From His Heart

This is the life: a life of fellowship, a life of joy, a life of walking with God. Are you the person that says, "Well, I say I have fellowship with Him, but I know that there's darkness in my heart that I'm not dealing with"? I know I'm not bringing that to the Lord.

Maybe you're one that says, "Well, no, I don't sin anymore." Maybe you're one who wants to move the out-of-bounds markers and say, "Well, I'm really struggling with this sin. Let's not call it sin anymore. Let's move the out-of-bounds markers over here, and then I'm good." Where are you today?

Guest (Male): Because we're so prone as believers to wander away from the Lord, we sometimes don't even realize that we've gotten into the rut of living a subnormal Christian life. When that happens, what we need is a supernatural revival to get us back to the supernatural Christian life, which is an abundant life.

You're listening to From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Schreve, and thanks for joining us today. Have you gotten so used to a subpar Christian life that you don't even know you're subpar? Today, Pastor Jeff shares three characteristics of the true Christian life and helps us discover how we can be revived and experience the fullness of life in Christ.

The message today is entitled, "This Is the Life," from Pastor Jeff's series, "Soul on Fire: God's Plan for Revival." We're airing lessons from this series through next week. If you miss any, you can go to fromhisheart.org, click the listen link to download a free MP3 of any broadcast, as well as Pastor Jeff's sermon outlines and notes. Right now, open your Bible to 1 John 1. Here again is Pastor Jeff to shine a mirror at you so that you can see your blessings from God and proudly say, "This is my life."

Dr. Jeff Schreve: Now, John in his first epistle, 1 John, talks about the life that the Lord wants us to have, that He wants us to enjoy, that He wants us to live. He says this: "What was from the beginning," kind of like his gospel, "in the beginning was the word."

"What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have beheld and our hands handled." He's talking about his relationship with Jesus. We've seen Him, our hands have touched Him concerning the word of life.

He likes that term for Jesus: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." Here he calls him the Word of Life.

The life was manifested, it became visible, and we have seen and bear witness and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us because the Word became flesh. What we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also that you also may have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His son Jesus Christ.

Why do we need revival? It's because we've fallen from living the true normal Christian life. So, what's that life supposed to be? I want you to notice three characteristics of the true Christian life from 1 John chapter one.

Characteristic number one: the Christian life is a life of fellowship with the Lord. Fellowship with the Lord. "What we have seen and heard," verse three, "we proclaim to you also that you also may have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His son Jesus Christ."

Fellowship is the word—you've probably heard it if you've been around church—koinonia. Koinonia, the Greek word that's used for fellowship. That word means a partnership. It means a sharing together. It carries with it the idea of oneness and unity, and we share the life of God in us.

We become partakers of the divine nature when we receive Christ. That's what the Bible says. Now, if you put that in practical terms, that means we have communion with God and other believers. A communion in that there's intimacy, and there's sharing, and there's conversation, and there's a relationship, and there's a closeness. That's what God wants to have with us.

The Christian life is a life of joy in the Lord. He says in verse four, in the easy-to-read version, "We write these things to you so that you can be full of joy with us." Why are we telling you about the fellowship? Because we write so that you can have joy with us, because there's joy in fellowship with the Lord.

There is joy in the Lord. Regardless of what might be going on in your life, you can have joy in the Lord. Joy is so much better than happiness because it goes deeper than happiness. Happiness is like a thermometer; it registers conditions.

Joy is a thermostat; it regulates conditions. Joy says, "I don't care what is going on, my joy is in the Lord." Now, when you are in fellowship with Him, there is joy. Joy is a wonderful byproduct of abiding in His presence.

Now, let me ask you a question. Be honest. You don't have to answer out loud or raise your hand, but just in your own heart: How's your joy today? Where's your joy? Is it full? In His presence is fullness of joy. Your happiness may not be very good, but are you joyful in the Lord?

What is the real normal Christian life? Fellowship with the Lord, joy in the Lord, and thirdly, the Christian life is a life of walking with the Lord. Walking with the Lord. Look at verse five: "And this is the message we have heard from Him and announced to you, that God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all."

"If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His son cleanses us from all sin."

What is the Christian life? Fellowship with God. It's joy in the Lord. It's a walk with the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. It's not a run with Him, it's a walk with Him, and step by step He leads me and I will follow Him all of my days.

The walk with the King is a walk in the light with Holy God. God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. You can't walk with God if you're walking in the darkness. Now, before you derail on a walk with God and you say, "Well, how am I going to walk with God? God is holy, in Him there's no darkness, I deal with darkness in my life, I deal with sins in my life, and so how can I ever walk with God?"

Remember this: this walk with God is not a walk of sinless perfection; it's a walk of sincere devotion. It's not sinless perfection because if it were sinless perfection, you can't walk with God, I can't walk with God, John couldn't walk with God, Paul couldn't walk with God, Peter couldn't walk with God, David couldn't walk with God, Daniel couldn't walk with God. Nobody could walk with God.

What does it mean when you walk in the light? It means there is openness and honesty about the things you are struggling with. Three musts in our walk with God. Number one: we must be open and honest about our sin. You don't hide it, you don't cover it over.

When David sinned with Bathsheba, he tried to hide it. He tried to cover it over. It didn't work so well. And David quit having fellowship with God. He quit walking with God. But here was the thing that David did, what so many of us do.

If we say we have fellowship with God and walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. That's what he did for months. He pretended that he was right with God, but he wasn't. And David in Psalm 32, he said, "When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long."

"For day and night, God, Your hand was heavy upon me. My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer. Selah." Which is in Psalms, that word that means pause. It's probably a musical notation: pause there. But it's so important because David said, "Hey, I was hiding my sin, I was covering it up, and all of a sudden, God was just squeezing the life out of me."

"I felt like I'd been out in the sun all day long. My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer. It was awful, because I lost my fellowship with God. I lost my joy in the Lord." He says in Psalm 51, "Restore to me the joy of my salvation." He lost his joy. Hey, if you're not right with God, you're not going to enjoy communion with God, intimacy with God, closeness with God. You're not going to enjoy the joy of the Lord. You lie and do not practice the truth.

We must be open and honest about our sin. Secondly, we must not turn a blind eye to our sin. He mentions two situations here: verse eight and verse ten. First of all, you have: "If we say we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth."

But then he says in verse eight, "If we say we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us." "If we say we have not sinned," verse ten, "we make Him a liar and His word is not in us." You know, there are some people, verse eight, who say, "Well, you know, I'm a Christian now, I don't sin anymore." Oh, really? How convenient.

Ecclesiastes chapter seven, verse 20, Solomon says this: "Indeed, there is not a righteous man on the earth who continually does good and who never sins." There is not a righteous man on the earth who continually does good and who never sins. You struggle with sin, I struggle with sin, John struggled with sin, Paul struggled with sin.

That which is of the flesh is flesh. We still deal with the flesh. But I say, "Walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please."

You deal with the enemy within, and I deal with the enemy within. Sometimes the flesh wins because we yield to the flesh. But when we yield to the Lord, then the Spirit wins. To say that, "Hey, no, I don't struggle with sin, I don't have any sin," we're deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.

Guest (Male): This is the gospel in its simplest form: to call on the name of the Lord, to repent and believe, to turn from your sin and place your faith in Jesus Christ alone. When you do that, the Holy Spirit comes inside you, sealing us for the day of redemption.

It doesn't mean we won't fail and sin again, but it does mean that it will grieve our spirit. It surely will grieve God's spirit, and we'll want to please God for what He has done for us. The Spirit gives us hope, not only for this life but for the future, empowering us to live for Christ.

Pastor Jeff will return in just a moment to conclude this lesson called, "This Is the Life," from his series, "Soul on Fire: God's Plan for Revival." Because your ongoing support to From His Heart is so vital, we want to say thank you for investing in kingdom work through From His Heart by sending you this timely teaching, Pastor Jeff's five-lesson series, "Soul on Fire."

When you support From His Heart, you are helping us revive the hearts of people around the world. Pastor Jeff is a volunteer for this ministry and receives no income from it. Messages in this series include "Prone to Wander," "This Is the Life," which you're hearing today, "Spiritual Adultery," "Returning to God in Prayer," and "Do You Want to Be Revived?"

History reminds us that when God revives His people, the impact spreads. Make your gift today to help us when you call 866-40-BIBLE. That's 866-40-BIBLE, or go to fromhisheart.org to make that gift of any amount today. Thank you and God bless you for joining with us in this mission to share Jesus with the world. Now, the conclusion to the message, "This Is the Life."

Now notice: if we say, verse six, "If we say that we have fellowship with God and walk in the darkness," what are we doing? We're lying to other people. We know we're not walking with God. We know that there is sin in our lives that we're not dealing with.

We're lying to other people. We're doing what David did. We're pretending like everything is right. "I'm the sweet psalmist of Israel, everything is right with me and God," but you know it's a lie. And God knows it's a lie. We lie and do not practice the truth.

But then when you lie to others, the next step down: "We say we have no sin, we're deceiving ourselves." We lie to ourselves. That's a terrible thing when you're deceived and you're self-deceived. You lie to yourself. "No, this is—I don't struggle with this, this is not a sin, no sin there."

In verse ten, "If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us." So, I go from lying to others, to lying to myself, to calling God a liar. Yikes. It's impossible for God to lie, Hebrews chapter six tells us.

But when you go down this road of darkness, you start to lie to yourself, and then you say, "God, what I'm doing is not a sin." We have people do that all the time. They want to redefine morality and say, "Well, no, I don't want to deal with guilt, so I'm just going to move the goalpost, and we're just going to move the out-of-bounds markers, and we're going to say, 'Well, this used to be out of bounds, it's not out of bounds anymore.'"

And so, I can participate in fornication. It's okay because we love each other. One guy told me that one time: "Well, you know, sex before you're married is wrong unless you love each other, and then it's okay." Can you give me a chapter and verse on that? Because I don't think it says that.

What it does say, Hebrews 13:4, "Let the marriage bed be undefiled, for fornicators and adulterers, God will judge." That's what it does say. That should strike fear into the heart of anyone that's participating in fornication or adultery.

We think, "Well, you know, it's just—I'm just sinning against God, no big deal." It's a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Our God is a consuming fire. But see, we just say, "Well, that's just—yeah, it's—everybody struggles with sin, it's okay, God's okay with that." He's not okay with that.

If we say we have not sinned, what do we have in our world today, in churches today? Homosexuality's fine. That's not a sin. We just redefine it. We just move the out-of-bounds markers and say, "It's not a sin, it's fine." You're calling God a liar when you do that. God has made it very clear what He thinks of that sin, and it is a sin. Not the unpardonable sin, but it is a sin. And anytime you start moving the out-of-bounds markers on any sin, you are in serious danger because God is the God who defines morality, not us. That comes from God. And if you call God a liar and make God to be a liar, that's a serious, serious sin.

And I promise you, you will not have fellowship with God, you will not have the joy of the Lord, you will not have the peace of the Lord. He says His word is not in us, His truth is not in us. Hey, we must not turn a blind eye to our sin.

What must we do with our sin? We must agree with God about our sin. "If we say, if we say, if we say." Now, verse nine doesn't use the phrase "if we say"; it says, "If we confess our sins." If we confess.

But the word for confess is a compound Greek word, *homologeo*, which means to say the same thing. So, this is what we should say: we should say the same thing about our sin that God says about our sin. "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just, faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

That's how you deal with sin in your life. You deal with sin, I deal with sin, we deal with sin. But what do we do with sin? We bring it to the light. We say, "Lord, I'm struggling with this. I'm struggling with fear, I'm struggling with bitterness, I'm struggling with jealousy, I'm struggling with lust, I'm struggling with greed," whatever it is.

"Lord, this situation has really got me in a mess, and Lord, I know that I have a wrong attitude here, so I bring it to the light. I bring it into the light. And God, I ask You to forgive me." If we confess our sins—say the same thing God says about our sin—He is faithful and He's just, He's righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Now, why is He righteous to do that? Why is He just to do that? Because Jesus Christ died on the cross for all those sins. And His blood washes us white as snow. That's why God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.

Now, some people will say, "I don't understand this at all. I thought when we received Christ that we were forgiven. So, why are we having to do this? Aren't we forgiven? Aren't all my sins forgiven?" Yes, they are. But how are they forgiven?

See, you've got to keep things in perspective. When you receive Christ as Savior and Lord, God the Father wraps His gavel, the judge of all the earth, He wraps His gavel and says, "Not guilty." You're justified, which is just as if you've never sinned. Justified before the Lord.

And so, we're forgiven judicially, and we have transferred from death into life. Our name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life. We're never going to stand at the Great White Throne and hear those terrible words, "Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness, I never knew you." We don't hear that because we've been saved. But now there is a relational aspect to forgiveness.

Just like in your own family. So, I have three daughters. And so, if something happens in our relationship—and let's say my daughters do something to me, to keep this with God and us—my daughters do something to me, I didn't do anything to them, but they do something to me that causes a rift in the relationship.

That doesn't mean they're not my daughter anymore, but that means we need to repair the relationship. If they did something, they need to come and apologize and get things right. Do you remember in John chapter 13 when Jesus washed the disciples' feet?

Interesting passage of scripture. It was the night He was betrayed. Judas was there; He washed Judas's feet. Well, when He comes to Peter, Peter says, "Never shall You wash my feet." Jesus said, "Okay, if I don't wash you, you have no part with Me."

And then Peter backs up and he says, "Well, Lord, wait a minute. How about wash my hands, my head, wash everything, not just my feet, because I want to have part with You." And Jesus said, "The one who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, because he is completely clean. You don't need for me to wash your head and your hands; I've already done that. But I need to wash your feet."

Here's the thing, here's the principle that we get from the foot-washing situation: You come to Christ, and you're saved, and your sins are washed away, and your sins are forgiven. But then you have to live the Christian life.

And you're going to fail from time to time in the Christian life—maybe more than just from time to time in the Christian life—and you need the Lord to wash your feet. You don't need to get saved all over again; you need for the blood of Jesus, God's son, to cleanse you from those sins because as we walk in this world, we're going to stumble, we're going to fall, our feet are going to get dirty, and we need God to cleanse us.

This is the life: a life of fellowship, a life of joy, a life of walking with God in the light with God. Now, I want to ask you as we close out: where are you today? Hey, when God's people get serious about Him, to really live the Christian life—the abundant Christian life—people will notice. It'll show up on the job. It'll show up in the community. It'll show up in the classroom. It'll make a difference in our world for Christ. Where are you today?

Guest (Male): Perhaps you'd like to turn from your sin today and back to God right now. Maybe you need to just pray and just say, "God, here is my life. Take it back and help me to be the Christian You want me to be." Or maybe you know that you're a sinner, but you just don't want to give up and surrender your life.

If you will sincerely turn from your sin and turn to Him in repentance and faith, you will be saved. You'll become a child of God, the Holy Spirit will live inside you, and you'll never be the same. And when you die, you can have confidence that you'll be in heaven with Him forever.

To find out more about what that means, go to fromhisheart.org and click the "Why Jesus" link. It's right there on the homepage. Discover the encouragement you'll need to get you started in your Christian walk.

Today you heard part two of the lesson, "This Is the Life," from Pastor Jeff's five-lesson series, "Soul on Fire: God's Plan for Revival." It's our gift to you this month for your support of any amount to the ongoing outreach of From His Heart. You can do that when you call 866-40-BIBLE—866-40-BIBLE—or go to fromhisheart.org.

Well, thank you for joining with us today on From His Heart. I'm Larry Nobles, trusting that you'll be here tomorrow for the third lesson in this "Soul on Fire" series. It's about living a life that is contrary to God's design for you. Join us Wednesday for the lesson, "Spiritual Adultery," when Pastor Jeff opens up God's word and shares from His heart.