Live Your Best Life

Real life presents the Jack Hibbs podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture. Listen, without Jesus we've all been bound to something and some of our struggles as a Christian is the revisitation of those strong holes 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. 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 Jackhibbs. So when I read a moment ago what Jesus had said give your life you'll save it. 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. Listen when do you say to you? No. When do you say to you? Nope because you're flesh. Listen your flesh will say I want that. I want that. I want four scoops of it. 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. We've been out of power for so long but inside their freezer the power is out. The ice cream that the talismic, the melky moon, melky moon, it's still frozen. It's full. We've lost power could be gone for days. There'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. He started eating it because you want to be a good steward. 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. Life is like all of our flesh does that. I want I want we've got to be able to say thank God is through his power. No flesh sit down. I deny you. What? You are denied but I want sit down and we deny. Well he's richer. She's younger denied. What about that? What about that 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 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 the word to follow him is a beautiful word and you've even seen posters of this which is 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 see the you'll see the video play on the internet where there's somebody walking in the sand and the ocean and the little kids feet footsteps and the parents step 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 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 be labor 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 and are you hearing me that holy doesn't mean that holy means you're set apart. 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 our workforce incredible and I had no plans to leave I planned on retiring from there but you was 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 may 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 a fiduciary agreement is that we're not we're not playing to the legal side of this but if you're going to be one of our employees we're asking we're appealing to your to to 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 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 want to design it if 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 you believe Jesus died on the cross 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 like never before you're the agent of hope 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 politicians is you can put your hope in me does that just sound like vomitous I mean this is grotesque no no human should say that the closest is we can come and say I promise even that's risky because somebody with the best intentions with the greatest resources can still fail in the promise because no one's got the ability to actually keep a promise we did a wedding here was so perfect yesterday in between windstorms that 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 or I'm about to give you the vows I gave 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 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 memories 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're going to kill him a rubin head second thoughts about it he said malicious seldom here comes a caravan a bunch of media nights they're on their way to Egypt we'll just sell them 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 deliver of the nation Israel some familiar Joseph was human trafficked human trafficking it's evil it's on a scale like it's never been for what reason book a 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 also 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 or in the Galilee it'd be nothing like this it would be noisy it would be laughing there would be cheering there would be look there would it'd be it's amazing but we have formalized so much of such a joyous thing did you know the Bible tells us in the book of Zephaniah that God when you arrive in heaven he's going to spend 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 three verse seven don't quote me on it but look it up later in the book of Zephaniah can you imagine I can't handle that well 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 clear come here can we be like in shock what don't be surprised if he gives you a kiss many times you have been trafficked in this world and sin maybe some of you are hearing this for the first time ever and Jesus wants to sit you free listen in the in the days of Jesus and 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 augura 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 some time was given whereby the buyers would come up and feel touched 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 shackles are 20 pieces 30 pieces 50 pieces 50 pieces do I hear more than many more than 50 pieces so old to the man for 50 pieces all of a sudden Jesus steps on to the platform then comes in Jesus excuse me how much 50 here's your 50 I'll take them based on what economy 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 an eternal kingdom where I come from we use gold for asphalt I give my life for them Jesus sets us free 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 listen without Jesus we've all been bound to something and some of our struggles as a Christian is the revisitation of those strong holes 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 and then we end here and I really mean it we end with this it is the fact that when it says your reasonable service that you 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 proscaneo you say what yeah proscaneo is an awesome word proscaneo 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 looking your hand that word in Greek is proscaneo 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 proscaneo it means to lick the hand like a puppy if you notice how fun it is to be around the puppy they just lick everything they're just lick and lick and lick and 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 why would God use these words if he didn't love you why didn't he use these words he wrote the Bible why did he use these words it's 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 this jack hips podcast as well as all the broadcast outreach opportunities are listener supported will you consider partnering with us through a special gift go to jackhids.com to learn more and stay connected