Within the critical journey, we started out week one, if you were here, and it's like, there is a natural, there is a natural progression to your faith. Like you growing is a natural process, so much so, that I bought a picture just to remind us of what this natural growth looks like. And so, this little guy, yeah, he's the best. He was four months yesterday, by the way. But this little guy is doing things that are natural.
Praise God he's healthy for a little healthy, four month old, thriving little boy. For example, I'm pretty sure he said grandpa the other day. Right? Don't tell his parents, don't tell his parents. But no, he's doing things that are natural. Like he's got his fingers in his mouth. He is a drool machine right now. Right? Like I was with him yesterday. He's just covered in drool right now. Because that's what he's supposed to be doing. That's a natural part of his growth. Right?
And another part is that when you look at him, he has facial recognition now. So he will make noises back to you. Right? Which makes you feel affirmed. Right? It makes you feel like, oh, he actually knows who I am. Probably got no clue who I am, but we'll get there. Right? But there's this part of it where he's making sounds. That's what he should be doing. There's a natural part of his growth where he's now trying to roll over. Right? Now the same is true for you in the critical journey. Right?
That within the critical journey that we've been talking about, critical journey is not ours. Somebody wrote a book. We're using it to talk about how do you map the spiritual journey? We can do it from a natural perspective of, hey, he's four months. At six months, he should be doing this. At eight months, this. And so on and so on. Within your spiritual journey, there should be benchmarks to your spiritual journey. There should be stages that you find yourself in.
And so what we've been talking about within the critical journey is, what does it look like to map? It's called a journey because it's not just steps. You don't just jump from one to the other. It's a journey. It's a meandering with God. You may find that you're in one and you journey back to another and journey forward, but you'll find that, hey, I think I'm in this space right here. And so within that, we created just kind of a graphic to kind of help us process this.
And so within this then, the natural progression is you meet Jesus, right? Like you give your life to Jesus as Savior. And when you do that, you, at some point, you go, and I also need to give my life to him as Lord because he owns it all. And so there's this process of growth and the recognition of God. And within that, if you've met Jesus as Savior, you're like, I wanna know more about him. And as you know more about him, you go, wow, Jesus was often praying.
What would it look like to pray like Jesus? I wish somebody would teach me. I wish somebody would show me. And so there's this life of discipleship that naturally develops. I wanna know how to pray. I wanna know how to value the scriptures like Jesus does. So I wanna know how to read the scriptures. I wanna know what it looks like to fast and hold a Sabbath and all these things that are part of the life of discipleship that help you grow into further intimacy with God.
But what they do is they also frame up who you are. And so as you begin to understand who you are, you go, wow, God has packed me full of gifts and abilities. He's given me a purpose. And now you go, I wanna live that purpose. And you step forward into stage three, which is the productive life, right? You're gonna do work for God. And so now you become busy for God, so to speak. Somewhere in that process, you hit a wall.
It might be that you enter stage four, which stage four is this journey inward where you begin to ask all kinds of questions, where you begin to wrestle with who is God. And as you begin to wrestle, there's something called a wall that's a pain that you can't get around that forces your will and God's will to come face to face. And as that happens, it pushes you deeper. And for some people, what they talk about is God's so absent. I feel like I'm losing my faith.
I feel like I don't even know who God is anymore. And there's this journey, you get to a point, you get to a point where maybe you wanna give up, but what is actually happening is you are dying to yourself. You are dying to the things that you once held onto. And as you step forward, and today we're gonna talk about stage five. Stage five is the journey outward. Words that kind of clarify stage five are this, that surrender is a big part of stage five. I surrender my life to the will of God.
I surrender what I thought I wanted for what He wants. I willingly accept who God is and what He has for me. There's this dying to self that's happened. And now this feels like a rebirth that the world is now new and you begin to step out and serve God. And you've got all new ambition and vigor, right? Another word that would kind of capture this time is sacrifice.
That you feel like your life is just a living sacrifice to God where you are sacrificing everything on the altar of what God wants and who He is and what He has for those around. Your motivation has completely changed. Here's what's confusing or can be. Stage five, which is the journey outward and stage three, which is the productive life. I'm doing work for God. They can feel and look very similar.
So for example, you may have held a role in stage three that in stage five, you picked that role back up. But what has changed in you from the journey inward is your motivation is entirely different. Before it was, oh, God has put these gifts in me and packed me full of purpose and I gotta go live that, right? And so it's all about me using what God's done, right? Well, in stage five, that doesn't exist anymore. The motivation is everyone else around you. The motivation is the heart of God.
The motivation is what God is doing in the community. And it's no longer about me and what I've got. And often what happens in stage five, these are the people that you don't even recognize because they are just behind the scenes. They are in spaces where they are just serving God, not because they're getting anything from it, not because they're trying to go anywhere, not because they're trying to perform for anybody, but simply because God has moved them and led them to sacrifice.
There's a beautiful story that kind of captures this in Samuel, Samuel chapter one, first Samuel chapter one. And the context is a lady named Hannah who has not been able to have children. And so there's deep, deep, within this culture, there was deep embarrassment, shame attached to that. There was the idea of God's blessing not being on you. And so within this marriage, and we can talk about this another time, but within this marriage, there were two wives.
And the other wife would kind of pick on Hannah and would belittle her and provoke her. It said that she was a rival. And so then it says in verse nine, once when they had finished eating and drinking in Shiloh, Hannah stood up. Now Eli the priest was sitting on his chair by the doorpost of the Lord's house. In her deep anguish, Hannah prayed to the Lord, weeping bitterly.
That language, maybe just for help within the stages, that's a wall where there's such a pain that you face and she is expressing it through weeping bitterly. She's asking questions of God. It carries on, verse 11, and she made a vow, saying, Lord Almighty, if you will only look on your servant's misery and remember me and not forget your servant, but give her a son, then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life and no razor will ever be used on his head.
So the language again captures this stage four, this journey inward where she's wrestling with God, would you remember me? Don't forget me. God, don't leave me behind. You're distant, but please step in. And she asked specifically for a son. Verse 12, as she kept on praying to the Lord, Eli observed her mouth. Hannah was praying in her heart and her lips were moving, but her voice was not heard. Eli thought she was drunk and said to her, how long are you going to stay drunk? Put away your wine.
Verse 15, not so, my Lord, Hannah replied. I am a woman who is deeply troubled. I have not been drinking wine or beer. I was pouring out my soul to the Lord. Do not take your servant for a wicked woman. I have been praying here out of my great anguish and grief. Eli answered, go in peace and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him. She said, may your servant find favor in your eyes. Then she went her way and ate something and her face was no longer downcast.
What does it feel like to move from stage four into stage five? Nothing has changed for Hannah. Right, like she, at this point, she's poured out before the Lord. She's wept, she's gone through the deep questions, and at this point, God has not moved. God has not told her what he's going to do. God has not changed her situation. The same pain that it caused from the situation is still there, but notice her posture. She's no longer downcast. She's no longer looking at her weakness as weakness.
She's looking at her weakness as opportunity for God to do something. Her weakness is no longer something that is holding her in a posture of asking questions and working. She has now come to the point, remember, the end of stage four is that you accept the hand of God with joy. And she walks out in peace and she's no longer downcast, but nothing has changed, only what has happened on the internal side of her. It reminds me of the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians. And Paul's had visions, right?
Like he's had these visions and he could boast if he wants to, and he begins to get into that. In verse six, even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool because I would be speaking the truth, but I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I say or do. Okay, so you want to know what language sounds like when you reach stage five? I could boast, I could tell you, I could make myself the center of the story, but I'm not going to.
I could make this moment about me because I've seen some pretty great stuff that God's done, but I'm not going to, why? Because I don't want you walking away going, hey, I have an inflated view of Paul. He's going, I don't want you to have that. He's like, I actually want you to walk away and have a different view, which then he continues.
Verse seven, or because of these surpassingly great revelations, therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. There's that inward journey, right? That pain that you can't get past. Verse nine, but he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. So Paul's making the connection.
He's going, wait, the power is actually found in the thing that I'm ashamed of. The thing that I'm weak by, that's actually the thing that God is using to make himself great, right? And there's grace for me to get through it, but God's actually using that thing that I don't like about myself. He's actually using that. And then it carries on. He says, therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ's power may rest on me.
That is why for Christ's sake, I delight in weakness, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties, for when I am weak, then I am strong. He's going, hey, I could boast about all this stuff, but it's gonna take your view off of Jesus. He goes, in fact, what I've learned is I'm actually gonna boast about my weaknesses because it's actually in my weaknesses that I'm strong. It's actually in this thing that I'm vulnerable about.
It's this thing that I don't think that I've got much to give in. And for Paul, he was self-conscious about the way he talked. That he didn't think he was very eloquent, that there were better communicators than him. And he says, yeah, inside of all these things, I'm not gonna boast about these things. Instead, I'm gonna welcome weaknesses. I'm gonna welcome sufferings. I'm gonna welcome, you wanna know what the language of stage five is like?
I'm gonna welcome those things if they make more of Jesus than they do of me. If somebody has come to the point in their life where they go, sacrifice is worth it. And so you jump back to Hannah's story and 1 Samuel. And so Hannah leaves, no longer downcast, verse 20. So in the course of time, Hannah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Samuel, saying, because I asked the Lord for him.
When her husband, Elkanah, went up with all his family to offer the annual sacrifice and to fulfill his vow, Hannah did not go. She said to her husband, after the boy is weaned, I will take him and present him before the Lord and he will live there always. Do what seems best to you. Her husband, Elkanah, told her, stay here until you have weaned him. Only may the Lord make good on his word. So the woman stayed home and nursed her son until she had weaned him.
24. After he was weaned, she took the boy with her, young as he was, along with a three-year-old bull, an ephah of flour and a skin of wine, and brought him to the house of the Lord at Shiloh. When the bull had been sacrificed, they brought the boy to Eli. And she said to him, pardon me, my Lord. As surely as you live, I am the woman who stood here beside you, praying to the Lord. I prayed for this child and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him.
So now I give him to the Lord for his whole life. He will be given over to the Lord and he worshiped the Lord there. I don't know if you have ever had the privilege of walking alongside someone who has been unable to have children. It is an immensely painful journey. It is one that there aren't answers to. It's one that all you can do is be present and remind them that God sees them. And I say that to say, sometimes when we read this, we can miss the human element.
Hannah's in a culture where she has been put down. She has been put down. She has been looked upon that God does not like her. She has been provoked by somebody, bullied by somebody because of it. Her longing is for this child. And yet what you find in this story is because of this journey with God, where does she arrive to? That there is now a calling on her life. That she doesn't view this as sacrifice. She views it as calling. It's completely changed.
The thing that she had longed for, the thing that she was holding onto, the thing that gripped her heart, the thing that had her, no longer had her, to where she could be open-handed with, yes, even her child before the Lord, to where the thing that she'd wanted so bad that she could go, I am choosing, I am choosing to sacrifice this to God. I no longer hold it. He's not mine. It's this beautiful moment of recognizing calling, calling.
It's this beautiful moment that in stage five, what actually happens is you're kind of rebirthed into this new life and you start to ask new questions. You start to find that things that once held your heart, they just don't hold your heart anymore. They just don't matter as much. I mean, this is a dumb example, but in my 20s, my wife and I had this pattern.
And the pattern went like this, that there was a Best Buy in Wisconsin, or similar to Best Buy, and I would convince her we needed to stop there, just to look, you know? And we would get there and every time, it would be the same song and dance, just with a little different spin. Baby, you don't understand how much this new gaming computer would change my life, to which my poor wife in my 20s had to become my mother and tell me why we can't get that, right? But here's what's interesting.
Now I'm the most boring person when I go to Best Buy. They must hate me. I walk in the door, I look at everything, and I walk out and rarely buy anything. It just doesn't have my heart the way it once did. This thing that I was like, oh, I gotta have it. Now it's like, I don't really care. And there's so many things within my life where I've seen God move my heart. The closer I get to Him, the less I care about that thing that I really cared about. You might be wondering about my pants.
Why they're so baggy? I don't care. I just don't care anymore. There was a time in my life where it's like, what's the latest fashion? What's the latest? Let's go to the mall. Let's go shopping. Let's go, right? I just don't care anymore. To the point I got home a month and a half ago and I walked, I think it was about a month and a half ago, maybe a month, I walked through the door and my wife looks at my butt and she goes, you got a hole in your pants.
And I was like, how long has that been there? That's a little embarrassing. But I've been telling her for about two and a half months, babe, I really need to buy some jeans. I'm down to only a couple of pairs. Because I just don't care anymore. And I'm not saying that's gotta be your journey, but what I'm saying is the Lord released my heart from something that had it. I just don't have the same drive that I had for that stuff.
It's interesting that what you find within this story is you find that the beauty of what we get to do is not build my kingdom, but build his. The beauty of as you journey longer with God and you grow into who he's wanting you to be, what happens is I relinquish this world more and more. I wish the world didn't have a hold on me the way it does. I can't wait for the day that I stand here 20 years from now and have some more dumb examples.
Because there's things today that God will release from me. And the sacrifice will be more and more. And that's where this is going, that your life would be a living sacrifice. You guys, if I could take you back to youth, I have so, there's so much pain in my heart around youth because God did so much. But the older I've gotten, the more I realize that if it is probably another weird example.
But everything we got to do, as good as it was, as robust as youth ministry was, as many lives that were changing, you know what I feel like today? You know the signet ring that a king has? And he puts his seal on it. If there was a signet ring and you went back to the youth events and the youth things we did and you look at it, it's got a signet ring that has my initials on it and not Jesus. And I regret it. I wish it was different.
Right, but at that time, what serving looked like was all about John. It was about me impressing you, it was about me building something, it was about an ego, it was about, and what God's had to do is strip it out. Why? Because sacrifice on this side, surrender is to him and the motivation has changed because God's changed. The motivation has changed because now it's about others. That's what this stage does is your life becomes about others. Think about Hannah for a second, right?
So she goes and she's gonna take her child to the temple. You know what's amazing about her sacrifice, this living sacrifice, living boy, it's a picture of this living sacrifice, her taking him to the temple. She had no idea what God was gonna do. Samuel is the one that anoints David, King David. Who's in David's line? Jesus. She had no idea. She's just living the moment with God and going, my response before the Lord is this calling, not sacrifice.
You know what's interesting in stage five, it doesn't feel like sacrifice anymore. In the earlier stages, it feels like such a sacrifice that you're showing up and keep doing what you're doing. And when you get to this one, it just doesn't feel that way anymore. I heard this recently that one of the ways that you can tell somebody who is in stage five of the critical journey is you just look at how they dress. They just don't care anymore. They're not here to impress you.
They're not here to gain some status. And it's this beautiful journey where God, God allows us to take our life and put it on the altar. And Romans chapter 12, Paul captures this with language for us. Romans 12, one, therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, in view of God's mercy, what that is is in view of what God has not given you that you deserve. God's withheld what you actually deserve.
And because of his mercy, because of his mercy, what's my response to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. What a picture, this boy that gets taken to the temple, he is going to spend his entire life in the service of God. Now, please don't mishear me. I don't think that means everybody should work for the church, but I do believe whatever you do should be work for God. I do believe that your entire life, including your vocation, should be a sacrifice to God.
As a living, holy, pleasing to God, living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed in the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing and perfect will. Do not be conformed, how do you not be conformed? Guess what the critical journey from the start all the way through to where we are, guess what it's doing?
It's taking, because you can be spiritual. You can be spiritual, what do I mean by that? Oh, you can have your rhythms of spirituality. You can show up to church every time the doors are open. You can serve in this ministry, right? You got your prayer, you got your prayer rhythms, you got all your things in place, right? That's your spiritual life. But what God is looking at is a holistic life that is centered on the person of Jesus.
What that means is that your mind, you can have a spiritual life and your mind not be connected to your spiritual life. What do I mean by that? Where you make your decisions and your will exists. Your soul can be disconnected from your spiritual life. And so here's what's amazing, throughout this journey, what God is doing is he's connecting you holistically. Why? So that you would not be conformed to what? To this world. That the things that you live for would be different.
The way that you live for them would be characterized by surrender and sacrifice. That your motivation wouldn't be about you and your life. Your motivation would be about others and people around you. That I wouldn't be taking from them, I would be giving to them. And I love that when you go back to Hannah, one last thought on Hannah and we're done.
But when you go back to Hannah in chapter two, which by the way, if you wanna hear language of what stage five sounds like when you pray, chapter two captures a prayer of Hannah. It's the longest prayer, it's the longest prayer by any woman in the Old Testament. That's incredible. It's beautiful. And it speaks of how big and how great God is and what she's learned about God through this whole journey.
And then in the midst of that, verse 18 says, but Samuel was ministering before the Lord, a boy wearing a linen ephod. Each year his mother, each year, each year his mother made him a little robe. And took it to him when she went up with her husband to offer the annual sacrifice. Each year, each year she made him a little robe. He was gonna be the best looking little boy priest, right? And mama was gonna make sure of it.
What I love about this, it wasn't begrudgingly that she brought her offering to the Lord, the living sacrifice of her son. It wasn't begrudgingly. How do you know that? Because you don't year after year make him a robe and go up and make him a robe. You don't year, make him a robe and go up and still step in and still give when it's given from a place that is not, that is not the work that God has done. We get frustrated when I thought he would only be there for a year, God.
We get frustrated when I sacrificed, but I didn't get the return. That's language of stage three. Stage five goes, Lord, my life is a living sacrifice because it's a calling. And I don't care what comes back because I'm already overwhelmingly, abundantly blessed by you. It's a difference.
The way you hold your work in stage five, you'll see a lot of people when they reach the stage five of their critical journey, they'll switch work and they've done that work forever, but they're like, I'm not supposed to do that anymore. I'm supposed to do this. And people around them go, you know, that pays less. They're like, well, well, okay. They hold their finances different. They're not building the same things they once were. All of a sudden their finances are for the kingdom of God.
Their family, they hold different. They once held their family closed. And now it's no, my family is to build the kingdom of God. And so we're gonna end by remembering. And the remembering is not a somber. Please don't feel like it's supposed to be this somber remembering. The remembering is like, hey, I have seen God move and work. I've witnessed it. You're speaking to your own soul right now. How have you seen God show up in your life and you're declaring to your own soul, I've witnessed it.
And then as you declare it to your own soul, we're gonna sing and declare it together. Hey, he's good and I've witnessed it. Can you imagine if Hannah was here today? What Hannah would tell you? Oh, I've witnessed it. What have you witnessed, Hannah? Oh, I've witnessed, I've witnessed the goodness of God. I've seen him do the impossible. I've seen him write a story with my life that I never thought I would be a part of.
All I was doing was being obedient and taking my sacrifice, right, and taking my boy to the temple. And what did God do? He uses that boy and he creates inside of that boy's life the narrative that brings you Jesus. She didn't know that. But she stood today going, hey, I've witnessed him. I've witnessed him and he showed up this way, this way, this way, this way. So if you would, right where you are, just stand up. And if you want to, you can close your eyes. You can keep them open.
But on the inside, as you take a deep breath, just let it out, allow your body to relax. How have you witnessed the goodness of God in your life? How have you witnessed the consistency of God in your life? How have you witnessed the God who heals? How have you witnessed the God who saves? And so the next moments are yours to remind your own soul I've witnessed it.