Introduction

Friends, welcome back to the best place you could be today: church! I’m thankful you decided to join us whether it be in person or online. God has something for you today, there’s no doubt about it. Maybe you already know this, but we are right in the middle of a series we started a few weeks ago called “Live Ready.” We’ve talked about a number of different things so far, but ultimately, we are seeking in this series to learn how to respond well to suffering, pain, turmoil, and trouble that will indeed come our way this year. We are unpacking these biblical principles in this series from an eternal perspective, knowing that Jesus will one day soon return to this very earth, and we must be ready!

Today, we are going to focus on practical responses to things we both personally witness and see/hear about in the world around us in the lives of others. We all have so many inputs in our lives, and sometimes the amount of information coming in can be overwhelming. Not to mention, much of the information is negative or alarming. What are we supposed to do with it, how should we handle it, and how can we respond in righteousness to a weak and weary world around us?

We live in a fallen world, where we will experience trouble. We’ve got to be ready to respond in righteousness.

Main Teaching

Maybe you see someone steal a woman’s purse and you say to yourself, “that’s wrong, but what will people think of me if I start chasing a guy on the street?” Or instead, maybe everyone at work or in school is participating in that one thing you know is wrong, but you wonder what it would feel like to be viewed as the black sheep. Today, I want to share with you from Scripture how we can ready ourselves in advance so that we may respond well to life’s circumstances with deep faith and strong convictions.

The place that Paul is encouraging us to start in this discussion is to be on our guard. But how do we do this? Being on our guard, as Paul says, means that we become extremely aware of that which we are allowing into our life. Because truly, whatever we allow into our lives will come out of our lives. We talked about this concept last week as well, and again, this passage from Solomon really hits the nail on the head…

As we talked about last week, our hearts are very important ... View this full sermon with PRO Premium