Thank you.
Thank you for you, too, for the whole family.
And I'm very grateful for the team that go to Africa.
You know, we pray for each of them.
And the missionaries, our missionary from Middleton Baptist,
you know, our pastor and the whole team, Police, Brother Bob,
George, and the more the other churches, they go over there.
But I'm very grateful and I'm very excited, you know, to hear the
preaching tonight.
Thank you, Pastor, for your dedication for the Lord.
Amen.
I mean, that was going to be my testimony.
I'm so thankful to be here.
We have been through a lot of stuff that has been an uphill battle
at times.
The Lord has helped us through all of our problems.
I mean, we had one thing after another to get here and get the house
sold over there.
We had issues with crazy inspections that we didn't think
we were going to have any issues.
We thought this was going to be a smooth ride.
There's nothing wrong with the house.
It should go.
And then they wanted some crazy things, and we said, that's
not going to be a smooth ride.
And the Lord, one by one, worked out those problems.
So we are.
We are praising God that we are here.
We are so thankful that we are here today.
That is for sure.
Anyone else?
I just want to thank the Lord for the children at this church.
It's just amazing, you know, for the most part, how they are learning
and growing.
And also, it was so much fun yesterday at the tie dye event.
I really wish more people would have come out, but it really
was a lot of fun.
So we're also very blessed by the Salt sisters that plan these
activities and volunteer to carry them through.
Amen.
Pretty cool.
Well, Last chance.
Oh, we got one more.
It just takes a little bit of time.
I know you're thinking some of you want to do a testimony, but I'm
thankful.
We went to Sight and Sound the other day and just to see the way
they bring it to life.
And.
And the story of sound started out with Moses and then Joshua and
how the Lord provided for the children of Israel.
And then you look at them and you think, how can you complain?
But speaking for myself, other people too, probably we do the same
thing.
You know, we forget all the ways that God has blessed us and
been faithful.
Amen.
All right, if that's all that we're going to do, I. I can pray.
Brother Carlos, you don't have to come up here.
I was just thinking about that.
I might as well just go ahead and do it.
We'll go ahead and pray.
And we will begin.
So one thing that I will mention, Brother Lee had to go to
the hospital with to take his mother in law so he asked me to make
mention of that tonight and just to tell everyone because they
were.
I don't have any other updates for you.
He hasn't said anything.
He just told me to pray that they were headed towards the hospital.
That was about 3, 3 o', clock, no 2:20 this afternoon.
Whenever they took her, she goes by the nickname Bunny if you're
familiar with her.
But it looked as if she was having a heart attack.
I have another praise that I could give.
My mother as well had an issue over the weekend and something with
her medicine that she was taking and low sodium and she had
to be rushed to the hospital midnight on Friday I believe it was
and they were trying to observe her but she's looks like
everything is going good there.
So I praising the Lord for that.
I know you weren't privy to that or had any chance to pray but
the Lord our God knows our needs and he's working all the time.
So let's pray now and we'll begin this evening.
Our heavenly Father, Lord, thank you so much that we can come
here today, that we can be here at this church, Lord, that we
could praise your name and look at your word, Lord, and thank
you for the testimonies that we've heard tonight, Lord, just the
many different things that we and how we are blessed.
We're blessed in this ministry, Lord, we're blessed in
this country.
Blessed to be working for the kingdom alongside one another and
doing all that we can for the gospel, Lord, and just the the many
avenues that you have here that are open to us, Lord.
And Lord, you bless us still in providing for us and in the things
that we have in our daily lives and the needs that we encounter,
Lord, just as you did for the children of Israel or that same God
that provided so great an escape, Lord, so great a rescue ward
is the same God who is willing to show us mercy and provide greatly
for us.
Well we do pray for brother Weed, Mother Ma and Susan, Mother
Lord, just as they went to the hospital.
We don't know anything Lord.
We pray for your healing.
Pray that you give the doctors wisdom, Lord, as they they stay there
and try to diagnose and figure out what all has happened more and
what they can do.
We just ask for your mercies there.
We ask that you would help us tonight as we look at your word.
We ask these things in Jesus name.
Amen.
All right, turn in Your Bibles to Philippians chapter two.
Philippians chapter.
What is success?
It's a debatable answer, debatable question that probably
will get many answers.
This morning we talked about where practical Christian living
begins.
And we saw that Christian life is not lived by self effort, but
by yielding ourselves to the Holy Spirit.
So the question naturally flows in the progression here.
Okay, if I truly yield myself to the Spirit, what should that life
look like?
Because we would all like to be successful in our endeavors no
matter what we're attempting.
But what does a successfully led spirit filled life look like?
We have to get that.
You know, you can't dance around the question of, about whether
or not everyone is led, maybe differently.
There is a gold standard that you label as success, but what does
that look like?
And I think that in Christianity mainstream we do get
caught up on that word, successful Christian ministry.
Pastors get caught up on what?
Successful Christian ministry.
How many people did you have that morning on Sunday?
That goes into many people.
I've been to different conferences, I've heard different
people go to conferences and everybody shares their stats.
Why some sort of comparison to see who has the most.
Is, are they trying to judge up of, you know, who has the most
this or most that?
The most programs, but most conversions, those disciples, I mean,
we're all sitting here thinking to ourselves.
And even in our own Christian walk, we have our own measure of
success.
I don't know about you, but if I've read my Bible and I've prayed,
I'm feeling like I'm a step ahead.
I'm all right.
I'm having a successful Christian day.
And then if I don't read my Bible and pray and I get through
the day, I'm like, I'm a failure.
I'm horrible.
God must love me less today than I loved me now.
Is that true at all?
Absolutely not.
Well, how.
What does the success in the Christian life actually look like?
Philippians chapter two begins to try to answer some of that question.
Paul shows us that success is not measured by conventional means,
not by money, popularity, accomplishments or recognition.
Success is measured by whether God is producing his life through
us.
And that success is something that we all would want and desire
to to see.
Is God producing something real in your life?
That's what you're asking.
The question, do you have any fruit?
What does that mean?
Is the fruit of the Spirit working in you?
Is God changing you into his image?
Sometimes that question, do you have any fruit?
People ask that in relation to how many souls have you seen?
Say person and if you haven't seen any, you have no fruit.
God isn't working at all.
There's zero accomplishment.
The Holy Spirit's just living inside of you for no reason this
past year.
No, there's, there's fruit, there's his working, there is his
accomplishment.
There's a guy fella.
How many of you are bowlers?
You like going bowling?
Going bowling?
Yeah, my dad had, he liked going bowling.
He had his own bowling ball.
They had a little team.
They really liked that for a long time.
I really wasn't around for that part of his life, but they like
doing it.
Ed Lorenz bowled a perfect game.
Then he had a heart attack.
Is that the success of a bowler?
The 69 year old retiree had started bowling in 1957 and had bowled
two other perfect games in 2004.
His per game average for his last full season was 223.
Now, I don't know about you, I'm, I'm just struggling to hit 99.
My daughter I think bowled at 87 the other day.
Whenever we took her he.
His average 223.
This is fairly hard to do in a perfect game.
In 2005 he was inducted into the Kalamazoo Metro Bowling association
hall of Fame.
He died after his third perfect game in January 2006.
They said if he could have written a way to go out, this would
have been it.
Said Johnny D. Masters Lorenz bowling partner man, he was thinking
that's the way to go out.
He died doing what he loved to do.
He died after that perfect game.
That was the perfect record.
Three games perfect.
That's what success looked like.
We chase success here in America all the time.
Some people chase it faster and you know, you go to other some
parts of the country where it's lower moving and their success
is something that is completely different than what maybe
someone in an inner city may be trying to chase.
We're working hard to chase that success too.
In the United States there was a survey that went out and all these
people who assumingly are just chasing success, like everyone, they
had a poll that they did and 68% of those people said they needed
more fun, 67% said they needed a long vacation, 66% said they often
felt stress, 60% feel time is crunched, 51% want less work, more
play, 49 feel pressured to succeed and 48% feel overwhelmed.
That's, that's the feeling.
You ever feel overwhelmed in spite of chasing success?
We chase success.
It's sought after but we're no closer to it than when we start,
it seems.
Look there.
In Philippians chapter 2, Paul gives us some instructions in verse
number 12, after the description of Jesus taking upon
himself the form of a servant, after seeing what a successful servant
looks like in the life of Jesus, Paul says in verse number
12, wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in
my presence only, but now much more my absence.
Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is
God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.
Now, you will notice two different things in here that we'll
talk about.
But there's two people working on your salvation.
There's number one, you, and number two, it is God who's working
on your salvation.
It's both in that stance, and yet each one is addressed as if one
is doing everything.
And Paul doesn't seem to reconcile either one of those things.
A person has painstakingly written out a definition of these
verses to give you a little bit more insight.
Listen to some of the words the way this is described.
Therefore, my dear ones of you have always obeyed my suggestions.
So now, not only with the enthusiasm you would show, you see,
he knew the Philippian Church quite well.
He knew they were going to show this enthusiasm, not only with
the enthusiasm you would show in my presence, but much more because
I am absent.
Work out, okay, cultivate, carry out to the goal fully complete.
That is the command that is being given here.
Your own salvation with reverence and awe and trembling.
That is that self distrust, with serious caution, tenderness
of conscience, watchfulness against temptation, timidly shrieking
from whatever might offend God and discredit the name of Christ.
There's a carefulness in our walk with God, not in your own strength.
For it is God who is all the while effectually at work in you,
energizing, creating in you the power and desire both to will
and to work for his good pleasure and satisfaction and delight.
That we as Christians, number one, success, has to be understood
as working out in the heavenly gym.
I don't know how many of you work out.
I have a gym and workout gear I was made fun of whenever I got
here.
I just got it very recently.
It hasn't had time for it to work on me yet.
Okay, but working out your salvation with fear and trembling,
that is a command for us as Christians.
Now we have to be very careful because, number one, we don't want
to live by list.
But what is practical Christianity doing?
Practical Christianity is doing something.
It is working to Yield to God in all that he would call us to do.
Paul connects the obedience of Jesus in the proceeding verses there
to the obedience of those Christians in the following of Jesus.
Jesus was obedient to be a servant.
He took upon himself the form of the servant, thinking, not robbery,
to be equal with God, yet he took that form of a servant.
That was a lot of work.
That was a position that Jesus had to take.
We as Christians, we have to take up that position of yielding
to God in every avenue of our life.
This obedience is abiding in Christ.
This obedience isn't sharing the gospel.
Disobedience is in following his will.
Work out, put real effort into your Christian lives.
Now in a workout plan, when you go about to do this, you set
out and the first thing that you do if you're going to be serious
about a real workout plan for your physical body is to set forth
plan.
No one goes and eats whatever they want and then goes into the
gym and well, I'm just going to go in there and live.
Maybe you do that if you're angry or you're just trying to get
your mind off of it.
But no one just goes about it willy nilly.
Everyone who goes into the gym, they usually follow a workout
plan.
They record at times what they're doing.
They're marking careful progress.
They're going about it very careful so that they can track everything.
The best bodybuilders who are really into fitness, they get into
the macros of their fit.
You know, the banana had 75 calories and 1 gram of protein and
they put that into their chart and they're trying to get up to a
certain amount of protein.
And it also, you know, it has this amount of potassium and I need
that amount of potassium to start off my day and to, to start
off my diet.
And then some people, I, I don't do anything until I've drank
a whole glass of water before the whole.
I mean, they get nitty gritty into it.
That is how we as Christians are supposed to our Christian want.
Now, I don't know if that's how everyone is doing things, but
that is what this is looking like, working out, putting real effort
into our Christian lives.
What would it look like in your life if you put real considerable
effort, goals after goals after milestones of where you want
to get to in your Christian walk and the things that you want
to accomplish?
What would it look like if you made a roadmap and planned it out?
What would you do to try to achieve that level that you have
in mind?
Furthermore, what does God want us to achieve?
What would you do to reach the goal that God has set forth for for
your life in the year 2026?
God has goals for us.
I am certain that God has a goal for every single one of us.
For Romans 8:30 tells us that he has the goal that we would be
conformed to the image of Christ.
And that is a goal that God is consistently working into our life.
Work out your own salvation.
There is a sense in which our salvation is complete, in the sense
that Jesus has done a complete work for us.
Still.
There is also a sense in which our salvation is incomplete and that
it is not yet a complete work in us.
God is trying to perfect our faith.
He is trying to conform us into the perfect image of His Son.
And I can tell you, I don't look like His Son right now.
There is still much work that needs to be done, but that is the
goal.
To be conformed to the image of His Son in every avenue of our
life.
The believer must finish, Mueller says, must carry to conclusion,
must apply to its fullest consequence what is already given
by God.
In principle, he must work out what God in His grace has worked,
in which we as Christians have a great work that has been done to
us at the moment of salvation.
God has worked in us.
Now we work with God to bring that forth and that is by yielding
to Him.
God works in us and this increases our responsibility to work
with Him.
And this is a bit of a paradox, if you will, of a sovereign
God who orders our steps and a covenant making God.
Salvation is a free gift and yet a cost, everything, commitment.
And that is what Jesus would tell Him.
No man sits down to build a castle and doesn't consider the cause.
It is foolish for that person to begin a work and then to stop
not having enough material.
Everyone would look at him and laugh.
Our Christian lives must be evident more than on Sunday.
Our Christian lives cannot be separated from the rest.
That is not what a successful Christian life.
And this is oftentimes a bit of the.
The problem in, in Christianity today.
There's a categorization of lives.
There's the life we live on Sunday at church and there's the
life that we live every other day of the week.
And those two don't seem, don't seem to cross.
And what is the saying?
Well, you know, we go to church and that's great, it's good,
it lifts my heart.
But that's not practical.
I can't eat spirituality.
I need a job this right here, this is my real life.
This is the real life here.
How does church affect my job?
How is church affecting my my bills or what I'm eating tonight?
How is church, how is living spiritually affecting my physical.
And that is, that is the complaint, that is the question.
All too often though, what Christians are doing is they're separating
their lives from Christ.
And successful Christians lives are one, not two.
God is a God who indwells and fill all areas of our being, infiltrates,
if you will, every angle of our life.
And so we as Christians, we go to work.
As Christians, you pay the bills.
As a Christian, your refrigerator breaks.
As a Christian, you have arguments and debates with your neighbor
and with your spouse and with your kids.
As Christian, every avenue of Christ is supposed to penetrate our
life.
And honestly, in the generation that I grew up in, I know
many, many people in my age group of 30s and 40s where they grew
up in a life of seeing hypocrites of where we go to church
on Sundays.
I was told this one time by a little kid I was trying to get and
it was a Wednesday night program, I was trying to get him
to go and do his study, his worksheet.
And I said, well, can't you go home and ask your mom to help you
with the worksheet and fill out your paper?
And what he said to me was, we don't do this whole Christian thing.
This kid's like seven.
Where does he get that we don't do this whole Christian thing
at home.
And that's the problem is the hypocrisy in our own lives at times
of we look really good on Sunday, but throughout the week we
live as if Christ hasn't affected us.
And these things can't be so in the life of a Christian.
Not a successful Christian, not a Christian who is seeing the
power of God, not a Christian who is seeing God change their life.
Look over to Colossians, chapter three.
Colossians, chapter three.
Paul gives us a list, if you will, of some things that we are
to do to live a successful Christian life.
But how the Christian life is to infiltrate every avenue of our
main life.
He says in verse one, if ye then be risen with Christ, seek those
things which are above where Christ sitteth on the right hand
of God.
Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.
For ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God.
What he begins to list.
In the previous chapter, the apostle had shown what a Christian
ought not to follow.
He was dealing with false heretics, false teachers.
And he warned these Colossians against some of these doctrines and
erroneous errors that they were beginning to learn.
And then he brings out this great chapter about how the duties
in life and how everything revolves around Christ.
How is God supposed to affect my relationship with my neighbor?
How is he going to fix that?
That.
How is God going to fix my relationship with people?
Well, he begins setting forth, he says, the duty of setting the
affections on things above.
There, the verse one, the duty of mortifying corrupt passions and
carnal tendencies.
The duty of speaking the truth, seeing they put off the old
man with his deeds.
There in verse nine, the duty of kindness, gentleness, charity
and the spirit of peace.
In verse 12, the duty of edifying one another by psalms and
songs of praise.
How we are to live our Christian life with our affection
set on the things of God.
The duty of wives, of husbands, of children, of fathers,
of servants.
Every single little area of our Christian life is to be dictated
by the Holy Spirit.
And how he would handle this matter, how he would talk to this
person.
What would Jesus do if there was a physical need in the lives
that in the.
In the time when he was here with his disciples, they would pray
he would get the thing solved.
It was a need that was not too great for God.
Your job is by the grace of God.
How am I supposed to do my job by the grace of God?
You do it because he has enabled you to do it and he is enabling
you to keep that job.
I often wonder, you know, well, I'm in sales, so every single
month I've just got to pray for God, for those sales.
I guess I'm not.
I can't sell more.
There's not a customer there.
Or, or if.
If I don't have clients coming to, to take up my services, I've
got to pray for those services.
Oh, if I just had a regular job, then I would just be sad, you
know, just.
You don't even have to worry about those things.
You've always got a job, right?
No, I know many people that have had a job, got laid off.
You're at the gr.
By the grace of God in that job that you think is so stable and
so steady.
Anything could happen.
I don't know what you're going to work for, but if you work for
Google, you're like, well, Google will never go under.
Well, they got done with you, so they fired you.
I mean, you just go through the list.
There's no telling what could happen.
No, there is no Such thing as job security.
Okay, you could break your leg and be on disability because your
spine has paralyzed you.
There is no job security.
You are, by the grace of God, working in your job, keeping it,
working in it.
The problems, the successes at work, it's all by the grace of God.
Your relationship to act like Christ and love one another as he
says.
The duty of edifying one another, the duty of wives, husbands,
children, servants.
It's a love.
And that Christlike love and the very image of humility that Christ
set forth in the preceding verses of Philippians, chapter two.
Your bills, the unexpected.
The IRS said you didn't pay it out, not the opposite.
You know, we all are like, oh, great, we got a check from the irs.
Thankfully.
What happens when the IRS says you didn't pay enough or your escrow
goes up and you weren't expecting your house payment to rise?
The unexpected.
We go to God for those bills.
How am I going to pay this except by the help of God?
Your stuff, God knows what we have need of.
We asked this morning, does God care about if your AC breaks
in your house?
He cares about you.
And just as my child cares about some of the smallest little
things that are so insignificant to us, to me, I care
about my child.
And so that means I care about what they care.
And so God has knowledge of what we need.
We only have to go to him and pray for it.
No matter how wonderful that request is, how impossible that is.
As God said to Abraham and Sarah, is there anything too impossible
for God?
Is there anything too wonderful?
Philippians, chapter 2, verse 12 is telling us that we are to care
about our salvation in such a way that it affects all that we do,
our new life in Christ.
We are not to work it out, not in a casual carelessness, but in
a careful attention to a new, radical way of life.
You know, David Platt is an author and pastor of a church.
And one of the things that he, he said in a conference meeting is
he went to China for a conference.
He was going to go there and go to a Chinese church and there
were going to be other churches in the area that would come
and some leaders would come.
This was what he was told.
They're going to come and you're going to be able to teach
them the Bible.
And so in America and other conferences, and you plan a conference
and you say, okay, we'll have, if we're going to go heavy on the
sessions, we'll start at 9, 30, and we'll have a session, 40,
45 minutes, you know, 10 attention span is we can't just go
too long.
We'll have a break and we can break for some donuts and then come
back 15 minutes later, have another session.
Then we'll break for lunch, and then we'll have one more in the
afternoon after lunch.
So, you know, three sessions.
And so he.
He goes there thinking that this is the way it's going to work.
He's got it set up for multiple days.
And so, you know, he's got his lessons laid out.
And he does the first lesson there in the morning.
He says, okay, we're going to go ahead and take a break.
And they're like, well, we don't need a break.
We don't need a break.
He's like, oh, okay, eager.
So he begins to go into the second lesson.
It's like, well, you know, now we can go ahead and take a lunch.
Well, we can.
We.
We don't have to eat.
We don't have to eat just yet.
Just.
Just keep on going.
And we say, well, I only got three.
Three lessons.
And the guy said, wait a minute, you only, you only brought
three lessons for this?
And he said, well, no, I mean, I have more material for that.
I just.
We can't go through everything one day.
And the guy said, no, you don't understand.
You need to go through everything that you have.
You don't understand what these people have sacrificed to be.
He said, I don't understand.
Please teach me.
Tell me.
And the pastor, the Chinese pastor there came to him and said,
these people have.
Have traveled for miles.
And the fact that they are here for this weekend, this is the
major harvest time for their crops.
They have abandoned their field, they have abandoned their
livelihood in order to be taught.
They are here because they want and need the word of God taught
to them in a way that is a greater need than their own livelihood.
They've abandoned everything so that they can hear you.
And David Platt was absolutely forward, taken aback.
And so he literally finished his entire weekend worth of notes
in that very first day.
And then from there on for the next three or four days, he just
taught the Bible.
He just began in the book of Romans and just started teaching.
And what he came away from that meeting and conference and time
was that here in America, we are not radical.
We.
We are not raising our children to be radical Christian.
We are raising casual Christian who are not dependent upon
the power of God, are not living a life that is full of God's
salvation and its effects on that life.
And he was smitten in his heart about his own walk with God.
Radical Christianity should be the normal Christian life.
And I know that that is very hard for us to digest.
We can hear it, we can even agree with.
But to digest that we as Christians need to be radical in
our thinking, that we are literally consumed in every avenue
of our life with Christ to where it affects us that much that
we would give up anything.
That is the part that is hard to digest.
We are to obey the command of the Spirit given to us through Paul
to work out salvation, go about your Christian life, intentionally,
put effort into it.
He exhorts us, as if everything is riding on us, to work
out our salvation.
Yet he prays just a few, a few sentences later, as if everything
relies on God.
And this is the paradox of the working Christian working for their
salvation and the God who securely saves them in his sovereignty.
This is a paradox.
Don't get me wrong.
It is completely paradoxical to say that man is working in his
salvation and yet God is the one who's doing the same.
And yet Paul presents both of these concepts, as he often does
in Scripture, of man choosing God and God choosing man.
He does not reconcile these two points together.
He never explains them.
He presents both of these truths as truth and just leaves.
And we as Christians, you know, you've heard that saying, work
as if everything depended upon you.
Pray as if everything depended upon God.
That is the same thing that we are to do in our salvation.
We are to work, to yield to everything that God would have us
to do in our Christian lives.
But we pray for the Spirit to change our wicked hearts.
We pray that that God would save our loved ones.
We're praying for God to change their hearts.
We're praying that God would call out to them, that God would
pour out his grace on them, that God would do an amazing work.
Yet if you and I do not go and witness to them, if you and I do
not live a holy Christian life and a changed life that they take
notice of, that they look at and say something's different about
them.
If we don't do that on our part, what hope does that person
have of being saved?
We pray.
And we can pray all day long for them to get saved and God can
save them.
God is his will, is that all men would be saved.
He's not just the Savior of the saved and those who are Christians.
He's the Savior of the whole world.
He is calling out, but we have to.
We are responsible for working with him to see the loss come to
Christ.
How shall they believe.
Except someone preaches.
How can they believe unless they have heard the Word?
So there's a bit of a paradox there.
We are in our Christian life looking for that success.
It requires work on our part, a yielding to God, a radical Christianity.
Success is living as a faithful witness before others.
People in every avenue of our life are watching us.
Look there in verse number 14 of Philippians chapter 2.
He says in Philippians chapter 2, verse 14, do all things without
murmurings and dispute that you may be blameless and harmless,
the sons of God without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked
and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as the lights.
As lights in the world.
Now understand what that means, that we shine as lights in
the world.
This is not a command to shine brightly in the world.
This is not a command that you need to go out and shine brightly
for Jesus.
No, you are shining brightly, whether or not for Jesus or for yourself.
Everyone sees and understands that you're a Christian.
Do you have people in your job that know you're a Christian?
Whether you act like Christ or act like the world, you are shining
brightly.
And that's what Paul's exhortation here.
People know where you work, how you react, how you speak, how
you handle pressure.
The worst thing I've ever heard in my life is this.
I thought you were a Christian.
Those words, that is horrible to hear.
I don't know if you've heard them, but I've heard them before.
And that is not something that you want to hear.
You shine brightly.
Whether or not that's for Jesus, they know that you're a Christian.
Fruit matters.
Paul wanted his labor in Philippi to bear fruit.
He was working for those people.
He was working to teach them, to exhort them.
He wanted to see fruit.
Success is not merely starting the race.
Success is finishing faithfully.
A changed life.
That is the success.
The fruit in your life.
Success is being willing to be poured out for Christ.
Look there in verse number 17, holding forth the word of life, that
I may rejoice in the day of Christ.
I have not run in vain, neither labored in vain.
Yea, and if I be offered upon the sacrifice in service of your
faith, I join, will rejoice with you all.
To be offered upon, to be poured out for Christ.
That's what Paul was willing to do.
If I be offered upon the sacrifice, like the drink offering
in Leviticus that was poured out for God, he was willing to sacrifice
anything for the Gospel.
What are we willing to be poured out for?
Success is seeking Christ's interest above your own.
Successful Christian lives live for Christ rather than themselves.
It is the example of other men in the Bible that we see.
We have the example that Paul gave here in First Corinthians 10.
Let no man seek his own but every man and others.
Well, he says in verse chapter 13.
Or no, I'm sorry, Philippians, chapter 2, verse 4.
Look, not every man on his own things, but every man also on the
things of others.
It's that concern for other people.
We have examples of men such as Demas.
He hath loved this present world, having forsaken me, is depart
unto Thessalonica, Titus, unto Dalmatia.
In his last moments, Paul had Timothy, Titus, Paphroditus, Epaphras,
Tychicus.
These were not all famous people.
There's just one verse mentioned for their names, and that's
it.
But these were men who were living faithful interests, who had
set their affections on things above, who had set their affection
on others.
And this is what Paul says about them.
He says, because of the work of Christ, Epaphroditus was near
unto death because of me.
Demas, speaking of how he had left him, having not that person
to care for him, as maybe some of these other people did.
Tychicus, a beloved brother and faithful minister of the Lord,
shall make known to you all things.
All of my state shall Tycheus declare unto you who is a beloved
brother and a faithful minister, fellow servant in the Lord.
These were people that Paul being poured out, working on behalf
of Christ, working to see fruit in other people's lives.
These were people that he had a part in their fruit.
These were people who he had loved and loved courageously.
Success in the Christian life surely is not narrowed down to the
things that we've talked about.
It cannot only be these things.
But this is a very good start.
This is a very good understanding.
But now comes the question, what if I fail?
What if I don't have success?
What if I don't have any fruit in someone?
A person was talking to their pastor about that and was saying
about how they had deep spiritual grief.
He said he kept telling him how woefully he must have failed
someone that he loved, for that person had wronged them so destructively.
And he said to that young person, who are you to think that
you are better than our Lord?
Not Jesus, do everything perfect.
And yet Judas betrayed him.
Yet people hated his guts.
At times they picked up stones to kill him.
Who are you to think that you are better than our Lord?
Oftentimes we'll get that picture of success that, well, I
must have failed in my Christian walk.
This person doesn't do this or doesn't do that.
And we, as Christians, we have to understand that it is not so much
what have I accomplished, lives that I change, we want to change
lives.
We want to impart to other people.
We want to see success stories.
We want to see other people come out and be able to praise them,
praise God for the work that he did in people's lives.
We want to see that, that material, that tangible, so that
we can say, wow, that's.
I've done something that's good.
But that's.
That's not the measure of success.
The measure of success is your faith to your God.
The measure of success is how did you run the race that God called
you to run?
Because God measures success not by.
By the things that we accomplished, but rather of how much
we have yielded to him.
That's what living the life practically looks like.
The Christian life lived practically is how much have you
yielded to God?
DL Moody is going to get to heaven with thousands of souls saved,
and you may get to heaven with 10.
Say if God has called you to have 10 souls, say you will receive.
Well done, thou good and faithful servant.
You did what I asked him and D.L.
Moody, who God had called to see 10,000 souls saved.
Deal Moody will see.
Well done now, good and faithful serf.
You have done what, What I called you to do.
The calling is different.
God calls us to do different things.
You can't all be pastors.
You can't all be evangelists.
You can't all see thousands and thousands of souls saved.
But God has called you to a specific place and a specific time
for a reason.
That is your calling.
That is how you judge success.
Am I doing what God has called me to.
To do on a daily basis?
Have I yielded to the Holy Spirit in these areas of my life?
Because at the end of our life, that is all that matters.
Did you do what God told?
Let's pray, Father.
Thank you, Lord, for your grace and guidance in our life.
Thank you for the grace that when we do fail, Lord, your grace
is there to pick us up and to put us back on our feet.
Lord, I know that not everyone is called to do the same thing, but,
Lord, you have for sure called each and every single one of us to
something, namely, number one, a relationship with you, Lord, that
is wonderful and beautiful.
And, Lord, there's many times whenever we would neglect that relationship,
Lord.
Lord, for other things, for things of this world.
And, Lord, you have called us to set our affection not on the things
of this earth, but on things above, Lord.
So I pray that you would help us in our calling, whatever that
may be, Lord.
That we would faithfully perform that calling.
That we would carefully direct our attention to it and to all that
our salvation has directed us to, or that we would seek to attain
to it.
That we would seek to yield to you continually and be transformed
by the renewing of our minds, Lord, and the inward working of the
Holy Spirit.
I pray these things and then ask in Jesus name for them.