Real Life Radio

Guest (Male): We are to crucify our flesh daily, you guys. The flesh will scream, and we got to get out the hammer and the nails and say, "Lord, this has to be put to death."

David J.: Welcome to Real Life Radio with Pastor Jack Hibbs. I'm David J. thanking you for joining us today as we listen, learn, and are challenged by God's word, the Bible.

What do you do when heaven feels silent? When you've prayed, believed, even begged, and still nothing changes? When the person you love isn't healed? When the worst actually happens? When it feels like evil is winning? Where is God in all of that?

This May, Pastor Jack Hibbs' featured resource is *Why Doesn't God Answer My Prayers?* by Erwin Lutzer. It's an honest, biblical look at the questions most of us are afraid to say out loud. Not shallow answers, but real hope, real truth, the kind that meets you right in the middle of disappointment and points you back to God's greater purpose, even when you can't see it.

If you've ever wrestled with doubt, confusion, or silence from God, this book is for you. *Why Doesn't God Answer My Prayers?* is available for a gift of any amount at jackhibbs.com/realradio. That's jackhibbs.com/realradio. Get your own copy of the Book of the Month, *Why Doesn't God Answer My Prayers?* by Dr. Erwin Lutzer at jackhibbs.com/realradio.

On today's edition of Real Life Radio, Pastor Jack now continues in his series called Disciplines of Life and a message titled Disciplines of Desire. You know, when a person is filled with Christ, our Christianity is filled with enthusiasm, passion, and zeal that's divinely placed within us.

You see, just as children love the brilliance of life, Christians would be colorless without the desires of the heart that are rooted and grounded in God's love. Desire is that internal drive that influences our will and causes us to take action. So today, Pastor Jack teaches that the seeds of our desires are rooted in our soul.

It's why we need to take our desires to the Lord. We can't manage desire without knowing God and what he says in his word. Now, with his message called Disciplines of Desire, here's Pastor and Bible teacher, Jack Hibbs.

Jack Hibbs: Philippians 4:8, listen to this. "Finally, my brethren," Paul says, "whatever things are true..." Wow. Whatever things are true. Well, you can flush half the internet down the toilet then. I can put anything on the internet tonight and say that you said it. People will go, "Man, did you hear what he said?" Right? Whatever things are true.

He says, "Whatever things are noble." High bar. Blue. Whatever things are regal, noble. "Whatever things are just." You want social justice? There is no such thing as social justice without true Christianity. Think that through. "Whatever things are pure." Well, that has shut down every porn shop in the city. I wish. I tell you, I pray going down the 10 freeway whenever I'm driving to camp for the mountain camp out that 10 freeway. Dear God, cause a wind to blow and knock these billboards down.

"Whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, whatever things of any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things." Wow. We need to work on that. Point number two: the discipline of desire is recognizing where desire comes from. Psalm 27:4 says, "This one thing I have desired of the Lord." Listen to David's heart. "That I will seek after." In the observable human nature of what we see, it reveals what a man or woman desires in their life, what's important to them.

We know that good desires come from the Lord himself. We know that the desire of love and to be loved, food, drink, air, sleep, fellowship with one another. That's a good desire. Listen, it's a good desire to go snow skiing or surfing or hiking. Those are great things. You can take Jesus with you in those things. And the things that you can't take him, you shouldn't be thinking about them, frankly. You sound like my dad. Well, I'm not your dad, so you have to listen to me.

But there's also aberrant desires that assault the will of God. There's the desires that people have to gain power and control over people. There's the desire to do harm to someone, even murder them. You say, "Well, I'd never do that." Do you ever say something about somebody that's not true about them to somebody else? God says you've murdered them. You say, "Well, I didn't." In the end, God's going to say you did. If you and I cause someone else to think different of someone else and it's not true, we have assassinated their character. You say, "Well, who's going to know?" God already knows. Yeah, but only two people know. God knows. It doesn't matter if anybody knows.

Didn't Jesus say if you think about adultery with a woman, he said, "Where I come from, heaven, you've already committed it." That's why repentance takes place in the mind, instantly, in the heart now, before it ever gets a chance to get out. You don't repent after you do it. I mean, you can, of course, but let's be honest. We don't live like this. Then all of a sudden you wake up and you're coming out of the bank with guns blazing. "Hey, what in the world am I doing? Oh my gosh, wow. I got all this money around me and guns blazing." That doesn't happen. The sin was, "I think I'm going to rob the bank." That's the sin.

Listen, are you ready? Come on. Any college students in here? Listen up. At what point does a horse thief become a horse thief? Before he steals the horse or after he steals the horse? Anybody ever gone to school? This is a big question in school. I mean, I'm not that old. Anybody know the answer to this? Very good. That's the answer. A horse thief becomes a horse thief before he steals the horse.

You cannot be a person who steals a horse without being a horse thief, and being a horse thief starts in the heart, in the head. That man says, "I'm going to steal that horse." Now, the judge or the officer is saying, "Well, he hasn't stolen it yet. He hasn't taken it yet." But the officer, as he sees the man walking towards the horse, the officer starts to pull out guns or whatever he's going to do because it looks like he's going to pull it off. Guess what God knows? He's a horse thief because it was in his heart to do, though the guy never got around to stealing the horse. What if he tripped and fell down and hit his horse, hit his head, hit his head on the horse and never got around to doing it? The judge says, "Okay, you're not a horse thief." God says, "Oh yeah, he is."

Desire. We got to get control of the desires. If I hurry, I'll give you some help in how to do that. I got to really hurry up here. Here it is. Getting control. Watch this. This is amazing. You need to follow this through. This is tough stuff. This is Paul at his most brilliant. He's so smart he's kind of scary sometimes. Romans 7:21. Paul is talking about the new life in Jesus. He says, "I find then a law that evil is present with me." Paul is saying, "I got evil in my life." He says, "The one who wills to do good, for I delight in the law of God according to the inward man." Translation: "I'm born again, the new guy that I am, I love God's law."

Verse 23, "But I see another law in my body, my members, warring against the law of my mind." My friend, only a Christian can have a war going on between the spirit and the flesh. "And bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members, my body." Verse 24, "O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin. There is therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the spirit."

Translation: Paul says, "You know what? I'm so happy to be a believer and I can prove it. You want to know? Two people live inside me. One is the old Paul, the guy that I've got to make sure is crucified daily. Every time a desire comes up that is opposed to the will of God, I've got to have a war. I put on my armor, I put on the gear, we go to battle and I have an argument with myself. And my flesh says, 'Hey, come on, let's do this,' because the flesh wants it all nice all the time. 'Let's sleep in.' And the spirit says, 'Let's get up.' And the flesh says, 'I don't want to get up.' Right? And you know inside there's a war going on about doing this or doing that or getting up or not eating this or going there. And it's a war that only the Christian knows about."

And Paul says, "You know what? Thank God. Here's the cool thing. Walk in the spirit and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. Here's what happens. When our spirit is strong by being in the word of God, being in worship, fellowship with one another, when we build up the spirit, the flesh is an amazing thing because the flesh gets conquered. The spirit begins to invade the soul, your mind. You're fueling up right now on spiritual things. Everything that I speak of that's of God, every verse that I give you goes straight to your spirit. I wish we could see it in the spiritual realm. Just like light beams going into the heart. When a verse goes, boom, boom, like light beams going out. And the spirit goes, 'Yes!' And the soul, which is your mind goes, 'Okay, yeah, all right, okay.' And the flesh says, 'Oh no.'

Seriously, your flesh starts to freak. But when you don't feed your spirit and you feed the flesh, guess what the mind says? 'Oh yeah, okay, well, whatever, sure, what.' No, seriously. Watchman Nee in his book, *The Spiritual Man*, he says the soul of a man, his mind, is his mistress. She will go anywhere with the one who pays the bill. If the spirit's strong, the mind says, "Yeah, let's go worship, let's sing, let's praise, let's serve." And when the flesh is in control, the mind says, "Yeah, let's do stuff we're not supposed to do, let's get in trouble and burn things and go." The mind will do whatever you feed it. And Paul says, "Hey, walk in the spirit, you won't fulfill the lust of the flesh."

David J.: You're listening to Real Life with Pastor Jack Hibbs. To learn more about this ministry or to catch up on some previous episodes, go to jackhibbs.com. That's jackhibbs.com. And now let's get back to today's message. Once again, here's Pastor Jack.

Which leads us to this: judging the desire against God's word. That's the deal. Judge our desires against the word of God. That's excellent. 2 Corinthians 10:3, very quickly. "For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for the pulling down of strongholds." Get control of your thoughts. "Casting down arguments and everything that exalts itself against the knowledge of God."

Listen to this, everybody. 2 Corinthians 10:5, "Bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled." What does that mean? You govern yourself by the power of the word of God and the Holy Spirit. When thoughts arise, when a thought arises, "Man, you know what? I ought to go do this, I think I'm going to," and the mind begins to think and your flesh begins to get excited, your spirit needs to come in and say, "Sit down! I will not sin against God or my sister or my brother. I will follow the Lord."

Look, if you got to go to a closet or a bathroom or run out to the parking lot at work and get into your car, preach it to yourself, but do it. When that girl comes and turns yourself on to you or when that guy comes and says, "Feel my muscles," you need to run and run and you might be lonely. Satan's smart. You've been lonely, nobody's been talking to you and she comes up and says, "You're so nice." Listen, you run like a maniac. Joseph did that. He took off running, man. You get out of there. "Well, she's really nice." She is nice and she has no idea that she's a tool of Satan. She doesn't get it. She doesn't understand that. You do. She doesn't get it. Get out of there.

1 Corinthians 4:3. Paul says, "But with me, it's a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. Wow. In fact, I don't even judge myself, for I know of nothing against myself. Yet I am not justified by this, but he who judges me is the Lord. Therefore judge nothing before the time until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of the hearts. Then each one's praise will be from God." Wow. That's what we do about judging our desires against the word.

Number four, we're almost done. Taking my desire before God. Think of this. Hannah, remember her in the Bible? 1 Samuel, she's Samuel's mom. Hannah had a desire, "Please God, I want to get pregnant. Please God, I want to have a baby. Oh, please God." She's not getting pregnant, she's not having a baby. She goes and prays and she's just, "Oh God, please, oh God, please." And God hears her cry. She took her desire to the Lord. Listen, and God said, "I'm going to answer your prayer." And God answered her prayer. You can read all about that in 1 Samuel chapter one. It's awesome. God answered her prayer and she names her boy Samuel, whose name means "the name of God."

But you say, "Well, how does that apply to me?" You know what Hannah did? She presented herself before the Lord. Romans chapter one. Christians, listen, we need to be diligent about presenting ourselves before the Lord. "Lord, help me." You have a desire, I don't know if it's from God or not, take it to him. "Is this a desire I should act upon?" Take it to him. Wait, give it to him and pray.

A great prayer to pray, make this your homework: Psalm 19. "Lord, keep me from deliberate sins. Don't let them control me. Then I will be free of guilt and innocent of transgressions. May the words of my mouth and the thoughts of my heart be acceptable to you, O God, my rock and my redeemer." What a great statement that is. And then another thing that we do is this: the discipline of desire is going to require us to manage our desire. Are you breathing right now? Are you alive? Check your pulse. You're going to have to deal with desires. Good, bad, or ugly, you got to deal with them.

And David's desire was that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. That's where you're going. You're going to heaven. You got to remember that. Set your desires on things of heaven. In 2 Timothy 2:15, that's why the Bible says that we are to be diligent about presenting ourselves to God, approved of God, knowing the word of God, rightly dividing the word of truth.

And so what do we do? I'll end with this. There needs to be a fatality. Someone's got to die. It's not the person that's flirting with you or trying to beat you up. It's not them. It's me. It's you. We are to crucify our flesh daily, you guys. We are to—anybody listening, anybody awake still? I know it's late. Got to get up soon, I know that. Listen, you guys, we ought to crucify our flesh. The flesh will scream, and we got to get out the hammer and the nails—I'm figuratively speaking—and say, "Lord, this has to be put to death. This is the old Jack and the old desires and it's got to be nailed to the cross. Jesus, you died there to set me free."

So whatever's going on in your life, you need to ask him, "Lord, is this good with you? Is it good?" You guys, I'm so glad and happy that we serve a living God, because what comes to my mind—and you can close your Bibles, we're done. What comes to my mind, we meet a lot of people here as you can imagine and there's never a shortage of stories. And what do you do with someone who comes and—I got to tell you something, it's pretty cool. How would you handle this?

Somebody shows up, "Hey, we've been coming for three weeks and we gave our heart to the Lord today." That's awesome. And I guess I should back up. "Hey, today's our first day here and yeah, we got out of bed early and came and we're glad that we did. And we're living together and life's cool." Think about it. Now, come on, this is real life. This happens in the foyer. What do you do? "Oh, excuse me, what'd you say? You guys are living together? What? Ushers, cuff them!" You don't touch them. You don't touch them. You say, "You know what? Come back next week. Let the Lord speak to you. That's great. You guys need a Bible?" "Oh, you know, yeah, we're okay, we're okay." Then they come back the second week. "Hi."

They're completely in sin, but they're so sweet. You know so much more than they do, but that's okay. Now then the third week comes. This just happened to me, that's why I'm telling you this. "Pastor Jack, we've been reading our Bibles." Now they're sleeping in the same bed, they're probably wrestling and eating breakfast together and everything else. And now they're reading their Bible. And you know what? This is perfect. "So we were reading our Bibles and we don't think that we should be living like this together and—well, we have a kid and we just bought a house two years ago. We've been together for about three years, but we're not married. And it's wrong. You think it's wrong, Pastor?"

"Well, yeah, the Lord wants you to get married. Do you guys want to get married? I mean, you're like living like it, but you're not." "Yeah, we want to get married." "Okay, well then let's meet and we'll talk about that, get you going. But here's the agreement. You got to go through pre-marital class, okay? We can marry you today, but you still have to go through six months of pre-marital after you get married. But you raise the baby up in the Lord. You guys are doing it right, okay? You guys are doing it right."

This is the world we live in. And you think about that, "Pastor, I would never, that's horrible counsel." Oh yeah? Put a sock in it because here's the deal. You think you're going to have two people who never knew anything about God who've been living together for three years, they have a baby, they got a one-year-old kid and then you split—Jesus comes into their life and splits up their home and separates Junior from Mommy and Daddy. God's not into that. You know what? You say, "Hey, you know what? That's what God's grace is all about. He molds them into shape."

We need to get control of our desires because they lead us astray. But glory be to God who conquers even the worst of the worst that we could do, huh?

David J.: Pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs here on Real Life Radio and his message called Disciplines of Desire. We appreciate you being here today. You know, this message is part of Pastor Jack's series called *The Disciplines of Life*. It's a series that highlights the disciplines of a Christian and the high cost of sharing our faith with others. And we'll continue on the next edition of Real Life Radio.

As you heard from our broadcast, Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. And if you'd like to know what a commitment to Christ can mean in your life personally, we would love to help you out with that. Go to jackhibbs.com/nogod. That's K-N-O-W-God. And there you'll be guided through what a commitment to Christ can mean in your life and the freedom that you'll find in knowing God. Don't miss out. That's the No God tab at jackhibbs.com.

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Hey, thank you again so much for listening. And if you'd like to hear or see more of what we do here, you can always go to jackhibbs.com for all the latest on what's going on with this ministry. And please, if you're ever in the Southern California area, come see us at Calvary Chapel Chino Hills. We'd love to see you there in person. It has been so good to be with you today, and I pray you find yourself in the grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. See you on the next episode.

This program is made possible by the generous contributions of you, our listeners. Visit us at jackhibbs.com. That's jackhibbs.com. Until next time, Pastor Jack Hibbs and all of us here at Real Life Radio wish for you solid and steady growth in Christ and in his word. We'll see you next time here on Real Life Radio.