Beth Moore - The Art of Growing Up - Part 3
The art of growing up, that we're gonna get to the end of our lives, and God, if he has had his magnificent way, is gonna have such a masterpiece for us to see when we get there that he has done with the course of these years and these days and these weeks and these moments and these seconds we've spent on this planet, what he's been up to in this sacred time he's given us in this tenure on earth. And we're thinking through that arrival and that departure, talked a little bit about infancy, starting out with that pure spiritual milk.
I was thinking about my grandson, Jackson, when he was about 13 months old and first learning to walk. And I think many of you know what I'm talking about. When they first learn to walk, I have a little video where I'm standing out in front of him on the front lawn of my house. And I have him where he's in front of me heading toward me, and I'm holding the phone with the camera like this. And I'm telling, I'm saying, "Come here, buddy. Come here. Come here to Bibby". And he's just smiling at me, and he wants to come to me so badly, but his feet are just going like this... And he's looking at me like, "I'll be back in a minute, Bibby, I'll be back in a minute". Because when we're first starting out, we're still just going where our feet are taking us instead of taking some kind of control over it and getting delivered about what we want out of life.
I say to you today, where do you want this thing to head? I'm gonna say that to you a number of times today. And ultimately, and most importantly, of course, eternal life. But I'm not just talking about for this moment of time that when it's over and all is said and done, do you want to go to heaven, or do you want to go to hell? Listen, that ought to be a really clear choice for us. But I'm asking you today, where do you want this thing to lead when you get here? Because listen, here is not when we decide how we wanted this thing to go down. Anybody know what I'm talking about? That now I really want, right here, I want to become the woman that God really set me apart to be; not here.
This is a really, really good place for just having gratitude, being so thankful, a really great place to say, "Lord, whatever I missed, Father, forgive me; but for what all you've done for me, I thank you so much". But what if way over here, we began somehow, the bells started ringing, and we decided, "I want to have a little direction about where this bike is gonna take me," anybody? What if here we decided, "I think I know where I want this thing to go. I don't know if I can define it. I don't know exactly where it's gonna take me, but I want to drive straight toward whatever it is Jesus Christ has set my life apart to accomplish, that if there are", I just want to throw this out to you. I don't think it's, like, this kind of systematic list, but I want you to imagine with me.
Say there were 25 important things that God really wanted to accomplish in you so that he could accomplish it through you. Wouldn't it be something to say, "Here's what I'm driving for, every one of those 25, I want checked off of that list by the time I drive this baby home". Anybody know what I'm talking about? What do you want from me, Jesus? When somebody says to me today, "How do I know what my calling is"? I would say back to you, listen, if you will say to him, "I do not want to miss you, I do not want to miss you. I want you. I want the goal of my life to be living this thing to the glory of your great name".
I promise you in Jesus's name, according to the authority of his Word, you will not miss your calling. You will not. You cannot head toward Christ Jesus with everything you've got and somehow manage to miss your calling. No, you will not, no, you will not. All you have to do is keep your eye on him and he will lead you straight. You will have a head-on and a heart collision with your holy calling, and you will have lived the thing out. And I promise you, girlfriend, you will have lived an adventure.
Ephesians 4, I'm gonna lock in at about verse 10, and let's go to 16. "(He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.) And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love". You gotta see 5:1, "Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ also loved us".
So here we see it, that somehow we are to grow up in every way at the very same time, simultaneously with staying children dearly loved of God. So what we said last night, I want to echo again today. We cannot become mighty people of God if we do not know down to our marrow that we are dearly, dearly loved children of God. Okay, so we're moving from infancy and childhood into the biggest transition we make. And that brings us to number three, and I want you to jot this one down. And this will get a lot of our attention today. A hair-raising shift from adolescence to adulthood happens behind the wheel. Anybody know about it? I gotta know if I've got any mamas in this room with a brand-new driver in the family, anybody? Then you totally get point number three.
Right here, something so dramatic takes place, this hair-raising transition, if we'll let it. This is going to be, if you'll just allow me to put it this way, this is going to be the rising or falling of us right here, what happens with these keys and what happens when we get behind this wheel. So this is where we're going over the next couple of minutes. Now, listen with me. The word "adolescence" as we're thinking about what the term means according to Webster's Dictionary, that's going to be, and I'm just reading straight out of Merriam Webster's, "The state or process of growing up". It's "the period of life from puberty to maturity". If there's one word I like less than the word "maturity," it's "puberty".
You know, there is really a reason why puberty begins with P-U, do you know what I'm saying? Is there anything that smells worse than a middle schooler who has been to gym class? Absolutely nothing. Then, three, the third part of the definition, it's a stage of development prior to maturity. So that's where we are, adolescence, and in this shift that can happen right there behind the wheel. Now, when was the last time you thought, what is it that drives you? What is it that motivates you? What's getting you up in the morning? What is it that keeps the blood flowing through your veins? What is it that is driving you? And see, it can be all sorts of things. It can be toxic things. It can be poisonous things. It can be all sorts of things. But the question on the table today is, what is driving you? Because something is driving you and something is driving me.
And so, here's the principle of the vehicle: where I'm headed is determined by what is driving me. Where I'm headed, so I gotta figure out what's driving me, because you and I are trying to figure out this weekend where we want to be before we lay it down on this bed. Who is it you want to become? Are you headed the direction you want to go? Because here's what we gotta do today, we gotta shift and head that direction. We think, "No, I'm gonna wait until I'm about 45 because then maybe I'll think some of the fun is over. I'll be over all of this by then. And then I'm going to really change then and become a mighty woman of God".
That is because you misunderstand maturity. You thought all the fun and all the adventure was over when you put childish things behind or put adolescence behind. But the Word of God is challenging that perception. Because I hope to show you that the longer you put it off, the longer you put off your calling and the longer you put off the greatest adventure of your entire life, where everything you have been through finds purpose in this one purpose, that's what I'm trying to prove to you today. So here's what's going on. We get behind the driver's wheel. You and I are gonna try to figure out what on earth is driving us. So I'm gonna sit down right here. I love my team so much. I told them what I had pictured for our scene this particular weekend with this theme, and this is what they gave me.
And I said, "Somehow, I need a steering wheel, and I need that thing to turn". And so I have exactly what you're looking at. I wish you could see it from this side because it is, I jotted it down, it is a '46, it's the steering wheel of a '46 Ford Super Deluxe sedan that I have before me today. So I want you to think about what is driving us because here we got a passenger seat. Something's driving, and I want you to think about all the ways those things drive. I just begin to let my mind go with it, and I just started writing down one thing after another. And I just want you to think, as I list some of these, think which one or which ones are driving you.
Here's what I think may be happening at the driver's wheel. Rage rolls down the window and makes crude hand gestures. Anybody? If rage is driving you, if you've been on the road, you know what rage looks like. If we want to picture it in some kind of imagery, it just, like, rolls down the window. It's driving down the road like this, rolls down the window at who it doesn't like, and it makes crude hand gestures. Slander also rolls down the window. It makes sure it's gonna do it in heavy traffic, and it yells out things, calling people names. Anybody know what I'm talking about? Now, legalism, if legalism is driving you, it plays sheriff and it wears a badge and it pulls everybody over, amen.
Now, appetite doesn't accrue very many miles. It's in the car a lot. Appetite is in the car continually, but it doesn't accrue a lot of miles because it's constantly pulling off at the exit going through the drive-thru. Anybody get that with me? Procrastination, procrastination drives with its blinker on. So it's got its blinker on. It keeps meaning to make the turn, but it just never does. Bitterness, oh, bitterness shifts constantly into reverse and backs over people. Drives back forward. That wasn't enough. One more time. And, you know, you're hoping you didn't kill them because you're enjoying punishing them so much.
So you really just want to run over the feet and the ankles, maybe the hands, because you're not done with them yet. And bitterness wants to punish in the worst way. Self-ambition, it just runs right over people. Jealousy and envy sideswipes the cars in the surrounding lanes. It can hardly go forward because it's all looking at the cars in the lanes beside it. "That car is better than my car," boom! You know how that one goes. Notice how we're so critical, we can see every little thing in somebody we're jealous of. And it's better if we point it out to somebody else so that they will see it too, lest they think too much of them. Narcissism doesn't even know anybody else is on the road. Seduction drives drunk, just going from one ditch into the other.
Seduction, a spirit of seduction, the Word of God says, seducing spirits in 1 Timothy 4:1. Gonna tell you something. I know what it's like to be seduced, and I'm gonna tell you right now, there are people in this room that are under such a seduction that you can hardly concentrate. Somebody in this room, seduction also takes often the form of a seductive kind of relationship or atmosphere. And some of us in this room, it may be that you are in a seductive relationship that has gotten you so intoxicated that you are not even recognizing the person who is in the mirror anymore. You don't even know who that person is. You can't think clearly. You can't concentrate at work.
Am I speaking to anybody in the house today? Because you are in a full-throttle seduction, and you are driving drunk all over the road. And it may not be until you come out the other side that you realize how many people you've hit on the way. I say that with compassion. But today is the day for somebody that's under an extreme seduction to wake up and get out of that car because it means to destroy you. This one really hit me because I have a very specific mental picture for it right now. Grief, appropriately, drives slowly, maybe on the shoulder, mostly, of the road. And sometimes it just pulls over, goes into park, lays its head on the steering wheel, and cries. I know that because my husband told me a couple of days ago about something his mama said to him.
Keith and I love his parents so very, very much, and they have lived next to us for many, many years. And his dad was just the superstar of our family. Just, I wish I could express to you what he was like. He just, if he was in a room, he took the room. He just took the room. He just was the family patriarch. We all absolutely adored him, and he died 11 months ago. We were expecting it, we were all with him through the hours leading up to his death and sat with him until he, that sweet body of his grew cold and they came to get him. I mean, it was just a family thing. We miss him so much. And my mother-in-law told my husband that a few days ago, we live way out in the country and it's just, there's a two-lane highway that is right beside our dirt roads that lead to another dirt road that lead to our home.
And so if there's slow traffic on it, nobody's getting around. It's very hard to get around because they're having to pass with oncoming traffic. And so there was a very, very slow driver, and my mother-in-law could see that people were passing. And she could see that as people would pass around them that there would be ugly faces at the driver. And she was looking to see and looking to see and looking to see, and it got to be her turn. He was just, like, barely moving. And when she went around him, she looked and it was a really, really old man. And she waved at him so that she could do a kind expression toward him. And she said after she did, she just pulled over on the side of the road and laid her head on that steering wheel and cried her eyes out. Appropriate for grief.
We have got some business we need to take care of and this is what it's based on. When sexuality is the driver instead of the God-intended passenger, God blessed, God-intended passenger, when sexuality takes the wheel, its brakes are shot. It doesn't know how to stop, yield, swerving all over the road. There is nothing we have mentioned so far that will drive us further in this culture from where you and I want to go than when sexuality is sitting in the driver's seat and has got a hold of the wheel. That we gotta understand that our whole culture is under sexual assault. Does anybody understand what I'm saying?
Our whole culture, we cannot get away from it. We can do what we can within our own home, but we're, like, driving down the freeway. We got pop-ups on our computer screens. We got all manner of thing going on, every kind of movie, every kind of commercial. I mean, we're just, like, constantly negotiating in a world that is under sexual seduction. And I'm gonna tell you why I think it is. Now, I'm no brainiac, but I'm just gonna throw out my theory. I think it's because Jesus Christ is coming back for a pure bride, and the enemy knows. He's furious because he knows his time is short. And so he's gonna do everything he can to defile the bride, everything he can do to defile the bride so that he can put off the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, it's all a big threat because the blood of Jesus speaks a better Word. Would somebody say yes to that? But do we need some purity? God help us, we do. Sexuality is a God-intended passenger, but it is a terrible driver. And here's one I'm gonna suggest to you, that this huge inundation of unhealthy sexuality that is surrounding us is so invasive that if you and I and anybody else out there is not doing something deliberate to have healthy sexuality, we will not have it.
Let me say it again. In the culture in which we live, it is so sick, so infirmed, so ill sexually, that if you and I want to be healthy, it will never, it will never be by accident, never. If you are gonna have sexual healthiness in Christ, it will be because you went out of your way to deliberately pursue it. I'm gonna wait for somebody to amen that. Most of us are aware of sexuality because we're people who are alive in ourselves and in our full selves.
So there's just being alive. Then this is how the cycle goes. It goes from being alive to now suddenly we're aware. That may come with the temptation that is right before us, whatever it may be. But then all of a sudden, I mean, we're always alive because we're people. And then all of a sudden there is, "No, I'm not just aware, all of a sudden, I'm awake," that it's just everything, all the pictures, all the images, everybody's dressed, everybody, what everything looks like. It just starts with awake. So we're not just alive, we're not just aware, we've gone straight to awake because that's how our culture is. So the next step from awake is aflame.
See, what's happened in our culture is that it's cut out some of those steps. Now the cycle is like this... and instead of us going like this... this is what we're doing, this is what we're doing, this is what we're doing, this is what we're doing. Because the way the society has set us up with all of the images around us and all of the graphic speech around us, with all that is hitting us, with all that is overrunning us, we start at awake. All we have to do is go around that cycle just a few times and what we've done then is come up with an addiction. And we want to be set free. Because listen, there's no good place for that thing to go. It just gets worse and worse and is a bigger and bigger destroyer. And today's the day for some of that to break off of us.