Grace Thoughts

Guest (Male): Hello friends, welcome to Grace Thoughts, the radio ministry of Grace Connection Church with Pastor Tim Kelley. Grace Thoughts has been dedicated to preaching a clear gospel of grace for over 20 years. Here is Pastor Kelley.

Tim Kelley: What will you look like next week? The same. Because I can't work out on Sunday and expect any change. I need to work out Monday, and I need to work out Tuesday, and I need to work out Wednesday, and I need to work out Thursday, and I need to work out Friday. I take Saturday off but not really. I have to work out Saturday, and I have to work out Sunday again. My Christian life, my friends, is seven days a week. It's not for an hour and 15 minutes on a Sunday morning. This is just your launching pad for the rest of your week. I hope that you go out and understand that these are the spiritual disciplines, however that may look for you.

Let me give you an easy one because people ask me, "How do you do this?" Well, this, my friends, I believe is the key to deep transformation. First of all, I believe that there's a void. Remember we defined it last week? Sin oftentimes is a void, quoting Lewis Sperry Chafer, of man trying to meet his own needs. So we don't address the sin; we address the void. We address the void in a man's soul. Why do they do what they do? Why do they seek what they seek? And so when we fill the void, the behavior changes, just like the word transformation talked about.

So how does that work for me? Well, it's different for everybody. I used to read books on prayer, and I'd read about Praying Hyde and Andrew Murray and some of the great prayer warriors, and I'd always feel that was never me. Okay, I'm going to pray like that. John Hyde used to stay on an upstairs of a second-story building and pray for the streets below him. He was above a barroom and he'd pray for the people below him. This was in the early 1900s. And the people below him would fall down on the concrete and repent and get saved just by the power of his prayers a story above them.

I said, "I want that power, God." So I got right outside my window, looked at 30th Avenue, and no one fell. Squirrel, bird, parrot, nothing. Cat, chipmunk, squirrel, nothing. Nothing repented. And I prayed, "Where's my power?" I would compare myself with these other people, and it was not good. Because then you get beat up on the inside and you think, "How come? What's wrong with me that I can't be like them?" No, find it for yourself. Find your place. I meet God every morning early; my wife meets God in the evening. I'm sound asleep while she's hanging out with Jesus. I'm hanging out with Jesus while she's sound asleep. That is just the way we are.

But it has to start someplace. What worked for me might not work for you, but let me tell you something I think works for everyone, based on a conversation I had with Andre even between the services. Ephesians 5:18 and 19 says this: "Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery. But be filled with the spirit. Be filled with the spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making a melody to the Lord with your heart. Giving thanks," verse 20, "giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."

What does he say there? He goes, "I sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs." What am I doing? I'm praising God. I'm thanking God. Wake up every day, go to bed at night, and thank him for the things in your life. Thank him for the people in your life. Thank him for the blessings you do have. Even though you may have some rough things, thank him for the blessings you do have. Mention these things. Find a psalm, a hymn, or a spiritual song and make a melody in your heart to the Lord. Until you find it, all of a sudden your mind starts getting off yourself. Your mind starts getting off your life and the things around you, and you become absorbed with him.

What are you doing? You're getting in the shower. All of a sudden the water starts coming in. Hey, I'm feeling like I'm getting clean here. You're connecting with God through the Holy Spirit. It's not that hard, and it can be for anybody from any walk of life. Just make time for it. You made time to be here today; make time tomorrow to spend time with God. Make time on Tuesday to spend time with God. Make time on Wednesday to spend time with God. Every day of the week, make time for it. "But Pastor, I'm busy." You are busy, then. "I'm too busy." You are. Cut something out. But don't relinquish the opportunity to spend time with Jesus Christ. Your transformation depends on it.

This is a lifestyle, my friend, not an event. We fill the void, understanding this: old habits and thinking practices don't disappear. They need to be replaced. They need to just be replaced. In other words, there's a principle of displacement here. This spirit doesn't share space; it kicks it out. The law of life kicks out the law of sin and death. Again, if it gets mechanical to you, like you've been doing the same thing for so long and it starts stirring the soul, change it up. Whatever it takes, but you want to stir your soul seven days a week and watch what Jesus Christ will do in your life.

There's a warfare issue. Last point. We wrestle not against flesh and blood. Let me actually read those verses for you, but before I even get there, it says this: "neither give place to the devil," or opportunity to the devil, in Ephesians 4:27. There's a target on your head, and to leave this out of this message would not be right. When I wrote my master's thesis on spiritual transformation, one of the things I did was read many books and did lots of research. I had over 100 reference works I referred to for that paper, and very few of them mentioned spiritual warfare. Very few. And I'm not a spiritual warfare guy. I'm not chasing demons around the closet and casting things out of closets. I don't really think like that.

I'm a pretty grass-down, feet-on-the-ground type of guy, but if I don't understand I have an adversary, I'm already deceived. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, and he knows you. In fact, let me read you these verses real quick. Ephesians 6:12 and 13 says, "We are not fighting against humans. We are fighting against forces and authorities, against rulers of darkness and powers in the spiritual world. So put on the armor that God gives you. Then when the evil day comes," whatever that means, the day of temptation, "you will be able to defend yourself and when the battle is over, you will still be standing firm."

Many believe that this passage, including verses 10 and 11, talks about a hierarchy of spiritual beings. This hierarchy of spiritual beings, my friends, is all there for you. Satan hates Jesus Christ. He hates God. You are hated not because of you; you're hated because you're loved by God. Anything that God loves, he hates. So if you are the focus of God's affection and the focus of God's love, then you're also going to be the focus of his attacks and his hatred. That's why Paul said, "neither give place to the devil." Don't give him any place. If you have a problem with a weakness in your life, don't hang around with somebody struggling with that same weakness. You're giving him a place. If you have trouble with alcohol, you don't get a job as a bartender. You're giving him a place.

If I don't give him a place where he can actually attack me and work on me, I stay under the spigot. Now with this said, here's my principle on this that I try to live my life by: If I live in a great light, I don't have to think much about the darkness. When I live under the spigot of God's love and I'm in touch with the Spirit and the Word of God is residing in my heart, darkness is automatically exposed. You can sense it, you can discern it, you can smell it. You know when darkness is coming in. You know when something evil is coming in. You know when evil is lurking around. You sense it because your spiritual senses are high. Then you go the other way.

But if you don't live in a great light, darkness comes in gray. If you're walking in gray, you won't see darkness. Gray won't see darkness, gray won't see light; gray sees gray. We try to walk that middle ground of half lordship and understanding this or understanding that without ever really saying, "God, I'm yours. Take me and do with me anything you want to do with me. Speak to me on the inside, change me on the inside. I don't want to be me. I'm not managing my own life anymore. God, I'm submitting myself to you. I'm submitting my pain to you. I'm submitting my past to you. I'm submitting my future to you. I'm submitting my present to you. I'm giving you my life. I want my life to count for something more than just myself."

And then at that point, you get in the spigot, you get in his word, and transformation starts taking place. I promise you. No law, no legalism, no "you better," "you ought," "you should," or "how come you didn't." Because I can promise you this is what's going to happen. I can promise you this because it happens to me: you're going to fail. It just may be up here or it may be out here. It may be refined failure or billboard grotesque failure, but you're going to fail. And when you fail, don't stay down.

You know the little commercial, "Help me, I've fallen and I can't get up." That's what happens with Christians sometimes. They fall. "I'm going to try my hardest," and then they fall and they just stay down. No, you know what? Jesus died on a cross so I could get up. Every time I fall, I can get up. And if I fall again, I can get up again. If I fall again, I can get up again. If I fall again, I can get up again. What happens if I fall on Saturday night? Should I not come to church? No, you get in here. You need to be here. If you fall on Saturday night, you get here Sunday morning. What if I fall Sunday night? Well, wait till next Sunday and come back.

I don't let my failure cause me to withdraw. "Well, Pastor Kelley, I don't want to be a hypocrite." You already are. It's called humanity. You know the definition of a hypocrite? You know what a hypocrite is? When I function in anything above my stated beliefs, that makes me a hypocrite. Come on. Join the Hypocrites Anonymous Club. We just believe this, but do I do it all the time? No. I should think this way, but do I always think that way? No. I should act this way, but do I always act that way? No. I should speak this way, but do I always speak that way? No. What's that make you? It makes you a hypocrite, like the rest of us.

So we take our little hypocrisy and those things, and we dust ourselves off. "God, take this piece of clay because you've loved me just the way that I am and use me just the way that I am. God, I come to you weak. I come to you needy. I don't have any strength. Just pick me up and dust me off and use me as you would use me." If you've been gone for a long time, come back. If you know somebody you haven't seen in a while, drag them back. "Because of sin, I'm ashamed to go back." I had a dear girl one time tell me, "I'm ashamed to go back to church because I've been gone so long."

I talked her into coming back. She said, "What happens when people come up to me and say, 'Where have you been?'" I said, "Tell them. And I want to watch when you do." Because she was living in some pretty funky stuff. And so she did. People go, "Where have you been?" "Well, I was doing this and this and this and this." And this is a big one. We almost had to resuscitate a few people because they had no idea there could be somebody such a sinner as her. But they have no idea who they're sitting next to. I know a bunch of stories, and some of them are even yours.

So she came back and sure enough, before you know it, she's just eating with the saints and having a blast again. Don't stay away. Come back. Spiritual transformation is a journey, my friend. It goes on throughout our lives. You're going to have ups and downs. You're going to fall flat on your face. You're going to have times when you're running the race as fast as you've ever run it, and other times when you think, "I'm down on my knees, I'm making no progress whatsoever." You're going to find you're going to have 10 good years, and all of a sudden this old sin that you thought was gone pops its ugly head up and grabs you for a little bit. Don't be surprised. It's called warfare. It's called humanity. That's how we're wired, but we fight it. We don't let it keep us down. We keep getting up, and we keep getting up, and we keep getting up. You'll finish this race strong. You'll finish this race with joy because those who keep getting up, who keep getting in the shower, they make it. Unto him who is able to keep me from falling and present me faultless before the Father. Amen.