Philippians 3 | Pastor Jeff Shipley

If you'll turn with me to Philippians chapter 3, we're going to do a little doctrinal study today.

Oh, I forgot. Yeah, look at all the babies. Sweet little things. How many babies do we got?

I know we've got four weddings coming up. How many babies? How many pregnant people we got? Three?

Only three? Come on, y 'all. Oh, that's right. I forgot.

What, Hazel? Yeah, guys, she was cute for a newborn. She wasn't ugly.

Oh, I remember Ava was born, and I was just like, oh, I love y 'all so much. It was that old

Baptist bless your heart moment. It really was. Guys, the

Pew Center Research and Gallup, I'm sorry, not Gallup, Barna, have concluded different statistics for 2022.

And I'll tell you, they're not that good as far as the church is concerned in the

United States. Some of the ones I'll just highlight here real quick. In 2022, and this was post -COVID, 2022, only 20 % of America attends church weekly now.

Only 20%. 80 % do not. Here is one that got me. 46 % of all pastors under the age of 45 are considering quitting.

Seven out of 10, 70 % of all pastors today will not retire from the ministry.

70%. Mm, mm, mm, mm, mm. Churches of every denomination are seeing a decline in attendance.

And the average age, the average age of church attendance in the

United States today is 49 years old. 49. Now, in this church, it's 27.

But this is an anomaly to most churches. It's an anomaly. Now, you say to me, well, who cares what the age demographic is?

Well, I'll tell you the reason why is just walked out that door, see? You have young families, young parents that are not going to church, and by default, their children are not going.

So that when they get to a place of, quote, higher education, they're gonna believe that we evolved from an ape.

They're gonna believe that men are women and women are men. They're gonna believe the stupid lies.

Romans 1 .22 says, professing themselves to be wise, men became fools.

And we own that moniker in this generation. So what do we do?

Well, I don't want us ever to be that church that blames homosexuality or drugs or gangs or guns or any of the other little keyword news snippets that wanna blame all of our problems.

Guys, the church is in the position that it's in today for no other reason than the fault of the church.

There is no power. The gates of hell cannot prevail against the church. Why do we actually think that anything of this world is the demise of God's house?

Reason why, I'm gonna be real honest with you, is because churches in the last 30 years have been more interested in entertaining rather than educating the believer.

And as a result, the maturity of the Christian believer today is absolutely horrific.

You go back 200 years, the field hands, the sharecroppers, the slaves, you go back to the poorest of rural

America, they knew the Word of God by heart, even those who couldn't even read.

For their whole life revolved around the Word of God. It was their entertainment. It is how many people learned how to read.

And now we find God's Word on our nightstands covered in dust and crumpled up on the floorboards of our cars.

And we wonder what's going on. Sanctification. Justification, sanctification, and glorification are the three aspects within the linear timeframe of soteriology that define our progress through this life.

Now let me break that down. I know I have some folks here from West Memphis, so I'm gonna talk slower. We actually have a family here that used to join us on the live thing during the

COVID thing. But justification, what is it? What is that doctrine?

How do you define it? Rendered innocent. Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our

Lord Jesus Christ. It means when I stand before God, I have been rendered innocent by the precarious work of Jesus Christ.

What does sanctification mean? Set apart, agios, agadizo.

It literally means that one that has been set apart from the world and from sin and from the path of destruction into the positional salvation of Jesus Christ.

And of course, glorification is what? It's the final step when we all get to heaven and the

UT Vols win every game and pork chops are served three times a day.

It's when we get to heaven. Now, how do we as Christians get more sanctified?

Justification is a one -time thing. You are saved one time and that's it.

Sanctification is an ongoing process. It's where your life at times looks like a small two -seater plane with me sitting in it.

It's giving it all she got and then sometimes you're in a nosedive. How do we as God's people mature?

Well, of course the word of God is central to that but what does the word of God explain?

Read with me chapter three verses 15 and 16 real quick.

It says this. Let those of us who are mature think this way and if in anything you think otherwise,

God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have obtained.

I'm gonna go through three things this morning on how you can mature in Christ.

How we as God's people can be more mature. Now, I know in generations past, the

Christian maturity was marked with church attendance and although God commands us to gather ourselves together, if that is the only metric you're using to obtain a level of maturity in Christ, you are still a babe in Christ, I assure you.

What are the three things that we can do? Well, number one, read with me verses one and two of chapter three and let us answer the question of what

Paul said, let us continue to do these things. What are those things? It says, finally, my brothers, rejoice in the

Lord. To write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you.

Look out for the dogs. Look out for the evil doers. Look out for those who mutilate the flesh.

Guys, the number one thing we can start doing right now, every one of us in this room is to stop selling ourselves so cheaply to the acceptance of the world.

Guys, it's amazing to me how many Christians claim to be sanctified, i .e.

set apart from the world, but strive so hard to continue to be accepted by the world.

How many of y 'all care what the world thinks of you? I know, everybody gonna sit and, I don't care, I don't care,

I don't care. How many of y 'all nagged your mama for Air Jordan 32s, you know, when you were younger?

Of course you did, Mike. Absolutely. How many of y 'all this morning actually looked in the mirror on how you looked?

How many of you women in here did this number right here? Huh? Brandon, you ain't got nothing to worry about, baby.

How many of you men, you know, you care? Yeah, brother, yeah, you ain't got nothing to worry about either, man.

It's called futility. Guys, the reality is we do care.

At the jobs, men, how many of y 'all chuckle with the jokes that are inappropriate about a young lady and how she looks?

How many of you women gossip with that tongue? You see, we still try to find acceptance in the world when we're told right here, we're telling us to watch out.

Now, I want you to understand that we need to stay away from them dogs.

Stay away from those folks that are gonna bring you down. Some of us in this room have the will and the desire to be more godly.

The Holy Spirit's conviction is on you and you want to do that, but you don't have the strength.

You don't have the motivation. You don't have the drive and you feel like if you just heard this sermon or this song or listened to this, it would give that motivation to you instead of doing that, remove certain things from yourself.

The influence of the world will suck the strength of you to motivate you to do more.

You see, there's a place in our lives, a vacuum in our hearts that if we are going to be truly sanctified, it can be only filled with those things of God.

Now, look at this. It says, finally, my brothers rejoice. It's not just staying away from the evil.

1 Corinthians tells us, come out from among them and be ye separate, sayeth the Lord. But it's also doing things in that vacuum.

Once you remove those things of the world, you need to do a couple of other things. Rejoice in the

Lord. Now, Christians, I'm here to tell you, I am so glad this does not say rejoice in your current situation.

Because I'll be honest with you, there are certain situations and I know there are super Christians out there that are like, woo, my house burned down, praise the

Lord. I'm not one of them. I'm not strong like that, okay? I'm just not strong like that, all right?

I praise God that I don't have to rejoice in my circumstances, but in my circumstances,

I still can rejoice in the Lord. That's a mark of maturity. And it's not a fake happiness.

It doesn't say be happy. It says rejoice. Joy is the strength of the

Lord. Now, what's the difference between joy and happiness? Happiness is an emotion. Joy is a state of being.

Joy is deciding that I am going to be obedient and humble myself before God no matter what befalls me and I'm gonna do the same thing yesterday that I did today and I'm gonna give

God the glory and the thanks for it. See, that's a mark of maturity. Joy, it should be the common stead place of God's people.

But it says this, to write the same things to you is no problem for me,

Paul says. Guys, did you ever say this, those of you that are parents, have you ever said this?

I can remember looking at, I won't name the childs, basically all my boys.

Ashley was perfect in every way, but them four idiot boys, I'd look at them and I'd say, come here, boy.

Son, how many times do I got to tell you this? And I was waiting for one of them at one time to sit there and logically go, at least one more,

Dad, because I'm still being dumb. Guys, understand this,

I am so thankful for the grace of Almighty God. I love in Jonah where it says in the word of the

Lord came to Jonah a second time. Even in Jonah's rebellion, God's voice still calls him home.

Even in your failures, I don't care how bad you've messed up. I've been talking to a guy online trying to get him to get back into the house of God, trying to get him back into the family of God here.

And he says, brother, I've gone too far. I said, man, you have, but God's grace goes further.

You see, God in His word came to the Philippian church and He told him, hey, guys,

I'm gonna write to you again. I'm gonna correct you one more time. It's not just joy, it's that scripture again and again and again.

Some of us grew up in church, and I didn't, but some of us grew up in church and some of the problems we have is we think we have heard it one too many times or we already know it all.

What you know, unfortunately, in the church in America today is stupid Bible stories. You don't know doctrine.

And doctrine is the meat of God's word that in the absolute stillness of the night when you are under persecution or under conviction, it is doctrine, not stories, that will bring peace to your soul.

It is the grace of God and understanding that from a doctrinal understanding that will bring you peace.

Guys, understanding the word of God that you can enjoy and God's word comes to you again and again and again, no matter how many times it takes.

You know, it's amazing in churches today, you can't get people to come to anything anymore when

God is the only thing that's happening. You gotta have food or entertainment or any, you gotta have all this stuff.

When God is simply the sole function of a gathering, people won't show up.

Or, as some of our people can tell you, when ministry work happens.

When ministry happens, man, we too busy. It's too much.

Guys, that's how you grow in maturity. I tell young men all the time, you wanna grow up?

Stop doing the things you wanna do and start doing the things you don't want to do.

In other words, those things that you have to do, start doing them. Stop playing the video machines.

There's nothing wrong with video machines. There's nothing wrong with playing Atari or Zelda or whatever it's called nowadays, right?

Ain't nothing wrong with that. As long as it is in the following of you finishing everything that you have to get done at that moment.

Guys, stop laying down with dogs. Rejoice in the Lord and find heart in Scripture again.

There's a reality of separation. I'm gonna say this and I hope he is not upset when he watches this video.

We just finished a pastor's conference in West Bahama, in Freeport.

And there were, I don't know, 80, 85 pastors there. And the president of the association got up.

It was a two -day conference. Brother Jeremiah, Pastor Josiah and myself and three chicks that kept following us around.

We were there. And Dr. PhD Pastor, the president of the association got up and said this.

We've got to come up with a new strategy to reach people because our churches have not recovered from COVID.

We've got to figure out a way to get online and reach those people and bring them to the knowledge of Jesus Christ.

We got to get those people educated. We got to do this. Brother Jeremiah walked up, 24 years old, walked up and said this.

Well, guys, why are you gonna pick up dead tree limbs that God's already pruned from your church?

And I went, oh my God. But he's right.

But he was right. Guys, our job is not to grow numerically.

That's the Holy Spirit's job. I don't win souls to Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit does.

Our job is to be together and to help each other and to be the tool that the

Holy Spirit can use. But understand this. If every one of us dropped out of the race right now,

God isn't going, oh Lord, what are we gonna do now? Or actually He'd say, oh me, what are we gonna do now? His plan

A is still gonna happen. And He's gonna call and bring to them those that have been foreordained before the world was even created.

Here's the second thing. Stop selling yourself to a sinful world, but stop self -righteousness.

Now this isn't as big of a problem here at Witten as it used to be. Good Lord, when I first got here, some of these,

I'll never forget. Oh my Lord. He was the chairman of this, the chairman of that, taught

Sunday school, blah, blah, blah, was the chair of everything. And I remember it was sitting right over here and he was teaching a

Sunday school class out here. He was actually a guidance counselor for a Christian school here in Memphis.

So he was Mr. Christian everything. And I remember him teaching a Sunday school class and he read a verse and I went, that didn't sound right.

So afterwards I walked up and I said, can I see your Bible? And this is the Bible he had been teaching a

Sunday school class here at Witten Baptist Church for decades. And it was the New World Translation, Jehovah's Witness Bible.

And I went, what are y 'all doing here, man?

He didn't even know. He wasn't doing it on purpose. He wasn't an agent of the Jehovah's Witness.

He just didn't know. He was clueless, absolutely clueless. And I'm gonna tell you why he was clueless.

Because he was so self -righteous that he didn't think he had anything else to learn.

He had come to a point in his life where he had obtained and reached that absolute pinnacle of Christian belief because he was

FCA this and Baptist this and all that. And he had had a letter at this church for 30 years.

By the way, nobody has a letter here. There's no such thing. That's Baptist talk. Guys, read with me verses four through seven.

Listen to what the Apostle Paul says. Though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also.

If anyone thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, buddy, I got more.

I was circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a

Hebrew of Hebrews. As to the law, I'm a Pharisee. As to zeal,

I persecuted the church. As to righteousness under the law, listen to him, blameless.

But whatever gain I had, I count it for loss at the sake of Christ.

You know what the second thing you can do to mature in your Christian faith is forget your Christian resume.

Tear it up and throw it away. Please, stop resting on the laurels of what could have been, did do.

Stop sitting there thinking about, well, in my day, we did this. Who cares what you did in your day?

Your day is gone, okay? Your day is gone. One of the things I hate is drums.

Hate them. Hate them. I wasn't raised up in church, but I was raised

Catholic, right? So if you go to any local Catholic church, you're not gonna have a set of pearl drums up there, okay?

Now, you'll have a $40 ,000 organ, but you ain't gonna have no drums, man. Hate them.

It was funny. Christian actually read, it says, "'Praise God with the crashing cymbal.'"

I wish Aidan would have gone, Tsshh. Because that's what them things are up there on them drums.

You see, my perception is irrelevant to God's Word. My understanding of what righteousness is cannot come from in me, because I'm gonna be honest with you, everything in Pastor Jeff is corrupted.

The only understanding of righteousness I can find is in the finished work of Jesus Christ. Guys, we have to admit that our righteousness is worthless.

Look at verse eight. Paul continues and he says, indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing

Christ Jesus, my Lord. For this, his sake,

I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain

Christ. Brother Mike, who's learning New Testament Greek, what's that Greek word rubbish there,

Brother Mike? Yeah, but what's it in Greek? Skubalon, skibadon.

Let me explain that to you. Now, the English Standard Version here takes a little bit of liberty with this

English translation. It says rubbish. Your old King James Bible's got it just a little bit closer when it calls it dung.

But do you know what the actual word is colloquially? I ain't gonna say it.

It starts with an S. That's what Paul's saying. Paul uses some harsh language here.

He uses a colloquialism for poop in this passage. Now, some of y 'all

Baptists are about to pass out. I didn't write it, Paul did. Go take it up with him.

Listen to me. That's what we've gotta come to with our own self -righteousness.

Guys, if you use a personal pronoun, let me explain it to you this way.

I heard Pastor Josiah say this one time. When you stand before Christ, or you stand before the holy righteous judge of God, and your worth and value of going to heaven starts with any personal pronoun, you're going to hell.

There is nothing I did at all to find salvation.

It is all poop. And some of y 'all that have potty mouths start saying scoobalon rather than the other one.

Please, I love having a young church, but man, it's a pain. Don't smoke that, quit taking that, stop saying that.

Guys, our righteousness is worthless. Now look at verse eight. In the absence of our righteousness, it gives us what to put in.

That's why I love this passage so much. It tells you what to not do, then it tells you what to start doing.

Get rid of your self -righteousness, but read verse eight again. I count as everything a loss because of my surpassing worth of knowing

Jesus Christ, or I'm sorry, Christ Jesus, my Lord. Verse nine, read it with me.

Here is the number one thing you do in the vacuum of your self -righteousness, the absence of it.

And be found in Him, not having a righteousness of our own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith, that I may know

Him and the power of His resurrection. Now it doesn't stop there. Now listen, that I may share

His sufferings becoming like Him in death. You know one of the greatest sufferings

Jesus ever had? How many of y 'all saw The Passion of the Christ? Best movie

I'll never watch again. I'm telling you, man, I can't. I remember taking a group of church people from my church in Nashville to watch it, and it jacked me up.

When they were whipping Him, I'll tell you the part that killed me, and this is gonna sound silly.

Some of you moms and dads will get this. The part that killed me the worst is when He was a little kid running, and He fell and scraped

His knees, and He was crying. That broke my heart, because He's crying over something that He has an idea of what's coming later.

God's tearing me up now. I need counseling. The thing that killed me was every time that lash hit

His back, I sat there and go, that was my lick He took. Man, when

He screamed when they drove those nails in, that was me. Those were mine to bear.

But that's not when the suffering began. Do you know when Christ's suffering began?

At the Incarnation. The meat suit. For the first time,

He was encapsulated under the laws of physics by time, space, and matter.

He had a mortal suit that felt pain, and hunger, and fear, doubts.

That's why I always laugh when I hear Christians say, well, Christians should never doubt. Eh, go to the

Garden of Gethsemane and read that. Son, stop being self -righteous and start being real.

Guys, the reality is, the suffering of Christ lasted for 33 years. And He took it.

He knew what it was to sit in glory in the throne room of God, with angelic hosts serving

Him. And then He knew what it was like to be running for His life to Egypt.

He knew what it was like for His own family to come to Jesus, His own family, and say, dude, can you tone it down?

You're embarrassing us. For His friends to walk away. For Him to be alone and absolutely destitute.

For one of His best buddies to go, I don't know Him. Peter sat there and denied

Jesus so much, he cursed and made an oath to God. Peter made an oath to God on the name of God.

I don't know that man. And yet, Jesus still used him.

Grace. Guys, stop self -righteousness. And in the absence of that self -righteousness, fill it with this.

Service, pain, work, sacrifice.

You want to grow spiritually? Sacrifice. Service over self.

Every time. Those of you that are struggling with discouragement, anxiety, and depression, I get it.

I'm telling you, the number one thing that helps me, the number one thing that helps me is investing my life into other people.

Stop thinking about all my problems, start investing in somebody else. My problems don't seem that big.

And in a church like this, you can be an ax murderer, and you'll find someone around here that's more jacked up than you are, right?

Good Lord. I mean, look at Vicky. I mean, my God. That right there will make you feel real good.

All right. Last thing. By the way, your hair looks good, baby.

Your hair looks good. Stop. Yeah, talk to the deacons again.

Guys, stop running with the world. Stop self -righteousness, and here comes the last one. And this is especially for some of you.

And Bill does counseling in this. Stop self -loathing. Verse 13.

Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.

Guys, can you do me a favor? No, forget me. Can you do yourself a favor?

Forget the perfection. Stop. Stop it.

Well, pastor, you don't know how I've messed up and failed in the last 10 years. No, I probably do.

I probably do. And I can tell you with all certainty and confidence, God still loves you and still wants you.

Well, pastor, I've committed adultery. Pastor, I've murdered. Pastor, I've lied.

I've cheated. I've stolen. Yeah? And God's grace is much greater than any sin you'll ever commit.

Guys, you got to learn to forget the past. Guys, our anxiety in our

Christian life happens when we overestimate the power of our sin and underestimate the grace of God.

When we think that our sin is too strong or that something bad's going to...

How many of y 'all wait for the other shoe to drop in your Christian life? Stop it!

The other shoe's already dropped. You're headed to hell without the grace of God. God saved you and has taken you home.

There is no other shoe. That's what the doctrine of justification means. Well, pastor,

I got saved at 15. I invite Jesus Christ in my heart, my Lord and Savior, but I've messed up really bad since 15.

What do you think? God's up there going, I didn't see that one coming. You think

God's up there going, wow, Michael, where were you on that research? I died for Melanie, and then she ends up Mary and John?

Come on, man. Really? Do you really understand that God does not consult your past failures to determine your future glory?

Understand that the blood of Jesus Christ was shed for you before the foundation of the world.

You see, I know some of y 'all just looked at me like, dude, what? It's not a cult, relax.

By the way, we're handing out Kool -Aid on the way out the door. Listen to me real quick, listen.

Revelation tells us that Jesus was slain before the foundation of the world. Now, for some of you, you don't understand that.

That's called the immutability of God's sovereignty. Once God decrees something, it's as if it's already happened, okay?

So when God decreed that I would be His son, when did He decree that? Ephesians 1.

Before God said, let there be light, He said, Jeff Shipley's my boy. Before I could do right or wrong,

God chose me. Not because based on what I would do for Him or some stupid prayer or some silly,

I walked down the aisle. God's grace, what you need to start doing is stop waiting for the other shoe to fall and realize that God's picked up the tab for all of it and start living in the victorious righteousness that His blood has paid for.

You need to forget what's behind and look at this next part, forget what's behind, listen, and press forward.

I don't know how many of you all played football. Probably not a lot of you chicks.

But do you know the one thing I hated in football more than anything else? Well, besides up -downs and running wind sprints?

Oh, I hated two -a -days. Oh, I hated two -a -days. But I hated pushing the sled on two -a -days.

Now, for those of you that don't know what the sled is, it is something out of Toca Mata's Spanish Inquisition.

Basically, it was a steel metal sled with five springy steel things with pads on them, if you were lucky.

Usually, it was like a mattress with duct tape wrapped around it. And you would get down, and you and four other guys would hit it, and you would have to push that sled.

Now, you say, well, that doesn't sound that hard. With your 300 -fat -pound line coach standing on the sled with a whistle going, my rod!

Right? Oh, but it gets better. In the average play in football, it lasts for six seconds.

That's it. But from hike to the whistle, the average is six seconds, okay?

Six seconds. We pushed that sled for like five minutes, and you would have to step over the puke and everything else as you were pushing the sled, and they would take great delight in going, rah, ha -ha!

God. Well, it was tough. I'm still in counseling over it, okay? Man, it stunk.

I hated it. I hated it. But I always put this in my head.

It ain't gonna last forever. It ain't gonna last forever. When the courts of Tennessee told me and my brothers that we had to go to my dad's after the divorce,

I'll never forget this. Our dad met us at the Greyhound bus station in Atlanta, Georgia, and he looked at us, and he said,

I paid $200 a month in child support, and you're about to work it off. And we did.

My grandmother, God bless her little heart, she told me this. Every night at 5 .30,

she would sit in her chair, my grandpa would sit in his chair, and they'd watch Walter Cronkite. And she would say, no matter how bad it gets down there, no matter how bad it gets, just remember, you will be back here with us in the fall.

Nothing's gonna change that. And in my little 12 -year -old mind, when I was doing what

I was doing, I remember going, one last day, till I'm back with Grandma.

One last day. Christian, I know some of y 'all are struggling. I know some of y 'all are struggling waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I know some of y 'all are struggling with failures. I know some of y 'all are struggling that you're under oppression. I know some of y 'all are struggling with cancer.

I know some of y 'all are struggling with your kids, grandkids, it's one more day. Press forward.

But Pastor, I'm tired. That's when growth happens, when you're weak. That's when

God becomes strong in your life. When you're faltering and failing, that's when you grow.

That's when you get maturity. When you sit there and you keep floundering and failing, and you're just so tired, you just don't wanna do it anymore.

Do one more. And one more. When I used to punish my sons, I would tell them, that's 500 push -ups.

Start pumping them out. You know how many push -ups they did? 501.

If I told them it was 30 push -ups, they would do 31. But I taught them at a young age, whatever life demands of you, you do one more.

You go the extra mile. Guys, stop the self -loathing, forget the past, focus forward on your future, and feed the pig.

All right, last thing. Music people, you can come up. I press forward to the mark.

That's what Paul said, I press forward. And then he says this, for the surpassing knowledge of Christ Jesus our

Lord. Do you wanna be a mature Christian? A mature Christian is not one that does things right all the time.

I don't know a Christian like that. I'll be honest, I've been doing this for 30 years now. I've never met one.

I surely don't see one in the mirror, because I still mess up bad, bad.

But I don't rest on my failures. In other words, what I think about is that there are times where God has taken me to task.

I'm still suffering some things because of things I did in my past, consequences for my actions.

I still am, and I will to the day I die. But I know this, the more

I have gotten to know the reality of Jesus Christ, not as a religion, but as someone that I talk to every day, the more confident

I've gotten. Rebecca and I were joking about this the other day.

Rebecca sat there and goes, man, I have so learned how to trust in God. Rebecca's in charge of our finances around here.

And there are days when she got $1 ,000 worth of bills and 26 cents to pay it.

And it's funny, every time she gets in that position, she sits there and says, Lord, take care of it.

And how many times in the last 10 years has God not taken care of it? Speak.

Every single time. One of the things you can do in your maturity is put the trust in God, time and time again.

And I'm talking about not just in the big things, but in the little things. I know Christians that judge their worth in Jesus Christ by sitting there trying to put out fleeces.

Well, if this light turns green before I get to it, that means God still loves me. Well, if this paperclip flips this way instead of that way, well, then

God still loves me. Stop relying on stupid stuff and start relying on God's Word.

One of the ways you push forward is start surpassing in the knowledge of Christ Jesus.

Yes, scripturally, yes, doctrinally, but more importantly, personally.

In other words, it's great to know that information, but with that application to our daily lives, that information is absolutely useless.

Guys, I ask you three questions. Who are you witnessing to right now or ministering to?

Who are you submitted to in accountability and mentorship? And who are you mentoring?

Guys, those are three things that would be a great litmus test for you to know where you are in that sanctification process.

Guys, stop trying to act like the world and be like the world. Number two, forget the self -righteous resume.

And number three, quit being so hard on yourself and holding yourself accountable that you have things you've already been justified for.

I'm gonna ask you to stand with me. And if God has spoken to you today through His Word, not relying on emotions, but relying on commitment, and you need some help with that,

I'm gonna ask you to come forward. Pastors, as you come forward, if there's anyone out there that needs prayer or accountability or anybody who just needs to understand or join a church or get saved, whatever it is, this morning, if God has spoke to you, you come this morning as God leads.