Am I Doing This God Thing Right? (North OC)

Speaker: We've all been there.

You're in the middle of something and then you ask yourselves, am I doing this right?

You've been there.

Whether it's IKEA furniture, that's me every time I get there and I'm like, man,

can't they just write their instructions in English and keep it simple?

We've been there.

Maybe it's cooking a recipe without, I mean, cooking without a recipe.

It's A-D-D-I-Y home project.

Maybe you're trying to fix something or replace something on your car,

and you get to this point and you're like, am I doing this right?

Especially if you have more nails or more parts than you're supposed to have.

I was talking with Dallas Kauai the other day, and uh, you know, it

looks like I'm, I'm going to physical therapy and, and, uh, I'm not sure

if it's tendonitis or arthritis.

What will, you know, God, God will help me figure it out and I'm there.

And, and you know, Dallas, uh, he, he did some, uh, internship and so I'm

trying to get his advice 'cause I'm like, I'm doing this exercise, but

like, I don't know if I'm doing this right because I don't know if this

is supposed to feel the way it feels.

And so we've all been there.

Maybe it's something new, but we've also asked this question sometimes when

we've been doing something for a long time, maybe it's, maybe it's parenting.

Am I doing this right?

Maybe it's our job.

Maybe it's marriage, maybe it's just, it's just life.

Am I doing this thing called life?

Right?

We've all been there.

And so this is a good question to ask because we desire to do it

right and we desire to see the good and the blessing from the effort

in which we are giving ourselves.

And so we are starting a new series this week here called Am I doing this right?

And we're gonna be talking about relationships and finances and success.

Are we doing these things right?

And so for the month of May, this is what we're going to be walking through.

As we learn from God's word, how can we go in these areas of our

lives and do it the right way?

And so today the question is, am I doing this God thing, right?

Am I doing this God thing, right?

This faith, this religion, this Christianity.

Am I doing it right?

Because maybe you've asked yourself this before.

Maybe you've prayed, you've gone to church.

You try to live a good life, but still feel unsure, disconnected, or feel

like you're, you're missing something.

Or maybe you've been a disciple of Jesus for many years and you know the

language, you know the culture, you know many scriptures, but maybe lately

you're feeling like you've been missing something or maybe you've been a disciple

of many years and you are hit with that question like, Hmm, am I doing this right?

Still?

The beauty of it is that you're not alone.

Wherever you are in the spectrum, you are not alone, and you're

not too far gone either.

In fact, Jesus had a conversation with someone just like you that's

gonna help us answer this question and guide us to see how we can capture

what it means to do this God thing.

Rights.

And so are you ready here to explore this today in the next several weeks?

Let's go ahead.

Let's go to God in prayer.

Then we're gonna dig into the scriptures.

Father in heaven, Lord of glory, the holy one, the one who resides in heaven.

But yet you dwell within our hearts.

We thank you that you have gone before us.

We thank you for the fact that we are part of a worldwide fellowship.

But we thank you that we don't have to guess about life.

We thank you for your scriptures, and most of all, we thank you for Jesus,

the example of how to do things right.

We pray that you will guide us, that you will minister to us, that

you'll put to the side any and every distraction that will try to block

us from hearing your word today.

We pray in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Yeah, so will we want to go somewhere or where do we usually go when we're

asking ourselves, how do we do something?

You go to Google or you go to YouTube.

Those are the two spots we go to, right?

I know even this week when I was trying to figure out these, these exercises I'm

supposed to do, I was like, man, let me go to YouTube and let me type this in

and let me see how to do this correctly.

And so if we're gonna answer this question correctly, if we're gonna get the right

answer, how to do this God thing, right?

Yeah.

We might find something from YouTube, but we might find some good stuff on Google.

But where we need to go is we need to go to, actually, Jesus.

We need to go to Jesus because Jesus, he has He.

He knows that God thing pretty well.

Yeah.

And in fact, in the scriptures we see something that's gonna help us.

You see in Colossians one, the apostle Paul tells the church, he says, Jesus

is the image of the invisible God.

You wanna know what God would be like.

Guess who you look to?

You look to Jesus.

He also says this in Hebrews chapter one.

It says, Jesus is the exact representation of God's being.

Whatever Jesus was like, that's what God is like you say, what

would God be like in the flesh?

We have that answer.

It's Jesus.

And in fact, over in John chapter one, it says, no one has ever seen God, but

the one and only son who is himself God and is in closest relationship

with the Father, has made him known.

Jesus makes the Father known.

To all of creation.

And even Jesus said this.

He says, anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.

And so one of Jesus' main objectives in coming to, uh, to to earth

here and living and dying was to reveal this whole God thing.

What to show us what it's supposed to be like.

So again, if we're, the very starting point is Jesus, so

let's go to Jesus as he reveals.

How to do this God thing.

Right.

Brother and sisters, are you with me this morning?

Let's go to Mark chapter 10 and we're gonna go ahead and

Mark 10 · chapter mention

read here, mark chapter 10.

Mark 10 · chapter mention

In verse 17, mark is, uh, written basically a biography about Jesus.

And, uh, what we know from church tradition is that Peter told,

uh, mark about Jesus' life.

And so Mark writes it down and it says here in verse 17, as Jesus started on his

way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him, good teacher, he asked,

what must I do to inherit eternal life?

That's a good question to ask.

What must I do to inherit eternal life?

Now, here's what's interesting is that, again, this is the first century

and first century Jews would've all been able to answer this question.

They would've said, Hey, how do you have eternal life?

Is you obey the law, the law of Moses, you obey, and that's

how you will have eternal life.

So it's interesting that he would even ask this question because

he would know what the answer.

Would be, however, he still asked it, why I think he's asking what

we're asking ourselves today.

Am I doing this God thing, rights?

And so he goes, and we see problems already in his question, although

he's very sincere, it says he ran up and fell on his knees.

Now, if somebody runs up to you and falls on their knees and asks you

a question, are they pretty sincere about what they're asking you?

Of course they really want it.

There's a heart that desires what's right and what's good, and we see that.

But he starts off and he says, what must I do?

Did you catch that?

What must I do to inherit eternal life?

Problem number one, he thinks he can earn eternal life.

That's the problem right there.

He has some stinking thinking going on.

Is that he thinks if I do something, then God will hon obviously reward me with

eternal life so I can earn my salvation.

And then we see here he is thinking about really a checklist or rules.

What's the one thing I need to do?

Let me do it.

Bam.

I'm good.

Let's continue in the past.

And he says, why do you call me good?

Jesus answered.

No one is good except God alone.

You know the commandments.

You should not murder.

You should not commit adultery, you should not steal.

You should not give false testimony.

You should not defraud honor your father and mother, Jesus goes on and he lists

a number of the 10 Commandments, but he says, you should not defraud, which

actually isn't in the take commandment.

So he's not saying just, Hey, you gotta obey just 10 commandments.

But he's talking to him and he already knows this.

And Jesus, we, we, we know how Jesus is.

He set him up for a longer conversation.

But there is something important that we can take from this is that

obedience is a part of or right response to God that we are called

to obey his word, but he says this.

Teacher, he declared all these, I have kept since I was a boy.

I've done it all.

We can debate and we can speculate.

Did he really do all this since he was a young boy?

Maybe.

Maybe he was a good one.

Maybe he was like Dallas, Kauai and he was just the golden child.

However, I knew Dallas when he was two, and I'll tell you,

he was not the golden child.

Great person.

Just having some fun.

I've known him since he was two.

No, but we see here that the ruler that this young man we see here in

different passages, call him young.

He's called the rulers.

So we call him the rich young ruler, is that he, he wants to show off his resume,

Hey, hey, you, you know what, Jesus, you said I gotta do these things.

Well, guess what?

I've done them.

And so maybe he's saying this with confidence, maybe he's probably, you know,

I've been doing this since I was a boy.

You know what I'm saying?

Or maybe he's saying with insecurity and uncertainty.

You know, I, I've been doing all this since I was a boy, but

something still doesn't feel right.

Maybe I'm still missing something.

Maybe this whole God thing I don't have on as much as I thought

I did since I was a youngin.

And so we see some wrong things here.

Is that he's thinking again, more of rules.

More than heart and relationship.

Again, it's about following these rules as opposed to the hearts and

the relationship that God seeks.

And so we continue in Mark 17, in verse 21.

Brother and sister, are you still with me here?

Jesus looked at him and loved him.

What was that like?

What was that like?

What kinda look did Jesus give that the people around said why he looked

at him and you could tell he loved him?

Obviously it wasn't one of condemnation, it wasn't one of anger and frustration.

Man, what's wrong with this guy?

He thinks he's got it all together.

No, he looked at him and loved him.

He says here one thing you lack.

Go sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you

will have treasure in heaven.

Then come follow me at this.

Demand's face fail.

He went away sad because he had great wealth.

You know, Jesus offering mercy, grace, he's patient and he's giving

him an opportunity and a tragic.

Tell.

It says he went away sad.

You know, if you go through the gospels outside of Jesus's opponents,

outside of his ops, the ones who come to Jesus usually are sad, feeling

something, and they come away with joy.

This is one of the few occurrences where he came in and left actually

sad because he was called to something and he didn't wanna give up.

One thing, and that was his, his wealth or his security or his ambition, and

we can dive into that another day.

But what do we see here is that he had a belief, but there was no sacrifice.

There was a belief in God.

There was a belief that Jesus obviously had some right answers.

However, there was belief with no sacrifice.

You know, you can do all the right things.

Still get it wrong.

You can do all the right things and still get it wrong.

You know, I want us to look here real quickly and we're gonna take

some more from this passage and also add a couple more things

of some signs of doing it wrong.

Hmm, as we see here from this man.

And we can also see it in our lives.

And so here are some signs of doing it wrong, and these are perspective or

practices that you and I and those around us in this our society, that we can think

that that could be our view, or these could be our practices and our lifestyles.

And, and this isn't necessarily in the ranking order, but this

is the order that I don't believe it is exhaustive, but captures.

How we can do it wrong.

And so one rules based, when we have a perspective of practices in which

we think God just wants rules to be followed, and included in that is

performance or outside appearance.

If I perform a way, if I look good in front of those around

me, but that's doing it wrong.

Also, if we're morality focused, this whole God thing is just

about being a good person.

As long as you're not a bad person, you don't steal, you don't kill people,

you don't rob, you don't lie too much.

You don't get angry too much, as long as you are a good person.

So I'm just gonna focus in on being a good person.

Another way is when it's convenient commitments, we're committed on

our terms, but if we ever have to stretch ourselves, sorry.

Give financially sacrificially.

Nope.

Give them my time.

Nope.

No sacrifice.

We also can see it in this being self-centered, where this whole

God thing is really about me.

It's about me.

It's about what I can consume or it's about my improvements.

Yeah, I just don't wanna be the same person I was before.

I wanna be a better person, or I don't wanna be the person I naturally am.

Or it's a consumer mindset, Hey, what's in this for me?

What's the value for me?

What can others do for me?

And we might not say that out loud, but it's our perspective and we look through

the lens of how does this affect me?

We can also have, and we don't really see this in the story here, private faith.

This is where it's about me and God and that's it.

Don't you get in my business, it's about me and God.

It's not between me and you.

I can just do this on my, on my own.

And you know what, you could argue that with the rich young ruler,

he is asking about himself and private, he's not actually concerned

with, how do all of us get this?

And we can see this a lot of times, a lot of people say, I do the God

thing, but I don't do the church thing.

It's private.

Here's the thing, lemme share this real quickly.

Our relationship with God is supposed to be personal but not privates.

Our relationship with God's supposed to be personal but not privates because

God designed us for a relationship.

Here's another way which we could be doing the wrong, and this is the other extreme,

which is it's about church over Christ.

Meaning I'm all about the people.

I'm all about the routines.

I'm about the tradition, but I'm not too much about the whole Jesus parts.

And this can be seen in language like, Hey, I go to church.

When you're thinking about problems and answers for your

life or others, it's about church.

Hey, what do you need?

You need to go to church with me.

You get what I'm saying here is that church becomes the focus and not Christ.

Come on man.

And here's another one and last one that we'll briefly mention here is faith only.

And this is where we believe we have faith, but there's no relationship.

We believe, but there's no obedience.

And so it's faith only.

These are the signs that you may be doing it wrong, and I want you to

humbly ask yourselves right now, do any of these things describe me today?

Because here's the thing, if this is the case, God wants to take you from

doing it wrong to doing it right.

Amen.

And so it's okay if you say, you know what?

That has been me.

Because I can say, this has been me prior to becoming a Christian and

at times after becoming a Christian.

And so we need to honestly look and observe and ask, am I doing this wrong?

Because I don't wanna do this wrong.

I wanna do this God thing, rights.

And so Jesus is going to help us.

Brothers and sisters, are you still with me here?

All right.

Don't get too quiet on me now.

Let's go back to Mark chapter 10 here.

Mark 10 · chapter mention

It says, Jesus looked at him and remember he looked at him.

He says, Hey, go sell everything.

No, he is not calling everybody to sell, but he calls it for him

because that's the one thing that he knows that he needs to give up.

He says, then come follow me.

Jesus invites him to relationship.

Hey, come follow me.

He invites him not to a list of rules, not to some restrictive religion

and some restrictive lifestyle, but he invites him to relationship.

And you see the man, he had religion, but he didn't have relationship.

He wanted heaven, but he didn't want the one from heaven, and

he walks away from the relationship.

He didn't walk away from his religion.

He didn't walk away from his faith, but he walked away from the

one who was the author of Faith.

You see, the main part of doing it right is this whole relationship thing.

That's the main ingredient and the main components of this God thing.

It's about a relationship.

And we even see this even some more in Mark.

As Jesus continues, let's continue.

He says, Jesus looked around at his disciples and he said, how hard is it

for the rich to enter the kingdom of God?

The disciples were amazed.

What?

What did he just say?

The rich can't enter the kingdom of God.

I thought if you were rich, God bless you.

You had God's favor.

But Jesus said again, children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God.

It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone

who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.

Everybody like, well, that's impossible.

A camel can't go through a eye of a needle.

What are you talking about?

The disciples are even more amazed and said to each other,

well then who can be saved?

Then Jesus looked at them and said, with man, this is impossible, but not with God.

All things are possible with God.

We gotta remember that verse, y'all.

All things are possible with God.

It was possible for that rich young ruler.

It's possible for you, it's possible for every soul.

But he continues in verse 28, and Peter spoke up.

We have left everything to follow you.

Truly, I tell you, Jesus replied, no one who has left home or brothers

or sisters, or mother or father or children or fields for me.

And the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present

age, Holmes brothers, sisters, mothers, children, fields, along with persecutions

and in the age to come eternal life with many who are first will be last, and

the last first will stop right there.

Did you catch that?

Peter says, Hey, you know what?

We left everything to follow you.

And Jesus says, Hey, guess what?

Everybody here if you've sacrificed anything for me.

I'm gonna reward you in the present.

And for all eternity, Jesus points them to himself.

The disciples at this time weren't trying to follow a religion or a set of rules.

They were trying to follow the one who invited them to a relationship.

And so here's the thing here, brothers and sisters, here's what it

comes down to is that Christianity is not about a what, but who.

Ooh, Christianity is not about a what?

What should I do?

It's about a who and that who being Christ himself.

You see Christianity while Christ is craziness.

You don't even have Christianity if you take Christ out of the word.

Are you with me there, Chris?

You caught that one.

You see, it's all about a focus in on Jesus.

That's what this God thing is about.

It's about a relationship with Jesus.

It's about becoming more like Jesus in our character and in our nature.

It's about working alongside Jesus in his work to redeem all of creation.

And this life that Jesus offers again, isn't one of restriction.

We can have some stinking thinking, thinking, man, following Jesus

means this life of restriction.

It's actually one that produces freedom and security because it's in relationship.

Think about the people that you're close to use your, your best friend.

For example, my, my best friend, uh, by the grace of God is, is my wife Karina.

She's my best friend.

And y'all tell her I said that.

Okay.

Because she gonna have some other things to be mad about Maia and be like, okay,

well you did that one thing right?

You know, after.

And part of the reason why I didn't marry her was because of our, our, our, our, our

friendship, our relationship that we had.

But after we got married, after there was a full commitment.

20 years ago, our relationship got better, but it also became

more freeing in our relationship.

I was no longer trying to impress her.

I'm like, girl, you already said yes, but I wasn't trying to impress her

and I wasn't nervous and insecure.

Uh oh.

If I do this, will it mess it everything up?

Will it blow up?

Why?

Because of the commitment to the relationship actually

made me more free and secure.

Before the commitment, Hey, there could be some insecurity and uncertainty

because we're not fully committed.

Are you with me here?

Thinking about your close friends?

Maybe it's your spouse, your your best friend from 20

years, whatever the case is.

As you guys built this relationship and you understood, we're down for each

other, that's my ride or die, whatever the case is, it made you more free in the

relationship to show the ugly, to show the bad, and to rejoice over the good.

You didn't feel restricted in that relationship.

You actually felt freedom and security because of the

commitment in the relationship.

The same with Jesus.

When we commit in the relationship, there's freedom.

In Christ, perfect love dries out fear.

The scripture tells us when we have this relationship, we don't have to fear.

Oh no.

Where am I at with you, God, because everyone likes and enjoys you.

Notice that.

So what I'm saying here is when you're in a relationship and you're

committed, you oftentimes do things that maybe they're not your preference,

but you start to do them with them.

And over time you even start to enjoy and like some of those things.

I seen that, you know what I mean?

Like, I, I, I got Karina listening to a lot more rap

music than she probably used to.

She's into basketball more than she's used to, and she, she likes sports, you

know, but I'm into certain things that I, I'm like, oh man, I, I would never

do this, but because I love you, girl.

But the more we get closer to God, guess what?

We start to like what he likes.

We start to enjoy what he enjoys.

Guess what?

We start to become more like him and our character and in our nature.

And so how do we know when this God thing is on straight?

It's when we're becoming more like Jesus.

Our relationship leads to taking on the traits of others.

I remember there was a time I noticed this when, when, uh, my oldest brother, uh, um.

And moved back from Arizona and we were spending a lot more time together.

And my oldest brother has a certain kind of laugh and for some odd

reason I started to laugh like him.

And my mom was like, can you stop laughing like that?

You sound like your older brother.

And I've seen that and I've seen this in in my relationships, and I even got

this thing that I'm trying to stop.

I love my boy Martin Shires, but he does this thing with his hands.

Have you ever noticed that he does that?

And I saw myself doing this and I was like, stop.

But it's because we've been spending this time together that we start

to take on each other's traits, and guess what happens spiritually?

When we spend more and more time in relationship with Jesus, we start to

take on his traits again, becoming more like Jesus, building in our relationship,

and then we spiritually, day, week, and years, start to become more like Jesus.

So again, Christianity's not about a what's but who and why is this important?

Because we can be getting this thing wrong and we could be missing

out for today, but we also could be missing out for all eternity.

We don't know what happened to the rich young ruler.

The fact that we never hear about him makes me think it didn't,

it didn't go well for him.

And what a tragic story it is.

You and I have the opportunity to respond differently.

We have the opportunity to go.

Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but now I can focus in on Christ and I can do it right.

You know, I've been at all these stages.

As I mentioned earlier, before I became a Christian, I was wilding out.

I was way out there knee deep, not even knee deep in sin.

I was neck deep in sin.

And by God's grace, I had a time where I decided, you know what I,

I need to become more religious.

And, uh, and so I end up becoming more religious.

I didn't fully commit to Christ, but I became more religious and I

feel like I became like the rich young ruler and I became religious.

But there was all this, there was always this idea that I don't really know

if I'm doing this God thing, right?

And I knew it, but then my pride wouldn't accept it.

But then I knew it deep down.

You, you, you guys understand what I'm saying?

And so in, in 2001, uh, over at Howard University, I was doing an exchange

program, uh, by God's grace and mercy.

I started studying the Bible with some member members of our church

in Washington, dc and as we were there, we're studying the scriptures.

I'm like, man, I haven't been doing this right.

And you know what?

I haven't been doing this right my whole life.

I didn't even know about these things.

Then I decided, you know what?

I'm gonna pursue Jesus and follow Jesus.

And by God's grace on May 1st, 2001, I got baptized into Christ

and became a new creation.

But after 24 years, God has used many people to bring me back to focus in on

Christ, because many times I have veered in my perspective or in my practice.

And this Holy Spirit through the word has convicted me and reminded me, and

still to this day, continually convicts me and reminds me, make it about Christ.

Even as I was thinking about preaching, uh, I think maybe it was

yesterday, I can't even remember.

I was like, man, I was starting to think about me.

How am I gonna look man?

The people who came to East, are they gonna come back to hear me?

And guy's like, it's not about you.

Right.

It's about me.

And so God has been reminding me, he refines me.

And so the question for the our brothers and sisters is, am I

doing this God thing rights?

And for some of us, am I still doing this God thing?

Rights.

Again, Christianity is not about a what, but who.

So how should we respond?

I believe it's this, it's to pursue Jesus again, pursuing Jesus.

Will we pursue a relationship?

We pursue?

Focusing in on getting to know Jesus, adopting his mission for

our life and, and working alongside Jesus in his great commission.

And guess what?

We all need help with this.

None of us can do this alone.

That's that private faith that we were talking about.

We all need help in this, so I encourage you to seek help in pursuing Jesus.

That's not a bad thing.

That's the way God designed it.

Ask for prayers and wisdom for certain areas, but we pursue Jesus

by making Christianity about Christ.

Let's get real practical here.

Are you still with me?

Church?

Yeah, let's get some action steps here for the week.

First one here, reflect on the signs of doing it wrong.

I want you to do this.

Don't wait till Wednesday.

Don't wait till Tuesday.

Do it today or do it tomorrow.

It's to reflect.

Hey, are any of these things me right now?

Rules based morality, focus, convenient commitment, self-centered private faith,

church over Christ, or belief only.

Is to go ahead and ask yourself and to reflect and answer it.

Honestly, the worst thing we can do is when we're dishonest with ourselves, well,

we just don't want to face the truth.

It's like looking in the mirror and go, no, I just don't wanna face that.

It doesn't make sense.

Look in the mirror, accept it so that God can move you to his direction.

But after we do this, here's the second part here, is to go ahead here and

take a practical step to pursue Jesus.

A practical step for some of us that's making a decision to study the Bible.

Appreciate Anna sharing how once she studied the Bible, she

came to know the real Jesus.

Not a tradition, not a culture, but Jesus and who he is, what he's done,

and what he's calling us all to.

For others, that's making a decision to repent.

Whatever are the distractions, I'm going to make a decision to address those,

confront those, and get rid of those.

Maybe it's to study out Jesus in the gospels.

You know what?

I need to get focused in on him.

So let me just go to the gospels, let me get reacclimated with my Lord.

Let me see what he was like so I can become more like him so I

can join him in his good work.

Regardless, we need to pray and get some help.

So as we take a practical step, God show me.

And you know what?

Let me get some input.

Hey, what can I do to take a practical step this week?

To pursue Jesus.

Imagine the freedom, the security, the fulfillment, and the joy that can start,

that you can start to experience in this life and in your faith, and you

can stay the course for all of eternity.

This is why important that we just don't like this today,

but that we implement it today.

Am I doing this right?

Next week we're gonna talk about, am I doing relationship?

Am I doing this relationship stuff right?

So please come on back and join us for that.

But let us learn from Jesus and let us learn from the rich young ruler

today that we could be doing many things right, but still get it wrong.

However, in God's grace and mercy, he's calling us to do it right,

and that's by focusing in on Jesus.

Focusing on how we can get him to be more of our Lord and Savior,

not just in theory, but him to be our character and our nature.

And when we focus in on him, then we will get our life right.

We'll get our faith right.

We'll get this God thing right, and we'll get eternity rights.

So let's close out with this last passage, which I believe captures

this for us in Hebrews chapter 12.

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

It says this in verse two.

I'm reading from the, uh, the old school 1984 version.

It says, let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith for

the joy set before in he endured the cross scorn in his shame and sat down

at the right hand of the throne of God.

Brother says, I pray that we may all do this God thing, right?

Amen.