Pointless Christianity

I like this version anyways.

They told me I moved the mic around too much and they had to chase me and so they wanted it on my head.

Hope y'all been working out your fingers and your arms this week.

Thank y'all so much.

Uh I didn't even know anybody knew.

I know I wasn't gonna say a word either.

But it's pretty nice stuff in there.

I may have a birthday two or three times a year now.

Just kidding.

So if you will stand for the reading of the word today, isn't the presence of God just something to chase after?

Man.

I'm telling you, uh Sister Jesse, she was, I had to work in Tyler all day yesterday, and I got home about 8:30 last night, and she was keeping me apprised of her business.

And if she don't tell me, I have that 360 thing where I know where she is.

But she said she came up here to the church and she was praying for y'all.

And I'm thankful for a wife, I'm thankful for a companion that knows how to pray.

I'm thankful that someone's on my team in my house that pleads the blood over our children, our future children, our future children.

Amen.

Somebody and for y'all.

If you don't have somebody praying for you, you're gonna be weak.

Because there's gonna be times in your life where you're not gonna want to, you're not gonna know how.

You're not gonna know what to say.

And let's be honest, you may even be angry with God.

You may become in this house today being angry with God for something that he allowed to happen to you last week.

Come on now.

No, I wouldn't get mad at God that you're not in a relationship with him.

Let's look over in Jeremiah 20, verse 9.

Jeremiah 20:9

If you don't have your Bibles today or you don't have it already there, it was on the screen for a while.

So let's read.

The prophet says this, but if I say I'll never mention the Lord or speak in his name, his words burn in my heart like a fire.

He's saying, if I shut up and I don't talk anymore about God, I am going to catch on fire.

It's like a fire in my bones.

He even says that I am worn out trying to hold it in.

And then at the very end, with an exclamation point at the end, he says, I can't do it.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you so much for your presence already here today.

I pray that every heart, every mind become transformed, be renewed, that today change become off in the name of Jesus.

That addictions and strongholds in the mind, heart, and body today be loosed in the name of Jesus.

Devil, I want to speak to you for a second.

We rebuke the attack of the enemy over this body.

We rebuke the attack of the enemy over our children.

We rebuke the attack of the enemy over our marriages.

We rebuke the attack of the enemy over our spiritual growth.

You have no stake here.

Get out in the name of Jesus.

Let every person under the sound of my voice today leave here, feeling like they got their joy back again, like they have something to live for, like they have a word to speak, like they have a prayer to pray in the name of Jesus.

We say amen together because we know that when we pray, mountains begin to move.

And it's nothing in the power of you, it is something that we have a relationship with the Creator.

You may be seated if you can.

There must be anointing in this microphone.

But Jeremiah says this if I never talk about him again.

Now, this is coming from a prophet.

We quote the famous scripture in verse 29 later down the road that I don't know the plans I have for you.

Plans of good to prosper to not harm you.

And here he's saying, before he even gets to that, he's saying, if I shut up, I can't contain it.

It's like a fire burning inside of me.

I've told y'all this before, but before we came here, we've never been lead pastors anywhere.

I've been associates, we've been youth pastors, we've been worship leaders, but I cannot explain to you the fire that was burning in my bones before I ever met you.

Because when you allow the Spirit of God to begin to move in your hearts and become rightfully placed on the throne of your heart, you walk different.

You talk different, you move different.

When the enemy tries to, I was watching somebody in a wheelchair the other day on Instagram or something, it was a real, and this woman, she was boxing in it, she was sitting in her wheelchair and she was pop pop, she was weaving in job.

I'm like, man, I can't even that kind of hurt me doing that right there.

And she's in a wheelchair.

If I came up on her and she wanted to fight, no ma'am, I'm good.

Because in that ring, I would still be the one handicapped.

Sometimes we allow things in our life to cripple us to dismantle and distract from what God is trying to place you in.

But let me tell you something.

When you begin to do what I challenge you with, I try to remember to do it every single week, is just in the morning time before you start your day, five minutes in prayer, five minutes of reading a word, and five minutes in praise, you're praising before you've ever come to a circumstance.

What does that do?

That gets your mind right, and you're in a state of praise.

If you're reading the word, when the devil tries to come against you, just like when Jesus was tempted by the enemy, he quoted scripture to him.

And when the scripture and the devil meet, he loses every time.

We have to understand that even Jesus knew what the power was in the word.

That if you quote scripture to the enemy, he has to flee.

I was talking to my wife, I think it may have been yesterday, maybe on Friday.

And I'm I'm yeah, some of y'all know this.

I'm honored.

Like, I know it's a shock to some of you, but and I said something like, devil don't scare me.

She's like, Don't say that.

And I said, Listen, I'll taunt him, I'll throw it in his face because I know who my father is.

Here's the thing I know that it is not a war between good and evil.

God has already won.

There's no struggle back and forth between powers.

The God of the universe has is letting the enemy have his little time and fun here, but eventually it will end.

And the Bible says that it will take only one angel to do it.

So if I serve the God that created that one angel that is going to take the enemy and bind him up and throw him in his rightful place, why should I fear the enemy when he comes against me?

Because I know that when the devil comes against me and I go through trials and I go through tribulations, it had to be stamped and approved by the one true God.

We don't like that.

We want to say, Oh, the enemy's after me today.

It may be a season and a time where God's actually testing you to try your faith so that you start to produce perseverance.

And if the enemy is attacking you, maybe you were just a little too good like Job.

The story of Job, it's it speaks a lot of things.

You could do a lot of sermons on it, but one thing that I draw from this is that God had to allow it to happen.

People were killed, homes were destroyed, livestock was ripped away, even friends betrayed him.

His own wife turned against him and said, You just need to curse God and die.

But yet he stood his ground and he knew who he served.

I want to ask you today, do you know who you serve?

Now I know here in the church house we get a little loud because a quiet church is a dead church.

And we are not dead, we are alive through Christ.

We are excited about what God has done for us.

But there is nothing like the test of true faith when you go outside of these walls, and your real life hits you back in the face.

You go home to that situation, you go back to that job that you hate, you go back to the circumstance that was there before you said, God, I give it all to you.

You know, the the prayer that we we pray of salvation, that sometimes we do it together, sometimes we lead people in it.

The prayer is not magical, it's words to get your mind in the path it takes to serve Jesus.

A magical, no prayer that I could ever tell you to pray, or any pastor could ever tell you to pray.

If you ever hear somebody say, if you said that prayer, you're going to heaven, they're a liar.

Because serving Jesus is a lifestyle.

That's why Jesus said, Your faith has made you whole.

You cannot make God happy with no faith.

And then after He would hit Jesus would heal somebody, he said, Now repent and turn from your wicked ways.

There is a turning point.

There is a turning point where you must stop going in one direction and you must begin to face God and chase after him.

Because there is never a season in your life where you chase after God and you will not get something from it.

Because he has not come to rob you or destroy you.

That's the enemy.

He has come to prosper you and mature you, and sometimes they look real close to the same.

So the title of my well, they've had it up here, I guess, for a minute.

Is Pointless Christianity.

That sounds like an oxymoron.

But I promise you.

It'll make sense in a second.

So let's look at some things.

So if we look at, I'm gonna break down these in little pieces.

So pointless is having little or no sense.

I'm gonna leave that one alone.

No use or purpose.

It is pointless.

Now, Christianity is the religion based on the person and the teachings of Jesus Christ of Nazareth or its beliefs and practices, Christian quality or a Christian character.

Now, you know here that I'm all about self-examination.

We must begin as believers to look in the mirror.

Jesus Christ, He He said all of the time, even rebuked his disciples, Satan, get behind me.

Because they weren't looking at themselves, they were trying to achieve something on self-worth or self-gain.

So self-examination, and the reason I preach this so much is because if we don't put in the time and the effort into examining ourselves, we will fall prey, not P-R-A-Y, but we will fall prey, P-R-E-Y, to these things.

We will become critical in the church.

We will become hypocritical.

Have you ever heard the excuse?

Well, I don't want to go to church with a bunch of hypocrites.

At some point, we're all hypocritical.

Come and join the club, bro.

We all need help.

We're all just trying to get to heaven.

We become boastful and we have proud spirits.

We become always negative.

And we have last week I preached about joy.

We begin to get in these steps of joyless Christianity where you're never happy about anything.

And we I made this one up and I like it.

In the church house, sometimes we get what I like to call a diva spirit.

Where if it ain't what I want or what I like, I'm gonna find somewhere else to go.

Bye, Felicia.

Because why?

There's always going to be something at some point in time that you're not gonna like.

There's gonna be a choice, there's gonna be a decision, there's gonna be something said that you're not going to like.

Stop living in a fence and quit letting things get in your crawl.

If the devil can get into our relationships in the church house, he can destroy a church.

Let me get back.

Let me get back.

To sum this all up in one phrase, we can very easily get a Pharisee mindset, also known as church people.

Have you ever had somebody who gets hurt in church and they will not come back because there's people there?

Is that not true?

They will they will say, if we if we lived our lives this way, say I ate something at a restaurant and it was chips and salsa, and it was bad chips and salsa.

This place was a first-timer for us.

We did this the other day, and there wasn't nothing great about it.

That doesn't mean I'm not gonna eat any Mexican food for the rest of my life.

How much would I miss?

If I dated, if you dated, and you didn't work out and you didn't marry that person, do you stop trying?

But people use church hurt as an excuse to give up on God.

We use man-made issues and put it on God.

And church hurt is some of the most talked about and most used reason why people will not come to a church building anymore.

Now you may say, Pastor, I think we're doing a pretty good job here of all this.

You guys are.

When people come in here that are new, some of you can attest to this.

Just your first time here today, your hand gets shook.

People come around, they say hi, good to have you here.

We want you to know I stand over here and scream to the top of my lungs because new people is here.

But today we're gonna talk about some things we can work on.

You ready?

So, now why is it why is it that I'm talking about this today?

Because it is very easy, and you can attest to this living your own life.

Most of you had a good chunk of time, except for maybe Tristan in here and a few in the back, that that you've had several, several years to actually live things out.

You have some wisdom under your belt, you have some knowledge about you that you know that after a time period passes by, you can do one thing really well and enjoy it and thrive at it, and 10 years down the road, you could hate it.

Or you can do something right.

You could be living your life right, or you could have a good marriage starting out, and then something happens along the way, and now you're miserable and dying and undone.

Jesse asked me the other day, my wife, she asked me, she said, Well, I said something about somebody, and I said honeymoon phase.

And she said, Okay, so I I'm really good at brownie points, so y'all fellas want to take some notes.

Uh I said, you know, we've been married, we just passed in April seven years, and she said, Well, when is when does the honeymoon phase?

I said, I don't know, baby, but it ain't yet.

And I said, chances are I'll never know.

Why?

Because I want to constantly renew that relationship with her, I want to constantly be treating her and adoring her and singing her praises.

I want to constantly do things for her, not because she does things for me, but because I love her so much that I want to do anything I can to make her satisfied with being with me.

The same goes in the relationship with God.

Some of us are asking, God, where are you?

Why am I feeling this way?

What is going on in my life?

And you don't put in the work for the relationship.

Well, ooh, come on.

We want God to come down with thunder and lightning and show up and change and heal and do things and all these things, and we won't even put in the work to show him we care.

If we did that with our relationships, you would have no happy relationships in your life at all.

None whatsoever.

Because if we don't self-examine and we don't constantly stay on top of things that we're doing good now, we will slack.

We will end up gossiping about other church people.

We will end up saying things that may not be so true because you're feeling a certain way.

Feelings can manipulate truth.

That's why the Bible says for us to keep our minds on things above, to not worry about things down here, because if you look with your natural eyes, if you think with your natural mind, you will get confused.

You will get angry at someone who will probably never even know you're mad at them.

And you think you're doing it justice for not talking to them when they don't even know.

It's so dumb how we do things.

We feel like we're so justified by holding on to hurt and pain, and the only person it hurts is you.

And it's not just because of old age.

Because God will lead your steps, God will guide your steps, he will speak to your heart, and he will speak to your mind, and he will protect those things if you allow him, but you cannot protect, you cannot be led, you cannot submit to God if you do not give him time in your day.

Like I have to set reminders.

Thank God for watches that talk to me.

Every time someone says something or wants to wants me to remember something, I will say, Hey Siri.

Yes, Steven.

She can't, I have her silence, but she will say, What can I do?

And I say, Well, set a reminder for this time so that I will do this.

When I have church stuff going on, I have to set reminders.

I will put it on my calendar, and I still set reminders because I need that fresh on my mind.

I need structure.

Because you know, if you talk to me any, I'm like this already.

I need structure, I need to constantly check myself so that I don't wreck myself.

Jeremiah 29 says, But if I say, I'll never mention the Lord or speak in his name, his word burns in my heart like fire.

It's like fire in my bones.

I am worn out by trying to hold it in.

I can't do it.

Now ask yourself, what part of your relationship with God has not become so important to you anymore?

What have you slacked on in your Christian walk?

You know what I promise you is that if you figure this out right here, every other relationship in your life will not be such a big deal anymore.

I'm not gonna say it's gonna make every relationship perfect, but you will have a new vision and the way you look at things because now God is in control of this.

You won't see things through the same filter that you used to look through.

What parts of your relationship with God are not so important anymore?

Are you reading?

Are you reading daily?

Are you allowing God that room in your life where he's not another piece to check off?

He's not another thing on my reminders.

I'm terrible about this.

Sometimes, and I preach this, I will get up, kids off to school, work out.

There's all these things I have to do in the morning time.

And if I don't remember at a certain time, I will forget until about 11.

And I know this about myself.

I try to remember every single day to do it before everything begins.

But in the morning times, if you have kids, things are chaotic.

I don't know what y'all do that don't have kids.

I don't remember those days.

Are you praising?

You know.

In the in the in the Western culture, at least, we we oftentimes want to praise after we see the product of God's promise.

And God doesn't work that way.

He still is faithful and He still is loving.

But God wants you to understand this little secret ingredient in being content in seasons is praise him no matter what it looks like.

Because when you praise him, what you're doing is actually a hundred percent fulfilling your purpose.

He read earlier about the angels that surround his throne and say, Holy, holy, holy.

There is a reason praising God's name, and there's no not supposed to be other idols before him, is because it takes the praise away from our lips.

It robs us of the joy in our hearts.

Are you praising?

And most importantly of all, are you praying?

The only time you should really pray is not when you need something.

The only time that you should really pray and seek after God.

Sometimes praying is shutting up.

For me, a lot of my prayer time is just having worship on, and I'm just still and listening.

Because I talk a lot.

I know it's shocking.

I know some of you didn't know that.

There's a reason I do it, I guess, for a living, technically.

I'll talk to anybody, I don't care.

I will talk.

My wife will text me after Wednesday night or after now.

She's up here with me, but Tuesday nights, now she's up here with me.

Thursday nights, she's not here for that worship practice.

And she's texting.

Are you ever coming home?

I'm trying to, but I'm talking to Howard.

I'm just kidding.

She knows.

She sends me those texts, but she knows the truth is that I'm probably doing most of the talking.

Because I'm trying to pass it off on other people.

She was like, Yeah, right, okay.

She knows I like to talk.

I want to get in people's lives.

I want to know what's going on in your life.

It's a part of who I am.

It's it's why God crafted me this way.

I love doing it.

But when I pray, and I'm really praying, I've been up in these altars before praying for people that needy things.

And God told me, shut up.

And as soon as He tells me to shut up, someone steps up and begins to pray the words I didn't have.

That is how important relationship is in the church house.

When God tells you to be quiet, you need to be quiet because He's sending someone else who's gonna speak it.

It's not that you can't do it, it's not always that you don't want to do it, although sometimes it can be hard.

And I've been in situations before, I've told y'all this before.

I was a youth pastor at my dad's church over in Palestine several years ago.

And I had two times that I literally heard the voice of God speak to me in my ear.

An audible voice.

And I was young.

I was 20, maybe 21.

Two things he told me to do.

My father had this, I don't think they call it a gord or gorge, whatever it is, had this mass in his throat right here.

Gorder, there's the word, gorder, gorder.

And it was right there in his throat.

And we were praying for him.

He was in the altar, it was his church.

And the voice of God literally said to me, punch him in the throat and he'll be healed.

Two things wrong with that statement.

One, he's my dad and he may punch me back.

Two, you ever been hit in the throat?

There ain't nothing satisfying about it.

And I said, I think you got the wrong guy.

And I didn't hit him.

And he wasn't healed of it then.

There was another lady that came up, different service.

It may have been the same one, don't remember, it doesn't matter.

And she had arthritis hands to the point where she almost couldn't open them.

We had a bottle of anointing oil just like this.

And the audible voice said again, take that oil and begin to pour it all over her hands.

And he said, if you do, she'll be healed.

The first thought in my mind was, What about the carpet?

There are times in our Christian wall that God wants to move on us and wants us to do something, and He wants us to step out.

And when we first came to God, it was like fire shut up in our bones, but we've become so conditioned, so culturalized that God can't even get a message through to us anymore.

God wants his people, every person in here, God wants to speak directly to you.

You do not need a pastor to show up at Walmart and lead you in a prayer.

You do not need a pastor or a deacon to show up and lay hands on somebody and pray because God has given you the authority through his son Jesus Christ.

There was no if you are this at the end of Jesus statements.

But we don't listen anymore.

And so we walk around with a badge of Christianity stamped on our chest.

We want everybody to know that we believe, but our actions say different.

We want everyone to know that we have faith, but we never step out on it.

Faith without works is dead.

You want a church that's alive?

Praise Him.

You want a church that sees powerful things happen?

Pray.

You want to see miracles be performed by God and salvation, people pouring in this place, wanting to know just what you have that is different.

You got to start acting and living different.

You can't hold on to who you were and expect God to bless it and pour it out.

You have to say, God, everything inside of me, every agenda that I have, every single word that I say, let it be anointed and let it be saturated in your spirit.

You cannot walk in that path.

You cannot walk down that road if you're holding on to who you were.

You know, it says faith without works is dead.

Faith without works.

Salvation doesn't take work, the work has been done.

But after you have been saved, you now have to start to act in faith.

Some of us haven't laid hands on people in years and prayed.

Some of us get upset and want the mountains to move, but we don't have the faith to move them.

I hope this sparks something in you today to stop living a mundane, regular, everyday Christian life that has been pounded over and over again in the face by culture of what we can and can't do, how we're supposed to act, or visitors won't come back.

We are tongue-speaking, filled Pentecostal people of God.

And if you believe that that's what you are, that that's what you know to be true because it's in the Bible.

It was poured out on the believers in the upper room.

This is not something we're making up to feel what we like and feel all good inside.

This is a power that you can't contain.

So it makes sense that it's in a language that you don't understand.

Because if we can understand it, we would try to control it.

So here's what you can ask yourself.

If you don't, if you don't ask yourself the hard question sometimes, it will become poison to your body.

Just like if we don't handle things in the church, it becomes poison to the body.

There are things that need to be handled.

Have you become complacent?

That means marked by self-satisfaction, especially when accompanied by unawareness of actual dangers and deficiencies.

Are there deficiencies in your spirit today?

Some of you may be here and you may be depressed, you may be lonely, you may be full of anxiety.

You may have a lot of questions, and you've been asking more questions, and you just keep seeming to get no answers and more questions.

But our God is still faithful.

Ask yourself this Am I still hungry for God's word and his spirit to be in control of my life?

What does that mean?

That means more and more and more your flesh needs to die and the spirit needs to lead you.

Is God your God?

Am I not just making room for him, but is he the center of everything that I do?

This sounds foolish and weird, but when I was super poor and was working for$10 an hour doing odd jobs, after I got off drugs and I was living with my cousin, and I just did something for a guy that had a bunch of properties.

I was doing drywall work and patchwork.

And I would be in Walmart.

This is how this is how we are when we first come to God.

We are so sensitive to being moved and led by the Spirit.

And then we become complacent after years of knowing God, and the relationship is not so important anymore.

We allow things to take the place of God and we still label it as being God and it's not.

And we have false gods in our life.

I was shopping and I had a certain amount of money.

It was probably less than 20 bucks, and it was in cash because that's how I got paid.

And I knew I was gonna be outside, we were cutting down some trees for somebody, and so I got this spray lotion stuff, you know, for sunscreen.

Spray skin sunscreen.

It was maybe three or four dollars.

And I'm pushing my little cart along, and there's nothing in there except for a few things and some food.

I never had any refrigerated food, I always had the kind that you just had to heat up.

And God said you need to put that back, and I knew that it was gonna be hot and I was probably gonna burn.

You didn't notice I'm white.

We crisp.

Some of y'all really understand that.

And I put it back, and I got up to the the checkout, and I was so embarrassed.

Of course, you're checking out, nobody knows if you're just getting what you need.

Nobody knew I couldn't afford it anymore.

And almost to the dime, it was exactly what I had in my pocket.

My point is, God wants to have that kind of relationship with you.

To where even the small things that are so insignificant to everybody else, it may be embarrassing to you, it may be something that you never share with anybody else, but God knows that he sees it.

All he wants is for you to let him into that place and to allow him to be Lord of your life.

That he wants, you know, me and my wife have been married for several years now.

Most of y'all probably married more than us, but we hit seven years, and that was a big deal.

There's stuff that she knows about me that I let her in.

She has access to every account that I have.

Some of you want to have a relationship with God, but you won't give him full access.

And he is saying, if you just let me in to the dark places, if you just let me in, to the places you've been trying to hold on to, the things that you've been trying to keep, and I've been trying to redeem you, and I've been trying to satisfy you, but you keep going back and you keep allowing yourself to be fed by a synthetic salvation.

God wants every person in here to know what real true freedom is.

That everything that you've been trying to control and make it go your way, you can try a thousand more years, and it will take one second in the hands of God.

One moment of you saying, God, whatever you want to do, everything inside of me, every dark corner, everything that I've been trying to hide from you is yours.

Everything that I have, God, is yours.

Every worry, every desire, every addiction, everything that nobody even knows about and probably wouldn't even care about.

I give it to you.

And when you allow God into that secret place in your heart, you begin to produce the fruit of the spirit.

There's not one fruit from that vine that will not sustain you.

Most of us in here are seasoned Christians.

We've been with God for quite a while.

But I want to ask you today, where have you allowed your relationship with God to grow stale?

Where have you, at one point, when you come to God, man, you're excited, you're on fire.

It is in your bones.

You want to tell everybody, you want to get everybody saved.

Everybody's gonna get healed up in here.

Because I know what God just did in me, and if He can do it for me, He can do it for you.

And then five, ten, twenty, thirty years down the road, we lose that first love.

We forget where God brought us from, we forget that His resurrection power is still true today as it was then, and that you know, along the way, when you move houses, you find things you didn't know you had.

And you usually have a lot more stuff than you thought you did.

And we go through this long process of moving from where we were to where God wants us to be, and we forget that even along the way we pick stuff up.

It may not be something you had to do with 20 years ago, it may be something you've picked up here recently.

God wants to free you, He wants to save you, He wants to redeem you, He wants to restore you, He wants to renew you, He wants to bring your joy back.

There's one thing about my wife when we were dating, she would get tickled and she would giggle.

Man, two things about her her giggle and her prayer.

God wants intimate time with you.

It starts with you making time.

With every head bowed.

With this one scripture, John 20 21, and Jesus said this again, he said, Peace be with you.

As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.