Ep 54: A Most Excellent Way (w/ David Rogers)

Speaker 1: Good morning. I'm Daniel Daub and this is for your Sunday Morning Drive, the short podcast with the goal of providing your motivation and drive on your way to worship and recentering your mind on those spiritual things on those hectic Sunday mornings. We are brought to you in partnership with the Ministry League Network of Podcasts. Ministry League specializes in offering many great free resources to the church, as well as a great network of podcasts. And I encourage you to go to ministry.com or download their app to see all that they have to offer. Speaking of Ministry League this week, my family and I are down in Georgia for the Ministry Summit, which is presented by Ministry League in the Citadel Bible Institute. I'm excited to sit at the feet of some wonderful brethren. And don't worry though, I leave you in good hands this morning. The excellent and capable hands of our guest, my dear friend David Rogers. David is the pulpit minister at the Washington Avenue Church of Christ here in Evansville, Indiana. He enjoys mission work, climbing music, comic books, and Dungeons and Dragons, kind of giving you a sneak peek behind the curtain here. Most guest episodes. I let the speaker choose their own topic. However, when I approached David, I had a very specific one in mind excellence. And if you know David, you know that if he is going to do something, he wants to do it right the first time and do it to the most excellent degree possible. I admire this about him, and I know that you are about to be blessed by his message. David, thank you so much for joining us this morning. This is episode 54, A Most Excellent Way. Let's go to church.

Speaker 2: Are we there yet?

Speaker 3: Our topic today is excellence. And as we prepare our mind for worship, how could we not consider what it means for a child of God to pursue excellence in everything that we do, and our service and our worship and our faith. Literally every aspect of life should be teeming with excellence. Paul writes about that in Colossians three, verse 17 when he says, and whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. I had a moment of clarity about the concept of excellence in high school, and it was because I had one of those very special teachers, the kind you never forget. Her name was Diane Davis. She was amazing. Never forget her. One of the favorites, one of the greats. Now, she had a massive personality and that helped. She was stern. In fact, she was a little bit scary, but she deeply cared for her students, and she wanted to make sure that we had every opportunity available to us that she could provide. There was a day in which she absolutely hit her boiling point. The focus of it was a group of students who didn't really appreciate what she was sharing and what they needed to hear, to be honest. These were the students that would champion that phrase. C's and D's get degrees.

Speaker 3: Kind of the opposite of excellence. And so when they planted their flag on that pathway to mediocrity, Diane Davis finally broke. And I don't know if it was the volume of her voice. I don't know if it was the intensity of what she said. It may have just been the sheer force of her willpower. But she got up, smacked her desk and told those students, you are settling. You are settling in your work and you coast through your life. I'm sure there was more to what she said. I kind of blanked out. It was enough. That was enough. But I will not forget the moment because it struck very, very true. It was the idea that you have a certain amount of potential, but you knew that you had to have passion to go with it. Motivation for excellence. And if you didn't, you'd be stuck. Your life would be capped. We understand the importance of that in our jobs and in our work and what we do for our families. But spiritually, that is an incredibly important lesson. After all, has God given us anything less than excellence? Absolutely not. In the creation, he could have spoke the universe into existence in such a way that we only have the bare minimum just to survive. And yet he gives us the majesty of the mountains and the depths of the ocean.

Speaker 3: He gives us the expanse of outer space to inspire us and build our wonder, and help us yearn for him. Because when you consider all of creation that we understand, how could you not see a God who deeply, deeply loves and provides excellence for his people? Even in salvation, where God provides life for us, eternal life. He sends Jesus. Does it get any more excellent than Jesus. Where God takes on the form of man, comes to earth and demonstrates to us what it means to follow and serve God, even to the point that he sacrifices himself out of love to pay for our sins. Nothing but excellence and the Holy Spirit too. When he inspires men of God to put pen to parchment and give us the words of God, what God would have us know to please him and to follow him, we have nothing less than excellence. So with the understanding that God continuously gives us his excellence, let's use that as our motivation to reflect our excellence into the world, both to him and the people around us. Let's use the fullness of our potential and the whole of our heart, constantly developing it to make a difference for God's kingdom. Two ways to think about that today. If you are on your way to worship today, ask yourself, what's a way that I can show 5% greater intensity for my worship today? How can I magnify and praise God for his glory in a way that's unlike any other time that I've done it before? That's excellence.

Speaker 3: Excellence also applies to our good works. Think about the way that you can make that truly something special. What if there was a clothing drive? And instead of getting rid of the things you no longer want in your house, you went out and bought brand new things for a stranger in need. In fact, what if you go buy the exact same quality of the shirts, the shoes, the dresses, the pants, whatever it is that you normally wear, and you give that to a person in need. They are then blessed with receiving the excellence of someone out there truly loving their neighbor as themselves. You may already do that. In fact, you may have already figured out another way to raise the bar and the excellence of your service. I would love to hear it. I would love for you to share that. The point is, excellence is a thing that we can constantly pursue and that we need to pursue. God didn't create you to do the least amount necessary. He deserves the fullness of our potential and absolutely all of our heart. Never hesitate to show the world the excellence of God.

Speaker 1: Those were some excellent thoughts from David. Now it's time to hear yours. Our discussion questions for this week are what hinders our works, commitment, and worship from being excellent in the eyes of God? Do we sometimes coast through life and our faith, instead of holding ourselves to the excellent standard of Christ, pushing ourselves to be more like him? And what is an area in which we can strive to be more excellent? And what steps can we take to make it an achievable goal?