Don't Be A Lazy Christian

00:00 - Speaker 1 Real Life presents the Jack Hibbs Podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture. 00:09 - Speaker 2 Don't be sloppy. You've heard somebody say don't be sloppy with your agape. Don't be sloppy with the love of God in your life, don't become lazy. The word would be this don't be a lazy Christian would be this Don't be a lazy Christian. 00:30 - Speaker 1 You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to jackhibbs.com/podcast today. If this podcast lifts you up and encourages you to live a more fulfilled life in Christ, then make sure you leave us one of those five-star ratings. To us that's like saying amen or yes. Then that rating will encourage others to listen. Now open your hearts to what God's word has to say to you. Here is Jack Hibbs. 00:55 - Speaker 2 We are to be working together as a body of believers, and it's quite beautiful. I wrote this down. How do you treat others in your life by the words and the deeds coming out of your life? How do you treat others in your life by the words and the deeds coming out of your life? Notice, it's the words and the deeds that come out of our life. Quite remarkable. I wrote this also to myself as a note. I should say page six. 01:17 It says there's only one way that I know of to have this be a reality in my life, and it is to intentionally neglect myself. If I believe that he is taking care of me. Church, listen, do you? Do I believe that God is taking care of me? Do you believe that God is taking care of you? Then if I believe that, if he's taking care of me, then I can focus on others, then I can intentionally neglect myself. I don't have to take care of me. Do you have that? I am called to take care of you. You're called to take care of me because he has promised to take care of me and he's promised to take care of you. Do you see the circuit? He's the pioneer, he's the one that takes care of us. 02:07 So here's the fun thing about being a Christian I don't have to worry about what I'm going to eat. He'll get something to me. I don't have to worry about where I'm going to live. He's promised he'll take care of me. What I'm supposed to be concerned about is what you eat and how you live. Listen, I don't say my job. I ask God to forgive me of even thinking that my calling, my purpose, is to make sure that you're okay, that you're eating well and that you're safe, and that love goes both ways. The church should conduct itself in such a way that the world ought to knock down these doors to get in here and say scoot over everybody, love me too. It's amazing. And the final thing is this we do the acts of the Holy Spirit. We do the acts of the Father. We do the acts of the Father. It is the Father who communicated His love to us through Jesus. Jesus communicated His love toward others by being our prototype, our pioneer. The book of Hebrews calls Him the author and the finisher of our faith. He's awesome. And then, thirdly, it's the Holy Spirit. In verse 11, we are to be doing the acts of the Holy Spirit. 03:28 Look at it with me Not lagging in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord? I'm going to be honest with you guys. Note in your Bible, some of your Bibles have fervent in spirit with a lowercase s. Some of your Bibles have an uppercase s. Uppercase s, of course, meaning the Holy Spirit. I'm going to let the theologians argue about which meaning it is. There's great guys on both sides. To me it's irrelevant it. Is this Not lagging in this diligence? Is this Don't be sloppy. 04:04 You've heard somebody this don't be sloppy. You've heard somebody say don't be sloppy with your agape, don't be sloppy with the love of God in your life, don't become lazy. The word would be this don't be a lazy Christian. And this is a big deal in our day and age right now. I think this is part of the satanic drug that is floating in the atmosphere, where you're starting to see people right in the midst of battle. I mean everybody. Do you realize we're in an amazing battle time, spiritually speaking? There's people falling asleep right in the middle of the battlefield. Satan's just putting them to sleep. 04:47 One of the things is laziness, spiritual laziness. You know we're supposed to bring our bodies. You know our bodies. Oh, my body, my body. Your body's the problem, my body's my problem. My body thinks it's in charge. All the time it always tries to take the lead and you have to tell it get back here, sit down, let's go to a prayer meeting. My body says no way, I don't want to sit there. You ever heard that I don't want to sit there? Well then, we'll kneel, kneel On knees. No, we're going to go. How long? An hour, an hour. And your body thinks up all kinds of stupid things. You can do it in an hour. The body. We're supposed to bring our body under obedience to the Lord. We'd all be doing fine right now. Think about it. 05:44 A friend of mine he was a pastor of a church, this was decades ago he said I love the ministry, I love studying, I love preparing sermons, and he was actually dead serious. And he's just talking about this. He goes. But man, I'm really struggling. I go. What are you struggling with? He goes, it's the people. And he didn't even see it, he didn't even realize it. He goes, the people, everything's fine, until I basically go public and be a pastor. And then all the drama starts and I said are you for real? Right now, it's supposed to happen Ministry. There wouldn't be ministry if there wasn't people, because people listen. 06:29 We move in our flesh, and that's the problem. But our flesh can get lazy, and what the warning is here is don't become a lazy Christian. Oh, oh, oh. I'll read next week what's that? I'll do that next week. Have you noticed that somebody who says I'll do that tomorrow? Did you know that if you live by that, I'll do it tomorrow? Did you know that you'll never do it Because it's always tomorrow? You ever think about that. I'll take care of that tomorrow. And you keep saying that it's always tomorrow. It'll never get done. So lazy, for example, I'm telling you right now Lazy, I've been challenging you 5 am. 07:23 - Speaker 1 What are you doing at? 07:23 - Speaker 2 5 am in the morning. Whatever you're doing, your body's saying oh, it's so warm. Your body's like I'm fine, don't bother me. And I'm saying to you make yourself hurt, set your alarm, get up, join me, live, listen, there's. It's only five to 10 minutes. People are praying. We've had up to 250,000 people praying together and that's growing. You ought to join us. We're live all around the world. 08:00 We go through a verse which is the structure of our prayer and in 10 minutes we're off and we're praying and people are posting their prayers and people are praying for each other all over the world. Pastor, you mean 5 pm. You meant to say 5 pm. That's too late, not really. It depends on where you're living in the world, but for us it's 5 am and I'm inviting you to join us. But that's a sacrifice Exactly. Make your body cry about it. Drag your carcass along, come on. You know it's true. That's why you gotta put perfume on it. It's dying, it smells if you don't do something with it. 08:45 And the Bible says here that we're to be fervent in spirit. Hot the word fervent is boiling hot in the spirit serving the Lord. Can you imagine You're supposed to be hot? That doesn't mean crazy, but your heart is to be boiling, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord. Hear that machine gun. Theology of Paul's coming at you, isn't it beautiful? And we're supposed to have hot hearts, blazing hearts, hearts ablaze, hearts aglow serving the Lord. Nothing worse. Listen, people, you know this. There's nothing worse than to show up for ministry or to go to a church, and the people that serve their hearts are not hot for Jesus. They come out and they go like this hey, let's praise the Lord. I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever. Let's shout hallelujah. You know what I'm saying? It's like what is this? At least the Jews, when they go to the wailing wall. Have you ever been there? Have you ever seen them? They're going like this. I'll never forget it. I think it was like 1993 or 1994, my first time in Israel and the Jews are praying like this. 10:02 And I didn't know, you weren't supposed to talk to them, I mean not when they're praying, but when they walked away. This particular group of Jews, they don't talk to Gentiles and I didn't know and I said, hey, excuse me, and they're like. I said what are you guys moving for? It's pretty amazing. And they just like, and I asked Amir, it was Amir. Amir was Amir. He was like that big back then. He's so Just young Amir. And I said what's the deal with that? And he goes. He said it's it's them expressing that they're loving the Lord with all their strength. And so they move. 10:48 Now, if it's religiously done, it's just a lower back exercise. Right, it could be like the oil well movement. It doesn't mean anything. But if they mean it, that changes everything. What if they mean it, that changes everything. 11:08 So when someone might be worshiping like this, you know you might come into this church. It's a non-denominational church. It's like what is that person's hands up? What are they doing? Well, I don't know where they came from, but that's the way they're worshiping the Lord. Just leave them alone. Well, that guy's over there kneeling down, that's his thing. Leave him alone. Well, I just want to stand there. Go ahead, knock yourself out, just leave him alone. Are you hearing me? Because you know what? If we right now got in an airplane and we went to Nairobi, let me tell you, even the black people in this church would look really white because, man, have you seen how they worship the Lord? Even the black people in this church would look really white Because, man, have you seen how they worship the Lord? They're worshiping Jesus like this man. And we're like, oh, how can they do that? Is that legal? And wherever you plant your flag, so to speak, spiritually, on any continent, of any people group, it's different. And I think God loves it, I think he loves it, I think he loves it Serving the Lord. So we have to be hot. 12:18 I'm going to show you something. I'm going to show you the verse first, book of Revelation, chapter three. Again, Jesus said unto the angel of the church at Laodicea you do not want to be a Laodicean kind of Christian. I personally believe I have a pretty hard view on this. I must admit, very few people hold my view. I believe the church at Laodicea is not even a Christian church. I think it's fake. I think it's a church. 12:40 That Jesus is saying is not a church. If you read it, he's on the outside of it trying to knock on the door to get inside of it. It doesn't even have a handle on the door. They don't even want him in. And I'm only going to read you a part of it. But just make sure you are not a Laodicean Christian, because that is not going to work and to the angel of the church of Laodiceans right. These things says the amen, the faithful and true witness. And the angel of the church at Laodiceans write these things says the amen, the faithful and true witness in the beginning of the creation of God. I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish that you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of my mouth because you say I'm rich, I've become wealthy and I have need of nothing, and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked. This is. 13:36 Jesus talking Wow, don't be like this. So notice, Jesus says in verse 16, I wish you were cold or I wish you were hot. If you're a careful Bible reader, you will discover that being hot is really pleasing to Jesus and being cold is really pleasing to Jesus. Did you know that, again, we westernize things and mess it up? The bad thing is lukewarm. You got it. Jesus said I wish you were cold. What's he saying? Is he wishing? What's he wishing upon them? That they were cold, ice cold, is that good? Oh, just wait, it's wonderful. Or I wish you were hot, boiling, wonderfully hot. Well, that I can relate to. Lukewarm. Nobody likes lukewarm, nothing. And Jesus says notice, this is going to mean something to you. In a second. He says because you're lukewarm, I'm going to puke, wow, wow. The old King James, by the way, it's so appropriate. The old King James says I'll spew you out of my mouth. 14:50 Every guy knows when a guy vomits, he pukes. When a girl vomits, she spews Like it's. Oh, look at her. A guy is like ah, that's the word Jesus is using Vomit out, I'm sick. Why is this the case? I knew you would ask. 15:15 So do you see Laodicea, number one on the map. This is Turkey, asia Minor and the region of your first century, phrygia. Do you see number two, hierapolis? See that at the top. And do you see the city of Colossae? Number three. So I want you to look at it this way Keep looking at the map, but allow the topography to do this for you. Number two and number three are the higher elevations. Okay, the higher elevations. The lowest elevation is Laodicea. It's in a valley, the Lycus Valley. The Lycus River flows through that valley, hierapolis. In fact, european physicians and Middle East physicians will write a prescription to their patient to travel to hierapolis to take mineral baths in the hot water, because it's very, very therapeutic, still to this day. Don't look at it now, but look at it on youtube. It's beautiful. We should go sometime as a church tour of the seven letters to the seven churches, all right. 16:25 Then look at the city of Colossae. Colossae is in the foothills below the great mountains that capture ice, cold snow. Of course, snow being ice, it percolates down into the mountain and out at Colossae comes ice cold water, and people travel from all over the region to bottle the ice cold water that comes out, and they say that it's incredibly powerfully. What's the word, revitalizing the minerals. And it's cold and you can be refreshed. Jesus said I wish you were cold, I could be refreshed by you, or I wish you were hot, I could be ministered to by you. 17:09 Those two locations flow down and when those locations of the hot water hit the Lycus River and the cold water from Colossae hits the Lycus River, just moments downstream is a town called Laodicea and the water is lukewarm and if you drink it you will throw up. You will vomit. It makes you very sick to your stomach. It has agents within it that actually induces vomiting. Here you are reading your 2,000-year-old Bible that Jesus talked about Two geographical locations all coming together to one specific geographical location and if you drink the water there, you're gonna puke. 17:54 Can you imagine going to a church that's dead and you want to throw up? It's. There's no moving of the spirit, there's no word of God. Jesus is not exalted. There is no cross, there's no sin that he died for to free you from by him saving you. There's no life after death. And Jesus says watch out, don't ever forget this picture. This is powerful. Be hot for God or be refreshing to the Lord, whatever you do, or be refreshing to the Lord, whatever you do, do not be an average run-of-the-mill Sunday religious individual. 18:38 - Speaker 1 This Jack Hibbs podcast, as well as all the broadcast outreach opportunities, are listener-supported. Will you consider partnering with us through a special gift? Go to jackhibbs.com to learn more and stay connected.