I want everyone to understand something today, when it comes to my position at Prairie Family Church, as the senior pastor, my greatest concern is your commitment to Christ.
Not your commitment to the church. You can be committed to the church and not be committed to Christ.
Not your commitment to religion. You can be committed to religion and not be committed to Christ.
It is like the guys who are in the Italian Mafia. They attend Catholic Mass, but they are unaffected by what they hear because they are not committed to Christ.
I am concerned about whether or not you are committed to Jesus Christ in such a way that God comes first in your life.
When we are committed to Christ, everything else in our lives falls into place. It aligns correctly.
That is why Jesus said in Matthew 6:33, 33But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
Jesus was teaching the people that when they are committed to Christ and the Kingdom of God, everything else, everything will fall into place.
That is the purpose of this message today, to help us get things aligned.
No, the title of this message doesn’t have anything to do with my waist line!
The title gives us a clue into something that every person who calls themselves a child of God should be doing.
Pressing on, pressing in, and pressing out.
PRAYER
Father, open my eyes to see Your Word.
Open my ears to hear.
Open my mind to understand.
And open my heart so I may receive Your Word today.
AMEN
VIDEO ABOUT THE APOSTLE PAUL
Scripture doesn’t say but I bet it is fact, that Paul was either at the crucifixion of Christ or he knew about it. Whatever the case, before Paul’s Damascus Road experience Paul what was he? He was a minister of murder.
Paul knew about Christ, he knew about His teachings and His healings and about His followers. And Paul wanted to end their movement.
But one day Paul made a decision to change his ways and he committed his life to Christ. By doing this he became a great man of God writing 13 books in the New Testament.
In Paul’s letters he wrote about pressing on, pressing in, and pressing out.
READ Philippians 3:10-16
10I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
12Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
15All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. 16Only let us live up to what we have already attained. Philippians 3:10-16 NIV
When Paul became committed to Christ what did he want to do?
He wanted to know Christ and the power of the resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings.
Paul wanted to become like Christ.
So what was Jesus Christ like when He walked on the earth?
Jesus was kind, hard-working, compassionate, obedient, thoughtful, and was focused on His mission.
He was adventurous, how many people do you know who walk on water when it is storming out?
He was not a wimp.
He took on the demon possessed.
He stepped on the toes of the religious.
He was not afraid of a challenge.
He paid the ultimate sacrifice for our lives and died on a cross.
He was beaten, whipped, and nailed to a tree. Thorns pierced His head and a sword pierced His side.
Jesus was a manly man!
There is one other thing Jesus was, Jesus was perfect.
He was the perfect man who knew no sin.
That is what Paul wanted to be like, can you blame him?
Why wouldn’t we want to be like Jesus?
He wanted to know Christ. He didn’t want to speculate about Jesus, he didn’t want to guess about Him. He wanted to the deepest, fullest, richest experience that he could find in regards to the knowledge of Jesus Christ.
And to get that done, Paul was going to press on until he accomplished the task.
Nothing was going to keep Paul from reaching his goal. Here is how Paul put it in Philippians 1:21, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.”
How does that relate to us? Paul said in Philippians 3:15, “All of us who are mature should take such a view of things.”
Paul said we need to press on as well so that we can be like Christ.
As we press on we are then going to want to press in.
PLAY VIDEO CLIP FAMOUS PEOPLE
What did all of the people in that video clip have in common?
They failed and they tried again. The lived and they pressed on and they pressed in so that they could accomplish the great things they did.
They never gave up.
Life equals risk which equals pressing on and pressing in.
One person in the Bible who wrote about pressing in was James, the brother of Jesus. He said this, Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. James 4:8 NIV
Pressing in closer to God is an extremely important aspect in our commitment to Christ.
What does it mean to press in?
Webster defines pressing as something that is extremely important. The word in as a preposition that has to do with location, as an adverb it means being in close quarters.
We can conclude that pressing in means coming closer to something important.
If we don’t press in, if we don’t stay close then we are going to have some problems.
One problem that we will have is that we are not going to learn what it takes to be like Christ.
Pressing in is learning all we can about Him so we can be like Him. It is reading and studying your Bible, it is talking to God in prayer, and it is going to a church that teaches the truth about God from the Bible.
I said earlier that my greatest concern is not you going to church but understand that if you are going to be committed to Christ than church attendance is important.
It is important for your learning and it is important to the other people who go to church. The church needs you as much as you need it.
When we press in we are going to see a change in our lives.
The change is a revived and regenerated life of victory.
That is not to say that there will not be any challenges, there are always going to be challenges, just ask Thomas Edison, Abraham Lincoln, or Michael Jordon.
Pressing in makes us better people.
If we are pressing on and pressing in then the last one will come naturally, pressing out.
There are two ways that we as Christians need to be pressing out.
One way is by telling others the good news.
We are told by Jesus in Mark 16:15 to “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.”
There is a world beyond these walls that doesn’t know about Jesus. One way we can press out is to tell them the good news.
What is the Good News? That God sent His only Son onto this planet to die for the sins of the world so we could have a way to go to heaven. John 3:16 sums it up pretty good.
When you make a commitment to Christ you will want to tell others about Him.
PLAY VIDEO ITS ALL ABOUT ME
It is not all about me. And it is not all about you. It is about everyone in the church and everyone out of the church.
Another way that we can press out is by serving others.
It is about you and me and everyone else in the church getting out of our comfortable positions and doing what we can to help each other.
In Matthew 25 Jesus tells the parable about the Sheep and the Goats.
The point of the parable is for God’s people to be serving others. When they are hungry, thirsty, needing a place to stay, needing clothes, sick, or whatever the need was, that we should help those people.
Why should we help them?
Why should we serve others?
Because when we serve others we are doing it as if they were the King themselves.
In the parable Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it for me.” Matthew 25:40
One of the greatest things we can do for the kingdom of God is to serve.
Jesus taught us this time and time again through the actions of His life.
He said in Matthew 20:27-28, “whoever wants to be first must be your slave — just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
SHOW VIDEO BROKEN DOWN.
There is a need for PFC to press out. We all know people who are not serving God, we all know people who need help in various ways.
We know that our world is full of all kinds of evil and problems abound.
As long as there are people who do not know Christ and as long as there are people who are having problems with alcohol, drugs, abuse, sexual immorality, crime, finances, health issues then we need to be pressing on, pressing in, and pressing out.
As long as there is a breath in us and we are on this planet we need to be pressing on, pressing in, and pressing out.
Are you pressing on, pressing in, and pressing out?
CLOSE
ALL VIDEO CLIPS ARE FOUND ON http://www.bluefishtv.com/ .
BluefishTV-Heroes_-_The_Apostle_Paul
BluefishTV-Famous_Failures
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pc_itsallaboutme
