Excelling at the Basics - Ben Stuart

it is my privilege to introduce a friend and our speaker today pastor ben stewart who is pastor of passion city church washington d.c ben stewart serves again as the pastor of passion city church washington dc and is the author of single dating engaged married that's right isn't it that's right it's making sure that you're still claiming that book i know you are brother that has ministered to many prior to joining passion city church been served for 11 years as the executive director of breakaway ministries a weekly bible study hold on your moment's coming those of you that are already whooping served for 11 years as the executive director of breakaway ministries a weekly bible study attended by thousands of college students and the campus of texas a m thank you that was good ben earned a master's degree in historical theology from dallas theological seminary ben and his wife donna live to inspire and equip people to walk with god for a lifetime ben it is always a privilege and pleasure to have you back on campus thank you for your faithful faithful ministry through the years that continues on today in a very challenging ministry world would you please join me in welcoming ben stewart today thank you brother howdy you got to do that here they don't say howdy in dc so uh hey it's awesome to be here with you um i am a big fan of your president uh mark yarbrough and uh his leadership and i'm a big fan of dts with every year of ministry that goes by i'm grateful for the education i got here the pain fades in your memory but a lot of the tools remain so i'm grateful and it's an honor to be here i was happy to brave flying into the hotbed of coveted transmission uh for your sake so i'm excited to be here with you if you've got a copy of your scriptures i want to read a couple verses from philippians chapter four let me let me read them to you we'll pray and then jump in philippians 4. beginning in verse 6 it says this do not be anxious about anything but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be made known to god and the peace of god which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in christ jesus finally brothers whatever is true whatever is honorable whatever is just whatever is pure whatever is lovely whatever is commendable if there's any excellence if there's anything worthy of praise think about these things and what you've learned and received and heard and seen in me practice these things and the god of peace will be with you now let's pray well father thanks for these few minutes around your word help help us now not just understand them god but let them sink deep and change the way we think and the way we feel and the way we live and i want to invite all of you if you're willing take a minute and you ask him say lord please teach me in this time and then if you would please pray for me that the lord used me to be helpful to you well father we love you and we trust you use this time we pray in jesus name amen i had a friend a couple years ago was on a plane and mid-flight the engines cut out and the plane began not so much to descend but to plummet uh towards the earth and you know masks came out it's a moment of great panic and he said in that moment it was fascinating to watch the plane instantly split in half sociologically speaking he said half the plane became instantly vocally religious started praying to god crying out for rescue in jesus name and he said but it was about half the plane rather than praying just screamed the f word and he said it was interesting because he said even in the middle of panic like i thought i was going to die he said i just noted the lack of variety in their profanity it was just the one word and by the grace of god engines kicked back on plane rided itself and continued on towards destination he said but it was interesting for the rest of the plane right because it all landed on us we suddenly learned something about ourselves and about everyone sitting around us that even their like closest friends don't know like what do you do in a crisis like okay so you're an f-word guy all right you want to unpack that how are you doing but it just kind of exposed the crisis brings out whatever you got inside right now why mention that because that to me is 2020. i just think this year has been a crisis moment and we have collectively watched everyone we love and know at some point freak out i know now the crisis response of every human being that i interact with i've seen it as various crises have come up in their life and particularly i'm watching now in the life of ministers how this crisis is coming out it's been a difficult year i had a friend tell me once about ministry he said ministers are like a submarine he said if you have a hairline fracture in the hull you're fine he said but as you go deeper and the pressure mounts a hairline fracture can become a fissure and you take on water and you're in trouble and as we entered into the ongoing stress of a pandemic and then ethnic tension and then the political strife and then the constant polarization and agitation and anxiety on social media i'm watching a lot of people freak out and little hairline fractures in our character are becoming fishers and we're taking on water and we're in a place where it's dangerous and difficult this is a rough time to be in ministry as you prepare to be into it not super fun to preach to a camera and not get any feedback other than the emails you're going to get later which has some percentage of people very upset it's a challenging time in difficult waters to navigate but i remember for me you know years ago uh i was able to climb uh long's peak tallest mountain in colorado and when we were ascending to the top of this my buddy and i we were charging up the hill felt really good about ourselves but then as we got to this one particular ascent suddenly we began to feel really nauseous uh fatigued exhausted and scared because we realized we just put ourselves in a fairly precarious high stress situation and all of our resources got depleted it was a scary place to be and so we started to pray and by the grace of god some like grizzled mountain man turns the corner and i'll never forget he came up to us and he said well problem one is you're breathing wrong i'm like what do you mean like i think i know how to breathe like that feels to me like the least of my problems and he says no not up here you don't he said the atmosphere has changed and you got to adapt if you're going to survive and so he started teaching us how to breathe when there's less oxygen in the atmosphere and he outfitted us with the gear we needed and then he led us up the final ascent but i remember as as we stepped out into the snow he stopped us at one point i'll never forget this he turned and he looked at me right in the face and he said everything we are about to do you do on the ground every single day he said the only question that will be answered today is can you excel at the basic things as the environment around you gets more chaotic and i think about that all the time because i look at ministry right now and life in here and you go you know what the ancient path hasn't changed and it's sufficient the only question being asked of you and me right now is can you continue to excel at the basic things while the environment around us gets more chaotic so i don't know that i'm going to present to you a lot of new information today but i'm hopefully going to call you back to an ancient path because if you walk it it's going to save your life because if i can be real with this for many of us just right now like our anxiety is one of the biggest problems i would say we all have problems but our anxiety about our problems has become our biggest problem it's a major issue how am i handling what happens to me for many of us it's not what happens to you uh which is going to make a difference it's how you respond to it that will be the most memorable and for many of us we're responding with an anxiety and it's not meant to be this way that's why i went to this text just about some of the basics of how to survive i'm going to share with you how i think i'm going to survive in washington dc which if you can guess is a little stressful right now but i have confidence i'm going to make it and i remember saying that to our leadership team of all young people they look just like you and i remember saying that to them i'm going to make it and one girl came up to me in an honest way said what makes you so special because i had just told them i talked to two three pastors every week and a lot of them are really struggling and a lot of them are leaving and i said well it's not something special about me i think the lord is helping me walk hand in hand with him and i just want to show you some of what's working for me right now makes sense but the reality is our anxiety is often the biggest problem about what's happening around us okay and jesus presents that to us that your anxiety here's what's crazy jesus says anxiety is going to be one of your greatest impediments to filling your fulfilling your god-given destiny don't miss that in matthew 6 he says don't be anxious about anything saying what shall we eat what shall we drink what shall we wear and then he says but contrast seek first the kingdom of god do you see the contrast he sets up you're either going to seek the kingdom or get caught up in anxiety he says so you need to understand that that your anxiety is one of the greatest impediments to you fulfilling your god-given destiny one of the enemies greatest strategies against you is to try to fill you up with anxiety let me get you freaked out because once i got you there i can lead you down a variety of broken roads right and so paul when he comes to us is helping us here do not be anxious about anything which i just think is so powerful that anxiety is never godly you know that and that doesn't mean we don't care should care deeply about people you should care deeply about the problems in our society today but the scalp drying shoulder tensing stomach nodding anxiety that some of you think is just a cost of leadership and i'm a hero for taking this on the bible says no it's not supposed to be like that and if you're doing it that way that's problematic right and i understand that for me i i picked up a heart issue in my 20s and i remember realizing hey hypothetical situations are in reality killing me and some of you your fear about the hypotheticals are in reality killing you we got to get this right and i love the permission the bible says to us don't be anxious about anything be anxious about no thing if there's a thing don't be anxious about it right and here's the tragedy many of us are living in luke chapter 8 jesus is talking about and this is what made me think he all as i was coming here remember jesus telling the parable of soils farmer takes the seed casts it out the different soils the seeds the word of god and it lands in various soils which are our souls and it's going to have varying degrees of success right and remember one of the soils is unfortunate the word of god lands in the soil and what's it supposed to do as you're studying the word of god here it's supposed to land in the soil of your soul and then it sink deep in and grow and then explode into life and fruit that benefits others that's what it's supposed to do he says but some of y'all it's not going to happen that way he said the word's going to sink in deep and begin to sprout and begin to grow and then it gets choked and one of the weeds jesus warned us about do you know what luke calls it the worries of this life to some of you you're spending so much time and so much money studying the word of god but the worries of life are going to choke the word of life in you and we need to get past that so what you're learning here is gold i want to make sure it sinks deep enough into the soil that you become a fruit-bearing minister for the rest of your life and so that starts with not being anxious about anything so what do you do rather in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to god i love i i know many of us know this text most of you have probably already preached this text but you're like man i already know this and sometimes it feels a little simplistic oh i should just pray and trust god but i just think it's worth going okay if you're skeptical about paul's theory here test your own what are you up to be anxious about nothing but in everything go to your pantry and eat for comfort right and for some of us that's what we're doing and i'm not judging you i mean when we launched the church i remember someone came to my wife once and we were talking about health and they said what are y'all eating and without hesitation she went our feelings and it was like that's actually she's right that's true or others of you don't be anxious about anything but as soon as something gets hard difficult what do you do you just instantly doom scroll well let me do this this will make me feel good you're like no that's not a solution that's a distraction that's not solving anything if anything it's exacerbating a problem and so it's fascinating though if you look in like secular scientific studies now more and more they're trying to help humanity battle the anxiety that is actually being amplified on social media and you know what most of them are going to they're saying there's something about gratitude meditation and breathing being still and silent and grateful that's good for the human soul and modern science is stumbling and fumbling sideways into an ancient path that's always been ours in christ jesus we just need to access it and so he says in everything so be anxious about no thing but with everything let your request be made known to god and i love that it's the verbs in the passive it's like they want to get out it's like they're all down there freaking out he's like just let them out for many of us we've got all these fears in our heart and you wake up the day and you're like i got a soul drawn take these feelings and eat those get down there right come out later in frustration to my spouse but right now i gotta study this participle yeah you're like no no no in everything let them out don't try to shove that beach ball under water let it rise maybe not to everyone maybe not how are you doing today was mad about this and that's about that you know like not everyone's ready for your full emotional volcano of feelings but you're meant to take it to the lord in prayer that's a general term for creating space to meet with god that's what it's just are you creating space to come to him with your concerns and then supplication are those specific requests that i'm bringing to him if i can be honest with you i learned so much in the seminary i'm so grateful for but seminary did destroy my devotional times because for me in college i wanted to learn the word of god so bad i would write out books of the bible and then sit there and do my best to study them and just kind of break them apart and then i got here and i learned the tools to actually do that and know what i was doing but i was doing that all the time and learning it in class and i realized doing that all the time and doing it in class and then also doing it in my devotional life i felt like i was stagnating and i realized oh if the goal of devotions is to cultivate an intimacy with god i'm getting the study part of my mind worked on in these classrooms i need to pivot something else that's what martin luther said right the three tools of study i'm gonna get this wrong i don't know latin horacio meditatio tanacio study pain and meditation you are studying you don't have to find pain it will find you but meditation is the lost art in our day we've lost it in in generations past when you sat in your car at a stop light it was you and god when you laid in bed at night it was you and god now it's you and your phone and billions of prayers have been lost over the last seven years because of our phones right but meditation is the seedbed of innovation silence is the seedbed of insight and many of us are missing inside about ourselves because we haven't taken time to go be still with the lord so what i had to learn to pivot in my time in seminary was i was studying great stuff in school and then i would sit there and i would take my journal and say you know what i'm not going to exegete another passage i got to let all these passages exegg me so i would write at the top of the page how do you feel and i'd have to ask myself that question because the truth is i didn't know but then i would just let them rise angry scared confused frustrated and then i would do what david taught us to do why are you down casting my soul and i was like well let me think about that and as i would ponder it i'm worried about this test why because i'm worried i won't make this why i'm worried this i'm worried i won't be accepted and sometimes when you follow the worries it has nothing to do with the presenting issue it's something deeper about whether i'm loved and whether i'm valued if anybody cares and you're not supposed to take that to a grade your grades are valuable to test your knowledge they're not valuable to authenticate your value as a human being god is meant to do that and so that journal became a place where i was writing a lot more and processing my emotions and then when covet hit the journal didn't work just to be honestly i've told a million people about that journal and then in covet i'm like oh journal's not working i'm still freaking out so i started taking walks you want to find me you got to search in the woods there are woods all around dc and people ask me how are you so calm right now i was like i'm off the phone man i am off it i am out in the forest i am out there i know where all the deer move in virginia i am frequently a guide and a help to lost hikers i am out in the woods because i realize i have to get away from screens when it's in the room it calls to me i got to get out and i move away and in that quiet place with the lord as i walk i begin to pour out my heart to him and i find that with thanksgiving that sounds always kind of ironic when people read this passage with thanksgiving yeah because you're talking to god the one that i love peter 5 says cast your anxieties on him because he cares for you psalm 55 says cast your cares on the lord he will sustain you he will not let the righteous fall you get two passages with the same command cast your cares on him but different motivations one is because he loves you one is because he's strong enough to sustain you isn't that great you can start being thankful as you're out there in the woods or wherever you can go here walk in the mean streets of dallas why because you know i'm talking to a god who loves me enough to hear my heart and is strong enough to do something about it and there's something beautiful about that it'll guard you that peace of god that surpasses understanding will guard your heart and mind in christ jesus abraham lincoln when general lee marched 76 000 troops into pennsylvania panic took hold in washington dc but abraham lincoln seemed eerily calm and so a general asked him later how did you do that how were you able to function in the middle of all that high stress you were still making decisions and you seemed calm and able to focus how were you able to do that and he said this when everyone seemed panic stricken i went to my room got down on my knees before almighty god and i prayed and soon a sweet comfort crept into my soul that god almighty had taken the whole business into his own hands now i want you to catch that that didn't release abraham lincoln from making decisions but it did free him up to make good decisions the root of the word anxiety is to be drawn and distracted you've felt this in the library i'm trying to focus on this and my mind's going how am i going to pay for this who am i going to meet will i ever get married where am i going to work what does anyone like me and you just can't focus doing this rhythm allows them to take legitimate concerns and place them in the hands of the one who loves you and is strong and in doing that that doesn't free you from having to make real decisions but it does free you up to make good ones does this work it's interesting i had a buddy in the special forces community commend to me a a monitor called a heart math monitor i won't go into all the details of it but it's a way they call it measuring coherence it it measures your heart but not beats per minute it measures the space between beats and the way it does that it's it's to see if you're coherent and can focus and make decisions which when you're in high stress situations like special forces operators are you need to be able to control your mind focus and operate and the way you do that is two ways focus on your breathing and think about something happy give a wonderful thought you know and you just and so i put this monitor on and i'll tell you what it starts mapping me and they do little colors and it turns bright red which is bad and usually is commensurate with the fact that i can't focus but i start to breathe and i start to do what this text is talking about i'm casting off anxiety but i'm taking up some other things and i watch that dial change colors i watch that beat rhythmically move along and i've discovered i can focus it works burroughs the old puritan used to say and forgive the illustration that's jeremiah is not mine he says you don't pour wine into a shaky bottle he says still that bottle and then you can pour wine into it or grape juice or whatever and uh he says the same as your soul god wants to pour good things in your soul but you got to calm down first and so that's why paul starts here start by not being anxious but if something's bothering you don't suppress it let it out and give it to the god who can do something about it but then you don't just empty your brain then you move on right don't be anxious but seek first the kingdom so finally brothers whatever's true what is real what's honorable what's respectful and dignified what's just what's the course of uh action that that fulfills my obligations to every human being what is pure it's not duplicitous it's not false not insincere i'm not playing fast and loose with the facts what's lovely what's something i could do today that that would be regarded as beautiful that you'd want to write a poem about what is something commendable or of good repute it's not needlessly offensive run your social media posts through this verse and see how many make it through if there's anything excellent anything worthy of praise think about those things take your mind and forcefully turn them towards the positive we do this in meetings not to be fake but i noticed and this is a free leadership tip if you start a meeting going hey how's everybody doing it's risky because inevitably the er in your group is going to be like well i'm tired i didn't sleep much and the world is on fire and you'll go like okay thank you well um but let's charge the hill together and like suddenly you're trying to dig your way out of a hole we don't start meetings that way in our church we start with whatever meeting even me with my smallest team all the way up to our larger serving teams we just say hey let's start with some jesus stories that's what we call them and i'll be honest with you in this season it's there's been a longer pause before people bring them up but as we wait someone to tell the story hey man uh invited this person church and they're coming hey got a friend that he's got three buddies that would never darken the door of a church but they will watch church in his living room online and he said three out of three were crying last sunday and they're not sure why but they're coming back and you start telling stories like that and you realize are things as awful as they feel in america right now yeah probably i think that's pretty bad in a lot of places but it's also really really good too and i don't want to miss this this is one of the hardest times to be a minister but it's also one of the best our church has quintupled the number of people we're reaching that's crazy one of our team leaders the other day was walking in the park reading chronicles of narnia the one big one where they're all shoved in one book a picture of azlan on the cover and a guy yells to him from across the park you're almost done he's like what he's like you're almost done i've seen hang up and runs through traffic gets to him and was like i've seen you out here walking and reading from time to time and i just noticed you're almost done he's like yeah and he's like is that the chronicles of narnia he said yeah he's like man i used to read that as a kid and uh and i quit going to church he got hurt in church somehow i don't know the details quit going made a bunch of different choices in his life ended up in dc things had just gone sideways with his boyfriend his life was a total wreck and he said you know what i was sitting in this park and asking where did the peace of my childhood go and how do i ever get it back and i saw this guy walking and i saw the face of that lion on the cover and he said i said to myself if i ever see that guy again i'm going to ask him how do i get the peace and joy back i had so many years ago and he ran across the street tell me where peace is found and he said aslan it's just a picture of jesus that's where the world is is it really this desperate in some ways yes but what that's done is opened a wide and effective door of ministry people running to hear the gospel if you stay in the game so i would encourage you i'm working right now on praying more than i post on reading scripture before i read social media and reading more scripture than i read social media because i know all the studies are out doom scrolling through social media increases anxiety anxiety becomes anger anger becomes attacking it's not necessarily the best transmission of knowledge or wisdom i'm making a lot more phone calls i'm sitting face to face with a lot more people and i'm realizing if i start the day in social media it instantly gets me in a reactive mind and it's hard to focus and accomplish anything the rest of the day i want to start with scripture i want to read more from the word of god than what the world thinks i'm not ignorant to the world i'm engaging it but i'll tell you i've decreased screen time and i've told myself i will stop decreasing at the moment i become uninformed and i haven't hit it yet a lot of nonsense and mixed in with the knowledge and for me i'm realizing i'm more peaceful and more functional as a leader as i'm following this path am i anxious god cares and i give it to him and then i force my mind towards beautiful things we tell jesus stories as a team every night when my kids and i and my wife sit down for dinner we start with what's the best thing that happened today and then we say what's the worst thing and then we've added what's the weirdest thing because that's kind of fun because life's strange so we do those three things for me i'm reading a lot of christian biography it's a way to think about beautiful things because i'm watching brothers and sisters from the past who obviously were successful or else we wouldn't have written a book about them but i'm reading their lives and just watching them get punished just beat up by life crushed and i'm strangely encouraged by that because i've realized all my pain is not entirely my fault because that thought creeps in am i doing something wrong is it me what's going on why god i realized oh no you are just hammering everybody that's the price to admission to life so yeah i can learn some things but when i see men and women in church history persevere well i want to do the same and i don't want to miss my moment who wants to minister in a boring day there's a gift to being a minister in the middle of all this drama right and i don't want to miss it so i'm thinking about positive things and i love where he ends it and what you've heard learned and received and heard and seen in me practice these things you got to go do it and the god of peace will be with you i want to step out and live these basics can i excel at the simple things while the environment around me gets more chaotic that's the question it's the question waiting for us every morning it's a question waiting for us every time we pick up a phone it's a question waiting for us every time we run into a conflict where someone says something am i going to speak the truth and love to them which is a simple command i have am i going to pull back and passive aggressively attack them online our marching orders are clear will i do them that's the question but as i practice these things i love the rhythm not only will the peace of christ guard me the god of peace will be with me and that's where it gets fun when my buddy and i were completely depleted on that mountainside laid out this guy came up out of nowhere and he led us to the top of the highest point in america we looked down on clouds unbelievable wouldn't have got there without him and then he led us all the way back down and there was a moment where my buddy and i both slipped on the mountain and began to fall in an uncontrolled descent towards a cliff i almost didn't make it here today 20 years ago from a mistake on a mountain and i'll never forget he was below us on this snowy slope he looked up and saw the two of us slip fall and begin to slide headfirst towards a cliff and i'll never forget this guy's face he looked up at us pulled two ice picks out of his bag threw him in the snow wrapped his knees around him and caught us and the whole rest of the trip down my buddy ben and i were like do you think he's an angel i kind of think he's an angel i think he's an angel but there was something about we're doing the basics he taught us to do and even when we slip fall twist up and careen head first the god of pieces with me this piece is available not through a technique although i think these techniques help they're available through a person who says i want to walk with you i want to lead you to heights you can't get to on your own and high places are hard you got to breathe different up there and i'm going to lead you down slippery slopes that are hard you can get dashed on the rocks in this culture but you keep excelling at the simple things and you do it by holding on to me and i will carry you further than you could ever get on your own that's our hope amen and the world needs to see us do it well so father bless everybody in this room bless everybody online bless us as we excel at the simple things god i pray for some people today that they got a long to-do list but i just pray at some point today they'd go outside take a deep breath charles spurgeon called the excessive study in a library with no windows a suicidal process he said a stiff walk in the wind will not bring grace to the soul but it'll bring oxygen to the body and that's next best so i pray lord every now and again we would just go take a walk with a friend and laugh think about something fun tell a great story remember why we're here be inspired by the stories of our brothers and sisters alongside of us and who've gone before us see that the hand of god is moving mightily through this culture even in the midst of the pain your purposes prevail and i pray god as we look at our lives in five years now ten years from now say man god had me enter ministry in the furnace of affliction and it forged me into something great and it's not because i did anything great it's because i excelled at the simple things even while the world entered chaos bless us lord steal us for this day and we trust you let me pray that in jesus name amen amen thank you guys

Channel: Dallas Theological Seminary

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Length: 33min 2sec (1982 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 18 2020