A Heart for God Part 4 The Blessing of Discipline 02-08-26

It goes on into the the the the one about the rich man or what I must do, and he has to give everything. Everyone knows about that. But sometimes we forget how that story starts. And the way it starts is he comes to Jesus and calls him good, and Jesus stops him and says, no. Only one is good and only God is good. So, you know, we worship God and we worship Jesus, but we forget [00:10:35] (26 seconds)  #OnlyGodIsGood

that even Jesus had the humility to point to God when someone else wanted to point to him. And so this whole thing of this this irony, this this this this unconventional approach to getting close to god by taking whatever praise might go onto us and then taking what is coming through us from God and pointing it back to God is the way that we actually get closer to God. Counterintuitive. [00:11:01] (36 seconds)  #PointPraiseToGod

We also need to do it because we get joy and we need to have joy. And we need to praise and have joy so much that we're willing to risk the pain of loss. But I maintain, my beloved, that the joy of victory in your life far surpasses that of any manufactured scene that we have created in this world. There's nothing wrong with it. It's great. [00:13:16] (42 seconds)  #JoyBeyondComfort

But why not praise what God has done in your life even more? Why not praise what God is doing in the life of another even more? Why not seek the joy that transcends all of the pain in this life, and why not risk the pain in the life in this life, the risk of going for the brass ring in being like Christ in your life? Why not take that risk and go through that pain [00:13:58] (30 seconds)  #RiskForChrist

and experience that discipline if you would so that you can really get the real prize? Well, I think there's a reason why maybe we don't. I'm not saying, you know, everyone doesn't. I'm saying why we don't do it maybe to the extent that we know that we should, While we don't go for it in this battle of life, we don't go for the victory, we don't go for the joy, and then we wonder why we're not [00:14:27] (37 seconds)  #ChooseVictory

filled like we wanna be filled and why we don't have that exhilaration in life like we wanna have because we're just lukewarm and we're just trying to hope that nothing bad happens to us because we don't wanna take any risks. I think maybe you know, I was thinking about a church I used to pastor in the West Coast many, many years ago, and the church had had gone through a difficult time with beautiful people, beautiful people. [00:15:05] (36 seconds)  #FaceTheBattle

You see, we let our light shine that others will see our good deeds and praise our father in heaven. But a lot of times, people don't see or hear our good deeds because God is doing good things all of the time through the lives of billions of people all over the world at the same time, but we don't tell our story. You should always have a testimony prepared to tell. [00:19:28] (37 seconds)  #ShareYourTestimony

And then it goes on to say that you can cry, whine, and blame about hardship, but know the hardship is there to refine you, to perfect you, and to discipline you so that you will have the victory and you will have the joy. So there's a purpose to the hardship and an opportunity for us to go into a battle that we would have victory and that we can praise God and others can praise God when we tell our story about how we overcame. [00:23:06] (43 seconds)  #RefinedByHardship