Spiritual Procrastination

Next Steps:

• I will turn from negative behavioral patterns.
• I will stop saying “Tomorrow” where God is asking me to say, “Today.”
• I will do whatever I need to do to change.
• I will play my part in the partnership God wants to have with me at work.
• I will get intentional about following Jesus my finances.
• I will take a step of obedience and get baptized.

Full Sermon Script:

I want to suggest to you what I think might be the single most dangerous word in the English language.

It’s found in Exodus 8.

||

Let me give you a little background to this text.

In this part of Exodus, the Israelites have been living in slavery for a long time — for centuries — and they want freedom.

And so we have one of the great labor management conflicts of all time.

The Israelites have a very bad contract — work and then die.

||

Moses is their top union guy, but he doesn’t have much leverage and the rank and file is a little shaky.

||

Management is represented by Pharaoh and he’s a hard-line negotiator.

||

So God gives Moses some very powerful bargaining chips known as the plagues to kind of level the playing field.

In one of them the water in Egypt turns to blood — the whole Nile is filled with blood. Fish die. The stench spreads through the country.

Other plagues involve gnats, flies, locusts, and boils.

And in the midst of all this, one of the most memorable plagues is written about in Exodus 8, starting with verse 6.

And Pharaoh’s response to Moses is the key word I want to focus on today.

Exodus 8:6-10.

So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came up and covered the land. But the magicians did the same things by their secret arts; they also made frogs come up on the land of Egypt.

Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, “Pray to the Lord to take the frogs away from me and my people, and I will let your people go to offer sacrifices to the Lord.”

Moses said to Pharaoh, “I leave to you the honor of setting the time for me to pray for you and your officials and your people that you and your houses may be rid of the frogs, except for those that remain in the Nile.”

“Tomorrow,” Pharaoh said.

There’s the word: Tomorrow.

I want to ask Pharaoh one question: “What are you thinking?”

||

Get the picture — the frogs are out of control.

Look at Exodus 8, verse 3:

The Nile will teem with frogs. They will come up into your palace and your bedroom and onto your bed, into the houses of your officials and on your people, and into your ovens and kneading troughs. Exodus 8:3

Ken Davis put it like this: “Pharaoh can’t even back his chariot out of the garage without killing a hundred frogs. His pizza is covered with frogs. If his home is anything like mine, his wife and oldest daughter have been standing on chairs, screaming ever since the plague began. His youngest daughter has run out of jars in which to collect and accidentally suffocate the frogs.”

The frogs are everywhere.

Yet when Moses offers to get rid of them, what is Pharaoh’s response?

Tomorrow.

Does he enjoy frog legs?
Is the sound of his shrieking daughter music to his ears?
Is he tired of sleeping alone?
What could possibly motivate this man to wait until tomorrow if he could resolve the problem today?
Why spend another night with the frogs?

If you look carefully, Pharaoh’s behavior isn’t so unusual. I’ve been there myself. I’ve done that.

Cancer ward residents continue to smoke cigarettes through the tracheotomy hole cut into their throats. Why? Because the very habit that is killing them still provides a moment of pleasure. They settle for another night with the frogs.

Intelligent people sacrifice reputation, health, and fortune to continue illicit relationships. They do this even when they know they’ll be found out, even after the relationship turns sour, even after they’ve lost everything. They choose to spend another night with the frogs.

||

A troubled young woman walked into my office one day. Her dilemma was this:

She wanted to live her life in a way that pleased God, but she was confused about what it was that God wanted her to do. Her particular concern was her relationship with her boyfriend.

She had been dating this guy for six months. From the beginning of their relationship, he had been verbally and emotionally abusive — a jerk.

Her question to me was, “Should I continue to date this man?”

Will you be having frogs with that?

||

This kind of thing has puzzled the human race for a long time. The Greeks had a word for it. They called it “akrasia.”

Greeks were big into reason. They valued reason very highly.

They could not figure out why human beings chose to engage repeatedly in irrational acts, that would not just harm other people, but destroy themselves.

So the Greeks called it “akrasia.” They said the gods clouded human thinking and led them to do crazy things.

||

An author named David Pears has written a book on the same subject. He calls this ‘motivated irrationality.’ Motivated irrationality.

People persistently tolerate and maintain behavioral patterns that will destroy their own lives.

||

A husband holds a grudge against his wife. He withholds his love, nurses his resentment, even though he knows it’s destroying his own heart. It’s making him miserable. But he spends another night with the frogs.

A sex addict keeps going back to the Internet, even though he knows it’s destroying his marriage, his self-respect, and eating him up with guilt.

A woman is sinking in unmanageable debt. Debt is destroying her life, and she goes out and gets another credit card for one reason: to get deeper into debt.

Will you be having frogs with that?

||

Moses said to Pharaoh, “You don’t have to live with the frogs anymore, Pharaoh. I’ve got Frog-Be-Gone. Say the word, and they’re history. Just say the word.”

Pharaoh says, “But then, I’d have to give up my labor force. I’m not ready for that. Maybe if I wait, the frogs will go away. Maybe they’ll all hop to Assyria. Maybe the Frog Fairy will come and make them all disappear.”

Pharaoh has learned that he can live with the frogs. He can tolerate a frog-saturated life.

It’s not a great life. There’s not much joy in it, but he can survive.

And he prefers it to the change that would be required in repentance. — “I’ll wait until tomorrow,” he says. “I think I can handle another night with the frogs.”

It may be the most dangerous word in the English language — Tomorrow.

||

We suffer from what might be called spiritual procrastination.

Now, procrastination is not the same thing as physical laziness. You could be hyperactive and still be a procrastinator.

Procrastination is the failure to do what needs to be done, when it needs to be done.

Like the kamikaze pilot who flew 17 missions. You have to think about that one for a second.

||

It’s the failure to do the right thing at the right time.

And just to level the playing field here, we’re going to do a mass confession of procrastination.

Let me just run through a few categories.

If as a student you’ve ever put off studying for an exam or writing a paper, or ever pulled an all-nighter.
If you’ve ever put off a project around your house.
If you’ve ever delayed in answering an email or paying a bill or returning a phone call or text message.
If you’ve ever put off balancing your checkbook.
If your desk has any paperwork tucked away that you’re avoiding.
If your desk is so full of paper, you can’t see your desk.
If you were ever reminded by store ads to do your Christmas shopping in September, but waited until November… or December 24th.
If you’ve ever watched TV crews interviewing people at the post office on April 15th at midnight and thought to yourself, “I wish I had my taxes done on time like those people.”
If you’ve ever put off signing your kids up for lessons or taking them on a trip.
If you’re still intending to have that talk with Junior about the facts of life — although Junior is 40 years old now and has teenagers of his own.
If you’ve ever put off going on a diet, doing home repairs, getting your oil changed, having your will written, seeing a doctor.

If you’ve ever spent a night with frogs — how many of you, at least once in your lives, have procrastinated? Mass confession.

How many of you want some more time to think about it?

||

It’s amazing how much damage this one trait can do.

||

And for the most part, for most people, the problem is not that we don’t know what to do. We know what to do.

Our problem, usually, is not that we deliberately refuse to do what we know we shouldn’t. That’s why this is such an important issue for us.

For most of us, our problem is not that we don’t know what to do.
Our problem is not that we deliberately refuse to do what we ought to do.

We just don’t get around to doing it — tomorrow.

||

Now, there are a variety of consequences to spiritual procrastination.

||

There are external consequences.

Some of them get quite serious.

This trait may cause you to mismanage finances and mean that you live in constant financial pressure and can never give generously.

Or it may mean constant problems at work — patterns of delay — trying to hide what’s really going on, never realizing your full potential. In severe cases, some of you have lost jobs because of this.

It can damage relationships. It can mean words of affirmation and love that never get spoken, conflicts that never get resolved, commitments that never get honored.

It can cost friendships, damage the effectiveness of a parent, cripple a marriage.

||

But then, there are also internal consequences to this “tomorrow” syndrome.

You can end up living with a constant anxiety that you’re not going to beat the deadline. Stress levels go way up.

You have a chronic sense of guilt because you know you’re not doing what you should do.

It erodes your sense of joy.

It eats at your self-esteem.

And the worst is, it will keep you from ever realizing the purpose for which God created you.

— Not because you ever said “no” to God. You just said, “Tomorrow.”

||

So here’s my question for you today: Where, in your life, are you saying “tomorrow” where God wants you to say “today?”

Before we walk out of this room, in a little while, I’d like for you to get real clear on that — where in your life are you saying to God “tomorrow” where God is asking you to say “today?”

||

In Hebrews 3:15 the writer says,

Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. Hebrews 3:15

Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.

But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. Hebrews 3:13

When God calls today, and you don’t respond today, you get a little harder inside. Today is all you’ve got.

||

So I want to spend our remaining time talking about a few areas where you might be putting up with some frogs.

And I want to ask you, as we walk through these areas, to do a little heart check.

As we walk through each one of these, ask — Is God saying you’re doing well in this area? Are you responsive to God?

Or is God saying, “There’s something in this area where you need to take action?”

And I’m asking you now, don’t say “tomorrow” anymore.

||

The first area involves habits or negative behavioral patterns that God is calling you to change.

Negative behavioral patterns

Do you have any habits or negative behavioral patterns right now that God might be bringing to your mind, that need to change?

||

This can have very severe consequences.

||

Saul was called to be the first king of Israel.

We’re told in Scripture that Saul stood head and shoulders above all the other men of Israel.
He was called the glory of Israel.
He had a heart for God.
He prophesied.
He was, at least initially, quite humble. So humble, that after his coronation, he went back to farming for a while.

And then, one day, after he had been king for a while, after a big battle, a young man named David became a hero. And the people sang a song as the troops were returning home — “Saul has slain his thousands. David has slain his ten thousands.”

And the writer of Scripture says:

From that time on Saul kept a jealous eye on David. 1 Samuel 18:9

||

Saul was the king. Saul was God’s anointed. When he saw David’s giftedness, he could have befriended David. He could have trained him and helped him and been a mentor to him.

But he didn’t — “From that time on Saul kept a jealous eye on David.”

Envy got started in Saul, and he just never dealt with it.

||

Let me ask you a question:

Did envy help Saul at all?
Did it add any joy to his life?
Did it make him more effective as a king?
Did it benefit any of his relationships?

It destroyed him.

It’s crazy to live in envy.

It destroyed his heart.
It consumed him with anger.
It drove him to attempt murder.
It destroyed his relationship with his own son. He tried to kill his own son.
It cost him the affection of his own people.
In the end, it cost him his crown, his throne, his life. It cost him everything.

So why didn’t he do something about that envy that was corroding him, and ultimately, destroyed him?

||

I’ll tell you what I think.

I don’t think he chose, deliberately, to live in envy. I don’t think Saul said to himself, “Now, I’m intentionally going to develop a bitter, jealous heart.” I don’t think he did that.

I think he just learned that he could live with it. There was never much joy in it, but he preferred it to the change that repentance would have required.

And so, when little promptings came his way — when he was rebuked by Samuel, when David refused to try to retaliate, but instead, showed mercy and grace to him — anytime there was a glimmer of the Spirit’s work to try to appeal to Saul’s conscience, because he knew better, something inside him said:

“Not today. I’m not going to repent today. I’m not going to fall on my knees today. I would rather nurse the anger and bitterness and resentment inside me than be freed of it, than to have to go through the embarrassment and the pain of repentance. Not today.”

||

And so he didn’t repent that day… or the next day.

And the days turned into weeks. And the weeks turned into months. And the months turned into years. And it killed him.

||

So I want to ask you, friends, is there anything that has gotten ahold of your heart, and you know right now it’s a pattern, it’s a habit, it’s an attitude and it’s leading you away from God?

And there’s no joy in it — it’s not creating a more loving, patient, peaceful, winsome, caring, serving person.

It’s making your heart a little colder and a little harder every day.

And at various points in your life, the spirit has attempted to convict you, but you keep saying, “Not today. I’m not going to repent today. I’d prefer to live with this anger, with this resentment, with this bitterness, with this greed, with this envy, with this whatever it is, than to go through the pain of repentance. Not today. Maybe tomorrow.”

||

Maybe it’s a pattern of deception, and the truth is, you’re just getting used to it. You’ve begun to rely on it.

Maybe it’s addictive behaviors, maybe involving substance abuse or sex.

Maybe it’s a judgmental spirit that’s getting a little stronger in you. It’s a little stronger in you this year than it was last year. And if you don’t do something, it’ll be a little stronger in you next year than it is this year, until one day you end up a Pharisee.

Maybe you have a bitter heart toward someone, and it’s a little more bitter now than it was a month ago. And it’s going to be more bitter a month form now.

Maybe it’s a spirit of discontentment inside you that’s choking all the gratitude out of you.

Maybe it’s a toleration of sin in some area.

“Listen,” the writer of Scripture says, “Today, if you hear his voice, don’t harden your heart.”

I want to plead with you as earnestly as I know how.

Say, before God and yourself, right now, “I’m going to start working on this today. I’m not going to live under the illusion anymore that it’s going to go away tomorrow. I will confess before God. I will acknowledge it before another person, a trusted friend. I will start praying, day by day, for change.”

Whatever help you need, get it.

Start reading relevant Scripture passages and studying about change.

Memorize appropriate Scripture that relates to whatever it is that needs to change in you.

See a Christian counselor if that’s what you need to do.

Talk to your small group about it.

But draw a line in the sand. Do it today.

That’s the first area. Anything in your character, any kind of habits or behavioral patterns that need to change — start now.

||

The second area involves work.

Work

Does anyone here ever struggle with procrastination at work?

I was thinking about this when I was putting this message together about an hour ago.

||

One of the things the writer of Ecclesiastes says is —

Whatever your hand finds for you to do, do it with all your might. Ecclesiastes 9:10

Or the Apostle Paul, when he says —

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord. Colossians 3:23

||

Now I know how this goes — all of us would love to be in a work situation where, whenever you go to work, you’re just full of ideas and energy and your motivation levels are peaking and you can’t wait to get things done.

And sometimes that happens.

But, at least in my experience, a lot of times it doesn’t.

And a lot of times all I can do is just discipline myself to say, “I’m going to study and pray and think and write. I can’t control the outcome of my work, but God and I are in partnership. And there’s the part that God will do. And there’s the part that I have to do.”

Here’s what I’ve come to learn about work —

Procrastination is a refusal to play my part in the partnership God wants to have with me.

God wants to partner with you, whatever your work is — in an office, at home, in school, whatever it is. God wants to be in partnership with you.

But procrastination is the refusal to play my part — a refusal to play my part in the partnership that God wants to have with me.

||

The outlet is your work, your office, your home, your desk, your school.

I know how easy it is, after a while, to settle for less than working with all your might.

Maybe it’s a cynical attitude that goes unchecked.
Maybe it’s a spirit of complaint about a boss.
Maybe it’s complaint about your company and it begins to infect other people around you.
Maybe you started to just punch the clock and stop growing.
Maybe you’re in the wrong job, and you know you’re in the wrong job, and it doesn’t fit the way God has made you.

||

I was reading a Christian author recently, about work and God’s view of work. And here’s the phrase I’ve never thought of before.

He talked about the sin of staying in the wrong job.

In other words, if you know God has made you to do certain kinds of things — given you certain gifts and passions, and you’re involved in an area of work, whether it’s volunteer or for a paycheck or whatever, and it’s not tapping into the thing that God made you to do, and you know it.

If it would be possible for you to seek change and you don’t do it, you’re violating stewardship.

That’s a sin that we don’t talk about too much… but it really can be a violation of God’s will.

I know people who spend a year or a decade or sometimes their whole life working in a job that doesn’t match their gift or passion because they never get around to looking for something else.

They just spend another day with the frogs for a whole career.

||

Maybe God is saying to you, “I want you to work diligently, as if you work for me. Because you know what? You do work for me.”

In Paul’s writing to slaves, in his day, he says, “Work diligently as unto the Lord.”

||

Maybe there are patterns in your life that you’ve been putting up with for far too long, and its time to change. Change. And start now.

||

Okay, habits and behavior patterns are one area.
Work is another area.

The third area that I want to talk to you about are finances.

Finances

Writers of Scripture are quite clear that we are to be intentional and proactive in our financial lives.

Paul wrote to the Corinthians:

On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with your income, saving it up, so that when I come no collections will have to be made. 1 Corinthians 16:2

In other words, they have taken the initiative to get their financial lives in order, and then to be generous towards God’s work.

||

In the church for Christ followers, Paul is saying we should not neglect giving or wise financial management and then get in crisis mode because we’ve put it off.

||

There are many statements like this one in Proverbs.

If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and not be answered. Proverbs 21:13

And many people manage, or rather mismanage money in such a way that they have to shut their ears to the cry of the poor. They have no choice because they’ve mismanaged their finances so badly, they have nothing to give.

It’s not because they said, “I want to become a greedy person.”
It’s not because they said, “I never want to give anything away.”
It’s because they just said, “Now I know that I ought to get my finances in order. I’ll do that — tomorrow.”

||

I think of a couple I know who are solid people. They’re Christians. They’ve always been committed to the church and to ministry. They’re very devoted parents.

There’s really just one area in their lives where they’ve learned to put up with the frogs, and it’s with their money.

They consistently engage in patterns of spending that are not healthy.
They’re not accountable in their financial life to anyone.
They don’t plan.
They’re always spending on something.

And they knew they ought to get disciplined in this area of their lives, but somehow it never happened, and they would just laugh about it. It was almost an endearing quality to people who knew them. People knew that they would always be ready for a party.

But the troubles got a little more serious every year.
Financial pressures began to mount.
They made some unwise decisions.
They cut corners they should not have cut.
And then a crisis hit.

And now they may lose their house. They may lose the company they built. They face legal actions. Their marriage is under a horrible strain. It’s not clear that it will survive.

You can imagine the effect that that has on their kids. All because they just kept saying, “Oh, tomorrow. We’ll get around to honoring God with our finances tomorrow.”

It was never a deliberate deception of disobedience.

Not only is this creating tremendous destruction, think about all the good that could have been done — about all the money that has flowed through their hands over the years that could have been used for good.

||

There’s an organization called Opportunity International that’s working to end global poverty by creating and sustaining jobs.

They provide small business loans and training to more than 14 million people in the developing world.

They believe that empowering individuals to work their way out of poverty and give their children a quality education is the most sustainable way to transform lives.

It has a huge impact.

I read about a woman — a mom with small children — her whole world has changed, because of $500 that was made available to her to start a business.

And now she’s supporting a family of small children. They have a home. They have healthcare. They have food. They have a sense of empowerment and self-sufficiency.

||

Now, over the last ten years, this couple I was telling you about — they could have done that gift a hundred times over.

There could be a hundred families in places like Ecuador where we sponsor children through Compassion that would be different today if one couple would have said, “Today, today, from this day on, with God’s help, things are going to be different.”

“Today, starting now, we’re going to get intentional about following Christ with the financial resources that he has given to us so that we can honor and glorify him and make a difference in this world.”

They never said that.

They never said, “We’re going to defy God in this area. We’re going to mismanage our finances in a way that brings chaos into our home, threatens our integrity, jeopardizes our marriage, damages our children, and dishonors God.” They never said that.

They just said, “Tomorrow…”

I’m telling you, that word is lethal.

|| ||

It’s amazing to me how many people know what’s coming up.

They know their kids will grow up and need money for an education.
They know they’re going to retire.
They know their resources could help people who are starving to death in developing parts of this world.

And they never take a significant step toward a life of serious stewardship.

Don’t do that.

Today God may be talking to some of you about this area.

Maybe you need to sign up for financial peace university this Fall.
Maybe you need to meet with one of our financial mentors.
Maybe you need to get on a budget.
Maybe you need to go home and cut up some credit cards — get out the scissors.
Maybe you need to set goals for giving — set them.

No more frogs.

||

Alright, the last area:

Negative behavior patterns
Work
Finances

And then the last area not to say “tomorrow” to is baptism.

Baptism

Scott mentioned earlier that baptism Sunday is coming up in the next month or so.

I want to talk to you about why it’s important to take this step in your spiritual journey, and why you shouldn’t put it off to tomorrow.

||

Baptism is really the initiation rite of the Christian faith. Baptism is when you go public.

It’s one thing to say in the privacy of your own heart or home, “I’m committed to Jesus.” It’s another thing to do what hundreds of people have done at Blue Oaks, which is to come forward in front of our church and say through baptism, “I’m a follower of Jesus, and this is the primary commitment of my life.”

||

Baptism was so important to Jesus that the very first thing he did when he began his public
ministry was to be baptized.

Before he turned the water into wine
Before he fed 5,000 people with a few loaves and fish
Before he healed the sick and the lame
Before he delivered the Sermon on the Mount
Before he invited even the first person to follow him, Jesus was baptized.

In his final instruction to his followers, Jesus said:

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. Matthew 28:19-20

Baptism was to be the first of many steps in the spiritual journey of following Jesus, and
baptism became the practice and the pattern of the early church.

||

When 3,000 people came to faith in Jesus Christ on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, all 3,000 were baptized that day.

When an Ethiopian official had the Gospel explained to him by Phillip, they came to some water
and the Ethiopian asked to be baptized right there. Luke says in Act 8:36:

As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water. What can stand in the way of me being baptized?”

There are nine conversion stories recorded in the Book of Acts. Every one of them begins with a person putting their faith in Jesus Christ. And every story ends with a visible expression of baptism by that person.

||

Some of you were baptized as babies or as children and you may think you don’t need to be baptized again.

Others of you have recently decided to follow Jesus Christ in your life and you wonder
how much you need to know or how much you need to learn before you’re baptized.

What do the writers of scripture say about this?

I want to look at a couple examples of the progression of events in the Bible.

The first is from Acts 8:13. Luke says:

Simon himself believed and was baptized.

Notice the progression. First he believed and then he was baptized, in that order.

Another example from Acts 18:8:

Crispus the synagogue leader, and his entire household believed in the Lord; and many of the Corinthians who heard Paul believed and were baptized.

Notice the pattern: first they believed, then they were baptized.

That’s the pattern we find consistently in the New Testament church. People would first put their faith in Jesus, and then they would express it publicly with baptism.

||

When a couple gets married, they look each other in the eyes and they express their vows of love and devotion. And then to mark the significance of those vows, they exchange rings with each other. The rings come after the vows. The symbol comes after the commitment.

Baptism is only significant after a person makes a commitment to follow Jesus Christ.

||

Once you come to faith, you don’t have to spend time getting your spiritual life together before you take the public step of baptism.

Waiting until we grow up in the faith is not a requirement of baptism. The simple requirement is to be a follower of Jesus. The requirement is that we have genuinely put our trust in Jesus.

||

Now what if you put your faith and trust in Jesus 5 years ago or 15 years ago, but you
haven’t been baptized yet… either because no one taught you about it or maybe you just put it off.

I think when you understand that you need to be baptized after you come to faith in Jesus, you
just follow. You just go ahead and do it, whether you made your decision to follow Jesus five
days ago, five months ago, five years ago, or 50 years ago.

||

Maybe your parents had you baptized when you were a baby or very young. I know that’s
true for many of you.

And you may ask, “Isn’t that good enough?”

||

Often parents want their children baptized primarily as a sign of their dedication and commitment to God, expressing their intent that one day they hope this child becomes a follower of Jesus.

If your parents did that for you, I think their motivation was pure and in the right place, and you
ought to be thankful for their spiritual concern. You ought to express gratitude to them for that.

But at the same time, if you look at what the writers of Scripture say, baptism always comes after someone comes to faith.

||

If you decide to be baptized as an adult because you’ve come to your own sense of faith now,
that doesn’t repudiate the baptism you received as a child. You can kind of view it as a fulfillment of your parents’ wishes and their prayer that you would follow Jesus one day on your own.

||

Now if you’ve reached a point in your life where you’ve made your own decision to put your
faith in Jesus Christ… then you need to follow his example and express your decision with baptism.

||

So what are you waiting for?

People go through years, sometimes decades, waiting, “I’ll follow God in baptism… tomorrow…”

Maybe you’ve been putting off baptism, saying, “Someday, I’m going to really take Jesus seriously.”

“Someday, I’m really going to follow in this step because I see other people do it and I want the kind of joy that they experience. Someday, I’m going to do that.”

And tomorrow never comes… and they die.

||

And they never said, “I’m going to go through my life with a heart that’s shut off. I’m going to defy God. I’m going to disobey him in this area of my life. I’m going to be so preoccupied that I never make it a priority.”

They never say that. It just happens.

Because they never said, “This is the day.”

||

If God is speaking to you about being baptized, I’d like to ask you to check the box on your next step card.

I want to call you this week to talk to you more about it… so make sure you put your name and phone number on the card as well.

|| ||

Well… Blue Oaks.. this is your day. This is our day.

Others have gone before us, and others will come after us. You have this day, so don’t say “tomorrow.”

“Today if you hear God’s voice, don’t harden your heart.”

||

Let’s pray as the band comes to lead us in a closing song.