Faith Lesson 16

OK, we are in lesson, what lesson are we in? If you don't know. Fifteen, right? So we've been going, last week we spent most of the time going through different aspects of that came out of Galatians 5.19-21, the works of the flesh. What I was trying to do was, I hope you can see this over here, I was trying to work my way down through here. We recognize that as we are abiding in Christ, what happens, the desire comes to come out of abiding in Christ. And where does this desire come from?

Sin nature. It comes from sin nature, it comes from me. And it's designed to draw me away. Draw me away from what? Abiding in Christ. And it's enticing. And one of the things we spent a lot of time with last week was the enticement of sin or it could be just something other than Christ. It could be something that appears to be very beneficial to you that's not of him. Or it might be a solution to a situation you're involved in that's not of the Lord.

Okay? So now you take the bait. How do you take the bait? How do you do that? Get distracted by it. You know, I was thinking... You get obsessed by it? Maybe. Like sin means miss the mark. So if you're like an archery, you know, you have a dart, arrow, you have an arrow and you look at what you want to hit, right? And so it's like, that would be Christ. And then it'd be like, if anything, like got your attention other than what you're aiming for, then you're going to miss. Yeah, that's right, you are going to miss, but you don't know that. And that's sin, right? You don't know that. What do you mean? That you're going to miss.

Oh. The enticement, well, the enticement actually can be, well, forget the target, we're going to do something else. Right, or look a deer, or look up, a squirrel. Sure, squirrel, my dog, he mentioned the word squirrel and he's gone. Right, right. Like that movie, what was that movie? Up. Squirrel. Squirrel. He's gone. Right. So, anything that's going to take you away from abiding in Christ.

We talked last week about with men it can be sexual desires, with everybody it can be self-preservation. Well, you know, it's interesting if you've ever been in the military and you're in a combat situation, there's fear involved in that, but it's real. You know, it's real. It's like, I remember when I was at boot camp in the Marine Corps and you do this, you go to the rifle range for three weeks. That's what makes the Marines so good.

They can hit what they shoot at. So you sit down in these things called the butts What's that? Talk them to death. But what butts are is the targets. And you're down there behind this berm and you're looking up at the target and when a hole goes through it, you bring it down and put a spotter in it and run it back up and they can see. And what dawns on you is that the first time you're down there and you're watching and a bullet goes through the target and makes a snapping sound and then you hear the gun go off. And it hits you like, oh boy, if I'm going to get shot in combat, I'll never hear the gun.

This ducking is nonsense. That's right. That's called Maggie's drawers. If you miss the whole thing, they wave a red flag. But I was sitting down there the first time I was down there thinking, you know, once they start using real bullets, the whole game changes. I mean, it really does. Wow. Those are really bullets. Fearful? Yeah?

Their attitude is that they can train you well enough that you'll overcome the fear and follow orders and do what you've been trained to do. Still doesn't mean there isn't fear involved. I do know that all of our sin natures have been with us since conception. And they know us better than anybody. And they know exactly how to get you. They know the temptation. They know how to get you out of Christ. We were talking before about what brought it up. If you're abiding in Christ, Donna asked me about Satan. Right.

Does he inhabit individuals? Does he inhabit individuals? I don't know if he does or not. He doesn't inhabit Christians. Maybe he does non-believers. But what's interesting is that think about how crafty this guy is. He can get a population of Christians to be so involved in the world system that half of them are liberals and the other half are conservatives. And what do they spend their time doing? Either being conservative or liberal and studying and focusing and all their energy. What has he accomplished by getting you to do that?

Distraction. He's kept you out of Christ. You see that? Squirrel. And you think, oh, I have to pay close attention because if I don't, my country is going to go in the dumper. And immediately, what have you done? You've taken away the sovereignty of God. You have assumed the role that your intensity and your involvement in it somehow is going to... and get enough people to agree with you that you can change things and everything will be okay. We're going to take the sovereignty of God and take his sovereignty out of his hands cumulatively. It's the same idea as if I can get 500 people to pray for my issue that God is going to hear me better than just me praying.

Really? I'm a son, I'm in Christ. He doesn't need a louder voice of all these people so that you can hear him, so he can hear you. He doesn't need that. That's a mindset of a person who's actually in the flesh thinking that they're going to influence what God's going to do. Can all that be right here? Right where? Right here where the take the bait is? Oh yeah. Absolutely it can.

So the ignorance for believers is really having a thorough understanding and some time and grade of what it means to abide in Christ. And then feelings can come in after that. You can feel bad that you're doing that. You can feel guilty because you're doing it. and then that distracts you and then you end up doing it more. My attitude about feelings is that they should follow the truth rather than lead. It's okay to have feelings, but you should check them out. Jim? I just wanted to clarify.

I think probably some of us in the class are thinking, I'm going to use the example of the political pendulum of conservative liberal and We all probably have certain concerns or convictions within that space, or we should, I would say. So can a person have interest in political things and be persuaded and be participatory in the political process such as voting and not be susceptible to the temptation process that you're talking about? I think so. I think so.

I mean, the Lord would have us aware, you know. It's interesting that we're to be as wise as a serpent, as meek as a lamb. We're supposed to know what's going on around us. But our perspective is biblical, not emotional, and not fleshly, and not selfish.

Should I vote? Sure. I was thinking the other day that, you know, people say, well, especially on Tuesday and people like Monique, we've got to pray for the country. No, we need to pray for the people that run the country. And I was thinking the other day, I'm going to start praying that God would raise up a godly man, just one, who will stand on biblical ground and just stand there. you know, and proclaim and not be sucked away into that massive quicksand that's called Washington, D.C. But you're praying for God to do that. God already has His plan, right? He does. So how about if it's just we pray for who we got? Yeah, that's alright. But you know, you have to understand you get your prayers from the Lord. Actually, Roger's going to talk about prayer this morning. I think you're going to like what he's going to do. He's going to talk on Romans 8.

We don't know how to pray as we should, etc. Anyway, when the Word of God says that anything that's not of faith is sin, so I think right here, anything that's not of faith can entice you away from abiding in Christ. I don't care what it is. It doesn't mean that you're just over-the-top angry about something or lusting or whatever.

So with what Jim is saying and what you're talking about, does that tie in with does it control me? Great question. Did everybody hear what Donna said? Does it tie in with what controls me? And if you were in the grace class with us, we talked about Paul said, you know, I'm at liberty to do anything, but I won't let any of it master me because I already have a master.

So, I remember Macaulay used an example of his neighbor who was controlled by gardening. This guy was so into gardening that when he came home from work, he didn't even get out of his suit. He'd go right in the garden and start gardening. I mean, the thing controlled him. I know a Christian guy that worked for Young Life. Golf controlled this guy. Golf was his thing. It controlled him.

You know, power, I love the King James, they call it approbation lust, or approbation desire. You know what approbation means? I've got to be noticed. I have to be noticed. I have to be recognized and thought of if somebody thinks I'm cool or I'm whatever.

That's a desire of the flesh. Isn't that interesting? And we would say in our society, what's wrong with that? What is wrong with that? Simple. It's not of Christ. He's the one that needs to be noticed, not you. And I've said this before, the greatest tool ever invented for approbation lust is Facebook. Isn't it? Absolutely. Anyway, so you take debate, whatever it is, you go for it. How do you take it? How do you actually take it? Like a fish, you open up your mouth and take a bite? How do you take it?

Well the desire itself, is the desire itself a sin? You make a choice. You exercise your will to do what? What do you use your will for? to believe, right? You don't use it for anything else. You use it to believe. So when you take the bait, you believe whatever that enticement is, is beneficial to you above everything else, and so you put your faith in it. Whatever it is. Aren't you sort of saying that that is better than following Christ? Oh, sure. But what have you done? You have said...

You've broken that fellowship there to do that. But when the enticement comes, I don't go through that process. If I do this, I'm going to break fellowship. I don't think like that. I think that whatever that enticement is, say it's self-preservation, that's the most important thing to me, and I have to preserve myself. I have to preserve my family. I have to be noticed. I have to whatever.

And it goes back to the Garden of Eden, right? It's like, oh, this fruit, whatever is good for me, and oh, and I'll be wise. You know, it's interesting. If you read that in the Garden of Eden, what Lucifer was able to do, he got Eve to focus on the fruit. See that? He got her eyes off of whatever else it was on, Presumably it was to focus on the fruit. And how it would be, like you said, beneficial to her. And how would it be beneficial to her.

And so she went for it. Right? And she bought the lie. What was the lie? That you'll be as God. God's lying to you. You're not going to die. So your sin nature is telling you, hey, come on, you're not going to die. It's beneficial to you. Or how about this one, I have a right to do this. I have a right, really? Do you have a right to be in the flesh? Do you have a right to be fleshly? Anyway, so I think you exercise faith in whatever the temptation is or the allurement is, and you believe that it's going to be beneficial to you, so you go for it. It's faith. You have an object, a brand new object, something other than the Lord Jesus.

It's like, even too, like anger. Oh, it's important to vent that anger, otherwise it builds up. So it's good if I let loose on everybody I feel like letting loose on. Sure. Well, and there are people that we all know that are loose cannons. They're a firecracker. And you know that if you're in a discussion with them and you cross that line with them, duck, because here it comes. And they feel like they have a right to be like that for whatever the reason might be.

People that have been, I think I used the example last week, people who were the families and friends of victims, like murder victims. And, you know, after the guy gets tried and he gets convicted and they send him to life in prison, some reporter will go up and stick a microphone in the survivor's face and say, do you have closure now? And the answer is usually, well, not really. I have a right to not have closure.

I have a right to be angry at this guy. They should have fried him. And until they do fry them, I'm going to be angry. But then they fry them and then there's a reason to be angry. Oh sure, there's another reason. They didn't fry them soon enough. Or hot enough.

So what happens when you take the bait? I like this idea that you have, actually when you take the bait, a conception takes place. What's the conception? What do you conceive? You become pregnant. So what have you conceived? What's that? You conceived sin. Now, once you're pregnant, you are pregnant, right? You're not a little bit or a lot, you're pregnant.

And so now what's going to happen? There's going to be a sequence of events that's going to happen. Now that you're pregnant, there's going to be a term and you're going to give birth. And you're going to give birth to what? Sin. You're going to give birth to what Holly was talking about, this falling short. And what comes with sin? Yeah, Galatians 5, 12. By one man, sin entered the world and death by sin. So sin comes in the world through one man and sin and death go together. So what kind of death are we talking about here? Separation. From? Fellowship with God. Fellowship with God, okay.

So are we talking about Believers or non-believers or the first sin? I guess I don't want to say original sin. Okay. When did you become a sinner? When I was born? No. No, before that. I always was, or the conception of me. When did you become a sinner? When Adam sinned.

There you go. Okay. See, there's this concept we have that non-believers somehow shifted into neutral every now and then. No, they don't. They constantly, 24-7, are sinning. And one sin is the same as another from God's perspective because it's an insult to Him. kind of like a permanent separation. For a non-believer. For a non-believer.

That's why it's called different. If they stay there, yeah, it is going to be permanent. It's called the second death. So, they have, well, let's back to the question. A believer sins, gives birth to sin, and consequently dies. What kind of death are we talking about? What kind of separation? separation from here, abiding in Christ.

One thing that we, when we went through James, we had to really think about this issue because it has to do with, I hear James is talking about a process of a believer going through walking with the Lord as he understood it. And James was the first book written of the New Testament after the epistles, I'm sorry, the Gospels.

And so he had not been privy to Paul's understanding of sanctificational truth. He didn't explain it as elegantly as Paul, and I say that respectfully so, but because of the context and the time that he wrote the book of James, he understood it as a separation, but couldn't clarify the depth of that separation or what that fellowship looked like. or how the believers walk really, but he understood the temptation process and that was all God gave for him to communicate in these verses was how that luring happens and what happens as a result of it. I think he understood the walking in the spirit though. Yeah, but he didn't understand the full sanctification.

I agree, I agree. I marvel at Paul going up to Jerusalem and seeing if those guys are doing it right. It's not the other way around. So this process, the one comment, the first time I ever heard this or sat through it or when Hal Malloy put it together, I raised my hand and I'm sure I'm not the only one who's done this. I said, Hal, you've been talking for 30 minutes on this process.

With me it happens that fast. from top to bottom, boom, I'm out of there. It's a slide that's so greased so fast, I'm gone. Right? And so this process, especially when you're dealing with a sin nature that knows you very well, that knows how to deal with you and to get you going down the road quickly, it doesn't take very long. Okay? Any questions?

Because I'm going to go to Lesson 16. I think generally it is a snap decision that you just feel like doing this and you're going for it. Yeah, I talked to a guy one time, a Christian who was struggling with pornography and you may or may not agree with me but I've had several guys who teach and coach in Christian colleges and say that the number one problem with young Christian men in college is pornography on the web. Number one. There it is.

So with most Christian advices, well, you shouldn't be doing that. How do you stop it? Well, I think, because the stuff I've heard is like, oh, throw out your computer, oh do this and that, but I mean it really ends up coming down to recognizing that you have no power over it at that point and only God can... Let's address it because I think we can figure out what to do here.

So the first question in 16 is temptation or strong desires coming at us then? No, no. That's what I said. You can't add to my question. Let me see you demonstrate that. Is temptation or strong desires coming at us sin? No. No, it's not. Why not? Because it's just the desire. It gets you to here. Now that does not mean, or how do I say this, there's a lot of believers that think that desire or temptation is sin itself. It's not. Well that's how the Jews came up with a million laws, right? It's like, avoid the desire. Well, the Jews are really crafty. God gives them the Mosaic system, 613 laws, and so you know what they do? They create another 613 laws that are one step out and they figure if they keep these, they're never going to violate those.

That's the ultimate political correctness. We marvel at the Jewish people across the street the way they about all of this stuff. Yesterday was, or Friday was Rosh Hashanah, New Year, and so they had to do a whole different shtick for that, you know. And what we laugh at is that they're not supposed to work on Sunday, or on the Sabbath, right? So all of them have like 18 kids. And the synagogue is like a mile and a half away. So they put them all in these strollers and they push them up to the synagogue. But they can't drive. Makes no sense to me. Does that still work? Yeah.

I mean, here they are with a double. The double's got two kids here and two here, and they're all walking along, going up to the synagogue, and they're all sweating like crazy and working as hard as they can. God forbid they get in a van and drive up there. Oh, my God.

Can't do that. Or, you know, they come over to our house and knock on the door, and we've got to go do stuff for them. on the Sabbath that they can't do themselves. They have Sabbath refrigerators. If they turn the hose on, they can't shut it off. They can't turn the lights off. They can't. But you can push your babies up to the synagogue.

That's exactly right. So we agree that temptation or strong desires is not sin. Okay? So in this downward process, when does it become sin? When we yield. Oh, when we yield. Or in this case, you take the bait. Or you exercise faith that the temptation is going to be some benefit to you. Or is it when it becomes your master? Yeah, but you don't... Yeah, that's good. Because that's really what happens. Sin masters you. So you take the bait. And now you're wallowing in sin. And the Spirit of God comes along and He convicts you of that sin. How do you get restored? Confess it. Confess your sin. One John, one night. Yeah. Okay? You confess.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from every unrighteousness. So what does the word confess mean? It means to agree with God. About what? That you are a dirty rotten sinner? That you are sinning? Is that what you have to agree with him about? That you are not walking as who God has created you and Christ to be. What does God say about it?

Go ahead, Jim. Oh, this is just something I've thought quite a bit about. Because a lot of times when we get into this state of confession, we do, we agree with God. You know, I went and I did this and I did this and, you know, I'm looking for restoration and that's fine. But I think it starts with identification. That's really where confession starts for us in the church age.

It sure does. Maybe you can expand upon that, but I think it... Oh, you're right. You're absolutely right, that's where it is. It's the sin nature, and so recognizing that I am not the sin nature. There you go. And then I'll let you finish. Okay, so you're sinning, and the Holy Spirit convicts you, and you confess. So what are you going to say to God?

I'm going to say I'm a new creature in Christ. I'm dead to sin. There's no reason for me to have to do this. So I'm not being who I am in Christ. I love it. I wish I could have heard that. Say that again. You're going to have to turn around and talk to the ladies. Put him on the microphone. I have my mother's voice. So I have my mother's ears.

I was just saying that, you know, it says I'm a new creature in Christ. I was crucified with Christ. I no longer live my, you know, I'm dead to sin and I don't have to obey sin anymore. And so I just tell God, I am a new creature. I'm not, I'm dead to the sin nature. I don't have to do that and I allowed myself to go that way. That's not me. I'm a new creature in Christ. So, that's right. So what has he just done? He's just done what Bob said. He's agreed with God about what God has said about him. Who is he from God's perspective?

You know, here's a question hopefully that will Are there any saved sinners in the body of Christ? Well, I hope so. Not a single one? No. Not a single one? Why not? Because it's not the sinner that's saved, it's a new creation. Yeah. Jim says, look, when I agree with God, I say, look, you told me in Romans 6 that I was crucified with you. I was buried and resurrected.

Galatians 2.20, I have been crucified. That means I got separated from sin. That's what you say. You know what? I agree with you. I agree with you. What have I done?

I've just moved my faith off of whatever the temptation was, and I've moved it back on God and what His Word says, and now I'm functioning by faith, which is what God would have me do. As a matter of fact, sinning for a believer is spiritual insanity. Believers in Christ, in your position, don't sin. It's not part of who you are in Christ.

But then we do it again. It is spiritual insanity, and we're insane. So then we do all that, and then lo and behold, we're in it again. And that's why I asked the question last time. You get into this rhythm of sin and confess, sin and confess, sin and confess. How do you get out of that rhythm? I think you've got the answer. I think Jim's got the answer. You begin to walk, you reckon yourself dead to sin and alive to God. Here comes the temptation, right here. It's right here is where it all happens. What do I do when I'm right there? Wait a minute, that's not me. That's not who I am. Father, I believe you. I'm separated. So I begin to live and walk by reckoning. On what? On who God says I am.

Don't you think if the temptation process, if this situation where you're about to take the bait is a hard decision, if you're like actually debating and working it out in your mind and if it's a laborious thing, then you're toast. Have you already missed it?

Yes you have, you're toast. And I think that's important for us to realize is that, and this is really hard for myself, so this is where I'm at, this is my spiritual insanity out for you guys. If it's hard, if you're deliberating back and forth, should I, shouldn't I, should I, shouldn't I, you have already began the process of listening to this in nature and are already giving, taking the bait. You're giving it space. Yeah, you're sitting there hanging out the carrot for yourself and you're just like, no carrot, yes carrot, no carrot, yes carrot, no carrot, you know. And that process has already begun because the recognition of who we are in Christ happens before that. It happens before the work starts happening.

And where does that come from? This whole process that we're describing, we're going through, who's the person that's orchestrating this restoration? The Holy Spirit. Yeah, it's the Holy Spirit. So what's he doing? He's reminding you, he's convicting you, he's not condemning you, he's just saying, look, what are you doing here? And let me show you, let me get it clear in your mind, exactly who you are. And whoosh you back to Christ. So that you don't go back and forth in this process. Yeah, there's a peace right there. Absolutely there is. And you know the difference between... So, Holly, I'm almost anticipating what that hand is about to say. No, I don't think you do.

I was going to say then, it's different from Adam and Eve, because they sinned and it was death, separation, total. When we sin, it's God using it then for growth through the Holy Spirit. Look what God did with Adam, though. Look what God did with Adam.

Who sought out who in that deal? Who went after who? Did Adam run and say, wonder where God is, I've got to fix this? No, he was hiding in the bushes. God went after him. He said, Adam, where are you? He said, well, I'm hiding in the bushes. He said, what are you doing that for? He said, well, I was naked. He said, who told you you were naked? And so, who restores who in that situation? It's God who restored Adam. The scenario that Jim's talking about kind of goes, I've got to restore myself, I've got to restore... No, I don't. The Spirit of God is the one who does the restoring.

By doing what? informing you as to what the Word of God says about taking the bait and also educating you and settling you down on who you really are in Christ. So you settle down. So guess what happens there? That gets to be, you learn to trust the Spirit to do His job so that the next time that you see the bait coming, wait a minute, He's already, like you were saying, He's already at work.

He's already doing so that you don't even go there. So that you will trust Him. God's already doing that. The Holy Spirit's doing that. But if He doesn't, He's happy when you come back. No, He's doing it. There's never a time He doesn't. Yeah, I'm just saying when you do it again, then God's happy that you recognized who you are in Christ, which is a good thing, but then if it happens again, he's always using it for conforming you to the image of Christ, no matter what. So I guess you can even rest in that. Even if you're in sin, you can still know that you can rest in knowing that whatever it is, God's using it to conform you to the image of Christ. Absolutely. One thing that has also dawned on me recently is that we go through these physical representations of this that don't have to do with sin per se.

For example, I shouldn't eat that because it hurts my stomach. So you go through this physical battle. It's like I really love corn tortillas. Look how beautiful that corn tortilla looks. It draws me out. And all of a sudden you add some green chili to it and some chorizo and you start building this tostada out of it. I can't put lettuce on it because lettuce is good for you.

So we have these But what we do is we have these physical challenges in our life where we're trying to prevent ourselves from doing certain things, and we relate that to spiritual things, and that is a dead end. Oh, you're dead. You go that way, dieting. How about if you're a smoker, or you have trouble with alcohol or drugs?

You go down that road, you're going to lose it every time. Every time. That example has nothing to do with a position in who you are. And not to say that God does not care about your challenge with eating corn tortillas. He absolutely does. And it can become a spiritual thing for you. But to relate our physical challenges of trying to stop something to our spiritual battle of temptation is not an equal and comparable situation. I think that's the way it's taught in the churches. All challenges are considered the same in terms of how we deal with them. Do you ever notice that God always deals from a completed work?

Do you see what I'm saying? He doesn't say, well, we're going to go through this process and we'll see if you win or lose. He says, no, no, you've already won. Do you trust me? I already took care of this. Never. Never. But he will allow sin to come in your life and he will allow you to learn this process that Jim's just describing so that at some point you'll say, well this ain't working. I wonder what the Lord has to say about how you deal with the sin issue. I was a smoker at one time. early on in my Christian life.

I knew that principle because I come from an alcoholic family and I know that if you're going to get sober, you don't do it by willpower. You do it by giving it away. The higher power and all that is nonsense. Bill who wrote the big book in AA must have understood identification because it's really what he talks about.

I knew smoking was the same thing. One morning I got up and the Lord said, today is the day. In the trash they went. And I was not a smoker from that day. And I knew I wasn't. And I never had a struggle with it. Thanks to the Lord, I mean, it wasn't, you know, because I knew if I said, well, I'm not going to smoke starting the day, by noon, I'd be puffing away again, because I'm addicted.

There's a physical addiction there. You know, along with the psychological one, I'm addicted. Well, some sins are addictive. Oh, yeah. And I was thinking, too, you know, how God uses people to help other people. It's not like then you quit smoking and then you say, well, this is how you do it. You go through steps 1 through 12 or whatever. It's like then God uses you to say, that's a dead end to go through that. Just, you know, rest in God. It's interesting because I know through this process, One of the thoughts that hit me was that, look, you live unto the Lord now, and he would not have you smoke because it's not healthy. That makes sense to me, because how can I serve the Lord?

There was a guy, Ed Sundine, he used to sit across from me in the Bible study, and you'd see the cigarettes here drove him crazy. But he was spiritual enough not to say anything to me. That's really cool. He told me later, he said, I prayed for you every day. Oh, man.

I'm having trouble understanding the subtleness of Jim's thing about someone overeating. You know, that's different from... No, I didn't say overeating. Just something that he was eating that was harmful to him. Yeah, something that hurt my stomach, like struggling not to eat something that I know will hurt me. Oh, I got it. But he really likes it. Yeah. Oh, I see.

But if someone just... say someone has a problem where they... So is that what I say? The new man in crash doesn't eat corn tortillas. Therefore, corn tortillas are no longer a temptation for me. Yeah. Can you do that? Does that make sense? I mean, so you get that one. She likes corn tortillas. She's like, what? I can't have corn tortillas.

We go through a decision of what is good and what is bad for us on a regular daily basis and we doubt that it's always a spiritual conversation with the Lord. So what I'm just saying is that we can't all of a sudden say, oh my battle with, you know, this little issue is the same and functions similarly to the spiritual battle of actual sin. So there are some things that are grey, and food would fall into that category to a certain degree. So my choice of how I maintain my body and what I choose to eat and what I don't eat is not necessarily the same as battling the sin from a position of the new man. But we often have to put that whole life of making decisions into the exact same process that can sometimes be almost stifling to a degree.

You know what I mean? Sure. Like I know that I should walk every day and a lot of days I don't do it and I think that falls into that gray area where... Yeah, did you sin? Did you follow the sin nature and you didn't walk? Right. So that's helpful. Well I'm just saying these things become almost controlling to the point that you're not growing spiritually. There you go. That's back to Donna's point that does it control you or not? Yeah. Do you have a master as a believer? Yeah, you do. Who is it? It's the Spirit of God.

Well, in physical things have to do with the body, which is going to die. The flesh. Yeah, and it's going to die. And if you're abiding in Christ and walking in the Spirit, pumping too much alcohol or smoke or something in your body, you keep it in shape so that it can perform to serve the Lord. And whatever gets in the way of that, goes now. I was just going to say that The Hungry Heart from two days ago, so September 11th, is spot on for all this. I won't take up your time with it, but if anybody wanted to check it out later, it just kind of puts all of this together.

Yeah, it is. You have no idea what I've been going through. Boy, am I glad. Well, you're going to hear about it. On Tuesday, I just found out about that. I can't believe that I've been in church all these years. I thought tithing was the law. It is a law, but not for you. Well, I thought it was one of the Ten Commandments. And then now, I find out that every time I do something wrong, I don't have to say, you know, Father, forgive me. I didn't mean that. And thank you for forgiving me. I mean, I was like, whoo, how do I?

It's wonderful, but then it's kind of scary. It's totally scary, because now you have to live under grace. What do you think? Yeah. But then you said a lot of people want to be seen, and that's, well, that's me. Because, and everybody knows that, because I always say something, but I'm trying to learn. But my background was theater. Did that make me a bad person? No, no, not at all. I mean, singing in theater, and at first you want to be seen, but then it comes down to something more than that, of being someone... I'll give you a good example.

You know who Steve Dyer is? He's in the church here. Steve Dyer is one of the best trumpet players you ever heard. And he decided, he put the trumpet down about six years ago. You know why he did it? It got in the way of his growth with the Lord. And he was involved in big Christian musicals at those mega churches all over the country. He'd write music and if you've ever, he's played here a few times. Amazing. But he hasn't picked up a trumpet in five or six years.

Because he, in his mind, It was in the way of what the Lord would have him do. Isn't that interesting? But the Lord gave him that talent in the beginning. So you want to talk about talent? So your mindset can be, I'm doing this to bring glory to myself, my accomplishments, or I can do it unto the Lord to bring Him glory. And it's all in the attitude. It's in the attitude, but you know what's interesting about bringing glory to the Lord?

I think you've got to get educated about that. I think you have to go through the process of learning what's of the Lord and what isn't of him. Otherwise, you're given, you know, it's these guys that say, Lord, we're going to do X, Y, Z, 55, 54, 53, and we're going to give you the credit. Really? The issue is that Do I live unto the Lord or don't I? And am I intelligent about it, spiritually intelligent about it, because I understand the identification truths. And as a resurrected person in the Lord Jesus Christ, is what I'm doing glorifying to Him and edifying to those around me?

If it's not, I don't do it. If it is, then I'm dependent on Him to do it through me. So I don't have to worry about taking credit for it. to even look at whether it's beneficial to somebody like let's say with Steve you know like maybe some people would have I don't know.

Some people might have been edified by what he did. It gets into a big analyzing thing. It's really simple. He was walking with the Lord and one day that's the conviction that he felt upon his heart and so he put it down. If that wasn't his conviction and he was still doing it, so be it. It's a matter of are you walking with the Lord through it. Exactly what it comes down to.

Does it control me or not? Right, and not noticing how it's affecting other people. I mean, you can be the pastor of a church and being the pastor controls you. You can be a Sunday school teacher and being a Sunday school teacher controls you. And you don't look at how it's affecting other people, you look at whether God is... But you depend on the Spirit of God to make it clear to you whether you're walking with Him or not.

That's His job. And you end up being dependent on him totally because, trust me, none of us are smart enough. Like another Hungry Heart this week that talked about the guy that's always smarter than you will control you. Do you remember how it goes, Donna? Oh yeah, it was another one of those Hungry Hearts where if you moved out of your position in Christ, then you were immediately vulnerable to anybody who was more clever than you. More clever than you are.

I'm sorry, I didn't hear all you said. I'll read it when I get home. Is it just recent? This last few days. It's like when we give a class on spiritually mature and spiritually weak believers, everybody in the class just naturally assumes they're the strong ones. Really? Really, that's what I say, really. Was that the second buzzer? We actually, without going through them, we did questions 3, 4, and 5 and we didn't get to 6. So Jim will be teaching next week. Let's close.

Dear Father, how we thank you for your grace. We thank you that you have already made provision for us to rest and abide and walk in your son. And that you've given us the spirit to enable that to happen. And our job is just to trust you and to rest by faith in all that you've already accomplished. And we thank you, Father. We pray in your son's precious name. Amen.