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  THE LOVE OF OTHER THINGS
  by Dan Young
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Summary: This sermon emphasizes the importance of prioritizing Jesus in
our lives, especially in the midst of busy schedules and distractions.
It highlights the need to keep Jesus at the center of our families,
businesses, and personal lives, focusing on humility, integrity, and
seeking God's will above our own desires. The speaker shares personal
experiences of stepping out in faith, facing challenges, and learning to
trust in God's provision and guidance.

Topics: "Prioritizing Jesus", "Trusting God's Guidance"
Scripture References: Philippians 1:6, Philippians 1:21, Philippians 2:14, Philippians 2:15, Philippians 3:14

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DESCRIPTION
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This sermon emphasizes the importance of prioritizing Jesus in our
lives, especially in the midst of busy schedules and distractions. It
highlights the need to keep Jesus at the center of our families,
businesses, and personal lives, focusing on humility, integrity, and
seeking God's will above our own desires. The speaker shares personal
experiences of stepping out in faith, facing challenges, and learning to
trust in God's provision and guidance.

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CONTENT
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It's good to pray. We'll pray enough, but we need to pray for our
families, too, that the Lord will help our families. We forget to do
that very often and, you know, our family, we have five children and
we're quite busy.

We run our own business. We have lots of activities that we get involved
in, I guess we sign up for it, but in the midst of it all, I need to
keep Jesus center and that starts with me personally as the head of the
home. I struggle with that.

I get caught up in the cares of life, desires for riches, desires for
pleasure, and I need to rip those thorns out of my life and I need to
keep my eyes on the Lord so it can bear fruit and I don't want to put on
a show, I'd rather be honest. Two years ago or three years ago, I bought
a business and the business has done fairly well. I find myself getting
caught up with the business being the center of my life rather than the
Lord being the center of my life and we need to keep our priorities
straight.

It doesn't mean you don't do your job, you do do your job, but you need
to know that it's in its proper place and that's not what your life
revolves around. Maybe the Lord will ask me on that judgment day how I
ran my business. I'm sure he will, but he's not going to ask how
successful it was.

In fact, I think he's probably going to ask, did I keep his word when I
ran that business? Did I humble myself when I needed to? Did I have
integrity? Did I do my job to the best I can and did I keep it in its
proper place? We have to be careful that we don't allow the love of
other things, the love of money, creep into our lives and let that not
be the way that we make choices. We need to put the Lord first and if
the Lord provides more, praise God, but it's not your own, it's the
Lord's and he will make a way for other things. We can't be afraid to
take a step of faith in the direction.

It was a huge step of faith for me to buy this business. I'd never owned
a business and it was in an industry that I didn't know anything about,
but I felt the Lord wanted me to do it and I was very grateful that he
opened the door because it met the needs of my family at the time. The
company that I worked for, if I had not taken this business, I would
have lost a job two months later.

I remember going to my boss one day who was at this other job and the
Lord allowed it that when I worked there, I would just get humbled and
humbled and humbled and I wouldn't advance in the job. I found some
projects that were worth lots of money and the commission would be very
good, very good, many, many years wages and they would make me give them
up to the senior sales reps and he wanted me to stay in my lane and they
were very upset with me, but the Lord was with me in that time and he
humbled me just like he was with Joseph and the Lord allowed it. The
Lord allowed it to test me, to humble me and to see if I was willing to
accept from his hand what he wanted me to do and many times we're trying
to kick a door open when the door has not been opened and you need to
stay in your place when the Lord has not opened a door for you somewhere
else.

He will make it very clear to you. The owner of the business that I
bought called me one day and said, would you be interested in purchasing
the business and I said, no, I have a good job. I work from home.

I'm in sales. I can go golfing during the day and still answer the
phone, you know, and I can do things. I can go out for dinner with my
clients.

I can enjoy the sales life and he said, well, I just want you to meet
with me and I, okay, so we met once a month for about a year and finally
I decided when I decided, I said, Lord, if you want me to take this job
or buy this business, then you need to make it clear if I'm going to
advance in this job and so at this other job, I was in sales. I was
there for a year and actually about a year and a half and the Lord was
with me even though they kept me in my place, the Lord used it, but I
remember sitting down with him one day. It was the Christmas banquet out
in Vancouver and we were sitting down with him and I said, how come you
don't let me go after the bigger projects and I said, Lord, if you want
me to buy this business, then you need to make it clear that I'm not
going to advance in this company and so I went and I sat down with him
and I said, how come you don't let me go after the bigger projects? Is
it because you just want me to focus on the small projects or is it
because you want me, because I don't have what it takes and he looked me
straight in the eye and he said, Dan, you do not have what it takes to
do those things and I remember sitting there thinking like, okay, Lord,
you make it clear.

He may have well been right. These things are, these types of sales with
when there's big dollars, you need to have a certain type of personality
and I would admit that those senior sales guys had a more patient
personality, a better personality for that thing. I didn't, but he told
me, you don't have what it takes and so I knew in my heart, I said,
okay, Lord, that I'm going to buy this business.

So I went and I purchased the business and a week later, COVID hit,
there wasn't a car on the road. I remember looking out the door, oh,
Lord, I just put my house on the line to buy this business and I look
out the door and there wasn't one car on the road and I said, Lord, I'm
going to lose my house and I'm going to lose this business. What am I
going to do, Lord? You know, it just so happened that that month that
one of our biggest customers, all of their vehicles got broken into and
they needed them repaired and they brought all their vehicles to our
shop and it gave us work for that one month.

I couldn't believe it and he provided enough for me to pay the bills.
Two months after I bought the business, I got a call from the other
senior sales rep and he said, Dan, they just, you made the right
decision. They closed the doors.

Everyone got a severance notice. They didn't even get severance pay.
They just basically said, we're declaring bankruptcy and that's it and I
look back and I say, Lord, you were watching over me.

But in that situation, the Lord was allowing me to be humbled. Why? So
that I wouldn't go through a door that he did not want me to go through.
So you need to look at your circumstances.

Sometimes you're trying to fight to find your way, you're trying to
fight to find your way and you need to be patient and allow the Lord to
keep you right where you need to be. Now there's a different example. If
I didn't take the step of faith to go and do that, I would be stuck in
the same place.

Just like Abraham was when the Lord said, I want you to leave your
father's house and your relatives and go to the land that I will show
you. And he packed up his stuff and he left, but he took his father with
him and he never went to the promised land. And then the Lord had to
remove the man's father.

The Lord allowed it that that man died. And then he said, now I need you
to go further. You've been sitting here thinking that this is the
promised land and this isn't where he wants you to be.

So you need to discern for your own situation what the Lord's will is
for your life. If you're in a circumstance and you realize, hey, you
know what, we've kind of outgrown our situation, then we need to, we
need to make a decision. I remember about six months ago, the Lord put
it on our heart that I need to sell my house.

We were running out of room in the home that we were in and it was just
a bit too much for us. And so we sold our house and I'm grateful that we
did. The Lord made a way for us.

It was a small miracle through the encouragement of some friends saying,
I think this is the right decision. It's good to ask counsel of your
friends, what you should do. You need to ask brothers who you trust.

You need to, to say, what should I do in this situation? They will give
you good counsel. And they said, you know, I think now is a good time.
And we got two offers, two offers.

We accepted one of them. And then a week later, the Ukraine war hit and
suddenly all the interest rates started rising. And I honestly didn't
think that we were going to actually sell our house.

The deposit that they left on the house was fairly small and the value
of our home had dropped more than the deposit value on the house. So
from the time that we sold it, a week later, the Ukraine war hit,
interest rates start rising in Canada. Literally what happens? I'm
thinking, well, my house is probably devalued more than $30,000.

These people may walk away from this. And you know what? It was a small
miracle that the Lord allowed the thing to go through. And now he's got
us in a nice rental with a little bit more room for us because that's
what we needed.

It's a nice space and the Lord is able to make a way. So I want to be
encouraged. I want to encourage ourselves with these testimonies of how
the Lord can watch over us in our natural life.

In our spiritual life, it's a little different. Sometimes we get
discouraged because of our spiritual condition. And so we run to these
other things to find comfort in them.

They can be in a business. They can be for me and things that catch my
eye or things that I have interest in or goals that I have ambitions
that I have in my life. But those things must be surrendered to the
Lord.

They must be surrendered to the Lord. You must entrust those into his
care because he is the one who cares for you. And you can't be afraid to
willing to take a step of faith when he does put it on your heart to do
so.

But in a spiritual sense, sometimes we get discouraged by that. And so
what do we do? We try to stir it up, but we need to actually call on the
name of the Lord and ask him to deliver us out of the place that we're
at. I wanted to read one verse in Philippians here to encourage us in
the Lord to not lose heart and to trust him at all times.

A few verses here. Philippians 1, verse 6, verse 3, it says, I thank my
God in my remembrance of you, always offering prayer with joy in my
every prayer for you all, in view of your participation in the gospel
from the first day until now. For I am confident of this very thing,
that he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of
Jesus Christ.

The Lord is doing a work. Now, how can we hinder the work of the Lord in
our life? Is that we don't be obedient. The Lord's work was hindered in
Abraham's life because he wasn't obedient to do the thing that God asked
him to do.

And so he could only go so far, and it was written for example, so that
we don't do these same things. They're written for our encouragement in
the scriptures so that we won't follow that same example. And that's how
we can hinder the Lord from finishing the work that he started in our
life, is that we're not obedient when the Lord asks us to do something.

That's how we can hinder it. But the Lord is patient with us, you guys.
He's merciful to us, and he wants us to continue to respond as he puts
that gentle nudge in our hearts to follow him.

But we have to be confident of this very good thing, that he who began a
good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ. I get
encouraged by that because the Lord is the one who will finish the work
in our life, and we have to put our trust in him. I wanted to read
another verse here in Philippians 1 verse 21.

It says, For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if I am to
live on in the flesh, this will mean fruitful labor for me, and I do not
know what to choose. But I am hard-pressed from both the directions,
having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is very much
better.

I want to ask yourself that question, do you have that desire to be with
the Lord? You know, it's amazing that he wrote this in the scripture,
that he says, my desire is that I would be with the Lord, but it's
better for me that I remain on in the flesh because it will produce
fruit. And this is something that I get challenged with, is I want to
produce fruit in my life. It's not something I'm going to do, it says if
you abide in the vine, the vine dresser will produce the fruit in you,
but he will prune away all the things in your life that are not bearing
fruit.

But it's his desire is that we would bear much fruit. And so we need to
ask the Lord, say, Lord, what fruit do I have in my life? I want to have
good fruit. I look at the fruit of my life lately and I say, Lord, I
don't think this is good fruit.

It must mean that I'm not abiding in the vine. If you've lost that
hunger for the Lord and that thirst for the Lord, then we need to ask
ourselves and say, where is it gone, Lord? It's not because I'm not
doing certain things, it's because I've lost my love for Jesus. And
that's where we need to ask ourselves in that heart.

I wanted to read another verse in Philippians 3, about suffering in the
Lord. We sang that song, I count all things lost. I want to skip back to
verse 2 first.

It says this, in verse 14, chapter 2, it says, do all things without
grumbling or disputing, that you may prove yourselves to be blameless
and innocent children of God. We have children here in the midst. We
have lots of kids.

I have my daughter, Alana and Isaac. And I'll tell you one thing that we
like to do in our home is sometimes we like to grumble and complain. We
like to grumble and complain that things are not good.

I do it. I'm probably the leader of it, and they probably pick it up
from me. And so we need to search our own hearts and say, Lord, help me
not to be a grumbler or a disputer.

What's a disputer? Disputer is somebody who always disputes. They can't
receive instruction. They can't receive any correction.

They can't receive any type of instruction in their life. They're always
disputing. Well, I can do it this way better.

I can do it this way. Sometimes I have employees that I ask them to do
certain things, and they dispute it right away. Well, I want to do this
and I want to do that.

And I'm like, I'm not asking that. I'm just asking you to just do what I
ask. And sometimes I think the Lord says, Dan, I want you to do certain
things.

And I grumble and I dispute with him because I think I have a better
plan. The Bible says clearly that we're supposed to do all things
without grumbling or disputing. So when your parents ask your kids to do
certain things, they shouldn't argue back.

They should do all things. And as Christians, he's not writing this to
children. He's actually writing it to Christians here.

He's saying we're not supposed to argue back in that situation. I have
employees who don't dispute, and they are such a blessing. They just,
can you do the, yes, I can do that for you.

That's so encouraging. And when we have that same attitude to the Lord,
Lord, help me not to grumble and dispute with you when certain things
are going a certain way. It says that you may be innocent children,
children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse
generation among you, whom you appear as lights in the world.

I asked somebody this week to do something, and that person disputed me.
And this person is a believer. And I have an unbeliever employee.

I asked them to do something and they said, yes, I'll do it. And I
thought, you know what? This is shameful, I said, because later we
talked about it together. And I said, this is shameful.

I said, here we have as an unbeliever, this person who we consider as an
unclean, and that person has more of a submissive attitude than we do as
believers. I said, this is not a good example. Whom we as appear as
lights in the world, we want to be a light shining in the dark place,
then we have to have certain attitudes about it.

We have to have certain reactions to certain things that happen in our
life. Husbands and wives. Sometimes the husband may ask the wife to do
something and there can be a dispute.

And that's not a good thing. Sometimes the wife can ask the husband to
help out and the husband can dispute. That's not a good thing either.

We need to do both. We need to appear as lights in this world. Those are
the things.

And it says, we have to hold fast the word of Christ so that on the day
of Christ, I may have cause to glory because I did not run in vain nor
toil in vain. I didn't work over you as Christians in vain. And it's
funny because at the beginning of the verse, I'll finish here, guys.

But it says here at the beginning of chapter one, he says, God will
finish the work that he started in you. But yet here he's reminding them
that they're grumbling and complaining and that on the day of Christ,
he's going to realize that I ran in vain and I worked over you in vain.
So maybe the Lord won't finish the work that he started in him.

Maybe the Lord won't finish it because on that day, he's going to say,
why were you grumbling and disputing the whole time? Why were you
fighting? Why were you always arguing? Why did you always have to have
your way? One of the hardest things I think as a parent, I think of my
dad with us children and our family, the hardest thing for him was the
fact that we always disputed with him when he asked us to do certain
things. And I'll be the first to say I was number one because he treated
me the best. I was the one who was the most spoiled.

I was the youngest in the family. The youngest one is always the most
spoiled. And yet we can find a way to dispute about these things,
dispute with them and argue with them.

And that does not mean that we are lights in this world. It means that
we're darkness and we're reacting just like the rest of the world is.
And so we need to be cautious that we don't have that type of attitude,
even when the situation is difficult.

It says right here in verse 21 or verse 19, it says, but I hope in the
Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you shortly so that I may be encouraged
when I learn of your condition. And for I have no one else of kindred
spirit who will be genuinely be concerned for your welfare, for they all
seek after their own interests, not those of Christ Jesus. And I want to
leave you here and finish here.

Do you seek after your own interests or do you seek after the interests
of Christ Jesus? And that's the question you should ask yourself. Paul
could only find one younger brother out of all the assemblies and the
churches that he was in. It was only Timothy who had that one desire,
and that was to do the will of God and have Christ's interests above his
own.

Isn't that amazing? Sometimes I wonder, I say, Lord, is there a reason
that you can't use me? I had a brother the other day, he says, when I
come to church, there's no ministry for me. And I said, brother, if
there's no ministry for you, it means that the Lord has not entrusted
you with a ministry. I said, you don't need to go and search for a
ministry.

If you want to get a job at a church, you can put in your application
and you can try and build yourself a ministry. But if the Lord has
decided to put you into the ministry, do you not think that he would
have brought it to you already? He would bring people into your life to
hear the Word of God, to sit at your feet. And I said, there's a reason
that maybe me and you have not got that ministry that you think we
deserve.

It's because we seek after our own interests, not those interests of
Christ Jesus. So if the Lord has not given you a ministry and you feel
you could have a better position at a better church, then by all means,
I recommend you to go. Go find that position.

But that might not be the position that the Lord wanted for you because
you're seeking after your own interests, not the interests of Christ
Jesus. In fact, I don't want people to be a part of the church who are
like that because I don't want to be like that. I said, you know what?
The Lord has taken out of my heart a desire to minister because I don't
feel worthy to do it, you guys.

I don't. The more I walk with Jesus, the more I start to see the
grossness in my flesh, the grossness in my life, and how different I am
from the Lord. I see him and I see me.

That doesn't get me discouraged, you guys. It gives me a desire to want
to change. But I need more of Jesus to do that.

That's not something you can stir up on your own. I need the Lord to
help me to overcome, to finish the race, to not forget the ministry that
the Lord maybe has entrusted to me so that I may lose my crown so
somebody else could take it. Some of you have been, the Lord has asked
you to do something.

He's asked you to put him above maybe your own family sometimes to go to
a Bible study one night. Maybe he's asked you to do that. Maybe he's
asked you as a mother to be the minister of the home to your children.

And you think, well, maybe, Lord, I want to go out and minister. But the
Lord's real ministry is for you to raise your children in this crooked
and perverse generation. Because we live in more wicked generation than
ever before.

It says in the last days that the tribulation will be worse than it's
ever been. And as a mother, you have the greatest responsibility, more
than anybody else, to pray for your children, to raise your children so
that they know Jesus. Because the husband is at work trying to provide
for the family.

And you need to respect that. You need to honor that because you've
given a greater role. You have little disciples that you're raising
every single day.

There's no higher calling. Wherever the Lord has put you, he's given you
a ministry to be a servant, to serve with gladness, to not grumble or
complain. And that's the thing that the Lord has entrusted you.

I said, brother, I said to this brother, I said, you know why the Lord
hasn't entrusted us to go and start preaching the gospel, brother? I
said, number one, we're not clothed with power from on high. Jesus said
to his disciples, you're not allowed to leave Jerusalem until you're
clothed with power from on high. And if you say that you're clothed with
power from on high, then I tell you the Lord would have sent you out
already.

But because you're not, he's here with us right now. And this is what
he's entrusted us to do, to be faithful with our natural job, to do the
things that God has asked us to do, to do it without grumbling,
complaining or disputing, and to be a witness and a testimony. This
person said, well, maybe I can't bring the uncleans to your church.

I said, brother, we are the uncleans. We are the uncleans. I said, if
you want to come to the uncleans, you can come with us every Thursday
night.

You can. We go visit them. I said, I haven't met more brothers in my
life who've spent more time with uncleans than the people that I have in
my life.

I was an unclean. And as I start to walk with the Lord, I see more of
it. I said, how can that be? I said, but yet here we are at work and
you're disputing, you're disputing with an unbeliever who you consider
unclean.

I said, if we can't be faithful with the unbeliever, how do you expect
us to be bringing somebody into church when the Lord has brought
somebody to us? What ministry do we have? Well, they're my neighbor and
that person, they have tattoos, they have piercings, they, you know,
they have a little bit of dyed hair. They're unclean. I don't want to be
around them.

But I want to bring somebody to church who's unclean. I said, brother,
we've missed the mark completely. We've missed the mark completely.

It's right in front of our face. We want to go out into the mission
field and the Lord has brought the mission field right to us. We can
say, hello, how are you today? Hey, that's okay.

I'll help you. We can be lights in the midst of this perverse
generation. That's why that person has brought somebody like this to our
job site.

Why? So that we can be a witness and we can be a testimony and we can be
different than them so that they might be attracted to something in our
life. And that's Jesus, my friends. That's Jesus.

Let us not be so high minded that we think that we need this type of
ministry when brothers, we don't deserve a ministry. The Lord is the one
who will entrust us. He will give it to us at the proper time if he sees
us fit, if we've passed the tests, if we're faithful with the little
things so that he can entrust us large things.

May the Lord bless you. I'm grateful to be here. I missed the last two
weeks and I'm so thankful to be back.

It's nice to be in the presence of the Lord and the presence of the
brothers and sisters. It is, you miss it when you don't have it, I'll be
honest. May the Lord bless you.

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Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/pxSoP3VK8sA.mp4
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/dan-young/the-love-of-other-things/
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