We want to talk this morning about having an audacious faith and doing something and seeing something happen that we didn’t think we could do or could possibly happen. Will we really take God at His Word and believe that He will do what He said He would do and be who He said he would be – We are reading about it every day as I hope you are reading in the Gospels five days each week! Well, let me share with about this guy and doing something He would never dream he could do!!
We start to turn the corner here – again if you missed the last several weeks, then you’ve missed the foundation – the core of what we are talking about and living out this gospel revolution must start at the beginning – the Abiding, Amazement, Acceptance, Approval, and Affection inform how we then are to live out the Gospel in our lives – Here is the 2nd part of the revolution. The 1st part was the 1st 4 weeks – allowing the Lord to revolutionize our hearts in understanding How He sees us and deals with us and loves us and cares for us and provides for us and on it goes and then our desires changes to abide more and stand in greater amazement that He accepts us and we have his approval and His affection. Then we begin to the 2nd part which is then how we live that out – where the rubber meets the road so to speak. We flesh out the Gospel in our lives!
The words we have used so far are ABIDE, AMAZED & ACCEPTED. Today we add the words "Our Affection & God’s Affection Approval". The goal of this message is to teach the second part of the Gospel Prayer, which affirms that Christ is life’s greatest treasure, and in Him, we have all we need: “Your presence and approval are all I need for everlasting joy.” No longer do we need to crave the approval of others, because in Him we have the absolute approval of the only One whose opinion really matters. No longer do we need earthly riches, for we have a treasure of unspeakable worth. In Christ, we can give away all we have because in Christ we have all that we need.
The verse in I Corinthians 13:13, but now these three remain, faith, hope, and love and the greatest of these is love.” We here a lot about faith and love, but not as much about hope. Gets overlooked a little bit, so let’s take a deeper look tonight at hope, what it is and what it means for believers. Biblical hope is not a wish but an absolute future reality guaranteed by the Lord. This hope cannot be experience by unbelievers. This hope is a like a light blazing in a dark room. It immediately will illuminate one’s outlook, uplifts the soul, and produces joy in our hearts even in the worst of circumstances and in the midst of our dark, sin stained and death-filled world.
As we continue through the Gospel Revolution, we are on this journey – taking one step at the time – discovering that how live out the Gospel depends on how we view the Gospel. It really boils down to the difference between religion and a relationship and this becomes even clear today as we talk about the Power to Change. The words we have used so far are ABIDE & AMAZED. Our call as believers is so crystal clear yet because we are wired to do before we become, we jump into doing religious stuff for Jesus hoping to earn our acceptance when the call from Jesus is simply to Abide.
When is the last time you and I stood in amazement at God or something that the He has done? When is the last time we stood amazed in His presence for who He is? Too often familiarity (not intimacy) can cause us to yawn at God! This can be a danger for those who have been a believer for a long time or if we think religion – what we do for the Lord matters the most!
Does it really matter what we believe? We hear many people today say, as long as you believe something and you are sincere, then that is enough. Is that true? No way. A sincere Dr who means well could give a patient the wrong medicine and it makes them violently ill. It doesn’t measure up to the truth. It takes much more than sincerity to make something true. It makes a difference what we believe both now and in the life to come!! Here John is warning his dear children about the conflict that was happening. The Last Hour/last times or the last day as it is talked about in the Old Testament, we are living in right now, we have always lived in it. The last hour begin when Jesus Christ came to this earth and it will end when He returns to claim His bride, the church. It is not an amount of time, but a kind of time. And it only grows in intensity as we rocket forward towards the end of the age, the last hour/last times when Jesus will return. There were false teachers in John’s day, but not only is the number of false teachers greater, but we are closer than ever before to that coming last hour. It adds a great sense of intensity and urgency.
Christian growth doesn’t come by adding things into our lives, but by growing in our awareness of what God has already given to us. We don’t grow in Christ by growing beyond the gospel, but by growing deeper into it!
We start a new section today of Acts and we have focused on the early days of the Church and the launch of the Church, and the mission control and their leaving earth and now this morning we turn our attention to how the Lord works through specific individuals in the life of the Church and how they displayed incredible courage as they relied on the Holy Spirit to embolden them. We think about the incredible courage of those men who went into space and getting into a ship that was attached to a rocket! They went places that people had never been before and no sure they would survive and there were people who died in the space days. We see some connections to help us think about these men of courage starting with Peter and John today.
God has already set into motion his kingdom, and that kingdom begin with the death and resurrection of the Messiah and now looking forward to that time of incredible refreshing, where we will be in the presence of the Lord, truly, face to face. The 2nd coming of Christ and the setting up of His kingdom on this earth.