Living Beyond Despair

0:00:00     Hello, everyone, and welcome to another more faith, more Life podcast. Today we’re going to talk about the series the alternate lifestyle. And we’re in a series alternate lifestyle, and today we’re going to add to that living beyond despair. Today we live in a world where there’s a lot of desperation, there’s a lot of despair, there’s a lot of frustration, there’s a lot of disappointment, there’s a lot of division. All these things are going around, and it makes life difficult for us. There’s just a tension all the time in the air, and there’s such division.

0:00:29     You’ll notice if you tell people what you believe, what you think, what you want, whatever, they’re going to throw you into a camp, so to speak. And your camp has to believe that way or your camp won’t let you in or they’ll kick you out. And you can’t be in two camps at the same time. So I believe this. This is what I think I ought to like, for instance, this is what I believe should happen in the public schools. Whoa.

0:00:52     All of a sudden, I’m thrown into whatever camp they throw me into, and that camp loves me and everybody else hates me. All right? So it’s despairing that we’re so divided. Families are divided, marriages are divided, churches are divided denominations. Yeah. Divided and splitting and going different ways. So I want to help you live beyond despair here and how to do it. And so you’re going to have to be that person that’s willing to accept God’s alternate lifestyle.

0:01:18     Because this is what’s slowing down the church religion, Christianity today, in becoming all that it needs to be. This is what’s slowing down a great awakening. It’s slowing down a revival of spiritual things in our country. It’s because those who already believe go to church, believe the Bible. Okay, maybe they don’t go to church, but you believe the Bible, you believe in God, you believe in Jesus, but you refuse to believe in the alternate lifestyle that God presents to us. That brings a whole lot of alternatives of success and victory and help and.

0:01:52     And joy and all these things that go with it, not meaning that there’s, you know, there’s not still battles going on in the world. We understand that, but. And trouble is still in the world. We understand that and will be until the end of this age when Jesus comes and corrects it all. But in the meantime, you can choose an alternate lifestyle if you’re brave enough, if you’re courageous enough. Listen to what Paul says as a choice for an alternate lifestyle. In the book of Corinthians. He talks to them. He talks about how when the holy. This is for. This is chapter 14.

0:02:24     He talks about when the Holy Spirit is among you and the Holy Spirit is present. Now get this. He says that when the Holy Spirit is present and active, present and active, that is an alternate Christian lifestyle. Because I’ve been to lots of churches. You have too grown up in church, maybe attended church at one time, but the problem was the Holy Spirit was talked about. Sometimes. Jesus obviously has talked about that. He’s there because he’s everywhere type Jesus, right? So we get some theology out of it, but the Holy Spirit and the Jesus that we talked about is not active and present.

0:03:01     We say he’s present, but there’s no holy spirit activity. There’s no Jesus activity like we saw in the Bible. So we need to get an alternate lifestyle of a kind of church that has active and present Jesus. Right. Or the active and present Holy Spirit. Now, he said, this is what Paul said will happen. If that happens, then people will be convicted and. And they will begin to declare, God is really among you. God is really among you. Well, we’ve just changed the world.

0:03:30     Cause people, when they see God is really among us, they change. They want to be a part of it, too. They just don’t want to be a part of a church where you’re going through religious motions. But there’s no God activity. There’s no Jesus activity. There’s no holy spirit activity. So it’s like, what are we doing this for? We’re talking about activity. We talk about the things that God does, but we look around in our service.

0:03:52     And no matter how long the people have been going, some new beginning believers and some been there for years and years, but the activity is the same. It’s the same level the new people are getting. Sometimes new people get more activity. But the old folks that have been there forever, and I don’t mean age wide, just people have been in church forever. They have the lowest activity. They settle into a religion that has low activity and. And unseen things. Nothing is seen.

0:04:18     And so what happens is then that just takes over. And now we need to offer an alternative and revive church. That’s what I try to do at revive church. I know our church is different than other churches, and I’m offering an alternative. When you come in and we do it, I mean, we’re church like everybody. We’ve got home groups, and we have fellowship, and we have community, and we love each other and all that kind of stuff.

0:04:41     But when you come to our services. Our services are geared to bring you an alternate lifestyle church where you can connect with an active God that we help you activate the spirit of God in your life. So there’s spiritual activity, there’s spiritual presence, and it causes people to notice, and it changes you first, the alternate lifestyle is, I like this. So I’m going to change and be altered. I’m going to be a worshipper, and I’m going to worship. We like to worship the Lord, and not just on the stage, but in the chairs. So you’re going to hear people singing.

0:05:15     We like to worship. We love the word of God. We preach the Bible. Get that? I mean, a lot of preachers, but they’re preaching humanism and self-taught, pull yourself up, do better, self-effort. But not us. No, we’re preaching the Bible as the spirit of God, coming to enable you to be everything you can be. And that’s an alternate lifestyle that is not offered at many churches. It’s offered by God, but it’s not offered by many churches.

0:05:42     Hey, we’re going to do this different. Cause what I see, everybody’s doing everything the same. I’ve had people go to, you know, they shop for churches, I guess, you know, and that’s okay. But they come back. Either come back or come to us and say, look, here’s what I found. They’re almost all the same, especially those that, you know, they’re considered spirit filled, you know, charismatic, spirit filled, holy spirit, church, Pentecost, whatever.

0:06:08     They’re almost all the same. And so there’s very little activity. They say everything, right? They have some good music, maybe, and then it’s over with. So there’s an alternative to that. And I want to help you understand how to do it, because what happens is then you lose when you accept God’s alternative lifestyle. The despair, the disappointment, the anger, things that are driving you just every which way, you know, and turning you every which way but loose.

0:06:37     Get out of. Out of your life. All right? So we want to get this holy spirit movement in us, and that’s not. And get rid of the despair so that we don’t go into a church which is common today. And here’s church folks, and they’re despairing. They’re worried. They’re fearful. Their marriages are strained, their finances are strained, their relationships are strained. Their kids maybe, or maybe don’t want to come.

0:06:59     They’re not sure. They are living emotional lives that where they’re hurt, their feelings are hurt, right? They’re offended, their feelings are hurt. The disappointment, that’s the Christians that’s the Christians, not all of them, but that is the majority. And so they’re going to church for that very reason, okay? To try to get some relief from the despair. And the only way you can get relief from the despair is an alternate lifestyle of who you are going to be when it comes to God.

0:07:30     And here’s the good news of why we want to do this. Okay? So I was reading just a few minutes ago, got my bible here, and I was reading about in Luke, chapter seven, where Jesus comes to town and he meets a funeral, and they got a guy laid out on a thing, you know, and they’re carrying him through town, and it turns out that this is the lady that’s following is his mother, and she’s also a widow, and she just lost her son, and she has nobody else, no other family members.

0:08:01     Now, this is a pretty despairing situation in their culture, because if you’re a widow and you have no son, maybe even no daughter, which would maybe give you a son in law, but you have no. Nobody else. You have no husband, you have no son, you have nobody to help you. You are going to be probably a beggar. You’re going to be a beggar. Or some of them would turn to prostitution because they had no setup.

0:08:24     And you’re supposed to help widows, but it was pretty lame. And so when Jesus sees this woman crying and everybody else crying and her son, her only son is dead, this woman’s future is ended, pretty much. And so do you think maybe she was experiencing, as they’re carrying her dead son through the streets, do you think she’s experiencing some despair, some fear? Right? So Jesus comes and offers an alternative, which I’m sure they didn’t think of, right?

0:08:53     So he comes and. And he tells the mom, don’t cry. And then he speaks to her son and says, young Mandy, I say to you, get up. And he does. Comes back to life. Now, we may not get that every time, but doesn’t that tell us that there was an alternative to her despair that she did not think of? And all of a sudden, the despair’s gone, got her son back. Now, what happens is this, though. The people, of course, they all begin to rejoice and they’re happy. And they say, a great prophet is here, but here’s the line I want you to get.

0:09:29     And they begin to say, God has come down to help us. God has come down to help us. That’s an alternative lifestyle to religion where God doesn’t come down to help us. He’s upstairs. He’s the man upstairs. He’s a good God, but he pretty well blanks out, leaves us alone, lets us live our life with the wisdom that we have, and then when we die, then we go to be with him. And all of a sudden the alternative is, hey, God has come down. We hadn’t thought of that.

0:10:01     Had you thought of that? An alternative lifestyle to you and get rid of the despair and disappointment is what if God would come down to help you? You see, the good news is not you going dying and going up to heaven. That’s what’s been preached so much that it’s ruined religion, ruined Christianity. So people, they think, what is salvation? Salvation is what happens after you die. You die and you get to go up or you die and you go down, right? That’s the way that people know it. And that’s not the good news. The good news has always been God always comes down. Now, sometimes the people mess up. They get in despair because their enemies take over. You know, you read the Old Testament and the Israelites would do good with God and then they’d forget God and they’d go and they’d worship idols and enemies would come in and the crops would dry up and everything goes haywire and goes bad and they begin to despair.

0:10:54     Then God comes down. God sends a prophet first and says, here’s what you need to do. You need to return to the Lord. You need to get your face before God, you need to start praying before the Lord. You need to repent of being so lazy. You need to repent of losing everything and creating some kind of a Christianity that really doesn’t exist or a religion that doesn’t exist or a Judaism that doesn’t exist.

0:11:17     And no, you need to start believing and call and get a type of church or religion or relationship of an active Jesus, an active holy spirit, an active God. And that’s what happened here. They said, wow, God has come down to help us. This is what will happen to you. This is how the despair leaves. Disappointment leaves. This is how your life gets better. God will come down and help you, but he won’t come down and help you if you don’t change your lifestyle to be in a different position. If you’re just going to go along with lukewarm, half-hearted church, right? It’s just, I go, I just go to church and I try to be a good person.

0:11:59     That’s not the same as God coming down and helping you become whatever you need to do, taking, giving you the God advantage. An alternate lifestyle is I’m going to love God with all my heart. I’m going to go to church. I’m going to give money. I’m going to worship. I’m going to read my Bible. I’m going to raise my family this way. I’m going to, I’m going to zone in on who God is. I’m going to be interested in what God does, what he’s saying, who he is, who he’s going to be, what’s going on, what ha. All that. I’m going to change.

0:12:27     I’m going to change and get an alternate lifestyle. What’s going to happen? The same thing. God’s going to have compassion. Jesus going to have compassion on you because he’s going to see you like he saw that widow, and he’s going to say, you know what? This person is going to be miserable and hurt and despairing and disappointed the rest of their lives unless I come down and help him. But you’re going to need to get that alternate. You need to get a lifestyle like Paul talked about to the Corinthians, where there’s an active and present holy spirit, and it causes people to say, look, God is among them.

0:13:02     There you go. See, we want to alter our lives until God is among us. Not that we’re saying he’s going to be among us. Not that. Just, you know, blind faith. Well, he’s not doing anything. We don’t see him doing anything. We don’t know what he’s doing. We don’t even know where he is. He’s flying around somewhere or he’s upstairs or the Holy Ghost is flying around us or whatever. No, we are going to alternate our style of Christianity, our lives, our commitment, our loyalty, our faith, our actions, until God starts showing himself strong and the Holy Spirit becomes active and present among us.

0:13:39     So unbelievers then say God is among them, and that’s why we’re not despairing. It’s not. We say he’s among us, but we can’t find him. Right? He’s among us and he’s helping us until we can say, look, everybody, God has come down to help us. And when you get to that point, knowing, that’s the good news. That’s the good news. I’m telling you, yeah, you can have a home in heaven after you die. But is that good news today?

0:14:03     If you’re living in despair today, I want you to get rid of that despair, that disappointment, that directionless. Who am I? What am I doing? What’s wrong? Who am I supposed to be? Everybody. You know, everybody’s trying to figure out who they are and trying to find themselves. I’m telling you, do this. Lose yourself in the Lord, lose yourself in the gospel, lose yourself in the Bible. It doesn’t matter if you can’t find anybody else wants to go along with it, it doesn’t matter.

0:14:26     Right? But I would say this, this is just me talking now. If you go to a church where nobody else cares about God and you can’t get anybody else really interested, nobody wants to pray. They, you know, they’ll have a spaghetti supper, but they. And a volleyball team, but they won’t meet for prayer, right? Come on. The problem is you cannot live that lifestyle and get the blessings of God and have God come down and help you. If you’re going to hang around with lukewarm religion and hypocrisy, which gets on every hypocrisy gets on people, hypocrisy gets in you, it gets on you. It’s like yeast. It goes through the whole loaf of bread.

0:15:00     And so why would you stay in that when I’m telling you that you can get God to come down and help you? You just need to get around some people that know how to do it and believe it and start doing what they’re doing. Don’t stay in a church where nobody’s interested in God because you’re going to live in despair. You’re going to be like that widow that has very little hope in God ever coming and helping you. And you’re just going to have to try to make it on your own. So I’m telling you right now, God has a way of coming down. That’s the good news. And I want him to come down in your life. And it changes the whole world. It changes unbelievers when God is activated among us. So bottom line, can God come down and help us? Yes. Will God come down and help us? Yes.

0:15:39     How do we make that happen? We change our lifestyle so that we have an atmosphere where the Holy Spirit can dwell and be comfortable. We’re not doing this to make you comfortable. We’re doing this to make the Holy Spirit comfortable in our lives, in our homes and in our churches, so that we have an active God, an active holy spirit, a very present God, and one that we can say, how about that? Isn’t this wonderful? God has come down to help us. So I hope you’ll take this message of alter your lifestyle. That’s it.

0:16:13     That’s all you have to do in towards God. And God will come down and it’ll be so, so different because you will activate the Holy Spirit and the presence of God in your life. Well, be sure and check out https://www.morefaithmorelife.com bookstore, and especially, you know, the book, If You Only Knew: A Guide to the Clueless Generation. If you haven’t got it yet, it’s still free. Download it free, or you can order it.

0:16:37     And there’s some other stuff there. When the Kingdom Comes, I think that book might be released again. You want to get caught up with these, all these materials and start listening. Tell your friends, start watching, because you’re going to hear things here. There’s a lot of great podcasts, but you’re going to hear things here that you’re not going to hear everywhere else, because I’m going after this thing to get the presence of God in your life and activate the power of God in your life so you don’t have to spare any more. Till next time. Bye.