SPEAKER_01: Hey, I'm Pastor Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_01: I want to empower you today to walk in your true identity as a worshiper and warrior.
SPEAKER_01: Today, embrace the power of God's Word and the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Born for War podcast.
SPEAKER_01: Turn in your Bibles to 1 Peter chapter 1.
SPEAKER_01: We're talking about Peter's principles for prevailing over problems.
SPEAKER_01: Anybody here want to prevail over your problems?
SPEAKER_01: Alright, well, this is what Peter's talking about.
SPEAKER_01: And he's taking us through a letter.
SPEAKER_01: It's an epistle of 1 Peter.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, it's his first letter.
SPEAKER_01: And he's giving us instruction on how to prevail, how to overcome.
SPEAKER_01: And if there's one thing that we know about this life, that those that are successful, those that are effective are overcomers.
SPEAKER_01: You're prevailers.
SPEAKER_01: And he's showing us how to do that as a Jesus follower, as a disciple of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: So look at verse 22.
SPEAKER_01: So I'm going to read the whole passage and then we'll break it down from there.
SPEAKER_01: Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit, in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart.
SPEAKER_01: Having been born again, not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible through the word of God, which lives and abides forever.
SPEAKER_01: Because, verse 24, all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass, the grass withers, and its flower falls away, but the word of the Lord endures forever.
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you.
SPEAKER_01: Now, chapter 2.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, as newborn babes, desiring the pure milk of the word that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.
SPEAKER_01: Now, word is mentioned one, two, three, four times.
SPEAKER_01: And so I want to talk about this idea of the word in our hearts, this word in our life.
SPEAKER_01: And I want to say that the word of God has activating power.
SPEAKER_01: The word of God has activating power in our life.
SPEAKER_01: Now there's two aspects of word here.
SPEAKER_01: The first is how we are born again, how we become a new creation in Christ, because the scriptures tell us, John tells us, that the word became flesh and dwelt among us, speaking of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: So when you give your heart to Christ, when you surrender to him, the Word, the Spirit comes to live within you.
SPEAKER_01: So that's another, that's one aspect of the Word.
SPEAKER_01: The Word begins to be activated in your life because the Holy Spirit has come to live in you, and you're a new creation in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: But there's another aspect of the Word of God that is in this passage, and that is that part of a newborn babe.
SPEAKER_01: It was chapter 2, verse 2.
SPEAKER_01: Look at chapter 2, verse 2 again.
SPEAKER_01: It says, like a newborn babe, longing for or nursing upon the mother's breast, there's this longing for the word.
SPEAKER_01: So there is a word that gets implanted through the Spirit, but then there's also the Word as it grows, which is the Word of God, which would be the Scriptures, the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible's living and active.
SPEAKER_01: Hebrews 4.12 says the Bible, the Word of God, is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword.
SPEAKER_01: So that means the Word is not just a book, it's actually a living seed in our lives that, if connected with good soil, begins to grow.
SPEAKER_01: So what's interesting about our passage is that the first part, the first few verses that I read, we're talking about a sincere love, having a sincerity of love in our life.
SPEAKER_01: But then if you go to chapter 2 again and you look at verse 1, it talks about hypocrisy.
SPEAKER_01: So on the one hand, he's saying, look, there's this seed that gets planted.
SPEAKER_01: It's called the incorruptible seed that's planted in your heart, that then begins to be nurtured into sincerity of love, that then begins to work in our life, that I think in 2-1, what he's saying is that it begins to drive out hypocrisy in our life.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, that's the nature of the work of the Spirit in our lives is that men and women, you're becoming a real human.
SPEAKER_01: You've heard the term humanism.
SPEAKER_01: Guess where humanism came from?
SPEAKER_01: Humanism was developed during the Enlightenment by believers.
SPEAKER_01: The idea of us being truly human is the essence of humanism.
SPEAKER_01: Now, the way humanism is being defined today is entirely different than not only the etymology of the word, but also the history of the study.
SPEAKER_01: But here's the reality: that the more we grow in Christ, the creator of the universe, through the seed that's been planted in us when we believe, the more human you become.
SPEAKER_01: You become the essence of what you were created in the beginning to be.
SPEAKER_01: When we're not following Christ, we're actually not as human.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you're human, but you're not as human as God created you to be.
SPEAKER_01: And so it's my 62 Volkswagen.
SPEAKER_01: My red 62 Volkswagen bug that I had in college.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't take to a Ford dealership.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't take to a Chevrolet dealership.
SPEAKER_01: I took it to a Volkswagen dealership because that mechanic knows how to work on VWs.
SPEAKER_01: God created you.
SPEAKER_01: Christ created you to be who you are.
SPEAKER_01: Your DNA has a destiny that God put within you, and the more you line up with the one who gave you your DNA, the more you discover the created person that you are.
SPEAKER_01: That's humanism.
SPEAKER_01: That's true humanism.
SPEAKER_01: And so what he's speaking here of is this word that became flesh on the one hand, but also the written word that as we spend time in God's word, we grow and become the people that God's called us to be.
SPEAKER_01: Now we're a new creation in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: So as a new creation in Christ, we are different.
SPEAKER_01: We're not reforming ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: So 2 Corinthians 5.17 says, I'm a new creation in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: The old has passed away.
SPEAKER_01: Behold, new things have come.
SPEAKER_01: So when we surrender to Christ, there's this new work of the Spirit within us.
SPEAKER_01: And what happens in many Christian circles is we try to reform ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: We're trying to change ourselves, and it's kind of an outward-in discipline that is futile.
SPEAKER_01: You can't change you.
SPEAKER_01: But it's more as we surrender to Him that He does his work within us, and as He works inside out within us, we see the new creation for which we were created.
SPEAKER_01: So C.S.
SPEAKER_01: Lewis, the great Oxford Cambridge professor and writer, said this: God became man to turn creatures into sons.
SPEAKER_01: Not simply to produce better men of the old kind, but to produce a new kind of man or a new kind of woman.
SPEAKER_01: It is not like teaching a horse to jump better and better, but it's more like turning a horse into a winged creature.
SPEAKER_01: So, in other words, what God's Spirit does through the seed of the Word is he comes to work within us in our natural existence, and he begins a supernatural work within our natural existence by which new desires and new passions are birthed within us.
SPEAKER_01: And that new birth activity of God is what begins to set us free from those areas we were in bondage to before.
SPEAKER_01: So, a number of months ago, I was in a conversation with a young man, and he was sharing with me his background in both Gnosticism and Stoicism.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not going to go into the differences between the two or what exactly those are.
SPEAKER_01: You can look them up.
SPEAKER_01: Stoicism, S-T-O-I-C-I-S-M, or Gnosticism.
SPEAKER_01: He had been involved in both.
SPEAKER_01: And we began the discovery of how he got saved, how he came into this new experience with Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And he said this was the essence of it.
SPEAKER_01: The essence of it was that in Stoicism, as well as in Gnosticism, it was about me attempting to discipline my life better and better to be a better person, which by the way is a good thing.
SPEAKER_01: I'd rather for you to be disciplining yourself to be a better person than not disciplining yourself and being a crummy person.
SPEAKER_01: So I think it's great to do that.
SPEAKER_01: But in the end, he saw the vanity and the futility of that.
SPEAKER_01: And when he came to Christ, it really resonated with him that Christ does the work.
SPEAKER_01: And what Peter's saying here is there was a seed planted when you believed.
SPEAKER_01: This incorruptible seed that's now growing within us.
SPEAKER_01: And so in Ephesians 2 we read, even when we were dead in trespasses, he made us alive together with Christ by grace.
SPEAKER_01: You've been saved.
SPEAKER_01: Not by works, but by the grace of God you've been saved, and raised us up together and made us sit together with him in heavenly places in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And so this is a work of God, though we be dead in our sin.
SPEAKER_01: He pours life into us through this seed.
SPEAKER_01: John 4.
SPEAKER_01: John writes, True worshipers worship the Father in spirit and truth.
SPEAKER_01: For the Father is seeking such to worship him.
SPEAKER_01: God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.
SPEAKER_01: So we give our hearts to Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you may have done that last week.
SPEAKER_01: We had a lot of spontaneous baptisms up here at all the services.
SPEAKER_01: And you might have gotten baptized either the first time or maybe the fifth time.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe this one's going to stick.
SPEAKER_01: And I say that because I have so much experience with people in the church who have gotten baptized because it's going to turn over a new leaf.
SPEAKER_01: They're going to turn over a new leaf.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to change my life.
SPEAKER_01: And that right there, that phrase right there is already a big mistake.
SPEAKER_01: You can't change your life.
SPEAKER_01: And so they think that somehow getting physically baptized is going to change everything.
SPEAKER_01: No.
SPEAKER_01: It's your faith in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: It's for by grace you're saved through faith.
SPEAKER_01: So it's his grace coming in.
SPEAKER_01: Then we get baptized because God's doing a fresh work in our life, and we're making a public statement about that.
SPEAKER_01: So with that, church, God transforms us from the inside out with this incorruptible seed.
SPEAKER_01: So look at verse 22 again.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 22 again.
SPEAKER_01: Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit, in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart.
SPEAKER_01: God desires that we have sincere love in our relationship.
SPEAKER_01: God desires that we have a sincere love in our relationship.
SPEAKER_01: And that's one of the first things that happens in a person's life when we're born again, when we come to know Christ, is God begins to give us a sincere love.
SPEAKER_01: It's pretty interesting because the word here starts in the Greek, if you were reading the word for sincere, the word is ano kritos.
SPEAKER_01: Anupo kritos.
SPEAKER_01: So a is a negative when it's in Greek.
SPEAKER_01: Pokritos comes from hippocritos, which is the word hypocrite.
SPEAKER_01: So how many of people have ever said, I don't go to church because it's full of hypocrites?
SPEAKER_01: Raise your hand.
SPEAKER_01: That's you, okay?
SPEAKER_01: All right.
SPEAKER_01: Well, you're all hypocrites.
SPEAKER_01: All right, so let's just settle it.
SPEAKER_01: We have hypocritical ways in certain parts of our life.
SPEAKER_01: Nobody's perfect in that.
SPEAKER_01: But here's what he's saying: is that the incorruptible seed, which he's about to explain, the first thing that it begins to do in our life, it starts to give us sincere love.
SPEAKER_01: So remember I talked about humanism?
SPEAKER_01: The reality is you're becoming the real you.
SPEAKER_01: When the spirit comes in, when the seed comes in, you start to become the authentic you.
SPEAKER_01: The problem is religion.
SPEAKER_01: The problem is religion because we have in America or we have in our church backgrounds, mine would be, you know, a background with my dad actually being a pastor.
SPEAKER_01: There's a veneer, there's an outward veneer of spirituality that comes with that, and you just embrace it when you're a kid, and you just think that's what it means.
SPEAKER_01: And I remember thinking, like, even as a pastor, like, I'll never be a pastor.
SPEAKER_01: That's like the most boring job.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, not only is it boring, but you wear that cardboard thing on your neck, man.
SPEAKER_01: It's like, it's like my dad's choking all the time.
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's called a clerical collar.
SPEAKER_01: That's a religious, that's religious paraphernalia, religious fashion, I guess you could call that.
SPEAKER_01: But there's also other religious things that go with it.
SPEAKER_01: And what happens is we start becoming posers.
SPEAKER_01: We become fakers because we're not, that's not really who we are, but we begin to become pretenders, hypocrite, hipocritos means actor, a poser, a faker.
SPEAKER_01: And what Peter's saying is the purpose of the work of the Spirit is to make us sincerely who we are.
SPEAKER_01: That's pretty exciting.
SPEAKER_01: And folks, who you are is different than the person you're sitting next to.
SPEAKER_01: So you have gifts and talents, and you have a DNA and a genetic code given supernaturally by God that gives you the mind you have, the heart you have, the body type you have, the eye color.
SPEAKER_01: That's from God.
SPEAKER_01: And what he wants to do in our lives is enable us to love him and love ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: To love him and love.
SPEAKER_01: Love what he made you to be.
SPEAKER_01: And quit trying to be something that you're not.
SPEAKER_01: Comparison is like the death knell of our lives.
SPEAKER_01: God is happy with how he made you.
SPEAKER_01: So, how do you find out who you are?
SPEAKER_01: By a sincere love for him.
SPEAKER_01: So it starts with loving God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and then your neighbor is yourself.
SPEAKER_01: So as we learn to love God, that work, that incorruptible seed begins to be birthed in us, and it's super exciting.
SPEAKER_01: It's really good.
SPEAKER_01: And so we say things like, Well, I don't love people that vote that way.
SPEAKER_01: Anybody ever said that?
SPEAKER_01: I can't love people like that.
SPEAKER_01: I can't love people that are going to vote for that person or this person or whatever it might be.
SPEAKER_01: Well, what God will begin to do in our lives is He starts to give us a sincere love for people that are different than us.
SPEAKER_01: That's what the civil rights movement was all about in the South back in the day.
SPEAKER_01: That's the reason my dad was a leader in the civil rights movement as a white guy.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we had black pastors coming in and out of our house all the time.
SPEAKER_01: And I just thought that was normal.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I remember going to school and realizing when I heard the N-word and things like that, I'd never heard that before.
SPEAKER_01: And I just remember being shocked.
SPEAKER_01: And I remember thinking to myself, I think that's derogatory.
SPEAKER_01: But I had to go home to mom and say, Mom, is that seventh grade?
SPEAKER_01: I said, What does this mean?
SPEAKER_01: And she goes, Don't ever say that word.
SPEAKER_01: And I go, whoa, okay.
SPEAKER_01: You know?
SPEAKER_01: Um, but it was because I grew up in a home where there was a sincere love for all the races.
SPEAKER_01: And that was my background.
SPEAKER_01: But but for some of you, it's the opposite.
SPEAKER_01: You grew up in a background where you're always right and you're superior to everybody.
SPEAKER_01: You saw it in your mom and dad or your grandparents or whatever.
SPEAKER_01: And so you're working out a sincere love for those that you saw your parents hating.
SPEAKER_01: And then, here's the part that really makes it fun is the deeper your convictions about something, the harder it is to love those who don't have your convictions.
SPEAKER_01: So you say, well, maybe I shouldn't have such deep convictions.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying that.
SPEAKER_01: I say let your convictions grow deep, but then allow the word of God, the supernatural word of God, to give you a law for those who are different than you.
SPEAKER_01: Because it ain't gonna happen naturally.
SPEAKER_01: It's not gonna happen naturally.
SPEAKER_01: It would have to be a supernatural word of spirit.
SPEAKER_01: He does it all the time.
SPEAKER_01: And you guys know the stands that I've taken since COVID and all the different things that have happened, and people that have come against me and the papers and people who've actually come into the sanctuary and said stuff to me and everything.
SPEAKER_01: And my response is always, man, I love you.
SPEAKER_01: And they're like, Well, I mean, it just throws the whole thing in a spin, man.
SPEAKER_01: I say, I love you.
SPEAKER_01: Hey, you want to go get coffee?
SPEAKER_01: I'd love to hear your perspective.
SPEAKER_01: Sounds like you have some really deep convictions, just like I do.
SPEAKER_01: I'll treat you to coffee.
SPEAKER_01: But I'm not gonna get in a match where I'm trying to degrade people.
SPEAKER_01: What?
SPEAKER_01: I'm a Christian first.
SPEAKER_01: Politics is way down on the list, man.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: So be a Jesus follower first.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: With the sincere love of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Other convictions, as deep as they may be, and I know I'm yeah, I know some of you are going, Steve, that's there's no way.
SPEAKER_01: There is no way I'm doing that with that person.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: You keep coming here, you'll be doing it in a year.
SPEAKER_01: Because Jesus will work in your life.
SPEAKER_01: And it's and it's really freeing to realize that they don't have anything on you.
SPEAKER_01: There's no hooks there.
SPEAKER_01: Because I mean, there's some jabs that come, right?
SPEAKER_01: You go, man, I'm a punching bag.
SPEAKER_01: Fine.
SPEAKER_01: You want to get coffee?
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes they take you up on it, sometimes they get scared.
SPEAKER_01: Because they know I can talk pretty good.
SPEAKER_01: So anyway, look at verse 23.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 23.
SPEAKER_01: So here's how this works: this is how sincere love begins to work in our life.
SPEAKER_01: Having been born again, not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever.
SPEAKER_01: Because all flesh is as grass.
SPEAKER_01: And all the glory of man is the flower of the grass.
SPEAKER_01: The grass withers and its flower falls away.
SPEAKER_01: But the word of the Lord endures forever.
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is the word which by the gospel is preached to you.
SPEAKER_01: So the seed of God's word is incorruptible and it activates transformation, men and women, in your life.
SPEAKER_01: We're fading out.
SPEAKER_01: From all the shooting that I've done and all the worship services I've been a part of and all the practic, I mean, loud music.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, my right ear ain't so good anymore.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna ask, I'm gonna ask some people to pray for me at noonday prayer because there was a big healing of two ears getting healed recently, and I thought, I want in on the healing, man, because it'd be great to have that ear healed.
SPEAKER_01: But we're we're fading, we're fading, and yet the incorruptible seed is growing.
SPEAKER_01: So we may be fading on the outside, we can be growing on the inside.
SPEAKER_01: We can be fading out in our ability to ski or to run or to lift weights or whatever it might be, but we can be growing stronger on the interior of our heart.
SPEAKER_01: That does not fade.
SPEAKER_01: It's an incorruptible, internal, eternal seed that's growing within us, and it's activating transformation in your life.
SPEAKER_01: If you spend time in it, if your soil is good.
SPEAKER_01: And the word here for seed is spora.
SPEAKER_01: It's like the spores on a flower.
SPEAKER_01: God is working within you.
SPEAKER_01: Now turn in your Bibles, go left in your Bible to Mark.
SPEAKER_01: Mark chapter 4.
SPEAKER_01: Look at Mark chapter 4, 26.
SPEAKER_01: Look at Mark 4, 26.
SPEAKER_01: Mark 4, 26.
SPEAKER_01: The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground, and should sleep by night and rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow.
SPEAKER_01: He himself does not know how.
SPEAKER_01: For the earth yields crops by itself, first the blade, then the head, and after that the full grain in the head.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 29.
SPEAKER_01: But when the grain ripens, immediately it puts in the sickle because the harvest has come.
SPEAKER_01: Now we think that if we go to the store, that's where food comes from.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, that came from Safeway.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, this came from King Soupers.
SPEAKER_01: No, it came from a farmer somewhere out there who planted a seed somewhere.
SPEAKER_01: And in some cases, he sprayed it like crazy with pesticides.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: But the seed was the corn which grew.
SPEAKER_01: And that farmer, when he plants the seed, does not go out into the field every day.
SPEAKER_01: I grew up on a farming community, and my grandfather never went out into the garden or into his area and just sat there and screamed at the seed to grow.
SPEAKER_01: No, he slept, he drank water, he smoked cigars, and he chewed tobacco, and here came, and here came the corn.
SPEAKER_01: All right?
SPEAKER_01: So that's the way the seed works, church, is that God plants his seed in your life.
SPEAKER_01: And for some of you, you know, you just got the head coming up, some of you, you got the stalk coming up, some of you got the limbs coming up, and then some of you are bearing fruit.
SPEAKER_01: You're actually getting fruit on the vine because, listen, you take such good care of your soil.
SPEAKER_01: Soil's everything.
SPEAKER_01: It's not the seed.
SPEAKER_01: The seed has got everything that it needs to be corn or to be wheat or to be a tomato plant.
SPEAKER_01: Believe me, that that tomato plant's not going to change its mind.
SPEAKER_01: It's going to be a tomato plant.
SPEAKER_01: And so Liz has a greenhouse at our house.
SPEAKER_01: And there was the she was just learning how to do all this.
SPEAKER_01: And first two months, like nothing's really growing that much.
SPEAKER_01: And so she did some research and found out, listen, how to amend the soil.
SPEAKER_01: How to amend the soil with minerals, how to amend the soil with vitamins, how to amend the soil, and bam! It was incredible over the next two months.
SPEAKER_01: We had tomatoes until like a month ago.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it kept coming and kept coming because that's what the seed does if it has good soil.
SPEAKER_01: And that's your job.
SPEAKER_01: Nobody can amend the soil of your heart but you.
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes we blame God.
SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm not growing in this, or this doesn't seem to happen for me.
SPEAKER_01: And you go, and I understand that's that's that's really tough for you.
SPEAKER_01: But I want to say, wake up and smell the coffee and realize you're the one who has to amend the soil.
SPEAKER_01: He's the seed.
SPEAKER_01: But if you don't have a good heart, if you don't have soil for the seed to grow in, you're gonna be the same person now as you were three years ago.
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna be the same person five years from now as you are right now, unless you're in God's Word.
SPEAKER_01: And begin to nurture God's word and to keep planting God's word in your heart by reading it, knowing it, and studying it.
SPEAKER_01: So, this is where the kingdom of God story in our lives comes from.
SPEAKER_01: So now look at the beginning of the first part of Mark 4.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 14.
SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna move back, go to the left a little further.
SPEAKER_01: In this parable, this is what Jesus says.
SPEAKER_01: The sower sows the word.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 15.
SPEAKER_01: And these are the ones by the wayside where the word is sown.
SPEAKER_01: So he's gonna tell you about four types of soil.
SPEAKER_01: First one is by the wayside where the word is sown.
SPEAKER_01: When they hear, Satan comes immediately and takes away the word that was sown in their hearts.
SPEAKER_01: You've known people that they hear the word of God, they hear about Christ, they receive it just really quickly, they're excited about it, and then it's like the next day or the next week, boom, it's gone, because Satan came and he stole away the word because there was no root to it.
SPEAKER_01: Satan comes immediately, takes away the word that was sown in their hearts.
SPEAKER_01: These likewise are the ones sown on stony ground, who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with gladness, but they have no root in themselves, and so endure only for a short time.
SPEAKER_01: Afterward, when tribulation or persecution arises in the word's sake, immediately they stumble.
SPEAKER_01: So I remember so many friends over the years, people in the church even, that for a while they walked with the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: But soon as tribulation came, soon as difficulty came, they fell away because during the peaceful time, they didn't dig deep.
SPEAKER_01: Folks, listen, when things are going your way pretty well, that's the time to dig in deep because tribulation's coming.
SPEAKER_01: Difficulties are coming.
SPEAKER_01: So Tuesday, for wholehearted men, give all you men a, you know, a heads up about what Tuesday is going to be about.
SPEAKER_01: The title, I haven't worked out totally, Todd, but the title's gonna be something like this: suffering is the secret to greatness.
SPEAKER_01: Suffering is the secret to greatness.
SPEAKER_01: You show me any man or any woman who has a successful life, I'll tell you, they have suffered a lot and they kept pushing through.
SPEAKER_01: So suffering's the key to greatness.
SPEAKER_01: And so it is in our lives that when tribulation comes, if you haven't, if you haven't allowed the word to grow deeply into you, you're just blown out of the saddle.
SPEAKER_01: You don't know what to do because you don't have roots that have been dug deep into your heart.
SPEAKER_01: Then in verse 18, there are those who are sown among thorns.
SPEAKER_01: They're the ones who hear the word, and the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things enter in and choke out the word, and they become unfruitful.
SPEAKER_01: And then verse 20.
SPEAKER_01: These are road, verse 20 is road people.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: Everybody say, road people are in verse 20.
SPEAKER_01: All right.
SPEAKER_01: But these are the ones who sow on good ground, good ground.
SPEAKER_01: Those who hear the word accept it and bear fruit.
SPEAKER_01: Some thirty-fold, some sixty, and some a hundredfold.
SPEAKER_01: So they they don't just hear it, they believe it.
SPEAKER_01: They read it, they hear it, they believe it, and they act on it.
SPEAKER_01: And then what happens is like we read earlier, it's like the seed that just begins to naturally grow because that's what it does.
SPEAKER_01: Seeds grow when it's in good soil, 30, 60, a hundred times what you could be if you didn't have the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: So, in other words, God doesn't want you to stay where you're at.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't want you to just be good at what you do and naturally I'm gifted this way.
SPEAKER_01: Well, what are you gifted supernaturally in?
SPEAKER_01: What are you, what, what kind of work in your character does God want to supernaturally do?
SPEAKER_01: I already know what you naturally can do.
SPEAKER_01: Everybody knows what you can naturally do.
SPEAKER_01: You're born with some natural gifting, but when we start to nurture and the soil of our heart becomes a part of living and reading and hearing and believing God's word, you can have a 30% increase in your gifting, your anointing, and your calling.
SPEAKER_01: You have a 60% increase.
SPEAKER_01: You can have a hundred times what you could be when Christ comes and takes over.
SPEAKER_01: That's up to us.
SPEAKER_01: Letting God's word be nurtured within us.
SPEAKER_01: And so, men and women, spend time in God's word.
SPEAKER_01: Get your nose in it, read it, study it, know it, meditate in it, talk about it.
SPEAKER_01: Just make it a part of your lifestyle.
SPEAKER_01: So when I got saved, it was exactly what our passage says.
SPEAKER_01: It was like that nurturing of the baby, 18, and I read God's word.
SPEAKER_01: I was blessed to be in a group, Campus Crusade for Christ at University of Georgia, where they just talked about quiet time, quiet time, spending time in the Word.
SPEAKER_01: And so, first thing in the morning, I'd read God's Word.
SPEAKER_01: Before practice, I would read God's Word.
SPEAKER_01: At night, I would read God's Word.
SPEAKER_01: And then once or twice a week, I would go out to this river in Athens, Georgia.
SPEAKER_01: There was an island in this river.
SPEAKER_01: It was only like 15 minutes away, and I'd drive over there, I'd park the car, and I'd wade over to this log that was there and some rocks that were there, and I'd cross over and I'd spend just an hour or two by myself reading God's word.
SPEAKER_01: And back then the praise, they were called cassette tapes.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, cassette tapes.
SPEAKER_01: So these cassette tapes, I would listen to praise music.
SPEAKER_01: And then we had a walkman.
SPEAKER_01: Those Japanese, man, they really knew how to invent really cool stuff.
SPEAKER_01: So you had your Walkman.
SPEAKER_01: So I had my Walkman, my headphones, and my cassette praise music with uh with the word of God coming through.
SPEAKER_01: Early, early contemporary uh praise and worship like we have, pretty typical now, but it was new then.
SPEAKER_01: And so I'd go to Southern Baptist Church on Sundays where you had the, you know, the worship director was, you know, they did all this and you had a hymnal and everything.
SPEAKER_01: Remember that?
SPEAKER_01: If you were really progressive, you had an overhead projector.
SPEAKER_01: And nobody could ever put that piece of that little that little plastic thing on and said the sun has like this and this is like that, you know.
SPEAKER_01: But but that's a progressive church back then.
SPEAKER_01: So if you want supernatural growth in your life, you must activate God's word in your life.
SPEAKER_01: If you want to grow, you have to activate.
SPEAKER_01: And you're what you're doing is you're amending the soil.
SPEAKER_01: You're amending the soil of your heart, spending sometimes hours and hours before the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: The word of God is living and powerful.
SPEAKER_01: The word of God is living and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, able to pierce the division of soul and spirit in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: And so, and so the word of God this past week, Liz and I had some time off, and I spent most of the time in Psalm 119.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 119, I think, has something like 173 verses.
SPEAKER_01: I did not memorize it, I'm not planning to memorize it.
SPEAKER_01: If any of you memorize it, I'll give you a shirt.
SPEAKER_01: But uh it's like three pages there in the Psalms, but it's all on the Word of God.
SPEAKER_01: That's what Psalm 119 is.
SPEAKER_01: And I knew this sermon was coming up, so I just spent an inordinate amount of time in God's Word.
SPEAKER_01: Men and women spend time in God's Word, it will supernaturally change your life.
SPEAKER_01: I am always surprised to see how many people who call themselves Christians, how little actual time they spend in God's Word.
SPEAKER_01: It's amazing to me.
SPEAKER_01: And that really sometimes their lives are no different than anybody else's.
SPEAKER_01: They they can tell you the place, the time, and the date of when they got saved, but they're the same person they were when they got saved.
SPEAKER_01: They haven't changed one bit.
SPEAKER_01: And the reason is they've never nurtured and amended the soil of their heart where God can begin a new and fresh work within them.
SPEAKER_01: We grow in maturity as a Jesus' disciple through daily planting the seed of God's word in the soil of our mind and our heart.
SPEAKER_01: And so God does that in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: So look at chapter 2.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, as newborn babes desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is amazing.
SPEAKER_01: So he gives us the opposite word for hypocrisy in verse 22, and then he mentions hypocrisy in chapter 2, verse 1.
SPEAKER_01: So one's in the negative, which means sincerity.
SPEAKER_01: Here he's talking about hypocrisy.
SPEAKER_01: The only way, men and women, that we can grow out of deceit, out of lying, out of hypocrisy, out of envy, and out of evil speaking, is to be nurtured on the pure milk of God's word.
SPEAKER_01: So Liz and I learned a long time ago through this the information that we read was more in the homeopathic rim, that when you nurse, when you nurse your children on demand, so not a schedule, but you nurse them on demand, kids don't get sick very often because they're getting the immune system of the mom all the time.
SPEAKER_01: They're constantly getting the immune system of their mom.
SPEAKER_01: And we did not give them baby food when most people did, because we wanted to keep getting.
SPEAKER_01: We knew there was hardly any immune system within baby food.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: But there was a there's a great immune system built into the bloodstream of my wife by her keeping herself healthy.
SPEAKER_01: Here's the other thing.
SPEAKER_01: For all you ladies, this little you can thank me later for this, but you know, you see the women, they're working out at the gym and everything, and they're doing all the workout because they're trying to lose that weight because they just had the baby.
SPEAKER_01: And I just want to go up to them and say, honey, God's already designed your body to lose that weight.
SPEAKER_01: Nurse your kids.
SPEAKER_01: Because when you nurse your kids, all that energy comes out of the mother and she begins to lose that baby fat because the fat's all going into the baby, which the baby needs it.
SPEAKER_01: So listen, you guys, God's immune system is better than yours.
SPEAKER_01: Drink his word, read his word, love his word, meditate in his word, and you'll start to get the spiritual immune system of God.
SPEAKER_01: And that's really, really exciting.
SPEAKER_01: And it's and it's it's one of the greatest things that can happen in your life.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to the Foreign for War podcast.
SPEAKER_00: We hope today's message has empowered you to make a difference in your world.
SPEAKER_00: To connect with Pastor Steve's sermons, books, and blog, visit Steve Holtonline.org.
SPEAKER_00: God bless.