From Evening to Morning

MESSAGE TRANSCRIPTION: 

Well, Eastside. How are we doing this morning? All right. I had to do this was 9:30. Our services are getting too big. There’s too many people for us not to feel like the room is actually full. So, Eastside, how are we doing this morning? There we go. Yes. All right. My name is Brandon, and I’m one of the leaders around here. And I have the opportunity to serve in our student ministry. I have the opportunity to serve in our guest service ministry and even in our facilities ministry. And now, before I go on, I just want to take a moment and pause. And I just want to say we had this special event on Friday night for the first time in East Side. It’s called Night to Shine, and we put on a prom for our special needs community. Can we give it up for them? They’re absolutely a blessing. And let me tell you, if you missed out, you need to go ahead and put it in your calendar that you will make it a priority to be here next year because everyone’s cup was overflown just by the opportunity to spend time with all these guests and their families. And it gave East Side an opportunity to be able to love and to minister to a community that is often overlooked. And so I’m just thankful that I’m a part of a church who made this opportunity for this family and for our guests. But I am so excited to be talking to you guys this morning. We are closing out our sermon series called You in Five Years. And how is it not been amazing, right? Like we’ve had the opportunity to plan to, prepare, and to dream about what we want out of our life in the next five years and what we want God to do in us and through us these next five years. And so before I jump in, we have to ask the question, what have we learned? What have we learned? So in week one, we talked about who do we want to be in five years? Who do we want to be? And if where we are headed is not where we want to be, what do we need to do? We need to make a change. And then, in the second week, we talked about why? Why is it so hard for us to change? And Virgil brought the concept of inertia. The inertia can either be our best friend, or it can be our worst enemy. And then we talked about last week. How are we going to change? How are we going to change? And it’s not through monumental steps and giant leaps and bounds, but Virgil actually talked about how it’s going to be little by little, by little by little, one step at a time. And today, where we’re going to talk about, we’re going to talk about when are we going to make it a priority in our lives to actually implement all these plans, these preparations, and these dreams of what we want God to do in us and through us over these next five years. So if you have your Bible, what I want you to do is turn to Genesis chapter one. All right? And I’m going to take this all the way back to Genesis. And the reason is we’re going to look at this old biblical principle of how we should actually view our day, see how we actually view our day is from morning to evening. Right? We view it from morning to evening. But the way the Bible actually pictures it and shows us is we need to view it from evening to morning. And so this concept is all over the Bible. So before I jump into Genesis, I just want to show you that this is an ongoing threat theme all throughout Scripture. So one of the places that we see it is in the Book of Exodus here. God is feeding his people in a miraculous way. So what makes it miraculous? Well, it’s actually raining Krispy Kreme donuts from the sky. And some of you are giggling right now, but it actually rained Krispy Kreme donuts. Now they called it something different. The Old Testament, they call it manna, but the Bible says it was the bread that tasted like honey. What does that sound like? CHURCH This sounds like Krispy Kreme donuts. God is good. That’s good, right? But back in the Old Testament, God is feeding his people, and it’s raining, and they eat at a particular time. The Bible talks about a particular time that they would eat. So in the evening, they would eat their meat, and then in the morning, they would eat their Krispy Kreme donuts or manna. And then we see in the Book of Psalms and Psalmist writes about how a life is like a day. And this is what it says in Psalms 96. He says.

Psalms 90:6

 In the morning, it flourishes and grows up, and in the evening, it is cut down and withers.

So just like a plant that pops up and it’s gone just as fast in the evening, from evening to morning, we see those words, and then we can even take it to the New Testament, and we can talk about Christ because Jesus is a good thing to talk about, right? Church We could talk about when Jesus is coming back and when is Jesus coming back? I don’t know. I do not know the answer when Jesus is coming back. But this is what He said to his disciples. And.

Mark 13:35 (GNT)

It might be in the evening or at midnight or before dawn, or at sunrise.

And I love that this is Jesus. His response, right? His disciples, I’m sure they, had their pen and their notepad out there ready to write this down. So, Jesus, when are you coming back? When can we get ready? When can we be prepared? And he’s like, It could be in the evening, it could be in the morning, and it could be at midnight. It could be when you wake up. And the thing is, they don’t get a clear answer. But all throughout Scripture, times we see this theme from evening to morning. And what I want to do this morning is I want to take us back to the first book, the first chapter of the first verse, and actually show us the first time we actually see these words pop up in Scripture. So we’re going to jump into Genesis chapter one, starting in verses one through five, and this is what it says.

Genesis 1:1-5 (CSB)

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness covered the surface of the watery depths, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.Then God said, “Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light ‘day and the darkness he called “night.’ There was an evening, and there was a morning: one day.”

And so we have this idea of evening to morning. And this is quite different what we actually think about our day, right? Because, in reality, the day actually starts at midnight. But how we view a day would actually start is when we wake up, we stretch out of bed, and we go get our morning coffee, our Starbucks, our Dunkin, Right. We say, ah, it’s a new day, new day, new me going to change day, right? That’s how we view our day. But the reality is you’ve been asleep, and the day actually started at midnight, and you’ve already missed a part of your morning. But the Bible says all throughout Scripture that we should view our day from evening to morning. See, this is actually how the Jews would reckon time. They would view it from sunset to sunset, which was a 24-hour period. So their day would actually start in the evening, and so evening for us, typically when the sun goes down, it is at 5:30 p.m., right? That’s typical. That’s on average. And then we also think about when the sun goes down. We’re also thinking about when’s the sun going to come up. So over here, the sun typically comes up at 8 a.m., and in the span of time right here, we have 14. And a half hour. We have 14 and a half hours from evening to morning. And so what I wanted to do is I really want us to focus on this time that we have right here, this chunk of time from evening to morning because I believe if we focus on this time, this will be the time in which we can start taking those small little steps that Virgil talked about last week. Little by little, this is where we can take the steps to start making that change in our life, to see what God wants to do in the next five years. But see, typically, we think about our day differently, right? We think about it when we first wake up. So let’s say eight am and when the sun comes up to 5:30. Penn. And why is it bad that we would view our day in this timeframe? Well, you’ve got less time because from here to here, you’ve got nine and a half hours. And for my math whizzes out there, I know you’re trying to check my work. I did the work before. All right. So I know this is right. Okay. This is 24 hours. But not only do you have less time, but this is also the period of our life in which we have the least control. We have the least control because it belongs to our employer or belongs to our kids and what they’re doing and their schedules. Right. This is the time that we try to dedicate, but it’s time we have the least control and what’s going on in this time frame. We’re taking our kids to school or taking them to practice, or you have to be at work, or you have to be at the meeting, or you have to go to your doctor’s appointment or take the kids to the dentist appointment. Some of you, you got to get your dry cleaning out, but you can’t do it until lunch. So you go on your lunch at work. And then this is the time when the UPS store opens up, and you can finally get that package out. But guess what? It opened up when you had to go to work. And remember, in March, you had to do your dry cleaning. And so after work, you have to go to the UPS store. This is the time when it’s the craziest, the wildest, and most unpredictable in our lives, even on our best day. And we’re trying to fit our life in our nine-and-a-half-hour drive there. And so we tend to focus and push our time toward this time frame. And guess what we’re also trying to do in this time? We’re trying to fit Jesus into our life. In this time frame, we’re trying to fit Jesus into our life. But what I want us to do is I want us to go back to the 14 and a half hours, how the Bible says we should actually view our day. And I believe if we do that. Instead of us trying to fit Christ into our life, we’ll start working our lives around Christ. Come on. I didn’t even get an amen off that. That was good; instead of us trying to fit Christ in their life, instead of trying to put Christ in a box and try to fit him in. Well, guess what? We’ll start letting him be the sinner and the anchor of our life, and we’ll start working our lives around Christ. All right. And what do I want you to hear this morning? If you hear nothing else, what is my message for you today? What do I want you to receive? This is it.

If you anchor your evenings and your mornings in Christ, then in the middle of the day, come what may, you’ve already had a great day.

That is it. That’s what I want you to take away. If you anchor your evenings and your mornings if you have a killer evening. If you have a killer morning. No matter what happens in these nine and a half hours, come what may, you’ve already had a great day. See, the reality is, it is hard to say that you’ve had a bad day if you had a killer. Evening, a phenomenal morning. Now it’s possible. But if you anchor yourself, if you anchor your evening in Christ, if you anchor your morning in Christ, and both of them are amazing, whatever happens in the nine and a half hours come, what may come, what may And so what do we have to do to be able to take back our mornings and our evenings? What are we going to have to do? There are two things we have to do. The first one is going to be really easy. You’re going to love this point. This is the best point you’ve ever heard at East Side. You’re about to be like, Man, Bunch needs to teach more. He needs to teach more. The first point, you need to.

Get sleep. 

That’s good. Come on. Yeah, You need to get sleep. And why am I making this a point? So you might be like, This is so simple, but the reality is, it is hard for us to get sleep. It is hard to get sleep. And why is it so hard for us to get sleep? Well, the reason I believe it’s so hard for us to get sleep is because life is stressful. And we allowed the worries and the stress of our life to create our habits in the evening. And those bad habits lead to us going to sleep late or not getting any sleep at all. Right. See our chaos of the nine and a half hours, create our bad habits, and then it puts us in a position to where we’re not able to get any sleep and what’s going on in the nine and a half hours. We got worries, and we got anxieties. Maybe we have broken relationships. Maybe Mom, Dad, you’re arguing with your kids, or maybe it’s your husband or your wife. Maybe you’re struggling, and you’re living financially from Check to Check to Check. And that’s the chaos that’s going on here. Maybe you just went to the doctor, and you found out something medically is wrong, and it’s changed the trajectory of your life. See all that is happening in the nine and a half hours. And then it creates our habits of what we’re doing in our evenings. And so, why is it so important that we take back our evenings? Why is it so important that we focus on this? Well, this is what a lot of our habits look like when we get home from the nine-and-a-half hours. So when we get home from the nine and a half hour, some of us, we go to our phones. And we get that from rolling, Right? We start scrolling through everything that we possibly can. And when Instagrams are enough, then tik-tok is enough. And when then tick tock is not enough. Let’s see what they posted on Facebook. And when I’m tired of Facebook, then I can go to Twitter, Right? We have everything that we can go to. And by the time we’re done, we’ve wasted our evening, and it’s 11:00 at night. See, for some of us, maybe we went to the doctor, and we’re that person that when we go to the doctor, we have to go research everything they just told us and go down the Google search Rabbit hole. My wife is bad for this. I’ll get a little nod or a punch in my sleep. Hey, hey, hey. I just read, like, go to sleep, like. But there are some people that get that worried, and they’re on Google, and they’re searching, and they’re freaking out. And guess what? When they get off their phone, they’re just as worried and anxious as they were before. And they can’t go to sleep. So for some people, maybe you’re like me, I’m really bad at this. But when I get home, I just want to check you out, and I just want to watch a TV show and match my show choices to the office. Some of you guys, knock it. Some of you guys, you love it, and you own it if you’re like me. But I go home, and I watch the show, and I’ll be watching it. And by the time I’m done, it’s 11, it’s 12:00 at night. And guess what? I got to check back into reality. And none of my worries or my stresses are going for some of you. You go home, and you’re stressed. Either you come home from the chaos in the chaotic day, and you go home, and you start eating. You start eating your stress the way you eat, and you eat. And you eat until you can’t eat no more. And then, when you’re finally tired, you go to bed, and guess what? You want to rest. You want to go to sleep. But your body has to digest all that food. And guess what? Then you lay there for 3 hours before you can ever close your eyes and get peace and quiet. See. We have to take back our evenings. Why is it so bad? Why is this not good for us to not get sleep? Well, it causes a lot of problems. Sara Mednick, who is a professor of psychology at UC Riverside. This is what she said about losing sleep

 So studies have conclusively linked sleeplessness to irritability, anger, depression, and mental exhaustion. -Sara Mednik

That’s what happens when you don’t get any sleep. I was listening to a podcast about two weeks ago. I didn’t know it was going to say this as I was preparing for the sermon, so God just gave it to me. Thank you, Lord. But I was listening to this podcast, and this guy makes this statement about sleep. He said, Less than 1% of the world. Less than 1% of the world can function on less than 6 hours of sleep. And I know I got some of you in here this morning. You’re, like, on the 1%. On the 1%. I can do 5 hours. I’ve been doing 5 hours for the past five or ten years. Right. But it says less than the world can function on less than 6 hours of sleep at their full capacity. So what does that mean? It means if you’re getting less than 6 hours of sleep, yeah, you might be killing it at work. But when you get home. When you get home, your house is not in order. You might be killing it with your kids, but because you didn’t get enough sleep, guess what? You have no energy for your husband or your wife. So long story short, we need to get sleep. Sleep is important, is a part. And it needs to be a part of our evening routine. It is so important because if we want to take back our evenings. We need to set our evenings around, gradually working towards trying to get sleep. And why do we want to get sleep? Well, we want to get sleep so we can take back our evening, so we can get a good night’s rest. Right. So we can then take back our mornings. All right. We want to get sleep so we can take back our evening. So then, when we get a good night’s sleep, we can take back our morning. And what are we going to do when we wake up? We’re going to go deep. So we’re going to get sleep, and then we’re going to go deep. And how are we going to go deep? Well, we’re going to go deep spiritually and physically. We’re going to go. We’re going to go. And we’re going to wake up, and we’re going to anchor ourselves spiritually and physically when we first wake up in the morning. And so what I want to talk about first is I want to talk about the physical because I want to get it out of the way because I believe this is harped on all the time. All right. I don’t think I have to tell you the benefits of when you first wake up in the morning, you’re getting your body moving, and getting exercise is really good for you. Like, you know, if you wake up in the morning and you exercise, you get your blood moving, that you’re going to feel better, you’re going to look better, you’re going to have more energy, you’re going to have more time for your kids and your wife and all the things. Right. And the church, we’re not in a position where we can help you. That’s not where we thrive. That’s not our expertise. We can’t help you. But we have people within our church who are experts at this who would love to help you. We have people like Casey Rodas, who owns a gym. Or Angie Lucas. And it’s not Scott but Dave Brumley. I said his name wrong. Last service. He forgave me, though. And Emily, his wife. So maybe you’re in a position. You’re like, I want to get serious. I want to get serious about my physical journey. There are gyms you can join. There’s programs you can start. There’s people in our church that would love and that are committed, have committed their lives to help you get physically in shape. So, long story short, when you wake up, get physical, get your body moving, and it’s so good for you. The return on investment, if you do that, is so good for you. In the second thing what is the second thing we need to do? Not only do we need to go deep physically, but we need to go deep spiritually. And how are we going to go deep spiritually? We’re going to go deep spiritually in two ways. The first is through personal spiritual disciplines. Through personal spiritual disciplines. And what are personal spiritual disciplines? Well, when you wake up in the morning, instead of grabbing your phone. Need to start praying. When you wake up in the morning, instead of scrolling Facebook or worrying about work emails, you open the word of God. See, when we wake up, we need to make it a priority that we are spending time with God and going deep spiritually. This is what it says in second, Peter says.

2 peter 1:5-9

So don’t lose a minute. And building on what you’ve been given, complementing your basic faith with good character, spiritual understanding, alert, discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm friendliness, and generous love, each dimension fitting into and developing the others with these qualities active and growing in your lives. No grass will grow under your feet. No day will pass without as reward as you mature and your experience of our Master Jesus without these qualities. You can’t see what’s right before you. Obviously, that or oblivious that your old simple life has been wiped off the books. 

So what is this saying to us? They say when you wake up, don’t waste a minute. Do not spend time on your phone. Don’t waste a minute. But spend time in the thing that God is giving you your salvation, your faith. Because what’s going to happen if you spend time on this when you first wake up in the morning? What are the benefits? Well, one of the benefits is you’re going to get more of Jesus. Come on. That’s good enough, right? I mean, if I was to stop right there and say that’s the only benefit of you having personal spirits disciplines, that would be enough. You get more of Jesus. But guess what? Jesus is so good. He’s got more than that. Not only are you going to get more of Jesus, but you’re going to get more growth. You’re going to become a better husband. You’re to become a better wife, a better. You’re going to become a better student. You’re to become better because you invested your morning. You anchored yourself in Christ when you first woke up. Not only that, you’re going to get more of the goodness of God in your life. You saw it. I hope I’m not the only one, but I love it when God gives me blessings. I love it when God shows up and shows off in my life. So when you wake up, when you wake up, you need to go deep with the Lord in your personal spiritual disciplines. And you’re like, maybe asking the question, So bunch, do I When I wake up, I don’t really know how to read my Bible because I haven’t actively done it for a long time. So do I go to that book that you were referring to earlier, Genesis? I wouldn’t recommend that become a little complicated if you started there, but what I think you can do is start a personal devotion. Start a personal devotion started devotion to get yourself on track. And there’s an easy way to do that. There’s this app called you Version Bible App, and they’re going to play this video. And over here, this is what the app looks like once you click on it. There’s going to be something at the bottom of the screen that says plans. And once you click on plans, it’s going to take you to this page where they have thousands upon thousands upon thousands of plans and devotionals. You can get started. If you’re like me, I would just want to learn more about the Bible. I want to learn more about who our God is. They’ve got a devotion for it. Maybe you’re in a position. You’re like, Well, I’m angry at God or on stress or anxiety. I have worries, and I just need God to be able to speak to me. Guess what? They got a devotion for that, too. You know, we love being on our phones. So let me encourage you. Plug yourself into that app. Start your day on your phone with a devotion. So not only when we wake up do we need to anchor ourselves in our personal spiritual disciplines. The second thing we need to do is we need to go deep spiritually into corporate spiritual disciplines. And what are these? I got to that. We really want you to be engaging. The first is we want you to show up to church consistently. That’s the first thing. That’s a corporate spiritual discipline. You showing up, gathering with the body, worshiping together here on Sunday morning. And let me tell you, I don’t want to spend long on this because Virgil’s talked about it. Carlos talked about it. Now I’m talking about it like we just need you to show up because there is power in showing up on Sunday morning. And I just want to say the past six weeks of church have been the largest attendance that we’ve had in the history of Eastside. That’s pretty amazing, right? I mean, it’s been the largest attendance. So thank you so much to all of you for showing up consistently. And can I say, have you not seen the life change? Have you not seen the fruit of what God is starting to do in your life? Have you not experienced his goodness and his blessings already from showing up consistently? So we need to show up consistently. And the second corporate thing we need to do is we need to join a life group. And some of you, you’re here this morning, you’re like, Man, I thought I was going to get by a sermon without them talking about life groups. I thought I was going to get away with it. I mean, you were just like, Oh, he’s at the end. No one talked about it, but you need to join a life group. You need to join a life group because gathering in homes is important. Why? Because as we become bigger as a church, we need to become smaller as a church. The only way we do that is by plugging ourselves into the life group. And let me tell you, there’s so much benefit in our spiritual walk when we join a life group, and in my life group, we read the Bible together. We pray over each other. And let me tell you, there’s power in prayer, but there’s even more power when there’s someone who’s willing to lay their hands on you and pray over you. In my life group, we break bread together, and we eat good, and we eat things. We shouldn’t be eaten, but we do it, and it’s so good, and we do life together. So if you’re asking the question, what is a life group? That’s what it is. This gathering together, going deeper together in our walk with Christ and having a good time, because we all are going through something. So some of you are here this morning.

You need to join a life group. And we have over 50 adult life groups. So if you’re here this morning, you’re like, but I don’t think you have a life group for me. Well, you’ve got to try all 50 before you can tell me that we got over 50 for you to try. And even our student ministry, we have over 20 different life groups. And so there’s an opportunity for everyone to go try and commit themselves to life groups. And so this morning, what I want you to do, I just want you to bow your head. And I just want to talk to my two groups because I believe both are in the room this morning. First. My first group. There’s some of you in here like you’re hearing me say. And you’ve heard a part of this sermon. You’ve heard a piece of this sermon, but you’ve not been consistent in showing up on Sunday morning. And let me tell you, there is power in showing up, and you know that. But you’re trying to avoid it. You’re trying to give yourself all the excuses for why you can’t make it. And I challenge you, and I want to dare you this morning that you’re going to start showing up consistently because God wants to transform you, and he wants to bless you. And so if you’re here this morning with everyone’s heads bowed, no one else is going to see this. But let me show you and the Lord. But if you’re here this morning and you’re like, I’m that person, Brenna. I need to start showing up consistently. Would you just boldly raise your hand this morning? We just raise it high. Don’t be ashamed. This is you and God this morning. Thank you. Thank you so much. Just keep him up high. I’m going to pray over you right now. Jesus. I ask for an anointing and a blessing over these people. God, there are so many things that are trying to keep them out of the church, out of the body, out of Sunday morning worship. But, God, right now, I pray. I pray that God, you would remove every obstacle, every excuse, everything that would try to keep them from rushing to the church and being able to join and worship with the body and with other believers. God, I just pray that this will be their most consistent year. That God, over the next five years, are going to change with them. You’re going to transform them, and you’re going to teach them why they were showing up in the first place. You say this in your name, Amen. And just keep your heads bowed because I think there’s one more group I need to talk to. The other group is you’re, the people. You’re the group that really needs to join a life group. And let me tell you, you’ve been avoided at all costs. Maybe you had a bad experience once. Maybe you just feel like it’s not for you. Or maybe you feel like you’re too broken, you’re too far gone, and no one will receive you. Let me tell you I’m broken, and I’m far gone. And they received me very well. And this morning, you need to join a life group. And what I’m going to do right now I’m just going to pray that you would have the courageousness that God would instill in your heart. weighed heavy on your heart that you will not leave this morning until you join a group that you’re going to walk out of this worship center, go to the My People lounge, and you’re going to get plugged in today because you want to spiritually grow. You want to see God spiritually transform your life. So if you’re in the room this morning again, no one’s looking around. Just be you. And Lord, if you’re here this morning and you know that you need to get into a life group, would you just raise your hand. Would you just raise your hand? Lift it high again. Don’t be ashamed. God wants to do work in your life. Yes. So, God, right now, I pray over all my people that have raised their hand. God, I know that there are people in the room who haven’t raised their hand. Dear God, I pray for them, to God. I pray that you would weigh heavy on their heart right now, that after the service that, they would have to go out of their way and try to find a life group that God, that you would plug them in, that God, you would get them a community that God. You would help make our church smaller in their life and God, and you would have proved to them, as you always do, if they are consistent in showing up and being faithful to God, you’re going to show up, and you’re going to show off God. We thank you so much for what you’ve done this morning. Jesus, We pray all this in your name. Amen. Would you stand and worship?