To Be More Like Jesus | Power for More | Rick Atchley

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Welcome to the hills. Pastor Rick here, greeting everyone that's online who's watching. And a lot of people are with us today at our four campuses in Dallas and West Fort Worth, Keller, and North Richland Hills. I am thrilled that you are here. Last week was a blessing. Jamie and I went to New York City. I'm on the management team for Brave Church, and we got to spend some great time with this couple who sends their greetings. Manny and Marlene Dominguez are doing well. Brave Church is less than four months old. They've already had 15 baptisms. They're averaging about 300 people a Sunday. They've had 60 people sign up for Alpha to learn more about God. So they're off to a great start. Now, Manny has made a very wise decision, and that is this first year as he's establishing the DNA of the church,

he's not going to travel much. He's going to preach almost every Sunday in New York City. But I've already asked and invited him next year to come back and see us, and he's accepted, and we look forward to that. Because it is a season of invitations, right? This is the time of year, more than any other, where it seems like almost every day another invitation shows up in the mail. Bridal showers, and baby showers, wedding ceremonies, graduations. And these are all really, really happy events. But be honest, sometimes when you get an invitation in the mail, aren't you just a little worn out of one more thing to put on your busy schedule? And so don't you wish sometimes you would get an invitation that gave you more than two options? Most invitations are STP, I can come, I can't come. What if you had these options? Happily attend, regretfully decline, resentfully attend, eagerly decline, and the ever popular, choose not to respond, but I might show up at the last minute. I bring this up because some act like Jesus' invitation, follow me. Has more than two responses. I just bought a field. I just got married, need to wait until my dad dies. And honestly, I'm not that into discipleship, but I love the buffets with fishes and loaves.

When's the next one? When you read the gospels closely though, you realize that Jesus, when he said, follow me, only accepted two answers. Be with me, become like me, learn to do what I did, yes or no. And I would argue the greatest failure of the church today, especially in the West, is our inability to grasp that there's only two answers to what Jesus is offering. I believe the greatest crisis facing the church today, it's not legalism, and it's not liberalism, or any other kind of ism, it is a failure formation. And almost every pastor I talk to says the last 10 years exacerbated by the pandemic has made it clear a lot of people in our churches don't care about trying to be like Christ. We now have made it possible to identify as a Christian without any intention. of representing Christ. How did we get to this place? And how does the Holy Spirit get us to a better place? We're in week four of a six-week study of the Holy Spirit, Power for More, and I want to share with you today what I believe is the greatest miracle the Holy Spirit offers. But first, we've got to answer the question, how did we get to

this place? How did we get to the place where you can identify as a Christian and not even try to be like Jesus? I think there's two big challenges. One is what I would call viewing the gospel as transaction. This understanding of the gospel makes the aim believing something without necessarily becoming something. And the purpose of this gospel is to make sure you get your ticket to heaven. That's all that matters. In some churches, you say something. In some churches, you pray something. In some churches, you do something. But all that matters is, I got my ticket to heaven. Now, how I live the rest of the time is pretty irrelevant. The main thing is, I got my ticket. And today, in America, when most

people identify as Christian, that's what they mean. Polling has shown that an enormous percentage of people that identify as Christian don't even go to church. That identity has nothing to do with how they live their lives. They're not trying to put on the character of Christ, and this is why they support people who don't show the character of Christ, because they've got their ticket. And the Holy Spirit is quenched when people want to be saved, but they don't want to be changed. This is a distorted gospel that makes, just don't go to hell, the only priority. And Jesus doesn't accept it. He does not accept that option for responding to His invitation. You can read the Gospels for yourself. Never one time does Jesus save anybody and then say, let's not focus on molding your

character. Let's just focus on holding on to your ticket. To follow Jesus means that you're radically different from someone who does not have the Holy Spirit living inside them. Paul put it like this. You put off your old self, and you put on the new self, created to be like God. The true gospel is gonna offer forgiveness and formation, believing something that leads to becoming something. But if this is what Jesus expects, then why do our attempts at behavior modification typically end in frustration? If you took a psychology class in college, you've heard the name Robert Cole. He's probably the best-known psychologist in the country. He tells a story of teaching a class at Harvard. And he has a friend who's a psychologist who was complaining.

I've got a client. He came to me 15 years ago mean, angry, self-centered. And after 15 years of therapy, he is mean and angry and self-centered. But now he knows why. We've explored all the childhood drama that produced adult dysfunction, but he's still a very unpleasant person. And so, Cole's asked his class two questions. Number one, is it possible that what that man needs is not information but transformation? Second question, and is transformation of a human being possible? And you know what he means. It's hard to be a different person than your flesh wants to be. My wife tells a story. We're in our first year of marriage, of wrestling with this. All of us who've been married know that first year's hard because you don't know how

selfish you really are until you do life with somebody 24 seven. And she told me later that first year, she prayed a prayer, and that prayer was, Lord, I know how to be nice on a date, but I don't think I can be nice all the time. Most of our attempts at behavior modification wind up in frustration, and here's why. Because the power of the flesh is stronger than the... the intentions of the will. And that leads to a second challenge, a mistake. One is viewing the gospel as a transaction, but the second is pursuing what I would call externally-focused transformation. You've heard the word legalism. Most people say, yeah, that's when you try to earn your salvation. That's trying to work a human effort to produce your salvation.

That's true. We're saved by grace. But I'm going to suggest there is a more common and more toxic version of legalism. And it's not trusting your own work for salvation. It's trusting your own work for sanctification, which is a long word for trying to become like Jesus. And some people here in church you get saved by grace and you stay saved by grit. We got a lot of new Christians in our church, a lot of people just been baptized. We got to teach them how to live right. So we give them a bunch of rules and a whole lot of don't do that anymore. And it is rule-oriented and it's guilt-motivated and it's short-lived because it is an outside-in attempt at becoming more like Jesus.

There's a book in your New Testament called Galatians. Paul wrote this to these people that were outside of normal Jewish territory. They had been pagans and lived a pagan lifestyle their whole lives, and now they become Christians. And they've never known how to be moral, ethical people. And there's a few Jewish Christians and they say, we've got the answer. Law of Moses. Just do what it says. And Paul is furious. And he writes and he says, how foolish can you be? After starting your new lives in the spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort? Stay saved by grit. Over 10 years ago, there was a lawsuit in Virginia. A school board had put up a poster in a school with the Ten Commandments

and some families sued. And I don't want to get into that bait, so don't email me. That's not why I'm telling the story. I'm telling the story because of what the judge thought was a brilliant compromise. He said, just take the first four commandments off the poster. Take off anything that mentions God and just leave the rules like don't steal and don't lie. Now, what's the problem with that? Show me any culture in history that got rid of God and became more virtuous. You cannot live a moral, virtuous life without an understanding of where this idea of what's right and wrong comes from. The Christian life isn't difficult. It's impossible. You can't live for God unless you live from God. In other words, Christlikeness cannot be produced by us. It's got to be produced in us. And so just as we need Jesus for eternal life,

we agree with that, don't we, church? Amen. We need Jesus for eternal life. Listen to me. We need the Holy Spirit for internal life. Unless the only reason you're a Christian is to not go to hell. If that's your only priority, then you don't need the Holy Spirit. But if your goal is to put on the new self, then you're going to need some supernatural help to get dressed because your will is not stronger than the pull of the flesh. But the Holy Spirit supplies power for more. Listen to Paul. If you use your lives to do the wrong things your sinful selves want, you will die spiritually. But if you use the Spirit's help to stop doing the wrong things you do with your body, you'll have true life. The true children of God

are those who let God's Spirit lead them. Becoming more like Jesus is the outworking of the indwelling Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit has one agenda for you. To help you be with Jesus and become like Jesus and do a whole lot more of what Jesus does. He wants to get us to a better place. How does he do that? I'm going to show you three ways. First, the Holy Spirit will retrain your brain because the journey to the new you begins in headquarters. You need to change your mind about the possibility of changing your mind. Paul, Ephesians 4, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. And this is critical because contemplation always precedes transformation. Let me put it this way. You will not be able to sustain a new kind of living if you maintain an old kind of thinking. Oh my, what I just said. This explains why so many of you have tried to be more like Jesus in some part of your life, and it failed because you cannot sustain a new kind of living as long as you maintain

an old kind of thinking. Listen to Paul. Those who live following their sinful selves think only about things their sinful selves want. Now let me tell you, your flesh is always telling you what to think about. Your flesh wants what it wants, and it wants you to think about it all the time. But those who live following the Spirit are thinking about the things the Spirit wants them to do. If people's thinking is controlled by the sinful self, there's death. But if your thinking is controlled by the Spirit, there's life and peace. You see, you cannot consistently behave in a way that is out of alignment with what you consistently believe. You've heard WWJD, what would Jesus do? It's a great question, but a question comes before that question, WWJT. What would Jesus think? I've seen this in my own life. So many parts of my behavior that I wanted to change that I could not change until I learned a new way to think, to let the Holy Spirit retrain my brain. For example, I'm a recovering people pleaser, and as a young preacher, it was a killer. Praise from people would puff me up. Criticism people would beat me down. I had to retrain my brain. The Holy Spirit had to teach me to live from my blessing and not

for a blessing. To start every day remembering I am loved by God, and so I can love you and not need to get anything back. Another thing the Holy Spirit had to teach me was that people are not my enemy. They are the captives and the victim of my enemy. And so I don't need to hate anybody, no matter how they act to me, because people are not my enemy. And maybe most of all, the Holy Spirit had to teach me that outcomes do not get to determine my outlook. Now, that's not a natural way to think. The flesh thinks I cannot live the life I'm meant to live until I get the life I want to have. You hear this all the time. Why do you live like that? Why do you do what you do? Why did you act that way? And always there's a reason, because there's something out there that's keeping me from being the person I ought to be. I can't live how I'm supposed to live because I don't have the life I want to have. The flesh produces a character that is tethered to circumstances. The Spirit says nothing that is going on outside of you can take away what's growing inside of you. When Jesus said, follow me, it was not a promise to arrange the outside of your life like you want. It was a promise for the power to arrange the inside of your life like God wants. And let me tell you, this is real freedom.

Real freedom is when I have the capacity to be the best version of me, no matter what's going on out there. No matter how difficult the circumstance or how difficult the person, that cannot keep me from being the best version of me. But it starts in headquarters. You have to let the Holy Spirit retrain your brain. And next, the Holy Spirit will rewire your desire. Now, you know how the flesh thinks. You do you. Follow your heart. Obey your thirst, which is such lousy advice because the flesh thirsts for so many things that are toxic. that are poison. And yet Jesus did not put a big emphasis on the stop it ministry. Just stop it. You know why? Because ought to is not a strong enough motivation to produce sustainable life change. The Holy Spirit must provide the power to turn ought to into want to. And if you don't make that shift, no matter how hard you try, the flesh will always win. Listen to Paul. Let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won't be doing what your sinful nature craves. The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit, notice, the Spirit gives us desires that are opposite of what the sinful nature desires. You see, what that old self wants is just natural. What the new self needs is supernatural. God, my willpower is not strong enough to overcome what my flesh wants. God says, well, then I'll do something about that. I'll give you new desires. He promised it in the Old Testament. In the book of Ezekiel, God said, I'll give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I'll remove from me your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Listen, God is not saying my law is worthless. My God is good and holy. I'm not going to put it aside. I'm going to put it inside. I'm going to take ought to and I'm going to turn it into want to. Personal example. Like many of you as a young

person, I love music. I listen to music all the time in my car or wherever I was. My two favorite genres were rock and country. So my teen years, my college years, even my young adult years, I was always listening to music. And can I be honest? A lot of the popular music was raunchy. And I told myself what you tell yourself. That I can let sewage go into my brain, but I won't get dirty. And you could have given me ten sermons on stop it. You ought to. Wouldn't matter because I didn't want to. But then I began to seek more of the Spirit's leading in my life. Began to pursue the person of God more. And I remember one day I'm in my car and I'm just listening to a popular song and the Holy Spirit just said to me, you'd be embarrassed to listen to that song if Jesus was in his car. And I, I mean, I became almost nauseous. And so don't even ask me who won the Grammys. I don't know anymore. I don't listen to popular music. I'm not judging you that you do. But I'm not missing anything. I listen to praise music and I listen to things that will build up my life in Christ. I don't want to put anything foul in my brain. Several years ago, I got a great testimony of an older man who came to me. He was just an honest pastor. I didn't like your church when I came. I was raised as a racist. I grew up in a racist church. And I walked into your church and I didn't like what I saw, but I liked your preaching. So I kept coming back and something happened and God started to work on me. And the more I came, the more I thought this church is beautiful. And he made this comment to me. He said, I've reached a point now where I don't ever again want to go to a church where everyone looks just like me. A sermon to stop it did not change him. The Holy Spirit gave him a new one to. Now you need to know, I typically finish my sermons about three days before I preach them and I go over them. And only about 2% of the time do I ever add something to a sermon I've already finished. You're about to get one of those times. So I'm going over my sermon on Thursday, and I come to this point, and the Holy Spirit said, bring up pornography. And I said, I don't really want to go there.

And the Holy Spirit said, that was not a request. I'm not looking for feedback. So we're going to go there. Pornography is the most toxic cancer in our country today. It's destroying our country. It's destroying our families. It's rampant in churches. Any pastor who says there's no porn problem in my church is lying. And that includes our church. And not just men. Women struggle, too. And I feel like the Lord gave me two strong things to say to you right now. Number one, the Lord understands it's hard. You didn't want to click on that link again. You told yourself you weren't going to. You did. You had a temporary thrill and then a lot of guilt. And you said, well, I'm going to try harder. And it's not working. And the Lord wants you to hear. The answer isn't run from pornography. The answer is run to God. You have got to want to be so full of the Holy Spirit that that desire for something that obscene just has no room anymore. And the Lord wants me to tell you something else. He is not disgusted with you. He is sad because he misses you. And your secret sin is interfering with the intimacy God wants to have with you. God wants to be close with you. You see, obedience isn't compliance. Obedience is holy defiance of that flesh in pursuit of a greater thirst.

Listen again to Paul. For God is working in you. Notice he's given you the desire and the power to do what pleases him. A theology professor was giving his class an exam. One hour, 30 minutes on the Holy Spirit, 30 minutes on the devil. One kid turned in his paper. He wrote the whole hour on the Holy Spirit and wrote at the bottom, had no time for the devil. This is what happens when we begin to be filled with the Spirit of God. But even if you don't have time for the devil, becoming like Jesus takes time. And so the third thing the Spirit will do is reboot your fruit. Let me explain what I mean. John 15, remain in me and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it's severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me. Yes, I'm the vine. You're the branches. Those who remain in me and I in them will produce much fruit. Notice three times Jesus said, remain in me. So what he's saying is that character transformation takes time. It's a process. Now, Jesus healed people immediately. You were lame. You were blind. He would immediately heal you. But Jesus never went to anyone and said, I immediately give you the character of Christ. That's a process. Growing fruit's a work of the Spirit over time. And legalistic approaches will work faster, but they won't work longer. Here's a rule. Follow it. Stop it.

But it doesn't last. Fruit that lasts grows from the inside out. Here's what that fruit looks like. The Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives. Love and joy, peace and patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. None of those things grow naturally. When life is hard, I don't naturally have joy. When people are rude, I don't naturally want to be patient and gentle. These things grow because we are remaining in Christ. And when that flesh wants to respond, the Spirit is there to reboot my fruit. The flesh wants to respond. Oh, wait. The Spirit just reminded me how Jesus would think. Flesh wants to respond. Wait. The Spirit just... gave me a new desire, a new want to. Flesh wants to respond, but the Spirit just gave me the strength to live supernaturally. In other words, the Holy Spirit is there to help me act fruity. And please notice, most of the fruit pertains to how we treat people, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control. This is because there's difficult people in your life. In fact, God wants so much for you to look more like Jesus. Here's what God's going to do. God is going to put difficult people in your life so you can let the Holy Spirit make you more fruity. We've all got these people, right? You say, Pastor, I don't have any difficult people

in my life. That's because you're the difficult person God is putting in someone else's life. The rest of us have difficult people. But understand, Jesus said, follow me. He didn't say, get your ticket. He said, would you like to have a radically formed life that looks more like God? It's not natural, but it's possible. Listen again to Paul. Now, the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory, are being transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory. Notice it's a process. It comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. It's happening. Not immediately, but definitely it's happening. If we remain in Jesus, and if we ask the Holy Spirit to lead us, we're becoming more fruity. Another version just says we're being changed to be like Him. And this is the greatest miracle of the Spirit. Now, I've told you, I believe in all the miracles of the Spirit. I believe in all the gifts of the Spirit. The Spirit still heals people. The Spirit still gives dreams and visions. The Spirit still gives prophetic words. But the greatest miracle, the Holy Spirit still does. See, it takes people like you and me, and over time,

we start looking more like Jesus. The church father, Augustine, was a very profligate young man until he met Jesus. Shortly after his conversion, he's walking down a street in Milan, Italy, past a prostitute that he had been with in his old life, and she thought he was going to stop. He walks past her, and she calls out, Augustine, it is I. And he kept walking, never turned around, and said, yes, but it is no longer I. God does not just want to reveal Himself to you. God wants to reveal Yourself to you. Not the old you, but the new you that you are becoming. And the world needs this so much. The world needs the witness of a people who are full of something besides themselves. See, what God is doing in you is not just for you. So please don't you do you. Instead, just do Christ in you. Let the Holy Spirit dress you this week in your new self. He's not going to make you look weird. He's going to make you look like Jesus. And remember this. There is somebody in your life who desperately needs to see what a real Christian is like. So bow your heads. Ask the Holy Spirit right now to help you dress like your new self. And my guess is there's a part of your life that you know has been a struggle and ought to, isn't going to cut it.

So ask the Holy Spirit to come into that part of your life and retrain your brain and rewire your desire. And so, God, we thank you. We thank you for salvation. We thank you for finding us right where we were. But God, we thank you that you wouldn't let us stay where we were, that you're calling us to something that's the best version of us, the Jesus-resembling version of us. We can't get there by willpower, God. We need supernatural help. We need the Holy Spirit to help us, God. And so, please, especially in that part of our life where the flesh is the loudest, help us this week to listen to the Holy Spirit. Because we want someone to see us and say, if that's what a Christian is, I want to follow Jesus too. We pray this for His namesake and glory. Amen.