Live Your Best Life

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 Listen. Without Jesus we've all been bound to something and some of our struggles as a Christian is the revisitation of those strongholds. And we have to remind ourselves. I have been set free by the blood of Jesus Christ, by the resurrected Lord, the empty tomb. God keeps his word and I'm not the same person. I'm a brand new person. 00:35 - Speaker 1 You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to jackhibbscom slash podcast Today. If this podcast lifts you up and encourages you to live a more fulfilled life in Christ, so when I read a moment ago what Jesus had said give your life, you'll save it. 01:09 - Speaker 2 If you hang on to your life, you're going to lose it. I asked myself these questions here. Maybe you can ask yourself the same. What is it to me to desire to come after Jesus? Am I, jack, coming after Jesus? I have to answer this question. You have to answer this question. Even if you ignore it, you're still answering the question. Am I Jack, pursuing Jesus? And then I had to ask myself what am I denying? You need to ask yourself that. What do you listen? When do you say to you no? When do you say to you no? When do you say to you nope, because your flesh, listen, your flesh will say I want that, I want that, I want four scoops of it. 02:02 I had this battle. Do you know why? This is one of my breakdowns of this verse. I'll tell you. Don't tell anybody. This is between us. It happened just the other day. 02:10 We've been out of power for so long, but inside the freezer, the power's out. The ice cream, the talimic, the melky moo, melky moo it's still frozen, it's full. We've lost power, could be gone for days. That'd be a very waste of money. If I let all of that melt, what do I do? What do I do? Should I pray about it? No, you start eating it because you want to be a good steward and not waste anything. Not waste anything. You see the justification. I know how to get all this ice cream under the guise of sorry. Somebody had to do it. We ain't got no power because Newsom doesn't know anything about this kind of stuff. 03:18 Life is like all of our flesh does that. I want, I want, we've got to be able to say thank God, it's through his power. Nope, power, nope flesh. Sit down. I deny you what you are denied, but I want sit down. Well, he's richer, she's younger Denied what about that? What about this? Denied? Can we do that? Jesus says you must do that. And then he says to carry your cross. Jesus says for each of us, as believers, that we are to carry our own cross. By the way, our own cross. It means you can't carry my cross, I can't carry yours. Did you know that? Let's make this clear. Jesus carried his cross, to die on that cross for all of our sins. This is not a salvation issue For you and I. To pick up our cross and to follow him means that we pick up all of the stuff of our lives that we have to deal with in association with Jesus. In other words, we count the cost and the cost is absolutely. I'm following you, jesus, come what may, and we go with him. When people spit, mock, ridicule, beat us, whatever it is, it's okay. I'm walking with you, jesus, and then to follow him. 04:51 The word to follow him is a beautiful word and you've even seen posters of this, which has in some ways illustrated the truth of it, but some ways maybe made it too common. But it actually means to walk in the footsteps of him, and you'll see the video play on the internet where there's somebody walking in the sand and the ocean and the little kid's footsteps and the parent's steps. That's very sweet. That's exactly what the word means. Somebody will say that when I walked through this dynamic of life, you know, on the sand there was two sets of footprints, but there was nobody with me, but of course it was Jesus. I understand the pictorial side of all of that, but the fact of the matter is that to follow him is to walk in his footsteps. We can't do that on our own, so we ask him Lord, use me and church. This brings us to the issue of hope, faith, yes, hope. It says that we will be for him, holy, acceptable to God. I won't belabor this other than to say this holy means set apart for God. That doesn't mean you wear black clothes and have a bun, your hair pulled back in a bun and you don't wear makeup and you have a carriage with a horse. Are you hearing me? Holy doesn't mean that Holy means you're set apart. 06:22 I remember you guys know I resigned my job to come and start this church and when I did that I was really sad because I loved the corporation I worked for. It was incredible and I had no plans to leave. I planned on retiring from there, but you know what's awesome about it? Did you know that when you were hired, they had for you to sign what is known as a fiduciary agreement? You know what that is. You might know what that is. Raise your hand. If you don't know what that is, it's nothing to be ashamed about. I didn't know what it was until I got hired there. 06:55 A fiduciary agreement is that we're not playing to the legal side of this, but if you're going to be one of our employees, we're appealing to better angels, so to speak, within you, because we have you as an employee. We pick our employees very, very rigorously when you're off the clock. We want you to conduct yourself in such a way as though you were on the clock. Take care of your body. This is a corporation global. Take care of your body on your days off. Refrain from using profanity on the clock and off the clock. Remember that if you wear any of our apparel, you're representing this corporation globally. And then finally live your best life, healthy and wise, so that each and every Monday, you can get back to giving 100% to our customers. After I read that, I wanted to sign it. 08:03 If the world says things like that and it's honorable, what about God saying just be set aside for me and acceptable and the word acceptable means we already are acceptable. Jesus made us acceptable. Do you trust Christ? Do you believe Jesus died on the cross? Do you believe he rose again from the dead? Listen, you may believe all that. That's great, but is it a reality of faith and hope in your life? Don't say anything right now in this room, but can you testify to the fact that you know that God dwells in you internally, that there's a perpetual conversation going on in your life between you and God, regarding all matters, big and small. God has called us to bring hope. I tell you, our world needs hope right now, like never before You're the agent of hope. 09:00 You think the government's going to bring hope? Listen, I'm not bashing government. Government's not designed to bring hope. If any government, if any politician says you can put your hope in me, doesn't that just sound like vomitous? I mean, that's just grotesque. No human should say that the closest as we can come is say I promise. Even that's risky, Because somebody with the best intentions, with the greatest resources, can still fail on the promise Because no one's got the ability to actually keep a promise. 09:35 We did a wedding here. It was so perfect yesterday in between windstorms. It was a perfect wedding and those two beautiful people stood there and I said now to the family and the audience and I said we're about to recite, I'm about to give you the vows. I gave them the background from ancient Hebrew of the origin of vows, what it meant. God's hearing them and the whole thing was each of them giving promises to one another. But I stress the fact that Jesus had been welcomed into their lives a long time ago as Lord and Savior. It's not so much that they will keep the promises, it's that Christ will keep the promises through them. He's so good. 10:27 But, friends, today there is a world out there that has caused people to be completely bound up, and I think of Joseph, who did no wrong. Joseph in the Bible, joseph in Genesis 37. Joseph, he was taken, remember, he was taken by his brothers and they bound him up and they threw him in a hole because they hated him, they were jealous of him and then they were going to kill him. Reuben had second thoughts about it. He said well, let's just sell him. Here comes a caravan, a bunch of Midianites. They're on their way to Egypt. We'll just sell him. 11:05 Joseph, who in the Old Testament is a type of Christ. Joseph was sold by his brothers for silver pieces into slavery, and all the while, in Egypt, god was preparing Joseph to be the deliverer of the nation Israel. Sound familiar? Joseph was human trafficked. Human trafficking, it's evil. It's on a scale like it's never been. For what reason? Book of Revelation tells you that in the last days there will be those who will stand in damnation before God, who trafficked in the souls of men? Did you know? That's the grand play of what's going on even here right now? Your soul, god wants you to have hope. I told that couple in that wedding. I said you know, we're all so formal, we all have our suits on and even I was wearing a tie. Everybody's dressed up, flowers, gorgeous, and I said you know if we were really doing a wedding like they did in Cana? 12:09 - Speaker 1 or in the. 12:10 - Speaker 2 Galilee, it'd be nothing like this. It would be noisy, it would be laughing. It would be laughing, there would be cheering, there would be love. It's amazing, but we have formalized so much of such a joyous thing. Did you know? 12:28 The Bible tells us in the book of Zephaniah that God, when you arrive in heaven, he's going to spin the world? The word in Hebrew is twirl. This is hard for us to handle, the God of the Bible. When you show up Christian into heaven, he is going to twirl around you. It says with singing. I think it's chapter 3, verse 7. Don't quote me on it, but look it up later In the book of Zephaniah. Can you imagine? I can't handle that. Wow. Then everybody else is going to be very loud and happy and you're going to be the only party pooper as the Lord welcomes you into heaven. He's going to think it's fantastic. You know he is from the Middle East. You know Jesus didn't come from eternity to Canada or to you know, connecticut, where they're so proper. No man, he came from Israel. They can't even talk without passion. He's going to see you and he's going to say awesome, come here, come here, come here. I'm going to be like in shock, what? Don't be surprised if he gives you a kiss. 13:43 Many times you have been trafficked in this world in sin Maybe some of you are hearing this for the first time ever and Jesus wants to set you free. Listen, in the days of Jesus, in the days of Paul, in the first century and it had gone on for a couple thousand years previously did you know that, when Paul was writing to the church at Rome, did you know that you could go down to the Agora Because a new shipment of slaves have arrived from some of Rome's conquests? And this is how they came in Male or female alike, they were stripped completely naked before they took the platform. But first they came in because they've walked hundreds, if not a thousand miles over the course of six months Like this A fish hook in your bottom lip, pierced through, tied to the back of the neck of the person in front of you, and you were marched into Rome. Then they would disconnect the lanyard from the back neck piece. You'd stand on this platform with this hook in your lip, the string dangling down, naked. You were asked to present yourself a living sacrifice for inspection. 15:18 Some time was given whereby the buyers would come up and feel touch. How strong are you? Examine you and then the bidding would begin and, based upon your particular potentiality, be it sex or labor, the bidding started. Can you imagine 20 shekels, or 20 pieces, 30 pieces, 50 pieces, 50 pieces Do I hear many more than 50 pieces, sold to the man for 50 pieces? All of a sudden, jesus steps onto the platform. Then comes in. Jesus, excuse me, how much? 50. Here's your 50. I'll take them. Based on what economy? 16:28 My life, maybe they would say your life means nothing to us. Who are you? I'm the son of God. Yeah well, so is everybody else in this town, my kingdom. I give my kingdom Eternal kingdom. Where I come from, we use gold for asphalt. I give my life for them. Jesus sets us free. 16:59 You may have think that you've been free all your life, and yet you've been bound to pornography. You've been bound to drink. You've been bound to pride. You've been bound to I don't know what bound to fear. You've been bound to pride. You've been bound to I don't know what, bound to fear. Listen, without Jesus we've all been bound to something, and some of our struggles as a Christian is the revisitation of those strongholds. And we have to remind ourselves. I have been set free by the blood of Jesus Christ, by the resurrected Lord, the empty tomb. God keeps his word and I'm not the same person, I'm a brand new person. 17:37 And then we end here, and I really mean it. We end with this it is the fact that when it says you're a reasonable service, that you are to present yourself to God in a reasonable service, the translation of the word reasonable is where we get the word logic. The translation of the word service is where we get the word proskuneo. You say what? Yeah, proskuneo is an awesome word. 18:02 Proskuneo means? It means this If you were speaking the Greek language and if your child came up to you and grabbed onto your hand and held your hand like so, or if your dog came up and started licking your hand, that word in Greek is proskuneo, because Jesus provides you salvation from all damnation and all of your sins and gives you as a gift eternal life. To all those who would say I'm a sinner and I need you to save me, lord Jesus, our reasonable, logical response to that is worship service. Proskuneo. It means to lick the hand like a puppy. Have you noticed how fun it is to be around a puppy? They just lick everything. They're just licking, licking, licking. They're little licking machines and they have that amazing puppy breath. Ladies, you should invent a perfume called poodle or something I don't know. Isn't it just a beautiful? 19:12 Why would god use these words if he didn't love you? Why did he use these words? He wrote the bible. Why did he use these words? Present your life to me. I want you to live. It's logical, it's worship, and to worship is to draw near to him. 19:38 - 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.