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[00:00:24] Speaker B: Well, good morning. We are in a new series called Fruitful, and I hope you'll follow along with us. If you haven't yet signed up to receive the weekly devotionals, I hope you'll do that. The devotionals are entitled be fruitful. And you can find information in the program, the bulletin you have also, you can find that online and you can track with us each week as we try to really drill down and we talk about what it means to experience and to produce and to see produced in your life the fruit of the Holy Spirit. And really, these are more than just great christian values. The fruit of the Spirit, when you look at it, is actually one, one fruit, but it has like nine different clusters. You might think about it as being one fruit that is produced by the Holy Spirit and the life of a person, but it has nine different flavors. There are different flavors to the fruit of the Spirit. And each one of those we're going to be exploring and we're examining whether or not these flavors, these things produced by the Holy Spirit are evident in our life. And there's a reason why it is called the fruit of the Holy Spirit. It is what God produces in the lives of his people. Now, just to reset everything in your mind and heart, you understand, you receive as an individual the presence of the Holy Spirit, the third member of the Triune Godhead, the moment you receive Jesus as your savior. Now, some people believe that the spirit of God entering into the life of a person is a second work of grace. Like you receive Jesus and then later on you receive the Holy Spirit. And that's really some, and I have friends that differ with me on this, and they're wrong about other things, but I'm fine with that. But the reality of it is you cannot have the presence of God without having the presence of the Holy Spirit. In fact, in romans eight, verse nine, the Bible says if anyone has not the spirit of God, he is none of his. So you don't get the presence of God on installment, you don't get the Jesus now, and you get the Holy Spirit later and you get a relationship with the Father on down the line, you get all of him. Three in one, you get Jesus. Now the problem is he receives, we receive him, he just doesn't receive us. This is where the misunderstanding comes in. The Bible speaks of the fullness of the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit fills the areas of my life that I yield, as I yield to his control, he fills me with his presence. Now, that can produce an emotion, that can produce a feeling. But the reality of it is you do not belong to Jesus if you do not have his holy spirit. And so the whole dynamic of the coming of the Holy Spirit was introduced in acts chapter two. Up until the cross, until salvation was completed with the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, the Holy Spirit could not indwell people because salvation was not yet complete. And so you have acts as a transitional book. It is a transitioning of the Holy Spirit into the lives of God's people. There was a lot of misunderstanding. You read verses like, have you received the Holy Spirit? Since you believe, since you believed. And the idea there was, you understand that now that Jesus has ascended, now that the work of the cross is completed, you have the Holy Spirit. You may not realize that you have his presence in your life. And so it is a transition book, helping us to understand how the Holy Spirit has transitioned into the life and into the heart of his church. And so the moment you receive Jesus Christ, you now have the presence of his spirit living within you. He doesn't enter you and leave from you and rejoin you at another time. You don't go to church and get your worship on, and then you disconnect from God and you're kind of on your own till next weekend or whenever you decide to go back. That's not how it works. He is within you. You are sealed with the spirit, as Ephesians one says. And that seal is good. The Bible says, until the day of redemption, meaning until the day we stand in the presence of God. I'm sealed with the Holy Spirit, and I know he is the seal. So my salvation, sealed with the spirit, is as good, as long as the Holy Spirit is good. And he never changes, he never fails, he cannot lie, and he will not forsake his very own. So once you receive Jesus, drill this down in your mind and heart, you have the presence of the Holy Spirit. And now the spirit of God begins a work in your life and mind of transforming us. He's trying to make us look like who and what we have become. That's a process. If anyone be in Christ sees a new creation, the old is past. The new has come. But that's a lifetime process. That's not an immediate transaction. It's a transformation that takes a lot of time, takes a lot of spirits, of life experiences. Many times in the process, you'll go three steps forward and two steps back.
But God is working in our life of according to romans eight and verse 29. He's working to conform us into the image of his son. He wants to set us back to the original design. We were created in the image of God, the imago day. And we were wrecked and marred by the image, by sin, by the entrance of sin. And once the presence of God comes into our life, there's a process of him trying now to conform us back into the original design, into the image of God, to make us more like him. And so when you read about that, the fruit of the spirit, they're qualities of God. And those qualities of God, he is wanting to produce in your life and in mine. I've told you before about the good news and bad news, about all of this. The good news. Now hear me now. Here's good news. You can have all of God you want. Isn't that great? You can have all of God you want. Here's the bad news. You have all of God you want.
And sometimes God has to put us through a series of trials and tests to make us realize how desperately we need him. And sometimes he has to bring us to the end of ourselves until we understand how we need him more in our life. And so the point of the message and the point of the series on the fruit of the spirit is helping us understand these qualities, these flavors that God is wanting to develop is open and available to everyone who knows Jesus as savior. Now, there's two types of fruit the Bible speaks of that can be developed in the life of God's kids. Now, his children, just as a fruit tree is born to be productive, his kids are designed to be productive. We are to produce. The Bible said we're to produce after our kind, after our type. Apples produce apple trees, oranges produce orange trees. And so God has given us the ability to produce and to reproduce. Now, once you become a Christ follower, there's a beautiful thing that happens. Instead of me reproducing people who don't know God, the Bible says I was born in sin. I now have an ability because of a process called regeneration. Regeneration is a beautiful word. It means to be regened. It means the presence of the holy spirit gives me the ability to be transformed. So the fruit that can be produced from my life, maybe it used to be apples, now can be oranges. God can do something different in and through my life. I don't have to re something that is wayward and away from God. I can reproduce something that knows God and has the ability or the opportunity to receive God. And so it's a beautiful principle when you drill down into it. To think about the presence of the Holy Spirit gives us so much power and so much ability to be more than we started out to be. God is trying to develop us, as I said a moment ago, and move us in the image of his son. Now, the first type of fruit that a person can reproduce is what I would just call the fruit of the believer. It's another believer. You see that in John 15, the Bible speaks of fruit. More fruit, much fruit. I would I give it to you another way. When you share your faith with someone and that someone receives Christ as their savior, that's fruit the Bible describes as abounding to your account, meaning you get credit for that. There's a soul winner's crown the Bible speaks of in heaven. It is a crown that will be given to people who lead other people to Jesus Christ.
You invite a friend to come to church with you that doesn't know Jesus, and they're sitting in a service like this, and they're experiencing what you and I have experienced, and then all of a sudden, they have that epiphany. They have that moment where the spirit of God moves into their heart and says, you need to receive Jesus, and they humble their heart and open their mind, and they receive Jesus as savior. That's fruit abounding to your account. Those are things you and I can do. That's the fruit of the believer. When I give and I invest into the ministry, I share in everything God is doing in that ministry. Fruit abounding to my account. So all of those things are the fruit of the believer. They're things you and I can do to be fruitful in our christian life. But that's not necessarily what we're talking about here. We're not talking about the fruit of the believer. We're talking about the fruit of the Holy Spirit, the fruit of the spirit, meaning this is something that God will produce in my life as a result of me yielding my life to his control. And that's a daily event. It's not a one and done proposition. Once you are daily yielding to the spirit's control, as I yield, he fills. Ephesians 518, don't be drunk with wine, wherein is excess but instead be filled with the Holy Spirit. And literally in the Greek, it's be you being filled. It is a continual process. A person gets drunk by drinking. A person stays drunk by keeping drinking, they tell me. And so the point I'm making is he does the analogy between getting drunk and the filling of the Holy Spirit in the same way as you immerse yourself in the presence of God, as you yield to his control, as you consume the spirit of God in your daily life by acquiescing and acknowledging his presence and beginning your day in his word and studying and partnering with him throughout the day, then the spirit of God has the ability to fill those areas of my life that I'm now yielding to his awareness and to his control. And the result is what we're talking about in this series, the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Now, the Bible says we're not to judge. Probably one of the most quoted verses is Matthew seven, where it says, judge not, lest that you also be judged for whatever judgment you measure out, that will be the judgment that comes back. So we all know as Christians, we're not to judge. People will be judged. But God is the judge. He's the only one qualified. He's the only one that has all the evidence and all the information. So one day there is a judgment, but God is the judge. We're not the judge. However, even though we're not to be a judge. Are you ready for this? We can be a fruit inspector.
There's a difference. There's a difference between being judgmental and being discerning. Judgmental is wrong. Discerning is wise. Discerning means that I can detect or discern if there's any fruit in this person's life. Listen to me now. This is not judgmental. This is discerning. I wouldn't be in a relationship. I wouldn't be in a business partnership, wouldn't be in a church fellowship that I couldn't discern the fruit of the Holy Spirit. If there's no love, joy, peace, and all the other aspects we're going to be covering, run.
You don't need to be a part of something. You should be able not judge. But being discerning, you should be able to see some of the flavors of the fruit of the spirit in someone's life. It's not a hard thing to do once you get to know them. You get to know them a little better. You say, you know, that's a very loving person. I sense that about them. They, as Mary talked about last week, they know how to love as Christ loves. They've received something. And by the way, you cannot give what you do not have any more than you can come from where you've not been. So once you have received the love of God, you can give that love. And so you ought to ask yourself, is this a loving person? This morning I'm going to talk about joy. Is this a joyful person? I'm going to talk about what that looks like. Does this person demonstrate any elements of joy? Next week we'll talk about peace. Is this a peaceable person? Are they always fighting and quarreling, and are they always a very.
What's the word I'm looking for? They're just constantly angry at the world. Is that the type of personality they are? I'm just saying not to be judging, but to discerning and try to see if you can detect any elements of the fruit of the spirit that's being wise, and that's what we are called upon to do. So in Galatians five, let's look at the text again this morning. Galatians five, look at the two verses the Bible says but. And the reason it begins there with but is prior to that, he talks about the works of the flesh. If when you get home later, before you go to bed tonight, read all of Galatians five. There's a lot in there. But about verse 19, down to about verse 21, he talks about the works of the flesh. He says, the works of the flesh are manifest. And he lists off several things that are very obvious by someone who's operating in the works of their own flesh.
And so he's now drawing a distinction, if you will, between the works of the flesh, that which is naturally produced in my life. It's the smorgasbord of sin. It's the cafeteria of corruption. It's that thing where you can walk through and say, I think I have a little bit of that. I'll do a little bit of the other thing. It's the works of the flesh. But he distinguishes now the works of the Holy Spirit. And he said, this is the fruit of the spirit in contradistinction to the works of the flesh. And here they are. It's love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control, and notice. Against such, there is no law. There's never been a law passed to prohibit you or I from the fruit of the Holy Spirit. No law has been passed. Now, there's a lot of laws passed against the works of the flesh, stealing and taking advantage of your neighbor and doing terrible things to other people. Those are the works of the flesh. Now, we have a lot of laws that have been passed to prohibit the work of the flesh, but he's saying there's no law necessary to protect us against the fruit of the spirit. Can you imagine a law that says you're way too loving, you need to quit that. You're way too forgiving. You're too gentle with that person. You need to be meaner, you're too peaceable. You need to be angrier.
You're not. You're too joyful. You always have joy. Why can't you be bitter like me? Right? There's no law that has been passed. Paul was saying to go against the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Who would pass a law against such things? These are wonderful things that we would aspire to. Beautiful qualities about a person's life. Again, it's one cluster is one fruit with nine different clusters or nine different flavors. And the second one is this thing called Joy. Now, once you attain joy, once joy is prevalent and present in your life, the challenge is, now you ready? Maintain that joy once God is giving you joy. And I'm going to talk about what that looks like. But once you have the joy of the Holy Spirit that is functioning in your life, the challenge for us each day, how do I maintain that joy? How do I maintain the joy that I've attained through my relationship and my fellowship with my lord? Well, let me tell you the best illustration and the best person I could find in scripture to illustrate this is the apostle Paul. If you want to read a great little four chapter book in the Bible that focuses on joy and rejoicing, it's the book of Philippians. Such an incredible book. In fact, some people have, have named the book Jailhouse Joy. And it's the idea that the apostle Paul is experiencing enormous joy under the worst of circumstances. Now, here's the distinction that you need to understand.
There is a difference between joy and happiness. Happiness, you can be unhappy and be joyful.
Conversely, you can be happy and not have joy. They're two. They're similar, but they're two different things. Happiness. The idea of the word actually comes from an old english word that we don't use anymore. The word is hap. Hap, h a p, happenstance. We don't use that word. We use this word. Now, circumstance, it means the same thing, so happenstance. And in fact, if you have a King James Version of the Bible, if you go to the Book of Ruth, that beautiful book of Ruth and Boaz, you will find that the word hap is found there. When the Bible says that Ruth came upon the field that was owned by Boaz, it says it was her hap. It was her hap. It was a wonderful circumstance that led her to the field that was owned by Boaz. They would fall in love and marry. He would change her life, she would change his life. It's one of the beautiful love stories of the Bible. But I'm saying that Old Testament word hap was used there. It happenstance, meaning that if your hap is good, you're happy.
Another way of putting it, if your circumstances are good, you're happy. Bills are paid, spouse is happy, you're happy. Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. Kids are getting along, you're happy. Job's going good, sales are up, happy money in bank, happy cards full of fuel, happy. Groceries in the happy, happy, happy. Right? Happy is happenstance, happy is circumstance. What I'm talking about is something different from circumstances. Because if the only time you experience real, true happiness is tied to your habit, to your circumstance, then there's going to be a lot of circumstances in life where you're going to be miserable. There are a lot of experiences in life that will not make you happy. So how do we maintain joy? Joy is that deep sense of satisfaction and peace that we find in God. It's that assurance that we have deep down in our heart that regardless of what we're going through, we know it's going to be okay. We're going to better days. I shouldn't be content, but I am. I shouldn't be full of joy, but I am. It is hard to explain. It has to be experienced. That's why the Bible said, it is the work of the Holy Spirit. Only the Holy Spirit can make us joyful. And that's why under the worst of circumstances, remember, Paul was chained between two roman guards. He was being guarded 24 hours a day. He was allowed to write and to communicate to the church at Philippi. And what he was saying to them is, rejoice, be happy. Now, you would think in reading Philippians, he's riding from a condo on Maui. You would think he's in the Caribbean somewhere. He is chilling. He is feeling no pain. Now, believe me, that'll make you happy if you have those experiences, but it's not necessarily make you joyful. And Paul was saying, look, I'm not happy, but I'm full of joy. And I want you to be full of joy. And he was joyful under the worst of circumstances. And can I tell you, that is something God can produce in your life and mine. No matter how dark or dismal or difficult things can get, you can experience a joy. The Bible says it's unspeakable and full of glory. How many joyful people do you know? I know some joyful people we have in our church. I'm talking to many joyful people. I know your story. I know a lot of the experiences you've gone through in life are unhappy experiences, and yet you're a joyful person. People around you would describe you as being an individual that experiences joy. I can tell you about someone that was here on our stage just a moment ago who is a joyful person. Of all the joyful people up here, I think about Aidan, who plays bass right back here. Aidan is one of the most joyful guys I know. Aidan has an unusual career, if you're not familiar with it. He was Miranda Lambert's band leader and toured with her for many years. This guy has played on every major musical stage you could step on in the world. He's played there. Gmas, cmas, Ama's. He's been on all the late night shows. I mean, Aidan has an incredibly remarkable career. What you may not know about Aidan is he's gone through a lot of heartache in his life. The most recent thing he walked through was the loss of his 23 year old daughter just a few days ago.
And when he reached out to Billy and shared that news with us, billy said, well, man, we'll get you a sub. We'll have somebody that will fill in for you. Don't worry about it. He goes, no, I need to be at church. I need to play. I need to be there. I need to be around the people who are worshiping. I need to be there. I need to be around my bandmates. This is my therapy. This is where I need to be. And you wouldn't know that if you didn't know him. But when you know Aidan and you know some of the valleys that he's walked through, and you see a guy who is so full of joy, you know, that's the product of God in his life. And I'm saying, you know, of people in similar circumstances, that when you peel the layers of their life away and you see beneath the surface of their experience and you find out they have every reason in the world to be bitter. And I've told you before, back to what I said a moment ago, I'm not judgmental at people. I run into some bitter people I know, some who started sweet and ended bitter.
But when I understand their story in my flesh, I can't blame them when I know what they've walked through and they know what I know, what they've dealt with. So I don't judge them. I just realized that they hit that fork in the road of difficulty, of death, of all that negativity, and they just turned away from God instead of turning toward him. And now they're dealing with the fruit of that decision, and it's created some bitterness. But I'm saying, when you hit the fork in the road and instead of being driven away from God, you let it draw you to God. He can bring out of that hurt and out of that pain. It's not that you forget it. It's not that it ever goes away. It's probably going to be there. Trust me from personal experience, there's a pain that we go through that's probably going to be there till we're in heaven one day and you kind of get comfortable with it.
If I can give you another analogy. You learn how to play hurt. You ever played hurt?
Where your mind and body doesn't want to do something, but your duty tells you you need to do. You need to just cowboy up and do the thing you've been called to do, and God will give you grace and strength to do it, so you do it anyway. If all I ever did were things based on how I feel, there's not a lot in my life that I would do, because I don't always feel like doing it. Do you?
Can you honestly say, I feel like doing everything I'm called upon to do? I feel like jumping up in the morning and going to work. Some of you are like, oh, not me, right? You don't wake up all the time and say, good morning, lord. You wake up and say, good lord this morning.
All I'm saying is God made us emotional, but you can't base what you do on your emotion.
Probably our emotions are the shallowest part of who we are.
Martin Luther said, feelings come and feelings go, and feelings are deceiving. My warrant is the word of God. Nothing else is worth believing.
It's doubtful that God will do his deepest work in the shallowest part of my life. My emotions are all over the page.
You can be up and down and happy and sad and good and bad. Those emotions you can experience within an hour.
You can get in your car and leave here in a little while, feeling pretty good that you went to church. You worship. You received communion, heard a message, and leave here, and somebody cuts you off and boom, now you're a different person emotionally, right? Because that's how we are emotionally. But I'm not talking about an emotional decision. I'm talking about something that you consciously say, I choose to trust you. And the payoff of choosing to trust the Lord is he can bring about joy out of the darkest and most difficult of circumstances.
So how did Paul do it? I want to give you very quickly the outline for my note takers and the rest of you that want to hear this. Let me share this with you in just a few minutes. So we're together. Here's how Paul maintained the joy. It's all there in Philippians number one. Paul had a perspective to live from. A perspective to live. If you are going to maintain the joy that God is giving you, you've got to change how you see things.
Your perspective is how you see things. Philippians 112. I want you to know, brothers, that the things that happened to me. Listen. Have fallen out for the furtherance of the gospel. He said I had to learn to let some things go.
Man, that's hard to do, isn't it, by the way, sometimes it's not things you have to let go of. Sometimes it's people you have to let go of.
It's not that you don't love them, and it's not that you don't pray for them.
But you get to a point with people when you realize this relationship is toxic. There's nothing I can do to change this person. You have to bring it to yourself to finally release them and to say, I'm going to pray for them. I'm going to trust God to deal with them. I cannot save them. I cannot fix them.
Paul said I had to learn to get to that point. I had to change my perspective. I had to change my outlook. I had to let some things go.
Did you know the idea of forgiving is release.
One of the ideas of forgiveness is release. Let it go.
When you forgive someone or you forgive something, you're releasing them.
You know why we don't? Why? We hold on to it because we feel like they're getting away with something.
And you almost feel like as long as I can hold on to that or hold on to them, I can make absolutely certain that they're going to pay for the pain they've caused me and isn't long, as I've said before, if you grip your fist and you squeeze it as tight as you can, it isn't long until your arm will hurt, your shoulder will hurt, your whole body will hurt. And so you have to learn to release them.
God said, vengeance is mine, I'll repay. God said, I keep good records. Turn them over to me.
Let me handle it.
Paul said, look, Alexander the coppersmith, I want you to know, God, who it was. It's Alexander. Not just Alexander the Coppersmith did me much evil. And then he said, may the Lord give him what's coming to him. Isn't that a sweet prayer?
God? I don't wish anything bad on him. Just let him have what's coming to him. That's good. I'll be good with that. But why did Paul pray? He had to get it out of his system. You know what you do when you pray? You're getting it out of you.
You're putting it on him.
You're learning to let things go. You're learning to let people go. And I'm saying one of the ways he maintained the joy that he had in his life is he had the right perspective. He knew how to let some things go. Number two, he had the right priority to live by.
Philippians 118. He said, the priority of my life is that Christ is preached first and foremost. I'm to be a witness. I'm to share my faith. That's the primary reason God has left me on this earth. That's why the minute I received Jesus, he didn't take me to heaven all the way right then. Because he said in acts one eight, you will be my witnesses. Now, what does a witness do? He didn't say, you're to be my attorneys. I love attorneys. Thank God for them. One of my best friend's attorney. But he didn't call us to be attorneys. You know what an attorney does? Attorney argues their case.
You're not to be an attorney. You're not to go to your unchurched or unsaved friends and try to argue them into a relationship with Jesus. Here's why. If you win the argument, you lose the person.
We're not called to be attorneys and argue our case. Listen, we're called to be a witness. What does a witness do? If you're called to court to be a witness, why are you there? You're there to share an experience.
This is what I know. This is what I saw. This is what I can absolute testify. Hand on the Bible, arm extended. I can say, God, this is what I know to be true. I'm a witness. A witness is just testifies to an experience. We're to be witnesses. We're just to go to our friends and say, I don't know how this is going to work for you. Let me tell you how it worked for me. I was struggling, went through the loss of this person. I struggled. I was angry. I was hurt. I was bitter. I wanted to lash out. I wanted to quit. I wanted to crawl in the hole and die. But finally I found the strength, through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, to walk out of that dark place. And day by day, I found that strength. And day by day, God has given me joy. And it worked for me. Maybe that would work for you.
That's a witness. That's it. Paul said, that's the primary priority of my life, is I want to share my faith with people who do not know Jesus. And can I tell you, that ought to be the heartbeat of a church. At the forefront of every listen, at the forefront of everything we do should be to tell people about Jesus.
Sometimes we argue about things in churches, don't we? How many knotholes were in Noah's Ark?
Did Adam have a belly button? You know, those deep, profound things.
And we divide and we split and we fuss and we fight. Remember I told you how denominations were formed? Jesus healed three blind men three different ways. One blind man, he came along and just touched his eyes and said, be healed. And the blind man could see.
The other blind man, he said, take that mud and put that mud in your eye and go down there and wash it and you'll be able to see. He healed the blind man. The other man, he picked up a little dirt in the ground, he spit in it and made a little pack, put it in his eyes and go wash your eye. And you see. Three men healed of blindness, listened three different ways. Can you imagine those guys getting to a testimony service later on? And the pastor gets up and says, if you've been healed by God and you've experienced God, tell me how that happened to you. And the first guy says, well, let me tell you, when God begins to do it, he will touch your eye. That's how God touches you. That's how he does it. Second guy stands up and says, oh, no, not according to my experience. When God wants to do something, he'll put mud in your eye. That's how God does it. That's how he did it for me. Third guy said, both you guys are crazy. When God wants to do something, he'll spit your eye. He spit my eye. That's how he did it. And out of that meeting, there was disagreement and three great denominations were formed. There was the touchites, the mudites, and the spitites.
The reality of it is God can do whatever he wants to do. He's God. Right. And the priority that a church ought to have, regardless of whether we agree to disagree on other issues, the priority we ought to have is get people to Jesus. That's the most important thing. Every one of us in this room knows someone who needs Jesus. And it gets you to a different point. You know, when you bring somebody to church with you and you set them next to you and somebody you know in that church, they don't have really a background in church. Our whole design of our church from day one has not really been to reach church people, though we have a lot of church people, and you got to have church people to reach unchurched people. But our drive and thrust has been evangelism. And then once we reach them, we want to teach them. There's discipleship, and we do a good job at that. But evangelism reaching people, we don't get. It's not just swapping sheep, sending some over there, and they say a little while in another fire truck, and they chase that one. They're over there and they're over.
And I know God moves people around, but I'm saying that's not been our model, not to build off of other people's churches. Our model has always been to reach people who are lost, people who do not know Jesus. And every one of us knows somebody like that. Can you imagine the dynamic of our church, how that would change if every one of us began to pray, God, lay somebody on my heart who needs Jesus. You know what it'll do if you set somebody next to you in a service, that it'll change the way you experience a service.
Trust me. All of a sudden now you're not experiencing a service necessarily for what you get out of it, though we hope you get something from it. Now you're seeing it through their eyes. Now you're sitting there saying, God, speak to their heart. Use that. Oh, that's a great song there. Listen to the words of that. Maybe that'll minister them. And Bill, one of those other teachers got, God, help him not say anything stupid. Help him to say something that will reach their heart. And all of a sudden you're experiencing it differently because you really want them to connect with the message. I'm saying it changes the whole dynamic of the church, and I'm going to be talking more of that, particularly as we go into the fall. We're going to be talking more about reorienting our church toward real evangelism. It's the priority of Paul's life. Paul said, man, the most important. The most important thing to me is get people to Jesus. How do you maintain the joy? You got to change your perspective. You got to change your priority. Number two, you need a power to three of them.
I wasn't good at math, but I found out five out of four people aren't either. So. So number three, you got that on the way home. Number three, you need a power to live on. A power to live on. Philippians 119 20. Paul talks about the power of God at work in his life, the dynamic of God's power. You need a power to listen. If you don't have within you that which is above you, you eventually succumb to what is around you and you will fall into what is beneath you. You and I cannot live without the power of God at work in our life. There was an old hymn that said, I need thee every hour, most gracious lord, really, when you think about it, we need him more than every hour. We need him every moment of every day. We need him to help us each and every day. So Paul found the power that he needed to live on. Here's the last thought. Number four, he found a purpose to live for. A purpose to live for. What was Paul's purpose for? To me, to live is Christ. And then at the end of it all, to die is gain. What did he do? He understood. He was a man on a mission. He was a man with a purpose. God had a will for his life. He had a plan for his life. He was okay with that. And I'm saying, folks, if you receive this joy, if you want to maintain this joy, here are four things necessary for that to happen. Let's pray together.
Father, thank you for your word. You've told us in Isaiah that your word, when your word is declared, it never returns empty, it never returns void. And I pray your word will penetrate our minds and hearts. For our friends watching online, I pray, Father, that you will speak to them. For others that will hear this message through a podcast or one of the other media platforms, I pray you will speak to them wherever they are. And for those of us in this room, in this moment, Father, I pray that we will have heard something in this service that will help us put some dots together and help us, Lord, to get a better plan and help us to deepen our resolve and our trust in you. And finally, Lord, I pray for anyone who may never have trusted you as savior, that this might be that moment where they just swallow their pride and humble their heart. And they pray a simple prayer like this and say, Lord Jesus, with everything I know about me, I now trust all that I know about you. Come into my heart, forgive my sin, be a reality in my life. And Father, I will praise you, for I ask this in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:35:51] Speaker A: Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you have any questions or prayer requests, please contact us by visiting metchurch.com so that we can follow up with you this week. We look forward to seeing you next week.
