Are You Walking the Walk or Talking the Walk - Part 2 — Will Graham

The Faithful Heart of a Man or Woman of God

The heart of the man of God is the heart of faith. God-centered and selfless. A servant of God in public and in private. He realizes his life is not his own, but he belongs to the Lamb of God that purchased him with his own blood.

Humble Service in Secret

So he walks in humility, holy, pure, sanctified, consecrated, doesn't flirt about with the nonsense of this world. Such a person is pleased to clean up the church when no one else is looking, because they're not looking to be in a platform preaching.

They don't need to be playing music to be seen. They're glad to serve God in this secret place. They give people a greeting when they come into the church for the first time. They go out of their way for the benefit of others.

Works as Evidence of New Birth

Such a person has been born from above. The power of the gospel has touched their heart, and their works prove it to be so. Your works will never save you, but you do works when you've been saved. Sanctification is always the result of true biblical justification.

If you've been saved, there will be fruit in your life. Jesus didn't say by their great profession of faith you will know them. He said you will know them by their fruits. And if there's no fruit, there's nothing that's pleasing to God.

Understanding Christ Crucified

The heart of him that has understanding, the heart of the man or woman of God, the young person of God, is captive to a special type of understanding. We're not talking about some type of spiritual elite or mystical band that has a divine flame that keeps everybody else at a distance.

This is God-given understanding. Once the heart has been touched and transformed by the grace of God, the understanding of the man or the woman of God delights in contemplating the Lord of glory. In Christ and Christ crucified.

There in two words, we have all the divine wisdom summed up. Christ crucified. Where is your power, O Lord? Where is your wisdom? He answers, in Christ. Christ crucified. Let us boast of nothing else but this.

We have nothing of ourselves, so let us boast of nothing. Paul said in Galatians 6 .14, God forbid that I should glory in anything save the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified unto me and I unto the world.

Our boasting is in Him. And the only understanding that is of only of any value is that which has eternal significance. Understanding the cross of Christ. But sad as it is to say, contemporary Christianity for the most part, contemporary youth groups and churches have taken the cross out of the gospel.

If you take the blood out of the message of the gospel, this book's not worth the paper it's written on. The cross is what unites Genesis to Revelation. The cross, the cross, the blood of Christ. This understanding is God-given.

Faith Beyond Rational Understanding

This is more than rational understanding. We understand by God's providence that He was pleased to bestow upon man the gift of reason. But reason only goes so far and no further. It ends with mortal man.

The first law of rational thinking is that reason doesn't know it all, nor does it even come closer. But faith in the heart brings a special type of understanding that transcends the realm of reason. Augustine once said, don't try to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.

Anselm said in the 11th century that faith seeks understanding. Did I not say if you believe, you would see the kingdom of God? True biblical faith, true God-giving faith delights in the gospel, in the manifestation of God, and rejoices in the deep waters of the truth of Christ.

Building Every Area of Life on Scripture

Understanding in God always grows in the knowledge of the grace of God. Such a person longs to contemplate everything from a biblical perspective. God, biblically. Christ, biblically. Man, biblically.

Sin, biblically. Salvation, biblically. Church, biblically. The future, biblically. Everything conforming to the Word of God. You must build your life in such a way that every single part of your life is on the firm foundation of the Scripture, so that in any given moment, if someone asks you, why are you doing what you're doing, you can say, because the Lord has spoken.

The Lord has said this. Jesus said, the wise man doesn't just hear his Word, he hears it and obeys it. He puts it into practice, because I'm here to tell you, you're building a house, and I can tell you right now that the rain is going to fall, that the rivers are going to rise, that the winds are going to come and beat and bash against your house, but if you've listened to Christ and you obey His Word, come rain, come high water, come hail, your house will stand, your house will not fall, because you're built on the King of glory, the Lord of hosts.

So are you building on Him, or are you building on your own wisdom? True understanding will always show itself in obedience to God. I've met plenty of people, told me they know God, that they're servants of God, and then have watched their lives, and they live like demons.

They don't know the first thing about God. If you know God, your life will reflect that to be true. If it was a criminal offense in Ulster to be a Christian, would the authorities have enough evidence to put you behind bars?

Does your life line up to what you profess? Do you walk the walk? The heart of Him that has understanding seeks knowledge, seeks knowledge. We seek a knowledge that is complete foolishness to this world.

Seeking Christ and Him Crucified

We seek Christ and Him crucified to the Greeks' foolishness, to the Jews' stumbling block, but for us that believe, He is precious. He is elect. He is that chief cornerstone placed by God Himself, and he that believes in Him shall not be confounded.

Growing in the Knowledge of Christ

You see, God doesn't grant you the new birth, that you stay stagnant until the day you die. God's design is that you grow in the knowledge of Him. Paul sums this up most excellently in Philippians 3, when he says, O that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings.

In Philippians 1 .21, he says, For me, to live is Christ. He is all. He sought that knowledge. Paul had an understanding heart, a heart of faith, and so sought knowledge. A true born-again believer will always seek God.

If you're in love with someone, you want to be with that person. You want to spend time with that girl, with that lad. Why? Because there's a love. I'm the same in the things of God. If you love God, there's passion for Him.

There's a desire to know Him more. This knowledge is what sustains the life of the believer. It's a delight to know Him. In the following verse of our passage, the Scripture says, He that is of a merry heart has a continual banquet, and the gospel is a feast for the child of God.

The Gospel as the Believer's Feast

You see, somewhere along the lines, we've got something mixed up and awful wrong. We've come to believe that the gospel is nothing more than a little life-giving potion that gives life to a sinner that's dead in transgressions and sins.

But we've forgotten that the gospel is not only for the sinner, but the gospel is for the saint. The gospel is for us to delight in, for us to rejoice in, in the greatness of our God. In this sense, Christianity is pure pleasure from beginning to end.

Christianity is not a binding, legalistic, pessimistic, sour-faced, back-crippling affair. It's life, and life in all of its abundance. It's liberty. It's glory. It's excellence. It's virtue. It's pleasure beyond all measure.

Transformation Through Delight in Christ

The ungodly look at you and think you suffer because you don't smoke their joints, you don't sleep about with their girls, you don't get drunk on their alcohol, you don't mess about with their nonsense, as if it pains you that you couldn't do that stuff.

But we've come to a greater knowledge, the knowledge of God, before we delighted in those things, but now our delight is to contemplate Him, and Jesus Christ. He has become our passion. He has become our hunger, and our thirst, and our all.

And as we contemplate Him, we are transformed from glory to glory. Are you being transformed? Does your life show that you've been marked by God? True knowledge of God begins with the fear of God. And if you fear God, you won't fear anyone else.

If you've been confronted by the putrid reality of your stink and depraved condition of sin, then count yourself blessed.