Yesterday's lesson

I'd like to encourage everyone who doesn't normally listen to the lessons on youtube to take 30 minutes and re-listen to this week's lesson. It's interesting that both the sermon and the lesson are taken from the same scripture but were completely different. I really think this scripture is very vital in our walk with the Lord. It's so upsetting to imagine us making Jesus vomit with our disgraceful walk. The view point I'm getting ready to share isn't one that's approved but I'm going to share it and if told I'll take it down but it's what I'm beginning to feel.

Good works are a path straight to Hell. It's so easy to get caught up in doing things for earthy people that we've put everything on those works. What do we do? We think just because people are serving as an usher or playing an instrument or on singing in the choir that they are a Christian. We somehow elevate someone as a big Christian who decides to open a soup kitchen to feed the poor. We tend to praise and think that the people doing all the work are the people who are on fire. NO, NO, NO! We've gotten so tied up with HELPING people. The whole serving Sunday thing, everything, doesn't mean anything if we don't have a real experience with Jesus. Sure the church needs these things, but without the fire from the Holy Spirit it's all in vain. Just a veil to cover working and helping people out. The Gospel isn't a social Gospel. Jesus didn't come back to feed people and build things for them. Jesus came to save us all from a sinner's Hell. Jesus wants us in HIS boat. We tend to get things backwards. We think that we'll go to church and act like a welfare office and we're doing a great job. The problem is that we need to get our hearts concentrated on Jesus. Seriously on Jesus. Praying for his mercy in each day. On our faces begging for forgiveness from a Holy and Righteous God. Begging for deliverance from sin and selfishness. Then after we do this and develop our relationship the rest will fall in line. Paul didn't go out and establish soup kitchens. He established the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm seriously not picking on anyone, seriously. It's just that as I listened to the lesson again it's what God placed on my heart. I don't want to be Jesus's vomit. I want a double helping of the Spirit of Elijah. I want the Holy Spirit to come and burn out all the sin and turn my heart from it. I want deliverance.

It's so easy to work. It's easy to serve and show up for church. It's easy to bust your butt on a project and serve. It's hard to start off your day in prayer begging for deliverance for the day. It's hard just to praise him. This message really hits home to me because it's me. So long I've hid behind the "It's not my personality" thing. So long I've hidden behind "I'm giving all my time serving" thing. So little time actually in a relationship with the one who saved me from Hell.

Ephesians 2: ¹ As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, ² in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. ³ All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh^a]">[a] and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. ⁴ But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, ⁵ made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. ⁶ And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, ⁷ in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. ⁸ For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— ⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast. ¹⁰ For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Now reading Ephesians you can see the order God wants us to have. First we are made alive. And then because of our being alive in Christ then we will do his good works as he directs. Maybe I'm just the only one who seemed to get this backwards. Maybe but I'm doubtful. What you do for Christ without Christ will pale in comparison to the work you can do WITH Christ for Christ. God's Holy Spirit is the helper and it's time we as Christians start to seek it's power. Pray for revival in your own heart and just start to seek the Holy Spirit. I'm really trying in earnest, just to seek God's face in everything I do. I'm done with hiding behind my works. Thanks for such an encouraging message Ryan. It really is time to quit messing around and get on our knees and be part of God's true church.