Churches in Wadsworth

“See, I think many times, especially in western church, the problem is not knowledge. Many of us have heard, hundreds of sermons in our lives and read thousands of verses. The problem is not knowledge. The problem is submission to God in what we read. It's to say, God, I'm not reading this just for understanding. I'm reading this to act upon it and for it to change me. Paul says, practice these things. Do these things. If we approach the word of God and we read just like those stats said, if we read it often and we approach it with a heart where we say, God, I'm willing to act on whatever you show me today, I'm not getting out of this word until you show me what you want me to do, it will change your life.”

“And so I'll watch all these videos. I've probably watched hundreds of hours of that. And and and, yeah, I'll go out on the golf course, and I'll still shoot a 100. You know what I mean? And that's just the first nine holes. And so, and and so I'm like so I watch all that, and I experience that. And I'm like, well, I I know what I need to do. I I've studied it. I've learned it. I've got all the information that I need. Why am I not better at golf? And you would look at me and you would say, well, you did you take that information? And did you go to the range? And did you practice it? Did you did you put it into energy and effort and work? In the same way, when it comes to the word of god, the bible is always powerful, but the the power of scripture is only released into your life by the practice. You actually have to obey what you've read and heard and received. You have to live it out.”

“Here's what Paul and David are getting at when they're teaching us this reality. The word of God is nutritious to the soul, listen, for every generation and every situation. If you need wisdom for a relationship, if if you need to know where to find peace when everything's falling apart in your life, This word is an anchor and a gift. If if if you need to know how to live with integrity at work, if you if you need to know how to grieve a loss in your life, if if you need to to know how to forgive pain when someone hurts you or how to hope beyond hope or how to walk away from sin in your life. This word has every single thing that you need, and it never expires. Even if the generation that you live in tells you that it's outdated or that it it it's out of touch and it has nothing to offer, This book is unchanging, and it's given life giving wisdom for for decades upon decades and centuries upon centuries. It it it leads to health. It leads to goodness. It's sufficient for doctrine. It's sufficient for moral formation. It's sufficient for training and right living. It has all that you need in this word.”

“And here's what I wanna tell us this morning. In the word of God, in the Bible, there is water that can replenish the sinus of your soul. There's water that can actually soak into the deep places of your life and begin to transform you from the inside out. In fact, in Isaiah, the Bible teaches that that that the Bible is like rain that comes down from heaven from God, and it it it waters the earth, and it makes, people sprout fruit. In Psalm one, it teaches that that the person who lives by the scriptures is like a tree planted by streams of water and they produce fruit out of their life in in abundance and in blessing. And so water in this word, but the question I have first this morning is, is the soil of your soul taking it in?”

“``See see, I think many times, especially in western church, the problem is not knowledge. Many of us have have heard, hundreds of sermons in our lives and read thousands of verses. The problem is not knowledge. The problem is submission to god in what we read. It's to say, god, I'm not reading this just for understanding. I'm reading this to act upon it and for it to change me. Paul says, practice these things. these things. If we approach the word of God and we read just like those stats said, if we read it often and we approach it with a heart where we say, God, I'm willing to act on whatever you show me today, I'm not getting out of this word until you show me what you want me to do, it will change your life.”

“And, it's his way of saying that the the Holy Spirit is applying the word of God to our hearts like a surgeon. He's slicing open the cavity of our inner life. He's exposing what's cancerously harming us so that we can see it. And when the word of God does that, I wanna exhort you. Don't resist it. Don't push it away. Don't don't distract yourself from it because of the discomfort. And instead, submit yourself to God and what he's speaking because the word doesn't wound just to wound, the word wounds to heal. The word opens us up so that we can experience the healing that God wants to bring. And when the scriptures open that place, those hidden places, it's it's a scalpel of grace.”

“This is our first step. If if we want to experience the water of the word of God on our life, such a simple step, but you have to have to actually know this word. You have to study it. You have to have to dive into it. You have to immerse yourself in it. See, there's something powerful about what God speaks here, but unless you dig into it, you're like hardened ground against what God wants to give you. And I wanna show us this, what the scriptures say about the scriptures. Because when you dive into the Bible, it will change your inner life. It it will transform you from the inside. I wanna show you four ways that the scriptures will change us. The first is this, scripture, when we read it or we hear it, it will expose the deep hidden motives in our life.”

“And you may listen to this and you say, yeah. Okay. So if the scripture is that powerful, why do I read it and feel nothing? Here's the thing. In our rational secular age, we often think that if we just read a book and we understand what it says that that we receive something. But but this book is spiritual. That means that there are four forces waging war wanting to keep you from understanding it, wanting to keep you from receiving it. Also, sin will cloud the heart and mind. It veils our understanding. And so here's the reality. It's not natural for us to read this word and understand it in and of ourselves. It's not.”

“James is like, when when you don't obey the scriptures that you heard or read, it's like looking in the mirror. It's like this morning before church. You looked in the mirror and when you looked in the mirror there was a huge piece of oregano stuck in between the middle of your teeth. You know? Like a big tree stalk sticking out. And you see it, you're like, ugh. Alright. And you come into church, and you're shaking everyone's hand and smiling just going through your day. You people would look at you like, do you dude, there's something right there. You're like, I don't care. Like, I not gonna do anything with it. I know I know it's there, but I'm not gonna act on it. I'm not gonna fix it. This is what James is talking about.”

“I'm not minimizing what they did to you. I want you to hear me. I'm maximizing the grace of God in your life. God has grace for you. He has grace for you that he wants to pour out. He doesn't want you in the bondage of conflict, in the bondage of unforgiveness, in the bondage of bitterness. He wants to free you into his grace and into the expanse of his love for you. So Paul commands us forgive. When we release our hands of justice, it frees our hands to pick up mercy and to freely give it out.”