Pathway to Victory

Speaker 1

Hey, podcast listeners, thanks for streaming today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.

Pathway to Victory is a nonprofit ministry featuring the Bible teaching of Dr. Robert Jeffress. Our mission is to pierce the darkness with the light of God's word through the most effective media available, like this podcast.

To support Pathway to Victory, go to ptv.org/donate or follow the link in our show notes.

Now here's today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.

Speaker 2

Hi, this is Robert Jeffress, and I'm glad to study God's Word with you every day. This Bible teaching program. On today's edition of Pathway to Victory.

Speaker 3

Do we go for taste or nutrition? Do we go for sugar or substance?

We're gonna talk about the difference between being a Krispy Kreme Christian and being a Special K Christian. You know, that's a choice that we all face, not just in relationship to our physical diet, but our spiritual diet.

Speaker 1

Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor, Dr. Robert Jeff. As Christians, many of us long for something more in our relationship with God. We get all fired up during worship on Sundays, but the rest of the week, it sort of feels like something's missing.

Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress discusses how to find contentment in both our spiritual walk and all areas of life.

Now here's our Bible teacher to introduce today's message: Dr. Jeffress.

Speaker 2

Thanks, David, and welcome again to Pathway to Victory. Well, our generation is addicted to instant gratification, and that extends not only to the physical realm, but also the spiritual realm. Too many Christians are chasing after a quick infusion of spiritual emotion. But the Christian life cannot be measured in goosebumps. I can relate because I've been through this as well.

And so I've written a book to teach you what I've learned. It addresses the deep longing each of us feels for something more. God has given you a craving to experience more joy, more peace, and more victory. In my book called *I Want More*, I'll explain how to ignite new passion in your spiritual journey as you learn to unleash the power of the Holy Spirit. I'll help you identify four spirit quenchers in your life, and I'll expose the common misunderstandings about the Holy Spirit.

Again, my book is called *I Want More*, and we'll send you a copy when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway Victory. Now it's time to get started with the final message in our series. A bit later, we'll explain how you can receive this entire teaching series on CD and DVD. The series is called *Unleashed*. But right now, here's the final study titled *Becoming a Special K Christian in a Krispy Kreme World*.

Speaker 3

Recently, I discovered I was out of my breakfast cereal. That was my usual habit, Bran Flakes. And so I ran up to the supermarket to pick up a new box, and I found out they too were out of Bran Flakes. The closest thing they had was a Special K cereal. I was about to make the purchase while standing there when suddenly I was approached by a temptress. She was very seductively dressed in a green, red, and white outfit. She was very, very appealing, I must confess to you. They say confession is good for the soul. I'll confess to you, I was very tempted to give in to my fleshly lust at that moment, to surrender to her enticements. She was a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

As I looked at that box of donuts and then thought about the Special K cereal, I had a choice to make in that instant. I had to choose between taste or nutrition, between health or happiness, between that short-term exhilaration that comes from a sugar high and that long-term satisfaction that comes from eating a bowl of cereal. You know, I thought about it for a moment. I thought about all the wonderful times Krispy Kremes and I had had together before. I thought about how when you eat one of those donuts, or in my case, it's usually half a dozen of those donuts, you know that surge you get. Oh, you feel great for a little while, and then you hit that sugar thud and crash to the bottom. Did I want to go for that experience, or did I want to go for the long-term satisfaction that comes from cereal?

You know, that's a choice that we all face, not just in relation to our physical diet, but our spiritual diet. In the series on the Holy Spirit, we've seen that all of us have a hunger for more in our relationship with God. Don't we all want more than what we're experiencing right now? We want more joy in our worship, more power in our prayers, more success in our struggles. We all have that holy hunger for more. The choice is how we are going to satisfy that holy hunger. Do we go for taste or nutrition? Do we go for sugar or substance? Do we go toward that short-term exhilaration that comes from experiences, or do we go for that long-term satisfaction that comes from a relationship with God?

Well, today, as we conclude our series on the Holy Spirit, we're going to talk about the difference between being a Krispy Kreme Christian, one who's out for the short-term fixes, and being a Special K Christian, one who finds that lasting satisfaction. If you have your Bibles, I want you to turn to Genesis chapter 25. The Krispy Kreme Christian is one who is looking for exhilaration. He focuses on short-term rather than long-term solutions. If I were going to sum it up this way, I would say the Krispy Kreme Christian, put it on your outline, is one who focuses on spiritual experiences. He's always going from experience to experience, looking for new revelations, looking for new manifestations of the Holy Spirit of God. He is one who is looking for experiences rather than spirituality.

The Krispy Kreme Christian focuses on spiritual experiences. Now, what do I mean by spiritual experiences? Gordon McDonald lists four characteristics of a spiritual experience in contrast to true spirituality. Write it down. First of all, spiritual experiences require little discipline. They require little discipline. The person who is the Krispy Kreme Christian is always focused on the external, what other people can do for him. He's always looking for a new song that will give him that buzz that he needs, or new preaching or a new revelation from God. Because he's constantly looking to the external for his satisfaction, the Krispy Kreme Christian never has to engage in mundane disciplines like reading the Bible, praying, or obeying God. It's always focused on the external. It requires little discipline.

Secondly, spiritual experiences focus more on emotion than on change. Again, that Krispy Kreme Christian is looking for the new high all of the time. But finally, when the tears dry up and the shouting stops and the goosebumps subside, the Krispy Kreme Christian finds that he is just the same person he was before the experience. He doesn't realize that the real essence of spirituality is not emotion, but transformation. Thirdly, spiritual experiences, as wonderful as they are, are short-lived. Just like my sugar-induced high from the donut, it's great while it lasts. The only problem is it doesn't last. When you come down off that high, whether it's physical or spiritual, many times you find yourself lower than you were before you had the high. And so you're constantly craving a new experience that will give you even more exhilaration.

Finally, spiritual experiences focus on the participant rather than on God. For the Krispy Kreme Christian, it's all about him, how he feels about things. So he's always looking for experiences that focus on him. Maybe he's focusing even on the Holy Spirit of God. You say, well, what's wrong with focusing on the Holy Spirit? Remember what Jesus said in John 16, verse 14: "He, the Holy Spirit, shall glorify me." The reason the Holy Spirit came was not to draw attention to himself, but to draw attention to Jesus Christ. J.I. Packer says that the Holy Spirit of God is like a floodlight. It illuminates the object on which it is focused. It's the same with the Holy Spirit. His purpose in coming was not to glorify himself, but to glorify, to illuminate the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Krispy Kreme Christian is one who focuses on spiritual experiences. But the Special K Christian, the one who finds that lasting satisfaction, focuses on spirituality. Now, what is spirituality? Remember Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Stewart Potter was once asked to define pornography, and Justice Potter said, "I can't define it, but I sure know it when I see it." The same thing with spirituality. It's hard to define what real spirituality is, but we know it when we see it, don't we? One of the greatest illustrations of a Special K Christian, one who focuses on satisfaction for the long term rather than short-term fixes, is the character Abraham in the Old Testament. If you have your Bibles, turn to Genesis chapter 25 if you haven't already. We're going to look at this character named Abraham. He had a holy hunger for more in his relationship with God, and he found that answer. He died satisfied in his relationship with God.

How do I know that? Look at how Abraham ended his life. In verse 8 of Genesis chapter 25, Abraham breathed his last and he died in a ripe old age, an old man satisfied with life. He was gathered to his people. Now, you know my pastoral profession requires me to spend a lot of time in cemeteries, more time than I would normally like to spend in cemeteries. But a lot of times when I'm waiting for the service to start, I'll walk around and look at the different tombstones and see what was written on them. In the thousands of tombstones I have seen in my lifetime, I had never seen this epitaph before: "He died satisfied with life." But wouldn't that be a great way to go out of this world? Wouldn't it be great to end your life satisfied? Wouldn't it be great that when you drew your last breath, it was a sigh of contentment rather than a groan of disappointment? That's how Abraham ended his life, satisfied with life.

What happened in his life that produced that satisfaction? Now, we could go back and look at Abraham's life and see a great number of high points. He had some of those high points and spiritual experiences when he was called by God to leave Ur of the Chaldees and was promised that he would be the father of a great nation. That was a high. Or think about the battle that he had with the kings of the east and won that battle. That was a high. Or when he prayed and interceded for Sodom and Gomorrah. That was a high. He had a lot of highs in his spiritual life. But there was an episode in his life early on in his relationship with God that really changed the course of his life and best illustrates what a real Special K Christian is all about.

This experience was actually a real estate transaction that Abraham engaged in with one of his family members. But in this transaction, you see what gave Abraham that lasting satisfaction that characterizes a Special K Christian. So turn back to Genesis chapter 13. I said the Krispy Kreme Christian focuses on spiritual experiences. The Special K believer, write it down, focuses on spirituality. Notice how this chapter begins in Genesis 13, verse 1: "So Abram went up from Egypt to the Negev." Now, what was he doing in Egypt? We'll find out in just a moment. Abraham and his wife and all that belonged to him and Lot with him. Lot was his nephew. Now skip down to verse 6. "And the land could not sustain them while dwelling together, for their possessions were so great that they could not remain together. There was strife between the herdsmen of Abram's livestock and the herdsmen of Lot's livestock. Now the Canaanite and the Perizzite were dwelling with them in the land."

So Abram said to Lot, "Please let there be no strife between you and me, nor between my herdsmen and your herdsmen, for we are brothers." Underline that: "We are brothers." "Is not the whole land before you?" Abram said, "Please separate from me. If you go to the left, then I'll go to the right. Or if you go to the right, then I will go to the left." So Lot lifted up his eyes and saw all the valley of the Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere. Doesn't that sound appealing right now? Look out on land that is well watered, green, plush. He looked out on the Jordan, and it was well watered everywhere. This was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt as you go to Zoar.

So what did Lot do? He chose for himself all the valley of the Jordan, and Lot journeyed eastward. Thus they separated from each other. Abram settled in the land of Canaan, while Lot settled in the cities of the valley, and he moved his tents as far as Sodom. Not a great idea, as we'll see later on, but that's where he went. Now, what's going on here? After Abram and his family had a short stay down in Egypt, for reasons we'll look at in just a moment, they come back to the promised land. They come back to Canaan. The first thing they notice is that because their wealth has increased during the time they were in Egypt, the land wasn't big enough for both of them.

Now, in Abram's day, the way you measured wealth was in terms of livestock. Their livestock had multiplied, and there wasn't enough land to sustain both his and Lot's livestock. They had a choice to make. Let me point out here that this is the first time that wealth is ever mentioned in the Bible. When we get to this chapter, chapter 13, this is the first time we see anybody who is truly wealthy. The first time we find somebody who had so much they didn't know what to do. I want you to notice it's mentioned in a problem context. It caused a problem. Now, there's nothing sinful about being wealthy. Abraham was a friend of God, and he was wealthy. Moses was a servant of God, perhaps the most faithful in all the Old Testament, and he was wealthy. We look at David, the man after God's own heart; he was wealthy. We look at Job, perhaps one of the wealthiest men of his day as well. Wealth in and of itself is not sinful.

But what I want you to see here is that wealth does create its own unique problems. I see this as a pastor all the time. Here are a husband and wife who struggled for years together in a marriage and struggled to try to build a business together. Once they reach a certain level of prosperity, what do they do? They decide they have irreconcilable differences, and they split up and go their separate ways because they can afford to do so. I see it all the time with families, kids just fighting at each other's throats over their parents' estate. Nothing causes problems in a family any more than large estates or small estates, which is a great reason to leave your money to the church, by the way. It's a great way to promote family harmony, to keep your kids together. Just give a big hunk of it to the church. They don't have anything to fight over. A lot of people do that. They fight over estates.

I see it as a pastor. Pastors tell me that the biggest fights they've ever had in their church are not when the church was running a deficit in their budget, but when they were running a surplus. What do we do with all the extra? Church members begin to fight over it. Fortunately, we never had that problem at First Baptist Dallas, but it'd be a great problem to have. Maybe not. Wealth creates its own unique problems. Because of this, there was strife between Abraham and Lot. How are we going to sustain our flock? So Abraham says, "Lot, here's the deal. You choose which land you want, and whatever land you want can be yours, and I'll take what is left over."

Why was Abraham willing to surrender his right as the patriarch in the family and let Lot get the best of him? The reasons really illustrate what a Special K Christian is all about. I want you to notice here the three ingredients, if you will, of a Special K Christian as opposed to a Krispy Kreme Christian like Lot. First of all, the Special K believer has a greater purpose in life. He has a greater purpose. You know, every life is either God-focused or it is self-focused. Every life is either lived to meet a need in others or to fill a greed in ourselves. It's one or the other; it can't be both. By the way, what is the focus of your life? Is your life God-focused, or is it self-focused? Is your life about getting all that you can? Is it about filling a need or meeting a greed in your own life?

Unfortunately, many people, like Lot, the Krispy Kreme Christians, it's all about themselves. It's the old philosophy: get all you can, can all you get, and sit on the can. That's the way Lot was living his life. He was already a wealthy person when he came back from Egypt. He had plenty, but he wanted more. Look at verse 10. The Bible says that Lot saw the Valley of the Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere. That Hebrew word "saw" means to long, to gaze with longing in your heart, to look at something, to long for it in your heart. When Lot looked out over that land, he said, "This is what I want. If only I could have that piece of land, then I would truly have everything I need in life."

Listen to me this morning. You know what it is that wars against contentment in your life? Do you know the greatest enemy of satisfaction in your life? It's what I call the Oasis Syndrome. It's the belief that happiness is somewhere other than where I am right now. If only I had that job, if only I lived in that city, if only I had that house, if only I drove that car, if only I had that amount of money, then I would truly be satisfied. The Oasis Syndrome: looking for happiness other than where you are right now. Years ago, I was being interviewed on a program by a well-known minister whose name everybody thinks about when they think about positive thinking. I was talking on this program about this Oasis syndrome. I kept talking about it, kept talking about it. Finally, this minister couldn't contain himself. He blurted out, "What's wrong with looking for the Oasis? After all, the toll-free number for our ministry is 1-800-Oasis." That's what his whole ministry was built on.

Here's what's wrong with looking for the Oasis: the Oasis is a mirage that will always outdistance you. Once you get there, you find out that's not where it is. It's just a little bit further down the road. That was Lot. His whole purpose was living for himself, that immediate self-gratification. The problem with the Oasis is you never arrive there. Now contrast that to Abraham. Abraham had a greater purpose in life than his immediate gratification. Why was he willing to surrender this land to Lot? First of all, he was concerned about his own family's well-being. Notice in verse 8, he says, "Please let there be no strife between you and me, for are we not brothers?" Are we not from the same family? You see, Abraham realized that once they got back to Canaan, the problem with Canaan was it was filled with Canaanites, people who hated God and hated the people of God.

Abraham knew that if these Canaanites sensed that there was strife between Abraham and Lot, they would see that as weakness and use that as an opportunity to attack and obliterate God's people. So Abraham was saying, "For the sake of our family, let's stick together. We either hang together or we hang separately." That was the idea. "Let there be no strife between you and me." By the way, we would do well to remember that as a church family. You know, one of my pet peeves as a pastor is church members who have a commitment to the church that is about a thimble deep. You know, they're here, they're with you. "Pastor, we'll stay here. Pastor, we're with you all the way." Unless we hear a song in the worship service we don't like, or you preach a sermon we don't like, or a decision is made that we don't agree with, or there's a better show down the street. In that case, we're out of here. Do you know people like that? They're in churches everywhere.

Contrast that to what Paul says should be our devotion to one another. In Romans 12:10, he said, "Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Give preference to one another in honor."

Speaker 2

Perhaps as you listen to today's message.

Speaker 3

You begin to realize that you've been.

Speaker 2

Living your spiritual life a little bit like one of those Krispy Kreme Christians. You're longing for something more in your relationship with God. But when the music fades and the lights go out, you just don't feel completely satisfied. Let me give you a couple of steps to take so that you can deepen your relationship with God and with others in his family.

At the beginning of today's broadcast, you heard me mention a book I've written called *I Want More*. I'm eager to get a copy of this book into your hands because I truly believe it can help reignite your walk with God and bring you into a deeper relationship with Him. My book is written for anyone who struggles repeatedly with the same sin or finds it difficult to read the Bible, or who can't remember the last time they had a meaningful encounter with the Lord. A copy of my book *I Want More* can be yours today when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory.

And then in a moment, David will explain how you can receive the entire collection of messages from our current series called *Unleashed*. The CDs and DVDs give you an opportunity to listen or watch at your own pace. Plus, the collection has far more material than we've had time to present on the radio program, and the DVDs are great to use in your small group Bible study. Be sure to get in touch with us today. Here's David to give you our contact information.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Dr. Jeffress. You can request the book *I Want More* along with a copy of the *Jesus Map* when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory. Call us at 866-999-2965 or visit our website at ptv.org now. When your gift is $75 or more, you'll receive not only the book, but also the *Unleashed* teaching series on both CD and DVD. One more time, call 866-999-2965 or find us online at ptv.org. You could write to us if you'd like; here's that mailing address: P.O. Box 223609, Dallas, Texas 75222. Again, that's P.O. Box 223609, Dallas, Texas 75222.

I'm David J. Mullins wishing you a great weekend, and join us again next week when Dr. Jeffress presents the final message in our study on the whole called *Unleashed*. That's Monday here on Pathway to Victory.

Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. If you enjoy listening to Pathway to Victory, you can also experience the powerful biblical teaching of Dr. Robert Jeffress on television. Watch Pathway to Victory weekdays on TBN, the Trinity Broadcasting Network, and weekends on both TBN and Daystar, as well as numerous other television stations across the country. The television broadcast features the same life-changing messages you love, presented in a straightforward format that focuses on the powerful teaching of Scripture.

Pathway to Victory's mission is to pierce the darkness with the light of God's Word, and we're doing it through the most effective media possible, including radio, podcast, digital streaming, and television. For complete program information and viewing options, visit ptv.org. Again, that's ptv.org.

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