-Transcript-
00:36 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the cafe.
00:40 Good to have you here today. Hope you’re having a blessed day. Hope you’re having a wonderful day.
00:45 God has been so good. He’s been too good to us not to praise Him today. Today we were talking about something so practical, so useful, so wonderful and that is the Christian walk.
00:55 How God would have us to live. And in the first part of this series I spoke about being saved and having a deep understanding of what salvation means. You know the Bible calls us to be ready to give an account of what happened to us, of why God is in our lives, of what we’re doing to be heavenly, okay? We are called to give an account.
01:18 We say, hey this is why we’re going to heaven. This is what God did for me, right? And I believe that even those informal accounts can be very effective. Those testimonies can be very effective.
01:29 But we must firmly understand what salvation means and what Christ did for us on the cross and how the shedding of blood was the only way that there was remission for sin, that we are forgiven of our sins, that our sin debt was paid. It was only by the perfect sinless spotless Lamb who was Christ. And we have to understand these principles, not just generally.
01:57 Like, okay man’s a sinner. Christ died for us. Christ died for the sinner.
02:01 Saved. I’m good. No, I am a sinner.
02:05 I have a sin debt. I have a sin nature that has been in me since birth that I cannot resolve on my own, and the world certainly can’t fix it. And Christ died for me.
02:16 And I accept Him as Savior. And I thank Him for what he did for me. And I believe on Him.
02:22 I believe He literally died on the cross, was buried three days, and that God resurrected him from the grave. And that He walked the earth 40 days and 40 nights, was seen by over 500. I believe that.
02:36 And He ascended up to heaven. Today’s at the right hand of the Father. I believe that my God is alive.
02:40 I believe he saved me personally. We understand God’s program for salvation. By the way, if you haven’t been saved, you can pray today and be saved.
02:49 I’ve just walked through a general idea of the gospel. You can ask the Lord Jesus Christ to save you right now. You don’t need to be a member of a church.
02:57 You don’t need to have any kind of financial thing or education. Nothing. Simply believe on Christ and what He’s done for you personally, and you’ll be saved.
03:09 Amen. That’s my hope and my prayer. Oh, what a glory it would be to have any part in a salvation out there.
03:15 So if you’re hearing this and you haven’t been saved, give your life to Christ. Oh, what a moment that would be to just give your life to Christ. Maybe the Lord’s been working on you.
03:23 Maybe you’ve had people come into your life and talk to you about Jesus, and you just said, no, I’m not ready. I’m not ready. I don’t want to give this up.
03:30 I’m not sure about this. Just give them your heart. I’ve never met a Christian that truly gave their heart to Christ that regretted it.
03:35 I’ve only met Christians that said, I wish I could have served him earlier. I wish I could have been saved earlier. The sweetest life there is, is the saved life.
03:49 And please, friend, if you’re listening today and you haven’t been saved, accept Christ as your Savior. I accepted Him as my Savior, and He changed my life. He changed.
04:00 He made me new. Amen. I’m not perfect, but he gave me a beautiful family, a house, a great house, and a good job.
04:08 A great job, really. A wonderful ministry, and I give God all the credit because he did that. And statistically, I don’t know that I should even be here.
04:19 Some have heard my testimony. I’m very blessed to be where I am, and it’s all because of Christ. And he can do that for you.
04:26 He can change your entire life and make you new. God specializes in making broken things whole again and new and better than they’ve ever been. So be saved today if you haven’t.
04:38 I just want to take a moment to urge anybody listening. Accept Christ as Savior. Believe on Him, and you’ll truly be blessed.
04:46 And if you are giving your life to Christ, contact me. I want to pray for you. You can email Clark at enduringpromise.org, or if you go to kjvcafe.com, I think we have a little envelope button.
05:01 You can click that, or our Facebook, KJV Cafe. Look us up. Let me know.
05:05 I will be praying for you. I’ll be celebrating, too, and I’ll be praying for you. Praise God.
05:08 All right. We are to live fearless. We’re talking here about being saved in the Christian walk.
05:16 Number one, we understand we’re saved. Number two, we have the present-day Christian walk by understanding that we’re saved. And that present-day Christian walk deals with appropriation, the idea of assigning these principles of our faith to actions in our life.
05:28 Appropriating things like living freely in Christ, understanding we have liberty in Christ, studying His Word, as 2 Timothy 2:15 explains, seeking the kingdom first, as Matthew 6:33 explains, finding rest in him alone, as Matthew 11:28 explains. And we’re appropriating these scriptures, these principles to our lives. We are distributing them.
05:50 We are taking them, and we’re saying, okay, they’re up here for us. We’re gonna grab it and apply it to us and live that life. And here we are to live fearless.
05:59 That’s what I just mentioned. Fearless. Another way to appropriate our faith to our life is not to be afraid.
06:05 It’s very hard not to be afraid. I was talking to my young son, C.J. Clark Jr., newly five years old, cutest kid you’ve ever seen, pretty much. Sitting here talking to me, Daddy, I’m playing a game, and Daddy, there’s a big scary man in the game, and I was scared.
06:19 And he just says it so casually about how he’s scared, Amen? And the truth is, we all deal with great fear. And God says, be fearless. Psalm 23:4, yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.
06:36 Thy rod and thy staff, theycomfort me. We should be fearless. Even, what is the scariest thing? Death, typically.
06:42 Think about the underlying fear in anything. War or COVID or whatever it is, the underlying fear is death, right? Either you dying or someone you love dying or people dying, right? And here we see God tackling that through David directly in Psalm 23:4. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. See, we walk through very scary times here on this earth in these last days.
07:04 I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. If you look at David’s testimony, he killed a bear, killed a lion, he knocked out Goliath, he had to confront Saul who was hunting him down.
07:22 He had a life full of very scary moments, and he says, I’m not gonna be afraid, amen? I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. So David’s fear, lack of fear, is rooted in God’s full presence, and we know that God is a very present help in times of trouble. And so we understand that God’s all-powerful, then we are to live fearless.
07:42 Let’s appropriate that today. Let’s live that out. Let’s not just read that, say, that’s beautiful.
07:47 Some people say Psalm 23 is the most beautiful language or words ever written. I can’t argue, it’s incredible. It’s of God, it must be of God.
07:56 It must be the Holy Spirit writing that through David, because I can’t imagine any man thinking of it. It’s so beautiful, and at the same time, it’s true. We need to take the reality of it, the practicality of it, and say, look, okay, this is beautiful, and it’s wonderful, and we can think about it, and say that’s really great for him, but I’m gonna go ahead and apply this to my life too.
08:14 And when I get that news that I have a medical condition, when I get that news that the plague is coming back, when I get that news that the war is coming to my doorstep, when I get these scary information, when I get the scary information coming toward me, I won’t fear. I’m gonna turn to that strong God and that I know and love, and that I’ve been saved of, and I’m going to live. How? In comfort.
08:35 It says they comfort me. We have the Comforter living within us, amen? So I’ll turn to the Holy Spirit, and I’ll be comforted, and I will live fearless. Another reason not to fear, another reason not to stress, is we don’t lose our salvation when we fail Him.
08:51 1 Corinthians 3:15, if any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss, but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire. We need to stop thinking that we’re gonna lose our salvation if we don’t work hard enough or do something. God is a God of His Word, and if you truly have trusted Him as Savior and Lord, as I’ve mentioned earlier on how to do, and you mess up, you sin, or you fall short, you miss a Sunday service, you lose your temper, you go on the list of what could be a sin or what could be something not pleasing to God.
09:27 He’s not removing the salvation from you. He’s not doing that. We understand that our rewards, this is speaking of the bema seat, the rewards, our rewards may be burned up.
09:37 We may not get as many rewards if we’re not quite living for Him, but we will be saved because God promises those that believe on Jesus are going to be saved forever. The idea is eternal security. You know, I want to just say here briefly that when once saved, always saved, Christ died one time for all mankind, for all time.
09:56 And so we can read Scripture, like in Revelation and stuff, those that, you know, make it to the end will be saved or whatever, but that’s dealing with the Jewish people after the church has been raptured out, Amen? I believe in a pre-tribulation rapture. Everything that I’ve studied and the people that I’ve studied under, so to speak, all teach a pre-tribulation rapture. The idea that our Christians, those that are saved, are gone to heaven to be with the Lord before the tribulation period, that seven-year period, takes place on earth.
10:28 And so we are saved. You know, we are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise unto that day of redemption, Amen? I was reading, I think it was the last message Scripture, on how God’s not going to lose, God the Father is not going to lose one for Jesus the Son. So everyone that God the Father gave Jesus the Son, that’d be us, anyone that’s been saved, anyone listening has been saved, I shouldn’t say us because some people listening may have not been saved, but if you’ve been saved, you’re going to be with Jesus Christ in heaven.
10:55 That is a promise and God does not lie. We are to train our children in His ways. Another way to appropriate our faith, to live it out, is to train our children in His ways.
11:05 Proverbs 22:6, train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old hewill not depart from it. And so we are to bring that Christian legacy and the Christian heritage that we have and pass it down to the next generation. You know, if you don’t do family altar and you’ve got little kids, you really need to consider doing a family altar every night.
11:23 If the night doesn’t work, every morning. I’ve heard it done both ways. It’s very important, or ideally, in the morning and at night.
11:30 And at the very least, talking to your kids all the time about the Scriptures, explaining that all good things come from God, teaching your kids to pray, teaching your kids to give God praise, helping your kids understand the nature of the world, that not everybody is saved and that the world is lost and that not everything that the crowd or the group thinks is right, is right. You know, these are very important principles and God calls us to teach our children very seriously, I believe is the command, that we are to raise our children up in the ways of the Lord. And once they have that in their hearts and their minds, I believe, like the Bible says, they will not depart from it.
12:06 Amen. They will not. That will be in them for the rest of their lives.
12:10 Amen. And here we have, again, the hardest part of appropriating our faith is that submission, that idea of yielding to God and fleeing from sin. And that’s so hard to yield to God in a world that says, be the captain of your own ship, make all your plans, fill out your calendar, make your roadmap, do your mind map.
12:30 Everything is you, you, you. And God’s saying, no, it’s not. It’s me.
12:32 Proverbs 3:5- 6, this is my life verse,Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding.In all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths. This is radical advice if you were living in the world.
12:48 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, not the world. Lean on your, not lean on your own understanding. Try to tell that to a PhD or an MD or somebody with a bunch of letters behind their name.
12:56 Don’t lean on your own understanding. Trust God. That’s real hard.
13:00 In all thy ways acknowledge him. All thy ways, not some ways, but all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths. How about Psalm 119:105 Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.
13:12 We are to yield to God, to appropriate our faith. We are to yield to God and we are to let him guide us and we are to turn to him with every decision, big or small. I’ve heard this said before, bringing every thought into subjection unto Christ.
13:26 That should be our goal. So to recap, realize your place in the kingdom that you’ve been saved. Realize your place on earth that you are a servant and slave to Christ.
13:38 Amen. Appropriate your faith to live in victory and yield to God all the way to the place of submission, service and obedience. Remember, obedience is better than sacrifice.
13:47 We want to be obedient to God and God will bless us richly for that obedience, for that service, for living for him and fully getting to know him. All I’ve preached came from the Bible and we get to know God through the Bible. Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God.
14:04 Tune in for the last part of this series very soon. I appreciate you listening. Take care.
14:09 God bless and amen.