7 Steps to Share the Good News with Love: Part 1 | Randy Bell

Understanding God's will is crucial for a Christian's life.

There are four phases of being a Christian: infant, child, young person, and spiritual father.

The third phase, young person, is not about youth but about maturity and ability to serve God.

God expects Christians to mature and become teachers, not just preachers, to others.

Thank you. Okay, now what I'm doing here is our last message after 12 weeks. We've talked about the literal phases of being a Christian. I wish when I was first saved at 19, somebody would have taught me this. The misery of my life for the first few years of being a Christian would have not been there if I would have understood God's will. Now, I know what God's will was. what he did to me was on purpose to deal with me, to mature me. I thought, first of all, either he abandoned me or hated me or just wanted to punish me. And I got discouraged and fell away and thinking he didn't love me anymore and listened to me. And all the time, it was none of that. He was right on track, maturing me, developing my spiritual life. I had no clue. Oh, I am so excited that I now can understand. so hopefully I can share with others in the faith what God is doing. I now understand the exact steps of God's will for your life. And that's amazing. Before, I just kind of wandered through it and hoped I got there and whatever. But there is a clear-cut teaching here. Well, now we're at the last phase. Level 4, according to 1 John. And the way he used the term was he said, I write to you fathers. Fathers. Now, really, in English, the best thing you should say is grandfathers, grandmothers. What he's really talking about, not fathers, because remember the young person, according to that level, was up to 40 years old. Well, they would be the parents. So literally the usage here is if you think of it as a spiritual grandfather or a spiritual grandmother is what he's talking about. You're enlarging your vision beyond your own local family, and you're looking to a larger group of people that you can share your wisdom and your love for. So it's a larger picture of what God is trying to teach us. This is why it says in 2 Peter 1, the seventh step in this level is adding agape love. Your heart needs to be enlarged like God's is enlarged. The Bible says, for God so loved the world. He didn't just love me, He loved the whole world. Me-ism is America. We only think in terms God loves me and has a wonderful plan for my life. We can't understand that God's love is for the entire world and He has a major plan for humanity. And so we need to look in bigger terms. We need to think in terms of church, not me. Think of the kingdom of God, not my own little church. We don't think big enough. This is where the level of maturity we're talking about when we talk about spiritual father is. At that level, you get it. You get your bigger picture. You're in a phase of life that's got a bigger and larger understanding of people around you. You have a greater heart to care for their needs. You don't think of your own self anymore in your own little world. You're worried about the needs of others. You have a burden that bears upon you when you see other people hurting. You don't think about your own children, but these people and their children. It enlarges and makes it bigger. That's the phase you have to come into. It's not a mental thing. It's a literal life change. It's a style just the same as when you become a grandparent and you have a larger approach to life and a larger perspective. You don't think of just your children. Now you're children's children and your children's children's children are however larger that gets as you are older. It becomes a larger and larger aspect of life. This is exactly the phase of life that God wants you to move into before you go to heaven. He doesn't want you to wait and go to heaven and do this. He wants you to start this on earth. And one line of Scripture has haunted me all week from this. It's really brought home this final point of interest. So remember our chart, when I get to it, and I'm going to read the one verse that's going to level it out for you. But remember what we're saying then is, the first phase of Christianity is when you're born again. The Bible, John, says, I talk to you infants, because you have come to know God. Your sins are forgiven, he says. The second phase is literally the character-changing development, just like you think of children growing up in the church, I mean church, in school, as they begin going to first grade, second grade. It's a whole level of learning that's necessary to develop you to an active, useful Christian. It's a major level. The Scripture uses the term children, not little children, because the two Greek words are different. The first one was infant. That's what it translates to be in English. The second one is half-grown or basically immature. Immature believers is what it's talking about. And God has a plan to get you out of that. His desire is for you to be mature. Can you imagine that here I am on this day for my mom's birthday. I came in in diapers and expected her to feed me bottles. Can you imagine how she would be disappointed in me? she expected me to grow up she expected me to change she expected me to mature god does too it hurts him to think that his kids are still dumb little kids in church fighting each other arguing over the carpet uh ignoring his you know it just drives him nuts to no end that's not what he wants he expects change and he developed it just like the dna of humanity i mean i can't stop being old I get gray hair and then my teeth fall out I can stop it Even if I choose them I will go I don want to get older than 21 It doesn matter You will do it anyway Well spiritual DNA is the same thing God's grace flows through you and He won't allow you to stop. If you're really a Christian, He will push at you. Now, you might slow it down and He might have to do some end-arounds, punish you, beat you into the ground, whip on you, whatever it takes to get you back in line, but He won't stop. and you can slow your process down or if you can understand his truth and understand the knowledge he's talking about, you can speed up maturity by cooperating with him. That's why I'm saying I wish I would have understood the word before. I wish someone would have taught me when I was young because it would have sped up my maturity instead of suffering the going in circles I did and all that that I went through without knowing what was going on and losing my faith, getting discouraged and then repenting of wanting to quit being a Christian every other day and all those kind of things because I didn't know what was going on. If you know what's going on, you can endure. That's what God's after, that you endure and get on and become strong in the faith. The third level is what he calls young people, but the actual Greek idea is up to 40 years old in the natural realm. So it's not young like you think. It's young in the sense that you're a strong, healthy, mature young adult who can do the work, serve the living God, and accomplish the task. But as you go through that period, God naturally expects you then to be able to gain experience and understanding so you can turn around and do one important thing. Reach back and mentor and train other people. Now, I think we were wrong all these years. I kept thinking you had to have a special call. In other words, you have to be led by God. You have to have like a lightning bolt come down from heaven and hit you in the head and say, I want you to teach the Word. And if you don't have that, you can kind of just leave your world and do your thing. This is what caught me this week that's changed everything about what I'm thinking. Out of the book of Hebrews, there was a sentence that just threw me for a loop and it can either excite you or scare you, I think. Notice Hebrews 5.11. We have a lot to explain about this, he says, but since you have become too lazy to pay attention, explaining it to you is hard. But by now you should be teachers. Now he's not talking to preachers here. He's talking to the Christian community. Listen to that sentence. By now you should be teachers. No calling. No special thing. Time should have made you teachers. Is what he's saying. That blows our whole concept of Christianity I think. but it actually fits exactly to what this teaching of 1 John has been saying. It's literally expressing the evidence of what I'm saying here. God expects you to grow up. And the growing up shows up in, first of all, God expects all of you to be diligent and to be trained to be teachers. He expects the reason you're going to church is so that you have a goal coming along. you're eventually going to become a teacher in the name of Jesus. Now everybody's going to quit my church after that, right? Because they say, wait, wait, wait, I don't want this. What are you talking about? I'm not interested. I just want to sit back, enjoy church, enjoy my life, blah, blah, blah. No, no. See, this is what threw me. It says you become too lazy to pay attention. The actual Greek idea is diligence is just like when you become trained in a job. What does it take to be trained to be a piano player? You have to have a teacher. You have to have practice. You have to learn how to read music. There's a lot of effort involved. That's called diligence. Christians are too lazy to be diligent about what I'm talking about. And I'm sorry to say that. In fact, the Greek word here, it can be translated slothful is the idea. Literally want to slow it down and not listen and actually take the effort to do what God wants. and this really blew my mind because I never thought of it and think of being the natural process of maturity that God expects us out of us. I thought you had to have this special calling and that doesn't really match this. Now to be a preacher maybe, you know, maybe something different, but what I'm talking about, I'm going to even show you that where I'm even starting to doubt this now and I'll show you why. But notice how clear that says, by now you should be teachers. By now. Meaning, you should have got there at the time limit you were involved with. And so God, I believe, demands that in time, not by a special calling, you are to take responsibility for the spiritual maturity of others, is what he's saying. Natural maturity of being a Christian is being concerned about others, because that is a natural maturity level, because that's what love is. Think about it. my sons when they were four years old, I didn't expect them to get married and have children. That would be crazy. But as time came along, they have different desires and they start having mature interest. And then they have children in the natural process of time. That's the same thing I want you to understand. Time here. The natural process of time is once you become a Christian, God's natural working with His grace in you is causing you to try to get you to get it. He wants you to take responsibility for other people's life. Not your own, but other people's. And specifically in the area of maturity. Now, does that mean you have to all become pastors? No. That's a different thing. Teachers is not the same thing as having to be a pastor. Pastors is a leadership responsibility. Teaching is a personal responsibility. you can take anywhere and all the time. For example D Moody was a man that lived 1850s and actually died in 1899 Lived in Chicago He was a shoe salesman. As he was doing his work, he was busy, busy wanting to become rich. His goal in life was to become rich. And so he had a goal from becoming a salesman to getting his own business and all these things and become a rich guy. In the midst of that, he got this crazy customer that came in and told them about Jesus. And through that witness of this customer, he was converted. Now, a lot of things were going on at this time in America. There was a spiritual revival that was issuing throughout the nation, vibrating at this point. And he didn't take long, and he started to feel a desire he wanted to teach, which is a natural process I believe of maturing. So he went to his pastor and said I want to teach a class. And the pastor told him no. He said sorry there are tons of people on the waiting list to be teachers. Boy, the dream of the 21st century church that they have so many Christians that mature enough that want to teach that they had to be put on a waiting list. Literally begging to serve God. And he literally was told, no, but here's a good idea for you. If you really want to be a teacher and you can't stand it, go out into the streets and find those roughneck kids that are a bunch of gang members and find the kids that are basically without parents and they're left on their own in the streets. Go find them. Take them out on the beach at Lake Michigan Beach there and you just get them going and whatever. And once you've actually calmed them down so we can trust them, they won't tear our building down, then maybe you can get your own class, bring it in, we'll find room for you. So he was so into it, he did. He went out in the streets and tried to find it. He literally got his own class from out in the street, and then he asked permission to come to the church with him. And he continued from there. That blew my mind to think that many Christians really wanted to serve God and were begging to serve God. In the 21st century, what happens? The church begs people to serve and nobody has time. As if it's a burden upon them. Notice the difference though. There was such a spiritual change in the lives of people, they were maturing and they wanted, had a desire. Remember, what's the definition of grace? Power and the desire. Exactly. The natural process of grace causes new desires to grow in you and it also causes you to have the strength, ability, the power, in other words, to be able to do it. And that's what grace... Grace naturally growing into maturity causes people to have a hunger to say, I want to help others know Jesus. I have a natural desire to help them so they don't go into eternity. And it's a natural process of true grace coming. If we had a lot of grace going on in America, we would have churches of people begging to do things. Because we don't, that shows we have a very low level of grace. We are hurting or very immature people who have very little bit of grace, in other words. So what we need you to see is the natural process. If you really start to understand what God's doing, He really wants you to become a teacher. It's not a question here. That's His will. He is going to push you to a level that eventually you need to become a teacher. Well, if you can't become a piano player without being diligent, I mean, I wouldn't want somebody to come up here and play piano and play chopsticks every week if we're trying to sing praises to God. We need somebody diligent enough who would have went through the effort to make it so they could accomplish it. Just like you don't want, I don't want a brain surgeon who studied gas station work. I want to make sure if he's going to operate in my brain, he's got training and the drive to make sure he's doing it right so I live through what he's doing instead of just popping my head open for no reason, right? And you go that for any level. Even running a small business, a big business, being a police officer, you name it, everybody has to be diligent, be trained, make sure they know what they're doing because they're trying to accomplish a very important task. God is trying to keep people from going to eternal damnation and hell. Is the Christian so lazy they won't even spend the time to be trained to stop them? See what I'm saying? that the process of maturity says, I'll do it. I may be afraid, but I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me because grace gives me the strength to do it. You start to see the reality here. But this is the level of where God is trying to take you and me too. Now, let me give you some good examples to show you that this is how true this is. First of all, 2 Timothy 2 says, Nevertheless, the solid foundation of God stands. Having this seal, the Lord knows those who are His, and let everyone who names the name of Christ depart from iniquity. Notice the focus here is not preachers or teachers. It's everybody who names the name of Christ is the focus of this context. Now, he goes on in verse 20, But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay, Some for honor, some for dishonor. What that's basically saying is there's hypocrites in the church. Some people in the church that we see are hypocrites. They're for dishonor. They're amongst us, but they're dishonoring God, right? But there are some real people inside the church who honor God. And that's the key. So he goes on saying, verse 21, Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from the latter, the dishonoring, the hypocrisy or whatever, he will be a vessel of honor sanctified What sanctified That a big word What does it mean Set apart See purity is in a sense there but what the really point is you set apart for a purpose a specific duty a job And what he's saying is, anyone, any Christian who has gotten out of this dishonorable thing and actually been purified by walking with God, they are already set apart for a holy duty. What is the holy duty? It says to be useful for the Master, prepared for every good work. Now that doesn't mean working in your job. It means working in the kingdom. You're actually set apart. You're called already to do a job for Him. You hear me? You're already there. You don't have to have any other special... You don't have to have lightning strike you from heaven and God saying, Stupid! Do you hear me? Get up and do this! You're already called for it. You've already been given that because you're in Jesus. And if you don't do it, you're shirking your responsibility. Does that make sense? That's what I said. This is heavy stuff. As I started getting it, I'm going, I'm going to be in trouble. I'll be stoned out of most churches if I start teaching this because if they get what I'm saying, they're not going to like it. Really. And it's overwhelming to me to realize what it's really saying here. Now, verse 22, Paul then speaks to Young. He says, flee also youthful lust, but pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace with those who call on the Lord, all Christians again, out of a pure heart. There goes your purity. But the purity comes from the salvation of God. Yeah. Now, verse 23, avoid foolish and ignorant disputes. In other words, you're going to have to have enough diligence so you're not ignorant. And this is where we get so much problem in the church. we have lots of ignorance. And this ignorance causes all kinds of church splits and conflicts and denominations and whatever because of ignorance. Again, because I think what the warning was because we're too lazy to be diligent to learn the truth. So therefore, we're not protected by the truth. And that would be the same thing if a guy went through the university that he was too lazy to take his exams and study his stuff, and then he wanted to operate on you. That scares me to think if they, you know, you want them to not be too lazy and not get through there somehow and then don't know what they're doing when they start cutting you open. And that goes for any kind of job. You don't want to hire somebody who has been too lazy to learn how to do mathematics. Think about it in a store, you know, giving change or taking orders and you can't even add. If they weren't diligent enough to learn mathematics, they can't do most retail because it's counting. Even if you have a computer, you still have to know how to do something. You have to have some knowledge. If you're not diligent enough to do it, you cannot accomplish the work for that. Well, if you refuse to be diligent for God's kingdom and take everything in a lazy fashion, ho-hum, whatever, you'll never be glorifying God. You're going to dishonor Him. And that's going to be terrible in the time of judgment. I want you to understand that. So look at verse 24. A servant of the Lord must not quarrel, but be gentle to all, able to teach. Notice that. After all the context we're talking about, dishonor the general public of Christians that says you have to be able to teach. Again, reinforcing my thought for you today, that I believe God wants you to become teachers. You, as a servant of the Lord, must be able to teach. That's the teaching here. Now, if all Christians are already commanded to teach by what he's saying, by being set apart for this work and calls us to it, then there's got to be clear teaching. Well, Matthew 28 clearly teaches us that anyway from the very foundations of Christianity. Remember, Jesus left the earth, gave this absolute command to the church, all Christians. Go, therefore, make disciples of all the nations. And King James will say, go teach all nations. Teach them what? Verse 20. Teaching them to observe all things, whatever I've already commanded you. You can't teach all the commands of Jesus unless you know them. Right? Therefore, you are called, commanded to be so diligent you understand all the commands of Jesus Christ. So that you can not only follow them, but you can teach other people what that means. you guys got a lot of work, don't you? See, so do I. Because this is telling us you can't be lazy about being a follower of Jesus. He never called you. He didn't say go make sure people go to heaven. He said go make disciples. A disciple is a disciplined pupil, student. That's what it is. We are too lazy in America to become disciplined pupils. We don't want that. We just want to go to heaven and have fun before we get there. right it's kind of the attitude party in jesus you who not get down to dirty stuff of learning what it means to to teach the truth yet it's the call of every christian that we're to make disciples pupils for his kingdom's sake that is the goal anything outside that goal is being lazy and slothful and ignoring the command i'm gonna keep stomping here wait till i'm done Thank you.

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