Latest / The Madison Church Podcast / Perseverance, Discipline, and Support in Our Spiritual Lives | Living Like Never Before (Part 4) | Stephen Feith

Transcript

Perseverance, Discipline, and Support in Our Spiritual Lives | Living Like Never Before (Part 4) | Stephen Feith · The Madison Church Podcast

• 0:00
  Stephen Feith: Who is I want to start to who's a runner? Who is a runner? You raise your hand.
• 0:04
  Stephen Feith: Yeah, runners, no one. If you're watching online, no one in the room as a runner. You're my type of people. You're my type of people. The only time I'm running is from being chased.
• 0:12
  Stephen Feith: And I've got to be somewhat convinced that I'm going to outrun this thing. Otherwise, why run in my last moments of life, it doesn't mean like, you know, I'm saying like, if a bear could run fast, I'm not gonna outrun it. Like, it's just over.
• 0:21
  Stephen Feith: Just, I'm just gonna take this and so none of you are runners.
• 0:24
  Stephen Feith: Do any of you aspire to be a runner? You're gonna be cool someday. Yeah, some of you.
• 0:31
  Stephen Feith: You're like, yeah, maybe, maybe not. Well, this, have you heard of the Ironman? Triathlon?
• 0:36
  Stephen Feith: You've heard of that? Right?
• 0:38
  Stephen Feith: Yeah. Okay, so you're not runners, but we've heard of it.
• 0:40
  Stephen Feith: We just had it in Madison. Lea there last month or the month before? Do you guys know what is all involved in that? Have you ever looked into that you got to swim 2.4 miles. So that's how we're gonna we're gonna start swimming 2.4 miles, then we're going to bike 112 miles, we're going to bike 112 miles and then we're going to run 26.2 miles.
• 1:02
  Stephen Feith: That's a marathon people. That's a marathon. You know, sometimes when I'm going golfing, I decide I can't walk the four miles over the course of the next four hours, and I opt for the old golf cart. Okay, that shows you where I'm at in life. I can't imagine people pay to do this.
• 1:20
  Stephen Feith: They're not paying people to do this. People pay to do this. I mean, you've got to have and you've got to have a controlled lifestyle. I tried running a half marathon, I did run a half marathon. And this last time I ran, I'm still recovering. Like 10 years ago, I'm still recovering emotionally, psychologically. And physically, I've recovered but, and I trained a lot for that. I followed the training program, and then I actually ran it. This is the worst, this is the worst.
• 1:46
  Stephen Feith: Why do people and and people are finishing the finish line?
• 1:49
  Stephen Feith: Actually, it's funny. I should have got a picture. I wasn't going to talk about this. But there's a picture and all these people finishing the finish line and I literally look like I'm gonna die. Like my Finish Line photo is like I'm about to throw up. Get out of the way I didn't.
• 2:05
  Stephen Feith: I was white as a ghost. I mean, I'm already kind of tinted that way. But I was so white. I was I was ready to die. I look like I aged 50 years over the course of the last I don't know how long it took me to run at 10 hours, probably 12 miles or whatever, but and then I'm thinking like, can you imagine you just swam for two and a half miles, and you just bike for 112? And you get off the bike? And then you're like, now I gotta run a marathon? I can't I can't imagine that is just so beyond my ability to comprehend that people do that. And you do you so you gotta You can't just show up and do that. Right? I mean, like, obviously, this takes not just months of training. That's what I did. For my half marathon. I did monster training like half a year, which seems so significant half a year to train for one race. Well, the people who do the Ironman, they train for years. And it's like a total body makeover. I mean, it's it's swimming, it's biking, it's running, it's all that but it's a little bit of weights. And it's, it's what kind of outfit Are you going to wear when you do it, you're certainly not going to wear like a winter coat right when you're out here running this thing. And so there, it's everything. And it's diet, they meticulously pick out everything. And there's almost nothing unintentional, about someone who does an Ironman Triathlon. And I bring this up because the author Weber's has been talking about persevering and maybe there's not a greater example in modern society of perseverance than somebody who's 60 miles into a bike ride, who says, I'm going to do this again, and then I'm going to run for almost another 30 miles, there might not be a better example of perseverance and it's going to be challenging.
• 3:35
  Stephen Feith: Anything that we're going to do in life is going to be challenging, let alone our spiritual walks. And comparing our spiritual walks our spiritual runs our spiritual marathons, our spiritual triathlons, to the Iron Man is a good analogy. And not one that I've come up with the author of Hebrews is going to talk about it today and the passages that we're studying in Hebrews chapter 12. And so if you want to follow along with us, we have the house Bibles all around you, I will have the words on the screen, of course, you can use your smartphone and Bible app.
• 4:04
  Stephen Feith: But we're going to Hebrews chapter 12. That's where we're at in our series weren't part three, or we're in the third series going through Hebrews.
• 4:10
  Stephen Feith: And so we've been on this journey for about two years, I want to say a year and a half, two years, we haven't done a straight shot. This is only week 27 or something. But we work the series and where we go word by word through books of the Bible, we've done Colossians we've done Jude, now we're doing Hebrews, and in part one, it was about finding our faith, which isn't a concept that we came up with, it was written in Hebrews, he's writing to a primarily Jewish audience, or she's writing to a primarily Jewish audience that has kind of transferred and let go of all of this Old Covenant Judaism, and now they're doing all of this new stuff, and they're wondering if they made a mistake, like, did we make a mistake? Why do we believe what we believe and so that was kind of the first part of the series.
• 4:53
  Stephen Feith: Those are questions that we can have today. Maybe not. We've left Judaism but we live in a pluralistic society and that Islam, there's Hinduism, there's all sorts of different faiths out there. And there's, there's combinations of faith or all paths lead to God. And so you might have been one of those people who have asked the questions, are we sure about the path that I'm on, and that is what the first series did. And again, those are all available online, if you want to go back, the middle part of the series was called losing my religion.
• 5:17
  Stephen Feith: And that was, again, going back to these people who lived under the Old Covenant, not just their whole lives, but like their whole generation had lived this way their parents generation lived this way. This was hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years of trying to get Levitical law, right. We talked about the Pharisees a lot with Jesus, these religious teachers who followed the rules while and now we have Jesus coming on the scene. And he does, and he kind of up ends a lot of that stuff. And so we talk throughout this whole middle portion of Hebrews, we're under a new covenant. It's not the old covenant anymore. We're not sacrificing bowls anymore at the altar of God, because Jesus died for our sins. And we don't have priests anymore High Priests anymore. The only ones allowed in the temple, the only ones allowed to talk to God, because we have a higher price than Jesus. So now we can all come to the throne room of God.
• 6:05
  Stephen Feith: And so this was about losing their religion, their Judaism, religion. And now we're getting into this final part, which is like, well, you know, and just for the record, Jesus didn't start a new religion. This was something that was always predicted in the Old Testament, it was always looking forward to Jesus all the way back to the first couple of chapters of Genesis and which one we're hearing about the curse, we read that some day, Eve son is going to step on the snake's head, this a prophecy of Jesus, someday he's going to overcome the curse of sin. So he didn't start a new religion. And when we do this, when we find our faith, and when we lose our religion, we can begin to live like never before. And a big key critical aspect of that is perseverance. And so as I said, we're in Hebrews chapter 12.
• 6:50
  Stephen Feith: Let's read today's passage verses one and two. 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 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. Last week, we did the entire 11th chapter of Hebrews is that Hall of Faith where we're going all the way back to Abraham and talking about the great faith that they had, and, and able and working our way, this is what they did because of faith. And so he's transitioning here, again, they didn't have chapters and verses when this was first written. And so this was the transition since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd.
• 7:51
  Stephen Feith: And he's referring to the people he just talked about, as a matter of fact, he uses a Greek word, your translation, if you're using a different one might say, a cloud of witness, and you must have Why is he saying the cloud, really just popular in Greek culture and Greek literature, they would say you're in a cloud of whatever it is, you're knee deep, as we would say, in our society, which is just to say, it's a fog. It's all around us. We have all of these huge witnesses around us amazing people of faith. And then goes, we do this, we run the race with endurance by keeping our eyes on Jesus. And hear the author saying, but our greatest example, this is the climax, this is it. This is the top of the mountain.
• 8:33
  Stephen Feith: The greatest example that we have of faith is Jesus. And remember, primarily Jewish audience, Moses. Yes, Abraham.
• 8:40
  Stephen Feith: Yes. David. Yes, we're good talking about all of those.
• 8:44
  Stephen Feith: Maybe they're not sure about this Jesus who came in and was causing all these problems? And wasn't that Jesus, the one who was killed on the cross? And yeah, I know, a lot of people said that they've seen them since. But now you're saying that he is our greatest example of faith. And he says, here's the example of faith. Remember, Abel, he brought forth a good sacrifice to God and, and Moses, he crossed the Red Sea. And there were the examples of faith. Well, what did Jesus do?
• 9:11
  Stephen Feith: He endured the cross, disregarding the shame. That's Jesus's example of faith that he put forth. For us. The cross was the lowest form of capital punishment, and the Roman Empire who ruled the world at the time and ruled most of the world's biggest army and what they would do to the just the biggest scumbags of society, the people that they wanted to humiliate, torture kill. If you are a law abiding citizen, we're going to make a point out of this person, so that way, you never even think about it. We're gonna hang you naked on a cross. And I know our VeggieTales versions of Jesus on the cross, he's got a loincloth, but that just wasn't the case. He's up there and he's and he's got nails. He's bleeding profusely. And over time, like what happens is as you're hanging on the car off the weight of your body just pull down right by gravity, you're getting weak, your muscles can't hold itself up on the nail anymore. So you slowly as you began to drift began to suffocate. And that's how you die. And, and that was horrible.
• 10:13
  Stephen Feith: And this is look at how much faith Jesus had the night before he knows this is what's going to happen. He prays, I don't want to go through with this, can I please leave? But not my will God, yours. And he goes through with it, knowing that this was his ending, this was the greatest act of faith in human history. So the author of Hebrews says, How can we persevere because what we've been talking about, since we keep our eyes on Jesus, Jesus is the finish line, whether you're running the Iron Man or your half marathon, or you've got the promotion in mind, or the next, whatever step of life it is, you have that finish line in mind, and he says, For personal faith, we keep our eyes on Jesus. Now, that's not all he has to say, right? Because that'd be a really short letter, if he should have just or he or she should have just began with that. The author writes, remove the weights around us. And this is an analogy again, because we're not physically running a spiritual race. But they talk about like, imagine running a race and then just having a lot of extra weight on you. Maybe that's your weight, maybe that's just extra weight, you're running with extra weights. I mean, the Ironman is hard enough as it is right. But now imagine that we're going to tie an extra 50 pounds of weight around you would never do that. No, no one would want to do that. The author of Hebrews is saying, Okay, let's just be smart, let's be smart, like the athletes, they had these games and enroll them at the time, let's be smart, like these athletes. And like, let's not make this any harder than it has to be. We have to let go of the way to name and specifically that the author mentions two things, which is interesting, let go of the weights and the Send. Okay, so that's important because we get into this conversation where some things aren't sin, but they're just not good for you.
• 12:07
  Stephen Feith: So it's possible that you're doing things that aren't sin, it's not wrong, it's not necessarily hurting you. It's not hurting your relationship with God. It's not hurting anyone. The author of Hebrews says just not wise, for your spiritual life. Now, of course, we're used to things like anger, envy, greed, loss, bitterness, arrogance, just to name a few.
• 12:24
  Stephen Feith: Those are the weights of sin around our lives that the author says if you want to finish this race, while you have your eyes on Jesus, these are weights to your spiritual journey. These are the things you got to start cutting loose. But there are also things that just might not be a sin that we're carrying around us. Maybe the people we're hanging out with that we just need a little bit of space from because they're kind of like a weight to us spiritually.
• 12:45
  Stephen Feith: Maybe it's a certain hobby. And it's not necessarily a bad hobby. But I've thought in my life, this summer, maybe of golfing too much. Maybe there's a hobby in my life that I'm too committed to. That's operating as a weight my life is golf wrong. No is hanging out with people wrong, oh, Jesus wants you to hang out with people. But perhaps there's a line that we've crossed, that's not sin.
• 13:07
  Stephen Feith: It's just not wise. And the author of Hebrews is asking us to examine our lives and say, as we're running the race, in our spiritual life, where do we feel the weight that is coming from and we need to shed the weights all around us, we need to prepare to run along race. Now the author of Hebrews continues, we're gonna read verses three through 13. Think of the hostility he Jesus endured from sinful people, then you will become weary and give up look to Jesus, He is our example of faith. After all, you have not yet given your lives and your struggle against a sin. And have you forgotten the encouraging words God spoke to you as His children. He said, My child Don't make light of the Lord's discipline and don't give up when he corrects you. For the Lord's discipline. The Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes each one he accepts as His child as you endure this divine discipline. Remember that God is treating you as his own children, Whoever heard of a child who is never disciplined by its father, if God doesn't discipline you as he does all of his children and means that you are illegitimate, and are not really his children at all.
• 14:17
  Stephen Feith: Since we respect that 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 they knew how, but God's discipline is always good for us so that we might share in His holiness. No discipline is enjoyable. While it is happening, it's painful, but afterward, there will be a peaceful harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way. So take a new grip with your tired hands and strengthen your weak knees. Mark out a straight path through your feet so that those who are weak in life will not fall but become strong. Remember original context, we had people who were defecting from this church was a small church, a lot like ours.
• 15:04
  Stephen Feith: And you had people who were like starting to question God, God's goodness. And one of the things that they're obviously questioning was, they're going through these tough times, it must mean that God is apathetic.
• 15:12
  Stephen Feith: Well, that's what the Greek society around them would have believed that bad things were happening to them, that Gods were either punishing them or they didn't care. They needed to get on the, on the radar of the gods and do good things with the gods, Gods love them, like them, and will do good things. And now here, the author is creating a very important distinction between the Christian God between Jesus and all of these other Greek gods where if you did do something wrong, they would punish you. They said, No, this isn't like punishment for the sake of like joy or pleasure of God being bored. For others discipline, and the change of perspective that sometimes we're going through tough times, because God loves us. Now, this is a hard topic and one that we don't have a terrible, terribly long time to unpack today. But bad theology around this bad theology around us, is what causes us to believe that something bad happened to us, I must have done something wrong.
• 16:05
  Stephen Feith: I know a lot of you believe that, right? Like you're getting pulled over, you stub your toe, something bad happens, I work, you lose your job, whatever it might be, and you think, I wonder what I did to deserve.
• 16:18
  Stephen Feith: This is kind of the thing. We think of karma. If I do good things, good things will happen to me. If I do bad things, bad things will happen to me. And that's not always the case.
• 16:28
  Stephen Feith: Okay, so one punishment is when you do something wrong, and you have to atone for your sins. So don't think of God's discipline as punishment, because remember, God atone for our sins already.
• 16:39
  Stephen Feith: So if you are in a situation where something bad has happened to you, and you think I must be getting punished, remember, that's not the case, because God already took the punishment for the bad things that you did.
• 16:49
  Stephen Feith: Okay. So that's the first thing that we need to clear up. The only form of punishment at this point for us from God is the consequence of our own action, and is to continue to reject that gift of the Atonement from him. And then there'll be a natural consequence that we've talked about a lot, and most recently, two weeks ago, but discipline is completely different from punishment. For example, you know, the author of Hebrews uses a parenting analogy. So I want to unpack that maybe a little bit more modern day in our house when our two kids Oliver and Elijah get in a fight, or they have a dispute a lot of times what Megan and I will do, depending on how fired up they are, we make them go to the room until they work it out. That's the thing. Like if they're fighting over a toy, over a video game, whatever it might be, we're okay, that's fine. Just go to your room and work it out. Shut the door. Is there crying?
• 17:41
  Stephen Feith: Screaming? Yes. Do they know that they can't hit each other?
• 17:43
  Stephen Feith: Yes, that that'll get them a timeout, which is additional.
• 17:46
  Stephen Feith: Now that's punishment, the timeout. But what we're doing in this act of discipline, which isn't like it's not physical, I mean, they feel like it's physical because they're in the room and they feel like it's punishment because they're six and they're four. But what Megan and I are doing in this is we're disciplining them. We're trying to teach them how to have good conflict. Okay, you both have conflict. You guys got to work it out. Mom and Dad can't always jump in intervene? Do we?
• 18:11
  Stephen Feith: Sometimes? Yes, we do. Like with hitting I mentioned. But who gets this toy. Now, we're not going to we're not going to micromanage this situation. Like either compromise, work it out.
• 18:22
  Stephen Feith: So you both get it. Or one of you just needs to give up one of you needs to concede that's okay. Like guys in life, sometimes our kids and I would have benefited from this No offense, mom and dad if you're watching or listening, but like I needed to be taught when to concede sometimes, you know, that was a hard lesson to learn.
• 18:37
  Stephen Feith: I wasn't somebody who gave up and I've learned that sometimes it's wise to just concede my, my son Oliver has already figured this out. He'll be in the bedroom for 30 seconds. If you can tell all Elijah is not gonna give up. He's like, you know, I really didn't want that. So that way, when they are in the room for like, 20 minutes, I'm like, Man, Oliver really wants this.
• 18:54
  Stephen Feith: And he's not giving up kudos to him, you know. And so we're trying to discipline and we got to think of that, as God. Not saying, think of me as God, please don't hear that. But think of the situation that sometimes we're going through something or thinking it's punishment. But perhaps God's trying to teach us a lesson, perhaps is a situation that I've put myself in, I'm not sharing, right like my kids do. And so God lets natural consequences happen sometimes. That's it. And other times, God puts us in a period of season. And how and why? Those are just not answers.
• 19:28
  Stephen Feith: We get a whole lot of clarity on in the New Testament and in the Bible. But the author of Hebrews says, if you find yourself in this situation, it's not natural consequences. You're not being punished. You find yourself in a season of discipline, the best question that you might need to just ask God is God, what do you want me to learn? Where you can be stubborn, and like I said, Sometimes my kids do this right?
• 19:46
  Stephen Feith: 20 3040 minutes in the bedroom, and all they needed to do was compromise. And so sometimes when we find ourselves in this situation, where we find ourselves in a season, we're like, we're pretty sure this is God discipline and God's trying to teach me something. Why am I In this situation, the best answer is to say God, what are you trying to teach me?
• 20:02
  Stephen Feith: And then you respond to that, okay? This is what God's trying to do. So there's a little like tidbit. If you're in a season of discipline, you're like, how do I get out of this? Ask God what you want me to learn, so I can learn it and move on to the next thing. Don't think of God as like some kind of cosmic parent ready to like just Zapier when you do something wrong. Think of God as like a personal trainer or a tutor, we hire those people, right? We hot we pay a personal trainer money, we say I have a goal of running in the Iron Man, I can't do it by myself. So we hire we pay someone to yell at us. We pay someone to say you're gonna do more weight today, we pay someone to say you got one more rep in you, we pay them we give them money to do this. And I want you to think of God as like your free personal trainer, because he's not charging you think of that free tutor who is pushing you. God says I know the goals that you have. And I've got goals for you too. And I know the dreams that you have for life. And I have those dreams too. And together, we're gonna make it happen. And so I when I think of God, disciplining, I don't think of this mean, bully who's waiting for us to make a mistake. So he can zap us I think of somebody in my own life. Well, yeah, I pay a golf coach, to tell me what's wrong. And I've got agonizing videos from a few years ago, when I first started getting coaching from her where she'd be I do this. And now three years later, I'm like, Oh, that was bad. I was ugly, but I paid her to tell me and now more much better golfer and I enjoy it more because of the hard feedback. And it's not just golf, it's everything in life.
• 21:32
  Stephen Feith: It's it's coaching at work, it's coaching at school, you get that feedback, we want to take it and we can do that through God. And I wanted to mention briefly just we do this at Madison church with our new thing network. So we're a non denominational church, but we're in network with other churches, some of them are non denomination, some of them aren't. Some of them are Lutheran, some a Methodist, Baptist, Pentecostal, but we don't get together based on an agreement of theology. We get together on an agreement that Jesus loves the world and wants us to start more churches and to reach people for Jesus. So what does that mean in the new thing network? It means that we get together once a year in our churches in Wisconsin do this.
• 22:10
  Stephen Feith: We fill out a form and then we send it into the national office in Naperville. And we all are accountable. How many small groups did you start off with this year? How many do you have now? How many leaders did you start off with this year? Coming up? Now? How many people did you baptize this year? How much money did you give to missions last year? How much money did you give to missions this year?
• 22:32
  Stephen Feith: And what are we doing we voluntarily do this if we just don't send that in like we're out of the network. I guess that's always kind of been a thing. I've never heard of anyone being kicked out. But we're all because we're all choosing it. We're all voluntarily walking into the situation for accountability.
• 22:45
  Stephen Feith: And iron sharpens iron type of situation where we say, hey, we want to be each other's personal trainers, we want to be so forth missionaries, because let's be honest, it's easy for churches to become inwardly focused. It's easy, it's easy for us to just see each other and say that this is the church and we're good. So we've got to be intentional.
• 23:03
  Stephen Feith: We've got to put people and systems in our lives that say, no, no, no, no, you all are important. Hear me out. But don't get just so focused that you forget that there are a whole bunch of people out there too, who could be in here, as well. And so that's new thing we do that as a church, we should do that as people. And then wrapping up Hebrews 12, verse 14, some concluding remarks, work out living in peace with everyone and work out a living a holy life. For those who are not holy, will not see the Lord, look after each other so that none of you fails to receive the grace of God, watch out that no poisonous root of bitterness grows up to trouble you corrupting many, make sure that no one is a moral or godless like Esau, who traded his birthright as the firstborn son for single meal. You know that afterward, when he wanted his father's blessing, he was rejected and it was too late for repentance, even though he bagged with bitter tears. So we've talked about Jesus being the high point. And the author is gonna just throw out a contrast as they've done this entire letter of somebody who's a low point. And in this case, it's Esau, is God, Jesus had this great faith that took them all the way to the cross, and through the cross II saw his faith was so shallow that he traded the promise of everything for a single meal. So that's the Compare and contrast here and the author's just saying, Please don't be like that. Don't be shallow. Don't just walk away, don't give up. You have so many good things coming to you. If you continue to push forward. I love the kind of first statement, balanced living work at peace at living with everyone and living a holy life. They're not saying do whatever you got to do to get along with everyone. They're kind of saying both. Follow Jesus wholeheartedly and live at peace with everyone.
• 24:54
  Stephen Feith: But don't live at peace at everyone at the cost of following Jesus wholeheartedly, but don't follow G and follow Jesus. But that means you should live at peace with people. And so they're kind of comparing and saying do both do both. Well live at peace with everyone and follow Jesus. I think in our society, we kind of pick and choose. So if I'm gonna live a peace with everyone that I got to agree with everyone that that everything that they say or not disagree with anything that they say, are the author of he resigned? No, it's actually possible that you do both. You can have an unapologetic face while living at peace with your neighbors and co workers. If you're like, I haven't figured that out yet. Okay, that doesn't mean it's not possible, it just means that you haven't figured it out. And perhaps they'll be something we talk about later on. Now, again, going back to this idea of like, living and persevering and making better choices. I'm not a runner. I'm not a swimmer. I'm not a biker, and I have no at all. I have no like desire to ever run in the Ironman that sounds like torture, ask someone the other day. I'm like, what do you do for hobbies? It was another pass from walking. So what do you do for hobbies? And he said, I run and I go to the gym, or like, Well, sounds like your hobbies are torturing yourself. Do you do anything for fun? I love doing those things. Okay, that's fine. But in another way, I thought of a physical example in my own life was that I was not a good student in high school. I did graduate early, but I graduated with an awesome 2.0 GPA. So I'll figure that's, hey, that's classic Steven right there. Graduates early. But with a 2.0 GPA. We don't have time to unpack that. I never studied. I never studied and I partied a lot. Why studying was boring, wasn't gonna read anything. And partying was fun. Now, partying is still fun. To this day. I'm 34. I still like a good party.
• 26:42
  Stephen Feith: Studying is still boring. But my senior year in college, I ended up spending every evening in the library till close to like two or three in the morning. One was because in my dorm room, I wasn't going to focus. My bed was right there. One that was the first issue. My bed was right there, too. I had a TV three, I had a computer right there and, and nobody else around me. But I went I changed my environment to work in a library. So I had people around me, who were also studying people were better students. I graduated undergrad with a 3.0 I was I was ambles. I mean, look at that progress in the four years that I've made. And then I went to grad school, and my GPA was just under 4.0. There, I got to be in an introduction to theology class, I was mad I had to take because, again, another story, but I didn't think I needed an intro to theology class. kind of blew it off a little bit. But I studied a lot.
• 27:29
  Stephen Feith: I did absolutely no partying when I was working on my master's degree, we were also having kids and working on the church. So we really had to simmer that down. And in addition, I got I got extra help, then that's when I started seeing the tutor and reaching out to professors. Like I didn't do that undergrad, I just went to the library. And then in grad school was like, Okay, I need to study I need to not party. And that is kind of what I want you to begin to think of your own spiritual life as, what are some of the things you need to give up? What are some of the environments you need to change?
• 27:59
  Stephen Feith: What are some of the ways that you need to walk? Do you need someone else's help? So for example, what do you need to give up? What do you need to quit so that you can have a more consistent prayer life? If you don't have a consistent prayer life? What do you need to quit?
• 28:13
  Stephen Feith: What's stopping you from doing what's in your life that needs to be more optional, than praying to God? What do you need to do to begin reading and studying the Bible every day, setting an alarm on your phone.
• 28:22
  Stephen Feith: So you remember to do it before you go to bed, setting an alarm on your phone. So you can wake up early, it's really not an option for me. So I do the latter, I do the or the former, I stay up and read the Bible.
• 28:33
  Stephen Feith: Who do you need in your life to push you forward in your faith?
• 28:37
  Stephen Feith: I mean, gathering in this space is great. And getting together in your small group is even better. And that's one of the ways one of the most impactful ways that we can get together to push each other on people around us will help us spiritually. The marathon we're running the spiritual one requires a sustained effort. Who do we need to offer forgiveness to what's the weight that we're carrying?
• 28:58
  Stephen Feith: The bitterness that we're holding on to the person that we're not willing to love. And maybe today for what we're talking about, there's a hobby that we need to do less of or poverty, we just, frankly need to quit. Maybe it means letting go of a certain possession or possessions. Maybe it's creating space between you and certain people, people that add a weight or things that add weight to your spiritual journey that are keeping you from running the race. Well, we need each other to motivate and help each other if we're going to persevere and let's end with Ironman again. I got a picture of somebody who just did this. I want you to think about this. They did just this is what they look like after 10 hours, 10 hours people of biking, swimming and running.
• 29:49
  Stephen Feith: And they're about to pass the finish line right there and the smile on their face. Was it hard? I'm sure it was. They can't tell right here but About the water was cold or dirty. I bet when they passed that halfway mark, when they're riding their bike, they thought, oh my gosh, I'm only halfway there. I'm sure when they jumped off the bike, they thought this would be a good place to stop.
• 30:11
  Stephen Feith: But they kept going and look at the result. And how much better is it going to be for you spiritually? That you keep going is life hard? Yeah. Is faith hard? Yeah. But imagine your face. When you see Jesus, your finish line at the end of your life, and the eternity that's promised when you cross it