-Transcript-
00:34 Amen. Welcome to the cafe. Good to be here today.
00:36 Hope you’re having a wonderful day. Thank you so much for joining me. I truly appreciate it.
00:42 Today we are getting into God’s Word as we always do and we are in the fourth part of a four-part series on the Christian walk. How to live as a Christian and it’s just been beautiful to preach this. I preached this recently to our congregation here in Lincolnton, North Carolina and I’ve preached it in different parts here on the radio and I’ve been blessed by it.
01:04 I hope you have as well. By understanding the Christian walk is more than buying a Bible and opening it on Sunday morning. The Christian walk is more than buzzwords and terms and saying, I’m doing kingdom business.
01:23 I’m discipling others. Okay, well that’s great but what does that mean? And not only does it mean to you but what does it mean to God? Amen. See God has an order and a pattern for everything and as we study His Word, oh how we see an orderly God.
01:37 I was in numbers. I’ve been studying numbers for my morning Bible study and God had the Israelites take a census by Mount Sinai and it was counting all the men of war 20 and up or something whatever it was and I thought that was pretty interesting.
01:58 It’s kind of similar to a census we have today in America or even kind of a combined with a draft and God had that done again later on in numbers some chapters later on when they were in a different place and God was saying look if you look at this new census and you look at the old census not one person from the old census besides Caleb and Joshua not one person is going to go in to the promised land because God had made that vow as they murmured and as they built false gods and as they were very wicked while God was caring for them and loving them and guiding them to the promised land God made that vow and said y’all aren’t gonna go in and guess what happened they didn’t go in and God said by the way I’ve just done a little census before and after and here you go.
02:52 Well what’s the point of this? The point is that God’s a God of order. Look in your life the things that God has done for you oftentimes they’re very orderly. You know we love to see in movies or things where these like surprise extreme events happen we love to hear stories about that but more and more so it’s often very orderly even if there are extreme events they’re happening in one’s life like through a testimony or through your own life they happen in like an order.
03:13 I was watching a great message by the founder of the Christian Law Association I think Embassy Media is the name of the company it’s a great company they have all these messages on there and this man was giving a great testimony of his mother and his mother had been a great woman of God and then was injured or had a awful polio type disease and it was in a wheelchair and then wanted to do something for God and faced rejection and then was able I won’t ruin the whole message
03:42 but was able to do something for God thereafter and the wheelchair and all of it and her perseverance it all played a part in how she was able to do something for God and what we see here is God’s methodical and in that testimony it’s so emotional but but you get behind the emotion and and the tears that you would you would cry over this wonderful testimony you would see a pattern or an order and
04:02 that’s how the Christian walk is friend there’s pattern there’s order there are ideas their principles that are being applied to the Christian walk and I believe the Lord has opened my eyes to see it and I believe he’s opening the eyes of those that listen to this message to see it and I love the Lord for doing that Amen
04:18 and part of the Christian walk here is2 Corinthians 5:7 for we walk by faith and not by sight we must have faith and then we say okay if we have to have faith here faith cometh by hearingand hearing by the Word of God we realize that our our mode for developing our faith and honing in on our faith is the Bible so we study the Bible well what’s the whole Bible about well it’s all about Jesus Christ it’s all about salvation for God’s people he’s the God of salvation Amen
04:43 so what is salvation we look at the blood amen we understand the principle of the substitutionary death the principle of a Savior dying for a lost sinner so that the perfect Savior that died and was risen again could supply that free gift to the lost sinner to be saved Amen
05:00“and we understand these these unbelievable true poetic loving principles that a gap a love that sacrificial love that only God can provide we start understanding them more and more and now guess what our Christian walk becomes better and better fuller and fuller we’re able to serve God as He’d have us to serve we’re able to sacrifice ourselves as our reasonable service because we understand what that means and I think that ignorance plagues the modern church
05:31 I was so excited to go to campground went to a campground and it was a Christian campground it was a really nice campground went to a service and it was 80% singing and no 90 80 90% singing and just a tiny little bit of preaching look if we don’t get the meat of the word if we are not in the word if church becomes simply worship and praise and it’s not studying the word then we are gonna be anemic Christians we’re gonna be starved we’re gonna be unhealthy and we’re gonna be unfruitful
06:01 and so we need to get in the word to understand our Christian walks we talked about salvation we understand the need to be in God’s Word and then we look at the idea of appropriation I spent a messages on appropriation the idea of appropriating our faith taking our faith our understanding of what God’s calling us to do and using it putting it to work putting it into action we went through that and now here this last message we’re focusing on the best part Amen
06:27 and that’s our end goal that’s where we’re gonna be heaven Amen heaven that’s where we’re going soon we’re going to heaven the believer is going to heaven I say we those that have trusted Christ as Savior they’re going to heaven their home is heaven a soul winner knocks on the door and says do you know where where you’d go if you died tomorrow or if you died today do you know where you’d go because the soul winners starting with the end to get to the beginning right heaven is our end
06:57 Jeremiah 29:11 for I know the thoughts that I think toward you say it the Lordthoughts of peace and not of evil to give you an expected end you know if you love somebody you probably think about them don’t you if you really love somebody you probably think about them often and if you love somebody oftentimes you’re thinking of what you could do for them or what their future holds or what aspirations you have for them especially if it’s a child Amen
07:24 you you think of them you know I’ll think of my kids what they what professions they might have or if they may even be in the ministry or I’ll think of my children playing sports and you know I love sports I think of them winning you know I don’t know if it’ll happen God hopefully you hear me there but they’ll be winning and victorious and they’ll do well and good teammates and we think of these things well what does God think of us He thinks peace and not evil
07:53 toward us even when we go through trials and He wants to give us that expected end and that expected end friend as I understand it is heaven and heaven is a beautiful place and it’s home to the saved believer no sinner no sinner that has not been saved no no I should say or no unrepentant sinner right because we’re all sinners but we repent of our sins we say Lord we don’t want to do these anymore we believe on what Christ did for us we get saved nobody that is living in sin that has not been saved will go to heaven they won’t be there heaven will be full of people that have trusted Jesus Christ truly 100% trusted Christ as Savior and Lord
08:33 and believed it and had faith that’s who heaven that’s who will be in heaven and we’re not the judge of that Christ is the judge of that he is the judge amen so we’re saved by Him and we’re admitted into heaven through Him Amen
08:43 He’s our Savior He judges and so He rightly divides He knows the hearts Amen the Bible speaks of Him having eyes like fire Amen piercing fire fire is gonna purify fire is gonna burn through all the muck and so you won’t be able to talk your way into heaven or barter your way into heaven it’s already been done at that point that’s why it’s so important to be saved I met a man yesterday that had a horrible experience a diabetic coma he had all kinds of he got kovat in the hospital he had hypothermia because he had that coma when he was living alone with the door open on the coldest day of the year it was a awful story and he told me he said I’ve been going to church more now because you never know when the end is gonna be
09:24 and you tell them and he literally knocked on death’s door and it wasn’t pretty he didn’t have any real pretty experiences when he was in that coma he said it was all black it was all black okay well that would motivate me to go to church more to amen but we shouldn’t need to get into a coma and hypothermia and hospital induced kovat we don’t need to do all that we could just go ahead on our own account get into the Holy Word and get into His place His house and praise His name Amen
09:47 because heaven is the home of the saved believer and it is great to be in heaven one day yet here we are on earth and so we need to keep the in a heavenly mind about us and of course you probably heard this we don’t want to be so heavenly minded that we’re no earthly good I agree with that but often it’s the opposite isn’t it those that are out there working for the Lord serving the Lord often they’re not heavenly minded they’re they’re caught up in the trials and tribulations of each and every day and so for a lot of us we need to be a little more heavenly minded
10:21 we need to realize some traits or some principles about heaven and that helps with our Christian walk here today to understand where we’re going helps us today Amen
10:31 I’m better at work on a work day if I know hey I got a vacation coming up and I’m looking forward to it especially if the kids are gonna be there there maybe there’s a water slide or something the kids will be playing in the water slide and you know me I’ll be I have some coffee a little bit of food I’d be great I might be a little bit better today if I can think about something fun tomorrow
10:51 and God’s saying take that principle and double it times a hundred million trillion you’ll be a little bit better today when you realize that you’re going to paradise maybe not tomorrow maybe but maybe not tomorrow but real soon Amen
11:02 you’d be a little bit better today knowing your tomorrow Amen we already have a place there one of the big principles I’ve been learning about these last few years in the ministry is the idea that that our names already written in the Lamb’s Book of Life that we’re already have a place in heaven that the Lord went to prepare a mansion for us Amen
11:24 that it’s already done so what Christ did on the cross is already done if we’ve been saved that’s already done and if we’ve been saved we know we get that Holy Spirit of promise living within us and that we’ll be there till the day of redemption when we’re go to the Bema seat Amen we’ll be with the Lord and we’ll get rewards for any good deed that we did out of the working of the Holy Spirit out of what we did out of a love for God and not for ourselves will be rewarded so we’re gonna have rewards in heaven our names already in the Lamb’s Book of Life we are secure in heaven our place is secure in heaven we are just pilgrims passing through we are just sojourners here we’re not here forever we are just here for a season and so understand your place is already there I think that that really helps a lot to understand hey I already have a place in heaven and number
12:11 number two understand that your place is secure that we have eternal security in Christ Jesus once born again always born again you’re not born again and again and again Christ died once Amen for all mankind for all time when we believe on Christ truly and fully no matter what happens after that our place is secure we have security in knowing that we are going to heaven and we can know that we’re saved by that Holy Spirit living within us
12:37 as we go and we’re convicted in the church service maybe convicted listening to a message or you hear singing and you know you’re convicted or maybe you sin and the Holy Spirit convicts you that’s the Holy Spirit living within you and we know that that Holy Spirit will keep us until the day of redemption till we’re in heaven we know that God is shaping us to be more like we will be in heaven because we’re not gonna have sin in heaven and the Bible clearly instructs the Christian the believer which as I understand all of Paul’s epistles all of Paul’s letters are written to the believer and if you read about what Paul is writing about he’s saying depart from sin depart from the unholy thing get rid of all that live for God live as a holy sacrifice study to show yourself approved all of these things for the believer it’s making us more like we’ll be in heaven
13:21 so we might as well get started now as to how we’re gonna be in heaven we should be heavenly minded in that sense and there’s no pain or suffering in heaven and so our Christian walk will inevitably have pain and suffering and we need to remind ourselves that this is just for a season it’s so much easier to suffer when it’s just for a season I remember playing high school football and we would run like crazy and all we’ve been telling ourselves is this is just the preseason this is the preseason because once you got in the regular season you didn’t have to run as much as you did in the preseason and then by the end of the season you were barely running at all because you’re already in shape you’re just walking through plays and 13:55 you realize that that exercise that difficult time that challenge was just for a season and we need to think about that in our Christian walk that as we go through hard times it’s just for a season and finally remember Christ will always be with you that we don’t do anything but it’s Christ doing it through us thank you for listening
14:14 Take care God bless and Amen