I'll start from where we just heard.
I'll just repeat it.
The most useful life I can lead is
to fulfill the plan that God has for
my life.
The most useful life I can lead is
to fulfill the plan that God has for
my life.
Well, if that's the case, then I must
be able to answer the question, how's it
going?
What's the plan and how are you doing?
How is that working out for you?
How long have you been a Christian?
How long has it been since we heard
that goal for our lives?
It's written outside.
And so we have to be able to
answer that in whatever way we think is
appropriate.
If we agree that that is the most
useful life we can live, is to fulfill
God's plan for our lives, it'll be useful
to be able to measure it, to be
able to say, here's how I measure it.
Here's how things are going relating to that.
And that's something that has been something I've
thought about for years.
As long as I've known that the goal
for the Christian is to become like Jesus
in the purity of his character and to
be a fully functioning member of his body.
As long as we've had a church, we've
had that as our goal.
So as long as I've had that as
a goal, I've asked myself many times, how
am I going to measure this?
What's the measurements that I use?
And I don't have the corner on that.
I don't have the answer to that completely,
but I want to share today what I've
discovered and am discovering are some measurements by
which I can discover that.
Because it's so important.
Because if I have the wrong measurements, I
could be completely deceived or discouraged or feel
that I've blown it.
Which I have experienced all of the above
in my journey.
And to see that that is not the
message of Jesus Christ is extremely important for
me to know.
I'll start by saying this to an old
covenant life is performance-based.
Okay, the old covenant life is performance-based.
What is the new covenant life?
I'm going to make up a word.
The new covenant life is loved-based.
Loved, not love-based.
Loved-based.
It's not a word.
But I live my Christian life at the
level of my lovedness.
Loved by God.
We love because He first loved us.
And Jesus gave a new commandment that summarizes
how we ought to live.
Love one another as I have loved you.
So the first step is not love one
another.
The first step is as I have loved
you.
The response is love one another.
So my spiritual life always will remain at
the level of my lovedness.
Whether I fast and pray, whether I make
a decision today to be different, whether I
weep, whether I fast, whether I have some
commitments to read the Bible, this and that
every day.
At the end of the day I will
live at the level of my lovedness.
Not loved by the human beings, but loved
by God.
The old covenant life is performance-based.
The new covenant life is loved-based.
Which is why I believe that the old
covenant life, the symbol of that is the
Ten Commandments delivered through Moses.
The new covenant life is the Father's lap
delivered to us through Jesus Christ and His
cross.
To me that is what Jesus says.
Abide in me.
The law came through Moses.
This is John chapter 1 verse 17.
The law came to us through Moses, but
grace and truth came to us through Jesus
Christ.
And then goes on to say in the
very next verse, He who was in the
lap of the Father, He has come and
explained the Father to us.
Very clear the distinction between the old covenant
and the new covenant.
The old covenant is the law, the Ten
Commandments.
The new covenant is grace and truth delivered
to us through Jesus Christ to take us
to the lap of love.
So to me, the symbol of the new
covenant to me is the lap of love.
That is the only way pathway to that
is I'm the way, the truth, and the
life.
The cross is the only way to get
to be seated on the Father's lap, which
is where I am loved.
Which is where all insecurity goes to die.
Which is where all ambitions go to die.
Which is where all complaints go to die.
Which is where all anxiety goes to die.
It's through the cross onto the Father's lap
who fills me up.
There's an expression that I heard.
You can bring up this slide.
There's an expression I heard in business, but
it has many applications.
Let's say I wanted to lose weight.
I can look at the weighing machine every
day and tell myself I'm not losing weight.
I'm losing weight.
I'm trying to get down 10 pounds and
I can keep trying to look at my
weight.
The weighing machine is just going to tell
me how things have been in the past.
The weighing machine is not going to change
my future.
Even children can understand that.
The weighing machine is what they call a
lagging.
It lags behind.
It comes behind you.
It's a reflection of all that you've done
in your past.
It's called a lagging measurement.
A lagging indicator.
But there are other measurements.
Remember what we were talking about.
How do I measure my life?
How do I measure whether my life is
successful or not?
Towards the goal that I have set out
for myself.
May not be money.
Okay, it's Christ-likeness.
Well, what's the things that are going to
lead me towards that goal?
The leading indicators.
They are going to drag me towards the
goal.
So if my goal is to lose 10
pounds, the leading things will be, let's look
at what you eat every day.
Let's look at how you exercise every day.
You do those things right, three months later,
the weighing machine will tell you what you've
been doing for the last three months.
But the great obsession is for us is
to obsess with the weighing machine.
And to have our own, a whole identity
defined by the weighing machine.
And I've seen a similar parallel in my
life and in many Christians' life.
That my track record becomes the key indicator
of whether I'm fulfilling God's plan in my
life or not.
I'm not saying it isn't an indicator, but
it's what drags behind you.
It's the trail that will follow me is
my track record.
Track record is an indicator.
Victory over sin is an indicator, but it
is not what leads me in my goal.
If I were to ask you, how was
your week?
Just think about that for a second.
Think about it.
Interact with that question, literally.
How was your week?
You're going to think about all the things
that happened in your week.
The default way our mind works.
When you think about whether you're fulfilling your
goal to be like Jesus, you think about
all the activities you've done.
We're so performance-based.
And there are lagging indicators, a lag behind.
Well, what are the indicators that can lead
us towards the goal?
And it is such a culture shift.
It is such a mind shift that I
have to do these things so often every
day to keep reminding myself, don't get pulled
down into despair and discouragement and defeat by
the lagging indicators, the trailing behind indicators of
my track record.
They will change over time, but they are
not what lead me.
The weighing machine, like it is to losing
weight.
I must change my eating habits.
I should change my exercising habits and then
give it time.
Because one day I may gain weight because
even though I ate and exercised properly, because
things like water weight, or I don't know
how the body works, but you give it
time and it'll figure itself out if I
eat correctly and exercise correctly.
So what are these leading indicators in the
Christian life that have really helped me?
First one, number one, our lovedness.
This is a measurement, red, yellow, green, zero
to a hundred.
We have these kinds of measurements that we
do.
How good is your computer system?
What's your health?
Well, red, yellow, green, red is bad, green
is good.
What's the measure of my lovedness?
I have to make this a key indicator
for my life.
Say, Lord, my movement towards the plan on
a daily basis is constantly engaging with how
loved I am, not how loving I am
to other people.
It's receiving the love of God.
We heard about being filled with the Holy
Spirit.
Romans 5 is a beautiful chapter that among
many, which talks about the love of God.
Because he says, hope doesn't disappoint because the
love of God has been shed abroad, poured
upon your life through the Holy Spirit has
been given to you.
So being filled with the Holy Spirit is
to be filled with the love of God
so that I feel infinitely loved.
And Romans 5 verse 8 says that when
we were still sinners, and Romans 5 verse
10 says, while I was his enemy, Christ
died for me.
Another passage that I will share with you
just on this is Ephesians chapter 3.
You can turn there.
Ephesians chapter 3.
I believe we memorized it a few years
ago.
Ephesians chapter 3 verse 14 to 21.
Paul says after these three chapters of talking
about every spiritual blessing that God has given
us, how he brought us and saved us
by grace through faith and three chapters full
of it.
Near the end of it, he says, verse
14, Ephesians chapter 3 verse 14 says, for
this reason, I bow my knees at the
end of all that I've written to you.
At the end of the day, what I'm
just saying, I just bow my knees before
the Father from whom every family on earth
derives his name.
And I say, I'm going to ask him
that he would grant you to be filled
with the Holy Spirit, to be strengthened with
the Holy Spirit so that Christ may dwell,
may live in your hearts, may visit, may
dwell in your hearts through our confidence in
him, through faith.
That's how the Holy Spirit strengthens us.
Christ, so that we may be strengthened with
power through his spirit in the inner man.
What's the fact, what's the proof that I've
been strengthened by the Holy Spirit in the
inner man?
Not on the outside, but on the inside.
Well, that Christ may live.
And what will be the result of Christ
living in me by faith?
That I will be rooted and grounded in
love and that I may comprehend together with
all the saints what is the love of
God.
And then beyond that, beyond all my church
fellowship, I go back to my secret closet
and in verse 19, to know the love
of Christ that surpasses knowledge.
So it's love on the first floor, it's
love on the second floor with the other
believers, and then it's love, a super abundant
love beyond all comprehension.
Again, love upon love upon love, being loved,
being loved, to know the love of Christ
and to be able to comprehend and to
know the love of Christ which surpasses all
knowledge.
I can't even explain it.
I can't even describe it.
I can't even, I don't know what I'm,
but it's a love that I feel.
And this is a daily leading indicator.
And so if I bring up my indication
list of how am I doing towards my
goal?
Well, what's the measurement of your lovedness?
Well, I'm not getting victory over sin.
Hold on on that one.
That'll come over time.
But what's stopping us from being loved?
I'll tell you what's stopping us.
You know, I've believed this truth, what I'm
saying here for years.
The prodigal son story has meant so much
to me, but it is really hard because
I'm such a slave to performance.
Eating of the tree of knowledge of good
and evil has so made me an addict
to performance that it creeps in, in every
facet of my life, including my spirituality.
And it sounds very easy to just embrace
my lovedness, but it's really hard.
And the key word that I want to
leave with you about this is surrender.
I really have to surrender what my coworker
said to me.
I really have to surrender deep down how
my children are acting.
I really have to surrender all of my
ambitions so radically and make space for the
love of God to say, you are enough.
No matter if your business goes kaput, no
matter if all the things are going haywire,
you are loved.
And I have to surrender every other metric
and throw it out to allow the lovedness
of God to come in because bad moods
dominate because of something somebody said or some
sprinkler that went wrong.
The dog just chewed on the sprinkler can
get me into a bad mood and messes
up my day.
Start of a mess day.
Well, go back to your lovedness.
You're not such a horrible human being.
You're not somebody who's just so given to
anger.
Yeah, that's the track record.
What's the solution?
Go back to the leading indicator.
Go back to that leading off.
Oh, but surrender that.
Surrender all of those complaints and things that
we don't understand to say, but aren't you
fully loved?
If I live the perfect life for the
next 50 years, I'm 47, 48, 48, so
old I can't remember my age.
48, I think.
Yeah, 48, 48 years old.
If I live another 50 years and I
don't sin even once, does that give me
the chance to get into God's presence?
Yes or no?
Thank you.
No.
After 50 years, I'm still having to get
on one thing alone of strong and perfect
plea.
Even if I were to give myself a
perfect track record for the next 50 years,
it's not doing me any good to get
me into the gates of heaven.
It's a leading indicator.
It's a lagging indicator of many things, but
it's not going to get me into God's
presence.
50 years of a perfect life from now
on still is not going to get me
into God's presence.
It's Jesus Christ alone.
That's who we're going to be singing for
all eternity is Him.
So I have to allow that to sink
in.
And He's going to be worthy of every
praise of mine when I get to heaven.
Let's start that now.
And that means me surrendering so much of
my complaints and why questions and the things
that I don't understand to say, but I
am loved.
Next one.
As a result of that, I will be
grateful.
Dear brothers, that's another indicator for me, another
leading indicator.
What's my gratitude level?
It's not complicated.
Hebrews 12 talks about how it compares, you
read this passage, it talks about the difference
between Mount Sinai and Zion.
And Mount Sinai, they were so afraid to
even come near God, because if you even
touched the mountain, you would die.
If a beast, if a donkey touched the
mountain, the donkey would die, I think, if
I remember reading that right.
And then it says, we're not going to
Mount Sinai, we're going to Mount Zion, where
God is a consuming fire.
Well, how do you deal with a consuming
fire?
You show gratitude.
Can we do that?
Can we bow our knees, put our face
in the dust and say, thank you.
And the word is actually not, the word
in the Greek is actually the word for
grace.
The King James uses the word grace.
Let us show grace, sometimes translated as gratitude.
But I liked that connection between grace and
gratitude, between gratitude and grace.
If I want to have grace within me,
the Holy Spirit is called the spirit of
grace.
Grace came to us through Jesus Christ.
If I'm going to have grace, one of
the first things that I can have is
be thankful.
Romans 1 talks about how the society goes
completely horribly wrong.
And many of us who are raising children,
many of us who are looking at the
culture can say that culture is going horribly
wrong.
What's the start of that?
Because they did not honor God and give
him thanks.
Because they were not grateful.
They were not thankful to God.
Well, we're going to suffer the same fate.
We may be more sanitized on the outside,
but we'll have the same corruption inside if
we don't follow that principle, which is be
grateful.
Among the 10 lepers in Luke chapter 17
that were healed, only one got salvation.
Only one got progress in fulfilling God's plan
for their lives.
Healing is immaterial for God's eternal blessings.
We know that we're going to be healed
from sickness, but then we're healed from another
sickness and eventually we're going to die, right?
Physically.
That's still coming, no matter what number of
sicknesses we get healed from.
10 lepers got healed from sickness, leprosy.
They still died.
So did the 10th one.
But the 10th one, because he was grateful,
coming back to the Lord Jesus, shouting with
a loud voice, glorifying him, got salvation.
Gratitude is another metric that I can look
at myself, a measurement that I can look
at every day and say, what's my gratitude?
Lord, I'm struggling horribly today.
Can I not be grateful for so many
things?
Look around you.
That's what Paul says.
Invisible attributes are manifest to us.
We can see it.
Look at the air we breathe.
Look at the comforts that we have.
Children, we can do that when we're in
a bad mood.
We've got to fight and say, Lord Jesus,
fill me with the Holy Spirit so that
I can be grateful for the parents you've
given me, for the school you've given me,
for the abilities you've given me, that I've
got two feet to walk on.
I've got two hands.
I've got eyes that can see.
I can hear.
Gratitude comes so easily.
These are not complicated things, but they are
things I have to fight for.
We know this.
And he also tried to be grateful, trying
to live in our lovedness.
Next one.
Next leading indicator for me is hope.
We cannot lose hope.
It's in hope that we're going to get
saved.
Romans 8 verse 24.
It's with hope.
And it's very clear in Romans 8 verse
24.
You can't see hope.
Hope is for what you do not see.
Because if you can see it, it's not
called hope.
Paul is very clear about that.
It's in hope that we find our salvation.
You want the track record to be worked
out?
Salvation?
That's a lagging indicator.
That'll come later on.
But what we need to have in the
beginning is hope.
The opposite of hope is hopeless.
And here again, we hear about the Holy
Spirit.
Because in the same way, with the same
hope that we have, the Holy Spirit has
that same hope with what?
With our weakness.
Not with God's plan for our life, but
the Holy Spirit looks at God's plan for
our lives.
The Holy Spirit looks at our weakness, our
inability to make it.
And he says, I've got hope.
I'm not going to lie to you, telling
you you're great.
Everything's great.
No, no, no, no.
Not looking good, but I have hope.
And I'm groaning within you.
This is what it means to be filled
with the Holy Spirit.
To be filled with his lovedness.
Deeply, infinitely loved.
To seek to have the spirit of gratitude.
And to hear the Holy Spirit groaning.
You groan, you weep.
It says in the previous verses, we weep
and suffer the pains of childbirth.
Well, guess who's groaning with you?
The Holy Spirit.
Have we ever heard a voice within us
groaning?
He's on our side.
And Jesus ever lives to intercede for us.
We have to hear the new covenant voice
of God, as it is in scripture, as
it is in scripture.
The Holy Spirit groaning, saying, well, I'm groaning
at it with hope.
Not done with you.
Not finished with you.
Don't give up now.
Keep getting up.
He's groaning.
That's a strong word.
We have to sit with that.
That's not me groaning.
God's not telling you you need to groan.
God's saying the Holy Spirit's groaning within you.
What a wonderful partner in the journey.
Leading indicator number four.
Longing for purity.
I wrote this down initially as purity, but
I changed that.
Longing for purity.
Purity will come later on.
Purity is a lagging indicator.
1 John chapter 3, verse 2 and 3.
We don't know much about what will happen
when he appears, but we know this, that
when he appears, we will be like him.
Because we shall see him just as he
is.
He who has this hope, first get the
hope right.
He who has this hope, I want to
see Jesus.
I want to be like Jesus.
Such a person will purify themselves as Christ
is pure.
The hope comes first, and then as a
result of that, God says, I immediately said
a desire for purity, but I was like,
no, it's bigger than a desire.
It's a craving for purity.
Like a baby craves for milk.
It's the Holy Spirit groaning, but we also
have to partner with that groaning.
And I like this verse in Romans chapter
6, verse 10 and 11, because purity is
not freedom from sin.
That's what I like about this passage.
Purity is not freedom from sin.
Purity is a being alive and full of
life with God.
The purity, freedom from sin is an empty,
clean cup.
What good is an empty, clean cup to
a thirsty man?
What a thirsty man needs is a clean
cup filled with water.
That's the life of Jesus.
So yes, I must clean the cup.
It's not desire to be free from sin.
It's a craving for purity.
And purity is a positive word.
Purity is beauty, craving for beauty, craving for
the beauty of Jesus Christ.
So when my wife bothers me, a silent
tongue is not sufficient.
A sustaining word is the tree of life.
That's what it says in Proverbs chapter 15,
verse 4.
I need to search for the Holy Spirit
to give me sustaining word.
Silence is a lot easier.
Believe me, I know sustaining word.
I'm clueless.
I'm clueless for the 16 years that I've
been married, for my children, not responding to
them in anger when they exasperate me.
Silence kind of figured that one out most
of the time.
Sustaining word, getting an F.
I need the Holy Spirit.
Longing for purity is not absence of sin.
It's not just saying I didn't say anything
with my mouth.
Well, did you give the sustaining word because
the sustaining word is the tree of life.
That's the garden of Eden life.
It's a sustaining word.
So I don't ever stop at not getting
angry at my children.
Well, I need to learn, listen to them,
watch them, see them, see the brothers and
sisters around me and say, Lord, what is
the sustaining word that can bring a life
into this situation?
I want to say something about the lagging
indicators about victory over sin.
In my understanding as I've lived this life
myself, the first indicator, and I'm speaking even
to teenagers onwards, young people, the habits are
what are extremely dangerous.
Be careful of sinful habits.
That's the short term things that we got
to fight.
It's not that I stumble and I fall
into sin.
It's I keep falling into sin and it
becomes a habit.
Romans chapter six, verse 14 is very clear.
Sin shall not have mastery over me.
It's not that sin won't trip me up.
Sin won't have mastery over me because I'm
under grace, not under law.
And so it's the mastery over sin that
comes from my craving for purity.
And God will say, if you keep craving
for purity, you may fall into sin.
Don't be discouraged, but don't let it be
a master over you.
And that's the first step that I must
fight.
It's the habitual sins.
It's the habitual lying children.
It's the habitual disobedience.
As we grew up, it's the habitual looseness
with the eyes that has get us into
bad habits.
It's the habitual looseness of the tongue that
has got many of our marriages in all
kinds of trouble, small little body part, but
it's the habitual looseness of the tongue.
And on the way to recovery, I have
to say, Lord, let me at least cut
off the habit.
I want to do it less and less
often.
Then long term, I must be able to
see consistent victory, even in my inner life
too.
It will come.
It must come.
It's an indicator, but it's a lagging indicator.
And I will tell you, I got discouraged,
I despaired, and I was defeated for many
years because I made victory over sin the
leading indicator of how I was doing spiritually.
I've learned to change those things along and
keep these things more and more often.
And that last slide I put up because
I wanted it to be in front of
me often, all four indicators.
How are you doing in terms of your
lovedness today?
How are you doing in terms of your
gratitude today?
How are you doing in terms of your
hope?
The thing that you cannot see?
How are you doing in terms of your
craving for purity?
Fight for those now.
Reclaim the lost land now.
All the other things will come over time.
Is it possible to be falling into sin
all week and have a good week?
Is it possible to be falling into sin
all week?
I'm speaking especially because I know my teenagers.
I know how it was at times.
I don't know if it was all week,
but it was over and over again.
Is it possible to be falling into sin
over and over again and still have a
good week?
Yes.
Fight for these metrics first of all.
I absolutely believe in living a life of
overwhelmingly conquering.
Absolutely believe in it.
That's Romans 8.37. I'm fighting for it,
but I'm not going to make that the
leading indicator because that discouraged me.
That gives me despair.
This is what we ask when we ask
people, do you want to be baptized?
Similar kind of questions we ask.
Do you know your sins have been forgiven
you?
Do you know that you've been justified?
Do you know that you're sitting on the
Father's lap?
You got entrance to the Father's lap?
Do you want to be fully obedient all
the time?
Do you want to be fully free from
sin, craving for purity?
Do you want to know God more?
Hope, gratefulness.
These are the things.
I'm realizing in the questions that we ask
our teenagers about baptism, it's the same questions
we adults need to ask ourselves.
That's it.
The track record will follow, dear brothers and
sisters.
Romans chapter five was three through five and
James chapter one through to four convinced me
that getting up was being successful.
Getting up was being successful.
I could fall a thousand times, but a
righteous man falls many times and gets back
up.
The first step towards perfection is endurance and
perseverance to these virtues.
What have we done this week or this
month or this year that stops us from
getting into the green in any of these
areas?
Our lovedness, I need to surrender.
For gratitude, I just need to think for
five minutes, letting go of all of my
agenda and all of my complaints and say,
just count a few things that I have
to be thankful for before the Lord takes
it away.
Why have I lost my hope?
Because you got defeated in sin.
That's the devil.
The devil loves to poke me with my
spiritual track record and say, stay down, young
man, stay down, young woman.
And we've got to fight that with hope
and listen instead of the Holy Spirit's, so
instead of the devil's accusations, listen to the
Holy Spirit groaning and Jesus interceding for you
over and over again and tune your frequency
to that voice.
The groans of the Holy Spirit saying you
can make it, keep getting up, keep craving
for purity in your interactions with your children,
crave for it.
That's what may have been lost.
All of this is possible only through the
Word of God that it comes alive through
the Holy Spirit.
I can't know how loved I am by
going to a seminar, by going meditating and
taking a fast for 30 days.
That's what the world will tell you.
The only way we know we can do
this for eternal results is when the Holy
Spirit makes the Word of God come alive.
His Word shall last forever.
And that Word though has to come alive
and the Holy Spirit needs to make it
come alive to assure me I am a
child of God.
I am.
I can't prove it to you.
I don't have any scientific proof for it,
but I am.
Only the Holy Spirit can do it.
It's not done by flesh or by man,
only by the Word of God.
I must ask God to keep reaffirming me.
Lord, am I still your child?
Speak to me.
Tell me that I am your child and
that'll be enough.
Tell me, show me, Lord, the little things
that I've forgotten that I can be grateful
for today.
Amidst all the things that are going wrong
in my life today, and Lord, I repent
for losing my craving for purity.
Amidst all of my complaints of what's gone
wrong in my life, I'm sorry that I've
lost that craving for purity.
I want to have that hope again.
I want to see you.
I want to be like you.
He who has this hope, we will purify
ourselves as we are pure.
Such a beautiful gospel.