Father, thank you for being gracious to us. Thank you for meeting us in surprising ways. Thank you for all the testimonies that prove that you’re real, that you’re living and active, you’re present. you’re with us, you’re in us, the hope of glory. Thank you for meeting me personally through all the sharings of the brothers and sisters. How precious those testimonies are in your sight. I pray that you would receive all of our words, all of our prayers, all of our singing.
I pray that this message, you would receive it, Lord. Speak to us as we close out this service in Jesus’ Name, Amen.
Yeah, I had a difficult week just wrestling with myself. Nothing bad happened, just myself. So, thankful for all the testimonies. Thank you, thank you. Thank you, Stephanie especially. Her testimony moved me because that encounter is so precious. Encounter with Jesus is so precious. That’s all you really need in life.
And tomorrow, if you have that same encounter, that’s all you need for tomorrow.
Think of how different our lives would be if that’s just a regular occurrence. There are four types of people in this world: people who never met Jesus. I was that way for 19 years, although I grew up in the church, 19 years. I didn’t know who Jesus was.
Then one Sunday, around November 1993, I met Jesus as a college student. It’s as if this one spotlight was upon me and I heard the shepherd’s voice. I came forward. I gave my life to Jesus. And that was the beginning.
I wish I could testify that that was smooth sailing and a blessing from there, but it wasn’t. For the next 20 years, I think I fell into the second group of people, people who meet Jesus once, but their theology tells them, that’s enough. And just go on with your life and be busy in the church.
And that’s how I spent the next 20 years in that second group. And in the last decade or so, I think I’ve been in a third group, trying to get into the fourth group.
Third group being people who have the language and the vocabulary that meeting Jesus every day is the right direction and is the focus. But still, although that was in my vocabulary, I was not meeting him regularly as I should. Something was not going well.
And occasionally, I would be in this fourth group, people who meet Jesus regularly in a proper way, and Jesus is definitely present and he is shining forth and I am changing. Churchgoers, people who have never met Jesus. There are so many scriptures about this.
I’ll just read one of them, 2 Timothy 3:1.
1 But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. 2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, 4 treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. 6 For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, 7 always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. (2 Timothy 3:1-7, ESV)
Then, just jumping down to verse 12.
12 Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, 13 while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. (2 Timothy 3:12-13, ESV)
Unfortunately, these verses describe many in the body of Christ, people who are pretenders, people who are churchgoers, but never encountering Jesus in any meaningful way. They are always learning a lot of Bible knowledge, but never able to arrive at a proper encounter, a knowledge of the truth.
And maybe it was good at some point, but gradually it is trending in.
A negative direction, from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. So, how do we consistently meet Jesus and be changed by Jesus? Isn’t that what we’re all after? We’re not after perfect church attendance and busyness. That’s why we’re here in Bellflower.
But I’m very, maybe it can be perceived as slow to move. I don’t want to get busy for the sake of being busy. I want to make sure we’re doing the right things, the right people are doing it.
We’re changing because the worst deception would be at the end of our lives, we gave our lives to church, and then Jesus says, “I don’t know you.” How tragic that would be. So, we need to get the order right. We need to meet Jesus. And then, upon his charge, when it’s time, when we’re ready, to go and make disciples of all nations.
So, how do we get there? I think we all have the vocabulary, at least those who’ve been attending our church for some time. We have the vocabulary.
We know going to church is not it. Attendance is not it. Serving is not it. We also know that just because we had a very sincere encounter several decades ago, that is not enough to hang everything upon.
Because we’ve been there, we did that, and we thought church, ministry, and that was where our focus should be. And then we look back on our lives and we say, “Where’s Jesus? How come people don’t see Jesus in me? How come I’m still Ray?”
And so, we don’t want to fall into that trap again.
So, how do we consistently meet Jesus regularly in a proper way and have Jesus shine forth? I think the Good Friday, Resurrection Sunday is the pattern for the Christian life. It is Good Friday, death to self, and being buried with Christ, that’s our baptism, going underwater. And then, when you come out of the water, you’re raised in the newness of life.
That pattern of death to life must be ours. It must be the pattern for us to have a chance at the end of our lives to look anything like Jesus.
So, whatever is re, whatever is me, whatever is self-centered, whatever is proud, whatever is harsh, whatever is moody, whatever is irritable, all these things that can describe us before we knew Christ, we die to those things. We crucify them on a cross, we confess them to the Lord Jesus, and we bring our fallenness, our flesh to Jesus, and we ask Jesus, “Can you do something with this?” And he does. It says in Matthew 11, he takes it from us and then he gives us himself, his very nature.
And that transfer, that exchange, is the Christian life: death to yourself, alive to Christ, putting off all that was you in the past, putting on Jesus, putting on Christ. I have all these other verses, but I think that pretty much sums it up. That pretty much sums it up, and I pray that all of us can have many encounters the way that Stephanie had that encounter this past week.
That’s a good day. That will take all of the fogginess and the confusion of decades. In a moment, you meet Jesus, everything makes sense.
And then if you have another occurrence like that, another encounter like that, the next day, then we know that that’s the direction we should be going. Dying to everything, forgetting what lies behind, straining toward what is ahead. What is ahead is a life with Jesus forever, and a life of becoming like Jesus little by little. Let’s put to death the old you, the old me. Let’s come alive to Jesus by bringing him all of our nature. Ask him for his nature. And that exchange is the Christian life.
Okay, let’s pray.
Father, all of us, we fell into the first category. We were born into sin. Category of people who never met Jesus. We were born that way. We were cut off from Christ and from God due to our sins.
But along the way, Jesus, you are the good shepherd. You came looking for your lost sheep. You found us one by one.
And Lord, perhaps we fell into the second group. We met Jesus once, but we stopped pursuing you. We pursued ministry, we pursued things in this world, and again, we became lost.
Lord, you had mercy upon all of us in the last decade or so. The message that you’ve given to us has shifted. Now, we know that Jesus is it. And an encounter with Jesus is what we pursue each day.
But Father, forgive us that even this, we get wrong. We don’t die to our flesh. We don’t die to our old nature. We don’t come to you. We don’t bring ourselves to you sufficiently enough, and days and weeks and even years go by, and we’re still struggling with the same things.
Father, we want to, from this day forward, put to death on a daily basis our old nature. We want to bring it, our soulishness, our brokenness, our fallenness, our character flaws, our idolatries, our sins. We want to bring each of them to you, Lord Jesus.
When we’re tempted to sin, we want to bring these temptations to you, Lord Jesus. These inclinations in us that are not right, we bring it to you, Lord Jesus, even before we fall.
So that one by one, Lord, you can take away these things as we put them off one by one. We put on Christ, his nature. We pray that you would change us as we learn to encounter you, fellowship with you, stay close to you. Death to life. This is the Christian life. Lord, we want to experience what we celebrated last weekend on a daily basis, that we’re dead to our old nature. We’re alive to Jesus Christ. May he come forward more and more. May we decrease as John the Baptist confessed. May we all decrease.
May you increase, Lord Jesus, Christ in us. May you come out more and more. May you shine forth more and more as the days and the years go by. May people see Jesus in us, Lord. That they may be drawn to Jesus and to be saved. Lord, when it’s the right time, give us a strategy to reach Bellflower, to reach all of Southern California, to reach all of California, to reach the United States, to reach all the world for Christ. Lord, when it’s time, Lord, send us out.
May you raise up workers for the harvest field. We don’t know when it will be. We don’t know who you will send among us. But Lord, we want to be a people that are fully surrendered. When it’s time to go, we want to be ready. Thank you, Lord. We pray that you minister to us as we celebrate this new covenant. Lord, we want to remember what you did by dying on a cross, by being raised to the new life. Thank you for this new covenant through your blood. We celebrate it. Every Sunday. It’s that important.
Thank you. Lord, we give you all the praise and glory for all that you’re doing in our midst. In Jesus name we pray, Amen.
