You must stop relying on your own performance and start resting in the righteousness Jesus has already given you. To truly grow, you need to choose to love God for who He is rather than just for the blessings He provides. I challenge you to join a discipleship group this week to learn how to follow Him with a humble heart.
And you guys are like the "best hype team" ever. And that was rude by the way because I'm a crier and I was like, you can't say nice things about me right before I go on stage. Man, what an amazing day to be in the house of the Lord. Amen? Wasn't worship just awesome?
I was just back there just getting wrecked and getting ready to preach. But I'm just extremely humbled to be here this morning and sharing with you. Here at Real Church, we've been blessed with an incredible speaking and pastoral team. So, is truly humbling to be a part of this team and to get to serve you in this way. I mean, first and foremost, I gotta, you know, call out pastor David, our lead pastor.
I mean, he is an anointed teacher and he's truly pastoral. And by that, I mean, when he preaches, you can tell that he wants you to get it in a way that you can apply it and be changed. He's not just up here to share cool bible stories with us and cool bible facts, although those are usually included as well, but amazing. And and you don't see that everywhere. That's a rare quality.
And I can't give everyone a shout out, but I do have to just give 1 because I am about ready to start the Clearwater Chapter of the Daniel Mannix fan club. My man, Daniel back there, he's 1 of our teachers here. If you have not listened to his teaching on sanctification that he did a couple months ago, what are you even doing with your life? Go from here and listen to that right after you leave. So, it's amazing.
And, I just need to tell you how much I love this church. I love you guys. I love being a part of this church. My family and I have been coming here for about 2 and a half years. And, when we came, we were in a season of our walk with the Lord where we didn't really fully understand our identity in him.
We had no understanding or even concept of what it was to be the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. And because of that, we were stuck in a place of "spiritual infancy". *Hebrews-5:13* says that, everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness. You have to understand who you are in him in order to grow. Because the more you understand who you are in him, the more you realize that who you're becoming has nothing to do with you, and it's everything to do with him.
Come on. What a freeing revelation. Yes. That I am righteous not because of anything that I've done, not because of anything that I will do, not because of anything that I haven't done. I am only righteous because the God of the universe came as a man.
*Jesus lived a perfect sinless life and died for my sins and accredited his righteousness* to me. Come on. Come on. Now, how many of you here have ever been asked by pastor David or another leader in the church, the righteousness question? Yeah.
I'm seeing some hands out there. Okay. For those of you who haven't been asked, this is gonna be a little bit of a spoiler, but I think that's okay in this context because I'm gonna tell you the answer. But to give some background, when my family first came here, we kinda came out of a church split situation and we were, you know, wanting to make sure we landed somewhere healthy. So we had dinner with pastor David and Courtney, so that we could interrogate them about, you know, how they lead their church and what their structure is like.
And I'm sitting there with pastor David and saying, know, oh, yeah. You know, I came out of this church and it was really abusive, and then we were part of a couple different churches that fell apart, and it was really kinda like my church sob story. And pastor David so lovingly interrupted me and he said, can I ask you a question? Sure. He said, who is Jesus to you?
And everything in my performative Christian background rose up and kinda wanted to say something really profound and like theologically impressive. Because I was like, well, this is the pastor, know, I gotta show him that I know what I'm talking about. But all I could get out was really the only thing that matters. I said, well, he's my Lord and Savior. So pastor David said, great.
Now, on a scale of 1 to 10, how righteous are you? 1 being completely and totally depraved and 10 being Jesus. I thought surely this is a trick question. But, I sat there in silence. Hold on.
My computer froze up. A little longer than I'd like to admit. And I eventually just shrugged my shoulders and said, don't know, probably like a 5. And pastor David said, I'm glad you were honest. And then he immediately quoted a couple scriptures to me.
*2 Corinthians-5:17*, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a "new creation". The new has come and the old is gone. And 2 Corinthians-5:21, for our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him, we might become the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. So on that scale, that means God sees you as a 10. And why would you call someone a 5 that God calls a 10?
This was met by a longer silence and probably a little bit of an eye twitch. Because in that moment, he confronted 20 years of bad theology and stinking thinking that I'm just a sinner saved by grace and I'm never gonna be good enough for the Lord and it's always gonna be something that I have to overcome. All of that derailed in 1 question. And the hilarious part about this encounter in retrospect is that when I was thinking about my answer, I was thinking about it based on my own merit, and I still gave myself a 5. Like, how prideful do you have to be to be like, well, I'm at least half as good as as Jesus.
So needless to say, I needed this revelation in my life. And I began to pursue the Lord through his word, spending time in his presence, and pursuing discipleship, and this 1 revelation has caused more growth in the last 2 years of my walk with the Lord than the first 20. And I need to tell you that through spending time in his word, spending time in his presence, and seeking discipleship, I didn't wake up 1 day and feel more righteous. You see, what happened is those things started to renew my mind, and I began to believe Amen. That I was righteous.
That's right.
I began to believe what Jesus said about me in the Bible. Come on. So if your eye is twitching right now, you're in a good place, and I can promise you that it gets better. Alright. Let me pray.
*Jesus*, you are so good. *God, we thank you for your presence*. Thank you that you are the 1 who changes us from the inside out, that we're righteous only because of you, and that because of you, we can enter into the presence of the father, unashamed and unhindered. Father, let my words pierce hearts today, Accomplish what's on your agenda. In Jesus' name.
Amen. Alright. So as pastor David indicated, we're in this series called Rooted in Purpose, and it's by doctor Leon Van Royen. He's 1 of our overseers of our church, an incredible man of God. I have no idea how he has the capacity that he has.
The man oversees like hundreds of churches, has multiple schools. And if you're in 1 of his schools and you submit an assignment to him, you'll get a response, usually time stamped for like 2AM with like a dissertation on what he thought about your response. But incredible book, rooted in purpose, it's all scripture. Anything doctor Leon writes, my favorite part about it is it's about he'll introduce the topic with a couple paragraphs, and then you read about 10 pages of scripture to back up what he's talking about. So you read a lot of Bible.
And rooted in purpose in particular, we're going through the core principles of our faith in Christ, and then the developmental stages as believers that we go through. So so far, we've covered love God. That was our first core principle. And then, we went to loyalty to the church. And then, a couple weeks ago, pastor David preached on having a passion for the harvest.
And he really leaned in on what does it mean to have passion. And it's to give yourself to the point that you're willing to suffer for something. And aligning our lives with the heartbeat of God, which is for family and discipleship and bringing lost sons and daughters into the kingdom. And I have the joy and honor of preaching today on being spirit filled and having godly character.
Now,
when I was initially asked to preach several months ago, pastor David said, just preach whatever the Lord puts on your heart. And then, had rooted in purpose come up and we pivoted, and I thought, oh, I wonder what I get to preach on. And when I found out, I honestly had to laugh to myself because this is exactly what God has been walking us through in the last 2 years, me and my family. So let's talk about it. Being spirit filled and full of godly character.
So there is a balance to being spirit filled and walking in godly character. There are 2 aspects of the Christian life that a mature believer will walk in both of them, in harmony. If we emphasize 1 over the other, we get out of balance. So for example, if you're a spirit filled, prophesying, tongue talking, evangelizing Jesus follower who can't show up to work on time, or can't manage their finances, or is seen as unreliable, we have a problem. On the flip side, if you're very responsible and you're an integris person, but you're a little stiff and you're not willing to walk out of your comfort zone and truly operate in the power of God, that's equally as problematic.
Neither 1 of these things by themselves fully represents Christ in us or demonstrates that we actually know him. We need both the power of the Holy Spirit to fill us and move through us, and we need to be committed to holy living. So first, let's talk about these separately now. Being spirit filled. So what do we mean when we talk about living a spirit filled life?
Well, there's a couple things that we're gonna go through here. When we surrender our lives to Jesus as Lord, confessing with our mouth that he is Lord, believing in our hearts that God raised him from the dead, he puts his Holy Spirit inside of us immediately to lead us and guide us like a father leads a son or a daughter. So immediately, we've got Holy Spirit when he he becomes our Lord. Ephesians-1:13 and 14 says, and you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession to the praise of his glory.
So when we hear the gospel and believe, and again, that's belief followed by action. It says, I believe you so much that I'm gonna follow you over what I think and feel. I'm making you Lord of my life. In that instant, his Holy Spirit comes and lives inside of us. So now, this indwelling *Holy Spirit* that we're talking about from salvation is often a separate and distinct experience than the filling and empowering of the Holy Spirit that equips us as believers to walk in the power of God, operate in the spiritual gifts, fill us with boldness.
We refer to this as the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And we see this demonstrated with the apostle Paul when he's going on the Damascus Road and encounters Jesus and has this radical conversion experience, then he was called Saul, he recognizes Jesus as Lord in that moment. And so, from what we just talked about, that means his Holy Spirit came to live inside of him. And Jesus told him to go and wait and sent another disciple, Ananias, to pray for him. So in Acts-9:17, Ananias says, brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road as you came, has sent me that you may receive your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.
So Paul, at this point, as we covered, was already a believer. He was indwelt by the Holy Spirit, but needed to be filled with the Spirit in order to accomplish the mission that God had given him. And this idea that the empowering and baptizing of the Holy Spirit as separate from the indwelling Holy Spirit is repeated throughout Acts. And I'm gonna read 1 more passage, *Acts-19:1* through 6. While Apollos was at Corinth Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus.
There he found some disciples and asked them, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? And they answered, what you talk about, Willis? They answered, no. We have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit. So Paul asked, then what baptism did you receive?
John's baptism, they replied. Paul said, John's baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the 1 coming after him, that is in Jesus. On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them and they spoke in tongues and prophesied.
These were believers. The verse says that Paul came and found a group of discipled. Disciples, so disciplined followers of Jesus. So they were indwelt by the Holy Spirit. But in this interaction with Paul, they experienced a separate work of the spirit that filled them and empowered them to operate in the gifts of the spirit.
It says they spoke in tongues and they prophesied. And when you read the book of Acts Acts and you look at the lives of the disciples, you see a very clear picture of what it looks like to live a spirit filled life, to be led and guided by the Holy Spirit, experience the power of the Holy Spirit in ministry to others through miracles, boldness in preaching, and operating in the spiritual gifts. Speaking in tongues, prophecy, words of knowledge, and healing. This is the normal Christian life. The "supernaturally normal Christian life".
A life surrendered to Jesus and walking in the power of the Holy Spirit every day. *Ephesians-5:18*, Paul says, and do not be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Holy Spirit. And the language that he uses here doesn't mean a 1 and done filling, like, I'm full and I'm ready to go. A better way of saying this is that he's saying to be being filled with the Holy Spirit. So, it's an ongoing continuous experience.
But how do we do that? How do we continually be filled by the spirit day by day, and moment by moment? I'm so glad you asked. I've got a few tools for you, and this is not by any means an exhaustive list, but I think these are things that you can grab a hold of and take care of and take into practice. So 1 is ask.
*Luke-11:11* through 13, which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will he give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will he give him a scorpion? If then you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father in heaven give the Holy *Spirit* to those who ask him? Come on. Ask.
This is 1 of those verses that I read and I go, man, we over complicate the gospel and following Jesus a lot. It's like, how do I get full of your spirit, Lord? And Jesus is like, get ready for this. Ask. Another way is abiding in the word.
*Colossians-3:16 says, let the word of Christ* dwell in you richly. He is the word made flesh and we abide. When we abide in his word, he comes and he takes up residence inside of us. Another way is prayer and worship. Ephesians-5:18 through 19 says, be filled with the spirit.
Again, this is that continual ongoing filling. Speaking to 1 another in Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord. And I'm just gonna take a moment real quick here and plug Boiler Room 1 more time, because if you want to grow in your prayer life and be challenged in your response to the Lord in worship, I implore you come to Boiler Room right here on Friday nights from 8 to 9. You're gonna be around a bunch of crazy people who are passionate in prayer, passionate in worship. It's gonna overflow into your daily life of pursuing the Lord.
And you're gonna be immensely blessed. And as we say, if it happens at real church It's birthed at the point of road. That's right. So walking full of the spirit. It's an exciting thing.
Right? Like to walk full of the spirit and be used by the Lord to impact the world and those around us. How many of you have ever prayed for someone and seen them instantly healed? Or prayed for them once or twice, like in the moment that you were praying for them, you saw them healed? Or how many of you have been the giver or recipient of a prophetic word that was just right on, and you were just like, woah, *God* sees me.
Or if you were the giver, you're like, I hear God. And you're just like amazed. Right? It's amazing. We get this sense of excitement and awe when we experience the spirit of God moving in us to impact someone else in a way that we couldn't do in our own human ability.
And, we're encouraged to eagerly desire the gifts. *1 Corinthians-14:1* says, pursue love and desire spiritual gifts. This verse is the perfect segue into the other topic from this chapter, having godly character. It says that we're to desire gifts, but we're to first pursue love because everything we do as believers is based out of love. *Ephesians-3:17* says that we're to be rooted and grounded in love.
The baptism of the Holy Spirit energizes us to the work that God has called us to, while Godly character grounds us and gives us a firm foundation. 1 of the primary differences between the baptism of the spirit and having character built is the amount of time that they take. The baptism of the Holy Spirit is instant and ongoing, moment by moment, like we've talked about, but character is developed over time. But this can be hard for us. Right?
Like, it might not feel as exciting as seeing the Holy Spirit move through us in power. We like the thrill of seeing instant *miracles* or being floored by a prophetic word. But on the surface, when we think about daily laying our lives down by following the guidance of the Holy Spirit and relying on his grace to overcome that old nature and to look more like him, we don't tend to approach that with as much enthusiasm. But Jesus came and died first and foremost to restore our relationship to him. And character is developed in the context of that relationship.
And when you really, really get a hold of that, you begin to realize there's truly nothing better than knowing him and becoming more like him. So I wanna illustrate this by telling you about the journey we've been on, my family and I, in coming to Florida, and in particular, the purchase of our home 2 years ago. So, to give you an abbreviated backstory, 4 years ago, we my family and I moved to Florida from Seattle, Washington, just based on a word from the Lord. And that in and of itself was a miracle. At this time in our lives, we were kind of still sitting in church hurt and and weren't really intentionally pursuing the Lord, but in his grace, he made it abundantly clear that we were supposed to move, and we did.
2 years into being in Florida, we found real church and our lives have been radically transformed by this amazing body. And, the Lord has used this place to do all the things that I just told you about. Give us this revelation of *righteousness* and change us forever. And we knew that we were supposed to put down roots here. And the Lord began putting a passion and a vision in us for what we were called to do, where he's gifted us, and what he wanted to do in particular in using our home.
So we thought, okay, we gotta find a house. We gotta find a house. The Lord gifted us and birthed us with a passion for hospitality. Not just welcoming people in, but creating a space where people truly feel welcomed into our lives, where they can let their guard down, rest, and feel loved. And of course, where we would make a lot of really good food.
There's something about good food that opens hearts and tears walls down. And I'm convinced that's why you see Jesus sitting down and eating with people so often. In fact, tonight, we are hosting our young adults ministry. So if you're here and you're between 18 and 34, we want you to come. We're inviting you in.
It's gonna be an amazing night. We've got pastor David, pastor Courtney, pastor Deja, and pastor Robbie, and it's gonna be an open q and a panel. I know all of you that aren't young adults are all jealous now, but if you're between 18 and 34, please come and there's probably gonna be something good and homemade there as well. So, *God* gives us this passion and his heart for hospitality, and we have a clear vision for the type of home that we need. We start envisioning, oh, we we needed to have spaces like this, and we need a kitchen like this.
And, after a couple months of searching, we found the house. And let me tell you, this place was a dump. I mean, it was in a great it's in a great location and it doesn't look too shabby from the outside, but on the inside, there was all sorts of nasty. The prior owner's things were piled up everywhere, there was all sorts of stains, pet biology and otherwise, all over the carpet, dust, visible mold in the vents. And the worst part of all for my wife and I was that there was probably like 4 Glade plug ins plugged into every single room.
So that when you walked into the house, that spring fresh smell just slapped you right in the face. So needless to say, it was rough. But my wife, who is much more the visionary than I am, knew that this was the house the Lord wanted us to get. And actually, I felt that from the Lord as well, which is just a miracle because normally, it's hard for me to see past all that stuff. She said, amen.
So as soon as we closed on the house, we we immediately began renovating. *God* was so good to us, and we got a very large amount of equity out of our house that we sold in Washington, and so we didn't waste any time. We're ripping up those nasty carpets, we're putting in nice floors, redoing bathrooms, and it was all great. We were so excited. And then, hurricane Debbie happened.
And this is interesting. This is a strong house, but an interesting thing happened, we had water coming into our kitchen from behind the kitchen cabinets. So we had to rip out the floors that were there, which we were gonna get rid of anyways, but needless to say, we were a little bit worried. Thought, well, we haven't seen that happen before, so maybe it won't happen again. Then shortly after, we had hurricane Milton and all of a sudden, had 3 inches of water in our living room.
And no, we don't live in a flood zone for you Florida people. It turns out that the backyard was graded towards the house and there were several water access points along the house that weren't detected during home inspection. So, we had to use a very large chunk of that equity to regrade our backyard and put a drain system in. But praise God, now we don't have water issues. So we were ready to move forward.
Shortly after this, while my wife was cleaning 1 of the bedrooms upstairs, she was wiping a windowsill and it just crumbled under her hand. We had termites. And you know, through each of these situations, I just kept hearing the Lord remind me that he is worthy of worship through it all. And he kept reminding us, this is my house and I will provide for everything that I want to accomplish here. So it was about that time that the termites showed up that the Lord reminded me of James-1:2 through 4, which says, consider it pure joy my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.
Let perseverance finish its work in you so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. And, I started to see in all of these situations that there was an opportunity to know Christ in a way that I didn't know before. And, that after all is what it's all about. *Eternal life is knowing him. John-17:3*.
So, we get through all that. We fix the things that need to be fixed, all the unexpected pests and water issues and all of that stuff, and then we used the rest of our equity to finish remodeling what we can. And we were still at that point, after all that work, in a torn apart kitchen with an open concrete floor and half painted rooms, and the Lord began to put on our hearts to start hosting people as often as we could. Despite the current state of the house being far from what we had envisioned, but we obeyed. And, during this time, we had a friend over, actually an unbeliever and at 1 point, she sat down and she said, I just love being here.
Your house just feels like a sanctuary of peace. The Lord is so kind to drop little reminders here and then, here and there that this was his house and we're participating in his dream for our lives and it's not about having our version of the perfect place. Through all of these issues, the Lord was pruning us to produce peace, joy, faithfulness, integrity, and greater levels of obedience and surrender. And, we were truly rejoicing in what the Lord is doing in and through us and having eyes to see him in the midst of all of it. And, I don't want you to think that this is because we're like super spiritual or super holy, it's because we had a revelation of his grace on our lives.
We understood who we are in him and through this, our mantra just became, Lord, this is your house. The ministry that takes place here will be your ministry. You will provide everything that is needed in your timing. So then 1 day, we flushed our upstairs toilet and voila, we had an indoor waterfall coming down through the ceiling onto our 1st Floor. Our old home had cast iron plumbing that failed.
This unexpected indoor water feature effectively ruined all of the remodeling we did on the 1st Floor. And to give you a picture of that, in our 1st Floor, we have a divided dining room and living room that are conjoined by a pass through. Those 2 rooms had been freshly finished and painted with new floors and paneled ceilings. And, on the living room side, we had put in custom built bookshelves and a nice fireplace. Before you judge me, we're from Seattle, we wanted the aesthetic.
Okay? So, of that beautiful new work had to be torn out. But, here's the kicker. My amazing prophetic wife, on the day that the water started pouring out of the ceiling, immediately heard the Lord say, favor. Now, you might be thinking, how is that favor?
But I'll tell you, God used every circumstance up to this point to form more of himself in us. So that when this issue arose with the house, arguably the biggest and most expensive, our eyes were already on him, unwavering and the fruit from that was peace. You see in the bible, the word favor and grace are often used interchangeably. And oftentimes, when we hear the word favor, we think circumstantial blessing. Like, and we say funny things like, I've got a job interview tomorrow.
Would you pray for favor? But can I tell you that's such a weak framing of favor? When you surrender to Jesus as the Lord of your life, you become a new creation. It's because of the cross and his shed blood that you are accepted, nothing else. You live in grace and God's posture towards you is settled.
And, you begin to see that favor is God using the circumstances of your life to form more of Christ in you. It's not him giving you what you want. That's right. Preach. Favor is God using the circumstances of your life to form more of Christ in you.
It's not him giving you what you want and what you think is best. Amen. Because we can get so caught up in circumstances, so wrapped up in all the things that are going on in our lives that we begin to pray for deliverance when we should be praying for development. And I'm not saying it wasn't difficult. Like, when we saw the water coming out of our ceiling and we heard the Lord say favor, we didn't just flip on worship and go, let it rain.
We didn't do that. We were frustrated and disappointed and we felt defeated. But, we didn't stay there and that's the key. We processed that with the Lord because through trial, we had developed perseverance which in turn built character and because of that, had hope Because we had experienced the grace and the presence of God through everything. So, we already knew we had all that we needed.
This is the progression we read about in Romans-5:3 through 5. Right? Trials, perseverance, character, hope. So, of this was really about the house. When we had a vision from the Lord and took a step of faith to buy the house and we were filled with excitement about how we were gonna be used by the Lord there, do you think we knew any of this was going to happen?
Absolutely not. But, he has grounded us and strengthened our foundation. And, I believe now, we're carrying things that he will use to minister to people out of our home that we didn't have before. He wrecked us and built us back up stronger than before. And what we learned in the process is that there's truly nothing better than knowing him and walking with him.
And we saw on a deeper level that intimacy with us was what is most important to him too. *Matthew-7:22* to 23, I think you know it well. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? And in your name, drive out demons, and in your name perform many miracles. Then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you.
Away from me, evil doers. We need the power of the Holy Spirit to flow through our lives. And operating in the gifts of the spirit is an essential part of our walk, but it's an important thing to know that the gifts of the spirit are given by grace through faith, but they're not necessarily evidence of intimacy. Come on. We should be just as in awe of God every time our will bends towards his as we are when we see a miraculous healing.
The power and presence of God changing you from the inside out is nothing short of miraculous. May we all have the attitude of Paul in Philippians-3:7 through 10, where he says, but whatever gains to me, I now consider a loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ. The righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.
I want to know *Christ*. Yes. To know the power of his resurrection and participate in the participation of his sufferings becoming like him in his death. To truly live a spirit filled life, we must be grounded in godly character making it our aim to be a reflection of Christ everywhere we go. May we center our lives around knowing him more and more every day.
Amen. Pastor David, come up.
You honor Will. Thank you, church. Amazing job. I want you to listen for just a second. How did Heidi in the midst of all of the water falling from the second floor and ruining everything they had worked on for months In the midst of craziness happening, Heidi saw that and heard *God* and said, God says favor.
I'll tell you how. She knows him. And she's not she wasn't distracted by the circumstance such that she couldn't hear God's voice. Here's my challenge to you. The end of his message to know him.
I counted all loss for the sake of knowing him. I want you to process something for a second. Honestly, ask yourself this. Why do I follow Jesus? Just close your eyes.
Why why do you follow Jesus, really? Why? What's the focus of your answer as you're processing that? Now the Bible says, say, we love because he first loved us. And he demonstrates his love to us, drawing us to him.
And we respond because of his great kindness. So initially, in your walk with Jesus, it's probably your response why you follow Jesus was probably because of what he's done for you. Right? He healed me. He delivered me.
He forgave me. He did all of those things. And that's good initially. But my role is to equip you and help you mature in your relationship with him. And if your relationship with *Jesus* stays all about what Jesus has done for you, then when things don't go your way, you won't hear God.
You'll blame him because things aren't going your way anymore. And God takes immaturity. *Romans-5:3* through 5, suffering produces perseverance, which produces proven character, which produces hope that doesn't disappoint. So God takes us in our immaturity as a loving father and he confronts our flesh. He allows circumstances that confront our flesh to teach us to love him for him instead of for his hand for what he can do for us.
So you want to you want to grow to where you can hear God in the midst of the crazy? You have to grow from loving him for you to loving him for him. As long as the reason you follow him is what he's done for you, when craziness happens, you're going to be shaken and circle the drain and blame him. But at some point in your walk with Jesus, it has to shift from I'm following you for what you've done for me to I'm following you for who you are, then it's come hell or high water. Doesn't matter.
Is there blessing there? Sure. Absolutely. I'm a son. He blesses his sons and daughters.
And I love those things. But I even love him more than the blessing. And when I love him more than the blessing, I can hear him when I don't see it. Real church, to be real church and to reflect him no matter what. All of us need to remember it's about him, not us.
I counted all the loss for the sake of knowing him more. Amen? Amen. So my challenge to you is to process that. Where's Robbie?
I like putting Robbie on the spot. Robbie, will you come here? Pastor Robbie to you. That's pastor Robbie. When you honor someone for what God has done in them, you're able to receive from the gift of what God's done.
When you dishonor them, you're not able to receive. Right? Okay. He runs a ministry, you saw in the announcements, called Belong. If you're new in your walk with Jesus and you've never really been *discipled* or maybe you're older in your walk with Jesus, but you've never been discipled, Don't go with your ideas.
Go to learn. Be *discipled* because those who are discipled make disciples. So if you've never made a disciple, maybe you've never been discipled. And you need to go on a Tuesday night and learn and be discipled. And it's humbling for those that have been following Jesus for longer.
But it's only the humble that grow. The prideful stay being humbled. Right? You good with that? Look it up on our website, realchurch.us.
Ministries belong. It's worth it. And if you're in here and you don't you've never been born again, you don't know Jesus, I'd love for, like, 5 or 10 people to come up asking Robbie, can you lead me to Jesus? I don't actually know him. I've never really learned what it means to surrender to him as Lord.
I've just been going to church. There's a lot of people that go to church in America that's never surrendered to Jesus as Lord. And that's that's scary. Don't be that person. If that's you, we love you enough to call you out and say, hey, it's time to know him personally, not just him on the outside, but him living in.
Amen? So I'm gonna leave him here. If you don't know Jesus, "come ask". He's gonna lead you to Jesus. And hopefully, he has to lead a group of you because you're hungry.
And I'm dismissing, last but not least, you're invited to "fast with us" on Fridays. We're fasting because we're in the middle of a miracle. There's a building that's too much for us, but God wants to give it to us. $3,500,000 is too much, but there's too much that he's done to show us this is his plan. This is his word.
So we hear it, we believe it, and we're "walking in obedience", and we don't know how. We're gonna fast and pray. And we're fasting and praying. How do you want us to participate in what you are doing? On March 29, fifth Sunday of the month, we're going to have an offering.
If you've been preparing and God challenges you to give, please give whatever he put on your heart. We're going to assess at the end of that month. Hey, Okay. At at the end of that offering, praise the Lord. This is what you've put in our hand.
How do we move forward? Because we know this is your word, so we'll be in this building in July. Okay? So March 29, we're praying and preparing and fasting. What does this look like?
Amen? You don't know what I'm talking about? Go watch the message from last week. Amen? So Lord, I thank you for this amazing congregation.
Bless them. Bless them, Lord. Stretch them. Stretch their faith. Challenge their flesh so that they walk by the spirit in everything.
*Lord*, let them mature in you where they follow you because of who you are. Lord, and man, it's a joy to to receive stuff from you too as our father. So we love that as well. Lord God, if there's any under the sound of my voice that has never known you, they've just experienced you, let them come talk to pastor Robbie. Lord, and any that need to be discipled, let them go to belong on Tuesday nights.
Lord, thank you for boiler room being fuller than it's ever been this past Friday. Put it on their heart to come worship and pray with us on Friday night from 8 to 9, and let them have an amazing Sunday moving forward. And everybody said, let's end like this. I'm a Real. Person living a Real.
Life for a Real. Jesus having a Real good time. You're dismissed.