Don't Be A Lazy Christian

Real life presents the Jack Hibb's podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture. Don't be sloppy for 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. You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to jackhibs.com slash 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 Hibb's. 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? 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 and verse, or I should say page six. This is, there's only one 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 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. 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 to take care of me. What I'm supposed to be concerned about is what you eat and how you live. I just 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. That love goes both ways. The church conducted 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. The final thing is this. We do the acts of the Holy Spirit. 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. And verse 11, we are to be doing the acts of the Holy Spirit. 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 for 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. 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 is the problem. My body is my problem. My body thinks it's in charge all the time. It always tries to take the lead. And you have to tell me, 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 an hour. The body. We're supposed to bring our body under obedience to the Lord. We'd all be doing fun right now. Think about it. A friend of mine. He was a pastor of a church. This is 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 because I'm a 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? What's supposed to happen? Ministry. There wouldn't be ministry if there wasn't people. Because people listen, 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. 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. Please, I've been challenging you. 5 a.m. What are you doing at 5 a.m. in the morning? Whatever you're doing. Your body's saying, hmm, so warm. I'm, 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, it's only 5 to 10 minutes. People are praying. We've had up to 250,000 people praying together. And that's growing. You had to join us. We're live all around the world. 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. Well, I'm a pastor. You mean 5 p.m. You meant to say 5 p.m. That's too late. Not really. It depends on where you live in the world. But for us, it's 5 a.m. And I'm inviting to join us. But that's the sacrifice. Exactly. Make your body cry about it. Drag your carcass along. Come on. You know it's true. That's why you got to put perfume on it. It's dying. It smells if you don't do something with it. And the Bible says here that we're to be to be fervent and 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 for an 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 of blaze, hearts of glow 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? What? At least the Jews when they go to the whaling wall. Have you ever been there? Have you ever seen them? They're going like this. I'll never forget it. It was like I think it was like 1993 or 1994. My first time in Israel and the Jews are praying like this. And I didn't know. 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 a mirror. It was a mirror. A mirror was a mirror. He was like that big back then. He's so just young a mirror and they said, what's the deal with that? And he goes, he said, it's them expressing that they're loving the Lord with all their strength. And so they move. Now, if it's religiously done, it's just the lower back exercise. Right? It could be like the oil well movement. It doesn't mean anything. But if they mean it, it changes everything. So when someone might be worshiping like this, you know, you might come into this church, a non-denominational church is 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 him 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 and knock yourself out. Just leave him alone. How 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? 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. Serve in the Lord. So we have to be hot. I'm going to show you something. I'm going to show you the verse first. Book a revelation, chapter three again. Jesus said, into the angel of the church at Leodicea, you do not want to be a Leodicean 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 Leodicea is not even a Christian church. I think it's fake. I think it's a church 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 Leodicean Christian because that is not going to work. And do the angel of the church at Leodicea is right. 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 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, is he, 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 lukewarm, I'm going to puke. Wow. The old King James, by the way, it's so, it's so appropriate. The old King James says, I'll spew you out of my mouth. 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, that's the word Jesus is using. Vomit out. I'm sick. Why is this the case? I knew you had asked. So, do you see Leo to see a number one on the map? This is Turkey, Asia Minor. And the region of your first century, Frijia. Do you see number two, Hieropolis? See that at the top? And do you see the city of Colossi? Number three. So I want you to look at 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 Leodicea. It's in a valley. The likeus valley. The likeus river flows through that valley. Hieropolis, in fact, European physicians and Middle East physicians will write a prescription to their patient to travel to Hieropolis 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? Then look at the city of Colossi. Colossi 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 Colossi comes ice cold water in people traveled 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 recalled. I could be refreshed by you. Or I wish you were hot. I could be ministered to by you. Those two locations flow down. And when those locations of the hot water hit the likeus river and the cold water from Colossi hits the likeus river. Just moments downstream as a town called Leodicea. And the water is lukewarm. And if you drink it, you will throw up. You will vomit and makes you very sick to your stomach. It has agents within it that actually induces vomiting. Here you are reading your 2000 year old Bible that Jesus talked about two geographical locations all come in together to one specific geographical location. And if you drink the water there, you're going to puke. 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 is watch out. Don't ever forget this picture. This is powerful. Be hot for God. Or be refreshing to the Lord. 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