That was like perfect timing wise, just best. We had good guys here. Anyway, when my wife and I lived in Houston, we were about half a block from a really nice shared hiking and biking trail, which is one of the reasons we bought the house. We like to do both. And one evening we were walking my daughter’s little dog Quincy, he’s a cavalier King Charles. If you know him, you know him. Most emotionally needy creatures on the planet wrap themselves around your heart. I love that guy. I give my life for that guy. Little guy at the time, he was still kind of a puppy, maybe 12 pounds or whatnot. So we’re walking down, it’s dusk. Around the corner comes another guy walking to I think boxer mixes. They’re both about hip high, so even tall for boxers. He didn’t have ’em on a leash.

There is a leash law in Houston, but apparently he thought it didn’t apply to him and his boxers. They saw Quincy and started salivating like a linebacker over a piece of fla mignon. And he’s trying to control ’em, but there’s two of ’em. He goes, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And I can tell that he had no control. I’m terrified for Quincy. So I pick him up, I scoop him up. I just say to him, those dogs should be on a leash. He goes, well, if you’ll just get your dog outta here, there won’t be a problem. I go, my dog’s on a leash. My dog’s not the problem. There are young kids that come by. They should be on a leash. You don’t have ’em under control. Well, my wife finally pulls me away and she says, seriously, honey? She goes, I, that’s the closest I’ve ever seen you come to get into a fight in all the years we’ve been married.

At first I thought she was like, man, I’m glad I’m married to a man until she added and I didn’t like your chances. Which I’m, I’m sure she said, because he had two boxers, right? And I had this little cavalier. About two months later, I’m on the same trail, walking along on the right side, and somebody comes up behind me on a bike and clips me, passing me on the right. It’s like breaking five rules, right? Like, Hey dude, what are you doing? Well he, he was pretty big. Turns around, gives me the one finger salute as it somehow it’s, it’s my fault, starts screaming at me, finally moves on. And I, I really sense God giving me a warning. You know, if you’re a Christian, you know what this is like. It’s not that I hear it verbally or audibly, but it’s just that sense of Gary, this is a different world. You might have to start letting some things go by or these two times were fine, but it might get pretty serious. And I wanna universalize that a little bit at the start of 2025 and ask you, are you fighting only essential battles that matter? Are you choosing ’em wisely and carefully? We’re starting the series called Made For Less. And what I wanna suggest is sort of an introduction to that series is that we were made often to fight fewer battles and we need to know which ones we’re supposed to

Fight. And just as importantly for today, which ones we’re not supposed to fight. Proverbs 26 17 says this, like one who grabs a stray dog by the ears is someone who rushes into a quarrel, not their own. It’s a good verse to think about for 2025. Every time you come across a point of conflict online in life, at work, on the roads, ask yourself, is this a quarrel that I need to participate in? If not, I wanna let it go. I say that because I believe you could have a good life, you can have a great life, you could be doing a good work and you could lose it all fighting the wrong battle. The saddest example of this, I think in the Old Testament is Josiah, he’s one of the greatest kings Judah had ever had. He’s the grandson of Manasseh, who was one of the most evil kings Judah had ever had during Manasses reign.

There were idols and high places all over Israel. It felt like every God, but the God was being worshiped. And one of those gods was the God, particularly that God particularly detested. And that was mole. The reason God detested the worship of mole so much is that mole demanded child sacrifice. We know the Christian message that we would see through Jesus is that God gives his son for us. And mole was no, you give your Son for me. And Manasseh had one of his own son’s sacrifice to appease Molech. He said He allowed in the Old Testament temple in the holy of Holies, where God had designed a place for people to worship God and meet with God. Male temple prostitution. It was one of the most repugnant things you can imagine in a place set aside and consecrated for worship. There’s male prostitution.

And when prophets would speak up, Manasseh instead of listening would have them killed. You know, Isaiah’s got a whole book in the Old Testament that he have his prophecies. Manasseh had him sown into, rather than listening to Isaiah’s words, he was about as evil a king as you could find out. There was a little bit of repentance near the end of his life, but it wasn’t very long. And then his son, amen. Josiah’s father took over. He was only there two years and he was as bad as Manasseh had ever been in his worst years. And then comes Josiah, a young guy when he becomes king and the spirit of God fills him and he becomes one of the most glorious kings that turns this nation single handedly back to God. Look at second Kings, 23, 25. Neither before nor after Josiah was there, a king like Josiah who turned to the Lord as he did with all his heart, with all his soul, with all his strength.

He wiped out the idolatrous places. He cleaned out the temple. No more prostitution now it was a place of worship. He listened to the prophets. He supported the prophets. He brought the word of God back to Israel. It was an amazing time of revival. He was a hero in every sense of the word. While his father and grandfather were among the worst, he was truly among the best. But that didn’t save him from one very foolish decision. When he got involved in a battle he never should have started fighting to begin with. The backstory is this Israel’s strategic location as the sole land bridge between four nations shaped its history in the past, shapes its history today. You’ve got Egypt to the west of it. You’ve got Assyria in the north and Babylon in the south. Assyria had been ascendant. They had been the power, they were getting weak. Egypt saw its chance. So it was gonna join with the Syria to attack Babylon, which was becoming a threat. Now, just looking at this map, if Egypt wants to join with Assyria to attack Babylon, what do they have to do?

They’ve gotta go through Israel, right? They don’t have airplanes. They’ve gotta cross the land. And you see that happen a lot of times in the Old Testament. Israel wants to pass through or whatnot, not to battle Israel. They just literally have to walk through. They were gonna go through the pass of Megiddo. And so that’s what Pharaoh Nico decided to do. For whatever reason. We don’t know why. Josiah said no. Many warnings throughout the Old Testament where God would tell the kings of Judah and Israel, Hey, don’t get involved in international politics. You have a calling. You’re God’s people, you’re this or that. Sometimes they had to fight battles, but they shouldn’t get involved in in other country’s battles. Maybe Josiah just thought, well, I’ve done what I could do. Maybe he was bored. Maybe it was Brad, we don’t know. But he decided to march out and challenge Pharaoh, Nico of Egypt two Chronicles 35, 20 through 22.

After all this. And after all, this doesn’t do justice. When Josiah said the temple in order, I mean it was, it was incredible what one leader did. I mean, this country was in ruin. Josiah brought it back from the dead. It was a glorious work. And then that was over. Nico, king of Egypt went up to fight at ish on the Euphrates. Josiah marched out to meet him in battle. But Nico sent messengers to him saying, what quarrel is there king of Judah, between you and me? It is not you. I’m attacking at this time, but the house with which I’m at war, God has told me to hurry. So stop opposing God who is with me, or he will destroy you. Now we know from what happened, what follows. Nico isn’t bluffing. God had really told him that he was giving him specific instruction, but Josiah didn’t listen. Josiah, however, would not turn away from him. He disguised himself to engage him in battle. Well, disguise don’t work when the word is from God. He would not listen to what Nico had said at God’s command, but went to fight him on the plane of Medo. So God had given Josiah general revelation throughout all the scriptures. Hey, if you’re the king of Judah, don’t get involved in international politics. He’d sent him a personal messenger. Josiah, God is saying, don’t do this, but Josiah did it. Well, I’ll disguise myself. And so it won’t count.

Don’t we sometimes do the same thing. We know the word of God, we’re doing something. We know that God is warning us away from it because he loves us and because we don’t quite get it. Maybe he sends a person to you. Maybe it’s a friend, a family member, a spouse. You hear it in a sermon or something and it pinpoints you don’t do this. Yeah. And we still do it. We think, well, I’m gonna do it on the sly. I’m gonna disguise myself now. God still forgive us in Christ, but the consequences of disobedience can be severe. For Josiah, it was fatal though. He went into battle camouflage. He thought an archer pulled back. His bow had an arrow, and it found its way between Josiah’s armor and he was fatally wounded and he died fighting a battle he shouldn’t have even been fighting.

And what’s so sad, he was just 39 years old. To put it into perspective, his grandfather Manas, ruled for 55 years, not lived. He ruled for 55 years. Josiah could have had another couple decades of raising up the nation, solidifying their worship. And to make matters worse, his two sons that succeeded him were as wicked as his father and grandfather had been. All Israel paid a price because a good man with a good mission extended himself and fought a battle he shouldn’t fight. And the results were catastrophic. Second Chronicles 35 25, Jeremiah composed laments for Josiah. And to this day, all the male and female singers commemorate Josiah in the laments. These became a tradition in Israel and are written in the laments. I keep emphasizing laments in the sentence they’re mentioned three times. And this is what makes me so sad. We should think of Josiah and celebrate a nation in apostasy offending God at every turn, even in their place of worship, he turns it around.

God raises him up. Seems like a miraculous work. We should celebrate that. But no, they remember him with laments because it ended far too soon. It ended with him doing something foolish. And they thought, oh, what promise? And then it was lost. And we’ve seen people start out, you get a good start, we wanna celebrate it. And then it comes to an end. Why did she do that? Or why did he get involved in that? And the start of 2025, it tells us to want people to look back on us. Will it be a faithful celebration of a life in obedience? Or will we lament what could have been if only they had heeded the word of the Lord, if only they had heeded counsel? But that’s the message of desire, though he did great things. Good guy, gifted, unique. He lost it all. Fighting a battle that wasn’t his to fight.

What battles are you called to fight in 2025? Are you tempted to get involved in battles that aren’t yours to fight? You might not be killed, but maybe your influence is lessened. Your relational ability is thwarted. The ministry that God has really called you to do gets neglected. Or you only have part of you left to fight it. It could be on little things. I, I love to watch football, particularly college football. I remember one December 31st I was watching some bowl games. And I, I hate commercials as much as I love football. So I almost always start games an hour late, which is what I’ll do today. So don’t text me about the Broncos until it’s nearly end. ’cause If I wait an hour and I fast forward through commercials, by the end, I’m about live this game went into a couple overtimes, and so suddenly I’m already caught up.

I don’t know what to do. Commercials foolish. She’s like, well, I’ll just flip, scroll through Facebook. I don’t do that too often. And it came across this post from a woman that my wife and I had supported because we believed in her ministry. And she’d asked me to write a forward for her book, which I did, which I normally don’t do if it’s not a traditional publisher. But I believed in what she was saying. I believed God’s giftedness in her. We had supported the ministry physically, financially, I should say. But she was posting somebody who had left the faith who was promoting heresy. I was just, I’m just like, so I decided to private messenger. I don’t make these things public. I was like, what’s up with this? Do you know what this person is saying and doing and where they’re going? Now let me just start out and say a hundred percent bad on me.

We hadn’t communicated for about a year. If you haven’t communicated with somebody for about a year, your first word should be, Hey, how are you doing? How are things going? Right? It’s not like, what is with this? Oh, a hundred percent. I take ownership of that. And so she didn’t appreciate it. She’s pushing back and then there’s this and there’s that. And oh, this is a terrible way to start the new year. We sleep on it. There’s still more messages going back and forth. Her husband is involved, my wife is involved. Lisa’s reading through all this. And I think wisely with the wisdom of the spirit said, Gary, there’s something else going on here. I think you need to step back. There’s something that we don’t know about that’s going on later. I think that was true in her family or whatever. And I just thought, Gary, this is not the kind of battle you need to fight.

This is not the kind of battle you need to get involved in at the start of the year, because just because you might feel like you’re right or know what to say, that doesn’t mean it’s your battle. The example of this, I think the perfect example of this is Jesus, when did Jesus, how old was Jesus when he started his public ministry? No, he’s about 30 years old. Right? And when did that public ministry end? How old was he when he was crucified? I think about 33. Some people will argue, but that’s pretty close. 30, 33, do the math. For 90% of his life, Jesus was relatively quiet. Maybe there was some private ministry we don’t know about. But it wasn’t a public ministry launch. Now, think about that. Was Jesus capable of healing people when he was 25? I think, yeah, he’s still God in flesh.

Did he have some good teaching to correct the Pharisees? Were the Pharisees not teaching heresy and leading people astray when Jesus was 28? I, I think he probably were. Weren’t there people that needed to be discipled when Jesus was 29? Absolutely there were. And yet Jesus was silent. And even when his mom tried to bring him in about the, at the wedding, he says, woman, this is not my hour. And then he did it. But he was very cognizant. This is not yet my battle. And when he fought, he fought. And the reason this is, is that though Jesus healed, though Jesus taught, oh, Jesus disciple, his real battle was simple. He was to bring the kingdom of God to earth. Everybody living for themself to live for the eternal kingdom of God, plant the church, establish the church, die and rise from the dead for our forgiveness and our salvation, send the Holy Spirit so we could continue the work that he sent in place.

That was his focus. That was his battle. And he did it so well. And so he was capable of fighting that battle earlier, but for whatever reason, he waited, he could, but he didn’t. That should give us some freedom and some perspective and some determination. This whole series made for less assumes that we have limited energy, limited focus, limited resources. And so we need to figure out what is the essential thing that God is calling us to. We don’t wanna get involved in battles that dissuade us from our battles. That’s a natural question. Well, Gary, how do I know what battle there is? I mean, Josiah was told through scripture and then a king of Pharaoh told him specifically. But I don’t know that my position is in scripture. I don’t know that I have a king or a prophet telling me what to do.

Well, here’s a rub rubric that might help you a little bit. I was reading on the life of Truit Kathy a few years back, he’s the founder of Chick-fil-A, came up from very poor surroundings. And then through the success of Chick-fil-A, he actually ended up on Forbes 400 lists of the 400 richest Americans. He was with his pastor. When he was notified that he had made that list, the pastor said he was actually a little bit embarrassed. Truett liked to be known for his humble beginnings, not for his wild success financially afterwards. And so after reading that, I looked up today what you have to earn, what you have to be worth to get on four, 400 lists of the wealthiest Americans. You know how much it is for 2025. It will be over $3 billion. Over $3 billion. Can I just say that’s more money than most of us can even conceive of?

I mean, the government spends it like crazy. So we just hear these numbers. But if you try to wrap around in your mind how much 1 billion is, it’s staggering. So let me help make it a little bit easier. Most of us can conceive of a million <inaudible>. Well, if I earn a hundred thousand a year, or you could imagine earning a hundred thousand years and I worked 10 years, I’ll have earned a million dollars, right? You can see that now the government will have taken away about 40% of it. So you won’t have a million dollars, but you can at least do that math and understand that number. So with a million is a number. You can get your hands around here, let me help you understand how much more a billion is than a million. 1 million is 0.0333% of 3 billion. That’s three hundreds of 1%.

Which means if you’re on the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans, and you decide, let’s say he decides, or she decides to give you for a New Year’s day present, $1 million, okay, write out a check for $1 million. How much will that billionaire have left? $3 billion. All right. It’s a rounding error. They really wouldn’t even miss it or notice it. Now, most of us would notice if somebody deposited a million dollars into our account, I would, most of us would notice if somebody tried to take out a million dollars from what we have. For some of us that would more than wipe out everything we do have. So most of us, I don’t want to insult some people here, most of us we’re never gonna be on the top 400 list of the richest Americans. That’s just not our call. But here’s what I want you to think about.

What 400 lists has God called you to be on? What 400 lists has God gifted you to be a part of that you should fight that battle? I could think of some. I could think of the 400 most active devoted members of Cherry Hills Community Church. It’s amazing to me, seeing how this place is growing. We had, I think, close to 9,000 here on Christmas Eve. And a church like this is so dependent on those really devoted marriages. Now we know your family situation. Your work situation might means that you come here on a Sunday, you’re not that involved. No guilt, no judgment. We get that there are different times in life, but a church like this also depends on those. And names and faces come up in front of me where they say, this is our church. It’s not church, church. It’s not my church.

This is our church. We are, we planted our flag here. This is where we’ll minister this. We’re all serve a, a work of God. Like this requires a certain number. You say, I, I might not be this or that, but I’m gonna be one of the members here at Cherry Hills. Maybe it’s quieter ambition. Maybe I wanna be among the 400 most devoted prayers in the country. I want when, when the angels ask God, what voice is most familiar to you? Oh, here’s my daughter, here’s my son. They wake up, I’m hearing them. They go to bed. I’m hearing ’em almost glad when they go to sleep, I get a little bit of rest. I mean, they, they are praying for the loss. They’re praying for the needy. They’re praying for their family, praying for the work of the church. Their voices are more familiar to God.

Wouldn’t that be fun that you are in the 400 most familiar voices to God? Or maybe it’s tied to your vocation. You’re a teacher that doesn’t wanna just draw a paycheck. You say, I really wanna invest in the younger generation. I wanna be most devoted, whether it’s as a teacher and coach or one or the other or whatnot. I’m gonna give myself fully, this is my focus for now. These are the battles I’m going to face. For some of you, the circle might be small. Maybe things have gotten tough in your marriage with your children. You say, I, I need to step back and become one of the 400 most devoted husbands and fathers, mothers and wives. I need to get this small circle going before I can fight any other battles outside of our family. And that’s okay. And I’m saying pick a few because that helps tell you what battles you are called to fight.

I, I think one of the top four hundreds that I’m on, and I think I could say this worldwide is one of the, the most devoted scholars to the Christian Classics 400 in the world. The reason I could say that is I don’t think there are 400 of us in the world that get in that it’s really seen as this esoteric thing. And even my pastor friends kinda laugh about it, but they call me if they need to know about this Christian classic or that one. But knowing that that’s my passion, and that’s sort of this weird calling God has given me, helps me know what other battles I don’t fight. There’s a, a funny skit by Holden, his family. They’re funny videos if you wanna look at ’em over Covid. They had one where the husband has a remote control in his hand, and then he puts it down.

He says, honey, I finished. She goes, oh, that series on Netflix. He goes, no, I finished Netflix. I’ve seen everything <laugh>. Now that’s impossible, right? But I’ll tell you this, Netflix knows the top 400 viewers. They could look it up. They know how much you’ve streamed. They know how many shows you’ve watched, how many hours you’ve spent. They know these are our 400. We’ve got them. Nobody watches us more than these 400. The reason I say that is I, I can’t be a student of the Christian classics or do the work God has called me to do if I’m on the top 400 of Netflix. So knowing what battles I’m called to fight helped me, helps me not to fight the battles. I’m not, I wanna specifically say this for you, high school students or college students, it can start now. God can use you now.

God will fill you up with a spirit now. And so think forward to graduation. And you’re saying, what 400 lists? Do I want to be on 400 that I’m prepared for my calling in life, 400 that I have reached out for the teachers and tried to represent Christ 400 that I’ve made friendships for life? You think these are the battles I wanna win on the day I graduate? As much as I get a diploma, I want to thank yes, I got on this list. And the reason that’s so helpful for you is that you can have other opportunities. You have other, Hey, we got this party going on Friday. And you can say, well, my goal isn’t to be among the top 400 partyers, right? In fact, that might get involved. That might get in the way of me doing this battle or that battle.

So knowing what your battles are, help you understand what battles aren’t yours, and you can turn away if you don’t consciously think through, you could be sucked into these battles that take your time and energy, and they take you away from what God has called you to do. So in 2025, I’m publicly pronouncing. I’m retiring from policing friends’, comments on Facebook, you wanna be an idiot on Facebook? Go ahead. I’m not even gonna find out. All right. You just go do what you want there. That’s not where I’m going to fight. I’m not a law enforcement guy. I’m not gonna police hiking and biking trails. It’s really hard for me not to do it. But if you wanna be an idiot, go ahead. I’m just gonna say a prayer. I’m gonna try to say a prayer and let you go, because that’s not that We wanna choose our battles and then let it go.

One of the most delightful things I ever saw was when my 3-year-old granddaughter, I knew what she was watching. ’cause On the phone, I heard her sing. Let it go, let it go. Ah, I know anything about the movie or the song. All right, I know those three words. And there are glorious three words for 2025 that there are some things I just wanna free you up, guilt free. If it’s really weighing you down, maybe you just need to let it go. Maybe it’s not even your battle to fight and you just have to let it go. Because for some of you, it might be very personal. If you’re fighting depression, your battle is to take care of yourself emotionally, physically, mentally, to get over that. If you’re battling an addiction, you say, this year, I’m really gonna get ahead of it. You have to be careful about the battles you’re facing.

The recovery community has this word they call halt, HALT. And the idea is that if you compromise on these four things, it’s like you’re setting yourself up for a relapse. You’re making yourself so weak. It’s almost inevitable that you fall. The H stands for hungry. It could be physical hunger, but it could be other things. You’re just depriving yourself. A is angry. Now, if you’re fighting battles, you shouldn’t be fighting. You’re, you’re manufacturing anger that could be very destructive in your soul. Lonely, maybe because you’re fighting so many battles. You’re not dealing with the physical relationships, the healthy relationships you should be dealing with, and you’re making yourself lonely. And then t is tired for fighting too many battles. You are tired. You just can’t get it done. And so if you don’t take this message and you’ve been dealing with an addictive pattern, you’re all but setting yourself up.

And this is the message to be like Jesus and say, no, I know my battles. And those are the only battles I’m gonna fight. It’s not just my savior who lived this way. I think of my theological mentor, je I packer. I went to a seminary where he was a professor. He was, I was in his advisory group some of you know of him. He died in 2020. He wrote a great Christian classic called Knowing God. He sold over a million and a half copies, which is huge in publishing only about 10 books a year will reach a million copies. And he, he really helped start evangelicalism as we think of it today in the best sense of the word, not the worst sense of where it’s gone in some places. And I would look back on his life and say he had three battles that he fought.

One, the battle for the Bible in errand sea. Earlier on in his career, people were challenging the veracity of the Bible, the truthfulness of the Bible. He realized that was ballgame. If we lose the authority and our reverence for scripture, everything could fall apart. And he fought that brilliantly and passionately. The second battle is with the Puritans. He recognized just the wisdom from that source, and he passed it on to his students. I don’t know that a year’s gone by where I haven’t been reading from the Puritans, a third focus, a third battle in his life was sort of an ecumenical spirit, which I know sounds dangerous to some, but he cared about the unity of the church. And so he would beg us students don’t leave the mainline denominations until they kick you out. If we always start our own, we’re just giving up on those other ones that are running into heresy.

Until his denomination just about kicked him up. When they did run into heresy and he stood up and some even wanted to remove his license. He was a wonderful mentor. And man, to me, one of the things I will take to my grave that matters most to me. Somebody brought my name up to him one time and he said, well, Gary’s one of my boys. You know, I think all those that have tagged me, I’ll take it if, if he considered me one of his boys. One of my last, actually the last face-to-face conversation with Packer. I was living in Washington State at the time. He was teaching in British Columbia. So I drove up, I wanted to talk about a book with him, a book that became pure pleasure. Why do Christians feel so bad about feeling good? Which is terrible grammatically, but marketers don’t care about grammar, so they’re just trying to make the point.

And it was on the appropriate pleasure in the Christian life. And I wanted to challenge them. And I felt like they talked about pleasure, but it was always in religious terms, worship and meditation and prayer. And Bible said, which are great, but I said, but God isn’t just our redeemer. He’s our creator. And there could be a good meal that we could thank God for a walk by the SunSetter or, or physical things. I remember taking away, reading this man’s book that I loved where he said, well, people that have empty souls and do things like run marathons and have affairs, and I’d run a dozen marathons at the time, I said, well, I’m worldly ’cause I’m doing the marathon. And so I, I talked with Dr. Packer about it, and I said, here’s, here’s what I’m concern. I don’t mind being attacked if I’m right, but I don’t wanna be foolish.

Am I representing this person correctly? Is there something I’m not seeing? He said, no, Gary, I’ve seen this weakness for a long time. I’ve been waiting for someone to take it on. Apparently it’s you. I’m thrilled. And he spent a lot of time with me, and we talked through the book and what we could do. He asked me for a ride home, and this is our last conversation. I’m right outside his house. And I he’s getting out. I said, Hey, I’ll write up the quotes. I wanna make sure I quote you correctly. He goes, oh, no, no, no, no. If there’s anything I’ve given you, just use it. Put it in your own words. And then he said, last things he said to me, Gary, I just want you to write a good book. Now, packer could have written the better book. He knew that issue better than I did, but that wasn’t his fight.

He was so effective in his life because he knew he had the bullets, but he wasn’t gonna shoot ’em. But he would give the bullets to somebody else. And he remind he was just like Jesus. He knew what he was called to do, and he knew what he was called not to do. And that’s why I believe he heard well done my good and faithful servant because he changed the church because of who he was and who God was in him. And so today I live with that challenge. And here’s a physical thing that really helps me. I ha this is from my church office. I have an identical one at my home office. I call it my three flips a day philosophy. When I’m honest. And I look at my intellectual ability and focus, I’ve got about three good hours a day. I can do other things, but for deep, intellectual, creative thinking, three hours.

And I’m, I’m pretty wiped. And so the first flip, I’m doing what God has called me to do. I’m focused on what God has called me to do. It gets done. I might take a little break, I flip it again, and then I flip it again, three flips, and then I can fight any lesser battles face no emails, meeting with other people, things like that. But I’m always focused every day on getting those three flips done. Like those are the battles that God has called me to. And so it helps me. Now, I may not have time for any others, and that’s what I’m asking you to consider in 2025. What are the essential battles as we go into the Made For Less Series? How can we set up our life? Because we learn when we do more, less, sometimes we accomplish much more.

That’s what’s Behind Made For Less. Doing Less might actually help you accomplish more. Now, I know you don’t remember much of sermons. None of us do 24 hours from now. About 5% maybe. We’ll, hang on. So I wanna encourage you, if you think like, I really wanna make this season count, I want this series to go beyond just a little bit of inspiration. I wanna give you some resources to follow up on to read during this series. The first one is Sarah Hagerty, the Gift of Limitations, finding Beauty in Your Boundaries. She’s a lyrical writer, sort of in the vein of Ann Vase Camp. It’s poetical. And what I loved about this is I used to push up against my boundaries. I wish I could do more. I wish I could be more. I wish I was smart. There’s that. And she helped me find the beauty in the boundaries. The sweet part of life is knowing what God has created you to do and just doing that and not worried about what you can’t do.

A pastor Kevin Harney from California has written an incredible book. No Is a Beautiful Word, and I found that you will save hours for every minute you spend reading this book as you learn how to say no and what to say no to, so that you can give your all important yes to the most important things. A secular approach, and I never use secular in a negative sense, is Essentialism by Greg McKean. My agent gave me this years ago, and I’ve reread it. That’s how helpful I found it was. The tagline is, essentialism isn’t about getting more done in less time. It’s about getting only the right things done. So if you like business books and whatnot, and you think it’s helpful for business, this would be a great book to go through. My, my passion, my hope for this, I, I think it’s a great series, but I want us to make it a part of our life, not just as a sermon series, but we really spend a couple months really thinking through how we can get this done. And then this sermon actually comes from a book I’ve done that a lot of you saw in the fall when to walk away. Let’s pray. Father, we don’t know how much time we have left.

Some of us may not see December, some of us may have many decades yet, but the choices we make this year will set up how fruitful we are in the decades to come. So I just pray as your church, as we worship Jesus, we would live like Jesus. Identify the battles you’ve called us to fight. Let the other ones go. And Lord, we can know the joy and the peace of being right where you’ve called us to be. In Jesus’ name, amen.