Discipleship Lesson 6 – The Spirit Of God Getting Full, Staying Full, & Living Full Of God’s Spirit

Transcript

Let’s open our Bibles to the book of Ephesians chapter five and migrate to verses 18 and 19 which are part of the text you’ll see there. And I want you to think about sitting, in fact, I was during that last song as we were singing about the Holy Spirit coming on us, I was thinking about what would be a good visual of discipleship. And I was thinking of what I picture in my mind is sitting in the midst of the blur of a Panera or of a Water Street or Starbucks or wherever Biggby, don’t want to be discriminatory and leave anybody out, or McDonald’s coffee. I mean, it doesn’t matter where you dispense vitamin C, but just get the vitamin C and sitting there at a table with the Scriptures and intently one on one-on-one discussing. So that’s really my intent for these weeks, is to transport all of you. And I would like you to sit there and think as if it was just you here this morning and we were talking about these truths. Okay?

And so, I would ask you to open to Ephesians 5. And I would say this. I would say, in this discipleship lesson, and a disciple is a learner someone that doesn’t, it’s not a student teacher relationship because students just learn facts in a discipling relationship. They become like the one that’s training them. So that’s one of the hesitations people have in discipleship because they don’t want anybody to become like them because their life’s out of control. So, I don’t want anybody else to be out of control, we’re not talking about that. Paul said, follow me in the ways that I’m following Christ, right? Be followers together with me, even as I am of Christ. So, what we communicate in discipleship is how we are following Christ. He is the teacher, we’re the conduit. So, discipleship is not about me becoming a paragon. Of Christian virtue, although he wants that, the Lord does. It’s about me showing someone how to follow the Lord, like I have learned to follow the Lord and so it’s so much about us having a personal life.

So, I’d say we’re having discipleship lesson, and this might be the most life impacting, the most transformational, and the most vital of any lesson that we could have. That’s in Ephesians 5:18 where you are in your Bibles because Ephesians 5:18 is all about getting full of the Holy Spirit. So that’s the Ephesians five part right here in our text this morning. So, God has ordained that the work of Christ be done in the world. And by the way, this is everything I’m talking about this morning is supra-cultural. What I’m talking about this morning works in Moscot, Noman. It works in Guinea and Beau or however you pronounce that. And it works in the heart of Mexico City and it works in the high plateau of Tibet. It is supra-cultural. This is God in his plan and it transcends all generations of time. This is what He’s always wanted, okay? From the birth of the Church on He’s wanted us to get full of His Spirit.

Now, remember in John 15, Jesus already told us why. He says, because apart from Me, you can’t do anything. Everything you do amounts to nothing. And there are many people that do the work of Christ in their own energy, and they’re frustrated and they’re burned out, and they’re angry, and they’re troubled because nobody recognizes them, and they’re ready to quit almost every week. That’s the evidence of doing work apart from Christ. It’s like your chariot wheels come off. He’s resistant because He says, I am sending My Spirit as the Comforter, and if you’ll allow and invite and welcome Him and get full of My Spirit, you will do unbelievable, incredible, inexplicable things. Did you know that’s how you know it’s the Holy Spirit because you can’t figure out how on Earth did they accomplish that? They didn’t. See that’s what fullness of the Spirit is.

Then staying full of the Holy Spirit, we will not be able to talk about this morning. That’s this chapter, Ephesians four, the staying full. What we’re going to look at that is the signs of emptiness and we’ll see that after the Lord willing after the missions conference, what are the signs? They’re having a flat tire spiritually. This summer, Bonnie and I had a real bout of that. I had the first tire I’ve had to change in 30 years. This summer I was on my way to speak a Word of Life going up I-80 something in New Hampshire, Vermont. I was on the side of about a 22% incline and barely going up. When all of a sudden it was so clear we knew exactly what was wrong. We had a blowout and a flat tire on an interstate in holiday traffic. Of course, we call AAA. I’ve been a member since the seventies I believe, and do you know what AAA said it will be four to six hours minimum. They said, this is a holiday weekend, and they said, our trucks, I think we were in Vermont or New Hampshire. They said, our trucks are all the way to Maine. There’s so many people are having breakdowns. They said, four to six hours. I went, oh. I said, honey, can you open the glove compartment? I said, there’s a manual about how to overcome emptiness of the tire.

And I said, I haven’t really studied emptiness reduction of tires in a long time and Bonnie got it out and I mean, have you ever read what’s in your manual? It’s just like in the Bible. It’s amazing. And by the way, we immediately went to Costco. We are members in Vermont or somewhere and got our new tires because I wanted to stay full. And by the way, I crawled under the car and I was laying on an ant hill and I did not know it. And here I am just dutifully getting that spare tire that came with the car seven years ago underneath there and I was working on it and getting it out, and I kept feeling stuff, and by the time I got the tire changed, you should have seen, I look like a kid in church, that can’t sit still.

But how do we stay full? And then what we’re going to finish with this morning is this. Galatians five is how do you know you’re living full of God’s Spirit? Did you know this morning at elder prayer? One of the elders prayed a magnificent offering to the Lord? You know what he said? He said, Lord, deliver Calvary from thinking that just knowing the truth is equivalent to doing it. Because our heritage is for decades, for scores of years, this church has had unbelievably trained and studied and supported Bible teachers, and the knowledge is so thick here that it’s unbelievable. Knowing something isn’t the same as doing it. And what the Scriptures say is there is evidence of whether or not at work, at home, at school, in your neighborhood, in the hospital, when you’re in the ER, whether or not we are living full of God’s Spirit, there are nine indicators that are visible and other people can see them.

Have you ever watched someone, you go, whoa, you take a step back, they look like they’re ready to blow up? That is an indicator of not being full of the Holy Spirit. You see, the Spirit of God wants us to get full. We need to know what makes us have flat tires because He wants us living full of His Spirit. And that is why the first century Church permeated all of the Roman world in one generation, not because they all went off to school and learned, some techniques. They were discipled and nurtured in the power of the Holy Spirit, and they learned that God commanded them and their chief occupation every day was to make sure they were full.

I live in a house of drivers and I buy the gas for a lot of the cars. And I know whether they’re full or not because it costs so much money, and I track all that and say you’re driving too much and all that. But you know what, if you’re interested in your car, you know whether it has gas or not. If you’re interested in your cell phone, you know whether it’s full. You don’t want it to die on you. The chief pursuit that they were trained as getting full, avoiding anything that emptied, that punctured, that destroyed, that gave them a blowout, and then going through life, living full of God’s Spirit.

So, look at what it says in Ephesians five. As we open to 5:18, we’re learning what it means to get full, stay full, and live full of God’s Spirit. And now this might be the most vital topic in the Bible for any born-again believer after they’re saved. Because this is the essence of how to live the way God designed us. And sometimes when we study a topic, this massive, like the Holy Spirit in our lives. And look what it says in verse 18, do not be drunk with wine. I mean, they were living in the Baccian culture of Dionysus and all that in the Roman world where people just lived, and just were constantly looking forward to the kind of like, thank God it’s Friday attitude that they were just drinking and drunkenness was rampant in the ancient world. He says, don’t be drunk with wine. That’s a command in which is dissipation. He said the whole drinking way of the world that you were saved from is dissipation contrast but similar command be filled with the Spirit.

By the way, if you look up from your Bibles, did you know the whole book of Acts is the Acts of the Holy Spirit? A lot of Bibles titled at the Acts of the Apostles. Those apostles couldn’t have done anything in that book if it wasn’t for the Holy Spirit. That’s what the whole book is about. It’s kind of what our missions conference is about this year. An extraordinary God using ordinary people and just bursting. Have you looked at all those pictures? They’re all over the missions conference, posters with the clay pot, with the power just emanating from it. That is a picture, what the book of Acts is.

The book of Acts were a bunch of ordinary people, some of them subordinary, almost losers, that the Spirit of God so filled that their lives began to radiate His power.

In fact, when I reread the book of Acts and here’s my conclusion you want to know this week I reread the book of Acts, and do you know what my first human response was to reading all of that? Unbelievable, incredible, but almost, in 21st century terms, unattainable. What do I mean by that? Well, let me just give you three stories out of the book of Acts, okay?

You all know these. Peter from Pentecost on Paul saved in chapter nine, the Apostle John. We find him, in chapter four, and then he goes all the way to the end to Revelation. Let me just talk to you about the ordinary people and the incredible, extraordinary, unbelievable lives, and each one of these. Chapter five, verse 18 is the only difference between them and us. They were ordinary people that extraordinarily surrendered and opened their lives for God to flow out of them filling and overflowing their lives.

Number one, Peter. Peter was a stumbling, bumbling man who was always sticking both feet up to the ankles in his mouth during the Gospels. I mean, he rebuked the Lord and told the Lord what to do and not to do. I mean, he was a mess. In fact, after the first Lord’s Supper, one servant girl in the dark scared Peter into uttering some horrible curses and publicly repeatedly denying Jesus Christ, who was in visual distance. Peter denied Christ looking at Him and denied Him. So yeah, he’s a mess.

Yet, only days later, he stood up in front of 3,000 families. And the murderous, religious establishment that had already gotten Christ crucified and their military backing the Romans in front of that whole crew in Jerusalem, Peter stood up so boldly that people were transfixed and stood and listened to him preach. And at the end, 3,000 people went against their pride, which is to say a lot because they were all religious. They were actually in Jerusalem because they were so religious. And he said, you’re a bunch of sinners and you need to repent and get saved. And if you get saved, I want you to demonstrate your public alignment with Christ by getting baptized. 3,000. 1st day, I mean, unbelievable. And by the way, Peter has never recorded as wavering again from that day onward. He faces inevitability of personal pain and certain martyrdom with serenity. Do you see why that’s unbelievable? Incredible. And it seems unattainable. I mean, doesn’t that seem impossible? The only thing that happened to Peter was the Spirit of God.

Well, how about the Apostle Paul? The Apostle Paul? By now we’re in Act 16, so Paul, we’re in Act 16, and Paul just got beaten within an inch of his life in Philippi. And he was put down into a prison. He was neglected to the point of abuse. He was thrown into a dark, damp bug infested dungeon, fastened down with iron and wood stocks, left to grow infections, to burn with fever, and probably to die. By the way if he would’ve been wearing the new Apple watch that’s coming out after the first of the year, it would’ve been beeping and saying, you have health problems. Did you know that’s the direction our culture is going. We are uber-health conscious. I mean, we want to protect everything about our bodies. We want to eat right and we want to rest. Right? And I mean, you got to have a sleep number bed and you got to purify your air and your water and you’ve got to take every possible and exercise and monitor with your little electronic device. I mean, kids can’t sleep without a panoply of electronic devices around them with the parents, checking and monitoring them. They got a little camera and they can’t imagine that they’re going to survive unless they’re just-

Did you know what Paul was doing was very bad for his health. Did you know that’s part of how the devil is going to deter so many people from serving the Lord? Because we are caught up in this health saving as if this is all there is, and this body being healthy and fit and toned and good looking and manicured is all that matters in life. Paul said the body they may kill as Luther later put into him. But God’s truth abides still. I am living for something greater than manicuring and maintaining this body.

Now it is his temple of God, but Paul’s temple was really hurt. Well, what’s the result of all that fever, infested and infection wracked body? Well, Paul started to quote, and then he began to sing aloud from the book of Psalms. He was so convincing that almost everyone who heard his voice wanted to become a Christian in the dark from the stocks. He’s not calculating how he can get an antibiotic and how he can get to er and whether he has coverage out of state, and what is going to happen, and as he’s going to be permanent scars, he’s more interested in communicating the gospel. Because he was filled and overflowing with Holy Spirit. You know what? That’s unbelievable. It’s incredible, and it’s almost in our minds today, unattainable.

You go to the Apostle John, he was alone in prison and troubled, and for all he knew, he was forgotten by God as well as everybody else when Revelation one opens. Now John was the longest surviving apostle and he was the target of the Roman Empire. I mean, if you read Church history, and I could bore you with Church history. I mean, that’s my PhD work was in Church history and I spent years studying Church history and there’s so much about how John was hunted and haunted and followed. And I mean, he was, they even tried to boil him alive in oil and, french fry him and according to Church tradition, the Lord even preserved him from that.

But he was scarred and now he’s alone. He was on a bake rock in the middle of nowhere. Patmos was kind of like an ancient version of an Alcatraz or a San Quentin. He had already survived being beaten and mobs and jails. He even lived with the scars that marked his body from all the Romans had suggested him to. But now what comes out of a scarred and wasted body, we meet him in Revelation one. In the spirit worshiping God on the Lord’s day, and he has the most beautiful and amazing vision and tour of Heaven that anybody’s ever had. Unbelievable. Incredible. When I read it, unattainable in the 21st century, right? Isn’t that what we say?

They just had something that we don’t have, and that is true. They stayed full of the Spirit. They were Ephesians 5:18 respondents. They denied anything that would keep them from being under the influence of God, which is dissipation. And they sought, verse 18, to be filled with the Spirit. And by the way, it doesn’t stop there. The list from church history just goes on. There’s a galaxy of unbelievable lives. It goes way beyond the apostles. There are countless first century saints who found their pathways colliding with the godless belligerent Roman society, and their lives ended in the sands of the arena, or at the stake, or in ghastly martyrdom and history records they went to their death serene, confident, and testimonies. In fact, I was just at somebody’s house, we’re still doing the a hundred homes, and I can’t even remember which one it was, but they had this little book that was called Glimpses from Church History, and they were showing it to me, and it got to the point where people, as they were being burnt at the stake, would proclaim the Gospel to the crowd. So, they started clipping their tongues so they couldn’t talk. Because the Holy Spirit was prompting them to share the Gospel. Just a few amazing ones. Four from the fourth, 16th, 18th, and 20th century.

Athanasius, he stood at a church council in the fourth century, and he was the only pastor, only bishop, pastor of a church in the whole council that believed Jesus Christ was God the Son, God in human flesh. All the rest of the council were following the Jehovah’s Witness view. That Jesus was a created kind of the Mormon view too, that Jesus is a created being par with deity, but not divine. Worship able, but not really God in human flesh. And Anthia said no. His famous statement is Athanasius Contra Mundum. Contra means against mundum the world. He said, I don’t care if everybody is going that way. It’s not true. And I am standing for Christ. And he swayed the pastors who began to read the Scriptures and the vote went for Christ being God the Son. Amazing.

How about Martin Luther? He stood alone at the Diet of Worms in the face of excommunication death by fire. What did he say? Here I stand upon God’s Word. I can take no other stand. How did he do that? Was it because of the University of Leipzig he went to? Was he in a campus organization that kind of worked with him a little bit? Well, how did he get that? It was the fullness of the Spirit. See, apart from God’s Spirit, we can’t accomplish anything and these connected and were filled.

How about Judson? And Carey had an Iram Judson, William Carey and Iram Judson in the 18th century worked seven years in Burma without seeing even one soul converted. He was starved for weeks. He was left for dead in prison. Yet he never quit. I wonder if his prayer letters coming back, what the people supporting him thought. I mean, after seven years, can’t you do something over there? You know what kept him going?

How about William Carey of India? He was in the same century. He faced the mental insanity of his beloved wife. His wife went crazy in India. Now we definitely would’ve jerked him home. Modern missions, get her in treatment. He took care of her in India, took care of his house full of kids, and said, I’m not leaving, because God called me to translate the Bible into the language of the largest people group that at that point did not have the Word of God, and he faced the hostility of the Hindus and never quit until God’s Word was translated. Unbelievable. Incredible. Probably not attainable nowadays the way we think.

How about C.T. Studd? 20th century. He faced sickness personally. By the way he died. They did a little postmortem on him, and they said that his gallstone was the size of a baseball. Now, can you imagine the intense, endless pain and nausea and sickness. And by the way, he had that for a long time by his symptoms. He faced weakness because of all of his debilitating diseases, mortal dangers. He lived among cannibal Pygmies in Africa’s darkest jungle. And yet in 1931, 20,000 of those he had led to Christ and baptized were wearing clothing. They were naked, by the way, when he met them and they lived as saints in the devil’s own deep, dark jungle. How did he do that? Did he go to some conference and learn some technique that works with pygmies? No. It’s the power of the Spirit of God. And that is what God wants us.

Well, is it possible to live this unbelievable and incredible life? Yes, and the Scriptures tell us that in verse 18, the only connection we need is to be filled with the spirit. But it doesn’t just it comes down.

The secret is in one word, this is the Greek word, be filled, plerousthe is the Greek word. And that word, that single word describes everything that God wants to do through us, if we will just yield to Him.

Now, there’s four parts to that word. It’s an imperative. It’s in the plural, it’s passive and it’s present. And of course it’s a verb. So, it’s an imperative verb, a plural verb, a passive verb, and a present verb, and that summarizes what God wants to do in our lives.

First of all, it’s an imperative. An imperative verb means God is commanding something. Do you remember the structure of the Scripture is there is all of the doctrines. Those are in the form of Greek language called the indicatives. It’s just the listing of doctrine. It’s just the truths of God in His Word. And then scattered among all of those will be one of these flaming imperatives, a command that says, based on this doctrine, you have a duty to respond. And it isn’t a suggestion. It’s a command from Almighty God that on the basis of, now let’s just think about this one being filled with the spirit. This is what the Lord says. He says, I bought you if you were born again Christian and I own the ground of your life. So, imagine this platform is a little plot of land and God says, I bought and paid for that land with My own blood. So now it’s Mine. Now I’m asking you to surrender every part of the ground, your body, your life, every part, the field that you are to me, in any part, you surrender to Me, I will start growing fruit.

That’s what the fruit of the Spirit is. It’s an indicator of what parts of our life God is controlling. If He’s controlling our amusements, then the fruit of that is we only amuse ourselves with things that are true, honest, just pure, lovely, and of good report, and that’s what we think about. And if He’s controlling our family life, then the wisdom is from above, which is first, pure and peaceful and gentle, and easily treated and full of mercy and good fruits without partiality, without hypocrisy that’s growing in that part of our life. But if there’s anger and irritation and kind of rival risk living and kind of like sneaky parts of our life that we’re doing stuff we would be ashamed of and we’re hiding. Those parts are not under His control.

So, number one, it’s an imperative God ask us to respond. Our duty, Indicatives are the doctrinal explanations. The imperatives are the personal responses to God’s truth. Remember back that prayer this morning in the elder prayer before the service Lord deliver us from thinking that knowing is equivalent to doing, we are saturated with the indicatives. And often nonresponsive to the imperatives. because we know so much, we know a lot more than we do sometimes. And the Lord says, don’t allow that to persist in your life. The filling of the Holy Spirit of God into our life is our supreme obligation because the Almighty God Himself is commanding us. It’s an imperative.

It’s plural. A plural verb means God is speaking to all of us. When he said prior in the 18th verse to not be drunk with wine. He’s speaking to all believers. It’s an imperative command. And the same is for the filling. The Spirit-filled walk is for every believer.

It’s passive. Passive means it’s not something we do. We don’t say, I’m going to fill myself now. See, there’s a real danger. Some people equate excitement and feeling excited with being full of the spirit. That’s why the whole Christian concert movement goes and people just, they think if they can, it’s almost like pumping up enough if I can get so excited at this conference. Let’s see how far I can go. No, it’s not something we pump into ourselves. It’s something that God takes over when we surrender and when we consecrate and when we deny ourself and crucify that part of our life at more and more of our being comes under His control. Remember we got all of Him. It says in John one, God gives not His Spirit by measure. He doesn’t say, oh, you get a quarter teaspoon eighth teaspoon for you. No, he gives all of Himself to us at salvation and then He waits for us to surrender. The garden plots of our life to his planting and plowing and round uping and getting ready. It’s passive. Which means a passive verb means God is asking us to open our lives to His filling.

Passive means allowing this to come into your life. Let the Spirit fill you, is what God is saying. This is a direct call to my unreserved, yielding to God’s control. He’s saying, I want your driving. I want your communication. I want your thoughts. I want your entertainment life. I want your spiritual disciplines under My control. I want your finances. I want your schedule. I want every part of your life. I don’t want you cubby holding Me and have your little church part and say, that’s yours, God, and the rest is mine. He said, I want all of it. Now, can you imagine some of you have gotten a little comfortable, you’re sitting in the stadium. Can you imagine hearing this far from someone with them looking in your eyes and saying. Do you believe that’s an imperative? Do you believe it’s to you? Do you believe it’s something that God does, that you have to surrender?

And it’s a present verb, which means, Jesus said, fill twice. He said, fill in John 2:7 to remember the wedding in Cane of Galilee and Jesus said go fill those pots with water. That’s an aorist verb. An aorist means fill them once. This is not talking about filling once with Holy Spirit. This is a present passive plural imperative. Jesus commanded them to fill the pots once, and they did. He’s commanding us to keep our pot constantly over flowingly full of the Holy Spirit. That’s what God’s wants.

So basically, we can say this Spirit-filled living is God’s plan for all of us. Okay, let’s go back to Galatians now. And this always in the discipleship. When you move off of one passage, they kind of feel, ah, it couldn’t get worse than that. That was a little hard. Now let’s go to Galatians chapter five. Spirit-Filled Living is God’s plan for all of us. And if you look in chapter five, starting in verse 19, it says, now the works of the flesh are evident, which are adultery, fornication, and cleans and lewdness. And by the way, every time a believer has an unsurrendered part of their life, the weeds of the old way that you used to be.

Have you ever seen these massive corn fields? And they just chemical those things to death. And I mean, they can plow them and they stay absolutely looking plowed for months. Everything’s been killed in sight, except there’s this lone weed. You ever seen those? They just stick out. I mean, there’s, some of them are massive weeds and it’s like, ah, whatever chemical you used did not affect that, and it just shows up in the, or in the corn, you see it too, it’s like a chemical resistant monster weed. They call them Franken-weeds nowadays because they’re being, no, literally, the genetic engineering and all of the chemicals are actually kind of like antibiotics in the human body producing super germs. We’re producing super, chemical resistant weeds.

But that’s what shows up in the plowed ground of the purchase by the blood of Christ, lives of believers. When we do not apply, by the way, the Holy Spirit’s Roundup kills all weeds. He’s not like, Monsanto. He can kill them all, and He wants to, anything under His control does not have these things in it. What shows up when the Holy Spirit’s not working. The works of the flesh, unSpirt-filled and controlled and led people have adultery, fornication, uncles, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery. Believers would say, we don’t do any of those things. Hatred. Contentions. Jealousies. Outbursts of wrath. I lost my temper. No, you didn’t. It’s still there and you found it and it’s springing up, outbursts of wrath. Selfish ambition. That’s at the core of getting ahead. If the goal in life is to be wealthy and successful and comfortable and secure, you better have strong selfish ambition because you’re going to have to climb to the top and everybody, there’s everybody competing and you’re going to outdo them.

Did you notice that selfish ambition has bad company? We’re right by idolatry and immorality and selfish ambition, dissensions, heresies, envy. I mean, you’ve probably never heard of anybody that doesn’t like it, that someone, I mean, they’re being paid too much and they have too nice of stuff, and they shouldn’t have that. It’s just envy murders. The Lord says, if you’re angry at someone without a cause, you’re a murderer. Drunkenness, revelries, and the like, which I tell you beforehand, I tell you now in time past that those who practice such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God. Did you know those things are not allowed to grow in our life without divine intervention?

And by the way, that’s what we studied last Sunday night at communion, that if we don’t examine our life and say, ooh, I have a Spirit of those things in my life, Lord, I confess and forsake and I want you to get rid of that. If we don’t, the Lord moves in and gets rid of it. That’s called the chastening of the Lord. And at 1 Corinthians 11 said, some are weak and some are sick, and some are sleeping. They’re dead. The Lord will not allow a believer to persist in any of these things. He resists it in their life, but that’s not what we’re talking about. That’ll be in the flat tire part.

Look at verse 22. Here’s the evidence, the fruit of the Spirit now. Now here’s what I call the fruit of the Spirit. What we’re going to look at very quickly in 14 minutes. There are nine life-altering personality changes that are the evidence. Now, this is when the person starts really squirming at the table, say, we’re going to look at the fruit of the Spirit and what we’re going to do is going to examine if God is at work and if you’ve surrendered the soil of your life to the Lord, just as I am to be, we are going to see visible crops that show up in every dimension of our life. That’s what the fruit of the Spirit is. They’re the evidence of what the spirit of God brings into our life. He changes our personality. He alters our life. He starts plowing and disking, and spraying and preparing, and then He plants and He waters. There’s a crop that he’s looking for in our life and there are nine of them. And here they are.

Number one, love by the way, don’t think of love as how I treat people. It starts with how I treat God. See, love. It starts loving God. And then it flows into how we treat people. And if you see someone that has a little problem with the way they treat people, it’s because there’s a defective connection in their love of God. And so, it says in Romans 5:5, love is the absence of selfishness. It’s the product of the Holy Spirit that flows out of our lives through the power of God. The whole Law is fulfilled by loving God and our neighbor. That’s what Jesus said. Love involves always a sacrifice. It’s not a feeling.

So, let’s do a personal checkup. Questions. Do I sacrifice my way so I can follow God’s way? Now you say. Where does that come from? Well, John 14:21 says, he that has my commandments and keepeth them, and he that loves Me, be loved to My Father and I will love him. We’ll manifest ourselves to him. The basis of my relationship with God is that I respond to His Word because I love them. If you love someone, you want to please them. You want to do what pleases them. Jesus said, I always do those things that please My Father. Why? Because He was scared to death of Him, because He thought God was going to hurt Him because He loved Him. How do we show love? We sacrifice. God so loved that He gave, do I give up my way, sacrifice my way so I can follow God’s way?

Well, what is God’s way? Matthew 6:33. I would pause and say, you remember that verse but seek ye first. The kingdom of God’s rule in your life. Do you do that? How about Matthew 4:4? Man should not live by bread alone, but by every word that precedes out of the mouth of God. Does God’s way have a priority in your life? Is God the priority? Or is He secondary? And you know what? In our world of Christendom 21st century, it is fashionably accepted in the Church to have Christians who have lost their first love and God. Basically, it’s like this if you have a shelf, this is the top shelf. This is the number one spot. And when we got saved, God was up there and everything else in our life was to be under His gracious Lordship. But what happens is. Not more important than God. I got to work. Oh, I got to please my family. Oh, I’ve got to, I’ve got to enjoy life a little bit.

And what we do is a lot of other stuff gets on God’s shelf of the top spot. All of those things are part of life. Eating and sleeping and working and loving and amusing and entertaining. I mean, as long as it’s not directly sin, they’re all okay. Now, they don’t count forever and a lot of them are going to be burned up in the fire. But God says, I want to be the priority of your life and everything else. I want to be secondary. So, is that kind of love operative In my life?

I meet people because I grew up with one, my dad who got offered at General Motors double time to work Sunday. Do you know what? During those years of General Motors, when they were conquering the world, there were so many godly men that were absent from the church because they got double time. And what’d they do with their double time? They bought a boat, they bought a cottage, they bought a nicer car, and they did not sacrifice their way to follow God’s way. You know what? My dad, after one week of double time, he went back in, he says, I’m not going to work anymore. He said, I felt so horrible knowing that the church was gathering. My Sunday school class was gathering that I taught, my family was gathering, and what was I teaching my family that if someone will pay you twice as much, you can neglect the only time the body of Christ gathers in the week as a body to earn a little more money. Wow.

Does anybody think of that anymore? If you want your kids to excel in sports, you got to travel every weekend. If you want them to excel in anything, you got to travel every weekend. We almost count on the fact that as soon as sports season starts, we aren’t going to have any of the key people because they are out tromping into hotels and sitting out in the rain at fields. What is that teaching your kids in 20 years when they look at all those trophies? And those state things, and they got the big scholarship to go to the state school where, by the way, they lost their faith. What does it teach them that your way is more important than God’s way? Very interesting to think about, but I can feel the tension. I’m going to get off of that point.

Do I sacrificially deny myself so God gets his way? We all have 168 hours a week. Am I denying and seeking first the Lord or do other things? Now, can you think, this is a little, can you imagine sitting across the table asking people these questions and waiting for an answer? When do you have your time with the Lord? When do you schedule that? Is that a priority? When do you read God’s word? What are you getting out? When’s the last time you read it? What did you find last time? By the way, can others, the people close to us, trace your progress in expressing God’s love? Do those who watch me see me as less selfish, less self-seeking, less doing my own way than I was last month?

How about the next one? Joy. You know what joy is? It’s a detachment from my circumstances. Most people’s lives are like this, they’re sick. They got a raise. They’re sick. They got a raise. They lost their job. Their child just won something. They have cancer and their lives are just like a roller coaster. You know what joy is? It’s when I’m detached from my circumstances. It’s Isaiah 26:3. You know what that says? Thou, God, will keep them, that’s 26:3, in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee because he trusts in the Ye. Trust in the Lord. He is the everlasting. Joy of our countenance as it talks about the joy that comes because God is keeping us detached from our circumstances. Do those that know me, watch my life, see evidences throughout my daily life, at work, at school, at home, that I’m a more and more joyful person? Would that be what people that are watching you and observing, they say, boy, he is so joyful.

How about peace? Peace. Shalom? That word means to be made complete. Shalom, you’ve heard. Shalom is a greeting but it actually is the same to be made complete as a peaceful person. I have been made complete in Christ. I have Christ. I don’t need anything else. I have everything I need. I met someone this morning, first service, and I said, how you doing? They said, great. They said, but I hope I’m alive in a year. And I looked them right in the eye and I said, I can assure you, you will be because I know them personally. And they were kind of probably going to tell me about a cancer test they had. And I said, you’ll be alive forever because whoever lives and believes in me, Jesus said, we’ll never what? But we don’t really sometimes connect that with our daily lives. We’re worried about dying. And Jesus said, you’re never going to die, your body. I asked him, I said, you ever have a car that got old and you got rid of it and you got a new car? I said, your body is like a car, but you inside of it will never die. You’ll just get a much better car in Heaven, but that’s what peace brings. It’s an anchor of our soul. Both sure and steadfast has peace. Through the changes and the upsets and the unexpected twists and struggles and challenges and trials, whoop trials and pains become more and more a way of life for me this year. Do people notice your growing peacefulness? That no matter what the news says, no matter what the job outlook, there’s peace.

How about this one, by the way, see each of these long suffering or patience, you know what that is? Long suffering. Patience is an absence of personal irritation at the behavior of others. That’s what it is. Other things, other people. I don’t get irritated, personal irritation, at what other things and other people do. Ask yourself. Am I more patient than I was three months ago or less? Does patience, absence of personal irritation at people and things, would that characterize the way others would describe my driving? Oh, we go, that’s one of the fashionable. How about my explaining constant questions to people that constantly are questioning everything I do? How about the way I direct the way things need to be done if you’re a supervisor or a parent? How about my interacting with people in general? Is there a growing absence of personal irritation? Are you patient? If we are not increasing in patience, it’s only an evidence that we’re not yielding, submitting that part of our life to the Holy Spirit.

How about kindness? That’s an absence of personal abrasiveness. I remember I was at a shower once. I don’t know what I was doing there. It was a wedding shower or something. And the challenge, I mean, there was a little challenge to the couple and they said, well, we know that marriage is like sandpaper and it’s going to shape both of your lives. And I thought, no, we’re not supposed to be sandpaper. We’re not supposed to be abrasive. I mean, is God changing my way of looking at people and responses toward people? Would someone follow me around for a day, say that my actions are showing an increasing tendency toward personal abrasive freeness with others?

How about goodness? Jesus said, I am meek and lowly in heart and His goodness was a manifestation. It says in Acts 10:38, when the Holy Spirit filled Christ, it says He went about doing good. Good is God-like behavior. Am I visibly a person that’s better to those who feel my life up close? Do people see me doing good? Remember, let your good works be seen by others that they might praise God. It’s not just a Boy Scouts that are supposed to do that to get a merit badge. All of us are supposed to yield our lives so that goodness increases. Do people think of the presence of God when they see how I act or the absence of God?

How about faithfulness? Faithfulness is me act, or Psalm 15 doing what I say I’m supposed to do. Am I making strides in reliability and dependability? Christians are supposed to be more reliable, more dependable every year of their life. Is my life less and less out of control? Did you know God wants my life under control so that I can help people whose lives are out of control and we have so many people in the church whose lives are out of control. They can never help anybody else because their lives are out of control and the fruit of the spirit. See anything that’s not under control? Is because I haven’t surrendered it to God’s control. Am I faithful in my punctuality? There’s some people you know that if you say it’s at nine o’clock, they’ll get there at nine, 10.

How about in your finances? I mean, we’re always supposed to spend less than we make, so all you do is just decrease the spending. Boy, they don’t teach that anymore. Our government and our culture is driven on borrowing enough money to get totally out of debt. It’s just like we, we don’t even think about what we’re saying.

How about my promises? Do I do what I say? Do I swear to my own hurt? Psalm 15. How about my spiritual disciplines like prayer? In the word do I always say I don’t have time? I do have time, but I’m not yielding my time to God’s faithfulness and any part of my life that’s out of control is reminding me that area is not under God’s control.

Gentleness. Would people say, I’m assertive or gentle? This is a virtue in our culture. This is a weakness. But Jesus said in Matthew 11:29, I’m gentle. So, do you want to be assertive or Christlike? That’s the choice. That any assertive part of my life is not surrendered to the Lord. Do I fight for my ideas, my plans, my agenda, my preferences? Or am I willing to let others express their ways? What shape is my personal agenda and my ambition? Are they intact? Are my rights being defended? Is my personal self-driven agenda in hopeless shape? Is it crucified?

And finally, self-control. Self-control that’s actually self-control is the virtue of having all of my life not dominated by an external influence. They used to use it for athletes in the Olympics. Is my life dominated by the Spirit of God? Do I have a disciplined life or undisciplined life? Would others think of me as graciously under the control of God’s spirit? Am I beating my flesh down? Does it seem like God’s taken over more and more of my life and my attention and my schedule?

That’s only possible by the Spirit’s power.

So, let’s turn to 366. You can close your Bibles and let’s turn to 366. And we’re just going to sing a prayer before we go. And so, grab your green book, 366 and let’s stand together. And we’re going to go two minutes late as we sing this prayer. And as we sing these words, I want you to think about something. Think about the life that God bought with his own blood through the cross of Christ. And as you’re singing all to Jesus, I surrender. Say, Lord, have I surrendered to You my schedule? Have I surrendered to You my entertainment? Have I surrendered to You my public life ha, my driving? How about my business career? How about my appetites? How about my finances? How about my spiritual disciplines? I mean, I want to surrender all that to You, and I want You to be growing in your control. I want your Spirit to fill every part of my life so I can do unbelievable, incredible things and You get all the credit.

Wow. What is our response we’re supposed to do? We’re supposed to surrender all of our life to Jesus. Okay, so we’ll just sing the first Stan, and then I’ll pray.

Oh, and Father, I pray that these words of this song be the reflection of our hearts and that we would invite You to invade and control and plant the fruit of Your Spirit to grow in every part of our life. And I pray that we would be constantly renewing that surrender and looking through our lives to see any part that’s out of control and realize it just needs to get back under Your control. I pray that you would keep us full and that we would live the Spirit-filled life for your glory. In the precious name of Jesus, and all God’s people said, amen. God bless you as you go.