Frankie Mazzapica - He's On Your Right
Thank you for tuning in this morning. My name is Frankie. The title of the message is "He's On Your Right". He's On Your Right. Now, this is a Christmas message for you. And I wanna just say that there are two scriptures that we should remember during this Christmas season. There's two and the first one, I'm just gonna tell you, it's in Matthew chapter 1, verse 23, where it reads like this, "A virgin shall bring with her a child and shall bring forth a Son and they," everyone else "shall call him Emmanuel," which being interpreted means God with us.
Now wrapping our mind around even the existence of God is so difficult. How has he always existed? He was never born, that the King of kings was never born. The Son of God, he was sent to us. He knew that you and I would need a Savior. He was sent to us. But the Bible says in John chapter 10, verse 30, that the Son of God and the Father are one. Jesus has always existed. That the time alone, the concept of time no longer existing is greater than what I can understand. I'll say it this way, no more can a flea drink in the ocean, can our finite mind understand a God who is infinite. A God that we can understand would be no God at all. However, a God who loves you as if you were the only person on this earth deserves your endless praise.
Somebody asked me recently which child of your three do you love the most? And, you know, parents, we laugh at that because we don't love any of our kid the most, kids the most. We love them as if they were our only kid. Sometimes I hear people say, I only want to have one child so that I don't rob the other one, because I know that I'll have to share my love. Well, that's not how love works. You see, your heart that's full of love does not have to share the love that's in it, because your capacity to love expands. Does that make sense? Do you agree with that? Put your hands together. It expands. The Lord loves you as if you were the only one here. There is no end to the capacity of his love. The psalmist says this, this is the second verse that I want us to remember during this season. It's in Psalms chapter 16, verse 8, where it reads like this. "I know God is with me. I will not be shaken because he is right beside me. He is right beside me".
If all I can say over and over again, if you're only gonna get one point out of this message, if you're only gonna remember one thing, I want you to remember this. He is right beside you. He is right beside you. He is always... come on, encourage me. He is right beside me. He's always right there. He's right there. He's right there. He's always right there. I'm not gonna make you stand up or do something, but just kind of take your finger wherever it is and just point it. If it's resting on the arm, just point it and just say he's right there. He's right there. He's on my right.
Now, some of you who went, he's right there on the left, we'll let you slide. Just know he's right there. He's on your right. I know I will not be shaken because he's right there. I'm gonna break that verse up into two parts. The first one is I will not be shaken. The second part will be he's on my right. He's always right there. It's fascinating because God the Father, when we see him, when we're in the throne, when we go to heaven, Jesus is on his right hand. But let me just kind of unpack this a little bit more. I'm gonna talk about first I will not struggle. Then I'm gonna talk about him being on our right, and then I'm gonna close with this last point. Why is he on your right? Why?
Now let me just dive into the struggle. I will not struggle. And I was thinking about this. You don't know what struggle means unless you have struggled before. I have three children and they did not... the first two, ones in college, one's in high school, they know what struggle means. But my ten year old, she doesn't know what struggle means. Her biggest struggle in life is finding her shoes. She doesn't know what it feels like to have your bones struggling. She doesn't know what that's like. You and I know what it feels like to struggle. The psalmist said, "I will not struggle". It was a statement for the future. It was a statement for the present, because he has a past full of stories of struggling. Struggle is defined for this particular message as a travesty.
I read this one time. Everyone has at least three events in their life that almost break them. At least three. And some of these seasons last so long, they overlap with the second and the third. But when we look back, yes, we've had troubles. Yes, we've had struggles, but there's always at least three that almost break you. When you go through these seasons, and you look back, it's almost amazing that you're here right now. Those seasons, the season ten years ago, the season when you were a child, the season that you... how in the world did you get out of that? Even if you try to explain it to me now, you still don't know. How did you survive a divorce? Oh, my goodness. How did you get through that? How did you survive not having a job for that long? How in the world?
If you've lost a loved one, how in the world? If you've lost a parent, you never knew what it was like to live on this earth without that parent until they passed away. How did you get through that? And some of us, you're living one of those seasons right now. And you think to yourself, I don't see how I'm gonna get out of this. And your only hope is you got out of that one, surely God will help me get out of this one. Are you with... like three people. If you agree, come on. Surely. I have a friend of mine and he's a lumberjack. His business is to clear land. And so him and his team, they go out and they chop down trees. And they load the trees up, and they bring them, and he gets them weighed and he gets paid by the ton. And I asked him one time, he was going through a very difficult season, and I was just curious, I said, are you nervous? Are you scared?
And he said something I'll never forget. He goes, "Pastor, I've had a tree fall on me, and when it fell on me, it collapsed both my lungs. It broke almost every bone, from my knees to my shoulders, my arms, I couldn't work. I was laying in bed. I could hardly talk". And he goes, "I don't know how I got through that. And then right, shortly thereafter, when I finally got out, my wife left me and it felt like 100 knives being shoved into me". And he says, "If I got through that," he goes, "there's nothing else in the world. My whole body got broken down. I lost my job, my wife was gone". He goes, "It doesn't get any worse than that". And so now he's saying from this moment forward, I know what it feels like to be pressed. I know what it feels like to lose hope. But as far as being shaken down to the ground, that's not gonna happen anymore where I lose faith. Where I walk away from God, that's not gonna happen. I've already been as low as you can go.
Let me jump on to the next point where it says, "I will not struggle, for he is right beside me". The first thing that I wanna say is that he takes pleasure in being right beside you. Now, this is difficult for a person like me who has always fought depression. Because when I fight depression, I don't like where I am and I see no hope in the future. That's what depression looks like. That has always been my Achilles heel. Those are the moments where I can only mumble out a few sentences of prayers. And when I'm in that state, I think to myself, I don't even like being me. To imagine that the Lord is on my right and he is taking pleasure with me while I'm not even taking pleasure with me.
How many of us have gone through seasons where we're not even proud of ourselves? If you're a parent, you understand what I'm about to say. There are times where we... I'm talking to us. We have failed so miserably as a father or as a mother that when we think about it, even though it has happened decades ago, we can't help but to just drop our face, cover our face and just go oh my what? Oh my goodness. What was I thinking? I can't even talk about it much more than that because the rest of this, I'll shut this message down early and go eat ice cream. And to imagine that the Lord was right there and still took pleasure in being with me. That's beyond my imagination. How can someone love you that much? How can someone love me that much? I have a friend of mine. He was, I say he was a pastor on staff at a thriving church. He had an affair on his wife, and in politics and in ministry you get no grace.
So, you lose your job. Boom. Those are the only two jobs, the only two occupations on the planet. You have an affair, you're gone. Just like that. You just blink, you're gone, the whole thing's gone. Like, go find something else to do. And so he had an affair and I called him every single day. And how you doing? Crying, bawling. "I can't believe I did it. I can't believe", he's got children that are of age, children are embarrassed. The children lost their church. It was terrible. And I did not have too much to say to help him. The only thing I could really do effectively was call him every day, and listen and ask him how he's doing. And it was, it was amazing to me how he just kept on saying over and over again, "I just have to keep on believing that God's not done with me, I have to keep", and he's crying, he's bawling, he's shattered. Like, "I just have to keep on believing. I just have to keep on believing".
In the terminology that we're using this morning, "I have to keep on believing he's on my right. I have to keep on believing he's on my right. I have to keep on believing that he hasn't turned his back on me, that he still loves me. I just, I cannot believe anything else. It's the only way I'm gonna survive". And the Lord has proven, "Son, I was on your right before. I'm still on your right. I still take pleasure with you. I'm not frustrated with you". If you look back on the history of Jesus in scripture, he encountered some of the most sinful people and he did not shake his head at them. If you take, for example, the woman that he met at the well, who had multiple husbands, husband, this husband, that husband, this husband, that husband. Husbands. Husbands, ring, walking down the aisle, sharing a home, children.
We're not talking about a lady who has been lovers of a whole bunch of people. No, no, no, married, multiple husbands. And how did the Lord deal with her? Did he shake his head? Did he look at her and say... no, no, no, no, no. He didn't shake his head at her. What about the demoniac who had a legion of demons? When you have a legion of demons... see demons need a body to fulfill their own cravings. A spirit of lust, he cannot fulfill his lust without a body. And so he needs to get into a body to fulfill that lust. When a person has a spirit of lust, he is within their body, causing other people to lust after them.
If you find yourself lusting after a woman, she probably has a spirit of lust. It is a spirit pulling you in. If it's a spirit of deception or addiction, that is a spirit of addiction that needs to fulfill its craving to be addicted to something. But he can't be addicted to anything unless he has a body to fulfill that addiction. Now, I've given you two spirits for us to consider. Imagine 5,000 spirits. And what has this gentleman done to open up that door to invite these spirits into his life? The Lord did not look at him and shake his head and say, these spirits are a result of the spirits that you have entertained. The spirit that you entertain will take control of you.
If you entertain the Spirit of the Lord, it's the Spirit of the Lord that will influence you. If you entertain a spirit of lust, that spirit will influence you. Jesus didn't look at him and say, I saw all of those things that you entertained. I saw all of those spirits. You're the one who invited them in without even knowing it. You opened the door. That's not what Jesus did. He didn't shake his head at the woman at the well. He didn't shake his head at the demoniac. He didn't shake his head at Peter. He took pleasure in being around them. In fact, the demoniac, he went all the way across the sea just to see him. And after he saw him, he came all the way back. He doesn't, he never shakes his head at you. He's always on your right. And he's always taking pleasure in you. He's always, do you agree? Come on.
Now, we have to ask the question, why? What is it about you? Is it your great looks? I'm sure you're attractive, but come on, that's not why God wants to be next to you. Because you're funny? No, no, no, no, no, no. Why? For two reasons, number one, he wants you to take pleasure in him. He wants you to take pleasure in his presence. He wants it to be a two way street. So wow, God is here. You're in the coffee shop. He crosses your mind. God is here. Every time the Lord crosses your mind, it's an opportunity for us to say, oh, I'm thinking about you. I know you're here and I love you. That's you enjoying his presence. That's why he's with you. He wants that to be an exchange.
Secondly, you are only on this earth because his assignment to partner with you, to affect someone else is not complete. You and I can do everything that we do here in heaven. There's no reason for us to be here because everything that we can do for him now, we can do for him there. We can praise him. We can worship him. We can be more effective on sharing and taking pleasure with him. The only reason why you and I are here right now is because there is a particular assignment that we have to affect other people. That's the only reason why we're here.
And so the first reason why he's on your right is so that we can take pleasure in one another. We can become aware of him because then we can also work together. And for those of us that back up and we say, I'm in. I'm glad you're on my right. And those two things that compel you to be next to me are the exact two reasons why I'm compelled to be with you. I wanna take pleasure in you. I wanna find a hiding place in you. I want to be able to detach from the worries, the problems, the fears, the insecurities. I wanna do that with you, but I also wanna have some kind of purpose for my life.
But these things, these experiences are only for those who are God chasers. God chasers. I know a lot of people who are very skilled, they're very talented, they're very anointed. But they're not God chasers. You look into their private life. They're not God chasers. They're riding on a reputation and oftentimes preachers fall into this same exact trap. You assume that I pray. You don't ask me if I pray. You assume if I pray and I can ride on that assumption and you'll never know how much I pray. I can just ride on my charisma and my giftings. But I will never partner with him and make a significant difference. Because on judgment day, fire will reveal what kind of work each one has done. And if it has not been fueled by being a God chaser, enjoy your pleasure now because you won't have a reward there. Come on, put your hands together.