Linking Together

The third guiding principle of Influencers is: We link together with likeminded men. When the crisis comes and courage is required God expects his men who are seasoned and mature to be the reliable ones.

In the Navigators’ wheel analogy of the Christian walk, the hub is Jesus Christ. He is the center of our lives to deliver the power of God’s Holy Spirit to the rim representing obedience to God. The two vertical spokes are Prayer and The Word of God to connect our vertical relationship with the Lord. The two horizontal spokes of witnessing and fellowship solidify our relationships with others.

Pete often spoke to men’s groups and women’s groups. The men’s groups were generally less well attended than the women’s groups. God has made men and women different with different strengths and weaknesses. One of women’s strengths is meaningful relationships.

When Jesus walked this earth, the multitudes flocked to him to hear his unique message and to witness the miracles he performed to demonstrate the power of God. He became so popular that the people wanted him to be their political leader. However, Jesus said, that’s not why I’m here. When they asked him, then what’s your plan? He pointed to a group of lowly fishermen and a despised tax collector. He said, those guys over there, they’re the plan. According to Corinthians, God choses the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. For the wisdom of men is foolishness to God and the foolishness of God is wiser than men.

The heat of battle pulls men together. When you ask war heroes why they risked their lives in battle, they never say, for the honor of my country. When pressed they will say, I did it for my brothers in arms… he’s got my back and I’ve got his. The essence of a successful team is as they say in the military, “I’ve got your six.” The six o clock position means “I have my brother’s back.”

You’ll never be the man of God that God called you to be without other brothers in Christ. For my brother, I’ll gladly go the second mile and carry his pack. I’ll risk my life to save his…. Therefore bear ye one anothers’ burden and thus fulfill the law of Christ. Jesus said, my yoke is easy and my burden is light… He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.

All winning teams pull for the success of their team mates. Team sports are not about individual performances, but about everyone doing his job so that the team can win. Solidarity and selfless chemistry for the good of the team are hallmarks of teams that win consistently.

The devil’s ploy is to divide and conquer. He roams about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. The lioness hunts by singling out and separating one animal from the herd. Apart from from the herd an individual is easy prey. Without the protection of the herd, an individual cannot withstand the onslaught of the enemy.

A winning team has a camaraderie and an affiliation for one another. Love is the tie that binds the winning team together. It’s important to remember the lessons of how those who loved us taught us to be better men. Psalm 1 says, “BLESSED is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. 2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. 3 And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.”

You’re most like the ones with whom you choose to spend time. Be careful who your enemies are but even more careful who your friends are. Evil company corrupts good morals. Children are most affected by their circle of friends.

God created us for fellowship. Paul exhorted the Christians in his letter to the Philippians: “IF there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies, 2 Fulfil ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. 3 Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. 4 Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. 5 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:”. (Philippians 2:1-5)

Jesus said, I call you friends. What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and grief to bear. What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer. Mercy, grace, and love cover a multitude of sins. Learning about the grace and mercy of God is the beginning of understanding the love of Christ.

Ninety percent of men do not have a best friend. BFF’s are a godly assignment. They support each other through the trials of life with the love of God. They are faithful and true through good times and bad. Even though they have differences, best friends quickly reconcile after each offense. True faithful friendships are developed over time.

At Pete’s strategic director’s meeting of Influencers last month, the purpose was for each man to tell his own story of God’s Holy Spirit helping himself to their lives. Each individual in the body of Christ has a different story of how the Holy Spirit has worked in him and through him to will and to do of God’s good pleasure. The importance of each of our stories is that we are joined together in his-story…. for collectively we are the body of Christ. Jesus Christ is the crossroads of history.

As Christians, we each have a different function within the church, the body of Christ. Ephesians 4 teaches that our purpose is to edify, build up, encourage and comfort each other with the love of God.

We have been called together with a high and holy calling, to love God above all and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Our liberty in Christian fellowship is to serve one another in love…

…that together we may live to the praise of the glory of His grace!
Your brother in Christ,
Michael

Pete McKenzie
Hey, man, good to see you guys. Bill would say most of you guys, but I like to see you all. While we’re going through this series, it’s it’s basic foundational stuff. But you know, just about every coach I had, and certainly my college coach would always say the team that makes the fewest mistakes wins. And you make the fewest mistakes when you’re strong in the basics. I learned that in baseball when my coach, I’ve been playing first base in high school, he recruited me as a first baseman at Auburn. But the problem is we couldn’t play as freshmen and I wouldn’t have gotten to play much anyway. And we had a freshman team. And then in my sophomore year, when I went to the varsity team, we had an all sec senior first baseman, he said, I don’t need you at first base, but we got an opening at second, I want to try it second base. So he took me into the Fieldhouse, while the other guys were out playing pepper and getting warmed up. And he drew these footprints on the board. And he said, Pete, when a ball is going to be hit at you at second base, your feet are here when the pitcher throws now when the ball comes just foot goes here, and this foot goes here and your gloves on the ground and you watch that ball into your glove and and I’m sitting there thinking I’m coach I’ve been playing since I was nine years old, what is all this footprints on the board stuff. But what he was doing, he’s teaching me the basics from the ground up, he was teaching me the basics. Then he taught us how to run the basis, he taught us how to button. He taught us all the basic aspects in the outfield hit and cut off man we went situation place where you draw on the blackboard, okay, where there’s a man on first and second balls hit up to left center gap, what do you do? And so we knew what to do. We knew what our job was. And you know, every winning team has three things in common. One, they have a common objective. And I remember our coats, countless together behind the home plate next to the screen. And this is one of our first practices as we were going into that year. And he says he looked around, he said, we got all we need right here to win this SEC championship. And we believed him. And he taught us how to play the game. We were a bunch of average ball players, we had one all American pitcher. And but most of us we were just average guys, but we learned how to play the game, we learned the basics, we didn’t make a lot of mistakes. My senior year, we went to the College World Series, we rode the back of that all all American pitcher. But we believed in each other. The second thing is after a common objective is everybody knows their job. So when he took us through all those situations ever guy knew his job at his position. And I remember him coming out to second base. And he said to me one day said, Pete, you can’t play shortstop for Scottie or third base, or Greg or centerfield for Rick, you play second base, you do your job, you let them do their job, you just get your job done. And that kind of set me free. I don’t know why. But I felt that was a real freedom that he just said, do your job, let them do their job. It’d be like if I said to you today, now you got a job to do for Christ, do your job. If your wife doesn’t do her job, don’t let it bother you. It will but try not to let it bother you. If someone else is not doing their job, don’t get all wrapped up in it, do your job. And help them do their job. And you know what their job is. And so help them do it. And that was a lesson he taught me too. But that’s another message. So what we’re talking about today is link yourself together with men who are like minded men who are doing want to go the same place you want to go. And that’s the first thing about we talk in fellowship and friendship. And that’s a horizontal spoke in the wheel, where you have fellowship and witnessing. Next week, we’ll talk about the Great Commission and witnessing and evangelism and how that plays into this whole deal. But the wheel basically, in these five goals, basically are the basics of the Christian life. If you’re going to live a Christian life and you’re going to be let’s just put it in baseball terms or sport, sports terms. If you’re going to be a winner. You’re going to have to do these things. If you’re going to accomplish all God has for you in this life, you’re going to have to be strong in these things.

And there’s no shortcut. You either going to do this or not. And there’s there’s no backdoor way to do this. It’s going to take a lot of commitment, it’s going to take a lot of time, it’s going to take a lot of discipline, you’re gonna have to deny yourself certain things to accomplish it. But you’ve got to decide, and I’ve got to decide if we’re going to do our job. do our job is becoming men of God. Jesus making Jesus Lord of our life, making God’s word, the final authority in our life, becoming a man of prayer. Now that’s that vertical spoken the will you become an A man of prayer. And that’s your relationship with God has to do with the word and prayer. And then that horizontal spoke in the wheel is well fellowship and witnessing that has to do with people, your horizontal relationships. And it’s all wrapped up in the Lordship of Christ in the hood in the room around the wheel is obedience to all these things. We’re going to talk about friendship and fellowship. And the quote that I learned a long time ago, this is always stuck with me as you’ll never be the man of God you could be or should be. If you’re not surrounded by a bunch of man or God, without the godly friendship of other men. In other words, iron sharpens iron is one man sharpens another. It says in Proverbs, and I’m not as sharp as I could be, if I wasn’t a friend of Ron’s neuron sharpens me, I get around Ron and say, Boy, I wish I was as bold as him, I wish I had the same passion he has. But if I’m going to have that I got to hang out with Ron, you got to pick your friends carefully. And the reason you have to be careful is because whoever they are, you’re going to be and wherever they’re going, that’s where you’re going. So you find like minded men and men that love Christ more than you do, and you hang on their screen, don’t don’t let him shake you off. You’ve heard that a few times. But it’s really true, you find those guys, I remember growing up when I was a became more of a center every year that went by, into my junior high in high school years. And it really bothered me that I didn’t know what to do about it during those days. But I’d get around guys, it seemed to really know Christ, it seemed to really live the life. And I wanted to I felt good in their presence. And I thought this is better than not my teammates on the baseball team and all the stuff we say and get into. I like being with these guys. I just knew there was something different about them, but I couldn’t figure out what it was and what I was missing. So I started learning about friendship, most of the trouble you and I’ve got into when we were young is because of the friends we had. or most of your friends got in trouble because a you work can work either way. And so you have to pick your friends carefully in the Christian life, you have to get mentors, coaches, and that you may or may not have an official relationship with them as my mentor. But for instance, in my life, I’ve had mentors all along. And every stage of life I’ve had guys that took me under their wing that model for me that took an interest in me that helped me grow. It taught me the basics helped me memorize scripture learned taught me how to have a quiet time. And that’s but the thing that I think has been missing in the body of Christ. We haven’t missed so much church, we have plenty of churches, and they’re planting new churches all the time. But what we miss in church is the fellowship. You can come and sit in this group right here on Friday mornings, and you may see some friends and pat each other on the back and maybe give each other near tug. And I probably should go over the air tug again, because I’m tugging some of you guys ears and you’re looking at me like I got a problem. But my dad used to do that he used to grab me on the leg right here. And he did shake it and make me squirm around on the front seat of the car. And so let me show you how the horse eats corn. And then he had tug on my ear and he’d reach over and grab my ear and tug on it. And as I finally one day I said Come on, Dad, I’m getting tired of that. ceratitis he said, Don’t you know what that means? I said Was it me? He said it means I love you when I do that. I remember my son coming up to me one day, and I told him the same thing about ear tugs. And I remember him coming up to me one day and say, Dad, I think I need to talk. I think some of you guys come in here and get your hug in your tub because this is the only place you’re going to find it all week long. Because we’re not big into that and oh man code says no Huggy. But if you don’t like hugging that, my guess is you’re gonna hate heaven. One of my favorite pictures of Heaven is Jesus hugging the guys. He comes through the gate.

And I’m sure that he hugged his disciples in the day had that kind of relationship. That’s what a father and a friend say hug. They talk. They encourage each other. They build each other up. Jesus said, you know, when it comes to all that, and he looked at his disciples, in course, everybody was trying to recruit Jesus, politicians, zealots. Everybody wanted him on their team. They saw his charisma, his power, the people that followed him. They all wanted him on their team. And then they killed him. But at one point, they wanted him on their team, and he would resist them all. And when he resisted all all the things they asked him to do, they finally said, we’ll be our king. He says, My kingdom is not of this world. What is your plan? Remember what he said? He looked at Matthew, the tax gather. He said, See that cat tax gather over there? Yeah, we hate his guts. He’s a stinking traitor. He will make words for the Romans. Well, maybe that’s true, but he’s a plan. And then here comes Peter and James and john, these roughneck fishermen, profane, drinking, gambling, fighting. And he said, See those fishermen over there? Yeah, whether the plan and then these guys couldn’t believe it. They said, the Pharisees must be the plan. He says those guys are not the plan. These guys over there the roughneck guys, the guys that are profane the guys that are not recruitable to any other group, I’m recruiting them, and then even recruited a traitor, Judas. And when he recruited him, he knew what he would do. He knew what the future held. They recruited him anyway because he was going to be a friend, and a friend in the sense that he was going to help him accomplish what he had come to get done. And so you’re the plan in the plan is that you would love each other, that he’s loved you a new commandment I give to you love each other. And that’s a third thing and a winning team. First is a share a common objective, the second they all know their job. And third, they love each other. I remember watching being a golf fan, I watch the Ryder Cup and the Ryder Cup. And golf is where they’re taking the 10 best American golfers and they have a captain of the team who doesn’t play but coaches and puts guys together and matches them up with the with the other and they take the 10 best golfers from the UK, from England and Scotland and Ireland. And they play each other every other year. And they have different formats for play. They have match play, and they have singles play and some other counterplay. But it’s a big deal. And the British have been beating us mostly in the last 20 years, we’ve lost more than we’ve won in the Ryder Cup. I remember a few years ago after the cup was over. They were interviewing the players and having a press conference and things and they interviewed Nick Falco and he said we helped each other if anything would help. We did it for each other. There’s where our bonding came from. In Graham Graeme McDowell said, I played terrible, but we won. That’s what team is all about picking up each other, having each other’s back, getting to share it with others is what it’s all about. Sergio Garcia said, getting to know the other players at a deeper level than we have a chance to on a regular tour is a great part of the Ryder Cup. Well, a great part of influencers is you got an opportunity to be in a small group with guys, for instance, a forum group, not at 6am or 8am, or 12am, Jesus had a 12am group. But we do in a forum group because he took those 12 and in fact, he narrowed it down to three that were his James and Peter and john that were his inside guys. There’s a guy that he took up on the Mount of Transfiguration with the other guys he took him to the seminary with him. And there are two other times I’m sure he did that, that we don’t have record off. But he had three guys that he really pulled in close to himself, they got to know each other. They got to know him. They had an intimate personal bonding relationship with Him. And that’s the whole point. That’s what this is a face to face group you see that guy and some of you guys have been coming for years and then I’ll be talking to one guy and another guy walk up and I go How long have you been here? He’s eight years How long you been here? I’ve been coming about three or four years. You guys ever met now? I don’t know his name. I’ll introduce them to each other. You can come to this group for months if not yours. And not really no the guys over here always sit over here and the guys over here always sit over here so I don’t have to guess where you’re going to sit.

We’re creatures of habit and we get comfortable in certain places and we tried before saying Okay, are you guys gonna sit over here and are you guys gonna sit over here and it worked for one week. So this is a face to face group but what what really changes your life when you’re growing in any aspect uncertainly spiritually is where you get in small groups, which we call Heart to Heart groups. This is where you tell your story. This is where you get to talk about things you don’t talk about regularly and men don’t men have are experts at superficial relationships. I remember the guy that was telling the story that he and his wife had a couple that were good friends and they were divorcing. And so he was going to play golf with a guy that was divorcing. And so they went out and played golf, and he came home and his wife said, well, how’s he doing? He’s doing good. He shot 82. Now, I mean, what do you How’s he doing with his divorce? What do you mean? Why is he doing? Well? Are they gonna get it or not? He says, I don’t know. He says why she failed and she have no idea. She says you spent four hours with him and you don’t know these things. He said, Well, what am I gonna do? He’s up there putting for the prize. And I go Hey, how’s your divorce going? Which might not be a bad strategy if you’re losing I remember playing golf with guys when would show up near put our two sim with another to summon with and they’re cutting and doing all the stuff guys do and get about the six hole and I go, what do you do? And I say I’m a pastor? No. They were hitting balls out of bounds in the water missing putts. So it’s good strategy if you want to win, if you need help. But guys are superficial we can meet together. But I remember bill telling me when he’s a corporate head and a member of a country club for seven or eight years, he played golf with the same guys. So my maiden name, I know their last name. And that’s what man can do. We can hang out together and never talk about anything that’s meaningful or important. We might talk sports and politics, but nothing personal nothing. As your walk with God as your relationship at home with your family and your kids and your close friends. How can we pray for you right now. It’s like your wife who’s praying for her if you’re not. If you have a wife or children and you’re not praying for them, who is people to get prayed for do better. People who pray together love each other more, that the family that prays together stays together, the marriage that prays together stays together. But we talked about that when we talked about prayer. It’s most needed thing but the most neglected and difficult thing because the devil knows when we start praying he’s done. He’ll do anything new keep us from praying. He’ll do anything and do from keeping you and me and Heart to Heart groups with other man telling our stories, getting to know each other. The one through life together dealing with stuff I just had. Greg Tell me in the back back there, a friend of his who’s 34 year old son just committed suicide. America is the leading suicide country and well among wealthy countries in the world. We got men blowing their brains out every day, jumping off a bridge is as golden the Royal gorge last couple of summers ago. And I don’t know if you’ve ever been to royal gorge in Colorado, but I don’t like heights and they have a brace suspension bridge all the way across. It’s about 1000 feet down at a train that runs along the bottom of it. And I was in the middle of the bridge, believe me walking across. But here’s the week before they told me a guy just jumped off the bridge. The fence on either side was just about this high, anybody could jump over. And they’ve had a lot of people do that. guys get to the place in their life where they just have the enemy just has his way with them. They get depressed, they get discouraged. They look in horizontally instead of vertically. They lose their hope they get into despair, they’re taking drugs. And they life isn’t worth living. It’s too hard. It’s too painful. It’s too difficult. And if you ask that guy and he asked the average guy who’s your best friend, they don’t have a best friend. Men don’t have best friends. They have guys that are acquaintances they have guys at work they they may go to lunch with or hang out with or do something play golf with. But they can’t say their best friend that they someone they could call it three o’clock in the morning. They’d be there no matter what.

guys just don’t do that. But we’re going to be different. You’re going to be different. We don’t have to be that way we can have we can get in heart to heart groups. We can tell our stories. We can do life together, we can pray for each other. And the guy in our prayer group had two really important meetings yesterday. So he texts us in the morning and said pray for me this morning. I’m meeting here and I’m going to meet with these people and this afternoon is very important meetings for what’s going on in my life and business. So we all got a chance to pray for him yesterday and today we’ll have lunch and we’ll download what happened in those meetings. We’ll get to hear what’s happening and going on. But you know, guys are reticent to open up and share and be vulnerable and transparent even with their own wives, because you want them to respect you, you want them to honor you, you want them to love you. But if you knew what I was thinking, if you knew what I was doing, then you wouldn’t love me. And that’s where we come to Jesus, Jesus. And there’s a song we’re going to hear a little later, what a friend we have in Jesus. Jesus told his disciples and john,

john 15. Now this is my commandment, love one another. Just as I have loved, you know, Greater love has no one than this, and one who would lay his life down for his friends. Now, when we start talking about best friends and friends in general, we’re talking about people who sacrifice for the good of others. They bear up under suffering, for other sake, they sacrifice for them. And Jesus was talking in terms I’m sure in his own mind when he said this, of how he was going to lay his life down for these guys. Can you imagine lay in your, in his, he said, anybody might die for a righteous man. But no one’s going to die for a center for a scalloway for a guy full of shenanigans and all the things that we pull in life. But do you might die? Probably not. But you might die for a good man. But you’re not going to die for that guy. And Jesus was going to die for that guy. He was going to die for those who didn’t deserve it. That’s what grace is. He was going to die for guys that should be dying themselves. But he died in their place. That’d be me and you. You are my friends if you do what I command you. So he’s talking about friends here? And how do you know if you’re Jesus his friend. You obey Him. Say that on the rim of the wheel is obedience to all these things. The word and prayer and fellowship and witnessing Jesus is Lord of your life is a hub. But the rim of the wheel is obedience. And Jesus says, If you love me, you will obey me, you will do what I say. And it won’t be a burden. My my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. It’s not going to be a big heavy burden if you love me. But the Christian life is a heavy burden if you don’t, if you’re halfway committed, if you’re more worldly than you are spiritually if your carnal Christian or lazy Christian, it’s going to be a burden to discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness. But if you really love Jesus, and what is that love rooted in? How do you know if you love him? Well, you know if you love him, but if you obey Him in how do you get to a place where you want to obey Him, because you want to do something for that person that loves you so much, and is sacrificed so much we love our mothers, most of us. Most of us had mothers, I don’t know about fathers, but mothers who sacrifice for us, they bore us and birth, they nurtured us that their breath, there was a bonding that was going on there that it was a chemistry. And so we want to honor them when we get a chance. And I look at sometimes notes that our children wrote us on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, especially to Susan on Mother’s Day. And they just say an amazing things in those notes. Because of why, because of the parents, they had some of us had parents that were worth celebrating a mother’s day and Father’s Day, but not so much others. But we always have a father we can celebrate a father in heaven, who sent his son who said, I’m gonna call you servants or slaves anymore. I’m gonna call you friends. No longer do I call you slaves. So the slave does not know what his masters doing. Now, you may have acquaintances in here and people that you know, but you don’t know what they’re doing. You don’t know what’s going on in their life, that person that drove by you because you weren’t good driving fast enough and flip to off, which happened to me one time that I shared with you. And I was about to return the salute. And the Lord put his hand on my hand and said you don’t know what’s going on in that woman’s life. You don’t know what her marriage is like you don’t know what she’s struggling with. You don’t know why she’s so angry at a stranger cause you slowed her down.

And so that’s the thing that Jesus is saying here. I no longer call you slave. A slave doesn’t know what his masters doing. And Jesus says I’m revealing to you I’m sharing with you. And that’s what we do in our forum groups. We share our lives with each other. We say whatever shared here stays here. You we can trust each other With with Sharon, our most greatest weakness in the struggles that we’re having, most men don’t have that. And I can tell you right now I can guarantee you that men in these kind of groups are not going to commit suicide. They’ve got guys to be there to pick them up when they stumble and fall to pat them on the back when they lose. And that’s what one of the golfers said, because he had blown it at the end. And in the Firestone Country Club tournament, prior to the Ryder Cup, and he had the thing one and he blew it at the end. And someone asked him, How do you feel about that? How do you feel about being on a team with guys that you let down? He said, I can tell you never been on a team to ask that question. He said, yeah, it was one of the lowest moments in my career when I lost at Firestone. But when I failed here, I had guys to pick me up pat me on the back encouraged me not get down on me. He said, that’s all I didn’t have anybody to do that when I lost when I was just playing for myself. But playing with a team and playing with a captain and 11 guys on the team that are dependent on me to do my job. When I let them down, that crushed me. But they picked me up, they patted me on the back, they told me that one end of the world, I was part of the team, they weren’t down on me. So don’t get down on yourself. And we need to have that every now and then we had need to have that little zinger, that little word from the Lord that just changed everything in my day, that thing I read in the Bible that quote I read from that person in that book, maybe it’s a devotional book. But we need that pat on the back, we need that word of encouragement, we need to be reminded of who we are and why we’re here and where we’re going and who’s going to get us there. We need someone to get our eyes up and quit looking at if I look at myself, I get depressed. If I look at you, I get distressed. If I look at myself, I’m always blessed. Well, that’s not true. If I look at Christ, I’m always blessed. I’ll see and if any of you look and grace out after that, but there are people that look at themselves and feel blessed. I’m not going to name names. I no longer call you slaves. Slave doesn’t know what his masters doing. But I have called you friends. For all things that I have heard from my father I have made known to you. I’m laying the whole thing out. And then the movie, the series The chosen. These guys were going well. Nicodemus is what is your plan? What are you doing? Why are you here? You’re the Messiah. He goes, I’m gonna introduce them to a new kingdom. I came to establish the new kingdom on earth. It’s a kingdom not of natural, but it’s supernatural power. I’ve come to explain that and make it known. And of course, the disciples struggle the whole time Jesus even open to his death and resurrection, they struggled with faith. It took Pentecost where they came to the Holy Spirit. I’ve got a guy I’ve been sharing Christ with and and I said, read this gospel of john, first chapter. And we’ll talk. So I saw him later. And he said, Well, let me say, Did you read the first chapter? And he goes, Yeah, he said, Now let me get this straight. If I believe in Jesus, I’m going to heaven, right? I said, Well, if you truly believe in Jesus, that Scripture says, you will go to heaven, that you’ll be saved, you’ll be forgiven for all your sin. He says, Well, how do I live it out then. And I said, you can’t live it out until you have it in. You got to be in Christ. Before you can live for Christ, you have to be a man of Christ before you can be a man of God. You have to be a man of God before you can do God’s work. So we’re going to have another conversation today and pray for Jeffrey because I’m going to share the gospel with him this morning. But you got guys you’re doing the same thing with and say, I get a chance to come in with a bunch of guys like you and say, Hey, join me in prayer. And so I’ve not dismayed. In one this my buddy and his wife praying as he went into those meetings yesterday, he had guys praying, and I got guys praying for him. So he had a bunch of people praying for him going into that meeting. When’s the last big meeting you went to?

And had guys praying for you? Who’s the last guy that prayed for your marriage? Who’s the last guy that prayed for your finances, in your health? Whereas the guys that are doing that with for you and with you and you for them? See, that’s what makes life worth living. ie when you’re in love, it makes life worth living. someone thinks you’re valuable. someone thinks you’re lovable, someone thinks you’re fun to be with and it builds your self esteem. Same thing with the guys, when you get to know each other and love each other and encourage each other and you have brothers, you have friends, you have guys that watch your back. You can fake caring, but you can’t fake showing up. And these guys are showing up. And every guy needs that. And you’re gonna limp along in the Christian life if you don’t have it. And what God has given us here is a treasure. It’s a it’s a diamond hidden in the rough. It’s something you cannot pay money for in half. It’s fellowship, it’s a fellowship of the body of Christ, it’s God’s given us the structure, the plan is God who’s given it to us. He raised up for him, one, just something we thought of is something God put on our heart. So this is how you’re going to be able to reach me and you cannot reach on Friday morning and Wednesday morning, because there are guys in four m groups that will never come to this meeting. But they’re in a forum group. Some of them live in Minnesota, some of them live in North Carolina, some of them live in places. And in Costa Rica. We got guys in all those places and more that are on zoom, and they’re having forum groups on zoom, I got guys in Alabama, they’re fixing to crank up zoom, and zoom therefore in group. So God’s given us something that most 99% 99.9% of men in our country just don’t have. And they’re blowing their brains out. They’re breaking up their marriages, they’re struggling as fathers, they’re struggling at work. They’re under unbelievable stress and pressure. And they have no one to come along and put an arm around them. Some of us didn’t have dads that did that. You may have never heard your dad say, I love you, son, but you write one letter from God to you, and you’ll hear soon. I love you. Son, I love you. That’s what you hear from God. That’s his message to me. And always I asked the guy just the other day I said if you wrote a if God wrote you a letter today, dear Brian, if he wrote you a letter today, and no one knew as well as he knows you, what would he say? In the first words out of his mouth as he said he would tell me love me. And that’s exactly what God does. I’ve seen scores and scores of men at retreats in different venues. And then just in talking to guys say, I want you to write two letters, write a letter to God write a letter from God to you, because I know what they’re going to hear from God. Because I told him I said, I can tell you that God loves you and that’s good theology. And you may believe it. But when God tells you he loves you that’ll change your life and God always and that’s why prayer and journaling and being around other guys who love you anyway. Who know your stuff and they still love you. And that’s what men are missing today. So what a friend we have in Jesus all our cares and Grace dubare I want you to hear Alan Jackson sing this this is my favorite renditions of that guys. Can we play that?

Unknown Speaker
Whoa. Friend we have Angie Oh Larson’s in Greece today Whoa. Thank God we often for home Oh god needless pain we because we do not. Breathe thank God and pray. We try to empty user trouble and we shouldn’t be discouraged. To get to the Lord and pray we find friends or face. sorrows g every we today Get into the Lord in prayer.

Pete McKenzie
That is an Amen. Guys, you might not have a best friend, but you can be a best friend. You can be a friend to those who don’t have any friends. That’s what Christian missionary work is all about. That’s what Christian love is all about. You have the power if you know Jesus Christ. And you may be like that God is trying to live it out that doesn’t have it in. And that’s a frustrating development in a guy’s life, where he thinks he saved but he’s really not. And there are some guys that aren’t saved, and they’re still good friends, better friends, and some of us Christians are, they serve better, they sacrifice more, they give more than a lot of us guys who are Christians, it costs you something to be a friend, you’re gonna have to be vulnerable, you’re gonna have to learn to be transparent. You’re gonna have to be plugged in spiritually with Christ, you’re gonna have to sacrifice sometimes you’re gonna have to reach in your pocketbook sometimes. And help them out. You’re gonna have to humble yourself. And learn to be honest with them. Give them the not the kisses of an enemy, but the wounds of a friend, you’re gonna have to tell them the truth sometimes when they don’t want to hear it. Be the kind of guy that when your friends tell you the truth, based on what they think, then defend yourself and explain yourself and indicate yourself all the time listen to what they have to say. Because a good friend, and the wounds of a friend are priceless. They know you and the reason they’re sharing with you. And sometimes they don’t do it in the right way, you know, not all loving and gracious. Sometimes they’re irritated and upset and had enough for you. And they let you know it. So it’s a gift if they can do it with grace. But don’t make them have to do it with grace. Just listen to what they have to say and see if God’s saying something to you some some some error, you need to correct some direction you’re going in it needs to change some habits you have. But I find that if you’re not being rebuked, and we talk about this, if you’re not being rebuked, it’s not because people don’t think you need it. It’s because they don’t think you can take it. So we all need to be rebuked, we all go in the wrong direction. We all start having bad habits, we all start getting lazy. We just need guys to come along and challenge us stick their finger in our chair sometimes after they prayed and prayed for us, and then pray for us and these weaknesses. So it costs Jesus to be able to say that his disciples were his friends, not as you’re known by your friends. And so they called him donors. Well, that’s exactly what he was. I got that one, right. He’s a friend of sinners, guys like you and me. And he can make us friends. They’ll go out there and be a blessing go give them heaven. If you’re not in a forum group, get in one. You need it. It may be you have another group. And I’m talking about a group that talks about relevant things to spiritual life and growth and emotions and what the where you need help and where you need people lifting you up and praying for you. Because people who pray together, stay together, people who have prayed far do better. That’s just the way it works. What a friend, how easily discouraged. We are. And God wants to Kurt encourage you. He wants to pick you up and he wants to teach you how to pick others up. That’s why it works. And that’s why he does it. And we’ll all give Him the glory for being such a friend. Amen. Let’s pray.

Father, we just thank you for being our friend, we thank you for no longer and call the servants but friends, that you desire our friendship, you’ve paid a great price that we might have access to you as our friend. And I pray that we could repent of anything we’ve been doing that keeps us from being better friends with you and each other. Because we know that that’s the best thing we have to offer here. The reason we want to be men of the word and man make the Bible the final authority in our life is so we can be better friends. So we’ll know what friendship is. So you can rebuke and correct us and our life to become better friends more faithful friends, friends that will be there. Just like you are for sure always there. We can always turn to you. We can always turn to But we can always turn to you our best friend. And, Lord, we want you to be our best friend. Most men don’t have a best friend. But we want you to be our best friend. And I pray for every guy in here and everybody in the sound of my voice on streaming video and who might ever hear it later. I just pray that we would all have a best friend and Jesus and you would teach us how to be best friends with each other. A new commandment I give to you, you told us not as a world gives do I give to you, but I want you to love one another, even as I’ve loved you and by the ASR man will know that were your disciples because of the way we love one another. We asked for your blessing. We asked for you to answer these prayers for friendship and brotherhood. We desperately needed and you’ve given it to us. May we not blow it? My we take advantage of it. Each one of us do our job. We can’t do the other guy’s job but we can do our job and our job is to be best friends with you and each other in Jesus name And all God’s men said go get him heaven guys.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Prayer

Jesus said, Abide in me and you shall bear much fruit. The heart’s desire of a follower of Christ, is to do the things that bring us closer to him. According to Phil 4:10, Paul said, “that I may know him and the power of his resurrection being conformend to his death.” He clarified this verse in Galatians 2:20, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”

When we treasure treasures in heaven, it’s not about the price, it’s about the value. Value is worthiness. What is worth most in your life? We will be set free when we come to the realization that He alone is worthy. Glory means weighty… The weighty things of life are the things that really matter. Therefore glory in the Lord.

Our first principle of Influencers is that Jesus is Saviour and Lord. Lord means owner. As follower of Christ we are men of God. A man of God is God’s man. Christianity is not who we are, but whose we are.

God doesn’t call the qualified, he qualifies the called. The qualification is in God’s gift of the Holy Spirit he gave us when we were born again, not of corruptible seed of biological life, but of incorruptible (seed) by the word of God which liveth and abideth forever. His seed is Christ in us the hope of glory.

The second principle of Influencers is that the Word of God is our final authority for faith and practice.

Influencers’ third principle is that we are men of prayer. Most men have an aversion to prayer. Pete avoided his elder group prayer meetings in Munich where he served as a missionary. He felt guilty and unworthy to pray. When we think that God does not approve of us, we’ll avoid the fellowship of corporate prayer. If we think that God is unsatisfied with our performance, we’ll avoid meeting with men who value their fellowship with like minded believers. When we allow God to search our heart, he will convict us to approach his throne of grace with a spirit of meekness and humility. When we come to him confessing our sins, our broken fellowship, he is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

We can approach God’s throne of grace with the righteousness of Christ because of Romans Chapter 8. “For there is now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit. For the spirit of life in Christ has made me free from the law of sin and death.” The righteousness of Christ in us, overcomes the failures of our fallen carnal nature, the “corruptible seed” of biological life that we inherited from Adam. Because of the payment Christ made on our behalf, we are sons of God by our new spiritual birth. Therefore we can approach God in prayer clothed in the righteousness of Christ.

All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. However he who was without sin was made the perfect sacrifice for sin on our behalf that we may be made the righteousness of Christ in him.

Paul said in the the second letter to Timothy that men in every church should pray with holy hands lifted up to God. Therefore be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication let your requests be made known unto God, and the peace of God which passes all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus our lord.

God always answers prayer. It’s not always the answer we want according to our own desires unless we have made his desire our desire. Most people think that prayer is God giving us what we demand. However according to the book of James, you have not because you ask not or because when we ask we have the wrong purpose… that we may consume it upon our own lusts. God doesn’t give us what our carnal minds desire…. he gives us what we need according to the good pleasure of His will. Prayer is aligning our desires with God’s desires. Therefore as the Psalmist said, Delight thyself also in the Lord and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.

Prayer is the work. Prayer is God’s force multiplier. Then when our delight is God’s delight… when our good pleasure is God’s good pleasure, then when we pray, God will work in us and through us to will and to do of His good pleasure.

Like a son who runs into the loving arms of his dad, we come boldly to God’s throne because God is our loving Heavenly Father. For he that doeth evil hate the the light, neither cometh to the light, but he that doeth truth cometh to the light that his deeds may be manifest that they are wrought of God.

In Psalm 51, David turned away from his sin and approached God with a broken and a contrite heart. Even though he had committed adultery with Bathsheba and ordered her husband Uriah’s murder, David said, “Against thee and thee only Lord have I sinned.” David prayed, Create in me a new heart so that I can walk according to thy Word and thy will in the joy of the fellowship of the Lord.

When we run to the Lord, our joy is in the Lord and not in the selfish desires of our flesh. Jesus said, come to me all ye that are heavy laden and I will give you rest. The Lord is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble.

Prayer and praise to God is the outpouring of a thankful heart. Prayer aligns our heart with God’s heart. When our vertical relationship with God is in alignment, then our horizontal relationships with others will be blessed. The prayer of a loving servant says, Lord, thy wish is my command.

In Colossians 1:9-12 Paul said: 9. “For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding;
10 That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God;
11 Strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness;
12 Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light:”

Prayer taps into the power of God’s agape love. Love suffereth long and is kind. Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.. behaveth not itself unseemly, seeketh not its own. Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never faileth.

My prayer is that we walk in a manner worthy of the Lord pleasing him in all respects according to the spirit of Christ’s heart behind our heart.

That with a thankful heart rejoicing in the Lord,
We may live to the praise of the glory of His grace!
Your brother in Christ,
Michael

The Word

These are challenging times whrere the world is in crisis. Oswald Chambers said, When the crisis comes and courage is required, God expects his men to have such confidence in him that they will be the reliable ones. We have been separated from the darkness of this world for such a time as this.

Influencers is founded upon five basic tenets of the faith: Jesus is Lord; the Bible is our sole authority for faith and practice; we are men of prayer; we link together with like minded men; and we give it away.

Navigators ministry teaches that following the Lord is like a wheel consisting of six elements: a hub, the rim, and four spokes. The hub at the center of the wheel represents Jesus Christ the center of our lives. The hub transfers God’s power to the rim which represents obedience to the Lord. The power of Christ is transferred to the rim through the spokes. The two vertical spokes represent the word of God and prayer. These two spokes align our hearts with God’s heart. The two horizontal spokes are witnessing and fellowship. These spokes define our relationships with believers and non-believers.

The first question is, Is Jesus Christ Lord of your life? If he is then he is the word of God made manifest.

The Bible was written on three continents by forty different writers. Among them were scribes, a doctor, pastors, kings and even a tax collector. Today most bibles are published in China. There are over 6,000 prophesies in the Bible of which over 3000 have already been fulfilled.

In our day we have given people permission to live according to the world’s standards instead of God’s righteous standard according to the Word of God.

As Pastor of a church Pete confronted five men who were elders and leaders of his congregation. All five were living out of wedlock with their “significant others.” Pete confronted them with the Word of God According to Hebrews, you drink milk but should be feeding on solid food. Those who are mature by reason of the (spiritual) maturity have their (spiritual) senses excercised to discern bot h good and evil. He said, you need to follow God’s word about marriage. You have two choices, either move out of the house and live separately from your girlfriend or get married.

When he checked with them a few weeks later, all five men were still cohabitating. Often men need a specific action plan. Pete said, “This week, Each of you will go down to the courthouse with your partner and sign a marriage certificate in the presence of the Justice of the Peace. The following week, all five men had made a commitment to the vows of holy matrimony in the sight of God and men. They remain happily married. To this day, each man thanks Pete for insisting that they follow God’s righteous standard of marriage.

According to John 1, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the Word was God. And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us. To know Jesus Christ is to know the word of God. He is the meaning of the word. He is the word of God manifest in the flesh.

Therefore, blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree that is planted but he rivers of (living) waters. His leaf also shall not wither and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

How do you get the Word of God into your life? The first way is to hear the word. People only remember about 6% of what they hear. The next step is to read the word. Then it’s important to study the word. Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman who needed not to be ashamed (of his workmanship) rightly dividing the Word of truth…. The next step is to memorize the word. Then in times of need God will bring the word we’ve memorized back into remembrance. The final step is to meditate upon the word. Therefore meditate upon these things, commit thyself wholly and holy unto them that thy profiting may appear unto all.

The Word of God is an acquired taste. Jesus said, blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled. An intimacy with the Lord Jesus Christ is built through meditating on the Word of God. Time in his presence turning the word over in our minds develops intimacy with our Lord. The prophet Jeremiah said, “Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart: for I am called by thy name, O LORD God of hosts.”

According to 2 Timothy 3:15, The Bible, God’s word is God-breathed and is profitable for doctrine, reproof and correction which is instruction in righteousness. The purpose is that the man of God may be perfect (fully equipped and furnished) unto all good works.

This verse is written to a “man of God.” A man of God is God’s man. Lord means ownership. The phrase man of God is the genitive of possession. Christianity is not who we are but whose we are.

A disciple is a disciplined follower. A man of God through the word of God is equipped for every good work. The King James Version reads the man of God may be perfect, through and throughly furnished unto all good works.

The word of God is the love of God in manifestation. God is his word and God is love, therefore God’s word is love. Love gives unconditionally from the heart of Christ in you the hope of glory. Love does the right thing, especially in a marriage relationship. Ephesians says love your wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her.

When God said in Ezekiel 33, say, come now and say what the word of the Lord says. They will hear your word. Your words are like a beautiful performance… they gladly listen to your song, but they will not do them. But then when your words come to pass (according to God’s righteous judgement) they will know that you have spoken the word of the Lord.

The world thinks that reproof is a bad word. However, whom the Lord loves, he chastises. The greatest life lessons are learned through life’s most difficult tests. If you’re not being rebuked, it’s not because you don’t need it. It’s because you can’t take it.

Pete recalls that the year after he had been honored as an all star in the Double A Southern league, he was traded to the Minnesota Twins farm team in Indiana. He was assigned to the bench and was inserted into the lineup periodically as a pinch hitter. A fellow team mate Pete knew who had also been transferred from the southern league was in the starting lineup even though he had never been an all star. Pete was jealous of his teammate and thought that he deserved to be a starter. Then in a game in Indiana he was called to pinch hit. Pete thought to himself, “this is my opportunity to get a hit and prove the manager that I belong in the starting lineup.” On the mound was an up and coming pitcher named Pedro Bourbon. Bourbon was later drafted by the Cincinnati Reds and became an all star pitcher for the Big Red Machine who won two World Series. Pete says that his contribution to the minor leagues was to get minor league pitchers into the big leagues. Bourbon struck him out in that game in Indiana.

That night Pete was journaling and reading in Hebrews 12 where it says that the Lord disciplines those whom he loves. “Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.”

God spoke to Petes heart, “you know how to be an all star, but you don’t know how to sit on the bench. Some things you can only learn on the bench. You’ll learn meekness and humility to put your team mates first…. to encourage them, support them, and build them up. It’s painful to forsake your pride. Humility is learned in the refining fire and the crucible of my reproof. Reproof means to test and prove over and over that I, your God alone am your strength and sufficiency.”

When we approach the Word of God, as Paul prayed our prayer is, “Lord open the eyes of my spiritual understanding that I may know the hope of your calling and the riches of the glory of our inheritance of the saints.”

People take notice when we live according to the loving standard of God’s word. When we give grace and mercy instead of vengeance and retribution, the world sits up and takes notice. It’s not the world’s response to turn the other cheek, go the second mile, and recompense to no man evil for evil.

The sermon on the mount is contrary to the world’s definition of happiness. The beatitudes are God’s blessed attitudes. Humility is the prerequisite to receive the word of God. Like a child that hangs on his father’s words, we need to receive the word of God with childlike innocence and humility.

Doctrine, reproof, and correction are instruction in righteousness. God gave us his word so that we could live under the canopy of his love and protection. The Ten Commandments were God’s “terms of endearment” his wedding vows to Israel. He is our “sole” provider and our “soul” provider.

To be adequate and equipped and fully furnished unto all good works, we are to be men of the Word. For God said through his prophet Isaiah, “As the rain cometh down and the snow from heaven and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth and maketh it bring forth and bud, so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth. It shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please and it will prosper in that thing where unto I sent it.”

Thank God for opportunities to live the word…. to demonstrate the power of God in manifestation.

…That we may through a heart of love, live to the praise of the glory of His grace!
Your brother in Christ,
Michael

Like a forest fire, you get it going, you can’t stop it. We’ve been talking about these five goals, the five goals are taken from Do we still have that will illustration. We can flash up there, the will illustrations navigator will let me know when it’s up there. If it gets up there, I forgot to tell him, I want to use it this week. Anyway, if you had a wheel, and you know the dynamics of a wheel, you have this wheel, and this is the hub of the wheel. And that’s the Lordship of Jesus Christ. You start there, then you have a relationship, you have two relationships. One is horizontal, one is vertical. The horizontal, the vertical relationships has to do with our relationship with God. That would be the foundational one is what we talked about last week, God’s word and prayer, which we’ll talk about this week. Those are the vertical spokes, then you have horizontal spokes, you have fellowship, which is what you were just doing and what we do in small groups. And when we get together and go to breakfast, and do all the things we do play golf, that’s fellowship. And then we have, give it away. We have witnessing evangelism, the Great Commission, we’ll talk about that. Now the thing that makes it all run is the realm of the will. That’s what that’s where the rubber meets the road. And the rubber meets the road in obedience to all of these things, becoming a man of prayer. Is it up there? becoming a man of prayer, becoming a man of the word and having if you’re going to have a relationship with Jesus, that’s what you got to do. And you just have to decide how close you want to get. Then that horizontal relationship, and we have a big challenge there, and we’ll talk about that next week about fellowship. And why men need men and what fellowship is how God uses it in our lives. But if we’re going to grow in the Christian life, those are all the elemental aspects, the foundational things that we have to do and be growing in. We like to ask as a question, which one of those Do you think your strongest sin typically will hear fellowship? The least is prayer. And we’re going to talk about that today. First Timothy two eight says, Therefore I want men in every place to pray. Well, you know, when I came to Christ, and well, when I was a kid, going to church in the Southern Baptist Church, the thing that I hated most about going to Sunday school as a young man, was that they would have this habit of randomly asking someone to pray. And it scared the bejesus out of all of us. Until we learn the road prayer that everybody prayed. God, we thank you for the day, we thank you for our church, we thank you for all our missionaries, we pray to help us get something out of today and bless the teacher. Amen. And that’s what everybody prayed every week. So you didn’t have to be so afraid, because we learned the rote prayer to pray. But if someone asked me to pray, and just an open forum, then I would have been up the creek because I really didn’t have a prayer life. And then I came to Christ, I truly came to Christ. And even then I struggled. information about me, they asked him to share something that he could share about me that might help me and be a better leader or whatever. And so he’s he put them off and said, I can’t really think of anything. And then they pressed him further. And he says, Well, if I had to think of one thing I wish you to showed up at the prayer meeting. And why would that be why men afraid of being in God’s presence? Well, if you if your mom and dad lay down the law, and this is what you can do and what you can’t do, this is your curfew. This is a friends you can hang out with. These are the places you can go, this is the way you have to dress, bah, bah bah. And you’re violating those. You avoid them. You avoid your parents the best you can, because you’re not keeping the rules. And that was found that was my problem. I avoided God because I wasn’t keeping the rules. Now, my theology was still growing, and I was still trying to figure out say, by grace through faith, I believed I was saved by grace through faith, not a result of work, so no man can boast about it. I want man in every place in every church and every place of leadership in the home in the church, it business on the road, get Jesus on the scoreboard on your heart, pray about everything, pray without ceasing. There’s another guy that I talked to once I’d done a man of God talk at a retreat up near Sacramento. And on Saturday night, I did a man of God talk and it’s just full of grace, how amazing grace is. And that’s unmerited favor given toward one who doesn’t deserve it by one who didn’t have to give it. It’s amazing that God gave us his grace. And we’re saved by grace. Because if it was no grace, we would have to work and earn it and be worthy of it. And we can’t do that. So God gave us what he called grace. unmerited favor, gave it to us anyway, but God demonstrates His love toward us. And while we were still sinners, Christ died for us not when we got through sin and not when we cleaned our life up. Because I can’t go and clean my life up, I tried clean, everybody tried cleaning your life up. And you just get desperate and frustrated and you can’t. You can resist, resist, fall, fall, fall, resist, resist, fall, fall resist. And that’s our battle against sin. And so men have a struggle with praying. Because if you’re on a works based system, if you’re feeling guilty and ashamed all the time, you’re not going to want to get in God’s presence. If the code says run your laps, and you don’t want to run the laps, you want to avoid him. If you’ve broken curfew and he finds out about it, you’re going to avoid him with all you can. In the same thing with God with us guys, if we’re not men of grace, instead of man of works. We’re going to avoid the prayer meeting. We’re going to avoid getting in his presence. We’re going to tell people I can’t journal. I can’t memorize. I can’t get in the word. I’m not disciplined enough. I’m too lazy and we accept it in ourselves that we’re lazy. But really what the Kuru root problem is, is we’re uncomfortable with God. We’re uncomfortable on spiritual turf. We’re uncomfortable in Bible studies. We’re uncomfortable in small groups. We’re uncomfortable being around other guys. Because if they really knew what I was really like, they wouldn’t accept me, they wouldn’t love me they wouldn’t approve of me. It weren’t gets it becomes a problem in the marriage too. Because we won’t be transparent, we won’t be open with our wives. And there are some things our wives don’t need to know. But then there are other things we need to be open and communicative within. We need to share with them and they need to know our heart. And that’s why I pray in with your wife is so important. Because when you’re praying, she can hear your heart. And when you’re praying, she gets to know you better. And when you’re praying, she can hear your real heart, which we have a hard time expressing sometimes when we’re just talking and communicating. But when we bring God into the Holy Spirit into the conversation, it changes things. And it can make you more intimate with your wife or anybody else in your life that you pray with there are far so if we’re going to struggle with our relationship with God, and we are it’s gonna hinder our prayer life. It’s going to hinder our time and the word because the word rebukes and corrects. And we don’t like to be rebuked and correct, corrected. And so when we read God’s word, that’s what happens and that’s what it does. God wants to man to be spiritual leaders see what he says I want man in every place with holy hands lifted up to God, free of anger and dissension, disputing controversy quarreling in doubt. Nepal’s writing Timothy and Timothy is about to take over the churches and the churches are struggling. Churches are bloody battlefields spiritually. Their church arguments church splits, people can’t get along. People insidiously preoccupied with their way their self. They feeling self righteous about being right. treating other people less than brothers and sisters. Getting resentment banks. happens in church, having with elders hand with a consent for pastors happens with people in the church happens when they want to change the carpet in the church, or where they’re going to get pews or chairs. Important things things that really matter. Where you have a cross or not up there, while you some people go to war over that, and some people go over not having one. What kind of music you’re going to do when that guy’s throwing up a lot of churches? Can we raise our hands or not? Is that going to get us in trouble? What if I speak in tongues? how we handle that neck can be very divisive. The devil always plants a outhouse next to every Cathedral, God God bills. More than one actually. He salts the whole congregation with his people. And they are the best way that I’ve found to help that you’re never gonna stop it. But you can help it is to preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified. treats a truth. If you preach the truth, the people that are Devil’s minions, useful idiots, we call them as what Stalin call people that help the communist cause but they weren’t communists. They just went along to get along and he called them useful idiots. And so those things are planted throughout the church and they cause trouble in ruckus, and they’re irreconcilable. It’s hard to make peace with them. It’s their way or the highway. They gossip they slander and they were having all those troubles. I got a list of things they were having. They’re in First Timothy two eight from anger and dissension and disputing and controversy. I looked those up it means strong feelings of displeasure and antagonistic feelings of opposition. dissension is contentious, likely to cause disagreements, disputing to argue irritably to debate? controversy arguing because of opposing views, quarreling verbal conflict between antagonists doubt to call into question the truth, to lack confidence in they were struggling with all those things in the church. Paul’s first admonition was hold up holy hands that God has called you His men to be holy to be the leaders in church in the the leader in home. And we always put an agitate before leader when we’re talking about spiritual leadership and that is that word spiritual servant leadership, laying your life down, do sacrificing for the good of others, bearing up and conflict in tension and problems in trials. God’s called us to be those kind of leaders like himself, who emptied himself and took the form of a bondservant. And made it was made in the likeness of a man that didn’t regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself even to the point of death on a cross. That’s a hard thing to be schooled in worldly leadership and then to transfer over to spiritual leadership. And so a lead doesn’t happen in a lot of churches. You still get a lot of worldly leaders leading us trying to lead a spiritual church, and it crashes and burns eventually, some quicker than others. But you can operate on the world’s ways and complex God’s purpose in will. You have to operate by faith. You have to be able to see bad faith in the in balance grace in truth, because I can have grace and give you a lot of grace. But if I give you a lot and a lot more grace, you just run over me go there’s no truth. But if all I give you is truth, true truth. I’m holding the line I’m making you keep your the rules. legalistic we might call it. The new people run away from you. The thing that draws people is what Jesus had he came full of grace and truth. He says in john one. He had a balance between grace and truth. And I love the way they depict him in the series that chosen because when he was going to heal the level of the crippled man who would couldn’t get in the pool of Salaam he says, do you want to be healed? Well, there’s no one to take me I didn’t ask you that. Do you want to be healed? So he was great to give him grace, but he wanted the truth. Still me you want to be healed? And so he finally said yes. And Jesus healed in there. He didn’t have to go on the pool. Jesus healed him. That’s a wonderful scene. It’s It’s It’s wonderful to see the depiction of Mary at the woman at the whale when she was delivered. Mary when God God casts a demon down the crippled man at the pool, this alone, the leper that He cleansed. We’re all lepers and crippled in our own way. We’re all, no one there to help us to get into the pool. whatever they’re saying, you need to do better you need to and we all know we keep record on our sins. Jesus keeps no record on our stance says that first Corinthians 13. His love is a love that keeps no records of wrongs done. He doesn’t have resentment, bank, your name on it. We talked about that a few weeks ago on forgiveness. Any fool can claim his rights and any game and I’ll make sure it gets some. I want man in every place with holy hands lifted up now he’s not talking about a posture for prayer because he’s not saying if you’re going to prayer, we pray with holy hands, you have to lift your hands up. That’s okay if you do that. And there is a scripture in Psalm 63 that talks about lifting up your hands to worship Him. And it is a sign of worship and respect. We can bow down in prayer and in humility and bowing before King. You can lay on your face you can pray with your eyes open you there’s no particular way God said when he said Pray without ceasing. He didn’t tell us what physical posture to get in. It’s a hard issue. It’s connecting with God in our spirit and our soul in our heart. And that’s what God wants. He wants a relationship with you and me, believe it or not, he wants an intimate, personal abiding relationship with you. Me, why me? If he if Pete if you knew what I was like, if you knew what I’d done, you know why I’m reticent to tell you and be transparent with you and the rest of these guys. But God brings us into the plateau of grace and peace, transparency, honesty, truth. When we come to know Jesus Christ, he puts all his that sin of mine behind him brass, sand, present sand and future sand. He chooses not to remember it and that’s what we can do in gray stone. to each other, we can choose not to remember your past sins. Because our tendency as human beings is to label people. And so once they’ve fallen, they can never get up again, they can never outlive that reputation. Take pastors who fall in the pulpit, Morley, they have an affair, they are hooked on pornography, they’re having whatever issue they’re having. They may or may not step down, and oftentimes they have to step down. But there are some that aren’t that repentant. They want to beat the rap, they want to dictate the terms of their own restoration. It’s hard to deal with those guys. But there are others that are broken and repentant. And David said, after his murder and adultery when he came into God’s presence, he said, a broken and contrite hearts, you’ll never cast out. The sand that God’s always going to hear, for sure is a repentant sin. If my people would want to humble themselves and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways in you’ll enjoy all the riches of heaven, all the riches of this Christian life, but don’t enjoy them to for Jesus to be lifted up and get it and he said, and therefore he exalted him and gave him a name, which is above every name, that the name of Jesus every knee would bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. What did Jesus have to do? He went to the seminary and he said, Father, if there’s any way I don’t have to drink this cup, let it pass from me three times. And every time he had God’s had to say, No, you have to drink it to the dregs. He didn’t want to drink it in his humanity, who would want to go what he knew he was fixing to go through, who would want to not just not be beaten and scoffed at and spit on and humiliated And for you, and I took some joy, the riches of the kingdom of God, all the fruit of the Spirit, all the blessings, all the peace, all the grace, all the gentleness, all the kindness, all the goodness, all the self control, all the fellowship, the love, for us to enjoy those things we have to humble ourselves. We’ve got to pay a price. What do you want, I want peace, what price you pay, willing to pay to have it. And not all prayer groups or groups you want to be in. But there are prayer groups or groups you want to be in. And I’d like to think that the ones we have are one you’d want to be in if you want to learn to pray. If you want to get to a place where you hear a man’s heart and the beauty of and that’s where fellowship flows out of. It’s like I tell you, if you do a prayer, hug with your wife, people who prayer hug with their wife, their marriages do better. 32nd or less prayer. God, thank you for this woman. Thank you, you bless me with her. I pray a blessing over her as her husband. I pray that she would sense your presence and you would meet every need of her heart, amen. Now, if you put your arms around your wife and prayed that you think you’d have a worse marriage or you think you’d have a better marriage, the better marriage comes when you do those kinds of things. They don’t just come left to yourself, you’re going to self destruct. So we have to bring him into every every relationship, every circumstance, we pray without ceasing. But if you’re going to pray you got to get past this thing of guilt and shame. With the Lord. Because Do you do things that are gonna make you guilty? Yeah. And you’re always afraid of punishment. You’re afraid of being neglected, not neglected, but unaccepted. rebuked, humiliated, embarrassed, scolded. And then that shame comes in in shame produces in you a sense of abandonment, a fear of abandonment, when you’re afraid that God’s going to leave you that your wife’s going to leave you that your boss will fire you that your coach won’t play you. In so you’re afraid of abandonment, because some of us have been abandoned. We know what abandonment is, we’d been left without dads, we’ve been left without wives, we’ve been left without money, our physical health, we’ve been abandoned, you feel like you’ve been abandoned that he doesn’t care anymore. They don’t care anymore. And we do abandon each other. That’s one of the things that’s that’s what divorce is all about. It’s abandoning each other, someone’s abandoning the other. Sometimes it’s mutual, most times it’s not. And so we have a fear of that. And what we do is we put that fear on God as if God’s gonna abandon us. And God’s got the whole Bible full of scripture that says, I’ll never leave you, nor will I ever forsake you. No matter what you do, no matter how far you run in the wrong direction. No matter how many sins you commit, I’ll never leave you. I’ll never forsake you your mind, I called you to myself. That settles it. Now if you really believe that you can get rid of your guilt and your shame and you get rid of it in that cleansing verse, first, john, one nine. If you’ll confess your sin, you have to do that repentance, you have to refit, confess your sin. That’s what David did in Psalm 51. against the the alone have I sinned and done what’s evil in your sight? I know my sin, it’s ever before me. And I bring it to you. So you’re right. When you judge me, and you’re right, when you punish me and correct me. You have to come to that place in your life where you are getting cleansed on a regular basis in the old country preacher said that some issue doesn’t. Don’t wait till the night to try to think of all the sin you committed when you come here a second of thought, this girl walked by and those things were today. And you just your eyes weren’t bouncing, they were focused. You were riveted. And the Lord just checked you. And when the Lord checks, the Holy Spirit checks, you just go, wow. Am I ever going to get over this? I had a friend that went to see his mentor. his mentor was a godly man. And he was dying in the hospital. And he was praying with the guy says, How can I pray for you? He says, pray that I’ll quit trying to look down my nurses dress. Any thought Will I ever get over this? There are some things that we’re going to have pray that I won’t won’t that BonBon that won’t. That candy bar, that coconut cream pie that I’ve been gobbling lately. Could be anything that is not good for us. But the truth of the matter is, the Lord says you can just run as hard as you want to run, let that product Go, go. Let him go let him run as hard and far as he wants to go and spend all his money on while living. And the father was always there. father didn’t judge him. He didn’t rebuke him. He didn’t criticize him. He didn’t try to fix him. He just let him go because he had to suffer the consequences of his sin. And when he suffered the consequences of sin, and his dad was praying for him, he came to his senses. And he says, What am I doing? What am I thinking? Here I am I’m working for a Gentile pig farmer. Which is not such a Jew wants to be doing an employment. I’m hungry. I’m looking at what the pigs are eating and thinking that’s looking good these days. And my father has a bunk house back there and all his heart helps it live in the bunkhouse. He feeds them three times a day he takes care of them. And here I am out here. What kind of fool Am I you have to come to that place in your life. If you’re going to enter into prayer, if you’re going to have a prayer life and if you’re not entering into prayer and having a prayer life, you’re going to have a worthless Christian life. You’re gonna you’re going to hurt the cause more and you’re helping the cause you’ll be carnal worldly, and we’ve given ourselves permission to do that I mentioned last week we’ve given ourselves permission to be carnivores. Only Christians, and there’s no concept of that in the Bible. We’ve given our permit itself permission to drink too much. Yes, we can drink his Bible and say you can drink alcohol, but there’s going to be a point in time where you drink too much. Maybe not. But probably. So controlling their appetites is something that we have to work at. We have to discipline ourselves for the purpose of godliness, whatever freedoms you think you have. And we give ourselves freedoms that the scripture doesn’t give us. So those things we have to come to first john one nine, and confess our sin. And then we’re still on praying ground, we’re still have an open communication with the Lord. If you will confess your sin, I will be faithful. Faithful means I’ll never not do this, I will be faithful and I’ll be righteous, the righteous thing to do and I am righteous I am God. And the righteous thing to do is forgive those who come and repent. And it’s a terrible thing when someone has sinned against you. And they come and ask forgiveness and you don’t give it to them. All you’re saying is the unforgiving heart is an unforgiving heart. So if you’re not willing to, you’ve been forgiven by God, and he’s erased all your sin, and he’s put it far behind him as he is in the West, and he died while you were still a sinner, not when you cleaned yourself up. Then how dare you not forgive another person who’s repentant. Now, if they’re not repentant, you forgive them anyway, because you don’t need to carry that around. But Jesus says, in the Sermon on the Mount, when he was teaching about the Lord’s Prayer, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. But if you don’t forgive them, then you’re not going to be forgiven. That’s sobering verse. But that’s what we find in prayer, we find forgiveness and peace. And we want to walk away to that plateau of freedom in truth. Jesus says, I came to set this captives free, free to do what free to have a relationship with me. And then we do that in prayer. We do that in talking to him bring in everything before him. But we all do it in a structured way. And the structure is not my will, but your will be done. We prayed and we prayed and prayed, granddaddy and grandmother still died. Why did we keep praying 1000s of people were praying, and she still died. And it was because of God’s will, sweetie, God was calling her home, it was her time. And we have to just accept that. And we’ll see her again. And that’s what we can rejoice in. And that’s our hope. We’ll see her again. But God knows best and God is good. And in as bad as this feels. And as much losses were suffering. It’s a good thing, because my God is good. And my God is sovereign. He learned that in his presence, he learned that he doesn’t keep score on your sins in this presence when you’re confessing sin and he forgives your sin. And he never brings it up again. You can sin in the morning. And then he asked forgiveness, he forgives you. You can repent. You can send the same sin in the afternoon and you go the Lord and say, Lord, I did it again. He said that was that Santa committed this morning and God straight with you. I did it again. The devil will come along at that point and say God doesn’t want to hear that he knows you’re just gonna keep doing it. Why are you wasting your time going to confess it. And that’s a lie from the pit of hell. If you confess your sin, all your sin, anytime you sin, I will forgive if you’re repentant, and broken, and he knows your heart and He knows my heart. And if I’m going to confess my sin, He knows if I’m repentant or not, and I’m broken over that sin. And I don’t really think many guys are going to go to him in that, in that condition unless you’re repentant and broken. If you’re not repentant and broken. You’re justifying and rationalizing your sin instead of confessing it and being repentant over it. And so you go to him and he says, what, Sam? And you say, you know, the one I committed this morning? I don’t remember that. What do you do? What do you do this morning? And I’m sitting there gas and I’m just going What do you mean your God? He says, I choose not to remember it. Did you repent? Yes. Did you ask my forgiveness? Yes, sir. Don’t you believe I forgave you? Will you receive His forgiveness for your sin? Would you clean up your heart so that you can enter his presence with holy hands lifted up. That’s all you need to do. holy hands are coming from holy living. And holy living is confessing your sin when you when you sin, and God will forgive your sin and invite you into His presence even closer. That’s the battle that we face every day. And if you’re not a man of prayer today, if you say, Well, what are you strongest? And well, I know, I don’t know what I’m strongly saying, but I know what I’m worst in prayer. That may be the reason it probably is, oh, you can be lazy, you can be a guy. That’s pretty good guy. You live a pretty good life and your galus like Nathaniel. But you’re lazy. You’re not willing to do homework, you’re not willing to get up earlier, to spend time in the word. You don’t have a real hunger for God’s word, because you’re not in it. The way you get a hunger for God’s word is getting in it. You don’t wait to get hungry, you get in it and become hungry. You don’t wait to see if that pies good. You taste it and see that it’s good. And Scripture says that about God taste and see that he is good. So sometimes it can be we’re just lazy. But look what we’re missing out on. If you really believe that prayer works in prayer does. And there are people that have been prayed for and they live. And they fail for prayer. They knew people were praying and they were healed. And God loves to heal. He loves to lift up. And he does it all the time. But he doesn’t always heal. Sometimes he lets us die. It’s our time. We got to die sooner or later. And some of the people that have been that strongest Oh, nutrition and all this stuff, die cancer. That’s just life just the way it is. And we have to accept whatever God puts in and whatever God takes out. And then that’s where the peace is. That’s where you know, that when God loves you, he has your best interest in mind and everything he does, he’s able to work all things together for good if you’re been called in, if you’re a believer today you have been called if you’ve been called. And what’s the rest of that verse. All things work together for good for those who have been called in according to His purpose. God has a purpose, and you’ve been called according to His purpose, and he’s going to make sure that purpose is accomplished in you and through you. Whatever it is, we know what the big purpose is. It’s a great commission. But you have a place to fit. You have gifts, you have a location, you have a geography. People ask me, you’re going back to Alabama. They asked me that I knew you moving back and I said, I don’t call that it’s not my call. Lordships says it’s his call. He’s my commanding officer unless he cuts me orders and calls me away. I don’t go anywhere I’m put. But when he calls me I have to be ready to go. I want to finish off with this one. Scripture. It’s in Colossians. One. Because this is how if you want to pray for someone this if you want to pray for me, this is what I want you to pray. In. When you hear this, this is what you want me to pray for you. For this reason, also since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray. This is intercessory prayer. This is praying for others This was interceding between that person and God and we’re asking God to do things like we just prayed this morning for Cindy Sree. We’re interceding for her that God would heal her body that the doctors would find out exactly what’s going on because they didn’t don’t know right now. Hopefully they do right now because we pray. But we have not ceased to pray for you so that you may be now here’s why we’re praying for you, that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will. Now, filled with the knowledge of his will means that you’ve been in His Word. Because that way, the only way you know for sure you’re praying according to God’s will is you’re praying according to God’s word. And that’s the reason the word is so important in our lives, it’s knowledge. And that’s what we want. We want knowledge of his will what’s God want? What would God do? What did they put in that colloquial term? What would Jesus do? How would he respond? So I want you to be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding now he could have said with all wisdom and understanding that he qualified it he didn’t say it couldn’t be our worldly wisdom. But he said, I want you to be filled with the knowledge of his will and all spiritual wisdom. Now, Bill gothard years ago defined wisdom is Seeing life from God’s point of view, understanding God understanding his will, understanding his heart. And you get that in the word in prayer. And then a divine understanding is learning how to respond in any situation the way Jesus would respond. That’s true understanding. You’re slapped on one cheek, what do you do? You turn the other, you’re accused falsely, what do you do? You bear up under, you’re forced to go one mile you volunteer to go to. So you know the knowledge of his will. And then you have the wisdom and the understanding, to know how to respond through the Holy Spirit in any situation. It’s not a bad thing to be prayed for. Why so you’re walking in a manner worthy of the Lord, if you’re not doing these things, you cannot be walking in a manner worthy of the Lord. What does that mean worthy, that means that you have the privilege to honor him. And if you’re a Christian, that people are going to judge how Jesus Christ is based on how you are, if you claim to be a Christian. So when they criticize you, or make fun of you, or mock you, or do everything that they did to him, what do you do? How do you respond? And don’t be too quick to try to explain yourself or defend yourself or vindicate yourself. When he was reviled, he reviled not and when he suffered, he uttered no threats. There’s a time to do be that, to do that. And then there’s a time to give a testimony. Are you the Son of God? Are you the King of Kings? Are you the King of the Jews? Yes, I am. And you’ll see the Son of Man coming with his angels from heaven, that got him in trouble. So I would, would you like to see me walking in a manner worthy the Lord and pray that I’ll be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and understanding it to please Him, in all respects, bearing fruit and every good work that you do, you’re not wasting your time, you’re not shadowbox and you’re hitting the target every time you’re bearing fruit, the fruit of the Spirit, the fruit of change lives, the things that happen when the Holy Spirit is using you and moving in you and through you, speaking through you, and increasing in the knowledge of God. I want to see you increase in your understanding and wisdom and knowledge of who God is. Because if you’re not praying, I can only come to the conclusion that you don’t really have a healthy concept of God. So I’m going to pray that you will be strengthened in your knowledge of God and strengthened with all power according to His glorious mind. And so I can pray this, that you would be strengthened because he’s powerful, and he has a mighty God, and He can do this. I love playing golf with Lee mash off. I’ll be fixing up but he’ll go you can do this. I don’t but he’s because he’s powerful and mighty and he can make that happen. That you will be strengthened with all power according to His glorious mind for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience. That’s character. That’s Christian character. Your steadfast You’re not going anywhere. You’re not leaving your post. You’re sticking there. And patience. You are a patient impatient guy. In the one you need them, be the most patient with is yourself. That you will be attaining all steadfastness and patience, joyously giving thanks to the Father. He didn’t just say giving thanks, joyously giving thanks. And when you’ve been forgiven, and you’ve confessed your sin, and he’s cleanse you of all unrighteousness, joyously give thanks, I’m clean, I’m forgiven. I can go on now. I can walk with him today. I don’t have to ruin my whole day because I sinned in the morning, I can confess it. And Will’s in the he’ll put his arm around me say we got work to do but and God doesn’t have a trashy who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the sons of life. One day, there’ll be an inheritance and you’ll inherit heaven, and all the joys and all the power and all the wonderful things and having so you’re going to share and heritance of the saints of light the saints of light. That means heaven as opposed to darkness. Some people are going to spend eternity in darkness. But if you get to spend eternity in the light, had say that something to be pretty joyful about. And so if you don’t have the joy the Lord right now, then just start thinking about I’m going to get to go to heaven, no matter Why I’m saved, I’m forgiven. That’s never going to change. I’m going to heaven. Hallelujah. Amen. So guys, God wants us to become in a prayer and we’re going to stay after it. Amen. We’re not going to give up, we’re going to be guys that are going to be resolute. And if I’ve, if you’ve been lazy, quit being lazy. Do whatever you have to do to find a prayer meeting, journal, read your Bible and pray it back to God. If that’s all you can do is pray it back to God. Now you we all know about foxhole prayers, oh, I just got the word, I got cancer. Let’s go to prayer. Go to prayer way before that. Because when the cancer comes, or whatever that print trial is, whatever that loss is, you need to be prepared now, not later for you practice for the game, you’re playing Saturday, all week long, you prepare. And then there’s a game. You prepare for trials and loss and difficulties to come. And then when they come, you’re ready to live a life worthy of the gospel worthy of Jesus Christ, worthy to be called his son, his servant, his friend. So let’s pray. Since we’ve been talking about it so much, Father, we’re banging our heads before you today because you’ve invited us into your throne room. The God of this universe is called us to be his. I’m just praying for you. The God of this universe has called us to be here. You’ve called us in because you want us to enjoy all the things that we just got through reading about the wisdom, the understanding the knowledge of your will, being strengthened by your mind and your power. And that’s what we asked for. And Lord, that we want to enter into a relationship with you that blows our mind. It’s not natural, it’s supernatural. We want to see marriages healed and bodies healed. We want to see people come to know Jesus Christ. And we all do that through prayer. Prayer is not supporting the work. Prayer is the work. And so Lord, we come and we pray, help us to be men and prayer help us to seek your face and not your hands. And, Lord, we want to enjoy all the riches of your kingdom, all the riches of the spirit that you give us. And so Lord, I asked you to do all this for every guy in this room and everyone listening through streaming video or wherever they might hear this. Bless. Come open our hearts make us men and prayer in Jesus name And all God’s men said Hey, man, give them Heaven, guys. Thanks

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The Word of God

There are five basic foundational principles upon which Influencers is founded. These are: Jesus is Savior and Lord. The Word of God is our final authority for faith and practice. We are men of prayer. We link together with like minded men. We give it away.

The Navigators ministry uses the diagram of a wheel to illustrates the basic tenets of a vital Christian life. The six elements of the wheel are the hub, two vertical spokes, two horizontal spokes, and the rim. The hub represents Jesus Christ the center of our lives. The hub transfers the power of God to the wheel. The two vertical spokes are prayer and the Word of God. These vertical spokes align our hearts with God’s heart. The two horizontal spokes are witnessing and fellowship. These to horizontal spokes prioritize our relationships with both non-Christians and Christians. The rim represents obedience to God.

The word of God is the final authority for faith and practice. God’s word is truth. It is practical, powerful, and relevant. The word of God is reliable… it is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Authority is the right to control, settle disputes, and establish and enforce rules of order. God gave us his word and the freedom of will to either walk according to its righteous standard or suffer the consequences. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.

Jesus Christ is the word of God made flesh. To know Jesus Christ is to know the word and will of God. The prophet said, “taste and see that the Lord is good.” blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. The word of God is an acquired taste. Jeremiah said, “thy words were found and I did eat them, and they became unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart.

There is power in the word of God. For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12 NIV)

The devil’s ploy is to distract our eyes from God and his word. Romans 8 says that the carnal (worldly) mind is death, but the law of the spirit of Christ is life and peace. The word of God are God’s terms of his endearment. He gave us his word because he loves us.

As a pastor Pete has counseled and advised elders and leaders in his church. In one church he needed to confront five men who were living with their girlfriends out of wedlock. Pete said, You’re living contrary tot he word of God. Fornication and adultery is against God’s righteous standard. God wants you blessed. That’s why he instituted holy matrimony. You have two choices: either you and your girlfriend can live separately or you can get married. Pete followed up several weeks later and each man was still living with his girlfriend. He said to each of them, Go to the courthouse this week and sign a certificate of marriage in the presence of the justice of the peace.

Hebrews 5:12-14 says, “For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. 13 For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. 14 But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.”

Pete said to his men, “Solid food is requiring that you separate from your girl friend until you are married.” That week all five men went to the courthouse and married their wives. They are all still happily married. Whenever Pete sees them after all these years, they each say how thankful they are that Pete insisted that they commit to their wives before God and men in the bond of holy matrimony.

According to 2 Timothy 3:15-17. “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, (God-breathed) and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.”

The word of God is profitable. It is useful… it is beneficial to maintain a loving relationship with our Heavenly Father. For what is it useful? It is useful for doctrine, for right teaching. The word of God is God’s righteous standard. It rebukes us, it proves over and over God’s will for our lives. Most people think that reproof is a bad word. However, whom the Lord loves, he chastises. Even though reproof may be painful because it’s painful to be pruned, he will teach us through tests that joy is to walk in proximity with the Lord. To correct means to restore to an upright position. Then when your vertical relationship with God is restored, your horizontal relationships will be blessed.

The blessings of God are the result of a process, The first is not to walk in the counsel of the ungodly, but in the counsel of the word of the Lord. A disciple appreciates his Father’s coaching.

Psalm 1 says, “BLESSED is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. 2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night 3 And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.”

The term “man of God” is only used twice in scripture. This usage in 2 Timothy is the second usage. A man of God knows intimately the Word of God. The best sharing of the word is a life lived in demonstration of God’s word. For ye are our epistles, God’s love letters, written not in tables of stone, but in the fleshly tables of the heart. To confess Jesus as Lord means to say it and to believe it. The believing is in action. To confess means to walk the talk and to talk the walk. The best bibles are the Bible’s that are bound in shoe leather.

The series “The Chosen” about the life of Christ illustrates that to know the word of God is to know Jesus Christ, the word of God made manifest.

While Pete was meditating after his wife’s death, he journaled. Lord, I’m afraid that I loved Suzan more than I loved you. The word of God came to him as God said, You didn’t love her more than you loved me. You loved her because you loved me first.

James says, be ye doers of the Word and not hearers only deceiving your own selves. In our flesh we often fall short of the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. When we miss the mark, God has given us a way to return our hearts back to him. 1 John 1:9 says, If we confess our sins (our missing the mark) he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

In Ezekiel 33, your fellow citizens say come and hear the message that comes forth from the Lord… they sit before you to hear your words but they do not do them…. but when your words come to pass they will know that you are God’s prophet and the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.

Pete recalls that he had been traded to the Minnesota Twins farm team. Although he had been an all star in the Southern League he found himself sitting on the bench. He was jealous of another player from the southern league who was in the starting lineup ahead of Pete even though this player was not an all star. Pete was called to pinch hit at a game in Indiana. He thought to himself that, “this is my opportunity to get a hit and prove to management I belong in the starting lineup.” On the mound was an up and coming pitcher named Pedro Bourbon. Bourbon was later drafted by they Cincinnati Reds and pitched for the Big Red Machine who won two World Series. Pete says that his contribution to the minor leagues was to get minor league pitchers into the big leagues. Bourbon struck him out in that game in Indiana.

That night Pete was reading in Hebrews 12 where it says that the Lord disciplines those whom he loves. God spoke to Petes heart, “you know how to be an all star, but you don’t know how to sit on the bench. Some things you can only learn on the bench. You’ll learn meekness and humility to put your team mates first…. to encourage them, support them, and build them up. It’s painful to forsake your pride. Humility is learned in the refining fire and the crucible of my reproof. Reproof means to test and prove over and over that God alone is your strength and sufficiency.

To know the Word of God is to know Jesus Christ. He is the meaning of the Word… he is the word of God made flesh. When we walk in the love of God, then we manifest the word of God, for Jesus said, “in that thou hast done it unto the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me…”

…that in loving God above all and our neighbor as ourselves, we may live to the praise of the glory of His grace!
Your brother in Christ,
Michael

Jesus Is Lord

Pete returned recently from his annual trip back home to Alabama. After extended time in the South with like minded believers from his youth, God said, “Teach the men of Influencers the basics of our ministry.” These five basics are first, that Jesus Christ is both Lord and Savior. The second is that the Bible is the final authority for faith and practice. The third is that we are men of prayer. Fourth, we link together with likeminded men. Fifth, we give it away.

Oswald Sanders taught a conference in Germany where Pete served many years as a missionary. Pete asked him after the conference, “Can you be saved without making Jesus Lord of your life?” Sanders said, “I was saved before I made Jesus lord. This was because of poor teaching. But when I was taught correctly about the lordship of Christ, I dedicated my life to serve Him as Lord.”

Franklin Graham wrote a book many years ago called the Name. The name of Jesus Christ shouts out a choice: Whom will you serve? His terms are unilateral… there is no other name under heaven whereby we must be saved. Jesus is not a negotiator, he delivers God’s non-negotiable terms… He said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No man cometh unto the father except by me.”

The name Jesus means savior. Savior is the one who brings salvation…. the one who saves us and delivers us from sin and the consequences of sin. He’s our rescuer and our redeemer who has paid for our sin and the penalty of sin. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through his son Jesus Christ. 2 Corinthians says, Ye are not your own. You were bought with a price. The payment was the price of his innocent blood in exchange for our guilty blood. For he who was without sin was made the perfect sacrifice for sin on our behalf that we may be made the righteousness of God in him.

The spiritual battle raging around us is not about political correctness; instead it’s about power and control. Evil dictators do the devil’s bidding… to take men captive against their will. The devil’s purpose is to steal, kill and to destroy. Those he takes captive are not atheists, they believe in the god of this world, the devil who has blinded their eyes lest the glorious light of the gospel of truth should shine unto them.

While he was playing Double A baseball, Pete came to a change of direction. He had been playing to be the best ball player he could be. When he read The Bobby Richardson Story, He received a new purpose for playing ball. Richardson was a hall of fame player who was also a committed Christian. The theme of Richardson’s story is, “I’d rather have my name and legacy erased from history down here to have my name written in heaven.” Pete had confessed “Jesus is Lord,” and his life’s pursuits took on new meaning…. To live for the praise and the glory of God’s grace.

Since his life changing decision to follow the Lord, God has revealed to Pete that without a test you cannot have a testimony. Pete learned this through difficult life lessons. When his beloved wife Suzan was diagnosed with stage four terminal brain cancer, God said to them, either this trial will break you or this will be your finest hour.

A lord is the supreme owner, the commander in chief over the life of a disciple who has confessed Jesus is lord. This means that I subjugate my will to his will. God will help himself to our lives whether we allow him to or not. The Lord’s bond servant’s prerogative is to bow in submission to his Lord. Then all things will work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose.

Without making Jesus Christ Lord, life will be an expertise in frustration. However, when we choose to abide with him and within him, He will work in us and through us to will and to do of His good pleasure.

Pete’s mentor Chuck Singletary said to Pete, “if you want to be a man of God, find a brother who is walking with the Lord, and “hang like a cat on his screen door and don’t let go.”

When God calls missionaries, they often worry about their safety in dangerous foreign lands. Pete reminds those called to foreign missions, “the safest place is where God calls you to be.” A bond servant’s heart says, “thy wish is my command.”

Jesus said in John 15, if you belonged to the world, the world would welcome you as its own and treat you with affection. A servant is not greater than his master… the world will not keep my word… they will persecute you because they persecuted me.

The adversary will do anything to entice us to acquiesce to his power. He and his minions strive for control over hearts and minds. The battle is not against flesh and blood but against spiritual wickedness from on high.

There is a lesson from the story of Abu Tabor, a chieftain who was renowned for his small but powerful army. His elite fighting force of 200 mighty men had a reputation of invincibility. A warlord who commanded thousands of troops had pillaged and plundered the surrounding area and had claimed the territories around Abu Tabor’s tiny kingdom. The warlord sent an emissary to offer Abu Tabor terms of surrender. The emissary said, either you surrender your territory and pledge to serve our king, or we will decimate your army and take your women and children captive. Abu Tabor said to the emissary, You see my warrior here? Tabor said to the warrior, “Plunge your dagger into your heart.” The warrior did not hesitate and fell dead at the emissary’s feet. Then he said to the soldier on his right, “Jump off of that high cliff.” The soldier immediately jumped to his death. Abu Tabor said, “I have two hundred more mighty men just like these two. If you invade my territory, by sunset your army will be defeated and your chief will be chained to my dogs.” The emissary delivered to his chief the message of Abu Tabor’s refusal to surrender. The warlord attacked and by the end of the day, the warlord’s troops lay dead and dying and their chief was chained to Abu Tabor’s dogs.

The lesson is that it’s not the size of the dog in the fight but rather the size of the fight in the dog.

God is sovreign overall. God only is omnipotent. One with God is a majority. As Abraham Lincoln said, the question is not whether God is on our side, but whether we are on God’s side. If God be fore us who can be against us? Who shall separate us from the love of God? Shall tribulation or famine or nakedness or peril, or sword? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

A bond slave says to his master the words Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, “not my will but thine be done.” As Bonhoeffer said, “When Jesus bids a man come, he bids him, “come and die.” For I was crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ liveth in me, and the life that I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

…that we may ever live for our Lord Jesus Christ… to the praise of the glory of His grace!
Your brother in Christ,
Michael