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.
You know the ones that I am talking about.
Those crazy people. Right?
Have you ever really looked back at some of your Facebook post?
I’m not talking about the Friend averseries.
I am talking about the ones when you just got off work and you were tired
And had to fight the traffic all the way to the grocery store
And you stood in the 20 item express line behind the lady who had her shopping cart just running over?
Or you go through the drive through window and when you get home you have the wrong order.
we read through your posts
We even post pictures of it of our frustrations and hashtag#can you believe these crazy people?
It’s like… what in the world are we doing…
and I’m not judging…
I do the same exact thing…
But once again… we are consumed… with ourselves…
And as human beings… our default…
Like what we naturally do…. if we’re not very intentional…
is to live a life… based on selfishness…
a life that is centered… and is self-focused…
on our self.
And this doesn’t mean that we’re horrible jerks or anything…
Or that we’re terrible people…
It just means… that we live… for #1…
We live for our self…
Living how we wanna live…
Putting our self at the center… of everything….
instead of looking to God.
**And honestly… this wouldn’t be that a big deal…
And it wouldn’t matter all that much…
Except Paul tells us…
that living this way…
is not very pleasing to God.
There are several complex reasons why Philippians 2:13
is actually less about an individual relationship with God
and more about unity and working together with others within the church.
Without going into a lot of detail, here, Paul uses all plurals in the original Greek.
So Paul is talking about owning your relationship with God
in the context of being in the body of Christ or belonging to the church.
“…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
When it comes to relationships, how are you doing?
When it comes to your relationship with God how are you doing?
It is God who is at work in you.
God is drawing you to truth and light.
It is God through the Holy Spirit who convicts us of having sinned against Him.
John Wesley in his sermon “On Working Out Our Own Salvation”
said, in the same manner that Christians serve their masters on earth,
let other Christians labor to serve their Master who is in heaven.
So, the question is,
if your church records, were given to your earthly boss?
Would you still have a job?
Wesley goes on to make the point: Do you labor to serve your heavenly Master
With the same diligence, speed, punctuality and exactness as you would an earthly master?
All of this is done within the context of the church.
We are made for community. We need one another.
The friendships in the first century Church
were so focused on forming spiritual bonds within the life of the church they coined a word for it.
They called it koinonia
– the fellowship of kindred minds working together, sharing the loads of life while reaching out to others.
Church must never be about me doing my own thing but us doing God’s thing.
Earlier… when I asked…
have you ever just felt like… you’re barely surviving?
Or have you ever felt like you were the only one worshipping?
Ever just felt… like you’re carrying…
the weight of the world on your shoulders…
Ever just felt nothing really satisfies you…
And have you ever just felt… like you’re spiritually dead…
inside of here?
I know for myself…
it’s like… ummm… yes… I have.
And maybe for you… you’d just say…
Well... that’s pretty much… the story of my life.
I mean… broken… empty… miserable…
Never satisfied… That’s me.
And all of this…. can look so many different ways in our life…
And for some of us… it’s quite obvious... that we’re living for ourselves…
At another place in the Bible…
Paul tells us… that the result of living for ourselves…
Are things like doing whatever feels good…
and hate shows up in our lives…
and we struggle with losing our temper…
and jealousy… and conflict…
And if that’s us… I just wanna ask…
Like… how is that working out for you?
Is that going well for you?
It doesn’t mean that we’re doing…
anything… inherently bad….
It just means… that we’re consumed with our selves.
And we’re consumed with our own agenda…
And we’re trying to control… every little aspect of our life…
And we’re secretly hoping to get our way…
or to get noticed…
all the while… nothing ever seems to be enough.
**And what it all boils down to…
and listen to this…
What it all boils down to…
is that we were just never… ever meant to live a life…
that was based… and focused on our selves.
Because when we’re the center… of everything…
It means… we do have to be in control…
No wonder why… we’re anxious.
Because we have to be in control…
and we’re terrible at being in control.
And honestly… we don’t have much control…
over things… to start with…
And when we’re at the center…
Our worth… and our identity… and happiness…
is based off of us…
and how we feel… about ourselves…
that specific moment…
which only changes… about 6 thousand times
every single day…
And when we’re at the center…
we live… and we do what we think is right…
and we do what we think will make us happy…
when the truth is…
we don’t have a clue…
and when we live this way…
it’s like watching a bad car accident…
We go from one thing… to the next… and the next…
And we might find joy… for a moment…
And it’s maybe awesome… for awhile…
And we’re maybe satisfied... for a few minutes.
Only to find myself…
empty and unsatisfied… once again.
And when we’re at the center…
We’re trying to do things out of our own strength…
And out our own love…
And our own self-control…
And it’s no wonder… why most days…
It just feels… like we’re barely hanging on…
And we’re close to going… completely crazy…
multiple times a day…
**Again… when we live a life based on ourselves…
we focus on ourselves…
and Paul tells us…instead “God is working in you, giving you the desire to obey him and the power to do what pleases him.”
This is the better option.
Talking about your life pleasing God.
And what does it take to make that possible…
what is keeping us…
from putting God…
from putting Jesus…
at the center of our lives?
And just to be clear… it might be one big thing that’s holding us back…
But it also might be a lot of little things holding us back.
something different each day... that does.
Maybe we’re following Jesus… maybe we’re not…
Maybe there’s a lot of things keeping us following God…
Maybe there isn’t…
Today… I just pray that we’d ask…
and that we’d put God at the center of our lives.
I pray… that we’d just get sick… of trying to survive through life…
I pray… that we’d just be tired…
of spiritually dying… any longer
And today… we’d just ask Jesus…
To be the center…
To be the focus…
And how do we do so?
Just making it known….
Just declaring it…
Just showing up…
Just being present and accounted for…
Jesus today… would you be the center of my life.
God… I’m sorry that I’ve put other things…at the center of my life.
But Lord, today… I’m tired of just trying to survive…
I’m tired of trying to control my life...
I’m tired of running…
And trying to find wholeness…
Only to become more broken.
Jesus today… I want to base my life on you…
I want to be focused and consumed with you…
and things connected with you.
Starting today… Father… instead of walking away from a relationship with you
I am choosing to walk towards a relationship with you.
I want to find life in you.
