Hello, friends. We're really glad that you're here this morning. Some of y'all haven't been around for a long time, but in the early days of Watermark, the first seven years, from 1999 until about 2007, we were at Lake Highlands High School. It was really funny. During the fall, winter, and spring, when Todd did most of the teaching, the A/C was always on and the lights were working great, but in the summer, when he took some time off, he had some others of us teach, and it was amazing how sometimes the A/C didn't work or the lights didn't work.
So we were like, "Does Todd have some minions back in the back who are pulling levers because he doesn't want anybody else to teach?" We walked in this morning, and Peter was on a big lift messing with our projector. Obviously, we have one screen not working today, so if you guys see Wagner around here, let me know, and we can find out if he's trying to sabotage what's happening, because we're unplugging from Dallas for a few weeks.
Last week, we celebrated our baptism. Today, we're just going to take some time, and it's really my first chance to talk about my heart for what I want our Plano Campus to be about. We've been going really hard. For all of y'all who have been around, we started meeting in August. We went hard in August in the Loft. Then we launched here in January, and we've done membership classes and GroupLinks and baptisms and Easter service and all that kind of stuff, and there has been a ton of activity.
So I'm really excited about today and next week and the following week when we get to pull back a little bit and be reminded about what it means to be Christian, what it means to be a Christ follower. We're going to talk today a little bit about that, and then next week we're going to do a praise and worship and Communion service. That's what Dallas is doing today. We're just going to spend some additional time in worship, we're going to spend some time in prayer, and then we're going to take Communion together as the body of Christ.
Then the week after that we're going to be unplugged from Dallas as well. So I'm excited about this little season where we get to pull back a little bit, take a deep breath, and say, "Okay, God, let's just be reminded in the midst of the activity what's really important." Before we jump into the message, there are a couple of things I really want to celebrate. First of all, today is Mother's Day. Happy Mother's Day to all you moms. We're really glad you're here.
This is really significant for me. Some of you all don't know my story, but my dad left our family when I was in my early, early teens, and my mom basically exhibited what it means to be Christ to me. She gave up everything in her life so she could love and care for my sister and me. If you ask me what led me to the Lord, if you ask me what gave me my heart to love and serve people, I will tell you that it's my mom and the example she gave me.
So for you moms who are here, sometimes in our culture we don't give you the due you deserve, and I just want to tell you, from a kingdom of God perspective your role is incomparable in terms of what you do. I know some of y'all have four kids under the age of 5 at home, and you are thinking, "Oh my gosh. Is this ever going to pass?" It does, and it goes really fast. Even though those days don't feel significant, they're incredibly significant for your kids and for God's family as well.
This may be a little awkward for you. We're going to go a little Southern Baptist on us today. If you're a mom, would you stand up? I'm going to pray for you. So stand up. We want to honor you and pray for you. So let me pray for the moms in our body. Let's pray together.
Father, I thank you for these women who are standing up, and, Father, I pray that you would bless them. Father, I pray that you would bless their walk with you. I pray that you would bless their families. Would you protect their families, Father, from accident, from evil, and from illness? Father, I pray that they would understand in the midst of craziness as a parent, which it is so much of the time, that they would sense your peace, a peace that passes all understanding.
I pray that they would sense the significance of their role. Father, I pray that you would encourage them in unique ways. I pray that you would be their comfort in times of trial and tribulation, that you would be their joy and their encouragement when there's playtime happening all over the house, Father, but I pray that you would bless them. We want to celebrate them and their role on this day. We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.
Thank you to our mothers. The other thing I want to celebrate is we had a little deal last week here called a baptism. We had a bunch of folks get baptized. I just want to give you a little pastoral comment. At the beginning, you were told, "If you parents don't participate in the hand motions, we're going to call you out and bring you up here onstage." I turned around, and I didn't see anybody not doing the hand motions, so you're going to get a chance to see it in this video.
[Video]
It says, "Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life."
A bunch of folks who are in this room are going to get baptized today, and it's a picture of the fact that we are dead to this old life, separated from God, and there wasn't anything we can do about it. We were separated from God. We're dead. That's the symbol of that water. So you come up into this newness of life. It's an external picture of an internal commitment these people have made. They have placed their faith and trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross.
Male: I'm just thankful for everything Christ did to set me free from the bonds of religion and just thinking that tradition was the way to life. I'm glad to be set free.
Male: I was saved through faith, not of myself so that I won't boast. It is a gift of God, not by my works. This is not a work that I perform but a work of the Lord that he performed in and through me, and I'm so grateful, as well as the others who are here, to be called as a sheep in his flock.
[End of video]
Love it! Just so you know, if at any time you decide to cross the line of faith and become a Christ follower or if your friends do and they're a part of our family here, we don't have to wait until May 10, 2016, to baptize you. We bought those tanks for a reason, so we can do that all through the year. So let us know if that's anything that ever you want to do in order for you to feel obedient to what God is doing in your life.
I'm going to throw a slide up here as we start the message, and I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to ask you if you would like to have all of these things in your life. It's things like… Would you like to hear from God on a regular basis and in critical moments? Would you like to have peace in the midst of trials and tribulation? Would you like to stand courageously for Christ when persecuted? Would you like significant eternal rewards, a deeper understanding of God's goodness and sovereignty?
Would you like to know God's heart for our culture and our world, how to manage your time to get maximum kingdom impact, to be a vessel for life change in the lives of your family and others? Would you like to have boldness to share your faith? It's kind of a silly question. Right? I think as we go through that list… I just sat down and did that really quickly. I just said, "What are the things I would like to have in my life that aren't fully realized yet?" That list came to mind really quickly, so I just jotted those down.
Today, we're going to spend some time talking about one thing you can do so that all of those things I just read about can happen in your life. The Scripture says in several places, but specifically we're going to look at a couple of different places where Jesus and King David said, "Only one thing really matters." In the midst of all the activity we do for God, in the midst of all of the things we do as believers, two pretty significant people in the Scriptures say one thing really matters: King David and Jesus.
So we're going to look at a couple of those passages of Scripture, and then we're going to talk about how we, as the body of Christ at Watermark Plano, can begin to take ground in this area, because if we take ground in this one thing, all of these other things are going to characterize us as individuals and us as a church, which is my heart and my dream for our church. First, let's look at Psalm 27, verse 4.
This is King David, and he says, "One thing…" There it is. King David, a man after God's own heart, says, "One thing I have asked from the Lord , that I shall seek: That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life…""One thing I have asked." Anytime you're studying God's Word, one of the things you want to do, if you have time to unpack a verse like that, is take a look at the verbs in that passage. So let's just take a quick look at what the verbs are in that passage: asked, seek, dwell, behold, meditate.
David is saying, "All of these things are part of the 'one thing,' that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life." I want to make sure you hear it. King David is saying to you and me that one thing matters, and that's that we have an intimate relationship with God, an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. Then if we go into the Gospels to Luke, chapter 10, verses 38-42, we see that Jesus gives a familiar story that I think has really been misapplied. A lot of you will be really familiar with this story. It's the story of Mary and Martha.
"Now as they were traveling along, [Jesus] entered a village; and a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her home. She had a sister called Mary, who was seated at the Lord's feet, listening to His word. But Martha was distracted with all her preparations; and she came up to Him and said, 'Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to do all the serving alone? Then tell her to help me.'
But the Lord answered and said to her, 'Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things; but only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.'"
I've heard this taught a lot of times like this is a passage of Scripture that just says, "Hey, we are wired differently, and some of us are Marthas and some of us are Marys," and that's true. We all have different spiritual gifts, and we have been called to use those for the sake of God's kingdom, and what else is more important than when Jesus was on this earth as a way to make preparations for him? But I want to make sure we understand the scene that's happening right here.
Jesus, in his loving, kind, tender way, is saying to Martha, who was the one making all of the preparations, "Hey, Mary has made the better decision." It is a loving, gentle rebuke of Martha in that situation and of us, that when we are running around doing all of these things we think under the name of Christianity or for the sake of Jesus… Jesus is giving us a mild rebuke, and he's saying, "Hey, one thing really matters, and Mary has chosen it."
What is that "one thing"? She's sitting at the Lord's feet listening. I want to make sure that we, as the Plano Campus, in the midst of our busy culture, our busy, independent United States of America…"We're going to do it our way, the way we want to do it"…that we are represented as people who listen to Jesus, who seek Jesus, who seek to know and understand Jesus. In the next month or so, a good friend of mine who helps us lead in Plano is having a daughter and a son get married within three weeks of each other.
Everybody in the room, mostly the moms, are like, "Oh my gosh!" We are in the midst of that. One of the things they said early on was, "Help us. We know this whole wedding planning thing can get crazy as we're leading up to that, and we want to continue to fight for the 'one thing.' In the midst of wedding preparations and invitations and the ceremony and all that stuff that comes, we want to make sure we're paying attention to the 'one thing.'"
So we're on the phone a couple of days a week praying together. We're asking questions. "Hey, is Christ still the number-one thing in the midst of all this craziness?" Because it's easy for us to become Marthas. It's easy for us to do the activity of Christianity and forget that this is about a relationship with Jesus Christ. King David and Jesus both tell us that intimacy with the Savior is incredibly important.
In John 17:3, Jesus says, "This is eternal life, that they may know the one true God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent." I'm giving you these verses just to remind you that the Scripture all throughout points us back to this. One of the things I did in getting ready for today's message was I went all through the Old Testament and the New Testament just looking at "Where are people who talk about this relationship with God?" I know why Wagner struggles with being on time. The hard thing is you have to leave some stuff on the editing room floor as you're getting ready for a message.
But I went back into the garden of Eden, and it says that God walked with Adam in the cool of the day. I went back to look at Moses, and it said that he related to God as a friend. I kept going, and Paul talks about "abide, remain, dwell." Jesus talks about those same things. There's a lot of terminology in the New Testament about being in Christ. All throughout the Scripture, it's talking about this "one thing" that David and Jesus reminded us about.
Several years back, probably 20 or 25 years back, I was thinking through these two verses. Luke 10 and Psalm 27:4 are two of my life verses that I've been living with for a lot of years. I found a quote by E.M. Bounds that really moved me years ago. It says, "The men who have most fully illustrated Christ in their character, and have most powerfully affected the world for him, have been men who spent so much time with God as to make it a notable feature of their lives." He also said, "To be little with God is to be little for God."
In the midst of Luke 10 and Psalm 27 and that quote by E.M. Bounds, I came up with a mission statement for my life. This was 25 or 30 years ago, and I haven't even come close to it, but I want you to see what my heart is, what I want to do. It says, "My mission is to spend so much time with God that Christ is fully illustrated in my character to the point that I have a powerful impact on the world for him." I stole David's stuff, I stole Jesus' stuff, I stole E.M. Bounds' stuff, and I said, "This is what I want my life to be about."
But if I'm going to have that impact for God's kingdom, if I'm going to be a good husband and a good dad and a good friend, I have to be spending time with the Lord. You just can't get those things that were on the first slide without spending time. It's really important for us, as a body, to be getting our Bibles, kicking our feet up, getting something to drink, sitting down, and saying, "O God, teach me from your Scripture."
If you'll pursue this "one thing," all of those things we talked about begin to happen. You begin to have peace in really difficult circumstances. You begin to be able to make decisions that make your life effective for God's kingdom. That's what I want our church to be about, but we have some pitfalls we all fit into. I want you to hear me. The "one thing" is spending time with God and getting to know him. I want that to be the rallying cry for Watermark Plano. That's who we are. We're characterized by people spending time with God.
But in my mind, there are four things that prohibit us from jumping into that intimate relationship, that prohibit me from jumping into that relationship I want that allows me to reach that mission statement I've set for my life. I'm going to run through those four things, and then I want you to evaluate your life.
As we run through those four things, I want you to say, "You know what? I struggle a little bit with that one. Oh man, I struggle a ton with that one. I struggle a little with that one." Just begin to think about, "What is it that keeps me from practicing the 'one thing' the Scriptures talk about all throughout?"
The first one is that our relationship with God becomes informational. It becomes ritualistic. It becomes dry and checklist Christianity. I got up this morning, I got my 15 minutes in, I read the Join the Journey, and I'm off, and never the rest of the day does any of that cross my mind. If you do that long enough, your relationship with Christ is going to become stale.
I came through a season two or three years ago where I was doing… The guys at Watermark had asked me to help them build the children's building at Dallas, and that was about a year-and-a-half or two-year project I was in charge of. Here's the problem. I have no idea how to build anything. They said, "Hey, Kyle, would you be in charge of this building?"
The illustration I use is I was a little bit like an orchestra conductor, and I couldn't read music or play an instrument. Do you think that's a problem? That is a huge problem. We got the right people in the room, but anything anybody else knew, it took me three times as long to figure it out and learn it.
I got to the end of that year and a half… I was working in places outside of my giftedness. Because the time was so crazy, my time with God had become checklist Christianity, and I was just checking it off. "Yeah, I got it, I got it, I got it." I got to the end of that, and I was done emotionally, spiritually. Some people call it burnout.
I was done, because I had been operating in this informational checklist Christianity, and it had taken the life out of my relationship with the Lord. So I took some time, and I pulled back from projects at Watermark and doing some things, and I just went back and refocused on my relationship with Jesus.
I spent a lot of time with my feet up, reading the Scripture, praying, worshiping to worship music, trying to bring the life back into my walk with Christ. If you're here today and that's your ditch (which that's mine, that my faith can become checklist), would you tell somebody that, whether it's your Community Group, whether it's friends? "Hey, I just need some help. How can I begin to bring life into my walk with Christ?"
The second one is that, for some people, your relationship becomes driven by emotion. That's not my ditch. Emotion does drive me at times, but it's not my number-one ditch, but for some of us, that's our number-one ditch. To us, even though it's subconscious, if I feel it, it feels true to me. We say around here all the time, "Feelings are real, but they're not reliable." Some of us are so carried around by our feelings we miss the truth. We don't pay attention to God's Word. We don't pay attention to what other people are trying to tell us.
If that's your situation, tell somebody. "Hey, I know I am somebody who's wired with really strong emotions and feelings." You need people in your life who know that and can say, "Hey, what's driving you right here? Have you looked at God's Word? Have you gotten godly counsel?" It's a danger. Like the informational side is a danger, the emotional side is also a danger.
The third one is what we've been reading through in the Journey: idolatry. We have just decided that we're going to let other things be more important than our intimacy with Christ. To some degree, we all have idols in our lives, but some of us have let those idols control and take over our lives.
I don't know what your idol is. Most of the time, it's not little Buddhas sitting on our fireplace mantel that we consider an idol. A lot of times, it's stuff like money or possessions or, in my case early on, kids' sports. It can be for me TV, but I let other things jump in and take the place of really important things that can help me in my intimacy with Christ.
The fourth one that represents a category of reasons we don't pursue Christ is fear. There are a lot of us in here who have said, "You know what? I'm too afraid to go there. I am not going to work on my hurts, habits, or hang-ups. That little pet sin or that little relationship that's broken, where there's bitterness… We're not going to touch that. We're going to leave that there."
I will tell you, as I meet with people, even the last few months that I've met with folks from Plano at the Plano Campus, there's a ton of that going on. People are saying, "We're going to leave that little cub over there, and we're not going to pay attention to the fact that it's going to become a lion in one year, two years, five years, or ten years." It's fear, because we don't want the turmoil that's going to come with diving into those things.
Just so you know, starting in August or early September, we're starting re:generation here at the Plano Campus. I would love for you to start… You can't do that by yourself. It's too scary. So jump into a ministry that says, "Hey, there are a lot of us who are messed up. Kyle Kaigler, lead one, is messed up. Let's jump in together and work on these places we're scared of, we're fearful of." So if you're stuck in your relationship with Christ, chances are it's one of these four things. It has become informational, you're carried around by your emotion, there's idolatry, or you're scared.
As you think about that, as you process that while we're here this morning, as you go home and talk about that with your Community Group, your friends, your spouse, it's really important that you identify, "What are my ditches, and how do we slowly but surely begin to make progress in those things, because I want that list of things?" And make your own list.
"I want to have peace in the midst of really difficult circumstances. I want to stand for Christ when our culture all around us is falling." That doesn't happen unless you're getting the time I'm talking about in your intimacy with Christ, so we're going to spend the last few minutes just talking about how we can make progress in those areas.
The first thing I would love for you to do as you apply our time today is that you would make a heart commitment to Christ, to the Lord, and you would say, "Hey, God. I know I have missed it here. I know my life is not characterized by somebody who walks with you daily. I've missed it." Just tell the Lord. Ask for forgiveness and say, "Hey, God. You are worthy of my full devotion, and yet I've missed it." Tell him that.
He's not mad at anybody. He will be so excited. If you haven't spent time with Christ ever in your life and you come the first day and don't know how to find the book of John in the Bible, can I tell you how pleased God is that you're even trying to find the book of John? He wants to be with you. The God of the universe who created heaven and earth, who is involved in your life whether you know it or not, wants to spend time with you. He loves you that much.
When you miss weeks and months, whenever you do something you regret like crazy, anytime you come back, he's ready for you. His arms are open, and he is ready to grab you and hug you and say, "My son, my daughter, I'm so glad you're back and we can spend time together." So would you make a heart commitment to a relationship with Jesus, not a to-do list?
It's a lot like our marriages. With my bride, if everything I do I'm just doing because it's ritualistic or something like that, Tresha and I grow distant. If I'm not sitting down with her and saying, "Hey, how are you? What's happening? Where have I offended you? Why are you frustrated?" or "Why am I frustrated with you?" That happens all the time. It's ongoing. I make my wife mad a lot. But there's this relationship there, and we work on it and pay attention to it.
There are times when we'll go two or three weeks and it's kind of cold around the house. The most mature person is the one who first comes and says, "Hey, we're not doing well, so let's sit down and talk about it." That's maturity. That's not the one who gives in. That's maturity: the first one to raise your hand and say, "Hey, something is not right here; let's talk about it." Our relationship with Christ is like that. We have to pay attention to it. What is it that's pulling us away from that time with Christ?
The second thing I want you to do, besides making a heart commitment to the Lord and just telling God, "That's what I want; I want the 'one thing' to matter in my life…" The second thing is I want you to make a time commitment. I know there are people sitting in here right now who probably haven't ever spent time with the Lord on a regular basis or maybe you haven't in a long time or maybe you are every day but it has become checklist for you.
If you never have, would you make a commitment? I don't know what it is for you. You need to do something that you can do, if it's three times a week for 15 minutes. Is it half a day or a couple of hours on a Saturday? I know schedules are crazy. We talked about moms with three kids under the age of 5. That's nuts, and it's hard to get time, but we can all prioritize some amount of time to spend time with God, reading his Word, praying, meditating on Scripture, memorizing Scripture, journaling, all of those spiritual disciplines. We can find time to do that.
Or maybe you're doing really well but it has become checklist. What I have to do whenever that happens to me (because it does happen to me) is I pull out worship music, and I listen to worship music, and I meditate on Scripture instead of memorize. I kick my feet up and roll it back and forth through my mind. "God, what are you saying to me?" Then I write it down. "Hey, God, here's what I think you're saying to me." I read it, and I'm like, "He isn't saying that," and I'll scratch it out, because I don't hear from the Lord perfectly. But there's a relationship we're trying to pay attention to, just like our relationship with our spouse.
The third thing you need to understand as you go through this intimacy with Christ and you want to grow in the "one thing" that's in John 14:21. It says, "He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him." I want to make sure you see that. If you obey what God has asked you to do, Jesus will disclose himself to you. Do you want to know Christ better? There is a direct correlation to your obedience to what God has already called you to do.
Matthew 5:8 says, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Have you ever thought about that? "Blessed are the pure in heart." In other words, there are no hidden secrets. There's no mystery. There's no guile. There's no deception. You're pure-hearted. And what happens? They will see God. This whole message is about us knowing Jesus Christ, about us growing in our intimacy so that all of the other things we do count for God's kingdom.
The other thing I'd love for you to spend some time doing, as we've talked about, is know yourself. Know how you're wired. Know where you get off the track, and ask for help. Then the last one is to be single-minded. Be focused. The Scripture says in Psalm 90:12, "Lord, teach me to number my days so that I may present to you a heart of wisdom." The psalmist is saying, "Hey, I have a few days; I have a certain number of days on this earth. Teach me to number those so that I may be wise in how I live."
The way I'm thinking about this since I hit 50 (I'm 52) is I have a third left, as a general rule. God could take me tomorrow, take me this afternoon, but as I think about it, I have a third of my years left until 75, and I'm going to number those days and try to use those as effectively and efficiently as I can. One of the keys to that is that I stay focused. One of the keys to that is I stay single-minded. I stay wholehearted toward this relationship with Christ.
This last spring, with about 130 of the men in here on Thursday morning, we went through the book of Ecclesiastes. Rob Barry, who was teaching one Sunday, challenged us. He goes, "Write your obituary." We were like, "What? That is morbid and weird and all kinds of things." He stayed strong. He said, "Show up next Thursday with your obituary written." I told Tresha I was doing that. She goes, "That's weird." But she did say, "Hey, save it and put it in a file so when it comes time I don't have to write it."
So I wrote it. I'm going to read it to you. It's crazy, because what happens is it helps you get single-minded. It helps you do Psalm 90:12. "Number my days so that I may present to you a heart of wisdom." I sat down and wrote it. Now before it even comes up, I want to be really clear that this is what I want people to say about me. This is not who I am or where I am. I have a third left, and I want to use these next 25 years to be the guy who's right here, but I'm not there yet.
You're going to read it and laugh, those of you who know me. "There ain't no way his kids are saying that about him." But it was a great exercise for me to spend some time writing it. What do I want my wife and my kids and my family and my friends to say? This is a little vulnerable. I've never done this before. I haven't read this out loud, so we're going to see how this goes.
Here's what it says: "His mission in life was to spend so much time with God that Christ is fully illustrated in his character to the point that he has a powerful impact on the world for him." That's the mission statement for my life that I read at the beginning. "He did it! His wife is shouting from the rooftops that she was lavishly loved by him and that, apart from Jesus, she was the most important aspect of his life.
His kids are proclaiming that they were loved unconditionally, discipled intentionally, disciplined appropriately, and always had fun with their dad. His extended family knew they were cared for and deeply loved by their son, brother, brother-in-law, uncle, cousin, etcetera. His coworkers, neighbors, and friends, although not all Christ followers, are saying that Christ was primary in his life and, regardless of their own belief, considered him a great friend and knew they could call on him at any moment and he would come running.
He had a band of mighty men who will be on the front row at his funeral. They were from all seasons of his life and carried him through the tough times, lived it up during the good times, kept him living adventurously and laughing continuously. He had an immeasurable impact on God's kingdom in his neighborhood, in his community, and for his church. He was not perfect, but he quickly owned his sin and shortcomings and was passionate about restoring intimacy with Christ and with all those he loved when he missed it. He gave his life away and, in return, lived an incredible life with Jesus, family, and friends."
That's what I want them to say. I'm not even close, but it's what I want to do. I have a heart for my wife and my kids and my friends and those guys who are going to be the mighty men at my funeral… I want them to say that about me. I'm here now, and I want to be here then. The answer is the "one thing." All of that stuff I do to serve and lead and hang with neighbors and share my faith has to overflow out of a relationship with Christ.
Hear me, as the campus pastor at Watermark Plano, when I say who you are with Christ is more important than anything you will ever do for him. It's that important. So we're going to take the last couple of minutes, and I'm going to read a passage out of Colossians 1:15-22 that's categorized as a passage about the supremacy of Christ. There's also a passage in Ephesians 1:17-23 that does something really similar.
If you remember, earlier I was talking about this God of the universe who wants to spend time with you. Let's just look, and let's read and meditate on who this God of the universe is. Once we're done, we're going to sing a song about being single-minded, focused, and wholehearted on the "one thing" that David and Jesus talked to us about. Here's what the Holy Spirit through Paul says in Colossians 1:15-22.
"He [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him." All of creation was created for Jesus, including you.
"He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything. For it was the Father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven.
And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach…"
So will you sing to the God of the universe? Will you make a heart commitment to just make a little bit of progress on the "one thing"? Because when we prioritize on the "one thing," all of these other things start to happen. Kingdom impact starts to happen.
