Would you turn in your Bibles to 2 Corinthians 5? Children, I believe they're gathering for children's worship. Those who are ages 3 through kindergarten would like to be back for that. And for the rest of us who are jealous, because we don't get a go and have Mr. Darrell teach us, so we'll settle for 2 Corinthians 4, I think I said 5, verses 16-18. Therefore we do not lose heart. But though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison. While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. Our Father in Heaven, we lift up our eyes to Heaven, and we call out to You, our God and our King, and we ask that You would give to us the grace that we so desperately need, that You will sustain us as we face the difficulties and the trials and the hardships and the distractions of this world, and grant, O God, that we may live every moment heading home with our hearts set on heaven. We pray for the children in children's worship and plead with You, our Father, that You would please, please, please, O God, work faith within their hearts. And would You change us as we contemplate this passage. In Jesus' name, Amen. I think it was in 1999 that the Arizona Diamondbacks began as a franchise in the Phoenix metro area. And we were there at the time, and one of our elders had season tickets. And he let us go to a game. And so I remember going to the first game at what was then Bank One Ballpark. It was great. It's Bob, Bank One Ballpark. Now it's Chase Field. There's nothing to that, but Bank One Ballpark, it'll always be Bank One Ballpark to me. And I remember going in for the first time, and I remember being so completely overwhelmed. I mean, first off, it's massive. It's just so huge, a stadium, and it's got the roof, you know, that's retractable, that they can open up or close, depending on what the need might be. It was absolutely gorgeous. There are people everywhere. It was packed out. There's all these crowds that were there, and then to see all the vendors, and they're selling all the different stuff, and people with programs, and as we're walking in, and all this is going on, and I realize, We have to find our seats. Where are we going to find the seats? And I've got my two sons who are young at the time, and how do we get to where we need to go? And look at this. It's just amazing. And so we're just walking through overwhelmed. A couple years later in Bank One Ballpark, there was another amazing, overwhelming experience. It was the World Series. It was Game 7. The Diamondbacks were playing the New York Yankees. I mean, the storied New York Yankees is who they're playing against. It's game seven. The game is tied at the bottom of the ninth. There's one out. And Luis Gonzalez steps up to the plate. Imagine that. Imagine he steps up to the plate. And he sees that same massive building that I saw. Only he's seeing it from the middle from the plate and he's looking up at all the crowds and all the lights flash And this is game seven of the world series Everything's going off. He's he's looking around. He's hearing the crowd going crazy He hears his teammates. He looks out at first base second base third base. He sees his players out there It is just incredible and then he gets in his stance and he looks out And there on the pitcher mound is none other than Mariano Rivera, the greatest closer maybe in the history of baseball. And he's right there in that moment. What does he need to do? I'd have been so overwhelmed with all the stuff around. I know he probably said, yeah, I dreamt of that from the time that I was little. Yeah, but to see all this stuff, and you have to cut all of it out, He had to focus on one thing, and that was that ball that was going to be coming at him at about 90-some mile an hour and could be doing weird stuff. And that's what he had to focus on, the ball, just the ball. And sure enough, he hit a little blooper into center field. World Series is won by the Arizona Diamondbacks. It was wonderful to watch. But to think of how overwhelming and how the potential for distraction was so great. It reminds me of life on earth for believers. That as we walk through this land, There's so much going on around us, right? There's so many voices that are talking to us and telling us what we ought to be thinking and what we ought to be doing and the things that are important. There's so many opportunities which are around us. And everything is the greatest opportunity that's ever been. And you can accomplish so much if you do this. But then there are also these tremendous temptations which pull against us to distract us from the path that we need to walk. Could easily be overwhelmed. And let's be honest, this is a good and a pleasant place to be, isn't it? It's wonderful to be alive on this earth. And it can invite us to want to set up our home here and to want to stay here. But we're heading home. And if we're going to be heading home, we have to keep our focus. We have to remain focused on what God has called us to do. In this passage, 2 Corinthians 4, 16-18, we have Paul's testimony. He's sharing with us, this is his experience, and he's telling us that experience. But at the same time, he's also inviting us. And he tells us three things that he focused on. And so there are three things that we need to keep our focus on as well. And the first is that we need to focus on the inside. To focus on the inside. One of the things about covenant theology, covenant theology is just a way of understanding the flow of scripture. And we believe that God's covenant relationship with His people is the same from Genesis through Revelation, and He's entered into that relationship of a covenant that He'll be our God and we will be His people. And yet, we also see that there's a break in time, at the right time, God sent His Son, Jesus. And the covenant before Jesus came had a different emphasis than the covenant after Jesus came. Before Jesus came, the emphasis was on the outside. Remember where the law of God was in the old covenant? The law of God was on tablets of stone outside of man. Do you remember the promise of the new covenant? I will write my law upon your heart. He's going to begin to put it inside us. He's going to begin to bring that change. He's going to work on the inside. And so we need to learn to focus on the inside of us, recognizing that our outer man is decaying. He says in verse 16, therefore, we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying. Notice what he says, he doesn't say that our outer man might possibly decay. He says it's happening right now, your outer man is decaying. Amen? Some of us feel like we're rushing the whole thing. And we see our bodies begin to wear down. I love the phrase from C.S. Lewis that he talks about death as an unstiffening. Right? Wouldn't that be great in heaven? They won't ache, you know? And we'll be able to actually raise our hands above here and without pain, and we'll be... We don't have to strategize before we bend down to tie our shoes, right? We can just handle it. I look forward to that. But right now, our outer man is decaying. Paul wrote about that in verses 8 and 9 of chapter 4, as he said, we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed. Perplexed, but not despairing. Persecuted, but not forsaken. Struck down, but not destroyed. And that reminder that our outer man is decaying, but Our inner man is renewed day by day. So if we're going to focus on the inside, we're going to focus on that. What does that mean? What's that going to look like? I think it means for us that I need to set aside the sinful. And I don't mean that we set aside the sinful in order to somehow, you know, gain God's favor. That's not what we're talking about. I set aside the sinful because I realize the sinful is poison. Do you on a regular basis choose to drink poison? No, why? There's no good for you, right? Of course I wouldn't do that. Well, that's all sin is, you realize. It's just poison. It's just something that's harmful to you. Why would I do that? And as I begin to understand that, I say, well, I want to set that aside. I don't want anything to do it. Of course it's harmful because it's inconsistent with the God who is life, right? And so if it's inconsistent with the God who is life, that means it must be death, right? And pretty much we understand death is not good for us, right? And so we avoid that, and so we've got this change, and so we want to set aside the sinful, because the outer man is decaying. The inner man is being renewed. So I want to set aside that which is decaying. I want to set aside the sinful. I want to choose to remove the self-destructive elements from my life. And he uses the word, he says, the inner man is being renewed. Renewed is a present passive verb. Okay, present tense, and we've talked about it at different times, and there's no quiz on this, but we talk about the present tense means it's a present continuous action. It's happening now and continuing, and it's just kind of ongoing. And so a lot of times we might use almost a participle to say that by renewing is going on. But it's passive, which is interesting. We are being renewed. It isn't that we're mustering up the strength to renew ourselves. But we are being, we are receiving the work of the Holy Spirit in our life, who is indeed renewing us. In Colossians 3, we have this idea spelled out for us again by Paul, as he says in verses 9 and 10. He says, Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices. Notice, this is in keeping with the idea of laying aside the sinful. And having put on the new self, who is what? Being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the one who created him. That we are being renewed. That it's something that's happening in us. The Westminster Shorter Catechism, question number 35, it talks about sanctification. And that's really the concept that we're talking about here is sanctification. And it answers what is sanctification by saying, sanctification is the work of God's free grace. First of all, notice that it says it's the work of God's free grace. When it talks about justification, justification is the act of God's free grace. What's the difference? Justification is a point in time in which it happens and it's complete. Sanctification is an ongoing work. And so it keeps growing, it keeps happening. And it's a work of God's free grace whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God. Now there's an element in which if I were writing the confession, I'd have been tempted to stop right there. Yeah, that's what it is in which we're being renewed. But the divines decided, no, no, no, no, no, no, let's not stop there. There's something else that needs to be said and are enabled more and more to die into sin and live into righteousness. Not forced, we're enabled. Because God honors our freedom and He gives us the opportunity to make that choice to say, I am going to choose to die to sin and live to righteousness. I am going to choose to lay aside the sinful. Why? Because I have the Spirit of God inside me and I can. And why would I do that which is death to me? I want to put that aside. To do that, we need to be deliberate. To set aside the sinful, we're gonna have to be deliberate. It isn't gonna just happen. I think sometimes we feel like the Christian life just happens. Have you ever said, well, if you do this, the rest will fall in place, right? And sometimes we think about the Christian life that way. My experience, particularly with cutting down trees, is it never falls into place, ever. no matter what I do to try to establish what the place ought to be. Basically, you've got to almost be a hyper-Calvinist and say, it'll fall where God wants it, and move away. And I think that sometimes the way it happens within the Christian life, it doesn't just fall into place, it has to be a deliberate action. You have to continually make choices. in order to see it come into reality. We have to be deliberate about our sanctification. And that means I've got to start. How am I going to begin to set aside the sinful? I'm going to have to, first of all, begin each day by just turning to God. I can't decide on my own what is sinful and what ought to be done away with, right? I've got to set my heart on God. I have to turn my attention to him and allow him to begin to illuminate me, allow him to show me that which needs to go. Psalm 139, verse one, David prays, O Lord, you have searched me and known me. This psalm of this great meditation of God's interaction with David and God's knowledge of David and God's creation of David and God's work in David's life and God's sanctification of David begins with him recognizing this simple truth. You have known me. And so he turns to God. And then, from that place then, we need to have an honest exaggeration. Oy. Thanks for being so patient with your pastor. An honest evaluation, an examination of our hearts. Honest, because it's really easy to use hyperbole, right? I'm sinful in everything that I've ever done or thought. No, you're not. That's just silliness. That's just an exaggeration to make yourself feel more pious because you think you're more sinful, but you don't even believe it. Not really. Be honest about what my sin is. Don't exaggerate, but also don't self-justify. Allow the reality of the sin to sink in and allow it. It is awful. It's worse than you think. But God can handle it. David does this with verses 23 and 24 when he says, Search me, O God, and know my heart and try me and know my anxious thoughts and see if there be any hurtful way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. And so he turns his attention and begins to actively ask God to do that examination in his life. To show him what is there. And when God shows us, let me ask you parents, if you choose to discipline your child and your child says, why are you disciplining me? How many of you would say, you figure it out. Right? That's just cruel and heartless and awful. If that's cruel and heartless and awful of us as humans, wouldn't it be cruel and awful of God to do that to us? But if we turn our attention and say, God, show me, will He not answer that prayer? Now, He won't show us everything because we'd be overwhelmed. But He'll show us something that He's working on. And when He does, we need to do two things. Simple. Number one, confess it. We can confess it because we don't have to be afraid. Because why? Jesus died for it. We're good. Number two, we need to renounce it. We don't have to worry about renouncing it because we can because the Holy Spirit's inside us. He gives us the power to renounce it. That's what we do. Confess and renounce. That's all. Say, I'm done with this. It is sin and I want to be done with it. And to turn that over to God. To focus on the inside starts with setting aside the sinful. And the second step is to be filled with the Spirit. To be filled with the Spirit. Ephesians 5.18 says, Do not get drunk with wine which is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit. Be filled with the Spirit. This is also a present passive verb in the Greek text, to be filled, but it's an imperative, it's a command. Isn't that kind of fun? To be commanded to have something done to you. Right? Be filled. I do like the transliteration that John MacArthur offers to really capture the concept. He's saying, to be being kept filled. Yeah, yeah. That's a very good description of what this word means. To be being kept filled by the Spirit. Now, to be filled by the Spirit is different than being indwelt by the Spirit. to be indwelt by the Spirit. That happens when someone trusts in Jesus Christ. As soon as you become a believer, the Holy Spirit dwells inside you. And he is actually, technically, he does that a little bit before you even believe because it's him who gives you the belief that you're able to have. And so we have him working in us, he regenerates us, but he's inside us and he dwells in us, he's always there. To be filled with the Spirit means that I'm going to relinquish control of my life to him. It's a moment-by-moment choice to relinquish control to Him. That's what it is to be filled with the Spirit. If you look at verse 19 of Ephesians 5, he says, "...be filled with the Spirit," and he goes on to say, "...speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord." And if you compare that with Colossians 3.16, Notice the connection here and the similarity. Let the Word of Christ richly dwell within you with all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your heart to God. Do you notice it? To be filled with the Spirit produces the same thing that letting the Word of Christ richly dwell within you produces. What does that tell us? Same thing. They're the same thing. How am I going to be filled with the Spirit? By letting the Word of God richly dwell within me. By taking the time to consistently think the Word of God. To be meditating upon the Scriptures. To allow it to transform my life. Not just that, oh, I can now quote Scripture, but I'm going to live Scripture. Do you remember those bracelets that I think it was like 73% of all Christians had to wear at one point? The WWJD bracelets, right? Maybe didn't have to, but we had them. And the idea was that I want to, before I make any decision, I want to ask the question, what would Jesus do? Well, isn't that what being filled with the Spirit is all about? What if we changed it to, what does the Spirit want? You WW that, whatever in the world that would be, but what does the Holy Spirit want? Because isn't that what I'm doing if I'm relinquishing control? That as I begin to face a decision, as I begin to face a temptation, I begin to face an opportunity, what does the Spirit want? And I'm going to do that. And that's that relinquishing of control, that it's not about me determining, it's about me trusting in what God wants to do. First, focus on the inside. Second, focus on the eternal. Look at verse 17. He says, for momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison. We are spending this year on the theme, Heading Home. And it isn't just that I want to have some cutesy little series on heaven. That's not the point. The point is, I recognize that as we live in this world, it's easy to get addicted to this world. I don't have it in my notes, so I'm going to try to remember. It's a line from Rich Mullen's song, Land of My Sojourn. He says, nobody tells you when you get born here how much you'll come to love it and how you'll never belong here. So I'll call you my country, but I'll be longing for my home. That is such a true expression of a Christian. It's just a beautiful reality that we live in that place. But this world is so nice. They didn't tell us we're going to love it so much. And we love it so much that we can get sidetracked. And we begin to live for here instead of living for heaven. We can lose our focus because we begin to focus on the temporal. That's not surprising, is it? I remember years ago in the 80s, Robin and I were leading a small group of college students and we went through the life of Jesus. And we were all struck by how many times Jesus had to say to the disciples, O ye of little faith, because they were focused on the temporal and not the eternal. I want to show you just three examples of that for us to just recognize that we're not alone in this. We're in really, really good company when we struggle with focusing on the temporal instead of the eternal. In Matthew chapter 16 and verse 6, and Jesus said to them, Watch out and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. They began to discuss this among themselves, saying, He said that because we didn't bring any bread. Can you see Jesus? Oy. And he had to sigh. I just believe he had to sigh as he began to respond to them. It's like, they're so focused on the temporal. And so Jesus says in verse eight, but Jesus aware of this said, you men of little faith, why do you discuss among yourselves that you have no bread? Right? And it's like, I kind of resemble them in my own life. But they wrestled with that. But that's not the only time. The next one that I want you to look at is in Matthew 8, verses 23-26. When He got into the boat, His disciples followed Him, and behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being covered with waves. But Jesus Himself was asleep. And they came to him and woke him saying, save us, Lord, we're perishing. And he said to them, why are you afraid? I get it with the bread and the leaven, right? I'm able to stand next to Jesus and say, yeah, you guys, you don't get it. Here, I'm almost standing over with the disciples saying, Jesus, that's a dumb question. That seems obvious, right? And all of a sudden we begin to see that, well wait a minute, of course they're afraid, they're about to die! What does Jesus say? He goes on to point out, you men of little faith, Then He got up and rebuked the winds and the sea, and it became perfectly calm. We tend to be a little bit practical. We tend to not have faith. We tend to not believe God really is interested in changing our environment and our circumstances, right? But He just might. It's one of the things that I really love in that Even If song that you guys did for the offertory. He could. Isn't that what the three Hebrew children told Nebuchadnezzar? Right? Oh, King, live forever. Our God can save us. Right? We don't sweat that. But even if, He doesn't. But we need to remember that. That He is able. to rescue. And then the last one that I want to look at is from Luke chapter 10 and verse 20. And I think this is where Jesus really presses this concept to us. Remember the scene Jesus has sent out the disciples. I think the 70 went around and he gave them power to even rebuke unclean spirits and cast them out of people. OK, and the disciples come back and what they say to Jesus, they're amazed at that. And Jesus says, Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are recorded in heaven. They were experiencing something just absolutely astounding. That angelic enemies were subject to them. They could command a demon and it had to obey. And they were going, this is so awesome! But Jesus remembered something of greater significance that He had told them at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 7, verse 22, when He said to them, Many will say to Me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles? and then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness." You see, Jesus understood something. That if your name is not written in heaven, but you have power to cast out demons, from the eternal scope, it means nothing. But from an eternal perspective, if you have no power over the demons, but your name is written in heaven, everything is good. What really matters, He lifted their eyes to look at the eternal. And Paul does exactly the same thing in verse 17, as he says, for momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory. He's telling us that we can endure trials. To endure trials. He talks about momentary, light afflictions. He calls the afflictions momentary and light. What afflictions is He talking about? You know, He tells us what afflictions He's talking about. He gives a list in 2 Corinthians 11, verse 23. He says, Are they servants of Christ? I speak as if insane. I more so. and far more labors, and far more imprisonments. Think about that for just a moment. How many imprisonments would affect you? Right? Right? One is more than I really want to be. But he's had far more. Far more imprisonments. Beaten times without number. He lost count of how many times he was beaten. Often in danger of death. Five times I received from the Jews 39 lashes. Imagine being tied up and whipped 39 times. And that happens to you on five separate occasions. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. A night and a day I have spent in the deep." Imagine that. A night and a day in which you're floating on debris in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. Hoping for rescue. Because your ship has sunk. I have been on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers on the sea, dangers among false brethren. I've been in labor and hardship through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure, apart from such external things. He says all that is amazing, but there's something even more. There is the daily pressure on me of concern for all the churches." And what does he say about all that? It's momentary light. Momentary light afflictions. He looks at it from a different perspective because I believe that he knew that trials would come. He's not surprised. We act as though a trial in our life is some shocking thing. How could it ever be that something bad would happen in my life? Well, didn't Jesus say bad things would happen? Didn't He tell us that? Even as He gave the parable of the soils in Matthew 13, verses 20 and 21, as He was telling us that the soils, He says, the one on whom the seed is sown on the rocky places, this is the man who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no firm root in himself, but is only temporary. And when affliction or persecution arises, because of the Word, it immediately falls away. He talks about when there's affliction coming and our faith isn't strong, when our faith is temporary, what happens when we face that hardship? When we're focused upon the temporal and not on the eternal, what happens when the hardship comes? Our faith withers. But when we're focused upon the eternal, we're able to endure it. We're able to, with James, consider it pure joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith, what? Produces endurance. That the afflictions are actually beneficial for us. Paul was aware of that reality. He recognized the benefit of the afflictions. He wrote about it in Romans 5. Verses 3-5 where he says, And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance. Perseverance, proven character. Proven character, hope. And hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. He saw the benefit of the trials in his life. There was a meme on Facebook recently. Did I credit that properly? Yeah, I think it was Laura. Usually if there's a meme, I'm looking to Laura. And usually for puns, they're glorious. But this one was just incredibly brilliant. It said, enjoy the snow. Because if you don't, you'll have less joy, but the same amount of snow. But isn't that deeply profound? Consider it pure joy when you encounter various trials, because if you don't, you'll have less joy, but the same amount of trials. But God is producing something with those trials in our life. So let's await the glory. He says, it is producing for us an eternal weight of glory. Do you hate waiting? I remember years ago, I was at a stoplight in Mesa, and I said to my family in the car, I said, oh, I hate waiting. And they laughed at me. And Patrick, I think, who had learned the word epiphany, said, is that an epiphany ad? Well, it is to me, but apparently not to anyone else in my family. They knew I hated waiting, but for me, it was this life-changing event to learn this about myself. Clearly not very clever at looking at myself. But we don't like to wait. I want it now. I want it now. But he says it's for us in the future. He calls it an eternal weight of glory. I was meditating on that this week, and I was thinking that the Hebrew word for glory is kabod, and it means heavy. And I wonder if Paul was doing somewhat of a play on words. An eternal weight of heavy, an eternal weight of glory. That's what he's producing in us through these momentary and light afflictions. He's producing something that lasts forever. Need to focus on the inside. Need to focus on the eternal. Need to focus on the unseen. Look at verse 18. While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. He's juxtaposing our sight and really our faith. In chapter 5 verse 7, he tells us that we walk by faith, not by sight. Now we have a saying that is, seeing is believing, right? I think technically speaking from the Bible's perspective, seeing is not believing. That I'm no longer believing when I see, but when I believe it's because I don't see, and yet I still believe. So to begin to have that mindset that I'm going to focus on that which I cannot see. Consider reality for just a moment. We have a tendency to live as though what we sense is what is real. Okay? This is real, right? We see the people around us, they're real. And we begin to think about the things that we can't sense. And we wouldn't want to say it's not real, but yet that's kind of how we live our lives. For instance, think about what is real. The power of prayer. to deliver us from hardship or money? Which is real? Which is real? The demonic forces that want to wreak havoc of our souls or the murderer who might want to take our life? The fact is we spend an awful lot of time ordering our lives around the belief that it is money and the murderer that are real. We spend an awful lot of our effort and our time trying to be sure that we're kept secure by our money. We make sure that we're going to be kept secure from the robber who might attack us. And we spend much, much, much less time protecting our soul from the evil one who wants to devour us. What if we focus on what is unseen? And we treat the unseen as real? Remember the event in 2 Kings 6 where Elisha is with his servant and they are being threatened and he prays. In verse 17 he says, Notice he did not pray, O Lord, provide an angelic host to protect us. He just said, pray that his eyes may see. And the Lord opened the servant's eyes and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around him. They were already there. They were just as real as the king who was out to kill Elisha. Just as real. Not more real. Just as real. They were just unseen. Elisha was focused on the unseen. His servant was focused on the seen. to make that shift so that we're focusing on the unseen. A couple applications of that, just a couple unseen things that I want to say and have you think about, and the first is that the Spirit is in you. You can't always see that, can you? Not firsthand. It's kind of like the wind. You can't really see the wind, but you see what the wind does. And the Spirit is like that. And He's in you. What is He doing in you? He's working faith in you. He's also working powerfully in you. That the power that is in you is more than you can ask or imagine. And He's also working God's love in you. But you know the Spirit is also in others. He's at work around us. Sometimes He's enlightening the heart of the non-believer and we don't even know it. Sometimes He's using the words that you speak or the life that you live or the love that you show to light a flame inside that unbeliever's heart that they might begin to respond to the Gospel and trust in Jesus Christ. Maybe He's doing that to you even now, and if so, I would invite you to put your trust in Jesus today. Believe that He's died for your sins. He's also at work in that other Christian with whom you disagree, with whom you're tempted to treat as a heretic. But it's the Spirit who's at work in his life too. I remember this powerful lesson that I learned, believing in the sovereignty of God and His work in my life, and then watching my dream shattered, that my dream was to join with Robin's brother and to plant a church together. But God and His providence led Robin's brother to become a Reformed Baptist, and He led me to become a Reformed Presbyterian. And we knew that there were no Presby-Baptist churches. So we were Baptiterian? I don't know how you'd call that. But anyway, I'd want top billing, so I went the Presby up front. Which is a part of the whole problem with this whole Mass that we've got. But God sovereignly took Bart a different path than He took me. And God was just as much at work in opening up His heart to understand the Word of God the way that He does as He was at work in mine. And I've got to trust that to be true as I deal with other Christians. That the Holy Spirit, I can't see it, right? But I've got to believe it. And it sure helps me treat people who disagree with me not as bad. They just disagree. And finally, what lasts? I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on this. Jeff Robinson was a man who, I think, was protecting my wife. He was a part of the Navigator Group in Colorado, and he knew I was chasing Robin, and I professed faith in Christ. And I think Jeff was pretty sure, yeah, he's doing it just to get Robin. I've got to protect her, so I'm going to disciple him. I thank God for Jeff Robinson. I thank God for the love that he had for Robin. I thank God for the love that he showed me. And one of the things that Jeff said to me, he said, Vince, invest in things that last. And there are only two things that last. The Word of God and the souls of men. None. What lasts? The Word of God. I'm going to hide His Word in my heart because it lasts. What lasts? The souls of men. I'm going to invest in souls. And seeing people come to trust in Jesus and seeing people grow in that faith. So, notice we have to pull the blinds down. The sun's shining. Yay! You know what that means, don't you? Golf. Yeah, it's coming. It's coming. And the doctor told me I need to do more of that. So I've got to obey him. It's just, you know, it's not up to me, you know, doctor's orders. And when I golf, I have to focus on three things when I'm about to swing. And that is, my thoughts are, first of all, keep my head down, because I have a tendency to whiff and to go right up over the ball, and so I lift up my head, so I've got to keep my head down. So that's number one. Number two is I need to keep my left arm straight, because if my left elbow isn't straight, I bend it, and then I end up with this slice that almost takes it around behind me. It's just awful. And the third thing is, swing the club, don't hit the ball. So it's all about swinging the club and let the club hit the ball. If I try to hit that ball, I'm going to try to make a mess. And so this is for anybody who wants to be a really poor golfer. These are the three things I focus on so you can be like me. Talk to someone who's good at golf and they can tell you the things they need to focus on. But for me, just to be okay, this is what I focus on, these three things. Paul tells us that as we're walking through this world with all of its distractions, with the overwhelming opportunities left and right, there are three things that we need to focus on. We need to focus on the inside. We need to focus on the eternal. And we need to focus on the unseen. And in so doing, we're able to stay on that path walking toward the celestial city as we head home. Let's pray. Father in heaven, you're so good to us. You love us so much. You sent your spirit who works in our hearts, and Lord, you gave us your word. Thank you. God, I pray that you help us to keep heading home, to make heaven our hope and our home, to keep focused on that which matters. And would you do this for Jesus' sake? Amen.