The Gospel of Self

0:00:00 – (Steve Gray): Hey, the Bible says in the last days, they will be terrible times. You know why they’ll be terrible? It won’t be because of the devil. It’ll be because of what we like and what we love. And I’ll share all about that on the next More Faith, More Life podcast. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another More Faith, More Life podcast, your voice of revival. Last week, we hopefully shook a few people up. We talked about the fairness gospel, and we also talked about fairness politics.

0:00:27 – (Steve Gray): All this fairness stuff is going around and we get deceived into thinking that it’s okay because God’s fair. If I was told, I guess I was quoted the other day, I didn’t know I was at some place. They said somebody told me I was in France and preaching in France or someplace in Europe. And I don’t remember doing this. And a reporter came up to me, and I think it was during the. Not this last Trump, when Trump was elected, but the first time he was elected, because I know I was in Europe and I was flying back and we flew international and we stopped over in Chicago. So we’re in one of the lounge, you know, whatever airline we were with in their lounge, getting ready to go to the domestic flight to fly from Chicago to Kansas City.

0:01:19 – (Steve Gray): And while we were in there, Trump was being elected. And so I got to see all these people from around the world and all these people from around the United States, some real happy. But most of them were. There was a lot of. Well, they were just shocked. And watching the reporters, everybody was just shocked. Anyway, so they said I was over there. So anyway, they said I was preaching. And afterwards a reporter came up to me and the election was going on.

0:01:44 – (Steve Gray): And the reporter asked me, so I had to be reminded of this. And the reporter asked me, well, if Jesus was here today, who would he vote for? And I know that they were trying to corner me or say something. So they said, if Jesus were here today, who would he vote for? And I said, himself, of course, he is. The way, the truth, the life. He’s the narrow way. He’s the gate, right? He’s everything. He’d vote for himself.

0:02:13 – (Steve Gray): And so when we open our Bibles, I was telling this on the last podcast. Just a reminder, if you open your Bible to the very first gospel, which is Mark, and the very first words of the gospel is Mark, it says the gospel about Jesus Christ, not about you. It’s not about your sin. You’re in there, your sins. Forgiveness of sin is in there. Right? God loves you. Yes, that’s in there, but it’s not about you.

0:02:37 – (Steve Gray): And then you have to find your place in a gospel that’s not about you. And you have to find your place in the system. And some people do this, some people are talented in that, Some people are called to this, some that. We all need each other. We’re all in the body of Christ. But you have to find your place, and your place will always be the same. Commit. You’ll have to be. God’s asking you to commit. Loyal and serving.

0:03:01 – (Steve Gray): And that never changes. And yet today, as I mentioned last week, and I’m recapping it a little bit today, we have the Fairness Gospel. And the Fairness Gospel is underlined, whether it’s preached. That title, that’s my title. Nobody’s going to say this is the Fairness Gospel, but it’s inside of us. Fairness. You grew up with it. You know, it’s not fair. And that was like, you know, we just had the soccer tournaments, you know, the World cup and everything in our country. And I did end up watching.

0:03:32 – (Steve Gray): I did actually watch some soccer. I never watched it before. And now I realize, you know, if you do something wrong, you get, you know, the referee or whatever, they pull up a red card, you know, or I guess. Red, I guess. Is that right? I’m asking my guy. Is red card the worst card you can get? They pull up a red card. And that’s how we do today. Like the children and adults, like, that’s not fair.

0:03:56 – (Steve Gray): God pulls out the red card. Right? So. So you’re right. It’s not fair. Or we pull up the red card. Well, we’re going to make it fair then. And so we have a fairness. But the Bible’s not fair. The kingdom of God is not fair. What is fair about God responding to one person’s faith? And a person doesn’t have faith and he doesn’t respond. God responds to faith. You know what? It’s not fair because God does not respond to need.

0:04:19 – (Steve Gray): If God responded to need, he’d be running all over the earth constantly trying to take care of everybody. But he doesn’t. He responds to faith. Faith pleases God. As I said this last time, faith pleases God and we’ve got to believe that he exists. That’s enough. But you got to do it. But that’s not enough because even the demons believe. The Bible said they’re believers. That’s hilarious. When you say.

0:04:47 – (Steve Gray): This person says, yeah, well, I’m a believer. Well, so is the demons. So that’s not a very powerful category to put yourself in, right? But we must believe that he also is a rewarder of those that do what diligently Seek him, he said, seek me while I may be found. Seek first the kingdom of God. Love him first. He’s your first love, not yourself. Okay? Self love. And so with all those things in there, now we have the Fairness Gospel. So I read this last week.

0:05:21 – (Steve Gray): The Spirit clearly says in the latter times or last days that some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Okay? And so these are the things going on. It says they’ll abandon the faith. Well, we think that that’s going to mean they don’t believe in God anymore, and now they’re overtaken by demons and things taught by demons. But the example they give is not a very good example for us in our culture. But. But it works in theirs.

0:05:51 – (Steve Gray): Well, we still have it in our culture. So it said they forbid people to marry and forbid them to eat certain foods and things like that. And so what happened is it didn’t mean that they stopped being religious people or maybe even stopped going to church or whatever that they gave them instead of the real faith, that is faith in God that pleases God, that seeks him, that diligently seeks Him. That kind of faith.

0:06:19 – (Steve Gray): They have another kind of faith, but it’s still religion. It’s been replaced by. The real faith is they still have faith. They believe God exists, but they’re going to serve him and be committed to him on a different level. They’re going to serve him by not getting married in this case. They’re going to serve him by not eating certain foods in this case. All right, but in our case, we go the other way. We don’t take things away or say, you can’t get married. Although some groups do still do that, by the way.

0:06:50 – (Steve Gray): But in Protestant Christianity, we don’t do that. And instead we go the other way as we abandon our faith and we give people other stuff to do. Right. In other words, we go find a church or a group of people that they’re not pushing. Discipleship, commitment, loyalty, dying to self. Right. Serving. No, they got other activities. We’ve got home groups, fun groups, sports groups, support groups, everything going on. And you look down at all going on in the church, but there’s no prayer meeting, there’s no prayer gathering. That doesn’t mean they don’t pray a little bit on Sunday morning.

0:07:29 – (Steve Gray): But there’s, you know, there’s activities. But one of the activities is not prayer and seeking God. What the Bible says, seek him first, you know, so there’s none of that going on. And so we get to nominal Christianity. These are the things being taught by demons. And these are deceitful spirits. How do they deceive you? They deceive you by getting you to commit less, give less, serve less, but you’re okay because God’s fair.

0:07:56 – (Steve Gray): And those that give more, it’s okay for them. That’s okay for them. But I’m me and it’s okay for me because God’s going to treat me fair. But God does not treat people fair, okay? So if we get that part of it that that’s going on, and there’s things. One more of things taught by demons. The idea is we get people to come to church because we’re going to make it all about them. I can guarantee there are people teaching pastors, young ones too, old ones too.

0:08:26 – (Steve Gray): This is how you get people. You’ve got to get them to hear a voice that says, as you listen to the sermon or anything else going on, okay, what’s in it for me? So they say, you have to put what’s in it for me in your church. What’s in it for me? And Jesus said, here’s what’s in it for you. Pick up your cross and follow me and become my disciple. That’s what’s in it for you. Which is commitment, loyalty and serving.

0:08:55 – (Steve Gray): But now it’s easy to find a wide way, not a narrow way. And it’s easy to find a group of people that are nominal, kind, good, fun, you know, teaching you how to cope with your problems. Cope with them. But that’s not Christianity. Christianity transforms you. So you get rid of those problems. Get rid of those problems. So that’s how we get. Here’s how we cure people. We cure people by more God. I don’t know if you ever thought of that.

0:09:25 – (Steve Gray): And people get spiritually sick with less of God. So now we have churches. This is the trend. This is the trend. Less of God and more of everything else. Less of God and more of everything else. And it’s going to. You’ll see. People never get any better. Not get any better. And if they’re good people at this level, they’re going to stay good people. They’ll just stay. They’ll just. But they’re not going to. We’re not going to get revival in our nation.

0:09:55 – (Steve Gray): We’re not going to get it. And we’ve got a revolution going on now, the fairness, politics revolution, right? Socialism and all these things are. Some people call it communism. But all this is going on in our country. And we think well, we’re God’s people. He loves us. We’re going to beat them. Some of them pray three times a day. So come on. They have a revolution. They’ve got an agenda and they are committed.

0:10:22 – (Steve Gray): They are loyal and they’re serving their cause. And we go to church that’s making us feel good and doing less. And we have people searching for those churches. They find them and they go, well, I’m going to go to this church. I don’t have to do anything. God’s going to treat me fair. I can do less. I can enjoy life more. I can have more me time. And I’m still good. I’m still in. I’m still good with God. God will still treat me the same. Cause he’s fair. Okay, so anyway, staying with Timothy only. We’ll go over to 2 Timothy as soon as I find it.

0:10:56 – (Steve Gray): Paul writes now, same Paul, same Timothy, chapter three. But mark this. There will be terrible times in the last days. Well, that’s no revelation. I mean, everybody thinks that they’re going to have terrible times. And some. Some people expect terrible times. I have people tell me we can’t have revival. I said, why can’t we have a revival? Because we’re not supposed to. Everything’s supposed to go bad and the devil’s supposed to take over the earth. And you’re Pastor Steve. You’re going the wrong way. You’re trying to get more of some revival. Outbreak of God’s presence.

0:11:29 – (Steve Gray): And they’re expecting the outbreak of the devil’s presence. That’s the truth. You know that if you’ve been around very long. So in the last days will be terrible times. And he doesn’t mention one beast. He doesn’t have 3. 3. 3. 4. 4. 4. 5. 5. 5. Or 6. 6. 6. He got no numbers. Beast? Nope. Antichrist? Nope. None of that is here. But he says it’s going to be terrible in the last days. Well, tell me, what is it?

0:11:56 – (Steve Gray): I’m ready. I’m ready. And you think I already got this figured out. You know it’s going to be something weird. Nope. He says this. It’ll be terrible times in the last days. Why? People will be lovers of themselves. They’ll be lovers of themselves. And that gives the impression insinuation as you read these others, they become lovers of themselves more than they love God, obviously. And so God’s not the priority. He means instead of loving God with all your heart, they love themselves with all their heart.

0:12:27 – (Steve Gray): And it’s going to make us sick. And it is making us sick. And so in the last time, the sign of the last days, the first one Paul picks is be lovers of themselves. Now does that mean that we’re supposed to be haters of ourselves? No. What does it mean? Well, if you read the Bible, it’s not supposed to be about yourself at all, right? It’s not about yourself. It’s about another self. It’s all about Jesus Christ.

0:12:58 – (Steve Gray): He’s the self, he’s the center, he’s the one. People sing songs. You know that song, Jesus be the center of it all. All right, let’s do it then. But we can’t. Cause people are already lovers of themselves and they’re the sin. So they always, when they’re lovers of themselves, they may hear a message, go to church, they get in a group or whatever and it’s always about, okay, what’s in this for me? What’s it going to do for me?

0:13:26 – (Steve Gray): And you know, you can get people to serve on a minimal, minimal servants go out once in a while and you know, feed the poor or whatever, have a clothes drive and give clothes away every year or something like that. But to be real servants, committed to the person, Committed to the person. Not to an activity and not to a ministry and to, and not to an outreach, but committed to a person. And when you’re committed to that person, what do you do? People who are committed to that person gather at one place.

0:13:57 – (Steve Gray): The committed people gather and glorify that one person, magnify that one person, establish who this one person is. Lord of all, establish your King of kings, your Lord of all, your God of everything, Creator of heaven and earth. And we send that message up into the heavenlies and into the, into the power towards powers of darkness, principalities and powers. We send that power up, we send that message of who God is and who Jesus is and who we are to him. That we are his disciples, we are lovers of the Lord and we send that message out into the world and we get it in us. We gather like minded people and then we go out and serve in other ways.

0:14:40 – (Steve Gray): That’s when, after that. But what’s happening is we have anti church now groups that say church is not important anymore. We just get together casually, not formally, but casually we get together and then this idea that we come together and have powerful worship where we declare, we sing together as a group. We’re like an army declaring who God is. That goes out. It’s all about me. We’re going to have a nice little group and we’re going to meet, we’ll have a little bit of fellowship, we’ll have a little refreshment and we’ll have a little Bible study. Maybe we’ll sing a song or two.

0:15:18 – (Steve Gray): No instruments. Well, they’re not against instruments. They just sing a song. That’s okay. Maybe they stand in a circle and hold hands at the end or whatever, you know. And so all of a sudden, the corporate gathering of power, that brings the power down. And you say, well, we don’t know. We don’t agree with you. Our way is good. Well, that’s what the Bible people did. That’s what these people did. They met, they prayed, power came down, signs, wonders, miracles, deliverances, transformation.

0:15:54 – (Steve Gray): And the gospel that they took. You know what the gospel was? They took. They went out and preached. You can encounter the presence of God, for the resurrection power is here. And you’ll also. He was raised from the dead and you’ll be raised from the dead also. The resurrection power, the power of God. That’s how they converted all those people and started all those churches. They didn’t start them by saying, do you know you’re a sinner, you have to confess you’re a sinner, do you know you’re a sinner and you’ll go to heaven when you die? None of that. They didn’t do that.

0:16:24 – (Steve Gray): And so we’ve got churches that are completely off the mark of teaching what the first century churches taught. And more than that, the attitude of the believers. The attitude of the believers. I’ve had people say, why? How come we don’t have signs? Wonder. Because miracles like they did in the Book of Acts. Because we’re not like the people in the Book of Acts. That’s why we’re nominal. We’re people who want more of everything else. We want more of everything else.

0:16:55 – (Steve Gray): And God. We don’t want just to love God with all our hearts. We don’t want to seek the kingdom first. We don’t want Jesus to be our first love. That’s too narrow. So we want to have less of God and more of everything else. And the reason is, is because down deep inside, people are fake. They’re actually. I’m not saying they don’t have any love for God or love for you or love for church or whatever. But down deep inside, what’s really driving their lives is they are lovers of themselves.

0:17:27 – (Steve Gray): That’s it. And people think like they’re supposed to, aren’t I supposed to love myself? And then they bring in, you know, I talked about doctrines of demons and things like that. How many have heard this. You can’t love other people until you first love yourself. Did you know that? Being taught that’s being preached. How can you love others until you love yourself? How can you love others unless you love yourself and then it follows the other one they think is in the Bible.

0:17:57 – (Steve Gray): How can you forgive others if you have not forgiven yourself? Do you know self forgiveness is not in the Bible? Did you know self love is not in the Bible? Oh yeah, I know. We’re all bible believing people, right? We’re bible believing folks. Yeah, they teach, they preach the Bible at my church. Yeah, I guess if. But that ain’t it. People assume, but they think it’s because they think that’s in the Bible. They think they’re hearing the Bible.

0:18:26 – (Steve Gray): Nope, not in there. And then the second one is the other one that gets everybody right. The first one is it’ll be terrible times because people will lover themselves. That’s the bottom line, is what it is. Okay? And the second one is just as bad or worse, maybe, I don’t know, it says, and the second one says in the last days it’ll be terrible because lovers, they’ll be lovers of money. Lovers of money.

0:18:51 – (Steve Gray): You’re going to have a tough time convincing. Get up in your church and preach against loving money. You’re going to have a tough time to convince people that there’s nobody there that loves money. You don’t have to have money. You say, well I don’t have that much money. Yeah, but you wish you did. You’d love to have more. You’d sure love to have more. So you put that together. Lovers of self, themselves and lovers of money.

0:19:13 – (Steve Gray): You’re going to have a terrible life. You’re going to miss out on life and it creates terrible times. What does it create? Divorce, Division. People come to a church and they drift to another church and they go look for another, something else. At another church they look for another husband, another wife, another friend, another job, another home, anything. Something else. It’s have to be. It can’t be God.

0:19:38 – (Steve Gray): It can’t be. The answer is more of God. More serving, more loving, more caring, you know, more committed, more loyal. Oh, it can’t be that. It’s have to be these other things that are going to make me happy, that are going to fulfill me. I’m going to get a fulfilled marriage. I’m going to marry somebody that meets my needs. Which is what? Love yourself and you love money. Well, there’s a whole big, big list that you need to know that even gets, you know, all the boastful and proud and abusive and disobedient to their parents. And ungrateful. How about ungrateful and unholy? Whoa, there, you got it.

0:20:16 – (Steve Gray): You know why so many people are miserable? Because they have blessings, things, and they’re ungrateful. They got what? I don’t know how much your phone costs you, but they’re not cheap. If you get blessed, everything you want to play with, right? And all the movies you want to watch, right? And so you get that, but you’re still not happy. How come you’re not happy? How come you get all this stuff? Because you’re ungrateful and then you’re unholy.

0:20:41 – (Steve Gray): Holiness means to be separated unto God. You’re here, but you’re going to sit Now. I’m for God. I’m over here. I’m for God now. I’m for God’s use only. You don’t see that. You don’t hear that. You don’t hear that in churches today. And so people drift from the level that God tried to get them to go to, and then they go find someplace else where they can be lovers of themselves, lovers of money and all this unholy, ungrateful, all those things.

0:21:08 – (Steve Gray): And then it begins to end on it. Then about when they get all this stuff and they have a form. What we have now in our churches is a form of godliness. It’s ungodly in a way, but it’s a form. And so they follow the form, follow the formula, right? It’s a form, and it’s, you know, it’s friendly. It’s got a few worship songs, you know, sing a little bit of music, preach a sermon, have some fellowship, you know, have some home groups or whatever. As I’ve already said, it’s a form of godliness. Right?

0:21:48 – (Steve Gray): Form. But it lacks commitment and loyalty. Serving, loving God with all your heart first, right? Serve, seek the kingdom of God first. It lacks that. It doesn’t even preach that, all right? And so it becomes a form of godliness that makes people feel good about themselves and feel like, you know, God’s fair, He’s going to be right. I’m okay because. Because, you know, I’m not being a bad person. I’m not doing blatant sin or being bad, right?

0:22:18 – (Steve Gray): So, you know, it’s a form of godliness. We get together with good people. We believe in God. We’re not atheists. We believe in Jesus. We believe as a savior. We believe if we die, we’ll go to heaven. Okay? It’s a form of godliness. But Then Paul says, this is the problem, but they deny its power. And he says, don’t have anything to do with people that live in a form and deny the power of God. How many churches do we have in America? It’s uncountable. You can’t count them like Abraham trying to count the stars that deny the power, that preach. There is no power today.

0:22:52 – (Steve Gray): The power of God ended with the apostles. If you have power, if somebody gets healed, if somebody gets delivered, it’s the devil, it’s not God. They deny the power of God. Well, you’re going to say like most people. Wait a minute, slow down, Pastor. Hey, hold on here. I believe God has power. I believe in God’s power. So I’m not one of those. Cause I don’t have a form of godliness. And I’m denying the power of God. The power.

0:23:15 – (Steve Gray): Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. That’s not what it means. It doesn’t mean that you don’t. Denying the power means you deny it exists. Of course. Even people walking down the street who never set their foot, never set a foot in a church. If I ask them if God can do miracles or God do power, yeah, yeah, he could. They don’t. Maybe believe he will. But they’re not denying that he’s a powerful God. God’s a powerful God.

0:23:39 – (Steve Gray): So see, it’s deceptive to you. Just like deceiving spirits. Deceiving. Because we get a form of godliness, then we deny the power. How do we deny the power? We deny the power access to us. See, the power of God lands on people. The power of God gets on people, gets through people. It doesn’t just exist in the air. The Holy Spirit power. Jesus said, you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you.

0:24:10 – (Steve Gray): We can have great arguments that I have the Holy Spirit and I have this Holy Spirit. Don’t you tell me I don’t have our denomination. They teach how. This is how you get the. I got the Holy Spirit. Well, where’s the power? Well, you deny that. You’re not denying the Holy Spirit. You’re not denying there is power, but you deny the power access to you. And that’s when revival starts. We need revival in our nation badly.

0:24:37 – (Steve Gray): Badly. There’s powers that are trying to destroy our nation right now. It’s not coming. It’s here. It’s here. Destroy our nation, destroy our churches, destroy our faith. They’ve got an agenda and they plan to do it. And here we have nominal Christians that either don’t believe, some don’t believe in the power, by the way, but that’s not what this means. But they deny the power access to him. They know it’s there, but they’re too afraid to give access.

0:25:07 – (Steve Gray): They’re afraid of it. And if they see anybody too on fire for God, they feel like there’s somebody that’s doing too. They’re too on fire. All they do is talk about God and they believe in the power of God and they’re talking about God, God. They’re having God experiences and it frightens most people. They back away. We’re in the day when God is an embarrassment to most church folks. It’s an embarrassment if you go and start talking about God with them at the park or whatever.

0:25:38 – (Steve Gray): They’ll be polite and they’ll listen a little bit, but they’re embarrassed. They don’t join the conversation. They don’t say, yeah, tell me more. Well, let me tell you what God’s doing. They that’s what. Tell me what God’s doing in my life. Oh, great. That’s a wonderful. Thanks for sharing me. That’s really uplifting. Thanks a lot. No, they’re embarrassed and they have nothing to say. They lose their voice, they lose their passion. They were having fun and excited and life and going to the ball game and cheering, standing and shouting, bring up God.

0:26:06 – (Steve Gray): And we back away, we shut down and we’re the embarrassed people of God. We while the other side is zealous for the things of their God and we think we’re going to be okay and escape. So there you have it. This is where we are. This is what’s going on in the world. So we deny the power of God, get access to ourselves. There’s demons being taught, doctrines of demons which are what? Lowering, setting the standard. Lowering the standard where loyalty, commitment, serving is, I guess, just if you want to.

0:26:40 – (Steve Gray): It’s not part of our walk. But that’s not what it was in the early, early church. So I hope you’re getting this. I don’t know if you’re hearing it at other places. Maybe you’re hearing it at your church, maybe you’re picking up on it. That the political scene in our country today with one side is very spiritual, very spiritual, and then another side is very nominal, spiritual. And we’re going to have to pick up the pace. You’re going to have to pick up the pace. It’s have to be people.

0:27:07 – (Steve Gray): Remember, the Holy Spirit comes, but he always lands on somebody. All right, go to our website, https://stevegrayministries.com to learn more. See new books, new things, a new website, all the things that we’re doing. And this message, if it touches you, then you need to tell somebody. Subscribe, be a friend, and all that kind of stuff. Till next time, bye-bye.