I want to start by asking a question today. And the question is this? Have you ever created something with a passion and given up on it? You know, like you were in it for months and years, then after a while, you like,e meh. Come on, be honest. We are all in this together. Great, thanks so so so much for the honesty
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I am a guy who found out a few years ago that I fell in love with running. And I started with a bang. I run smaller distances, like 5km, then ten and then 21.1km. That was the goal. My goal was to hit 10km in under 6 minutes a k or an hour. To do a 21.1km in less than 2 hours. Very close to that one. When I started, I could see the changes very soon. I lost weight. Asthma started to disappear. I got some muscles in my legs; my belly went smaller, but I got bored. I was like ok, this is fun, but what can I do? So I got a mountain bike. And I started mountain biking, and I set a goal of 40km in under 2 hours with an incline of more than 400 meters. And I did that, and then I did 80 km with Arthur. Go to shell ultra city and back.
And guess what. I got bored again. And I was like, man, I want to do something else. And now I am doing CrossFit also. Yes, I love it. Yes, it is intense, and I now understand what it means to die daily cause that happens. Ask my fellow CrossFit people.
Here is the thing, though. I want to use this analogy in my sermon a bit today. The thing is, the same is true for us as Christians in our walk with Jesus. The same is happening in our walk with God. Let me explain.
I have seen, and yes, even in my own life, that my hunger for God seems to die and sometimes starve. I am reminded in verses like James 4:8 (HCSB), 8 Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify your hearts, double-minded people! So when we as a staff read this book closer. This verse kept coming into my devotional times. And I want to spend some time on why we tend to lose our hunger for God and how we can guard against it.
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We must be careful of becoming indifferent Christians.
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I was looking at this verse and said Draw near to God. The words double minded just popped up. In the book, we see Revelation.
In the book of Revelation, we see that there were letters sent to the seven churches, and the thing is that these letters even apply to us today. If it did not, it would not have been in the bible. It is still a message for us, and it is relevant for us today. And we need to open up our spiritual eyes because if we are not careful, we can read something and not even think it applies to us. In Revelation 3, we can see that Jesus declared his church to be in a lukewarm state. We see that what was necessary for Jesus was not important to them. We see Revelation 3:17 (HCSB)17 Because you say, 'I'm rich; I have become wealthy and need nothing,' and you don't know that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked. We can see Jesus saying, " Hey, you guys, your passion is misplaced. Your love is not in me anymore but in the world.
Now please, I am not talking only about material things. Or that wealth is wrong, or that is the issue. What I am saying is that in these letters to these churches in Asia that they put something above God. They allowed material things to satisfy them rather than God. Let us be honest. For us, it can be so many other things. Alcohol, social media, pornography, WORK, career, hustling.
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Ryan and I were privileged to see Francis Chan in Potchefstroom this year. The fantastic thing is, actually. I was very sceptical. Because it was so poorly advertised. I was telling Ryan, dude, I do not see anything online. Nothing is mentioning him, even being in the country. I was like, this is going to be video based. No offence to you guys online. But we preserved, and man, never mind Francis chan. The number of young people just like worshipping God. Like raw, intense worship. And when I got back, I needed to ask myself some really intense questions? And I needed to ask some of the people that came for help some intense questions. I do not think we always understand the following verse 1 John 5:21 (HCSB)21 Little children, guard yourselves from idols. Now the word little children means teknion in the NT, used as a kindly address by teachers to their disciples. So children listen. People listen. You need to guard yourselves from idols.
These kids could have been out drinking and partying. That field was actually in the middle of all the party places. You could see them from where we were at. These kids did not want to do that. They wanted to draw near to Jesus. They wanted to be in the presence of God. And when I prepped for this message, I was like, how did we lose our hunger for the presence of God. How does that happen? How did we miss spending? How did we get to this place? Were we happy with going to church once in a while and more intensely that our quiet time is a 5-minute prayer and random verse for the day?
I have heard this prayer, "Lord, increase my hunger for you", and I also prayed them, but at the end of this message, I hope you come to the same conclusion I did, and it is this that our hunger for God is on us, not Him. If we are not indifferent Christians or seek God, we will have a healthy hunger for Him. So what is the remedy? Revelation 3:10 says this.
Bible Passage
Revelation 3:20 (CSB - Christian Standard Bible)
20See! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him, and he with me.
Application
I had to repent again for a verse I misused out of context. For years I believed that these verses spoke to people who are not saved. Actually, it is not. He is speaking to the church. He is speaking to believers who lack passion. This verse says starts if anyone hears my voice. It means their Soul will break bread with Him, and they will receive the bread of life. The NLT says that Jesus will come and share a meal as friends. So how do we get more hungry for God? How do we get closer to Him? We need to ask ourselves a few questions, and the first is this?
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What are you eating?
Bible Passage
Proverbs 27:7 (CSB - Christian Standard Bible)
7A person who is full tramples on a honeycomb, but to a hungry person, any bitter thing is sweet.
Application
Let me ask this have you ever tried giving up coffee? How did that go for you? Does anyone give up chocolates? Sugar? Well, what the world gives us and offers us is the exact thing.
This verse speaks about this precisely what we need to do. If we are full of the world's fast foodstuff, we won't have a hunger for God, but if we have a desire for God, it would be sweet and so much better for us. So I need to ask, what are you filling your Soul with. If you are constantly on the internet looking for porn. You start to look for that in real life. It becomes an addiction. If you continually watch reality shows. What do you crave? If you constantly look at these shows, what will you desire? You will crave their lives. You start trying to act and think like them. Halloween is coming up. And now Horror movies, no, not horror movies. Films that disguise demonic activity as horror movies are making a comeback.
I mean, we have a word called binge-watching. Do you know what binge means? Well, here is the meaning. A period of excessive indulgence in an activity, especially eating, drinking, or taking drugs. Excessive. Indulgence. So it can become like this for work, sports tv, and social media.
Let me explain what happens. Let me show you how we slip away from our spiritual lives. Use moving away from the stage. It starts with TV shows. We hear swearing, and it is ok. They created a league on a Sunday. It is ok. I will catch up in the week., but the bible says not to use the Lord's name in vain. You like an ok man. I know where I stand with Jesus. It is ok.
Then the world started to show some nakedness, and we were like, that is ok, I will look away. We missed this week's church, and I do not want to attend. My business needs to run. God will understand. Then we moved into full sex scenes, and we were like ok, I will fast forward to it. Then the world when into full nudity, and we, like ok. Now every week we are away for sport on a Sunday. We stopped even trying to watch anything Christian-related. You do not even bother with devotion. You just tick it in case any of the pastors sees it. Then now, we see children's stories, and we want to freak out, but where were we as Christ's followers when this all happened.? We see the Sunday night movie and do not even bat an eye. We see violence, and we become numb. We become numb and do not notice that we are moving so far from God. We stop attending church physically and online. We start accepting bribes. We start becoming like the world and then ask why God is not close to us. Newlife is because we moved away from HIm.
I will attend church here and there. I will watch a youtube 5 minutes here and there. So what happens is we take the wholesome food of the bible. That was given to us, and we started swapping it with fast food. And we are tricked into thinking that this food is good for us and is healthy, and before we know it, we are spiritually obese, and our Soul is sick. Our lives are in a mess. It feels like we want to throw up, and we are looking for a diet all of a sudden and we move to God. And we start again, and what happens again. Guys, we need to stop this rollercoaster with God.
This has to stop. Jesus said in Revelation you are not hot or cold, and I would instead Spit you out. This is serious stuff. This is not a game. This is eternity. So I want to ask. What are you eating? Wholesome food or always junk food. And do not get me wrong, I do not want you to go into a monastery. No, God still wants you to relax, have fun, to enjoy life. To do your hobbies, to run to cycle to CrossFit to do movies, to do book clubs, to go and braai and do a picnic. To be with friends. But it must never supersede God.
God knows what you need, but you need to start changing what you eat. You need to start cutting out the "sugar" of this world. But I love horror movies that have demons in them. Cut it out. The devil is more intelligent than you are. My music only has one or 2 swearing words in it. Cut it out. I like the beat, and not the lyrics cut them out. I have seen how easily we do not care about a song until there is perspective. Have you noticed? Let me use this example. Kate Perry had a piece in 2014 Called dark horse; it won the MTV best female artist award. It has won the best video MTV Europe awards. It won the best single of the year.
It has a line. She is a beast. She will eat your heart's life, Jefferey Dahmer. Now with the Netflix series, people started to see what the song really means, and the words are now because you saw the context of a person killed by Jefferey Dahmer, a victim. Now the song is not that popular. Go listen to some of the other music. Series we watch Dahmer. The most watched show in the Netflix series accumulated 300 million hours in week 2 of launching alone.
Matthew 6:31-33 (HCSB) So don't worry, saying, 'What will we eat?' or 'What will we drink?' or 'What will we wear?' 32 For the idolaters eagerly seek all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you.
Swap your Netflix diet for Truth tv. Start by putting on your Spotify account to music with swearing to grey out and go a step further and get some Christian music going. You can search, but some good ones are Maverick city, Rockers Skillet, Pop one's Toby mac, Alive city, Rap Lecrae, Tedashii, and NF. To name a few. You can google this. Read Christian authors. Do bible study. Start swinging your diet back, and when you do that, I need to ask this?
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How Often do you eat
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You might be sitting here and saying, Louis. You do not understand. I am just too busy? Instead, our active lifestyle is the greatest thief that steals our hunger for God. Many well-meaning believers have fallen into this trap and replaced time with God with busy Christian lifestyles. This can also include the deceptive and continuous labour of ministry.
Let's ask a simple question: Why do we feed ourselves physically? Your answer will hopefully be: to bring nourishment and strength to our bodies. Can you imagine not eating but continuing your life at full speed? If, as an experiment, we skipped food for a few days but continued the pace of long hours of physical labour and no additional sleep—what would happen? Just think about it for a moment. We'd collapse! You would die, but we do it so quickly spiritually.
Yet how easily we do this spiritually, there is a reason we will tolerate it spiritually but not physically. If we go without food for too long, our stomachs complain, not just once.
They will continue getting louder and scream with more pain as time progresses. Our whole body cries, "I'm hungry. Feed me!" Yet our Spirit does not scream like this. The opposite seems true; the voice of our inner man becomes quieter as time goes on. Yet the reason is that we don't hear it. Our Spirit is weakened, and our flesh becomes more dominant.
You wonder why God is not speaking to you per se anymore. Like you were on fire with God, and now you like indifferent.
We lose our appetite when we don't eat over an extended period of time. If you go without food for longer than five days, the physical scream of hunger quiets. Food loses its attraction and a piece of steak looks about as appealing as eating a shoe. Your appetite is gone and will not return until all your inward reserves are gone and starvation settles in.
We read this in Psalms 105:1-4 (HCSB) Give thanks to Yahweh, call on His name; proclaim His deeds among the peoples.2 Sing to Him, sing praise to Him; tell about all His wonderful works!3 Honor His holy name; let the hearts of those who seek Yahweh rejoice.4 Search for the LORD and for His strength; seek His face always.
Like I said before we cannot only live on Sundays.
Spend time in the world more. Make your quiet time your number 1 priority, and if you do not know how to do that. Join us for the faith series, or let anyone of the pastoral staff know. We would love to help you get this right. Be in church more often. Join a circle, and spend more time in prayer. But start shifting yourself back to God. He has not left, but we can move back to him. We have so much opportunity here alone for you to eat more. Sundays, circles, courses, encounters. But it is going to take commitment from you. God is immovable. You need to move to Him. This brings me to my last point.
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Do not forsake eating together
Application
Do not forsake meeting:
Can I be honest here? Can I really share my heart here? I mean let us look at how we treat gatherings and Sundays as a start. Can I be honest? Can I be real? Do you know how church attendance drops when it is the Sunday pay weekend? Like people somehow decide the mall is more important than gathering. When it rains, or it is cold, we do not meet.
Louis, the power was off, and I could not get ready for church. Can I tell you? We do not care how you look when you come to church. Come as you are, you loved as you are. We care more that you get to spend time in the gathering and take something home that you can apply to your life.
I have people telling me, we are not fed at church anymore.
The same people who said it to me never attended a course and only attended church once in a while. No, I am not talking about those watching online, I am talking that the gathering is taking 2nd or 3rd or 4th place. I have had people asking for counselling advice on topics that were just spoken about in church the last couple of weeks and they did not even know. Circles are deep diving into the Word and praying for each other. Holding each other accountable. We have courses where people are filled in the Spirit. We had Sundays where people were served in the Spirit. We saw people healed in prayer. We had people give thanks to God.
The local church is not feeding me. And I am like, really, really. Can I remind you of James 4:7. Draw near to God. You need to draw near. You need to gather. You need to be at church, the gathering the ekklesia. "not forsaking our meeting together [as believers for worship and instruction], as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more [faithfully] as you see the day [of Christ's return] approaching." Hebrews 10:25 AMP
God saw this coming. He saw that, in the end, days we need to do it all the more. It means as a good step is to actually plan for yourself. But for all the reasons above, WE are forsaking meeting together. We need to start moving in the direction that the Encounter is Tuesday evening. I can get fed again. Let me come. I know I am writing exams on Wednesday but I will plan around it and come. Oh, my circle is happening. Let's make it a priority for a while. Ohh, there is this course. Instead of staying home and bingeing, I and my friends and I come to church to be fed.
Church, what are you? What are you eating? How often do you eat? And maybe it is time for us to start prioritizing the gathering above everything else.
