Owning My Relationship With God

Owning My Relationship with God

“…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;

for it is God who works both to will and to do for His good pleasure.” Philippians 2:1-13 KJV

Intro: I want to talk about how life goes better when you start your day with God.

Your relationship with God started this morning the moment you opened your eyes.

Your relationship with God started long before you ever reached the church parking lot.

Your relationship with God started long before the sermon is ever preached.

So, the big picture is to make sure you get as good of a start as possible.

What if you start the day with prayer?

Or is you already pray every day…,

What if you pray with more expectation and pray with more passion?

What if you start every week off with worship

And you worship every service by becoming more engaged

Like, What if you raise your hands in praise to God during the music?

What if your surrender your heart to God during the preaching?

You can’t really go back and get a new start to your story

Because the past is already written.

But what you can do is change the ending of your story.

The title of today’s sermon is “Owning My Relationship with God.”

I have used a phrase several times, who probably heard me say it.

“I am going to worship whether anyone else does or not.”

God first gave me this phrase when I was going through a difficult time in my spiritual life.

I was at a church where it really felt like some of the people, not all of them, but some of them

Did not want a sermon, they only wanted a meditation.

They wanted to be told the good things they were doing

But did not want to hear the things they could do better

or perhaps needed to change or stop doing all together.

So God would give me a message, I would preach it,

And after the service I would have someone come up to me and whisper in my ear.

“Preacher that was a good sermon.”

Anytime a member of the congregation has to whisper something in your ear,

That is not a good sign.

It is more likely that there is a spiritual drought on the inside.

I mean… internally… have you ever just felt like… you are barely surviving?

And have you ever just felt… like you’re anxious about everything…

Like you’re carrying…

the weight of the world on your shoulders…

Like nothing really satisfies you…

and you just go from one thing to the next…

I mean… have you ever felt… like you’re spiritually dead…

In here?

Well… that is exactly what we’re gonna talk about…

A guy named Paul… is writing a letter to a group of Christians…

In the city of Philippi…

And in the Bible… it’s called the book of Philippians.

And Paul is explaining to them… the basics of their relationship with God.

“…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;

for it is God who works (in your) both to (do His) will and to do for His good pleasure.” Philippians 2:1-13

There is a clear difference…

between living for ourselves…

and living for God…

And He’s just trying to show the clear contrast…

when we focus on ourselves…

and when we focus on God…

He’s basically saying… instead of doing what God’s will is

The temptation, the danger is to do what we want to do…

And we do… what we think is right…

And we do… what we think will make us happy.

But Paul is saying there is a better option…

That we can live a life based on the Spirit…

Basically that we can live a life based on what God wants

And when that happens…

we do… what God wants us to do.

And we do… what God thinks is right.

And we do… what God says is good…

We can live a life based on spirit….

And when we do… we think about Spirit…

and we focus… not on ourselves…

but instead… we focus on God.

The bible teaches…, and this is really important…

that there are things that… lead to spiritual death…

And other things that … lead to spiritual life…

One way leads to death…

And the other… leads to life.

**Okay… so that’s heavy right….

And that’s a lot to take in…

But if you’re anything like myself… it’s like alright…

I’ll be the first one to say…

that I’m not an angel…

I mean… I am definitely not Jesus…

I am not perfect but I am present.

Again… I’m not God…

I’m just guessing… that most of us… would say that we are not like those people on Facebook.