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00:35 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the cafe today.
00:38 Good to have you here today. We are in God’s Word studying spiritual truths today. I hope you’re ready.
00:45 I hope you’re excited to dive into God’s Word. I’m so thankful that you’ve joined me today and that you’ve given me, really you’ve given the Lord here some time and to get into His Word, to study His Word, to show ourselves approved unto God. We need not be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of truth.
01:06 That’s a paraphrase there from Timothy. We just love the Lord here today and I’m so thankful for God’s Word. I hope you are too because it can comfort us in our current situation, any situation.
01:18 And today we’re in 2 Corinthians 5 and we’re looking at some scriptures here about living by faith and how we can live by faith in these last days and how Christ’s love can guide us. 2nd Corinthians 5 we’ll start with verses 6 through 8. Therefore we are always confident knowing that with we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord for we walk by faith not by sight. We are confident I say and willing rather to be absent from the body and be present with the Lord.
01:57 And so we see here oftentimes verse 8 of 2nd Corinthians 5 will be kind of muddled together and people, preachers including myself, will say to be absent from the body is be present with the Lord. But here we see it in a more fuller context. We are confident I say willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.
02:18 And so preachers, many preachers including myself have kind of taken that verse and shortened it a little bit and it’s not untrue. It still is the same meaning that if you’re saved Amen. Because who does Paul write to? As I understand it Paul always writes to the believer and Paul often wrote right with we.
02:40 I found myself we have a very small congregation and especially early on in the ministry I found myself writing these sermons almost like line by line word by word to make sure I didn’t miss anything and it’s doing what God would want me to do and get everything in there. And often I would write we. We this, we that.
02:59 Because the congregation is a small congregation of believers, right? And so Paul here is doing the same thing. Certainly Paul didn’t copy me. I guess I might have been inspired by Paul or might have been preaching on Paul.
03:11 But he’s writing to the believers here in this epistle and he’s telling them we are confident I say rather willing to be absent from the body and be present with the Lord. The idea is if you’re saved and you die you’re going to be present with God immediately. And now this helps to fight against some kind of false doctrines about there being a purgatory, there being some kind of waiting room, there being some kind of area where you could or could not go this way or that way.
03:44 No. We see in the scripture several times this being one of the scriptures that shows that when we die we’re instantly with God. Another one would be like the thief on the cross and Jesus says today you’ll be with me in paradise.
03:55 The one that believed on Jesus whereas the other didn’t and mocked him. And it’s another example today or to be absent. I mean it’s immediate, right? And we read about the rapture and the Lord calling his church home.
04:11 It happens in the twinkling of an eye, not even a blink, a twinkle and multi or a millisecond or I was gonna say less than a second. I believe that’s what death is like for the believer. There may be illness that lasts years, amen, and there may be these things that are happening slowly, slowly, slowly, but once death actually occurs that instant the believer is with God.
04:34 And let me ask you this question today. Would you rather be here on earth or with God? I hope your answer would be with God because when we understand that God made us, that God desires a relationship with us, that God loves us, that God is sovereign and puts us on a path and gives us the talents that we have and even the interests we have. Who gave you the interests you have? God gave you those.
04:58 So if you’re worried about your family or your interests or your passion or anything, God gave you all those to begin with, amen, and he wants you to come home. At that time it’d be good to come home, Amen, because he is the creator. He is the maker.
05:16 He is the almighty and he has a great love for you. And we understand that words cannot describe what is there for us in heaven. Amen.
05:22 Words cannot, cannot bring it to life. Amen. Nobody can even explain what is there for us in heaven.
05:27 It is so wonderful and great. So you, my friend, if you have been saved, you should desire to be with the Lord, which makes your walk on earth a little harder or a lot harder because you don’t want to be here. Amen.
05:41 And again, talking about preachers and old time preachers, you might’ve heard the preacher say, I’m just a pilgrim. I’m just a pilgrim. I’m just a sojourner.
05:46 I’m just passing through. I’ve said that many times. That should be our attitude.
05:52 And the reason why is we shouldn’t be too comfortable in this place. You know, I, I, uh, hear people say sometimes with the best of intentions, this is our forever house or we want to get our forever house. And I know what they mean.
06:05 They mean forever here on earth, but truly our forever houses in heaven. Amen. That’ll preach our forever house is in heaven with the Lord Jesus Christ.
06:14 That’s our forever house. And so here we dwell in houses or tents or RVs or tiny houses or apartments or condos or whatever. We dwell, we dwell here in a place, but it’s not our forever home.
06:29 Amen. And that should make us even want to groan. And Paul writes about it in second Corinthians five, the idea of groaning for that new body of that new life in heaven and getting rid of the old one.
06:42 And so we see here in 2 Corinthians 5, that this is all underscoring a great spiritual truth of living by faith, because everything that I did to introduce this in, in, in the six or seven minutes we’ve been on the air, everything I’ve done here is to set up the idea of a mind frame that is heavenly minded, that is positioned towards the heavenly. Even Abraham, I believe this scripture says was looking for a city, not built by man, but by God, we should be like Abraham looking for that city. Amen.
07:14 We should have a heavenly point of view. Now you may be thinking about that old saying, don’t be so heavenly minded. You’re no earthly good.
07:21 I’m going to get to that. And we should be of much earthly good. I’m not saying to thumb our nose up at the earth.
07:26 I’m saying to, to live in faith freely here on earth, even more so than a lot of Christians may want to, or feel like they should do knowing that our true home is in heaven. Imagine a Christian family. They have a good heart.
07:40 They go to church, they give to the church, they’re 10%, they’re tied. And, and I know giving can be a hot topic and, and you know, in this program, we’ve never asked for anything. Amen.
07:50 Uh, God has provided miraculously. I’ll say that. And I can testify and I should that God has provided for this program on all the stations we are on.
07:59 It’s incredible what He has done and He gets the glory. Amen. But just imagine a couple, they tie, they give their 10% and they’re very reserved.
08:07 They have a good savings account. They have a very nice life. They both have jobs.
08:12 Their kids are in a good school. And God is calling them to sell all their possessions and give to the poor radically and go over to the mission field in Asia. And they’re saying, wait a minute, this is going to wreck our lives.
08:28 Right? And they go through all of this unnecessary trouble, worrying about losing these things they’ve accumulated. And what the scripture here is saying is live by faith. Understand that when God calls you to something, it is good.
08:41 And you should go ahead and walk by faith. It is for your best. Amen.
08:51 The picture we see in the old Testament, for whatever reason, I’ve been preaching about this a lot lately, is the Israelites being delivered from the Egyptians from bondage and the Red Sea splitting. And they wanted to go back to Egypt when they were in the wilderness. And they wanted to go back to those comforts of that earthly life.
09:03 In fact, when they got sick of the manna, they were saying, oh, we missed the garlic and these different things, the leeks and so forth. Things I didn’t know they had there, but they missed those things and they missed those comforts. We need to be, as God called us to be, and forsake that stuff.
09:17 A New Testament version would be like when Jesus sent the disciples out two by two and said, don’t bring a script, a wallet, don’t bring two coats, don’t bring nothing. Just you go and I’ll provide. We need to have that mentality and stop clutching onto the comforts or the safety, the crutches here we have on earth.
09:36 And we need to live by faith because truly, I believe the example I gave, that good Christian couple probably would have come to the conclusion to do what God wanted them to do. But how much heartache and stress they go through in the process, right? Now, we’ve not all been there, but maybe the Lord is impressing on us to do something and we’re pushing back. And hey, as Jesus said to Paul on the road to Damascus, it’s not easy to kick up against the bricks, Amen It’s not easy to go up against the Lord, Amen It’s much easier to go with the Lord and to follow his guiding.
10:04 And you know what? Maybe he wants you to do something spectacular so that you can have a testimony that brings Him glory, so that you can say, hey, look what God did, Amen As I mentioned earlier with our radio program, look what God did. He’s provided for it. And my prayer to him all the time is, God, you called me to this, please provide for it.
10:25 You called me to add more stations, please provide for it. And He has, he’s provided incredibly. And I give Him the glory here today.
10:32 It’s nothing man could do. It’s not something I could ever do on my own. I believe that.
10:37 I could not do it on my own. It’s all God. And the next step here for you, Christian, is to walk by faith, to live by faith.
10:44 And we could see here, okay, that those that are not living by faith are doing what? They’re living in unbelief, right? So those that are not living with a godly mindset, not living as God has called them to live, not living with their minds and their hearts positioned towards heaven, looking for that city that was not built by hands, those that are living in unbelief. And so in the world, you have those that don’t believe God is real. They don’t fear God and they’re living very rebellious, right? In their heart, they probably know God is real.
11:17 The Bible says that everyone has some light in them. And so they all understand or have a form of God in them, but they don’t want to identify. They don’t want to admit it.
11:26 They want to live in sin. They want to be like those bugs in the dirt when that are in the dark under the rock. And they don’t like it when the light comes in, they can’t stand the light.
11:34 Amen. And so they’re living in unbelief. And so when we live by faith, we are living in belief.
11:41 Abraham was justified by faith. All we can do is believe. So we say we believe in Christ.
11:47 Again, we try to act like we believe in Christ. Let’s have that monster faith that we really do believe, believe in Christ that just of incredible magnitude, like, wow, these people really believe in Jesus. They’re really doing what he calls them to do, no matter what the culture says, or no matter what that unbeliever says, or what that scorner says, He’s a Bible word.
12:06 And how do we do this through Christ’s love? This is how we do it. 2 Corinthians 5: 14 -15.For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: And that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again. So we see Christ’s finished work on the cross should guide our life.
12:30 We should stop living for ourselves and start living for Him. Amen. We have to realize that what Christ did for us is life changing, that we should be living in the mindset of being reconciled to God by Christ, and then having that ministry of reconciliation so that we can lead others to Christ.
12:48 And we should be bringing Him glory all the way. We should be living fearlessly, knowing that we desire to be in heaven with him. And that when we go to heaven, we’d like to have some reward there for what we did here on earth.
13:00 Amen. And what we did out of the working of the Holy Spirit, nothing that we did on our own, but what the Holy Spirit did through us on that Bema seat or that judgment seat. And all this happens after salvation.
13:11 So firstly, we must be saved, believe on the blood of Christ, saving us from our sins, debt that we could never pay, living for Christ fully and holy, desiring to be in heaven, and having that great faith about us, understanding that it’s Christ that died for us, that he was obedient first. So now we can be obedient and that he died for those that were spiritually dead so they could live again. That’s us.
13:37 So now we can walk by faith and not by sight, not by what we see, not by what’s happening in the culture. We can live as God’s called us to live. But it all starts with our heart and our mind and prayer, purposing in our heart and our mind that we will pray to God and seek His will, and we will live fearlessly for Christ, desiring to be in heaven with him more than desiring the comforts and riches of this earth.
14:01 I thank you so much for listening. Take care, God bless, and Amen.