Growing Spiritually: Living Out God's Word Daily

1. "How does that also affect us spiritually? You know, sometimes we can be a Christian for a very long time but guess what we can fail to grow up. We might grow old without growing up and that just be an absolute shame so um James the brother of Jesus as he's writing the book of James one of his things that he's calling us to do is to grow up so today we're going to look at how do we grow up what's the process how do we grow up and in looking at that we're going to talk about three aspects um of growing up that help us reach spiritual maturity one of the aspects is going to be accepting god's word the next next is going to be to act on the word of god and that's going to be to authenticate the word of god." [39:05] (45 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


2. "Do you know what the mouth says the overflow of the heart the mouth says the overflow of the heart what's going on in the heart normally comes out the mouth oh no no that's not really true yes it is if there's deception in your heart the deception will come out of your mouth there's lies in your heart the lies will come out of your mouth there's anger in your heart the anger's gonna come out of your mouth and he starts this with what quick to listen slow to speak slow to get angered and he goes and now he's going to tell you why he says for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of god." [43:03] (35 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


3. "Meekness doesn't mean weakness so many times we miss the word meekness and weakness whenever we see meekness we think oh that's somebody being weak it's not meekness it's somebody being weak it's somebody not at all I remember when my kids were young and we would play uh catch in the yard we play football in the yard when they were little right um I would like toss them the ball like underhand and they would just be right there and they'd catch it with both hands and there was their catch and as they got older you know you throw it a little farther and eventually you're throwing a little farther and eventually your kids are trying to throw it over the tree and you're trying to throw it over the tree when you were tossing it to them when they were really little you still had the same power to throw it as far as you do right now you can throw it so hard you hit them in a chest and blow them away meekness is power under control you have all that power that you need but how are you using it when we receive this from the lord we've got to understand that we don't see the whole picture god is explaining to us through his word and through the holy spirit that we've had um when james is talking about brothers he's talking about brothers who believe the second someone believes they have the holy spirit within them and the holy spirit and the Holy Spirit will be in them and the Holy Spirit will be in them God's word within us equips us to live and act different." [46:51] (74 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


4. "We grow up by acting on the Word of God. Not just hearing it, but acting on it. We grow up. I don't know if you saw this or not, ever experienced this, but have you ever been to a grocery store where you see this little kid, and they're throwing an absolute temper tantrum? Tell me you've never seen it at a grocery store, right? All of us have seen it. We've either seen it, or we were their parent, and that was our kid, right? And we're like, ah! And have you ever thought, when you see this kid acting crazy, have you ever thought, well, somebody just spanked that kid, you know? But what's going on? That kid is throwing a whole temper tantrum. We want to look at that kid and say, what? Grow up. We want that kid to act like an adult. Act older. We talk a lot about here that God didn't just come to change our actions. He came to change our heart. It starts with your heart. When your heart changes, the overflow of the heart is how you live and how you act." [54:58] (58 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


5. "How do we act on God's word? Well, we got to get off autopilot. That's the first thing. It's really easy to be a Christian and be a Christian for a long time and know all this and come to church and just do the same thing. And you can get stuck on autopilot. It's easy to get stuck on autopilot as a Christian. And autopilot works really good until you get a lot of turbulence. Then maybe not so much. Autopilot works really good until you got to land and take off. Autopilot works really good until you're out of fuel. Like all these different things going on. So how do we act on it? Well, we got to get off autopilot and begin to live." [01:00:18] (34 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


6. "How do we authenticate by God's word? When your conduct and your character come from God's word. That's how we authenticate. It's real when your conduct and your character come from God's word. It's one thing if you get up here on Sunday morning and, Don, you talk a lot, but if you don't act like it, it means nothing. My conduct and my words have got to go together. And they've got to be based off from God's word. How do we authenticate by God's word? When you choose ownership, not blaming. Over and over and over, James is telling them, do this, do this, do this. Go to the widows, go to the orphans. What happens when you spend the whole time blaming everybody else for where you're at? There's no authentication in that. You're pretending." [01:06:57] (44 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


7. "We grow up by living out these three aspects of spiritual maturity. One, by accepting God's word. Two, by acting on God's word. And three, by being authenticated by God's word. Jesus says to John the Baptist, he says, I am living out who I said I was. He says to John the Baptist, guess what? He says, I am living out who I said I was. And he says, I am living out who I But I have said that I'm going to love people. Watch me authenticate it as I go to the cross and die on your behalf. If someone says that they love you and they're willing to die for you, that's real. If someone says that they love you and they're not willing to die for you, hmm, maybe that's not love. Maybe that's infatuation, concern. Maybe that's whatever else. But Jesus authenticated his love by his actions. He lived it out." [01:09:59] (50 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)