All right, welcome everybody.

Man, I'm glad you're here.

Welcome West Coast, welcome Rancho.

Turn in your Bibles if you would to Philippians chapter three and I wanna tell you a story.

Okay, while you're waiting on the scripture to be read, I wanna tell you a story.

So we're gonna bring a basketball goal out here right now, I think somewhere, or maybe we were supposed to do that already.

Oh, it's right behind me.

Man, what is wrong?

Sorry about that.

Okay, this is one of my absolute favorite stories I've told this numerous times, especially when I speak at graduation ceremonies, because there are some things in life you experience that just leave an impression on you that you never forget.

And this is one of those stories.

When I was in high school, we had a young player on our team come in as a freshman.

His name was Keith Turner.

Actually, it still is Keith Turner.

And Keith and I have remained friends.

He's now the athletic director of our high school back in, actually he's in Johnson City, the adjacent city.

And he came in as a scrawny little kid, and he was determined he was going to be the first player in Elizabethan cyclone history to dunk a basketball in a game.

Now those of you who play basketball today at high school, you have to understand the game has evolved.

I mean it was probably in the 60s before anybody dunked, Lew Alcindor and a few other people, but in high school it was unheard of back in those days.

In the mid-70s Late 70s, you just didn't hear of a dunk in a high school game.

Man has evolved, haven't they?

You have them all the time now.

Keith Turner was determined he was going to be the first one to do that.

Let me tell you what he started doing.

So I'm going to go over here and get this little apparatus.

It's called a ladder.

I'll be right back.

So every day after practice, this is after we had a coach that was, man, he was a difficult coach.

But every day, and I've told this story, but I want to demonstrate what he would actually do.

Every day after practice, Keith Turner would get some athletic tape, okay?

He would tear off a piece of tape.

Man, I'm getting weak.

And he would put the ladder near the backboard.

So this isn't 10 feet, but just imagine that it is.

And he would climb on the ladder.

And if I fall, it's going to be great YouTube stuff.

But...

He would take a piece of tape and he would put it on the backboard like that.

Okay?

Now, what he would do as a freshman after practice, he would stand under the goal, stand under the hoop, and he would jump until he could touch just above that tape 10 straight times.

Okay?

When he found that he could touch it 10 straight times, he would get back onto the ladder, take another piece of tape.

He knew that if he was ever going to dunk a basketball in a game, he was going to be a...

he was going to have to have the tape above the square.

Because you basically got to have room for the ball and the palm of your hand.

He did that from the time he was a freshman.

And what do we do?

What do you always do when people are trying to work hard to achieve something?

You make fun of them.

You're never going to do that.

What are you taught?

You're a scrawny little kid.

And this scrawny little kid was always getting injured.

Even when he broke his left arm, he would still stay after practice and jump straight up and down with a cast on trying to touch that square.

He never, to my knowledge, Keith never knew his father.

His father left the family at a very young age and his mother raised him.

They lived in a very poor part of town, not much of a future.

And this guy wanted to go so desperately to university and knew the only way he was going to get there is through a basketball scholarship.

Now, you think of having the presence of mind as a 13-year-old to know you've got to do something special if you're going to achieve your goals.

That dude, his freshman year, his sophomore year, his junior year, even in the summer, he's raising the mark.

He's climbing that ladder and he's putting a piece of tape on that backboard.

He would go weeks.

Sometimes months not being able to touch the next level, the next level of athletic tape.

Because you know You can raise it to a degree but you're gonna get to a point where you can't reach it unless something special happens Unless you drop some pounds or back in those days We didn't realize that your vertical jump had a lot to do with not only your leg strength But your upper body strength pulling you up.

So in those days we only did leg exercises no upper body strength now we know that you got to have both in order to have a a a good vertical jump.

So Keith Turner did this for three years and we ridiculed him.

I mean, we didn't really ridicule.

We just said, why are you doing that?

You're wasting your time.

It was my senior year and Keith Turner's junior year and we were playing Sullivan Central High School in the regional finals.

We had a very good team.

I got the ball.

It was the beginning of the third quarter.

I got the ball did exactly what my coach told me I was supposed to do you pivot to the outside and you look for The outlet Keith Turner was standing at half court.

I threw him the ball He was out ahead of the pack and I'm telling you you could sense what was about to happen he was either gonna do it or die trying and he took about five big dribbles Keith Turner and Back then they didn't have the breakaway rims They didn't have all the things they have now because nobody was dunking you don't need breakaway ribs and Keith Turner is left from just inside the free throw line and went up with two hands and slammed the ball so hard that they had to stop the game to recenter the goal.

And the whole crowd, even the opposing team jumped up and started screaming, wow, that's the greatest thing we've ever seen.

Okay.

Now you see it all the time.

That whole endeavor, I gained a whole new respect for Keith Turner.

And I know what some of you are saying, wait a minute, Pastor Jeff, you're a senior?

Couldn't you dunk in high school?

Well, yeah, I could.

But in a game?

Never.

Never got the chance, as far as you know.

I was gonna...

Would you like me to get a ball and show you that I can still do it?

Yeah.

You gotta be crazy If I tried to do that now, if I tried to do that right now, I would break my back.

I don't play...

People, some of these young guys come up to me all the time.

"Hey, I heard you were an All-American in school.

You wanna play some ball?" "Dude, I'm 61 years old.

You don't play anything anymore.

Everything hurts.

I stopped playing about my mid forties.

Somebody talked me into playing some kind of charity event down at Western Christian and I went down and played and I couldn't walk for a month." Those days are gone.

They're gone.

Enjoy them while you can.

That event, Keith Turner and I still talk about this because it left an impression on me And I want to walk you through it.

Because here's what life teaches you, not only the scripture, but here's what life teaches you.

If you don't set some goals and objectives, if you don't have some priorities of what's really important in your life and what you're trying to achieve, and I don't care what age, you're going to waste so much of your life away because there's so many distractions around you trying to pull your attention to things that don't matter.

And you're going to end up spending hour after hour doing meaningless things.

For Christ followers, I am begging you in 2026 to kickstart your life by saying, you know what?

I've got a lot of things happening in my life.

But what I want more than anything else in my life is to be an ambassador.

I want the kingdom of God to become a reality.

here on the earth.

Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

That's what I want.

And I want to get to the end of 2026 and know that I had a goal, a main objective, and I achieved it.

I made progress.

This is what it is to be a kingdom first person.

Seek first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added.

For you and me, we're going to have a lot of things distract us this year.

We're going to have a...

A lot of things are going to require our attention.

And a lot of those things are good things, okay?

You've got to work to make a living.

You've got to eat.

There are things you're going to have to do.

But surely your priority, your primary objective should be that the kingdom of God is becoming more and more a reality in your life.

Now, here's the thing.

This is where as you get older as a pastor, you start to learn something very valuable.

And that's what I'm going to share this weekend.

Okay?

And I want you to lean in here.

You start to realize that there is no way you will ever be able...

to transform the world around you into the kingdom of God until first you have been transformed internally.

You're only as effective externally as you are transformed internally.

This is the greatest lesson I've learned in my own life.

I have preached on Philippians 3 probably a hundred times in my preaching career, and it's only been in the last few years that I've realized that I've never really made the connection between the first part of it and the second part of it.

Now, here's the passage I want to focus on, and most of you are familiar with it.

Because in this passage, kingdom-first people began to truly understand that if you're going to seek the kingdom of God above and beyond all other things, that you've got to be transformed on the inside.

And here's how it happens.

Not that I have arrived or already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.

Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it, but one thing I do, forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Now here...

are the three characteristics of kingdom first people.

And here's the first thing, they are always raising the mark.

They're always raising the tape higher and higher.

When Keith Turner dunked that basketball in that game, the other four starters, we began to cry.

I mean, not out loud, but just a tear in our eye because we knew the years of hard work that had gone into achieving that.

The apostle Paul says, not that I have already attained all this or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on.

And I think about that.

Paul had not attained it.

Paul met Jesus face to face on the road to Damascus.

Paul had been imprisoned and shipwrecked and still had written the primary portion of the New Testament.

Paul had a vision where he was caught up in the third heaven.

I don't even know what that means.

And he says he hasn't arrived.

What hope do I have?

But this isn't the point, is it?

Because kingdom first living is certainly not about perfection.

It's not about that you do everything well or right.

In Romans 7, remember what Paul said?

I do not understand what I do.

For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do.

And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree the law is good.

Paul says, there are times in my life I know what to do.

I agree that the law is good and I should do it Yet, I still fail.

What is it about then?

If it's not about moral perfection of some kind, what is it about?

It's about always pursuing, always raising the mark and never, ever giving up.

Paul says, I'm not there, but here's what I'm doing.

I'm pressing on.

I've not arrived.

I've still got so much work to do.

There's so much room for improvement in my life, but I press on.

The Greek word is dioko, which means it's the picture of a of a runner coming to the finish line, and he's stretching and straining, and his face is contorting, trying to get to the line, trying to win the race.

Paul says, I press on.

I keep moving forward, no matter how many failures, no matter how many successes.

Now, the question in your mind should be this by now.

Okay, Jeff, what's the mark, though?

What's the objective?

Oh, this is gold.

What's the objective I should be aiming for?

Keith Turner wants to dunk a basketball.

That's not going to help me much.

What do I want?

What should I be pursuing?

Stay with me.

Mother Teresa won a Nobel Peace Prize, made great strides in mercy and compassion, worked among the poorest of the poor in Calcutta.

Toward the very end of her life, this is what she said.

May I truly obey you starting today to be a courier of your love and your grace to a hurting world because up to now I've really done nothing.

At the end of her life...

This is what I've noticed about kingdom first people.

This is what they do every day of their lives.

They have a fresh new desire in their hearts.

They possess a never-ending passion to raise the level of excellence in their lives, to relentlessly pursue God's best.

Now let me illustrate it another way.

Come on, stay with me.

If you were alive, which I don't know if there are many of you who were, after the second world war, there was a time when If anything we had in America said "Made in Japan," we knew it was junk.

Because after the war, their economy was in disarray, horrible shape.

Do you know who rescued their economy?

That's right, we did.

We sent in our best quality control expert, a man by the name of Dr.

W.

Edwards Deming.

And here is what he told the Japanese, and I quote, if you will improve something about yourself and your products every day and make quality not something that's like a threshold that you grab and hold on to, but make improving or quality just part of your DNA, just part of your genetic makeup, And you improve something every day about yourself and your product or what you produce or what you do.

Here's the promise.

In 10 years, you'll turn the economy of Japan around.

And in 30 years, you will be a world power economically speaking.

And it happened.

The problem with you and me, we want drive-through transformation.

We want to drive through.

I'll take one transformation to go, please.

And that's it.

But kingdom first people understand the kingdom of God, listen now, is like a seed that is planted by the Holy Spirit, but it is water and fertilized by your spiritual effort.

That's hard.

I'm saved by grace through faith.

I didn't say anything different to that.

I just said it grows through an effort that you make.

I love that great line by Clint Eastwood in Pell Rider, the spirit ain't worth spit without a little exercise.

True.

Kingdom first people understand that if they raise the bar just a little bit every day, every month, every year, if they stretch and strain toward the goal, if they press on, if they keep moving forward, trusting that little by little makes a bundle, they realize that they have a slam duck deep inside them.

Now stay on.

Number one, kingdom first people, they're always raising the mark.

Now here's the second thing they do.

They refuse to dwell on the past.

Paul says, but one thing I do, forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead.

I cannot tell you how many days, weeks, and months we saw Keith Turner trying to jump up and touch the tape and he couldn't do it.

Day after day, week after week.

I mean, most of us said, why don't you just give up, dude?

You're not going to reach the next place on the backboard.

It's over.

But he had this bulldog tenacity.

I'm not going to give up.

And it catapulted him to some of the greatest victories probably of his life.

Now here's the thing, do you know the story of Singapore and the Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew?

One of my favorite case studies in 1826, Singapore became part of the British Empire.

It remained so for more than a century.

Britain began granting independence.

Singapore rushed to the front of the line.

They wanted theirs and in 1959 Independence came to Singapore.

They determined at that moment that their best hope for the future or success was to align themselves with Malaysia, which they did in 1963.

This relationship was not a good marriage, so after two years, the two countries separated, and what followed in Singapore was a string of failures.

Failure after failure after failure, and then in comes one of my heroes, Lee Kuan Yew.

He brought industry in.

He employed low-skilled workers.

so that everyone could have a job if that's what they wanted.

He created public housing, so there would be a better quality of life affordable to everyone who was willing to work.

He sent people to school.

He made education affordable to all.

He set up an entirely new banking system.

His goal was that he wanted Singapore to become the financial center of Asia.

He encouraged international travel by making Singapore a business and tourist destination.

In the process, if you know the story, defeat after defeat, there were riots about everything, strikes about nothing, unrest everywhere, betrayal in his own cabinet.

But Lee Kuan Yew believed in this simple phrase, advancement comes through adversity.

He just kept moving forward.

Many successes and many failures.

He could have quit.

He could have said, job's too big, problem's insurmountable, but he kept reaching forward.

He then brought in Japan and Germany.

As technical advisors, Sweden and Holland, as experts on banking and financing, New Zealand and Australia, as Air Force and Naval Advisors.

He brought in over 1200 companies from overseas, General Electric, IBM, Sony, Mobile Oil.

And remember, Singapore is a country smaller than the state of Rhode Island.

But the story of Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore has become a master class in success and turnarounds And today, Singapore has become arguably one of the most flourishing international cities slash countries in the world.

But here's my favorite part.

Do you know what Lee Kuan Yew's motto is?

Get up, get going and get over it.

Get up, get going, get over it.

I've got a friend.

I got a lot of friends at Coffee Clutch, but I got one that I'm investing in and every morning it's the same thing.

I say, how are you doing?

Well, my life's been tough.

Oh my goodness.

I mean, how many people do you have to tell that your life has been tough?

And do you think yours is the only life that's been tough?

That's what's amazing.

Every day I ask him, what's your plan?

Okay, your life has been tough.

What's your plan?

And his answer is, well, I've messed up everything.

That's not what I asked you.

I've heard this story all my life as a pastor.

My life is a mess.

I spend every hour of every day trying to recover.

I have so many broken relationships in my life.

I'm scarred for life and I don't see any way forward.

Or I've suffered so much loss with the people that I've lost in my family.

in my life, I just can't find the strength to do anything or to move on from here.

I'm estranged from my children.

It's a bad marriage, a bad relationship, and I'm so depressed, I just can't move forward.

I have this addiction and I'm so far gone and I'm in too deep, there's no hope of recovery.

I'm so far in debt that I will never recover and I will have to work for the rest of my life just to merely survive.

I will never thrive again.

I've got so much sin in my life.

"There's no way God could ever use me or forgive me again." Or, "I've never read my Bible or prayed with any regularity.

"I just can't do it, it doesn't work for me." On and on it goes.

Do you think you're alone?

Every person in this room, I promise you, has a great burden that they're carrying.

You're not alone in this.

That's the world in which we live.

Everybody's dealing with something.

There is only one true option.

What is it?

Get up, get going, and get over it.

I'm not being cruel.

I'm just telling you, it's the only way.

There's no other way.

It's the only way to move forward and experience the abundant life Christ came to bring.

Now, here's the question for kingdom first people.

What is the bar you and I are trying to raise?

Oh, I wish I had known this when I was younger.

I would have saved myself a lot of hassle and I would have been a much better counselor to people.

Because here's the problem.

Most people think that the bar they're trying to raise is to be gooder.

Oh, the bar I'm going to raise, I'm going to work hard on forgiving people.

I'm going to do better this year at conquering my addiction.

I'm going to try harder to be a better person.

I'm going to try not to lose my temper on the golf course.

I'm going to try to be a better husband, a better wife.

I'm going to try to be a better son or daughter.

I'm going to work really hard and get along with other family members.

Good luck with that.

I am going to be more generous and more giving and more sacrificial, and it's going to be less about me and more about other people.

On and on it goes.

And you keep failing.

Do you know why?

You're raising the wrong bar because these are all products of something else.

To change what you do on the outside, you've got to first alter yourself.

who you are on the inside.

You've got to be transformed internally before your behavior changes externally.

Your pursuit, the mark toward which you should intentionally strain in the coming year is not to be more compassionate, not to be more forgiving, not to be more loving, more serving, more generous.

You have but one goal to reach, Jesus.

That's it.

That is it.

Because when you reach that goal, everything else will fall in place.

See, you're trying to be a better Christian without being better with Christ.

You can't do it.

It's like windsurfing without a sail.

You're dead in the water.

It doesn't happen.

Do you know who understood this?

And I never made the connection.

Paul tried to tell us that in the paragraph before the one I just read.

In verse 8, he says, What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I've lost all things.

I consider them garbage that I may gain Christ.

I want to know Christ, yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participating in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so somehow attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

I don't know why I've allowed people to tell me that the mark that Paul was reaching is some kind of moral perfection.

That is ridiculous because you can't reach that.

It's a cause and effect relationship.

As you move toward Jesus, you become like him.

C.S.

Lewis, the most reluctant convert, was an atheist.

And let me read to you what he said.

He said, in the Trinity term of 1929, I finally came in and admitted that God was God.

And I knelt and I prayed.

I thought I was coming to a place, he said, in a book called The Four Loves.

I found out I was coming to a person.

You came to Jesus because he pursued you first.

Now you've got to pursue him.

That is your only goal in 2026.

And I'm asking you, man, I'm telling you, I wish I would have discovered this earlier in my life because I got so much sin in my life that I thought if I just worked harder and kept raising the mark, I would conquer it.

It didn't happen.

It just got worse.

And then somewhere along the line, my eyes were open.

Man, dude, you got to get close with Jesus.

And then Jesus will live his life through you because he's in you.

So then the question is, if that's the mark I'm trying to raise, how do I do it?

I'm glad you asked.

You kickstart this year by choosing two things that are as old as the apostles themselves.

Number one, Worship will become a non-negotiable in my life.

Intentional and intended.

Intentional means this, I will decide now to make weekend worship a non-negotiable in my life.

Why would I do that?

That's work salvation.

No, it's not.

It's practical wisdom because that's where you meet Jesus.

Going to church doesn't make you perfect.

It places you where God can shape you again and again, week by week.

And we stated that the Holy Spirit works in conjunction with worship and the Word to open our heart and our mind to spiritual realities.

This is the place, whether you like it or not, where you meet God the most.

It's not the only place, but there's a spiritual dynamic that happens when the people of God come together in corporate worship.

It happened in Acts 2.

They were meeting together and praying.

Boom God shows up.

They were meeting together and praying.

Again, God shows up.

I don't know why it is this way.

But it is this way.

You desperately need what happens here, and you need it on a regular basis, because in today's world, you are being bombarded with lie after lie after lie, and you must offset it with spiritual realities so that you can gauge what is good and acceptable and true.

Archbishop William Temple said this, worship.

"Is the submission of all our nature to God.

"It is a quickening of conscience by his holiness, "the nourishment of the mind with truth, "the purifying imagination of his beauty, "the opening of the heart to his love, "the surrender of will to his purpose, "and all of this gathered up in adoration, "the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable." Worship shapes the whole person, the mind, the heart, the conscious, the imagination and the will.

Something supernatural happens here.

And especially when God's people come together to pray, like we did this last Monday.

And if you were here, you know something happened in that room that nobody can identify.

Corporate worship is where belief evolves into a way of living and life.

You began to see the truth of the gospel, then you begin to understand your life.

And then God touches your heart.

And then God touches your mind where you start to see the truth about the way you're living and what you're doing.

But more importantly than all of that, you come into contact with Jesus in a unique and special way.

Jesus said we're two or more gathered.

What?

I'm there.

I'm there.

I'm asking you to kickstart this year by saying, you know what?

I'm not just going to come periodically.

I'm not going to show up once a month, once every six months.

This is going to become a non-negotiable in my life, and I'm going to be attentive.

I'm going to make a conscious decision to lean into worship.

What I've discovered, you only get out of this setting what you put into it.

If you come wanting to pass the time and click off something in a box, well, I attended church, I'm good with God, you'll get nothing out of it.

But if you come, God, I want you to speak to me this weekend.

I want you to open up my eyes about a truth about my life.

I want you to guide me.

I want you to give me wisdom.

God, I want to see you.

You come expecting like that, God shows up.

There is a reason.

that they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship and to the breaking of bread and to prayer.

And as a result, what happened?

They changed the world.

They were counter to culture because Christ had changed them.

They didn't go out and say, we're gonna try to feed more hungry people.

We're gonna try to show the world that we have a better sexual ethic than they do.

No, they just came in close to God, his word, their relationship with Jesus, and they just went out and lived their lives the way they did.

The only way they knew how, and they changed the entire Greco-Roman world.

See, I'm wary of people telling me that the West is too far gone and the church has no hope.

What are you, crazy?

The issue is that we're not distinct enough.

And the reason we're not distinct enough is because we don't move toward Jesus to where we can be changed by him.

The second thing is I'm asking you this year, To make time with Jesus as the first fruits of your day a priority.

I'm asking you to, before you do anything every day, just pick the Bible up and read a psalm.

If that's all you do, at least do that.

To meditate, to pray, and to give God the first fruits of your day by meeting with him and praising him and thanking him for his provisions and then asking Jesus to come on the inside and to walk with you.

every moment of the day.

A prayer that I've prayed since I was very young is, God, I pray that the Holy Spirit would be at the forefront of my life so that everything I encounter today, I will see it through the eyes of God and will have the wisdom and the power of God to respond appropriately.

Jesus said in John 15, if you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish and it'll be done for you.

Wow.

This is to my father's glory.

Okay.

Here is where the principle of forgetting the past and straining ahead toward the goal has to be employed.

Because here's my question to all of you: How many times have you started your devotional life only to find it end?

How many times have you intended to make church a non-negotiable but after a couple of months I'm out of here?

How many times have you intended to attend prayer meeting on Monday nights but somehow things got in the way?

How many times have you intended to read the Bible during your lunch break at work or pray each morning before you began work or attend a growth group so you can do life together where iron will sharpen iron.

And you do it for a while, but like people who make a commitment to the gym every new year, it doesn't last very long.

Now, how many times?

Now, do you know why you fail?

Let me read it to you.

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Because you got an enemy after you and he's going to do whatever.

The one thing, look, he doesn't care how hard you try to be righteous.

All he cares is keeping you away from Jesus.

All he's got to do is keep you away from Jesus.

And even if you do good things, you'll pat yourself on the shoulder and say, boy, wasn't I a good person today?

That's all he has to do.

Keep you away from Jesus.

And you'll have the click.

And if you know what I'm talking about, I've had it in my life.

You have the click where someday you realize, hey, wait just a moment.

So I go to the office, pull out my Bible and I'm getting ready and I just don't feel like it today.

You know, I got a lot to do.

I think I'll just move past this.

And I did that for a lot of years and then suddenly it dawned on me, wait a minute.

This is the devil.

He's trying to ruin me.

And then I get mad.

Then the athlete in me comes out.

Oh no, you won't.

You're not going to get me.

I mean, like I said, the devil, I just tell him you can go straight to hell because what I'm doing right now, I'm going straight to heaven and you're not going to stop me.

I mean, that competitor comes out in you.

James says, blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.

See, the sin is not that you failed.

Guess what?

You're human.

The sin is when you stop trying.

You've got to keep moving forward.

Get up, get going, get over it.

In fact, you've got to get really good at allowing your failures to launch you forward.

That's the only difference between true failure and true success.

Those who succeed refuse to give up, and they have a way of allowing their failures to catapult them towards success.

Jonas Salk, you know that name?

Discovered the polio vaccine.

He failed over 200 times.

And a reporter once asked him, how did it feel to fail 200 times?

He said, and I quote, I never fell 200 times in my life.

In my family, we were taught not to use the word fail.

I just discovered 200 vaccines that could not cure polio.

Somebody once asked Winston Churchill, what most prepared you to lead Great Britain in its victory over Germany?

And he said, there was a time I had to repeat a grade in the English equivalent of elementary school.

And the interviewer said, wait, do you mean you failed a grade in elementary school?

Churchill's response, I never failed anything in my life.

Sometimes you just need more than one opportunity to get it right.

I love it I used to let my failures just beat me up.

I said, "Wait a minute I have obviously discovered the way not to do this a thousand times." See part of it is, I'm so ADD that I thought I had to do my devotion time exactly like everybody told me.

I had to sit down and write in a journal and then I had to do this, that...

No, I failed at that so many times.

Wait a minute, Jesus, you made me.

How are we going to do this?

I said, well, Pastor Jeff, you're going to take walks and you're just going to talk to me as you walk.

And I'm going to talk to you throughout the day and you're going to pick up scripture.

I'm going to remind you throughout the day and you might read in the afternoon or the evening.

And now it's not so laborious.

Now it's in the flow of my relationship with God.

Because I've asked him, God, I know you want to meet with me.

You got to remind me because I'm kind of hard-headed.

Sure enough, ding, time to read some scripture, ding, ding, time to pray.

You cannot allow past failures, past sins, past lack of spiritual disciplines, past broken promises to God.

You cannot allow the fact that you've promised God that you were going to start reading the Bible, that you're going to start praying, that you're going to start putting God first, that you're going to start...

Meeting weekly in corporate worship that you're going to start tithing, that you're going to start pursuing sexual purity, that you're going to stop the addiction.

You cannot allow the fact that you've broken that promise and failed so many times to cause you to stop and give up.

Those failures must be viewed as a discovery.

Discovery of how not to be victorious.

Keith Turner, man, I tell you, the weeks and weeks we would see that poor kid.

try to jump and touch that tape and not be able to touch the backboard and refuse to give up, I mean, most of us would have.

But he was determined.

And then something happened, by the way, between his sophomore and junior year.

He grew about six inches.

And suddenly, this scrawny kid was six feet four inches.

And because he had done all the work of training in his upper and lower body, man, could he jump.

What boys can jump?

A few of them, just a few of them.

Now let me give one more analogy and then I'm going to finish.

I've said this numerous times.

I think that God, it's my favorite illustration that God made us to prove to us that we should always keep moving forward.

You know, the ears are in the front of your face.

The nose is on the front of your face.

Your mouth is on the front of your face.

Every part of your anatomy faces forward except one part.

And And that just proves that there are some things that need to be left behind.

Your anatomy.

Now, I'm asking you to kickstart your year by always raising the mark.

What mark?

To be with Jesus.

To be with Jesus.

By the way, that's what the church...

That's the purpose of the church.

It's what we pray about, think about.

How can we get our people to meet Jesus?

We have worship so you can meet Jesus.

We have growth groups so you can be with others who are pursuing Jesus.

It's what we do.

And then third, kingdom first people are always living their lives for a purpose greater than themselves.

I love this.

The apostle Paul says in verse 12, not that I have already obtained all this or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.

Let's read it one more time.

Not that I've already obtained all this or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold...

of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.

Can I just say to you, all of us, you have certain talents and abilities that God gave you, and he gave them to you because he wants you to fill a hole that needs to be filled not only in the kingdom of God but in the church to which he has called you.

What this means practically two things.

Number one, If you are kingdom first person in 2026, the best of me, my talent, my ability is given in service to Christ's kingdom.

You get to use your talents and abilities on things that bring you an advantage.

There are some of you who are great teachers in our community, in our schools, and we are thankful for you.

But are you using your teaching skill and ability to teach the next generation and to give them the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ?

Some of you are incredible builders, man.

You're just great with your hands.

You can build anything and you get paid because you're a builder.

But how many of you are using your hands and skills to improve the quality of life for some of the less fortunate in our community.

Some of you are in accountancy and finance, and you get paid for your skill and your know-how that incidentally God gave you.

But how many of you are using your skills to assist others in dealing with their financial burdens and showing them the way to financial freedom?

You might be an artist.

How many of you are using your creative skills to communicate the beauty of the gospel?

Do you know our greatest need at our church?

God has sent us a ton of junior hires, elementary, high schoolers, and young adults.

I mean, we are overloaded here, but we're not complaining.

He obviously trusts us to train the next generation to be ambassadors to seek first the kingdom of God.

I don't care what your skill or your ability is.

The greatest way that you can use your time, talents, and ability this year is to invest somehow in this age group.

They're the future.

They're the hope.

And they're awesome.

They want to be mentored.

They want to be taught.

And sometimes you think, you know what, Pastor Jeff, but I like being in this room and hearing the sermon.

And if I serve over there in one of those areas, I can't be here.

We have five services.

You can serve one and attend one.

Kingdom First people, it's a beautiful concept.

The second thing is the best of your resources this year.

All of them.

And I'm not going to labor this point because I've spoken too often about it.

The person who is a seek first the kingdom of God person, they automatically give the best of themselves, not the last of themselves.

That's their time, their talents and their monies.

It's just what you do, but you're never going to do that until you come close to Jesus.

And when you pursue Christ and you meet him in the way he wants to be known and met, I promise you it's a cause Where's my bar of steel?

So let me close with two quick illustrations, okay?

And I know I've gone over a little, but you don't care.

Best illustration, one of the best I heard from Wayne Canero back in my New Zealand days.

He says, if you take a bar of steel and you take this and convert it into 16 penny nails, it's going to be worth about $60.

But instead, if you take it and convert it into something like sewing needles, it'll increase in its value to somewhere around $300.

If you convert it into knives or cutlery, knives, forks, spoons, things like that, then it's going to be worth about $3,000.

But if you take this and you convert this into Swiss watch springs, the bar of steel will now be worth over $2 million.

Now, the question is what changes its worth?

That in which it is invested.

What are you investing your life in?

That's the question.

A virtuoso had, I read this story years ago, had purchased a violin in New York at an auction for $750.

This was in 1981.

But there was something about the carving in the wood grain that caused him to search it out a little bit more.

And after a year and a half of appraising it, he discovered that it was made around 1715 by a very famous family of violin makers called Stradivarius.

And that violin was appraised in 1981 at $250,000, a quarter of a million dollars.

That was 1983.

Today it's worth 15.5 million.

That story reminds me of a poem that I have often read by Myra Brooks Welch, written all the way back in 1949.

I want to close with this.

Here's what she says.

"'Twas battered and scarred, and the auctioneer thought it hardly worth his while." To waste his time on the old violin, but he held it up with a smile.

What am I bid, good people?

He cried.

Who starts the bidding for me?

One dollar, one dollar.

Do I hear two?

Two dollars.

Who makes it three?

Three dollars once, three dollars twice.

Going for three, but no.

From the room far back, a gray-bearded man came forward and picked up the bow.

Then whopping the dust from the old violin and tightening up the strings.

He played a melody, pure and sweet, as sweet as the angel sings.

The music ceased and the auctioneer with a voice that was quiet and low said, what now am I bid for this old violin as he held it aloft with its bow?

"One thousand, one thousand, do I hear two?

"Two thousand, who makes it three?

"Three thousand once, three thousand twice.

"Going and gone," said he.

The audience cheered but some of them cried.

"We just don't understand what changed its worth." Swift came the reply, the touch of the master's hand.

"And many a man with life out of tune, "all battered and bruised with hardship "is auctioned cheap to a thoughtless crowd "much like that old violin.

"A mess of potage, a glass of wine, "a game and he travels on He is going once, he is going twice, he is going, he's almost gone.

But the master comes and the foolish crowd never can quite understand the worth of a soul and the change that is wrought by the touch of the master's hand.

Every single one of us in this room has a slam dunk deep inside us.

But you're only going to discover it when you submit your life to the master.

And if you will make your goal this year To pursue Christ with everything that is in you, you will meet him and you will employ those spiritual disciplines.

And as you meet him, he will transform you.

And some of these failures that you've been having, you'll start to succeed because it is no longer you who live, but Christ who lives in you.

And the master, when he puts his hand on your life, changes absolutely everything.

Because he not only changes what you do.

He changes what you want to do.

Let's go.

Father, I pray in Christ's name that the words we have spoken, they would settle deep into the soul.

And it may be this weekend our eyes will be open that we've been pursuing so many other things, almost to the point of insanity, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

Perhaps this year we can decide we're going to pursue Jesus Christ above and beyond everything else.

And we are going to have moments of failure, but we're not going to give up.

We're going to learn how not to succeed so that over time we will learn how to succeed.

So as a church, as a pastor, as a staff, we commit this year to pursue you like we've never pursued you before.

I commit to lead the staff in a way.

to pursue Christ in a way that we've never pursued him before.

And I pray that our people would make that same commitment, knowing that little by little makes a bundle, and one day we wake up and realize that we all have a slam dunk deep inside.

May we be kingdom first people who are always raising the mark toward Christ, always forgetting past failures and never allowing them to stifle future progress.

and ultimately live our lives for a purpose greater than ourselves.

In Christ's name, everybody said.