and we found in you. We thank you for giving us the opportunity to meet together, to praise you this evening, and to learn more about you. Gotta pray you would speak through John this evening and open our hearts in our minds to what you would have us learn about you when you're not praying, amen. All right, so hey, listen, we are finishing a series to this week in our series called Hashtag Relationship Goals.
We talked about the past few weeks, we kind of broke from our normal method of going through books or scripture to talk about relationships, we talked about friendships, we talked about marriage, we talked about last week, about dating and singleness, and tonight we are talking about the most important lesson, and that is our relationship goals when it comes to our relationship with God. This week I did something stupid, and I feel like as your pastor, it's good for me to tell you when I do some things that are stupid sometimes, so you know that I'm a normal human being just like you. So this week we were trying to find a mouse that kind of got in our house, and in the rush of everything, trying to find this stupid little creature, I forgot that in the pantry is a hook for the aprons. Aprons were off and I didn't really see the hook, and as I was trying to go down into the bottom of the cupboard, I hit my left eye on the hook.
Now, if it was over maybe like a half an inch, I probably would have went through my eye. Luckily I just hit the bone right here, but in that moment of craziness, Amber can attest, I just started screaming. I just started going, Amber, Amber, Amber, Amber, help me, I mean, I hurt so bad. And I forgot that we had just put Jonathan down to sleep, so you know how that goes, like he hears his dad screaming from downstairs, you know, bloody murder, anyways.
So that happened, and then what followed was kind of blurriness of vision for the next, probably about 24 hours, and I had blurry vision, but I thought to myself, you know what, I'm gonna make you through it, and I'm just gonna live life as normal as if nothing happened. So that resulted, for example, me pouring heavy creamer in my milk, or in my cereal instead of regular milk, which is pretty gross, by the way. I just, this is really thick. And I mixed up salt and flour, okay?
So I went to go put some salt on my, you know, my meal and put flour on it, also not a good thing. But here's the point, okay, here's the point. I learned a valuable lesson, and when you are, when you have blurry vision and you can't make everything out sometimes, you oftentimes make mistakes, and you can oftentimes take a few steps back, so you can be making progress in some way, but then if you have blurry vision, you can't really see, then you can't really accomplish the task, the way that you're supposed to. And I feel like when we come to Christianity, when come to our spiritual goes with Jesus, I feel like that many of us enter a relationship with Jesus with kind of blurry vision.
We know that we wanna have a relationship with God, but a lot of churches do a good job of teaching you how to have a relationship with God, by trusting in Jesus, but then they don't really do a good job of the follow through. Well, how do I actually grow in my relationship with Jesus? And so what I hope that we can do this evening, is kind of make some of the blurry vision when it comes to our relationship with God become clear. And what I hope to do is show us that, when it comes to your relationship with God, there are things that you can do, that you can be active in doing, that will help foster a relationship with God that is actually flourishing, that will actually will grow.
See, I think a lot of people think that your relationship with God is a passive thing, that you can just grow in your relationship with God passively. The problem is we don't apply that anywhere else in our day and age. So for example, how do you climb up the ladder, right, in your jobs? Do you have to be active or do you have to be passive?
You have to be active. You have to be working towards things. You have to be setting goals and working towards those goals. If you want a relationship with somebody, what do you have to do?
Can you just be passive? No, you have to be active. You have to be engaging with them. You have to be talking with them.
In every sphere that we have in society, we understand in order to grow, you have to be active. And yet somehow we think that maybe just coming to church once a week, which is a really good thing to do, that just coming to church once a week and spending an hour with God a week is going to somehow cause us to grow in our relationship with God. And yet scripture tells us that there are biblical things that we can do to help foster, that we can be active in our relationship with God. Now we're gonna be looking at a few things tonight, one of those things being the term grace.
So if you have your Bibles, James chapter four, we're gonna go through, there'll be a lot of scripture tonight, which is a good thing. But if you turn to James chapter four real quick, James chapter four, I want us to stop in that first sentence, it says verse six, but he gives us more grace. Let's just stop there. Grace is a term that just means God's unmerited favor.
Now we all receive this. If you have put your faith in Jesus, you have received grace. And what happened in that moment is what we call the great exchange. You received God's, God's Jesus is right standing before God the Father.
So Jesus is perfection that allows him to have a relationship with God. You received when you put your faith in him. In exchange for that, Jesus took our sin. What separated us from God through grace.
Now we have a relationship with God because of what Jesus has done for us. That is the salvific sense of grace. However, James is not using a salvific sense. He's using a daily form of grace.
So on one side, you have the everyday grace, or on every day, grace. On the other side, you have the one time salvation grace. And James is saying, this one I'm talking about here is the grace that you receive every day. God's unmerited favor in your life every day.
And he says, I want to share with you how to receive that. I want to share with you how to get grace. Because here's reality. Grace is not just a diving board into a relationship with God.
It is the very pool that we swim in. Every day we need God's unmerited grace in our life. If we are going to live for him, if we are going to live a life that is flourishing in our relationship with God. And so I've kind of created this diagram here that we're going to kind of walk through today.
And I'm just calling it the state of grace. This is how you can receive God's unmerited favor in your relationship with God daily. And it's by walking through humility, worship, prayer, and serventhood. So we're just going to walk through that in the James text here.
And yeah, so let's jump in. So let's look at humility. First off, humility. That's our first spiritual goal.
It's a foster a life of humility. If you will, look at the rest of James 4 and 6. He says, but he gives us more grace. That is why scripture says, God opposes the proud, but shows favor to the humble.
There's a couple of things here. First off, he says, the words God opposes the proud. That word opposed, that word is actually a military term here. If you guys ever seen 300, you know, they get the shields up and they got like the spears like that, like it is crazy.
And what they're essentially saying to the people in front of them, you will not pass this line, right? We're going to keep pushing you back. We're going to be opposing you. You're not going to pass us.
And that's what God is doing here. He says, the proud, the people who are proud, they have no dealings with me. I will keep pushing back the proud. The proud will not be able to be on my side.
So what is the proud? Well, the prouder people who have decided to depend on themselves instead of depending on God. Biblical pride is when you tell God, you think you know it's better for your life than he does. And so he tells us that he opposes the proud, but he gives favor to the humble.
We're supposed to be humble. And in order to do that, we need to have two things. We need to have a right view of God and we need to have a right view of ourselves when we do that. And the only way we do this is on a term that is pretty often used outside of church, even though it's mentioned multiple times in scripture and it's the word meditation.
The Bible tells us to meditate on God's attributes and his word day and night. The way that we can start fostering humility by knowing who God is and knowing who we are is to meditate on God's word. So here's the reality, meditating on God and who he is reinforces in the normal, what is needed in the abnormal. What that means is this, in the moments that are difficult, in the moments of trials in the moment where your life goes all sorts of crazy and is a mess.
The meditation on who God is in the normal avenues of life will suddenly you'll start to see the benefits of that in the abnormal times. Now when things are okay and you start dwelling on God's goodness and his grace and his mercy and his love, you'll be reminded of that if you put in the work to meditate on God's word in the normal. When the abnormal comes, when it gets all crazy, you'll see the benefits of doing that work. And so what I want us to do is I'm just gonna go through about six or seven characteristics of God.
There's a lot more of them, but I want, this is your homework for this week, it's this. Pick one of these characteristics and just thank God. Meditate on who God is, pick one of these characteristics, one of these attributes about God this week. And you'll be amazed at what, when situations come up, how that actually helps.
So let's look at the first view of God, first attribute. And he's all knowing, all right. So I'm not gonna use a lot of the big words here. There are big words, but he's all knowing.
Look at Psalm 147, five, great is our Lord and mighty in power, his understanding has no limit. See for the Christian, for someone who's put their faith in Jesus, here's the comfort here. The comfort is knowing that when we don't understand why something has happened, God understands. The reason why it's good that God is all knowing is that when we don't understand why maybe a loved one died, or someone broke up with us or something happened in their life while we lost the job, or what we're going to do next, the beauty of having a savior and a God who is all knowing is that we can trust that he knows what's next for us, that he's not surprised.
I think about it this way. Have you ever been to one of the museums and seen a massive tapestry? You know those big rugs, right? From like medieval times, like they're amazing.
You look at the outside, you look on the front of them and they're absolutely beautiful. They got beautiful artwork, you can see people, you can see buildings, it's absolutely amazing. Have you ever seen the back of one of those? It's a mess.
You've got strings everywhere, you've got knots. I mean, it's other you would not even be able to tell what was on the other side. And that's the reality of our life. We are those who only see the back of what's happening.
We are those who can only see it being formed piece by piece. We see the knots, we see the strings. And it's good to know that God sees the whole picture, that God sees the beauty that's at the end of our life. That's the comfort that we could have as a follower of Jesus is that God is all knowing.
Second is God is everywhere. Look at Psalm 139, seven through 12. This is kind of like the go-to section of Psalm for this attribute. Where can I go from your spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there. If I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me, even the darkness will not be dark to you. The night will shine like the day for darkness is as light to you. So here's the comfort. The comfort is knowing that no matter how far we go, God will be there.
Now for those who are fathers of Jesus, that sounds like a good thing, right? Then when we mess up, when we go astray, when we go off a deep end or if we try to even run away from God like Jonah did in the Old Testament, God will be there. And then for some of you, you think that's a curse. You mean I can't outrun God?
God will always be there? The comfort for the Father of Jesus is this, that even when we feel like we are unlovable, even when we feel like we've run so far away, we don't have to work our way back to God. God comes to us. God is there.
God is everywhere. I mean, a lot of people who go through life and they think to themselves, I have done too many things. I have done so much stuff. I have gone so far away.
There's no way that God would ever love me. There's no way that I can have a relationship with God. And I want to remind you that the comfort that God is everywhere means that he is everywhere and he is right where you are. You don't have to go anywhere.
That's why you can't work your way back to God because God is already there. God is everywhere. Let's look at the next view of God. He's all powerful.
Genesis 18, 14 says this. Is anything too hard for the Lord? It's a rhetorical question. The answer is no.
Nothing is too difficult for the Lord. Here's the comfort. It's knowing that when we can't handle it, God can. And when things happen, we know that God can handle it.
It is amazing what God can do when his people have faith and trust in him. I've had too many life experiences where I felt like I couldn't handle what was going on. And as soon as I stopped turning to myself, to my bank account, to my own wisdom, and I start trusting God's wisdom and God's power to work out the situation, guess what? Amazing things happen.
Sometimes it doesn't solve the problem right away, but I can guarantee that every single moment I've grown in my relationship with Jesus. The dependency that you build in moments where you need him is actually the most growth you'll experience in your life. If you're always on the mountaintop, you're not really gonna grow. But if you're in the valley, struggling, depending on God, climbing, right?
Trying to get closer to him in this relationship. Yeah, this is not salvation. This is just a relationship with God. Like you would do with normal people.
You have to work out it. If you find yourself working out those muscles, actually doing these, being active in it, meditating on God's word, Dan, meditating on his characteristics, of him being all powerful. The next time you feel powerless, I guarantee you the spirit will just reveal to you that God is all powerful and he can handle the situation. Alright, let's look at the next one.
He's unchanging. Malachi 3.6 says, I am the Lord, I change not. And here's the comfort here for the follower of Jesus. When life change, when people change, when jobs change, when you even change, God doesn't change.
That's good to know. So when he tells us that he has a plan for those who love him, that he works all things out for good, when he tells us that he loves us unconditionally, there's not a moment where that is untrue. God does not change. Some of us have maybe grown up in households where we've had maybe people tell us, oh, I love you.
And then six months down the road, they ditch us. Maybe they've also offered false promises to us or they've done something where we thought, man, this is great, but then they've changed or I've changed. Maybe we thought, I'm finally in a dream job of mine. And then that changed, we got fired or we got kicked out or something happened.
The good thing to know is that we have a trust in someone who does not change. Next is he's holy. Psalm 99, 9 says, exult the Lord our God and worship at his holy mountain. For the Lord our God is holy.
I love this because God's holiness is a few things first. It tells us that he doesn't make mistakes. See a lot of us at some point in our life, we think, man, is this a mistake? How is this happening?
God, why would you bring me here? Is this a mistake? Some people even get to the further and think, man, is my existence a mistake. And the reality is this God has loved and fashioned you and you are not a mistake.
You are not an accident. You are meant to be here because God has fashioned you to be here. But also part of his holiness means that he can do nothing with falsities. He's perfect.
So when he offers something, when he does something into our lives that might be something that we may not like, we know that God does it perfectly. So we know that he perfectly loves us through that situation. We know that if he's going to be just on something, we know that he can do it perfectly. When he needs to, for example, deal with us because we have been rebelling against him.
We know that he didn't go too lenient or he didn't go too harsh on punishment. He is perfect. God knows exactly what we need, when we need it, he knows the perfect amount. It is perfection that really defines the other attributes.
That's why he can perfectly love. That's why he can perfectly be all powerful and not take advantage of his power because he is perfect in that manner. But also because he's holy means that people who are unholy cannot have a relationship with him. That's why it's so important about that great exchange that Jesus had did for us.
That he gave us Jesus' righteousness, his holiness, his right standing before God for our sins. So that we, even though we still sin, God now sees us as holy and now we can have a relationship with him. You see the grandness of that, that the son of God would have to come down to heaven or someone who was perfect and trade that for us. That's amazing that it's a beautiful, beautiful thing.
Next is he's loving. He's loving, look at 1 John 4 9. This is how God showed his love among us. He sent his only son into the world that we might live through him.
This is a love that is undending. It doesn't depend on us, but it depends on who he is. See, that's a beautiful part of this. Normally in our society, we love based out of our own capacity.
We love other people because I am stirring up the love for them. But guess what? If Jesus and he knows me more than anybody else in this world, if he, since he knows my heart, he shouldn't love me. And yet he does why?
Because his love does not depend on my own merit. It doesn't depend on what I do. It depends on who he is and because he perfectly loves, he means that when he gives you his love, he doesn't take it back. That's an amazing attribute of God.
So another gracious, second Corinthians 12 9, but he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness. Paul goes on to say, therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ power may rest on me. Guys, he is gracious to us. He gives us grace.
Shilin calls it God's riches at Christ's expense. Because of what Christ has done, now we get to live as if we are a son of God, but we get to live lavishly in a spiritual kingdom. Now it's not talking about material lavishing. It's talking about spiritual.
We now can live in a state of flourishing because we are a son or daughter of God because of what Jesus has done. And then lastly, he's merciful. God is merciful. Look at Ephesians 2, 4, but God who is rich in mercy, because it was great love which he loved us.
He's abundant in mercy. He's abundant. He is merciful. He grace is us getting something that we did not deserve.
And mercy is us not getting the punishment that we deserve. But it goes farther than that. Mercy is just not getting something we deserve. If that's all mercy was, God could have just said, I forgive you.
But mercy is always tied up with compassion. You can interchange the language in the Bible. It's that God made another way. He put arson on Jesus.
That is the mercy that he's given us. That when we deserved punishment for rebelling against God, what Jesus has done is taken that for us. That is the mercy of God. We did not get that punishment, but it had to go somewhere.
So I went to Jesus. So that is having a right view. Those are just a few attributes of God that we can think through this week. Now we also have a right view of us and this will be short.
I wrote just experience for my own life. So I've hurt people. I've made mistakes. I'm limited in my knowledge and my understanding.
I choose to trust. Oftentimes the idea that I know what's best for me. I change often. I handle things poorly whenever it comes to marriage or relationships or even when it's supposed to be with God.
I handle things poorly. And somehow even in my limited mindset, I feel like I know what I have, what it takes when things are crazy. All of that is me centered. And that's the often view of most people.
Even though we've lied to ourselves more than anybody else. Even though we've hurt people, even though we mess up, even though we have limited knowledge. Somehow we think that we have what it takes to get a right view of the situation when scripture tells us meditation, memorizing scripture, remembering who God is and what he has done helps us orient ourselves so that when things come in our lives, when struggles come, when circumstances change, when it goes crazy, we can remember who God is. I guarantee you, if you are not dwelling on the grace of God when things are good, or the goodness of God when things are good, or the love of God when things are good, when it becomes bad, you will second guess, the graciousness, the love of God.
You practice meditation in the good moments of your life in preparation for the bad moments of your life. And that's why we meditate. So if you're trying to figure out, okay, how do I meditate here? How do I become humble?
Start building in practices now of knowing who God is and meditating on that during the week. Oftentimes our humility and our pride though, aren't shown or they're not easily determined between our relationship with God, but they can be easily determined when we look at how we treat other people. So let me read this. Proud people focus on failures of others, but humble people are overwhelmed with the sense of their own spiritual need.
Proud people have critical, fault-finding spirit. They look at other people's faults with a microscope at their own with a telescope, but humble people are compassionate. They can forgive much because they know how much they have been forgiven. Proud people are self-righteous.
They look down on others while humble people esteem all others better than themselves. Proud people have an independent self-sufficient spirit, but humble people have a dependent spirit. They recognize their need for God and their need for others. Proud people have to be right, whereas humble people are willing to not be right.
Proud people claim rights. They have a demanding spirit, whereas humble people yield their rights because they have a meek spirit. Proud people desire to be served, whereas humble people are motivated to serve others. Proud people have a desire to be a success, whereas humble people are just motivated to be faithful and to make other people a success.
Proud people are wounded when others are promoted when they're overlooked, whereas humble people are eager for others to get the credit because they rejoice when other people are lifted up. Now I can go on and on and on about differences between proud and humble in the way it works and all the other areas of life. But here's where I'm just trying to get our mind around. And if you want to have a fulfilling flourishing relationship with God, you must have a heart of humility.
That is the first step. God will oppose the proud, but he will give favor to the humble. Let's look at the next one, worship. All right, it'll go much faster, I promise.
That was a long one. This will go much faster, worship, worship. Let's look at verse seven in James. It says submit yourselves then to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you.
A couple of things here that same resist at the end of the, resist the devil is the same word as the opposed, right? So the same opposing that God does to the proud, he says do that to the devil, but he uses this word submit. Now this word submit can be exchanged here for surrender. And the first time we actually see this word, it's really interesting is in Genesis 22.
So I want to look at that real quick. Genesis 22 says this, then God said, take your son, your only son whom you love Isaac and go to the region of Mariah. So he's talking to Abraham, sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you early next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac.
When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering he set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. He will worship and then we'll come back to you.
Here's an amazing point of this. If you don't know the story, Abraham was, God told Abraham that he was gonna have this numerous amounts of descendants as the stars. The problem was Abraham was like 100 years old and his wife was around the same age, right? But actually it's an irony because Abraham actually means the father of many and yet he was the father of nothing, right?
He had no kids. And yeah, God says even in your old age, I'm gonna give you a child. So God gives him this miracle child, Isaac, the one whom he desperately loves and then God says, go to the mountain and sacrifice him. What's interesting is this, we see the word worship here.
That's the first time worship has ever mentioned in the Bible and it's not set in the midst of music. It's set in the heart of surrender. God tells Abraham, I want you to surrender the thing that you love the most. The thing that you care for the most.
I want you to surrender that to me as worship. So today if we came in here and we got rid of all the music and I just had right on a piece of paper and tell the Lord what you're gonna surrender to him, the thing that you love the most, the gift to him, that would be worship. And so we see here worship being used as a way to surrender. He says, submit your James, he says, submit yourself.
Surrender those things to you that are that of most importance. Now there's a practical thing that we can do in our lives as followers of Jesus. It's called fasting. Now this is a temporary voluntary thing that you do for a certain amount of time, whatever you want it, that you fast, you abstain from something in order for you to do a few things.
One, let's just use food for example. I abstain from food. Why? Because I want the hunger of my stomach to remind me of the hunger of my soul.
So when I feel the pain of wanting to eat, I can remember that I need to be this urgent about filling myself with God's word as opposed to filling myself with food. And so fasting allows us to build in those dynamics into our life, but it also helps us to build self restraint. So not doing something for a period of time helps us build self discipline. So the next time we're tempted, next time we wanna do something that we know God says it's not beneficial, we'd have a lot more stomach, a lot more angst to get out of it.
We'd be better prepared to get out of it because we've been practicing self resistance against those things. And so fasting does these types of things, but it's all about that surrendering. So maybe it's food. If you need to eat for medical reasons to eat, okay, I don't do food, right?
But maybe it's social media, maybe for a week, maybe for a month, maybe for two months. I don't know, you need to say, man, that's just such a hold on my time. I need to not do social media. And instead of the time I spend on social media, I need to pray.
I need to focus on something. These are things in your life that you can do that will help nurture a relationship with God. All right, let's move on. Prayer is the next thing.
Look at verse eight in James. It says, come near to God, he will come near to you. Wash your hands or sinners and purify your hearts, you double-minded, grieve more and will. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.
Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will lift you up. Coming near to God is often set in the midst of prayer. When he says, coming to God, he's talking about prayer here. And here's a reality, here's the comfort.
If we go to God with prayer, he will always show up. We never have to close our eyes. We never have to pray to God wondering if he's going to come. He will be there.
And there's a few ways to do this. First is adoration, second is confession. Adoration is agreeing with God about who he is. Confession is agreeing with God about what is best for you.
See, oftentimes when we come to prayer, we just ask God, give me this. God, do that. When in prayer, what we need to be doing is saying, God, I adore you because of this. So let me give you a sample prayer.
Let's just say a family member is sick. That's a common situation. Family member is sick. Or maybe let's say I'm sick.
We say things like, God, I know that you are all powerful and you are great and you are good. So now in my weakness, now in my sickness, I'm begging you to show how powerful you are. That is adoration. That is talking.
God, I know you're powerful and I know you can handle this. Or saying, God, I don't know what the situation is going to entail, but I know that you know all things. That is adoration. But then it's confession.
But God, I know my heart and I know that I'm going to want to deal with this a different way. So be with me. God, keep me from going to trust in myself and I should be trusting in you. Maybe you've done something.
You just have to confess to the Lord God. I know this is not what's best for me. And I know, and I'm agreeing with you. I'm agreeing that this lifestyle, this way of living, this thing that I'm doing, I know it's not beneficial.
That is confession. And then you adore God, but God, I know you're a God who not only gives second chances, but you give their chances and four chances. And if I come and draw near to you, you will come near to me. And I can just trust in you and trust in the sacrifice of Jesus.
That is a beautiful part of prayer. So I want to encourage you, make your prayers have adoration and confession, not just what we call supplication or asking, something from God. And we see in the text too, it says you double-minded. The idea here is just being tossed by the sea.
You guys are in the Navy, right? Have you been on a bad boat before with bad waves? Over here, and then you're next thing over here. The whole point is this, sometimes when we get into situations, we act like we're over here.
Oh, I trust God. And then a minute later, we're over here. Oh, I got to make this my own way. I got to figure it out of our own.
But I trust God. And then we're all the back of our God says no. It's not being double-minded. It's not being tossed by the waves.
Focus. Trust in God. Adore him. Adore him for what?
And he is who he is and what he can do. Confess for any reason that you may doubt or something that you've done. And then ask him to be the one who provides. All right, lastly, is this servanthood.
We're going around this table. Servant is going over four. Now, there's not really a verse for this. But eight times from now, in this point in James, to the end of the book.
So it's about 20 verses or so. Eight times out of the 20 verses, he's going to talk about how we should interact with somebody else. He's going to be talking about how we serve other people in our relationship with God. See, servanthood represents God to the world.
You want to know what your identity is, a father of Jesus? It's not a prince. It's a servant. When Jesus calls us to follow him, he doesn't say you're going to have a lavish lifestyle.
People are going to serve you. He says, no, people are probably going to hate you. They're going to persecute you. And I want you to serve them.
Even the people who look down at you and spit at you. I want you to serve them and love them. That is the identity that we have as followers of Jesus. So you want to become a follower of Jesus after that, right?
Probably not. But that's the reality. He says, you are to love your community. You're to love your neighbors.
You're to serve your neighbors. We ask the kingdom. We ask the question why. We ask the kingdom.
Look at the very end of James 5, the last two verses says this. My brothers and sisters, if any of you should wander from the truth, and someone should bring that person back, remember this. Whoever turns the center from the air of their way will save them from death and cover over a multitude of sins. The whole point, put up that graphic, the main graphic, the whole point of receiving God's grace in our lives, the whole point of being humble, the whole point of worshiping God, and surrendering sin, the whole point of praying, and the whole point of serving those that are around us is simple.
It is to influence the world. It is to show people that there is a God who loves them, a God who created them, a God who cares for them, a God who is all powerful, who knows everything, who is invested in us. There is a God that wants to have a relationship with them. That is one of the only, the primary reason you have a relationship with Jesus.
God did not just save you so that he could save you. God saved you so that you can go out into the world and tell about the greatest message of all. God gives us grace not just for ourselves so that we're the sole beneficiary. God gives us grace so that the world will be the beneficiary.
Everything is wrapped up in this idea of being in the great commission, of being called out by God to influence the world. If you are not influencing the world with your relationship with Jesus, then I can guarantee you that your relationship with Jesus is experiencing very little grace. Why? Because if you're not serving, you're probably not asking the Lord where you want to serve.
You're probably not praying and adoring Jesus and confessing your sin. If you're not doing this thing, I guarantee you have a wrong view of who God is and you're worshiping maybe a man made God. Your worship is not about surrender. Your worship is just about singing.
And if you're not doing these things, then I guarantee your heart is not being humbled. See, we have to have all these elements in our lives. If we want to do what God has called us to do, our goal as followers of Jesus is to be the light to the world. It is to show people that Jesus has it.
Love for all people. I think I've used this analogy way back in the day, but I'll use it again. You guys remember Christmas time and people put candles in the windows? Have you ever seen that done before?
The big candles in the windows? Well, that started a number like hundreds of years ago, really for two reasons. One, people would put a candle in the window to tell any traveler that if they needed a place to stay, they can stay in that home. That candle will also represent another thing.
That if there was an estranged son or daughter or family member that left home, the candle represented the parents telling the child, whenever you're ready, you are welcome home. See, our job as a light of the world, our job of receiving grace from God every day is not just about us. We're supposed to be that light in the window. Then when people who don't have a relationship with God see us, they know that they are welcome home.
Whether they've been there before and they've gone off, whether they've never been in the house before, they know that there's a loving God who's ready to welcome them, that there's somebody who loves them far greater than we could ever love them. We are supposed to be that candle representing God to the world. That is the goal of our spiritual walk with Jesus. That is the aim.
Right? So in our Bible studies, guys, what we do when we talk about James and our Bible studies, it's sort of the sole purpose that we get to talk about humility, worship, prayer and servanthood. If at the end of the day, when you guys eventually get transferred somewhere because the military likes to do that, my goal is that you leave here people that are humble who surrender to God who pray and adore God and who serve the world into our influencers. If we can be a people who love God passionately, serve one another and then go out and serve the world where ever God takes us, then we have done our job as followers of Jesus.
We are to be the light of the world. We need to start acting like the light of the world. I don't know if you ever saw our sign on the way out, it says, now go be the church. We are to go be the light of the world.
We are to go tell people and show people how much God loves them. So let's do that. Let's pray. Lord, we love you and we're grateful.
Father, there's a lot tonight. I knew that going in that it was going to be a more hefty message. But Father, I think sometimes we just need to sit back and we need to take it all in. We need to take in just a small fraction of your attributes.
Just to understand how amazing you actually are. Father, our job is to show that small fraction of love that you've shown us in great measure to the world. Father, our job is to show a small fraction of that grace, of the full grace that you offer to us. Father, I'm so grateful that in the past few months many have decided to follow Jesus.
But I don't want them just to follow Jesus and stay stagnant. I want them to follow Jesus and experience a life of abundance when it comes to our spiritual walk with Jesus. I want them when they come upon hard times to meditate on God's Word on who He is and His character. I want them to adore you and love you because of who you are.
I want to see their relationship with God's grow. God, I hope that they're making goals in their lives so that they can experience a greater depth of who you are. God, I want to be where you are. God, I want to go deeper.
God, I want to grow. So Father, I ask that you answer that prayer for myself. For those in this room who have that same prayer, they want to grow, Father, I ask that prayer for them. I pray that you would just give them an abundance of your spirit to influence their lives.
Father, they would adore you, that they would confess in their lives, that they would know what things in their life that they're not surrendering to you, that they need to surrender. Father, I know that there's people in this room that this talk about who God is, maybe something foreign to them. But God, I really believe that if every single person you desire to have a relationship with them. So Lord, I pray for those in this room who may not have a relationship with you, that you would give them your Holy Spirit.
I pray that you would give them a heart of humility to say, God, I need you. I need the God who is all knowing, who is all powerful, who is everywhere. I need the God who is holy, who is loving, who is just. I need the God who is unchanging in my life.
Lord, I pray that in the midst of this you would just show yourself to be our deliverer and our Savior. I pray that you would just be the light in our lives that ignites something beautiful that we would grow in our relationship with you. Lord, I pray most of all that the light that you've given us would shine to all people and they would know that there's a God who loves them. In GC my pray, amen.