Living a Spirit-Led Life: Prioritizing God's Kingdom

so in case you're wondering why why do we pray for Andrew well because the Holy Spirit during worship I was just worshiping the Lord paying attention not paying attention to myself or just listening to him and all of a sudden I kept thinking about Andrew and I was like why in the world I don't want to think about Andrew but I just had Andrew in my heart so I began to pray for him and the Lord just began to speak to me about him and I was like that's kind of cool and I wasn't even thinking about and then he says call him up after worship and pray for him so that's why we did it the Bible would call that a word of knowledge or just you know being led by the Holy Spirit you just we want to be led by the Holy Spirit when the Holy Spirit tells us to do something we should do it it's just that simple and you know we make it hard we make it complicated when we don't want to and when we disagree and when we you know like Paul said in the opening this morning you know we argue with God and we go I don't want to do that that's just weird [00:52:05] (69 seconds)


when you're led by the Holy Spirit you can only be led by the Holy Spirit if you're concerned about the finances about the finances about the money and God says to do something crazy that costs a lot of money and you're going I can't because I don't have enough money well then you're telling him that he's not able to do what he said he would do [00:52:25] (22 seconds)


therefore I tell you do not be anxious about your life what you will eat or what you will drink nor about your money but money your body I got money on the brain about your life about your body what you will put on is not your life more than food and the body more than clothing look at the birds of the air they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns and yet your heavenly Father feeds them are you not more value of more value than they and which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life and why are you anxious about clothing consider this the lilies of the field how they grow they neither toil nor spin yet I tell you even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these but if God so clothes the grass of the field which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven will he not much more clothe you oh you of little faith [01:02:45] (63 seconds)


you get real spiritual when you have to you get real spiritual so we decided to fast so we go and we go to church we're sitting through church and I'm thinking God you know lunch is coming up I you know and I like to eat but Lord I know you're going to take care of us we get all done we're shaking hands we're all saying goodbye to everybody and somebody came up and said oh I heard you went on the mission trip we said yeah they said we'd love to hear about it I said yeah we'd love to tell you about it hey why don't we take you out for lunch hallelujah they took us out for lunch we all went out and we ate they paid for it huh that's pretty cool but supper's coming [01:00:44] (43 seconds)


about five o 'clock that afternoon somebody called up and said hey how was the mission trip we said it was awesome they said hey we'd really like to hear about the mission trip can we take you out for supper yes you can it's pretty hard to be humble when you're hungry sure we'd love to tell you went to a nice restaurant we told them they fed us there were leftovers hallelujah had those for breakfast the next morning at noon right before noon somebody called and said hey guess what happened can we take you out for lunch that went on for a whole week day after day after day people called us and said hey we'd love to hear about the trip can we take you out for lunch sure we didn't tell anybody we had no food in the house not one I didn't tell anybody we didn't tell anybody Sunday morning Sunday morning we go to church again we still it was two weeks before we got the paycheck Sunday morning we go to church there's no food in the house we had eaten we had eaten every day we go to church that morning we get done nobody walked up to us and asked us if we had any if we had any plans for lunch I'm thinking oh no here we go I'm thinking you know nobody's going to take us out for lunch we still got a week to go okay Lord we can go you know I'd hate to admit I waited as long as I could you know just in case somebody was not being obedient [01:01:24] (89 seconds)


But seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you. When you put God's kingdom first, when you put His kingdom as your highest priority, when you put, now you're going to say, what are you saying, isn't God my highest priority? Yes. [01:05:15] (22 seconds)


If you allow Him to be the king of your life, if you allow Him, if you put Him first in whatever you're doing, everything, even working, whatever job you're doing. When I worked in the factory, in the hot dog factory, I thanked God for my job. And I said, God, how do you want me to represent the kingdom today? [01:06:40] (19 seconds)


I'm convinced, I'm fully convinced that I'm doing what I'm doing today, and I'm able to do the things that I'm doing. Because I put Him first in what seemed to be absolutely meaningless. God, what do you want me to do today? Who do you want me to speak to today? I'm available. [01:06:47] (20 seconds)


When Jesus died on the cross, by being obedient unto death, his blood shed, he made us kings and priests. Now that's still, it still feels like a road bump. It still feels like, every time I say that, and I don't say it because I'm thinking it myself, I can feel it in the Spirit. Every time I say, you're kings, and priests, it feels like, for some people, it's like, I just can't get there. And that's a problem. [01:13:42] (37 seconds)


That's a problem because that's who you were called to be. That's who you are called to be. And if you can't accept it, man, you're a long way from operating in it. Well, you think, well, I don't want to think of myself more highly than I ought. Isn't that a Bible scripture? Well, yes. [01:14:37] (17 seconds)


What does a good king look like? What is a good king? And I'm only going to hit very quickly the highlights. I'm not going to go into any depth because I just don't have the time. Number one. I found this on the internets and I thought it was awesome. So I stole it. But it's absolutely biblical. What are the characteristics? What are the characteristics of a king in the Bible? Number one. They're sacrificial. A king is sacrificial. What's our example in his kingdom? Jesus. He sacrificed his time. He came to this earth. Lived 33 years. He sacrificed his glory. He sacrificed his position on the throne. [01:22:03] (48 seconds)