I CANT SIT HERE ANYMORE / Pastor Ben Graves

0:31 Matthew chapter 16, 24 through 25, it says this. Then Jesus told his disciples, if anyone would come after me, let him or herself deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. I got this whoop band. It's an athletic flex. Yep, doing high rocks in December. This thing tracks everything. And if you don't know what a whoop is, it just tracks your sleep, optimize all the stuff, you know? And they got this new feature and it's like your life expectancy. So based on your habits, how long you're gonna live. The problem with this is I have a seven week old and a two year old. So every morning I wake up and it's like, you got 12 years left to live if you keep sleeping at this rate. And I just had me thinking in the current age and culture that we're in, have you noticed that there is this desire, this pressure to optimize, to push, to grind, to succeed, to achieve.

1:34 And I am not against wisdom. I am not against being successful. I will say this. I think it's a disservice to the witness of Jesus Christ. If you do something in the world, but you're not great at it, I think we should be the very most excellent artists and creatives and business people. Like don't come at me with that bad coffee from holy grounds or something like that. I want good coffee. I just think for us, we're in this culture and this verse is so counter to what from the very age of for many of us, 11, 10, 12 years old, we were taught. And it was get good grades, succeed, get to college. And again, I'm not preaching against that. I think you should. But I just wanna propose for you today. Could it be that the bullseye of God's will for your life is not found in your plan, in your dream, or culture's plan, but it's found on the other side of a surrendered life, saying, God, wherever you want me to go, I will go.

2:28 That when we deny ourselves and we pick up our cross and we follow him, that we get to God's plan, not our way. We get to God's plan, his way. And today I wanna preach a simple message entitled, I can't sit here anymore. I can't sit here anymore. Jesus, we invite your Holy Spirit. Have your way, oh God. Jesus, we love you. We're grateful for you. Lord, it wasn't for what you did on the cross 2,000 years ago, Lord, we would not have the ability to worship and communion with you. So Lord, we just for a moment pause and say, thank you. Thank you for the times that we should have been in a car accident. We should have been in trouble, but Lord, your grace and your mercy pulled us out of the pit, Lord. We thank you for the moments where, Lord, you have blessed us, the gift of life and family and kids, Lord. We're so grateful for the gift that you are to us. So today we open our hearts. We say, Lord, whatever you wanna say, I will receive it. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Give someone a high five as you find your seat. Come home.

3:27 Like I said, been married for quite a few years now, and we got two little babies, and they're absolutely amazing. I took our two-year-old golfing for the first time, which is the hack, because now I get, it's family time, you know, but I'm getting to golf. And we get home, and I'm like, did you have fun? And she just goes, thank you, dada, and, like, gave me a hug. And I'm like, oh man, whatever you want. You know, you have my yes. We do have a dog as well. His name's Tuesday.

3:59 Yeah, he's Mormon, so he's not here. We got him in Utah. Sorry, I shouldn't have clarified. We got him in Utah. At like this, yeah, he's a doodle. His name's Tuesday because we got a dog named Sunday, but Sunday passed away. And then there was Monday. And now we're on a Tuesday, real creative. so my family sends their love so grateful to be here I love your pastors, I love this church and expect it for what God's going to do today I was thinking about this though like the reality of the cultural moment that we're in we're really for so many of us most of our life is spent thinking, dreaming working driving to accomplish something that if we were really to boil it down Have you ever asked the question, why am I doing what I'm doing?

4:51 Like, I know it sounds ethereal and big, but have you ever looked at your job, your kids, and what God's placed in your life? Have you ever just asked the question and went backtrack a minute and went like, why am I doing this? My friend in the Raiders jersey asks myself all the time, like, why would I be a Raiders fan? I'm a Raiders fan, bro. It's a tough. I just saw it, and the Holy Spirit was like, prophesy life. we need it. Why are we doing this? I think it's messages and texts like this that are so simple, but really do. Like if we were to boil down the Christian life, I think so many of us have made it about so many things and leveling up. What we have done is we have applied the cultural moment of achieving and grinding and climbing a ladder and we've applied it to our faith. And I just came to remind someone today that it's a simple thing to follow Jesus. It's not easy, but it's simple.

5:48 In the moment we begin to overcomplicate it and we begin to add things to it. Today, I just want to boil this down and go like, let's talk about what this is really about. In the Christian life, I could just boil it down for you. The war for your life is not over just your mere belief in God. I think if you're at church in LA on a Sunday morning, I would bet there's something in you that goes like, yeah, there's probably a guy up there. Like, I believe there's something. Like, how do you get the birds in the trees and Yosemite with the water and my emotions and my feelings. There's no way all of this came from two Adams going.

6:21 I believe there's probably something out there. And I don't think the enemy of your soul is worried about your belief in God. What the enemy of your soul is worried about is your surrender to him. Because you don't actually walk into the fullness of what the word of God teaches until you surrender, deny yourself. Which means the Christian life is a life lived of how do I die to my flesh daily? Paul uses the word flesh as this imagery for the worldly parts of you. It's the parts of you that have been assimilated by culture. I think about this in video game culture. I'm not a big video gamer, but maybe the boys can help me out. There's these things called NPCs, right? And an NPC is like a non-playable character. It's just like a guy in the video game. And I think a lot of times what we have walked into is this NPC mentality in church. It's like non-playable Christians where they give the illusion of life. but it's actually dead inside.

7:16 It's controlled by an outside system. And today what I would say for you is, no matter how you found yourself in the room today, I want to call you to a new level of surrender. Not because I want it for you, but because I think you should desire all the things God has for you. And on the other side of a no to the things of this world is a new yes and a new abundance in God. So we want to today, like Matthew says, I gotta deny myself. If you want to follow them down yourself, which leads me to this thought, have you noticed that like every seat tells a story in this world? And real practically, you just go back to middle elementary school for a moment, right? You know the kid who was sitting at the front row, notepad open, glasses on. What would we call them? A nerd, right? Yeah, like, I'm kidding. They're now our bosses, right? That's how it works.

8:08 And then if you sit in the back row and you're just sitting in the back seat and you're slacking and leaning back, we'd be like, oh, like they're a slacker because a seat tells a story. If you were in school and you were sitting at home during lunch, you'd be homeschooled, right? Like there's just seats tell stories. I think about this even in our culture. If you were to see someone say in a Maserati pull up next to you at a restaurant and you see a guy sitting in the driver's seat of a Maserati, there is a narrative and a story you could begin to draw from the seat he's sitting in. I could flip that. If you see somebody sitting on a street corner asking for money, there is a narrative and a story that seat tells. Every seat tells a story, which makes me ask, what seat are you sitting in this morning? I don't mean literally a seat in this church service today. I mean, like, what is the narrative of your life right now? I think many of us, if we were to be honest, we're sitting in a seat of anxiety, where every time we think about the future or the next stage, it's not positive thoughts, it's negative thoughts of what could go wrong.

9:06 How could they get hurt? What could, and we're living life from this seat of control. I'm gripping life as tight as I can, trying to figure it out. Maybe for you, it's like the opposite. You're sitting in a seat of, I would call it depression. There's a lack of vision for your life. And you feel lost and aimless. And your whole life is dictated by this seat of just like, I don't have the energy or the motivation to continue forward. Maybe some of us, the seat we're in is a seat we didn't choose. Abuse brought us there. choices that we would have never chosen for ourself that maybe at a young age were imprinted on you brings you to a place where maybe your seat is one of insecurity where you can't help but be self-conscious and insecure in every room you walk in i could go on and on and on but every one of us we find ourselves sitting in a seat which brings us to the author of this book in the moment he decided to surrender and follow Jesus. Now this is fascinating to me because when Jesus finds Matthew, watch what the text says. It says that he found a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector's booth. My dog worked for the IRS.

10:18 but in this culture you might not be familiar with the tax collector but tax collector in this culture would have been a jewish citizen jewish born person working for the roman government so in a sense what was happening is it would be like one of our own going and working for a different nation that was keeping us in bondage and stealing from us this man was hated this man was a traitor to his own people but it's fascinating because as he was hated by his own people, he was also rich and wealthy. So he was making it in some areas of his life, successful. He probably had a better house, better food than the Jewish people, but he was hated by people. Have you noticed that sometimes we see people sacrifice relationship to trying to achieve something in this world that we think is going to fulfill them? This man finds himself in a seat where on the outside he's got it all put together, but he is hated by his own people.

11:15 And I watch this. It says Jesus approaches him. And watch the simple two words he calls to him. He doesn't say sign up for this class. He doesn't say you've got to memorize the whole Bible. Watch what it says. Follow me, he told him. This is the call of a believer today. Follow me. This is what Jesus said. Now, I love this because it doesn't seem like Jesus is too fascinated with the current seat he's in. So this man was living in sin, living in brokenness, as stealing. And Jesus isn't like, oh, sinner, thief, repent, then follow me. It's almost like Jesus wasn't concerned with his current location. That the call and the beckon wasn't him having to change seats to get to a better seat that Jesus could use. But it was exactly where he is. I want you to write this down today if you're taking notes. You don't have to move seats to be called, but you do have to move to follow.

12:10 So he's like, yep, where you're at right now, I love you. And here's where this is real for us, especially as believers. It's like in the culture, like we don't get accepted as we are. It's true. Like we are so used to performing and putting it up and being dialed for an interview or making sure we have the right image and like social media looks like we're used to like putting on a thing so that people can accept me. I was thinking about this like the first time I met my now father-in-law and I grew up Southern California, surfer kid, never been hunting, never done any of this. And this guy, all I'd heard is like, he is a hunter, right? And I'm like, all right, put a few Morgan Wallen songs on, try to get in the culture and show up at his house, right? And I had this whole thing of like, I got to buy boots. I got to look this part. And I was trying to have him get to know a version of me that wasn't actually me, but I thought he would like it. I think many of us apply that to our relationship with Jesus. We think God needs to get to know us. So we project a version of ourselves that God we think will accept. What is it, Christian? We're so like, can I help you?

13:23 God doesn't need to get to know you. He formed you. The Bible says that while you were in your mother's womb, he put you together. So here's what's important for us to catch. you don't have to perform to get God's attention in your lowest moments. He was there. I'll say it so simply, uh, before depression, God knew you before divorce knew you, God knew you before that sickness knew you, God knew you, which means it's not about God getting to get to know you. It's you submitting your life and saying, God, let me know more about you. Because the more you can learn about him, his image can then be reflected through you. God doesn't need to get to know you. Like the seat you're in right now. He will come and find you. God has an ability to search you out and track you down. You think you're running from him. Let me help you. You are not Hussein Bolt. You are not fast enough to run away from the grace of God. The Bible tells me this, that while we were still sinning, Christ died for us. Let me translate like in your lowest moment, the part of your life you are most embarrassed about, the part of your life that you try and blot out of your memory, the part of your life that you try and delete from your history that part of your life, God said, I love that person.

14:36 I will find that person. I love this. Matthew's working his bad job, and it says Jesus comes to him. And he says, follow me. Now watch his response to this. It's simple, but it's possible for us to overcomplicate it. It says that Matthew, after hearing follow me, he told him, it says Matthew. Googled if it was worth it. Ask chat if it was a good idea. It just said Matthew got up. No, there's so many implications to this. Because Jesus in this time would have been known as a rabbi. He would have traveled with a crew of people that would learn from him. So literally what this means, it wasn't just him like literally getting up out of a chair and following him. It was him saying, all right, the life Jesus is calling me on, I have to assess this whole thing I've built, this empire. Am I willing to stand up out of this and follow this man?

15:39 and I love that it just says he got up and he followed him. There was something in the beauty of Jesus, something in the eyes of his creator that when he saw him, he knew whatever this guy's got is far better than what I've been searching for, and I wonder if today you have been searching for God and things that he is saying. It's not good for you. It's not healthy for you. It's not enough for you. The only thing that will ever be enough is when you follow me. But you know what we do is we hear something from God. We hear a call. We hear an action. We hear a sermon. And we immediately weigh what God is saying against what we feel. Ah, you know, I wasn't raised in a real Christian home. Seems a little extreme. Ah, I got a really good paying job. Yeah, I don't know if this is what.

16:31 And we weigh out our idea next to God's idea. and you know what that does? It makes you the judge and the juror, and it makes your mind have to be the one that can discern, and you think we're better. It's pride. I would just say this. Here's a fun posture to live. Have a yes in your heart before you even know what he's asking you. I try and wake up in the morning. I'm like, God, it's a yes. If it's pray for this person, if it's go to this thing, if it's catch my tongue on the freeway, come on. If it's changed the diaper, if it's preached the message, if it's whatever it is, God is just a yes. And I've learned this, the more I say yes to God, the louder and the closer I sense him in my life. Could it be the reason you do not feel or sense God's nearness is because you have been living in direct disobedience to something he's called you to do?

17:28 Faithfulness, faithfulness, faithfulness. You know, it's like all throughout scripture, after God does something, there's usually some sort of test or pushback or rioting, all through Acts, right? Early church, they have Pentecost. Holy Spirit falls on the upper room, 120 are filled with God's Spirit. Church starts to explode. You know what happens? People start mocking and making fun of them. I mean, I could keep going all through Acts. Early church, it's like God moves, does something. You know, they free a demon-possessed girl. than the owners of the girl who was demon. They were monetizing her demon possession to sell things. And they cast this demon out of the girl, set her free, and the owners get mad at the disciples for freeing this girl because they can't profit off her possession anymore. Now, I just had this thought for our culture, how cool would it be and how natural would it be for the demonic industries of our world?

18:26 We should expect them to flip out when people start getting free because they cannot profit on our dysfunction anymore. So this goes free. And what happens? It's just this process. It's revival, chaos, growth. You'll have revival in your life. There'll be chaos and you'll grow. So when you say yes to following him, just buckle up. Chaos is coming. You know, in culture right now, it's like there's a lot of punching up. Someone gets clout, someone gets famous. All of a sudden their comment section, people are just bashing them. Have you noticed this? it's because when someone gets to the top someone starts winning people like to can i tell you this that when the enemy sorry when god starts winning in your life expect the enemy to punch up because if you're winning in your relationship with jesus the enemy is going to start kicking back and if you if your life feels a little uncomfortable right now your mental struggle there's thoughts you feel stressed you feel weight could it be but that's an indicator that you're right where God wants you to be.

19:27 Because if your life is too comfortable, I would be concerned you're not following Jesus. Because I've learned this, that following Jesus means I should expect resistance. Come on, I wanna live a life that tears up heaven. Come on, I wanna live a life that makes the enemy flee. I wanna live a life that makes everyone who's comfortable in their sin go, man, I gotta fix something. Because I know when I'm living a life on mission for God, I should expect resistance, so bring it on. If your life's comfortable, that's not what the Bible teaches at all.

20:01 And you can only have, you can have comfortability or you can have God, choose one. But you know what I'd rather have? Purpose is so much better than comfortability. Fulfillment is so much better than comfortability. And you can't experience those things unless you follow him, follow him, follow him. So he has this call to him and he says, hey, would you follow me? And it says he gets up and he goes after him. And I love this, that he had to literally get up out of his old job and follow Jesus. Write this down if you're taking notes. You can't follow Jesus and keep your own seat. And in 2025, there are so many seats that can occupy our life. I was just thinking of a few. And that's why this is up here. Welcome to Orange Theory. We're going to work out today.

20:51 I think one of the seats I see in our generation so frequently is this thing. I mean, I've been up here for, what, 20 minutes? I got like, here's the thing. how could you ever know where God wants you to be and hear God's voice if you have 10,000 voices all the time you know my daughter I've learned this like the pacifier the binky for a kid oh it's like a fix-all I mean this girl scrape her knee freaking out give her the pacifier everything's perfect Thank you. Does the pacifier heal her knee? No, but it distracts her. I've learned this thing has become like a digital pacifier to a generation.

21:37 It's like, why heal when you can distract? It's like, why actually look internally at the things that are broken in me and deal with them when I can feel numb? I'm not here to say phones are the enemy or AI is the devil. I'm not, that's not the sermon. Can you imagine? I came all the way here today just to preach a message.

22:01 It's the chip of the beast. You know, I started doing that. Somebody who's never been to church before is like, what is going on? I would just ask yourself, is there somewhere that God's asked you to be present and work on, but you can't hear his voice because of this, it's a C. Surrendering means I'm going to actually make some decisions to not be glued to this all the time. Bro, and it's not just young people, my grandpa be on Candy Crush nonstop, bro. He'd be sending me things on Facebook at 2am and I'm I'm like, dog, I don't even have Facebook, bro. there's the seat and this one gets a lot of us it's it's the seat of self now this one's a problem because usually if you're just so busy looking at yourself it's really hard to see god or other people you know my wife when she's like hey take a photo of me usually what she means is take 7 000 photos so i can choose the best one i get second photos But I did have this thought, I'm like, if we were as convicted by the Holy Spirit than we are, the front camera, I think we'd see revival.

23:17 Because we're so quick to change something in our lives if we see it in ourselves. Oh man, okay, I gotta get the injection. I'm not gonna say, right? I gotta pluck the eyebrows. I gotta go to the gym. I gotta go to, and we will be motivated to like change ourselves if we don't like what we see. But then the Bible will be like, hey, love your neighbor. And you're like, but like, talk to me. What does my neighbor actually mean? I'm just saying like, when you have this, this is where anxiety comes from because here's what anxiety is. It's a symptom of an idol in your life. And many of us are sitting in this room right now and you are carrying the entire weight of the world on your shoulders because you're God. You're God of your life. And it's rooted in this cultural moment of self-obsession. I would just say this, what is deny yourself?

24:12 Look, it might be like, you gotta change your habits for some of you. It's like, you gotta actually make sure you're not just completely self. Eyes are always on yourself and you gotta start serving people. How do you kill the self thing? You start serving. Like give money, help somebody.

24:32 Do something that doesn't directly benefit you. This is how you crush it in our culture. I think the other one that we really get and this one gets a little touchy because it's not what everyone can see and I had them bring a weight, they were going to give me a two and a half pound weight and I'm like come on, why did you doubt me you know This is a weight because the Bible says this, that there's a burden and a weight that comes with carrying sin. And I think the seat many of us find ourselves in is one that is heavy because we have things in our life we know are out of line with God that we have not confessed or moved past.

25:19 I've learned this. Like if I was to say everyone in the room, close your eyes for 10 seconds and imagine one thing, you know you probably could stop and you would overcome and go to a new level with God. All of us could do it. Because we all have PhDs in our own brokenness. and what I've learned is we just talk ourselves out of dealing with this weight, and then we're walking through life heavy in burden. You know what the Bible says? The Bible says that his weight, when you give it to God, it says his burden is light. His yoke is easy. So if your life feels super heavy right now, it might be you've been distracting. It might be you're thinking about yourself. I also think it could just be, man, there's some sin in your life that you just need to overcome. You need to confess. You need to go to war with. The Bible teaches this, that if you would confess your sins to God, you will be forgiven. And I think we love that one. Yeah, talk to God, do our thing, feel good.

26:19 But the next part of the verse says, confess your sins to one another, and you will be healed. Which means you can be forgiven by God, but still carrying the weight. until you find a friend, you find a leader, you find a pastor that you can say, I'm gonna talk about this. I'm just gonna give it to you. The only way you get the weight off you of sin is talking. I like to say this way. If you keep talking, you'll keep healing. If you can't talk about it, it owns you. And many of us are stuck in this seat right now where we are owned by substances. We are owned by things. We are owned by addictions. And I would just say this to you today. You do not have to suffer alone when we know our God is a healer. a miracle worker, that when you bring your brokenness to Jesus, he will make the bound free where the spirit of the Lord is. Can I remind you that there is freedom in that place? God didn't create you to live heavy. He created you to live free.

27:16 So some of you got to make a decision. I can't sit here anymore. Now watch this powerful. I love the Bible because in the, in the gospels, we see the same story told from different perspectives. And that was Matthew's version of it, him writing about himself. Watch what Luke has to say. Same story, catch with me, verse 27. After he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth, he said to him, follow me. In leaving everything, he rose and followed him. I read this, I'm like, Levi, who's Levi? I thought this was about Matthew. Well, you dig into this a little bit, you find out that before his name was Matthew, that was the name Jesus gave him. He went by the name Levi. Now Levi would have been his birth name, which derived from the tribe of Levi. Now the tribe of Levi had a duty in the Old Testament. The tribe of Levi had the priestly duty. so you're telling me this man had priestly potential, but he chose to sit in the seat of a tax collector.

28:19 How much more do I think of this room, the priestly potential that's in this room to honor God with everything, but we choose to sit in the seat that we were never created to sit in? But you know what Matthew means? It means gift of God. So he changes that. And I love the dynamic of this. When Luke writes about Matthew, He calls him by his birth name. But when Matthew writes about himself, he says, that's not my name anymore. My name is Matthew, which means gift of God. I've been marked by grace. I've been marked by mercy. Now I can walk forward with a new name. You have priestly potential, my friends.

28:57 Let me show you what priestly potential looks like. Next verse, he says he leaves everything. And then it says, Jesus goes to Levi's house and has dinner at his table. I was like, I thought he left everything. Why'd he keep the crib? because this doesn't literally mean you have to sell everything you own no i think some people might get that call remember yes in your spirit but he actually, he gave up ownership because no longer was the table to serve him. The table was a place for Jesus to sit at. The house no longer was where he robbed people. The house, if you read the story, is where he leads all his friends to Jesus. You wanna talk about what a priest does? A priest gives glory and honor to God in everything we do.

29:51 So it's not saying sell everything. It's saying now you have to view it not as you're the owner, but God's the owner. Oh, come on, your bank account, you don't own it. God owns it. Come on, those kids, you don't own it. God owns it. So the priestly potential in you is, how do I die to myself in every sphere and everything I have? What does it mean? It says, God, you own it all. And watch what God will do with a humble, submitted heart saying, God, use it, take it, multiply it, use it to reach people. Because when you're the God on your own, you're hoarding it all, you're going to end up being real tired, my friends. And at the end of it all, let's just remind ourselves most of this stuff ain't coming with us anyways. So I'm blessed to be a blessing. I'm loved so I can love.

30:36 And you know what the true mark of a believer is like? Maybe things can bounce off you. You're not easily offended. You're not caught up in your head all the time. Why? Because God's got it. He's in control. My daughter, we'll close with this, got stung by a bee for the first time two weeks ago. It was horrible. And she's sitting outside with her fat little fingers, you know, that are so cute. She's got the singer in it. She looks at me. She goes, da-da-da-da. She shows. I'm like, oh, I've got to get the singer out. So I go to grab the singer. And she goes, da-da-no. I have her finger. I'm like, Banks, no. Give me your finger. I've got to get the. She goes, da-da-no. And I had to try to explain to her, no, no, the longer we leave the singer in, the more venom is going to be released into your fingers. It's going to hurt. And she's like, I don't know it hurts. You know? And I think for a lot of us, surrender is like pulling the stinger out of a finger.

31:32 It's gonna hurt a little. Like it's going to sting. It's gonna be, I'm not in control anymore. Yeah. But on the other side of pulling that thing out, now it can heal. Now we can move past it. So my question today is where in your life do you have to make a resolve? I can't sit here anymore.