Blessed are the Righteous

Hello, and welcome to the Salt Church Podcast. Thank you for tuning in to this week's message. Join us as we explore God's Word providing practical teaching for day-to-day living. The message you are about to hear was recorded live at our Sunday morning worship experience. If you would like to learn more about Salt Church, please visit us at saltchurch.

org. We hope that you are encouraged by today's message. So, we are entering into a family series, and we're going to talk a lot about stuff like this, you know. And what a better day than Mother's Day to talk about a godly, healthy family. So, we're beginning a series called Bless This Home.

And how many of you want a blessed home, right? You want your home to be blessed. Nobody says, I want a cursed home, right? No, curse me, you know. Nobody says that.

Nobody wants that. And there's all kinds of families, you know. A lot of different types of families are represented here. And it is a struggle, right? There's a lot of struggle in raising a family.

There's different sorts of families. There's blended families. Some of you may have come from past marriages and have kids from different marriages, and they're together now, and you're experiencing the challenge of that. Some of you may be single mothers, and God bless you, you're trying to raise those kids. Maybe some of you are single fathers, and you're raising kids.

But we have all kinds of different families, and you have all these different personalities when they come together, and there's always a bundle of mess, you know, going on when you're raising kids. So, it's hard, and I think it's important for us to look at what the Bible says about how to raise children. And as we look through Scripture throughout the entire Bible from a theological standpoint, we see family communicated over and over again. We see the Old Testament. It gives you the idea of a family, of God.

The Godhead himself is sort of a family. It communicates and symbolizes a family. The church in the New Testament symbolizes family as well. And that's why we call each other brothers and sisters, right? Because we are a family.

That's why it's important for us to love and welcome and spend time and build community with each other because we're family. We are family. And it goes further than just blood. Family is a spiritual unity. The church is a family.

And if the family goes, and if something happens to the family, and if Satan, the enemy, can hinder, harm the family, bring destruction to the family, then he can bring destruction to God's design. And he tries with everything he has. So, the family is a strategic place that he hits. And so, it's extremely important for us to look at the family unit. And I'm no different than anybody else, okay?

Just because I'm pastor and I have the calling to teach and to lead a church doesn't mean my kids are well-behaved, okay? In fact, I mean, we don't just say, you know, when they're arguing, I don't start singing Kumbaya and they all line up. And we all are perfect and peaceful and we go on with our, we're singing choruses and hymns and spiritual songs, you know, together. We're not doing that. It's, we're a real family.

In fact, just the other day, Miranda headed over to the neighbor's house to pick up my daughter, Savannah, who was playing with the neighbor's kid. And Savannah planted herself Indian style on the floor and would not move when Miranda came in and told her. And she's just like, I'm not moving. And she basically had to drag her out of the house back to the, to our home because she's that stubborn. See, it's not easy raising children.

And where do they get this stuff? I don't know because we're not stubborn. We don't have those problems. We don't have those issues. Not at all.

Not at all. Neither one of us are stubborn at all. On the other hand, there's a lot of things that we do that we make a part of our family to influence our children. In fact, although Savannah is as stubborn as she is, she loves to pray. And if we don't pray before bedtime, if we don't pray before we eat, she gets stubborn.

She gets upset. But that's a good thing. And the thing about Savannah, when she starts praying, she prays. She, she prays for everything. Dear Jesus, blessed is chicken.

Thank you for the vegetables. Thank you for the French fries. Thank you for the plate. Thank you for the napkin. Thank you for, and we're sitting there.

We're like, come on, girl. Get through this. Thank you for this. Thank you for that. I think she gets it from her mom.

I don't allow her mom to, to pray publicly a lot because it will go on for about 30 minutes, praying for all the missionaries and everything around the world when we're, when we're getting ready to sit down and eat a steak. Um, and that steak's sitting in front of me and I'm ready to eat. You know? So, so it's important for us to, to, to institute things in our family that are God things. God influences in our family.

So what we're going to do for the next few weeks, we're going to look at the Beatitudes of Jesus. And what we can do, we can take those Beatitudes and apply them to our family. And we take them and apply them to our family. God will bless us. Cause why?

Because he says he will. If we just demonstrate and, and, and follow these Beatitudes. So if you have your notes, you can pull those out. They're in the bifold. You can follow along so that you don't, uh, so you have somewhere to go with it.

And we'll, we'll just kind of roll right into this. So this week's talk is about righteousness. Blessed are the righteous. Next week we'll deal with the pure in heart. And we're going to talk about, uh, uh, a peacemaking family a few weeks from now.

And we're going to kind of dig into a lot of these, these ideas. But this week we want to deal with this idea of righteousness. It says blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they will be filled. Let's just look at that for a second. Blessed.

What does the word blessed mean? Does it, does it mean, you know, being filled and being blessed and you being blessed? Is it, is it just some happy day or giving you some type of goosebumps? It goes much further than that. In fact, the, the Greek word for blessed is, it, it, it really means, literally means supremely blessed.

Supremely blessed. When God extends his grace and his benefits to you. Meaning that he, he does more than just being, you being happy or having a temporary fix. It, it, it goes much further than that. So being blessed, uh, is, is something that, that are, are blessed.

When Jesus was saying blessed, he's like, you're going to have so much more than even this life can offer. And we go back to life and life abundantly. The abundant life that he's, he's, uh, reaching for here. So, so what is our role in this? When we see this, blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they will be filled.

What is our role? What is our role? To hunger and thirst after righteousness. Now, everybody knows what hunger and thirst means, right? When we're hungry, we eat.

When we're thirst, we drink. And we've got to have it. My kids yesterday, on the way home from a family reunion. I'm thirsty. I'm hungry.

I need this. I've given something. They, 15 minutes later, I'm thirsty. I'm hungry. You know?

And it's just constantly something. And, and what God is telling us here, what God is trying to communicate, you need to have that kind of hunger and thirst after God. How many of you have that thirst after God? Uh, not a lot of us. We, hunger and thirst.

We, we need to be as children, hunger and thirst after God. The psalmist wrote, as the deer pants forth the water, so my soul longs for you, longs for you, meaning I've got a, I've got a hunger and thirst for God, but so what, what, what is this righteousness we are hungry for, that we should be hungry and thirsting for? It's the quality of being made right and justifiable. It's being right, being positionally made right. But the question is, who is righteous?

So, what is righteous is being right, but who is righteous? Well, the Bible tells us, the Word of God tells us that no one is actually good and righteous except God. So, God is the one who is perfectly righteous, we are, we are not so, and we are not, so that's why, and this is a good thing, because we cannot be perfect in the way we live, in the way we do things, in the way we think, in the way we act at times, and even if we try really, really, really hard, we still stumble and fall. But God, in His mercy, gives us Jesus Christ, the Righteous One, the Messiah, so that we can be positionally made right. So, that should free us in thinking about righteousness.

When we hunger and thirst after righteous, we're hungering and thirsting after God. And what does God do? God fills us. God fills us. Now, imagine a family filled with the fruits of the Spirit.

Imagine a family filled with joy. Imagine a family filled with peace. Imagine a family filled with hope and patience and kindness and all that comes with righteousness. Wouldn't that be a wonderful family? Imagine a family like that.

Well, that's what God wants for us. So, in your homes, here's what I'm going to ask you today. Just kind of bring this down to a practical standpoint. In your homes, what are you hungry for? Let me challenge you today.

What are you hungry for? What are you pursuing? What are you seeking in your homes and in your family? What are you filling your home with? What are those things that you're hungering and thirsting after in your home behind closed doors when nobody else is looking and nobody else knows what's going on?

Not when you come to church happy and friendly and smiling and praise God for that. Thank you guys for being that way. But I don't want you to come in here sour and mad and angry. But, you know, when you're in your homes and when nobody's around, what are you hungering and thirsting after? What kind of home are you creating, are you making?

What kind of environment are you creating for your children, for your wife, for your husband, for the people who live in your home? It's in the private times, behind the closed doors, that reflects who we really are. Who we really are. So, what are you giving your time and energy to? What's that hunger and thirst?

Hunger and thirst. What is that? What are you hungry for? What are you thirsting for in your time? Well, for some people, the home might be a place of comfort, which isn't a bad thing, right?

You spend a lot of your time and energy making it a very comfortable place where you can get away from the world and just enjoy life. Some of you may be an environment of fun. You know, you want a fun place. You've got the big screen TV. You've got the sports.

You've got the surround sound. You've got the outdoor thing going on. Whatever your flavor is, you've got that. So, you like and enjoy fun. Maybe you spend your time and energy doing that.

For some people, it might be image management. It might be popularity. It might be the more money, the bigger house, keeping up with the Joneses. How many of you watched Home Improvement back in the day? That's like the best show in the world.

If you haven't watched it, you need to go buy the series and watch it. And every year, Tim, the tool man, Taylor, would decorate his house with Christmas ornaments. And he would go all out. Every year, he'd buy something new. And every year, it didn't matter.

They would have an episode around his house and how he was decorating his house. And there was one year, there was a neighbor across the street who was just one step ahead of him on everything. And it would drive him crazy. He'd put the keller out. And then there was the new keller, the caroler, not caroler, caroler that moves, you know.

And he's already got it. Wow, okay, I'm going to run out to the store and I'm going to get another one. And then he looks, ah, he did it. Where is he? Has he got like a television game?

And then he finds out later in the show that his son was dating the daughter of the, or talking to the daughter at school and telling what his dad was doing. So, her dad would go out and buy the item to try to, you know, because it was a popularity contest. You know, I've got to have the best house. I've got to have the best Christmas ornaments. And we're like that in a lot of ways.

It might be sports. We've got to have, we've got to get our kids in sports because we know they're going to be a professional basketball or professional baseball players. There's a really strong chance for that, right? So, we put all of our money into that and we travel around all over creation, joining fall league, spring league, summer league, any league between because we just know that it's going to happen. They are going to make millions of dollars playing baseball.

So, we put a lot of effort into that. And that's kind of what we put our time and energy. Or maybe it's your kids' grades. You have an academic kid and you put all your time and energy into that. We've got to get her, get him the best schools, the best things, you know, that help promote her or him to academic success.

And these are the things we pursue. But we often seem to be missing something when we only pursue these things. There's always something more that we're striving for, we're reaching for, and we're always empty. But God tells us, you know, if you hunger and thirst after something else, I will actually fill you. You will be filled.

So, what do you do when you are hungry for the wrong things? How do you change your appetite? Well, you diet. You change the things that you're filling yourself with. You have to change your appetite.

The best way to change your appetite is to begin to put in place a spiritual diet. And diets are really hard because I'm trying to do one right now. And I'm failing and my wife is doing an amazing job. She's lost a ton of weight and she's killing it because she's eating fish and chicken and vegetables every day. And Lisa Marie is giving her some consulting as well.

And she's doing, yeah, just all kinds of stuff. And I'm eating that too. But then I took out a jar of those Reese's candy mix things on the way to North Carolina a couple of days ago. And she kind of, I was telling her, I need to lose at least 10 pounds. I need to lose 10 pounds.

And she says, you can't eat that anymore. You can't be eating big cans of candy anymore. And I said, I know, I know I can do it. And that's what, in our spiritual life, we have to do the same thing. We have to adjust because the things we're hungry for, we crave.

And when we crave, like sugars and breads and pizzas and pastas. How many of you like pizza? I love pizza. And I love Gino's pizza over here, North End pizza. And I'm sitting here the other night and I went through a whole day of eating healthy.

And I'm thinking about North End pizza. And I want a North End pizza so bad. But I put it away. But after a period of time, after a period of time, your appetite begins to change. Because the sugars are out of your body.

You detox your body of all those things that you're craving. And then you eat a piece of pizza. You can't even eat a quarter of it because it fills you up. And it's changing your appetite. We need to change our appetites.

We need to change our appetites to focus or to crave or to hunger. Hunger and thirst for the things that are righteous, the right thinking, the right, who is the righteous one? God. We want to crave Him, but it's going to take some work. It takes spiritual exercise to do this.

So what doesn't work? Let's just ask for a second what doesn't work. Here's some things that don't work. First of all, legalistic Christianity. A family of legalistic Christianity, where it reduces Christianity to a list of do's and don'ts.

If you don't smoke, if you don't drink, if you don't hang around that certain crowd, then I'll check your list off and you're okay, right? If you do this, you are a good Christian. And if you don't do that enough, then you're not a good Christian. And we put it, it's called legalism. And it's why many don't want to have any part of Christianity, because there's no way to ever be perfect, right?

There was an ongoing joke. I'm a preacher's kid. My father's been in ministry for 40 years plus, and still pastoring today. And there was this ongoing joke about PKs, preacher's kids, right? That they were the bad ones, you know, right?

I tell somebody I was a preacher's kid, they're like, oh, yeah, yeah, huh, you're a preacher's kid, huh? I don't know what's going on with you, you know? Why was that so often the case for preacher's kids? Because a lot of them, now my family was great, and we had a great balance, I had a great family life. But for many, they live in this environment of do's and don'ts.

And we never can achieve what only God can achieve. That's why God positionally, it's about thinking positionally right. Thinking about that God laid his life down so that we could be freed not to worry about all the do's and don'ts of life. We could be freed and we could live in righteousness because he is righteousness on our behalf. That's what's beautiful about a relationship because without relationship, it's religion.

And what does religion, what does rules without relationship lead to? It leads to rebellion. It leads to rebellion. So, legalistic Christianity doesn't work in the household. Philippians 3, 9, and 10 says this, I no longer count my own righteousness through obeying the law.

Rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. So, I put my righteousness. I know I'm not righteous, but I place my righteousness anytime I begin to fall, anytime I begin to stumble, anytime I walk the wrong direction. I'm not thinking about, well, I better do right, I better do right, because I'll never make it. I place my trust in Jesus.

I place my righteousness in him who is the righteous one. For God's way of making us right with himself depends on faith. That's trusting him, falling into him. I trust you, Jesus. I'm in a relationship with you.

I give you my life. I give you my faults. I give you my stumbling. I give you all those things. I place that in your life.

The second thing that doesn't work, and this is the flip side of the coin, is lukewarm Christianity. Lukewarm Christianity. And that's, I believe in God, but I don't live like he exists. I don't even look like a Christian. Everything looks great on the outside, but behind the doors, it's nothing from being close to the Christian life.

Romans 6, 1 and 2, Paul gets pretty hard on this. He says, well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? Now, going back to righteousness. See, he's kind of tagging on to that because he knows that we can't be perfect, and we can't be pure without Jesus. He knows that we're going to fail, and we're going to stumble, and things are going to happen.

But does it mean that we can just take advantage of that? Oh, I'm just going to live like I want to, and I'm going to trust in the grace of God. Guess what? His grace is enough, but we can't go on that way because it can be devastating and destructive for us. And God wants the best for us.

So he says, of course not, since we have died to sin. We're dying to sin. When we give our lives, when we place our trust in Jesus, we die to our sin. Our sin is dying. It's deteriorating.

Isn't that a good thing? It's freedom. It's freedom. Of course not, since we have died to sin. How can we continue to live in it?

How can we continue to live in it if we live in sin? And in Revelation, he's speaking to the church of Laodicea. He says, I know your deeds that you are neither cold nor hot. Meaning you're somewhere in the middle. You're kind of being a Christian, but you're not being a Christian, and you're kind of living.

He says, I wish you were neither one or the other, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold. I will spit you out of my mouth. Man, when I read that, it really tears me up on the inside, doesn't it, Greg Emanizer? Yeah, I see you over there shaking your head. He's getting some of this.

Yeah, amen. I mean, it just, it gets you. So you're like, man, I want to hunger and thirst after God, because He's going to fill me. And I know that He's got hope, and He's got purpose for me. But if we live this life, it just doesn't work.

Lukewarm Christianity doesn't work. We can't benefit from it. We can't gain God's benefits from it. And I'm not here to judge today, but I know that for me, there are some indicators when I begin to fall into the lukewarm category, and I'll just share some of those with you. One of the indicators is if I'm not praying with my family enough, if I start falling back on praying publicly with my family, or if I'm not talking about my faith and the opportunities I get to share with others enough, or if I'm not sharing Bible verses or a spiritual thought with my family, or investing time to serve God, you know, and remember His blessings.

When I start pulling away from those things, you know, coming into behind closed doors again, you know, and around my family, if I find myself pulling back from those things, I begin to fade into lukewarm Christianity. And I'm just a Christian and not a Christ follower. And there's a big difference. Other indications, indicators you are a lukewarm Christian is you don't seek God when making decisions. Do you seek God when you're making decisions?

Perhaps people don't take your walk with God seriously. Maybe they're like, oh yeah, right, you know, when you talk about Jesus, and yeah, they don't take it very seriously. Or you push the limits to sin, maybe. If I just do this much sin or this much sin, I'll be okay. But if I go overboard, then, you know, everything will be all right.

Those are some indicators. But what does work? What does work? Well, here's a statement I want to make. We are not just a Christian family.

We are a Christ-centered family. There's a distinction between Christian family and Christ-centered families. There's a difference in being a Christian family and a Christ-centered family. Christian families tend to compartmentalize God's involvement in a few areas of their life. But a Christ-centered family allows God's involvement in every area of their life.

Not part, but the center. How does that look like? Well, a family that is a Christ-centered home is not just a once-a-month-er or a once-a-week-er with God. You know, we'll go to church on Sunday. We'll do our thing.

But God, I want you to stay over there. In fact, stay out of my business. You know, Jesus, look, I'll bring you in when I'm ready to have you here. But for right now, I don't want any part of you because, you know, I'm talking to my kids right now, and I'm talking to my wife right now. So, why don't you just go over there to the room and sit for a little while?

That's called a Christian family. But a Christ-centered family involves God in their business. It says, God, I want you to be a part of everything I do, every decision I make. 5% of our countries say that they are Christians, but many are not Christ-centered. They're not Christ-centered.

And you can call yourself a Christian, but the question you have to ask yourself, are you a Christ follower? There's a difference between calling yourself a Christian and being a Christ follower. In fact, in the New Testament, there was no word mentioned of Christian until later on. Christian was a tag they gave to Christ followers, to people who, the way, they called it the way. And this movement was making such an impact on the community.

The gospel was moving so radically, and people were being changed, and orphans were being taken in, and widows were being taken care of, and the homeless were no longer homeless, and all these things were happening, and people were, I don't know about this Jesus, but those people have something. And then they called them Christians. So, take it back to the roots. Are you a Christ follower? It's one thing to call yourself a Christian, but are you a Christ follower?

You can call yourself a duck, but if you don't quack, if you don't lay eggs, you're not a duck. Right? Psalm 63-1 says, You, God, are my God. Earnestly, I seek you, I thirst for you. My whole being longs for you in a dry and parched land where there is no water.

Let me edit that to the family version here. You, God, are our God. Earnestly, we seek you, we thirst for you, and our whole family longs for you. That's the kind of family we want. But typically, here's what we do.

We say, Oh, popularity. How I long for you. How I thirst for you. I want you. Oh, new car.

How I thirst for you. Leather seats and butt warmers. I mean, how I want you. Right? That's what we're like.

Oh, 70-inch screen TV with the perfect pixels so I can see every little bump on my ball player's face when he's running across the field. How I long and thirst for you, and I want to be with you all day long. Oh, football. Surround me with your presence. Right?

Oh, surfing. You know, we just, I could go on and on. And boy, we know how to just hunger and thirst after those things. Right? And I'm not saying any of those things are bad, anything of themselves.

But when you hunger and thirst and make those your life, you become empty. Oh, social media. How many friend likes can I get today? Oh, look. I got a hundred on my post.

Oh. And we just live on that, you know? And then we wonder why we feel so empty. Why am I empty, Lord? Why?

Why? Because you're hungering and thirsting after wrong things. I know that sounds silly, but this is why we aren't experiencing the greatness and goodness that God has for us. Because we're not hungering and thirsting after him. We're hungering and thirsting after everything else.

Trying to find the greatest, biggest fix. And you can't maintain hype. Right? You have to maintain, you can only maintain by placing your trust and faith and hope in Jesus Christ, who is the righteous one. And he who hunger and thirsts after righteousness will be filled.

So, here's what we need to do. We need to help our family see God as loving, approachable, and involved. Help your family see God as a loving God that loves you. An approachable God that I can talk to and I can have conversations with. And one that is involved in every part of our lives.

So, here's just a few things that you can take with you today to help you cultivate a family environment in which God is a loving and approachable, involved, and is a Christ-centered part of your life. First of all, you can involve God in your daily conversations. Involve God in your daily conversations. Talk about God with your kids. Talk about the blessings, you know, when they're, when you're feeding them or you're buying, you know, they have a new toy or whatever.

Oh, look at my new toy, Dad. Well, did God just bless you with that? Isn't that amazing? Dad, when we're running around the yard, look, God blessed us with the beauty of nature. Max and I were up on a hill the other day and we looked at the stars in the sky.

He has this app on his iPad where you can actually see the planets, you know. It's pretty cool. You see the planets there and you can see the constellations and, and we're just staring and looking. And, and I'm saying, isn't it beautiful? You know, God created all of this.

God was responsible for all of this. He spoke and all of this happened. And he's asking me questions. Spoke? What are you talking?

And I have to explain that to him, you know, like what, you know, the Bible says about that. But it's good to have them talk about God in our conversations, in our everyday conversations, fit him in. And Savannah prays for everything at the table because we encourage prayer, right? And we celebrate prayer when she's praying and she's giving God things, no matter how long it goes, no matter if she's praying for the forks and the spoons and the knives. We're, we're, we're, we're praying for those.

And we're, we're, we're supporting that and we're rejoicing in that. Psalm 71 15 says, I will tell of your goodness. This is what Paul, David said. I will tell of your goodness all day long. I speak of your salvation.

Though it is more than I can even understand. I can't even understand all the goodness you are. I can't understand what's going on around me. I can't understand why this is happening in that sense. But I can speak of your goodness.

I share your goodness and I celebrate your goodness. And number two, make church non-negotiable in your family. Make church non-negotiable. Make it a part of your life. Do this together.

This is what we do together. A great testimony, my, my personal testimony is I'm where I am today because that was, that was non-negotiable, you know, if I was going to stay home. My friends were going out to, we'd go out to, to concerts the night before. And I was a big music guy, you know, I would follow all the bands and stuff. If I was out two o'clock in the morning, I came home.

I was getting up, you know, on a Saturday night, I was getting up and going to church. It didn't matter. And that never, never was an argument. Never was a question. And, and I thank my parents for making that a part of our lives.

And, and, you know, Hebrews 10, 24 and 25 says this. And let us consider how we spur one another towards love and good deeds. See, it's important that we're together. This is good that we're together, guys. We spur each other along.

We help each other. We nudge each other. We're like a ball team that pushes each other. And, and we support each other. And we go out and do things and we do good and we, we encourage each other with doing good.

We, we look through scripture. We study together. I'm sharing with you some of these things I'm learning. And I want to share with you. And we share them together.

And we learn together. And we're, and, and we're spurring each other along with good. Not giving up the meeting together as some of you are in the habit of doing according to scripture. But encouraging one another. And all the more as you see the day approaching.

Talking about the day of Jesus when we're in his glorious presence one day. So, we're a team. It's a good thing that we are together. Let's encourage our families and our friends and all of us to come together. To come together.

Make it a part of your life as a family. My kids love church. They just love it. Sometimes they wake up on Monday morning and say, is it church tomorrow? And that's a good thing.

I appreciate our salt kids and everything they're doing. Tim and Christy. They're just really, really pouring into these kids life. And they're, they're, they're, they're really excited about coming to church. And, and we work really, really, really hard to do something good for your kids.

To do something well for your kids. We work really hard. I mean, we're meeting every week trying to figure out where rights and wrongs. How to do it better. How to make these kids excited about their faith.

And where they're going. And, and, and so bring your kids and let them be a part of it. Because we. Want them to be a part of it because we know the life change that takes place when they're in an environment like this, when they're together, when we're together. They love, love it.

So, don't make that an option. Come together. Worship together. And thirdly, show them, and lastly, show them the joy of seeking and serving God, that it's a joy. It's not a burden to serve and seek.

God's Psalm 100 says this, make a joyful noise unto the Lord all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness. I want to serve the Lord with gladness. Come into His presence with singing, you know. We celebrate and sing with gladness.

And we got this thing called quiet time that's kind of a part of our culture. And that's a good thing, you know, getting along with God, going through your devotionals, reading the Word of God, kind of building yourself up in the Lord and the Lord building you up. But God called us for more than that. He called us to go. He called us to be instruments.

He called us not to just sit and bask in the glory, which there's, that's beautiful, that's wonderful. In fact, we do messages about basking in God's glory and being encouraged by being alone with Him. Sometimes I have to get along with Him out in the woods or out on a surf, you know, just just by myself, nobody else around, and I'm out in the water or I'm out in the woods camping and I'm just alone with God and He's feeding me. But why do I do that? Because for His glory, I want to follow His commission to reach His world, the world He loves so much that He gave His life for.

And when we get together as families and we come together as a church, we have a great time serving. Man, the Java Surf we did this past September. It was so much fun. We had the Harris's and the Curtis's, all you guys out there, and y'all were serving and having a great time. And then the Rubles came at the end and they were, they had all their family there.

They were helping clean up. It was just a good time together. And everybody here in between that was there, it was just a good time, good time serving the Lord. It's just, just show your kids that it can be fun serving. We've got the Steel Pier Classic coming up in a couple of weeks, and we have an opportunity for you to hang out at the beach and serve, right?

What better, I mean, you're blessed to even be next, you know, live so close to the beach where you can go out there and actually serve. And they're asking for help to set up, break down, and we're putting a tent up, and you can go out there and just hang out and put your toes in the sand and talk to people and just serve people, give out some things, and there's a lot of cool things we do together. It can be fun. Serving God is fun. Serving God can be fun.

It shouldn't be a burden. It should be fun. We make it a burden because we are missing out on God's goodness. Going out and helping the homeless, going out and helping different ministries in our community, feeding people, helping children, serving in those areas, serving somebody in our church that might have a need, and taking them a meal. All these things that we do as a group, serving in small groups, leading a small group.

We have small groups in June that are reopened. We're on break right now. But serving a small group is a part of serving and having fun. And guess what? You can take an idea and run with it.

That's the cool thing about our small groups. You can have an exercise group. You can have whatever group you want. Let's just meet at the beach and surf. We have those going on too.

And you can be a part of that and have a great time. Serving God can be fun. And you can go out and evangelize together and tell people about Jesus. And you don't even have to thump the Bible because you love each other so much. People just want to be a part of who you are.

Right? And what you're doing. People want to be a part of the Christ community. So serving can be fun. In conclusion, we want to be people who hunger and thirst after righteousness.

Then choose for yourself this day whom you will serve. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord. I want you to make that commitment today. As Joshua said, this day we choose who to serve. And I'm making a statement today that in my household, we are going to serve the Lord.

We are not a Christian family. We are just a Christian family. We are a Christ-centered family. We all want to be filled. And God gives us the opportunity to be satisfied, to be strengthened, complete.

And the thing about it is when you find Him, you can't get rid of Him. You can try. You can try to lose your faith. You can try to run from Him. But once you grab hold of Him, He is so complete.

And He fills you with hunger and thirst after His righteousness. The righteous Lord, you will be filled. Let me pray for you today. God, I pray for the families represented in this building on this Mother's Day. I know there are many struggles, there are many difficulties.

There are ups and downs, there are valleys, there are mountains. Some people are in mountains, some people are in valleys today. There's all kinds of things going on, Lord, in people's lives. But one thing that we can be constant on is your righteousness. And that we can lean on you, God, who are the righteous, righteous one.

And we can be complete. So as we reach for you today, God, strengthen us. Make us families. Make us Christian, Christ-centered families. Not just Christian families, but Christ-centered families.

Christ-centered families. With all heads bowed and all eyes closed, continuing with that same spirit. If there's one here today that has not committed their life to Jesus. Maybe you know about Jesus. Maybe you even walked with Jesus at one time and you fell away.

Maybe because of the legalism that was involved or the do's and don'ts that you could never meet. Today I want to tell you, you have an opportunity to receive Jesus today. You can make that commitment. You can say, Lord, I'm all in. And some of you have been struck.

Some of you have been pulled. Some of you, you're like, what's going on here? What's this tugging at my heart towards this? That's called the Holy Spirit. He's leading you to Christ.

He's leading you to Jesus. And today you can make that decision. If that's you today, if you're ready to make that decision, I'm not going to embarrass you. I'm not going to make you come up to the front. But if you would just gently lift your hand and say, Lord, is that you today?

I'm ready to do this. I'm giving my life. I'm giving my heart to Christ today. I'm ready to start walking. Any others?

This is it. This is it. Make that decision. Pray this with me. Whether you raised your hand or you didn't, just, just, just, just, he wants to fill you.

He wants to fill you with his love and his completeness. Father, I believe that you are the son of God and you died on the cross for my sin. Today I make a decision for you to walk with you. Come into my heart. Come into my life.

Fill me with your goodness. Fill me with your gladness. I walk with you. In this day, Lord. In Jesus' name.