Prepared | Prepared | Thrive Community Church

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. Happy New Year! 2020 is finished. Can I get a hallelujah for that? We are glad that it's over. Here we are in 2021, the first Sunday, and it's good to be back here in person. Next week, as Hunter mentioned, we will have a full band here, and we will be doing that every Sunday instead of the videos that are online. I don't know if you realize online whether, hey, that band wasn't actually here. We were watching the videos too. I know I'm kind of giving a background secret, but we did that for the sake of especially the online presence. But next week, the band will be here, and you will still have the words on the screen while you're watching the band. So we're looking forward to kind of the next step as we advance both the online streaming and the in-person capability of worship in this new year. So hopefully you will be ready for that. And not only that, I hope you are prepared and ready for 2021. Are you ready? Yeah, I know. Ready for what is the question, right? Yeah, I think if 2020 proved anything, we really don't know what's going on. We don't know what's going to happen. We don't know what the future is bringing. And so that's why I thought today, a one-sermon series today, before we go next week into a five-part series on the book of Daniel called Stand, to stand up, to stand out, to stand firm in the fire. Do you know that, the whole Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the fiery furnace? So we're going to learn what it means to stand in a culture that is basically set in a different direction. How do you live in the midst of Babylon? Because that's what we're doing. We've always been doing, actually, but I think we notice that now. But before we do that, I thought to start the year off would be good to start with this one-shot deal called prepared. Are you ready? Are you prepared? So let's read Luke 6, 46 to 49 today, where Jesus finishes his sermon on the plain in Luke and says this. Why do you call me, Lord, Lord, and not do what I tell you? Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like. He is like a man building a house who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the streams broke against the house and could not shake it because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell and the ruin of that house was great. So, you know, the Boy Scout motto, what is it? Be prepared. Always be prepared. Right? Tell me, how do you do that? How are you always prepared? Especially the question is prepared for what? Pardon? Bring a Walmart with you. Or if you happen to be Hermione Granger, what does she have that little purse with everything in it? Okay. Oh, okay. It's just culture. I know. Anyways, but the point is, how do you be prepared? And the question is always for what? How do you be prepared for what you don't know is coming? I know it seems like, huh? How do you do that? And that's why people so often aren't just because they don't know what's coming. They aren't sure. That's why many people aren't prepared for the unexpected. And Kerry Newhoff wrote a book called I Didn't See It Coming. And in it, he says this. The implosions often come as a surprise. That's what happened to me. And I've seen the unexpected issues we deal with flatten many good people. They simply didn't see it coming. They didn't see the edge of burnout before they hit it. They didn't see their marriage becoming distant and desperately disconnected. They didn't see the compromise they made at work coming until they knew they had crossed a line of no return. They didn't see that their once cutting edge style and insight had become insufferably stale. They didn't imagine the emptiness they would feel after all their dreams came true. They didn't see it coming. Few of us do. Now he goes on in this book after chapter after chapter. He says this though too. Cynicism, compromise, disconnection, irrelevance, pride, burnout, emptiness. None of these have to be your final story. So the good news today is you can be prepared and you can be prepared for any of these things. We all face storms in life. We all face difficult times. We're all tempted to become cynical or to compromise at work or at home or to be disconnected from others or to be filled with ourselves and our own pride. To fall into, as some have said, misbelief on one side, magical thinking or unbelief on the other side and despair. We all face it. Jesus tells us how to be prepared, I think, in our text today. And he doesn't in this passage tell you what to be prepared for, but just for the storms of life in general. And so here's the reality. I think you already realize this. You are either just right now leaving a storm that you'v...