Some of you aren’t going to like what I say today.  I’m going to press hard today, even as God has pressed hard on me recently.  My hope is that in hammering a bit today you would not be broken, but as a precious metal is refined and purified by fire and by hammering out impurities, our souls also would see our own impurities today clearly so that we can be refined, purified by the all consuming fire of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

2 Corinthians 13:5 – “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!”  

When was the last time you sat down, turned the TV off, and spent time honestly examining your life to see if it lined up with God’s Word and His will for you?  Admittedly, there have been times in my own life when I have gotten so far off track, that when I finally stopped to “look at myself in the mirror” so to speak, I didn’t even recognize the person I was looking at.  I knew the gospel, I could recite scripture, but what did my actions say about what my heart truly valued?  Was I living for myself or was I living to worship my God and Savior?  I’ve been there, so if you find yourself asking yourself these questions and honestly saying – I’ve really been living for myself with God as an afterthought, know that there is grace and mercy from God for you.  It is the love of God that reveals our failings to us, so that we can truly repent and follow after Jesus where true life and peace is found.

How do we examine ourselves?  We’ll start easy.  How do you feel about money and how do you spend it?  Your answer is generally a pretty good indication of what you value.  Matthew 6:24 – “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”  Is money a tool for you to purchase comfort and pleasure, or is it a tool to grow the Kingdom of God and worship His value above all things?  People get hung up on a 10% tithe, if they tithe at all (really if you add up all the tithing in the old testament the number was closer to 25%), but God makes no such claims to a % tithe in the New Testament.  Why?  Because it’s all His.  100% of your money is God’s – He has given it to you to steward as a means of worship and joy.  If you only see it as a means to pursue comfort and pleasure, what does that say about how you value Jesus?  Everything in the Old Testament was pointing towards Jesus, and He summarizes all of the laws of the Old Testament when questioned by in Matthew 22:34-40 – “ But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.  “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”  And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”  Does how you view money and how you spend your money reflect that you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind?  If so, your giving to grow the Kingdom of God will be a source of great worship and joy for you whether that is 1% or 90%.  If how you spend money does not reflect that, what is it that is taking the place of God?

Second, take time to think about and honestly answer these questions:  What do I love?  What do I think about when I have spare time?  What occupies a majority of my “free time”?  What thing in my life am I pursuing right now?  What would I be devastated about, if it did not happen in my life?  Maybe that’s marriage, maybe that’s a new job, maybe that’s a child, maybe that’s more money, maybe it’s a good family life.  If you are pursuing those things and hoping that God will “make it right” after you have neglected pursuing Him above all else along the way, you are fooling yourself.  Not only will you not have the blessing of God in whatever you accomplish, you very well could lose your soul along the way.  Instead of gaining a blessing in your life and in your fellowship with God, you will lose both.  Jesus says this in Matthew 10:37-38 – “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.  And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”

Jesus is after our hearts.  In Ezekiel 36:26 we are told – “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.”  If Jesus Christ is in you, you have a heart that is able to follow Him – to reject living for yourself, and submit to following Jesus.  He loves you.  He died for you.  Trust Him.  That is what true saving faith IS.  We are so easily deceived, but God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, to give us eyes to see the surpassing value of our Lord and Savior above all things.  No one is coming out of this message clean.  If you are honest with yourself you’re going to have come up with some things in your life that God is calling you to lay down, and doing so may be very difficult for you.  My exhortation is to set your eyes above, fixate and meditate on the depth of our sin and the worth of our Lord Jesus.  We are not our own, we were bought with a price, His own shed blood – absorbing the wrath of our infinitely Holy God to redeem us.  Trust Him.  Stop trying to live for yourself and simply live for Him and trust that as a loving Father He will give you what is good for you in the right timing.

Hosea 6:1-3 – “Come, let us return to the Lord; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.  After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him.  Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.”  

Grace and Peace,

Adam