SPEAKER_00: Hey, I'm Steve Holt, the senior pastor of The Road at Chapel Hills.
SPEAKER_00: This is the Road Podcast.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_00: My heart is to empower you to change the world.
SPEAKER_00: I hope this message impacts you.
SPEAKER_00: Ephesians chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: What a joy to be in Ephesians chapter 2 and 3.
SPEAKER_00: Man, it's it this fires me up.
SPEAKER_00: So I love the mountains, and I love being in the mountains.
SPEAKER_00: I love fly fishing, I love hunting, I love hiking.
SPEAKER_00: It just, there's something invigorating about it.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that happens if you're a big game hunter is that you get up early in the morning when you're hunting and you go down a lot of times into valleys, and you're always on the shady side because you know you don't want to be on the sunny side because that's when the animals come out, and then you raise it up and you've got nothing but light in your scope.
SPEAKER_00: So you're always on the you're always on the cold side.
SPEAKER_00: So it gets really cold.
SPEAKER_00: Usually you get out there like 4 a.m.
SPEAKER_00: and for two hours you're just chattering.
SPEAKER_00: It's so cold, and sometimes it's 15, 20 below.
SPEAKER_00: I've been in some situations as much as 25 below zero.
SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, you start walking out of that.
SPEAKER_00: And as you do, you come up to peaks and you you you crest different peaks, and it's just majestic when you get to the top.
SPEAKER_00: But it's cold and it's and it's really uncomfortable in the valley.
SPEAKER_00: And I think there's no better illustration than Ephesians 2, 1 through 10, than this idea of being in the valley and coming up to the majestic peaks that God has for you.
SPEAKER_00: And so what Paul is doing is he's taking us on a journey.
SPEAKER_00: So in Ephesians 2, we're on a journey.
SPEAKER_00: We started last week.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to repeat everything that I said last week, but let's start at the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: And it starts off with the good news that you're alive in Christ, you've been made alive in Christ, but then it drops down into the chilly, cold valley.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are in that valley right now.
SPEAKER_00: This describes you.
SPEAKER_00: And for some of you others, you've come out of that valley and you're experiencing new life in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: In a church like this, we're gonna have various groups of people at various places in their journey with Christ, and it's okay.
SPEAKER_00: It's okay.
SPEAKER_00: I'm glad you're here.
SPEAKER_00: You know, and some of you sleep in church.
SPEAKER_00: And I want you to know, no better place to sleep than in church.
SPEAKER_00: Because you might catch something along the way right before you fall asleep.
SPEAKER_00: My granddaddy uh was a rancher on a farm, he worked hard all week, and his only day off was Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: And so I remember in Wittenberg Lutheran Church, wooden pews, he had his cushions, and you dare would never sit, no one would ever sit where Joe Taylor and Ola Taylor sat.
SPEAKER_00: That was their place.
SPEAKER_00: And the church never grew, as far as I know, for all the years that I went there.
SPEAKER_00: The same people sat in the same places, and everybody got older and older and older.
SPEAKER_00: But he would sit there, and I'm telling you, it was amazing, and I would, and I had my watch, and I'd sit there.
SPEAKER_00: We didn't have stopwatches like we do now, but I'd have my watch and I'd sit there and then he would soon, if Pastor Beck got up, I mean, he hadn't said one thing yet, but you know, it was one of these, one of these raised-up pulpits like you have in the Lutheran church, you know.
SPEAKER_00: You remember those?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe your Catholic church or whatever.
SPEAKER_00: He's in the raise up.
SPEAKER_00: As soon as he gets up there, he was gone, man.
SPEAKER_00: And then it was like on cue.
SPEAKER_00: It was unbelievable.
SPEAKER_00: On cue.
SPEAKER_00: He'd be coming to the end.
SPEAKER_00: We'd wake up, you know, and so if you do that, that's okay.
SPEAKER_00: It's fine to do that.
SPEAKER_00: But but we all go through highs and lows, and verses one through ten is an incredible journey into the majesty of God.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to write this down.
SPEAKER_00: Write this down first.
SPEAKER_00: You're a masterpiece.
SPEAKER_00: Right, said I am a masterpiece of God.
SPEAKER_00: Write that down in your notes.
SPEAKER_00: I am a masterpiece of God.
SPEAKER_00: Write that in big letters if you're taking notes.
SPEAKER_00: I'm a masterpiece of God, because that is the theme of verses 1 through 10.
SPEAKER_00: So let's go into the valley first.
SPEAKER_00: And you, he made alive who were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the Spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.
SPEAKER_00: So if you don't know Christ, this is your life.
SPEAKER_00: If you've not given your heart to Christ, you're living according to the course, there's a course, a course of this world, and Satan's the principle.
SPEAKER_00: Satan rules it.
SPEAKER_00: He's ruling, and he's ruling your life if you don't know Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You don't know it, I doubt anybody's like dedicated themselves to the devil, but you're dedicated to the devil because you don't have anything of greater power breaking through what the devil's doing in your life.
SPEAKER_00: And you probably remember this.
SPEAKER_00: I'm reading Keith Green's biography again, No Compromise.
SPEAKER_00: Love this that book by Melody Green, and she's talking about the first time she went into a bookstore to buy a Bible for Keith.
SPEAKER_00: He's not a believer yet, but he's seeking after God in all kinds of cultic ways and stuff, and she thought he should go get him a Bible.
SPEAKER_00: And she walks in, and then here's this guy with the shortest hair she's ever seen in a guy that age.
SPEAKER_00: Because this is 1972, and everybody that she hung out with had hair down to their shoulders.
SPEAKER_00: So he's there, and he's got his little three-piece suit on, and she thought, what a nerd, you know?
SPEAKER_00: This is what Christians are.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the way some of you were, right?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you are.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, ah, Christians, they never have any fun.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm free.
SPEAKER_00: I'm free.
SPEAKER_00: I can do what I want.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not, I'm not shackled by religion.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not shackled by organized religion.
SPEAKER_00: I'm free to get STD.
SPEAKER_00: I can just go out and get it.
SPEAKER_00: It's really awesome.
SPEAKER_00: I can go and get addicted to drugs.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I'm so free.
SPEAKER_00: I'm so free to get hooked on pot and then heroin.
SPEAKER_00: It's just awesome.
SPEAKER_00: And look at those nerds right there.
SPEAKER_00: They're like, they're not even addicted to anything.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, and they love their wives and they're true to their wives.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I don't want any of that.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: That's freedom?
SPEAKER_00: You call that freedom?
SPEAKER_00: So he's saying, look, you're trespassing.
SPEAKER_00: Men and women, write this down.
SPEAKER_00: Don't miss this.
SPEAKER_00: You have God's operating system within you.
SPEAKER_00: You've got God's operating system within you, whether you're a believer or not.
SPEAKER_00: It's there.
SPEAKER_00: You are created in the image of God.
SPEAKER_00: You have his operation, it's just not plugged in yet.
SPEAKER_00: It's not plugged in yet.
SPEAKER_00: So if you don't, you've got God's operating system, you know your stuff you're doing's wrong.
SPEAKER_00: You know it.
SPEAKER_00: I don't have to say you're a sinner.
SPEAKER_00: You already know you're a sinner.
SPEAKER_00: That's the reason you're here.
SPEAKER_00: Part of you is here because you know if you're not here, you're gonna be up to no good.
SPEAKER_00: And so following Christ is plugging in the operating system.
SPEAKER_00: So what happens in our life is kind of like trespasses.
SPEAKER_00: That's what he says.
SPEAKER_00: It's like trespassing.
SPEAKER_00: So, for two years in my life, we lived on a farm and ranch of Joe Taylor, that was my grandfather, and Ola Taylor, my grandmother, had thousands and thousands of acres, and we lived in a cabin.
SPEAKER_00: And when I say cabin, some of you had this like romantic image of a cabin, like when you put in uh Rocky Mountain cabin images, and you look, whoa, that's like they're all like four million dollars, right?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, this was like a cinder block cabin.
SPEAKER_00: It was really ugly.
SPEAKER_00: But it was pretty cool because I was on 200 acres and I could hunt and fish anytime I wanted to, had never done that before, was learning how.
SPEAKER_00: But there was Mr.
SPEAKER_00: Mr.
SPEAKER_00: Kraps, that was his name, I kid you not.
SPEAKER_00: Mr.
SPEAKER_00: Kraps had hit that that's a pretty common name in the Sandlapper part of Batesburg, Louisville, South Carolina, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: Sheeley and Kraps was a lot of them.
SPEAKER_00: I'll take Sheeley, how about you?
SPEAKER_00: But right next to our property was another thousand acres that Mr.
SPEAKER_00: Kraps owned, and it said no trespassing.
SPEAKER_00: And me being the law-abiding, what are y'all laughing about?
SPEAKER_00: The law-abiding citizen that I am, I never crossed over.
SPEAKER_00: Even if I saw a whole covey of coil over there, I would just pass it up because I was obedient to my dad.
SPEAKER_00: Not.
SPEAKER_00: But you see what trespassing is?
SPEAKER_00: Trespassing is crossing the line.
SPEAKER_00: It's leaving God's territory and you going on your own in new territory.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we call wrath.
SPEAKER_00: That's being in wrath.
SPEAKER_00: That's being under the judgment of God instead of the grace of God.
SPEAKER_00: So he's saying we've all been there.
SPEAKER_00: You've all been there.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are still there.
SPEAKER_00: But we have compassion for you.
SPEAKER_00: Because we were there.
SPEAKER_00: And somebody loved us out of there.
SPEAKER_00: You know?
SPEAKER_00: And it's so much better not to trespass.
SPEAKER_00: And it's really smart.
SPEAKER_00: Because God has the operating system.
SPEAKER_00: And in Genesis 1, 26 through 29, he created you in the image of God that you might prosper, that you might have dominion over your life.
SPEAKER_00: You can have dominion over sin.
SPEAKER_00: You can have dominion over your anger.
SPEAKER_00: You can have dominion over your lust because you've plugged in to God's operating system and he's working in and through you.
SPEAKER_00: He continues.
SPEAKER_00: And this is where we start to climb the mountain.
SPEAKER_00: But God.
SPEAKER_00: Best words in the Bible, I've got it circled in my Bible.
SPEAKER_00: But God.
SPEAKER_00: But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, he made us alive together with Christ.
SPEAKER_00: By grace you've been saved, and raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Now look at that.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to circle Bud God.
SPEAKER_00: And then this is really important.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to circle in verse 5, alive together with Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Alive together.
SPEAKER_00: Circle that if you've got a hard copy Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Alive together with Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Then in verse 6, he says, raise us up together, circle together again, and made us sit together, circle, sit together, three together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Now, look at my Bible if you can see it.
SPEAKER_00: Draw arrows down to workmanship in verse 10.
SPEAKER_00: Draw arrows down with your pen to workmanship.
SPEAKER_00: Here's where he's going with this.
SPEAKER_00: What he's about to tell us is if you'll link up with me, if you will walk in the power of the Holy Spirit and be in a partnership with me.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible calls it abiding.
SPEAKER_00: John 15.
SPEAKER_00: Abide in me and I in you.
SPEAKER_00: You can even ask for anything you want, and I will answer it because your desires are being infused by my desires.
SPEAKER_00: And when your desires, which tend to be selfish, start to get infused with his desires, you start to become selfless.
SPEAKER_00: Because you want God's glory.
SPEAKER_00: You fear God.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the biggest problem today is that we fear man.
SPEAKER_00: We're always worried about what other people think.
SPEAKER_00: We're always worried about, that's why, I'm not saying it in all cases, because some of you guys might believe in this stuff, but I've done the study and I don't believe in it.
SPEAKER_00: But you wear a mask, you say for other people, but really down deep in your heart, you just don't want to be targeted.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: I don't care if they target me.
SPEAKER_00: And I I revel in it.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, okay, so can there's no evidence.
SPEAKER_00: There's no evidence.
SPEAKER_00: There's no evidence that this helps anything.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you don't believe that, then start doing some homework on anything but mainstream media.
SPEAKER_00: Because the mainstream media narrative is out to capture us and to enslave us and to make us the little peons on their little chessboard of the things that they want to do.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm just saying, I'm just saying.
SPEAKER_00: We had a young lady Liz told me, and I don't know the whole story of it yet because she was whispering it to me right when I was coming up, but there was a lady out here after the first service who was raised in Russia under communism.
SPEAKER_00: And the stuff they did to her to fight God, to take God out of everything, was huge.
SPEAKER_00: Folks were headed that way.
SPEAKER_00: And when we fear God, we don't fear man.
SPEAKER_00: And so he's saying right here, look, this is, I've raised you up together with me to sit in the heavenly places.
SPEAKER_00: What he's trying to say here, I think, is that you don't have it if you just stay in the valleys.
SPEAKER_00: You've got to go to the higher levels in worship.
SPEAKER_00: You've got to go to the higher levels in being in my word because there's so much more.
SPEAKER_00: And it's and it's sitting down in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: It's not our effort, it's our surrender that makes all the difference.
SPEAKER_00: It's surrendering and resting in Him.
SPEAKER_00: And when I see what's happening in our country, when I see what's happening in our city and in our families, if I can't sit down in Christ and re-surrender everything to him, I'll go crazy.
SPEAKER_00: And so and so you look at the landscape, and you've got to put the word over the top of the landscape and say, God, show up in Washington.
SPEAKER_00: God, you've got to show up in Denver.
SPEAKER_00: God, you gotta show up in Colorado Springs.
SPEAKER_00: Use me.
SPEAKER_00: Right, Jeff?
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: So Jeff gets up, gathers men, whole-hearted men, and they go into D49 and they battle the stuff that they're wanting to teach our kids, and they're winning.
SPEAKER_00: Because they did something.
SPEAKER_00: So to me, talk is cheap.
SPEAKER_00: Action.
SPEAKER_00: In the power of the Spirit is what makes all the difference.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 7.
SPEAKER_00: In the ages to come that he might show the exceeding riches of his grace and his kindness toward us and believe.
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you two terms here.
SPEAKER_00: Mercy.
SPEAKER_00: Write this down.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what mercy is mercy is not getting what we deserve.
SPEAKER_00: Mercy is not getting what we deserve.
SPEAKER_00: So let me say it again.
SPEAKER_00: Mercy's not getting what we deserve.
SPEAKER_00: Grace is getting what we don't deserve.
SPEAKER_00: So here's the idea.
SPEAKER_00: The idea of God as judge is a judge over us, is that He, by the cross and by the resurrection of Christ, we just studied, you know, as we went through Easter, Good Friday and Easter, is that God took away the wrath of God by what he did in taking it upon himself.
SPEAKER_00: That's mercy.
SPEAKER_00: But then he gives us new life.
SPEAKER_00: We don't deserve new life, we don't deserve richness and mercy.
SPEAKER_00: We don't deserve the riches of grace, but he gives it to us.
SPEAKER_00: That's grace.
SPEAKER_00: So here's the thing.
SPEAKER_00: And please don't miss this.
SPEAKER_00: Lest this become a theological sermon, when it should be an experiential sermon because it's a letter written to the Ephesians, is this that he's saying that we would be that.
SPEAKER_00: That we would be rich in mercy, that we would be full of grace to our fellow man.
SPEAKER_00: So even people we disagree with, we show mercy and we show grace.
SPEAKER_00: We walk in that, we walk in love.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, we battle for our freedoms, but we can do it with a smile on our face.
SPEAKER_00: We can do it with joy in our heart.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have to be arrogant or prideful about it.
SPEAKER_00: We can be joyful in it.
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I just totally disagree with that.
SPEAKER_00: Man.
SPEAKER_00: And uh and this is the home of the brave and the land of the free.
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm gonna walk in that.
SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
SPEAKER_00: You get enough people doing that?
SPEAKER_00: Hello.
SPEAKER_00: You change the world.
SPEAKER_00: You're world changers.
SPEAKER_00: You guys are world changers.
SPEAKER_00: Don't bow down to anybody.
SPEAKER_00: In Christ, you're a masterpiece.
SPEAKER_00: You're a beautiful, beautiful masterpiece.
SPEAKER_00: Now, verses 8 and 9 is probably the most powerful set of verses in all of the Bible describing the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: No better gospel explanation than Ephesians 2, 8 and 9.
SPEAKER_00: And when I was sharing my faith a lot in Asia as a missionary all those years, I always went to Ephesians 2, 8 and 9.
SPEAKER_00: I started there, then I went to John 3.16 and John 10.10 and other passages.
SPEAKER_00: But I loved Ephesians 2, 8 and 9.
SPEAKER_00: So let me read it to you.
SPEAKER_00: For by grace you've been saved through faith.
SPEAKER_00: That not of yourself, it is the gift of God, not of worse, lest anyone should boast.
SPEAKER_00: So I heard a preacher one time say, well, no, I didn't hear him say, I heard someone say that they heard him say.
SPEAKER_00: But he said, salvation is like a frog in a jar of milk.
SPEAKER_00: And you can't quite get out unless you just keep churning and churning and churning, and then you make butter.
SPEAKER_00: And when the butter hardens, you jump out.
SPEAKER_00: That's about the dumbest little thing I've ever heard.
SPEAKER_00: Work salvation.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna somehow work your way making butter and jumping out.
SPEAKER_00: Here's a better illustration.
SPEAKER_00: So if you can imagine a plane leaving LAX and it's flying to Hawaii and it crashes a thousand miles away from Hawaii, and three people survive.
SPEAKER_00: And the first guy can't swim, he lasts for about three minutes, he goes down to Davy Jones locker.
SPEAKER_00: You know, second guy, pretty good swimmer, able to swim for two hours.
SPEAKER_00: Two hours.
SPEAKER_00: That's pretty good, you know.
SPEAKER_00: He got he got a mile and a half.
SPEAKER_00: But the other guy, the third guy, is an Olympic swimmer, gold medal Olympic swimmer.
SPEAKER_00: He swims for 35 hours.
SPEAKER_00: And he goes, um, let's we'll say, he went 50 miles.
SPEAKER_00: So I don't care if you're a thousand miles away from Hawaii or 950 miles from Hawaii, you're not gonna make it.
SPEAKER_00: You can't make it on your own, gang.
SPEAKER_00: And some of you come out of traditions where it's all about work, work, work to get your salvation.
SPEAKER_00: I'm telling you, it's all about grace, grace, grace.
SPEAKER_00: That's how you get your salvation.
SPEAKER_00: So I like what Martin Luther said during the Protestant Reformation.
SPEAKER_00: He said, it's by grace alone, but not grace that is alone.
SPEAKER_00: Let me say it again.
SPEAKER_00: It's by grace alone, but not grace that is alone, because look at verse 10.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 10 goes with verse 8 and 9, and we sometimes skip it, but it's really important.
SPEAKER_00: For we are as workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
SPEAKER_00: Workmanship is the Greek word poema, which is where we get the word poem.
SPEAKER_00: Here's literally what the Greek meaning here is.
SPEAKER_00: The Greek meaning here is of that which has been made, a work, a making.
SPEAKER_00: It's sometimes translated poem.
SPEAKER_00: It literally means, quote unquote, any work of art, architecture, a poem, a painting.
SPEAKER_00: FF Bruce translated best.
SPEAKER_00: We are his work of art.
SPEAKER_00: We are his masterpiece.
SPEAKER_00: Men and women, you are an intelligent design.
SPEAKER_00: Made by an intelligent designer.
SPEAKER_00: Do you realize that with science and all the marvelous inventions that we have today, still scientists don't understand the human eye?
SPEAKER_00: And yet they want us to buy into Darwinism?
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you ever heard of Jed Smock?
SPEAKER_00: Anyone out there?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, nobody here.
SPEAKER_00: This is Colorado.
SPEAKER_00: I always forget.
SPEAKER_00: People from Georgia in the South, they know Jed Smock is who went to some of the universities there.
SPEAKER_00: But every year, once a year, Jed Smock would come and he was a fundamentalist, white-suited, white shoes, white Bible-carrying preacher that went on campus and just hammered people.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he just hammered them with the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And then we used to, Jed Smock's back, let's go! And we'd all run down to the student center and he'd gather 500 people out there.
SPEAKER_00: And I remember one time he was walking along, and he's walking on this brick wall.
SPEAKER_00: He's got his Bible and he goes, I don't believe in Darwinism.
SPEAKER_00: I don't believe in evolution.
SPEAKER_00: I've never believed in evolution until I saw someone like you.
SPEAKER_00: And then he points at someone out there.
SPEAKER_00: So there's a more effective way to communicate the gospel, let me just say.
SPEAKER_00: So I was a gymnast, but I'm not a monkey.
SPEAKER_00: And neither are you.
SPEAKER_00: You're a masterpiece.
SPEAKER_00: Made by a creator God.
SPEAKER_00: Made with intelligent design.
SPEAKER_00: Made to have the mind of Christ if you want it.
SPEAKER_00: Made to plug into an operating system that gives you supernatural abilities that you do not naturally have if you want it.
SPEAKER_00: And to the extent that we plug into that, you become this beautiful work of art.
SPEAKER_00: It's like Michelangelo coming up to that huge rock, the story goes, and he's chipping away, and he goes, There's an angel in there somewhere.
SPEAKER_00: There's an angel in there somewhere.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe some of you feel that way that you're kind of looking for the angel that's within you.
SPEAKER_00: Keep chipping away.
SPEAKER_00: Don't quit.
SPEAKER_00: Keep believing.
SPEAKER_00: Keep trusting.
SPEAKER_00: Get people around you that believe in you.
SPEAKER_00: Get around people that you believe in them.
SPEAKER_00: They're called blood-stained allies because here's what you need: you need Christ, but you also need the church.
SPEAKER_00: You gotta have Christ in the church.
SPEAKER_00: There's two creations going on.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to listen, it's important.
SPEAKER_00: Two creations in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: The first is God's creation in you.
SPEAKER_00: God's creation in you.
SPEAKER_00: You are a new creation in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: The old life, the old ways have passed away, behold, new things have come.
SPEAKER_00: But there's another part to this, and that is the creation of God through you.
SPEAKER_00: There's the creation of God in you, but then there's a creation of God through you.
SPEAKER_00: He puts you on this earth to do something, to make a difference.
SPEAKER_00: And I mean, I look across, you know, five or six hundred people in this room right now, and the reality is every one of you are so unique and you're so different.
SPEAKER_00: There's something churning in your heart and in your mind.
SPEAKER_00: And you gotta break out.
SPEAKER_00: You gotta break out of this surfacey, earthly, wrathful thinking.
SPEAKER_00: Quit fearing man.
SPEAKER_00: Fear God.
SPEAKER_00: Go after God.
SPEAKER_00: Say, God, what did you, why have you put me here?
SPEAKER_00: Some of you, he wants you to be used in your family in a whole new way.
SPEAKER_00: You've been a lousy father.
SPEAKER_00: You've been a lousy mother.
SPEAKER_00: And you're so out there that you need to come home and be home.
SPEAKER_00: For some of you are called out of the home and through your home to build warriors that are going to go out through the discipleship you're going to bring to them.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you men, you're in work and you're messing around with lust.
SPEAKER_00: You're messing around with lust.
SPEAKER_00: You're looking at the secretary, you're looking at this, and you don't even know why you're there except for a paycheck.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm saying God's put you there to be a kingdom worshiper and warrior, and he's created you as his masterpiece to make a difference there.
SPEAKER_00: You're the only Jesus that anybody in that office may ever see.
SPEAKER_00: So here's the reality: that's where the fun is.
SPEAKER_00: That's where the joy is.
SPEAKER_00: What a great thought that you can wake up every morning with a mission.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna go out, I'm gonna make a difference.
SPEAKER_00: I don't care where I go, whether it's at King Supers, 7-Eleven, or my job, or my family, God use me in a mighty way.
SPEAKER_00: You start thinking that way, and you'll be rich in mercy and rich in grace because you're gonna say, Well, there's something different about that guy.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we need in Colorado Springs.
SPEAKER_00: We need more and more men and women who are wholehearted disciples to such a degree that people see Jesus in us.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that exciting?
SPEAKER_00: Just lie for me a second.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that exciting?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: Yours workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, that he prepared beforehand.
SPEAKER_00: He's already got this thing mapped out.
SPEAKER_00: He does.
SPEAKER_00: And you go, well, man, Steve, if you only knew how much I've messed it up, you ought to look at my marriage, or you ought to look at my single life, or you look at my finances, or whatever it might be.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, fine.
SPEAKER_00: But you're a new creation in Christ, and now is the best day to start believing Him for revival.
SPEAKER_00: Just start today.
SPEAKER_00: Don't wait for conditions to be right.
SPEAKER_00: Don't wait till everything falls into place.
SPEAKER_00: It falls into place because you make a decision to follow Christ, not the other way around.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's a road less traveled.
SPEAKER_00: It's a road less traveled.
SPEAKER_00: So when we were making, when we were in the throes of issues at our last church, God spoke to my wife and I seven times through all these obscure people and obscure situations.
SPEAKER_00: The road less traveled.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why we got the name The Road at Chapel Hills, the Road Less Traveled.
SPEAKER_00: And this poem by Robert Frost, many of you know, it's probably one of the most famous poems in the world today by Robert Frost, called The Road Not Taken, really Had an Impact Upon Our Lives.
SPEAKER_00: I want to read it to you because some of you are at that threshold.
SPEAKER_00: You're at a crossroads in your life.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to challenge you, don't be like everybody else.
SPEAKER_00: Don't be like everybody else.
SPEAKER_00: Be who God made you to be.
SPEAKER_00: Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both.
SPEAKER_00: To be one traveler, long I stood.
SPEAKER_00: And looked down as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth.
SPEAKER_00: Then took the other as just as fair, and having perhaps the better claim, because it was grassy and wanted wear, though, as far as that passing there had warned them about the same.
SPEAKER_00: And both that morning equally lay, in leaves no step had trodden black.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I kept the first for another day.
SPEAKER_00: Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.
SPEAKER_00: I shall be telling this with a sigh.
SPEAKER_00: Somewhere ages and ages hence, two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one last travel by, and that's made all the difference.
SPEAKER_00: So, men and women, go the way of the master.
SPEAKER_00: That you might discover that you're a masterpiece.
SPEAKER_00: Don't go the way of the devil.
SPEAKER_00: He'll ruin you, he'll destroy you.
SPEAKER_00: But following the way of the master is the road less trouble.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus called it the narrow way.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, thanks for listening to the Road Podcast.
SPEAKER_00: It's been my joy to be a part of your life today.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, that's part of what we do here at The Road, and this is what I do in having this Road Podcast, is to empower people to change their world.
SPEAKER_00: My passion and desire is that you would take God's word through the power of the Holy Spirit and make that relevant for your life.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the reality is that God has placed your life here on this earth to make a difference.
SPEAKER_00: And if you'd like more information about how to grow in Christ, if you need prayer, if you want more equipping in different areas of your life, go to the road.org.
SPEAKER_00: God bless you.