The A-plus life, the A-plus life to the full. Do you have it? Do you even know what it is I'm talking about? Don't you want it? And I can assure you Jesus wants it for you. He said, I came to give you life and life to the full. What is the A-plus life and how do we receive it? How do we live it out? And part of that is where we started last week and we're continuing this week and even next week. We call it bumping the trajectory, bumping the trajectory of our lives so that we end up on a higher plane. We're going deeper into the kingdom. Jesus is becoming more and more the Lord of our lives. That's what we're going to talk about today. Hi, I'm Sam Hunter. This is 721 Live, the media arm of 721 Ministries. Thank you for joining us. I'm glad that you're with us. And I know this is going to be a help for you because I'm living it out myself. I am pressing myself, looking in the mirror and saying, Sam, don't you want to bump your trajectory? Don't you want to go deeper into the kingdom? Don't you want to know Jesus better? So last, in our last episode, I started off with this. C.S. Lewis said, Jesus said he's God. He said, I'm the son of God. Now he's either who he said he is, or he's a liar, or he's a lunatic. And I've never met anyone who thinks he's a liar or a lunatic. By default, logically, it is He is who He said He is. That's what changed my life back in June of 1995, suddenly realizing, whoa, I've missed that. Jesus, I mean, I've been to church all my life, but Jesus really was God, is God, and really did walk on this earth. And I remember thinking, I gotta change my life. And my second thought was, I have to read everything that He said. I wanna know everything about Him because He is, He is Lord. Well, then I also referenced J.R.R. Tolkien, one of C.S. Lewis's best friends, who said, okay, he's either not important or he's of ultimate importance, but he cannot be just kind of important. If he's Lord, if he's who he said he is, doesn't that make sense? Isn't that logical? He's either not important or of ultimate importance, but there's no way we can say he's kind of important. And if we really think about it, he probably is just kind of important. He's not of ultimate importance. And then Jesus caps it off in Luke 6 by saying, why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do what I say? Why do you call me Lord, Lord? Why do you say I'm the Son of God? Why do you say that I'm God incarnate? Why do you say that I'm the Messiah, the Savior of the world? But you don't listen to me, and you don't do what I want you to do. How would we answer that question? How would you answer that question? And we could give a lot of excuses. We're busy. We're distracted. All these are true. Most of those distractions we invite into our own lives ourselves, but we're distracted. We're busy. We've got a lot of things going on. Have you seen my life? Have you seen my children's schedule? Have you looked at the way my job and everything that I'm involved in? We could say all those things, but the bottom line, why do we call him Lord, Lord and not do what he says? Because he's not our Lord. Isn't that true? He's kind important. He's not our Lord. And the more he becomes the Lord of your life, the more he becomes where your North Star is, where your perspective is, that I want him to be in charge of my life, the deeper you go in the kingdom. And let me assure you, if you have any doubt, it is the life that is truly life. And that's what he wants for you. So we're talking about bumping the trajectory, going deeper. And that's where we started. And that's what we're going to talk about again today. How do we bump the trajectory? Now, I have a poster that I want to go to now. And I want you to take a look at this. And if you just listen to this on audio, I'll describe it to you. It's a beach scene. And we've got some folks that are laying on the beach. I guess they're laying out in the sun. They're sound asleep. They're under the umbrella. They're not doing anything. Then next to them, we've got a man who's throwing the frisbee. Next to him, we've got a man who stepped into the water, maybe just waist deep. Beyond that man, we've got another man who is body surfing. Beyond him is a man who's out swimming beyond the surf. Beyond him, we've got a man in a boat who's gone out even further. Next to him is a man who jumped out of the boat. He's snorkeling. And I remember the first time I snorkeled, I saw men, I saw people scuba diving. I said, I want to do that because they can stay down longer and see more. So I got certified. So the next one is we have a man scuba diving, but he's just, he's just what we call reef diving. It's shallow water. It's easy to do, but it's colorful and it's fun. And then the last character is down deep on a wreck. He's wreck diving and that takes a lot more effort. Now, the reason I put this up there and the reason I'm describing it to you is you're somewhere on this graphic. You're somewhere on this poster. You're maybe laying down asleep. You might have just gotten up. You may have stepped into the water. Each person is going a little bit deeper into the kingdom. And here's what I want you to think about. Where are you, and perhaps you went a little deeper, and then you've backed up, you've plateaued, you're not really plateauing, you're dropping off. We don't drift into holiness, we drift out of holiness. We don't drift into excellence, we all know that. But the real interesting thing is to think about what each one of these men that have moved a little further is saying to the person back behind them. The man who is out here body surfing, he's saying to the man who's just standing in the water, what's he saying? Come on. Come on and try this. You'll love this. This is fun. You don't know what you're missing. Come on, this is great. This is what the man in the frisbee, he's saying, get up, throw the frisbee with me. Each one that goes out deeper is saying to the one behind him, you don't know what you're missing. I want you to come experience this. As we move along we come back and we go well What are the people who are behind these other folks saying to them when they say come on go deeper with me? What are they saying? They just think about this because these are the excuses that we give You might be given this excuse without even knowing it yourself Well That's for you, that's not for me. I'm fine where I am. You're kind of a fanatic, that's okay. I remember if I'm certified to scuba dive, which I am, and I'm just diving in 30 feet of water on nice reef dives at a resort diving, sort of, and I see somebody who's going out there and gearing up and going down to dive on a wreck deeper in the ocean, I'm going, well, you're kind of a fanatic. You know, I'm fine here. But I don't know what I'm missing. So each one of these is saying, you go ahead, I'm okay like I am, I'm comfortable where I am, I'm okay. But the worst thing any of them could say is, I'll do that later. I'll get to it later. Because you won't. So now is the time to bump the trajectory. That's why we're going through this exercise. Now each one of these men who has gone a little further, they're saying one succinct thing back to the others. One thing, and that one thing is, there's more. There's more. And no matter where we are in our journey with Jesus, there's more. And no matter how long you've been, I've been with him 30 years now, there's more. Every day I see there's more. And as a matter of fact, if you don't mind, I'll take a moment just to plug our latest book. The name of the book is There's More. There's More, you know it, come and find it. It's a series of short essays on Jesus's life to the full. You can get this at Amazon, you can get it, we have it on our own website, puttinggreenblog.com, we'll put that up there on the screen for you, puttinggreenblog.com, but there's more by Sam Hunter. We're getting great feedback on it because it's a series of one, two, three page essays that you can read in a little snippet and I know it's gonna be beneficial, so I encourage you, go and pick this book up. Okay, The A Plus Life. Isaac of Stella, who was some monk back in the 11, 1200s, he said this, and I've memorized this because it is so, it just represents what life to the full looks like. It represents what it looks like when you're really living out Jesus as Lord of your life more and more, because it is a process, but more and more. May the Son of God, who is in you, who is already formed in you, grow in you, so that in you He may become immeasurable, and that for you He may become laughter, exultation, the fullness of joy that no one can take away from you. May the Son of God, who is already formed in you, grow in you, so that In you, he may become immeasurable. Think about that, immeasurable. And that for you, he may become laughter, exultation, the fullness of joy that no one can take away from you. That is the A plus life. It's not a prosperity gospel. It's everything you would want to be filled to the measure of all of his fullness. And that's what we want. That's the life to the full. How do we get it? Let's go to the next slide. And again, if you're listening on audio, I've got on my first picture, I've got a line that is trending downward, trending downward. And the reason that line is not parallel is because, again, as I said earlier, we don't drift, we don't coast into excellence, we don't coast into holiness. We are drifting down if we're not moving up. And so the next one is an upward trajectory, an upward angle, and I hope that you are on that, that you're seeking to go deeper, you're seeking to grow closer to Jesus. So you're moving upward. Little by little, it's a process, I recognize that. The third slide, though, shows the same angle, but then you've bumped your trajectory by doing some of the things we'll talk about today, and now with the same angle, you are so much higher and so much deeper into the kingdom, just by bumping the trajectory. And my dad used to say, you know, son, I watch people's lives and instead of it just being a steady improvement, what you see is that there's this bump. And that's where I got the term. There's this bump in their trajectory. I've seen it. I've seen it in my own grandchildren. I have two little granddaughters. And just six weeks, if I don't see them for six weeks, they're different little people. I've seen it in athletes. I've seen it in business. I've seen it in school. I've seen it in my own life. How do we bump the trajectory? And again, it is a process. Peter said, in 2 Peter, right at the very beginning of his letter, he said, make every effort. Because of all the wonderful things that God has done for you, make every effort to add to your faith goodness. And he goes on a string of things to add. And then he says this, and this is key. For if you possess these things in increasing measure, Just increasing measure. It's a process. It's not overnight. So in the same breath, I want to say it is a process. So don't beat yourself up that you're not further along. But be sure you're moving. And we'll talk in just a moment about some ways to bump our trajectory. Now. We finished our message last week in our episode. We finished with a quick little story about the rabbi and the Roman soldier. The rabbi is stumbling along after a day's work at the temple and he takes the wrong turn, it's overcast, it's getting dark, and suddenly he hears a bellowing voice, who are you, what are you doing here? And he's startled and he's stunned and he stops and he hears it again, who are you, what are you doing here? and he realizes that he's stumbled upon a Roman outpost. So he stands there and he thinks for a minute, and in typical rabbi fashion, he answers a question with a question, just like Jesus used to do. He says, Roman guard, how much do you get paid a day? And the guard says, one denario a day. What is that to you, Jew? And the rabbi pauses and he said, I'll double that if you'll come to my house every morning and ask me those same two questions. Think about that. Every morning when you're walking out to your car to go to work, to take the kids somewhere, to start your day, there's somebody standing at the car door saying, who are you and what are you doing here? The rabbi wanted to be challenged to think deeply each day. how he would answer those questions. So I want you to think about it for a moment. How would you answer those questions? Let's say you're at a cocktail party, or you're at a wedding reception, or some social gathering, and the common question is, what do you do for a living? But let's just imagine someone said, who are you? How would you answer that question? We have an attorney who said when he interviews anyone for his practice, he says, who are you? How would you answer that? Just think about that for a moment. Because if you would answer it as most people would in any kind of a social setting, well, I am a doctor, I'm a lawyer, I'm a banker, I'm a school teacher, I'm a stay-at-home mom, I'm a advertising exec, I'm a broker, I'm a developer, I'm a hunter, I'm a fisherman, I'm, you know, all the answers we would come up with, if that would be your, if that's your mindset, I'm not talking about you would really answer somebody. You know, I'm somewhat of an introvert, believe it or not, and I've grown at this point in my life. I don't really like a lot of chit-chat, small, dumb conversations, meaningless. So you throw that out there, you'd probably shut down the conversation right away. They'll move to the other side of the party. But just think about it. I'm not saying you would answer it that way, although that would be an interesting answer. But how would you answer it in your own mind? Where's your perspective? And here's why I ask that question. Who are you? What are you doing here? The way you answer the first question is going to impact and influence the way you answer the second question. I think of myself as a some type of a business person or Some type of role that I'm living out and it's away from Jesus. This is my automatic thought is secular Then I'm gonna live that out. I'm not what am I doing here? That's what it's gonna look like I've had three friends die this past year. I had three more die the year before I read their obituaries with great interest. Now, I've read other obituaries, not my friends, and they were so shallow. He was a good guy. He had a lot of friends. He was a great fraternity brother. I'm not throwing off on someone's life. I don't want that. I want someone to say he loved Jesus, he loved his wife, he loved his children, he loved his grandchildren, and I'd like for him to say and he loved me. That would be so much better. So if I ask the question, if I answer the question, well, I do this and this and this and this and this for a living, that's going to influence what ultimately I am doing here. But imagine you were to answer that question in this way. I'm a child of God. Let's look at John 1, because this passage, John 1, 12, in John's great prologue to his gospel, yet to all who did receive him, Jesus, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. Now, you answer the question, I am a child of God, and dot, dot, dot, a wretched sinner saved by his grace, by the grace of Jesus, Each answer I'm getting ready to give that comes from that on down, emanates from that, is always going to have a called to. I'm a child of God. I was saved from my sins by grace, and I am called to. You see how that's going to influence what are you doing here? I'm a child of God. I'm called to shine His light to others. If I do nothing more than shine His light to others, I'm called to be ready, as Peter said, to always be prepared to give an answer for the hope, the confident expectation that you have. I'm a child of God. I want others to know Him as He's gifted me to know Him, as a loving Heavenly Father. The next answer might be, I'm a spouse, I'm a husband, I'm a wife, and I am called to. Think about that for a moment. This is how you start, and this is all about your perspective. When you think to yourself, you're gonna spend a lot more time in your own head than you are answering somebody's question. Who are you? What are you doing here? Who are you? I'm a child of God, and I'm a husband, or I'm a wife, and I'm called to love my wife, support her, die to self, submit to her, You know, by the way ladies if you're listening right now, you think it the Bible says wives submit to your husbands It says husbands and wives submit to each other out of your reverence for Jesus One little interesting thing. I'll tell you that that you know it nowhere in the Bible or is a man come is a woman Excuse me nowhere in the Bible is a woman commanded to love her husband And the only thing we can gather from that is women are better at loving than men. Men are commanded to love their wives, but women are commanded to respect their husbands, which is their primary love language, to be respected. But isn't that interesting? So I am a husband, I'm a wife, and I'm called to. I'm not just here on my own. You know, one thing real quick, the Jewish men, They wear a kippah on top of their head, yarmulke, whatever you want to call it. And the reason they do that is it reminds them that they are not the authority, that there's someone else over them. And I think that's a great reminder. I'm tempted to wear one myself, to always remind me I'm not in charge here. I have someone ahead of me. I have an authority over me. So I'm a child of God. I'm a husband. I'm a wife. I'm a parent. And I'm called to. I'm called to raise those children in a godly way. I'm called to make sure they're comfortable and confident in their relationship with Jesus as their Savior, but also as their best friend. I'm a parent, father, mother, and I'm called to sacrifice my life for those children. They are first and foremost. Think about how you answer that question. And it automatically answers, what are you doing here? I'm a family leader. You may have brothers and sisters, and you found yourself in a position where people are looking to you to lead them. You may be a business person. You're called to. You may have a lot of friends. You may be involved in a lot of things. You're called to certain things. So the way we think, the way our perspective, whatever that is, is going to influence the next question, what are you doing here? Because if I think this way, I'm called to do certain things. Now the next question, what are you doing here? And I would add, that matters. You know, in Luke 12, Jesus tells the story of the rich fool, who says, what I'm doing here is I'm getting richer and richer. And he says, you fool, you don't have any idea what's gonna happen with your life. You're dying tonight. In Matthew 16, 26, he said, what good is it to gain the whole world, and yet miss what's most important? So what are you doing here that matters? Dwight L. Moody had this great observation, our greatest fear should not be failure, but succeeding at things in life that do not really matter. Oh my goodness, our greatest fear should not be failure, but succeeding at things in life that do not really matter. Can you imagine? You get to the end of your life, or maybe you don't even have to get to the end of your life. You get into a certain point and you look back over your life and go, well, none of that really mattered. It felt good at the time, but I was so blind back then, I didn't see, I didn't know that that wasn't going to matter to me later on. I imagine all of us can look back over our lives and go, well, you know that part, that didn't really matter. It didn't have to have been evil, it just didn't matter. I was very successful as a real estate developer, a subdivision developer when I was young. I was successful at times and not so successful at times. It doesn't matter, but it meant a lot to me back then. That's how I would have answered the question, who are you? I'd have said, I develop subdivisions for a living. I'm a young businessman, I'm a young developer. That would have filled me up. Now I realize I was successful at something that didn't really matter. The next way we'd answer that is when we look at 1 Corinthians 3, and the Holy Spirit through Paul says, if anyone builds on this foundation of Jesus in their lives using gold, silver, costly stones, things that have eternal significance, things that matter, or wood, hay, or straw, things that don't matter, Their work, your life, will be shown for what it is because the day, that's your judgment day, not your mom's, not your dad's, not your pastor's, not your youth pastor's, not your wife's, not your husband's, that's your day because the day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire and the fire will test the quality of each person's work. There's coming a judgment on exactly what you did with your life. It's going to matter to you. Paul goes on to write, if what you've done is burned up in the fire, it goes up in smoke, then you've got nothing. You may still be going to heaven, but there's nothing that goes with you to heaven. Everything you've done mattered not. The next question I ask is, besides what are you doing here is, and who are you doing it with? And we always like to talk about in partnership. We're in partnership with Jesus. We're not doing this alone. Jesus himself said in John 15, his last night with his disciples, I am the vine, you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing. Apart from me, you can do nothing. I've seen a lot of people do a lot of things, but they seem not to really matter in the long run, certainly not to Jesus. So who are you? What are you doing here? Think in terms of that. This would not stop you from going out and running a business or taking on community things. It would not stop you from being very active. It just resets your focus as to what is my primary role and what am I called to do? Who are you? What are you doing here? As we go to finish, I want to talk about a couple of little things that we really can think about by way of bumping our trajectory. But I want to come back to that process because I don't want you to get discouraged. I don't want you to think there's, oh, there's so many things to do. There's really only one thing for you to do next. You know, Jesus said to Martha when she was all upset because Mary was listening to his teaching and she had to get everything ready. I don't blame her. You Martha's out there you you understand that somebody had to get the meal on the table and Martha's the one doing it She gets she gets very frustrated and calls out to Jesus. Will you tell my sister to help me and Jesus said Martha? There's only one thing that really matters and she has found it. There's only one thing So as we move to our next slide and our next topic, and we start to think about what you could actually do to bump your trajectory, let me just say, think in terms of one thing, and if you have a brain that's actually operating right now, and if you have a heart that's open, and you're a thinking person, you're probably thinking of something right now, Jesus has been saying to you that needs to go or I want you to add this to your life You probably are thinking of one thing and if you're listening, you're probably yeah, I know exactly what Sam's talking about Well, I know exactly what Jesus is talking about He's been saying it to me for a long time and I haven't been I haven't done it or I haven't stopped doing it and The reason you haven't is because it's somewhat of an idol to you It's going to be hard to do to add it to your life or to or to take it out of your life That's how we bump the trajectory doing something that is good for us, but it's not easy to do That's how we bump the trajectory. So I'll start with Great a great guy in Hebrews 12 1 let us throw off everything that hinders everything that hinders that could be good But not the best so often good is the enemy of the best Let us throw off everything that hinders the things that are getting in the way and the sin that so easily entangles We'll go to that and we'll talk about that in just a moment. Let's start with what can we start? What can we add to our lives? And I'm just gonna throw a few out. You could add an accountability friend, someone that you talk to about life. We cannot do life alone. And there are things that you would talk to a man or a woman friend, if you're a man, a man, if you're a woman, a woman, that you wouldn't talk to your husband about or your wife about. Or you wouldn't talk to someone you feel safe with, but that you can meet with regularly and talk about life and do life together. Small groups. If you're just going to church on Sundays and you're not engaged in a small group, you're not going to grow. So get involved in a small group. We have our 721 meetings. I wouldn't call them small groups anymore. So it may be that you would go to something that has 15, 20, 50 people in it once a week, but you'd also find a smaller group. Scripture. I've got first reading, and then I have studying, because they're two different things. Right now, I hope you're reading, but if you're not reading every morning, quiet time every morning, I hope you'll start that, reading the scriptures. That'd be the first start, doing a quiet time in the morning, a devotional time. If you're not doing that, you really are not going to be able to move through life and find, get anywhere close to the life that is truly life. So we start with reading, then you might actually, if you're already reading, you might actually start studying it. You might start thinking about what it is that you're actually reading, taking notes, thinking it through. You might even be so bold as to memorize scripture. I always like to raise my hand, I ask people in that group to raise your hand, are you good at memorizing scripture? And nobody raises their hand, and I'll say, well, that's just because you're mentally lazy. You won't give it any effort. You could start with a different way of praying. One of these that's golden is silence and solitude. I challenge the men in our men's groups to wait 30 minutes each morning before they look at their cell phone. Now, I've got a bunch of great men in these 721 groups. These are not lazy, no-count men. And I asked them, who in here will say that their phone is an idol? And every hand went up, including mine. So could we just delay it for 30 minutes before you look at it? By the way, the science will tell you that what it does to your brain when you look at it first thing is not what you want. Maybe even consider fasting. Some of you, if you would start tithing, that'd be a huge bump in your trajectory. starting to honor the Sabbath we've got our own book out matter of fact I'll grab it right here and let the producer get that on the film we've got our own book it's called it lighten up but tighten up it's about learning to live with the Sabbath in a modern-day world these are things you could add to your life there's plenty more but I just giving you some ideas now let's finish with some things we could remove from our lives some things we could stop Idols, addictions, things that have a mastery over me. We just talked about cell phones. Anything that if you can't live without it or it controls you, it's an idol. It may be an addiction. It doesn't have to be a drug addiction. It could be an addiction to coffee. If you're addicted to coffee and you broke that addiction, that would bump your trajectory. You're addicted to fast foods. I have a little addiction to French fries and potato chips. I will admit that. I have an addiction to French fries and potato chips. I'm shutting that down this year. Master, anything's got a master over me. Cell phones, come to terms with what an idle, what a slave master your cell phone is. Perhaps it's lust. I talk with people all the time about their issues with porn. Eating, drinking, smoking, dipping, all of these, these are things you could just take out of your life because you know that anything in excess is not good for you. And some of these things, not even in excess, are bad for you. And I promise you, It would bump your trajectory. We had a friend who loved the Lord, was in great condition, but she smoked a pack or two cigarettes a day. And finally, she realized she had to quit. And her spiritual life took off. Anything that is distracting you, you want to get it out of your life. My friends, bumping the trajectory is about Obeying that voice you're hearing, that one thing, that one thing that you know he's telling you to stop or start. Maybe it's reconciling with someone. It might, it's just any number of things, but I don't even have to go down a long list. Again, if your brain is functioning and you have a soul and you're thinking and your heart's open, you've already heard what it is he's talking to you about. Yeah, he's right. I know exactly what he's talking about. I had a friend who said, Sam, there's 12 things right now popping around in my head. I cannot narrow it down to one. I just looked at him, and a couple minutes later, he said, no, I know. There's one. There's one thing, that one thing that will bump your trajectory. I challenge you to think deeply, to listen, and then respond to it so that you can bump your trajectory. Because, as we said earlier, there's more. You know it. You know it. Come, follow Jesus, and find.