Progress on the Journey

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

If you would, why don't you turn in your Bibles with me to Galatians? We're going to be in Galatians, Chapter 5 today. Today, we're going to continue our series on the journey. Our series on the journey is part of a larger set of sermons series for 2021. We are calling 2021 as a church. We're calling it the Year of Focus, which means for us, it means that we're going to be honing in on the essentials of Christianity. And so, so far our different sermon series have been elements, elemental things like the gospel, the passion, the body, which is the church, the word, which is scripture. And all these things are, are really important. And now we're moving into the journey. Last week, we looked at how we begin the journey and we likened it to a passport. So the first thing you need is a passport. And I know it is cheesy, but we are going to have like one item every week of this sermon series

just so that I can kind of help you visualize what's going on. Okay. And so the first thing we need is a passport. That is that we need to make sure we are on the journey. There's a way to kind of embark upon a journey or to do that kind of in a rush. You don't know if you're on it or not. What we talked about last week was the need to establish an emotional connection with Jesus, an emotional connection with Jesus, which sounds weird, but what the Bible calls it is believing in your heart. Okay, the Bible says if you believe in your heart that Jesus Christ is Lord, then you're his. Another way to say that and maybe just a different way to get you thinking is to call it an emotional connection because that's what that is. It's an emotional connection with Jesus. In other words, it's not just mental acknowledgement that something is true. Okay. If I had that mindset toward my wife, right, yes, I believe that my wife exists.

Well, that's great. That's step one. I've got a long way to go in my relationship with my wife because just believing she exists, that's not the same as having a personal, emotional connection with her. And so with Jesus, it looks a little different because, you know, my wife is flawed and, you know, we're all people. We're all messed up. When you have this emotional connection with Jesus, you begin kind of feeling this joy of knowing Jesus. You begin to feel the joy in obeying Jesus. You feel the acceptance. You feel the peace. You feel the purpose that Jesus has kind of set you on. Also last week I gave a warning and it is the it is the warning of hey don't mistake the discovery of the journey for the journey itself. In other words don't don't think okay I had this one emotional encounter with Jesus and that's everything there is and I cannot tell

you how many times I have spoken with somebody and I've been asking, just asking about their spiritual history or church history. And maybe you've had similar conversations where, you know, they're my age, so they're like 32, 43. So they're my age, and I ask them about their spiritual history and they will tell me when I was 14, I cried at camp and that's it. It's all like, I went to church camp, I cried on Thursday. That's it. That's all I've got. That's the entirety of this personal, emotional connection I have with Jesus. It is something that happened 29 years ago, but I'm hanging on to that thing. I'm not saying it's not worth it. I am saying though that that is not a relationship. That is the discovery of it. It's not the same thing. We must make a decision to follow Jesus. And that's what I'm calling a passport. Okay. So we're going to, today we're

going to continue to look at the journey and we're going to move on from the passport into the compass, from the passport into the compass. It's only going to get cheesier. I promise as the The weeks go by, you're like, come on, Caperdon. A few years ago, I heard Francis Chan give this illustration about following Jesus. And it was very powerful and stuck with me, and so I want to share it with you. It says, he says, it's as if I'm leaving my house. So let's just say I leave my house and I tell my daughter, hey, clean your room. I tell my daughter, clean your room. I'm going to be back in a few hours, and I want you to clean your room. And sure enough, a few hours pass, I come back, and what's my first question? There you go. Did you clean your room?

And there's a little bit of like, looking to the left, and a little bit of twiddling of the thumbs, and a little like, well, dad. And here's kind of the explanation. The room is not clean. And the explanation is, well, Dad, listen, I paid very careful attention to what you said. In fact, I even wrote it down. In fact, I not only paid attention and wrote it down, I invited some friends over and we studied what you said. We even studied what you said in the Greek. After all that, I didn't clean my room. My question still stands, did you clean your room? The answer is no. All of these other acts of devotion, right? And let's just say it's true that she invited her friend over. She studied what I said in the Greek. All those other acts of devotion, all those other things are adventures in missing the point. It's not the same as cleaning your room. It's not the same.

One is acts of devotion and the other is actual obedience. And those are two different things. When I talk to people about their spiritual journey, a few things are pretty rampant. Discouragement is rampant. Guilt is rampant. Well, I could do better is all over the place. In fact, it's a very rare thing that I'll have a conversation with somebody about their spiritual journey. And I'll just say, kind of where you're at, hey man, never better. In fact, I probably haven't had any issue in like the last 15 years, I'm doing great. Nobody, nobody tells me that, okay? I would never say anything like that, because it's not true. However, in the face of that, what most people are inclined to do is to find spiritual activities that are relatively easy, Or maybe somewhat hard if they're feeling it. Find those activities, do them, and then count that as progress.

Okay. So we find things to do. So it could be, I mean, and it's good things. It's things that Jesus actually commanded. So it could be things like scripture memory or Bible reading or Bible study or church attendance or serving the poor or giving your money to the church or whatever. All these things, right? All these are good things, most of which Jesus commanded. But when the motivation behind that, behind those activities, when it moves from a desire to seek Jesus into a spiritual to-do list, we have missed the point. In fact, when that happens, you get Pharisees, you don't get disciples. And this is why, listen, I'm not unsympathetic. This is why it's so difficult to talk about, why it's so difficult to put our finger on what it is to make progress on this spiritual journey. Because sometimes I can do the exact same thing two days in a row. But on day one, it's great. On day two, something's off. It's the same thing. I'm still in the book

of Job, right? I've read Job chapter one and now I'm reading Job chapter two, but it feels totally different. I don't know what to do with that. It just, it's something's off. I don't feel like I'm progressing. I feel like this is dried and it's the same thing. It defies formula. What I would say is that for some, for some reason in some capacity, uh, between day one and day two of reading Job one and Job two, your motivation has changed. And I hear this a lot from people that they talk about, hey, I'm just going through the motions, right? I'm just doing this because I'm supposed to. That's it. I'm just doing this because it's required of me. And truly, many people do not know what happened. They really are bewildered. They don't understand how when they were praying and they were praying for, you know, this in this season, man, it just felt like, I mean, they felt like

like they were talking to God directly, they felt like, I mean, they just felt it, right? They felt it. And then, and then a month later, it's, it's like they're praying to their cat. I mean, it's nothing. Cats don't give you anything, by the way. Cats are terrible. Sorry, I'm just teasing. If you pray to your cat, don't expect anything. That's all I'm saying. The point is sometimes it just feels dry, right? It just feels like all the prayer to the ceiling, like, like nothing's working. Like you're trying, sorry, I know I've offended a few of you with that cat comment. I feel like I need to come clean. There are some good cats in this world. Okay, that's all I'll say about that.

I know I've found a few, no they're good, they're good. Some are, some are good cats. Some of you have great cats, I'll just leave it at that. Gosh, I'm getting derailed by cats. What a nightmare. To put it simply or to put it a different way, what happened between day one and day two was that you quit using your compass. You started to go your own way in your own power. Every person that follows Jesus has an inner compass, if you will. You don't know exactly when you got it, but it's there. And it's somehow, it's an ability inside of you where you know where to go, you know what to say, you know what to do, and you can sense when danger is coming. It's there. You can't explain it. When you try to explain it, you sound crazy, so you quit. You quit trying. Maybe you've tried to explain it to your spouse a few times and they just kind of give you this blank stare.

It is more than an intuition or a feeling. As a Christian, if you follow Christ, it is God's own spirit inside of you that is guiding you. That's what we call the Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit is likely the least understood aspect of following Jesus. You start talking about following the Spirit, and you're going to have about 50 random conversations that have nothing to do with following the Spirit, okay? You're gonna talk about like speaking in tongues. You're gonna talk about miracles. You're gonna talk about Acts, you know, five versus Acts nine. You're gonna, I mean, it's a whole conversation that I don't really wanna have right now. I'm not trying to explain all that. What I'm trying to talk about is following the Holy Spirit. Because make no mistake, if you and I are gonna make progress on this journey at all. It has to be living by the Holy Spirit. There's no

other way to do it. It all ends in a dumpster fire failure. It is terrible. The only way to make progress on this journey, the only way we're not going to fall into, I'm just going through the motions, is it means that we must act on what it means to live by the Spirit. And so we're going to do that. We're going to look at how to do that. It's in Galatians 5, verses 16 through 25. Galatians 5, 16 through 25. This is a letter. It's the end, near the end of a letter to the Galatian church. The Galatian church is a lot like us. They need help seeing and understanding the Holy Spirit. And so we get that here in Galatians 5, 16 through 17. I'll read those or through 18. I'll read a couple of those verses. And we'll just kind of move on from there. Let me read, it says, but I say, walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the desires

of the Spirit and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh. For these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law. Okay, a couple things to notice here. first, the first thing I want you to see, it says, it says, walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. What it doesn't say is walk by the spirit and chances are you won't do something bad, maybe. It's actually a command, walk by the spirit and a promise, you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. So how do we work this out? Well, let me just say Let me say it a specific way. When you walk by the Spirit, it is impossible, impossible to gratify the desires of the flesh. When you walk by the Spirit, it is impossible to gratify the desires of the flesh. It doesn't mean that we never sin.

That's not what I'm saying here. It doesn't mean we never sin. It means that walking by the Spirit points our minds and our life in a direction that is opposite gratifying the desires of the flesh. And verse 17 kind of spells that out for us, how they're polar opposites. You cannot, in other words, you cannot go both ways at once. You can't live by the Spirit, walk by the Spirit, and at the same time gratify the desires of the flesh. So what's the point of saying that? Why say that? It seems kind of obvious or kind of elementary. Let me put it a different way. If you are trying to walk by the Spirit, if you're trying to live as a Christian and your only or biggest motivation is avoid bad things, then you are going to fail. I don't want you to fail. That's why I'm telling you this now. If you're only, if plan A for following Jesus and living this journey, right?

If plan A is avoid bad things, you're sunk. It's not going to work. It's going to fail. Our encouragement is not to avoid bad things. Our encouragement is actually to the positive. Walk by the Spirit. It's not be nice to people and do better. Okay. That that's not our encouragement. And this is the larger point of Galatians. And it's also why you have verse 18 is that following Jesus means following his spirit. And if somehow, if somehow you get it in your head, that you're boiling it down to rules, you've missed it.

That's why 18, when it says, but if you were led by the spirit, you were not under the law, that's actually kind of a weird thing because it should be, it seems like from us, from 16 and 17, that 18 should read, but if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the desires of the flesh. But didn't mention flesh, he mentions the law. Why? Well, like I said, it's the larger context of Galatians. But if you're just getting it down to rules, like if you're saying, okay, Okay, following the spirit means avoiding this, this, this, this, this, this, this, or following the spirit means I have to do this, this, this, this, and this in this order. You've missed it. There's not a law you're following. And this is what we do with the next couple of verses in verse 19 through 21. We actually make rules out of them. So it says in verse 19, 20, and 21, it says, now the works of the flesh are evident.

Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. The point that the Bible is making right here is that if somebody claims Jesus, if they claim Jesus, but they continually gratify the desires of the flesh, they even justify it, then they're not going to inherit the kingdom of God, precisely because they are not walking by the Spirit, not because they're bad people and you're a good person. That's not what this is talking about. It's saying when you aim your life to follow the Spirit, you are not going to go in this other direction. Anybody that says, I'm following the Spirit, but their life is going in that other direction,

when they are gratifying the desires of the flesh, they're wrong. It's not real. They're deceived. Let me put it positively with an illustration. It's like the difference between hiking with a compass versus trying to follow a specific route. So you're gonna go, I know Osso, you're gonna go camping soon in some mountains, place I'd never go. Where you going? New Mexico. And I would never go there to hike mountains ever.

So don't ask, okay? Don't invite me next time. Okay, okay. Not gonna invite me. Okay. If you try to hike all those mountains, right, if you're trying to just say, hey, you know what, we're gonna follow this exact route, we're gonna go like, you can have a general sense of where you're going, but like, no, no, no, we gotta follow this exact trail all the way through. You're fine, you're great, until that trail is cut off. Until you experience something that you didn't plan on. Okay? If you're on a camping trip, and it has to go a certain way, when one of those things gets knocked out of joint, the rest of your trip is toast.

However, when you are hiking, according to a compass, you're going a general direction. You can kinda see what's in front of you. You know where you're headed east. You're headed a direction. I think you head east when you camp. I don't know. I'm just guessing here. Some of you, some of you, when everything is laid out for you, when your whole spiritual life is mapped out, you're great. You're fine. You're comfortable. However, when the Spirit leads you to take a risk, you shrivel, you shortarm it. When the Spirit asks you to discern between two choices that seem okay, you know, none of them is like killing somebody. Two good choices, right? You freeze. You don't know what to do because it's like, it's like that specific route you're following forks and you don't know which way you should go. The problem is not that the route has forked. The problem is that you need to be hiking with a compass, not just following a rule.

And so we need to let the Holy Spirit be our compass. And when we do that, when we do that, that it is impossible to gratify the desires of the flesh. But the question still remains, how exactly do we do that? And first, and we're still in Galatians 5 here, we need to understand that walking by the Spirit is, I'll call it passively active. There, how's that for confusing? Walking by the Spirit is passively active. Let me show you what I mean. When you look at how the Bible describes following the Spirit. It is always that the Spirit is doing something and we are responding. So look at the, in Galatians 5 alone, it talks about walking by the Spirit. So somehow it's aiding you in actually walking. It talks about being led by the Spirit.

It says, if we're going to live by the Spirit, verse 25, we're going to live by the Spirit. We need to keep in step with the Spirit. All these things point to this, this person, this Holy Spirit that's inside of us that is acting, that is guiding, that is, that is leading, and we are responding. Even looking at the fruit, so Galatians, uh, five, 22 and 23, it says, uh, so in contrast to the words of the flesh, we have the fruit of the Spirit. It's not the works of the Spirit. It's the fruit of the Spirit. And what's that love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control against such things. There is no law. Whenever we are following the Spirit, we are not the one that is initiating first. The Spirit is initiating and you are responding. The Spirit then, if we're going to go with the fruit metaphor real fast, The Spirit is working your heart like a farm, growing fruit in season, taking time, cultivating

the soil, planting the seeds, all of those things, all those farm metaphors totally work here. This is what the Spirit is doing in your heart. And it's all very maddening because it's very indirect. Right? We like things that we can activate. We like things that we can like, you know, push the power button and then do what we want to do. We want to turn the key, start the mower. We want to go. We want to do what we want to do and set it all in motion. And start when we want to start and stop when we want to stop. And that's not how this works at all. It's very un-American of the Holy Spirit to do this. Rude. No, it's great actually, because when you begin to live that way, you begin to understand what a cage you were were in before, right? You begin to understand when the Spirit is initiating and you're responding, that that's real freedom. But when you think you were in control of your whole life or in control

of other people or in control of even your own sexuality, which is what we're talking about in verses 19, 20, and 21, when you're pretending like you're in control of all of that and that the Lord God in heaven has not planned it, is not leading you, all of that, you're miserable. You're miserable. There's true freedom, true joy. Your compass then, getting a little technical here, your compass has a gyroscope in it. Okay, your compass, it's like, you know, when you're on Google maps on your phone or when you're in your Apple maps, you know, I don't want to start that noise here, but when you're on a maps app on your phone,

And you can set it two different ways. You can set it to where you see the map and then you're just kind of doing this on the map or you can change the orientation to where you're always going forward and the map kind of adjusts for you. Does that make, right? Just by a show of hands, how many people make the map move with them? Right, I see you. Anybody, there's no way you would ever do that. You keep the map in place and you're,

okay, fewer, fewer. Just wanted you to know that you're the minority, okay? guys. All right. I'm just teasing. What we're talking about with a compass and a gyroscope in it, it's like the second option. It's like the map is moving. In other words, you are handling things in real time. You don't have the whole journey. Jesus is disinterested in giving you all of this. The dumbest prayer that we can pray is, God, show me the future. Gosh, maybe it's not the dumbest. it's, maybe that's uncharitable, it's misguided because it tags along a thought of if I knew the future I would handle it perfectly. I wouldn't screw that up like I've screwed other things up. Oh, just show me the future. All we want whenever we pray that prayer is control. That's it. It's all want. We might as well just say, God, can you give me control? No? Okay. Because when we follow the

Spirit, when we're on this journey, we are handling problems in real time right in front of us, and the Holy Spirit is doing that. Okay. The compass has a gyroscope in it. It's pushing and pulling us in different directions. Even when there is no specific route. Even whenever there's a tree falling and there's no way you can get over it, you got to double back and turn around. It doesn't doesn't matter, the Holy Spirit can navigate around that.

But let's not stop here. Let's get one more layer down. Let's get real practical. Let's look at what this actually feels like, what it actually looks like, and actually how to do it in real time. Getting super practical. So, no, some of you just got real excited. You're like, yes, practicality, let's go. Let's talk about what it feels like first. Then we're going to talk about what it looks like, then we'll talk about how to do it, what it feels like. Following the spirit. What following the spirit looks like is real joy. I know I've said that a few times. I've alluded to joy. I've talked about this kind of this real joy. And listen, describing joy is very hard to pin down. We don't have many good synonyms for it, maybe like happy. you know, other longer words that are harder to say than joy. And so we don't say those words. It's hard to pin down, it's hard to explain,

but we know it when we feel it. We know joy when we feel it. Joy is, and I'm gonna try, joy is this combination of happiness and satisfaction. Joy is like, it's like falling into the ease of like, The ease of like, oh, this is all going to work out. That's joy. Joy is whenever the Holy Spirit prompts you, like the Holy Spirit prompted me a couple weeks ago, Holy Spirit prompts you, hey, do all the dishes. Just do all the dishes. We have five children in my house. That is a lot of dishes. So I did all the dishes. And afterward, nobody's patting on the back. I didn't announce it, which is rare. I didn't, nothing, right? I just did the dishes. I just did the dishes. And there was this joy. I know that's so small, right? Doing dishes and nobody sees it. But that's what I'm talking about. That's what this stuff is made of. It's these everyday, ordinary things that just give you joy.

And if you still need to kind of grasp onto what joy is or how it feels. Talk to somebody who's been a Christian for more than 20 years. They'll start talking about joy like this, this everyday, normal joy. It's real joy. It's again, it's knowing that you're loved. It's being secure in the fact that you belong to Jesus. It's knowing that your life has a purpose that you don't have to manage. I mean, how joyful is it for me to stand here and just say, the Lord God in heaven has a purpose for my life? All these things swirling around me, all the craziness of my world, right? That seems like it has gotten much crazier in the last year and a half. All that craziness is not something I need to put my hands around and control for me to be okay. Joy. And it's not escapism, it's not fake, it's not self-talk, it's truth, it's joy, it's real.

I don't need to handle it. I don't need to even understand all of it. I can take joy in the fact that I'm doing what the Lord God has put in front of me to do. We've been talking about this emotional connection with Jesus. Joy is the substance of that emotional connection. So it looks like, it feels like real joy. It also feels like conviction. When we sin, conviction. So when you sin, the Holy Spirit's going to be like, hey, don't do that. All right. Holy Spirit's going to get your attention. Like, hey, how'd that feel? Was that good? Is that a good? No. What's going on? The Holy Spirit starts to draw you out. Okay, let's talk about this. All right. You need to confess it. You need to start doing... Now listen, there is a big difference, and I counsel people on this all the time. I was counseling somebody about this recently. There is a big difference between conviction and condemnation.

Conviction says you're doing something wrong. Condemnation says you're an idiot. Do you hear the difference? Condemnation is name calling. Condemnation is judging somebody and declaring that true. That's actual condemnation. You are sentencing them to a label. Conviction is you did something wrong. Let's work to make it right. That's conviction. That's what the Holy Spirit brings, not condemnation.

It also feels like true concern for other people. You find your thoughts drifting to help others. You just do, you just think about them. You might not remember their birthday, like I did this morning. I forgot somebody's birthday this morning. You might not, you might not know everything about it, but you are considering ways to bless them. That's what it feels like. Here's what it looks like. What following the Spirit actually looks like is that your desires begin to change through this joy. Let's go back to real joy. The Holy Spirit compass that is in your life, it sets in when joy becomes that motivator. And it's not a manufactured joy, it's not fake joy, it's not self-talk, it's actual truth, real joy. And when you know that something is true, and when that truth gives you real comfort, that is when you find your actual desires beginning to change. You want different things. When you follow Jesus,

Your desires will change. You will grow that way. It also looks like action. The Holy Spirit, again, is a prompter, right? The Holy Spirit's like, you know, got the birds and the saddle, right? And so we're like, yeah, okay, let's go. Let's do it. The Holy Spirit is a provoker, an agitator, okay? That's what the Holy Spirit is doing. It's giving you ideas. So often we think of sin in terms of temptation, in terms of like luring, okay? So, we think of, oh, oh, you know, hey, I'm gonna skip work and lie to my boss about it, okay? That's the temptation that comes in our brain, okay? When we are tempted that way, we feel like now we're in a dog fight. Should I, shouldn't I, I really want to, maybe I should, maybe I shouldn't. What are the consequences when you start weighing pros and cons? When you are in that dog fight, that's a really hard thing to get out of. What the Holy Spirit is...

Sorry. So when we are in that dog fight, really, it's hard for us to see outside of it. Like, we really can't imagine, okay, I'm just... We can't say something like, well, I'm just not going to deal with it. I'm just going to forget about it. No, because it kind of gnaws at us. We have no problem thinking of temptation this way. We have a big problem thinking of the Holy Spirit tempting us toward good works this way. What if the next time, what if the next time you were prompted to serve somebody to pay for somebody's coffee behind you? I don't know.

You were like, oh, I got to do it now. Like I had the thought, maybe I shouldn't, maybe, oh, no, I got to do it. I got it. What if that was our mentality? mentality. We carried the same mentality when we're tempted to sin, that when we're tempted to do good. Because the Holy Spirit, like it talks about in verse 17 there, the Holy Spirit is tempting you, is like throwing things at you, lowering you into good works, provoking you, creating ideas in your mind of good things to do. If we aren't really in tune with that, we just dismiss it. It's like, Oh, that'd be a good idea We don't really wrestle it down. It doesn't really, we don't allow it to really penetrate our heart, but we should. So it looks like actual desire is changing. It looks like action. It also looks like timely knowledge. The Holy Spirit teaches us things. The Holy Spirit illuminates the scripture.

The Holy Spirit reminds us of things that we already know right when we need it. Timely knowledge. knowledge. It doesn't mean that you're always going to get everything right, that you're never going to look dumb, you're never going to take a risk that's going to fail. That's not what it means. Here's what it does mean. It does mean that if following the Spirit gives you timely knowledge, it means that you can put yourself in a situation to depend on the Holy Spirit to finish your sentence. You can put yourself in a situation for the Holy Spirit to give you words to say for this conversation. But then you don't need to be stuck in the spot of like, oh, it's going to be awkward, and I don't know what to say, and then they're going to ask me about this, and I forgot their last name, and blah, blah, blah, blah. It just kind of just keeps going. You don't need to be in that cocoon or in that coffin

of just never knowing what to say. You can actually jump out and say, I mean, just as your job, you're like, Holy Spirit, you better take care of this. It's going to happen. to land somewhere, you're going to have to use it for your glory, but I'm gone. I mean, in many ways, this is what got my family to this church and a couple of other families. We were just like, okay, Lord, you take care of the rest. We have no idea how this is all going to work out, but cool. And the Lord has been so great. We've been here a year and a half since January 2020. The Lord has been exceedingly gracious. The Lord has provided for everything that we need countless times, relationally, emotionally, physically, financially, all of it. The Lord has been so faithful with one of the biggest risks of your life.

The Lord is faithful, timely knowledge. What it looks like is also family. And we're going to talk about this more, a lot more next week, but it's enough to say that the Holy Spirit brings you into unity with other people. The Holy Spirit gives you a spiritual family. I want to end with how. And really, it's only two things. So I've described kind of what it feels like and what it should look like. And it's just because I want to help you. I want to help you see it. I want to help you kind of flush it out a little bit. But I want to just really give you two, like, this is how to cooperate with the Holy Spirit. Two things. First, we must pray, we must pray forward. What do I mean?

Praying backward is maybe not a good opposite, but praying backward is like, it's always like making sure that God's going to do what he said he was going to do to finish this situation here, or that God's going to fix what's broken. There's nothing wrong with those prayers. I don't mean to condemn those prayers. They're fine to pray. I pray those prayers too. What I mean by praying forward though, is that you pray for the things that your new heart, that that new spirit, the Holy Spirit inside of you is asking of you. You pray for, so the Holy Spirit is calling you to make disciples, then you pray for the ability to make disciples. Holy Spirit is telling you, you got to be more humble. You pray for that humility. humility. And we all like the joke and it's cute. Like, Oh, don't pray for humility. Okay. Listen, I've read the Bible a few times, pray for humility. You need it. I need it. Pray for humility. Pray

toward, pray forward toward eternity. Right? Pray for people that you know that that don't fall in on the Lord, pray for them to follow the Lord. Pray for God to do things and fix things and for you to be a part of a solution to things that you can only barely sketch out, that you can only barely see. I pray for my children as adults. None of my children are adults right now, but I pray for them so that I'm like front load in that prayer, right? I'm saying, Lord, let my children have a household that honors you. Let them be a blessing to whatever community they live in. Let them find complete and utter satisfaction in the jobs that they choose. Let them love their families. Well, these are prayers that I'm praying to. My kids don't have jobs, aren't in a career, don't have families, but I'm praying forward. It doesn't just work with your kids. It works everywhere.

job, church, personal life, all of it. And not only does God work as we pray, because that happens, but also we are able then to detect God working when He does do what we're asking Him to do. Daniel, I've talked a lot about you in this sermon. I don't know why, but you're coming to mind again. But a question that you asked that I love is, think of all the things that you prayed for over the last week. What if God gave you all those things? How would your life be different? I love that question. In part, that question kind of uncovers. Hey, what are you praying for? What kind of reality are you working toward? Is it, honestly, is it just a good weekend? Is it just a good day? Is it just nothing bad to happen? Is that it? That's, okay. I understand we need to pray for, give us this day our daily bread. I'm aware, Jesus prayed for that, I'm not above that. Jesus also prayed, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Same prayer, actually. So we're praying for the things that are immediate, but we're also praying forward. If you are going to walk by the Spirit, then you need to learn to pray forward. Also, you need to learn or actively kind of develop this habit of discerning the Holy Spirit. Okay. Your spiritual progress between now and the next two years, let me just tell you your future. Okay. The same prophecy I promised. The way that you're going to make progress rests squarely on hearing and discerning the Holy Spirit as He speaks to you. I don't care how much Bible knowledge you amass between now and then. I don't care if you gain the ability to pray in public. I don't care if you have a complete lack of suffering in your life over the next two years because none of those things in and of themselves are going to make progress. The thing that's going to make progress is

is you discerning and obeying the Holy Spirit as He speaks and probs you. Now, is the Holy Spirit going to speak through Scripture? Yes. Is the Holy Spirit going to speak through you, you know, learning how to pray in public? Yes. Right? I'm not trying to villainize those things. I'm just saying that the result, they aren't the work. The work is listening to and discerning the Holy Spirit.

And this is, and just as a point of clarity, maybe this will make a little more sense now. Now, we do life groups at our church. In fact, we do life groups, they start every January in July. There's a sign up at the start table, which is immediately out those doors and to my left, your right. And this is why our life groups, which is the heartbeat of our church, this is why our life groups are not Bible studies. Doesn't mean we can't study the Bible. It just means that that's not what these life groups are. Sometimes it includes Bible study, that's fine, I'm not saying it's bad. Life groups are focused on hearing and discerning the will of God on direction, confession, and living on mission. That's our life groups. It is really all about, like when I have my life group meeting with my guys, I got two guys I'm with, they're telling me how they're hearing from the Lord,

They're telling me what they're struggling with, and they're telling me who they're praying for to come to know the Lord, and we pray together. And that's it. That's what we do. That is our life group together. This is why, because, man, success isn't learning more Bible. Success is listening to and discerning and obeying the will of God through the Holy Spirit. And this is why, I mean, just kind of as an outgrowth of life groups, this is why for our church to make progress, right, how we're going to measure progress as a church, it's not more people. I love that you're here. You're visiting, I mean, thank you. Love it. Excited that you're here. Our way that we're going to judge success, we're going to make progress, is not by counting heads. It's not going to be by counting nickels. It's not going to be better music. It's not going to be a better children's ministry

or the sweet, you know, it's not going to be those things. It's not going to be all these kind of added amenities so that we become a cooler place to be and there's more people here. That's not our goal. It's not success. If that's your idea of success, I love you, glad you're here. There's about four churches I can recommend to you, but it's not here. That's not what we're about. It is the same progress for our church is listening to the Holy Spirit as He speaks to us, and it's being obedient in the things that we need to be obedient in, which is making disciples, loving each other, worshiping the Lord. Just some really fundamental things that we are going to viciously focus on forever, till I'm in heaven, right? Till I'm in the grave, in the backyard. That's what we're gonna do as a church. That's how we're gonna be. Galatians 5 ends with these two verses.

It says, 24 and 25, it says, and those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Living by the Spirit, walking by the Spirit, being led by the Spirit will make you confront your sin issues. And that is why we are very open about the fact that we're all sinners. I'm a terrible sinner. I'm a terrible sinner. I have bad days all the time. I say things I shouldn't say. I do things I shouldn't do. I do things when I think people aren't looking that I shouldn't do. I mean, I'm a sinner. Just like you. We're the same. It might be a matter of, you know, a difference of what exactly we do.

But if you are not willing to crucify the flesh, if you're not willing to address that sin issue, let me put it this way. If you claim to follow Jesus, but Jesus never calls you out, never convicts you of sin, then you're probably not worshiping Jesus. You're probably just worshiping some idea you have of how Jesus should be. Because Jesus says things that are hard to hear. Jesus pushes on things that we don't agree with, that don't fit our sensibilities, or even our political leanings. Jesus doesn't care about those things. Jesus is just going to tell you what the truth is. He's going to call you, I was going to love you, he's going to tell you whenever you're sinning and if that never happens, ever, then that's not Jesus that you're worshiping. That's some idea you have. That's something that you've kind of made up. As we close today, as Dan comes up and we sing some more, and we have our invitation

time, I'm going to be right over here, right by the piano. And if there's something that you want to come and talk to me about, if there's something you want to confess, if there's something you want to do, like you want to follow the Do you want to join our church? Then you can come up and see me during this time. I want to leave you with Galatians chapter three, verses two and three. So earlier in the book of Galatians. And it's a pointed question. It says, let me ask you only this. Did you receive the spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? And then it asks it even better in verse three. Are you so foolish? Having begun by the spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh. We don't graduate from listening to the Holy Spirit. It's how we come to the Lord. That's how we grow in the Lord. Today, during this invitation time, if you want to take that step

on your journey of following the Lord, listening to the Holy Spirit, then we'll be ready. I'll be here. Would you please stand as we sing. Just how glorious you are And I cannot be entertained I deep in love you do Lord, my ears I'd love you But now my eyes have seen Forever and ever Forever and ever You're the only one To be pulled away, I'd revert To the heart of state of my soul It found me, and it would prove me That a shame that was my own And I could not begin to turn A merciful to do them One way is a murder, and all my eyes have seen

You, you're worthy, worthy, worthy to be praised for ever and ever. You, you're worthy, worthy to be praised for ever and ever. You'll sing it out of your heartless days You'll sing it out of your heartless days We'll sing it out of your eyes We'll sing it out of your eyes We'll sing it out of your eyes We'll be taking turns Forever and a day We are, we are

Ready to be placed Forever and a day