Well, we're continuing in our series on equipping of the saints. It's equipping season. And as most of you know, if you've been here for any period of time the last few months, we've been shifting our focus as a church, shifting our mission, really expanding it, refining it in one sense, but expanding it in another. And if you remember that, our old mission was reaching the one that's far from God and helping them become a passionate follower of Jesus.
And I love that because we want to help everybody grow into everything that Jesus paid for and everything He died for and all that He wants you to be. But we felt like it was a little limiting in that it was only per- it only pertained to the one far from God. Well, what if you're not far from God? What if you're saying, well, I've already got a relationship with God, I'm trying to grow in my walk with the Lord.
And so we really changed it because I've seen over the years that many times as we try to do ministry to people that as we go, if we're ill-equipped or we're under-equipped, we can have a tendency to get drawn into the very thing that we're trying to help somebody come out of or help them walk through or whatever it might be. So we really shifted a little bit to say that we're equipping the one that knows Jesus. So if you don't know Jesus, you don't need equipped. If you don't know Jesus, you need Jesus.
Let's just say that. So if you're here and you don't know Jesus, step one would be to get to know Jesus, accept Him as your Savior, and we can talk about that later. But it's equipping the one that knows Jesus to reach the one that needs Jesus. Now the one that needs Jesus isn't necessarily an unsafe person.
I need Jesus every day. There's things that I'm going through in my life that I need your wisdom. I need your experience. I need your insight that the Holy Spirit gives you and has taught you over the years to help me.
So the equipping of the saints is not just for reaching the lost person, but it's also just doing the ministry that Jesus did inside the body and outside the body. So our theme verses are Ephesians chapter 4, 11 through 13 that say, and He gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edification or building up of the body of Christ, until we all come to the unity of the faith and to the unity of the knowledge of the Son of God, and we get to the place of becoming a mature man or mature woman. And the way that we measure maturity in the body is the Bible says, we don't measure maturity based on another Christian. We don't measure maturity based on where we were yesterday.
The yardstick or measuring step of maturity is to we reach the measure of the stature of the fullness of Jesus Christ Himself. So we're not playing the comparison game with other Christians. We are measuring our maturity against that of Jesus Christ Himself. So Jesus being the perfect example of everything that's available on earth, everything that a human could do when you're forgiven of sin and when you are living under the submission to the Holy Spirit following His leading, that Jesus is that example.
And so that our lives as believers, if we're going to measure up to the stature, to measure the stature of the fullness of Christ, He's the guide. He's the measuring stick. And so the last few weeks that I've reached, I started a series on kind of like a series within a series, and on the fullness of Christ. What does the fullness of Christ look like?
And identified five areas, we're going to take one each week, today we're on number three. But the five things that I really think are important in reaching that maturity as a believer, that we're tapping into the fullness of Christ. Now, of course, I don't know that any of us will ever get to that place of reaching the fullness of Christ, but our goal is to continue to press into that. So the first thing we talked about was the love of Christ and without the love of God, the love of Christ, nothing else works.
And Paul says, if I give everything away, if I give my body to be burned, if I speak with tongues of men and angels, if I have all faith to move out, if I can do any of those supernatural things, but I don't have love, it profits me nothing. It's worthless. And so everything's based on love. So the first foundational was the love of Christ or His nature, the love of Christ or His nature.
The next thing we looked at the last time I spoke was the gospel of Christ. And the gospel of Christ, Paul says the gospel of Christ in relation to the grace of Christ. So the gospel of Christ is really His grace. And we just talked last time about that.
Today we're going to look at the Word of Christ, which I like to call His will. And then after that, the next time I'm up here, we're going to go to the next one, which is the mind of Christ, His wisdom. And then finally, the works of Christ, which are His power. And so the combination of those five things, I believe, are keys.
They're keys to tapping into the dimensions of what we're going to call the fullness of Christ. So today's scripture, if you want a scripture to go to, the key scripture is this. It's Colossians chapter 3 of our 16. So if you have your Bibles, I'd encourage you to turn to Colossians 3 16, or if you want to look at it on your phone, or it's on the screen behind me.
And I want to read verses 16 and 17 together, because verse 17 starts with the word and. And so if something starts with the word and, there's a reason. So we're going to read those together as a couplet. Colossians chapter 3 verse 16.
Now this passage or this context is talking about some characteristics of the new man. But he says, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Everybody say this, let the word of Christ dwell in me richly in all wisdom.
Let the word of Christ dwell in me richly in all wisdom. And so after that, so there's an instruction there that we're supposed to do something. And based on letting the word of Christ dwell in you richly, there's things that happen. There's says teaching one another, admonishing or that means warning one another, singing to the Lord, giving thanks to the Lord.
And oh yeah, Paul says if I left anything out, everything or anything that you do or say falls into that too. And so allowing the word of Christ to dwell in me richly, and we're going to probably pick that up at the end of the message, but allowing the word of Christ to dwell in me richly impacts all of those other areas of my life. See what it says to. Now, I actually like the new American Standard Bible better and some of the other ones on this verse, because remember we talked about punctuation a couple of weeks ago, the punctuation matters.
So newer translations put the comma after the word richly, so it says let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom teaching and admonishing. So it's a little different understanding. I think it's probably the correct one. I just happened to defer to the new King James.
But when we talk about doing something in wisdom, and we'll unpack this a lot more when we get to the mind of Christ, but sometimes when we see wisdom, what is that? Well, let me just give you a quick definition. I have knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. So knowledge is the accumulation of information.
A lot of people like to accumulate facts and figures. They might even do it in the form of pulling a verse out of the Bible. They accumulate information. You gain knowledge.
Understanding is the comprehension of the information that you gather. Wisdom, then, is the right application of the information that you gathered and now understand. And so what Paul's saying is, I don't want you to teach and admonish and to do all these things just based on you grabbing a verse and trying to give it to somebody. He says, I want you to do it in wisdom, which means that you need to know the verse, you need to know the word, you need to understand it, but more importantly than knowing it and understanding it, you need to have applied it correctly to your life.
And so that once the correct application of the thing you know and now understand, and it becomes evident in my life, I now have a platform, not this platform, but I have a platform to actually speak into and to teach people. So there's nothing more annoying than somebody that tells me what to do when they don't have that evident in their life themselves. Do you know anybody like that? Well, here's the verse you could grab onto, and don't give it to them unless you actually understand it, and you apply it to your life.
But here's what Paul says, I want you to let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. Richly means that there is a wealth of the word of Christ. There's an overflow. There's a fullness.
You can't have the word of Christ dwelling in you richly if you're not full of it. If it's not so much a part of you that it's flowing out of you. Remember Jesus says, Jesus was the word made flesh? So Jesus is God, God's a spirit.
When Jesus comes, He's the word of God made flesh. He says, when I speak, the words I speak, they are what? They are spirit in their life. So we have the word of God, a spirit made flesh, but when He speaks, the words He speaks are now spirit.
And if you take that in reverse, that's exactly what needs to happen to us. The words that were the word flash became spirit, but the words that are spirit now need to become flesh again. The words that are in spirit form need to actually be so ingrained into my life that it gets down to the molecular cellular level of who I am. That it becomes so infused with me.
When it talks about allowing the word of Christ to dwell in you, it's in a tense that it leaves it up to you. It's the same word that Paul uses to describe the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer. He says, if the spirit of God dwells in you, the same spirit that brought Jesus from the dead will bring life to your mortal bodies in Romans 8. It's the same word.
Paul talks later in Corinthians, it says, he that has joined unto the Lord is one spirit with him. So that when the Holy Spirit comes to live and indwell you, he's so infused into your born against spirit that you're literally glued together to where two become one. That you couldn't actually like tell the difference between your born against spirit and the Holy Spirit if you could see in the spirit realm inside because they're so intertwined. And that's what Paul's saying that you need to allow the word of Christ to so permeate your being that it actually becomes part of you.
You just don't know it. You just don't understand it. But you've proved it time and time again that the application of it is now who you are. That's possible.
It's possible. Like, well, that sounds like work. Okay. So what?
Yeah. There is some work you got to put in and you walk with the Lord. You don't work to earn things, but Paul says that the grace that was bestowed upon me was not in vain. I labored more abundantly than they all.
So that the grace on me didn't become wasted grace. So God's graced you, but then there's a stewardship component that goes with the grace that you've received. There's a little work to put in sometimes. So what is the word of Christ?
I want to talk about that because I think a lot of times it gets maybe a little confused as to what is the word of Christ. What is the word of God? What is the word of God? What is the word of Christ?
So sometimes what happens is when we read phrases like the words of Christ or the word of Christ, ooh, I got a red letter Bible. Right? And I do. I love my red letter Bible.
But the words that Jesus spoke are in what? Red. But the word of Christ is not limited to red letters on a page. Like that's not the limit of the words of Christ.
The word of God is not limited to this book. I'm going to ask you to give me a little grace because a couple of things I say initially might sound a little heretical. But give me a little grace. Give me a little grace to give you some scripture.
David says this. Think about this. David says in Psalm 119, I think it's verse 89 maybe. The next slide.
Yeah. Psalm 119, he says, forever, oh Lord, your word is settled in heaven. How long ago was forever? This isn't our truth.
Was forever before the word of God was given and inspired to Holy Man. Peter says second Peter, the Holy Man inspired by God wrote this down. We know then 2 Timothy 3, 16, it says all scripture is given by inspiration. It's God breathed.
But before God's word was God breathed, it existed. How could it have been forever settled in heaven if it didn't come to be until this happened? Jesus says this in Matthew 25, he says, heaven and earth will pass away. If you read the book of Peter, you'll know that one day the heaven and earth will pass away with what?
Affervent heat. Like every element will melt. Everything that you see will dissolve, including this. And some of you are like, oh my God, she just dropped the word of God.
Now I dropped a Bible. This will dissolve when God dissolves the world. But the word of God will not. And what I want to bring you to understand today is, see, all truth exists in God.
Everything that's true exists in God. When we limit our understanding of God's words to what is here or to what is written in red, we limit our ability to walk in the fullness of the word of Christ. Think about it like this. Let's say that this stage represented all truth.
Let's say this is all truth, this is God. Instead of all truth is a written record of what God said, which means that everything that God ever said is 100% true, but all truth is not contained in the written record of God's word that we call the Bible. See, in too many people limit God's word to this when actually God's word exists in eternity before that ever came to be. And it will last into eternity after this ceases to be.
And so I want to open your understanding up to what the word of God is. See, we can open this up. Did God speak in this Bible? Yes.
Did the Holy Spirit speak in this Bible? Yes. Did Jesus speak in this Bible? Yes.
Did demons speak in this Bible? Did Satan speak in this Bible? Yes. Did men anointed of God speak in this Bible?
Did false prophets speak in this Bible? Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Yes.
So what is the word of God? See, Jesus even told us disciples in John chapter 16, he says, there are many things that I want to tell you, but you are not yet able to bear them. However, when he get this, it's a spirit of what? The spirit of truth is come.
He will take of what is mine and declare it unto you. He will not speak on his own authority, but he will glorify me. And that's why I said he will take of what is mine and declare it to you. While Jesus spent three years with his disciples, he imparted everything about ministry to them.
And yet at the same time, he said, there are things that I need to tell you you're not ready to receive yet. However, when the Holy Spirit comes, he'll cap out of the words in red and tap into the truth and declare it to you at a time that's appropriate when you're able to handle the word that I want to release into you. So some people might say, well, that was true until the Apostle Paul came along. And once the Apostle Paul wrote, then everything that was written is now the canonized word of God, and there's nothing outside of that.
I beg to differ to say that you cannot contain God in this. I'd like to submit to you that John says that all the works that Jesus did, the books in the entire world, could not contain them. I'd like to submit to you that all the Apostle Paul wrote, the majority of the New Testament, and I love his writings, and I study them like voraciously. He also saw things that he couldn't even write down.
And 2 Corinthians 12, it said that Paul went in the, because I don't know if I was in the body, I don't know if I was in the Spirit, but I went to the third heaven, and I heard things that are called inexpressible words that a man is not permitted to speak. So don't tell me that there's not words of God that exist outside of this because the Apostle Paul attested to having heard them, but he couldn't write them because he didn't want to draw attention to himself because they were so crazy. The Apostle Paul's letter to the church at Colossians, Colossians said this at the end of the book of Colossians, I think it was chapter 4, verse 16, he said to the Colossians church, he says, I want this letter read in your church, and then when you're done reading it, I want it sent to the church of Laodicea, and the epistle that I wrote to the church at Laodicea, when they're done with it, I want it read in your church. Well, guess what epistle doesn't exist?
The epistle that was written to the church at Laodicea, we never found it. So there were inspired words that the Apostle Paul wrote that didn't make it here. However, everything in here is 100% true, but all truth is not contained in this. All truth is contained in God.
And so any discussion about the Word of God has to start with God himself. Like you can't talk about the Word of God and not first talk about God. It has to start there. John chapter 1, the Word of God, let's go back to that.
The Word of God is the person of God. Oh, I didn't give you the, there's so many things I want to say today, but I really boiled it down to two points. The Word of God is the person of God. The Word of God is the person of God.
The second thing is, is the Word of God reveals the purposes of God. So the Word of God is God. The Word of God is the person of God. The personhood, the personage of God is his word.
And also number two is that the purposes of God are revealed in his word or the will of God. So God's word is God's will. God's word is God. And God's word is God's will.
That's really two things I want you to take on today. So Jesus says this in John chapter 1. He says, in the beginning was what? In the beginning was the Word.
The Word was with God. And the Word was what? The Word was God. If whoever's running the media, if you go to the next slide, I want you to see something.
We'll go back to this verse. Revelation 19. So John, I didn't put a hole here, but verse 13 says this. So John has this vision of Jesus and you can read about it if you read the whole chapter.
But it says he was clothed with a robe dipped in blood and his name was called what? The Word of God. The person that we call Jesus Christ, his original name was the Word of God. The person that we call Jesus Christ, his name and eternity future will be.
The Word of God. See, I get too many people see when God, the Word, came to earth in flesh. He was named Jesus. And so many people get hung up well, do we call him Jesus?
Well, maybe I need to go Aramaic and call him Yajua. Oh, well, maybe I need to be Hebrew and Yahshua, Joshua. Argue all you want, but eternity past, do eternity future, his name's the Word. Like why are we arguing over things like that?
When that's not even like that was his name when he came to the earth. But when he was in eternity past at creation, his name was the Word. In eternity future, he is the Word. Forever, oh God, your Word is settled in heaven.
Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my Word, does that start to make a little more sense now? This, now don't clip this, make a video of it. This is not the Word of God. This is a written record of what God said.
How Word of God is the man Jesus that came to earth, that existed in eternity past and will exist forever more. Jesus is the Word. Now go back to John chapter one, it says, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was God. Look at this, Jesus, the Word is not an it.
It's a what? It's a he, he's a he. Like can you thought gender specific pronouns were a new thing? They're not.
They're not. They were in eternity past. His name was Jesus. He says, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God, he.
Guess what the Word is? A person. The Word is not an it. It doesn't say that it was in the beginning with God.
All things were made through it and without it was nothing made that was made. See so many times we reduce the Word of God to an it. The Word of God is a he. The Word of God is a person.
The Word of God is God. He was at the beginning with God. All things were made through Him. Without Him was nothing made that was made.
Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly. See what happens a lot of times is people make their main pursuit in the Christian life. And I'm going to say this because this was me. My pursuit was the knowledge of Scripture.
But any pursuit that takes precedent over God is idolatry. Even good things. When you elevate the knowledge of Scripture above God, it's idolatry. When you elevate worship above God, it's idolatry.
When you elevate miracle signs and wonders above God, it's idolatry. When you elevate your ministry, your position, your giftings above God, it's idolatry. See all of those things should be birthed out of a bigger agenda which is to know God. Like I used to study the Word for the sake of studying the Word.
But now I just want to know God. And the fact that I want to know God, where am I going to go? I'm going to go to the Word, the written record of what God said. And I'm going to go to the Holy Spirit that takes everything that belongs to Jesus and begins to declare it unto me.
See any pursuit outside of the pursuit of God is the wrong pursuit. Jesus says this is eternal life. That they may know Jesus whom you have sent and they may know God. They might know you the only true God in Jesus Christ whom you've sent.
There's nothing wrong with knowing Scripture. I want you to know Scripture. But to know Scripture apart from God, it actually can lead you into error. I don't know anybody in the Bible that knew Scripture more than the Pharisees.
Do you know to be a Pharisee who had to memorize the first five books of the Bible? Do you know what Jesus said to the Pharisees in John 8? He said, you neither know me nor my Father. Had you known me, you would have known my Father.
Later in that same chapter, he says this, he said, you seek to kill me because my Word has no place in you. He's saying to somebody that memorized the first five books of the Bible, I don't know anybody today that's done that. But I'm connected to. You memorized the first five books of the Bible and at the same time my Word has no place in you because the Word is more than this.
And you cannot have a relationship with the Word apart from a relationship with God and actually live out the life that God wants you to live. When Jesus came off the amount of transfiguration, he sent some disciples into some area to prepare the way and they wouldn't do it. James and John say to Jesus, they said, do you want us to call fire down from God and consume them like Elijah did? Right?
It's just amazing that they thought they could even do that. Like, you know, that's faith. That's real faith. Did they have a biblical precedent for calling fire down from God that Elijah did?
Operating in biblical precedent apart from the Spirit of God will lead you into error. Jesus said, you do not know what Spirit you are of. For the Son of Man did not come into the world to destroy the world but to save it. You can arm yourself with the Word of God here, but apart from the Word of God there, you're going to walk a path that's different than what Jesus called you to.
It just seems strange that you could get into error locking onto the Word of God. And it's not the Word of God that's wrong. It's that your priority was wrong, that you didn't dig into it for the purpose of knowing Him. Like, that has to be the bigger agenda to know God.
So, number one, the Word of God is the person of God. The Word of God is the purpose of the person of God. Do you understand now how the Word of God is bigger than this? The Word of God is contained.
It's in God. See, this was published by some person here on Earth. I don't even know if the publisher was a born-again Christian. They may not have been.
I believe everything that's in here, it's true. It's true. I believe every Word, I believe every chapter, but I don't limit the truth of God to this. All truth is found in the person called the Word of God, Jesus Christ.
It's the same reason that God sent Jesus. It says in Hebrews 1, it says, it says, God who at various times and in various ways, spoke unto our fathers through the prophets. But in these last days has spoken to us through His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, by whom He also made the world. It said, who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person upholding all things by the Word of His power?
See what happened throughout the Old Testament, there were images of God that didn't actually represent God the way He wanted to, because God loves people unconditionally, but He's also just. And so without a Savior to pay for sin, sin had to be punished quite often when we read stories in the Old Testament and we get confused about God. And so God sends Jesus to be the exact representation of Him to actually correct our theology. He actually used Jesus to correct our perception of God.
And so this is really the intent. So not only is the Word of God God Himself, but the Word of God expresses or reveals the purposes of God. The Word Word, the Greek Word Word, you're not going to get out of here without giving you a Greek Word, right? Logos.
Now, so what happens a lot of times I've been in church like most of my life. Most believers like to, there's two words for Word, right? In Greek, basically. There's Logos and Rehma.
And so what happens a lot of times we reduce Logos to the written Word of God and we limit Rehma to the spoken Word of God. Not that that's wrong, but over time and as I've walked with the Lord what I found out is that distinction between the two under the anointing of the Holy Spirit that line begins to get erased. There's like an overlapping of the two. And so I don't want to just say that Logos isn't God speaking where the Rehma isn't, you know, is something else.
There are two different things, but really Logos is not just a written Word, but more importantly than that, Logos is this. It's the thoughts and intents of somebody's mind that seeking expression through words. It's the thoughts and intents of somebody's mind, what they think, what they intend to do and those thoughts and intents are seeking expression through Word. It says something said, including the thought.
So Logos is something said. It's typically what we read, but more than that by implication it's a topic. It's a subject. It's also reasoning, motive, or intent.
So that within the Logos of God, which is Jesus Christ in the flesh, is the will of God. That Jesus, the Word of God made flesh, is the will of God made flesh. See when we call Jesus Christ the Word of God, that means he's the living expression of the thoughts, intents, and will of God. So questions are not bad, but here's what I know is that I've known believers for 20 years and they're still wrestling with the same questions.
I'm not going to call anybody out, but people will wrestle with the same questions like, well does God want me to be healed or does God want me to be sick? Is it his will for me to be healthy or is it his will for me to stay in this condition until I die? Is it his will for me to be free or is he, you know, want me to be stuck here? Is it good for me to, is it his will for me to prosper or is it his will for me to be in lack?
And those questions are not wrong, but if you're continuing to have the same questions that you had 10, 15, 20 years ago, I believe it's a self-diagnosis of your lack of intimacy with the Word of God we call Jesus Christ. See if I knew Jesus, I would know the Father. If I don't know Jesus, then I don't really have a clear picture of the Father. So if I'm still wrestling with those questions, I got a question you, you self-diagnose yourself, I'm not diagnosing you, just don't self-medicate, self-diagnose, but you diagnose that.
Because if you truly were intimate with the one who perfectly represented the Father, then you would know what the Father's will was because Jesus perfectly expressed it. Isaiah says in Isaiah 55 verses 8 and 9, he says, my thoughts, he goes, no, this verse, he should, my thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways are not your ways. Whereas the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. A lot of people make a big deal about what repentance is.
You know, here's your, oh, oh, God, oh, God, I'm so sorry. And they'll say, wow, he's really repenting today. It's not repentance. That might be the fruit of repentance.
Repentance is the word meta noia, which means meta meaning change, noia meaning mind. Repentance is not a change of direction like people confuse it. Repentance is not turning from sin to God. That's the fruit of repentance.
Repentance is a change of mind. I think the easiest way to remember what repentance is, it's exchanging my wrong thoughts for his right thoughts because his thoughts are here. God thinks a certain way. I think this way.
And whenever the Holy Spirit reveals that there's a gap between the way I think and the way God thinks, I have a choice. I can repent and change that thought, change the way I think about things until my thoughts align with God's thoughts, or I can try to bring his thought down to mine and settle here. That's not repentance. Now if I truly repent and I truly change my mind and think like God, the result of a changed thought is going to be a change of action, a change of direction.
So that repentance is not this. That's the fruit of repentance. Repentance is here. See when Jesus said, the kingdom of God is at hand, repent, change your mind.
It's here. You've got to change the way you think and believe. See, I can't believe if I still think, the same thing I used to think. It doesn't mean I've got everything right in my life yet, but I'm starting with here.
But God says, my thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways are not your ways. It's the heavens are higher than your thoughts are in your thoughts. So there has to come a point where you get into the revealed will of God through Jesus and through the Holy Spirit. And God begins to show you areas in your life that you need to change the way you think.
And if you change the way you think, all of a sudden you're going to change the way you behave. As a man thinks in his heart, so is he. Jeremiah 29, so what are God's thoughts? Jeremiah 29 11, you guys know this verse too.
I know the thoughts. I think toward you. Thoughts of what? Shalom.
Thoughts of Shalom. Nothing missing. Shalom is wholeness, completeness, soundness in every area of your life. Complete in your body.
Whole in your body. Whole in your spirit. You have a relationship with God. Whole in your body that you're healed.
Whole in your mind. You're not stressed and depressed. Whole in your attitudes. Whole in your relationships.
That's God's thoughts toward you, but our thoughts are here. God says, I want you to exchange those thoughts for my thoughts. Go to the next slide. It says, the reason most Christians don't know God's will or tend to doubt is because they don't intimately know the word, the one we call Jesus Christ.
So you can know God at the same time, still not know God. I've explained that to you in terms of my relationship with my wife over 32 years now of intimacy. I actually, I won't go there. But over 32 years of, and I'm telling you it's been really, really good sometimes.
Not bad sometimes, too. But 32 years of intimacy. Hey, you know what? Marriage is another one of those graces that involve work.
Just because it's God's will doesn't mean it doesn't involve work on your part. Marriage is God's will. It is not good that man should be alone. Therefore I have made a helper to compliment him.
What God has joined together let no man put a sunder. But that doesn't mean you can just go through your marriage like this. Well, it will be God put it together. I don't know where I was now.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was trying to get my mind off intimacy with my wife. I was trying to do it.
Over renewing my mind to the Word of God. All right. No, I know Kristen better today than I did yesterday, better than I did last year and better than I did 32 years ago when we met because of intimacy, because of time. Matter of fact, I could, I'm not going to do it.
Just I told her I would have not. I could actually ask her what I would do in a certain situation. And she would, right, she would know what I would do. I can trust her through intimacy to act on my behalf because she knows my will.
She's actually spent enough time with me as my bride that even if I'm not present physically, she encounters a situation and I know that she'll carry it out a certain way that we're both in agreement on because it's birthed out of intimacy. Don't you think to even a greater degree that that through intimacy with Jesus, through intimacy with His Holy Spirit, as I begin to understand that the Word of God is God, that in the person of Jesus is the expressed will of God and as I become more intimate and abide in Him, He can trust me to actually carry out the very thing that He wants me to do and know that I'll do it right. Or I can just relegate my life to memorizing verses, pulling scripture out of context, flinging them at people for the purpose of creating division and condemnation within the church and actually end up in error. I can't end up in error if I allow the person of Jesus to influence me.
I can end up in error when I do this apart from Him. Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom. Look at this, the Word dwell, I probably talked about this a little earlier, it means to inhabit the same word that Paul uses of the Holy Spirit taking up residence. See, when I get saved, he comes in to live in me, I can't affect that.
That's what he does. I do have a decision to make whether or not I allow the Word of Christ to dwell in me, not just in the form of His Holy Spirit, the person of God, but more importantly, I have a decision as to whether or not I want to allow the will and intent of God to infuse me. If I allow that to infuse and influence me, I won't walk in error. It will be demonstrated in the love of God.
It will be demonstrated in perfect step with the Holy Spirit. This is a, you probably heard this statement before, it's made by motivational speakers. This is not the Word of God. Matter of fact, I can't even fact check it in the Bible, but I just want to put it up here for just a moment.
It says you are the average of your five most intimate relationships or the people that you spend, the five people that you spend the most time with, your inner circle, your closest friends, you become an average of that. I don't know if that's true, I'm just using somebody else's quote because I think there's a measure, I think there's a measure of truth to that. Think about the people you hang out with, think about your five closest confidants, people you spend the most time with, they have an effect on the way you think, they have an effect on the way you act, they have an effect on your outlook, your worldview. All those things are shaped really by those five relationships.
So the question I want to ask you today is this, how different would your life be if you permitted, if you permitted the word, so all the teaching today to lead up to this question because the word is just not just this. The word is God, the word is God's will expressed through the person of Jesus. How different would your life be if you permitted the word, him, he who created the earth, who created the universe, who was present in eternity past, the word that when the Spirit of God hovered over the waters and God said and released the word that the word and the Spirit came together in light came out. The Holy Spirit that now lives in you, just waiting for the word to be released in you, so that what God's called you to be could be created in birth out of you.
What would your life be like? The Spirit is here. Yes. And he's not going away.
If you've accepted Jesus, he's in you. But it's up to you whether you permit the word of Christ that was and is and is to come to dwell, to influence, to infuse you, to come together with the Spirit of God and release creative power out of you. Where do you think the rivers of living water flowing out of you come from? You've got to permit it.
What would your life look like? How would that change the way that you think? How would that change the way that you, now, man, I want to get in the word to know God. Interimization, meditation is all burst out of my desire to know him.
Like if I don't know him, I missed it. What would your marriage be like? If you allowed the word of God to dwell in you richly, how differently would you do your job if you allowed the word of God to dwell in you richly? Would you see your boss different?
Would you see the task differently? Remember verse 17 when I want to say, and whatever you do in word or deed, would you do things a little differently? Would you see things a little differently? Would you say things a little differently?
Would you see people a little differently? I think it would have an internal impact that would be profound. Thank you. It's what I was looking for.
A profound impact. And we're just tapping in to this thing we call the fullness of Christ. Like all of that was in him. God's will is in Jesus.
So if you're here today, like maybe your question is that God's will for me to be healed. What did Jesus say on that subject? Is that God's will for me to be free? What did Jesus say on that subject?
Is that God's will for me to be forgiven? You don't know what I've done. Well, what's Jesus's word on that subject? Because he perfectly expressed everything the Father ever thought.
Now, I was kind of putting scriptures together this week, but there's a verse in Psalm. Let me see if I could find it. Because if I told you, you wouldn't believe me, would you? Psalm 139.
How precious verse 17. How precious are your thoughts to me, oh God. Remember we talked about God's thoughts being higher than our thoughts? How precious are your thoughts to me, oh God.
How great is the sum of them? Now, you remember, let's put this all together. Jesus is the expression of the thoughts of God. If I should count them, verse 18, they would be more in number than the sand of the sea.
If Jesus was the full expression of the thoughts of God, and the thoughts of God are more than the sand of the sea, is it any wonder that the books of the world couldn't contain? All that Jesus did. I think within a square inch of sand is like a million grains of sand, something like that. If you don't like that number, I just cut it in half.
It's still a big number. But to think that God thinks thoughts of you in the billions upon billions upon billions, and that when Jesus came, he perfectly expressed all of those thoughts. It's just no wonder that everything he did and said couldn't be recorded because it's infinite.