Faithfulness | Pastor Adam Peterson

We kicked off a brand new teaching series last week that's gonna take us almost through the entire summer. The series is called Juicy Fruit. Yeah. And if you're wondering, like, what, there's a lot happening with this. Like, is that AI? It is. AI made this for us. And so, I got this idea as we were planning for this series, because when I was a kid, you could walk into a convenience store and you could buy a pack of these bad boys, five sticks of gum for 25 cents. Some of you are a little older than me. You might've got it a little cheaper than that. But this, how many of you know anything about some Juicy Fruit gum? Let's go. Anybody eat Juicy Fruit recently? Still? Okay, let's go. Here's all you need to know about Juicy Fruit. I don't know if it's still 25 cents. Probably not. But if you did, you would pop that gum into your mouth, and I'm telling you, the explosion would happen. Juicy Fruit, bam. And about 10 seconds later, that flavor is gone. And you are chewing flavorless gum. It's just in your mouth, and there is no taste. Absolutely. The juicy is gone. The fruit is gone. It's flavorless. Here's the idea behind this series. We want our lives to have flavor. We want our lives to have good flavor, and we want our lives, listen to me, to have flavor that lasts. And God's the only one that can produce that. And so, Galatians chapter five is where we're going to be in for the rest of this month, all throughout June and into July, talking about the fruit that the Holy Spirit produces. Now, we got a lot of people from different church backgrounds, so let me just clarify a couple things very quickly. There is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Three in one, the Trinity. God the Father in heaven, ruling over all, the creator of all good things. He is our heavenly Father, which means he loves his children. Come on, somebody. And then there is God the Son. That's Jesus Christ. He is the Savior of the world. He stepped out of heaven. He lived a perfect life. He died on the cross for my sin and your sins, so that we could have a relationship with God. And the moment, come on, the moment we call upon Jesus to come into our lives, to forgive us of our sins, and to be the Lord of our life, we now have a relationship with God, and he gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit, which is God's presence with us at all times, God's power at work in us. And so now that we have that clarity, this is what the Holy Spirit, this gift of God, does in our lives. The Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives. Love, joy, and peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. How many of you know? Come on. And so let me just say this, all right, last service, best service. If you're gonna clap,

I need you to clap for the hundred people that aren't clapping in this room, so it doesn't just sound like, all right, here we go, all right. We were working through this, just kind of talking through it for the summer, and our worship pastor, Pastor Jonathan, actually said, you know how easy it is to remember these, because sometimes you can get them out of order. He said, the first three fruits are all one syllable, the second three fruits are all two syllables, and the third three fruits are all, the last three fruits are all three syllables. And you're obviously not impressed by that, but I'm 42 years old, and I never noticed that before, and I thought that was just pretty cool, man. And somebody's like, what's a syllable? And we'll explain it to you later in the parking lot, okay. Last week, we kicked off this series, Pastor Rebecca, Pastor Aaron, Mother's Day, they kicked off this series, and they talked about the fruit of the Spirit, love, man, that the love of God needs to just overwhelm us, so that it can live in us, so that it can then flow through us. Here's the reality, you ready? I can't give what I don't have, so if I don't have the love of God in me, I can't give it away to others. I need the love of God, I need the Holy Spirit to produce that fruit on the inside of me. Now, here's where it's going to get really fun, because you're thinking, oh, love was last week, obviously we're doing joy today. We're not. All summer long, we're mixing it up. We're going out of order, and that's going to mess with some of y'all. Y'all are like, no, you can't do that. I'm a person of order. things in order. Here's why we're not doing it in order, because I don't want you to look and go, oh I don't need to be here for that one. I'm already doing pretty good on that one. Alright, here's the reality. You need all of these. How many of you have already identified at least one of these that you know you need work in your life? How many of you have identified one of these for the person you're sitting by right now? You're like, they need this in their life. How many of you are like, I probably could use all nine. Yeah, alright, fantastic. So this is our summer series, people. I know there's a lot of travel that's happening throughout the summer. Enjoy your vacation. Enjoy your time away. I'm gonna be a little away a little bit in the summer as well, but when you're here, let's be here and let's commit. Man, Holy Spirit, I want you to grow a beautiful work on the inside of me throughout the summer. Sometimes the summer months actually can get you out of rhythm and can actually mess with you spiritually.

You can kind of rock back on your heels, get a little spiritually lazy. I know that's happened in my life before. We don't want you to rock back. We want you to grow spiritually this summer, and we believe this series is gonna do that. And so today we are talking about the Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit, and the one we're gonna address today is faithfulness. Faithfulness. If you're taking notes, you can just write down faithfulness. It's the title of the message today. I love preaching every Sunday at Rush Church. I'm pretty psyched to bring this message to you today. I feel like the Lord has given me a word to share with you, and I think it's gonna encourage your heart and really just kind of point us to Jesus. Second Timothy is where we're gonna be today. If you love the Word of God, say yeah. Come on, Second Timothy. This is Paul saying this. He goes, this is a trustworthy saying, which is just Paul telling us this is a trustworthy saying. He's saying, guys, what I'm about to tell you, you can trust me. Now sometimes when somebody looks at you and says, trust me, you got to consider the source, right? Who is it that's saying this? But Paul, come on, here's the good news, we can trust him. He says this, if we die with him, Jesus, we will also live with him. What does that mean? It means this, that just as Jesus died and rose again, if we die, not physically, but we die to our sinful nature, we will be raised to life. The Bible would call it being born again. We will be given new life. Old life will be gone. New life will come. If we die with him, we're also gonna live with him. Then it goes on to say if we endure hardship, that's faithfulness. Like if we don't give up, we will reign with him. We're gonna talk more about that throughout the day. But if we deny him, he will deny us. Now this is not popular preaching, but it's truth, so hear this clearly. If you spend your entire life rejecting God, denying God, wanting nothing to do with God, there is this reality that when your life comes to an end here on earth, if you have wanted nothing to do with God, you will get into eternity and God will look at you and go, you wanted nothing to do with me here, you will have nothing to do with me for all eternity. If you deny him, he'll deny you. He'll look at you, and the Bible clearly states these words, he'll look at

you and say, I never knew you. If we are unfaithful, here's the good news, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny who he is. So we might deny him, but God's like, I can't deny who I am, I'm a faithful God. And what we want is the faithfulness of God to get put in us, so that faithfulness comes out of our lives. Now this is the 1130 service, so I'm expecting every hand to go up at some point in this service, okay? So let's try this one together. How many of you would confess amongst friends and family this morning that at some point in your life you've actually run from God? God was calling you over here, you went the opposite direction. If you didn't raise your hand, just keep polishing your halo and think that you're better than the rest of us. The reality is this, that all of us, a lot of us, sometimes God will call us to go and follow him, and we'll actually go another direction. And here's the good news of what this verse says, that when we're unfaithful, he remains faithful. I don't know if you've ever heard this before, but when you run from God, he doesn't give up on you. When you run from God, he actually runs and chases you down. Not because he's mad at you, but because he loves you, and he's calling you out to something better. So God, you're a faithful God. At times we're unfaithful, so we need the Holy Spirit in us to produce faithfulness. Through us. Here's the verse that we're gonna look at a lot throughout this series. It's in John 15 These are the words of Jesus. He said I'm the vine You're the branches Go ahead and tell your neighbor you're a branch You're a branch. That's who you are. All right, you're you're just a branch. Thanks for sticking around No, that's not that's that's a bad joke. It's a bad joke rain it back in. Here we go It was a bad joke, but somebody's gonna use it. I know you will I'm the vine You're the branches and this is a conditional promise If you remain like if you do this if you remain in me and I in you you will bear much fruit So the promise is this you will bear fruit. You'll actually bear a lot of fruit under one condition You have to remain if you don't remain you can't produce fruit matter of fact

That's why he says apart from me. You can do Nothing. So let's be real. Okay people that don't follow Jesus. They have an ability to love People that don't follow Jesus. They have an ability to have joy and peace People that don't follow Jesus can be kind. Okay, you know people like that But their ability to all of those things is very limited The Unlimited supply that God has is So good and you think you know love you don't know love until you know the love of God You don't know joy until you know the joy that only God can bring you don't know peace until you've experienced the peace of God That doesn't even make sense So what I'm saying is yes, the lost world can operate in some of those to some capacity But with God he has this unlimited supply. He's the source of it all and So if we want faithfulness in our life, we have to stay connected to the source We have to choose to remain Remaining isn't a one-time decision. It's continuous I'm choosing every day to remain and I wrote this down Remaining is choosing to place our faith in the faithfulness of God Remaining is me saying God. I'm gonna stay connected to you because the moment I Disconnect from the vine. I'm a dead man The moment I disconnect from the vine and I start pursuing other things. I'm pursuing dead things. I need you Yeah Remaining is putting my faith in the faithfulness of a good God Now how many of you know that? Sometimes it's not easy to faithfully follow after God because life gets hard Life gets difficult and sometimes in those moments It's easy for us to look and go peace out life got too difficult God. I'll see you later Sometimes it's easy just to bail and throw things out and just go I'm done with this because things didn't go the way that I wanted them to or sometimes if we're not careful

We'll actually point the finger and blame God for the things in our lives Anybody buddy want to be honest and go I've blamed God before for some things in my life Yeah, you get to a point and you're like God. I'm trying I'm doing I'm doing all the stuff. I'm following you I'm loving you and And yet I still have to go through this and What the devil loves to do in those moments is creep in and try to cause a wedge and drive disunity between you and God Because he wants you to blame God. He wants you to point the finger and go Yeah, this is your fault because if you were a good and loving God, why would you let this happen? I Say this all the time, but my wife is my hero because like many of you she's had a hard life and She could have easily Years ago looked at God shaken her fist and said I'm done with you because of what I've had to walk through But instead of shaking her fist at God, she opened her arms to God and said God I need you God I'm not gonna be able to make it through my life without you God I need you to come and bring some healing to the hurt that I've experienced in my life and The same is true for you I hope that you know that that all the difficult days that you've walked through and all the heartache and all the pain if you Run from God you're actually running from the one who can bring the healing to all that hurt And it's not gonna be easy, but that's what faithfulness is, but it only comes from the Holy Spirit from remaining connected to God So we're gonna close out today by looking at one verse of Scripture and how we can stay faithful, and how it will bring a blessing to our life, but also by the opposite, that if we do not stay faithful, we could miss out on the blessing. Psalm 1 says this, blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers.

Let me break down this word blessed. It simply means this, to be happy, to be like happy, happy, to be joyful, to be fulfilled, and to be content. Anybody wanna be happy, joyful, fulfilled, and content? Okay. Half of y'all do, half of y'all are like, eh, maybe, we'll see. And that word blessed has nothing to do with your circumstances. It has nothing to do with your material possessions. It has everything to do with who God is in your life. You can actually be happy when you're walking through dark days. You can actually be content and joyful and fulfilled when you're walking through some of the darkest, hardest storms of life. Not because life, oh, life's actually terrible right now, but God's good. So there's a blessing that God wants to bring to you, but it's gonna come from faithfulness. So we're gonna walk through these three verbs right here. The first thing, it says this, hey, you wanna be blessed? You can't be blessed if you walk in step with the wicked. All right, show of hands, how many of you like running? Didn't think so, you don't look like a running bunch. How many of you are like me though, in your old age, you enjoy walking? Yeah, yeah, yeah, love walking. My wife and I go on walks in the evening together,

it's fun to do. Walking is super chill. It's casual, right? You're not exerting a lot of energy. You can actually have a conversation while you're walking. You're not exhausted, you don't feel like you're about to die. It's super chill. But here's the thing about walking, you ready, it is directional. Meaning I'm starting here and I'm going somewhere. There is a direction that my life is going. And the warning in this verse is this, be careful, your life won't be blessed if you walk with the wicked. And you might be thinking, man, that word wicked, that's pretty strong, man, like what are we talking about here? Like, it's just like, be careful who you walk with, like people that are not walking wisely. People that are not walking towards God. Here's what 1 Corinthians would say, bad company corrupts good character. Meaning you could have the right heart, but if you get around the wrong people, you might end up making the wrong decisions. So apparently, who you walk with, the Bible would say, is extremely important. I heard a pastor say this years ago, I've quoted it countless times here at Rise Church,

show me your friends, I'll show you your future. I don't care what age you are, teenagers or adults, show me your four closest friends, show me the four people in your life that have your ear, that have influence in your life, I'll show you the direction your life is gonna go. You need godly people in your life to lead you to God. I know it's all sinking in, it's all good. And the challenge for all of us is this, do we wanna walk faithfully to God? Well then we're gonna need to get some faithful brothers and sisters in our lives, and if you need friends, you are in the right place. Dig in here, there are friends to be made. Not only do we need to be careful about walking with the wicked, but it says this, you need to be careful you don't stand in the way sinners take. So let me break this down for you, track it with me, you ready? When you walk with the wicked, eventually you're gonna stop walking. In that moment, what are you doing now? Now you're standing. You've stopped walking, now you're lingering. Now you're finding yourself, you walked with the wicked, now you're just standing amongst the rest of the sinners. What does it mean to stand amongst sinners? It means you look like everybody else, you talk like everybody else, you act like everybody else.

Hear me very clearly, you were never meant to look like everybody else. As a follower of Jesus, hear me, you were rescued from darkness, you were brought into light, now that light that you were brought into lives in you and is meant to shine through you to others, meaning this, every dark room you walk into, you bring the light of Christ with you. Therefore, people should look on and go, you're different. They should look at you, the Bible says, they should see the light of Jesus in you and immediately go, oh, they must be one of those God followers. Because it's Christ in you. But if you're not careful, you'll walk with the wicked. And then you'll find yourself actually standing in places you never wanted to stand. And this doesn't happen overnight, it's the small compromises. So you want your life to be blessed, it comes from a faithful walk following God. You want the blessing, you want the happiness, the joy, the contentment, the fulfillment. You got to be careful who you walk with, because eventually you're going to be standing with them. And then the third thing he said was this, and eventually you're going to sit with the mockers. So follow the progression, you ready? Be careful who you walk with, because that's where you're going to end up standing. And eventually you're going to sit with them. Which means this, you just got real comfortable in a place you probably never wanted to sit. And now you've made your home there, you camped out. And it says you're going to sit with mockers, which simply means this, you don't want to hear truth, you don't want to be corrected. You actually might even get to a place where you're laughing at the things of God. And when God himself, when the Holy Spirit is trying to lead you out and tell you he's got

something better for you, you reject him and go, no, I'm good here. See, we want to walk faithfully with God. But if we're not careful, who we walk with will cause us to stand in a place we never wanted to stand. And eventually, now we're sitting there. Now it's become our life. How many of you know God is good? And he's got more for us. So the warning would come in Galatians 6. Let's see if this 42 year old guy can get back up. Still got it. Let's go. See that babe? That was impressive. She's over there. Galatians 6, 7 says, don't be foolish. You will reap what you sow. You sow apple seeds, you get an apple tree. Galatians 6 would go on to say, if you sow to please your own sinful desires, you're going to reap destruction. It's going to kill you. It's going to destroy you. And destruction, hear me, never just stays with us. It always spills onto others. So here's the warning of the Bible. You ready? Where we walk, we will eventually stand. And where we stand, we will eventually sit. And a blessed life, happy, joyful, content, fulfilled, comes from following God faithfully. So, Pastor Jay, you can join me up on the stage. Here's how I wrote it down. Faithfulness is choosing to walk, stand, and sit with God over everything else. 25 years, guys, I've been walking with the Lord. He rescued me, brought me out of darkness, brought me into light. So grateful. Screwed up all along those 25 years, but by His grace and His mercy, here I am still. And I'm telling you, my life is blessed, not because I've got more stuff, but because of God and what He's done in me and through me and the people He's surrounded me with. And that's my prayer for you. Five years from now, you grab me on a Sunday morning, and you go, you're not going to believe how good God's been to me. You're not going to believe what God has done in me. You're not going to believe what God's done in my family, because you chose to stay faithful. It's a choice. You have to choose to remain, stay connected to the vine, not pursue just everything else that the world has to offer, but finding all the hope, all the fulfillment, all the joy in Jesus. So let me give you the verses that follow after Psalms verse 1. It says, those who delight in the law of the Lord. It's really talking about those who just love this book, man, who love God's Word and who meditate on it, who are thinking about it. They meditate on His law day and night. They do it day and night. They do it... No, they do it... No, they do it day and night.

Faithfully. That was a trick, all right? You guys in the 830 butchered it terribly. 10 o'clock did okay. Faithfully. Well, I read it in the morning. Read it again. I prayed in the morning. Pray again. See, the thing about faithfulness is this. When I faithfully read this book, I'm not just reading this book, this book's getting in me now. Now it's growing in my heart and in my mind. When I faithfully show up at church every Sunday, I don't just show up when it's convenient or when I feel like it. When I faithfully get planted in this house, I start building relationships with other people in this house. How many of y'all know we had an Ironman yesterday in Jacksonville? Ironman, 2.4 miles swimming, 112 miles biking, and then you run a marathon. Somebody said, Pastor Adam, we're gonna do one next year, you gonna do it? No. Why would I wanna do that, that sounds terrible. I don't even wanna drive 2.4 miles, you know what I'm saying?

I said, I will never be an Ironman. And then a girl in our church got real spiritual and she was like, but you are an Ironman. Because the Bible says that iron sharpens iron. I'm an Ironman! Spiritually. That's what you get when you show up faithfully to church. You get to bring your iron that God's working in your life, somebody else gets to bring theirs, and we sharpen each other, we get to encourage each other. But that doesn't happen if you're not faithful. You have an opportunity in our church to serve, listen to me, faithfully, to make a difference in other people's lives. Every single Sunday, those buckets are gonna pass. You have an opportunity to give faithfully, to advance the kingdom of God. Amen. Faithful, day and night. This is what it says. That person, that faithful person, is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season, whose leaf does not wither, whatever they do, prospers. It's this fruit that's gonna be produced in you. I love watermelon season. It is upon us. I will eat 20 watermelons this summer. I literally, I kid you not,

I will eat an entire watermelon in one sitting. If it's good, I will eat the whole thing. I'll probably go pee about 20 times afterwards. That's probably information you didn't need to know, but that's what happens when you eat an entire, because it's a water melon. But watermelon season only lasts so long. It comes to an end. And every year when it does, I take that last watermelon, we hold a service, moment of silence, I say a few words in remembrance, until next year. The fruit of the Spirit is not seasonal. It's not like, well, I do faithfulness in the fall. Patience, that's kind of like a summer thing. No, no, no. The fruit of the Spirit is an all the time thing. And you don't even have to work at it. Here's what it says. Go back to that verse of Scripture. All you have to do is plant yourself. Just plant it by the source. When you plant yourself by streams of water, that's what's gonna yield the fruit. Every season, the fruit for you, and really it's the fruit for others. See, a faithful life is one that we wanna live faithfully to God, but a faithful life to God also is faithful to others.

It means people can count on you. It means when you say, trust me, we can trust you. And that's what we want so desperately. God, you are so faithful to us. We wanna honor you by living faithfully, and we wanna honor others. I don't know about you, man. I just want, I want more of God in me. Less of me and more of him. And that only comes through the power of the Holy Spirit. If you're walking through some hard days right now, like I'm talking like difficult days right now, and it's hard for you to stay trusting God. It really is hard. This is not you going, man, I'm just messing up. This is you just going, it's difficult right now. Would you just lift your hand right now? Life's just hard. It's not easy. Thank you for your honesty. Keep your hand up, keep your hand up, keep your hand up. If somebody's hand is up beside you, I just want you to place a hand on their shoulder just to let them know you're not alone. You're not alone. And once somebody puts their hand on your shoulder, you can put your hand down. That's how I'll know everybody's. getting prayed for all right yep perfect perfect got one over here one give me two give me two give me one one two two all right everybody yeah here before you

don't don't close your eyes look at me right now what I want to tell you is this all of us walk through difficult days and in those difficult days sometimes we want to give up but you need to know you're a part of a church family that's not gonna let you give up we can't fix your problems but we can encourage you and remind you the God who's greater every step of the way don't give up remain faithful stay connected to the vine stay connected to the source you're gonna make it let's pray together God in heaven thank you that your presence is here thank you that you're with us thank you for your word thank you that you're a faithful God and you never fail us you never give up on us God you're a God we can trust in so I pray for every person that lifted their hands right now God just fill them with supernatural strength remind them that you are their father you love them overwhelm them with your goodness and your love and your faithfulness and we pray all of this in the name of Jesus amen amen amen amen