Disciplines of Durability - C

Guest (Male): Today, on Real Life Radio.
Jack Hibbs: Every Christian, all of us, should be extremely attuned to this challenge. Lord, what is Your will for me?
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Guest (Male): On today's edition of Real Life Radio, Pastor Jack continues his series called Disciplines of Life and a message titled The Discipline of Durability. The Christian walk is full of disciplines, trials, and setbacks, but God uses the hard seasons of life to shape our faith from the inside out. So, when it comes to durability, it's realizing that we can't do life relying on our own strength. You see, durability isn't about being tough enough to handle life on our own, it's about staying connected with Christ, no matter what. When times get hard, when people let us down, when circumstances don't go as planned, our natural response is often to pull back or just simply give up. But the Lord calls us to endure until His return, and that's exactly what we've got to do. So today, Pastor Jack teaches that durability means drawing closer to God, especially during hard and dangerous times. Trouble, it's not a reason to quit. A strong believer follows Christ not just in words, but also in actions. Now in his message called The Discipline of Durability, here's Pastor and Bible teacher, Jack Hibbs.
Jack Hibbs: He says, "You should also know this, Timothy, that in the last days there will be very difficult times. For people will love only themselves and their money." They are the kind who work their way into people's homes and win the confidence of vulnerable women who are burdened with guilt of sin and controlled by many desires. Isn't that an interesting, this is something I've always thought about. I didn't read anywhere, and maybe it doesn't matter to you, but I know this, that in the Bible, when Satan came to Eve, Adam was nowhere around. He showed up later. Did you know that? Adam was not there when Satan tempted Eve. He came along later. Isn't it interesting that the cults knock on your door during the daytime hours when moms are mothering kids and taking care of life? Have you noticed that? It's always been. If you appreciate this or not, Satan does. Satan hates the fact that a man has been ordained by God to be the spiritual covering of his home and his wife. And when he's not home, I find it interesting that the cults knock on your door. That's tripping to me. That's why, I'm not kidding, I'm not joking, that's why when the cults come knocking on your door, if you get a chance to see them, you grab your Bible and you go after them. You go, you chase them down. "Hey, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Did you knock on my door?" "Yeah, we did a little while ago." "All right, come, come, come, come, come." "What are you doing knocking on my door? I'm curious. Are you selling something?" "No, we're just here to tell you that Jesus isn't God." That's what they're really, that's what they're really pushing. Just cut to the chase. That's why you have that, that printable, downloadable form and you have it in the seat. You should have it in the seat in front of you. Is Jesus God or Jesus is God versus? There they are right there. You got to grab those and take them home. Keep them by your door. And when a cult knocks on your door, open the door and say, "Thank God you're here!" Hallelujah! Look at here. Let's, let's go through this right now. I got this thing right here. And then they'll say, "Now wait a minute, now wait a minute." "No, no, no, no, no, you wait a minute. You knocked on my door, you got me up. We're going to do this, baby." And then I guarantee you, that thing's already been proven. You'll stump them. And then they'll say, "Well, let's talk about the Holy Spirit." "We ain't talking about nothing or nobody until we get this answered: Who's Jesus Christ?" And they're going to go like this. You've never seen eyes go back and forth so fast. They will walk away from your door when you let them. I mean that. Let them go away spiritually limping. And then when they lay down at night, here's the cool thing, when they lay down at night, the Holy Spirit's going to drive them crazy. Because the Holy Spirit uses the Word of God. Be prepared for perilous days. Abide in Christ. Number seven, it means that we stay with Jesus at all times. Stay with Jesus. Stay with Him. Don't give up, don't quit. Stay with Jesus. His word to us was the same as it was to them so long ago, "Come and follow Me." He didn't say, "Come and follow Me for an hour, or for the day or for the month." He said, "Come and follow Me." In 1 John 4:13, he says, "By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us because He has given us His Spirit. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God abides in Him and He in God." Verse 16, "And we have known and believed the love of God, the He has for us. God is love." We read that a moment ago. Listen to it again. "And he who abides in love abides in God and God in him." Stay with Jesus all the way to the end, my friend. That word abide means to stay, to go to that given place, that place that's dedicated, a condition. It means to have expectancy. John 15, verse 4, says, "Abide in Me, and I in you," Jesus said. "As the branch cannot bear fruit in itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me." Verse 5, "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing." "If anyone does not abide in Me, he's cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. If anyone abides in Me, and my words abide in him, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you." Verse 9, "As the Father loved Me, I also loved you; abide in My love." Take up residence, live, stay there. "If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love." You say, "Well, you know, what's, I have to abide, I have to." Yes, now watch quickly. Yes, you have to abide. Yes. Sheep, we're called sheep of His pasture. He says, "My sheep hear My voice; they follow Me." Listen, if you're here tonight and you're saying, "Oh man, wow, um, this really concerns me." Praise God it does. For those of you who are sitting here tonight saying, "I don't get this, this is a joke." Listen, you're not one of His sheep, you're not abiding in Him, and you're not in the vine. You don't belong. "Well, wait a minute. I want to belong." Well, then belong. If you don't care, then you're not His. If you do care, you're His. And here's the cool thing. All the branch has to do is hang in there. You see those orange trees outside? Okay? The branches are just there. And it's amazing to me, the vine and the roots, they're doing all the work. The branch is just there and it's got these incredible orange blossoms on them, some of them full-blown oranges on them, and it's just there. That's how we're supposed to be. You just hang in there with Jesus. And you say, "Well, I don't know if I have the strength to hang." Hey, that's beautiful. Join the club. It's His strength. And listen, are you one of His sheep? "Yeah." Then you will abide. "Well, how do I know if I'm really His?" You'll abide, and you'll eat sheep food, and you'll talk sheep, and you'll reproduce sheep. Sheep reproduce sheep. You'll tell other people, they'll come, they'll give their hearts to Jesus. Sheep make more sheep. "Well, I think it's my responsibility to, to abide." It's your responsibility to obey. He'll make sure that you produce the fruit. He's the vine. He's amazing. I'm leaving a bunch of notes off because it's late and you can look online to the for the notes later on. But number eight is this, it means that we present ourselves for His service. We present, you want to abide in Jesus? I, listen, you abide in Jesus, present yourself for His purposes. I think every time I say that, I feel like I'm supposed to apologize because you think I'm trying to snooker you into signing up for something. I'm not. There's only one way to grow and that is to present yourself to Him for His bidding. That's why He's the Lord. We are His humble subjects. He's the Lord. "What will Thou have me to do?" said Paul. Present ourselves to Him. Romans 12:1, of course, comes to mind. And in the New Living Translation, it says, "And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God. Let them be living and holy sacrifices, the kind He will accept. And when you think of what He has done for you, is this too much to ask?" Isn't that a beautiful way of putting it? With all that He's done? Isn't that reasonable? The Bible says in 1 John 15:58, "Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord." Oh man, that's awesome. The greatest way to grow, mature and spiritually strong, and to see the Word of God activated in your life, is only one way: it's by serving one another. If you're not serving one another, this is only academic. You may have a Ph.D. in theology, but you've got a big F when it comes to ministering to other people. God is not interested in theologians. Theory is, theory never feeds the soul. It takes feet, it takes ground forces. It takes, it takes feet on the ground. And that's the Christian. Number nine. Did you see me look at the clock there? Sun will be up soon, it's okay, we'll have breakfast here. Number nine, we're only going to go to ten. Um, number nine means, or number nine is that we stop falling for this world's junk. I tried to, I tried to find a better word to make it more, you know, classy for tonight, but junk's the only thing I could think of. Stop falling for the world's junk. "How about garbage?" Garbage, trash. Okay, now watch out, we can't go too far down because we'll start using words that we don't want to use. Manure, bandini, waste. Stop falling for the world's, uh, stuff. Simply meaning this, it's pretty grievous to see how much of the world's wisdom has crept into the church life of the body of Christ. Charles Spurgeon said a hundred and some odd years ago, he said we need, we need to be careful that we don't fall into the place of preaching sermonettes to Christianettes. "Come to our church, you'll be in and out in 60 minutes." That's an apology by the way for church, if you haven't figured that out. "Come to our church, we'll do worship and you'll have a little sermonette to create Christianettes and you'll be out in 60 minutes. So you can go, you can go sin up a storm for 23 hours out of the day, but we'll give you one hour and you can just come on in and get a sermonette." Get your hand stamped. You ever been to Disneyland? That's the picture I see. Just come on, do the religious thing, we'll stamp your hand, you're good for a week. Stop falling for the world's junk, because it's crept into the church. And the Bible warns us about this.
Guest (Male): 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.
Jack Hibbs: In Colossians 1:9 it says that we should rather be filled with the knowledge of His will. Listen, I know you've taken a beating tonight, haven't you? This has been a message of exhortation. Every Christian, all of us, should be extremely attuned to this challenge. Lord, what is Your will for me? Every lamb of God, Christian, abiding person wants to know God's will for their life. And you won't rest until you're on that path. Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean that we that He starts to consume you? You know how cancer consumes people? That when you get to know Him and He's speaking to you, from His word, He'll speak to you from His word, that that begins to consume your thinking. And you know, somebody wisely made little rubber band bracelets that said, "What would Jesus do?" I'm going to guess that that came from someone who was possessed with the consumption of God upon your life. My biggest problem is not nuclear war, terrorism, or Satan, my biggest problem is me. And I have found the cure for me. And that is to know the will of God and to obey Him. And when I fall down from that, you get right back up. You say, "Amen, Lord, I got off track there for a minute. Here we go again." And you get moving. Peter was an expert at that. He'd fall down, he'd get up. Peter never quits. Even when he denied Jesus three times, and he got busted by a bunch of little girls in Jerusalem. Remember that? He never quits. Jesus is resurrected from the dead and He turns and He tells His disciples who see Him, He says, "Tell the, tell the disciples I'm alive and tell Peter." How cool is that? We need to stop falling for the junk of this world. And here's number 10. We need to sever all ties with dead things. Sever all ties with dead things. Jesus said in Matthew's Gospel, I'll just paraphrase it. You can write it down, it's Matthew 5:27-32. Jesus said, you need to be watching over your life, Christian. If your right hand has a tendency to get into trouble, He's talking about so disciplining your life that He paints a picture. You're not to do this. He's, He says, "If you look at somebody and lust after them in your heart," He says, "pluck out your eye." Does that heal your heart if you pluck out your eye? He says, "If you, if your hand gets into evil, cut your hand off." He's not talking about cutting your hand off and plucking your eye out. And if you cut your hands off, how are you going to pluck your eye out? And then if that's, if that's what He wants us to physically do, every Christian would be blind with no hands. "You must be a Christian." "You're good for nothing. Look at you, you can't do a thing. Can't feed yourself." That's not what He's talking about. He's saying that we need to be so serious about following Jesus that we sever things from our life that are dead. Dead things. They don't, it's, they're the, they're time-suckers. They are energy-wasters. They don't, they don't give anything back spiritually. They're Sabbath stuff, they're stuff that gives us a rest. Hear me out. I'm not preaching some legalism stuff here. If, listen, if your family thing and if your relaxation, uh, you guys are, you guys are golfers, then, then that's awesome. If your family thing is, is the beach with the frisbees and the dog, that's wonderful. If it's water skiing or snow skiing, surfing, praise the Lord. Whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God. But if the dead thing is, "Man, you know what? Woo, this world's crazy, I can't take it anymore. I'm going to go rent 25 hours of of, I don't know, what, I don't know stuff." Um. "Three Stooges!" I could have said 20, of, uh, 24, you know, Jack Bauer stuff, but I think that's very redeeming kind of stuff. But we need to make that decision. God's speaking to your heart. What is it that He wants you to cut out of your life? He wants you to do that. Why? Man, He's coming back. And and I'm going to give you this, it's over. You can even close your, in fact, go ahead, close your Bible. Look at, look, look at the screen. We're all done. Matthew 25:1, let me read it to you. You can look at the screen or you can close your eyes and let this wash over you. Jesus said, "The Kingdom of Heaven, the world you live in, shall be likened to ten virgins." It's like that. Notice, they're virgins. Not, not their, they're virgins when it comes to their spirituality. Listen. "Who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Now, five of them were wise, and five of them were, were foolish. They were silly," the word means. "Goofing off, playing games, not serious about it. Those who were foolish took their lamps and took no oil with them. But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps." They got extra oil. "But while the bridegroom was delayed," Where's Jesus? "Well, what's the deal? Come on, where's the Lord? When's He going to come?" "They all slumbered and slept. And at midnight a cry was heard, 'Behold, the bridegroom is coming; go out to meet him!' Then all those virgins arose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise, 'Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.' But the wise answered, saying, 'No, lest there should not be enough for us and you; but go rather to those who sell, and buy for yourselves.'" "And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came." Jesus returned. "And those who were ready went in with him to the wedding; and the door was shut. Afterward, other the other virgins came also, saying, 'Lord, Lord, open to us!' But he answered and said to them, 'Assuredly, I say to you, I do not know you.'" Notice what the qualifying factor is for Him knowing them. "Watch therefore," Jesus said, "for you do not know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming." We must abide in Christ. Heavenly Father, in Jesus' name, Lord, we ask You that if there's any area in our lives that is untethered, it's loose, it's undisciplined. We ask You, Father, in Jesus' name, we invite You, Lord, to search that of our hearts, that area, that thing. And Lord, if there's someone here tonight and they have pursued their own counsel. They decided to sin against the eternal God for their own pleasures, for their own pursuits. They have sacrificed and they have missed, Lord, Your oil, Your light, Your lamp. If there's someone here tonight who you've been stirring in their hearts, you've been working on them, you've been speaking to them, and they, they know that they're to accept You as, as Lord and Savior now, that they, they know that they're not ready to meet You, that they would make that decision right now, asking for Your forgiveness, asking for Your power and strength, asking for Your salvation. In Jesus' name, and all God's people said, "Amen."
Guest (Male): Pastor and Bible teacher, Jack Hibbs. Here on Real Life Radio in his message called The Discipline of Durability. You know, this message, by the way, is part of Pastor Jack's series called Disciplines of Life, a series on the disciplines God builds into the Christian life, trials, the setbacks, and the hard seasons of life that He uses to shape a believer's character and to deepen our faith. And we'll continue on the next edition of Real Life Radio. So 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/knowgod. That's K-N-O-W G-O-D. 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 Know God tab at jackhibbs.com.
Guest (Male): 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.