Text: Philippians 4:6 thru 8
Prayer:
I want to tell everyone this morning how pleased I am with what the Lord has been doing with this church. Does that come as a surprise to anyone? The fact is I see many people here today that are certainly not the same people my wife and I met a year ago. Many of you are really finding the peace of God and the anointing of the Spirit in your life. If I can see these changes I know God can see them as well. God senses His Glory in you!
I say all of that to say that we do have a new problem that seems to be stirring. I want to set the record straight on this.
Just as God is seeing these positive changes taking place, the devil is seeing them also. Satan is not happy with these changes.
He is now trying his best to plant a seed of discouragement in a few of you hoping that it will take hold and get to everyone else.
Well I have decided it’s time to blow the whistle on the devil.
I caught him red handed trying to sew seeds of discouragement.
I am not here to embarrass any of you that have fallen to this lie.
I am here to rebuke the devourer and serve him notice.
I have heard it said by some that nothing has changed, and this church will never change. It may be true there has been a pattern in the past of a cycle of that has plagued this church.
The devil wants to convince some of you that this church will cycle again with all of it’s problems. I refuse to believe that.
I would ask that everyone begin to make it a point to speak positively about what the Lord is doing and stand firm in their faith on this church fulfilling it’s destiny with the Lord.
Simply put, no one should allow themselves to become discouraged with what God is doing. Each and everyone that calls this fellowship their family needs to be very careful with what they are thinking about, what they are worried about, and certainly what they are talking about.
I did come here to scold any of you, but perhaps the greatest problem this church has ever had to face in the last 20 or 30 years is in ignoring what is written in Phil 4:8. The problem we have today is what we have allowed ourselves to think about.
Phil 4:8 is a passage I would suggest us all put on our mirror in our bathrooms, and tape to the phone on the wall. Put it in your car you drive to work. Put Phil 4:8 everywhere until you change the way you are thinking, and what you are saying to others.
Stop looking at the problems. Stop thinking about the problems. Stop talking about the problems. Start being a part of the promises that God has for this church and this family.
We are family.
God has bonded us together as brothers and sisters in Christ.
Listen carefully. Many times people want things to change overnight. I should remind us that we are not trying to build a spiritual Disneyland. None of us are looking for a magic pixey dust to wave over this church and make things change overnight.
That is not the plan God has for us. God’s plan of salvation is instantaneous, but God’s plan of restoration often takes time.
He gives you trials and circumstances that bring Him glory.
This is a series of supernatural events that has a two-fold purpose of restoring you while glorifying God.
Text: Romans 5:1 thru 5
Romans is an interesting and intense book that will either make or break a Christian that is unsure of his/her salvation.
To understand this text in chapter 5, we have to look at what is going on in the four previous chapters:
· Chapter 1 – the world is a mess
· Chapter 2 – you are a mess
· Chapter 3 – everybody else (in the world) is just like you
· Chapter 4 – it’s always been this way (for people w/out God)
The Truth of God’s Word sometimes will give to us the facts of life. This challenges some and offends the others. If it offends you when God reminds you are hopeless without Him, that’s too bad. You need to repent and get over it today.
And if you do repent, then Chapter 5 is the passage that will take you to the next step. It says that we:
1. Are justified by faith
2. Have peace with God
3. Have access to God’s amazing and unmerited grace
4. Are to rejoice in the hope of the glory of God
5. Are to rejoice (also) in our sufferings
I want to share with you only 2 of the 5 listed here.
JUSTIFIED BY FAITH
For some, this is only a concept that is too heavy to understand.
But if you ever grasp this spiritual truth, you will have a huge burden lifted from your life. Being justified by faith means that you are incapable of making yourself good. You will never be able to make yourself good. You might as well give it up.
Stop making yourself feel worse about your faults and sins.
A drug addict, or alcoholic can spend an entire lifetime desiring to be close to God. They will study the Word inside out and still be a drug addict/alcoholic. Nothing ever changes in their life.
Until the day they finally admit they cannot and will not ever do it on their own. Until they admit they are hopeless and lost.
They must confess their hopelessness and desperation.
When they do, they no longer justify their life to anyone. They completely rely on the Lord bringing to them God’s justification.
But listen. This is 100% true for the sin you are struggling with in your life. No, you may not be an alcoholic or drug addict, but you are just as hopeless and desperate as the town drunk.
It doesn’t matter how disciplined you make yourself, it only takes one sin bring the curse to your life, also. One single sin will bring to you the “law of sin and death”. Just one sin.
With your justification, you can easily explain what happened and why you did what you did. It will seem to make sense to you, but justifying your sin will never make sense to anyone, especially the Lord. This is why some people will feel good about themselves one day and not the next. They do not have the justification of God. Their emotions will change from day to day, depending on how well they feel about themselves. I should say, how well they have done in fooling themselves about their sin.
You can be feel good about yourself one day and be discouraged about yourself the next. Some people learn how to patronize and pamper the sin in their life so they can live with it.
How do we stop this from happening?
First admit your hopelessness and desperation.
And then allow the Holy Spirit to miraculously change your behavior. Just remember, this restoration of your behavior will not happen overnight. It will be a gradual series of events that God will bring to your life. Just like we said earlier with what the Lord is doing in this church will happen to your soul.
For example, you may have a problem with gossiping or murmuring that has haunted you all your life.
It has a grip on you as strong alcohol does on the town drunk.
You will have a choice to make. As soon as you sin, the Lord
will immediately speak to your soul with judgment.
You may hear the Holy Spirit simply say, “MURMURING…GOSSIPING”.
You may want to listen to the Lord at that exact moment.
Your reply should be, “Yes Sir Lord! I am wrong. Forgive me.”
Heb 10:14
by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.
You are being made holy with His justification. God has made you holy with that one temptation that you overcame.
God has another way of changing you. It is found in verse 3.
REJOICE IN YOUR SUFFERING
For some this may seem insane, and difficult to understand.
One of the greatest mistakes of Christianity is when we only want to help people who we think are worthy enough for us to help.
Our Golden Rule is, “Do unto others as they do unto us.”
And when we are faced with a difficulty, they will return the favor and bail us out of our suffering. This is not the plan of God. God wants us to actually rejoice in our suffering.
How can this possibly be? Let me tell you how my wife and I saw this spiritual truth demonstrated and proved.
Girls ranch in Georgia working with handicapped children….
I want you to know that sufferings are good for us; because it gives to us the opportunity to demonstrate an unconditional and genuine love for someone else. While you are suffering, you will always find out what you are made of. Your true heart.
Consider the Apostle Paul. II Corinthians says that he had a “thorn in the flesh” that he asked God to remove 3 times.
God didn’t take it from Paul.
Something makes us want to plead Paul’s case with the Lord.
“Come on God, can’t you see this man has a lot of important things to do for you?”
God says, “Yes I do, and that is why Paul has this thorn…”
Paul has pleaded with God to remove this thorn, but God says,
“I have done a lot of things for you Paul, but I am not taking that thorn of suffering out of your life. You might get prideful and arrogant if I took that suffering out of your life.
And then you might think you are somebody.
No it looks like to me that pain is doing exactly what I intended it do for you. You didn’t like it at first, but it sure made you into a great apostle.”
Suddenly, Paul is saying, “I am liking this suffering thing going on in my life. I finally get the chance to prove to everyone that I don’t have to be on the mountain-top to live for God. You were right all along God. I was a nobody Whom a Somebody lives.”
Far too many Christians are still expecting God to take the suffering out of their life and fix all of their problems.
Ideally, we all would like to have a meaningful life working at some place like the Bible Book Store making $100,000/yr. And listening to worship music all day long in the air conditioning.
God is still saying, “No, I want you to learn to glorify me in your sufferings.
2 Corinthians 12:10
That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
This seems so foreign to most Christians. Many Christians do not realize they are overcomers. They see their life as if they are surviving in their faith.
Look at your bulletin for another moment.
