Check Your Source - Pastor Joseph Pringle

This week, as we talked last week about surrender, I want to talk about dependency. What is it that we depend on for the source of life within our own worlds? So the title of today's sermon is check your source. Check your source. Source. Sorry. So funny. I'm like. I introduce myself and I say, oh, I'm a pastor. And they go, you're a Italian dish. Like, pastor. Okay. Check your. I am a saucy guy. I love sauce with everything. I always ask for, like, 17 sauce packets. My wife always makes fun of me. Check your source. Okay. Amen. I am an American. I promise. I'm sworn in. I bleed red, white and blue. Dependence. We need to have a dependence upon God. Because I believe it's possible for us to surrender to the authority of God and then act within our lives. Try to live out the will of God. Try to be obedient to God in our own strength. And a disciple, a true disciple, will draw their life from Christ himself. He is the source from which the disciple lives. That is why today I want us to do a source check on our own lives. I want us to see what is making us do what we do. What is the fuel for your life? What. What is it that you ultimately depend on? Even though we have our little prayer, Maybe prayer is the emergency box on the wall. Maybe it's the break in case of emergency time, and it's the prayer acts and we're waiting for the emergencies. But that we would depend on God at all times within our lives. That's why I want it to be a source check today. Not a behavior check, not an attendance check, not an appearance check, but a source check. What are you drawing life from? What are you drawing identity from? Because it is possible to look strong while drawing from the wrong source. You ever been there? Yeah, I've been there. It is possible to be productive in your life, but spiritually dry. It is possible to be successful on the outside, but inwardly anxious, never sleeping, full of doubt, full of worry. It is possible to love God while functionally relying upon yourself in this life. It is possible to sing I Surrender all while living as though everything depends upon you. And one of the greatest threats that I would say to discipleship, especially in our culture, is not that we believe God is powerless. Believe if we've received Christ in this room, we know that God is powerful. We know that there is power in the name of Jesus. We know that there is power in the blood of Jesus. But I believe that the greatest threat is thinking that we have become so capable in this life resourced, informed, connected and self reliant that we rarely recognize how much we need Christ Christ in our lives. We have the answers at our fingertips. We just go to chat GPT Chad. I call my guy Chad. Hey Chad, what's up? Just go to Chad straight away. We've got all this information. We have calendars to organize our days. We have technology to increase our capacity. We have savings account, insurance policies, we have retirement plans, business strategy, self help books, podcasts, counselors, doctors and experts. And none of those things are wrong. They can all be gifts from God within our world. But a gift from God should never be turned into the replacement for God as the fuel of our life. A resource is useful. A source is ultimate. A resource may help you, but your source is what you are trusting to hold you. It's what you are trusting to hold you in the hard times. So that's what you were trusting to hold you in the good times. And the question today that I want you to write down and I want to come back to you to come back to throughout the week is this. What are you truly drawing life from? What are you drawing life from? Where do you turn first in your life? Like truly, I know the right answers, but can we be human? There are many sources that we turn to to solve our problems first, rather than coming to God, I've got this issue. If I could just make more money, if I could just change this person, this whole situation would just go away. If all of that would just die. Get away from me. Change. We are depending upon a circumstance rather than the source of God himself. What you are depending on to give you security, identity, strength, peace, hope and direction. Because whatever your answer is to that question, it truly is your functioning source in this life. Source. Jeremiah 17 probably gives us the clearest picture of two people, two different sources, and two very different outcomes. Jeremiah 17:5 8 says this about the first man. Thus says the Lord, cursed is the man who trusts in man. Pretty heavy language, right? Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord. He is like a shrub in the desert, and so not see any good. Come. He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness in an uninhabited salt land. Then goes on to the second person in this whole equation says, blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when the heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought for it does not cease to bear fruit. Two people who experience, guess what, the same weather, both experience drought, both experience heat, both can walk through the drought, both can experience the pressure that is surrounding them. But they do not have the same source. And because they do not have the same source, they will not have the same response. Your source will determine what happens inside you when the heat arrives, when the overwhelming dryness comes into our lives. So today I want us to check our source. Amen. That we would be dependent on God. I just. In our prayer meeting before the service, when Josh was praying after worship, that word trust kept coming up. Trust, our dependence. What are we leaning on in this life? And I'm believing that God is going to plant within you a conviction to turn your life on over to him being the main source. Amen. Point number one today is don't confuse strength with source. Don't confuse strength with source. Jeremiah 17:5. It says this. Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh. He makes it his strength. I want you to notice that word makes. Makes it, conjures it. He cooks it up. The ingredients are there to make the flesh my strength. He doesn't say the flesh is his strength. He says he makes it. Something has been assigned a position that it was never designed to occupy. Something created in this life has been made into the source. These scriptures are not condemning strength or ability or planning or our responsibility. God gives us intelligence. Right? God gives us creativity. He gives us opportunity. The problem isn't possessing strength. The problem is turning the strength we have into our source and self Sufficiently rarely will happen just overnight. Nobody wakes up in the morning and makes this considerable outward decision and says, from today onward, I no longer need God as my source. Right? It's not this super conscious thing. I'm not going to use God as my source. It happens subtly. You pray less because you've done it before. So we kind of withdraw a little. You seek God less because you already know what to think in this situation. You make a decision and then ask God to bless it rather than seeking him before you make it. You refuse help because you do not want to appear weak. So you're isolating. You pull away. You begin carrying tomorrow. Because you believe anticipating every outcome will give you control over it. Where's all my control freaks? Come on, give me a look at these honest people. Thank you. Little by little, we make our flesh our strength. Little by little, self sufficiently can look like prayerlessness because you only pray about what exceeds your own ability. Can look like control because you need to know how everything will work out. So we grip it as tightly as we can. It can look like anxiety because underneath your thoughts is the belief that everything depends upon me and without me, everything will fall apart. In this life it can look like overworking because stopping forces you to confront the fact that the world continues moving when you are not moving it. And self sufficiently sufficiency can even look like competence. And that may be the most dangerous expression of all within our lives. Because sometimes the greatest threat to dependence on God is not failure, but it's our successes. Failure most of the time brings us to our knees, right? Oh, we got the, it's the emergency box over here. But success can convince us that we no longer need to kneel anymore in this life. And so we think, oh, I'm just, I can depend on, on just this situation and this is my source of happiness. Now. I feel actually good because this problem. So I feel good because I'm getting more money at my job. I feel good because this relationship has been birthed. But we have to be careful that our source of life is not pulled from temporary wells, but from the eternal wells that God has given to us. Deuteronomy 8:17 gives us this warning. Beware, lest you say in your heart, oh man, my power and the might of my hand has gotten me this wealth. I want to tell you this. You are wealthy because you live in this country. Wealth ain't a bank account if you think wealth is how much property you own or. No, wealth is the relationships that you have. It's the depth of relationship you have with Christ, the joy and the fruit of the spirit that is growing in your life. That is wealth to me. That is true wealth, unshakable wealth. And so I want to let you know, you are wealthy in this country. You are wealthy. It's Orange county for goodness sake. I mean, I believe the Holy Spirit lives here, but these people, they don't necessarily stop worshiping God. Their internal explanation of their lives simply just changes what once was. Look at what God has done quietly becomes look at what I have built. God responds in the next verse, verse 18, he says, you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the power to get wealth. Even the strength you are tempted to depend on came from him. Your intelligence, your creativity, your opportunity, your gifting, your capacity, your breath in your body. They are all gifts that have been given by God to you. And do you know what great worship is in this life? Whatever is given to you, you offer it back to God. From the moment God breathed into dust and he animated it to life. Breathing into those nostrils that we would be a people who say, every breath I have, every action this breath gives me in this life, I am giving it back to you, Father. I am laying it down and I surrender it to you. I see that there are apples that I am not supposed to eat, apples that look good in this life. But instead I deny myself and I take up the cross of Christ in this life that we would sustain ourselves with a life centered around Christ. The moment I take what God gave me and make it what I trust instead of him, I ask the gift to carry a weight it was never designed to carry. We cannot confuse provision with the provider. You cannot confuse the gift with the giver. We cannot confuse the resource with the source that it was given from. Your human strength may carry you for a season, but eventually every human strength reaches its limit. It reaches a limit. Now, we hate to admit it, I got a limit. But we need God as our source. Jeremiah 17:5. In that scripture we were reading, it says, whose heart turns away from the Lord? Self reliance does not begin with a conscious rejection of God. Sometimes we simply become so reliant upon ourselves that our hearts stop turning towards him. Still believe. You still attend church. You still pray the Lord's Prayer. But you no longer ask. You no longer wait. You no longer seek God for His word in your life. Your faith has lost substance. You have become strong. But you feel disconnected. And the spirit of God is lovingly warning us in this scripture. Do not mistake the strength I gave you for the source that sustains you and I. Amen. Number two here today. It's quiet. Was that a heavy point for y'? All? Come on, let's go. Truth and love. I love you guys. Love you guys too much to withhold the truth. And I love the truth. But it's delivered with love. Amen. Number two. Move the weight of your trust. I'm going to move a lot quicker. Jeremiah now opens and he shows us the opposite side of the life. Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord whose trust is the Lord. Listen, God is not someone. Is not just someone the blessed person consults with. He's not your insta bro. Quick flash past and doom scrolling past Little piece of advice that you get a consultation from in your life. God is the foundation upon which the whole weight of the blessed person life rests upon. It's built upon. Biblical dependence is not passivity. It's not saying God has done it. So I do not have to work. That is not dependence. That is laziness wearing spiritual clothing. Biblical dependence is active obedience flowing from a deep reliance, a deep well. This desire, this reliance upon God himself, His word, it's within our prayers. It's within. Within. Oh, man. That juicy piece of gossip I just want to spill right now that I withhold. It's that juicy little bit of anger that I've rehearsed over and over with that friend who I had a fight with, and I rehearsed it for 60 minutes in the car that I withhold. And I take to God because He is my source, not myself. I work, I plan, I prepare. We steward. I take responsibility for my actions. I have self control, not other control. It's the fruit of the spirit. But I refuse to make any of those things my source. Like, this is my identity. This is who I am. This is where I draw life from. It's my power and my strength. Proverbs 3, 5, 6 says, Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him and he will make straight your paths. I love that word, lean. Lean because it means transferring weight onto something. You can stand next to something and not depend on it. You can stand next to something and you can admire it. You can stand next to something and you can say it. There it is. It's something that I do depend on, but I do not lean on. I am not transferring the weight of my life onto it. And I can't help but think about Jacob in this circumstance, because I'm sorry to tell you, each and every one of us here today, but you and I have a limp in this life. I know what it is. I think some of us, we limp differently. Paul calls it a thorn in the flesh. So I'm telling you, you will lean on something in this life. I used to lean on alcohol and cocaine. I used to lean on money, pointless living. I used to lean on that for peace and for satisfaction, for numbing and for healing. But all it did was eat away within me what little pieces of hope I had left. I'm telling you, it doesn't have to be as sinister as those things. But you are leaning on something here today. And I want to ensure that you are transferring your weight onto God. Leaning on God, leaning on the blood of Jesus as your answer for whatever it is you are facing. When your finances get tight, what do you lean on? Does tithing now become optional? Does generosity in your life now not exist? Because generosity is limited to finances? When your Marriage comes under pressure. What do you lean on? Do you isolate? Do you pretend it's all okay, no help needed? We're perfect here. Everything's good. When you do not know what happens next, where does your mind run? Does it run to doubt? Does it run to making irrational decisions like this? Does it get hot tempered when the diagnosis comes? When the door shuts? When all of these things happen? Where does your mind lean? Where does your spirit lean? What does your hope depend on? What is carrying the weight of your trust? I'm telling you there is power in the name of Jesus that is bigger than just saying it. And I'm telling you, say it over every circumstance, but live like it's true. In Psalms 27 it says, Some trust in chariots and some in horses. But we. But you and I, we are set apart. We trust in the name of the Lord our God. I want you to know this. I am not the own source of my life, but I trust in the name of the Lord. Yahweh, the Lord, the self existent. I am El Shaddai, which means God Almighty. El Elyon, God most High. El Olam, the everlasting God. El Roy, the God who sees you, Jehovah Jireh the Lord will provide for you. Jehovah. Rapha, the Lord who heals Jehovah Nissi, the Lord, my banner. Oh, he is the guardian of my life. Jehovah Shalom the Lord is peace over your life. Jehovah Sekanu the Lord is our righteousness. Jehovah Sabaoth, the Lord of hosts, of armies is standing over your life. That it's not just you fighting alone, but there is a name that is above every other name. And I've tried the other names, I've tried the other ways. Jesus says, I am the way, the truth and the life. And he is saying to you, if you trust in my name, that some might trust in their chariots, in their horses, in all that they have, in the fine array and lawyers, in this and that. But we trust in that name. Jehovah. Roy the Lord is my shepherd, telling you there is power in his name. He is not just some add on to our lives, but he is the center point of our lives. Point number three is this root, your life in what cannot run dry. I love the two pictures that we're given here. Jeremiah 17:6 it says he is like a shrub in the desert. 178 says this, he is like a plant, a tree planted by water that sends out its roots by the stream. They both experience the same Problem. They both experience the heat of this world. They both experience dryness in this life. The God dependent person still experiences these things. Dependence upon God in our lives does not mean that difficult things will not happen. You can trust God and still experience loss. This is the heartaching thing about being a pastor is seeing someone walk through a valley and knowing what's on the other side. Knowing that God is standing next to them. Knowing that Jesus is comforting them, but still having to walk and step through. You could trust God and still face uncertainty in your life. You could trust God and still feel the heat. The difference is not the weather, but it's the source that each one is relying upon. One has its roots reaching towards the stream. It says it sends its roots towards the stream. Same heat, different source. Same drought. Different source. Same pressure, different source. What are you reaching for in your droughts? Your lack right now. Just take note. What is the lack in my life? Where is it not clicking right now? What am I reaching for in that area? When the season is long and when the heat unbearable, where are you sending your roots, your thoughts, your desires? Because there is a stream of life for you and I. Running pure, running full of life and running full of overflow that we have access to. God's promise is not there will never be a drought, but his promises is this. There is a source that is available to you that a drought cannot exhaust. Your peace does not have to dry up because circumstances change. Your worship does not have to dry up because your prayer has not yet been answered. Your faith does not have to dry up because your future feels uncertain right now. Your fruitfulness does not have to dry up because the season has become difficult. If our roots are in circumstances, we will only ever be as stable as the circumstances are. If your roots are in people, you will only be as stable as the people around you. People are crazy, right? But when your roots reach towards the stream, you discover a supply your circumstances cannot touch. And that's faith in Jesus. That is faith in Jesus. Maybe you've been asking God to remove the heat. But God has been using the heat in your life to reveal your roots. He's been trying to uncover where your roots are reaching. I've changed my prayers not to God, give me all of these desires. But what are you trying to teach me in this moment? That I would be a student that sees, hears and applies to my life? That I'm not a student that has to continually repeat that class, repeat that trial with the same teacher over and over? Whatever pride is in me I submit it. Weed it out. Father, whatever thought is not of you, I take it captive and I lay it at your feet here today. For I know Jesus is my source of freedom. Jesus is my source of strength. Jesus is my source of unity. No matter what we are facing. I want to end with this. And I feel like I have some visuals because I think with all of that, we have to ask ourselves, what is our response then? And I want to put in a visual and keep it simple. Is that okay? The response that we have is to put Jesus at the center. Okay. I don't know if you've ever seen a wheel of life. Anyone ever seen these. You know, these are the portions of our life that are important and keep us running, all the different spokes. And this keeps us moving through life when we've got finance, health, personal growth, love, recreation, social life, career, home, all of these things together. And then Jesus comes into the picture of our life because everything in the world has been revolving around us. We're at the center and we say, jesus, I want yout to be my Lord. And we're trying to figure it out. And the kingdom of heaven is around our life, but it hasn't yet gone into our life, hasn't made any changes. And so we start learning and we start leaning and we say, you know what? I'm going to take a step. I'm going to start putting God within my world. And so we put God within our world in a particular area. We say finances. We say, God, I'm going to tithe. Matthew 23:23. Jesus says this. He says, you should tithe, but you should also not be substituting all the other things like love and mercy and justice, thinking that the tithe covers it. So the tithe, it doesn't make you a Christian. It's just a portion of our life in the kingdom. The problem is, is that we are still in the center. We're still controlling all of this. And what Jesus wants for our life, what Jesus is desiring for you and I to actually understand, is that he is not a spoke on the wheel of your life. He is the center hub of your life. And then when Jesus impacts your life, it touches every area that you wouldn't say, ah, just give you the portion on a Sunday. And then I go back to the other ways. Listen, we're all works in progress. Telling you I still am. Just ask my wife. I'm a work in progress, and I never want to stop being a work in progress, because our God is limitless. There is no end to his source. There is no end to this stream of life and purpose that is in your world. And when you and I start depending upon the right sources, we start seeing the right fruit within our life. Jeremiah says, the blessing is this, that you would see fruit in every season of our lives. Jesus would even go as as far far to say, you will know my disciples by their. By their fruit. By their. By their what? By their fruit. So you and I, we have to have a good assessment of what fruit is in the kingdom of God. What is fruit? The fruit is a surrendered life. It is joy, it is peace. It is patience. It is faithfulness. It is kindness. It is self control in all circumstances when things seem tough. I'm telling you, if this feels impossible to you, this feels like, oh my gosh, this is such a big ask. God loved you so much that he sent His Son to cover you in his blood as an atoning sacrifice. Because I tell you, I could never be good enough. I could never be good enough on my own accord to come into the kingdom of heaven. But with the blood of Christ, by His sacrifice, you and I have been made clean. I got these stains, man, they're so unwashable. You don't know what I've done. Jesus is in the cleaning business, you know. He says his blood will wash you white as snow. It's a miracle. I'm telling you here today, when we turn our dependence upon God, he strengthens you for the course ahead. And I can assure you of this, that you partnered with God, surrendered to him, depending upon him will achieve so much more in this life. It may look very different to what you see in your own heart, but you will go so much further with God as your source, with God being your only source of dependence in this life. Amen. Hey, thanks for tuning in. There's a bunch of different ways that we connect throughout the week, including Sunday mornings, and we would love to see you there. You can check out all the [email protected].

Jeremiah 17:5 Jeremiah 17:5 Deuteronomy 8:17 Jeremiah 17:5 Jeremiah 17:6 Matthew 23:23