AUG 6 2017 | The Giant Series S1E14 | 1 Samuel 16

Sea Change Church · The Giant Series S1E14 · "1 Samuel 16" · Adam Stadtmiller · August 6, 2017
1 Samuel 16
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

This morning we're going to read again from 1 Samuel 16. Now the spirit of the Lord had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him. Saul's attendant said to him, see, an evil spirit from God is tormenting you. Let our Lord command his servants here to search for someone who can play the liar. He will play when the evil spirit from God comes on you, and you will feel better.

So Saul said to his attendants, find someone who plays well and bring him to me. One of the servants answered, I have seen a son of Jesse of Bethlehem who knows how to play the liar. He is a brave man and a warrior. He speaks well and is a fine-looking man. And the Lord is with him. Then Saul sent messengers to Jesse and said, Send me your son David, who is with the sheep.

So Jesse took a donkey, loaded with bread, a skin of wine, and a young goat, and sent them with his son David to Saul. David came to Saul and entered his service, and Saul liked him very much, and David became one of his armor bearers. Then Saul sent word to Jesse, saying, Allow David to remain in my service, for I am pleased with him. Whenever the spirit from God came on Saul, David would take up his lyre and play.

Then relief would come to Saul, and he would feel better, and the evil spirit would leave him. This is the word of the Lord. You've got to wonder what is going on in the life or in the mind of David, right? So if we are looking at this story of 1 Samuel, which we've been doing, and we've been in the giant series, building up to the moment where David faces Goliath.

Now we're going to do that next week, which I'm excited. It's been a long time coming. We had to get through Hannah, Eli, Hophni, Phineas, Samuel, all the way through. We went looking for donkeys, if you remember that sermon, and a few other things. Some of us are still out there looking for donkeys and trying to find God's presence along the way.

We're going to do two weeks on King David, and then we're going to be taking a break from King David, doing a few other things in the fall, and then we're going to be getting back into King David, the servant years, kind of as he's building up to be the king that God called him to be. A lot of times we feel that as soon as we get an idea of what God has for us in our life, that we immediately deserve the position.

You've got to wonder what is going on in King David's mind and life right now, because he has been anointed king by Samuel. Samuel took the horn of oil, and back then they did anointing right. You know what I'm saying? It wasn't just like a little touch of the finger, and I bless you. I mean, they would get a horn of oil, okay? I don't know if you've seen any of those horns.

Somebody gave me a shofar recently. Anybody have a shofar? They brought me a shofar, right. They brought me a shofar, and they used to feel like something like the size of a shofar, a big ram's horn with oil, and they would just like, do not light a match after you've been anointed by Samuel. David's out in the field. He's doing his thing. God's preparing him as a shepherd.

He's fighting bears. He's fighting lions. He's watching sheep. He's being bored. He's doing all the things that shepherds do, and then he gets called out. He never gets to go to the family events. All the other brothers are more chosen and liked than him, and in the midst of that, he gets a call last week, as we saw in the Scripture, and Samuel says, that's God's man, and he anoints him and pours this oil, and he is anointed, and he is told by the prophet of all prophets.

Samuel has led Israel for years. I mean, this guy had some clout. He had some mojo. He had it all, And so when he tells you that you were going to be king, you were going to accept and receive that word. Now, you've got to wonder what's going on in the mind of David, because as we see in this Scripture, does he immediately become king? No. Matter of fact, when he is called to come into the service of the current king, where is he?

He's back out in the field. He's back out there sitting, doing what he had been doing. There has, in effect, been no change in his life, other than a spiritual anointing of God, and a calling upon his life that God said, you are the man that I am looking for. And you know, sometimes when we look at these stories, we tend to know the end of the story.

And so when we see David sitting back out in the field after being anointed king, we know he's going to be king. We know he's going to kill Goliath. We know about all the things that are going to happen, that Jesus is going to come from the line of David. And we tend to look at the story through those lenses. But let's put yourself in the narrative.

You've been anointed. God has told you something in your life. You know that God has this for your life. You're called to it. It's this awesome thing. I know that, and by the way, no verse has been misused more than this one, but nonetheless, I like it. Jeremiah 29, 11, we could all sing it together. I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you, plans to give you a hope and a future, and yada, yada, yada.

Even though God wasn't speaking to an individual at the time, he was speaking to a whole nation. It would take 80 years to get to that promise, and most of them wouldn't see it. Nonetheless, that'd just be just the narrative. But we've turned it into a bumper sticker, and it means you individually. And we are an individual, purpose-driven society where the entire, you know, ecclesiastic universe revolves around your calling and your purpose.

Nonetheless, just my little take on Western spirituality. And so put ourselves in the place, David, you've got this huge calling on your life. He's got the Jeremiah 29, you know, bumper sticker. He's got, you know, the tattoo on his arm, and he's back in the field. And not only is he in a field, he ends up being called to be a servant to the current king.

Really? Like, what's going on here right now? You don't know the end of the story. But yet, all of a sudden now, you're the harp boy. You're a liar boy, okay? So you're playing the liar, and you're like, what am I doing here? What is this prophet stuff? What's this God stuff all about? How do I make sense of this? And maybe some of you have been there, and some of you now are still chasing donkeys, looking for donkeys, or you're in the field, and you're thinking to yourself, God must have something better for me.

I gotta say that a thought that went through my mind this week was, and last week, as I actually said it during the preaching, it came to me when I was preaching, is I don't think there's levels of servants, meaning that being a servant of God is any better no matter what he calls you to do. So if he calls you to be the shepherd in the field, or the king, we're still all servants.

Nice thing about David is, David had a humility about him. Humility is the ointment of a soft heart. Humility is the ointment that will give you the heart that has a discernment for God, and allows you to look for donkeys, go back and hear the sermon if you didn't hear it, it's on the website, or to become a servant in the midst of your calling. It would be years, years before David would become king over all of Israel.

Something like 15 years, close to two decades before that would happen, and a lot would happen along the way. How was David feeling when he was running from Saul and hiding in a cave, and worried that he was gonna be killed? How was David, and what was he thinking when he was having to pretend like he was a crazy man in front of the Philistine king, and foaming at the mouth, and one of my favorite verses in the scriptures when the Philistine king says, why did you bring him to me?

Like, I don't have enough crazy people in my life already. That's a paraphrase, but I love that verse. And so what was David thinking in the midst of that, and what are you thinking? Because you don't have the ability to see the end of the story. Actually, you do have the ability to see the end of the story. The end of the story is talked about in the book of Revelations where we will be with God.

How are you in that moment? We're gonna look at this, and in this scripture, and that was just one thing about, let's just keep David a real person. Let's not make him the statue in Florence. Let's not make him the biblical huge character. Let's just see a man that was trying to figure it out. A simple shepherd that had this huge calling on his life, had been told things, had beliefs, a faith in God, but it wasn't happening.

How do we live, how do we discern the present times? That is something we are talking about in this scripture today, and this scripture is chock full. It is rich with a formulaic understanding of how to have the discernment of God. Now, I'm not really big into formulas. I think Western spirituality, again, is really good at formulas. Give me A plus B equals Q.

C. Everything's falling flat today. They're just looking at me, Carol. Help me. Can you help me? Can you laugh more? Thank you so much. I'm not really into the formulaic, but there is a formulaic way to build discernment. There is a formulaic way to build a culture of God's presence in your life. And we're going to look at it through the scripture, through the lens of the first Samuel.

We're going to dive right into it. We're going to look at three things. First, cultivating God's spirit in your life. Now, as a believer, if you have asked Christ to come into your heart, and if you have asked, if you said, I want to follow you, then it says that the spirit of God is within you. The scripture is very clear that you can turn the volume of God's presence up in your life.

Now, he's an eternal God. He's fully present. But we live in a temporal world where God's presence seems to ebb and flow according to our willingness to get in alignment with the ifs that he gives us. If you do this, I will do this. If you do this, I will do this. And as we saw in Spinal Tap, we want our volume of our spirit to go to what? We want this one to go to 11.

That's right. So that's the best response I've gotten yet, 11. Cultivating God's spirit in your life. How do we do that? We're going to look at that. The second is walking in discernment. We want to be able to discern what's happening in the world. We want to be able to discern what's happening in our own lives. And when you're out in the field, when you feel like you've been called to be king, how do you discern what God is doing in the moment?

How do you settle down and say, okay, God, what are you doing? And then become content in the journey. Content with the journey. And the third thing is a willingness to be a servant. I want to say that the formula that I'm giving you is this. If you work on cultivating the spirit of God, and there is very simple things. Now, God's spirit is complex, but it's some very simple things you can do to cultivate the spirit.

As we're going to see in this text, worship is one of those things. Filling your life, saturating your life with worship drives away evil presence. We see that. If you do things, the word of God, there's others, thanksgiving, all these different things that you can do in your life to cultivate, forgiveness, all these things will bring God's spirit in your life, and you will begin to sense his presence.

When you learn the language of God's presence, and God's presence is like a language, the more you immerse yourself in it through the tools and the spiritual weapons that God has given us, the word of God, worship, thanksgiving, like I've said, the more you will understand when that language is being spoken, or the more you will understand when God's presence is near.

If you are a person that loves worship and you go to different worship places, you will tell there are certain times in the presence where God's presence just feels a little thicker than it did before you walked in. I've gone into other churches and other meetings and I've gotten there and even, maybe you've experienced this before, before anything actually happens, I can feel something different in the room.

Something touches my inner spirit and I sense that. They have cultivated a presence. Many of you understand this when you've come here and I experienced this when I came to this church and it was here long before I ever got here and probably long before anyone ever came to this church from the previous generations. When you walk in, you feel a sense of God's fellowship, you feel a sense of God's peace and the word people say over and over again, when I walked in, it felt like home.

Over and over again. We hear it all the time. People walk by, they've come into the office and say, I just felt something when I walked by the campus. It's just the manifest presence of God. When you get in alignment with God, things you will start, God will start saying, yeah, I'm gonna turn the volume up with that and as a church, as we get in alignment with God, as your home gets in alignment with God, as your life gets in alignment, you will start experiencing more of God's presence.

The more you cultivate, the more you'll experience it, the more you'll experience it when it doesn't exist and you'll be able to kind of speak that language, I guess, as a way to say it. If you cultivate God's presence, the formula is this and it will lead to discernment. You will know when God's presence is there, you will know when it is not there and lastly, it will give you the willingness to be a servant if that's what God has called you no matter what type of servant he's called you to be, to be content in the moment because if you can discern beyond what you think is happening, like when the manna hits the fan, like all the time around here, the manna hits the fan and we have to ask ourselves, that was funnier last week, did he just say manna hits the fan?

When that happens, to sit back and to say, God, what are you doing? And to be able to get a sense in the midst of chaos that God is at work and that there is peace in this place. And so that is a formula. Cultivate the presence of God. It will allow you to have a deeper discernment of God's presence. And when you do have a discernment of what God's doing, it's easier to be content.

Three steps. Let's look at the first things here. Here's the first in your notes. I just had a statement I wanted to begin with and it says this. Like oil and water, God's spirit and an evil spirit cannot occupy the same space. I want to say that the enemy and the enemy of God is constantly working to allow his presence, his ideas, his dominance to come in and take over an area in a place.

There is a fight. There is a spiritual battle, the scripture says, between the presence of God, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this air, the kingdom of the world and they fight back and forth. I'm going to give you a great example of it. When I was living in Australia, I was there on a missions trip. We went on a missions day and there was a guy and it said on the, we were going to do this trip and this guy named Dave Way was coming and it said, worship in the streets with Dave Way.

And they had my name and my group attached to it. And I had a feeling I didn't like that. I had a feeling I knew what that meant and I just was not into going into the streets and worshiping in the streets. I like worshiping in church. I like worshiping with my iTunes but not going into the streets. And so we went out that night with my youth group and this guy named Dave Way has become one of my best friends.

Went into the town and we began to worship and it was about 10 o'clock at night, 11 o'clock at night. My brother was with me and we began to go in and we started on the outskirts of town and we slowly started moving. Now we weren't out there singing to everybody. We were just in a circle facing in with each other, very uncomfortable, very not into it and but began to worship, didn't want to be there but I was leading the group so I had to pretend like I wanted to be there.

Okay, so if you're a pastor, you understand that. Or in ministry. Stop being so real. Stop. And we would sit there and we walked in and we began to sing and we began to worship and we began to feel a tangible presence. Now we went into this really dark district and there was all these different adult clubs and different things and we stayed outside and we began to worship and we would notice, actually we went many times, there was times when people would walk by and they would fall down just when we were worshiping.

Now I know that sounds weird and I didn't want to bring it up because a lot of people were like, well I'm not going back to that church and I won't go into it much but we would just be worshiping and people would walk by and bam, they would just fall down. Now some of them were drunk, you know what I mean? They're under that spirit. Maybe they're just drunk.

You could feel the tangible presence of God. You could feel the darkness. Have you ever gone into a dark area, a dark place, in a dark part of the city and experienced that presence? There was a battle going on in this world between the presence of God and the presence of evil and the job of believers is to bring the presence of God, to cultivate the presence of God and to bring it into the world in a tangible way.

Now I did not make that my ministry but I went multiple times and I will say I learned a lot about the presence of God. God has not called me to lead a church that way but there are others that go out and do that and I would say multiple times, one time we were worshiping in this circle and I remember I felt such a peace of God but we were in such a dark area.

There was prostitution, there was needles everywhere and I would walk out and I would actually get to a perimeter and I would actually sense this peace of God and there would come a point where I would step one more foot and all of a sudden I'd feel like this dark, it would be like, whoa, whoa, I'm getting back in that. You could feel the presence of God begin to go out from where we were.

It was the presence of worship that we saw that was driving away the evil. Now if you want to know a scriptural example that is right here in the text. We see this with David. David was a worshiper and when an evil spirit that it says was sent by God, we'll talk about that in a moment, they would bring David and David would worship and it says that what would happen to the evil spirit?

It would be driven away. Let's say if we cultivate the presence of God in our lives, it will drive away evil in our lives. Let's go to verse 14. Now the spirit of the Lord had what? Departed from Saul and an evil spirit from the Lord was tormenting him. This is in the same way. Now God is not in the business of sending, he has a whole bunch of evil spirits at his beck and call.

This is kind of an interesting verse to look at. If you were to look at the story of Job, we see that Satan comes and asks the permission of God to go and torment Job. God says yes and allows it for his purposes. And so this is in the same way that I would say that God allowed an evil spirit to go and allowed him to torment Saul. And so this is what we see. But God is not in the business of sending evil spirits.

Is that God? He's calling? Right on. But it says that the spirit of God had departed. Now this is also before the spirit of God lived within people. You know, and the spirit of God in the New Testament talks about the spirit coming in and living within our hearts. Back then, before Jesus had died on the cross and opened a pathway for the spirit of God to live within our hearts, the spirit, the presence of God would come over a person.

And so we see the presence of God that would hover over a person or over their lives. God had allowed the presence of, his presence to be over Saul, but Saul had denied that presence by the way he had lived his life. And God says that he removed his presence and where the presence of God is not, it is open for a presence of the enemy. And so the presence of the enemy comes in and takes over that space.

And it says that the presence of God does go to Saul. In verse 16b, it talks about what would happen in order to remove the spirit. Now this is God opening a door for David to come in and to become known. Verse 14, it says they sent for David because they understood that in order to get rid of something evil in their life, there needed to be a counterattack. That counterattack was worship.

This is a scriptural proof that worship drives away the enemy. Let me just give you that tool. When you are in a season of depression, when you are in a season of anxiety, when you are in a season of fear, what we want to do is invite God through worship. And it says that it drives away the enemy. Use that tool in your life. Here we see it in verse 16b. It says that you will invite David and he will play when the evil spirit from God comes on you and you will feel better.

The spirit of God drives away evil. Verse 23 talks about this happening again. It says, whenever the spirit of God came on Saul, David would take up his lyre and play. And then relief would come to Saul and he would feel better and the evil spirit would leave him. This is key. Now you look in your notes right here. I believe this fully and I've experienced it. Whatever spirit you choose to be in agreement with will take dominion over your life.

Why do they call alcohol spirits? Because it has the ability to overtake you, to change your behavior. The things, the spirits that you agree in. I would say it's very easy to tell a person who is deeply immersed in the news culture of our day. It's very easy to tell when they show up. It is very easy to tell when a person is agitated, when something is going on in their life.

And it is very easy to tell when someone has the presence of God upon their life. Do you know that person? A person that walks in and you sense that presence of God upon their life. I would say that presence is cultivated. That presence comes from making a dedicated decision that I am going to change the station onto what I allow into my life. See, if you allow more worship in your life, if you allow the Word of God in your life, if you allow thanksgiving in your life, it is going to cultivate a spirit within you.

And that spirit will allow, is what you give yourself over to. What you give yourself over to, the Scripture says, is what will put you in bondage and slavery? We want to be slavery to anything. Slaves of what? Righteousness. What are you allowing in? What are you dwelling upon on a regular basis? 2 Corinthians 3, 17, it says, now the Lord is the spirit and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is what?

Freedom. Cultivate the spirit of God. Do you feel free? Jesus says, I've set you free so that you can be free. Cultivate the spirit of God. The first thing that we're learning in this Scripture today. Do whatever it takes to cultivate the spirit of God and diminish the spirit of this world. Let's see, the spirit of this world is yelling right now to have your attention.

It is dominant in our culture. It is yelling to have your attention in the society. And are you going to give it audience? How much of your time are you going to give audience to the spirit of this world, to the news of this day, to the Facebook culture? I talked to David Levy. He says, Facebook, he believes, is an envy factory. I thought, wow, what an interesting thing to say.

Now, there's a lot of good stuff that goes on there. It's not completely like that. But what are you cultivating on a regular basis in your life? Next thing we want to see is walking in discernment. There's a interesting silent character here in the Scripture. There's this servants of Saul, these servants of Saul, that seem to have an answer for the king when the king can't discern it.

Why cannot the king discern it? Because he no longer has the presence of God upon him. But he is surrounded by people that do have discernment. They can sense what's really happening in a battle. Do you have discernment? Do you feel that you have discernment? Have you cultivated the presence of God which leads to discernment? That's once again the formula of this passage.

You cultivate the presence of God, you know what it looks like, you know what it feels like, and then you will have discernment on when it exists. The servants of Saul have an understanding of that. They look at him and we're going to go back to the text. I just want to read the entire portion here. If you go back to verse 15, Saul's attendant said to him, and this is a great, you know, thought for us, who are those that attend to you?

Who are those friends that counsel you? I mean, are the people in your life chaotic, crazy makers? Or are they people that you can go to that give you the real truth? Saul's attendant said to him, see, an evil spirit from the Lord is tormenting you. Let our Lord command his servants here to search for someone who can play the liar. He will, when the evil spirit comes on you, and you will feel better.

That's a great word of advice. Now we have the second layer of attendant of Saul who not only understands that advice, but has actually recognized it on somebody else's life. verse 17. So Saul said to his descendants, find somebody. Then verse 18, one of the servants answered him, I have seen a son of Jesse of Bethlehem who knows how to play the liar. He's a brave man and a warrior.

He speaks well. He's fine looking. And the Lord is what? With him. Most of that report has to do with what everyone can see. But the final little bit is something that he can see that many people would have no clue. that the spirit of the Lord is with him. When people see your life, do they notice anything different? Do they say that the spirit of the Lord is with that person?

I remember when I was at my old church and I had a upsetness with one of the other people and I was right and they were wrong as always was the case. And I was upset and whatever and I remember the Lord saying to me because obviously God wasn't with them. He was with me not with them. And I remember the Lord saying to me look at their life. Look at his relationship with his wife.

Look at his kids. Look at his flourishing ministry. Look what I've done here. Look what I've done there. Look at that. Look at that. Look at that. Are you not aware that I am with him? I suggest you do not come against him. You know what? Not that we don't have a word for rebuke. I'm not into the whole don't touch the Lord's anointed thing. We need to be rebuked as pastors and everything.

But I just felt like I settled down and the Lord said I am with that person. Now you might need to go work it out in forgiveness but it was very clear that God was with that person. I want to say they cultivate the spirit of God in their life. Not perfect but they do things to cultivate the spirit of God and it could be seen on them. I want to be a person where you can see the spirit of God.

Where everything you do prospers. You know the scripture gives you that if you do this whatever you want to do prospers. Nathan said to David he said do whatever is in your heart and it will prosper. That's a great that's a great promise from God. Just go do it and bless God in it and call God in it. Say it takes discernment to see that. Here's the difference between judgment and discernment.

Go down in your notes. Judgment versus discernment. Discernment and I got this off Wikipedia. They got it right. Actually it was a dictionary. Discernment is perception in the absence of judgment with the view to obtaining spiritual direction and understanding. Let me read that again. Discernment is different than judgment. People always say don't judge, don't judge.

I'm not judging, I'm discerning. Discernment is a spiritual quality where God gives you knowledge beyond what can be probably seen in the visible and gives you a sense of direction from within, a supernatural sense of direction that comes through discernment which comes through discretion which comes from God saying I want to share the secrets of this world with you.

It is different than judgment. Let me read it again. Discernment is perception in the absence of judgment with a view to obtaining spiritual direction and understanding. Philippians if you want a New Testament understanding of this it says and I pray that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and in all discernment so that you may approve the things that are excellent in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ.

There's a lot of things in our culture that we are being told are okay these days. Do we have the ability to discern beyond them to say what is God saying even though it looks okay even though I can convince myself it's okay even though there's a lot of great narratives and storylines that are being thrown out of why we should accept certain things but do we have the discernment to go back and say God says I don't want to allow this for this reason and I want to give you an understanding through discernment that you may have a servant to what approve the things that are excellent.

God has things that are excellent that he wants us to approve. So we started with cultivating the spirit of God in your life. Cultivation will allow you to understand what God's present feels like what it looks like when you are in it and when you are not in it because when you cultivate it when you're not in it you'll know when it's not there. That will allow you to have discernment because when you come into a situation and you don't feel the presence of God in a decision that you want to make you will know because you have cultivated the spirit of God and you will have discernment because you cultivated the spirit of God.

Once again, formulaic. Cultivate his spirit you will have discernment and all knowledge and the final thing is discernment will give you contentment. My wife and I we're doing a values I encourage you to come I'm going to do three weeks on value based living not living according to goals living according to values it's going to start in a couple weeks here on Tuesday nights and one of the values my wife and I we have 12 values and one of the ones that we put in this week was contentment.

Just want to be content You want to know the problem with contentment? It's boring. Super boring. Like I've been working really hard on contentment It's just boring There's no thrill You know if you're a coke addict like me coming out of PB there's a different rev that your life can live by I'm just trying to be a local church pastor man I'm not trying to be multi-campus guy not that there's anything wrong with that I'm just not trying to be multi-campus guy I'm not trying to be known in Singapore I'm not I just want to I just want to serve you really well be a good dad a great husband play a little basketball surf and just be a great local church pastor because I feel it's undervalued in the church world just have a church and be really good at one little church ride my little provincial French bike around eat baguettes just do my thing you know sorry I'm getting a bike for my birthday is next Sunday and I got the little French bike with the basket sorry I'm just right up to panic and get my drink super boring and I sit there and there's peace is boring I would say chaos is way more fun okay it'll kill you but I'm finding that it's super boring and when God gives me the peace that I'm that I want and that I'm looking for I find myself like I need a rush I need to go I need to go screw some things up right now that's what I'm used to right can't have peace unless I have chaos it's funny that you know very few people search for peace we all want our purpose at any cost no matter how much it raises your blood pressure it gives you anxiety very few people just want peace because there's no rush with peace often but the spirit of God often works in peace and so that's what we're currently going but we put one of our values is contentment and that value has driven so many decisions for this church for my own my own life when I want to say we need that we need that no because that is going to bring just another we don't need another thing in our life no matter how great that thing is that discernment gives you the ability to if God calls you to be a servant then you can just sit there and chill in it and say at least God's with me I'm good you know not very many people want to be a servant the Jeremiah 29 11 verse is always tied to you being a rock star have you ever realized that it's always tied to some massive dream like we're all going to be rock stars everyone can't be a rock star some people are just called to bake bread you know what I mean like do we get that but we're told in our culture every single one of you has to be a star why can't Jesus just be the star why can't we just have contentment and be in peace and just not have to to be chained to this whole idea of purpose now I believe God has purposes for us but my purpose is to know him and to know him well and so what if God's purpose for you is to be a servant of the king is that good enough if God called you to it if Jesus called you and you have the discernment because you've cultivated the spirit so you have the discernment to know that God has said your whole deal because David had to be thinking this right like maybe he got it wrong maybe he meant servant of the king like I gotta say David did such a great job as a servant of the king he was way better as servant of the king than he was as king in my opinion so good at it how good are you and what if Jeremiah 29 11 because it's God's purpose not yours anyways it's never been our purpose it's been his purpose I know my purposes I know the purposes I have for you what if his purpose is hey this is awesome you're gonna get to be a servant of a king you're gonna be a servant no one's ever gonna know who you are they're never gonna no you're that book you wanna write it's never gonna get written but you're gonna be an awesome servant because I called you everyone's like looking at me like please no not this but serving God and being content in that what does it look like and I gotta ask you when was the last time you were content when was the last time you sat and were content I gotta say recently I've had moments where I've thought I'm content maybe I had lunch with somebody this last week and he said two weeks ago he said when's what's next for you how long do you stand at the church I said great question they probably buried me out the back you know what I mean not that I'm I'm just you know I'm slowing down I'm taking the easy route it's not easy it's just like I said I'm content I don't need the next thing isn't there another thing what's the next thing I said there's no next thing it's now I really feel that way and it's taken a long time to get there you know what he said to me and this felt really good he said I can see it and he said I can feel it when you preach and I thought yeah it's really boring but maybe this is it so I'm an adrenaline junkie I wanna go jump out of a plane verse 21 we're coming in for a landing hopefully you got the formulaic you're gonna cultivate the spirit of God because I have been all over the map today cultivate the spirit of God so you can have discernment and know when it's there or not so that you have discernment to know if he's told you that I called you to be a servant of king you can be content as a servant verse 21 David came to Saul and he entered his service Saul liked him very much and David became one of his armor bearers David became an armor bearer and servant to Saul even though God had already anointed him as king David would not be coronated as king for many years and would go from being a servant to a fugitive before he would ever see that day we just don't see that part of the scripture we don't see that and I guess if there's anything that we wanna offer you as a church and as an elder board and as a staff and myself is the ability to just enjoy God and enjoy your life and there is such a push to be something great if you were a child of the son of God and you are his beloved and you spend an eternity getting to know him is that not enough I'm not saying if God look some of you God has called to things the world would say great you're gonna do great amazing things and everyone's gonna stand back and go wow that's amazing but somewhere in Montana there's an 85 year old church secretary who's lick stamps her whole life no one knows her name she's taken people in she's fed the homeless she's done it all no one knows who the heck she is and she's gonna walk into heaven and they are going to applaud and yell and scream and say yes and probably 10 rows back will be Billy Graham I just think that's how it's gonna work that's just my thing and I'm gonna have to battle for that and maybe you wanna battle for it too because this is the moment I have moments of this and then there's the moment where I'm like dude you're 40 I'm at 48 next week you're 48 on Sunday dude what do you come on dude step it up step your game up homeboy you know we wanna offer a sacred space for you to be God's child to be at peace to breathe to experience him and to have a lot of fun doing it amen let's stand if you would