August 17, 2025 • 42 mins
We all have to fight for focus because distractions are present all around us. While our lives feel like they are being pulled apart in different directions, Jesus’ dream is for us to be whole, not fragmented, but focused. In Week 2 of the Do Not Disturb Series, Pastor Ty Lanphere shared an incredible message of how distractions can cause us to drift. Drifting can look like taking action or sometimes not doing anything at all - which is still doing something! This message reminded us to keep our eyes focused on the main thing, Jesus. When distractions meet us, it can end with a decision and our devotion.
Scripture References:
Philemon 1:23-24 NLT
Colossians 4:14 NLT
2 Timothy 4:9-10 NLT
Galatians 4
Galatians 5:16 NLT
Hebrews 2:1 ESV
Scripture References:
Philemon 1:23-24 NLT
Colossians 4:14 NLT
2 Timothy 4:9-10 NLT
Galatians 4
Galatians 5:16 NLT
Hebrews 2:1 ESV
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Transformation Church Podcast, where we represent God to
the lost and found for transformation in Christ. We're so
glad you're here and wherever you're listening from, we believe
God will transform your life. Do today's message, Let's go.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
I hope that you got a Bible today. Get into
the word in just a second. But I got to
remind you of the series we're in. We're in week
two of a collection titled Do Not Disturb, and we
got to give honor one more time to the first
installment from Pastor Breed Davis last week. What an incredible message,
Thank you, Thank you. I've sent that to about one
(00:43):
hundred and fifty people already, so it was a great word.
And I just want to continue what she started last
week as we're in week two of this collection. And
I like the collection that we're in because in this
series do Not Disturb, we're asking a really good question.
We're building from a good thought, and the thought is
how do we find and focus in a world full
of distraction. I don't know if you've noticed that about
(01:05):
the world that we live in. It is full of distraction.
And so if I want to be focused something interesting,
I have to find focus. Maybe you're like me, maybe
you've had times where you have to fight for focus.
If I want to get focused, I gotta carve it
in my schedule. I gotta be intentional. I gotta make
sure nobody can mess with my time of being intentional
(01:27):
to get focused. So it's interesting to me. You gotta
find focus, But distraction, it has a funny way of
finding you. I don't know if you've noticed that. It
doesn't take much to get distracted. Distraction is at your
fingertips all day long, twenty four to seven. And as
(01:49):
we build off this word distraction, I want to make
sure that you have a good concept of exactly what
it is that we're talking about, because I know sometimes
when we study words or topics in church a lot
of time we like to get a definition for that.
And so it sent you. They'll be like, hey, if
you're going to give us a word, and you'll put
a definition on the screen, we want a definition. We
will get the term. And I think that the definition
(02:10):
of a word's powerful. But the people in the Bible,
when they would give a word, they want to give
you imagery, and so we want a definition. So it
kind of works like this if I ask him to you, Hey,
what's God like to you? You might say, man, God
he is, He's faithful. Hey, God's holy, he's sovereign, he's powerful,
and I like that. But there's not really imagery that
(02:33):
goes with that. So if you ask somebody in the Bible, hey,
what's God like to you? They would say God, He's man.
God's like a strong tower that I can run into
and be kept safe. God is like a solid rock,
a firm foundation, and he holds me and he stables me. Oh,
you want to know about his word. His word, it's
(02:54):
like a lighting to my feet and a lamp into
my path. That's what's the reason why they gave you
an expression is because they didn't just want to give
you a definition for understanding. They wanted to give you
an expression based off an experience. And so as I
hear about the solid rock, the firm foundation, I can
feel that and I can understand that. So when it
(03:16):
comes to this word distraction, I'm gonna give you the
biblical imagery. The imagery is your life being pulled apart
in multiple directions. What that means is that part of
me shows up to be a parent part of me
shows up to be an employee. Part of me shows
up to my friend groups to be a great friend,
(03:36):
and part of me is involved in my relationships outside
my family. It's not I'm showing up in pieces. And
this was never the dream that Jesus has for your life.
The dream of Jesus for your life is not that
you would live a fragmented life. The dream Jesus has
for your life is that you would live a whole,
an integrist life. And so it's not that I just
(03:56):
got a pick. Well, I can only be a parent,
I gotta be focused, so I can only be a student.
I can only be a good spouse. You don't have
to pick one. It's just that you show up fully
to whichever you're at at that time. It's the whole saying,
I am where my feet are, and so as I
show up to be a good employee, I'm not thinking
(04:17):
about the friend I gotta be. As I show up
to be a great spouse and a parent, I'm not
thinking about the employee I gotta be. I'm fully where
I'm at. And so if we want to find focus,
we gotta fight for it. But if we want to
get distracted, and distraction a. It has a way of
finding you. It's not that difficult. I don't know if
you have an experience like I do. But whenever I
(04:39):
grew up, my parents they used to ground me if
I did something you know, your boy shouldn't have done.
And so anytimes I would rebel against what they said,
or if I do something crazy, they would ground me,
and usually they would send me to my room. I
would go to my room, I would sit on my bed,
and the instruction was, hey, think about what you did,
think about what you can do better next time, and
(05:00):
then we're going to talk about it. Come on, somebody.
That's character development, that's good parenting. So oftentimes I would
walk back to my room. I would sit on my
bed and I start thinking, all right, what I do,
how could be better? And that's how it went ninety
nine percent of the time. But baby, there was one
time I went back to my room. I'm upset. I
(05:23):
sit on my bed. I start thinking about what I done,
how I could be better, you know, character development, And
all I did, literally the only thing I did. I
turned my head to the left, and as I turned
my head to the left, I saw a white and
orange battery powered radio and I looked at it had
a little belt clip. You know what I'm saying. It
(05:43):
was like the ogue I had. The little belt clip
had a long cord that went to some metal bracketed headphones.
Of course, as I'm sitting there in my room with
nothing else, I grabbed the radio. I put the headphones on,
I cut it on, and I start tuning through the
channels and through the stations to try and find something
that I could kill some time with. And so the
first thing I heard, you know, I grew up in
(06:03):
the South, so I heard some country music. I was like,
all right, I heard this before. Kept scrolling and I
tuned into some pop music. I was like, okay, I
like that, but heard this one before. Heard some rock music,
heard some talk shows. But then I came across the
station with the sound your boy, I never heard before.
I came across the station with the sound that was
(06:26):
earth shattering, groundbreaking, life transforming. It was the sound when
I tuned in, it said I liked the bar tender.
Oh yay, Hey, my little nine, ten eleven year old
white self. I stup off the bed. I was like,
(06:46):
what is happened? Like I just hey, you saw that
you peep that, you peap that. Yeah. Hey, when I
tell you I grew up playing basketball, I had a
week crossover from that day forward. I grew up. I
had the little little hiccup like, Bro, I'm telling you
it changed my life, changed my life the rest of
(07:08):
the time being grounds like this is the best day ever.
So my mom she comes in, She's like, all right,
let's talk about what have you learned? I said, Bro,
I learned you can rye mansion with Wisconson and people
buy it. Oh, people buy it just doing something. I mean,
I don't know. Transformation happened long ago in my life.
(07:30):
Ninety two point five hip hop and R and B.
I love you, love you. You know what's crazy though,
in a moment we're all I had to do what's
focused on my growth and my development. All I do
is I turn my head, make a decision. Now I'm distracted. Distraction.
(07:52):
It's got a funny way of finding you, and the
decision leads me to being distracted. I want to see
from that today about the danger of distraction. I think
for a lot of us, especially in our culture, everybody's
kind of distracted. It's something that all throughout the day
(08:12):
there's little distractions, little things that we can numb the pain,
little things that can take us off of our focus.
And so I think since it's so normal, we missed
the big danger of distraction. And today I want to
take you to some scriptures and hopefully I can help
point this out to you, the danger of distraction. And
we're gonna look at some of the writings of Paul.
(08:34):
If you want to go ahead and turn to Filehman.
If you got a Bible, you can turn there, if not,
in a second, they're gonna be on the screen, and
then we're gonna read some of his writings in his
letters to churches. If I can give you a little
context on Paul very simply was a church persecutor, Christian
killer who became church planter, church overseer, and as he
became an overseer of the church, all this happened off
(08:57):
of one experience with Jesus that transformed his life. And
he would write letters to these churches to encourage them,
to guide them, to instruct them, and some to challenge them.
So if you read, you can read his letter in
Philippians to the Church in Philippi, and you get the tone.
You know, his tone to them. He's like, man, I
love y'all. I'm so proud of y'all. I just gonna
let y'all know how I'm doing. Then he writes the
(09:18):
Church in corinth and first Saint Corinthians, and he's like, Hey,
when I pull up, I'm whipping ah, y'all, y'all ain't
good at this Christian thing. Okay, I gotta come back
so you can kind of get the tone. We're gonna
look at the tone today as he writes about one
of his ministry companions, Paul, he understood that assignment is
only as important as your alignment. And so Paul, he
(09:40):
actually had people that he would do life in ministry with.
And I want to read about one of those people today,
named Demus. He's mentioned three times in scripture, three different
books of the Bible, in three different verses, and the
first is in Phi Lehman, it's very interesting. This is
what says. They're going to put it on the screen
for us. But Paul said, Epiphrius, my fellow prisoner in
(10:03):
Christ Jesus sends you his greetings. So does Mark, Aristarchus,
Demus and Luke my coworkers. This is the first mention
we get of Demus, and the tone of it is, man, Demus,
my fellow worker, my co labor, my coworker in the ministry,
(10:26):
doing life with him. This is the earliest writing we
have of Demus. And I love that Paul is making
sure other people recognize Demas's faithfulness, Demus's job in the ministry,
him doing life with Paul. So we get this writing
about eighty fifty eight to sixty two, and then the
next writing that we're going to see of Demus actually
(10:47):
comes from Colossians, and it's roughly a year or two later,
and Paul in Colossians he does something. He hypes up
four or five different people and their engagement in the ministry,
and he's like, man, this guy named Aristarkus, another guy
named Oessames, there's a few others that he mentions. He's like, man,
support these guys. They are faithful to the ministry. Pray
(11:09):
for these men, accept them and their leadership in your house.
He really pours a lot of emphasis into the weight
of the character of some of these men. But then
we get to Colossians chapter four and he says this.
He says, Luke, the beloved doctor, come on you know Luke,
the beloved doctor. We all love Luke. He sends his greeting,
and so does Demus. It's about two years later. The
(11:33):
first one we got man, faithful co worker, faithful labor
in the ministry. And now about a year or two later,
a lot of people get their influence projected, get the
weight that comes with their name and their role told
to other people. And then it's kind of like, oh yeah,
and Demus he's here. You know, Demus, he's here too.
(11:59):
And the third mention we have of him, it comes
from about three to four years later, and it's in
tewod Timothy, chapter four, verses nine through ten, and this
is what it says. Paul says Timothy, please come as
soon as you can. Demus has deserted me because he
loves the things of this life and has gone back
(12:19):
to Thessalonaika. Can you see the progression, faithful worker, fellow
co labor, a friend and companion in the ministry. You
know he's here. Demus is with us. Timothy, Please come
(12:43):
as soon as you can. Demus has deserted me because
he loves the things of this life more than the next.
I want to submit that there is a danger of distraction. See,
nobody's life is really ruined by a moment of distraction.
(13:05):
It's never that I had one moment of being distracted
and man, now my whole life is just ruined. It's
daily small decisions that get you distracted. And I would
submit that the danger of distraction is that distractions got
you drifting. Distractions got you drifting. You can go ahead
(13:27):
if you got notes today and write that down of
the title of this message. Distractions got you drifting. Listen
to all of us. Christ follower or not, you've probably drifted.
If you follow Jesus, you know that there's times when
you probably have more passion, more fervor more zeo for
the things of the ministry and the Gospel than maybe
(13:49):
you do now or maybe you have in another time.
But even if you're not a Jesus follower, we all
started this year with New Year's resolutions. And I mean,
you had the membership to play and a fitness but
now you might as well get into Canes. Baby. It's
like you just it's kind of drifted ALUs in bulk season.
(14:10):
But come on, we drift. Drifting happens to the best
of us. And I want to give you a term
for drifting today, so we know what we're working from.
If you want to write this down. Drift is a slow,
seemingly undetectable movement from one place to another, from one
place to another. That's the danger of it, is that
(14:34):
it takes you from one place to another. It's not
just that I drift from being generous. It's that I
drift to being selfish. It's not only that once I
had close proximity to purity and now I'm not as
close anymore. It's that I'm growing in proximity to compromise.
(14:55):
Come on, it's not the fact that you know, once, man,
I was super faithful and now I'm kind of drifting
to a lot of doubt, some laziness, some complacency. The
danger of it is is it at one point you
can be focused, it'll have you drifting to being distracted.
(15:17):
And here's the danger of drifting. Drifting will take you
to a place where you do things you'll think you'll
never have done, and you'll be somebody you thought you
never would be. I guarantee you deemus when he was
written about in fi Leman, I bet he never suspected himself.
Going back to his old life. He drifted. So it
(15:39):
got me asking the question, you're drifting so dangerous? How
do you drift? Where does the drift start? How does
the drift get a hold of me? I want to
tell you today how the drift starts. You start to
drift by just not doing anything. I don't know if
you've ever taken your kids to the beach before and
you're like, hey, stay right here in front of the tent,
you gotta sit down. You look, they are a mile
(16:01):
to the right. They didn't swim down there. They were
just doing nothing, and they drifted. If you want to
drift spiritually, I promise you the easiest way to do
it just don't do anything. The truth of the matter
is the fact that not doing something is doing something.
Anytime I'm not intentional with my relationship with Jesus, I
(16:25):
become intentional with the things that are not of him.
And anytime that I take Jesus out the primary focus
of my life, that's the exact moment that I start
to drift. I really hope that nobody has gotten in
a point where you think, all right, experience of transformation,
this is right where God want me to be now.
(16:45):
I'm just gonna lift from right here. That's the exact
moment that you'll start to drift. I gotta be intentional
to keep Jesus as the primary focus of my life,
because anytime that you miss out on the main thing,
every other piece of your life is impacted by it.
(17:07):
I don't know if you've ever forgotten the main thing before,
but I know times in my life I have truly
forgotten the main thing. I think about when we were
in Memphis, me and my life. That's where we came
from before we moved to Tulsa. And when we were
in Memphis, we used to take care of a lot
of our friends' kids. So if they would go out
of town, we take care of them. I'll be honest
with you, don't have kids yet, so I really like
(17:28):
taking care of other people's kids. The reason being is
because I can't see them at crazy, and you've boys
got all the answers. I'll be like, well, bre if
I was they daddy, I'll promise I would die. Now
when I have kids, I won't know anything, so help
me out. But as of right now, you know, I
got all the answers, and so we would take care
some of our friends' kids. And one time, some of
(17:48):
our friends they went out of town for a week
and they had us come and take care of their
three kids. And as we got through the day before
they left, the wife she had done an incredible job
in actually listing out the details of how we need
to take care of them, and it was put on
a list on the fridge, and so as we looked
at the list, she walked us through the first day
and she was like, hey, listen, this is what time
(18:10):
they wake up, this is what they need to eat
for breakfast, this is what time they need to go
to school, this is what time they need to go
to practice. Here's we need to take them to church
on Wednesday. She had listed it out amazingly. And at
the bottom of the list, I noticed that there was
a main point to taking care of their kids. Didn't
say the main thing, but it was the only thing
that was highlighted, the only thing that was in bold,
(18:31):
the only thing that was underlined, and it said do
not give the kids chocolate milk before bed, I thought,
easy enough, all right, easy enough. So every single day
we wake up, we get them to school on time,
we had their food packed, we give them to practice.
We're taken to church on time and honestly daily, and
I like we were killing and we were looking each
other like, hey, bro, when we got kids one day,
(18:54):
easy money, easy money, and so we're taking care of it.
We're getting really excited. And the last night, the youngest daughter,
she went to stay one of her friend's house. They
wouldn't feeling well and so she went to sleep early.
And meeting the two boys, we had what the youngest
called guys' night. We had guys night, So we ordered pizza,
We get all the video games. And when I say, like,
(19:16):
vibes were up, like it was just energy was out there.
It was electric. And so we're playing video games. It's
like ten o'clock. They were supposed to go to bed
at eight fifteen, and at ten o'clock, like the energy
is just up. Man. And so I looked at him
and I was like, hey, bro, y'all know what was
set this night off? They said what I said, chocolate milk. Baby.
(19:41):
They looked at me and they were like, oh my gosh.
The oldest they had two very different personalities. The oldest
was like, mom, actually doesn't let us have chocolate milk
at night. I said, oh man, your momy here, So
we're gonna drink this chocolate milk. The youngest. The parents
had actually left a document on the counter and it
(20:03):
said that we could make medical decisions for the boys
while they were out of town. And so the youngest
he goes and grabs it and he's like, yo, this
is a medical decision, bro, Like they can do this.
I'm like, my guy. So we get out of chocolate milk,
drink the whole gallon, and oh yeah, I mean, if
you're gonna do it, let's do it. And when I
(20:26):
say it was the worst idea, I might as well
have given them drugs, bro, Like they ruined the house.
I was preaching next day. We were late to church.
I was the preacher. We were late to church. It
was just terrible, terrible experience. The reality is is that
in a moment, I lost sight of the main thing.
(20:50):
In a moment, I lost sight of the one thing
that I was supposed to keep in focus the entire week.
The truth is that if you ever lose sight of
the main thing, every other area of your life is
affected by it. And anytime I misplace Jesus as the
(21:11):
sinner focus and remove him and place something in his place.
The rest of my life is impacted by it. I
was looking at Demus and I was like, man, how
do you how do you drift?
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Like?
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Where was your distraction? How could you drift from being
in ministry with Paul bro How could you drift from that?
And honestly, we could look at the context of it
and we could get some really good clues and make
some really educated guesses on why Demus drifted. But that's
(21:47):
not the best question to ask today. The better question
to ask today is not why would demons drift? The
best question is why would you? What is the thing
that would cause you to drift? Only you truly know?
And sometimes we talk about, Man, I got sin in
(22:08):
my life. I got this addiction to a substance, I
got this bad relationship, I got some laziness, man, And
we talk about the sin, and absolutely, hey, sin will
have you drifting. But if we could ask a better question,
it might not be the sin. What's the thing tangling
you up? What's this thing tripping you up? Because it
(22:29):
might not be sin, but it might not be the
best thing. It might be that I prioritize my job
over my family at times. It might be your pursuit
of a comfortable life could be the thing keeping you
drifting from what Jesus called you to do and who
he's called you to be. Even if my pursuit of
peace takes the place of the person of Jesus, I
(22:52):
have missed my focus and I can start to drift.
And I like that. We do get a little context
about DMUs that it says that Demus he drifted because
he had desires of his old life that drew him
back to his old life. And I thought about that,
and I thought about this scripture. You don't have to
turn there, but it's in Ephesians chapter four. In Ephesians
(23:14):
chapter four, Paul gives a strong teaching. Paul says, stop
putting on the old life, put on the new life.
Stop going back to the thing that's dead, and put
on the new thing that's alive. In Rome at this time,
when Paul writes this, they had this practice. If you
(23:36):
committed a crime that was drastic enough, if you committed
a crime that was horrifying enough, you would get a
sentence where they would take a dead body. They would
tie it to your arms, tie it to your legs,
face to face, or they would place it on your back,
and over time is this dead body decayed and it rotted.
It would actually decay and rot into your skin, and
(23:58):
it was a few weeks time before where it killed
you could I submit, this is the picture we get
of the old self and the old life versus the
new self and the new life. That I don't have
power to revive that dead thing that God freed me from,
so I might as well link up and live in
the power of the new thing that God gave me.
(24:19):
It's going back to the old life. I find it funny.
We talk to students a lot, and you know, it's
through mystery, you kind of you get to see all
the little relationships happen. Okay, we act like we don't,
but we see y'all. So we you see some people
and there's like three weeks and you can tell they're
(24:40):
a new relationship because the girls will walking up in
the back pastor tie. When you meet somebody, it's like,
all right, man, what's up bro? And then weeks later
he didn't come around as much. And then there's a
new guy that shows up and I always ask him
be like what happened? She's like, oh, I'm done with him.
(25:02):
I'm done with him. A few weeks later go by,
new guy didn't make it. The crazy thing is Buddy
from the first time's back and I'll be like, hey, yo,
I thought we talked about this. What are we doing?
(25:24):
And they'll be like, oh, here's what they say. We
just talking. We just talking, and here's what they really mean.
Let me decode it for you. I'm just keeping him
on retainer because I didn't know if this other thing
was going to work out. So now I can go
back to what did satisfy me and give me what
(25:44):
I was wanting in the first place. Since the new
thing didn't work out like I thought it would, I
thought i'd go back to Buddy. Let me just submit
to you. We do this in our life all the time.
I'm pursuing Jesus until I feel like Jesus puts me
in a place and gives me a life I feel
like I deserve better than. And so then I find
myself drifting back to that old life, that old thing.
(26:08):
And that's when you find yourself saying how did I,
how did I get here? Why do I what do
I feel like this? Because in the spirit you took
what is dead and you try to revive it by
living in an old life that God freed you from.
(26:31):
And when we do that, man, it causes us to drift.
This might be one of the main distractions that we
find people in. And what I see when I read
the Bible is that people they didn't always realize that
they were in a battle of the new life versus
the old life. Actually, what the battle is is the
(26:54):
spirit versus the flesh. I don't think people often knew
and realize that they were in this fight. I don't
know if you know this, but every single day you
wake up, you're in a battle, and it's the battle
of the spirit versus the flesh. My life with God,
in my old life I lived when I wasn't with God.
(27:15):
My desires of Jesus and my desires I have in
my own flesh. And often, oh man, many of us
we show up to this battle and we have the
wrong battle plan. How many of us you've done this?
You've had a moment in an encounter with Jesus. I
mean he moved in worship and you had this moment.
He moved through the message and you had this moment.
(27:37):
And when you have that moment, you say, all right, God, Yes,
thank you for your grace and your mercy. Lord. When
I get out of the service, I'm gonna stop doing blank. God,
when I get out of the service, I swear I'm
done texting them. I promise I'm done smoking that. I
promise I'm gonna stop looking at that. And can I
(27:59):
submit something to you to There is a way better plan.
Jesus is far less concerned with what you stop. He's
far more concerned with the things you start. Because listen,
the battle of the spirit versus the flesh is not
about me getting the wrong things out. The battle of
the Spirit versus the flesh is me getting the right
(28:20):
things in. Because if I can get Bible reading in
my life, I don't have time to stroll on pornography
in my life. If I can get good community in
my life, I don't have time for community that draws
me back to my old life. If I can get
the right things in, I'm not gonna have to focus
on getting the wrong things out. They just don't have
the space anymore. So when I approach this battle, I
(28:42):
want to be focused on Man. I'm trying to put
Jesus as the focus, not Sin as the focus. Oftentimes
we get the wrong focus because we think, God, I've
got all these things, and I'll promise you, Lord, if
you'll give me time, I'll stop doing them. It's not
about what you stop, that's more important about what you start.
(29:07):
I looked at Demis's situation, you know, he went back
to the desires of his old life. And as I
looked at his situation, I thought of a scripture, and
this would be what I would prescribe to Demus if
you live today Scalations, chapter five, verse sixteen, and Paul
he says, so I say, let the spirit guide your life.
(29:27):
Then you won't be doing what your sinful nature craves.
It's the spirit. Let the spirit guide your life. For
a long time in Scripture, they didn't let the spirit
guide their life. They didn't have the spirit yet. And
so what they did is they made up a bunch
of rules and regulations and legalism to try to get
to a place of holiness. And what happened was they
(29:51):
set all these rules up, and they made our faith
about a performance based faith that you got to do
the right things to bec I'm the right person. It's
about how you look and how people perceive you before,
it is who you are. And whenever you get in
that mode and you start trying to just do the
right things, do the right things, and you don't have
Holy Spirit, grace and power in your life, you will
(30:13):
find yourself in a performance based faith. The beautiful thing
about our faith, though, is it's not performance based. It
is Holy Spirit, grace, power filled faith. And so as
I submit to the Spirit, he doesn't focus on what
I do. He focused on who I am becoming, because
to the Spirit it's way more of a priority of
(30:34):
who I will be, because who I become will determine
what I do, not what I do change who I am.
One is behavior modification, the other is inward transformation. And
so I'm looking for the Spirit to God in my
life because I want to be a new creation, not
act like a new creation. Come on, I'm trying to
become something different, become something better than I am. So
(30:56):
I need Holy Spirit in my life helping me change.
And I feel like Demus. He was doing ministry, and
oftentimes he was more about the performance than the grace.
Because he couldn't control a sinful nature. He went back
to his old life. Today is we're talking about drifting.
(31:19):
Maybe there's some of you in here and right now.
If we were humble, open and transparent, you would say
I'm drifting. I've drifted. It's happened before, it's happening now,
or at the least you can see that there's potential
for it to happen in the future. And so I
just want to work from two points today as we close,
(31:41):
and as we close, I want to give you this
first one. Distraction ends with the decision. If you find
yourself distracted, the way to end distraction it's with the decision.
It's by making a different decision. The same way that
I get out of distraction is the same way that
(32:01):
I got into distraction a decision. And what I've heard
a lot growing up, and it has rained true in
my life is that first you make your decision, but
then your decision it makes you. And if we don't
come to realize that it is by the decisions of
our life that our life is being built, we will
(32:24):
go through this life and not be all that God
promised us to be, and we'll be searching for his
hand but never partnering with him and what it takes
to get to where He wants us to be so
first we make our decision, but then our decision it
makes us. You're building your life by your decision. I
was told this story before me and my wife moved
(32:46):
up here, and it was about this town. It was
in the hill country, and next to this town there
was a large body of water, a huge reservoir of water,
and on the other side of this water there was
a dam that was holding back the reservoir of water.
And there was at one point a storm that was
(33:08):
coming to the hill country and it was a massive storm,
a greater storm than they had ever seen or experience
at this time. And as the storm was coming in,
the people of the town realized that the storm was
going to bust the dam, all the water was going
to flow into the town, and anybody staying in that
town at that time would lose their life. And so
(33:30):
they started running door to door and they were saying, hey, hey,
you got to you gotta evacuate, like this storm's coming
over and all this water's gonna flood. You gotta get
out of here. People started packing up their belongings in
a frenzy. They were leaving with the little that they
had and evacuating, and is all the chaos is happening.
There's this one man and he's standing in the middle
of the road. Everybody's walking mind. They're like, hey, hey, bro,
(33:54):
you gotta go. You gotta go. Into every person that
would try to get him to leave, he would say, nah,
I'm fine. I'm gonna stay right here. More and more
people start coming by, and they're like, bro, you gotta leave,
you gotta leave. Hey, you gotta get out of here.
You're gonna lose your life. Like the storm's right there,
You're about to lose your life. And he would say, no,
I'm gonna stay right here. And it got to a
point where there were two people left in the town
(34:16):
and it was the man and it was his son.
And his son comes to him with tears in his eyes,
and he's saying, Dad, what are you doing. Dad, You
gotta leave. You're gonna die. And he says, no, I'm
not gonna leave. He says, Dad, Dad, damn is about
to break and everything is gonna get washed away. You
will lose your life. And he looked at his son.
He says, it's not gonna break. His son said, Dad,
(34:36):
you got it's gonna break. He said, it's not gonna break.
And he's crying and pleading, begging with his dad, and
he says, Dad, how could you know? How could you
stand here in confidence and know that that's not gonna
break and you won't be killed? And his dad looked
at his son, and he looked at the damn and
he looked at the storm that was quickly approaching, and
he looked back and he said, because I built it.
(35:01):
He said, because I built it. His son said what
he said. I woke up every day for years and
I made a decision to make the foundation strong. I
made a decision to be in the details of the
structure so that it would not break. I made a
decision to build something that no matter the storm that
came against it and the weather that happened to it, no
(35:22):
matter the circumstances or the situation that found itself in,
I built it with the intentionality and the decision they
would live beyond the trial, that it would live beyond
the test. I want to tell you, friend, you're building
your life by your decisions, and the trials that come
to your life will impact you and affect you based
on how you've decided to live your life. And now
(35:44):
if I've decided to rely on self. I'm not going
to be able to stand past very much. But if
I decide each and every day to stay intentional about
leaning into the person of Jesus, I can stand the
trials that come against me. In this life. You are
being made by your decisions. Jesus is building you, and
(36:04):
he wants to build you and make you strong. But
Jesus offers us the opportunity not just to do it
for you, but to partner with you. And there's got
to come a point where you stop just saying God
will do it. If he wants to do it, you
got to make a decision. I'm a partner with him.
The team can come up and start to play. But
distraction ends with the decision. And if you're drifting, drifting
(36:28):
ends with devotion. It ends with remembering and staying committed
to the why. And as I looked at Demus's story,
man I started I started to get kind of sad
thinking about a story because the Holy Spirit took me
(36:51):
to some scriptures talk about drifting, and I saw where
the word drifting has talked about three times in the
New Testament, and they all have the same thing in common.
It's in the Book of Colossians's, in the Book of
revelationists in the Book of Hebrews, and they all rank
a similar sound as a Scripture of Hebrews, Chapter two,
(37:14):
verse one, and it says, therefore, we must pay much
closer attention to the things we've heard, lest we drift
away from it to the church. In Ephesis and Revelation,
Jesus told John to pin the words, not what he
told another church, to come back to your first love.
(37:35):
But he told him to pin the words you need
to come back to the thing that you heard in
the beginning. And I thought this as it could be,
so it doesn't say it directly in scripture. But I
started to look at Demus's story, and I thought, Demus,
(37:56):
did you get so captivated by the miracles of Paul's
ministry that you missed out on the message? Did you
get so caught up in the hand of God that
you forgot about the heart of God? Demons? Did you
(38:18):
did you lose sight of the message because you were
focused on what God would do and not what he
had already done. Listen to me, I like miracles man.
Whenever God steps into our life and does what only
he can do and bring about an outcome that only
he could be over. I love that, man. That's an
energizer to your faith, that makes faith fun. I really
(38:40):
like miracles, but I did not build and dedicate my
life to a miracle. I build and dedicate my life
to the message that there's redemption for your story and
restoration for your soul. I like miracles, but what I
committed my life to was the message that there is
blood that covers a multitude of sins and a savior
who paid a price that I should have paid and
in my place. Come on, man. I like miracles, but
(39:03):
I love the message that Jesus is seated at the
right hand of the Father right now, looking at me
and looking at you with pride in his heart and
love in his eyes, because He's done for us what
we couldn't do for ourselves. I like miracles. I've dedicated
my life to the message. And it says in Luke
(39:26):
that one day Jesus is going to come back and
he's going to be looking for faithfulness. And when Jesus
comes back, if it's in my lifetime, I want him
to find me clinging to the pages of this book,
preaching the message of restoration and reconciliation that he entrusted
me with. I want to live my life based on
the message, even if God doesn't do another thing for me.
(39:50):
Faith is a moment to be remembered. Faith is a
lifestyle to live that I'm not just waiting on the
next thing life from the best thing. The best thing
is that He paid the price that was placed on
my soul and he did for me what I couldn't
do for myself. If you're here today, maybe you've been
(40:15):
waiting on miracles. Maybe you've drifted, maybe you're in distraction,
maybe you've lost focus. I want to tell you, friend,
you can always come back to the message, because the
message tells me about a man who loves you and
cares for you and offers you a life better thing
than you've ever known to exist. So the head bowed
(40:35):
and eyes closed today, If you're in this room right
now and you've never given your life to Jesus, you've
never received and accepted the message. I want to tell
you that Jesus, God in heaven, looked at you and
stepped out of heaven and became flesh. He lived a
perfect life for thirty three years. He was crucified not
(40:59):
because of his sin, but because of my sin and
because of your sin. And he was placed in a
grave where he was dead for three days. But he
didn't stay in the grave. He got up from the grave,
came back to life, revealed himself to hundreds of people,
ascended into heaven where now he is seated reigning as king,
looking at you in this moment, proud of who you
(41:21):
are and who you can become. He offers you a
better way, He offers you a new life. And today,
if you want to give your life to Jesus, you
want to receive the message, I'm account to three, and
when I get to three, I'm just gonna ask that
you would lift your hand in the air. One. This
is the greatest decision that you could ever make. To
all heaven's about to throw a party. Three. Come on,
(41:41):
if you want to put your faith in the message
and the man of Jesus, would you just lift your
right hand let somebody know. I'll see you, brother, I
see you on the back. Come on, can we make
some noise for the people making the greatest decision of
their life today, Let's go. Here's what we like to
do is house. We like to pray a prayer for
(42:03):
all those watching online and here in the house who
made that decision for the first time. So, if you're
making that decision, would you just mean these words as
we all pray them to Jesus. Let's pray this say Jesus.
I love you, Jesus, I need you. Thank you for
seeing me, thank you for saving me, thank you for
(42:24):
loving me. Today, I commit my life to you. Change me,
renew me, transform me. I'm yours. Amen. Come on when
we just clap our hands and make some noise for
all the people stepping from death to life today. So
(42:45):
proud of you.
Welcome to Transformation Church Podcast, where we represent God to
the lost and found for transformation in Christ. We're so
glad you're here and wherever you're listening from, we believe
God will transform your life. Do today's message, Let's go.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
I hope that you got a Bible today. Get into
the word in just a second. But I got to
remind you of the series we're in. We're in week
two of a collection titled Do Not Disturb, and we
got to give honor one more time to the first
installment from Pastor Breed Davis last week. What an incredible message,
Thank you, Thank you. I've sent that to about one
(00:43):
hundred and fifty people already, so it was a great word.
And I just want to continue what she started last
week as we're in week two of this collection. And
I like the collection that we're in because in this
series do Not Disturb, we're asking a really good question.
We're building from a good thought, and the thought is
how do we find and focus in a world full
of distraction. I don't know if you've noticed that about
(01:05):
the world that we live in. It is full of distraction.
And so if I want to be focused something interesting,
I have to find focus. Maybe you're like me, maybe
you've had times where you have to fight for focus.
If I want to get focused, I gotta carve it
in my schedule. I gotta be intentional. I gotta make
sure nobody can mess with my time of being intentional
(01:27):
to get focused. So it's interesting to me. You gotta
find focus, But distraction, it has a funny way of
finding you. I don't know if you've noticed that. It
doesn't take much to get distracted. Distraction is at your
fingertips all day long, twenty four to seven. And as
(01:49):
we build off this word distraction, I want to make
sure that you have a good concept of exactly what
it is that we're talking about, because I know sometimes
when we study words or topics in church a lot
of time we like to get a definition for that.
And so it sent you. They'll be like, hey, if
you're going to give us a word, and you'll put
a definition on the screen, we want a definition. We
will get the term. And I think that the definition
(02:10):
of a word's powerful. But the people in the Bible,
when they would give a word, they want to give
you imagery, and so we want a definition. So it
kind of works like this if I ask him to you, Hey,
what's God like to you? You might say, man, God
he is, He's faithful. Hey, God's holy, he's sovereign, he's powerful,
and I like that. But there's not really imagery that
(02:33):
goes with that. So if you ask somebody in the Bible, hey,
what's God like to you? They would say God, He's man.
God's like a strong tower that I can run into
and be kept safe. God is like a solid rock,
a firm foundation, and he holds me and he stables me. Oh,
you want to know about his word. His word, it's
(02:54):
like a lighting to my feet and a lamp into
my path. That's what's the reason why they gave you
an expression is because they didn't just want to give
you a definition for understanding. They wanted to give you
an expression based off an experience. And so as I
hear about the solid rock, the firm foundation, I can
feel that and I can understand that. So when it
(03:16):
comes to this word distraction, I'm gonna give you the
biblical imagery. The imagery is your life being pulled apart
in multiple directions. What that means is that part of
me shows up to be a parent part of me
shows up to be an employee. Part of me shows
up to my friend groups to be a great friend,
(03:36):
and part of me is involved in my relationships outside
my family. It's not I'm showing up in pieces. And
this was never the dream that Jesus has for your life.
The dream of Jesus for your life is not that
you would live a fragmented life. The dream Jesus has
for your life is that you would live a whole,
an integrist life. And so it's not that I just
(03:56):
got a pick. Well, I can only be a parent,
I gotta be focused, so I can only be a student.
I can only be a good spouse. You don't have
to pick one. It's just that you show up fully
to whichever you're at at that time. It's the whole saying,
I am where my feet are, and so as I
show up to be a good employee, I'm not thinking
(04:17):
about the friend I gotta be. As I show up
to be a great spouse and a parent, I'm not
thinking about the employee I gotta be. I'm fully where
I'm at. And so if we want to find focus,
we gotta fight for it. But if we want to
get distracted, and distraction a. It has a way of
finding you. It's not that difficult. I don't know if
you have an experience like I do. But whenever I
(04:39):
grew up, my parents they used to ground me if
I did something you know, your boy shouldn't have done.
And so anytimes I would rebel against what they said,
or if I do something crazy, they would ground me,
and usually they would send me to my room. I
would go to my room, I would sit on my bed,
and the instruction was, hey, think about what you did,
think about what you can do better next time, and
(05:00):
then we're going to talk about it. Come on, somebody.
That's character development, that's good parenting. So oftentimes I would
walk back to my room. I would sit on my
bed and I start thinking, all right, what I do,
how could be better? And that's how it went ninety
nine percent of the time. But baby, there was one
time I went back to my room. I'm upset. I
(05:23):
sit on my bed. I start thinking about what I done,
how I could be better, you know, character development, And
all I did, literally the only thing I did. I
turned my head to the left, and as I turned
my head to the left, I saw a white and
orange battery powered radio and I looked at it had
a little belt clip. You know what I'm saying. It
(05:43):
was like the ogue I had. The little belt clip
had a long cord that went to some metal bracketed headphones.
Of course, as I'm sitting there in my room with
nothing else, I grabbed the radio. I put the headphones on,
I cut it on, and I start tuning through the
channels and through the stations to try and find something
that I could kill some time with. And so the
first thing I heard, you know, I grew up in
(06:03):
the South, so I heard some country music. I was like,
all right, I heard this before. Kept scrolling and I
tuned into some pop music. I was like, okay, I
like that, but heard this one before. Heard some rock music,
heard some talk shows. But then I came across the
station with the sound your boy, I never heard before.
I came across the station with the sound that was
(06:26):
earth shattering, groundbreaking, life transforming. It was the sound when
I tuned in, it said I liked the bar tender.
Oh yay, Hey, my little nine, ten eleven year old
white self. I stup off the bed. I was like,
(06:46):
what is happened? Like I just hey, you saw that
you peep that, you peap that. Yeah. Hey, when I
tell you I grew up playing basketball, I had a
week crossover from that day forward. I grew up. I
had the little little hiccup like, Bro, I'm telling you
it changed my life, changed my life the rest of
(07:08):
the time being grounds like this is the best day ever.
So my mom she comes in, She's like, all right,
let's talk about what have you learned? I said, Bro,
I learned you can rye mansion with Wisconson and people
buy it. Oh, people buy it just doing something. I mean,
I don't know. Transformation happened long ago in my life.
(07:30):
Ninety two point five hip hop and R and B.
I love you, love you. You know what's crazy though,
in a moment we're all I had to do what's
focused on my growth and my development. All I do
is I turn my head, make a decision. Now I'm distracted. Distraction.
(07:52):
It's got a funny way of finding you, and the
decision leads me to being distracted. I want to see
from that today about the danger of distraction. I think
for a lot of us, especially in our culture, everybody's
kind of distracted. It's something that all throughout the day
(08:12):
there's little distractions, little things that we can numb the pain,
little things that can take us off of our focus.
And so I think since it's so normal, we missed
the big danger of distraction. And today I want to
take you to some scriptures and hopefully I can help
point this out to you, the danger of distraction. And
we're gonna look at some of the writings of Paul.
(08:34):
If you want to go ahead and turn to Filehman.
If you got a Bible, you can turn there, if not,
in a second, they're gonna be on the screen, and
then we're gonna read some of his writings in his
letters to churches. If I can give you a little
context on Paul very simply was a church persecutor, Christian
killer who became church planter, church overseer, and as he
became an overseer of the church, all this happened off
(08:57):
of one experience with Jesus that transformed his life. And
he would write letters to these churches to encourage them,
to guide them, to instruct them, and some to challenge them.
So if you read, you can read his letter in
Philippians to the Church in Philippi, and you get the tone.
You know, his tone to them. He's like, man, I
love y'all. I'm so proud of y'all. I just gonna
let y'all know how I'm doing. Then he writes the
(09:18):
Church in corinth and first Saint Corinthians, and he's like, Hey,
when I pull up, I'm whipping ah, y'all, y'all ain't
good at this Christian thing. Okay, I gotta come back
so you can kind of get the tone. We're gonna
look at the tone today as he writes about one
of his ministry companions, Paul, he understood that assignment is
only as important as your alignment. And so Paul, he
(09:40):
actually had people that he would do life in ministry with.
And I want to read about one of those people today,
named Demus. He's mentioned three times in scripture, three different
books of the Bible, in three different verses, and the
first is in Phi Lehman, it's very interesting. This is
what says. They're going to put it on the screen
for us. But Paul said, Epiphrius, my fellow prisoner in
(10:03):
Christ Jesus sends you his greetings. So does Mark, Aristarchus,
Demus and Luke my coworkers. This is the first mention
we get of Demus, and the tone of it is, man, Demus,
my fellow worker, my co labor, my coworker in the ministry,
(10:26):
doing life with him. This is the earliest writing we
have of Demus. And I love that Paul is making
sure other people recognize Demas's faithfulness, Demus's job in the ministry,
him doing life with Paul. So we get this writing
about eighty fifty eight to sixty two, and then the
next writing that we're going to see of Demus actually
(10:47):
comes from Colossians, and it's roughly a year or two later,
and Paul in Colossians he does something. He hypes up
four or five different people and their engagement in the ministry,
and he's like, man, this guy named Aristarkus, another guy
named Oessames, there's a few others that he mentions. He's like, man,
support these guys. They are faithful to the ministry. Pray
(11:09):
for these men, accept them and their leadership in your house.
He really pours a lot of emphasis into the weight
of the character of some of these men. But then
we get to Colossians chapter four and he says this.
He says, Luke, the beloved doctor, come on you know Luke,
the beloved doctor. We all love Luke. He sends his greeting,
and so does Demus. It's about two years later. The
(11:33):
first one we got man, faithful co worker, faithful labor
in the ministry. And now about a year or two later,
a lot of people get their influence projected, get the
weight that comes with their name and their role told
to other people. And then it's kind of like, oh yeah,
and Demus he's here. You know, Demus, he's here too.
(11:59):
And the third mention we have of him, it comes
from about three to four years later, and it's in
tewod Timothy, chapter four, verses nine through ten, and this
is what it says. Paul says Timothy, please come as
soon as you can. Demus has deserted me because he
loves the things of this life and has gone back
(12:19):
to Thessalonaika. Can you see the progression, faithful worker, fellow
co labor, a friend and companion in the ministry. You
know he's here. Demus is with us. Timothy, Please come
(12:43):
as soon as you can. Demus has deserted me because
he loves the things of this life more than the next.
I want to submit that there is a danger of distraction. See,
nobody's life is really ruined by a moment of distraction.
(13:05):
It's never that I had one moment of being distracted
and man, now my whole life is just ruined. It's
daily small decisions that get you distracted. And I would
submit that the danger of distraction is that distractions got
you drifting. Distractions got you drifting. You can go ahead
(13:27):
if you got notes today and write that down of
the title of this message. Distractions got you drifting. Listen
to all of us. Christ follower or not, you've probably drifted.
If you follow Jesus, you know that there's times when
you probably have more passion, more fervor more zeo for
the things of the ministry and the Gospel than maybe
(13:49):
you do now or maybe you have in another time.
But even if you're not a Jesus follower, we all
started this year with New Year's resolutions. And I mean,
you had the membership to play and a fitness but
now you might as well get into Canes. Baby. It's
like you just it's kind of drifted ALUs in bulk season.
(14:10):
But come on, we drift. Drifting happens to the best
of us. And I want to give you a term
for drifting today, so we know what we're working from.
If you want to write this down. Drift is a slow,
seemingly undetectable movement from one place to another, from one
place to another. That's the danger of it, is that
(14:34):
it takes you from one place to another. It's not
just that I drift from being generous. It's that I
drift to being selfish. It's not only that once I
had close proximity to purity and now I'm not as
close anymore. It's that I'm growing in proximity to compromise.
(14:55):
Come on, it's not the fact that you know, once, man,
I was super faithful and now I'm kind of drifting
to a lot of doubt, some laziness, some complacency. The
danger of it is is it at one point you
can be focused, it'll have you drifting to being distracted.
(15:17):
And here's the danger of drifting. Drifting will take you
to a place where you do things you'll think you'll
never have done, and you'll be somebody you thought you
never would be. I guarantee you deemus when he was
written about in fi Leman, I bet he never suspected himself.
Going back to his old life. He drifted. So it
(15:39):
got me asking the question, you're drifting so dangerous? How
do you drift? Where does the drift start? How does
the drift get a hold of me? I want to
tell you today how the drift starts. You start to
drift by just not doing anything. I don't know if
you've ever taken your kids to the beach before and
you're like, hey, stay right here in front of the tent,
you gotta sit down. You look, they are a mile
(16:01):
to the right. They didn't swim down there. They were
just doing nothing, and they drifted. If you want to
drift spiritually, I promise you the easiest way to do
it just don't do anything. The truth of the matter
is the fact that not doing something is doing something.
Anytime I'm not intentional with my relationship with Jesus, I
(16:25):
become intentional with the things that are not of him.
And anytime that I take Jesus out the primary focus
of my life, that's the exact moment that I start
to drift. I really hope that nobody has gotten in
a point where you think, all right, experience of transformation,
this is right where God want me to be now.
(16:45):
I'm just gonna lift from right here. That's the exact
moment that you'll start to drift. I gotta be intentional
to keep Jesus as the primary focus of my life,
because anytime that you miss out on the main thing,
every other piece of your life is impacted by it.
(17:07):
I don't know if you've ever forgotten the main thing before,
but I know times in my life I have truly
forgotten the main thing. I think about when we were
in Memphis, me and my life. That's where we came
from before we moved to Tulsa. And when we were
in Memphis, we used to take care of a lot
of our friends' kids. So if they would go out
of town, we take care of them. I'll be honest
with you, don't have kids yet, so I really like
(17:28):
taking care of other people's kids. The reason being is
because I can't see them at crazy, and you've boys
got all the answers. I'll be like, well, bre if
I was they daddy, I'll promise I would die. Now
when I have kids, I won't know anything, so help
me out. But as of right now, you know, I
got all the answers, and so we would take care
some of our friends' kids. And one time, some of
(17:48):
our friends they went out of town for a week
and they had us come and take care of their
three kids. And as we got through the day before
they left, the wife she had done an incredible job
in actually listing out the details of how we need
to take care of them, and it was put on
a list on the fridge, and so as we looked
at the list, she walked us through the first day
and she was like, hey, listen, this is what time
(18:10):
they wake up, this is what they need to eat
for breakfast, this is what time they need to go
to school, this is what time they need to go
to practice. Here's we need to take them to church
on Wednesday. She had listed it out amazingly. And at
the bottom of the list, I noticed that there was
a main point to taking care of their kids. Didn't
say the main thing, but it was the only thing
that was highlighted, the only thing that was in bold,
(18:31):
the only thing that was underlined, and it said do
not give the kids chocolate milk before bed, I thought,
easy enough, all right, easy enough. So every single day
we wake up, we get them to school on time,
we had their food packed, we give them to practice.
We're taken to church on time and honestly daily, and
I like we were killing and we were looking each
other like, hey, bro, when we got kids one day,
(18:54):
easy money, easy money, and so we're taking care of it.
We're getting really excited. And the last night, the youngest daughter,
she went to stay one of her friend's house. They
wouldn't feeling well and so she went to sleep early.
And meeting the two boys, we had what the youngest
called guys' night. We had guys night, So we ordered pizza,
We get all the video games. And when I say, like,
(19:16):
vibes were up, like it was just energy was out there.
It was electric. And so we're playing video games. It's
like ten o'clock. They were supposed to go to bed
at eight fifteen, and at ten o'clock, like the energy
is just up. Man. And so I looked at him
and I was like, hey, bro, y'all know what was
set this night off? They said what I said, chocolate milk. Baby.
(19:41):
They looked at me and they were like, oh my gosh.
The oldest they had two very different personalities. The oldest
was like, mom, actually doesn't let us have chocolate milk
at night. I said, oh man, your momy here, So
we're gonna drink this chocolate milk. The youngest. The parents
had actually left a document on the counter and it
(20:03):
said that we could make medical decisions for the boys
while they were out of town. And so the youngest
he goes and grabs it and he's like, yo, this
is a medical decision, bro, Like they can do this.
I'm like, my guy. So we get out of chocolate milk,
drink the whole gallon, and oh yeah, I mean, if
you're gonna do it, let's do it. And when I
(20:26):
say it was the worst idea, I might as well
have given them drugs, bro, Like they ruined the house.
I was preaching next day. We were late to church.
I was the preacher. We were late to church. It
was just terrible, terrible experience. The reality is is that
in a moment, I lost sight of the main thing.
(20:50):
In a moment, I lost sight of the one thing
that I was supposed to keep in focus the entire week.
The truth is that if you ever lose sight of
the main thing, every other area of your life is
affected by it. And anytime I misplace Jesus as the
(21:11):
sinner focus and remove him and place something in his place.
The rest of my life is impacted by it. I
was looking at Demus and I was like, man, how
do you how do you drift?
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Like?
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Where was your distraction? How could you drift from being
in ministry with Paul bro How could you drift from that?
And honestly, we could look at the context of it
and we could get some really good clues and make
some really educated guesses on why Demus drifted. But that's
(21:47):
not the best question to ask today. The better question
to ask today is not why would demons drift? The
best question is why would you? What is the thing
that would cause you to drift? Only you truly know?
And sometimes we talk about, Man, I got sin in
(22:08):
my life. I got this addiction to a substance, I
got this bad relationship, I got some laziness, man, And
we talk about the sin, and absolutely, hey, sin will
have you drifting. But if we could ask a better question,
it might not be the sin. What's the thing tangling
you up? What's this thing tripping you up? Because it
(22:29):
might not be sin, but it might not be the
best thing. It might be that I prioritize my job
over my family at times. It might be your pursuit
of a comfortable life could be the thing keeping you
drifting from what Jesus called you to do and who
he's called you to be. Even if my pursuit of
peace takes the place of the person of Jesus, I
(22:52):
have missed my focus and I can start to drift.
And I like that. We do get a little context
about DMUs that it says that Demus he drifted because
he had desires of his old life that drew him
back to his old life. And I thought about that,
and I thought about this scripture. You don't have to
turn there, but it's in Ephesians chapter four. In Ephesians
(23:14):
chapter four, Paul gives a strong teaching. Paul says, stop
putting on the old life, put on the new life.
Stop going back to the thing that's dead, and put
on the new thing that's alive. In Rome at this time,
when Paul writes this, they had this practice. If you
(23:36):
committed a crime that was drastic enough, if you committed
a crime that was horrifying enough, you would get a
sentence where they would take a dead body. They would
tie it to your arms, tie it to your legs,
face to face, or they would place it on your back,
and over time is this dead body decayed and it rotted.
It would actually decay and rot into your skin, and
(23:58):
it was a few weeks time before where it killed
you could I submit, this is the picture we get
of the old self and the old life versus the
new self and the new life. That I don't have
power to revive that dead thing that God freed me from,
so I might as well link up and live in
the power of the new thing that God gave me.
(24:19):
It's going back to the old life. I find it funny.
We talk to students a lot, and you know, it's
through mystery, you kind of you get to see all
the little relationships happen. Okay, we act like we don't,
but we see y'all. So we you see some people
and there's like three weeks and you can tell they're
(24:40):
a new relationship because the girls will walking up in
the back pastor tie. When you meet somebody, it's like,
all right, man, what's up bro? And then weeks later
he didn't come around as much. And then there's a
new guy that shows up and I always ask him
be like what happened? She's like, oh, I'm done with him.
(25:02):
I'm done with him. A few weeks later go by,
new guy didn't make it. The crazy thing is Buddy
from the first time's back and I'll be like, hey, yo,
I thought we talked about this. What are we doing?
(25:24):
And they'll be like, oh, here's what they say. We
just talking. We just talking, and here's what they really mean.
Let me decode it for you. I'm just keeping him
on retainer because I didn't know if this other thing
was going to work out. So now I can go
back to what did satisfy me and give me what
(25:44):
I was wanting in the first place. Since the new
thing didn't work out like I thought it would, I
thought i'd go back to Buddy. Let me just submit
to you. We do this in our life all the time.
I'm pursuing Jesus until I feel like Jesus puts me
in a place and gives me a life I feel
like I deserve better than. And so then I find
myself drifting back to that old life, that old thing.
(26:08):
And that's when you find yourself saying how did I,
how did I get here? Why do I what do
I feel like this? Because in the spirit you took
what is dead and you try to revive it by
living in an old life that God freed you from.
(26:31):
And when we do that, man, it causes us to drift.
This might be one of the main distractions that we
find people in. And what I see when I read
the Bible is that people they didn't always realize that
they were in a battle of the new life versus
the old life. Actually, what the battle is is the
(26:54):
spirit versus the flesh. I don't think people often knew
and realize that they were in this fight. I don't
know if you know this, but every single day you
wake up, you're in a battle, and it's the battle
of the spirit versus the flesh. My life with God,
in my old life I lived when I wasn't with God.
(27:15):
My desires of Jesus and my desires I have in
my own flesh. And often, oh man, many of us
we show up to this battle and we have the
wrong battle plan. How many of us you've done this?
You've had a moment in an encounter with Jesus. I
mean he moved in worship and you had this moment.
He moved through the message and you had this moment.
(27:37):
And when you have that moment, you say, all right, God, Yes,
thank you for your grace and your mercy. Lord. When
I get out of the service, I'm gonna stop doing blank. God,
when I get out of the service, I swear I'm
done texting them. I promise I'm done smoking that. I
promise I'm gonna stop looking at that. And can I
(27:59):
submit something to you to There is a way better plan.
Jesus is far less concerned with what you stop. He's
far more concerned with the things you start. Because listen,
the battle of the spirit versus the flesh is not
about me getting the wrong things out. The battle of
the Spirit versus the flesh is me getting the right
(28:20):
things in. Because if I can get Bible reading in
my life, I don't have time to stroll on pornography
in my life. If I can get good community in
my life, I don't have time for community that draws
me back to my old life. If I can get
the right things in, I'm not gonna have to focus
on getting the wrong things out. They just don't have
the space anymore. So when I approach this battle, I
(28:42):
want to be focused on Man. I'm trying to put
Jesus as the focus, not Sin as the focus. Oftentimes
we get the wrong focus because we think, God, I've
got all these things, and I'll promise you, Lord, if
you'll give me time, I'll stop doing them. It's not
about what you stop, that's more important about what you start.
(29:07):
I looked at Demis's situation, you know, he went back
to the desires of his old life. And as I
looked at his situation, I thought of a scripture, and
this would be what I would prescribe to Demus if
you live today Scalations, chapter five, verse sixteen, and Paul
he says, so I say, let the spirit guide your life.
(29:27):
Then you won't be doing what your sinful nature craves.
It's the spirit. Let the spirit guide your life. For
a long time in Scripture, they didn't let the spirit
guide their life. They didn't have the spirit yet. And
so what they did is they made up a bunch
of rules and regulations and legalism to try to get
to a place of holiness. And what happened was they
(29:51):
set all these rules up, and they made our faith
about a performance based faith that you got to do
the right things to bec I'm the right person. It's
about how you look and how people perceive you before,
it is who you are. And whenever you get in
that mode and you start trying to just do the
right things, do the right things, and you don't have
Holy Spirit, grace and power in your life, you will
(30:13):
find yourself in a performance based faith. The beautiful thing
about our faith, though, is it's not performance based. It
is Holy Spirit, grace, power filled faith. And so as
I submit to the Spirit, he doesn't focus on what
I do. He focused on who I am becoming, because
to the Spirit it's way more of a priority of
(30:34):
who I will be, because who I become will determine
what I do, not what I do change who I am.
One is behavior modification, the other is inward transformation. And
so I'm looking for the Spirit to God in my
life because I want to be a new creation, not
act like a new creation. Come on, I'm trying to
become something different, become something better than I am. So
(30:56):
I need Holy Spirit in my life helping me change.
And I feel like Demus. He was doing ministry, and
oftentimes he was more about the performance than the grace.
Because he couldn't control a sinful nature. He went back
to his old life. Today is we're talking about drifting.
(31:19):
Maybe there's some of you in here and right now.
If we were humble, open and transparent, you would say
I'm drifting. I've drifted. It's happened before, it's happening now,
or at the least you can see that there's potential
for it to happen in the future. And so I
just want to work from two points today as we close,
(31:41):
and as we close, I want to give you this
first one. Distraction ends with the decision. If you find
yourself distracted, the way to end distraction it's with the decision.
It's by making a different decision. The same way that
I get out of distraction is the same way that
(32:01):
I got into distraction a decision. And what I've heard
a lot growing up, and it has rained true in
my life is that first you make your decision, but
then your decision it makes you. And if we don't
come to realize that it is by the decisions of
our life that our life is being built, we will
(32:24):
go through this life and not be all that God
promised us to be, and we'll be searching for his
hand but never partnering with him and what it takes
to get to where He wants us to be so
first we make our decision, but then our decision it
makes us. You're building your life by your decision. I
was told this story before me and my wife moved
(32:46):
up here, and it was about this town. It was
in the hill country, and next to this town there
was a large body of water, a huge reservoir of water,
and on the other side of this water there was
a dam that was holding back the reservoir of water.
And there was at one point a storm that was
(33:08):
coming to the hill country and it was a massive storm,
a greater storm than they had ever seen or experience
at this time. And as the storm was coming in,
the people of the town realized that the storm was
going to bust the dam, all the water was going
to flow into the town, and anybody staying in that
town at that time would lose their life. And so
(33:30):
they started running door to door and they were saying, hey, hey,
you got to you gotta evacuate, like this storm's coming
over and all this water's gonna flood. You gotta get
out of here. People started packing up their belongings in
a frenzy. They were leaving with the little that they
had and evacuating, and is all the chaos is happening.
There's this one man and he's standing in the middle
of the road. Everybody's walking mind. They're like, hey, hey, bro,
(33:54):
you gotta go. You gotta go. Into every person that
would try to get him to leave, he would say, nah,
I'm fine. I'm gonna stay right here. More and more
people start coming by, and they're like, bro, you gotta leave,
you gotta leave. Hey, you gotta get out of here.
You're gonna lose your life. Like the storm's right there,
You're about to lose your life. And he would say, no,
I'm gonna stay right here. And it got to a
point where there were two people left in the town
(34:16):
and it was the man and it was his son.
And his son comes to him with tears in his eyes,
and he's saying, Dad, what are you doing. Dad, You
gotta leave. You're gonna die. And he says, no, I'm
not gonna leave. He says, Dad, Dad, damn is about
to break and everything is gonna get washed away. You
will lose your life. And he looked at his son.
He says, it's not gonna break. His son said, Dad,
(34:36):
you got it's gonna break. He said, it's not gonna break.
And he's crying and pleading, begging with his dad, and
he says, Dad, how could you know? How could you
stand here in confidence and know that that's not gonna
break and you won't be killed? And his dad looked
at his son, and he looked at the damn and
he looked at the storm that was quickly approaching, and
he looked back and he said, because I built it.
(35:01):
He said, because I built it. His son said what
he said. I woke up every day for years and
I made a decision to make the foundation strong. I
made a decision to be in the details of the
structure so that it would not break. I made a
decision to build something that no matter the storm that
came against it and the weather that happened to it, no
(35:22):
matter the circumstances or the situation that found itself in,
I built it with the intentionality and the decision they
would live beyond the trial, that it would live beyond
the test. I want to tell you, friend, you're building
your life by your decisions, and the trials that come
to your life will impact you and affect you based
on how you've decided to live your life. And now
(35:44):
if I've decided to rely on self. I'm not going
to be able to stand past very much. But if
I decide each and every day to stay intentional about
leaning into the person of Jesus, I can stand the
trials that come against me. In this life. You are
being made by your decisions. Jesus is building you, and
(36:04):
he wants to build you and make you strong. But
Jesus offers us the opportunity not just to do it
for you, but to partner with you. And there's got
to come a point where you stop just saying God
will do it. If he wants to do it, you
got to make a decision. I'm a partner with him.
The team can come up and start to play. But
distraction ends with the decision. And if you're drifting, drifting
(36:28):
ends with devotion. It ends with remembering and staying committed
to the why. And as I looked at Demus's story,
man I started I started to get kind of sad
thinking about a story because the Holy Spirit took me
(36:51):
to some scriptures talk about drifting, and I saw where
the word drifting has talked about three times in the
New Testament, and they all have the same thing in common.
It's in the Book of Colossians's, in the Book of
revelationists in the Book of Hebrews, and they all rank
a similar sound as a Scripture of Hebrews, Chapter two,
(37:14):
verse one, and it says, therefore, we must pay much
closer attention to the things we've heard, lest we drift
away from it to the church. In Ephesis and Revelation,
Jesus told John to pin the words, not what he
told another church, to come back to your first love.
(37:35):
But he told him to pin the words you need
to come back to the thing that you heard in
the beginning. And I thought this as it could be,
so it doesn't say it directly in scripture. But I
started to look at Demus's story, and I thought, Demus,
(37:56):
did you get so captivated by the miracles of Paul's
ministry that you missed out on the message? Did you
get so caught up in the hand of God that
you forgot about the heart of God? Demons? Did you
(38:18):
did you lose sight of the message because you were
focused on what God would do and not what he
had already done. Listen to me, I like miracles man.
Whenever God steps into our life and does what only
he can do and bring about an outcome that only
he could be over. I love that, man. That's an
energizer to your faith, that makes faith fun. I really
(38:40):
like miracles, but I did not build and dedicate my
life to a miracle. I build and dedicate my life
to the message that there's redemption for your story and
restoration for your soul. I like miracles, but what I
committed my life to was the message that there is
blood that covers a multitude of sins and a savior
who paid a price that I should have paid and
in my place. Come on, man. I like miracles, but
(39:03):
I love the message that Jesus is seated at the
right hand of the Father right now, looking at me
and looking at you with pride in his heart and
love in his eyes, because He's done for us what
we couldn't do for ourselves. I like miracles. I've dedicated
my life to the message. And it says in Luke
(39:26):
that one day Jesus is going to come back and
he's going to be looking for faithfulness. And when Jesus
comes back, if it's in my lifetime, I want him
to find me clinging to the pages of this book,
preaching the message of restoration and reconciliation that he entrusted
me with. I want to live my life based on
the message, even if God doesn't do another thing for me.
(39:50):
Faith is a moment to be remembered. Faith is a
lifestyle to live that I'm not just waiting on the
next thing life from the best thing. The best thing
is that He paid the price that was placed on
my soul and he did for me what I couldn't
do for myself. If you're here today, maybe you've been
(40:15):
waiting on miracles. Maybe you've drifted, maybe you're in distraction,
maybe you've lost focus. I want to tell you, friend,
you can always come back to the message, because the
message tells me about a man who loves you and
cares for you and offers you a life better thing
than you've ever known to exist. So the head bowed
(40:35):
and eyes closed today, If you're in this room right
now and you've never given your life to Jesus, you've
never received and accepted the message. I want to tell
you that Jesus, God in heaven, looked at you and
stepped out of heaven and became flesh. He lived a
perfect life for thirty three years. He was crucified not
(40:59):
because of his sin, but because of my sin and
because of your sin. And he was placed in a
grave where he was dead for three days. But he
didn't stay in the grave. He got up from the grave,
came back to life, revealed himself to hundreds of people,
ascended into heaven where now he is seated reigning as king,
looking at you in this moment, proud of who you
(41:21):
are and who you can become. He offers you a
better way, He offers you a new life. And today,
if you want to give your life to Jesus, you
want to receive the message, I'm account to three, and
when I get to three, I'm just gonna ask that
you would lift your hand in the air. One. This
is the greatest decision that you could ever make. To
all heaven's about to throw a party. Three. Come on,
(41:41):
if you want to put your faith in the message
and the man of Jesus, would you just lift your
right hand let somebody know. I'll see you, brother, I
see you on the back. Come on, can we make
some noise for the people making the greatest decision of
their life today, Let's go. Here's what we like to
do is house. We like to pray a prayer for
(42:03):
all those watching online and here in the house who
made that decision for the first time. So, if you're
making that decision, would you just mean these words as
we all pray them to Jesus. Let's pray this say Jesus.
I love you, Jesus, I need you. Thank you for
seeing me, thank you for saving me, thank you for
(42:24):
loving me. Today, I commit my life to you. Change me,
renew me, transform me. I'm yours. Amen. Come on when
we just clap our hands and make some noise for
all the people stepping from death to life today. So
(42:45):
proud of you.
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