WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.480 You are listening to a message from Southwood Presbyterian Church in Huntsville, Alabama. 00:00:06.980 --> 00:00:10.620 Our passion is to experience and express grace. Join us. 00:00:12.500 --> 00:00:17.379 Good morning. Pleasure to be here in Huntsville at Southwood Church. 00:00:18.140 --> 00:00:23.400 Todd mentioned I am the National Coordinator for Reform University Fellowship, but prior to that, 00:00:23.480 --> 00:00:27.080 I spent several years as a senior pastor of Red Mountain Church down in Birmingham. 00:00:27.079 --> 00:00:33.739 I'm very, very happy to be here. I'll be reading from Romans chapter 5, verses 1 to 6. 00:00:34.839 --> 00:00:40.879 And it's possible that the translation I'm reading may be slightly different, but that's okay. 00:00:41.519 --> 00:00:49.039 They're close enough. This is Romans 5, verses 1 to 6, where the Apostle Paul, having explained 00:00:49.039 --> 00:00:56.840 the glorious content and the data, the what is of the gospel, in chapters 4 and following here, 00:00:57.079 --> 00:01:02.439 laying out the implications of that. Romans 5, verses 1 to 6. Let's hear now the Word of God. 00:01:02.439 --> 00:01:10.140 Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 00:01:11.079 --> 00:01:14.659 through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand. 00:01:15.799 --> 00:01:19.539 And we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 00:01:20.359 --> 00:01:25.140 More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 00:01:25.140 --> 00:01:32.400 endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And hope does not 00:01:32.400 --> 00:01:37.140 disappoint us because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, 00:01:37.659 --> 00:01:46.460 which has been given to us. While we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. 00:01:46.459 --> 00:01:55.759 This is the Word of God written. Amen. My wife and I love each other. We'll be married 30 years in December. 00:01:56.399 --> 00:02:01.759 But like most marriages, we have our differences. And one of the differences, small difference, 00:02:02.319 --> 00:02:09.599 is the way in which my wife loves those Facebook personality tests. You know those? 00:02:09.599 --> 00:02:18.299 Which 80s sitcom are you? Right? Which state should you live in? And those things always leave me kind of cold. 00:02:18.879 --> 00:02:26.139 In fact, I'm just not a huge fan of personality tests. I know people, my wife's one of them, 00:02:26.180 --> 00:02:30.379 they love the Myers-Briggs test. Maybe you're familiar with that, where you take a series of questions, 00:02:30.379 --> 00:02:35.919 and then you, four letters, I think, pop out, and that describes the way that you see the world, 00:02:35.919 --> 00:02:43.919 the way that you react. I'm just not a fan. To me, it just is taking something that is really, 00:02:44.119 --> 00:02:50.399 really complicated, and sometimes giving us the illusion that we understand something because 00:02:50.399 --> 00:02:56.099 we've taken some, we've answered some questions, and we're given some letters. Well, this is the way 00:02:56.099 --> 00:03:04.039 that I am, and I just, I don't know, I could be wrong. I'm just not a huge fan. But I understand 00:03:04.039 --> 00:03:09.639 why there is such a need for us to understand why we're different because we're just so different, 00:03:09.699 --> 00:03:14.859 aren't we? Parents, sometimes we look at our kids, and we see they're radically different personalities, 00:03:14.859 --> 00:03:21.879 and we wonder if they came from the same parents. We see that people will respond consistently in 00:03:21.879 --> 00:03:27.340 certain circumstances. There's certain kind of hardwired characteristics we each had. I get that. 00:03:27.340 --> 00:03:35.439 I just want to oversimplify it. I'm 57 years old, and I've lived long enough where I, well, 00:03:35.500 --> 00:03:40.240 I don't like those tests. I do know that there are certain things which kind of leap off the page 00:03:40.240 --> 00:03:48.039 on particular personalities, and there's one word that I can tell you maybe encapsulates 00:03:48.039 --> 00:03:59.939 a major part of my personality, and that word is grumpy. I was born grumpy, and I'm not bragging 00:03:59.939 --> 00:04:08.139 about this because let me tell you, on balance, being grumpy has not served me well. Being grumpy, 00:04:08.319 --> 00:04:14.219 I have said things, I have done things as a real grumpy person. Oh, I shouldn't have said that. 00:04:14.219 --> 00:04:22.459 I shouldn't have done that. But every now and then, being grumpy has come in handy. 00:04:24.300 --> 00:04:28.939 I became a Christian at the University of South Carolina as a first-year freshman student there, 00:04:29.240 --> 00:04:33.480 and as a new Christian, I was a part of a small Presbyterian church, but I also know, 00:04:33.620 --> 00:04:38.899 I knew that I needed to be involved in a campus fellowship. So in my dorm room, I saw a sign for a 00:04:38.899 --> 00:04:43.040 gathering of a particular campus fellowship, not a national one. You've never heard of this one. 00:04:43.040 --> 00:04:47.319 It was based at a local church in Columbia, South Carolina. And I thought, hey, well, here's a group 00:04:47.319 --> 00:04:51.640 of Christians. I'm going to go to this group. So I met on a Tuesday night. I went to the meeting. 00:04:51.720 --> 00:04:55.520 It was a large gathering at a local church, and it began with singing. And then after the singing, 00:04:56.100 --> 00:05:03.379 they had testimony. This was 1976, and we've got a testimony. And so a young woman got up to give 00:05:03.379 --> 00:05:09.620 testimony about how God was working in her life. And she stood up, and she said, y'all, 00:05:09.620 --> 00:05:15.800 I want to tell you about a miracle in my life today. And I'm thinking, this is going to be good. 00:05:16.860 --> 00:05:24.120 Y'all, I had a miracle today. I drove to campus, and I couldn't find a parking space. 00:05:24.399 --> 00:05:32.019 So I prayed really hard, and God gave me a parking space. That's my miracle. 00:05:32.019 --> 00:05:38.120 I'm sitting in the back of the room. Now, remember, grump, grumpy. I'm sitting in the 00:05:38.120 --> 00:05:42.500 back of the room. I've been a Christian for a matter of weeks. I didn't know anything about, 00:05:43.000 --> 00:05:48.279 much about the Bible or anything about doctrine or theology. But I heard her say that, 00:05:48.740 --> 00:05:53.740 and I just intuitively, that incredulity kicked in. I met a crunched eyebrows. 00:05:53.740 --> 00:05:59.280 And I went, you know, I don't think that's a miracle. 00:06:02.379 --> 00:06:07.740 Not only that, I remember thinking, not only that, I'm thinking that that probably 00:06:07.740 --> 00:06:16.819 cheapens the idea of what a miracle is. So after that meeting, I resolved I needed to find 00:06:16.819 --> 00:06:20.620 a group as grumpy as I was. Next week, I found RUF, and here I am. 00:06:20.620 --> 00:06:24.840 All worked out. 00:06:27.280 --> 00:06:34.459 I raised this because we come to this passage in Romans 5, 1-6, where if we read this and 00:06:34.459 --> 00:06:42.860 we don't say to ourselves, oh, I'm not sure that's true. If this passage does not invite 00:06:42.860 --> 00:06:50.600 you to a certain degree of incredulity, you're not paying attention. This passage invites you 00:06:50.600 --> 00:07:04.580 to go, um, is that true? Does suffering, does resistance really produce endurance and character 00:07:04.580 --> 00:07:14.360 and hope? Is that really true? Or is that as flippant as some freshman declaring a parking spot 00:07:14.360 --> 00:07:23.180 being a miracle? Because functionally, the way that you and I respond to suffering, to resistance, 00:07:23.740 --> 00:07:31.220 to heartbreak, to failure, to vocational setback, to family disappointment, the way that we respond 00:07:31.220 --> 00:07:40.060 to that sometimes says that this doesn't make any sense to us. It also speaks to what I'm going to call 00:07:40.060 --> 00:07:46.839 the beautiful, ordinary Christian life, and I think this is a key. You see, one reason why we have a 00:07:46.839 --> 00:07:52.740 problem with this passage is, is that we have an idea of the ordinary Christian life that makes this 00:07:52.740 --> 00:08:02.879 passage incomprehensible. For one thing, this is point one, for one thing, you and I have a very, 00:08:02.879 --> 00:08:11.839 very funny idea about the idea of happiness. The idea of happiness, I used to say happiness is 00:08:11.839 --> 00:08:18.139 overrated. I don't mean that. What I'm saying is this. The one reason why we struggle with the idea 00:08:18.139 --> 00:08:24.759 that suffering produces all these wonderful things is that you and I have an idea of happiness 00:08:24.759 --> 00:08:32.960 happiness that's pretty out of focus. In fact, most of us, we speak of happiness in a language 00:08:32.960 --> 00:08:39.600 that's mostly a post-Western construct. In other words, the way we talk about language 00:08:39.600 --> 00:08:45.299 is language that's been used, it's a philosophical movement that happened after the Industrial Revolution. 00:08:45.480 --> 00:08:52.720 Think about this. This is not hard. Way a long time ago, way, way a long time ago, you woke up in the 00:08:52.720 --> 00:08:59.300 morning, and if you made it through the day without getting eaten by an animal or being killed by 00:08:59.300 --> 00:09:07.200 disease, it was a great day. I mean, you woke up in the morning a long time ago, and you had to eke 00:09:07.200 --> 00:09:12.960 out an existence from the soil. Your life never existed more than a couple square miles from where 00:09:12.960 --> 00:09:20.980 you were born. Life was brutish and short, and there was not much spare time. Now, the Industrial 00:09:20.980 --> 00:09:26.240 Revolution comes through when we have a prospering middle class, and we have this thing called spare 00:09:26.240 --> 00:09:33.200 time. And we're not worried about getting eaten by animals or the constant threat of early death by 00:09:33.200 --> 00:09:45.980 disease. When we have time to sit and reflect, we start wondering, hmm, why am I here? What is my 00:09:45.980 --> 00:09:55.039 purpose in life? Am I happy with things? The British philosopher John Stuart Mill famously said this, 00:09:55.480 --> 00:10:01.300 ask yourself whether you are happy, and you immediately cease to be happy. 00:10:02.659 --> 00:10:07.180 That is the idea being that we're just reflecting, I mean, I just don't know. There's always this 00:10:07.180 --> 00:10:15.000 constant emotional splinter. What's going on here? And when we do that, and we start measuring 00:10:15.000 --> 00:10:21.940 happiness by, well, you know what, I wish my marriage was better, and this town I'm in is kind 00:10:21.940 --> 00:10:26.419 of boring, and the job I have, oh, you know, I wish I'd be doing something better than this, 00:10:26.799 --> 00:10:36.340 and boy, my kids are driving me nuts. Well, then suffering, resistance, becomes an obstacle 00:10:36.340 --> 00:10:45.580 to what you think is happiness. Resistance in life is no longer something which the Bible tells us 00:10:45.580 --> 00:10:51.379 produces this harvest of really, really good things. When we sort of construct happiness into 00:10:51.379 --> 00:10:57.180 being, well, I wish I had a better this. I wish I was married to this person, not this person. 00:10:57.179 --> 00:11:06.419 Then, all of a sudden, we have a very different idea of what happiness is. And then, the idea of 00:11:06.419 --> 00:11:13.519 resistance and the idea of the ordinary Christian life becomes one of constant lack of satisfaction, 00:11:14.339 --> 00:11:20.279 constant restlessness. There's always something better. My kids ought to be better. I'd have a better 00:11:20.279 --> 00:11:27.620 job. I should live in a better place. And the idea of the Christian life being in long stretches, 00:11:28.620 --> 00:11:36.120 being very ordinary, kind of boring, kind of prosaic, is just not a category you think about. 00:11:37.459 --> 00:11:43.339 But the reality is this, is that the active, the faithful Christian life, long stretches of it, 00:11:43.340 --> 00:11:53.879 are actually pretty ordinary, kind of boring, kind of prosaic, changing the diapers, taking out the 00:11:53.879 --> 00:12:01.879 trash, paying the bills, dealing with your kids. But that's not very exciting. That's not making me 00:12:01.879 --> 00:12:11.680 happy. Then there is the idea of us always living in the future tense. Some psychologists call this the 00:12:11.679 --> 00:12:18.139 satisfaction treadmill. Ever heard of that? Satisfaction treadmill? That's the predictable and frustrating 00:12:18.139 --> 00:12:25.199 way where any new source of pleasure, whether it is something major, like a new house or a job, 00:12:25.299 --> 00:12:33.579 or something like a new phone, it gives us an immediate visceral kind of pleasure. But then, 00:12:33.579 --> 00:12:41.379 when it starts to fade, it ceases to deliver the same kind of joy. The endorphin rush we get, 00:12:41.679 --> 00:12:50.419 from getting a new iPhone, or a new job, or the newest operating system, or a new car. That's 00:12:50.419 --> 00:12:56.699 always just so exciting, but that always fades. And physiologically, they've measured this. 00:12:57.519 --> 00:13:03.459 You just don't get that rush anymore. And it seems kind of boring. And I want something newer and more 00:13:03.460 --> 00:13:11.340 exciting. So, let's circle back to Romans 5. We know that suffering produces endurance, 00:13:12.200 --> 00:13:18.639 and endurance character, and character hope. And when we get frustrated when our internet is too slow, 00:13:18.980 --> 00:13:26.820 how could this make any sense? We get frustrated because our phone is too slow, or is too old. 00:13:26.820 --> 00:13:33.740 And when we look at the families God has given us, or the jobs that we have, and all we can think of 00:13:33.740 --> 00:13:41.060 is how frustrating and unsatisfactory it is, we want something more, something in the future tense 00:13:41.060 --> 00:13:48.560 that will make it better. Then there's our nostalgia. David Bentley Hart wrote this, 00:13:48.559 --> 00:13:59.199 The past is always, to some extent, a fiction of the present. Let me say that again. The way you 00:13:59.199 --> 00:14:07.399 perceive the past is always, to some degree, a fiction of the present. Let me spell this out. 00:14:08.199 --> 00:14:13.819 Think of your life right now, and rate your level of happiness in your own head and satisfaction on a 00:14:13.820 --> 00:14:21.800 scale of 1 to 10. All right? Now, remember that. Now, 10, 15, 20 years from now, you will remember 00:14:21.800 --> 00:14:27.360 this time as you being happier and more satisfied than you are right now. Do you get that? That's the 00:14:27.360 --> 00:14:35.320 way it works. We look back on life, and we always have a soft focus. We always winnow out the stuff we 00:14:35.320 --> 00:14:42.040 don't want to remember. Our childhood has become very pure and pristine and simpler and better times. 00:14:42.039 --> 00:14:48.059 Our college days, oh my gosh, the football games and the fraternity parties, oh, that was amazing. 00:14:49.459 --> 00:14:54.659 But if you were to transport yourself back there, you will discover that some of the very, very same 00:14:54.659 --> 00:15:00.000 things, maybe even worse, that frustrate you and anger you, we're still there. We just don't remember them, 00:15:00.059 --> 00:15:07.299 and so we become a victim of looking at the past and longing for something like that in the future. 00:15:07.299 --> 00:15:18.219 Okay, so how can this be true? How can suffering, how can bad, big disappointments in life, 00:15:18.819 --> 00:15:26.179 how can the idea that the life is resisting produce all these amazing things? Jesus has to mean something 00:15:26.179 --> 00:15:30.439 when he says, do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy, 00:15:30.440 --> 00:15:37.880 where thieves break in and steal. But instead, what? There's your treasure in heaven. Or the 00:15:37.880 --> 00:15:42.420 apostle Paul who says, we are afflicted in every way but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to 00:15:42.420 --> 00:15:53.020 despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed. So hold on to this one. We crunch 00:15:53.020 --> 00:15:59.900 our eyebrows at this passage because the way we think about happiness prevents us, often prevents us from 00:15:59.899 --> 00:16:07.100 fully embracing the blessing of suffering and resistance. The other thing is this. Not only do we have an idea 00:16:07.100 --> 00:16:13.379 about happiness that it's kind of funny, the second thing is we have an idea of achievement that is 00:16:13.379 --> 00:16:21.240 really funny. Like, achievement. If we get a little wonky when it comes to happiness and suffering, we are 00:16:21.240 --> 00:16:28.939 really tangled when it says here suffering produces endurance. Like, that's a good thing. Really? 00:16:28.940 --> 00:16:35.260 Just endurance? I want more than endurance. I want more than just hanging on. 00:16:35.259 --> 00:16:45.240 I was a campus minister at New York University from 1997 to 2001. And during that time, I was part of 00:16:45.240 --> 00:16:49.620 what a lot of campus ministers are. I was part of an organization of all the campus ministries on 00:16:49.620 --> 00:16:53.000 campus, all the heads of them. We would meet on a regular basis to pray for each other. 00:16:53.559 --> 00:16:58.279 Loved doing it. Well, at the beginning of my third year, we gathered before the school year started, 00:16:58.960 --> 00:17:03.819 and there was about 12 of us, and we were sitting in a circle. And the person who led the meeting said 00:17:03.820 --> 00:17:09.019 this, what we're going to do today is this. We're going to go around the room, and we're going to 00:17:09.019 --> 00:17:15.940 ask all of you who head up ministries at NYU, you're going to answer the question, what is it you want 00:17:15.940 --> 00:17:22.860 to produce in your students? What do you want to achieve with the students you work with? And the 00:17:22.860 --> 00:17:27.480 start of the person next to me, and it went in the other direction, so I had a lot of time to think 00:17:27.480 --> 00:17:39.920 about it. And the person next to me, they said, I want our students to be really concerned and 00:17:39.920 --> 00:17:47.559 involved in evangelism and discipleship. I said to myself, amen. Beautiful, of course. The next person 00:17:47.559 --> 00:17:55.980 said, I want our students to have a real heart for the widow and the poor and the orphan and the 00:17:55.980 --> 00:18:01.480 marginalized. I thought, amen. Next person said, I want our students to really know their Bibles, 00:18:02.400 --> 00:18:06.860 to be able to know the content, to memorize it, and to dwell upon it. I thought it's a great thing. 00:18:07.579 --> 00:18:12.860 So I went around the room talking about basically the things which their ministry focused on. By the 00:18:12.860 --> 00:18:18.779 time it got to me, okay, people were kind of tired. I thought, well, I better keep this short. 00:18:18.779 --> 00:18:32.180 So I said this. I hope with my students that in 25 or 30 years that they're still Christians. 00:18:34.220 --> 00:18:42.480 And there was this pause, really awkward pause. And I could tell they were expecting me to say 00:18:42.480 --> 00:18:50.740 something else. Well, that's it. What do I hope? Another pause. And I could tell the entire room 00:18:50.740 --> 00:19:00.779 was feeling sorry for me. Oh, poor Tom. He's so old and jaded. Okay. He's so, he is so like, 00:19:01.019 --> 00:19:08.079 what's this, everything okay? Like you've lowered the bar so much. And no, that's not the case. 00:19:08.079 --> 00:19:14.359 I can tell you right now that my happiest moments in ministry are when I run into people who were in 00:19:14.359 --> 00:19:21.599 a Bible study that I led in 1982, and they are still working out the implications of the gospel. 00:19:22.220 --> 00:19:28.000 They're still struggling with their own sin. They're still in the fight. Now, they're all over 00:19:28.000 --> 00:19:34.819 the landscape, these ex-students. I run into people whose marriages have been really, really hard and 00:19:34.819 --> 00:19:40.559 high maintenance. But they're still in it. They're hanging on. That is the happiest I get. 00:19:41.419 --> 00:19:46.480 Because trust me, on a college campus, it's not hard to work up a lot of people getting excited 00:19:46.480 --> 00:19:51.319 about things. Go to a pep rally, a fraternity party, political rally. That's not that hard. 00:19:52.460 --> 00:20:00.579 But the idea of instilling in students the idea that the Christian life is a marathon. It's a long race. 00:20:00.579 --> 00:20:05.299 And staying in the fight is the thing. The whole last book of the Bible, 00:20:06.279 --> 00:20:11.339 even with all our attempts in American Christianity to make that completely incomprehensible, 00:20:11.439 --> 00:20:22.299 the book of Revelation, you know it's about one thing. Hang on. Hang on. Really, to him who overcomes, 00:20:23.179 --> 00:20:28.919 to him who overcomes, the idea that's going to get really, really kind of toey here in the future, 00:20:28.920 --> 00:20:35.140 but you need to hang on. That's the whole idea of it. And so achievement in the ministry, 00:20:35.300 --> 00:20:42.120 achievement in the Christian life, when it's all said and done, is are you hanging on? Really? 00:20:42.620 --> 00:20:48.380 That's, I, again, here's my sort of grumpiness. I go, really? Can I be true? Seriously? 00:20:48.380 --> 00:20:54.320 Seriously. But we have a different idea of that. In our mind, the best Christians are the busiest 00:20:54.320 --> 00:20:58.780 Christians. Now, I got us done wonderful, amazing things through individual Christians and even 00:20:58.780 --> 00:21:04.020 churches, but I mean, what is the normal Christian life like? The New Testament contains extraordinary 00:21:04.020 --> 00:21:09.860 stories of how normal men and women have turned the world upside down. That happens. 00:21:09.859 --> 00:21:17.559 But in the main, the normal Christian life, the normal church life is one of faith and perseverance in 00:21:17.559 --> 00:21:28.319 the midst of suffering. Go like this. Yeah, endurance. And parents. I've grown children right now. 00:21:29.219 --> 00:21:33.379 And I'm going to tell you that when I look, I look at these toys here, and I almost got misty-eyed because, 00:21:33.519 --> 00:21:39.439 you know, I've got a lot of those toys for my kids. And I look back at raising my kids, and 00:21:39.440 --> 00:21:45.500 I think of a lot of mistakes, a whole lot of mistakes. One of those mistakes was this, 00:21:46.240 --> 00:21:52.779 was that I really should have said to myself more and more than I did, that it doesn't matter to me 00:21:52.779 --> 00:21:58.299 if my kids are a butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker, whether or not they're most socially skilled 00:21:58.299 --> 00:22:03.680 kids in the world, whether they're particularly smart, no matter what they do, but if they love Jesus 00:22:03.680 --> 00:22:11.100 and they're hanging on, I can't hope for anything more than that. But I didn't do so good on that one. 00:22:12.560 --> 00:22:15.580 You know, they disappointed me in ways that I shouldn't have been disappointed in. 00:22:16.880 --> 00:22:23.900 They let me down in ways that I should not have been let down by. The standard I had was not what 00:22:23.900 --> 00:22:29.680 God wants, but the environment, the culture I was in. So parents, what is our great achievement? 00:22:30.940 --> 00:22:34.120 It's not that your kids are the best or the brightest or the cutest or the best athlete, 00:22:34.660 --> 00:22:38.880 but instead, do they still love Jesus? 00:22:41.360 --> 00:22:49.180 So suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. 00:22:49.180 --> 00:22:54.560 What does this mean? Well, you could go a long way with this, but I'm just going to suggest a few things here. 00:22:55.840 --> 00:23:01.500 One is, is that the key of the Christian life, if you take notes, you can write this down, 00:23:02.740 --> 00:23:04.200 is to just show up. 00:23:07.360 --> 00:23:08.799 You all feel sorry for me now, yeah? 00:23:10.160 --> 00:23:13.039 You go, poor Tom, he's so old and jaded. 00:23:13.039 --> 00:23:19.759 I think Wardy Allen said that. 80% of life is just showing up. 00:23:20.639 --> 00:23:25.759 Now, let me qualify that. In the ministry, I'm always telling our campus ministers and interns, 00:23:26.759 --> 00:23:31.319 there are many mornings you wake up and you're discouraged, you're depressed, you want to call 00:23:31.319 --> 00:23:36.420 out a fetal position. I know what you're called to do. But there are many mornings in the Christian 00:23:36.420 --> 00:23:43.019 life where you just get up and go. You go, you do. I mean, in spite of the 00:23:43.019 --> 00:23:49.859 of your fears and anxieties, in that sense, you just show up. You show up in faith. 00:23:50.460 --> 00:23:56.500 You show up in spite of the overwhelming sense, perhaps, of despair at times, 00:23:57.440 --> 00:24:02.740 of frustration. You show up, you go there, and you step in there, and that's what happens. 00:24:02.740 --> 00:24:14.160 I have, I can't call myself middle-aged anymore because I don't know anyone who's 114 years old. 00:24:14.299 --> 00:24:16.019 I'm 57, right? I'm not middle-aged. 00:24:16.019 --> 00:24:26.019 All right? So when I got to my midlife crisis some time ago, here's how I decided to deal with that. 00:24:27.539 --> 00:24:32.079 You know, I'm not going to buy a Jaguar. I'm not going to, I can't afford that. And I play golf, 00:24:32.200 --> 00:24:36.839 man. Golf is the spawn of Satan. I hate golf. Can't stand golf. It's so frustrating. 00:24:36.839 --> 00:24:43.679 What am I going to do? I know what I'm going to do. It was back in Savannah. I'm going to start a band 00:24:43.679 --> 00:24:50.199 with my friends. See, I played the bass guitar when I was a teenager. I said, I'm going to start a band. 00:24:51.240 --> 00:24:55.379 So a bunch of guys in my church, about my age, same age in the stage, hey, we're going to start a band. 00:24:56.259 --> 00:25:03.199 Our kids were mortified. Just mortified. Our wives rolled their eyes, 00:25:03.200 --> 00:25:08.559 and we went out to the guitar center and got stuff. Like, we had, we bought our stuff. We 00:25:08.559 --> 00:25:14.140 literally went to a garage, a guy had, and we started playing. And we are so bad. We were awful. 00:25:15.819 --> 00:25:23.460 Very first song that we practiced, we rehearsed, was a song called Louie Louie. You know who Louie Louie is? 00:25:24.460 --> 00:25:33.180 Okay. Three chords. A, D, and E. You know? And a bass, you got the one note, A, D, and E. 00:25:33.200 --> 00:25:41.140 You got one note. And we're playing this, and it is such an awful racket. And even though it's just 00:25:41.140 --> 00:25:47.160 A, D, and E, A, D, and E over and over again, I'm just completely messing it up. And I'm getting all 00:25:47.160 --> 00:25:54.240 frustrated. I can't do this. And a guy across, the guy is Frankie. He was actually a pretty decent 00:25:54.240 --> 00:26:02.940 guitar player. He saw me getting frustrated, and he screamed over the din. Tom, it's just three chords. 00:26:02.940 --> 00:26:11.660 Just keep going. Don't stop. Keep going. It's all right. So, I kept going. And after a few minutes, 00:26:11.720 --> 00:26:17.680 it was slightly less awful. After a couple days, after practicing for like two or three weeks at a 00:26:17.680 --> 00:26:23.620 time, this, we actually had moments, these transcendent moments of almost competence when 00:26:23.620 --> 00:26:31.140 we played. Oh, it does make a difference. There's a certain simple harmonic cadence to a song like 00:26:31.140 --> 00:26:40.340 Louie Louie. It's A, D, and E. The gospel has a kind of harmonic cadence that way. When we face 00:26:40.340 --> 00:26:47.560 suffering, okay, the whole to translate that to character and endurance and hope, is that, 00:26:47.920 --> 00:26:55.160 you know, you just keep going. It doesn't eliminate the other issues involved. But we realize that the 00:26:55.160 --> 00:26:59.040 more we do this, how does the book of Hebrews put it? Who, through constant practice, 00:26:59.640 --> 00:27:04.920 how learned to discern good from evil? And that's how we move forward. The other finally thing, 00:27:04.940 --> 00:27:12.000 and I will close with this, is that we also have a very, very…if we overstate the idea of happiness 00:27:12.000 --> 00:27:18.980 and achievement, we also, of course, tragically underrate the love of God in Christ. Verse 6, 00:27:18.980 --> 00:27:27.440 while we were still weak at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. And in fact, that's the cadence 00:27:27.440 --> 00:27:33.980 right there. Those are the three chords. It's not A, D, and E. It is at the right time, Christ died for 00:27:33.980 --> 00:27:41.839 the ungodly. Now, you can call it what you want. In our circles, we are constantly producing slogans and 00:27:41.839 --> 00:27:49.519 waving flags. It's okay. We're gospel-centered. We're missional. We preach the gospel to ourselves. 00:27:49.720 --> 00:27:54.359 I believe in all those things. I fear that when we put too many labels on that, when we separate 00:27:54.359 --> 00:27:58.179 ourselves into thinking that we believe it more than other people. I'm not saying you do that, 00:27:58.839 --> 00:28:05.179 but I've seen that happen. No matter what you call it, just do it. At just the right time, 00:28:05.180 --> 00:28:14.820 Christ died for me. He died for the ungodly. And so, in that way, we get up and go. 00:28:15.920 --> 00:28:22.140 The artist Chuck Close said this, inspiration is for amateurs, the rest of us to show up 00:28:22.140 --> 00:28:30.120 and get to work. So, let me encourage you at Southwood that inspiration does come. There are 00:28:30.119 --> 00:28:39.179 moments when you are filled with a desire to serve Jesus. The love of God has been shed abroad in your 00:28:39.179 --> 00:28:43.759 heart through the Holy Spirit. There are moments when you get tremendous satisfaction and a great 00:28:43.759 --> 00:28:50.739 visceral form of joy and happiness from the Christian life. But what it doesn't, we go back 00:28:50.739 --> 00:28:56.159 to the harmonic cadence, the gospel. At just the right time, Christ died for the ungodly, 00:28:56.160 --> 00:29:02.700 and we get up and we go to work. Amen. Let's pray together. 00:29:04.960 --> 00:29:12.880 Lord, we give thanks for the way in which that you, through your gospel, have given us hope 00:29:12.880 --> 00:29:21.220 and encouragement. And pray that in every way that we would see the Christian life as being both a mix of 00:29:21.220 --> 00:29:28.360 wonderful moments of joy and happiness. And there's moments when we just get up and we show up. 00:29:29.740 --> 00:29:36.299 Always reminding ourselves of the harmonic cadence of Jesus dying for the ungodly at just the right time. 00:29:37.200 --> 00:29:39.960 This we pray in Christ's name. Amen. 00:29:43.960 --> 00:29:48.000 For more information, visit us online at southwood.org. 00:29:51.220 --> 00:30:21.200 Thank you.