Overcoming the Curse of Comparing

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Hey, it's great for you to be here today, and I'm glad you're here. This is the beginning of a new series. We're going to do a couple weeks before Easter and then a couple weeks after, and it's called Overcomers because we know that, as Scripture says, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. That's from Romans chapter 8, that in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. We're going to focus today on a passage from Hebrews chapter 12. You can follow along on the Bible app if you've got that. And this is Hebrews 12, verses 1 through 3. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or faint-hearted. So today starts a four-point series, two before Easter and two after, about overcoming some of those struggles that we face in our lives. Next week, though, I want to tell you about next week, because I think that of the four weeks, it might be the one that resonates the most for me, the one that hits, and that is overcoming apathy. They say that there is an epidemic of apathy across our country and in our culture, and I think that's true, because I think there's an epidemic of hopelessness. If you don't have much to hope for, if you don't really believe God is doing that much, if it's just what it is that you see, you're going to be pretty apathetic. It's like, well, whatever. And so we're going to tackle that one, and I hope next week you will see how God can make you so passionate about everything that is in your life and our life, because we have a hope that isn't just a hope-so hope, but a hope that is certain and sure because of our Savior. So we're going to overcome apathy next week, okay? And I hope you're not apathetic about our mission or our vision here at Thrive in any way. In fact, I saw a lot of excitement we did at Estero Community Park on Friday night. We were able to have a booth there, and we celebrated with them and the third anniversary of Estero, and we did some tie-dyeing that night with all these kids and had actually I think about 80 kids or so come by, about every kid that was in that celebration. And we tie-dyed T-shirts. We invited them to Thrive. We got them involved in things. We're also looking forward to what's coming up as we approach Easter. First of all, we've got our wonderful Good Friday service at 6.30. It's going to be a little different, more meditative, but on the passion of Jesus. We'd love to have you here for that. Then on Saturday, we have the privilege of connecting with the community through our community outreach, the extravaganza, March 31 from 9 to 11 a.m. There's about 300 or 400 kids that come to this, and each one we get to invite to come to worship on Easter. I hope you never get tired of the resurrection and the power of the resurrection on Easter. We'd love for you. I know the band is already practicing and working towards that. I know I'm working on a message that will connect with anybody who might be a skeptic or a doubt, which is probably all of us have doubts and questions and all of that. But it's going to be a great day of celebration. We'd love to have you involved in that. There are cards that you can pass out to others for that event at our Connection Center. So keep that in mind. Just a couple of other things. I want to just say God is doing some things here I'm just amazed at and I am thankful for. Sometimes they're things I don't even plan to have happen. And I'm kind of glad because those are usually better than the things that I try to make happen. So we're thankful. Today we've got Austin Angerman here. You can stand up. Austin's going to be our new intern. He's only here for the weekend at this point. He's got to finish out school in Texas of all places. Austin, Texas, yeah. Do they give you a discount there? And he'll come back mid-May, be with us for the summer, go back for one semester, and then all of 2019 he'll be involved, helping with worship, with campus ministry, all of those things. So we're really excited. You're invited, any of you, really, even if it's your first time. Come over to our house tonight at 5 o'clock. We can give you the address. It's in the Preserve on Corkscrew. We're going to have a cookout and just kind of gather together, just hang out together. We can grill Austin as well as the other food. No. But we'd love to have you there for it, 5 o'clock and thereafter at our house today. Then finally, just I ...