Good morning again, everyone. It's great to see everybody here today. Welcome. Welcome to Smyrna Campus. We love you guys. Glad you're connected there.
Everybody that's connecting with us online, we're so happy to have that connection with you. We, of course, had spring forward with the clocks last night. It looks like some people may have forgotten to do that. We also have people traveling, of course, for spring break, and we're certainly praying for them as they travel.
But we're glad that you're with us, whether you're connected online or with us in person at one of our campuses. We are continuing a message series we started several weeks back now called Love Notes. In this series, we are going through the attributes of godly love, as it's described in First Corinthians, Chapter 13.
The word that is used there is agape. Agape love is a high and holy set apart love where you seek the best for the other person. It's a self-sacrificing kind of love, and it's not as shallow as we often use the word love in our culture today. So we've been each week looking at different attributes.
Let's go back to First Corinthians 13, beginning with verse four. We see that it says love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud. It does not dishonor others. It is not self-seeking. We've covered all of those, and now we're into it is not easily angered.
This is one that a lot of people struggle with in our culture, and I think it's been true throughout history. There's a man who went to a marriage counselor. He was concerned about what was going on in his marriage. He was talking to the counselor. He said, "My wife just seems to get angry all the time, and she's beginning to lash out in anger more often, and it's beginning to scare me a little bit. I'm worried about our relationship."
And he says, "Well, I've got something for that." He says, "Here's what you need to do. Every time your wife seems to be getting really angry, really getting elevated in her anger, just take a glass of water, put some in your mouth and hold it there. Don't swallow it and just swish it around and keep swishing until she either calms down or leaves the room."
He said, "All right, I'll try it." So he comes back a month later looking all refreshed and happy, and the counselor says, "How's this going? How's it going?" He said, "It's great. I can't believe it. Every time my wife would start getting angry, I would get a drink of water, swish it around in my mouth, and she would calm down. It just began to work even better and better the longer I did it."
He said, "I love it. It's so great, but I don't understand how taking water like that does that." He said, "Well, the water doesn't do a thing. It's keeping your mouth shut that helps." Sometimes we can control it more than we think when we're dealing with anger.
And that's what the scriptures are talking about when it says that love is not easily angered. There was another older couple that was talking one evening, and the man said to his wife, "I just want to let you know, I'm so sorry for all the times I've treated you badly because I was angry. But you've always handled it so well. And, you know, I just want to compliment you on how you've always responded and didn't get upset with me and didn't yell back or anything. Even when I was getting angry and lashing out at you, he said, I just don't know how you do it."
She says, "Well, here's what I do. Every time you start getting angry at me like that, I just go clean the toilet." And he said, "Well, how does that help?" She said, "Well, I use your toothbrush."
There are different ways of handling anger, right? And today we're going to look at some scriptural guidance on how to best handle anger. Be turning with me if you would to the book of James. It's such a practical book with great teaching there.
In James chapter one, we're going to start looking at verse 19, and he begins with a word of caution there. In verse 19, "My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this." Now, when James specifically says in scripture, "take note of this," what should we do? Take note. Very good. Great students today. All right.
Take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. It's a warning. It's a word of caution. Now, he's going to go on and tell us more about that. We're going to look at the next few verses there.
But I want to start with this. We need to understand that this is a serious thing. The Bible gives warnings when there's something that could be damaging or harmful or keep us from something good. Those warnings are put in there because God loves us and he wants what's best for us.
And he's warning us that we need to be careful in this area of how we handle our anger. Now, one thing he's not doing is saying you should never get angry or I expect you to never get angry. That's not what the scripture says. It says to be slow to become angry.
It says we need to be careful not to be quickly angered in our relationships. So many relationships are always on edge because you don't know how the other person's going to respond. You don't know when they're going to just react in such an angry way. And you're having to live in fear day in and day out.
And sometimes you're the reason for that. Sometimes they're the reason for that. But either way, we need to learn to manage that better. Relationships aren't healthy when we're having to be afraid of the anger coming out either in ourselves or the other person in that relationship. Whether it's marriage or friendship or work relationships, it can be damaging anywhere in any relationship.
So learning to control anger is essential. Because of the warnings in scripture, it makes us understand that it can lead to terrible consequences. The first example of all of this is in Genesis with Cain and Abel, right? They both gave an offering to God, but God was more pleased with Abel's offering than he was with Cain's.
And Cain got so upset about that that he went out and murdered his brother. You see, we don't think our anger is going to do that kind of damage. But there's a lot of things it can do to damage in between just being a little irritated and murdering somebody.
In all those different stages in between those two, Satan can use our anger to hurt, to kill, to destroy relationships and people. In Ephesians 4:26, Paul warns us, "In your anger, do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you're still angry."
I've talked about this before. People always ask Sue Ann and I, we've been married a long time. How have we been able to do it and stay married so long? And I say, well, one of the things is this verse. We've committed to each other that we're not going to go to bed angry. And it's worked really well in our marriage.
Now, we've gone without sleep for days at a time, but we've tried to stick to this, not going to bed angry, right? Trying to work through it before it builds up. You know, if you hold it in and let it build up over time and don't deal with it the way you need to, that's when it oftentimes will explode later on down the road in some very damaging ways.
And that's what the warning is here: don't let it fester over time. Don't let it control you to the point that it's causing you to build it up and lash out in a way that harms somebody else. Ephesians 4:26, remember, "In your anger, do not sin." Getting angry is not sinful. Let's be clear.
But anger can be used by Satan to lead us into sinful actions, sinful responses, sinful ways of dealing with people and circumstances. Ecclesiastes chapter 7 and verse 9 says, "Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit, for anger resides in the lap of fools."
It can cause you to act in really foolish ways when you get angry. I'll give you an example. Not that this ever happened to me, but let's say you're driving down the expressway and you're going pretty fast, and this big truck comes right up on your rear end there and just really tails you and gets real close trying to force you over out of the way.
Now, my first response might be like yours is, I don't appreciate that person doing that. And the temptation might be to tap the brakes. That's one of the most foolish things you could do. They can't stop a big rig on a dime, right? They're not going to be able to respond that quickly if they're right on your tail and you hit the brakes like that.
So it was foolish. Anger can make you do really foolish things. And that's just a funny example, but it can happen in a marriage. It can happen in a friendship where we allow it to lead us to something foolish, and it's something sinful.
Psychologists and one school of study have broken down anger into five levels of anger. I just want to run through really quickly here. Five levels of anger, according to these psychologists that I was reading.
The first is irritation, where it's just something irritating to you. You know, you've got a mosquito buzzing around your ear. That's irritating, right? It can kind of make you angry that the mosquitoes are getting after you. And that's the first level of anger where you're just getting a little irritated by something.
The next level is indignation. They called it indignation is a little bit elevated from irritation because indignation starts bringing in the idea. This is unfair. This shouldn't be happening to me. I shouldn't be being treated this way.
All right. So that's the next level that can lead to the escalation of your anger. The next one is what they call wrath. And wrath is where you begin to feel so indignant about what's happening that you begin to formalize plans to get back at whoever or whatever is happening to you.
You've got to plan your revenge and start thinking of ways that you could start acting to get back at the other person that's making you feel so angry. And that can lead to the next level, which is fury. And that's when you lash out, actually take action in your wrath.
You start lashing out, doing those things to hurt the other person, to get revenge, to get back at other people. And the final stage is what they called rage. And rage is so intense that you don't control it at all. You don't even have any remorse about it anymore when you get to that level of anger, where you get to the rage.
You don't even feel sorry that other people have been hurt or destroyed by the way you responded in anger. Now, the problem is that every one of those levels, there's the potential to get to the next level very quickly.
And any one of those levels, if you don't interject something good, it can lead to taking action, saying words, doing things that become sinful in the eyes of God and become destructive in relationships. So I want to spend the rest of the time looking at some of those consequences of how that happens.
Why anger is such a big deal? One of the things it would do is it dulls our hearing where we're not listening like we used to. Let's go back to this passage in James, pick up with verse 19 again.
"My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this. Everyone should be quick to what? To listen. Slow to what? And slow to become angry. Because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires."
Therefore, remember in scripture? Let's see what it's there for. "Get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you. Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says."
Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.
But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues in it, not forgetting what they've heard, but doing it, they will be blessed in what they do. Overcoming anger really begins with something we talked about earlier, humility.
Being willing to humble yourself when you start feeling angry about something. Being able to come back under the control of God's word, of God's teaching, allowing God's word and God's teaching to rule over your own feelings.
That's why he says, be quick to listen, slow to speak out, slow to respond, but quick to listen. You know what anger does? When we're really getting angry, we stop listening most of the time. We stop listening to the other person.
Now we're just yelling at each other. No person's listening in that scenario anymore. You're not trying to understand. You're not trying to hear them out and hear where they're coming from. You're angry, and you're not thinking about that anymore.
You're just in a lack of humility wanting to defend yourself, wanting to come out on top, wanting to win the argument. My good friend Walter, who teaches here at Lake Shore a lot, is our church administrator. He always, when he's working with couples, sometimes he and Lucy will work with couples, and he always tells them, "You never win an argument that your spouse loses."
Think about that for a minute. If the intent in that argument was just to win the argument, and you've made the other person feel like they've lost the argument, you haven't really won anything. You've just damaged your relationship that much more.
It's not about winning an argument. We've got to get our egos out of the way to properly deal with anger. So anger can cause us not to listen anymore, not only to the other person in a relationship, but it keeps us from listening to God and God's Word anymore like we need to.
Because now the emotion is ruling, not God. That's what anger does. It takes control where God is supposed to have control. It leads and guides our next words and our next steps where actually we should be guided by God and God's teaching and His Word.
Now we're letting anger take that place of ruling our actions. We take God off the throne, and we let anger rule on the throne of our hearts and our minds and our lives. And when we do that, it leads to sin. It leads to escalation of anger.
That leads to words and actions that are outside the will of God. That's why he says that we need to be willing if we're slow to speak and we're quick to listen. That includes listening to God, listening to His teaching.
We stop before we say something. We stop before we do something, and we go to God's Word first. It could be in our minds if we stored it there. It could be in our hearts. We may have to look up some verses, however we need to do it.
Let's go to God's Word and see what God has to say about how we speak right now, how we act right now when we're feeling angry. What does God say about that, about those circumstances?
Now it doesn't even necessarily mean God's going to reveal in His Word that person's absolutely right. You just need to let it go. It may not be what God's Word will tell you. What God's Word might tell you is, "Well, yeah, they may not be right, but you want this relationship to be preserved, so the way you handle this is important."
So let's bring this down a notch. Remember last week we talked about being polite, being kind? Let's at least respond in a polite way, in a kind way. That's what God's Word teaches, to treat everybody with respect.
And when we're lashing out in anger, we tend not to be very respectful anymore if that's how we're talking to someone out of our anger. In John 8:31 and 32, He says, "Those words that are translated, that phrase translated, it means you listen to it in a way where it produces the response that it's calling for."
That's why He says, "People always want to make Christianity more complicated than it is. I don't know why. I think we human beings, remember we talked about this in our previous series, how we tend to be drawn to the more complicated and the complex all the time.
It's really not that complicated, Christianity, the Christian life, living the Christian life. Here's how it works: You hear what God says and you obey it. Period. That's the Christian life. You hear what He says, you listen to what He says in the Word, and then you do it the way He says to do it.
It's not more complicated than that. I know people want to make it more complicated. We want to get deep in our study of theology. That's as deep as it gets. Listen and what? Obey.
Now, that's a process where you grow all the time. So you may learn something new. So when you learn something new, what do you do? Obey it. And then maybe you learn something else. Then what do you do? You obey it.
The more you do that, you know what happens? You grow up to be like Jesus. Just by listening and obeying. It's that simple. How do you mature in your faith? Listen and obey. How do you mature in your ability to teach others and influence others? Listen and obey.
How do you become a better spouse? Listen and obey. Not your spouse, God. I want to clarify that. Listen to God and obey God. And when you're doing that, you're a better parent. You're a better worker. You're a better employee or employer. It changes how you live.
When you listen and obey, your life is transformed by that simple step. Listen and then obey what you see God's Word tells you to do. Watch and repeat. Ever, all day long, every day. Listen, obey, repeat.
Listen, obey, repeat. Because anger keeps us from listening, it dulls our hearing, then we're not going to be very good at obeying. We're going to be like he said in James, the person who looks in the mirror. You see something's wrong, but you're so angry, you walk away and forget about it and keep lashing out in anger.
Instead of understanding, you need to make some corrections there. You see, God's Word is that mirror. It exposes what we need to see that we need to change. We need to listen to what it's telling us and correct like we need to correct.
Listen and obey. The Christian life is no more complicated than that. That's as deep as it gets. So when you're quick to become angry, you will be slow to listen. That's why he says it the way he says it.
He's saying be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. Well, if you do the opposite and you're putting the anger part first, then you're not listening the way you need to. So let's be sure we get the order right.
Let's be quick to listen. Let's be slow to speak and slow to become angry. Let's give ourselves the ability to really evaluate what we're about to say or about to do by the teaching of God's Word before we act out in anger.
There are a lot of people that you've probably heard the term maybe in college or in school that you can audit a class. You know what it means to audit a class? You could sit in on it and listen, but you don't have to do any of the work.
That's the way a lot of Christians are trying to handle God's Word. We're trying to audit God's teaching. We'll come to church and sit and listen. We'll listen to teaching and our devotional readings or whatever. We'll hear it. We'll see what it says.
But we're auditing the class. We're excusing ourselves from doing the hard work that goes along with the teaching. See, the teaching is not there just for us to know in our heads what it says. Just like the mirror is not there just to expose, "Oh, your hair is all messed up."
You know what the purpose of that is? Fix your hair. Well, the purpose of the teachings of God's Word is not to audit the class. If it says something needs to change, you need to be transformed, you need to stop doing something, it means do that.
Do the work that changes your life, that helps relationships get better. Your relationship with God and with your spouse and with your kids and everybody else in your life gets better when we listen and obey.
Where we're quicker to listen than we are to speak and to become angry with the person that we're dealing with. So anger can dull our hearing. Another thing anger can do is it inflames our tongues according to this passage and other passages in Scripture.
That's why he says, right, be slow to speak. We need to be slow to speak. Look at verse 26. "Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is what? Worthless."
Oh. We don't like it when God steps on our toes like he does so many times, mine too. He's saying you can act all religious if you want to, but if you're not controlling your tongue, your religion is what? It's worthless.
That's how serious this is. Because reining your tongue means you're not being ruled by your emotions anymore; you're being ruled by God. It will come out in reining your tongue. To rein your tongue, some people may not understand that analogy, you put reins on a horse, right, to guide it and direct it.
You control it with the reins. He's saying control your tongue. Control your mouth. What's coming out of your mouth? The words that you're saying need to be under control, under the control of the teachings of God, not under the control of your anger in the heat of the moment.
That's not easy for any of us. We all get angry. We all have things that should anger us, but how we respond makes all the difference, right? The control we allow God to have over our mouths, over our tongues, is so critically important to the worth of our religion.
Now, I always hear people saying today, they like to say this, "Christianity is not a religion, it's relationship." And that's false. Christianity is a religion centered in a relationship with Jesus Christ. You know what a religion is? It's a body of teaching about how to live life.
Does Christianity offer us that? Absolutely. It is very much a religion. But it's not a religion like some of the other religions. It's based in, centered in, built on our relationship with the Father through His Son Jesus. It's all about that relationship this religion is.
So we need to understand our religion is important. We are supposed to be religious people, following a body of teaching that we have in God's Word. And it should be based in, we're doing this not because we're forced to follow the rules, but because of our relationship with Jesus, we want to honor Him by living this lifestyle that He's called us to.
That's what Christianity is. And so the more we can learn to put a rein on our tongues, even when we're angry, the more we can live out a religion that God wants us to be living like that influences, impacts the world the way He wants Christianity to impact the world.
But when the people who wear the name of Christ aren't reigning in their tongues, it makes our effectiveness less and less and less in impacting the world, impacting our spouses, our families, our friends, the way God wants us to impact them if we can't rein in our tongues.
So to be ruled by your anger, some people say that's just the way I am. Well, God knew that was the way you were, but He calls you to be reined in and transformed by His teachings. By His power and His presence, His teaching, He wants us to be changed into the image of Jesus.
Don't use that cop-out that that's just the way I am. Or the way we are is flawed. It's sinful. And God wants to transform us into something better than that. But we have to put in the effort, the work, to have that change happen in our lives.
We have to be committed to understanding anger can inflame our tongues to the point that it causes us to sin. You might want to write down this statement. This one's good. It's not original with me. I don't know who said it originally. It comes directly from the teachings of God's Word, though.
Here's what it says: It's possible to be right, but not righteous. It's possible to be right, but not righteous. The word righteous means that which is right with God. So you could be right in an argument and still not be right with God in how you handled that conversation, that interaction with that person.
It's not just about being right in the life God has called us to. It's also about growing to be righteous, to be right with God in how we do things, how we say things, how we interact with other people that God puts in our path.
Proverbs 29:11 says this: "Fools give full vent to their rage, but the wise bring calm in the end." Fools just give vent to their rage. In other words, you don't even try to control it. You just say, "That's just the way I am. I'm just going to do it."
People, you just have to accept me the way I am. Well, here's the deal. Sometimes what you're asking people to accept is damaging them and that relationship and your witness for Christ. People should never accept that. You should not accept that in yourself.
We need to do better than that. And so we need to repent of allowing our anger to rule in our lives. We need to repent and seek God's help in bringing in, reigning in our tongues and not letting our anger rule over what we're saying and how we're saying it.
Someone has said that when you get angry, you should count to 10 before you speak. Sounds good until they added this: That gives you time to think of a better comeback. We should pause before we speak, right? Be slow to speak, but not so that we can think of a more cutting response, but so that we can think of a response that actually will bring healing to the situation.
We can bring restoring power to the relationship and the way that we respond. Nobody's perfect at this, but man, we need to get better at it. We need to keep working on it. We need to keep being transformed by the Word of God and His teachings and to doing it in a more God-like way.
In anger, we would say hurtful things that we would not normally say, but in the heat of anger, we will let words come out of our mouths with an attitude, with a forcefulness that under normal circumstances, we would have never said that or said it that way.
Anger can really change the tone of what's coming out of our mouths to bring it from a place of help to a place of hurt. So let's be sure we understand the danger. It dulls our hearing. It can inflame our tongues. It doesn't stop there.
It can also distract us from the will of God in our lives. Verse 27 again: "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless as this, to look after orphans and widows in their distress, to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."
You know what anger does? It keeps us from being attentive to and obedient to the teachings of God. It gets us off of the focus of doing the work God called us to do, and it makes us start just trying to defend ourselves and take care of ourselves and look inward at ourselves and make sure we argue down the other person and win every argument and make ourselves look good no matter how much damage it does to somebody else.
Instead of controlling the anger to the point that we can actually serve others the way God has called us to serve others. We start looking more like the world. You know what pollution does? You know what pollution is, right? We have problems with our water getting polluted. We have trouble with the land getting polluted, right?
It causes all kinds of problems. Pollution coming into our lives often enters through anger. It causes us to trash our lives. If we're ruled by anger, friends, it's going to hurt everything. Our life could end up being garbage.
Because we're no longer under the rule of Christ when we let anger control us. And we're living a wake of destruction everywhere we go when we're ruled by anger. And it's a mess.
Now a lot of you can honestly say right now in some of your relationships that you've allowed anger. We've all done this. We've allowed anger to cause some hurt and some damage. We can look back and see how we've left this trail of people being hurt by us because we lashed out in anger.
We can't undo that. That's the problem. That's why we've got to guard our mouths, right? Once it comes out, you can't put it back in. That's why the illustration of the toothpaste tube, right, is such a good illustration.
Once you squeeze out the toothpaste, is it easy to get it back in the tube? No. That's the way anger and the consequences of anger work. Once you let it out, it is so hard to get it back in again. Get it back to where it's supposed to be in that tube, in that relationship, in that setting.
But what we can do is start from where we are and get back on track with following God's will. Look at verse 21 here in James. He says, "Let's start getting back on track. Let's start getting our words back under control. Let's start pausing before we speak. Let's start doing a better job of letting God's teaching rule instead of letting our anger rule in how we're interacting with other people."
I love what Paul said in Romans 12:21. He said, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with what? Good." Let's start immediately, even when something makes us angry, thinking about what is good and how I can speak and respond in this moment.
According to God, what is good? Not according to the world, not according to what I want to do to win the argument, or according to what God says, what would be the good thing to do, the good thing to say in response to the thing that has made me angry?
Because he's not saying either let yourself just be walked on and walked all over in relationships. That's not what he's teaching here. But he's teaching there's a right way to respond and there's a wrong way to respond.
The wrong way will create even more damage than the hurt has already created. So let's think through and pray through and read through God's word to find the words and the actions that will be good according to God and how we respond instead of letting the heat of the moment of anger cause us to say and do things that just create more havoc, more destruction, and had to be there in that moment.
John Wesley, a lot of you know that name. He was often known as the father of the Methodist Church, Methodism, and he did a lot of great teaching and preaching and service over the years, but he had a temper and he tended to be sarcastic a lot of times.
When you read about his life, he was very honest about that and how that was a battle for him all the time. On one occasion, this was back in the day before automobiles and everything, he was traveling on a road by horseback and wagon, horse and wagon, and he met his biggest adversary coming the other way on a one-lane road and they couldn't get around each other.
And the adversary yelled out at him and said, "I never back up for an idiot." And Wesley stopped for a minute before he responded and he thought, "Oh, here's one." He said, "I always do." And he backed up and let the other guy pass by.
Sometimes you can make a point without lashing out in anger, but you've got to stop and think and pray and try to do it in the most appropriate way possible. We can only do this by the power of God. The flesh will never allow you to rule over anger because anger is of the flesh.
So we can't be walking by the flesh and deal with our anger the way we need to. You could take all the self-help classes you want to take, go to all the seminars and the courses you want to go to, go visit all the counselors and tell, you know, have a five-step program on how you're going to handle your anger.
They're not bad things, they're not evil things, but the problem is they lack the power to crucify the flesh. The only thing that can cause us to bring our anger under the rule of God is to crucify the flesh.
And the only thing that gives us the power to do that is the Spirit, the Spirit of God. That's the only power that's great enough to rule over our fleshly inclinations, whether it's anger or other inclinations of the flesh.
It's only by the power of the Spirit of God in us that we can allow God to maintain that place of rule in our lives. Galatians 5:22 and 23 says this: "But the fruit of the Spirit is, where does it start? Love."
You know what word's used there? The same word that's used in 1 Corinthians 13, agape. Where does this power to love like this come from? The fruit of the Spirit is that which the Spirit produces.
So if we're going to be able to love like this, and in a way that controls anger, brings it under the rule of God, if we're going to be able to love like God, it must only be by the power of the Spirit of God that we can do that.
So he says the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, which means putting up with each other, right? Not getting so angry. Kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control; against such things there is no law.
You look at that description and it sounds like 1 Corinthians 13 love, doesn't it? So where does that come from? It comes from the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God is God Himself. He's God in us. God is what? Love.
We can't love like this. That's why all the songs about the world coming together and we all just need to love each other, it's impossible without the power of God in us. We can sing all the songs and have all the events and try to bring people together, and the flesh will still rule in people's lives until they're surrendered to the power of God in the form of His Spirit coming to indwell us and transform us.
God wants us to mature and come under the control of the Spirit and the teaching of His Word so we can love like God loves because it's only by His Spirit that we can do that.
There may be people here today who are ready to take a step of surrendering to the authority and the rule and the teaching of God. Maybe you understand you've got a problem with anger or with some other thing that's messing your life up and you're trying to fix it on your own power and you're trying to listen to what the world's telling you about steps to take to get this under control.
They may even be good steps, but you need a power greater than just a list of good steps to take for your life to be changed and transformed. Well, friends, I want to offer you the teaching of Scripture that says it's by the Holy Spirit that we are transformed.
It's the power and the presence of God that changes people's lives. You can't do this on your own strength. So if you're ready to take steps of surrender, and maybe even as Christians today, if you are struggling with anger or other problems where you're causing hurt or damage to yourself or to other people, understand that it must be brought back under the rule of the Spirit instead of the rule of the flesh.
The only way you can have the presence and the power of the Spirit is by surrendering your life to Jesus. He says when we're baptized into Christ, He gives us a gift. That gift is Him in Spirit. His Spirit comes to indwell and empower people who wear the name of Jesus, who are desiring to live a life that honors Him.
When you're ready to come under that power and that strength, He says, "Come, repenting of your sin, be baptized into Me. Then I will give you that gift." And that's where the transformation begins.
See, He doesn't just cleanse us from past sins. He empowers us to live a different life from that point forward as we walk in the Spirit and not in the flesh.
Let's pray together.
Father, there may be those today who are ready to take a step of being transformed by the power and the presence of Your Spirit in their lives. I pray that if they have not already done so, that even today they would come professing Jesus as Lord and Savior, repenting of their sins, and they would be baptized into Christ so that You will then give them that gift that You promised them of Your Spirit to come and indwell and empower them.
Because, Father, in their own strength, that transformation cannot happen and it cannot last. But by Your Spirit, we can be changed forever. For those of us that are in Christ, Father, we come to You, repenting of where we've come short.
We've allowed anger and other things emotionally and in the flesh to take over and rule when You should be on the throne of our lives. Father, we thank You that when we repent, Your grace is more than enough to forgive us.
But, Father, we must be willing to surrender again to the control of Your Spirit. May we be renewed in our commitment to walk by the Spirit as we leave this place today. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.
If you're here today and you're ready to take a step of faith or a step of obedience that you need to take, we're going to stand and sing. We invite you to come right up front while we're singing, and we'll lead you in those next steps.
Let's stand and sing together.
Everyone have a seat, please. Destiny, come on up. Destiny is a member of our church family, and she comes today just seeking prayer on her behalf. Adenia comes asking for prayer for a struggle she has with anger.
And I'm sure she's not the only one, all right? But she's willing to come up and say, "I need help with this." And she wants us to pray for her in this walk, in this struggle. So I want us all to do that for her.
And let's remember we need it too. And there are other people in our lives probably that we know that need some help with this. And we're not here to accuse or try to tear anybody down. That's not what this is about.
This is about confessing sin and seeking help and strength that only God can provide. And we want to do that for her. And we want to give her that chance to know that her church family is lifting her up in prayer as she goes through this battle.
Some people, and I don't know everybody's personality. You could take a personality test and all that to find out what your personality type is. Mine is one of those type A, you might say, personalities.
There's different tests that you could do where it's easy to want to be in control of what makes you angry is when you're not in control, right? But other people have different personalities where some other things might set you off and cause you to be angry.
But anger is always something Satan is right there beside you waiting to use it against you, no matter what it is that has prompted it or caused you to feel it. And so let's pray for each other as well as for her right now.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank you that we can approach your throne of grace through your son Jesus with all of the struggles that we face. And we lift up this young lady to you today, Father, who is coming before you in repentance and seeking help and strength and guidance and grace in dealing with the anger that she's struggling with, Father.
Father, you know every detail, all the circumstances. You know exactly what she needs, the help that she needs. And you've said to come boldly to your throne of grace and ask, and you would give us that help.
So we come on her behalf and on behalf of ourselves and others in this room or listening online, we lift up the need to be ruled by your Spirit instead of by our flesh. We thank you that you give us your Spirit to rule and to reign and to bless and guide.
May we continue to walk more in the Spirit and less and less in the flesh. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
God bless you. Thank you.
At this time, Hugh is going to come and lead us in a time of communion around the Lord's table. We want to thank you again for being here with us today.
It's a joy to have this assembly time together with our brothers and sisters in Christ to spend time praising God and lifting up prayer and songs and studying God's word together. It's just a strengthening thing for us in our walk with Christ.
I'm so glad that you're here to be a part of that. If you want to continue worshipping through the giving of an offering, we have offering boxes available here in the auditorium. There's one in the back mounted on the post there.
As you exit the auditorium there in the hallway, there's one mounted to the post there. It's got a slot in the top of that box. You can drop your offering there in that top slot. You can also give online at lakeshorechristian.com.
Just click on that Give tab. You can scan the QR code that's in your bulletin shell. It'll take you to that page as well so that you can give there. You can mail in your offerings to the church office.
Any way that you do it, it's a way to worship God, honor him by putting him first. It's also a way to support the work in the ministry of the church. We can't do what we are called to do as a church without the financial support of those who are part of the church.
So we thank you for contributing to that, being a part of that. Each week in your bulletins, we have this bulletin insert also. It's got a sermon outline you can follow along with and take notes on if you like.
But also, on the other side, it's got a list of announcements of things that are coming up here at the church. It's a great thing to take with you. You can use it for study with the outline later on during the week.
We also send out, usually on Monday or Tuesday, we send out a five-day devotional that goes along with the message from that previous Sunday so that you can do it within your devotional time. You'll have a little guide you can use that ties in to the message.
We have to have your email address on file to do that. So if we don't already have that, if you could enter that into our database there at the kiosk, you can give us your information. We'll be glad to add you to that list so that that is emailed to you each week.
We don't want to flood you with emails, but if you want to get this devotional, that's a good way to have that to use as a guide during the week. Also, other things that are coming up, we've got the Southeast Easter Egg Hunt.
We're going to have a booth at. We need some volunteers to help work the booth. So if you could do that, just call our office during the week, let us know. It's going to be on March the 23rd.
We have a cereal drive. We're going to be starting next Sunday where we'll have a table set up and a way for you to bring cereal to help out with the camp this summer. We've got a men's conference coming up, elementary camp, and summer youth conferences.
You could get more information on the bulletin or on our website and get signed up there at the kiosk or on our website for those things. Easter is coming up very soon. The end of this month, March the 31st, is Easter Sunday.
Studies still show that more people are willing to go visit a church for the first time on Easter weekend and Christmas. Those are the two times they're most likely to be willing to go visit a church.
But the thing that is most influential in getting them to take that step is what? The invitation of a friend. I've got a video that I want you to watch real quick here.
All right, so I hope that got the point across, right? The most effective thing we can do as Christ followers to help other people find their way home to Jesus is simply to be somebody who invites others to come.
Easter Sunday, March 31, we've got four in-person services we're going to be doing that day, 9 and 11, here at the Antioch campus. We're going to do two services at the Smyrna campus at 9 and 11 also.
And then we're going to still do our live stream. Maybe they can't be here in person because of health or distance or something like that. They can connect with us on the live stream at 9 o'clock on Sunday morning.
And then once it's posted, they can connect with it any time after that. We want to help people get connected. And you can be a vital part of that.
I'm going to ask Jeremy to be coming up. He's going to close us out with a word of prayer. And part of that prayer for all of us is this. Pray that as we leave the room today, God's going to lay a name of someone on your heart that he wants you to be the one that invites them to come with you Easter Sunday.
Thanks, Jeremy.
on Mar 11, 2024
