The Sixteenth Second

I encourage you to give this seven minute speech a listen: The Sixteenth Second.

Kyle Martin, a 2019 high school graduate, gives a powerful commencement address to his fellow graduating class. He put in a ton of work to accomplish being number one, but he reflects honestly on what it cost him. He learned a lesson early that should define his goals and the costs he is willing to pay in his life. Some of us have long past the age of 19, but maybe this is a lesson we need to learn as well.

Before we get to that, I'd love to tell you about a speech I was thankful to give to a group of High School students this past Friday night. God wants them, and you, to be filled and sealed with the Holy Spirit. When we are filled with Him, He makes us strong enough to stand the weight of the devil. And we can be prepared to pour the Spirit's goodness into the lives of others. This is God's will for our lives. May nothing else be allowed to rob us of this beautiful work of love and service.

- Why is a strong relationship with the Spirit needful to be strong in the face of trial?

- Why is connection with the Spirit necessary to be a light in the lives of others?

- Do we sometimes devote our lives to things that cost us our greatest mission?

- Are you comfortable with accepting God's great mission for your life?

- How can we live so that we will never regret "the sixteenth second"?

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to the Excel Still More Podcast. I am your host, Chris Emerson. I'm here to encourage you in your walk with God. Thank you for joining in. Today's podcast is sponsored by Cunningham Financial Group. John Cunningham is a friend of mine and a brother in Christ, and he can help you with financial decisions and future planning. He's been a big help to me and my family, and I commend him to you. You can reach him at 205-913-1720. I am so thankful you're here, so let's get started. In fact, right now I'm in the middle of a high school banquet weekend event in Dallas. I had the opportunity last night to address about 125 Christian teenagers. And tonight I'll be returning to Dallas for a formal banquet to present some other things to them, particularly the 16th second. I really, really love this concept. First of all, it's just a great title. I'm so impressed with titles that I in no way, shape, or form came up with. A young man named Kyle Martin, the valedictorian of his graduating class in 2019, gave a commencement address speech. And to the best of my Googling ability, Kyle introduced the world to this statement and its value. And since then, there have been several books written by the title, the 16th second, dozens of blogs, and I guess now you could say at least one podcast. What I hope you will see today is that that 19-year-old's ideas are important for our young people, and we want them to learn this lesson as early as possible. But the process of thinking through your goals and what you pursue, what you sacrifice to achieve that 15 seconds of glory, and what all too often throughout our life becomes a very empty sixteenth second, that is something that scales out to every age. You are never too old to evaluate your mission, the cost that you're paying to accomplish that mission, and if it might very well be that it's time to change because you're sacrificing people for the sake of things. So I want to read an excerpt from his speech and get into all of that with you in the back half of the episode, but if it's okay, I'd like to share a little bit with you of what I talked to those teenagers about last night. Maybe you'll find some value in it for your own life or maybe in the way you teach younger people. I started them out with something most of them had heard me say multiple times last year. I think everywhere that I preached, every youth event, and probably in multiple podcast episodes, I said the following. My questions for them were pretty straightforward. Question one, what does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit? And they gave great answers on that. My follow-up was, how do you go about building that kind of a relationship with the Spirit? And their answers were awesome, everything from private prayer to personal Bible study, being around fellow Christians, or just contemplating the presence of God. I then asked them the same questions about being sealed by the Holy Spirit. What does that mean? And they gave tremendous responses about being secured in Christ, being filled with hope, and living guaranteed these great promises in Jesus. And then I followed up similarly asking, How would you be sealed by the Holy Spirit? And we talked about becoming a Christian and trusting in the promises of God. Now, my ultimate argument to you and to them is very simple. God wants to use you, he saved you for the purpose of using you to his glory. Ephesians 2 says that we are saved by grace, no question about that. It is God's goodness, Christ's righteousness, that makes salvation possible. It is not as a result of your works, but the passage does indicate that you were saved for the purpose of good works. He has redeemed you to fill your heart with gratitude because he has important things for you to accomplish. And as I will be challenging you to consider today, maybe a lot of the things we are truly passionately pursuing in this life are more of a distraction from the work God has planned than they are complementary alignments to it. So anyway, last night I wanted them to understand that being filled and sealed with the Holy Spirit is important for a couple of reasons. The second one, and the focus of tonight's presentation, is because he has great work for you to do and he wants that spirit poured in the lives of others, but how can you dispense to others what you do not in fact possess yourself? But also, and maybe before that it's the fact that the adversary is trying to crush you. We are weak in flesh, we are vessels for the spirit, and Satan hopes to destroy that vessel, body, soul, and mind. I needed them to see that a relationship with the spirit was all the difference in the world, so I gave a little prop based illustration. I showed them a sprite can. I'd just gotten it from the convenience store, it was completely filled with life-giving carbonated water and sugar and sealed in the top. I sat it on the ground and I found the strongest looking guy I could in the room, this gentleman named Will, 190 pounds of muscle. And I said, Will, you represent the devil for just a few minutes, and this can represents one of the Christians in the room. I want you to step on that can and crush it. Will stood upon that can and sort of bounced up and down, and of course the can did not crush. Did you know that by the way? It takes a tremendous amount of weight to crush a basic thin aluminum can if it is filled and sealed with liquid. I then showed them a second sprite can. The can is exactly the same as the other. Will is exactly the same force as he was. The only difference is this can had been opened and emptied. I asked our temporary adversary Will to crush that can, and as soon as he stepped on it, it smashed flat. So my point to them, I hope, was simple. The two cans are the same, and the external force was the same, but whether that can was full or empty made all the difference. Side note on that, we usually blame the other two variables. We say, well, I'm just weaker than this other person, or the adversary against me is stronger than others are experiencing. But like in the case of Will and the cans, that was not the determining factor. So I hope that encouraged them to be filled with the spirit and build a better relationship with God. I got a great comment after that presentation. Chelsea Moody is a young lady that worships in the Houston area. Her dad, Brent, is a really good friend of mine. And she said afterwards, she said, I really enjoyed that illustration. I can't get out of my mind this idea, though, that if we open the can and pour the spirit into the lives of others, then how can we still be filled and sealed? On the way home in the car, I thought, well, you know, she's right. I guess that's just a limit to the illustration. But then I thought of a passage in Ephesians 3, kind of right in the middle of the text that talked about being sealed, and the text that talked about being filled, where the Bible says, Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to him be the glory in the church, and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. I hope to mention this to them tonight that that's the beauty of faith. We believe in things that the Holy Spirit can do that we cannot do. You cannot open a can and pour Sprite into someone's cup and still have a filled, sealed can. But in Christ and through the power of the Spirit, we can dispense his goodness while never being depleted of it. And that's what I want to talk to them about tonight. God has saved you not just to be filled, if the goal was to get to heaven, why are we still here? Ultimately, he has work for us to do, and I'm going to be asking them what some of that work is, and I guess if it's okay, I'd like to pose that question to you. If I ask you to write down five things that God has saved you to do, what would they be? We can talk about things like worshiping him, praising him, and honoring him, learning more about him, and a lot of other things about your relationship with God. And I think everyone would agree that that is important and valuable. But I would argue in the workmanship side of it all, all of those things are about filling you and empowering you to affect relationships. I did an episode not too long ago, Grace to Faith to Life in Your Relationships. It blows me away how all of these letters that start with grace, Ephesians, Colossians, 1 Peter, they talk to you about building this incredible relationship with God. And then when it gets to walk in a manner worthy or go out and accomplish the work, he just talks about people. He wants to use you to build love and unity and peace among his people. He wants you, of whatever age you are, to be some good factor in the body of Christ. He wants you to love your neighbor, to love the lost person, to be a light for them, to show them a better way, to exemplify the character of the Christ. He seeks to use you in your home, whether you're a husband or wife, parent or child. Our families are supposed to be proving and demonstrating the glory of the relationship between Christ and the church. I know we have other goals in life, and God is okay with those goals, education goals, recreational goals, whatever it might be. God wants you to go out and build things and do things. But He has not filled you with the Holy Spirit to go out and fill your pockets or even to fill your mind. He has filled you with the Holy Spirit for the sake of people. He wants you to build bonds of love and service and holiness. And again, I know we can't just sit around and do that all the time. We all need to have jobs and there are other things that we pursue. But what this short speech by a 19-year-old is about to challenge you to do is to consider who you have been sacrificing to accomplish something. So I'm going to give you a short excerpt or two from the seven-minute speech, and then I'll put a link to it on YouTube in the show notes. Kyle ended up graduating with some crazy like 4.65 GPA, and he won the highest marks in his class, so he became the valedictorian. And he recalls how determined he was to achieve that. He knew it was going to take a ton of hard work, but he wanted it and he pursued it, and he said, I got it. He went on to say that as he was receiving his great reward and recognition at their big senior banquet, he said, It felt so good. So good for about fifteen seconds. Yeah, he said, fifteen seconds of my heart racing and my adrenaline pumping. Fifteen seconds of yeah, I won. Fifteen seconds of being at the top of the pile of all of my accomplishments, and it felt euphoric. But there must come a sixteenth second. And on that sixteenth second, I sat down on my seat, I looked at my silver stole that says valedictorian, and I thought, that's it? What just happened? Why am I not feeling anything else? He goes on to say, to be honest, I don't even know what I was expecting. A parade of balloons to drop? Or maybe I was hoping that all of my problems would fade away in comparison to this amazing achievement. But none of that happened. Not even in my heart, I felt nothing. I was shocked. This was a huge problem for me, and I needed to figure out why. He goes on to say, look, working hard is good. It is in fact biblical, but it should not be done for the sole purpose of a goal's sake at the expense of relationship with others. Looking back on this year, I realized that the stress of this year for this goal and a five-minute speech was paid for with the lack of attending to relationships in my life, a lesson learned and self-reflection accomplished. He goes on to tell the room not to have regrets in your sixteenth second, and turns the attention back to relationships by saying, Nothing is more important than your healthy relationships. Nothing. Not your goals, not your successes, and here is why. Relationships are where we get to influence, impact, and change people's lives. Your life cannot be meaningful without them. He then said, We are put on this earth by our Creator, and we all have a purpose to advance God's kingdom that all may be saved. As you live your life on this earth, there is no greater good you can do for a person than to love them so much that you point them to Jesus Christ. It really is a wonderful speech, and I hope that you get the chance to catch all of it. But let's take a few minutes together here and make sure you and I get the point. You may not have heard the sixteenth second before, but you've probably heard the term fifteen seconds, fifteen seconds of joy or glory or fame. It is usually the story of someone who's worked very, very hard, devoted to something, sacrificed for it, and then they achieve it, and it's this great, bright, shining moment. But by definition it's very short, fifteen seconds of fame, it flashes brightly and then it goes away. And we usually don't contemplate what happens to the person after that. In fact, we don't usually look at either side of it, all of the sacrifices they made to get that thing that they thought was going to be the thing, and then how they cope with the fact that it isn't. We sometimes call this the brass ring, this beautiful thing that you're striving for. And while it's okay to pursue those things, the fact is everything you strive for costs you something. And sometimes that something is time and involvement in the lives of people you care about or you should be caring about. And sometimes we think that exchange is okay because those people will always be there later, but there are a couple of problems that emerge. Problem one, they may not be there later. This relationship may not survive that kind of negligence. Or even worse, maybe, number two, you just get in the brass ring business where you chase one thing that doesn't fulfill after another. I was thinking about all of this in my family. Both of my boys have played a lot of baseball, and they each have drawers practically filled with rings. That's the big thing now in sports. They give you these huge rings when you win tournaments. But there came a point where Summer and I with the boys had to talk about what we were sacrificing for the pursuit of these rings. The games were always on the weekend. We were sacrificing time at home as a family in practice so that we could give up entire weekends for the pursuit of these rings. We always worshiped on Sunday morning and tried to find a church wherever we were on Sunday night, but a lot of attentiveness that God would have loved directed to people was simply not there. We were checking the boxes. But it was okay, right? Because the kids were going to win a tournament and get seen by a scout and signed with a massive bonus at age twelve. Isn't that what's supposed to happen? In reality, it was a lot like everything else in this world. We enjoyed it for a moment, 15 seconds, put the ring away, and went on about our lives. And while the joy of accomplishment fades, what it costs to get it starts to accumulate over time, doesn't it? Habits form where we're not attentive to people, family, or friends, or brothers and sisters in Christ, and those seemingly little insignificant, occasional concessions actually turn into a lot more. So we still play sports and one of them plays league ball and the other one is on to college doing a different sport now. But we made a decision that it wasn't worth who it cost for what we got. And that's what I want these young people to understand as they are still in high school or headed to college. We're not talking about giving up hard work or your job or your studies just to hang out with your buddies. That's certainly not what Kyle Martin was saying, though you know we are terrible at balance as human beings. It seems like we always fall one way or the other. We're either really great with people and fun and loving, but not focused or hardworking, or we're workaholics in school or other ventures. All Kyle was really saying was that he was thankful at the age of nineteen that he learned an invaluable lesson. He would go on and pursue a collegiate education in business and I'm sure many other things. But as he clearly said at the end, those things would always fall second, or maybe I should say third, to things that were more important, like a healthy relationship with Jesus, number one, and fulfilling Jesus' purpose for his life in loving and serving and helping others and nurturing relationships. So my question to you is, are you ready to reevaluate the things that you've been making your primary mission? I read several blogs written by much older people who referenced Kyle's speech, but their stories were much different. They were in their forties or fifties and they had spent their entire lives trying to prove to everyone who they were, trying to define their lives by some form of accomplishment or possessions. And no doubt, like a nuke car or a great promotion, it feels amazing when you've worked so hard for it, but how often is it about fifteen seconds of joy? It's supposed to be the thing that fixes everything and then you hit that sixteenth second, and you wonder why it didn't work. I think maybe to be very direct, the big punchline of life is that we're not here for it to work for us, we're here to work for God. And so as we close, I don't want you to prioritize relationships over things because it's better for you if you do. It is, by the way, better for you if you do. A ninety-ninth night in a row of Uno with your family is a better investment than a great many other things that will not fulfill you. But ultimately, I want to bring it back to this idea. You are a vessel, made and remade by God to be filled with the Holy Spirit so that you can do his work. You can be his workmanship, you can accomplish great and fulfilling things, namely to pour forth the qualities of the Holy Spirit into the lives of everyone that you meet and know. You'll have no regrets in a life that prioritizes those things and makes everything else work around them. Look, we will still pursue other things and pull for our favorite sports team, but because those things didn't cost you what matters or who matters, you'll get to enjoy that 15 seconds of exuberance without facing any of the emptiness or regret in the 16th second. Thank you so much for joining in today. If you enjoyed this program, consider sharing it with your family and your friends. As always, you can go to excelstillmore. And remember this whatever you choose to do today in the name of the Lord Jesus, excel still more.