What are you fulfilled by? - Luke Hamlett

🕊️What is filling your voids?

In this message from July 26, 2026 we explore the question of what are you fulfilled by? Everyday we make choices to fulfill ourselves and serve a kingdom, but which kingdom are you serving? Pulling from Galatians 5:19-21, Matthew 4:4, Galatians 5:22-25 and Ephesians 5:18-21, this sermon challenges your thinking on filling any voids in your life. 

• Meet Him in the secret place instead of waiting for Him to lead you to the wilderness.
• Biblical definitions of some of the fruits of the flesh. 
• What you should fill yourself with when you stop consuming the fruits of the flesh. 
• Let Him push those evil desires out of you and replace them with what He desires for you. 

Full service: https://youtu.be/YYK_nMTG3TM?si=kdNV0JoiyR_jGHuS

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, good morning, everybody. Uh the the title of the message today here is uh What Are You Fulfilled By? So Galatians 5, Matthew, Galatians, Ephesians. I'm gonna jump around a little bit here, but so a little personal testimony we got going on here. You know, everybody deals with it. You got work stress and children acting up. Heat, dealing with the heat, dealing with skin issues. I got I don't want to say the word because I don't want to I don't want to label it, but I'm eat up right now. AC and the washing machine went out the same day. We had the power surges the other day. So it's just been it's been a tough one. Death, my wife dealing with another death and her family, and uh we had a service yesterday at uh over in Cape Coral for her uncle. And um, yeah, it's just a constant struggle. But that's life, you know. We all know that the Lord He's our provider, and but we're still flesh, and we still we fall short sometimes. Yeah, it's easy to forget that we all need to rely on him with all the noise. We have noise around us all the time, we're constantly hearing all the different things going on in the world and all these little mini afflictions that we're dealing with all the time, too. I was telling my wife yesterday that you know, sometimes if I can just sit quiet, sometimes I can just feel all the different things going on with my body. Literally from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet, sometimes I'm just afflicted. Stuff's going on. This aches, that hurts. I'm getting there in age, so starting to get a few grades now. I thought I was gonna escape that, but apparently not. But the uh, you know, we can blame it on being in the wilderness, which is kind of what my wife and I were talking about being in right now and being a little cold, but when it comes down to it, it didn't add. It's just a it's a lack of obedience or a lack of surrender sometimes where we just we put the things of the world in place in front of us. We fill ourselves up with the other things. We we look at we look at the world for for uh for indulgence to to make us feel better about whatever's going on, you know, whether that being food or drugs and alcohol and or even just ego, some people. But you got all these different things going on that we have to deal with all the time, and it it's really easy to lose to lose focus and lose track of where we need to be, of where that focus needs to lie. And the truth is it's just excuses. There's a lot of excuses for it. You know, we we should be more grateful for the gift that we get if we receive that gift and hold on to it a little better. You know, it reminds me of a story with Moses. So I'm not gonna go all into Moses. I'll let Mr. Ken stand up here one day and do that. He knows a little more about it than me, but you see, he spent he spent two different groupings, two different years or two different times of his life, or 40 years that he spent in the wilderness. The first time that he did it, he stood out there in the wilderness because he had escaped Egypt and he needed to be humbled, and he needed to be built into who he needed to be so that he could be the leader to go back and get the people, to go back and get the Israelites and lead them out of Egypt. The second time that he got stuck in the wilderness for 40 years, you know, it was a couple years or it was a couple of weeks trip that it was going to be to the promised land. And because of the, because of the people that he was with, because of their faith, he wound up another 40 years out there because the the elder generation of the Israelites, they just didn't have the faith that the promised land was there. So the Lord put them out. He put them out in the wilderness and let them walk around out in the wilderness and for 40 years until the elder generation had died off. And then ultimately, Moses, he never even got to see the promised land out of his lack of obedience. He made one little mistake, and the and the Lord said no. You can see it, but you ain't going in. And that was it for him. So, you know that gratefulness for we we have all the opportunity in the world to get on our knees and to spend time with the Lord and to really have a relationship with him because of what he did. Sending Jesus here for Jesus to become our Lord and Savior. You know it. You know, we don't we just sometimes we just don't appreciate it. We don't really, we don't really go and spend the time on the knees. That's uh that's just the truth of it. So y'all see what we should be doing is choosing to go to the wilderness. Because that's what Jesus did whenever he was here. That's where he would go to get away from the noise, to get away from everything, right? So we should be choosing to go to the wilderness, not making the Lord push us into the wilderness. You know, we get forced to go there because we're not going there on our own. But if we just go to that quiet place, away from the distractions of the flesh, denying our flesh, even when we're tired in pain or just being stubborn like me, you know, I can complain about all this and that and everything else, and I could also go get on my knees too and pray for God to take it away from me. It's exactly why we should push ourselves to strip away the noise so we should we could hear him. We can go to the wilderness, we can choose to go to that quiet place, that secret place, and be there to be available for him to provide us with a burning bush, like he did to Moses, so that we're not on the road to Damascus and we have to be blinded like Paul. My wife was telling that story this morning. I didn't write it down, but then she brought it out, so I figure it's necessary to bring it up. Sometimes that's what the Lord will do. He just wants to fulfill us. But what are we fulfilling ourselves full of? I'm gonna go into Galatians, Galatians 5, 19, and read through 21 here. So now the works of the flesh are evident, which are adultery and fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murder, drunkenness, revelries, and the like, of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in the time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Well, people, you wonder why, well, if I'm saved, I'm saved, right? Well, yeah, that's true. But you can also forfeit your gift. You know, the enemy, he's wanting to, he's constantly trying to drag us down with him. And he can't take it from you, but you can decide to join him up and give it back through blasphemy. Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, sexual immorality, idolatry. I get into a little bit of definitions here. I look these up in one of those biblical dictionaries. Idolatry is there's two types. One of them is the worship of idols, images, or anything made by hands or which not made by God. The second one is excessive attachment or veneration for anything. So if you can label any of those things, that's idolatry. Anything that you're putting before God, in place of God, above God, and prioritizing before God. And it's not about coming to church, it's about the relationship with Him. It's not about just showing up here on Sunday because not everybody can come here on Sunday. Some of us don't have the luxury. But what we do have time for is to get in the Word. We do have time to go spend time in prayer and to build a relationship with Him. Because He listens to everything we got to say and He can read your heart. He reads each and every one of our hearts. He knows right where we're at. And all He wants is He wants our heart to focus on Him and to get in closer to Him for each breath that He gives us. Sorcery, witchcraft. Some of you don't even know. Blowing out birthday candles can be considered witchcraft. I don't necessarily believe that, but I mean that's what some of some factions say that, some religions. But witchcraft, uh it's part of it too. Some people they they make little truces or they they uh make promises or they make wishes in their head for things. They look at people in certain ways, and hatred, contentions, jealousies, and outbursts of wrath. Those are a disposition to contend and argue and to lash out. I've heard Frank preach on it before. Some people just want to be angry. And I got to digging into that a little bit. And you know, some people they want to feel angry so they can feel something. If you dig into it scientifically, they get the same, they get the same serotonin release inside their head that somebody that feels happy does sometimes. If they don't have happiness, sometimes people will lash out in anger and they get the same kind of feeling back because they can feel something. Well, if if you're one of those people that just can't control your anger, if you're one of those people that lashes out or is bringing it home when you shouldn't, you should probably replace that feeling with Jesus. You know, it's if you pray to him, he can take it away. All you got to do is just ask. You just continue to beat on it and ask for it. Ask for, ask for that. He's gonna continue to push you through it to create patience, to create that uh long suffering in you. But that's how he gets us through it, right? Selfish ambitions, craving personal recognition, looking for honor, looking for status, and with doing that with disregard for others. That's a selfish ambition. Dissensions, a strong disagreement of opinion that causes division. This is one of the biggest ones that's involved in the church throughout all the different what do you call them? The the uh say it louder, Lily.

unknown 11:49

Denominations.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

Denominations, there we go. Through the different ones, strong disagreements of opinions that causes division. It's not what the Lord wants, he wants us in one accord. Heresies and false witness. A heresy is a false witness and lies. Envy. Envy is a painful longing for another person's success, blessings, or possessions, and wishing they did not have them. Or even wishing evil against them. Murder. We all know what murder means. Drunkenness and revelries. This is a tough one because it's losing self-control and sound judgment and having moral restraint, not having moral restraint, consuming your focus and leads to spiritual apathy and a disregard for God's works. So that's party animals, people that drink too much, people that eat too much and are gluttonous eaters of meat. So what are you being fulfilled by? And simply just not doing those things, it'll leave you empty. So we need to fulfill ourselves somehow, right? So what do we fulfill ourselves with? The word of God. When we operate on an empty, relying on our own strength and ignoring the commandments, that's when the flesh starts to take over. Now we can read that list and we see things like witchcraft or idolatry, and it's easy to think, well, I'm not doing any of that. I'm good. But we just keep reading. Paul, when he listed hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, and selfish ambition. Does that remind you when you get cut off in traffic? It's pretty easy to go there. I've been trying to replace the anger when I get cut off in traffic with God bless you, if you cut me off. You needed to get somewhere quicker than I did. So apparently it was important. Whether it was or not, don't matter. What about in our homes when we bring in discord? We bring in the stress of the world right through the front door and take it out on our family. Guilty. There's that too. That's discord. Selfish ambition driving us to chase the things of the world. While the people God gave us just get the leftovers of our time and our energy. Putting work ahead of our relationships, ahead of our godly relationships, ignoring Mr. Johnny's phone call and instead taking a work call and forgetting to call him back. That kind of stuff. That's flesh. It really is just a fragile way to live. Because they don't really know where we're at. It's nice. When the weather's nice, you know, you can be filled with all the things of the world and all that, but whenever the storm comes, that foundation needs to get washed in. The very first message I spoke up here, the title of it was, What is your foundation rooted in? Again, that's what I do for a living. I build foundations. So that one hits real close to home because I know just how important it is to be on a stable foundation. And no root. If the root of what you do is in your own works and what you do, you're in trouble. Last week after church, I had a revelation. I didn't even get to sit in church, but Pastor Frank, but I um I'd heard a little bit through the door. And uh I had a little bit of revelation on that. It's where the enemy really tries to blind us with what Jesus has done. As believers, we know that the war's already won, right? Amen. The war's won. When Jesus said it is finished, when he said it is finished on the cross, he meant it. We claim him as Lord, we know that we're saved. So we know we're on the winning side of eternity, right? And Satan knows that Jesus defeated him. And he knows that his time is short. Especially now. It's evident all over the place of Revelation coming to life right before our eyes. So, what does a defeated enemy do? He tries to take you down with him. He tries to take down as many of us with him as he can. But it isn't just that. He tries to distract us, even if we are saved, from living out to our full potential as well. Because if everybody in here would all live up to their full potential, it wouldn't take long when we could get the whole world saved. Right? But he knows that if we can distract one Christ follower into thinking they're okay, and not going out spreading the gospel like it says in the in Matthew, making disciples of all nations. If he can distract us, then we don't live up to our potential, then that can keep us away, and then he'll continue to indulge us and make us feel good about ourselves and to make us with religious lies make us feel like, oh, we're all like the Pharisees in our whitewashed tombs. Filthy on the inside, checking the box on the outside. His goal is to make us blasphemy the Holy Spirit. He wants us to forget about God and ultimately say, ah, I used to believe. I've heard that so many times. I used, you know, I used to believe, and then I just, I don't know. I just don't, I don't know. I just feel out of it. Especially in construction. You get over in Naples and Fort Myers, there's a lot of money. High-end houses going up down there around Creighton Road area. You got multi-million dollar houses, and people are like, I don't know. Well, they're making a half million dollars a year. You get people, people get distracted with it and they eventually fall away. Well, that's forfeiture. That's not losing something, that's giving it up. Handing it off, not putting a value on it. You get something with a value like salvation, you should probably hold on to it. Like Pastor Frank says, you shouldn't set it on the on the header above the door every time you leave church. And when you come back in, okay, let me go pick it up. Let me put it back in my pocket. I'm good, I'm saved. But then walk out that door and hang it right back on the header. Not take it with us. Young people, they tend to idolize people with wealth and status and lifestyle. Got all these impressionable kids in here, these teenage kids, and they see people and they'll they'll slip right into idolatry and they don't even know what it means. It's so hard. They get caught up in all those lies, especially when they don't have the confidence in Christ, knowing that the war is already won. It's so important for y'all to keep bringing your kids. It takes a long time to get it ingrained in their skulls. I know it took me a long time as an adult to get it ingrained in my skull. Now I'm still learning every day. But it's so important. These kids come in here, they get this foundation, they get to build their life on that foundation of Christ. Coming in here with people like Mr. Chris, especially. And because we know the war is won by the blood, we can easily buy into the dangerous lie. We think deep down, well, my salvation is secure. So what does it hurt for me to indulge a little bit? Right? That's alright. The war's already won, right? We forget that we can choose and switch teams. Saved by grace, right? Like a license to sin. I used to hear that all the time. They make a few movies over on that. They name that? License to sin. We convince ourselves that there are no repercussions because Jesus already wrote the final victory. But when we do that, our actions, they make us out to be traitors in the war. Some of us are wearing a cross around our neck, but we choose to go and do and say the contrary. Doing the enemy's work for him, actively rebelling against the kingdom, but there are repercussions, and we read it right there. Those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. It's pretty clear to me. We're going to fall short. People are going to, you're going to trip, you're going to stumble, you're going to make it, you're going to do things willfully, but don't fall into practice. I'm preaching to myself right here just as much as any of y'all. Because I need to hear it too. This is cutting like a knife this morning as I'm typing away. Because it's not just the things that we all see as evil in everyday life. There's a lot of things here that don't have any stigma attached to them, right? The world says it's okay or it's normal. Just because the war is won, it doesn't mean that our sin today won't hurt other people. That rubs off on them too. If we're falling short, then we're not reaching our potential, we're not doing the work, we're not being the hands and feet. When we indulge the flesh, we damage our witness for Jesus. We fracture our homes and we willingly step right into the traps of a defeated enemy. We are literally bolting the chains on to ourselves when we decide it. To allow it. You hand him the lock. Put the chain on. Here, Satan. Put the lock on. I like that. That's not stewarding either. It's not steward in your home. It's not steward in your body. If it's an indulgence thing like me, I like to eat. It isn't loving ourselves either. In Matthew 22, Jesus gives us the greatest commandment, which is you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul. And then he follows right up and gives us a second commandment. And I know I quote this one all the time. To love your neighbor as yourself. People cut it short all the time. They say, to love your neighbor. What about as yourself? What about if you're not loving yourself? How are you going to treat your neighbor? Do you want your neighbor to fall into the same traps that you fall into? It's not very stewardworthy of us to not love ourselves the right way either. We love all of our fleshly life, right? But that's not getting us closer to God. Picking up our cross daily. I know y'all have heard me say it before. My wife has heard me say it before. Plenty of times. Jesus, he doesn't care what you eat, and that's the truth. It ain't about what you eat, it's about what you do with it, how you eat it. It's not about what you put in your body whenever you're indulging, it's about your heart. And how much of it. What kind of void are you trying to fill? You know, whenever Jesus went up out to the wilderness again, and he was tempted for 40 days and forty nights, and Satan tried to throw the word at him all the time. And he just threw it right back. Matthew 4 and 4. It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, against such there is no law. And those who are Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another and envying one another. See, Jesus, he doesn't want to just leave us sitting in the mud of our own mistakes, right? So he gives us redemption, he offers us a completely different way to live. So in 22 it says the word the word shifts from all the bad things there that I've got written in green. In verse 22, it says you accept. Once you accept Christ, those fruits of the Spirit, they start to grow on you. Jesus is grafted in his vines and he gave you brand new roots. Standing on a solid, firm foundation, right? But this process, it takes time. It's not an overnight thing. You don't get saved today and start preaching tomorrow. It's just not how it works. It takes a long time to be able to start accepting those fruits of the Spirit. Because that's what it is. You just have to start accepting them. Letting Him push out the evil desires that are inside of you. And he'll replace them. But all we need to do is just crucify our flesh and suppress the desire. Suppress it, spend our time in the Word, spend our time in prayer. Build our relationship with Him, and those desires will come. Those things come in. If you're dealing with anything, you can forfeit it and give it up too. You have the key to the law. All you have to do is stick the key in and unlock it and throw it away. And it's going to feel rough for a little bit. But he will put new desires in your heart. It says in the Bible that it says that he will give you the desires of your heart. But the part that he doesn't say is that he's just going to replace them with his desires. If you have desires in your heart right now that they don't align with the word of God, he's not going to give you those. What direction are you going if you're pursuing desires that do not align with the word of God? They're either in alignment or they're not. If it's not getting you closer to Him, you should be probably trying to get rid of it. And as long as we continue to try to do that, His grace will be enough for us if we fall short. But in turn, we become better disciples and are able to be trusted with bigger loads. Bigger tasks that He can give us works, not to earn, not to prove, but because the desires of our heart want to do these things. To be pleasing to God, to earn favor, to get a new jewel in our crown. Not earning. Paul, he says, if we have crucified the flesh, y'all, it's a crucifixion is not, use the words crucify. That's what Jesus did on the cross. It's not a comfortable pattern. It doesn't feel good. Not something that anybody wants to do. But there's no shame in it. There's glory on the other side of it, not shame. We crucify our flesh by denying what it demands. We nail our pride to the cross by biting our tongue instead of lashing out. Hang up your selfish ambition. Put the worldly distractions away and actually be present. Heard that in that song earlier. Being present in his presence. When the Holy Spirit's around. Dying to ourselves. Putting the flesh away and not holding grudges anymore. The Bible says that we should forgive if we want to be forgiven. Those same things that we're holding on to. Those same grudges. The person you're holding the grudge on probably doesn't even know you're holding that grudge. It's only hurting you. Doesn't matter how busy we get in life. All we need to do is make a choice every day to choose him. To choose where we get all fulfillment from. Trying to carry the load yourself and you're breaking down, you're trying to outwork your problems. That's something that I often find. If you've got something you need to give up, he'll gladly take it. Stepping up, stepping out in obedience. But when you fall in short, he offers forgiveness. Maybe you're just hanging on to something, you need a little help. Surrender doesn't look like a gun to your head. That's what the enemy wants. You surrender to his will. Surrender to God's will. Taking the chains off. Unfolding them. It's about that relationship. It's about spending that time on your knees. Building that relationship with him. Just ask yourself today what are you getting your fulfillment from?