What do you believe in?  Here’s a quick test that will tell you exactly what you believe in:

What do you spend your money on?

What do you spend the majority of your time doing?

What do you think about the most?

Those things reveal where you put your faith and trust.  Belief is not an abstract concept or a claim that you make.  True faith and real belief are demonstrated by how you live your life every single day.  Do your all your thoughts and actions honor God or do they focus on worldly & fleshly things?

PS. I’m sorry about the sound quality on this one.  It’s pretty terrible.  You can hear it if you crank the volume, but it’s not recorded well at all.

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Jesus is Alive!  Do you believe it?  Do you REALLY believe it?

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Are you making opportunities to obey the Spirit and teach the world about who God is?  It’s kind of a big deal if you think about it.  If you’ve been saved by God, that means you were rescued from death–plucked from the fiery pit of Hell and turned from a wicked and sinful monster into a saint.  But Jesus didn’t sacrifice himself to turn you into a decoration (like the statues you see of dead people).  He gave his life so that you could have life, and then he said it’s your turn now!  Go into all the world and save some people!  Don’t waste the precious gift you’ve been given…spread it around.  There’s more than enough to go around.  God doesn’t want anybody to die without him.  If you’ve found God’s grace don’t hide it, divide it!

If you haven’t been saved, that means you’re still dead in your sins.  And you probably already know exactly what I’m talking about.  Your own conscience is probably telling you exactly what it is that is keeping you apart from a relationship with your Creator.  Today is the day of salvation.  Make the choice to leave your sins in the past and to start living for God, and you will find a life more amazing than anything you’ve ever known.  It’s not always easy.  In fact, Jesus guarantees that you’ll face persecution if you live life his way.  But it is so worth it!  To actually live in relationship to God and know his presence in your life outweighs all the troubles you could ever face.  And we haven’t even gotten to Heaven yet.  That’s the icing on the cake of a real relationship with Jesus!  Make the decision to find forgiveness and turn your life around and live by the awesome power of the Holy Spirit.  You won’t be disappointed!

PS. Thank you to NASA for a great title. 🙂

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You are what you eat.  I think it’s crazy how many different kinds of diet plans there are.  People will do some crazy things and spend some crazy money to lose weight and get in shape, when all they really have to do is eat less and be active more.  Every ounce of fat on your body, got there through your mouth.  But so many of us don’t want our stomachs and tongues to go without.  We keep hoping the diet pills and foods that replace fat with corn syrup will somehow magically turn us into the people we see in the magazines who starve themselves and take steroids.   And we do that in spite of the glaring common sense that simply cutting back on portions and going for a walk instead of watching TV will make more real impact than all the fads put together.

There’s another common sense thing lots of people ignore and that’s the requirement of God that we live holy lives by his power.  We are called by God to turn away from selfish desires and not be controlled by a hunger for immorality.  We are to be controlled by God’s Spirit and live the way he commands.  Jesus Christ gave his life on the cross as an atonement for our old, rotten, sinful choices.  But his grace is not just a technicality.  His gruesome death ought to be a terrible reminder of how painful and destructive your sin was so that you stop doing it and walk away from your old life and live as a new creation.  Christians aren’t called saints in the Bible just for fun.  We get that title for living righteous lives by the power of God’s Spirit.

So…whichever way you are living reveals what you truly believe.  You can make any claim you want about what you believe or don’t believe, but your real life choices you make (including the choices you make behind closed doors and in your own mind) expose the truth of what you have faith in.  If your faith is in the world, you will live life the way the world tells you to.  But if your faith is in God, you will actually do what he tells you and live life his way.  And if you say one thing and do another, you’re simply a hypocrite.

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So there are plenty of examples of bad churches in this world. We’ve all seen people who give God a bad name. They either teach things that are completely unbiblical or they lead people astray just for money or they are complete hypocrites teaching one thing and living another. It makes me so sad every time I hear of a pastor who got caught stealing from his church or sleeping around or doing drugs or anything like that because they are supposed to be the leaders of the church. But the pastor isn’t the only one who should be a good example. The church (the whole church) is supposed to be holy. That means Christians aren’t supposed to live like the rest of the world. They are supposed to have pure hearts and live righteous lives. By the power of God, they are supposed to be obeying his commandments–all of them. That’s what Jesus said proves who loves him…”Those who obey my commandments are the ones who love me” (John 14)

So what makes a good church is when the people who are members are living just like Jesus did. If you are a Christian, I challenge you to live like it. Read what Jesus tells you to do, and if you love him, obey him. If you aren’t a Christian, I challenge you to challenge your Christian friends to put up or shut up. If they don’t live out what they teach, point out their hypocrisy. If they do live out what they teach, then listen to them. They know what it means to have new life (to be “born again”) in Christ.

The reason I did this talk was because we welcomed a new member to our church that day, and I just thought it was a nice chance to talk about what it means to be part of a church.

Enjoy!

PS. I gave this talk when it was snowing outside, and it totally reminded me of a Bible verse about snow. You know how clean and sparkly everything looks after a fresh snowfall. The Bible says no matter how gross and nasty our past looks, God can make our heart look as clean and pure as newly fallen snow. We have to choose to stop living with evil in our lives and start obeying God, but when we do, God says you get a fresh start. Isn’t that cool?! Check it out in Isaiah chapter 1.

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Jesus made a lot of claims about himself, and backed up his words with his actions.  On top of that a lot of the things we know about Jesus come through the prophesies that were fulfilled by him–how and where he was born, how he lived, how he died, and even coming back to life.  So the Bible is pretty clear about who Jesus is.

Now, thinking about all the different people who claim to believe in Jesus or to be his followers, can you really believe in Jesus if you don’t believe all the things that he said about himself or if your opinions about who you claim to follow don’t match up with the facts of Scripture?

In Matthew 7, Jesus said that on Judgment Day many people will claim to know him and will claim to have done great works in his name, but Jesus will say “Go away, I never knew you.”  The sad thing is it’s obviously religious people who will be making that claim because they will be telling of all the things they did for Jesus.  So just claiming to know Jesus and doing religious stuff won’t get you into Heaven.

I don’t know about you, but that’s a big motivator for me to make sure I know Jesus for real, for who he claims to be, and to focus on doing what he wants me to do and not just various religious acts.  Lots of people talk about having a relationship with Jesus.  Clearly having a relationship is more than just knowing somebody’s name or doing things in someones name.  So common sense would say, if you want a relationship with Jesus, don’t repeat some empty prayer and expect that will save you, but learn about who he is from what he said.  Then if you’re really willing to invest your life in a real relationship and maintain ongoing communication and caring (like you would for any other real life, love relationship), when Judgment Day comes, Jesus will recognize you and not have to say “Go away, I never knew you.”

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Jesus.  There’s something about that name.  To some it’s a name to be honored and respected.  To others, it’s fodder for cursing.  Lots of people claim to know who Jesus is, but there are tons of different opinions about him.  So how do you figure out who’s right?  How do you filter through all the opinions and get to the real Jesus?  And when you do, what difference does it make to you?  Does knowing the real Jesus make any difference to your everyday, real life?

PS. This talk is, kind of, a response to another talk that I had already come up with.  But I shared this talk (the second talk) first.  That’s why it’s labeled “part 2 – kind of.”  And I’ll post the first talk that I came up with next time.

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