Don't Waste Your Life

Awesome. So, we’ve come to the point of our service where we as a congregation we’re just going to pray. I want to let every parent and every child off the hook when I say we’re intentionally doing these family worship services not to show our kids what it looks like to live a buttoned-up, quiet life. We’re doing this to model for our kids what it looks like to call on the Lord and to love Him as a family.

So, every parent, if your kid squawks, if they squirm, if they wiggle, guess what? We knew they were going to do that before we planned this. We said, “You know what? Bring it on. We’re good with it.” You remember the fact that God Himself is a father. He knows exactly what it’s like to listen to our squawking, to try to hold in our wiggling, and that’s totally fine. So, if your kids are moving and talking, we’re cool with that. Don’t you worry about it.

For all the other adults in the room, I would invite you to embrace the love and the fatherhood of our father towards yourself as you are listening to the wiggling and the squawking of the kids around you.

So, what we’re going to do, we’re just going to pray for a moment. We’re going to pray for these two big kids’ initiative events coming up, the Family Palooza and Vacation Bible School. I invite you to grab a neighbor and just pray for these two things coming up, asking for God’s blessing on them. Y’all take it away. I’ll put a bow on it here in a second. Thank you. You just text them to me.

Yeah.

God, thank you for bringing us here today. Thank you for gathering us, for protecting us, holding us throughout the week. God, thank you for loving us like the best dad that we’ve never known. Thank you. God, I want to thank you in advance for what you’re going to do through Family Palooza and VBS. I want to thank you for the fruit that you’re going to bear in the lives of people in this community and even in our church. God, I’m begging that Family Palooza and Vacation Bible School would be—they would become somebody’s spiritual milestone. God, years down the road as they are sharing their testimony of how they came to faith in you, I pray that the Family Palooza and VBS of 2026 at Sauldam Baptist Church would come up. Not for our glory, not for our sake, but because you met them there.

Lord, I pray specifically for the needs that we have for VBS. God, this nursery leads. I pray specifically that you would draw some adult of our church to just handle this for us, to take care of loving on the little ones of all the volunteers. Lord, thank you. Thank you for calling Mickey to this to lead VBS as a whole. I pray that you’ll bless her in that. Lord, thank you.

God, please get a hold of our service. I pray for all the little ones, for any of them that don’t yet know you as Lord and Savior, that you would get a hold of some of them. And I pray for the adults in the room. If there’s any adult in the room that doesn’t know you as Lord and Savior, you get a hold of them, too. Lord, we love you. It’s in your great name that we pray. Amen.

Amen. Awesome. The title of today’s message is “Don’t Waste Your Life.” Don’t waste your life. It’s not totally original. It’s actually not original whatsoever. It comes from a message that I listened to as a teenager. When I was about 15, I was coming to faith myself. Somebody had shared the gospel with me and I gave my life to Christ through that. And I immediately just started absorbing as much Christian teaching as possible. And I come across this sermon by a gentleman, a pastor out of Minnesota named John Piper.

John Piper is kind of like my generation’s Adrian Rogers to yours. John Piper, he’s just one of these singular pastors who has, man, just guided literally millions of young adults to a place of wanting to live their entire lives for the glory of God. In the year 2000, John Piper was preaching at a gathering of college students in Georgia, which became the Passion Conference. And he had preached this message titled “Don’t Waste Your Life.” He’s looking at all these 20-somethings saying, “You’ve got your careers ahead of you. You’ve got a family ahead of you. You’ve got 60, 70, 80 years ahead of you. Don’t waste it.” Three years later, He’d write a book by the same title, Don’t Waste Your Life, which has become some of the most catalytic writing to ever cross the desks and the pathways of people in their 20s and 30s. The challenge of the book is clear. You’ve got one life. Don’t waste it. John Piper, deeply motivated by a missionary from the 1800s, who put it this way: “Only one life to live, ’twill soon be past. Only what’s done for Christ will last.” That motivation, don’t waste your life, it gripped me as a teenager shortly after I had come to place my faith in Jesus. One of my deepest desires, one of my burning passions, is that when I meet Christ face-to-face, when I finish my race here, I will get to heaven and I’ll see God, and I will know that I did not waste my life.

Do you have that passion? Is that what wakes you up in the morning? This burning drive to not waste it. That’s the—that’s the—the—the sermon this morning. That’s the—the main title. That’s the main point. Don’t waste your life. Kids, if I could speak to all the—the three-year-olds, Luke, if I could look at you, bud. Annie, if I could look at you. Taryn, if I could look at you. Jacob, Caleb, Adeline, Lorelei, all the kids. Teenagers, Kingston, Cody, Haley, me, young adults, seniors, and everybody in between. You’ve got one life. Please don’t waste it.

If you’ve got a copy of the Bible this morning, I want you to go ahead and open it up to Judges chapter 16. We’re going to look at the end of Samson’s life. We’re doing this walk through the book of Judges, looking at these heroes, these savior figures that God was raising up for the sake of Israel to defend them against these foreign invaders. This is after Israel has come into the promised land, but before God has given Israel the kings. And in that in-between time, God is helping the Israelites through this group of people called judges. Samson is the last judge in the book of Judges, actually. Over the next month, as we finish this book, there’s no more judges, and we’re going to see how the people of Israel are just deteriorating through that. Samson’s the last judge. He gets the most airtime in the book of Judges. But I would also say Samson, of all the judges, is the one that most catastrophically wastes his life.

What we’re going to do this morning, we’re just going to walk through these final verses, chapter 16, verses 21 through 31. I’m going to draw out a couple truths about what it looks like to waste or not waste your life, and then I’m going to give everybody three arenas of application. As I come to the end point of the message this morning, I’m going to invite you to take out your connect card and to consider what arena of your life you are deciding today to not waste. So, this is putting all my cards on the table. My intention for you is for you to make a decision today to use your life well and to not waste it, giving you all the preparation that I can or that—that you need, okay? So, there we are.

Let’s look at Judges chapter 16, verses 21 through 22. In fact, let me actually catch everybody up to speed. If you haven’t been with us, so Samson, this crazy guy, lives a crazy life. God—He gives him supernatural strength. And Samson, time and time again, displays that strength, but ultimately for selfish purposes. One time he grabs a donkey’s jawbone, slays a thousand men with it. Wild. Another time he uses that supernatural strength, catches 100 or 200 foxes, something like that. 150, I forget, Paula. This is bad, the preacher forgets the number. He catches them, he strings them together, puts torches between them to burn down all the grain fields of the Philistines. Samson’s got this incredible strength, but ultimately he’s got this incredible weakness, and it is in the opposite sex. Samson is totally beholden to his eyes and what his eyes see with women. And Samson can’t get past himself. He keeps landing himself in bad situation after bad situation. Ultimately, he meets a lady named Delilah. Delilah was the central figure of last week’s message. Delilah is a lady who is being offered hundreds of pounds worth of silver from all of her countrymen if she could just get Samson to reveal what makes him so strong. Ultimately, Delilah convinces Samson to tell her the secret, which she uses to make him helpless. It’s It’s in his hair. Samson allows his hair to be cut, and in that moment the spirit of God and God’s strength leaves Samson, and Samson, we’re going to see, starts to experience the consequences.

This is verses 21 and 22. The Philistines grabbed Samson. Remember, he’s still in Delilah’s house at this point. They grabbed Samson. Eventually, they gouge out his eyes. They bring him down to Gaza. It’s another place in Philistia. They bind him with bronze shackles and they force him to grind grain in the prison. Eventually though, verse 22, his hair began to grow back after it had been shaved.

Samson experiences this truth. If you’re a note taker, write this down. Disobedience leads to a wasted life. If God’s plan for you is to use your life well for His glory and His plans, anytime you disobey Him and you go against what God’s word would tell you to do, you are leading to a wasted life.

Look at Samson’s situation. He disobeys God, which results in him being seized, blinded, imprisoned, bound, and forced to grind grain. Ultimately, as Matt read earlier, led by a young boy. All because Samson irreverently broke God’s rules. All because Samson thought that he was too good for God’s commands. Samson leads his life straight to the dumps, straight to the pits.

God had given Samson some pretty clear rules. Don’t cut your hair. Don’t touch dead animals. And don’t drink any wine. Within time, Samson breaks all three. So, what does God do? God allows Samson to feel the consequences of his disobedience. In other words, Samson’s disobedience is leading to a wasted life.

I want to ask you a question if we could be personal right here. Have you ever landed in a situation like Samson’s? Where your disobedience, your decisions against God’s will for your life, leads you to a place where you feel bound by the consequences, you feel blinded by what you have done? You feel shackled to the shame and even to just the weight of what has gone on. Have you ever been there? You ever been in this place where everything feels dark, it feels heavy, it feels like you can’t get out of it? That’s where Samson finds himself here. His disobedience leading to a wasted life.

All the potential Samson had. He is God’s number one choice to save Israel. God is offering him supernatural strength. God is telling him, “As long as you obey me and pursue me, I’m going to be with you and I’m going to bless you.” And Samson trades all of that.

Yet, as Samson’s disobedience lands him in the dumps, write this down. God won’t waste His glory. We may try to waste our lives, but God will not waste His glory.

Verse 23, the Philistine leaders, the same ones who paid Delilah off, the Philistine leaders gathered together to offer a great sacrifice to their god Dagon. Say that with me. Dagon. They rejoiced and they said, “Our God has handed over our enemy Samson to us.” And when the people saw Samson, they praised their god Dagon. They said, “Our God, he’s handed over to us our enemy who destroyed our land and who multiplied our debt. When they were in good spirits, they said, “Bring Samson here to entertain us.” So, they brought Samson from prison and he entertained them. They had him stand between the pillars.

Let me paint the picture for you. The people of Philistine or the Philistines, the people of what’s now called Palestine, they worshiped this god named Dagon. Dagon is just one of the myriad of gods and what they would do, they would gather him for these annual festivals where thousands of people would come together, they would flood the city and they would make sacrifices to this god Dagon.

The Philistines’ number one enemy is this guy, Samson. So, they’re all gathered, they’re drinking, they’re feeling good about themselves, and they start singing praises to this false god named Dagon. And they’re like, “Hey, we’ve got the prisoner down in in the dungeon. Let’s just get him and make him entertain us like a court jester.” So, that’s what they do. They’ve got Samson, they’ve led him up to the main proceedings and they’re making him entertain them.

For the Philistines, they saw Samson’s humiliated defeat as a direct work of their god, Dagon. However, Yahweh, the true God, whom we call God, was not going to let that slide. Even if Samson was a fool with no healthy regard for God’s holiness or God’s calling on him, God was not going to let His glory be tainted or diminished in any bit. In fact, God is still fixed on His glory. And that’s good news for you. Let me tell you something. Did you know God did not make you because God needs you? Did you know that? I’ll say it again. God didn’t make you because God needs you. And whenever you pass away, it’s not because God needs another angel in heaven. God doesn’t need us. God is complete in Himself. He’s perfect. He’s fully satisfied. He’s good in every way. God even has community in Himself. We call that the Trinity, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. God doesn’t need you. Yet God in His love and in His kindness and His mercy chooses to create us so that He can exist in a love relationship with us. We are the ones that need. We need God. He doesn’t need us.

God is perfect in every way. He’s complete in every way. He is whole in every way and He is holy in every way. God, therefore, is the very best thing in the entire universe. Nothing compares to Him. Ice cream cones on the beach at sunset in July don’t compare to God. Views of the mountains with lakes in front of them don’t compare to God. Marriage, family doesn’t compare. A satisfying career with lots of promotions and lots of paper benefits, that doesn’t compare. Being top dog at your company or in the community doesn’t compare. The very best thing in this world is God. And when we treat God the way He deserves, the Bible calls that glory. We glorify Him. And every time we fail to treat God the way He deserves, we are disqualifying Him. So God, in His kindness, makes a way for us who give glory to false gods to renew the right relationship so that we can give glory to the true God, God Himself. That’s why He sends Jesus. See, Jesus had to die on the cross because we, in our flesh, don’t treat God the way God deserves. We, instead of treating God the way He deserves, we give that glory and that attention to lesser things: marriage, family, career, ourselves. And God so loved us that He sent His one and only Son, Jesus Christ, to die for all of our failures to do what we’re supposed to do and to help us start sending our glory back to Him like He deserves and like is good for us. That’s the gospel.

So, God in heaven is looking down at the city of Gaza, at the temple of Dagon, and He’s seeing His servant Samson blinded, shackled, and humiliated. He’s seeing all these people worshipping this false god Dagon, and God says, “I’m done. I’m done with it. I’m going to end this right now.” You see, because God is going to protect His glory, God is about to answer a prayer of Samson. And I take extreme encouragement from this. Here’s the deal. You don’t have to get prayer perfect to get prayer right. You don’t have to get prayer perfect to get prayer right. Look at this prayer that Samson prays. Samson looks at the young man who’s leading him. You should have the idea of like a kid leading a dog. Samson looks at that young man, says to him, “Lead me where I can feel the pillars supporting the temple so that I can lean against them.” The temple is full of men and women. All the leaders of the Philistines were there, and about 3,000 men and women were on the roof watching Samson entertain them. I get to that in a second. Verse 28. Samson calls out to the Lord, “Lord God, please remember me. Strengthen me, God, just once more. With one act of vengeance, let me pay back the Philistines for my two eyes.”

Let me explain the moment. I told you they’re at this temple of Dagon. You know how big this thing was? All right, imagine there’s this bottom level. You got a stage up top or whatever, something like this. This bottom level is wide enough so that the second floor would be big enough for 3,000 people to stand on that second floor. The bottom is probably big enough for 5 or 6,000 people. In the middle of that bottom floor, you would have had a place that had two twin pillars stretching up to that second floor. These pillars would have had to have been big enough to support the weight of thousands of people functioning as this kind of cornerstone of the whole thing. And we’ve actually found these types of temples. If you go to Palestine today, you can find temples to Dagon.

that have these central cedar pillars that supported an area wide enough for thousands of people. This is like an early Credit One’s tennis stadium over on Daniel Island. That’s what you should have in your mind. Samson is led to the very middle of it, to the thick of it, and he says, “Hey, can you put me where I can just rest for a little bit and I can put my hands on the pillars?” The boy doesn’t know any better, so he does that. When he’s there, that’s when Samson offers this prayer.

And I’ll say it again, you don’t have to get prayer perfect to get prayer right. Someone in this room needs to hear me say, “For God, authentic is better than accurate.” Authentic is better than accurate. Go to the Psalms and read just how angry and disturbed David was. God cares about your heart. What He wants are authentic prayers, not just accurate ones. I’ll say it in a different way. God wants personal, not perfect.

One of the things I love the most about Sunday mornings is that at 9:15, myself and a few others, we gather in the old church for what we call the boiler room. It’s just a few minutes to pray for you. And you know what we do there? We pray. But you know how we don’t pray? We don’t get our prayer textbook out. We don’t say, “Hey, here’s this awesome prayer that I wrote that makes me sound really good.” We don’t do that. We come and we are real before God. We’re authentic, we’re personal, we confess our own sins, and we ask for God to help us with our weakness, cuz that’s what God wants. God doesn’t need your perfection, He doesn’t need your accuracy. What God wants is your authenticity and for you to be personal.

Man, for me, that took on a whole new dimension about 11 years ago. Some of you guys know my story. My parents, it’s their story to tell, but they’re no no together. And I remember going through a 6- or 8-month period as I am recoiling from the news that their marriage is falling apart. And I could tell you when I when I prayed for my parents and for God to somehow bring them back together, I was not worried about getting all of my theology right. I wasn’t worried about making sure that God’s got the A, B, and C’s of all of my correct thinking. What I What I did in those 6 to 8 months as I prayed for my parents was I cried. I wept. I said, “God, why are you doing this?” I was a little bit disrespectful, irreverent. But what I know is that God already knows everything that’s existing in my life and in my heart. God doesn’t need me to button myself up to come before Him. If God needed us to be perfect for us to pray to Him, not a single one of us would have a chance. That’s why He sent Jesus. So that when God sees us, He sees the perfection of Jesus, but He hears the personal prayers that I have to offer.

Samson is in this moment and Samson does not offer a perfect prayer. Samson’s prayer is actually pretty self-centered, pretty short-sided, and pretty small-minded. Look at it. It’s self-centered. Samson is praying about me and my. God, remember me. Help me to take vengeance for my eyes. He’s thinking about himself. He’s also short-sided. God’s calling on Samson was to be this deliverer against the people of the Philistines. Samson though, he’s only caring about just this once. Like I wish Samson would have said, “God, hey, starting today, I’m giving myself back to You. Help me get out of this today, and then tomorrow, let’s keep killing some Philistines.” That’s not what he prays. He’s just praying about just this once. And he’s pretty small-minded. Thousands of people, I get it. Samson’s looking to kill thousands of people. But, weren’t there like hundreds of thousands of the Philistines ready to keep stopping the Israelites? Samson self-centered, short-sided, and small-minded, yet God loved that prayer because it was authentic and real.

How many of your prayers sound like this? How many of your prayers are real and personal? If I could be so so bold and so offensive, I think one of the one of the deficiencies, one of the weaknesses of Christianity in America is that our prayers, honestly, are fake and rote. We’re trying to keep God at a distance. As if somehow not confessing our sin makes us look better before God. And the prayers we pray are just like little scripts that we’re rehearsing.

Because we think we have to get all the words right. When God in heaven is looking down at us and He’s like, “I made you for a love relationship. I made you to relate with me. I made you so that we could be friends.” How do you talk with your friends? Do you just run through the same one paragraph script over and over again? Or you actually converse with them? Do you open up with them? I hope you do. If you never open up with your friends, if you’re never real with your friends, if you’re always just repeating the same script, those aren’t friends. God wants your real and your authentic prayer.

Even though Samson doesn’t get his prayer perfect, he does ask for the right thing. He asks for the power to take out the Philistines as he would sacrifice himself. Write this down if you’re taking notes. Christian success comes through sacrifice. Christian success comes through sacrifice.

So, there is Samson. He’s praying. He’s asking God for strength one more time. Samson takes hold of the two middle pillars supporting the temple. He leans against them, one on his right hand, the other on his left. Samson is starting to strain. He’s starting to groan. He’s starting to push. All the little veins in his neck are starting to stand out. And Samson says, “God, LET ME DIE with the Philistines.” And he pushes with all of his might, AND THE TEMPLE FALLS ON THE LEADERS. ALL THE PEOPLE in it. Everybody. Wiped out. Those he killed at his death were more than those who he killed in his life.

Then in the aftermath, his brothers and his father’s whole family come down. They carried him back. They buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the tomb of his father Manoah. Samson judged Israel 20 years.

Christian success comes through sacrifice. Samson was no saint. He was not a spiritual pillar of the community. If Samson showed up to Sauldam, I can promise you I don’t ask Samson to teach a Sunday school class. I am not going to nominate Samson as a deacon. Samson might be invited to serve on the kitchen team. But I also have a feeling he’s just going to eat everything he makes. But in this prayer, Samson does show growth. He saw that his job was to sacrifice himself. That is our job, too.

Do you want to know how to not waste your life? Give it away. You will waste your life as you hoard it for yourself. You will use your life well if you sacrifice it for the sake of Jesus. This isn’t Jeremy talking. This isn’t even just Samson’s example. This is actually the teaching of the New Testament. You see, in Matthew 16:24-27, Jesus put it this way. He said to His disciples, “If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. For what will it benefit somebody if he gains the whole world, yet loses his soul? Or what will anyone give in exchange for his life? For the Son of Man is going to come with His angels in the glory of the Father. Then He will reward each according to what he has done.”

And Jesus is not the type of person that tells us to do things that He Himself doesn’t do. Oh, no, 1 Timothy 2:5-6 put it this way. There is one God. There’s one mediator between God and man, or mankind, the man Jesus Christ, who gave Himself as a ransom for all, a testimony at the proper time. And Jesus commands all of His followers to embrace that same pattern of self-sacrifice. For why else would He tell us in John these words? “No one has greater love than this, to lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.”

Goodness gracious, how we reject this. Few weeks ago, I’m sitting at lunch with a guy. I’m just trying to get to know him. I share my testimony, how God has saved me. I ask him for his, doesn’t have one really. So, okay, but like when did you give your life to Jesus? You know what that guy says? I reject that question. God’s already given His life for me. Why would He ask me to give anything to Him? Mic drop. I mean this guy looks at me and he says, “Jamie, God doesn’t require anything of us.” And I’m looking at him and I’m thinking, “No, Jesus literally told me to deny myself, take up my cross, and follow Him.” That is the way of Jesus. You see, modern culture and your sinful nature will tell you that self-denial and sacrifice are foolish ideas, merely just paths to financial ruin, emotional turmoil, or physical discomfort. But God says that self-sacrifice and service are at the heart of what it means to follow God. Religion is not. Keeping all the rules is not. To follow God is to sacrifice yourself out of love for God and for others. That’s what it means to follow God. You see, God is love. And how does God show that love? Romans 5:8 puts it this way, “God proves His own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” And what is the only proper response to God’s gift of sacrificial love? It’s Romans 12:1-2. Therefore, Sauldam Baptist Church, therefore, all my 4-year-olds in the room, therefore, my 12-year-olds in the room, my 40-year-olds in the room, my 80-year-olds in the room, in view of the mercy of God, I urge you, present your body as a living what? As a living what? Holy and pleasing to God. This is your true worship. Sacrificing yourself, that’s worship. MEN, DON’T BE CONFORMED to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God. Do you want to worship God? Do you want to use your life for something that matters? Do you want to waste your life? Then sacrifice yourself. Men, give it up for Him. One life to live, ’twill soon be past. Only what’s done for Christ will last. We may not topple pagan temples, but we’ve got idols that need to die in our hearts. Looked at this with the middle and high schoolers this morning as I got to serve in the student ministry, and we’re talking about idols. These idols of love and fear and trust, these things we bow down to. I’m going to run three by you. This is where I’m Earlier when I mentioned I’m going to give everybody an opportunity to make a decision today to follow God a little bit harder today. Now is when I want you to get your connect card out, okay? There are three arenas of your life where you are tempted to use your life for you, where you will waste it if you’re not careful. They are time, ability, and money. I’m telling you today, don’t waste your time. You see, we waste our lives by spending our time on things that won’t matter in eternity. I don’t know if you know this, but there’s only two things existing today that will last into eternity. God’s word and the souls of people. It won’t be the four walls of this church building. It won’t be your 401k. But God’s word and the souls of people, those will last into eternity. Are you using your time to help more people enjoy God’s word? You can. I think about our next gen ministry, serving in kids, serving with students, pouring into the lives of the kids and the students that are around us. I think about events like Vacation Bible School. I even think about our prayer ministries like the 9:15 boiler room or our 24/7 prayer that we are doing once a month. Man, we have opportunities for you for you to use your time for God’s glory. Now’s when you use that connect card. If you are interested in using more of your time for God’s glory, you just write time on your connect card. Hold on to it for a second. The second arena of life that you’re tempted to waste is your abilities. The Bible says in Ephesians chapter 4 and 1 Corinthians chapter 12 that God gives all of us unique abilities, spiritual gifts, for the sake of His people and His glory. Here’s the deal. Sauldam Baptist Church cannot be mature without you using your gifts or without you helping others use theirs. Jesus is in charge of this church, which means He is giving us people who have gifts that we need for us to do what He wants us to do. Jesus is in charge of this church, which means you are here because He has a role for you to play. Man, I heard this one time and I can’t get this out of my mind. Church is not a spectator sport. So many of us treat church like a track meet. Where we’re sitting in the stands and we’re watching the runners go around. God’s intention is for church to function Like a track meet, but for there to be nobody in the stands. Instead, we all have a role to play in one of the events. Some of us are runners, some of us are jumpers, some of us are throwers. Whatever it is, you push that metaphor however you want to. God’s intention is for you to get out of the stands and into the action. Are you doing that? In fact, if you want—if you want to use your abilities for the sake of God’s glory, if you don’t want to waste them, then write this down on your connect card: ability, passion, or burden. Some of us have abilities that we’re not using, or some of us are making it hard for others to use theirs, and we got to stop.

The final arena you’re tempted to waste is your money. I’ve got to be the offensive guy on this, because culture is discipling you seven days out of the week about how to hoard and invest your money for your own kingdom. There has got to be somebody else representing the other side. So, here I am. Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” In other words, your feelings follow your funds. What you spend your money on, you will grow to love. You spend your money on a bigger house, you will love that house too much. You spend your money on a nicer car, you will love that car too much. You spend your money on your body inordinately, and you will love your body too much. That’s how it goes. Jesus says, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” So, when it comes to money, you invest in what you want to love—not what you currently love. And Jesus even ups the ante. He says, “It’s hard for rich people to get into heaven.” It’s better to give than to receive. And to have His heart for the world means you would give your money to what God cares about. True sacrificial love always engages your bank account. So, if you don’t want to waste your money, you want to know what that could look like, you just write on your connect card: money.

So, here’s the hardest step. I want to talk with you about that arena of your life that you don’t want to waste. If you are ready to begin that conversation, you put your name on that connect card. You put your phone number on that connect card. And you drop it in the offering plates in the front or the back of the sanctuary on your way out, so that we could talk about what it looks like for you to use your time, your abilities, and your money for God’s glory, and not to waste them instead. This is a group of people that I know wants to love Jesus sacrificially. You wouldn’t be here otherwise. This is a group of people that wants their lives to matter. You wouldn’t be here otherwise. My desire is to help you figure out what would that look like for you to go from here to there.

Let’s close in prayer. God, You love us like crazy, surely. If You didn’t, this life would make no sense. But Lord, thank You for loving us. Thank You for sending Jesus for us. I pray that You would help somebody take their next step of loving You more with their entire lives today. Father, for the person in the room that is hesitating about putting that connect card in the offering plate and beginning a conversation, will You—You just help them? You give them the courage that they need. Would You give me and Al the pastoral sensitivity that we need to love them well and to help them disciple them? And would You make this church an even more sacrificial group of people that would love You with everything we’ve got, please. God, thank You. We love You. It’s in Your name we pray. Amen.