Ending End-Time Attitudes | Pastor Brodie Kalaman | FRESH WIND Series | June 14, 2020

Welcome, KCC family.

Welcome to KCC Church at Home.

I'm Brody Callman, and uh it's just a pleasure for me to be speaking to you today on this series called Fresh Wind.

I'm just gonna give you a moment to go ahead and share.

We want to remind you every week, bring people into your circle, share with them what's happening here at KCC.

Go ahead, do that now.

And while you're doing that, I just want to tell you a few things about what's going on at the church.

We have Zoom groups continuing.

I know it's a new season and kids are finishing up in school, but we're continuing to meet.

We just want the church to be gathering as best we can to keep connection during the season.

I also want to thank all of you who have been continuing to faithfully give here at the church.

We're able to do all that we're doing because of your generosity.

So we thank you.

Our missionaries, thank you, our support teams, thank you, the people who are hearing online, thank you.

Thank you so much.

All right, so we're in this seasonal word called fresh wind.

Go ahead and say it at home.

Fresh wind.

That's right.

It's like a fresh wind in our sail.

It's like a fresh wind that blows through the house, blows through the chambers of our heart, and gives us this fresh enthusiasm and fresh energy to move forward in life.

And we're giving you some principles at this time.

Some principles that will help you maintain and andor initiate that fresh wind in your life.

Many people, we learned a few weeks ago, are living in this space called the doldrums.

The doldrums are a space where there is no wind.

There's absolutely, they're at a stall, there's no dynamic, there's no energy.

They're in a place where they're just sitting still.

And we believe that if you just find yourself in that place, you need a fresh boost.

You need that fresh wind to move you forward.

And so we've talked about the first principle from two weeks ago, and I'd like to remind you about it today.

It's probably one of the most important principles that we can challenge you in.

We spoke about it on Pentecost Sunday, and this challenge was to open your heart and fall in love in a deeper way, in a deeper relationship with Jesus.

Through his Holy Spirit, who's with us every moment, all the time, 24-7, 365 days a year.

He's with us, wanting and desiring to relate to us and connect us.

If it's at home, if it's at work, if it's in the car, if it's having coffee or breakfast or dinner or wherever you are right now.

God is present there, and he's relating, and his heart is to relate to you.

This is our theme verse from this series, and you're gonna hear it almost every service.

Go ahead and just decide right now.

I'm gonna commit this thing to memory.

It comes from Deuteronomy chapter 30, verse 19, and it says, This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you, that I've set before you life and death, blessings and curses.

Deuteronomy 30:19

And the scripture says, Choose life.

Go ahead and say that.

I'm gonna choose life.

I'm gonna choose life so that you and your children and your children's children and the next generation and the generation after that may experience living.

They may experience life.

You have a choice, life or death, blessings or cursing, fresh wind or the doldrums.

And we are challenging you today.

Choose life.

And I want you to do it, to choose life.

So today, I want to speak to you about our second principle in life.

And I want to talk to you about the principle, and this is related to your attitude.

Your attitude.

And this is what I believe.

I believe that we're living in a time where our space, where our attitudes reside, our attitudes are being tested at this time.

How many of you have had your attitude tested during this season?

Your attitudes tested this morning?

How many of you have been challenged with this during this health pandemic?

You're staying at home, you're isolated, you're experiencing the financial challenges and pressures, you're feeling the imposition by government and businesses on how you're supposed to feel and function.

All these pressures by society, how we're supposed to live, even the information superhighway, the internet and social media.

You've got attitude.

Every time you open up and you read or you watch what's going on in the world, or you're you're faced with how you're going to address this new normal and culture.

You're addressing an attitude.

And I've watched this attitude be accelerated or magnified in this last season.

Attitudes have come to the surface, and I feel like we've seen the best of people during these times, we've seen the worst of people during these times.

And we've been faced with these attitudes.

And the Bible said that these attitudes were actually a prediction checkpoint for the end times.

The Bible says that the signs of the time, one of the signs of the time in the world is that people would have messed up hearts and that they would have messed up attitudes.

I'm going to share with you a verse that I believe is particularly relevant to what's happening in the heart of people today.

And it's an end times verse.

And when I was discussing this at home, my daughter, I was usually I go through my message a little bit with my wife, and I just share with her a little bit what I'm thinking.

And I said, you know, blah, it's quiet, quiet, quiet.

End times.

And my daughter from the other room had her headphones on.

She pulled her headphones off and she said, Did someone say end times?

Like it's like a trigger word.

As soon as you say it, people are thinking, could this be the end?

Could this be it?

And I've actually had a few conversations with people this week who have said, How how uh how knowledgeable is the church when it comes to revelation?

Even the book of Revelation, about the book at the end of the book of the Bible, and telling us about the end of the time.

There will come an end to our life, and there will come an end to time itself.

And we have to be aware and listening to the signs of the times and actually get understanding.

What is the attitude that the scripture says would happen in these end times?

That's why I've entitled this message, uh Ending End Time Attitudes.

And it comes from 2 Timothy, Paul, 2,000 years ago, telling Timothy, he says this in 2 Timothy 3, verse 1 to 3, he says, mark this.

2 Timothy 3:1–3

In other words, get out your highlighter, find your book, find the page where this is written, and highlight this.

Mark this.

There will be terrible times in the last days.

And so he's telling this to Timothy, and I'm sure Timothy thought, man, these days must be like now.

And 2,000 years later, we're going back to the same portion of scripture.

This word terrible is the same word used to describe the demoniac in the story where Jesus had crossed over the lake.

This demoniac was that same word.

It literally means demonic times.

And people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient.

On top of all the things you read about in Revelation, where there'll be wars, rumors of wars, pestilence, there will be plagues, all these things that are physical will happen.

There will also be these attitudes that will happen.

And it comes down to four last attitudes where the scripture talks about them.

And they're called the, I like to think of them as the uns in this portion.

It says people will become ungrateful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving.

These are the attitudes of the last days.

The attitudes of the end times.

And there's a challenge here.

The focus isn't on the physical, the focus is on look at these indicators right now to see where we're living, to understand the time we're living in.

We're living in end times where people are walking ungrateful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving.

So I want to take a few moments here and actually just walk through some of these attitudes and help you realize if they're in yourself.

To first do an assessment of yourself, because these attitudes will suck the fresh wind right out of your life.

They'll introduce a vacuum to your soul.

If you're carrying any of these attitudes, it will dry you up and it will cause you to sit still with no movement.

So we want to move, and I'm hoping to turn this boat around and start moving out of the doldrums and moving into the place where we're in the current and in the wind of God, in this fresh wind.

So we've got to carry this fresh wind attitude.

So let's look at the first one.

Ungrateful.

I believe we can get so focused on the things that we want that we forget about the things that we have.

This season, for a moment, many of us were so grateful for the simple things, toilet paper, haircuts, the basic things in life we became aware of.

But we become so thankful, so grateful for our community, for our family, for a hug and a physical contact.

You understand what I'm saying?

Oftentimes we can be ungrateful, and I realize it in my own life.

Today it was raining.

It was pouring rain.

And uh I'm as much as I can be grateful that it's green and everything smells fresh, and there's this fresh uh odor in the air.

Uh I also want hot, sunny, sweaty days where I'm looking forward to having the sand between my toes, living at the beach.

Like I have to learn to be grateful in those moments.

But there's always something else that we want.

Uh ungratefulness will steal the wind from our sails and will keep us in the doldrums.

Paul mentioned this in Philippians chapter 4, and many of you know this one verse in Philippians chapter 4 and verse 13, where it says, Paul says, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

Philippians 4 · chapter mention Philippians 4 · chapter mention

And we've used that scripture to say, you know, anything that we do, uh, we can do all things through Christ, anything we want to do, we can do because Christ is in us and Christ is there to strengthen us.

But Paul, if you go back a few verses, Paul is asking for a particular strength.

And this particular strength was a request he had to be grateful.

He wanted to be grateful in whatever circumstance he was facing, whether in prosperous times or humble times, whether he was filled or if he was hungry, whether he was living in abundance or he was living in suffering, he said, I know that I can do all things.

I can find gratefulness, I can find contentment in those moments, in those times.

I can do all things because Christ is there with me, strengthening me, giving me the grace to be able to do it.

One of our church members uh replied to one of my texts this week, and I was just doing a simple checkup and just see how people were doing over text, and the response was this we are blessed.

How are they doing?

They said, We are blessed.

How can we be anything but eternally thankful?

Eternally grateful.

I thought to myself, when I read that text, I thought, this is the kind of spirit I want to have.

This is the spirit that I want to carry.

And I want that to be in our hearts because when you carry that grateful spirit in your heart, you'll actually move out of the doldrums, you'll move with that fresh wind.

So we have to check our own attitudes.

Are we living in a time?

Are we living with ungratefulness?

And don't think about your neighbor or anyone else in the room.

We need to ask ourselves this.

We need to be grateful.

Last week I actually took a break from social media.

I I made sure I was connecting online with people who were messaging me, and I made sure I was uh I was keeping up with the the latest news and and uh media reports, etc.

But I took a break from it because I just wanted to assess, I I was just seeing so much ingrati ingratitude or ingratitude.

And so I wanted to make sure that I wasn't being affected and I needed to reset.

And maybe this is a challenge for someone who's listening today.

You may need the same challenge just to pull back a little bit and make sure that you're living in a grateful with a grateful heart.

I'm grateful for Dr.

Bonnie Henry.

I'm grateful.

The Wall Street Journal uh uh applauded her for leading BC the way she led BC and that uh she kept our people safe and our most vulnerable people safe as best she could.

Um I'm grateful for her.

I'm grateful for great leaders in our city.

I'm grateful for uh the church, that the church has continued to be able to connect and and keep the message in front of people.

I'm grateful for um all the workers and all the service providers that have been serving during this time.

I just want to be able to start my day and check my heart and make sure that I'm actually being grateful.

Being ungrateful is an end time attitude that needs to end with me.

My choice to end that attitude.

So let's have a heart of gratefulness.

Number two, unholy, meaning that we're making choices that are literally polluting our heart.

You might not have thought about this, but unholiness uh doesn't hurt God.

God is rich in love, rich in mercy, full of grace.

He's he's he's okay.

When we do something that is unholy, the person we hurt is ourselves.

I don't know if you're like me, but and I'm sure maybe everyone has experienced this.

I'm not gonna speak for everyone, but I know what it's like to experience guilt.

I know what it's like to feel shame, I know what it's like to carry the pain of walking in a compromised way, where I compromise my values, I compromise my integrity.

And when I've walked that way, uh I've realized that there's there's just nothing worse than feeling that feeling.

And it's an attitude that you carry when you're walking unholy that will suck the life out of you.

And there's no way that we can deal with this, there's no way that uh we can address this outside of Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the only one who can solve and can heal and and can uh forgive and and restore a heart that has been uh has been seared, has been compromised.

So unholiness is an attitude that the fresh wind of God wants to repair.

So we need to move in that way in living holy.

Number three, unloving.

And before you know what being unloving is and carrying an attitude where you're unloving, we need to know what it means to be loved and to live with an attitude that's loving towards others.

Real love is not a feeling, it's not a friendship, it's not uh it's not just an emotion.

Real agape love, it's a love that comes from God into us that is unconditional.

To know real love, unconditional love.

It's not based on performance, but it's based upon the nature of who God made you to be.

Who you are.

God loves you because you are fearfully and wonderfully made, knit together in your mother's womb.

God sees you as his child, and he loves you like a father, a mother loves their child.

This unconditional love is uh is given to us by virtue of the fact that he made us, he created us.

It's unselfish, it's intentional, and it's choosing to do something careful caring or helpful, uh even if it requires sacrifice or a consequence on one person's uh on one person's initiative, it it's loving.

And in the last days, one of the signs of the end times is that people will be unloving.

They won't be interested in people.

They just prefer that people become secondary to profit, or people are secondary to their own personal agenda.

And there's a lot to be said here.

In fact, we're living in a very selfish age, an unloving age.

And I believe there's an agenda to just separate people into different groups, and like whether you're black or white, whether you're rich or poor, whether you're Christian or non-Christian, whether you're male or female, young or old, whether you're uh conservative or liberal, they're based on politics or or stance regarding like abortion or anti-abortion.

There's a desire to separate people, to qualify people in those groups as either they're worthy of love and the others are not worthy of love.

And the agenda is to separate and divide people and to divide a nation.

It's diabolical and it's divisive.

It reduces people and removes the nature of God within each individual.

If there was a point in the church where we could say, hey, we're in unity about this, is the fact that God created each individual on purpose and loves every individual person.

And every human being is deserving of this love.

Let me be clear not every human doing is lovely, but every human being is worthy of love.

The result of this is not just a personal, not just the person on the receiving end.

The end time attitude is not only about those who are being unloved, it's about the attitude in my heart that is saying, Oh, Brody, are you loving others?

Because if you've got an unloving attitude in your heart, what will happen is it will pollute and poison you.

So I don't want to live with this end-time attitude of being unloving.

Number four, unforgiving.

This is so important.

If we were together and we were talking in a group and we asked people to raise their hand, like how many of you have dealt with unforgiveness?

And I believe everyone would raise their hand because all of us have experienced hurt at some point of our life and have felt the pain of that hurt.

And if we don't deal with that hurt, the Bible describes it like a poison that starts to fester in your heart and leads to other activities, leads to other offenses.

And it creates a vacuum in your life when you live with the unforgiveness.

And it's where this fresh wind cannot enter, it cannot move you until you've dealt with the spirit of unforgiveness.

And our problem, we have to realize our problem is not just people, it's the devil.

It's the devil who actually wants to rob, kill, steal, destroy from you.

And he'll do that by creating a pain point in your life.

Usually by an individual where most of our hurt occurs.

Someone hurts you.

And that pain point leads to a root of bitterness.

And that root of bitterness, if not dealt with quickly, turns to offense.

And offense turns to hatred.

And hatred turns to murder.

And the Bible says we have to root out the spirit in our life.

So at the very start, as soon as there's a pain point, we need to come to God and we need to say, God, what is your purpose for me?

To live life full, to live life with full life.

And in order to do that, we need to be forgiving of each other.

So as soon as there's a pain point, would you commit your spirit to say, I'm not going to live with unforgiveness.

I'm going to be quick to forgive.

It's a point and an example that we can practice personally, that we can extend to our community.

Learn how to be this individual that's quick to forgive.

Now, the Bible says that these choices that we make, these attitudes that we carry, are good like a medicine.

The Bible says that, like this cheerful heart, when you're living this way, you've got this cheerful heart, and it's good like a medicine.

And so we want to know how to actually get this cheerful heart.

And I'm going to just blast through this with you here in just some in this short time here.

And I'm going to tell you how you can get it.

Because if you realize that it's in you, you want to get it out.

If you see ungratefulness, unholiness, being unloving or unforgiving, you say, I want that out so that I've got that cheerful heart.

And I can live cheerful.

So the first thing we do is we make a choice every day.

And I know what you hear right now is saying, Well, I've got to make a choice.

Yes, that's true.

But what I want to stand and identify here and focus on is you have to do it every day.

Every day.

You need to choose it.

You need to choose being grateful.

You need to choose holiness.

You need to choose being loving.

And you need to choose forgiveness.

You've got to choose those attitudes every day.

Every day.

Even now, you're having to choose it.

Make that choice.

And I know it's not easy.

It's easier just to let the emotion take off with you, the attitude take off, and just be unloving.

But you've got to make a choice to be loving.

And we do that by submitting to God in prayer.

And I'll tell you this: this is like a lifeline for me.

Prayer is a lifeline.

I need to focus on Him.

My prayer to Him is oftentimes, Lord, may you increase and may I decrease.

Because when I make you large and when I put my attention on you, then the things of earth grow strangely dim.

And all of a sudden, the things that I carry attitudes about don't seem to matter as much as knowing Him.

So I make a choice every day to pray.

I make a choice.

Life is really about the 10% of the things that actually happen to you.

It's about the 90% of the way you respond to the things that happen to you.

And so we need to realize this and say, man, I've got to make a choice.

I've got to go to God and say, God, help me respond.

Not evil for evil, but good for evil.

Love my neighbors.

Love the people who are my enemies.

Make a choice.

I don't want to forgive those who have hurt me.

But I have to make a choice every day.

Psalm 19, 14 says, May the words of my mouth, the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, Lord, my rock, my redeemer.

May my words every day, the meditation every day of my heart be pleasing to you.

Secondly, we need to develop a high appreciation of life.

Go ahead and write that down.

Say, I want to develop a high appreciation of life.

People who have this high appreciation of life.

Look for the good in life.

Look that God is up to something good.

Look for his favor.

Look for his opportunity.

Even in difficult times, they're looking for the opportunity.

And sometimes I get so caught up in my own life.

I'm sure you can relate that you forget about the wonderful moments, the wonder moments where you stop and you think, wow, God, I'm just going to stop and just appreciate nature, appreciate where we live, appreciate the people who are around me.

Appreciate the way you've designed me and created me.

Appreciate the community around me.

Appreciate a fresh beginning and a new start in my life.

I'm just going to appreciate the life that is in front of me.

Paul practiced this.

And he said, even though in Corinthians he said, I was dealing with sorrow, yet I was always rejoicing, poor, yet making many rich, having nothing, yet possessing everything.

It was this life that he looked at, where he began to appreciate no matter what circumstance he was in, he became appreciative.

Paul said he gave thanks in all situations.

And you say, well, that's Paul.

Yes, but that principle remains for us.

We're thankful in all situations, giving thanks in all circumstances, because it's the will of God for our lives.

As we do it, we fall in line with God making all things work together for good to those who are called according to his purpose.

And we want to walk in that life.

So being thankful is his will.

And we look for the good.

Put on those perspective glasses, saying, Yes, I'm going to look for the good.

Number three, we find something positive in everything.

Find something positive.

And oftentimes the things in our life that are negative or relate to people, just look for something positive with people.

Start there.

Even the people that are around you today, start there.

Philippians 4.8 says this.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable.

If anything is excellent and praiseworthy, we need to think on these things.

Make a choice.

Say, I want that wind in my sail.

I don't have time for ungratefulness, unholiness, unloving, unforgiving, I don't have unforgiveness.

I don't want any of that.

I want to just set my sail and just say, I want to think about the things that are admirable, pure, noble, good rapport, excellent, praiseworthy.

I need that in my life, and that will launch me ahead and forward.

I think about it.

I meditate on them.

I chew on them.

And sometimes it takes a little bit of a muscle work to do it, but it's our attitude to do it.

Your attitude will determine your altitude.

And sometimes you've got to face those things in life that are coming at you, and you've got to just like a plane that's taking off.

You know, when a plane takes off, it faces the wind and allows its resistance, allows the pressure against it to allow it to get lift.

And in these times, we find something positive in everything.

Lastly, turn everything over to God.

And you might think, Brody, that is probably the most Christian, like straight up, end your message with just give it to God.

And and I have to be honest, it sounds really cliche, but this is the message because this is the issue.

It sounds like a carpet answer, but it's not.

We get in trouble when we try to do things on our own.

The fact is, if we don't pray first, and we try to be grateful in our own strength, holy in our own strength, loving in our own strength, and forgiving on our own strength, we fall flat.

We need to give things over to God.

We need to give our pain, give our trouble, give our our situation that we're going through, our conflict, over to Him.

And the Paul said this: I present my requests to God.

I give them to God, and He gives us a peace that passes understanding, that rules our heart, rules our mind, and allows us to take a deep breath and move forward.

The fact is, trouble isn't gonna go away, it's always gonna be here.

It's how we respond to it.

And we do this by ending these end time attitudes.

And so, lastly, this last scripture here, I want to just identify with you.

Cast your cares upon Jesus, cast them on him because the Bible says he cares for us.

So if you're struggling today and you're carrying any of these attitudes, you say, I'm struggling, I've tried to do it on my own.

We need to lean on God.

My encouragement to you is lean on God now.

Lean on God today.

And when the Bible says cast it on him, it means like you can't just throw it on him and God carry it and you carry it.

It's put it all on God's plate and allow him to be the one who actually carries it for you because he cares for you.

This is the difference between a Christ-like attitude and an end times attitude.

And we don't want to walk that way where we're walking in the doldrums.

We want to live our lives moving forward with the presence of God in our hearts, living in love, living in gratefulness, living in holiness and righteousness before God and each other.

We're able to be bold because there we're we're walking right and living with forgiveness in our heart where we're we've got we we don't harbor any unforgiveness against others, and we've addressed all of our pain points, we've brought them to Jesus.

This week the kids' ministry asked me, What are you preaching on?

We want to be able to share the same thing.

Can you just highlight in one word and one straightforward comment or statement?

And uh maybe that's all I should have done today.

I kind of elaborated on it, but I told them, I said, we just need to ask, what would Jesus' attitude be?

What would Jesus do?

And live according to that, because Jesus is our example, and Jesus, he dealt with difficult times, but he kept his attitude right in the in the challenge, in the difficult times.

He did what he said, he did what he heard the father say, he said what he felt the father said, and we need to just look at our lives and say, Today, I want to live with that fresh wind in my heart, so I want to live with Christ-like attitude.

So that's our principle today.

Live with that Christ-like attitude, and you'll experience that fresh wind to help move you forward.

Would you bow your heads with me today?

I want to thank you, Father, for this opportunity to come before you.

And uh, I know that you're here today.

You're in our homes, you're in our cars, you're where we're at, just listening to this message at this point.

And perhaps you're an individual today who's just saying, I'm dealing with this unloving, ungrateful, unholy, unforgiving attitude.

And I need it to be addressed.

And I just want to pray for you today.

Father, we just ask that there would be a touch of your presence in our lives today.

For those who are wanting this attitude to be rooted out and pulled out, Father, we just ask that you would uh touch our lives with a fresh grace and a fresh wind.

And Lord, you would restore and and reform our hearts, Lord, that you would start something new in us, allowing us to move forward.

We thank you, Lord, that we're not alone, that you're with us on this journey, and that we can turn to you at any point in time and ask you for help in our distress.

We thank you, Father, for this fresh wind you have for us today.

And we thank you, Lord, that you're moving the church forward and you're moving us forward and our families forward into the favor that you have for us.

And Father, today we pray for anyone here who may never have experienced this wind, this fresh wind that only Jesus could bring.

And if you're listening today and you've never experienced this wind, you've never experienced this new life that's inside of us, that can be inside of you, then I want to invite you to pray this prayer with me at home.

I want you to be able just to invite Jesus into your life and just repent of your sin, repent of where you've gone wrong, and accept Jesus to be your Lord and Savior.

So just pray this prayer with me.

Father, I repent today of my sin.

I acknowledge that I'm a sinner, and I ask for forgiveness.

I invite Jesus to be the Lord of my life, to rule and reign in my heart, to bring fresh winds into my life, and help me to move into the life that you called me to live.

In the name of Jesus.

Amen.

And if you're listening with us today and you have any other questions about any of this, my our my heart, our heart as part of a KCC team, is that you would not spend one day without experiencing the life that God has for you.

If you have any questions, you go ahead and reach out to us, any means necessary, and we want to be able to walk this journey with you.

God bless you.

God bless uh your time today, and uh may God be with you and your families.

God keep you safe and spiritually living in Jesus' name.

Amen.