So we're picking up tonight in chapter four
of 1st Timothy and once again this evening
we're gonna look at some of the verses
that we've already discussed, but we only discussed
them very briefly, sort of in passing.
So tonight I want to concentrate on verses
7 through 9 of 1st Timothy chapter 4.
The latter part of verse 7, Paul says,
exercise yourself toward godliness.
For bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness
is profitable for all things, having promise of
the life that now is and of that
which is to come.
This is a faithful saying and worthy of
all acceptance.
So here in these verses, Paul is once
again seeking to establish in the minds of
believers the superiority of the spiritual over the
natural and the eternal over the temporal.
So he says, bodily exercise profits a little
or could be translated for a little while,
but godliness, and you could translate this word
holiness, you could also look at it as
spirituality.
Godliness, holiness, spirituality is profitable for all things,
having promises of the life that now is
and of that which is to come.
And so what we want to consider tonight
is how we are to go about this
admonition.
The apostle gives us the admonition to exercise
ourselves toward godliness or training ourselves to be
godly.
So we could also take and translate exercise
yourself toward godliness in a variety of ways.
If you look at some of the other
translations, you'll find that there are a variety
of translations.
Let me give you a couple of other
ones.
Train or discipline yourself for spiritual fitness.
That's from the New Living Translation from the
Living Bible.
Spend your time and energy in the exercise
of keeping spiritually fit.
I like both of those.
Those really, you know, I think quite clearly
communicate what the apostle is wanting to tell
us.
We need to train.
We need to discipline ourselves for spiritual fitness.
Why?
Because spiritual fitness, in contrast to physical fitness,
which has only limited and temporary benefits, has
much greater profit.
Spiritual fitness profits not just ourselves, but it
profits others as well.
And spiritual fitness has eternal benefits.
Physical fitness has limited and temporal benefits.
They're limited primarily to you.
And of course, they're only beneficial as long
as you're in the physical realm.
But spiritual fitness, it profits not just you,
but it profits others.
And there are eternal benefits connected to it.
So how does godliness profit in this life?
For that's what Paul says, godliness is profitable
for this life.
How does godliness profit for this life?
Well, godliness brings, number one, a physical blessing.
Generally speaking, godliness brings a physical blessing, bodily
health, generally speaking.
Now, of course, this doesn't mean that Christians
never get sick.
It doesn't mean that we don't battle with
disease.
But if you are pursuing godliness, if you
are seeking to discipline and train yourself spiritually,
then you're going to stay miles and miles
away from many of the things that harm
us bodily.
You know, before I was a Christian.
I was like many of you, undoubtedly, and
many, many others, I was pretty much on
a self-destruction course.
I was just living a reckless life.
I was involved in all kinds of things
that were, among other things, they were just
simply physically unhealthy.
I was drinking, I was doing drugs.
Occasionally I was, you know, I was just
involved in all kinds of things that would
ultimately had I continued on in those things
certainly had a negative impact upon me physically.
And it was through coming to Christ and
beginning to exercise myself toward godliness that all
of that stuff was taken out of my
life.
And I know there are many people that
could testify to how.
Their conversion and then their their commitment to
Christ did indeed result in a great transformation
in their lives in a physical sense and
brought a physical blessing.
Secondly, there is an emotional blessing that comes.
You see, it's only when I'm committed to
Christ and pursuing the things of the spirit
that I can really be a mentally balanced
person.
So if you want true mental health or
emotional health, that comes through godliness.
Now, think about it.
The person who is pursuing godliness is a
person who is indeed emotionally healthy because there's.
This emphasis in their life on the things
of the spirit and what happens as we
pursue the things of the spirit, what is
the fruit of the spirit?
Well, we know the fruit of the spirit
is love.
We know the fruit of the spirit is
joy.
We know the fruit of the spirit is
peace.
These are all of the things that really
describe mental wellness or emotional wellness.
People who are mentally or emotionally, I'm using
those terms synonymously.
People who are unstable in those areas generally
are people who are lacking love.
They're people who have no joy.
Their lives are in turmoil rather than in
peace.
But when you train yourself toward godliness, it
results in an emotional blessing.
It also results in blessing intellectually.
Because what happens is as you exercise yourself
toward godliness, the mind is then trained in
the truth.
You know, some people have the mistaken notion
that to become a Christian means to, you
know, just sort of check out intellectually.
It means that you throw your brain out
the window and you just get caught up
in some emotional kind of an experience.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
God created us with all of our mental
capacities.
God created us as intelligent beings, and we
are only truly intelligent when our mind is
trained in the truth.
You know, most of the great scientific minds
in history, the founding fathers of what we
know today as science, most of them were
believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Some of them were not necessarily Christians, but
they were definitely men who had a theistic
worldview, in some cases, maybe a deistic, which
is still a belief in God.
God's just a bit further away.
But, you know, atheism hasn't really brought us
any benefits whatsoever.
And as science has become, in a sense,
predominantly atheistic, science hasn't done a whole lot
for us.
All that we have in all of our
modern developments and things are really just sort
of a working out of the things that
were discovered back in the 16, 17 and
18 hundreds by the founding fathers of science
who were, as I said, all spiritual men
for the most part.
So there's a blessing intellectually that comes godliness,
profiting in this life.
There is blessing relationally.
There's blessing relationally.
When you are a godly person, when you
are a person whose life is marked by
a deep and a true spirituality.
Centered in the truth of Jesus Christ, this
brings about a tremendous blessing relationally, it blesses
you in your relationship with your friends, it
blesses you.
As a member of a family, it blesses
your marriage, it blesses your children.
And of course, since the family is sort
of the foundation stone of society, godliness produces
a social blessing as well.
You know, people who are really godly, they
become a great blessing to society.
I was watching last night a DVD from
a series that I was given on the
church in China.
And it was the third DVD in the
series called The Bitter Cup in this.
This program entitled The Cross, and actually I
think they showed it in the fellowship hall
today as well, but I was watching it
last night.
And one of the interesting things that they
were bringing out was how the believers in
China, the underground church, of course, because the
church is oppressed and persecuted, they have to
exist in an underground sort of a state.
But the believers were talking about the fact
that they were not opposed to the government.
They wanted to pray for their leaders.
They wanted to, as much as possible, be
an encouragement to the situation governmentally and socially
and so forth.
And, you know, as I was watching that
listening to I was thinking, you know, that's
really the truth.
When a person becomes a Christian, when a
person is converted and becomes a believer and
begins to follow Jesus, that's when that person
really does become a productive person in society.
A person who is making a contribution rather
than a person who is creating a problem.
And again, I can think of my own
experience, you know, prior to becoming a Christian,
I was on the road to being a
menace to society.
And I didn't really care much about whether
or not that was the case.
You know, you're just living in this state
of rebellion and any authority is is something
that you ought to rebel against.
And that's exactly what I was doing.
I wasn't thinking in any way, shape or
form in being a person who was going
to be productive in society.
So when you exercise yourself toward godliness.
It has promises for this life, blessings in
all of these different areas, you are blessed
and then you become a blessing to others.
But then Paul says that it also profits
for the life to come.
How does godliness profit in the life to
come?
Well, the obvious, of course, we would all
know immediately is that we are going to
heaven, not to hell.
That's a tremendous profit right there.
And that's where we start.
But of course, going to heaven is predicated
upon receiving Christ and his grace, the gift
of salvation.
That's a gift from God.
But Paul's talking about really cultivating.
A spiritual life, and he says it has
promises for the life that is to come.
Here's something that's often overlooked.
Amongst us and this issue is one that
I think we need to pay closer attention
to.
It's the issue of position in heaven or
another way to look at it is reward
in heaven.
Now, we generally tend to think that heaven
itself is the reward, but heaven is not
the reward because a reward is the result
of a work.
You do something, you accomplish something, and then
you're rewarded for it.
Heaven, we know, is a gift.
Heaven is a gift, but the Bible definitely
speaks about an aspect of reward in heaven.
What is that based on?
It's based upon my faithfulness to the Lord
here in this life.
It's based upon my commitment to his work.
It's based upon my pursuit of godliness and
things of that nature.
Paul spoke of those.
Who would make it to heaven.
But basically, they would make it by the
skin of their teeth.
He used a different term, but it's essentially
the same thing.
He spoke of those who were saved as
though through fire.
Those who made it in, but all of
their works were consumed.
All of their works were burned up in
that that time of testing.
Now, the the implication there is that that's
not what we want to see happen in
our lives.
Peter spoke about having an abundant entry into
the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ.
That's what we want.
We want Paul is really talking about here.
Godliness has promises for the life that is
to come, because we need to realize that
the life that is to come is not
merely going to heaven and sitting around and
just looking at the scenery going to heaven
involves serving God there and holding positions there
and doing things and ruling over certain regions
and so forth, which is all to some
degree based upon.
Our faithfulness to what God gave us to
do here on earth.
So that I think is what he's talking
about when he says that godliness.
It profits not only in this life, but
also in the life to come.
Now, here's the question, how do we exercise
ourselves to godliness?
How do we get in shape spiritually as
we're being exhorted to do?
Well, let's take an analogy from the physical
realm.
Let's say I am.
A doctor and.
I'm a doctor who's, you know, oriented toward
nutrition and toward, you know, preventative kind of
medicine and all of that sort of thing,
and I have a patient, that patient comes
in to me and is extremely overweight, smokes
like a chimney, drinks like a fish, you
know, diet is out of control.
And he comes in, he says, now, doctor,
I want to get in shape.
What what do I do?
Well, if I'm a good doctor, I don't
initially send him down to get a membership
that 24 hour fitness.
Because if I did that, that'd probably kill
him.
First of all, we've got to deal with
some some more fundamental kind of things.
There needs to be a radical lifestyle change
for this guy and we need to address
those things.
There are certain things in his life that
just have to be eliminated.
If he's going to get in shape, if
he's going to, you know, become healthy, then
there are certain things that are going to
have to be eliminated.
He's going to have to reduce his alcohol
intake.
And, you know, all of those other excessive
things that he's involved in dietarily and so
forth.
All of those things are going to have
to go through a radical readjustment.
Then I can go ahead once we've established
that and once we've moved in that direction,
then I can go ahead and I can
begin to add other things.
I can begin to establish an exercise routine,
instruct him regarding a good diet and, you
know, just just a whole lifestyle change is
what needs to take place.
Well, we can sort of look at that.
And and find really a similar thing in
the spiritual realm.
There's a parallel between what you would have
to do physically and what we need to
do spiritually.
So we want to exercise ourselves toward godliness.
We want to train and discipline ourselves to
be spiritually fit.
What do we do?
Well, first of all, we need to eliminate
certain things.
If I am going to develop my life
spiritually the way I am being encouraged to
do here in this passage, then I have
got to, first of all, make sure that
certain things are not a part of my
life.
There needs to be a radical lifestyle change.
So there needs to be an elimination, first
of all, an elimination of any known and
obvious sin.
Any obvious sin, any any sin that you
are just totally conscious of being involved in
is something that needs to be removed from
your life immediately.
You can't really go anywhere until that takes
place.
You're not going to be able to really
progress in godliness if you're going to continue
to live in that sinful state.
So there has to be a turning away
from that.
There has to be a decision to just
walk away from it, whatever it is.
I'm going to go in a different direction.
So that's step number one.
Secondly, we need to reduce things that dole
us spiritually.
You know, Hebrews chapter 12, verse one tells
us something like this.
It says, therefore, since we are surrounded by
so great a cloud of witnesses talking about
all those godly men and women that were
just mentioned in the previous chapter, therefore, since
we are surrounded by so great a cloud
of witnesses, let us lay aside.
Every weight.
And the sin that so easily besets us
and let us run with endurance, the race
that is set before us, looking unto Jesus,
the author and the finisher of our faith,
the same sort of thing that we're talking
about here, we must set aside the sin,
but we also need to set aside the
weights.
Now, what are weights?
Weights are things that.
Hinder you, things that slow you down, things
that keep you back from.
Being able to run swiftly and freely.
With endurance, the race that is set before
you.
And so once we deal with the known
and the obvious sin in our lives, then
we need to, as I said, reduce the
things that dole us spiritually.
There are things that I think will dole
us spiritually.
And one of the main things that I
think will dole us spiritually.
Is the preoccupation with entertaining ourselves.
This is an area where I think we
of all people are most in jeopardy.
We're in jeopardy of just losing our spiritual
edge because we're so caught up in just
what goes on in the culture, which is
basically the hot pursuit of.
Every imaginable form of entertainment.
And as a culture, we just tend to
gravitate toward those kinds of things.
Now, I'm not saying that we can enjoy
ourselves, I'm not saying that we don't go
out and have fun and those kinds of
things.
But if that is the thing that you're
living for.
Which is really ultimately just another manifestation of
seeking to gratify the flesh.
If you're living for that, you're going to
be dole spiritually.
We have got to be living for the
things of the spirit.
Now, I've mentioned this many times before, but
I will bring it up again because I
think it's the biggest curse on the culture.
It's the biggest curse in the lives of
so many Christians.
You're just sitting in front of the television.
Endlessly sitting there watching mindless program after mindless
program, you want to dole yourself spiritually.
Well, you just sit in front of that
thing for a while and it'll be sure
to happen real, real quickly.
Now, again, I'm not saying that you can't
watch television and occasionally there are, you know,
there's a good news program.
Maybe there's something good of a historical nature
sometimes when they're not trying to rewrite history,
which are generally trying to do.
Occasionally you find something that's just good, wholesome,
you know, fun entertainment, which is fine as
well.
And likewise, you know, with the videos and
the DVDs and the theaters every week when
a new movie comes out, all of those
kinds of things.
You know, if we do that with.
A strong degree of moderation, we're going to
be OK, but what happens so often is
we have no moderation at all, we just
this is just what we do, this is
what our lives are taken up with.
And I wonder how many.
Christian people.
Spend.
The majority of their free time just sitting
in front of the television and soaking in
all of the.
Worthless stuff and not only worthless stuff, but
sometimes stuff that's very much opposed to what
we believe and to the moral standard that
God has called us to live.
So you see, we've got to get serious
about things like this.
Last night I was, as I mentioned, I
watched that one film on the church in
China and then somebody else had given me
another.
Movie produced by a Christian guy and, you
know, an interesting movie, good, good message, the
production was a little weak, but, you know,
it was it was rather enjoyable.
So I watched that and then right at
the end.
The DVD flipped out in my computer when
I couldn't see the end, so I went
from my computer, I went over the TV
and I put it on and and in
the course of that, the news came on
and so.
I don't know why I'm telling you all
those details, but I just wanted you to
get the feel, you know, just there with
me in my living room and.
So anyway, I'm there and I'm waiting, I'm
trying to get the DVD fixed and at
the same time I'm flipping around, I'm looking
at some of the different things that are
coming on and I think is about 1130
or something.
So David Letterman was on, Jay Leno was
on and, you know, I spent a couple
of minutes stopping there, just kind of watching
them begin with their monologues.
And, you know, these guys are filthy, they're
they're arrogant there.
And I'm just looking at this thinking, man,
this is pathetic.
How many Christians just sit in front of
that and soak that stuff in?
And we have to really be on our
guard.
And literally every single channel I went to
had some perverse, vile thing on it.
And, you know, it was just unbelievable.
Finally, I just went to the the Spanish
station and I don't know what they're saying.
So I was fine and I watched a
good boxing match.
So you see my point, I'm not standing
up here saying you can't watch TV or
anything, but I'm just saying, look, as Christians,
we have got to be wise because this
stuff, it will dull our senses spiritually if
we don't watch out what we allow to
come in.
We have got to have a standard and
we've got to just simply say to a
lot of things, you know, no, I'm not
going to do that now.
I'm not going to watch that.
And it might be hilarious.
It might be.
A few weeks back, somebody was watching some
of the Seinfeld stuff and I sat down,
watched a couple funny, hilarious stuff.
Great.
Next one comes on filthy, unbelievably filthy, just
said, OK, boom, that's it.
This stuff's out of the house.
You know, we can't do that and you
have to draw the line.
You have to set a standard.
You have to say no, because these things
will work against.
What we're talking about, what we're admonished to
do, these things will work against exercising ourself
toward godliness.
So these are the things that we must
eliminate and these are the things that we
must reduce in our lives.
We must eliminate those things that are, of
course, sinful and are going to have that
kind of an impact upon us.
But then we really need to sharply reduce
just those those things that are worthless, a
waste of time, because, of course, so much
of it is just that it's just simply
a waste of time.
Then we would add good things to our
lives, and these are the things and we've
talked about these things many times before, and
I even struggled today with going back over
these things again because we've brought them up
recently.
But I just felt prompted by the Lord
to to bring these issues before you again,
because the question is, how do I exercise
myself toward godliness?
How do I strengthen myself spiritually?
How do I become a godly person?
How do I become a spiritually fit person
who can have the kind of life God
wants me to live with those blessings that
we talked about earlier and the kind of
impact he wants me to have on the
lives of other people?
How do I do it?
Well, it's not just by eliminating things from
my life or reducing certain things, it's by
making sure that other things are.
At the center of what my life is
all about and they are the basic things
that we talk about over and over again,
but you know what, this is just the
way it is, this is the way to
it.
There isn't any other way if I'm going
to be a spiritual person, there are just
certain spiritual disciplines I must participate in, and
if I don't, then I won't be.
But if I do, then the promise is
that I will be.
So what are they?
Prayer, meditation, study, praise, fellowship, service, witness.
Those are the things.
These are the things that we, as God's
people, must be committed to and involved in
in our lives and especially in the days
that we're living in.
It is just unbelievable the stuff that's going
on in the world today, and I'll tell
you guys, the whole prophetic.
Scenario that we talk about occasionally and that
we're all somewhat aware of, it is amazing
how rapidly things are developing all over the
world, things that are just moving just right
in the direction that Jesus said they would
move in before he came back.
A couple of things I was studying up
on today, fascinating things in Israel.
In Israel, back in October, the Sanhedrin reassembled.
After.
A seventeen hundred year break, October of last
year, they reassembled.
They reassembled last year, Sanhedrin, remember, that is
the body, the legislative body that passed the
death sentence on Jesus Christ.
They reassembled and they have put themselves forth
now as the legal and moral voice for
the nation of Israel, what they're talking about,
what they're debating, what they're considering even now
is the re-implementation of the sacrificial system.
They're actually talking about debating whether or not
they should sacrifice a lamb for Passover.
And there's there's a diversity of opinion and
what they're you know, some people want to
do it, others are saying, no, we can't
do it yet, we must wait for a
reconstructed temple.
So this is this is going on in
Israel.
These guys are challenging the Knesset.
And they're they're they're rising up and taking
authority in the land.
Amazing in Europe, the things that are developing
in Europe, we've talked about those things occasionally
in the midst of the European Union, the
twenty five nation confederation.
There is another element to the European Union
that is not so well known publicly, it
is known as the Western European Union, the
Western European Union is the military and defense
element of the European Union, the Western European
Union is made up of ten nations.
Now, we're always talking about this ten nation
confederacy, because that's, of course, what Daniel says,
that's what the Book of Revelation refers to,
and there's been a lot of sort of,
you know, not confusion, but people have wondered,
well, how's that all going to work out
because we've got twenty five nations, how are
we going to get back down to ten?
We don't have to get back down to
ten.
The Western European Union is a ten nation
confederation.
And amazingly, I was on their website today,
I was on the website of the Western
European Union and.
The Western European Union has on their website.
They have basically laid out a variety of
things that they plan to do in the
future and they have a number of recommendations,
you know, they will get together in these
councils and they will put forth recommendations and
they'll recommend a variety of things.
Recommendation six hundred and sixty six.
States.
That the European Union.
Would put forth a man with strong political
influence.
To represent.
The union in its entirety, you know, you
wonder, did they go to Revelation and actually
kind of read it and say, OK, this
is what we're going to do right here.
I mean, it's unbelievable.
It's absolutely unbelievable how this stuff is just
unfolding right before our eyes.
And as it is unfolding right before our
eyes and, you know, all of this stuff
is rising up and, you know, morals and
righteousness and all of that is crumbling around
us.
What are we doing?
We need to be exercising ourselves toward godliness
in these days.
We don't have time to wait around.
Now is the time.
And so I want to take a minute
and I want to just go over each
one of these points that we've discussed in
the past, but just maybe just a slightly
different perspective on each of these points.
And I want to encourage you in this
direction.
So these are the things that we must
do to fulfill the word, to exercise ourselves
toward godliness.
We need to pray.
We need to pray personally and privately.
We need to pray publicly and with other
believers as well.
Ladies and gentlemen, we must.
Become people who pray.
We must pray more.
And I know we live in an insanely
busy world and you're asking yourself, when, how
do I find the time?
Well, this goes back to what I was
talking about earlier.
I believe that we probably do have time,
but it's occupied right now with a lot
of meaningless things.
So what we have to do is we
have to look at our lives and say,
OK, what do I need to get rid
of so I can bring in the things
that I need to be doing?
And I would imagine that if we got
rid of a lot of the things that
are worthless kinds of things, that we would
have that time.
But we've got to commit ourselves to prayer
personally and privately and also together with other
believers.
And then, of course, for my own life
personally, I need to spend time meditating in
the word of God, which means I need
to read it for myself, not just depend
on getting Bible studies when I go to
church.
It's wonderful that you come to church.
It's wonderful that you get Bible studies when
you come to church.
It's wonderful that you can turn on the
radio and get Bible studies, but you have
to read, meditate on the scriptures yourself.
God wants to meet you in a special
way and touch your life in a unique
way as you do that.
So we need to meditate upon the word
of God.
We need to take.
Advantage of all of the blessings that he's
given to us.
We have many things to help us to
understand the word of God, we have commentaries
in written form, we have many audio commentaries
and things of that nature.
But it's this combination of of me seeking
the Lord personally in my own sort of
devotional life, if you want to call it
that, in his word and then taking advantage
of the instruction that he's given us through
a number of different avenues.
We need to do that, we need to
take time, not just simply blast through a
chapter because, OK, I got to get out
the door, but we need to take the
time to sit down and read it over
and ponder it and think about it and
pray on it.
And let it.
Find its place in our hearts, we need
to study, we need to study things that
will build us up and strengthen us in
our faith and help us to contend against
all of the deception, all of the deceit,
all of the lies that we're being bombarded
with in our culture.
You see, we've got to equip ourselves, each
and every one of us are called to
be able to give an answer to everyone
who asks us a reason for the hope
that is in us, we're not to spend
our whole Christian lives just depending on somebody
else to do that for us.
We need to ourselves study and grow and
learn.
The things that pertain to the faith so
we can be strengthened by those things and
we can help others, we can be a
blessing to others, I want to do this
tonight, I want to recommend to you five
books to read over the next year.
Five books to read over the next year,
you'll have to turn off your TV to
get through these because it's going to take
some time, but I guarantee if you take
these five books and you read them over
the next year, you shut off the television,
you occupy yourself with this stuff, you're going
to come in a year from now and
you're going to say, thanks for telling me
to do that because it has enriched my
life spiritually.
That's what's going to happen.
These five books I want to recommend to
you.
Number one, what the Bible teaches, the author
is R.A. Torrey, what the Bible teaches,
give you a whole.
Look at what the Bible teaches all of
the different subjects that the Bible addresses are
contained in this book, what the Bible teaches
a fantastic book, secondly, and these are not
in, you know, you can read them in
the order that you choose.
Secondly, I would recommend Church History in Plain
Language, the author is Bruce Shelley.
Church History in Plain Language, you know, it's
it's a good thing to know a little
bit about what's happened in the history of
the church, there's a lot of disastrous things
that have happened in the history of the
church and there are a lot of wonderful
things that have happened and we need to
know both.
I would recommend a book entitled How We
Got the Bible.
The author is Lightfoot, Neil Lightfoot, how we
got the Bible, how many times do you
get a question about the Bible and how
often do we hear that?
Oh, the Bible, you can't trust it.
It's it's not reliable.
It was written by men.
It's full of mistakes and contradictions and all
of this sort of thing.
I'm sure if you converse with people out
in the world, you've probably heard those kinds
of remarks made.
So we need to understand how we did
get the Bible so we can answer people
when they come up with those kinds of
things.
Another book I would recommend is a book
entitled The Long War Against God, written by
Henry Morris, The Long War Against God.
It traces the theory of evolution all throughout
history, shows that it did not begin with
Darwin, by the way.
It goes all the way back to the
to the days of the Greek philosophers.
The Long War Against God.
A vitally important topic to be familiar with
in these days.
And finally, the book is called Jerusalem to
Erie and Jaya.
Jerusalem to Erie and Jaya.
It is a history of missions.
And the author is Ruth Tucker.
If you take the next year and read
through these five books.
Commit yourself to study.
I promise you, I guarantee you, you'll be
blessed, you'll be strengthened and you will be.
Impacted yourself and able to impact others as
well, we need to study, we need to
praise the Lord, you know, there's something about
praise, it's not just.
You know, it's not just coming and singing
a few songs before a church service, it's
really engaging with the Lord and really lifting
our hearts in thanks and praise to him
in the scripture, we find praise over and
over again, rising up from the people of
God and.
We need to be a people of praise,
not just when we gather together, but in
our lives privately as well.
And I would encourage you in those private
devotional times where you're praying, where you're meditating
on the scripture, you know, maybe take that
time just to praise the Lord.
Just to lift your voice in praise to
him, if you feel better listening to some
music that will encourage you in that direction,
then do that.
We get so much stuff coming in from
everywhere else and, you know, we find a
lot of times we're going along, we're singing
this, that and the other thing.
And and that's OK.
We are not saying that we can't listen
to anything other than praise music, but.
God wants to receive our praise.
And the Bible over and over again exhorts
us to praise the Lord.
And as we praise the Lord, something happens
inside of me and something happens around me
and something happens in the spiritual realm, you
know, when God is praised, the enemy is
confounded.
Truly, you find examples of that in scripture.
I think of the story of Jehoshaphat there
in Second Chronicles, chapter 20.
As he's being invaded by these.
Armies, he's completely overwhelmed, he's completely outnumbered and
he's terrified, he doesn't know what to do,
and as he's seeking God and praying, the
Lord begins to speak, the prophet comes to
him and gives him a message.
And then ultimately the strategy that God gives
to Jehoshaphat is when you go out, I
want you to go out and I want
you to put in front of you the
worship leaders, basically.
And I wanted to sing praise the Lord
for his mercy endures forever.
And that's exactly what they do.
And when they do that, God confounds the
enemy and gives Israel a great victory.
You know, sometimes we are being attacked and
it's coming at us from every side and
we how do we deal with this?
What do we do?
God has given us this wonderful opportunity of
praise to praise him privately, to praise him
publicly.
And then again, we need to fellowship.
We need to fellowship, and I think as
a body here on Saturday nights, we have,
I think, a good view of what that
is.
We're coming here not simply to just sit
and listen and get up and bolt out
of here as quick as we can, but
we're realizing the importance of connecting with fellow
Christians.
We're realizing the importance of encouraging one another
with songs and hymns, spiritual songs, giving one
another encouragement through the scriptures, sharing with each
other what God's doing in our lives, praying
for one another.
Those are the things that fellowship consists of.
And then serving, doing some service for the
Lord.
Now, what does that mean?
Does it mean you have to come down
to the church and volunteer to sweep the
parking lot or something?
Well, you could if you wanted to, but
it doesn't necessarily mean that because the Bible
tells us this wonderful thing that whatever we
do, if we do it with our whole
hearts as to the Lord and not to
men, we're actually serving God in that.
But I do think that when we talk
about service, I think that there is some
connection with blessing the body of Christ.
And so I would encourage you, as I
did in the past, once again, to be
looking for an opportunity that God might give
you to be a blessing to the body
of Christ, to serve in some capacity.
There are many, many, many things that can
be done that need to be done.
There are so many different ministries that you
could potentially be involved in in some way.
You know, getting involved in serving God, that
is one of the most thrilling things in
all the world.
It's where so many things come together.
You meet people, you fellowship with them.
Of course, when you're serving, you need to
be strengthened.
So you realize, man, I've got to be
in the word.
I need to pray.
And sometimes what's lacking in our lives is
just that area of service.
We're not doing anything.
Ask the Lord to show you an area
of service for him.
And the final thing in exercising ourself toward
godliness is we need to be open and
available and ready to share Christ with people
as the opportunities arise.
And I'll tell you this, this is a
way to exercise yourself toward godliness.
You know, I love to witness not simply
for the benefit of the person.
It's kind of selfish, but I mean, I
like that part of it, too.
But I like what it does for me.
It strengthens me in my faith.
It does something in me that results in
a blessing.
You see, as God pours this stuff into
us, he wants us to pour it out
to others as well.
Now, I know for some people that's much
easier to do than for others.
And and I understand personality differences and struggles
and shyness and all of that.
I understand all of that.
But none of that is really an excuse
not to do it, you see, because although
we're all different and although we have different
personalities and although some of us are going
to be very comfortable, some of us are
going to be less comfortable, you know.
God doesn't call us to do things that
we're comfortable with doing.
He calls us to do things that he
will help us to do because we can't
do them ourselves.
So here's what you do.
You just say, Lord, help me.
Lord, you know, my shyness or, you know,
it's difficult for me or and you know
what?
I believe that you can do this.
And I have been doing this lately.
I have just been telling the Lord, OK,
Lord, I want to share people.
I know you want people to hear about
Christ.
I know there are lots of people around
that not only need to know you, but
I know there are people around that you're
working on their hearts and and there's a
situation in their life.
Maybe there's a crisis or something.
And here's my prayer, Lord.
I'll make a deal with you if you
connect me with those people, if you get.
Us together, I will speak for you.
But you got to get us together.
I'm not that good at that connection thing.
But, Lord, you just make the connection and
if you make the connection, then I'll just
open my mouth and then I'll trust you
to help me there, too.
So, you know, we can do that.
And that's what we ought to do.
You see, again, as you've heard before.
What God is really looking for is just
willingness.
God is looking for availability.
When God looks for a person, he doesn't
look for the most qualified person in the
sense that we would think of.
God just looks for the person whose heart
is right and who is willing, and that's
the one he uses because he's the one
that does the work.
So as we make ourselves available, we will
find that God is working through us and
we will find that we are being exercised
toward godliness.
These things are the things that make for
spiritual fitness.
These are the things that we must do.
It's not, hey, you ought to do these
things, guys.
You know, it'd be really great if you
did them.
No, these are the things that we must
do if we are going to become strong
spiritually.
There's no other way to do it.
There's no other way to get there.
There's there's no other way to attain.
Spiritual maturity and effectiveness, except through these basic
fundamental things that we just.
Commit ourselves to and just stick with them,
just be faithful to, you know, a person
who's in great shape physically now, of course,
I'm not speaking from experience here, but I
used to be in good shape.
So I remember, you know what you do,
though, you just do the routine regardless of
how you feel, regardless of what the weather's
like.
All of that is irrelevant.
You just do what you do because that's
what you have to do.
And and this is true spiritually as well.
And you know what happens?
And I'm going to close with this.
What happens to us is we start off
and whenever you start anything fresh, you kind
of have an excitement about it, as you
know, you know, you physically say, OK, I'm
going to get in shape and you're all
excited about it.
And that excitement lasts for a few days.
And then the reality of getting up early
and getting out and doing the roadwork and
all of those, you know, whatever you're doing,
that sinks in.
And then there's a huge temptation to just
slack off a little bit.
Let's just back off.
Oh, you know, maybe we don't need to
be as serious about this.
And and then, you know, as you let
that attitude creep in, it doesn't take long
before pretty soon you're not doing it at
all.
The same thing happens spiritually.
We get all excited, exercise yourself to godliness,
man, that's great.
Yeah, I want to do that.
And so here's what I'm going to do.
And then we start off and we go
for a week.
We might go for two weeks.
But then the novelty of it wears off.
We don't feel the excitement that we were
feeling.
We're not getting the buzz or the thrill
out of it.
And so we start to slack off.
You see, that's what we can't do.
You have to just keep going consistently, steadily.
Whether you feel great about it or not,
whether you have some great experience or not.
You know, sometimes when you're sharing your faith
with people, sometimes you feel like heaven opened.
The spirit came down.
Man, God was there.
Other times.
You feel like.
You were completely left alone, abandoned a while
back, I had this unbelievable two hour.
Witnessing session with this guy was just phenomenal.
And, you know, God just set the whole
thing up.
It was great.
A few days later, I had another opportunity.
It was the exact opposite.
It was a total flop.
You know, I'm trying to share with the
guy and, you know, I just felt like.
I just felt like a dope.
And I think he probably was looking at
me like, well, what are you trying to
say?
And I'm not sure what I'm trying to
say here, just take this thing and read
it and maybe, you know.
Oh, God, you know, I just I just
totally went blank.
And, you know, when you do that, then
you think, well, you're not all that anxious
to do it again.
But you have to do it again.
You have to just press through it.
I remember times years ago, we used to
go out and do the street evangelism and
we go out sometimes and we just have
the most incredible opportunities and other times we
go out.
It was just the worst experience.
But you have to go out again and
again and again and not just in this
one area.
But I'm saying this with everything, with all
of these points, whether it's prayer, meditation, study,
praise, fellowship, service, witness, we just have to
do it and you got to be consistent
at it.
So.
This is the word.
Exercise yourself toward godliness.
Bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is
profitable.
For all things, having promised for the life
that is all those blessings.
The physical blessings, the emotional blessings, the mental
blessings, the relational blessings.
The social blessings, they're all their promises for
the life that now is and the life
that is to come.
If we exercise ourself toward godliness, we'll have
an abundant entry into the everlasting kingdom of
our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Let's pray.
Lord, help us to do this.
We pray, Lord, we need you.
Fill us, Lord, with your spirit and Lord.
May we, by your grace and through your
help, exercise ourselves toward godliness.
May we, Lord, truly, may we truly spend
our time and energy.
In the exercise of keeping ourselves spiritually fit.
Show us, Lord, we're all different, we all
have different issues and Lord, the things in
our life that are.
Needing to be eliminated immediately, Lord.
Just make that so clear that there could
be no doubt whatsoever, the things that need
to be reduced, trimmed back.
Lord, give us wisdom regarding that as well
and help us to implement.
These things, these positive things into our walk
consistently.
We pray in Jesus name, amen.