SPEAKER_00: You're listening to the road of the pastor teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_01: You know that the Lord says through Paul, therefore anyone is in Christ is a new creation.
SPEAKER_01: All things have passed away, behold, all things have become new.
SPEAKER_01: Do you know that you have a new heart?
SPEAKER_01: Do you know that when you received Christ, he took that heart and heart, he gave you a spirit of flesh, he gave you a heart of flesh, they gave you a tenderness you didn't have.
SPEAKER_01: You have that.
SPEAKER_00: Today, Pastor Steve continues his series on the Book of Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: For more information on the road, visit the Road.org.
SPEAKER_00: We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_01: Well, we have been in a series where I took off from another series that I was in on Philippians.
SPEAKER_01: And we were talking about the leverage of joy for several months, and then we came to this verse that talked about worshiping in the spirit.
SPEAKER_01: And too bad if you don't like this, but I kind of like to be led by the spirit.
SPEAKER_01: And I felt like God led me to talk on worship, beauty, and presence.
SPEAKER_01: And so we did that for like six weeks.
SPEAKER_01: But I'm coming back to Philippians.
SPEAKER_01: So we're coming back to the leverage of joy in the next several weeks.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna finish up this awesome book of Philippians.
SPEAKER_01: Look up here if you haven't seen this before.
SPEAKER_01: This is an illustration that I talked about during that time of how joy is like a leverage in our life.
SPEAKER_01: That if we cultivate joy in our life, it's amazing what we can lift in the way of pressures and difficulties that come our way.
SPEAKER_01: And so I gave this illustration that joy is that whole idea of, you know, when you move joy into your problems and into your struggles, everything just lifts a whole lot easier.
SPEAKER_01: And the book of Philippians is about joy.
SPEAKER_01: So turn in your Bibles, if you have your Bibles with you, to Philippians chapter 3, and some of you may remember we got to about verse 12.
SPEAKER_01: So that's where we are, Philippians 3.12.
SPEAKER_01: And I want to call this today contending, contending for your joyful destiny.
SPEAKER_01: Now, here's what I believe.
SPEAKER_01: I believe that as we discover God's beauty in meditation, worship, prayer, as you see as beauty in nature, there is a work of God in that that brings a beauty in your heart and brings a beauty in your life.
SPEAKER_01: So there's something beautiful that happens within you as you meditate on, focus on, and as, and in the passage that we looked at so extensively over the last few weeks, behold the beauty of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 27, 4.
SPEAKER_01: That was the one thing that David was after was beholding the beauty of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Now listen, here's what I believe.
SPEAKER_01: I believe that as you make it a habit to start beholding the beauty of the Lord through worship, through prayer, through uh recognize it in people, recognize it in nature, God does a work in your heart of beauty.
SPEAKER_01: So you start to resonate with what you behold.
SPEAKER_01: So if you've ever seen anybody who's addicted to drugs, if you've ever been around someone who's heavily addicted to porn, you become like what you behold.
SPEAKER_01: Don't miss that, folks.
SPEAKER_01: You become like what you behold.
SPEAKER_01: If you behold, if you behold porn on a regular basis, you're gonna become like that.
SPEAKER_01: If you behold idols, the scriptures are all clear.
SPEAKER_01: Very interesting that in Scripture, almost every time you have a reference to idolatry or idol worship, it's correlated with adultery.
SPEAKER_01: Well, why is that?
SPEAKER_01: Because you become like what you behold.
SPEAKER_01: And so as you become allegiance to idols, you break allegiances with your loyalties of your life because you become like the idol, and oftentimes it leads to adultery and affairs and stuff.
SPEAKER_01: And so when we talk about contending for our destiny, I want to preface it by saying that God works in you so that he can work through you.
SPEAKER_01: God works in you so that he can work through you.
SPEAKER_01: So he does this beautiful work on the interior that begins to overflow into your life on the exterior.
SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_01: That's why I've said to you single guys out there, and I should say it to single women too, the most beautiful women that you see on those Budweiser commercials don't exist out there in the bars.
SPEAKER_01: Those are models, and they and they they put things on them to look a certain way.
SPEAKER_01: The most beautiful women in Colorado Springs are right here.
SPEAKER_01: The most beautiful, most handsome men are right here.
SPEAKER_01: Because they're learning to behold the beauty of the Lord, thus, their character is being changed.
SPEAKER_01: And as that character is being changed, there's a beauty that actually starts to express itself in skin color and in the beauty on the exterior.
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely a biological truth.
SPEAKER_01: And so Paul here is talking about what he's contending for in his life.
SPEAKER_01: And so I want you to see it two ways.
SPEAKER_01: Is that when I talk about contending for your destiny, part one is contending for the beauty of your heart by knowing Christ, falling in love with him.
SPEAKER_01: But then God didn't make us just to sit around and just behold him all day long.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's those in the monastic movement that they've given themselves to 10 or 12 hours a day, and that's all they do is, you know, contend for the beauty of their soul.
SPEAKER_01: And there's nothing wrong with that.
SPEAKER_01: It's great.
SPEAKER_01: The Benedictine monks do the Augustinian monks, that's fine.
SPEAKER_01: I have nothing but but admiration for those guys.
SPEAKER_01: But for most of us, this contending then expresses itself, men and women, it expresses itself through some kind of a destiny, some kind of a calling on our life in business or education or government or uh or media and artistic, whatever.
SPEAKER_01: God works in you so that He can work outside of you.
SPEAKER_01: He works in you so he can work through you.
SPEAKER_01: So look at verse 12 of Philippians 3.
SPEAKER_01: So I want you to see it from two angles, not only interior, but also exterior.
SPEAKER_01: Not that I've already attained or am already perfected, but I press on that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has laid hold of me.
SPEAKER_01: Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended, but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead.
SPEAKER_01: I press, second time he said that, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call.
SPEAKER_01: In my Bible, I circle that upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, therefore, in other words, all that we've read before, therefore, let us, as many as are mature, have this mind.
SPEAKER_01: And if anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you.
SPEAKER_01: Nevertheless, to the degree that we've already attained it, let us walk by the same rule, let us be of the same mind.
SPEAKER_01: It's very interesting, actually.
SPEAKER_01: That word rule there is where you have the rule of Benedict and the benedicting order.
SPEAKER_01: This is the verse it came from, the rule of Saint Benedict.
SPEAKER_01: I want to give you five things, and they all start with a D, because I'm a pastor, okay?
SPEAKER_01: So five D's I want you to remember about contending for your destiny inside, in your interior, but also in your exterior.
SPEAKER_01: Here's the first one.
SPEAKER_01: The first one is dissatisfaction.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 12.
SPEAKER_01: Dissatisfaction.
SPEAKER_01: Not that I've already attained.
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is the guy who's been who's been taken up by the Lord into the third heaven.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, he has seen power, he has seen healings, he has seen uh mighty works of God.
SPEAKER_01: He says, not that I've already attained or I'm already perfected, but I press on that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended it yet.
SPEAKER_01: So there has to be, men and women, to come into your destiny, you have to have a holy dissatisfaction with where you currently are.
SPEAKER_01: And what happens for many of us is we look around and go, well, I go to church on Sundays.
SPEAKER_01: You know, I tithe, we give, we even went on Springs Initiative and painted some people's houses, and I'm doing better than most people that I know.
SPEAKER_01: You ought to see the jokers at my job and stuff.
SPEAKER_01: And so we become satisfied and we stagnate spiritually.
SPEAKER_01: And Paul's saying, I am not satisfied.
SPEAKER_01: I am not satisfied.
SPEAKER_01: Here's the deal: we can be at peace with Jesus, but not satisfied with our walk with Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, we know that we're saved.
SPEAKER_01: I want everybody to know that if you've given your heart to Christ by faith, the grace of God covers you, you have salvation.
SPEAKER_01: He's talking about the sanctification power that comes through a dissatisfied life where we want more.
SPEAKER_01: So I believe verse 12 is correlated with verse 10.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 12 is correlated with verse 10.
SPEAKER_01: So he says, I'm not, I haven't attained it, I'm not already perfected, but I am gonna press on.
SPEAKER_01: Well, what's he pressing in on?
SPEAKER_01: I think it's the two verses before.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what he says, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering being conformed to his death.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what Paul's saying.
SPEAKER_01: I want more power in my life.
SPEAKER_01: I have not attained it, but I want the power of the resurrection.
SPEAKER_01: That's how I'm gonna intimately know him.
SPEAKER_01: So that's why I love biographies.
SPEAKER_01: Encourage you to read biographies.
SPEAKER_01: Even read biographies that are that are by weird people.
SPEAKER_01: By the way, most biographies are people that if you'd known them in their life, you would have said they're weirdos.
SPEAKER_01: But then they make statues of them later because they were so, they did so many things great for God or for government or whatever it might be.
SPEAKER_01: But to read Christian biographies is powerful because you see men and women just like us who did extraordinary things because they believed in the power of God working through them.
SPEAKER_01: God had worked in them to work through them.
SPEAKER_01: I think I shared a couple weeks ago.
SPEAKER_01: I just, you know, I watched again Amazing Grace on William Wilberforce.
SPEAKER_01: And here was a guy that was set up to be probably a prime minister.
SPEAKER_01: He was he was an up-and-coming star.
SPEAKER_01: And he gave it up because he was passionate about the abolition of slavery.
SPEAKER_01: And really, it cost him his career.
SPEAKER_01: I was moved by that.
SPEAKER_01: That got me fired up.
SPEAKER_01: And so you guys know several weeks ago we had a little a little baby, a little four-year-old.
SPEAKER_01: I consider that like a baby, a four-year-old that drowned.
SPEAKER_01: And so Deborah and I rushed up to Denver to pray for that precious little child.
SPEAKER_01: And all of you prayed.
SPEAKER_01: Remember, we all prayed together.
SPEAKER_01: We stopped the service and we prayed for that little child.
SPEAKER_01: I had so much faith.
SPEAKER_01: Deborah and I were fired up.
SPEAKER_01: We just knew God was gonna resurrect that little child.
SPEAKER_01: And we prayed with authority and we prayed with power there at the children's hospital, and the baby died.
SPEAKER_01: I have no regrets about going up there and believing God that he could heal because he could have.
SPEAKER_01: But I'm not God.
SPEAKER_01: But I'm being obedient to pray.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what I found: I'm a genius.
SPEAKER_01: I found that when you pray, when you actually step out and pray for someone for healing, more people get healed than when you don't.
SPEAKER_01: I told you I was a genius.
SPEAKER_01: I'm from Georgia.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not real smart, I figured it out.
SPEAKER_01: But here's the reality is that um that God wants all of us to be dissatisfied with our Christian life and going for more and spending time in his word and worshiping, learning how to worship in greater measure.
SPEAKER_01: So we were on a flight to uh a couple weeks ago, we were on a flight to uh to uh Palm Desert to go see HB London, my dear friend, who's got colon cancer.
SPEAKER_01: We're sitting on this flight next to this guy, and he's got big earphones on, so there's not really a chance to talk, but he took him off at one point and we started uh a conversation, and and I said to him, Man, what do you think about the kingdom of God?
SPEAKER_01: And he went, What?
SPEAKER_01: I said, You know the kingdom of God is all around us?
SPEAKER_01: And that started the conversation, and as we started to come down in that plane after our conversation about the kingdom of God, I said, Would you like to receive the king of the kingdom, Jesus Christ?
SPEAKER_01: He said, Yes.
SPEAKER_01: And so we prayed, he prayed, receive Christ with me.
SPEAKER_01: We landed that plane in more ways than one.
SPEAKER_01: And he and he looked, after we prayed together, he looks up and he goes, Man, I'm so excited.
SPEAKER_01: Young 22-year-old young man works in the oil fields, and then we left, and you know how it is, he had the uh the aisle seat, so he got his stuff, he took off, and then it took us a while to get our stuff, so I didn't think I'd see him again.
SPEAKER_01: And we're leaving and we're going down that that hallway there at Ontario Airport, and Liz goes, Isn't that the guy that that prayed received Christ with you?
SPEAKER_01: I said, Yeah, oh yeah, that is him.
SPEAKER_01: And he was already in that inspiration section of choice books, looking for a Bible, because he didn't have one.
SPEAKER_01: And then we were up in Chico after that, and we're in Chico, and we're at a farmer's market, and this guy just starts talking to me.
SPEAKER_01: And he just I said, Dude, you talk a lot.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't even know him, you know.
SPEAKER_01: And he says, Yeah, I do.
SPEAKER_01: And I go, Do you ever come up for breath?
SPEAKER_01: Because I can't ever get in a word edgewash with the way you're talking.
SPEAKER_01: And then he and then we start laughing, and then turns out he goes, he goes, Yeah, yeah, I lost half my brain one time.
SPEAKER_01: And I said, Oh, you did?
SPEAKER_01: Doesn't seem like it's affected your speech at all.
SPEAKER_01: And and so he takes off his hat and he's got this hole, like a hole right here.
SPEAKER_01: That's he said, 22 years ago went through the the uh windshield of my of my truck in Wyoming.
SPEAKER_01: And I said, and they and then they put everything, kind of put it all back in there and stuff.
SPEAKER_01: And I went, wow, well, that's great.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you're a walking miracle.
SPEAKER_01: Isn't it amazing how the kingdom works that your brain actually has the ability to heal itself?
SPEAKER_01: And he was, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01: And I said, So how's it going for you?
SPEAKER_01: And he goes, Well, I'm having trouble with my right shoulder.
SPEAKER_01: I said, Well, let's pray for it right now.
SPEAKER_01: Let's ask God to heal it.
SPEAKER_01: And so we prayed for his shoulder, and he fell down, he foamed at the mouth, and he got up and he was completely healed.
SPEAKER_01: No, that didn't happen.
SPEAKER_01: But well, we prayed for his shoulder.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what I found though, that there is this, there is this correlation between verse 10 to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering.
SPEAKER_01: God spoke to me many times this this word years ago, and I and it, I always think of it when I read this, and it was these words.
SPEAKER_01: He said, If you go after my power, you will get my suffering.
SPEAKER_01: If you go after my power, you will get my suffering.
SPEAKER_01: And here's what I think the Lord meant when he spoke that to me is that you'll be called a fanatic.
SPEAKER_01: You'll be called a fool.
SPEAKER_01: Because when we go after more, most people won't go with you.
SPEAKER_01: Most people won't go with you.
SPEAKER_01: Let's be a church.
SPEAKER_01: Let's be a family that is dissatisfied with where we're at and we want more.
SPEAKER_01: And that in so wanting more, we'd be willing also to join into the fellowship of Christ's suffering.
SPEAKER_01: Because let me tell you, folks, if you can't be bought, you'll do anything.
SPEAKER_01: If you can't be bought, you'll do anything.
SPEAKER_01: Most people can be bought off.
SPEAKER_01: They can be bought off with money, they can be bought off with sex, they can be bought off with uh promotions, whatever.
SPEAKER_01: What is your price?
SPEAKER_01: Because if it's to know Christ and the power of his resurrection to be dissatisfied with where you're at and want more of the Lord, you cannot be bought.
SPEAKER_01: And that, listen, folks, everybody look at me.
SPEAKER_01: That's freedom.
SPEAKER_01: That's freedom in your heart when you can't be bought.
SPEAKER_01: That's freedom in your heart when all you want is more of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 13.
SPEAKER_01: And then he says this, he says, I do not count myself to have apprehended it yet, but one thing I do.
SPEAKER_01: One thing I do.
SPEAKER_01: Number two, devotion.
SPEAKER_01: A devotion to one thing.
SPEAKER_01: One thing is really a kind of a cool little phrase in the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus said to the rich young ruler, one thing you still lack.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus said to busy Martha, only one thing is needful.
SPEAKER_01: One thing I know, exclaimed the man who had received his sight by the power of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And then David says in Psalm 27, 4, This one thing I behold, this one thing that I'm after is the beauty of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: So I think there's two parts to this.
SPEAKER_01: I said this earlier.
SPEAKER_01: I think what I see in this passage is there's a one thing in your heart to go after the Lord, but then there's a one thing that God's called you to do.
SPEAKER_01: So there's a be and a do.
SPEAKER_01: There's a be and a do.
SPEAKER_01: There's a being, there's a God working in you so that he can work through you.
SPEAKER_01: And so D.L.
SPEAKER_01: Moody, back in 1871, was working in Chicago with the YMCA.
SPEAKER_01: He was working in itinerant evangelist stuff that he was doing.
SPEAKER_01: He was also involved in the Sunday school movement that was just getting started, and it was the Great Chicago Fire.
SPEAKER_01: And the Great Chicago Fire burned up everything that he had done at that point.
SPEAKER_01: And that's when D.L.
SPEAKER_01: Moody committed himself to this one thing in his life, which was evangelism.
SPEAKER_01: And when he gave himself to being an evangelist, millions heard the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: God has one thing.
SPEAKER_01: You never, the problem for all of us is we dabble in so many things and we never get to one thing.
SPEAKER_01: And so that one thing, that devotion to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: I think most of you are understanding that in your own life, or you wouldn't be here this morning.
SPEAKER_01: It's way too beautiful a day to be sitting in here unless you've got a one thing perspective.
SPEAKER_01: And I would challenge you and push on that, that as you become and develop that one thing of worship and prayer in your life, God's going to show you your destiny.
SPEAKER_01: Contend for the Lord, and God will contend for you for the destiny.
SPEAKER_01: If you'll contend for knowing Him, He'll contend for you knowing your destiny in your own life.
SPEAKER_01: He continues.
SPEAKER_01: Forgetting.
SPEAKER_01: This is the part that's really hard.
SPEAKER_01: Forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead.
SPEAKER_01: Direction.
SPEAKER_01: Direction with the Lord is always future oriented.
SPEAKER_01: It's always forward.
SPEAKER_01: Many people are controlled by their past.
SPEAKER_01: Many are controlled because of a divorce.
SPEAKER_01: Or abuse.
SPEAKER_01: Or regret.
SPEAKER_01: How many of you would honestly say you carry some regret?
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: And the rest of you are liars.
SPEAKER_01: You know you do.
SPEAKER_01: But we have regret.
SPEAKER_01: All of us have regret in our life.
SPEAKER_01: And it can control us.
SPEAKER_01: It actually can consume us.
SPEAKER_01: Some people are consumed by hatred, consumed by what was done.
SPEAKER_01: We definitely live in a culture that I think we could call the American culture right now is moving more and more toward victimology.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, how to be a victim for everybody and what everybody did wrong to you instead of owning your stuff.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, that's been done to everybody here, some to a greater extent than others, but the point is, Paul's saying, forgetting the past, I'm going to look to the future.
SPEAKER_01: That's my direction.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, Paul murdered people.
SPEAKER_01: He ripped families apart and imprisoned them in it.
SPEAKER_01: And we'd be hard-pressed not to prove that some of them died in those Roman and Jewish prisons.
SPEAKER_01: He carried that kind of regret because he and he became a believer of the people he was persecuting.
SPEAKER_01: And he tortured them.
SPEAKER_01: And yet he said, forgetting those things which lay behind.
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, in the Greek, it doesn't mean forget like you can't remember.
SPEAKER_01: You'd have to be, you know, you'd have to have Alzheimer's to forget some of the things that have happened to you.
SPEAKER_01: He's saying that the word means not being influenced by.
SPEAKER_01: Not being influenced by.
SPEAKER_01: God does it.
SPEAKER_01: You know that God forgets your sins?
SPEAKER_01: Here's what he says.
SPEAKER_01: Hebrews 10, 17, your sins and iniquities will I remember no more.
SPEAKER_01: You know that the Lord says through Paul, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation.
SPEAKER_01: Old things have passed away.
SPEAKER_01: Behold, all things have become new.
SPEAKER_01: Do you know that you have a new heart?
SPEAKER_01: Do you know that when you received Christ, He took that hardened heart and He gave you a spirit of flesh, He gave you a heart of flesh, that He gave you a tenderness you didn't have?
SPEAKER_01: You have that.
SPEAKER_01: Now your spouse might say you don't, but you do.
SPEAKER_01: That's actually part of one of the messages that we give in the wilderness encounter is your new heart.
SPEAKER_01: You've been given a new heart.
SPEAKER_01: You've got to start believing that you have a new heart.
SPEAKER_01: Because until you believe that, we live in the past that we tend to drive the bus looking in the rearview mirror.
SPEAKER_01: And in this particular passage, most commentators believe that what he's talking about is a chariot race.
SPEAKER_01: Not actually a running race.
SPEAKER_01: He's actually talking about a chariot race.
SPEAKER_01: Can you imagine a guy?
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you've seen any of the movies like Gladiator and stuff, but it's one guy in a little small platform.
SPEAKER_01: They believe it was about two by two feet.
SPEAKER_01: So about four square feet of platform with all these horses, sometimes as many as eight horses in front, and you're trying to direct that and you're constantly looking back.
SPEAKER_01: You see the danger of that?
SPEAKER_01: He's saying, don't look back.
SPEAKER_01: You're a new creation in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: The old has passed away.
SPEAKER_01: Quit lingering there.
SPEAKER_01: Now, many of you know that have been with us for a while, you know what a big believer I am in facing your past.
SPEAKER_01: Because until you face it and deal with it, you can't be wholehearted.
SPEAKER_01: So there is a point where you face it, you release forgiveness, you begin to work that through, but then you're doing that because you want to move forward.
SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_01: You're doing that.
SPEAKER_01: You can either be tied down to it by constantly staring at it and blaming everybody, a lot of times yourself, or facing it because I'm moving toward the future.
SPEAKER_01: And so I'm going to work on this so that God can use me because I'm dissatisfied.
SPEAKER_01: I'm dissatisfied with where I'm at, and I've got these hang-ups and these habits in my life because of the past, but I want to break the influence of the past.
SPEAKER_01: That's what he's saying.
SPEAKER_01: So that I can walk in the power of the Holy Spirit moving forward.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 14.
SPEAKER_01: I press.
SPEAKER_01: I press, second time he says that.
SPEAKER_01: I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Determination.
SPEAKER_01: An athlete doesn't become a champion without determination.
SPEAKER_01: A spirit-filled believer is not going to see God mightily work in their lives without determination.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know about you, but I think we signed up here at this church to not look like everybody else.
SPEAKER_01: We're outliers.
SPEAKER_01: That's why we named it Outlier University, which by the way starts in September.
SPEAKER_01: Eight classes that we're doing.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm doing a class on Sunday nights at 5:30.
SPEAKER_01: More on that in a second.
SPEAKER_01: But this determination, this tenacity, this stictuativeness of wanting the power of God in our families.
SPEAKER_01: In how we make decisions, praying about stuff, asking God.
SPEAKER_01: God, I need dreams and visions.
SPEAKER_01: I need you to speak to me from the word.
SPEAKER_01: Because let me tell you, folks, the easiest route is to do it.
SPEAKER_01: Everybody else just does because it's convenient.
SPEAKER_01: And I can tell you from personal experience raising seven kids that personal convenience is usually wrong.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, you can take that one to the bank.
SPEAKER_01: You can put that in your pipe and smoke it.
SPEAKER_01: Because here's what I believe.
SPEAKER_01: I believe that most of the time the reason most people are depressed, most people are struggling with all these areas of their life is because they just do what's convenient.
SPEAKER_01: And going the way of the Lord is usually not convenient.
SPEAKER_01: It's not.
SPEAKER_01: One word characterized Saint Teresa's personality.
SPEAKER_01: It was determination.
SPEAKER_01: One author said, once she had decided on a course of action, especially if she was convinced it was what God wanted of her, she would not be thwarted.
SPEAKER_01: Men and women, determination is huge.
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna have setbacks, you're gonna have failures.
SPEAKER_01: Take risks.
SPEAKER_01: Take risk.
SPEAKER_01: Faith is spelled R-I-S-K.
SPEAKER_01: Risk.
SPEAKER_01: And then lastly, verses 15 and 16.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, let us, as many as are mature, have this mind.
SPEAKER_01: And if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you.
SPEAKER_01: Nevertheless, to the degree that we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us be of the same mind.
SPEAKER_01: Lastly, discipline.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we can have dissatisfaction and we can have devotion and we can have direction and we can have determination, but if we don't have discipline, it doesn't go anywhere.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm talking about the discipline of getting up early and spending time with the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: If you're not in God's word, you're not going to know God's will.
SPEAKER_01: 95% of everything you need to know about God and his will is found right here.
SPEAKER_01: Don't need a revelation of Gabriel.
SPEAKER_01: You don't need Gabriel coming to you.
SPEAKER_01: You don't need Moses looking like Charlton Heston walking in the room.
SPEAKER_01: You don't need visions and dreams all the time.
SPEAKER_01: It's right here.
SPEAKER_01: 95% of everything we know is right here.
SPEAKER_01: So the discipline of the interior that leads to the discovery of the destiny on the exterior is discipline spending time with God.
SPEAKER_01: That's the first one thing.
SPEAKER_01: And then God's going to give you, as you walk with Him, something that He's called you to do that's unique to you.
SPEAKER_01: Because there's a be and a do.
SPEAKER_01: And I know for my wife, the biggest, I think Liz would say that the most important thing in her destiny has been to disciple our kids.
SPEAKER_01: That's the most important thing.
SPEAKER_01: Nothing gets in the way of her discipling our kids.
SPEAKER_01: So discipline.
SPEAKER_01: So on, I don't know, I think September 16th, which is the opening day.
SPEAKER_01: That's the opening day of the church season, by the way.
SPEAKER_01: We'll be throwing out Cracker Jacks and, you know, peanuts.
SPEAKER_01: But opening day is September 16th at the road.
SPEAKER_01: And that night at 5:30, I'm going to start teaching a class called Fire Within.
SPEAKER_01: Fire within, the disciplines of a worshiper and warrior.
SPEAKER_01: It's for men and women.
SPEAKER_01: It's for young people.
SPEAKER_01: It's for older folks.
SPEAKER_01: What are those disciplines that enable us to walk in with this fire within?
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to talk about prayer walking.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to talk about how to read the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to talk about how to meditate in the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to talk about prayer.
SPEAKER_01: I'm talking about how to read how to pray the scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to talk about fasting.
SPEAKER_01: All those disciplines.
SPEAKER_01: And that's at 5 30 on Sunday night.
SPEAKER_00: You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_00: We hope you have been blessed by today's message.
SPEAKER_00: To connect with us further, visit theroad.org.
SPEAKER_00: If you are walking through a difficult time and we want to pray for you, go to theroad.org, click on the ministries tab, and go to our prayer page to send us your prayer request.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks again for tuning in today.
SPEAKER_00: Be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.