Because I Said I Would

[00:00:00] Hi. Good morning. Welcome. [00:00:03] It is a privilege to be here this morning. [00:00:06] Thank you so much for having me. I'm going to start us off in prayer, so if you would bow your heads, close your eyes. Our beautiful, perfect father. We thank you for the gift of community. We thank you that we are truly better together. Lord, we thank you for this day. [00:00:25] And, Lord, we invite you into the room this morning. Lord, would you do your good work? Would you be here? Would you rest on us? Father, we are. We are open to all that you have planned. And so thank you for today. We love you, we thank you, we trust you. It's in your good son's name I pray. Amen. [00:00:47] So about 15 months ago, my husband and I welcomed in the most beautiful, amazing, perfect baby girl in the whole world. I agree. She deserves a clap. Selah is the coolest baby that I know. I'm sorry if there's other babies in the room right now, you can close your ears. But she is so fun and smart and confident and opinionated, and I just. I really like her a lot. [00:01:19] And after I gave birth, when I was in my postpartum phase, I started feeling really antsy to get back to myself. [00:01:31] When I was pregnant, I started making all of these goals and these lists of things that I was so excited to get back to, and I was finally ready to make decisions for myself again. I was excited to sleep on my stomach again and to eat sushi and go in hot tubs and try out a cold plunge for the first time. And for some reason, I don't really know why, but I really wanted to start running. [00:02:03] I'm not a runner. I ran in middle school a little bit, and I hated it. I hated every part of it. I would hide at the practices when we had to run two miles every day. And the sight of a track still kind of triggers me. It wasn't my favorite. And so for some reason, I wanted to start running when I was pregnant. But you can't start a workout when you're pregnant that you didn't do before, so I had to wait. [00:02:34] And so I would tell myself, once I was cleared postpartum, I would tell myself every day, today's gonna be the day. Today you're gonna go on the run. You're gonna put the shoes on. [00:02:46] Sorry. [00:02:49] You know, I preached on Wednesday at our Columbia Station campus, and the same exact thing happened to me. [00:02:58] I must be cursed or something. [00:03:02] I said, okay, take. Today's gonna be the day you finally go on the run, right? [00:03:07] And I would wake up with the expectation of putting on the shoes. And I would set the alarms and I'd be, you're gonna wake up early, you're gonna go on the run. [00:03:16] And every day I just. I wouldn't do it. I was like, it's not today. It's not gonna be today. Maybe tomorrow. And so fast forward about a year. I still hadn't taken one step in my plan to run, and I hadn't even put my shoes on. I didn't even attempt to follow through with my word. [00:03:37] And then my sister told me she was going to sign up for a turkey trot. This was this past Thanksgiving. And I was like, you know what? I've been wanting to run. I'll do it with you. I will finally hold myself accountable. I'll sign up for the run, and I'll do it with you. And so I had to start running. [00:03:57] So the day finally came where I put the shoes on, I went for the run. [00:04:03] And it was. Each step was the worst step I'd ever taken. I mean, it felt absolutely horrible. I wanted nothing to do with it. I hated every second of it. And I kind of knew that I would. And I had the wrong shoes on. So the next day I was sore. My. I had shin splints, my feet hurt. [00:04:26] But I told myself I was going to run every day. So I went to the store and got new shoes. I went for another run, and it hurt even worse than the first run because I was so sore, my shin splints were, like, splinting all the way up to my shoulders. It was the worst pain that I've experienced probably since childbirth. And each day I decided to wake up and go for a run. [00:04:58] So the next day I woke up and I went for a run, and the next day I woke up and I went for a run. And every day I was strengthening muscles that I hadn't used in 15 years, and I started adding a mile and I started running further. And then on Thanksgiving morning, my sister Taylor, I think we got a picture. My sister Taylor, my friend Anthony and I, we went for the four mile run. And it was great. It was awesome. Me and my sister, our goal was to not walk, and we didn't walk. So that was good. [00:05:31] And Anthony is a much better runner than I, so he would kind of go ahead of us and then jog back and run with us a little bit and go ahead and come back. And he probably ran like five and a half miles that day. [00:05:46] But the only difference between last year telling myself every single day, today's gonna be the day today. You're gonna go on the run, put your shoes on, go for the run. And every day not doing it. [00:05:57] And then this year, finally just being able to do it was. [00:06:02] I made a decision about the kind of character that I want to have, and this was much bigger than the running. [00:06:10] I finally made a decision about the kind of person that I wanted to be. [00:06:16] You know, the title of this morning's message is because I said I would. [00:06:25] And integrity is a character trait that I've always respected the most in people. [00:06:31] It's the trait that attracts me to people the most. When I see it, it makes me want to be better. When I see it, it inspires me. When I see it, I want that in my character. I want to be the kind of person that says does what she said she would do. [00:06:48] And every year, my family chooses a word for the year. [00:06:53] It's a word that we want to think on and we want to cultivate deeper into our character. And it's a word that hopefully will be better at the end of the year than we were at the beginning. [00:07:06] And this year, I wanted to choose the word integrity. [00:07:12] I think that for most of my life, I've been pretty average at integrity. I mostly do what I said I would do for other people. You know, I think that people can mostly count on me. [00:07:28] But the thing that I've struggled with is, is having integrity for me, is doing what I said I would do for myself, the things that nobody even knows that I said I would do. [00:07:45] I think that I've had a history of promising myself these things and knowing in the back of my head, yeah, you're probably not going to do that. [00:07:56] I would make these goals, and I would write out these things, and in the back of my head, I kind of knew that it would be left there on the paper, that it wouldn't really translate to my actions. It wouldn't really translate to my real life. [00:08:11] And so I decided I don't want to be that anymore. [00:08:17] I want to be the kind of woman that can trust her own word. I want to be the kind of woman that does what she said she would do or that doesn't do what she said she wouldn't do. [00:08:30] And I believe that in order to have integrity, you have to have discipline. [00:08:38] In order to be a person that's reliable and accountable and trustworthy, you have to have a history of showing up, of being there, of telling the truth, of being honest. [00:08:54] And discipline upholds our integrity. [00:09:00] If integrity was the home that we're trying to build. If it's the character that we are longing for, I believe that discipline is the foundation. Discipline are the bricks that we stack up. It's the reputation that we make to build the home of integrity, to build the character. [00:09:19] And it doesn't come overnight. [00:09:23] It's not something that happens by accident. It's built day by day by day by day of showing up. [00:09:33] I was listening to a sermon last week, and it was from a pastor named Robert Madhu. And it's someone that I really respect, and I like the way he preaches. And he was talking about integrity. [00:09:47] And he asked this question, and I want to ask it to you this morning. He said, will your current level of discipline sustain the kind of leader you want to be? [00:10:00] Will your current level of discipline sustain the kind of mom you want to be? [00:10:06] Will it sustain the kind of dad you want to be? Will it sustain the kind of friend or student or athlete or employee that you want to be? Will your current level of discipline, your habits, your routine, will that sustain the kind of leader you want to be? [00:10:25] And that brings me to my text for this morning. It is Hebrews 12, starting at verse 1. It says, Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up, and let us run with endurance the race that God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith because of the joy awaiting him. He endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God's throne. This is one of my favorite scriptures in the Bible. It's something that I come back to time and time again. And if those were the only words that I spoke this morning, it would be a much better sermon than I could ever write. And the author of Hebrews is actually responding to the chapter before it, chapter 11, when he's laying out all of these hall of fame of our faith, all of these men and women who came before us, people like Noah and Abraham and Sarah and Isaac. It's. It's these people who endured, these people who God made promises to. And some of them in their lifetime, they never got to see those promises fulfilled. But still they remained. [00:11:54] They were hopeful. [00:11:57] They endured. And we come from a long tradition of those who trusted in God. [00:12:06] But tonight, today, I want to focus on the next part of the chapter, starting at verse 3. [00:12:16] Think of all the hostility he endured from sinful people, then you won't become weary and give up. After all, you have not yet given your lives and your struggle against sin. And have you not forgotten the encouraging words God spoke to you as his children? He said, my child, do not make light of the Lord's discipline and don't give up when he corrects you. [00:12:38] For the Lord disciplines those that he loves and he punishes each one he accepts as his child. [00:12:44] As you endure this divine discipline, remember that God is treating you as his own children. [00:12:50] Who ever heard of a child who was never disciplined by its Father? If God doesn't discipline you as he does all of his children, it means that you are illegitimate and not really his children at all. Since we respected our earthly fathers who disciplined us, shouldn't we submit even more to the discipline of the Father of our spirits and live forever? For our earthly fathers disciplined us for a few years, doing the best that they knew how. But God's discipline, it's always good for us so that we may share in his holiness. No discipline is enjoyable while it's happening. It's painful, but afterward there will be a peaceful harvest of right living to those who are trained. And in this way. So take a new grip with your tired hands and strengthen your weakened knees. Mark out a straight path for your feet so that you who are weak and lame will not fall, but become strong. [00:13:40] Just in this one paragraph, the word discipline is used 10 times. [00:13:47] I mentioned before that I had listened to a sermon by Robert Madhu, and he talked so beautifully and eloquently about Hebrews 12. And in his sermon he argued that discipline is the foundation to becoming the you that you want to be. [00:14:05] That discipline is the foundation to becoming the you that you long to be. [00:14:13] He said that everyday decisions affect our next decisions. And I want to explain that a little bit. So we'll go back to the running situation metaphor. When I started running, I started wanting to eat better. And when I started eating better, I started to have more energy. [00:14:34] And when I had more energy, I started waking up earlier, before everyone else in my house woke up, which made me have really quality, intimate time in the presence of the Lord. [00:14:51] And I started reading longer in my Bible in the mornings and I started studying better and understanding more clearly. You see, one area of discipline will lead to decisions that become better and better and better every step of the way. [00:15:07] And I believe the opposite is also true. [00:15:11] If I decide to sleep in, then then my God time gets cut in half. And if my God time gets cut in half. Then I feel half full all day, which makes me feel short fused with my husband, which makes me feel guilty, which makes me feel less confident, which makes me break my promise of working out or my promise of being patient or to go to bed earlier. You see, it's all a domino effect. [00:15:38] And I think that we have to learn that discipline is falling in love with the private wins. [00:15:46] The wins that nobody else sees. [00:15:51] The moments where you pay off your debt little by little, paycheck by paycheck, seeing such slow progress. [00:15:59] The moments where you stay up late, after the babies are in bed and you get out your workout mat and you work out even though it's the last thing you want to do. [00:16:10] The moments where you get off work late and you have to study all night. [00:16:16] The moments where you hold your kids hands and you pray over them. [00:16:22] The moments where you teach them what a life of faith really looks like. [00:16:28] The mornings before the sun rises when everyone is still asleep and you get on your knees and worship and plead to God. It's the moments that no one else is ever gonna see. [00:16:42] It's when you slowly win the victory over yourself. It's when you slowly win the victory over your excuses. [00:16:51] Abraham Lincoln said the discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most. [00:16:59] I want to look at verse seven. [00:17:01] It says, as you endure this divine discipline, remember that God is treating you as his own children. Who ever heard of a child who was never disciplined by its father? [00:17:14] You see, I think that the author of Hebrews isn't talking about self discipline, he's talking about divine discipline. [00:17:24] I think that sometimes we want God our Savior, we want God our provider, God our comforter, God our protector. And those things are all good, and those things are all true. And he's all of those things. But I think that we don't always want God, our perfect corrective father. [00:17:48] We don't always want him to tell us how to live. [00:17:52] We don't always want him to tell us how to use our money or tell us forgive the person that betrayed us. Or we don't always want him to convict our hearts, to not look at the things that we've gotten so comfortable looking at. [00:18:08] We don't always want him to ask us to apologize first. [00:18:13] We don't always want him to ask us to be the hero in the marriage. [00:18:18] We don't always want his divine discipline. [00:18:24] But the author of Hebrews is, he's actually quoting the book of Proverbs where it says in chapter three, verse 12 that the Lord Disciplines the one he loves. [00:18:37] I believe we have to change our mindset from discipline as punishment to discipline as love. [00:18:47] And I think that we have two definitions of discipline in our head or at least two connotations that we have when we hear the word. I think when we think about self discipline, we think of strength, we think of strong character, we think of integrity, we think of endurance. It has a positive connotation attached to it. But when we think about the discipline of a parent, we might attach that to weakness or embarrassment or punishment, or the times where, you know, we were grounded or the times where we had to ground our kids. [00:19:26] If we came from abusive households, we might think of toxic discipline that came at the hands of an angry parent. We might think of unfair discipline. But that's not what the author of Hebrews is talking about. [00:19:43] You see, a good father disciplines. [00:19:47] How many parents in the room? Can you raise your hand if you're a parent? Wow, that's a lot. Cool. [00:19:52] We don't give our kids everything that they want, right? Like, we have to say no to some things. The other day, I was cooking dinner, and my beautiful baby girl, I was standing in the kitchen, and she was in the living room, and she came running up to me, screaming with delight, holding her arms up, saying, up. It's this new word that she learned. It's maybe my favorite thing that she does. She goes, up, up, up. [00:20:17] And so I picked her up, and she started pointing and reaching for the pan on the stove, and she wanted it. [00:20:26] And if I were to say, yeah, baby, here, you want it. You can have anything that you want. I'll give it to you, that wouldn't be a good parenting move by me. I think everyone in this room would say no to that. [00:20:38] But I think what happens is we ask God for that hot pan, and we reach and we plead and we beg for the thing that he knows is gonna hurt us. [00:20:51] He says, no, you can't have that. [00:20:55] No, you can't go there. [00:20:57] No, you can't date him. No, you can't date her. I'm gonna say no to this job. I'm saying no to this prayer. No. [00:21:06] And we question God, why aren't you answering this prayer? [00:21:10] God, I don't even feel like I'm praying this out of selfishness. I really believe this would truly be best for me, best for my family, best for the people that I love. Why aren't you saying yes? [00:21:23] And he's saying, because I love you. [00:21:28] I love you enough to let you go through this. [00:21:34] And I want to be clear, if you're sitting here this morning and you're going through the gut wrenching pain of grief or loss, or if you got a bad diagnosis, or if someone that you love is lost and in pain, that's not him disciplining you. [00:21:55] That's not what I'm talking about. You know, I believe that God hates the evil and suffering in this world. [00:22:04] And we get this image of Christ standing at his friend Lazarus Tomb. [00:22:12] And he doesn't say, all things work together for my good. [00:22:20] He doesn't say, you know, God gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers. No, what does he do? He wept. [00:22:28] He doesn't, he hates the evil and suffering in this world. [00:22:32] He doesn't discipline us by retribution or payback. [00:22:37] It's the kind of discipline that leads to growth. [00:22:42] He's training us to be the kind of people that can endure the brutal realities of life. [00:22:52] In his book, the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey teaches. I really like this a lot. So can you throw up the word responsibility? He teaches that responsibility you can go to the next slide is actually our ability to respond, that when we take responsibility for our life, we're changing our ability to respond especially to the pain, especially to the suffering. [00:23:22] And a good trainer knows the right amount of pain that we need to suffer through so that the next time the pain comes, you can endure. [00:23:34] Have you ever worked out after a long period of not working out and you can barely walk the next day, you can barely like lift your phone to answer it. Like everything is just hurts, it's in pain. [00:23:46] And don't we know that for when I am weak, then I am made strong when you're lifting weights? I don't lift weights, by the way, but hypothetically, if I was a person that lifted weights, each time that I do a rep, each time that I lift the weight up, it feels like it's getting heavier, it feels like it's getting harder, it feels like my arms are actually getting weaker. [00:24:19] But don't we know that for when we are weak, then we are made strong? Our perfect trainer, he knows the right amount of pain that we need to suffer through so that the next time it comes you're stronger. [00:24:36] And slowly you can endure more slowly it gets easier. You're sore the next day, Absolutely. But you can show up, you can walk, you aren't so sore that you can't lift your hands. [00:24:54] You aren't in so much pain that you can't worship through it. [00:24:59] Your heart doesn't break so much that you're not taken out. [00:25:04] We are so sore that we can't get up in the morning, that we can't show up for work, that we can't show up for our family, that we can't still be the mom or dad that we need to be, that we still can't be the spouse that we need to be. We aren't so sore like we were before because we're trained by the divine, corrective, perfect Father. [00:25:27] And this discipline, it gives us some skin in the game. [00:25:32] When our discipline grows, our integrity grows, and we become the type of person that's more generous because we said we would be. [00:25:41] We apologize. Because we said we would, we get in his word because we said we would. We're patient. [00:25:50] Because we said we would, we sacrifice. You see, we get to partner with God in this. [00:25:56] We get to grow in our ability to respond. [00:26:01] One of my favorite Christian thinkers, the late Timothy Keller, he said that when we enlarge our theory of life, it will increase our threshold for suffering. [00:26:16] What are you living for? [00:26:19] What is your theory of life? [00:26:23] If you're living for comfort, if you're living for happiness, if you're living to avoid pain, when the suffering comes, we're going to be shattered. [00:26:37] If suffering comes and we shut down, maybe it's because we had a theory of life that just wasn't adequate. [00:26:46] We need to enlarge our theory of life and allow ourselves to be trained by the divine. Teacher Keller also taught this beautiful metaphor that I want to share with you in sailing. When a storm comes, if you grab the wheel and you hold it tight in the direction of your destination, you can actually get to where you were going faster than you would have if the storm never came. [00:27:19] But if you let go, if you retreat out of fear and anxiety, you're going to be set way off course. It's going to take you so much longer to get to your destination, to get where you were trying to go. [00:27:33] And so when the storms of life come, when those pains come our way, look at verse 12. Take a new grip, grab the wheel, allow God to get you to your destination faster, because he can use it. He can use the pain and the suffering as ways to get us to where we need to go quicker. [00:28:04] Take a new grip with your tired hands and strengthen your weakened knees. [00:28:10] You see, when we can learn to worship through the tears, when we can learn how to trust God through the confusion, don't we know that weeping endures through the night? But what great joy comes in the morning after the affliction when the storm's over, I have the muscles, I have the endurance, I have the strength that I didn't have before. [00:28:43] I want to go back up to verse three. [00:28:48] Think of all the hostility he endured from sinful people and then you won't become weary and give up. [00:28:58] When we go through the pains of life, our souls can get discouraged, right? [00:29:05] When we go through a two year bout of depression, we can have the temptation to give up, to stop trying to settle, to say, this is just my personality, this is just who I am, this is how I'm always going to be. [00:29:26] Or when we experience months and years of a marriage that just isn't what we hoped for. [00:29:33] When the romance slowly fades to roommates, when you hear more criticism than you do encouragement. [00:29:43] When you went from talking about your dreams for the future to the dinner table, just being silent. [00:29:49] Or maybe for you, you're experiencing the pain of an empty nest or the end of a career. Or maybe you're in a season where your kids are really struggling and you just don't see much hope. [00:30:05] When you feel like giving up, what does the author of Hebrews say? [00:30:10] Consider him. [00:30:14] Consider him who endured such hostility from sinners. [00:30:19] When you feel like giving up, consider Christ. [00:30:25] Think about his ability to respond while he was enduring such hostility. [00:30:31] Hostility that we can't even imagine, pain that we cannot comprehend, wounds that no human body should ever have to feel. What was his response? [00:30:44] He prayed, father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. [00:30:50] His ability to respond is so far above, filled with so much humility, such love integrity that I can't fathom his ability to respond. [00:31:10] And why? [00:31:13] Why does he respond that way? [00:31:16] Verse 2 Because of the joy awaiting Him. He endured the cross. [00:31:28] What was this joy? [00:31:31] What was the joy that caused such beautiful character to shine? [00:31:37] What was the joy that he thought of with each insult, with each blow, with each brutal abuse? [00:31:47] That joy was you. [00:31:51] He thought of you. [00:31:53] Your face, your life. [00:31:58] He took the punishment for you. He took the shame for you and for me. [00:32:06] So what's our response? [00:32:09] How do we respond to that kind of love? [00:32:13] Do not give up. [00:32:18] Endure. [00:32:21] Do what you said you were going to do. Be trained by his divine discipline. Strengthen your tired hands. Stand up with your weakened knees and people will see something beautiful about Christ. [00:32:36] If we can do this in the right way, we can grow our ability to respond and people will see his way. People will see his hope. People will see his light. [00:32:50] The people around us will ask, how did you come out of that? [00:32:54] How did you get through that? How did you go back in your word day after day after day? How did you worship through that pain? [00:33:07] Last week, I saw a video of a family who lost their home in the devastating wildfires that are happening in California. [00:33:19] And as they stood in the rubble and the ashes of what was once their home, of where just a few weeks ago, their kids came running down the stairs on Christmas morning, the home where they laughed together. [00:33:39] The home where they brought their babies home to the home where they held each other and wept over the pains of life. The home where they taught their kids how to pray. Their home. [00:33:51] They stood in the ash and as a family, they worshiped Jesus. [00:33:58] They sang to him. [00:34:02] And I believe that this doesn't happen by accident, that this is not a fluke. [00:34:09] I can guarantee you that this wasn't the first time that they had to sing through the pain. [00:34:15] I can guarantee you that it's not the first time that they had to worship through the tears, where they had to raise their hands when they thought all was lost. [00:34:24] This is the fruit of a life lived in divine discipline. [00:34:31] They already had those muscles. [00:34:34] They knew what to do. [00:34:36] They'd done it before. [00:34:38] They had divine training. [00:34:43] So allow yourself to be trained by these moments. [00:34:48] I've given a lot of examples this morning of what you may be going through, but the truth is, I don't know exactly what valley you're walking through right now, but your trainer does. [00:35:03] He knows exactly what you're going through. And he's asking, abide in me. [00:35:10] Remain in me. [00:35:13] Strengthen your tired muscles. [00:35:17] Use this experience as an opportunity for character growth, to grow your integrity. Because the moments in my life where I've grown the most haven't been in the comfortable. And I think most of us in this room can agree that they haven't been in the moments that were easy, but instead they have been in the moments where you're on your hands and knees, pleading with God, lifting your hands through the tears, strengthening your muscles each time he lifts you up. [00:35:50] Strengthening your faith each time that he shows up when no one else would. [00:35:55] Strengthening hope in the pain and in the suffering. [00:36:03] So this week, I challenge you. [00:36:06] Start practicing this. [00:36:09] Choose one thing that you want to stick to for seven days, one thing that you're going to keep your word on. [00:36:18] Grow in your discipline. Grow in your integrity. Choose one thing, and I challenge you. Make it something that stretches you a little bit, something that you're not really good at, something that goes against innately what you want to do. [00:36:35] I will share with you my thing. [00:36:38] I'm a firstborn daughter. And so by nature, I struggle a little bit with perfectionism and control. [00:36:48] And I have really high expectations for myself. And so that creates really high expectations for the people around me. [00:36:56] And the place where that shows up most is in my marriage. [00:37:01] I tend to criticize more than I encourage. [00:37:06] And so this week I've already been practicing it. I made a commitment to myself that the only words I will speak to my husband will be words of encouragement. [00:37:17] No critical word is allowed to leave my mouth. [00:37:22] And this has taken intentionality. [00:37:26] It's taken pre deciding every day who I want to be. [00:37:30] I've had to slow down. [00:37:33] I've had to think about what I'm going to say. [00:37:38] It means that you have to grow in your ability to respond, and I'm learning that. So I challenge you. Pick yours. [00:37:46] Something stretching, something that will truly grow you in your ability to respond to yourself, to the people around you, and to the Lord. Let's pray. [00:38:00] Dear Father, thank you for this day, Lord. I pray that you would be our divine trainer. [00:38:12] Lord, I pray that we would be receptible to the ways in which you are teaching discipline to our hearts. I pray that we would take a new grip, that we would strengthen our tired knees, that we would not give up, Lord. And I pray that we would above all, consider your son who endured such hostility. [00:38:32] Lord, we thank you. [00:38:35] We glorify your name this morning. I ask that you would be high and lifted up. I love you, I thank you, I praise you and I trust you. It's in your good son's name I pray. Amen.