You Cant Try Jesus

So these last few weeks I actually have been out of town. My daughter and I were on a nice trip to Delaware. Has anyone ever been to Delaware? Okay, well, then you would know the joke of that, because there’s not much — I mean, there are beaches there, but Delaware’s a lot of cornfields. She had some lacrosse stuff going on, so I’ve been gone for two weeks, and I will say that I missed you guys. I am excited to be back. We had a great time together.

But towards the end of the trip we stopped at a friend’s house and stayed with them in Michigan. They’re actually our friend’s parents, and so being at their house — I told them it was like being with Mom and Dad. They fed us very well. Literally, once we got there and we sat down, they had snacks, and then they had root beer floats, and then there was someone making us breakfast. It was great. And then they had made us ribs for dinner. For someone who always cooks, when someone makes me a meal, I very much appreciate it. And then without even asking, she made us sundaes — she made freshly baked cookies and then threw ice cream and fudge on it. I was loving it. And I texted them, I said it was like being home with Mom and Dad. Thank you.

You can’t try Jesus

But part of what was also like being home with Mom and Dad — it was really the conversation that was actually the part that I was most blessed about, our conversation regarding the Lord. And there were some things that she kept saying that I just couldn’t let go of. We were just talking about various things, from ministry, individual ministry, church ministry, what’s going on in our family. We were talking about everything. But one of the things that she kept saying in various conversations — I couldn’t get away from it. In fact, I had what my message was going to be, and then I went back to change it, because I just think it’s so important and vital to where we are. She kept talking about people trying Jesus.

And so my message today is: You can’t try Jesus. All right? I wasn’t trying to be clever or funny or clickbaity. You just can’t try Jesus. Because when we think about the significance of the cross and the significance of Jesus, what we need to come to terms with is we just can’t try Jesus.

Now, I don’t know how many of you have ever heard someone say, “Yeah, I tried Jesus, but it didn’t work.” Has anyone ever heard that phrase? “I gave Him a shot, but it didn’t work out.” Well, the reality is Jesus isn’t something that you try on like a pair of jeans. He is not something to be casual about. Really, when we think about the significance of the cross and the significance of who Jesus is, He’s more than something that you can just try.

Have you ever thought about if you just tried being married? Or just tried being a daughter, a son, whatever relationship? If you just tried — “Yeah, I tried being a worker at work. It didn’t work out for me.” You’d be jobless, right? Oftentimes — and this isn’t about any of this — but oftentimes we find where things don’t work relationally, in whatever capacity that is, it’s because we tried something, but we weren’t willing to give up something, whether it was our pride, whether it was forgiveness, whatever.

I was thinking about how servers serve. A waiter will serve your table, but do you know they have all of these other things that they have to do? And I was thinking, do I really want to be a server? And then I’m like, actually, I just don’t want to do the other stuff. I just want to wait on people and get tips. That’s what I want. I don’t want to have to put ice in the ice machine. I don’t want to have to clean up and move benches and sweep.

One of my first serving jobs — it was my second one — I was working with a friend of ours, and he actually got me the job. I was working at the Spaghetti Factory in California, and one of the things you had to do is scoop butter in between your tables. That was one of your tasks. And so I was back there scooping butter, and he said, “Hey, can you help me bring this plate of food out to somebody?” And I was like, “Yeah, sure.” And as I always do, I wipe my hands on my clothes. I’m one of those, especially if I’m cooking — I just wipe whatever is here. So I kind of wiped the butter off on my apron, and I went to go take them their plate of spaghetti. And as I went to go put their plate of spaghetti down, I went forward too much, and the spaghetti landed on their lap.

And my friend who I worked with can be somewhat intimidating. He’s like six-four, six-five. He’s Hawaiian. He has a deep voice. And I was this 20-year-old Suzie — our personalities are very different — and I spilled food on his table. And he said, “That’s all Suzie.” And I just thought, uh-oh. So that’s why I think, I like serving, I love being with people, but the other stuff, I just don’t want to do it.

And when I think about following Jesus, so many times I think what happens is people kind of get that rubber stamp: I don’t want to go to hell. Maybe they hear a very compelling message, which I’m not even going to say is not true. But then the rubber meets the road, because what we’re actually saying when we invite Jesus into our life is we’re asking Him to take lordship of our life. And in our culture here, that’s where things begin to get a little bit difficult. Do I really want You, Jesus, to rule and reign in my life? Or do I just want to be with You and try You out where You’re convenient?

Where it’s convenient

And I think that it’s so compelling, because she kept coming back to this. This had nothing to do with what we were talking about, but I could not move away from it. How many times do I try Jesus, and then in a moment of crisis — and hear me out, the Lord is so good. He is so faithful. He loves us so much. He literally died on the cross for people who were persecuting Him. That is who He is. And so in His goodness, in His mercy, in His longsuffering, in His lovingkindness, and in His patience for us, He makes Himself continually available.

And so many times, as humans, once we get past the issue, past the point of desperation, then we move on and we forget. And then all of a sudden, because there is so much information coming at us — and I talk about this a lot, probably because it’s one of my biggest struggles, the amount of information. I’m going to be really real. If I’m real, my phone and social media really is probably a struggle for me. So that’s why I talk about it often, because I find that it pulls me, and I’m like, “Oh, what is this person doing? What’s happening here? Did you hear about this?”

There’s so much information that the reality is we can’t try Jesus anymore. We’re living in a time where Sundays will no longer be enough, where just reading a little bit for the day and not allowing Him to rule and reign in us will be easily siphoned off. Jesus can’t be tried.

So if things aren’t working out for you with your relationship with Jesus, is it because you’re just trying where it’s convenient? When I say these things, I would just want you to consider what’s going on as that’s happening. What are you feeling? Are you feeling uncomfortable? Are you feeling like, “Oh, here we go again”? Whatever it is, pay attention to what’s going on inside of you, because what’s going on inside of us is a lot more important. It tells us where we actually are. That is actually an indication.

And I believe in the times that we’re in, with the amount of information that can be there, we can no longer try Jesus only when it’s convenient. We’re going to have to make a place to decide and say, “I’m going to dig in and read His word and get to know who He is.”

I’m around some young love, and I love it, because young love is so precious, right? They see each other. They acknowledge each other. They pre-think, like, “Oh, I think this person would like this.” “Oh, I saw this, and I did this.” “Oh, hey, let’s go do this.” There’s this newness that’s just fun, right? You see the other person.

And then I’m like 21 years married, and you’re just like, “Hey, good morning. Here’s your coffee.” I’m just going to be real. I make him coffee every morning for both of us, because we enjoy it. But you put it in there, and you maybe don’t say any words to each other, because it’s the morning. Something that I like to remind one of my children — I always say, “Your dad didn’t do this when we were first dating.” I’m going to tell you, he did not eat apples with such vigor when we were just dating. Eating apples is kind of a thing for me. It grinds my gears. And I don’t know why he all of a sudden developed this love for apples so aggressively, especially at night. But I’ll look at my child and I’ll say, “I’m just going to tell you that your dad didn’t do this when we first fell in love.” And she said, “No, I think he probably did. You were just overlooking it.” Whatever the case may be, he eats apples with a vigor that really just gets me these days. And it’s a little different than when it got me when I was first in love, right?

And so wherever you are with your walk with Jesus, it’s time for us to take some account. Are you just trying to fit Him in where He fits? Now, hear me out when I say this — and I’m going to get to Scripture in a moment. There are seasons in my life where I’ve had to leave my Bible open, and as I’m going through the day, I’m reading my Bible, keeping it somewhere that’s there. There have been seasons in my life where I have the capacity and time to sit down and spend an hour in prayer and worship and journal. That’s not what I’m talking about. I understand that we ebb and flow with our relationship with Jesus based on a season. But what should not be ebbing and flowing is how we give Him a try.

If we’re going through our days, our weeks, our moments, our times, and don’t realize — the whole purpose of sending Jesus was so that the Creator of the universe can be reconciled with us, so that we can have more than just a try at Him, so we can have more than just a taste. There’s so much more.

And the reality is, I always say, you’re never going to be as not busy as you are right now. This is the least busy that you’ll ever be in your life. You’re only going to get busier. We don’t magically all of a sudden arrive at time. We just find other things to fill our time. And we’re walking in a season where I feel like right now we have to not do it out of “because I have to,” but “I get to spend time with You, Jesus.”

And I believe He wants us to be a church, locally and then the big-C Church, that moves from just trying Him on on Sundays and putting on the performances and doing the things and all of that stuff, to being a church that is in love with Him, who’s in relationship with Him, and Sunday is just an outflow of what’s happening Monday through Saturday. So much so that when people come here who don’t know Jesus, who need Him, we can be like, “Oh, hey, I have some of Jesus. Let me fill you up. Let me pray over you. Let me lead you. How can I partner with you?”

See, it’s more than just trying Jesus, because if you keep trying to fit Jesus in your life, you’re not going to find place and space for Him. If you’re going to keep just trying to act religious and do a few things, it’s not going to work out for you, because Jesus says, “I want all of who you are.” When you invite me to take over your life, that means we surrender everything.

Take up your cross

We’re going to go to Mark chapter 8, and this might be a familiar place for you. We’re going to be in Mark chapter 8:34 through Mark 9:1. “When He had called the people to Himself, with His disciples also, He said to them” — so this is Jesus, and this is what I think is so profound about this. He says, “Whoever desires to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.”

We’re going to break this down today, even though this might be a familiar verse. There’s some things that I want us to get into some perspective. As I was studying this, I began to think: Jesus was calling people to take up their cross before He was crucified. I don’t know about you, sometimes I just read things and I’m like, oh, it’s the Bible. But it hit me when I was studying this. Jesus was calling them to take up a cross before He was ever crucified.

Now, walk with me for just a moment with this, because I found this profound. You do with that as you may, but I’m still working some of this out. So think about this. The cross was meant by the Romans to be a place of humiliation, of pain, a slow, painful, humiliating death that would send a message to people, right? The Romans used the cross as a place where your humiliation would be put on display, and then it would also say, so then don’t make the same mistakes they did. It was testifying of something.

And so when Jesus is telling His disciples and the people following Him, “Take up your cross and follow me,” He had not yet taken up His own cross and been crucified. What they did not yet understand, and what kind of blew my mind in all of this, was that Jesus had yet to redeem the cross.

When He died on the cross — and we just experienced it through communion, right — He said, “My blood is the new covenant. My bread is the bread of life. It’s been broken for you.” There is healing. There’s salvation. So all of that was taken care of in the cross, in the Spirit. But what was also happening was Jesus all of a sudden turned the cross upside down. Not literally upside down, but the idea of the cross, where it went from being a place of humiliation and slow, painful death to a place of freedom and hope and someone being glorified.

Just think about this. Jesus took the actual cross. So when He was inviting them to say, “Hey, look, I want you to take up your cross,” they had no idea really what that meant. See, we live on this side of Scripture, where we have the understanding and the implication of what Jesus did on the cross. At that point it was actually a place of faith for them to have to walk through, the ideology of taking up the cross. Does that make sense? They had to walk in a faith and understanding. And when they chose to follow Jesus and He was saying, “I want you to take up your cross and follow me,” it had yet to be redeemed. He was calling them to say, “Hey, I want you to take the very thing, and watch what I do with it. Watch what I do with it.”

“Whoever desires to come after me, let him deny himself.” Deny himself, right? At the cross, judgment had already been made. If you were on the cross, that meant that they had deemed you guilty and deemed you worthy of dying in that capacity. And Jesus is saying here, “I want you to let go of that place of being justified. I want you to deny yourself any rights of anything, and just come follow me. And the way you follow me is you take up the most humiliating thing that would be associated with being guilty.”

Think about what He was calling them to. See, we have to understand that when we read Scripture, there’s the context that it was in and the context that we get to live it through. So He was calling them to something very serious, something that would equal humiliation, a slow death, slowly dying. What they wouldn’t understand at that point would be the beauty of what it meant to really follow Jesus: that those places that humanity meant to humiliate somebody would be a place of glorifying and of beautiful redemption.

What Jesus was ultimately saying is, don’t fall for the ways of the world. Don’t fall for what they’re saying that signifies. Follow me. Take that up, because you’re going to have a new idea of what the cross means and what it means for your life. He is the only one that could bring something that was so detrimental to life and make it beautiful.

This is why we can’t try Jesus. Could you imagine if the disciples were like, “I don’t want to do that”? What they would have missed out on. He’s talking about some serious stuff here. We serve a God who is so faithful that in all wisdom and understanding He would call them to something that would require more than just themselves. The cross was the ultimate power move for the Romans, and I love that Jesus took it and rewrote its purpose.

You can’t carry both

Now here it goes on to say in verse 35, “For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.” The reality is, we cannot carry the cross — and I think part of the reason Jesus uses this, because Jesus was very intentional with His words — you couldn’t carry a cross and carry something else. It’s not possible, right? If I were to take that down, I would most definitely need both hands. And so He’s using this imagery that tells us you can’t carry what you want to carry and follow me. We’ve got to let go. We’ve got to lay down. We’ve got to surrender.

When I came up here — is anyone in here someone who doesn’t like to take multiple trips? I do not like taking multiple trips. If I can get everything in one trip, wherever it is, I will load myself with all the bags, all of the stuff. Use my mouth, my toes, my everything. I have ten fingers; I’m going to pinky that up so I don’t have to come back for it. It’s ridiculous, right? I’m someone who tries to carry it all.

And Jesus is saying, “No, no, no. Here’s what I want you to do. You actually need to surrender all of what you think needs to happen.” If you try to save your life, if you try to hold on to your desires, if you try to hold on to the way that you want to do forgiveness, the way you want to do living holy, if you want to hold on to what you think being sanctified means — you can’t carry both.

And I think Jesus used such dramatic imagery of a cross, that we need to pick it up, that we need to deny ourselves and take up the cross, so that there is nothing that we could hold on to. We cannot hold on to this world, the burdens, the worries, the stress for success, the cultural appropriation culture, and follow Jesus. It is actually impossible.

If you think about your own life and what that looks like day to day, we are in a time where more than ever our words carry so much weight. We say the wrong thing — and I’m not trying to put us against them. That’s not it. The reality is there’s so much that we have to consider. And Jesus is saying, would you just surrender that and let me lead you? Would you surrender that and follow me? Would you surrender trying to hold up what you think you should look like, who you should be, where you should be by now, whatever it is? Would you surrender that, lay that down, and take up the cross, deny yourself something, and follow me, and watch how I will be glorified in your life?

See, the world and Jesus are completely opposite. That’s how it’s intended to be. When Jesus came, the intention was to pull us out of what we were in and lead us in a new direction. When we talk about repentance, repentance is completely turning from what we are repenting from and walking away from it. But the world and culture tells us we can do both. You can do Jesus on Sunday and yourself on Sunday afternoon, if you really want to. You can walk out here, someone can cut you off, and you can be flipping them the bird, honking, angry, and you were just saying, “Holy are You, Lord,” right?

Because culture tells us it’s okay. Do you. Whatever feels right. “Well, that felt right. They cut me off, and they almost hit my car, and they deserve that.” And no. But culture tells us we can live lukewarm and that’s okay. Culture tells us, well, maybe — and we’re going to get to this — Scripture isn’t all of what it’s supposed to be. “Did you know there were some discrepancies in some of the Bibles, and that’s not the word that was intended for you?” Compromise is here. You can live a compromised life with Jesus, and there will be plenty of people who will tell you that’s okay.

Now, He’s not talking about perfection. It says we’re being perfected until He returns. Hallelujah. This is not about perfection and works. This is about surrender and lordship, and those are two different things.

When I know who is Lord of my life — oh, You can be trusted. I can follow You. I can walk away from that situation and trust, because it says that You’re my protector. It says that You will guide me. I can walk away from that promotion that just didn’t settle right with me, because, God, I don’t know, I didn’t have the answer, but something didn’t sit right with me. So I’m going to lay this at Your feet, and I’m going to trust You, because You can be trusted.

See, that’s taking up your cross and denying yourself, versus trying to make something happen. “Oh, I’m going to take this promotion. It must be from God.” And meanwhile you’re ignoring the Holy Spirit inside of you. He hasn’t told you “absolutely not,” but you just know, oh, something’s not right.

Our heart for this church is that we would be a people, including myself, who would walk in obedience to the Holy Spirit. That I wouldn’t need the Lord to say, “Don’t go there.” That if I feel it inside, and I just feel just a slight check — I’m not doing it. I don’t know what it is. It’s not for me. And there’s going to be plenty of people who don’t understand, who don’t get it. You’re not living for them, right?

We live in a world right now where man’s approval means a lot. I work through it often. I think about often, oh, what are people going to say? If people start asking about my church, what are my answers going to be? And I start to get — no. Am I being obedient to the Lord? Yes. Are we doing what the Lord’s asking us to do? Yes. Then that should suffice.

See, denying yourself is more than just, “Oh, He’s not going to let me do the things I want to do.” No. Denying ourselves is saying, “Lord, I want You to rule and reign in my life today.” And whatever it looks like for today is going to look like what it’s for today, and whatever it’s going to look like for tomorrow is going to look like what it’s for tomorrow. But we can’t just live on both sides. And the reality is it’s getting harder, because the world is calling us louder.

What will a man give in exchange for his soul?

So verses 36 through 37: “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” See, the world always takes, and it always will cost us. Doing things our own way instead of allowing the Lord to rule and reign in our life will always cost us.

I remember my youth pastor — I don’t think he was the originator of the saying, but he would say, “Sin will cost you more than you ever have. Sin will keep you longer than you want to stay. And sin will take you farther than you wanted to go.” And the reality is that not everything is sin. Hear me out, not everything is sin. But when we become accustomed to using the world’s methods of running our life, it leads us back to ourselves and our needs and our desires, and it gets our eyes off Jesus. And when my eyes and ears are off of Jesus, guess what I do? I walk in sin. So it’s not that everything is sin. It’s just that the moment my eyes begin to come off Jesus is when I position myself to do what I want to do.

And quite frankly, by my Red Bull, I do what I want to do, right? We know this is not the best thing for me, and I still drink it. I do what I want to do. The more I get my eyes off of Jesus, guess what? I do what Suzie wants to do. I don’t know where you are on that. I just know that sin will take us farther than we want to go, keep us longer than we want to be, and cost us more than we’ll ever have.

And the beginning — if you remember back to when the serpent comes to Eve, he doesn’t come and say, “Come eat this.” He comes and says to Eve, “Did God really say that?” See, that’s what we forget: that getting off course has nothing to do with our actual actions. He just needs to bring doubt.

And so what will a man give in exchange for his own soul? I think back to the story of Esau. If you’re unfamiliar with the story, Esau was an older twin, and the younger brother, who had promise with him, fooled his brother into giving up his birthright. Now, birthrights make no sense culturally to us, but the firstborn were set apart. That just is how it was in Scripture. The firstborn meant something. There was a birthright, there was a blessing, there were things that came because you were the firstborn. And here Esau is. He is hungry. He’s a hunter. He’s out. He comes to his brother, and he exchanges the most prized thing to satisfy his immediate need.

And I think about that. As I was reading it — what will a man give in exchange for his soul? If we are just trying Jesus, we will give just about anything, because we’re going to be living in compromise.

I’m going to continue to say this, because I want to make sure we hear this again. This is not about perfection. This is not about works. This is about holding on to things that we shouldn’t be holding on to. It’s about doing things in a way that we shouldn’t be doing things. See, when we learn to ignore the yielding of the Spirit, we progressively begin to walk in disobedience, and we’re willing to sacrifice and give.

Why does that matter now? Why does it matter in your life? Why does this message matter in your life? You have to answer that question. But it matters because there’s people all around us. It matters because He’s calling us to greater surrender. It matters because most definitely there’s probably places where you and I hold on to things, and He’s saying, “Look, can you just surrender this to me? Can you just surrender this preference to me? Can you just trust me? I can be trusted.”

He can be trusted. We have gotten to this place based on His faithfulness and His goodness, not our good works and our good looks. We have salvation because He is a faithful God, whose heart is not judgment and condemnation, but His heart is mercy and grace. That is how we’ve gotten to this point. That is the God we serve. That is the God we can trust.

And it requires us to be people who say, “Okay, Jesus, I’m taking up my cross, and I’m laying this down today. I’m laying this preference down today. I’m laying this desire down today. I’m laying this down at Your feet.” And sometimes we actually have to say it: “God, I’m laying X, Y, Z at Your feet. Lord, You love that person. You love me.” Whatever it is, that’s how we surrender. We don’t just surrender in thought. We sometimes have to remind ourselves: “No, I gave that to the Lord. No, I gave that to the Lord. Lord, Your word is faithful.”

That’s why it’s important for us to read our Bible. Because how do we know what God’s promises are if we don’t read our Bible? There’s a lot of things that sound really good out there that are not Scripture, that have no promise, that have no weight, that have no covenant. Anytime we go back to Scripture, we come with the weight of the faithfulness of God. We come with the weight of the faithfulness of the covenant. We come with the weight that it says His word will not return void, but will do the very thing that it’s set out to do.

That’s why we need Scripture over motivation. That’s why we need Scripture over anything else. That’s why we need it in our hearts and in our minds, because things are going to come at us. “What comes around goes around” bears no weight. But I can say, “Lord, Your word says that I will reap what I sow. So I sow into Your kingdom. I sow faithfulness. I sow forgiveness. And I’m going to reap that abundantly.” Because that has weight and power. Anything else just goes out powerless. And we need the power of God these days. We need the power of God. We need to be yielding.

I don’t know most things about any of your lives. I know a handful of some people’s lives, what they see, what they go through. But I sometimes go online and think people are so deceived by what they’re believing. And I know the truth. I know what Scripture says. And people walk in such deception every single day, and we have the truth. And this is so much more.

I want there to just be this awakening in all of us: that when I walk into my school, when I walk into any place, I come with the power of God. I don’t just try Him on on Sunday and experience His presence here. No. I walk, and the presence of God is in me. And because the presence of God is in me, I can move in boldness and faith to pray over that person. I can move in boldness and faith and say, “No, I don’t need to do that.” I can move in boldness and faith and say, “No, that’s not for me right now.” I can move in boldness and faith that God is faithful. That’s what it’s about.

There’s people who are sleeping everywhere, and as believers we should not be them. We should not be people who are asleep because it didn’t work out for us. If it’s not working out for you, you’ve got to change the method, right? If something’s not working out, change what you’re doing and see how God moves, and then we begin to just go forward. But let’s not be a people who are willing to walk in compromise and surrender our own souls because we’re satisfied with what we get right now.

An adulterous generation

The end of the Scripture says, “For whoever is ashamed of me and my words.” I think back to when I was in high school. We didn’t really have social media, and I think social media helped this. You weren’t really ashamed of Jesus — I mean, I actually was ashamed of Jesus back then. I kind of was. You went to church; it was kind of weird. I like talking to someone about my faith. But now we see it everywhere, right? It’s commonplace. I think, again, that has to do with social media crossing these barriers. You’re like, “Oh, that person’s a believer,” or someone will post a verse. And so I don’t think anymore it’s about being ashamed. I think there is something, but here’s where I think we’re getting caught up right now.

“For whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.” And He said to them, “Assuredly, I say to you that there are some standing here who will not taste death till they see the kingdom of God present with power.”

Here’s where I think we’re getting a little bit caught up as the church: the adulterous place. When you think about adultery, it’s about being unfaithful, but it really is a division of our heart and emotions. If I’m adulterous towards my husband, it means that my affections and thoughts and dreams, all of that, are now towards somebody else, right? That’s what adultery means. And then adultery leads to behavior that then is sinful. So if I have feelings towards someone else, it’s beginning in my heart, and then I’m acting them out. And there’s even Scripture that talks about what’s happening in our heart and sin, but we’re not going to go there. We’re talking about the word adulterous right now.

Being in adultery is having your heart and emotions divided, and you’re unfaithful. And you’ve got to go back to here: “in this adulterous and sinful generation.” It’s interesting that there’s a division between the two words, that they didn’t just say “the sinful generation” or “this adulterous generation.” There’s something that begins in our heart that then leads out to our action.

And right now I believe that there’s a division that the world — the enemy — is calling us to: to be adulterous in our affection to the Lord. I believe that many of us can be divided in our thoughts and emotions towards God. And this is why we try Jesus. Because just in case Jesus doesn’t work, I’m going to have my backup plan. And guess what? Jesus doesn’t work when you have a backup plan.

When my daughter and I were in Boston, they had a fair or something in one little area. And I think that it’s just important, so I talk about it. There was a tent, and people were getting psychic readings. There were four people who were giving the readings and four people who were receiving the readings. And what I thought was interesting was that it was hot. I mean, she and I were hot. You’re not really wanting to just be standing, because your body starts getting sticky. And she was just like, “They’re so into it.” You just saw they were locked in. They were locked into it.

And as I was sharing with my friend’s mom, I said, “You know, really, God,” and she said, “Oh, well, of course someone’s locked in. There’s no accountability.” You can get it without having to ever have any accountability. Someone can tell you about the past, tell you about your future, and guess what? Then you can just do it yourself, and now you know, right? “It must be true, because they knew about that, so this must be true.” See, people are falling for it.

And we’re going to read about it in Jude. We’re not going to read all of Jude, but Jude is literally one chapter. You can turn there. It’s the second to the last book: Jude, and then Revelation. As I was reading it again, you see how telling it is of where we are. People just want Jesus to fix stuff. “I don’t actually want to do anything.”

Could you imagine if you were in a relationship — any earthly relationship requires a give and a take. It doesn’t matter. And I think oftentimes we have these relationships so we can learn how to be in communion, so we can learn how to be in fellowship. That’s the intention of community and relationship, whatever relationship it is. All relationships require something. If you’re not giving into a relationship, it’s probably not going anywhere, right? Like I said, I love watching the young love, because they give attention. They see. They think through. All of this stuff. It’s refreshing.

And right now I think when people walk away from their faith — “Oh, it didn’t work” — it’s because there was work that was required. There was surrender that the Lord was asking of me that I probably wasn’t willing to let go of. There was my way that I probably wanted to do this that I wasn’t wanting to let go of, because I knew better. I think that all the time.

But our relationship with Jesus requires time and devotion — not devotion in just writing devotions, but the admiration of our heart, investment, sacrifice, giving, hope, faith, growth. Our relationship with Jesus is so much more, because what we get in exchange is so much greater than what we could ever give. So much greater than what we can ever give. We don’t have the capacity to give enough to earn it. He already did, and gave us the ultimate gift. And He’s just saying, “Come spend time with me. Come be with me. Come sit at my feet. Just come be in my presence. There’s nothing you need to do except be with me.”

Isn’t that beautiful? That the hope isn’t that I get to perform my way to a greater place. No, Jesus just loves me. I’m His daughter; that’s who He sees me as. And there’s things I get to do. But my children are ultimately His. I get to steward and grow and help them, and hopefully walk in obedience and do things well with them as my children, but ultimately they’re still His.

This church is His. This isn’t my church. This isn’t Jay’s church. We get to steward it. We get to pastor it. But it’s not all of who I am. It’s like, “Okay, Lord, at any point, if this is what You want, You just tell us. You’re running the show.” It’s not about my title. It’s not about my position. None of that matters to Him. What matters is that we would just sit at His feet, and not be people of an adulterous and sinful generation who keep pursuing things in exchange for what He’s actually given to us. Because what He has for us is so much greater than we could ever think or imagine. Even if what you’re holding on to is the ultimate and He’s asking you to put it down, what He has for you is so much greater than the ultimate thing that you think it is.

Coach Jay

Okay, I’m going to share this testimony, even though it’s not mine to share. It’s Jay’s. And I’m almost done. Jay and I got married when we were 21. We were young, and we were like, “We’re going to be in ministry together.” And I was from California, and I’m like, “What’s a Wisconsin?” And he’s like, “It’s a place.” And I’m like, “I’m going, because you have beautiful eyes and a nice smile, and you love Jesus. I’m on board.” And, “You’re okay with me being a pastor?” We both only had two non-negotiables, and our non-negotiables were something we both were like, yes, we’re on board with.

Anyways, we’ve been in ministry since we moved here, in various capacities. It’s looked different. I’ve had children. It’s ebbed and flowed. I’ve worked, he’s worked. And every so often he’d be like, “You know, if I was never a pastor, I probably would want to be a coach. A football coach would be really fun.” Jay loves the Packers. It’s actually a fun fact about Jay: people who went to youth group always talk about how Jay would pray for the Packers when he was in junior high and high school. He loves the Packers through and through. And he loves football, and he said, “If I was not a pastor, I would love to be a coach.” Cool, whatever. We’re doing our thing.

And he has done a very brilliant job of really honoring his role as a father, doing his best to be a pastor — and he also works — but then coach the kids. I remember it was our youngest; he was in eighth grade, and I was like, “Your coaching is done,” because that was where he’d get his coaching gig from, right? He coached our son all through Little League, all through tournament season. He was one of the coaches and just did a really good job, because Jay loves to coach. And I remember taking a picture, and I’m like, “This is your last youth night,” and we celebrated.

And then at the end of summer of last year, one of the guys was like, “Hey, would you be interested in maybe coaching the high school with me? I’m coaching the freshman team.” And Jay’s like, “Yeah, just let me know. We can see if it works out.” And he heard nothing. And so Jay’s like, “Oh, that would have been fun, but you know.” There’s not much this man holds on to. I’m still, after 21 years, trying to learn. But he’s just like, “Okay, it’s what it is.”

So it’s August, maybe the second week in August, I think they’re two weeks into practice, and he gets a call that says, “Hey, we’d love for you to come volunteer coach the freshman team.” And so Jay talks about the first time he was out there with the freshmen, and all the boys love Coach Jay. Coach Jay is my favorite Jay. I just love watching him with these kids. I love watching my family in action. I love watching their nuances and their body language. I’ve studied my family, so I love watching them.

And so he got to coach. Here he is, coaching freshman football. And the super cool thing was, our oldest was a senior, and they have all of the coaching staff come to the varsity games and be on the sideline. And so here are these kids that he’s been coaching since they were probably in third grade, fourth grade, and he’s now with them in their senior year, on the sideline, coaching them. And so, oh, that was fun. Good season. Great.

Well, Jay — I think I can make this public, I think it is — just got brought on as a defensive coordinator for the freshman team for the high school. He actually has a position. He’s not just the general — he was always the people coach, is what I would call him, just making sure everyone was where they’re supposed to be. No, he actually has a coaching position this upcoming fall. And when he called me, I was so excited. You can clap. I was so excited, because here’s what I learned: it’s way better than he could have ever imagined. It’s way better.

How cool is it that — and he just loved it — how cool is it that you’re coaching your freshman son in high school, and then not only that, you’re coaching all these kids you’ve known since third grade, and at our son’s last game they’re there on the sidelines. I would see him just walk past our son and kind of hit his bottom and just go. That meant more than what was happening. He just was so filled with joy.

See, the Lord can do it better than we could ever ask or think, right? And so as we surrender to Him, as we lay these things at His feet, as we just walk in obedience — and Jay walks in tremendous favor, because he honors the Lord, because he’s saying, “Okay, Lord, I’m just going to lay this down.” It’s not always easy. It’s not always fun, don’t get me wrong. But he just is able to surrender. When we learn to surrender to the Lord and deny ourselves, what we think we’re giving away, the Lord brings back so much more beautifully than we could have ever asked or thought, than we could have ever done on our own.

Keep yourselves in God’s love

All right, we’re rounding the bend. Jude chapter 1. We’re going to start with verses 1 through 4. This is the NLT. I’m going to pull it up on my phone, because I wanted to read it in the NLT, the New Living Translation. Oh, okay — I had my phone turned off. Jude 1.

“This letter is from Jude, a slave of Jesus Christ and a brother of James. I am writing to all who have been called by God the Father, who loves you and keeps you safe in the care of Jesus Christ. May God give you more and more mercy, peace, and love.”

See, again, I want you to go back and read this. It’s not a long chapter. We’re not going to read all of it. But here we’re reading, and he’s saying, beloved, beloved, beloved, would you experience more? Would you experience more love and peace and mercy?

He goes on to say — and this is where we’re going to go down to verse 16. This is what stuck out to me. He’s warning the church. That’s what he’s doing. He’s saying, “I’m warning you.” Wait — did I read all the way to verse 4? Oh, nope, I haven’t. I was like, I’m missing something. Okay, sorry, we’re going to start back.

“This letter is from Jude, a slave of Jesus Christ and a brother of James. I am writing to all who have been called by God the Father, who loves you and keeps you safe in the care of Jesus Christ. May God give you more and more mercy, peace, and love. Dear friends, I had been eagerly planning to write to you about the salvation we all share. But now I find that I must write about something else, urging you to defend the faith that God has entrusted once for all time to His holy people. I say this because some ungodly people have wormed their way into your churches, saying that God’s marvelous grace allows us to live immoral lives. The condemnation of such people was recorded long ago, for they have denied our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”

So here Jude is writing, and he’s saying, “Okay, look, I need you to pay attention to what I’m about to say. This has to actually do with your salvation. I need your attention.” He goes on to describe some things, and we’re going to pick up in verse 16. So he’s talking about these ungodly people, what they’re like, what they’re saying. Again, we’re in a time and age where, if you don’t agree with or like what I’m saying, you can find someone else that will agree with what you’re saying. It may not be right. They may try to use Scripture. It tells us to be wise. That’s why we also need Scripture.

Anyway, so Jude is warning the church, and he goes on to say: “These people are grumblers and complainers, living only to satisfy their desires. They brag loudly about themselves, and they flatter others to get what they want. But you, my dear friends, must remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ predicted. They told you that in the last times there would be scoffers whose purpose in life is to satisfy their ungodly desires. These people are the ones who are creating divisions among you. They follow their natural instincts because they do not have God’s Spirit in them. But you, dear friends, must build each other up in your most holy faith, pray in the power of the Holy Spirit, and await the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will bring you eternal life. In this way, you will keep yourselves safe in God’s love. And you must show mercy to those whose faith is wavering. Rescue others by snatching them from the flames of judgment. Show mercy to still others, but do so with great caution, hating the sins that contaminate their lives. Now all glory to God, who is able to keep you from falling away and will bring you with great joy into His glorious presence without a single fault.”

That’s saying that when it comes time, we are redeemed in the end. We keep pursuing Him. “All glory to Him who alone is God, our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord. All glory, majesty, power, and authority are His before all time, and in the present, and beyond all time! Amen.”

This is what we have: this is the promise that we get when we’re not just trying Jesus, that we are His beloved ones. He loves us deeply. He loves us deeply. Our call to build our faith, so that we’re not just trying Jesus, is to read. It says to pray in the power of the Holy Spirit. How do you want to grow? We pray in the power of the Holy Spirit. That’s how we grow. We keep ourselves in the reminder that we are His beloved, that He loves us. We show mercy, but we proclaim salvation to others. We are cautious where we find ourselves, but we continue to proclaim the promise of God.

This is why we need to rise up. This is why we cannot just try Jesus: because we might find ourselves in places where we never thought we would be. And our job isn’t to go with the flow. The job is to pull people out and proclaim the gospel, to yank them out from darkness into light and say, “Jesus Christ is the same. He has salvation.” These are the promises that we have. His promise is to protect us with His joy, and He is able. He is able. But we must make room for Him. We need to be a people that bring our Savior to every situation, not just trying Him on when it’s convenient, because we cannot try Jesus.

So I’m going to pray for you, and after I pray for you, I’m going to have a benediction — I think that’s the correct word that I wrote out — and so I’m excited.

All right. Heavenly Father, we thank You. We thank You for Your grace and Your mercy that You show us, that You abundantly extend to us. We thank You, and we acknowledge Your longsuffering that You extend to us, so that we would not be people who exchange petty things for our soul, but that we would be people who would deny ourselves and take up the cross and follow You, Lord. We know that You cannot be just tried on like a pair of jeans or something — that’s bad — but that walking with You is a lifestyle, to walk in Your footsteps and walk in obedience to You.

God, we pray, and I proclaim and declare, that we would be people who would walk with that boldness and courage and that freedom in You, and extend it to other people. Lord, we pray that You would send people in our midst this week who need You. Lord, I pray that we would yield to Your Spirit — that we would yield our schedules, we would yield our flesh’s desire to keep on going — and we would walk in obedience. That our ears would be open to hear You speak, because You say that You will give us the words when we need them. Lord, that we would walk in discernment, that we would walk in words of knowledge, prophetic giftings, that we would walk in demonstrating Your healing and praying over people, and we would see You mightily move. In Jesus’ name, amen.

So here’s my benediction over you. May our God, who can keep us from stumbling, have your attention. May you be aware of the exceeding joy that you bring Him. We serve a God who is wise, glorious, and present, who has dominion and power over the places that we surrender to Him. May that God be glorified in your life. Would you walk in the mercy and peace, and would His love be multiplied to you this week. In Jesus’ name, amen.

And amen. Thank you, guys. We love you. I love you. I’m so glad that you are here. Spend some time in fellowship with one another, and we look forward to seeing you next week.

Transcribed from the message recording and lightly edited for reading.