Introduction
Let me begin with a discipleship question: how will you follow Jesus in prayer and dependence on God this week?
Main Points
In this lesson shaped by Calvary Boise's teaching on LOVE CHANGES EVERYTHING: Three Vital Signs of Spiritual Life, Christ invites us to receive truth with humility, practice repentance, and walk in faithful obedience.
Faith and Obedience
We've been for the last couple weeks studying a series in 1st Corinthians chapter 13 if you turn there now called love changes everything. And we're gonna come down to the very final aspect of this chapter which is a really useful thing to think about the thing.
- That were the season that we're celebrating is that God so loved the world he sent his son and we're gonna consider what that.
- Means for our own lives now this morning and to do that I'm gonna actually go up a verse beyond the before the one.
- We study this morning to give us a little bit of context and remind us where we came from last week so read along.
- With me starting in verse 12 first Corinthians chapter 13 starting in verse 12 reading to the end of the chapter says this for.
Now we see in a mirror dimly but then face to face now I know in part but then I shall know just as. I also am known and now abide Faith Hope Love these three but the greatest of these is love verse 12 is really an.
Faith and Obedience
Your Christian life faith hope and love I've titled the message three vital signs of spiritual life and this is a good time to. Be thinking about the most important things because we are coming to another turn of the calendar where we're ending one year we're beginning.
- A new one it's a great time to do inventory of your life what mattered from 2019 what will matter moving forward and this.
- Is a reminder from God's Word that really he calls you to live simply in the vitality of faith hope and love the faith.
- The trust that you put in God the hope the expectations of the promises of God to be fulfilled in your life and the.
- Love that God has poured into your hearts by the power of your Holy Spirit that you freely receive to return a love back.
To him and then to love one another that is the vitality of your life and I think about how we understand this spiritual. Importance of these three things by and also understanding wherever God gives us a lesson about our spiritual lives he also gives us a.
Grace and Justification
When we feel overwhelmed by the busyness of this season that can get complicated because parents there's pageants and there's decorations for families that. Want to do that and there's gifts and there's all sorts of parties that you can go to and you have to go to.
- The trap of the mall to kind of go in sometimes or you can go over to the villagio or the village as some.
- Of you call it and you can go to all those places and it can feel burdensome and sometimes what you need to do.
- Is just stop whatever you're doing as you feel the burden and breathe it's true of your own life that you can step outside.
- And get fresh air and that's good for you and that can solve some of the burden and it's also true if you live.
In a household like mine we use the term hangry are you familiar with this term sometimes you can go through life and you. See you seem do you feel like everything is in trouble and everything that someone says to you just hits you the wrong way.
Family Discipleship
Scripture teaches us how to do things is by reminding us what not to do it's in place of something that's bad for your. Life got wants to give you something that's good for your life and again I have an illustration of the way that we learn.
- Sometimes how to do things is by remembering what not to do because as some of you know recently I was not behind the.
- Pulpit because I took some rest with my family in the in the islands of Hawaii we went to Maui and we were able.
- To rest on the beach and just be a alone as a family it was so refreshing and as part of that journey I.
- Saw someone in a parking lot outside of a beach area that was putting some duct tape around an oxygen take and I rushed.
Up to him and I asked him if he was going on a dive but he was a scuba diver and he said yes. And then he invited me to come and I told my wife this is something I love to do and I haven't been able.
Faith and Obedience
Get into some major trouble now the same thing is true of your physic or your spiritual life as pressure comes into your spiritual. Life there will be something that tries to come to get you to hold your breath to get you to stop having faith to.
- Get you to lose your hope or become hopeless and to get you to lose sight of the main commandment of your life the.
- Design of your being which is to love God and so we're gonna learn this or be reminded of this or receive it maybe.
- For the first time this morning is not only by looking at what these things are but also what they keep us from so.
- I want to point out the three enemies of your spiritual life the three things that will try to get you to hold your.
Breath when the pressure gets tight so that you don't have faith and you don't have hope and you've lost your love so look. At the three enemies of faith hope and love and then we're gonna look at the answer and I think the answer is actually.
Faith and Obedience
Calling you to be there will be a tension that you face and that tension is seen throughout the scripture with anyone who receives. A call from God for something to believe in a plan to walk in something that God says you have to trust me and.
- One of the ways we can see that tension is in the story that we'll all be thinking about in celebrating not long from.
- Now on Christmas morning which is Mary and the call on her life to be the chosen one that guy set aside to bring.
- The savior in sin the world look what happens in Luke chapter 1 as we get the history of the Christmas story Luke chapter.
- 1 verse 30 says this do not be afraid Mary for you have found favor with God and behold you will conceive in your.
Womb and bring forth a son and shall call his name Jesus we have walked into with these two verses the tension of faith. For every single one of us that are being called to follow God which is all of us and that is God is going.
Faith and Obedience
Maybe it will help you because it starts to defuse the lies that fear wants to tell you there's an acronym that actually uses. The word fear f.e.a.r and here's how it goes fear your fear is false expectations appearing real you've got ideas about what the future.
- Might hold and those ideas can turn south very quickly and those false expectations will tell you all of the things that could go.
- Wrong as if they're true but they're not here's another way to understand it when we use the word fear we're talking about variety.
- Of emotions a variety of things that you think and actually behaviors that follow fear that goes so far beyond this one word and.
- So I want to share a couple of those synonyms emotions and actions with you because I love feeling that most of us in.
This sanctuary right now will be able to relate to some of these by-product words of fear so this is from the emotional wheel. Psychology 101 and emotion that will lead to another thing in your life and this is what it looks like for fear I will.
Conclusion
We return to the opening teaching: discipleship is not just information, it is transformation through faith and obedience to Jesus. If we receive His Word and walk it out, He will shape us into people who endure and bear fruit.
Lord Jesus, help me hear Your Word, obey it with faith, and grow as Your disciple. Amen.
Conclusion
We return to the opening teaching: discipleship is not just information, it is transformation through faith and obedience to Jesus. If we receive His Word and walk it out, He will shape us into people who endure and bear fruit.
Closing Prayer
Lord Jesus, help me hear Your Word, obey it with faith, and grow as Your disciple. Amen.