This SHOCKING Message Changed My Life! | Pastor Reacts

Wise Disciple

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There are hundreds of you in this crowd who do not want your life to make a difference.

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All you want is to be liked. Oh, it hits where it hurts.

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This is before Facebook, this is before Instagram, YouTube. Have you given in to the distractions and the myths of this world?

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Have you decided that it's better off to be liked rather than to discover what you were meant to do in this life?

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No more excuses. Today is the day that you say, yes, Lord, I will. Who's with me? Who's tired of the same old stupid news cycle and unsatisfying social media diet?

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For years, I struggled with feeling lost and wondering if I was doing anything in my life that really mattered.

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And I know you feel the same way or you have felt this way in the past. Why? Because we all do.

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We're all wondering how we can make a difference in this world, how we can do something that truly matters.

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And I think it begins by starting over, really. And that's what I had to do.

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Look, something is happening to us, ladies and gentlemen. We are being controlled by forces that seek to pull our attention away from our true purpose and our true mission in life.

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Andrew Tate, you know, and others calls this the matrix. And it's funny because I don't think the characterization is that far off.

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In other words, there is a concerted effort both in this physical reality, but as a Christian, I would remind us also in the spiritual realm that pulls our attention away from the true, the good and the beautiful in order to put focus on the opposite.

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And sometimes that focus is pulled towards incredibly evil things. But a lot of times the focus is pulled toward things that just don't matter.

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And going down either of these two paths is equally as bad. What if I told you that everything that's happening around you has already been laid out for us in the pages of scripture?

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How this deception works, what our true purpose and mission is as human beings.

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And every now and then someone comes along that pulls back the curtain of deception and shines a bright spotlight on the true, the good and the beautiful.

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My name is Nate Sala, and this is Wise Disciple, where I'm helping you become the effective Christian that Jesus wants you to be.

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And I'm so glad you're here. You clicked on the right video. We're going to get right into it. 24 years ago, there was an event called

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One Day 2000. It brought upwards of 40 ,000 people to a small farm town in Tennessee.

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And for one day and one day only, thousands of passionate young Christians came to worship together and to cry out to God for an awakening and for a move of his

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Holy Spirit. Take a look at this photo of the event. Here it is. Look at all of these people in one location.

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Upwards of 40 ,000 Christians seeking the face of God in the midst of this time of worship and an unassuming, mild -mannered figure walked out on stage.

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And what he said next not only shocked this crowd, but it changed my life when I heard it.

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Take a look at this. You don't have to know a lot of things in order to make a huge difference for the Lord in the world.

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But you do need to know a few things that are great and be willing to live for them and die for them.

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People that make a difference in the world are not people who have mastered a lot of things.

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They are people who have been mastered by a very few things that are very, very great.

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If you want your life to count, you don't have to have a high IQ and you don't have to have a high

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EQ. You don't have to be smart. You don't have to have good looks.

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You don't have to be from a good family or from a good school. You just have to know a few basic, simple, glorious, majestic, obvious, unchanging, eternal things and be gripped by them and be willing to lay down your life for them, which is why anybody in this crowd can make a world of difference.

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Worldwide difference, because it isn't you. It's what you're gripped with.

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I was 21 years old when Piper gave this talk. This is John Piper.

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But I wasn't there to hear it. At the time, I was too busy living for myself, doing my own thing on a one -way path to hell.

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At 21 years old, I had rejected the gospel. I had rejected God's church and I was pursuing my own desires and my own plans.

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But I was looking for the same thing that these folks were. I wanted my life to matter.

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I wanted it to mean something and to count for something greater than myself. And the problem was

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I rejected the only path possible to truly give my life to such a higher calling.

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And here comes Piper telling us all, if you want your life to matter, if you want to make a difference in this world, it won't be because of you.

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It will be because of what you are gripped with. Or should I say, who holds you in the palm of his hand?

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But one of the really sad things about this moment right now is that there are hundreds of you in this crowd who do not want your life to make a difference.

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All you want is to be liked. Ooh, ooh.

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Oh, it hits where it hurts, friends. It hits. Now think about this.

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This is before Facebook. This is before Instagram, YouTube. This is before the perfect storm of social media distraction and corporate and governmental manipulation of all of those things, right?

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He says the fact is you don't want your life to matter. Why? Because what you really want is to be liked.

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Somebody needs to hear this. In a moment, I'm gonna tell you how this message affected me and it changed my life, but it's not just for me.

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This is for all of us. Maybe finish school, get a good job, find a husband or a wife, a nice house, a nice car, long weekends, good vacations, grow old, healthy, have a fun retirement, die easy, no hell.

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And that's all you want. You don't give a rip whether your life counts on this earth for eternity.

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Ooh, the apostle Paul says it like this. 2 Timothy 4, verse three, for the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves, teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

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As for you, always be sober -minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

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Fulfill your ministry. What is your ministry? What is your calling?

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What has God called you to do? All of these questions flow out of a much more foundational one.

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Does my life have meaning? Does my life have purpose? And the answer is, yes, it does.

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And it's not a purpose that you make up for yourself. It's a purpose that you discover outside of yourself.

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When you take your eyes off of yourself, when you turn that arrow of discovery around and point it outwards, the purpose for why you are here on this planet is given to you as an epiphany that arises from looking outside yourself and to the

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God who made you. So the question is, and it's like the $6 million question.

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This is gut check time. Are you doing that or have you given up? Have you given in to the distractions and the myths of this world?

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Have you decided that it's better off to be light rather than to discover what you were meant to do in this life?

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All of these kinds of questions will lead to the greatest thing that you could ever do with your life.

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I promise you. That's a tragedy in the making. That is a tragedy in the making.

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About three weeks ago, we got news at our church that Ruby Eliasson and Laura Edwards were killed in Cameroon.

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Ruby Eliasson, over 80, single all her life, a nurse, poured her life out for one thing, to make

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Jesus Christ known among the sick and the poor in the hardest and most unreached places.

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Laura Edwards, a medical doctor in the Twin Cities and then in retirement, partnering up with Ruby, also pushing 80 and going from village to village in Cameroon.

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And the brakes give way. Over a cliff they go and they're dead instantly.

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And I asked my people, is this a tragedy? Two women in their 80s, almost, a whole life devoted to one idea,

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Jesus Christ magnified among the poor and the sick in the hardest places.

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And 20 years after most of their American counterparts had begun to throw their lives away on trivialities in Florida and New Mexico, fly into eternity with a death in a moment.

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Is this a tragedy? I asked. It is not a tragedy.

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I'll read you what a tragedy is. I've got a little article here from Reader's Digest. Now, what

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Piper says next changed the lives of so many people. Matt Chandler was sitting in the grass on that day.

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Many future leaders and missionaries of the local church were likely sitting on the grass on that day.

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And John Piper is about to say something that will change their lives. Now we know that there is no power in Piper, amen.

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But what he's doing is he's pulling the curtain back. He's pulling us out of the distraction and pulling the curtain back on the false narrative that many of us have adopted.

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And we didn't even realize it. Why? Because we're not even thinking about it. It is the water in which we swim.

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This is the false narrative that keeps us stuck inside the matrix that tells us that two senior citizens who lost their lives in a car accident is tragic.

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But this is not. This is a tragedy. Title of the article,

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Start Now, Retire Early, February, 1998. Bob and Penny took early retirement from their jobs in the

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Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30 -foot trawler, play softball, and collect shells.

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That's a tragedy. That's a tragedy. And there are people in this country that are spending billions of dollars to get you to buy it.

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And I get 40 minutes to plead with you, don't buy it.

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With all my heart, I plead with you, don't buy that dream, the

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American dream. A nice house, a nice car, a nice job, a nice family, a nice retirement, collecting shells.

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As the last chapter, before you stand before the creator of the universe to give an account with what you did, here it is,

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Lord, my shell collection. Look, Lord, my shell collection.

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And I've got a good swing. And look at my boat, God. Look at my boat,

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God. Well, not for Ruby and not for Laura.

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Don't waste your life. Don't waste it. Oh my goodness. It still gets me after all these years, you know?

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It's as if I heard it for the very first time all over again. And the reason why it still gets me is

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I know that there are millions of people out there who believe the lie.

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They believe the lie that this life is all there is, that there's nothing more than this, whatever this is, you know?

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And this lie, it invites just about every kind of emotion, either shallow satisfaction for some on one side of the equation, but also frustration and angst and misery for others.

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Just over the idea that there is nothing more than this, that that's it.

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These people walk around and let's get real. A number of these folks go to church.

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They are faithful to go to church every single Sunday, but not faithful to the

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God who tells them to live for more than that. They are faithful to commit to a life group, but not faithful to the calling that God has placed on their lives.

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They're so satisfied with the spiritual crumbs of what they could truly experience if they would just read their

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Bible and understand what it truly means to follow Jesus, to be a part of spreading his kingdom here on earth.

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Do you realize everyone claps on a Sunday when they hear Jesus promise that he's going to return, right?

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Amen. Yes, they clap. But they forgot the part where he says, I wanna find you doing the work of your father when

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I get back. Look at this, Matthew 24, verse 45, who then is the faithful and wise servant whom his master has set over his household to give them their food at the proper time.

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Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions.

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But if that wicked servant says to himself, my master is delayed and begins to beat his fellow servants and eats and drinks with drunkards, the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and in an hour he does not know and will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites.

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In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. See, friends,

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I'm afraid we'd rather stay jacked into the matrix and play the video game version of life than truly experience the meaning of life for real.

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I think we'd rather daydream about taking risks for God instead of truly leaping for him and trusting that he's going to catch us.

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But that's the thing, you know, and that's the trick. And I didn't even have this fully figured out until relatively recently.

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Your faith grows outside of your own comfort. How are you supposed to fulfill your purpose when you're constantly distracted with the lies of convenience and self -seeking?

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And the irony, you know, it's not lost on me at all that I am using the same platform that probably distracts you from fulfilling your calling, that distracts so many other people away from fulfilling the calling of God on their lives.

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That's precisely why I'm on this platform, okay? That's precisely why friends of mine are also on this platform trying to run in the same direction, trying to reach you and tell you that today is the day.

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No more excuses. Today is the day that you say, yes, Lord, I will.

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Amen? Yes, Lord, whatever your will is for me, I will do it. Not my will, but thy will be done.

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Who's with me? Who's tired of the same old stupid news cycle and unsatisfying social media diet?

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I heard Piper at a time in my life when

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I was straddling multiple opportunities, but I still had no idea what to do or what

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God was doing with me, where he was really leading me in my life and my family, right?

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From the outside, you could look at what I was doing and say, wow, look, look at Nate getting all that stuff done. But on the inside,

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I had no idea which of the things that I was doing was what I was actually supposed to do.

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But when I heard Piper's message, I knew it was the ministry for me. Whatever that looked like, whatever

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God wanted, however much that paid or however much it did not pay, I was on board.

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Shortly after I heard this talk, I entered the pastorate like within the year and I've never been the same.

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Arguably, I wouldn't even be here on this platform talking to you if I had not heard John Piper and that message at the right time in my life, which is amazing because that talk was given almost 25 years ago and God is still using it to change lives.

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How about you? What's the rest of your story going to be? Are your friends and family going to say about you, oh yeah, they cashed out their 401k and decided to sit on the beach collecting seashells or will your heavenly father say to you on that day, well done.

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Well done, my good and faithful servant. You had little, but with what

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I gave you, you did much for me. Take heart, friends.

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God has a purpose for your life and it starts right now. What is your purpose?

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What has God called you to do? Let me know in the comments. I'd love to pray for you. If you want to talk about this,

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I encourage you to jump over to the Patreon because I'm about to lead a discussion on this issue and get into how to determine

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God's activity in your life, how to see that from a spiritual lens, from a biblical perspective, you know, how to figure out what

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God wants you to do. So let's continue the discussion. The link for my Patreon is below and I'll see you over there.