Listen, I wanna welcome you today and uh, man, I love that we've got five other campuses that are all watching, uh, Lincoln Road. Let's welcome them together so they'll know. Listen, you're not alone today and today you've heard it at your campus. You've heard it right here at Lincoln Road, man, we're celebrating our men. And I gonna tell you, I've loved these past few Wednesday mornings that each campus at 6:30 AM men, our men have gathered together and we've got men that are growing and understanding Scripture.

Uh, we've got men that just left outta KXP classrooms this past hour and now they're in here worshiping 'cause they've been discipling other kids. We got men that today are sitting next to someone that they invited to come with them. We got men all through every single campus that you love to give and you give so generously. I'm gonna tell you, man, thank you men. We see you.

And we wouldn't be here without you. God's using you. And he's placed you in this faith family. And we're so grateful to get to do life with you. And I wanna tell you, I need to do this.

I need to say Happy Father's Day to my dad. He's watching today, I think he was in the room at nine 30. My father-in-law is on the road right now. He's on Highway 45 driving down. He lives up north in Tupelo.

And so he's coming today and we're gonna get to celebrate and have a little cookout today. And I was blessed with two godly men in my life. Uh, man, it's just, God just gave me that. It's a gift. I know that it's not something I take for granted.

And I don't know if that's your story, but I'll tell you this. It wasn't just those two men I grew up right here in this church. And the, the, the guy that leads our elders currently our chairman of elders, uh, was my Sunday school teacher in student ministry, Ron Kane. And I'm gonna tell you, every one of our campuses has men like Ron better investing in our students and investing in our kids. And I believe, I don't know if you know this or not, but, uh, God's up to something, uh, all across our country.

In fact, the Barner Research Group just put out some new numbers. It says over the last three years there's been 30 million new believers in America. And it's pretty incredible fact. And I believe now, now hang with me because I think with that number comes a responsibility for you and me. See, God's put us in a place, he's given us a platform like a lot of churches don't have right now, where we're getting the chance to reach the next generation.

And I'm gonna tell you we're passionate about it, but I believe that the men that God is here won't be the men that God uses to reach that next generation. Here's the title of today's message. It's really simple. It's just that there's more, there is more for you and there's more for me. And God's writing a story that he's gonna use you in today.

And I I wanna take you to a book that's encouraging. I mean, come on. Let's just be honest. Anybody need encouraging today? I just, sometimes I just need it.

And it means so much to me when you encourage me. And so I, I wanna encourage you today, and I wanna take you to a book of the Bible called Ephesians. If you need a book that's encouraging, get into the book of Ephesians. But what's encouraging about it is the one that wrote this letter, it was Paul and Paul was a man that wasn't always the kind of man that you would think would be writing letters to new churches. He was the kind of man that was lost.

He was the kind of man that dealt with some anger. He was the kind of man that had to get over his past to walk into a new story. He was the kind of man that it was God's grace and God's power that did more in his life. And so, if you need that today, this is for you. And I'm gonna start by saying, I need that.

I need God's power and God's grace in my life. So here's our verse. I want you to open up with me. We're in Ephesians and we're in Ephesians three, and we're gonna start in verse 20. It's just two verses.

So here we go. Let's read it together. Now, to him, who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. Now, I want you to see, one of the things we kind of get in the habit of doing is sometimes there's a particular word that I want you to look at.

And for this one, it's this immeasurably more. And let me give you a couple other words that connect with immeasurably more. Immeasurably more simply means a surpassing abundance. Does that, when you read that and you hear that, are you like, not me? Like I just, I don't feel like there's a surpassing abundance in me.

Like I, I need God to do a work in me. If you think there's gonna be a surpassing abundance that comes from me, and I get that, man, I understand that. And I think what happens is I wanna give you kind of a, a, a word picture that may help you. Uh, sometimes we, we see relationships and, and our lives kind of feel like an onion. And you know how when you take a, a layer off the onion, it just becomes less.

And then you take another layer off and, and, and you go to work or you get in a relationship, you have kids and you get more and more exhausted. And it's like you lose a layer, you lose a layer, and there's less and there's less and there's less and there's less and there's less till. There's almost nothing left to give. Compare that to this quote from CS Lewis. This is what he says about God.

The farther up and the farther in we go with God, the bigger everything gets. The inside is larger than the outside. So it's, it's just the opposite of an onion. It's like the more you get into God's word and the more you begin to pray, God give me strength, the more you begin to plug into this power of the Holy Spirit in us. It's not less and less and less.

It's the opposite. There's more. There's more. There's more. And Here's what I know about our men today.

When you hear me say the idea that there's more, that is exhausting to you, because the first thing that comes into your mind is like, I can't give any more. Because men today, here's how you would describe yourself. Typically, we're exhausted. Uh, we're demoralized, we're disoriented. Uh, we're misunderstood.

And this one really hurts my feelings. 'Cause sometimes I feel this, we're numb, we're lonely. How about this last one? We're agitated. Any, any ladies there any kids in the house that would say your dad's agi Sorry.

Don't do that. Yeah, that got real quick, didn't it? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're agitated.

That's the way that, uh, sometimes we would describe ourselves. So, so here's what I wanna do. I want to take you all the way back to, to God's design for you and for me, because I think when you see this, you're gonna realize again, there's more for you. So let's go back to Genesis. I want you to see this passage in Genesis, and I wanna see how God designed you.

It says, then the Lord God formed a man. It's good to know where we came from, right? The Lord God formed us. Now, this, this is, this is enlightening. He formed us right out of the dust of the ground.

And then you ready for this next part? He breathed into the nostrils, the breath of life. When was the last time you grabbed some dust and you've just breathed on it? And it became a man good to be reminded who we worship, right? God's not like us.

And the man became a living being. Now, look what he did next with men. This was the next thing that happened. The Lord God took the man and he put him in the garden of Eden and he gave them two responsibilities. I want you to work it and take care of it.

And man, I think we're good at work. I'm just telling you, man, we like to work. We were designed to work. It's that second word. We're also to take care of it.

Now, watch this. Here's two other words for that, that I think maybe are gonna strike a, a little bit of a nerve in you we're to cultivate. That's work. You know how if you're about to plant a garden, you, you can cultivate the ground, you stir it up a little bit. Boy, we good at stirring things up, but, but we're meant to stir things up so that something good can come up outta that ground.

Now, this next word is gonna blow your mind because if I were to ask you if this is the way you were designed or if this was what you do in your family, you would say, no, that's my wife's job. Nurture. Can you believe we were designed in God's original design to be nurturing? And that's what I'm telling you there. There's more in you.

See, when we go back to God's design and we go back to God's word, you're gonna see that he's designed us for more. Now, I'm gonna give you three things today, and this is really important. I don't need you to miss this line or you're gonna judge me at the end of this message. These are three things I'm working on. These are not three things that I'm coming to you to say, I've got this done.

Well, these are three things that I'm struggling well in. So I'm with you on this, okay? I'm, I'm encouraging you, but I'm encouraging myself because I wanna grow in these things. Here's the very first thing that I think we can cultivate and we can nurture. Even the best of men can confuse closeness with connection.

This, this, one of the traditions that my family has is, uh, when we get outta school, when both the kids gotta to school, got two high schoolers now, uh, the kinda, we try to get as close as we can to their last day of school. That next day we take a beach trip and we have loved this. We've done this for years now. We kind of go to the same place down on the beach, kind of orange beach area. And we got down and situated this year, got our, got our chairs in and began to just take it all in.

Looked at the water and the waves and little bit of a breeze, man. We were all right there. But right next to us, one group over on the beach, you know how that is, like you're kind of close to them, was a, was a group of women. And I know, I don't wanna guess their age, but if I were to guess their age, I would say they were probably in their fifties. And we watched these women laugh.

It was a group about eight or 10, they talked all day long. They got up together and I went out in the water and I think they peed in the water, but they got out in the water together and they still laughed. They came back to their chairs and they told more stories and they laughed. And I looked over at my wife, I looked at Katie, and I thought this, I was like, you know what? Men don't do that.

She was like, no, men pee in the water. I know they do. Now, she didn't say that. But no, men don't do that. We don't get together and laugh.

We don't just sit together and encourage each other. We don't get together a group of men in their fifties and listen, cultivating, nurturing each other. No, we compete and we're sarcastic and we're kinda sharp. Matt Chandler, a pastor in Texas, says, men are typically one of two things in the, in the, and the imagery helps us. We're either a turtle and we push back in our cell, in our, in our cell shell or cell where it's a little bit safer and it, we're not exposed.

And, and we don't engage in the conversation or the feelings in our house. I got a dad right here with a bunch of girls and we just get back up in that shell. Or we're a a, a porcupine man. We are sharp. And instead of engaging in the moments, we kill the moments because it's like, wow.

And you go, what in the world happened to him? And I see that pattern in me. I see both of those things in me. I've reacted where I just wanna pull back in my shell and I've reacted too sharply. And so what I wanna do, I wanna help you begin to identify that because I, I, I think the first thing that we've gotta do, if we're gonna connect with the people around us, we've gotta connect with what's happening in us.

And men, we're not great at that. And so here's the very first thing. I'm gonna pull that onion back up. And the first thing we gotta do is to begin to notice. I know, and this sounds bad, I notice those women on the beach.

I notice when I pull up at a, at a stop like the truck that's next to me, Hey, listen, in a good way. I notice when my girls need to be aware of a creeper. Men. We're good at that, but I don't know if I'm as good as noticing what's going on on the inside. Uh, there's patterns, um, there's passions, there's triggers that are all happening within me and you.

And, and we notice the exterior, but we don't notice the interior that's going on in us. And I'm gonna ask you to begin to notice those things. Now that feels like, uh, it feels like you're going against all manhood to do that because men don't have emotions, really. Uh, because, uh, remember men, we, we, I have a trash compactor at my house. And what we do is we fill a bit, we keep peeling, we keep stuffing stuff in there, and we crank it and it smushes it down.

And that's what we've been taught to do with our emotions. Not notice them much less. The second thing is to name them. Now, this is something I'm really bad at. In fact, honestly, most of the time I've gotten to a place where I just have to tell the story of what I'm feeling and then Katie will name it for me.

And if she gets it right, I'm like, yes, if she gets it wrong, I'm like, that turtle. Woo. Or I'm like, the porcupine. No, don't feel like that. But I'm learning what it means and what it would be like to try to name what I'm feeling.

Now the third thing is, now this is really where it's gonna cost you your man card, but share it. Can I tell you something? If, if you would begin to share some of those things you're feeling, and if you were to put a name to it, all of a sudden your, your wife would be a lot less lonely and your home would be a lot less lonely because then you would have this chance to begin to, to, to connect. And you wouldn't just be observing what's happening on the exterior, but you would begin to be aware of what's happening on the inside. I'm reading a book, and this is a great book if you need a good book to read.

It's called The Deep Rooted Marriage. And it's by a guy named Dan Allen. And he, he tells this story about skiing. And I, and I just, I love snow skiing. I've only been a couple of times I wanna go again.

But he, he talks about how he got a, he gotta go a chance to go on a ski trip. And he was on a ski trip and they'd had a great day, man. Everybody was having fun. His whole family, they'd had a good time. But he, he was real honest in the book.

He said, my wife's a little better athlete than me. And he said, I'd have to be honest with you, my son was doing great. I'm so proud of him. But he said, it was the end of the day. And how many of you understand at the end of the day, you get tired and sometimes the best trip can have a crash landing at the end of the day.

And that's how this was like, everything was good. But they were up on the top of a blue. It was late in the afternoon. Everybody was hangry. And dad was beginning to be impatient.

Dan and his wife suggested to him, Dan, I think you just need to go, go on down to the lodge. Get us a place to eat and let me help our son down the mountain at this point. So he says, okay, sure, I'm gonna do it. So he starts skiing down. Well, he gets down just a little bit and he stops and he, and he looks back to see how his son and how his wife are making it.

And he looks back and when he looks back, he sees his son throw down his poles and come up out of his skis. And he said, something triggered in me, and he said, I lost it. I took off my skis. And if you've ever done this, this is a bad feeling. And I began to hike up that mountain.

And he said, I got about halfway down up there. And my wife came down and she was coming up to me. 'Cause she knew this was bad. And I saw her and all I said was move. And then he said it again, move.

And I want you to see what she said back to him. Watch this, Dan. You know, he's in trouble now. I know that the men in your life have humiliated you and have shamed you. I know you don't wanna be that kind of man.

I know you certainly don't wanna repeat that with our son. I know you're a good man. Dan Islander, man. Listen, if you're dating somebody, you need to be sure you can say these kind of things to them. Dan said it changed everything.

Everything in their dynamic changed because he began to notice what was going on in him. Do you recognize they're all right there on the mountain together? But he couldn't have been more distant. His reaction couldn't have been more different than hers, where his son was and where he were. They were so close in proximity, but they were so far away from each other.

And it starts with being able to name, recognize, identify, and share those things that are going on in you. Here's the second thing, challenge you do, because there's more in you, just like there's more in me. Second thing is, even the best of men can get distracted. Now, watch this verse, because I've found this verse, and I have loved it all week long. Watch this.

It says, I have posted Watchman. Did you know that's you? Have you ever wondered what your role is? You've been posted in this church at your campus to be a watchman, to be a watchman, to keep us safe, yes, but to be a watchman, to cultivate and to nurture and to encourage. These watchmen had a role.

They were to tell God what was going on. They were, they were speak back to him, everything that they were seeing in Jerusalem, and he was begin to communicate back and forth. The watchmen was making sure that God knew all that was going on. And, and I think what's happened is, me and you, we've gotten distracted as watchmen. And I'm speaking to myself.

Listen, I am I'm more a DD than you. I see it all, everything around me. And I'm gonna tell you, I've kind of, maybe you connected this. I've got one of those jobs that doesn't stop. I'm not complaining about my job.

I'm gonna tell you I love my job, but it's constant. Now, maybe you, maybe your job's constant. Maybe you feel like you're always on. Maybe you feel like work follows you. If that wasn't enough, I'm gonna tell you a bad habit.

I have. I feel like I can get one more thing done all the time. I can see one more patient. Come on, I, I could take one more text to point them to this because it won't take long. And then it's like I open up a screen and then I'm waiting for a reply, and then I gotta give them a next step.

And so I'm distracted. I, I've watched, I've watched me not be the watchman I wanna be. And so I'm gonna tell you something. I wanna give you something. And if you need a practical, if you're into practical, this, this is really practical.

This is like a step for you. You can do this today. I wanna introduce you to something that's real simple. It's just called a driveway prayer. Okay?

Now, now this is important. We're gonna have a little fun with this. This has to be a short prayer. If you got a bunch of kids and you try to text your wife and be like, don't bother me. I'm doing my driveway prayer.

That ain't gonna work. If they banging on your door, I got one man in here that's got seven kids. If they banging on your door and you're out there, just praying, ain't gonna work. This is a short prayer, but it's a way to begin to retrain your brain. Like, Hey, come, come on.

Here we go. Because when you go home, now wait a minute. You remember how you were designed to, to cultivate and to nourish. You're not going home for a beer and a ball game. Your expectations are right.

You're, you're clocking into your, to your job when you go home. And so if you're gonna do that, well, you're gonna need God's help because we're tired and we get distracted. So here's the prayer. Here's the prayer. I want you to pray.

Just sitting in your driveway before you go in, you ready? God remind me today, and I have this part written on my mirror in my home. I get to be here for this. And one of the most godly men I know is not here anymore on Father's Day. Man, it hurts my heart.

He loved dad jokes. I saw those all through the atrium today, and it reminded me, Hey, I, I get to be here for this. No one else can fill my role at my home. Help me, give me my full attention to the people that matter the most. Good to be reminded of that.

Thank you, Jesus, for this season. Amen. Hey, we're doing Proverbs. You know this. We got, we're working through the book of Proverbs.

We're gonna read the whole New Testament, psalms, and proverbs. This year. We got men's groups and women's groups going on on Wednesday morning, Wednesday night. Here's the proverb we we read this week that applies to this prayer. Let your eyes look straight ahead, Cali.

That's enough right there. I'm telling you, I see all these things. God fix my eyes as I get out of this car on my family. Fix my gaze directly before me. I want you to pray that before you begin to engage.

Here's the third one. There's just three says, even the best of men need more. This is just hard for me to say. Can we say it together? Empathy.

Anybody else score zero on empathy? Like if we took the test, I, I'm like a negative one, and I don't think that's something I wanna brag on. I I, I wanna tell you what happens. I, I've, I've begun to kind of discover this because I see it in, in, in my life. Like men.

We, we operate on facts and fixes, and it's the strangest dynamic. And this is where we need a little bit of empathy from you, because I'm just telling you all week long, the more facts we can give and the more fixes we can bring means the more value we hold. And so it's so strange where somebody will come to you during the weekend, the workday say, I got a problem. Can you help me? And we'll do things like this.

Come, come, come, come give. And then we'll say this like, Hey, gimme the bottom line. And then if we can give a solution, like a fact and a fix, we are praised and then we go home. I'll tell you, man, you better not do like this when you're at home. You might not wanna say, Hey, gimme the, gimme the bottom line.

Instead, there's a, there's a, there's a new code that, a new language that I wanna help you with because I wish somebody would've told me this years ago, because this is a, this is a code for you when you get home. Here it is. It's real simple feeling for feeling and fact for fact, this is really good, but it's not natural here. Here's how it works. Uh, your wife says something to you like, Hey, man, I really feel overwhelmed today, Greg.

My natural response. Well, hey, you're burning daylight. It's eight 30. We could probably get some things done by now. Terrible response.

That was a feeling. And I gave a fact, Hey, what about this one? Uh, you're doing highs and lows at the dinner table. And your son says to you, Hey, uh, uh, dad, here's what happened in the baseball game today. Uh, man, I, I, I struck out.

It was, it was kind of a loaf for today. My natural response, well, who was pitching? What happened? Who was the ump today? What, what about this?

Hey, you know what I can remember clearly when I struck out your age? Sometimes it just sucks. I'm sorry. It's a little different, isn't it? I'm telling you, if, if we can retrain our brains, because sometimes we get to moving so fast that we stay in this facts and figures, but instead, we've gotta retrain those responses.

Here's the verse I'm gonna give you for this, because this doesn't come natural. You and me, we're gonna retrain our brains to think more like this. Therefore, it's God's chosen people, and that's who you are, okay? Don't let the enemy, don't let the enemy distract you. That's who you are.

You, you're chosen to lead. You're chosen to be part of our faith family. You, you are here for this season. Here it is. Here's what you're to do.

You're to clothe yourself. Ah, man, I put on a lot of different clothes, but here's, here's what he said. Clothe yourself with this. You ever put on this compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness. Oh gosh, this one's so hard.

And patience. You see how that's retraining your brain of all the different things you could put on? You see facts and figures in that list anywhere. What about fixes? No, he says, I, I've got something more for you.

And here it is. I want you to begin to put these things on as you cultivate, as you work it, as you keep it, as you nurture the people I've put in your life. Look what Dan Iser said. This is the closing quote. You've, you've done so good.

Okay, here's, here's, here's his testimony. I thought this was so powerful. He said this, and I think this is possible for you to say, I am not the same man who coldly, raged up the side of the mountain. You guys, we all know men, that that's the way they reacted. The rage monsters.

It's funny on dude, perfect. It's not funny at home. But with God's help, remember, there's more. I'm not looking for more from you. I'm looking for more for you.

There's more. With God's help, I've changed my automatic relational reactions. Now, that little phrase is really powerful. Would, would you be honest enough to say that your automatic relational responses are sometimes off? I I don't think I'm the only one.

See, today I'm challenging you to say there's more. There's, you said that word immeasurably more. There's a surpassing abundance. There's a picture here that may, you are exhausted and your onion has come down to nothing. But with this relationship with God, there's more.

You can begin to change the generational curses that have haunted you. There are men in this room that say, I used to respond this way, man, I would go get hammered. But now I respond this way. There are men in this room that can talk about memories that they will never get past in images of their father in the way that they reacted. But now there's less rage.

But now their automatic response and reactions are different. There is hope for you. Last story this week, this Wednesday morning at Men's Group at Lincoln Road, 6:30 AM had a man that stood up in front of all of us, us 60 men. And he said, I need to give you hope because I've walked in and out of these doors at venture and I have been hopeless. My son invited me.

He didn't give up on me. And I came with my son, and I found healing, and I found hope. And he told us, I'm no longer the same man I used to be. I'm just telling you, there is hope for you. Here's what I want you to do.

I want you to bow your heads for just a second, and I wanna speak something over you because I, I, I got a, I got a little card on the, on the crosses that I picked up. And in just a second, at every, every campus, you're, you're gonna have a chance to come down to the cross yourself. And you may wanna leave something there, and maybe it's a word or maybe it's something someone said to you. Maybe you want someone to pray over you or for you. But here's what someone put on the cross last week.

They said, the past doesn't define me. Man, I thought that was a perfect thing for today. Because whether you've been on that mountain at the end of the day and you've said things you shouldn't have said, or God man, whether you've said things to your wife or your friends or your kids that you really regret, they don't have to define you. I'm telling you, there is an immeasurably more grace and power. The whole passage today was written by Saul who became Paul.

There is hope for you. Lemme pray for you. God, I thank you that our mistakes in the past, they don't have to define us. God, I thank you that you give us this tangible relationship where the farther in we go, the more compassion comes, the more forgiveness and patience and humility. God, I've just gotta remember to clothe myself so many times, my automatic relational response isn't where I want to go.

So God, give me strength. Give me an awareness of the things that trigger in me and the patterns that I fall into. God, I pray for me, it's sarcasm. God, there's just no place for sarcasm in my home. Help me stop that before it just comes out.

And instead, God, let me begin to clothe myself with the things that your spirit brings. Greater is the one who is within us than the one who is in the world. God, there is more. There's a surpassing abundance that comes from you. So God, I pray for our men.

God, I pray you would send us men. God, I pray you'd send us men that love you. God, I pray for these ladies today that they'd be patient with us and they would speak into us in the same way that Dan's wife spoken to him. They would encourage us and God together. I pray that we would be the church that reaches this next generation and that we would bring hope and we would bring healing.

But God, it starts in us. So do immeasurably more than we could ask or imagine. It's in your name we pray. Amen.