Live: Jesus Christ Is The Only Life To Live

Real Life presents the Jack Hibbs Podcast, with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints, and impact our culture. And people will say something like this, I don't want religion. Oh, I don't either, friend. We're not talking religion here. We're talking about he, the Bible said, would come, be born in Bethlehem, live a perfect life, fulfill all the requirements of the law, then die on the cross for my sins, but on the third day be resurrected from the dead who ascended back to heaven and said, if you believe in me, you'll live forever. And if you believe in me, you'll be born again. And someday I'm going to come back for you or for the whole bunch of yous. I'm going to come back and pick you up. You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to jackhibbs.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 Hibbs. You and I, in our lives, we need help. Can we just come to that grip right now? I need help. I'm going to say it for you, even though you might be, so I'm not going to admit it. I'll admit it for you. We all need help. We all need help. We're humans. We need help. In fact, listen to this. I read this the other day in what is known as the positive psychology.com website. And it says, Positive psychology explores the meaning of life by focusing on personal strengths. I stopped right there. Wait, I don't have any personal strengths. The moment I thought I did, yes, I had personal strengths. I used to be 16. And then I was 19, and then I was 25. I had personal strengths. So I'm reading this, and this website's supposed to give me the answer to the meaning of life. That's what I Googled just to see what Google would tell me. I mean, I already know the meaning of life, but I want to know if Google knew. And so this is what came up, that we can explore the meaning of life by focusing on personal strengths. Well, you better have some. Purpose, or the pursuit of fulfilling experiences you might have, right? Enhancing overall well-being. What if you're lacking these things? Identifying one's values, engaging in activities that align with these principles can cultivate a deeper sense of purpose and direction. These are all great words, but they can't help me. Building meaningful connections. What if I can't? What if I'm a weirdo and I don't know how to do that? What if I'm not good at building personal relationships? contributing to something larger than one's self, enriches life, promoting happiness and satisfaction. They said a lot, but they didn't tell me anything. I'm gonna tell you right now before anything happens. Jesus is the purpose. Jesus is the reason. Jesus Christ, living for him, gives you a reason to get out of bed and to go to the office or to go to the site or to deal with those kids of yours. It's Jesus. It's Jesus. Satisfaction, to have a satisfaction in your life. And so because my house is wired and Alexa's listening to everything, she thought at that moment when I was reading this out loud that Mick Jagger had his philosophy to share and so he said, I can't get no satisfaction. Have you ever had your system listening to you and all the words pop up? Wow, what in the world is going on? And of course, I had to instruct Alexa in my home that only Jesus Christ can give satisfaction. She said, I have no opinion of this. She is godless. She is a pagan. She doesn't know. But you can know, the Bible says in 2 Corinthians 5, verse 17, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, I love that word, what it means, in Christ, he's a new creation. All things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new. Do you want that in your life? I want that in my life. In John 6, verse 37, Jesus said, All that the Father gives me will come to me. You're going to experience this at the end of the message. Amen. God knows you. And for some of you this morning, he knows what's about to happen to you, even though you don't. You might be here today and you're gonna say, I'm not, nothing's gonna happen to me, pastor. God might speak to you today. And if he does, he's gonna draw you. Look, watch this. They will come to me. And the one who comes to me, Jesus said, I will by no means cast out. He's saying, I'm not going to refuse you if you come to me. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. It's the will of God the Father that you today choose to follow Jesus Christ. Did you know that? Did you hear what I just said? Not become a member of this church. We don't want your membership. We don't even have membership. We don't want your money. We want you to know Jesus. We want you to go with him all the way. There's no agenda. Also this, not only change, but power. We need power. The world is screaming and trying to act like it's got power. The world has no power. You and I need power. If God's going to help us, we need a change and we need power. The Bible says in the book of Revelation, listen to this. The power that Jesus gives starts like this. In Revelation chapter 3, verse 20. Behold, I stand at the door, Jesus said, and I knock out. If any man will hear my voice and open the door, I will come into him. The word is reside, set up residence and will sup. See the word sup, it means I will eat with him and he with me. The power of God is this, friends. It's not to blow things up or it's not to move things over. And it's not to flex. The power of God is to move inside of your life. And when Christ moves inside, just as he promised, I will come in to you and I will set up residence in your life. And you'll never go through life alone again. And God, listen, when he sets up camp in your life, he begins to go to work in your life. And by the, listen, by the power of God, he changes you. Do not attempt to change yourself. You want to change yourself? Go to a Tony Robbins self-help course. Knock yourself out. That's good for you. That's great. But listen, when it comes to your soul, experiencing eternal life and forgiveness, no promotion, Positive thinker or movement's gonna help you. Only Jesus can do this. And he does it by his power. So many times in religion, we think that we can somehow reform ourselves. We can't do it. The Bible says in the book of Acts chapter one, verse eight. We read it a moment ago. I wanna read it again. But you shall receive, what's the word? Power. By the way, the Greek word is dynamite. Is that cool? That's where we get the word dynamite in English. This is dunamis in Greek. It means, but you shall receive explosive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. The power of God. How does that work? How does that work? When your life is changed, folks, listen, when your life is changed for real, and this is how God rolls, whatever he does, he does for real. When your life is changed for real, you can't shut up about that. Listen, come on, you know when you find something really exciting and thrilling, you got to tell everybody about it. You post it. I just found this dress at Nordstrom's, and you post it. Or, hey, man, there's a basketball sale right now. Big five, you post it. When your life is changed, You will post it. You will post it when you say to somebody, hey, listen, I got good news for you. Or I know how you feel. Or I know what it's like. Because Jesus took me from this pit. And he brought me into this experience. And people will say something like this. I don't want religion. Oh, I don't either, friend. We're not talking religion here. We're talking about he, the Bible said, would come, be born in Bethlehem, live a perfect life, fulfill all the requirements of the law, then die on the cross for my sins, but on the third day be resurrected from the dead, who ascended back to heaven and said, if you believe in me, you'll live forever. And if you believe in me, you'll be born again. You'll be born anew. And just, you just continue on. My Holy Spirit will see to it. And someday I'm going to come back for you or for the whole bunch of you's. I'm going to come back and pick you up. And he's going to make it very, very clear that you and I will be in heaven with him forever. The third thing under this point is peace. Oh, when was the last time you had peace? And I'm talking about real peace that causes you to fall asleep in the midst of chaos. Peace. Peace. Let's be honest, we're Americans. We are officially the most drug consuming culture in the world, America. We take more emotionally calming drugs than anyone else in America, and then we wake up and take the most emotional energizing drugs in the world. America does, did you know, how sad is that? America, the most drug addicted culture in the world. But do you have peace? When the drug wears off, do you have peace? When the drink is gone, do you have peace? I thank God for this young generation. They remind me of 40 years ago. When everybody had sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Freedom, we don't want materialism. We wanna, what's the old saying by Timothy Leary? Tune in, how's it go? Any of you, look I'm asking the drug addicts, they can't remember because their brains are fried. Tune in, tune in, turn on, drop out. I don't know. I didn't do drugs. But you know what I'm saying? It's happening again. And the kids are all done with it. They're sick of it. They're fed up with it. The young people are fed up with drugs. They're fed up with the sex. They're fed up with everything. And you know what? There's something going on in America. Young people are coming to know Christ all throughout the United States. Why? Why? Because they want to change. They found out that they have no power and they found out that they have no peace. And Jesus offers peace. I'm going to show you a little picture here of peace. Everybody loves this. Look at Jesus running after that little dumb lamb. Look at him. He got himself in trouble. How did he get himself in trouble like that? He ran away from the shepherd. Jesus said, listen, Jesus said, I'm going to leave the 99 and go after the one that's missing, the one that ran away. Look at him. Look. Just look at him. He doesn't look very smart. And you can look, I'm all dirty now. Listen, whenever you run away from Jesus, you're not very smart. You're going to get really dirty. And at some point, you're going to get scared. Now, obviously, this is a rendering, but I love that blurred image of Jesus running with zeal and purpose coming after you, the little lamb who's away from the Lord. And you know what? You can look at it this way. Think about all that mud and all that dirt just being your sin on you. I used to have sin like that on me. June 20th, 1977. I didn't even know it, but I ran head on into Jesus. He knew what was going on. I didn't know. But boy, did he show me. I didn't have this kind of a picture, but he showed me my sin. I was devastated. I didn't think anybody knew, except a few people I sinned with. And everything flashed in front of my face on that Monday night. And then the question was asked of Jesus. The whole congregation that was sitting there. If you die tonight, why would God let you into heaven? I had no answer. Because I couldn't say, I'm good. Because I knew I had mud all over my wool. Jesus saves. In Matthew 18, the Bible says, For the Son of Man has come to save that which is lost. What do you think, Jesus, is if a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray, does he not leave the 99 and go to the mountains to seek the one that is straying? And if he should find it, assuredly, I say to you, he rejoices more over that sheep than over the 99 that did not go astray. Is that you today? What if it is you today? What a great day this is. You know what God is saying to you? He's saying, I knew you were going to be here today, you little lamb you. And I'm here to save you. You have wandered away and Jesus is calling you home. He's calling you back. In John 14, 27, Jesus said, peace I leave with you. I love that. Do you believe that? I believe that. Peace I leave with you. We have no problem with that, do we? Why would you not want that? Can you imagine somebody saying, I don't, wait, Jesus, wait, you're the one bringing the peace? I don't want it. Isn't that interesting? Amazon brings stuff to your door every day and you never say, I don't want this. You'll even take it if you don't know what it is. What if Jesus came to your door and say, got some peace here. Want some peace? Sure. Who's giving it? Jesus, I'm Jesus. Wait a minute. Have you ever noticed why there's this bizarre, unexplainable aberrance about Jesus? What did he ever do to you? Except die in your place at the cross. I'm going to submit to you today. That's a spiritual event. It's a spiritual issue. You don't even know why. Because my friend, listen, you need a change. He's the power to do it and you need peace. in your life. Number two is this, because your life and my life, we need love. We need love. When I say that, love, love. All kinds of things pop up in your mind. What is love? What's love? First of all, there's only one love. It's revealed in the Bible. The Bible says, God is love. Now, guys, are you still awake? I know you're a lot of new people. You're saying, aren't you done yet? I'm just getting started. Listen. Listen, no, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Here's the thing. Here's the deal. Is that in our world that we live in, we see real ridiculous statements that could never pass first grade, first grade logic course or philosophy for that matter. And it's words like this, statements like this. Love is love. Now look, that may upset some of you. I just want you to think this through for a moment. Love is love. Number one, you cannot say that unless you have a definition of what love is. See, you and I live in a world right now. This world wants to live in a world without a dictionary. That old Merriam-Webster gets in the way every time. Love. The Bible says God is love. Let me put it in a non-truth. Love is not God. God is love, but love is not God. God. Because God loves, he loves perfectly, and he reveals to us what actual love is. But when we say love the way we want it is our God, it means that there's a love that we invent that really justifies everything that we want to do in our life. And if you have it that way, then listen, this God thing doesn't get so messy because we've put him in a box again and stuffed him back into the backside of the desert, so to speak. And we are going to love what we want to love the way that we define it. And God says, you can't do that. Here's the reason why. Because I love you, God says, I define love. And when you experience real love, it is true. It is raw. Listen, it is vigilant. It is aggressive. And it's all those things, tender, kind, tender. Because listen, like a surgeon uses a scalpel, that's how love is. God begins to speak to us in love. And he addresses some things. Listen to this. The Lord has appeared unto me of old saying, yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore, with loving kindness have I drawn you. The love that God loves you with is an everlasting love. You and I fall in love with people and then we're concerned if they'll love us back. And let me ask you this. How long will those who love you love you? You see, you just made my point. God will love you, the real love, which is forever. Even though you and I have wandered from God, Are you and I have lived our lives as we live our lives as weak human beings in this fallen world and we're subject to temptation and to sin? God loves us anyway. And that's why Jesus went to the cross. He's the answer. He's the manifestation of God's love for us. John chapter 10 verse 9 says, I am the door and if anyone enters by me, he will be saved. This is God speaking. And we'll go in and out and find pasture. The thief does not come except to steal and to kill and to destroy. I have come, this is Jesus speaking, I have come that they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd. Wow. Let him love you. If he's coming after you, stop. Let him catch you. We know this, acceptance. This is a big deal. Your life needs love. Let's be honest. Your life needs acceptance too. So what do we mean by acceptance? It's a good question. I'm glad you asked. I'm just gonna put it bluntly. In my notes, some of you have my notes. It says there in page six, Jesus Christ is the only one who could really love you. In all this world, it's Jesus Christ who really loves you. And that's not a slam on those who love you in this life, but their love can only go so far. Jesus' love for you tells you the truth and he'll do something about it in your life, in my life. And if you and I are really honest, when we take a deep, close look on the inside of us and we remember the things of our lives, there's shame and there's guilt. And you know what God says? God says, you bring it to me. This Jack Hibbs podcast, as well as all the broadcast outreach opportunities, are listener supported. 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