The Doing Makes the Difference

Good to see everybody you're doing good this weekend. So good to worship with you, to gather together, to sing to the Lord, to now sit under the teaching of His word I am excited about today. Let me first welcome everybody that might be joining us online, we got church family for whatever reason each week can't be here. Maybe you're homebound or you're just traveling this weekend, or maybe you're just out in the lobby. Hello, good to see you. Also, I wanna say welcome to those of you who are at Dick Conner, so we've got a church in a men's prison, and then ladies at Eddie Warrior, and they are part of our church family. In fact, it's not almost a week goes by that there isn't somebody from one of those two congregations that's showing up here live for the first time. And so anyways, welcome to you. Let's put our hands together and just say hello, and welcome. We are in week three of a series that we started a couple of weeks ago called Life Lessons. We're looking at biblical wisdom, little insight, scriptural principles that make a big difference. This stuff is simple, anybody can do it. But just because it's simple doesn't mean it's easy, and it certainly doesn't mean it's insignificant. In fact, these simple biblical principles actually have a massive impact on your walk with Christ.

And today, we're gonna be looking at a principle that I'm taking out of James chapter one. So if you brought a Bible, I was standing out the front door. I was so proud, saw many of you walking in with Bibles. I love that. Turn to James chapter one. We're gonna be looking at verses 22 through 25. If you were here last year, last fall, we taught through the book of James. We looked at these very verses. We're gonna look at them again today. This is James, the half brother of Jesus, and he writes this. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away, and it once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty and perseveres being no hearer who forgets, but a doer who acts. And let's all read this yellow highlighted part together. He will be blessed in his doing. This is the word of the Lord, and we all said, thanks be to God. This week's life lesson is simple but profound. It's the doing that makes the difference. If you wanna experience kind of the fullness

of what God has for you, if you wanna experience the richness, the deepness, the goodness of the Christian life, it will only happen because you put this principle into practice. You started applying the word to your life. Hearing is a great start. But hearing separated from doing gets you nowhere. And for some of you, today's lesson will explain to you why you've gotten very little out of your faith. Well, perhaps you've believed for a long time. But practically speaking, your life is filled with the same brokenness and challenges and honestly same struggles that pretty much everybody else's life, your unbelieving neighbor's lives are filled with. Why is that? It's a failure to do this right here. To put what you know into practice. It's the doing that makes the difference. So if you wanna experience what God has for you, if you want the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, if you want that working in your life, the only way it's going to happen is that you begin to obey. And that's really the principle that we're talking about today is obedience. You begin to obey God's commandments.

And what you'll start to see is blessing in God's goodness show up in your life. But obedience isn't exactly what you think. It's a deeper kind of more nuanced idea than what we just kind of think of on the surface. So we're gonna take some time to meditate on this today, to really think about it. And I've got three main thoughts I wanna leave with you on this idea, the doing makes the difference obedience. That's really what we're talking about this weekend. Here's thought number one. Hearing and doing go hand in hand. You cannot separate belief from obedience. Now culturally speaking, we don't really believe that this is true. Culturally speaking, what we believe is that the most true or authentic part of a person is the way they feel about themselves. We prioritize the truth. When some public figure gets caught saying something on camera that's really insensitive or just downright offensive or some emails that were meant to stay hidden surface and turns out they're not great people and they said this or they said that. And they have to come forward and they issue a public apology. It's always the same. Pay attention. They always say the same thing. What do they say? I'm really sorry for whatever it is that I said, that's not who I am. As if your words are somehow incidental to your character. That they're not really a reflection of who you feel yourself to be on the inside. But biblically speaking, this is not the case. In fact, that whole idea of my words really don't matter it's who I think I am that matters most. Flies in the face of what Jesus himself said when he said out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. That maybe your words are a truer indicator of how you really feel than what you think you feel. See, we want to be

judged by our feelings. We want to be judged by our intentions. We want to be judged by our good intentions more specifically. But I wonder what might change if we started to realize that your life is not measured by your feelings or intentions, what you meant to do or wanted to do or hoped to do, but what you actually did. What if you was a man, you as a woman, you as a husband, you as a father, you as a husband or a wife were not measured by what you wished you'd done or hoped to do or what you intended, but what you actually did. You see this play out when one spouse cheats on another and then says, "But I really love my husband. I really love my wife." Well, your actions tell a different story. We used to have a statement that we believed. Actions speak louder than words. Your actions tell a more accurate picture of what you really believe. It's interesting that in Greek and in Hebrew, which is the original language of the Old and New Testament, that the word for here and the word for obey are the exact same word. There's not a different word for here and obey. Jim Wilson and Earl Wagner are the ones who pointed this out. They said, "The Hebrew and Greek words of the Old and New Testaments convey the double meaning of hearing and obeying. The assumption is that when God's people heard him speak, they would instantly obey the Shema," which is spelled S-H-A-M-A, is a reference to a prayer that Jews still to this day pray. It comes from Deuteronomy 6, 4. You're probably familiar with it in English. Here, O Lord, here, O Israel, the Lord is our God. The Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. This is the great commandment. That word here is the Hebrew word Shema and it's translated as here in Deuteronomy 6, 4, but say, for instance, in Exodus chapter 5, it's translated as obey. Same word, two different translations here and obey. There's no gap between the two. You don't have belief here and action here. They are synonymous. To hear is to obey. They continue. They say, "This isn't merely like a linguistic accident or incident. It reflects a theological reality." And here's the idea that true hearing is responsive. In other words, I can tell that you actually heard it because you did it. Now, we don't think like this at all. We think that there's no problem with believing certain things and not actually doing what we say we believe, but biblically speaking, that's completely backwards. Correct beliefs require correct actions and incorrect beliefs result or incorrect actions result from incorrect beliefs. When you separate the two and this is powerful, you create a false Christianity. I think this

is really kind of what we've got in the Bible Belt. A lot of people who believe in Jesus but practically don't live like He's Lord. There's a gap between what we say we believe and how we live our lives. I was buying a car some years ago, sat down with the finance manager and he was asking what I do. And he had been talking about, you know, I lived with my girlfriend, blah, blah, blah. He didn't know who I was. What I did, I mentioned that I'm a pastor. Oh, yeah, I go to such and such church. He saw no problem, none with his life, the way he was living, in direct violation of what, how the scripture talks about marriage and covenant to relationships and where sex blogs, he saw no distinction between his life and his faith. There's just no gap there. But there's a massive gap between what he says he believes and how he's actually living. And this is a problem. I think this is why people as they've watched their parents or they've watched of their adults who claim Christianity but don't actually live it out. There's a lot of hypocrisy. We claim Christ, but we don't live like he's really Lord of our life. And the idea, biblically speaking, is if you hear the word, then you'll do it. And if you tell me that you've heard it, but you don't do it, then I can deduce that you never really heard it in the first place. Now this strikes deep into our hearts because we wanna hold onto this fantasy that somehow I can kinda live how I want and still claim that I believe in Jesus and somehow everything's going to be okay. But did you know that the evidence of your faith is in the way you live, your behavior, your action? I can tell that you're a Christian by examining the fruit. That's exactly what Jesus said in, let's go back here.

Matthew 12, look at this. He says, "Either make the tree good and its fruit good "or make the tree bad and its fruit bad "for the tree is known by its fruit." In other words, I can tell what's going on in the root by examining the fruit. Same idea happens in Acts 2. So Peter is preaching on the day of Pentecost. Maybe you remember this. The Holy Spirit has descended. There are flames of fire look like little tongues resting above their heads. They begin to speak in languages they don't know, proclaiming the good works of God and a crowd gathers. There were thousands of pilgrims in Jerusalem for the feast and Peter gets up and begins to preach a sermon about Jesus. It is a highly convicting sermon. He talks about what Christ came to do, how he suffered, how he died and they respond. Look at what it says. Now when they heard this, that's the big crowd. They were cut to the heart. Now let's just ask a question. How does Luke who wrote this, how does he know this? How does he know they were cut to the heart? Can Luke peer inside someone's heart? How can he tell what's going on in their heart? How he can tell is by the very next thing that he writes. Well they said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?"

I can tell you've heard it because now you're responding to it with action, action and belief. Obedience and belief go hand in hand. If you tell me you believe it but you don't do it, you don't really believe it. Now this ought to make some of us shake in our boots because we claim Christ but we don't live like it. What does that say about my faith? Well I'm not God and I can't say but it at least ought to make you stop and think soberly about the way you're living your life for a moment because the warning in the New Testament goes something like this, the writer of Hebrews puts it this way in chapter 10, verse 26 and 27, for if we go on sinning deliberately. But look at where he couches this. When is this happening after receiving the knowledge of the truth? In other words, you wanna claim, oh I know, yes, I believe in Jesus but you deliberately sin. You're living in a lifestyle and a pattern of sin and you're unashamed of it and you're acting as though the grace of God just keeps showing up for you, forgiving you, all just pray, I'll ask God to forgive me, he won't mind. Look at what he says, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sin. Instead what you get is a fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Whoa, I didn't realize that was in there, it is.

Paul puts it this way in Romans two, verse four, do you presume upon the riches of his kindness? In other words, when we say, well God, look forgive me. I just do what I want. God will forgive me, we presume upon the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience. But we don't realize, we've forgotten that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance. So to try to separate belief from action is to destroy the very heart of the Christian faith. I am not saved by my works but hear this, my salvation is evidenced by my works. You can tell a tree by its fruit. If there's no fruit, then what am I left to assume about the tree? That it's dead, that there's no life in it. So we dare not separate hearing from doing and belief from action, biblically speaking, they go together and more so your actions speak louder to me about the state of your heart than what you may feel. Wow, this is number one about obedience. We have to remember how critical this is, how significant this is, that putting these things How can I walk with God step by step if I'm not willing to obey where he's leading me to go? That's how obedience works. I'm following him. That's number one. Number two is this. Relationship is, and really I could go stronger.

Relationship must be the basis for true biblical obedience. Now let's just be honest for a second. A lot of us, we don't even like this word, obedience. We kind of cringe, we tighten up inwardly whenever we start using that word, obedience. We're good for our kids, that's great. But for me, I'm an adult, I really, I don't want to kind of come under this sort of heavy, religious burden, onerous rules, expectations, all of this kind of thing. I don't like this, even the start of this sermon is making you a little itchy. It feels a little works because I like God of grace. Yes, yes, I do too. But this is meaningful and it matters. We've got to rightly divide the word of truth. What we've done is we've misunderstood obedience. Completely warped it in our minds. The enemy has twisted it. I remember reading many times, as I was younger, I would read John 14, 15. You ever read this verse? If you love me, you will keep my commandments. I remember reading that and thinking, I don't like that very much. I don't like the way he's saying that. It feels kind of manipulative, doesn't it? If you love me, you'll obey me. It feels like an insecure mother or father trying to like guilt trip his kids into being obedient.

If you love me, you will obey me. And it feels desperate, honestly, it feels quite sad. Why does Jesus say this? It's because we totally misunderstand obedience. Our view of obedience is that it's a performance, a duty. The best way I could kind of picture it for you is like a dog trainer working with a dog. You've seen this before. Have a little pouch of treats. The dog does a little trick. Ooh, here's the treat. That's how a lot of people think about obedience toward God. If I obey, God gives me a little treat. If I perform a trick, if I jump through a hoop, if I show up at church, if I pray, God's gonna give me a little treat. That's the idea. And often you see this happen when people get desperate. So people who maybe have been living a little, you know, out there away from God and then all of a sudden, life goes haywire, marriage falls apart, get a bad diagnosis, I don't know, things just aren't going well, you're out of money, whatever, you're like, you have nowhere else to turn in. It's now it's like, let's get really serious about our faith. You see this happen, where people just get real religious. So I'm gonna come to church. I'm gonna show up, I'm gonna do all the things. Like people do this and I watch this. And the truth is, if we get obedience wrong, it never lasts.

'Cause what they're hoping for is that God will see their good religious pious behavior. They're being good, oh yeah, I'm being good. He'll see their behavior and then he'll do something about their situation. God will show up and he'll perform a miracle or he'll make things all better. And when he does, the truth is you'll just kind of go right back to what you were doing. But you're trying to be good now so that God will give you what it is that you want. Here's what I've watched time and time and time again when God doesn't show up and immediately give you what you want people to lose heart and they quit. Why? Because their obedience doesn't go deep enough. They have a fundamental and misunderstanding of obedience. It's a performative, dutiful kind of thing. And actually, I think this is why so many people in this part of the world, their primary rejection to Christianity is this. Occasionally you meet people around here just very hostile to the Christian faith. Most of the time, I find the people who don't really practice Christianity or don't buy into it, don't buy into it, not because they can't believe it. It's not because it's offensive, it's because it sounds boring to them. I like this quote, I think they explained it well from Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend in their book, How People Grow.

They say for many people, and I think this is the perfect description of kind of cultural Christianity and Oklahoma. For many people, obedience means to be deprived and withheld from. Some of you young people in the room, this is exactly how you think about it. If you really went all in with God, your life would be boring. If you're honest, that's how you feel. I wanna have a little fun. A lot of people are trying to straddle a line. I wanna live just wholly enough to go to heaven and just bad enough to have a good time before I have to go there. That's how people think. Get it in while you can, have a little bit of fun. Don't be too religious, that makes you a fanatic. You're weird if you do that. Let's have a little fun, let's lighten up a little bit. Let's be real. So we think of obedience as like being deprived. It means that you have to adhere to rules. be really good and don't do any fun stuff with no real benefit except maybe in heaven. I have friends who, this is exactly their perspective. It's not that they hate Christianity, it's not that they reject it, it's not that they read it. And they said, I find this unbelievable, I can't believe any of this, this is too fantastic. That is not the basis of their rejection.

The basis of their rejection is, if I did that, I would have no fun. I'd have to give up all the stuff in life that makes life worth living, or at least tolerable. That's the way that they see it. I'd have to stop drinking to excess, I'd have to stop going out and partying, I'd have to stop flirting with that woman that's not my wife, I'd have to stop looking at porn. Like all the things that are kind of fun and exciting, and the stuff that sort of makes life at least somewhat tolerable, you'd have to give all that stuff up. And now all you can do is pray and be on your knees and fast and show up at church and listen to really long talks and all this kind of stuff. Like that's what I'd have to do. It'd be a really boring life. What they miss is that virtually every study that's ever studied, it finds that Christians are actually happier than people who are otherwise. That they have the most satisfied, joy-filled, peace-filled life, so it doesn't mean that we're all perfect, but it's interesting on the happiness index, Christians are always at the top of the list. Interestingly, monogamous Christians, husbands and wives, they end up being at the very top of the list. Why? Because they have a different understanding and experience of obedience than what most people think. They think of God's commands as some kind of heavy burden

that's going to make their life awful, what they miss is that it's exactly the opposite. And you see this, demonstrated in the writings of the Old and New Testament. I remember reading these verses. For instance, Psalm 119, 47, and 48, look at how David writes about God's commandments. I find my delight in your commandments, which I love. I will lift up my hands towards your commandments, which I love, and I will meditate on your statutes. I remember thinking, reading this and thinking, what, who loves commandments? How is such a thing possible? Psalm 48, I delight to do your will, oh my God, your law is within my heart. This one especially got me. Psalm 12, speaking of the righteous man, whose delight is the law of the Lord. What? Who delights in laws? Who sits around looking at laws? Lawyers, judges, maybe, I don't know. Who just go, man, I love reading this book of laws. Wow, this is so, I just, I'm delighting in this. I do it all day long. I just live for it. I can't wait to get up and read the law in the morning. Who likes doing stuff like that? That sounds terribly tedious and awful. Why?

What I wanna do this is a fundamental different understanding of obedience. His delight is in the law of the Lord. Here's Jeremiah 15, 16. Your words were found and I ate them and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, oh Lord God of hosts. That's gonna become important here in a second. Roman 722, here's from New Testament, for I delight in the law of God in my inner being. First John 5, 3, for this is the love of God. In other words, this is what love of God looks like. That we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. The way we think about commandments, laws, obedience, as we think of it as a heavy weight, I've gotta do all of this to measure up. I gotta please God in some way. Gotta do all the right things. Just one more thing to do. In fact, a lot of people, that's how they experience church through a guilt trip. Heard about what I'm not doing again. Gotta add that to my life. Gotta add this to my life. Gotta start doing this. Gotta start doing that. And everything feels like a burden. My God is just throwing more on top

of the more responsibility, more expectation. And He's constantly disappointed in you, constantly frowning at you, constantly with His arms crossed, looking at you. Like you're not doing it right. You're not doing enough. Start doing more. That's how a lot of people feel about obedience. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of obedience. Let me help you understand the difference. And the serpent has twisted this in our minds from the very beginning. He's twisted how we think about God. The very first temptation. Do you know what the serpent said? Did God really say you couldn't eat from the fruit of any of the trees in the garden? Well, immediately, he's twisting God's words. God didn't say you couldn't eat from any tree in the garden. He said you can't eat from the fruit of that tree. But then he said, God doesn't want you to eat of it because He knows that you'll become like Him. In other words, God's holding out on you. He's trying to keep something good back from you. This is, if we're honest, how a lot of us feel about God. If I actually did it, my life would be over. I would have no more fun, something good. I would lose something good in my life rather than the opposite, which is I have something good prepared for you. So think about it like this, imagine for a second that after this service, I went out

to the little playground out here, you've seen our new playground out there, little preschool playground. Imagine I went out there to some of your kids, and I just started giving them commands. Hey, knock that off. Stop doing this. I lost them around, just started throwing out commandments that I wanted them to obey. First of all, how do you think they would respond? First of all, most of them are probably just going to ignore me. The ones that do stop and even hear my voice are going to look at me like I'm crazy. Who is this giant who's trying to tell me what to do? You're not my mom. You're not my dad. That's how they're going to think. And rightfully so. They will not listen to me why, because they have no relationship with me. We don't know each other. They don't know me. I don't know them. Now contrast that with me sitting down with my own kids. Who I have relationship with, who I love. They know I love them. And when I sit down with them and I say, hey, listen, I want to talk to you about something. Can I just ask you to consider something different? Can I challenge you to maybe not do that anymore? I've got three adult kids right now. My three oldest kids are 24, 22, and 20. And even still as I'm parenting adult kids, I have an open door into their life. It doesn't mean they always hear eagerly what I'm saying. It doesn't mean that what I have to say is always exactly right, but they give me respect and they take into consideration what I'm saying.

Why? Because I'm their father. And I think at least they know that what I'm asking for from them, I at least believe it will be good for them. They may have a different opinion, but they can trust that Dad wants what's best for me. He's not trying to hurt me. He wants what's best for me. This is how obedience can supersede understanding. How can I obey when I don't understand? How can I obey when it's difficult? This is how it has to be on the basis of relationship. If I trust that you're good and that what you want for me is better than what I want for myself, then I can say yes to your commandment. I can even find delight in your commandment. How? Because I know that your commandments are for my good. You're not trying to hold me back. You're trying to set me free. Well, what did James say, a man who looks into the perfect law, and then he called it the law of anybody remember the next word? Liberty. Wait a minute. That's a crazy notion about laws. I don't think about laws like that, do you? Laws I think are meant to lock up, to restrain, but this law is different. This law sets free. You know, I've noticed my family and I, my kids, and I mostly, we like watching true crime documentaries on basically every streaming platform that we can find them. Do anybody else a documentary junkie? We watched these.

We watched one just last night, crazy stuff going on in people's lives. I mean, it's crazy out there. It is. You know what I was telling my kids? We were watching a documentary, a tragic story, I won't even go into it, absolute tragedy. You know how it all begins? Sin. Stupid, sinful choices unlock chaos in families. Some of you, this has been your heritage, it's where you've come from. You've reaped hell because of decisions, sinful choices that someone before you made. Now, you get a choice in the here and now about what's going to happen in your life and family going forward, but these sinful choices, they multiply. I was stopping my son who's about to go back to fact today. He's on his way right now with other, they're driving back to Phoenix. He's headed back to college for sophomore year. I was just saying, Eliot, sin multiplies consequences in people's lives, notice it. They made this choice and it unlocks a door for all sorts of things. Is God gracious? He absolutely is, but when we don't live according to his commandments, we pay the price. There's hell to pay. Sin is hard. Scripture says the way of the transgressor is hard. This is not to say that there's not joy in it for a moment, that there's not some pleasure it for a season, but the end result is It doesn't lead you where you think it will take you. So God's commands can be a delight because you know where they're taking you. Imagine that you were headed down a road and you were moving quickly and you didn't realize that the bridge was out up ahead

and that if you kept driving, you're gonna die. And there's some kind soul who loved you enough to get in the middle of the road and flag you down and say, do not go that direction. Is that love or are they trying to hold you back? It's love. That's exactly what God is doing with His commands. Do you not understand this? When you start seeing God as a father through the lens of relationship, do you realize this is what separates Christianity from every other world religion? In Islam, in Hinduism, God does not become one of us. We don't have a personal relationship with Him. God is out there. God is at a distance. God is someone whose laws we're trying to measure up to and live up to and into His expectations. It's only in Christianity that God took on flesh and blood and got down in the dirt with us. Said, you can have a relationship with me. I want to know you. I want you to know me. Now that's a whole different kind of religion. That's a whole different kind of faith. It's not based on religious performance. It's based on devotion and love. And this is a game changer. When you realize this, you start obeying

from a completely different place. Here's the principle. Obedience, apart from relationship, produces behavior, modification. Some of you, this is all you've known. Your obedience is merely behavior modification. It's not done out of love for God. It's done because maybe the circumstances of life are pressing down on you've got to stop looking at poor and can't last anymore. Don't want to get angry anymore. All you're doing is white knuckling and this will produce at best behavior modification. Again, I see this. Particularly from time to time when there's maybe a couple where the husband often is the one who has stepped out on his wife in some way. And she's found out, blown up the marriage, trust is broken in a deep and profound way. He wants to make things right. So what does he do? They start coming to church. I'll come to church, I'll get really good. I'll do exactly what the preacher says. I'll serve the Lord. I gotta get my life back on track. So they show up and they start trying to live right. And the hope is that their wife will eventually see it and respond and forgive and things can go back to the way that they were.

But often it doesn't work like that. And what they're faced with is this choice. Were you doing this only so that your wife would love you again or are you doing it because you see the value in living like the Lord says to live? Which is it? See what I mean? Two different reasons for obedience. One is to get what I want. The other is to become who the Lord wants me to be. Totally different, fundamental, fundamentally different motivation. Are you trying to become like Christ because you desire relationship with Him and you wanna look like Him? Or you just want the Lord to answer your prayer. And it would be a great start to be honest and say to be honest with you, I really just want God to answer my prayer. Great, that's at least a starting point. Now you're being honest. But the reason that your change doesn't work, your obedience doesn't work, is because it's not based on relationship. It's merely behavior modification in order to get God to show up in your life in some kind of way. There's a difference though. Obedience on the basis of relationship produces character transformation.

When I become convinced that God's way is best, whether my wife ever forgives me or not, whether this marriage lasts or not, whether I get healed or not, whether the Lord shows up and provides a miracle or not, if God answers my prayer or He doesn't in the way that I want Him to, it does not matter, I will not let go, I am pursuing you, I wanna become like Christ, give your character to me, I wanna change, I love you because you have loved me. Now that's what Christianity is. It's not playing some religious game, trying to get God to show up and pass out a treat, it is realizing that there is no future and there is no hope, apart from Christ, I must surrender, I give my life to you. Whatever the result may be, I believe that your way is better than my way, and that's really what humility and obedience is. It's saying, all right, Lord, you get to direct my life, I'm not going to direct it anymore. Now here's point number three, I don't wanna park on this for a minute, we'll close here, obedience begets wisdom. And interestingly, the other leads to the one. There's like a cycle. Obedience produces wisdom, but the more wise I get, guess what? The more obedient I become.

Now it reminds me of the verse that we talked about a couple of weeks ago. This is Matthew 724, I just love this. I keep thinking about this, meditating on this. This is Jesus speaking. And it's exactly what we've been talking about. Everyone who hears, who hears these words of mine and does them, there's the connection between hearing and doing that we've been talking about. But look at what he says, he will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. Like, he doesn't say, and I think this is interesting, you will be a wise man. He says you'll be like a wise man. This is fascinating. This is because, and this is such an interesting phenomenon, so backwards from what we think, that action produces belief rather than the other way around. We think that belief produces action, but did you know that action can actually produce belief? The putting things into practice can actually change the way that you feel. We think that if it's gonna be real, I gotta feel it first, and then I'll do it. Just opposite biblically, do it. And then watch and see if you don't feel it. So I saw this play out, I don't know if you've seen this. And I'm gonna try, I forgot it again. There's a guy's name, Brian something or other. He's in New York City, he was an atheist.

And he's been on like, I don't know, TikTok, Instagram, lately going, I'm gonna do 30 days, have you seen this? I'm just pretending like I'm a Christian. I'm no Christian, I don't believe any of this, but I'm just gonna try it. And so here's what he said. I'm gonna put some four things into practice. I don't believe any of this. I don't believe in God at all, but I'm just gonna try it. And see if somehow Christian life, like this practice, action actually makes me feel any different, it was a social experiment. And he would be honest now and say, a lot of it he was doing, just to get the clicks, but he tried it. Here's what he said he was gonna do. Every day he was gonna wake up, he was gonna pray. Just gonna pray, and talk to God. There's a video on day one, I watched it last night, where he's praying and he's going, that felt weird, but he did it anyway. He's using Christian words, he doesn't believe them, but he's doing the word. Then the second thing that he's gonna do is he's gonna practice gratitude. This begins with just thanking God for his cat, thanking God for a beautiful day. One of the realizations that he had

is that culturally speaking, have you heard this? We gotta practice gratitude, it's for the wellness culture. Gotta practice gratitude. Who exactly are we thankful to? The phrase isn't thank. It's thank you. Who is you? I have friends who are far from God right now. And I look at their lives, they're so dark. And I think a huge part of it is because they have no one to be thankful to. All they see is brokenness. The only world they know is a world of pain and darkness and evil. They don't see anyone to say thank you. To imagine going your whole life and never saying thank you to anyone for anything. There could be no, how would that shape you? It shapes you in profound ways. He learned this early on, just starting to say thank you to God. So he's walking around, he doesn't even believe in Jesus. Thank you Jesus for this beautiful day. Thank you God for breath in my lungs. Like just stuff like that. Then the third thing was he said I'm gonna read about Jesus. So he started reading scripture. Day one was he was reading about Jesus being nailed to the cross and forgiving the people that had nailed him to the cross. And he says as I'm reading this, he said it reminded me that I have a friend

that I have kind of been sideways with. I've been ghosting them a little bit. I reached out to them, I'm gonna send them a text. And just say hey, I forgive you and ask them to forgive me. And then fourth is I'm just gonna do what Jesus would do. I'm just gonna put his words into practice. Part of what he does, he just went around cleaning up his neighborhood, just picking up trash. Just carrying for the space in the world that he occupies. That was day one. Day eight, he's just like growing this. Just keeps reading scripture by day 20. He's on there in tears. And he says I'm not pretending anymore, you guys. This is real. He's become a Christian. How? How? How does it happen? He started acting like a Christian. So we don't think that this is how it works. We think I gotta believe it, then I'll do it. Now how did you just start acting like it? Some of you in the room, I dare you to take the next 30 days and act like a Christian and see what happens. This young man is putting many actual, or what they would claim to be, true Christians to shame. He's actually practicing the simple gospel. He's putting these practices in place. I dare you to try it for 30 days.

See if what the Lord says will happen, will happen. See if things don't change. Just try it out. Give it a go. Find out if action doesn't lead to belief. Some of you have grown up in a Christian home. I don't know how old you are, 16, 17, 18, you're like me. One foot in the church, one foot in the world. You've been fearful to go all in with Christ because you're afraid it's gonna make you lame and boring. And you wanna have a little bit of fun. I'd say you're sort of playing games with your faith. You yo-yo, there's a big youth night and you get ulterior and then you go back to your old way and you just keep doing this. I wanna dare you. Act like a Christian for 30 days. See what would happen. Do what this man was doing. Spend time in the morning in prayer. Spend time reading scripture. Spend time saying thank you to the Lord and then put what you read into practice. See what happens. What have you got to lose? What are you risking? Just try it and see what happens. Here's what's interesting about this man. As he's been doing this and people have seen his journey, there's all of these other people on social media going,

all right, I'll try it now. Day one, day two, day 10 of acting like a Christian. I love it. Action can precede belief. Just act like a wise man. You wanna know how to be wise? Act like somebody who is wise? You don't have to have a theological master's degree. You don't have to be brilliant. You can just start doing what a wise person would do and guess what? You will become like a wise man. This is how it works. When you put the word into practice, the Lord shows up. He proves himself. It starts to become real to you. The reason that for so many of us, none of this is real is because it's never made it from here to here to here. We're not doing it. We think we believe it, but we're not living it out. So that's my challenge to you. Put it in to practice and see what the Lord does. I dare you. I'm confident. I give you a money-back guarantee. It's the doing that makes the difference. Would you bow your heads, close your eyes. Let me pray for us. Father in heaven, we're so grateful.

Thank you. In fact, Lord, I think it's just good right now, church, so we just take a moment. 'Cause I think all of us can acknowledge us. Lord, there's some gaps. Between what I say, I believe and what I'm doing. You profess Christ. You would call yourself a Christian, but you know, there's some obvious areas. I'm not talking about a stumble here and there. There's some habitual stuff that's going on. Lord needs to change. Not given my life to you, not fully. We all repent. We repent. Forgive us, Lord, for playing games with our faith, for professing the gospel, but not living it out. Lord, thank you for your correction and your discipline, which are not meant to destroy or harm, but to heal, to bring back into relationship, to restore, to give life. Lord, we trust you. We see that you're good. Oh, we were still sinners. Christ died for us. You don't ask us to obey, separated from promise. Your promise always precedes your commandment. You have devoted yourself to us. We can see that because you stretched out your arms and spilled your own blood.

How could we doubt your commitment? Lord, we offer ourselves back to you. If that's you and you're in the room and you just say, "What?" Lord has really convicted me today. I'm out of big gap between my actions And I'm just acknowledging that before the Lord. I'm ready to get serious. I'm putting this into practice. If that's you, I'm not gonna have you stand up. Would you just throw your hand up all over this room? Just say, "What, that's me?" Yeah, hands everywhere. Wonderful. Thank you. Lord, you've seen our hearts. You know our situation. You know what we're walking through, Lord, a pray. Quickness this week to put these things into practice. Not to just hear a sermon on a Sunday and forget it by Monday, but to really, really do the word. Lord, as we do, I know you are eager and faithful to show up and to show you off your goodness, your mercy, your grace. Thank you, Lord. We'll get a taste and see that you are good. In Jesus' name we pray and everybody's said, amen. As we close, our prayer team is gonna be down front. Two things, if you're ready to get serious

about your relationship with God, maybe you raised your hand today, or maybe you're going through something. You got like a big need, maybe, or a small one, either way, but you just, you need somebody to pray with you. We've got our prayer team down front. We would love to be able to do pray with you about whatever it is that you're walking through. And if you're ready to get serious about your relationship with God, come down front. We've got a little book for you. Just called, "What does it mean to be saved?" This is free, we're not trying to get your information to rope you back into coming here. All we want is to be able to resource you with this book. So just come forward and say, hey, can I get that? Copy that book that Pastor mentioned. Maybe you want it for a friend, a co-worker, a son or a daughter, whatever, grab this. We'd be happy to give you one of these. You can come down front and grab it at the close of the service. Stand to your feet. [MUSIC PLAYING] We're going to close with this blessing out of Numbers chapter 6 and Church on the New Tradition. We like to say it out loud together as we close our services every week. So here we go. You can say it with me, the Lord bless you and keep you.

The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. God bless you. I love you. We'll see you next week. You're dismissed. Thank you so much for watching this message from Church on the Move Tosa. We really hope it encouraged you to take a step toward Jesus. Church on the Move is a family of churches in Northeast Oklahoma eat with its own in-person pastor. We love our Bibles, learning and community, and taking steps toward Jesus. If you live in the area, we would love for you to join us in person. For more information, check out our website at churchonthemove.com. Or we've got a few videos we think you might like. Check them out here. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] (upbeat music)