing and stocking and all that other stuff.

I would drink a pot of coffee just to try to stay awake in those morning things. Um I got out of that field. I was able to sleep a little bit again and then I had kids and and um Zachary would wake up about 6:00. That was his time.

So, he'd be crawling on me. So, now I'm waking up at 6:00. And then I had a mentor tell me this. He goes to me, "Brian, every saint I know, every single one has morning quiet time.

You're not going to be the man God wants you to be if you don't spend time in the morning in his word, okay? I said, I'm like, all right, my kids wake me up at 6:00, I guess I'll get up at 5:30. And so I I got up at 5:30. And And it slowly grew because that time was so great.

And I'll hear people say I'm not a morning person or I'm not this or I'm not that, you know. We were talking earlier about the people that are Christians, but they never want to come to church. We were just talking about that, you know. What we want is God on our schedule, our terms, our life.

And And my question here is uh when is are we going to get on his schedule, his terms, and his life, okay? Um Seek first the kingdom. Focuses on that. Let's go to Mark.

And it's something Jesus modeled, okay? Mark 1:35-38. This is the beginning. So this is Mark 1, this first chapter of of Mark.

Jesus just had a blowout ministry night, okay? Hundreds, maybe thousands are coming, he's healing them, they're the the disciples who left everything to follow him are excited, they're fired up, man. Things are going the way with This is what we have. Imagine if 100 people showed up here this morning and and and demons are being cast down all this other stuff.

We'd be so fired up, like, finally, this is, you know, this is where we're supposed to be. So Jesus wakes up the next morning, and I read now. Now in the morning, having risen a long while before daylight, so that's pretty early, okay? A long while before daylight, he went out and departed to a solitary place, and there he prayed.

And Simon and those who were with him searched for him. When they found him, they said to him, "Everyone's looking for you. Come on." But he said to them, "Let us go into the next towns that I may preach there also, because for this purpose I have come forth.

Okay? Now, Jesus is fully man, fully God, right? So, he must have had the same desire, you know, oh man, this thing's really going good. Okay?

And he goes up in the morning, he gets alone by himself, and God tells him, "No, go to the next town. You're done here." Okay? Disciples come to him, "Come on, let's get back to work.

Listen, this is great, you know, it's No, we're going to the next town. Why? God changed his plan, and what he did was obey God, okay? Jesus said over and over, he he'd say things like, "I say only what the Father tells me to say.

I do only what the Father tells me to do. What I see him doing, I do." Okay? So, he would go and get God's plan, and then go and do it.

And that's what he's modeling for us. We should do the same thing. We should wake up, get his direction every day, and and go forth. And he'll tell you things that are simple, like Monday, he told me to text Jimmy.

I texted you because God told me to text you, okay? Um Tuesday, I called Donna. Now, her voicemail was full, and she didn't answer, and you know, but why did he have me call her? I I don't know.

Maybe just to just to obey him. Maybe just to see if I would obey him in the little things. I don't know, okay? Um but all I got to do is whatever God tells me to do.

It's It's kind of like Four Square, man. It's really genius, okay? What are you doing today? Whatever God tells me to do, you know?

It's that simple, right? Luke 5:15 and 16, it says this, "However, the report went around concerning him," capital H, that's Jesus, "all the more, and great multitudes came together to hear and to be healed of him and of their infirmities. So, he himself often withdrew into the wilderness and prayed." Okay?

The mom at home with the couple kids might be Those kids might be running her ragged. He had hundreds, maybe thousands, clamoring after him all the time. The busier you are, the more important it is for you to get out of that and get to the word, okay? And get some time alone with God.

You have to do it. Jesus modeled it, and we would be wise to follow it, too. So, I ask you, what's holding you back from spending more time with God, okay? Maybe you're afraid of being alone.

Okay? You're not alone when you're reading this book. All right? This The Bible says that there's only one weapon in our um in the uh armor of God.

There's only one real weapon, okay? The sword of the spirit, the Holy Spirit, which is the word of God. This is the Holy Spirit's tool, okay? To mold you and change you and and grow you, okay?

So, when you're reading this thing, you're not alone. God's actually there in the room with you through the Holy Spirit talking to you. You're not alone. You're never alone if you're sold out in Jesus, if the Holy Spirit is coming to your heart, then spending time in this word kind of fires you up because you're you're in dialogue with Jesus, okay?

Through the Holy Spirit. That's amazing to me. Man, that the king of the universe, the creator of this world, wants to come and spend time with me and with you. That's humbling, man.

That's wow, you know? He wants to spend time with us. And so often people say, "Well, I'm just too busy." If you don't have time, you've got to try to figure out a way to make time.

At what point does his agenda overtake ours? When do we put our feet in the sand and say, "No more. No more excuses. I'm just going to discipline myself to spend time in the word.

First Corinthians 9 24 through 27. Paul uses the example of an athlete about how we should be also about these little things that we always kind of kind of allow. Okay? Do you not know this is 1 Corinthians 9:24.

Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize. Run in such a way that you may obtain it. And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. That means they're they're not running out doing things that they shouldn't be doing.

They're they're an athlete, they're training. Now, they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we an imperishable crown. Therefore, I run thus, not with uncertainty. Thus, I fight, not as one who beats the air, but I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest when I've preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.

Okay? Which he's he's talking about training ourselves to seek God first. Okay? And and disciplining to win a prize, a real prize.

Because that's fine, your Olympic gold medal, but you can't take it with you. Okay? The real prize is on the other side. Okay?

At the uh Bema Seat. And you may be like I'm still so frustrated, I'm so I'm so busy. Man, start small. Okay?

Get used to telling yourself no in little things. If you wake up at the alarm and then you hit the snooze button four times, all right. Next tomorrow, hit it three times. The day after that, two times.

Start getting used to telling yourself no in the little things. And and then start finding somewhere time to spend a little bit in this word. Okay? You could start with one proverb.

Okay? There's 31 proverbs for 31 days. You could start with the Psalms. There's five Psalms a day with There's 150 Psalms.

That's 30 days of five Psalms a day. Glenn here reads a a chapter each day, okay? You could start in Matthew chapter 1, then the next day chapter 2, or John. Those are great places to start, okay?

Don't start in like Leviticus. All right, that's a little bit too hard to start, all right? But but Matthew and you know, the other are great. Guys, it's time to stop making excuses, to step out of the worry race, and to fight for it.

We have to fight for our right to to to spend time with God. The tyranny of the urgent is real. It's amazing. For 6,000 years in history, we didn't have this thing.

And somehow we still communicated, we still were able to raise kids, we still able to do everything right? But now it's like And And I like things on here, don't get me wrong, okay? But you have to learn to control that, or else it's going to take over your life. It really will.

And so we got to fight back against the tyranny of the urgent because Jesus is coming soon. Okay, he is. If we don't get serious about spending time with him now, when are we going to do it? Okay?

Going to wait till heaven? Then we missed out on all the opportunity between now and then to earn prizes, okay? To earn rewards in the next place. Listening.

When will we get serious about getting quiet time with the Lord? Listening, getting directions, and obeying. Really, just obeying what he does. It's a simple life, okay?

We have only one thing to do, namely to experience a life of relationship and intimacy with the Father. I love that this is down here. This is great. The little things in life, man, they're just so wonderful.

Learn Learn Learn to hear his voice and obey his word with no compromise, okay? The life that pleases God is not a set of religious rules. It's to hear his voice and obey his word. That's all he's asking.

And the first war we must win is the war with ourselves, okay? 2 Corinthians 5:10 says we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ that each one may receive the things done in the body according to what he has done, whether good or bad. Now, Paul was given insights by Jesus that weren't No one else got, okay? Um he's often would say, "I tell you a mystery."

It's a mystery cuz no one else got that particular insight. God just gave it to him, okay? And this is one of those, the Bema Seat, the judgment seat. Um But note, it's what we've done in the body, it says here, "for the things done in the body."

Everything you did before you got saved, okay? Everything you did before the Holy Spirit came into you, you're not going to be judged on. It's not It's It's done away with. It's as far as the east is from the west.

All of that stuff is gone okay? And the judgment seat of Christ, the Bema Seat, is not about heaven or hell. You're already in heaven. We're already there.

It's done, okay? That piece is done. It's not a salvation thing. But there is rewards and the lack of rewards for the things we did in the body.

Paul gives more direction on this in 1 Corinthians 3:10-15. And I'm reading now. "According to the grace which was given to me as a wise master builder, I've laid the foundation and another builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it, for no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

Now, if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or straw, each one's work will become clear, for the day, judgment day, will will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire. And the fire will test each one's work of what sort it is. If anyone's work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned, he will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.

That what really struck me was that we'll suffer loss. So, once you get saved, our works and our deeds are going to be brought up. It's going to be our actions and and the times we weren't glorifying God, they're going to get burnt up, okay? And the times we did little things, and it's even little things, okay?

He tells you to text someone and you text someone. That's a reward, cuz you obeyed God, okay? It's that simple. It doesn't have to be you start a church and you do whatever to get to get rewards in heaven.

It could be that dude and biscuit thing, making my day saying, you know, uh you know, that I spoke clearly. Um right? So, in so doing, it's our actions really can echo through eternity, right? Because we're in heaven and these are eternal rewards and they're going to echo through eternity.

That's a uh uh uh a th- a line out of Gladiator, but it's also true when it comes to the judgment seat of Christ. Fight for the simplicity of just going to Jesus every day and obeying what he says. That's it. You we we've got to find some time.

Will you join me in that? We got to stop the insanity, okay? Of running around like chickens with our head heads cut off. The world wants us running around like crazy.

The devil wants us running around like crazy. When I first got into the mortgage business, I became pretty successful and what happens is I started getting so many emails. I get at least 200 emails that I have to actually answer every day, not spam emails. Then there's probably 800 spam emails, right?

That you just blow through. But that's every day. You could sit there at your desk and just answer emails and that be you all you do all day. And then if you do that, you probably know this.

And and if you do that, you don't get anything done, okay? Nothing productive. You have to block it off. So I would block it off to 9, 12, and 5.

So from 9 to 10, I would clear out my emails. And what you'd find a lot of times what you'd see seven emails from one guy and you just read the seventh and it goes, "Never mind, I figured it out." But I would have spent the whole hour prior to that trying to help him with that situation that he ended up figuring it himself out. That's the genius of this plan okay?

Well, I never used to get on the social media stuff when I wasn't a pastor. Um I hadn't posted anything on Facebook in 2 years before I I uh I get called to do this. But now that we're out there and we're talking to people in marketing and stuff like that, I have to get on here um with it, but but it's the same thing, man. Little stuff comes in and then there's a little thing over there about something and it and they know what to feed you because it's whatever you were in, you know?

And and I I I could talk to him about buying something and then later that stuff's coming up on my feeds. Like, "How did It's spying on me, you know?" And it really is. And so I'm going to do the same thing with this, just twice a day, man.

Right before work starts, clear out the social media junk, and then at the end of the day, clear it out. So I can knock it out in 15 minutes or 30 minutes instead of it wasting any time in my day cuz I want to fight for my right. We can change little things. There's something you can do.

There's something that you're doing that you can eliminate to start spending time in this word, okay? Start small. Doesn't have to be hard, all right? And then serve, take that time to serve, okay?

We will get rewards. It's beautiful. Look at your life, where you're doing things that don't matter, and cut back on that. And with that time, take it to the to the Lord, okay?

Set that time for 30 minutes earlier. Start small, okay? It's time to get serious about it, cuz Jesus really is coming soon. We don't have a lot of time.

Okay? We don't. Why wait 1 minute longer? Let's get started today.

Amen? Amen? Let's get started today. So, do this today.

I want this is your homework for the for this. Look at your life, what one thing can you cut short? If you watch a 3-hour baseball game, maybe carve off the first three innings, you know? Just watch the final five or six.

I don't know. Whoa. Whoa. Now you're talking blasphemy, you dude.

Okay. But, there's there's things that nothing should matter more than spending time in this word, okay? So, we've got to figure out ways to cut back. And shoot, if if 30 minutes is easy, do an hour, do an I mean, spend as much time as you can in this word.

I I I would love to spend all day in it. Being a pastor allows me to to have an excuse to spend 3 hours a day instead of two, right? It's just I got an excuse, I'm preparing my sermon, I'm working. Um but really, I just love being in this word, and now I get to talk about it, which is so cool.

So, today, try to find something where you can carve out 30 minutes, and then commit to spending that in here. That's your homework for this week is try to do that, okay? You boys, this is a good thing for you, too, man, you know? All right, my boys are there, high school, they're like, yeah.

Um All right? So, and and now here's the thing. If you commit to that, you take that half hour and spend another half hour in the word, even if you're spending time in the word now, which some of you are definitely doing, spend it You add an extra half hour. Watch how God changes the other 23 and 1/2 hours of the day.

He will work through that time to change and to grow and to mold you. He'll grow your righteousness, which means you'll lose the flesh. And and the the things that that tempt you will become less and less because your righteousness is growing, okay? This is the sword of the spirit.

This is the Holy Spirit's tool right here, okay? To get into us and to change us and to mold us. We need to spend time in this thing. Let's run this race strong, all right?

So, we finish the race strong like Paul admonished us to do, okay? And while the guys come up, I want to pray over us. Um To me, this is serious stuff. The The church today does does not spend a lot of time in this word, okay?

Podcasts, reels, music, even, has replaced actually cracking this book open and reading it, okay? Um and there's nothing that can replace this. There's nothing, okay? It's the sword of the spirit.

And so, I want to pray over us now that we'll get just serious about about um seeking first the kingdom of God. It all starts right here. Heavenly Father, Lord, I lift up these beautiful beautiful people to you today, Lord. Lord, I know um we're from all different stages of our walk with you, Lord, but but all of us can spend a little bit more time seeking first your kingdom, Lord.

I just pray now that you will help them say no to the tyranny of the urgent, that you will help them uh find the time to spend it with you. We have to fight for that time. It's not going to come to us. We have to fight for it.

And I just pray now, Lord, that you'll make them warriors. Make them bold. Make them strong. That they may say no, set the line in the sand, say no, and spend that extra time with you.

That they may glorify you and get rewards from you and grow and become all that you want them to be. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.