Joyce Meyer - Radical Obedience (08/19/2019)
Jesus declares in John 5:30 that He does nothing independently—only what the Father commands, never seeking His own will but always God's pleasure. As believers, we're chosen by the Father, sanctified by the Spirit, and set apart for obedient lives that reflect Christ, pursuing holiness earnestly even when it costs us, because true joy and eternal reward come from full surrender to God.
Do You Truly Want to Be Like Jesus?
How many of you want to be like Jesus? Are you sure? You're really sure about this? Okay, I might ask you one more time. You're sure? Okay, well, let's take a look at a scripture and then you can tell me how sure you are. John 5:30, Amplified Bible—a wonderful scripture.
"I am able to do nothing from Myself [independently, of My own accord—but only as I am taught by God and as I get His orders. Even as I hear, I judge; and I decide as I am bidden to decide. As the voice comes to Me, so I give a decision, and My judgment is right (just, righteous), because I do not seek (aim at, do not desire) My own will but only the will and pleasure of the Father Who sent Me."
Wow. You'd have to read that probably twenty times for it to really soak in. Jesus said whatever God tells Him to do, whatever the Father tells Him to do, that's what He does. He listens for Him. He waits for Him. When He shows Him what to do, there's really no decision to make because He's already pre-decided that whatever God asks Him to do, that's what He's going to do.
No Decision Left When God Speaks
So after reading John 5:30, where He said He does not follow His own will, does not do what is pleasing to Himself, does not even consult His own will—when He hears God tell Him to do something, He does not even ask Himself what He thinks about it, whether He wants to or not. It's just a settled issue. Jesus said it is a settled issue, already settled. Whatever God says, once He knows what God is saying to Him, then there are no more decisions to be made.
Now, let me ask you again after hearing that—how many of you really want to be like Jesus? All right. Then I pray for you right now in Jesus' name that He will start a Holy Ghost revolution, a Holy Ghost takeover in your life. That He will invade your life and that if He has to tie you to the altar to keep you from running away from Him, you will not be able to get away from God until He is able to do everything in your life that He wants to do. Amen.
Chosen and Sanctified for a Special Purpose
1 Peter chapter 1, verse 2 says we were chosen and foreknown by God the Father and consecrated—that means sanctified and made holy, that means set apart for a special purpose. Let me tell you something: you are not like everybody else out in the world who does not have Christ as their Savior. You do not get to do everything that they do. You do not get to act like they act.
You have been... When the Holy Spirit came upon you, when Christ made you His home, He took you and set you apart for something special. He sanctified you, and in your spirit He made you holy. You are a spirit, you have a soul, you live in a body—you are a tripartite being. In your spirit, when Christ comes to live in you, you have everything that you need in there to live a godly life and to behave the way Jesus would if He were here doing it today. It is all in you.
It is not a matter of what is in you—what I am working on is trying to get it out of you. Philippians 2:13—work out your own salvation. That does not mean work for salvation. We know that we are saved by grace and grace alone. It is only God's undeserved favor that our sins are forgiven. But then He says take this salvation that has been given to you as a gift and work out your own salvation now with fear and trembling.
Letting God Fully Possess You
So after you receive Christ as your Savior, your number one goal in life from that point on should be to learn how to do everything that God wants you to do, to let Him own you and possess you entirely and to be of value to Him. And let me tell you, the more you do that, the happier you are going to be. You are going to get so happy, people are going to think you are crazy if you give your whole life to God. It is our selfish self-centeredness that makes us unhappy.
What does it mean to be sanctified? The Greek Vine's Dictionary says the word sanctify means separation to God. Everybody say, "I belong to God." "I belong to God." Think about that—you belong to God.
How many of you have maybe like a... I do not know. Well, we will just use this as an example. This is my glass on the road when I am traveling. This is Joyce's glass. Nobody else drinks out of this glass. They do not use this glass for coffee. They do not use it to water the plants. This is my glass. This glass is set apart, sanctified for a special purpose.
Set Apart Like a Personal Possession
All right, now you all know what I am talking about. You have certain things that you own that you have them for a special purpose. You do not want your kids messing with them. You know, it is like, this is for this—it is not for that, it is for this. Well, that is the way you are. You are set apart by God for a special purpose.
As far as this world is concerned, we are strangers and aliens passing through. This is not our home. We are not to take up residence here and get rooted in the world. We are on our way somewhere. And while we are making the trip, we need to collect a whole bunch of people and take them with us.
Do you have any idea how long eternity is? I mean, even if you live to be a hundred—which very few people here will do that—but let us just say you even live to be a hundred. That is nothing compared to forever and ever and ever.
So what if there is a little bit of giving up something that you would prefer not to give up? So what? If we do what God is asking us to do now, we can be of value to Him. We can have peace and joy, and we can be prepared to spend eternity in His presence. Do not just live your life like this is all you have got—you are going to live forever. You are an eternal being. And maybe we do not think about that enough.
Separation from Evil and Pursuit of Holiness
Set apart for a special purpose and learning to live the life that is befitting to those that are so separated—separation from evil things and evil ways. This is only made available to a person through faith in Jesus Christ. And it is the will of God for the believer. It must be learned from God as He teaches it by His Word. And I love this part—it must be pursued by the believer earnestly and without deviation. I love that.
So I am made holy. The fruit of the Spirit is in me, in you, every believer, every person watching us by TV today. If you have received Christ as your Savior, you are made holy. You are holy in your spirit. You are holy. You are a saint. You are full of the fruit of the Spirit—you have love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness.
You are like, well, where is it? It is in you, in the deepest part of your being. You see, God had to clean us up inside and make us holy before He could come to live in us because He cannot be anywhere that is not holy. How many of you understand that? God and sin do not work. So if He is going to live in our spirit, He had to clean it up and make it a right place for Him to be.
Holiness Inside, Now Work It Out
How many of you believe God lives in you? All right. So you are holy—inside, you are holy. But now you must pursue undeviatingly and seek with all of your strength to work with the Holy Spirit relentlessly to get what God has placed in you as a seed into your soul so full that it comes out of you and people can see God.
The worst witness that we have in the world today is you can hardly tell the Christians from anybody else. And we should not have to think that people recognize us because we have got a fish on our car and a cross around our neck. I do not pay one bit of attention to that kind of stuff. It needs to be by our behavior, our fruit, our love more than anything else.
The sanctification is an individual possession built up little by little as a result of obedience. Now I got this right out of the Greek dictionary—I am not making this up. It is very important that we get about the business of obedience. God is not alive to serve us—we are alive to serve Him.
God Wants Submission, Not Just Blessings
Now if I could just take a little aside here for a minute. God loves you. He wants you to be blessed. The Bible says if you delight yourself in God, He will give you the desires of your heart. God wants you to have nice things. He wants you to be the head and not the tail, above and not beneath, lend to many nations, never have to borrow. Everything you lay your hand to should prosper and succeed. He wants to give you favor everywhere you go, open doors for you.
But that is not all He wants. That is not all He wants. He wants us submitted, committed, on the altar, ready to do what He wants us to do every single day of our life. We must stop living for the purpose of trying to get God to give us what we want.
But you might be thinking, well, yeah, that does not sound like much fun. Please. When we obey God, we have a joy on the inside of us that you cannot get from anything else. You just cannot get it anywhere else.
Now we can make our flesh happy for a few seconds at the price of our spirit being miserable, or we can let our flesh be unhappy for a little while at the price of our spirit being free and full of joy and peace. You have got to make your mind up which one is the most important to you.
Sanctified for Obedience to Christ
Let us go back to 1 Peter 1:2 and see if I read it all—I am not sure I did. Sanctified, made holy by the Spirit—so we are chosen, foreknown by God the Father, consecrated, sanctified, made holy by the Spirit in order to be obedient to Jesus Christ the Messiah. Wow, wow, wow.
And there is another scripture just like it—1 Peter 1, verse 22. Let us just skip over there real quick and look at that one. Purified by your obedience to the truth through the Holy Spirit.
We cannot obey God except through the Holy Spirit. I have to keep saying this over and over and over and over—I am not trying to drive you into self-effort and self-determination, but to tell you that the moment that you turn in God's direction to do what He wants you to do, at that moment He links up with you and gives you the power to be able to do it.
God never—listen to me—God never asks us to do anything without giving us the power and the ability and the equipment to do it. You can do whatever God asks you to do through Christ who strengthens you.
God's Will: Pure and Holy Living
Now I am going to jump off the deep end here. We are going to see how spiritual you guys really are up here in Hershey. And some of you watching by television, I am just going to tell you ahead of time—I am about to step on some toes. So just do not turn your TV off—just hear me out.
1 Thessalonians 4, beginning in verse 1. We are going to read the first four verses—I will make some comments. Furthermore, brethren, we beg and admonish you in virtue of our union with the Lord Jesus that you follow the instructions which you learned from us about how you ought to walk so as to please and gratify God, as indeed you are doing, and that you do so even more and more abundantly, attaining yet greater perfection in living this life.
So Paul was saying, look, you guys are doing good, but I want to push you to another level. Well, that is exactly what I am saying. Hey, you are not a bunch of spiritual dunces—you would not have taken a Saturday morning to come out here to be in this conference if you did not care anything about God. Some of you probably are walking in a lot of obedience in your life—I want to go to another level.
Abstaining from Sexual Immorality
I am glad I am preaching this this weekend because it is going to help me. I am so glad that God called me to preach because I have to study to do it, and it just keeps me in the Word all the time—keeps me safe.
All right, let us go back to these scriptures. For you know what charges and precepts we gave you on the authority and by the inspiration of the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, that you should be consecrated, separated, and set apart for pure and holy living, and that you should abstain and shrink from all sexual vice.
Now we are going to talk about sex for a minute. What a stupid mess we have going on in the world today. To stay away from sexual vice means a lot of things. Sex was intended to be beautiful and holy and pure, and I tell you what—the devil has tried to do with it is nothing less than totally pathetic.
So now you have huge issues with pornography—I mean you cannot even get a magazine in your home to look at to try to buy some pajamas without half the people being naked. So many people live together now before they get married—they think that is not a problem. They rationalize—well, you might as well see if it is going to work before you get married. Well, after all, it is just a piece of paper.
Marriage Is More Than a Piece of Paper
Let me tell you something—marriage was supposed to be a whole lot more than a piece of paper. It was a deep commitment. And maybe we need to know a whole lot more about the person we are marrying before we sign on the dotted line—that would solve some of the problems.
Some people get married and they do not even know how each other feels about money or having kids or, you know—it is just some emotional thing. And all of a sudden, you know, they are getting married and... Take your time with stuff—do not be in such a big hurry.
Very few people now have not had sex before they get married. And you know what—to be honest, I would just as soon do something else besides this. I am doing this because I believe that God wants me to do it. Somebody has got to speak up and say that is not the will of God. And we suffer for it.
It is not that God stops loving us—yes, you can be forgiven. But once we know what is right to do and we keep doing it, there is something wrong if a person thinks that they can just keep doing what they know is wrong because after all, the grace of God is available—God understands.
God does not understand that this is the 21st century and that it is okay to do that because everybody does it. We are not like everybody else—we are sanctified, separated, set apart for a special purpose.
The Loss of Wonder in God's Design
You know what happens when people have sex before the right time? They take all the wonder and the beauty out of it. Nobody looks forward to anything anymore because nobody waits on anything. We have a huge problem in our society with instant gratification—everybody wants what they want and they want it right now. If they cannot afford it, they put it on a credit card.
There is no waiting for things, no looking forward to things, longing for things, planning for things, saving for things, disciplining yourself for things. And it is the same way with sex. You can control yourself—you can control yourself. The Bible says that we have self-control.
Do not let—do not even put yourself in situations where that can happen. If you have a problem, then when you go out, go with other people. And you know what—I already know, my gosh, there is no telling how many people turned a TV set off already.
You might look a little silly at this point if you got up and walked out because everybody might think, oh wow. So I am likely to keep this crowd at least for a little bit. I do not do this because I am trying to be unpopular—I am trying to help you and I am trying to get us to the point where our lives will give glory to God and where we will realize that we cannot just be like everybody else. That is not what God wants us to do.
A Real-Life Example of Lost Wonder
I was talking to a young man at a place where I go for some business and I had gotten annoyed. We talked about the Bible at different times. Well, you know, he was engaged and I did not really know him and his girlfriend were living together, but I kind of wondered if they were.
Well, you know, sure enough—found out, yeah, they were living together. So, you know, we talk about the Bible—he is living with his girlfriend. Go to Bible study, live with your girlfriend. And I promise you they are not sleeping in separate beds.
So he gets married and a couple months later I say to him, so how is married life? He said it is really no different than it was before. Now no amazement, no wonder, no beauty, no meaning because nobody waited on anything. It was not even special—not at all, not even special.
I had Dr. Rabbi Zachariah in to record some TV programs with me last week, and he said one of the four things that people need to be spiritually whole is wonder. We need to delay gratification, and we need to wait on things, and we need to do things God's way.
And you know, some of the television today is so stupid—it is beyond... I mean it is just beyond... I do not even know how to talk about how stupid it is. Let us stop being educated by the world and let us get holy enough to educate them. I want the wonder back—the beauty.
Consequences of Undisciplined Living
So people now—they have sex before marriage, they get pregnant, then they do not want the responsibility of their behavior, so they have an abortion. People spend money on credit cards, then when they cannot pay their bills, they file bankruptcy.
So people live riotous, loose from restraint, undisciplined lives, and then when they have got a mess, they will not even take responsibility for that mess. Our laws in society today have provided an open door for people to just totally destroy their lives—completely destroy their lives.
We are talking about obedience. What has been some of the hardest areas for you to learn how to obey God in? You know, it is not the same for everybody.
I was thinking about me and I thought, you know, probably one of the hardest areas for me to learn how to obey God in consistently was not trying to take care of myself and protect myself when I felt like people were not treating me right—to not try to make them treat me right.
And I know part of that was caused because I was controlled and manipulated by my father and mistreated by him. But I cannot use that as an excuse—see, I dare not use that as an excuse. I still have to learn how to do what God wants me to do.
Different Struggles for Different People
And you know, it is a little bit different for everybody, you know. I asked some of the people that travel with us—I asked my administrative assistant, Penny, and you know, what her biggest area was. And she said learning how to submit to my husband. And she said you taught me how to—I thought I probably ought to go back and get that teaching and listen to it.
No, I do—I do pretty good, but she is wonderful at it. Oh my gosh, she is just so, so good at it. I asked her husband what his was and he said pride and selfishness.
I asked Dave what his was and he could not think of anything, so I gave him a hint—I never think of anything that is wrong with him, it is just so annoying. So when he really began that—when we talked about it and he talked about it.
You know, Dave at one time in his life had a real huge problem with passivity. You know what passivity is? It means that you have given over your will to where you do not use your will to do what you know you should do—you just kind of float along with whatever.
Overcoming Passivity and Temper
And Dave was in the service for four years and his job in the service was to play sports—he was a great, great basketball player, good baseball player. So he did not have much responsibility—he just played games all the time. And he said he just got to the point where he just became real passive.
You know, we need responsibility—we need to have to get up and go to work, we need to move, we need to do things and take care of things. And so learning how to overcome that passivity in his life was a big challenge for him.
Because when you are passive, you can know what you ought to do but there is nothing in your feelings—it is in your spirit, your spirit wants to do what is right, but there is nothing in your feelings that wants to do it.
I remember how challenging it was for him many, many years ago when we first both realized that we needed to get up early in the morning to spend time with God before anything else—and it was challenging for Dave to do that.
I asked another guy on our team what his had been and he said temper—hands down, just having a bad temper. And he has just come such a long way, and he had an experience the other day with the airlines where he could have gotten really upset but he did not.
Rewards of Doing the Right Thing
And he said I just felt so good about it because I did not lose my temper—it was just great. You know, you feel so much better about yourself when you do the right thing. When we do the right thing, we have peace.
And so they actually had to delay their trip for a whole day because of this thing that they went through. And so when they came back out the next day to leave on their trip—and this was a vacation for them that they had planned for a long time, so it was real disappointing because the whole delay took a whole day of their vacation—they only had four days to start with, so now it is down to three.
And he said all of a sudden the guy at the counter called him over and said I am going to upgrade you—I am going to upgrade your seating, I am going to upgrade you to another level of luggage. He said when you were here yesterday you had the absolute best attitude. Amen.
And so he said well it really was not your fault because it was not—it was something to do with them bringing a wrong passport. He said even if it is not our fault you would not believe the way that people treat us and talk to us even though there is not anything we can do about it. And he said I just really appreciated the fact that you did not have a bad attitude and I want you to be rewarded for that.
Well, can I tell you something—if we will learn to do what God wants us to do for God's glory, the rewards that He brings in our life will be absolutely jaw-dropping phenomenal. Come on, give God praise.
A Chosen People Called to Good Deeds
Now let us go to 1 Peter chapter 2—I am going to show you what was probably one of the hardest areas in the Bible for me to swallow, mainly because I just had a hard time letting people mistreat me and waiting on God for deliverance.
I do not suppose any of you have a problem with that, do you? All right—how many of you, it is very hard for you when somebody mistreats you to just wait on God to bring deliverance? You are not going to like these scriptures—I might as well tell you ahead of time.
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a dedicated nation, God's own purchased special people. Somebody tell me—what have we been purchased with? The blood of Jesus Christ—that you may set forth the wonderful deeds and display the virtues and perfections of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. Amen? Amen.
Verses 12 through 13—conduct yourselves properly, honorably, righteously among the Gentiles so that although they may slander you as evildoers, yet they may by witnessing your good deeds come to glorify God in the day of inspection when God shall look upon you as wanderers, as a pastor or a shepherd looks over his flock.
He is saying okay—you get out in the middle of the world that is not so nice and you behave yourself. That is the Joyce Meyer translation—you get out in that world that is not going to treat you right, not going to be so nice, they are going to accuse you, call you evildoers, but you behave yourself right so even though they may judge and criticize you...
Behavior That Cannot Be Argued With
You know one thing people cannot argue with? Behavior. You did not hear me—it does not do you any good to take your Bible to work and act like everybody else. Matter of fact, it does more harm than good. If you are not going to bear the fruit, leave the thing at home—get the fish off your car.
Because all it does is cause the world to scream hypocrite, hypocrite, hypocrite. But it is okay to do it if you are going to really press in with God and pursue that way of living. That does not mean we are all going to get it day one—I mean it is a lifetime, this is a lifetime journey.
But I will tell you—as long as we are going somewhere, God is satisfied. Did you hear me? I mean if you have been saved 30 years and you are still in sandbox, there is a problem—pre-kindergarten.
Now you know I talked about the rebellion that is in the world and what a problem that is—and how many of you realize that the world is just full of rebellion? Nobody wants anybody telling them anything.
Verse 13—be submissive to every human institution and authority for the sake of the Lord. Verse 17—show respect for all men, not just the nice ones—treat them honorably. Love the brotherhood, the Christian fraternity of which Christ is the head.
You that are household servants, be submissive to your masters—let us put it like this: you who are employees, be submissive to your bosses. Well, bless God—I do what I am told but he is a jerk. You know what—that is not submission.
Submission Even to Unjust Authority
I had to learn—God told me one time... You know I got to the point where I would just... I knew I was supposed to be a submissive wife, so if I did not like something that they were trying to get me to do, I would say yes honey—and then honestly I remember one time when he turned his back I stuck my tongue out at him. Yes honey.
And God had to teach me—Joyce, submission is not an act you put on, it is an attitude of the heart. Mercy, we would need a long time, would we not?
Do you gossip about the boss with other employees? You know what—it may not be the best place in the world to work, but there is a lot of people that would take your job if you do not want it.
Okay, so maybe you—maybe they are not treating you right, maybe you are not being paid what you are worth—stay sweet. And God can bless you and give you favor and get you promoted into positions that are beyond your natural ability. God can open a door for you, and in the meantime you can give Him glory.
Be rebellious and you are going to stay right where you are at—you are going to spend the rest of your life going around and around the same stupid mountain. Complain and remain—praise and be raised.
You who are household servants, be submissive to your masters with all proper respect—not only to those who are kind and considerate and reasonable, but also to those who are surly, overbearing, unjust, and crooked.
You have got to be kidding. I mean the first time I read this I thought this is nuts—I am not going to be nice to somebody that is a jerk.
Enduring Unjust Suffering Patiently
For one is regarded favorably as approved, acceptable, and thankworthy if, as in the sight of God, he endures the pain of unjust suffering. Remember I told you I am throwing out meat today—this is not a dessert day.
After all, what kind of glory is there in it when you do wrong and are punished for it if you take it patiently? But if you bear patiently with suffering which results when you do right—now that is, and that is undeserved—now that is acceptable and pleasing to God.
For even to this were you called. Huh. Man, that is like the death quiet that you get sometimes—only one person even made a noise.
Well why in the world would God call us to suffer? I thought we had been delivered from all that. There are certain things that we have been delivered from—thank God we do not have to suffer for our sins and misdeeds, that Jesus paid the price for them. Thank God we do not have to go to hell, that we can live in God's presence.
But there are other things that we are going to have to go through in order to get out in the world and glorify God and behave the way He wants us to behave—and some of it involves not coming back at people who do not treat you the way that you think you should be treated. Amen.
Not Allowing Abuse, But Waiting on God
Now I am not saying that you should let somebody abuse you and walk all over you. My dad let—my mother let my dad abuse me—she knew what he was doing, she did not leave him, and she was wrong in doing that. She was irresponsible and wrong, and it caused me a lot of pain.
Basically some of the other things my dad did destroyed my brother's life. I am not saying to sit around and be abused.
Here is what I am saying—do not just do what you feel like doing. Hear from God first and then do what God tells you to do.
There have been places that I have been in that I wanted to get out of so bad I do not even know how to tell you how bad I wanted to tell them off and say I am out of here—and God would say not yet. I do not want you leaving with a bad attitude, I do not want you leaving angry—you wait, I am preparing something. You wait, I am preparing something.
Come on—this is good deep stuff today. You wait—I am preparing something. And oh my gosh, when God did promote me—oh, nobody could believe it, including me. I am still having a hard time catching up with it.
I do not—you know, I do not have time to tell you all the stories, but oh—I had to learn how to retire from self-protection and self-care. That is God—you are not going to treat me that way, who do you think you are, I am not going to put up with that.
Christ's Example: No Retaliation
Verse 21—for even to this you were called—it is inseparable from your vocation. For Christ suffered for you, leaving you His personal example so that you should follow in His footsteps.
Verse 22—He was guilty of no sin, neither was deceit or guile ever found on His lips. Now watch verse 23—this has become my new favorite lifetime scripture.
When He was reviled and insulted, He did not revile or offer insult in return. When He was abused and suffered, He made no threats of vengeance, but He trusted Himself and everything to Him who judges fairly.
Once again I am not telling you to sit around and let people abuse you—I am just saying you go to God before you shoot your mouth off, before you make a decision about what you are going to do. You go to God first and you say how do You want me to handle this—should I talk to them, should I wait on You, should I get out of here, do You want me to stay a while, what do You want me to do?
Then when the voice comes to you, you give a decision based on what you know that God is asking you to do. You do not consult your own will—you do not ask yourself what you think—you do not run to ten of your friends to get their advice.
You know half the time we ask people what we ought to do because we really do not want to hear from God to start with—we already know what we ought to do, bottom line is that we already know, and we are hoping we can find somebody that will tell us we do not have to do it.
God's Amazing Justice When We Wait
You know what—I do not even know how to tell you the justice that I have seen God bring in my life. It is just unbelievable—just absolutely unbelievable, the justice that God has brought in my life.
But it was hard for me—it was hard for me to wait on God. And you know there are other places in the Bible where it says children should be submissive to their parents—parents should not irritate and provoke their children, they should treat their children respectfully.
Can I tell you something—if you have grown children, let me give you a good piece of advice: stop trying to run their lives, trying to tell them this for their own good. Did you listen to anybody? Learn to pray more and say less.
Come on—I said learn to pray more and say less. Pray for your boss that did not give you that promotion you deserved. If you deserved a promotion and you were praying for it and somebody else got it—do not gossip about the boss, have a bad attitude, mistreat the person who got what you wanted.
Instead you say God I wanted that, You did not give it to me—I trust You for vindication, I trust You to make everything that is wrong right. Trust yourself and everything to God who judges fairly.
Is that not a beautiful, relaxing, wonderful scripture? Trust yourself and everything to God who judges fairly.
Waiting on God's Perfect Timing
God will show you what to do when He wants you to do something. There have been times when I have wanted to talk to Dave about something and God said no—nope. And then maybe two months will go by and He is still maybe doing something that irritates me—nope, nope.
And then God might say now. It is amazing if you wait on God's timing how He has every heart prepared and things go so good.
James 4:7 says submit yourself to God, resist the devil, and he will flee. It does not just say resist the devil and he will flee, which is the way we normally quote it—submit yourself to God, resist the devil, and he will flee.
You know what—when we submit ourselves to God, we are not going to have that much trouble with the devil.
Now Jesus said when the voice comes to me, I give a decision. Well, how do we hear from God? Now this is another four-part series, so you are going to get it here in a few seconds.
Jesus heard the voice and He obeyed. Well first of all God's Word is His voice—we have talked about that already. Then there is the audible voice of God which you hear rarely—I have heard the audible voice of God a couple times in my whole walk with Him.
Then there is the still small voice which is probably one of the major ways that we hear from God—and that is just that knowing or that whisper from God.
Following the Holy Spirit's Leading
I will tell you what—learning how to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit takes maturity. See, I do not want to have to put a sign on the back door you cannot leave because there is an altar call going on. I want us all to get to the point where we are led by the Holy Spirit.
We can now be led by the leadership and the promptings of the Holy Spirit. We follow peace—we pay attention to our conscience. If our conscience does not approve it, then we do not do it.
You do not sit at the lunch table and gossip about other people in the building and feel right about it—that is not possible. If you are a born-again Christian, that is not possible for you to do—you cannot do that.
You are not going to have sex before marriage and feel right about that. Now maybe if you are just totally ignorant—but you know I think even people who do not have a relationship with God know better than that because there are some things nature just tells us—God tells us.
Honestly and truly this may seem a little foolish but I am just going to say please—I am begging you. We are living in desperate times in the world today. Amen.
The Bible says Christ in us, the hope of glory. Can I tell you something—I do not believe that is just talking about because Christ lives in us we can be glorious. I think that Him being in us is His hope of being glorified in the earth today.
Do It for God and His Amazing Plan
If you do not want to do this for any other reason, do it for God—do it because of what He has done for you, do it because He is so beautiful, so amazing, so awesome that He sent His only Son to die and suffer in your place.
And let us not act like it is the end of the world if we have got to put up with something for just a little bit and wait on God to make it happen.
Do not do things that go against your conscience—do not do things you do not have peace about. When you know—I mean we say all the time I know I should not but... Well I know I probably should not say this but... Come on, okay now—come on now. I know I should not do this but...
Please, please, please—God has got an amazing plan for your life. Eye has not seen and ear has not heard all the good things that God has made ready, prepared, and stored up for those who love Him and obey Him with affectionate reverence.
This is not about oh what a terrible life you are going to have because now you have to obey God. God is good—everything He does is good—He has got good things for you. And I want you to get on the narrow path so you can get to them and find them. Amen.
Come on, everybody stand up.