Season of Building
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The Season of Building
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In this session, we’re going to talk about certain seasons of life when the Lord has us building—in our careers, in our relationships, in our families.
Let me ask you this before we get started:
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What will you give your life to?
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THE BIG IDEA IS: Lord, help us to say no where we should say no so we can say yes where we should say yes.
First, let’s talk about—what is it that we should say no to?
The scriptures teach that there is real opposition to us leading the life God has for us.
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We need to three opposing forces or influences; we need to say no to the world, the flesh and the devil.
What does it mean when we say “the world”?
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Let’s define it with 1 John 2:15-17
Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride in one’s possessions—is not from the Father, but is from the world. And the world with its lust is passing away, but the one who does the will of God remains forever.
Okay, what does that actually mean?
It’s a cultural system that has allied itself against God—a cultural system that tries to tell us that this world is all there is.
You notice that what it says here in this passage is that the cravings that we have, the lust of our eyes, the boasting about what we have and have done, these don’t come from God, they come from the world. And the world and its desires will pass away.
The ultimate truth about everything that we see around us—all the possessions that we can have, all the power we can have, all the experiences we can have—the ultimate truth about them is that they are going to pass away.
They are going to be gone, they are going to be forgotten. Yet we forget that because they seduce us and they try to tell us, “No. I am real, I am lasting, I am valuable. You need me.” And that is what we need to say no to in a season of building.
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In a time of building, what we value and the priorities that we set in our lives will determine what we end up building.
Because what we value is what we are going to be working toward. If we don’t have those values in place and those priorities set correctly, then we will eventually find that we’ve built the wrong things on the wrong foundation.
This is why it’s so important that we recognize and say no to desires that we have for things in this world. Those things will lie to us that they matter, that they’re real, and that they will last, but in reality, they have no power to truly satisfy us.
Second, we also say no to the flesh. What is the flesh?
It’s our own sinful desires. The Bible tells us the desires of the flesh are opposed to the desires of the spirit. Why?
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I say, then, walk by the Spirit and you will certainly not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is against the Spirit, and the Spirit desires what is against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you don’t do what you want.
Doing whatever we want, based on our own sinful desires, will absolutely devastate what we’re trying to build.
And third, we say no to the devil.
We don’t talk about the devil much today, but it’s critical to know that he is real. Jesus talked about the devil. Scripture refers to the devil.
Slide 48
Be sober-minded, be alert. Your adversary the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion, looking for anyone he can devour. Resist him, firm in the faith, knowing that the same kind of sufferings are being experienced by your fellow believers throughout the world.
The devil is a real enemy. There are satanic forces out there working against us. This is a spiritual battle that we are in, whether we acknowledge it or not.
And so, we have the influence of the world, the desire of our flesh, and the devil all allied in opposition to us when we are trying to build a successful life in terms of how the Bible defines success.
You can see it in almost every major area of temptation you might face.
Let me illustrate that for you. If you think about temptations related to work:
workaholism, working too much, striving after success or power, whatever it is, and being seduced into working all the time. How does that happen?
First of all, let’s talk about the world. Who is on the cover of Forbes Magazine? The guy who works 40-45 hours a week, has a decent career, mid-level management, spends a lot of time with his kids, is engaged at church, and lives in a small house in a safe neighborhood? Is he on the cover of Forbes Magazine?
No.
The guy on the cover of Forbes magazine is the person who spends 80-100 hours slaving away, year after year, building an empire. Those are the people who we have glorified in our culture today as what it means to be successful at work.
So each of us, in our minds, has an image of what we have to do to have a successful career. The world tries to define that for us and then what happens? The flesh comes along.
God gave us the desire to work. He gave Adam a commission to work. Work is good; it’s a calling from God. If you are doing work, it is just as holy or sacred to be a server or a construction worker as it is to be a preacher or a missionary, because God said that it’s holy unto Him. But what happens is that work gets perverted by our sinful desires.
So this good thing of work that He’s given to us begins to get perverted until it becomes almost an addiction. We start to say, “This other person is moving ahead faster that I am, if I could just work a little bit harder, I bet I could get promoted also. I bet I could beat them out for salesman of the year. I bet I could get to that next level, and boy, wouldn’t that be great because all these people would be working for me.” The flesh comes in.
And then the devil comes along. It’s hard to know exactly when the devil is at work, but I guarantee you that he is engineering things at that point so that those opportunities are there for us to get further and further sucked in at the expense of other priorities.
Another area that we see this alliance in is in the area of lust and pornography. Today in our world, pornography is everywhere. It is so pervasive; you used to have these barriers, because you had to go somewhere and pay for it.
Now, all you need is a computer or a cell phone. The privacy of an office and a closed door, and there’s any kind of pornography that you can imagine. The culture provides it, our flesh desires it, and I believe Satan is providing opportunities for us to participate in that.
Now, why are there so many pornography sites on the internet?
Why is a billion-dollar business? Because there is a demand. The reason there are so many pornography sites on the internet is because we want them. When I say “we”, I mean “we” as a culture. We as a society.
In large part, the reason the world is the way it is is because we have made it this way. Sex is so pervasive today because we all are fixated on it. We all will pay for it. So therefore, we have created a culture to satisfy this sinful lust that we have. And the same thing with workaholism.
The reason these people are glorified is because we glorify them.
So the culture has been shaped by our lusts so that it feeds those lusts, almost a vicious circle. The very lusts that we have are the very things the culture is feeding us because we’ve created a culture to feed those things.
And so we have to be aware of this when we face temptation—and realize that the world, the flesh, and the devil are allied against us as we attempt to build our lives.
Think about your own life for a minute. Where have you found the greatest opposition?
Where have you felt like you have just been blocked at every turn in terms of a sin that besets you?
How do you see these three forces at work in that?
We’ll talk more about how to say “no” to these forces, but first, I want to look at some positive opportunities we have in a season of building.
Opportunities to Say Yes
Guys, for those of you who have families, we are going to focus in on building our children and building our wives.
Say Yes to Your Children
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But for those of you who are already there, we’re going to talk about how you can say yes to your children.
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In Psalm 78:1-8,
We have entered into a period where we are going to have the largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in the history of the world.
In other words, with people living longer, and with what’s happening with the baby boom and all that, we are about to enter into a period where more financial wealth is going to be transferred from one generation to the previous generation than ever in the history of the world. That is going to be taking place in the next 10 to 20 years.
As we think about that, it really asks the question, is there going to be a corresponding transfer of spiritual wealth between generations?
Are we really making investments in our children so we can help them to grow into a life of faith?
So how can we do this?
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Well, the goal is to guide our children into a Christian worldview.
Notice what the psalmist says in verse 7
And that they would see things from a biblical perspective. That’s the goal—to lead our children to a life of faith. That’s how we build our children. So how do we do that?
Deut 6
4 “Listen, Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.[a] 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. 6 These words that I am giving you today are to be in your heart. 7 Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them be a symbol[b] on your forehead.[c]9 Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your city gates.
That they would have a Christian worldview, that they would see everything out of the perspective of their faith and trust in God.
I want to give you four practical ways to do that.
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One way we can do that is have regular family devotions.
Hard to build into your schedule, particularly if you’re not used to doing something like this.
Maybe you don’t feel creative enough or you’re afraid your kids won’t want to do it, or maybe there is no time when you’re all together right now.
Let me give you a couple of suggestions that may be helpful.
• Sunday after lunch to talk together.
- You can take the sermon and discuss how you might apply it.
- You could take just 10 minutes to ask open-ended questions such as, “What did you think about that?”
- “What does that mean when you are at school?”
Instill in your children the idea that God’s word is important, God’s word is valuable, and we ought to apply it to our lives when we hear it and when we are involved in it.
• Another idea would be to simply do something a couple mornings a week, or perhaps at dinner if you have dinner together a couple times a week.
Where is there opportunity in your family routines for doing some type of family devotion?
Secondly, encourage your children to do private devotions.
There is nothing that you can do in the lives of your children that will impact them more than helping them develop a habit of studying God’s word and prayer.
You can also help establish value for those by modeling it to them in your own daily life.
If they can learn to love God’s word and learn from it, then that will become the basis for them developing a Christian worldview.
Third, make sure your children are in church.
When you’re in a season of building your children, make sure they see a commitment to church in your own life.
The church is God’s community in this world. For most of us, it’s the place where we are going to grow as a Christian. How can you help your children get actively involved in the things that are going on at church?
Where they can learn from others, where they can see the gospel lived out, where they can see people being reached for and changed by Christ Christ, where they can hear about missionaries, where they can serve others—all these things that are so important to us, that shape us as part of the body of Christ.
Besides a Christian worldview, or perhaps as the outworking of a Christian worldview, is to adopt a family mission.
If you think about what our society was like 100 years ago, families would have had a lot of involvement in each other’s lives, particularly in terms of work.
There would have been a lot of things where the whole family needed to be involved in the economics of making the family work—from farmers to shop owners to blacksmiths. There was sort of a built-in mission that came from that.
In other words, the children did not think that the family only existed for them to have fun. They knew they had to serve, they knew they had to be involved, and if they didn’t do those things, then their family was not going to survive.
Today...
Maybe Dad works one place, totally disconnected from the family;
Mom works another place, totally disconnected from the family;
and the kids can very easily grow up just thinking that this family is here to help me have fun. I get to go do fun things with my friends, I get to be involved in little league, they buy me stuff that I need, and this is like my home base for going out and having a fun life.
So inadvertently, they begin to learn the lesson that the world exists for them. And that is a very dangerous lesson for anybody to learn, because it’s very hard to reverse that later in life.
When we adopt a family mission, we can begin to help our children see that there is something more important than their own personal happiness. They get to be a part of something bigger than themselves. They get to learn about giving and serving other people in the power of Jesus Christ.
What are some things you could do as part of your family mission?
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God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth.” God also said, “Look, I have given you every seed-bearing plant on the surface of the entire earth and every tree whose fruit contains seed. This will be food for you,
So he gave Adam and Eve the mission of tending the earth, of tending the garden. That was the family mission that Adam and Eve had together.
And so, when we think about our lives, we need to think, How can I help my children have a vision for something that our family is trying to accomplish as a family for the good of God’s kingdom? I would just encourage you to think deeply about that.
Illustration:
There was a gentleman on the beach in California and he was walking along and came across this kind of snail encrusted little jar, and he picked it up and started knocking off some of the shells. All of a sudden a genie popped out. He said, “Wow, I thought genies were only in stories that guys told at men’s events.” But the genie said, “No, I’m real, but I’m a different kind of genie. You only get one wish.” The man said, “Well, ok.”
So he thought about it for a few minutes and the genie was getting a little impatient and finally he said, “Ok, let me tell you some background because this is going to be a strange request. One time I tried to get on an airplane. I made it all the way in, I made it down the walkway, I got to my seat, I sat down and even had my seatbelt on. But, as soon as the other people got on the plane and they were starting to shut the doors, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I was sweating, I was shaking, and I ripped the seatbelt off and I ran off the plane as fast as I could.” The genie said, “OK.” Then he said, “Well, one time I tried to get on a boat. I didn’t even make it onto the boat. I got to the end of the walkway and started shaking and everything and had to move back to shore as fast as I could. I was just so terrified.” The genie said, “OK.”
The guy said, “The reason I told you that is because I have always wanted to see Hawaii. So what I was wondering is, could you build a bridge all the way from California to Hawaii?” The genie said, “A bridge from California to Hawaii? Do you have any idea what you are asking for? Do you have any idea how much concrete, how much steel, how much paint, what the engineering would be like for a bridge from California to Hawaii?” The guy said, “Well that’s what I want.” The genie said, “Isn’t there anything else you want besides a bridge from California to Hawaii?” The guy said, “Well there is one other thing.” The genie says, “Anything!” The guy said, “OK I have always wanted to understand women.” The genie says, “Do you want that to be 2 lane or 4 lane bridge?”
Sometimes, understanding our spouse can seem like it’s as hard as building a bridge from California to Hawaii.
But I hope that what we are going to talk about next will help us to understand a little bit more about that.
Slide (two clicks)
We’re going to talk about how you can build your marriage. In your outlines,
#3 is: Say yes to your wife.
Listen to what
A man who finds a wife finds a good thing
and obtains favor from the Lord.
tells about the marriage relationship
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What is God’s intended source of a man’s greatest joy in life?
If you’re married—and not everyone is called to be married—but if you are married, God intends for you to find joy in your wife.
He intends for you to find what is good.
Slide 57 (two clicks)
For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.
Slide 58 (five clicks)
Above that in verse 28 it says, He who loves his wife loves himself. Notice that it’s NOT saying “he who loves his wife as if he really loves himself.” No. Nor is it saying that he should love his wife like he loves himself.
It’s saying that he who loves his wife is loving himself, because you have been united; you’ve been made one flesh. And so, by loving our wives, we really are loving ourselves. We’re doing what is best for ourselves by sacrificially loving our wives.
That’s the message of that passage. It’s servant love. It’s love with a purpose, because of that true union that has taken place.
I want to give you a couple of practical ideas to implement that kind of love. In a season of building, as you say yes to your marriage and to your wife, there’s this idea you may have heard of an emotional bank account. The idea of an emotional bank account is that every time you interact with your wife, you are either making a deposit or a withdrawal from her emotional bank account.
Now if you aren’t married, anytime you interact with anybody, this is true.
One of the ways that we can help our wives grow and show servant love to them so they can be everything God wants them to be is to make more deposits than withdrawals from their emotional bank account.
A great way to make deposits is through this idea of The Five Love Languages.
Look with me on page 13 of your outlines. You’ll see a chart, and it describes these different love languages. We’ll look at this more in a minute.
Slide 59 (five clicks)
But basically here are the five: You have words of affirmation. That is simply sharing encouragement, kind words, and appreciation.
Second, quality time, spending time together.
Third is gifts, showing you care by giving gifts.
Fourth, acts of service, that you would do things to help and serve them.
Fifth, physical touch—nonsexual touch included.
These are five different love languages
Chart – Pages 13 of Session Outlines
If you’re married, take this home and go through pgs 12 and 13 together with your spouse. Talk to her about it, and let her have an opportunity to look at these things and then tell you about her love languages.
In the story The Velveteen Rabbit, there is a section where the old horse is talking to the toy rabbit, and the horse is telling the rabbit about becoming real. The rabbit says,
“What is real?” He wonders if it has something to do with being a moving toy with handles and springs and lights and all that. And the horse says,
“Real isn’t how you were made, it’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become real.”
I think there is something to that in terms of our relationship with our wives.
Part of what God has given us is the opportunity to make each other real. To love our wives so much that they become what He wants them to be—that they flourish and blossom.
In that passage in Ephesians 5:25-33 about marriage, it says Christ presented His church to God as a bride—holy and blameless, spotless, radiant.
And we have that same ministry opportunity in the life of our wives, to minister to them and to serve them and to love them well so that they are becoming everything that God wants them to be. We are consistently building into them.
Slide
In a season of building, we need to remember to say no where we should say no—to the influence of the world, the desires of our flesh, and the devil—so that we can say yes where we should say yes—to God, to our marriages, to our roles as fathers and grandfathers and mentors of the next generation.
Slide 61 (two clicks)
Because the problem is, once we have said yes where we should say no, then we have lost the opportunity to say yes where we should say yes. We are going to be forced to say no to things we should say yes to. And so those values and priorities, learning to say no to what we should say no to, so that we can build the things that are really important and lasting.
Let’s pray… and then take some time to go through the discussion questions as a group at the top of page 11 of your handouts.
Slide
Pray for the men
END SESSION WITH DISCUSSION QUESTIONS AT TABLES