You Can't Do All Things

God Centered Theology

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despite what many people have painted on their faces for football games, despite what many have exclaimed no doubt when attempting some event or some athletic endeavor, despite the what is probably one of the most misinterpreted verses in all the

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Bible, and I hope this isn't too much of a culture shock to you this morning, but I'm here to report to you that you can't do all things.

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It's just not so. You can't. My friends, you can't defy gravity.

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If you go on a tall building and jump off of it, you're gonna find out very quickly that gravity is real and that it never fails.

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You can't drink poison, expect to live. You can't drive over a hundred miles an hour into oncoming traffic and think that will end well.

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The vast majority of people living today can't dunk a basketball. I came really, really close one time, but I've never done it.

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Nobody can run a hundred meters in five seconds. You can't go into space without protection and last more than a microsecond.

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I could go on and on and on and on and on. There are just simply some things you can't do.

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You can't do all things that you can think of. So no matter how loud you exclaim it, no matter how much you may mean it, you can't just say,

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I can do all things through Him and then go do it. So if that's not what the verse means, and I'm here to tell you this morning it's not, what does it mean?

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This section of Scripture, particularly verses 10 through 13, but even moving past that all the way down to verse 20, is a great lesson in things like context, consistency of interpretation, understanding the original author's intent, understanding what the original audience would have understood, knowing that you can't take a verse by itself and build a belief around it.

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You see, and I've said this many times when I've been before you, and this, for some of you this may be something you ever heard before, for many of you this may be review, but keep in mind chapter and verse divisions in Scripture are not inspired.

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They are a modern thing. Somewhere, I think it's somewhere around the 1500s, somewhere thereabout is when we started having chapter and verse divisions.

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The original Scripture, when it was penned by the authors, did not have chapter and verse divisions. So the divisions of verses and chapters themselves are not inspired.

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They are mainly there for quick reference to be able to, you know, pick out a section of Scripture and things like that.

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So one of the downsides of having chapter and verse divisions in our Scripture, there's a lot of upsides.

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I mean, if you're going through like First Chronicles or something, it'd be a lot easier to say First Chronicles 6 .5 and then say, well, go about a third of the way through the book, maybe eight lines down, you know.

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But one of the downsides is many a teacher and preacher and Christian have taken verses and just ran with it and say, well, because this verse says this, well, this must be the author's meaning.

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So what's in view here? Well, that's what I want to talk to you about this morning. What is actually in view here in this section of Scripture when

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Paul says in verse 13, I can do all things through him who strengthens me, is anything and everything that God expects and wants you to do.

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We gain a lot of understanding about the actual things that Christ will strengthen us to do by if you were to survey the entire book of Philippians.

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Now, Philippians isn't the only book that deals with these things, but it's always good to get an understanding of what the author is saying in the full context.

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Now, time will certainly not permit us to look and survey the entire book of Philippians, but I want to just read off for you quickly 15 items that we find in just the first chapter of Philippians that God will certainly strengthen you to do.

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In the first chapter of Philippians, you will find things like thanksgiving, prayer, the work of sanctification, love for the brethren, growing knowledge and discernment, being filled with righteousness, working for the progress of the gospel, living for Christ, fruitful labor for Christ, living in a worthy manner, standing firm in the faith, unity in mind and purpose, contending for the faith, suffering for Christ's sake and for his name, and finally following the example of other faithful brethren.

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That was just a cursory view of the chapter. I'm sure if we spent more time we could find more. That's 15 items in just the first chapter of Philippians that I can guarantee you that God will strengthen you to do.

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So that's an example of some of the things that we should be doing and some of the things that this verse would apply to, but it's even deeper than that.

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It's more than just identifying the things that God will strengthen us to do and the things that he won't strengthen us to do.

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You see, Paul's message here in Philippians 4, 10 through 13, is not that God is going to supernaturally empower you to do whatever comes to mind or, and as I often do when

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I preach, I'm preaching to myself here, what you determine should be done.

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We're very good at that. I am very good at that.

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I think you should go this way. I think this should happen. I don't think this should happen. I think I should be able to do this.

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I don't want to do that. God should do this for me. God should bless me in this manner. I should have this type of house.

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I should, on and on and on and on we go. No, Paul's message is that God is going to empower you to do all those things that Christ is going to strengthen you to do.

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You see, the activity and the ability that results from the strengthening that comes from Christ is

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God -centered and not man -centered. It's a theme that seems to run through all of my teaching lately.

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Every single time I preach or teach, it seems inevitably at some point I mention the fact that the text, the passage, the idea, whatever it is we're is in view, is

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God -centered rather than man -centered. Because so much of the

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Christian, popular Christian thought and teaching and what we see and put in front of us, if you look at it in its correct form and look at what's really being conveyed, you see that it is so much man -centered.

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What I want, what I feel, God should condition or adapt Himself to me.

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Every single word, every single passage, every single verse of Scripture is

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God -centered. It starts with God and then we come down to us and not starting with us and then reasoning up to God.

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We call that idolatry. Every so -called idol, every so -called God, which really isn't an idol or God because there's none in existence but the true

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God, is made up in the mind of man. So what ultimately is

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Paul teaching us about besides the things that God will indeed strengthen us to do? Well, he's teaching us about two words that, if you're like me, takes you a long, long time to wrap your head around, much less master.

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And I certainly have not gotten to the point of mastering this, but I would submit to you that the way I handled this now is far better than I did before.

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Those two words are biblical contentment, biblical contentment.

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Our world and the people in it, including myself, including you, at different times in your life tend to be woefully discontent.

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It reminds me of a man that became envious of his friend's house. The house was larger, it was more luxurious, had everything he thought he wanted, so he became discontent with his own house, started finding all these problems with it.

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You know, the kitchen isn't big enough, the bathroom isn't big enough, I don't like the way this corner looks.

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Well, he decided what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna list my house, sell it, and with the proceeds

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I will go build a much, or buy a much bigger house, and then I can be cool just like all these other people.

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Then I'll be happy, then I'll be satisfied. Well, he lists it, and shortly after he's looking through the online listings, and what's interesting, just as a little side tangent here with this little story, when you read it online, it's got the original edition of it, so it says things like newspaper clippings, and I thought to myself, what's a newspaper?

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I'm like, we need to update this. We go online and look at real estate listings now, we don't have newspapers for these things.

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So that's what he did. He was looking online, looking through houses, scrolling through realtor .com or Zillow or all those good things, and he found this one house, and he started looking at it, and look at all the things they had.

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Man, this is perfect. This is it. This is, I can be satisfied,

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I can be happy if I just have this house. So he calls up his realtor, he's telling them all about it, and talking about the things that he likes about it, and so the agent, the real estate agents ask him questions, and gets confused and said, sir,

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I don't understand, why is this the one you want? He explains, well, sir, you don't understand, the house you're looking at is your house.

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Wait, my house? Yes, the one you say you want is the one you listed.

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Ah, okay. Yeah, there's not really much to be said here, so I think

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I'm just gonna go. Awkward! Makes a good point, don't it?

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Grass is not always greener on the other side, is it? What was this person's problem?

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They were trying to find satisfaction and contentment in the wrong things. You see, when one determines that their happiness and joy is based on their level of satisfaction with their circumstances, then no matter how hard one works, one will never be satisfied.

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I can speak from personal experience. If my friends in my sound booth back there will pop the graphic that I have up on screen for just a minute, and since we're live streaming,

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I don't want to leave it up for the rest of the service, but I think that will cause viewing issues, so we'll look at this for a minute and then take it down, but this is very interesting because I made this a long time ago.

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It's got to be over a decade ago, and when I was thinking about using this,

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I started realizing, like, huh, I think

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I actually do this now. At the time, it was a lot of good head knowledge, and I felt pretty, you know, haha,

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I'm so smart kind of stuff, and then I had to repent of that and humble myself and learn, but now when looking at it,

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I'm like, how could I have been thinking about it in this way then because I wasn't living it?

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This isn't overly complicated, but this is an example of what not to do, okay? So if you want to be discontent in life, the circle on the right is the goals, wants, and desires.

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Those things you have determined you must have to be satisfied. Now the red arrow takes that up, black arrow takes it across, and the other red arrow going down is the understanding that you are forcing it down on top of your reality and joy, meaning that you can only be happy if what you've determined to be your goals, wants, and desires are your reality and joy.

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Now notice the arrow in the middle that's going left, these things determine reality and joy, so then when you're going back, notice that your reality and joy, that word joy in the middle is on top of the arrow, going back to goals, wants, and desires.

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What that is indicating is that if you attempt to force that which you've determined you must have onto reality, your joy gets lost or your joy is submitted to whether or not you ever achieve those things.

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So as I wrote there on the bottom, you know, if you take your goals, wants, and desires and bring them over and attempt to force them on to your reality to where we decide that they must determine our reality, then we lose our joy into those goals, wants, and desires, which may or may not ever be reality.

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Our joy can be experienced in reality if our joy is found in Christ. Okay, brother, we'll take that on down for now, but the whole meaning and the understating behind that, there's certain things

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I think about when I started at Food Lion in August of 2000 as a 17 year old and, you know,

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I determined that by a certain age I was gonna be assistant manager, store manager, district manager, all these things,

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I was gonna do, you know, much like many of you, I had all these ideas and stuff and as time went on and those things didn't occur,

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I just got increasingly dissatisfied, discontent, and angry and misplaced the blame on God because He wasn't giving me what

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I wanted. He wasn't doing what I wanted. Failing to recognize that God doesn't owe me nothing.

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He doesn't have to do what I want. God does as He, the Psalm, I believe it's

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Psalm 105, says that Yahweh does as He pleases. Doesn't say man does as He pleases. And so you fast forward and, you know, then

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I'm going into school, looking to become a pastor, and I carry over some of that discontented, dissatisfaction, you know, it's got to be this kind of church, or it's got to be this kind of ministry, or I got to be able to do this type of thing, or constantly discontent, dissatisfied.

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Why? Because I've already predetermined, not being God, that I can only be satisfied if I have these certain goals, wants, and desires, and I took them over and forced them down and said my reality has to be this or I won't be joyful.

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Now no one in that environment actually says those things, but I can guarantee you it's in the back of your mind, and it's controlling everything you do.

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So what's going to happen? What's going to change? We've got to reverse our thinking.

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We are not content. You won't become satisfied by determining your reality or circumstances.

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No, you are content because we have everything we need to be satisfied from God, regardless of your circumstances.

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Now this is a whole sermon for another day. We're not going to delve on this long because time will not permit, but this doesn't mean that we don't have goals, wants, and desires that can be biblical and Christ -centered.

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Psalm 37, I believe it is, talks about how, you know, if you delight yourself in the Lord, He'll give you the desires of your heart.

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But the whole sermon for another day, we would talk about how as you align your soul and your spirit, and whoo!

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Yeah, I knew it was coming sometime, Roy. I'll be stealing. I'll tell you, with technology, these boxes are wearing out, so I told him,

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I said, if it does that too many times, we'll just switch over to this one. I said, don't worry, you won't have to have your ears destroyed. I'll serve us long.

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But if you align your goals, wants, and desires with what Christ ultimately wants for you, and find your contentment in Him, you find that what

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He wants for you is far better than what you ever wanted for yourself to begin with. And so verses 10 through 14 here, let's look at them in depth here.

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He says, you know, by rejoicing in the Lord greatly that now at last you have revived your thinking about me.

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Indeed, you were thinking about me before, but you lacked opportunity. Now I want you to notice here, he's talking about biblical contentment and being satisfied, but he does not dismiss or say that these

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Philippians that gave him a gift, they met his need financially or met some need and support.

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He doesn't dismiss that and say that it's not important. Saying that we need to be, you know, satisfied in Christ, content in Christ, is not something where, you know, things in life don't happen, we don't pursue certain things, we don't have goals, we don't have achievements, we don't have, you know, needs and these things.

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Because ultimately what's being in view here is that God's going to fulfill all the needs that you have as you serve

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Him. And so in this case specifically, there was a need that Paul had and they met that need.

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It isn't that you just sit around and you have to wait. It's like the, you know, the old joke of the guy, he's on the desert island, he's waiting for God to save him, he sends a boat, he sends a plane, he sends all these things, he's like, turn them away, saying, you know, oh

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God's gonna save me. And God's like, dude, I sent you a boat, I sent you a plane, I sent you all these things. It isn't like that.

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There are actual needs that need to be met and what we find is that there are a variety of ways that God meets needs and strengthens us as we live for Him.

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He says not that I speak from want or destitution or lack. When he says not that I speak from want here, the idea sort of is carried over from Psalm 23 when he says, the

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Lord is my shepherd I shall not want. I shall not find myself wanting or lacking.

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Not that I speak from want, for I learn to be content, satisfied in whatever circumstances

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I am. This word translated circumstances here literally could be rendered the things pertaining to me.

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The things, the state in which I find myself. And then notice he says,

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I know how to get along with humble means. I also know how to live in abundance.

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In any and all things I have learned the secret of being filled and of going hungry, both of having abundance and of suffering need.

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It is in that light that he now says I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

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Paul's needs were met. In some cases they were monetary.

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In other cases they were prayer or individuals helping him, housing.

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Maybe in the middle of suffering it was encouragement or peace. Keep in mind Paul's writing this letter from prison.

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He's in a Roman house chained to a soldier. That presents a couple of awkward situations

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I would think. Going to the bathroom, if you had some kind of medical emergency, if you're trying to get up move around.

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Kind of awkward to do that with some big old hulking soldier chained to your feet. So it's just kind of things

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I think about his situation and he's in this situation. The same man that's been shipwrecked, beaten, betrayed.

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All this manner of things happened to him. He's saying I'm good. Something must be wrong with this man.

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Doesn't he know that when things don't go your way you're supposed to get angry and shake your fist at heavens and say how dare you do this to me?

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Now we laugh. Is it not tempting? Especially when it's something that's going to cost a lot of money.

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It's tempting. It's the old thing we say it's always something.

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Paul's saying we shouldn't be like that. Paul's saying that the manner in which you find yourself does not determine your joy.

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The state in which you find yourself, the circumstances in which you find yourself, do not determine your contentment or level of satisfaction.

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Because those are the things that are not making you satisfied. God is. He says if I'm rich, if I'm poor,

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I'm happy. If I'm suffering need, if I'm abounding,

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I'm okay. All things that God requires of me

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I can do because he's going to strengthen me to do them. And sometimes the greatest strength we need from God is when we're doing well.

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Because then you get prideful. Tend to think you can do it on your own. Does that mean that Christians shouldn't pursue things if it doesn't you know leave you poor or destitute?

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No. We're not called to be poverty stricken and all these things on purpose.

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It's certainly okay to work a job and make some money and have a house and have nice things and these things.

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But that doesn't mean that that's the source of your happiness. And as much as it may be hard to think about, if God took it all away tomorrow we would need to be just as happy and satisfied in God as we did when we had those things.

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That's why we need to beware of the, and I always preach, a lot of this I'll preach against what I call the extremes, right?

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So in one case as a Christian we don't need to be so hyper focused on wealth and accumulating things.

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And on the other end we don't need to be doing as a lot of people in Paul's day would do. They'd mutilate themselves or you know purposely put themself in poverty or say well you know

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I can't have anything materialistically because I just only need to be satisfied in Christ. Well James said, the book of James says that every good gift comes from the

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Father so it's okay to have things. It's okay to even be successful in a certain venture or things like that.

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The point is not the circumstances, not success or lack of it. It's not having a big bank account or a small one.

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We need to eradicate all those things and stop using them as prisms by which we determine success.

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Otherwise churches with five people in it would only be a failure. Churches with a hundred or five hundred, well they must be successful.

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My friends there are churches filled with people that are failures. And there are churches with barely two people to look at each other that accomplished far more for the kingdom than the other ones.

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The size of a church, the size of your bank account, the size of your ministry, that's not what is in view.

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Faithfulness, obedience and no matter what comes my way

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I have a guarantee from Scripture that I can do it and I'll be strengthened to face it and I can do all those things that I find in my life because God is going to strengthen me to do them.

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Finally as we close look at 2nd Corinthians chapter 9 and verse 8. This is sort of a companion thought or verse to go along and sort of sum up what we've been looking at here.

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2nd Corinthians 9 8 Paul says, And God is able to make every grace abound to you, so that in everything, at every time, having every sufficiency, you may have an abundance for every good deed.

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God is, there's things in life that God's not going to strengthen you to do no matter how much you may wish you could do them but I can guarantee you because God's Word is inerrant and if he says that it will happen that you will be strengthened to do all those things that are necessary for you to bring glory to God.