Are You Having Fun Yet?

So it's not that he chooses not to lie, he can't.

So when he promises that he's going to be with you,

when he says that I am Emmanuel,

doesn't matter where your circumstances lead you,

I will be with you.

He's saying it, knowing I can't lie,

I'm gonna be there.

Yes, you might end up in a burnery of fiery furnace,

but his promise is, what up, I'm in there too.

What's up, what's good?

Welcome to the City Light Church podcast.

Thanks for joining us today as we look into God's Word

and discover the hope and truth that he has for us.

If you want to connect with City Light Church,

feel free to visit us at citylightnyc.com,

that's citylightnyc.com.

Pastor Boyan Jansik and his team believe

that the power of the Holy Spirit

is already working in our hearts and minds.

As you listen to today's teaching,

remember that you are deeply loved by God,

that you are surrounded by His grace,

and that He has a real hope and a future for you.

How you feeling this morning?

Awesome, awesome, good.

Let me ruin that for you, now I'm just...

So I want to talk today about, man,

I don't even know how to say that.

I said this in the first service

and you could immediately feel the sphinxters tighten up.

I want to talk about being a good Christian.

See what I mean?

Oh, man, it's one of those evil things.

Tell me about myself, oh, no.

No, but it's not what you think.

It's seriously not about what you think.

I've found that for years,

people have gone about Christianity the wrong way.

And I have an idea of why,

because what it has to do with God's promises,

I think every one of us,

we share equally in the human experience

this thing called disappointment.

We have an expectation for something.

It doesn't live up to the expectation.

And even when the expectation is based on something

that God said, so if God said something,

it's a promise, right?

But that, we get messed up

when we don't see the fulfillment of everything

that we want right away.

But I'm here to encourage you that Christianity

is not what you thought it was.

I'll just let the Ken out of the bag.

Let me ask the question,

how many of you are actually having fun in your Christianity?

I'm really excited for the amount of people

that raised their hands and clapped and applauded,

because guess what?

There are many, and I'm not talking about religious groups,

like they're well-meaning folks, actual Christians,

Bible believing, Jesus confessing Christians,

and they are miserable,

absolutely miserable,

and their lives have been ruined by religion and toil.

They're under the misconception that Christianity

means that you have to be perfect,

and you have to do it right.

And I'm here to tell you today that if your Christianity

is not produced in you,

this thing of actually having fun,

you're doing it wrong.

It's weird.

I don't know if it's just because it's me

or it's the Holy Ghost, but I hear,

I'll show you how to do this,

I said, but I...

You know, sometimes you gotta check,

like, is that me or is that you Lord?

Like that.

Psalm 89, verse 34 says this,

Psalms 89:34

It's easy enough to say yes, but I think the reality is,

most of us, when I say the us part,

I'm talking about the Christians in the room,

and I acknowledge there are some non-Christians in the room,

praise God, you won't be that way for long.

But for most of us, we do this double-dutch thing

of Christianity, double-dutch,

you mean like the children's game, yes.

You get a promise from God and you believe him,

so you step into it, yes, but then it doesn't happen

right away.

So you go, well, I don't know, did he?

But then you go through it again and go, well, I mean,

but he's faithful and nobody did for Tiffany,

so I'll trust him again, but then you get your feelings hurt.

Nope.

And then you end up living a life like that.

Well, you do, that is not the way your Christianity

is supposed to be.

The Bible says in the book of Psalms,

oh Lord, help me with this one.

This is pour out your complaint before the Lord.

And the reason I bring it up is because

we've got this misconception

that we can't actually be honest with God

and we can't really bring things to him.

So many of you, your prayer life is fake

because it's based on religion.

It's based on the chore that you have to,

because you want to get to heaven, let's be clear about that.

You're not trying to live down here and struggle

and then not make it to heaven,

so you're going to do whatever it takes to get to heaven

and you know that that involves prayer

and it involves going to church.

So let me get my attendance, check.

Okay, I got to make sure my prayer check is in.

Oh, here again, Lord Jesus, blessed be thy name, O God.

Thy name, O God.

Hallelujah.

So no, no, no, no, we laugh,

but sometimes prayer is so fake

because we're doing it to make sure that we get the check.

Has it been five minutes yet?

Has it been 20 minutes yet?

Maybe I could get up, oh man, it's only 19.

Let me just elongate my hallelujah, hallelujah.

20 minutes, wow, that really hurt my knees, Lord.

And God is like, how come you didn't stand up?

You could have walked around the house doing all that.

But we go through these religious things

in our mind that say, I have to perform

and I have to get it right.

Listen, I'm gonna tell you right now,

my prayer life does not look like yours

and I am proud of that.

And it's not because I'm better than you in any way.

But there's been a grace, a freedom

that I've inherited from the scriptures.

I don't have to perform anymore.

Christianity is not meant for you to be

on a hamster wheel of performance.

Let that sink in.

Because I know a lot of us,

we've been trying for a really long time

to get good at this.

Did you know trying to be good leads you to religion?

And being stuck in religion actually opens the door

for a sin lifestyle.

So many people are struggling today

not because they're not good Christians,

but because they're embroiled in religion.

They're embroiled in performance based Christianity.

You're constantly finding the next thing

that you have to do in order to present yourself to God.

I don't present myself, I just come.

The Bible says,

come with boldness before the throne of grace

to receive help in a time of need.

That looks antithical to the way that our prayer life

looks sometimes because sometimes we go through routine

of oh, dear God.

Perfect and holy Father.

You offer the lily of the valleys.

You are Jacob's ladder.

You are the God of Isaac, Abraham, and Jacob.

Oh, I said Jacob again, okay.

Oh, hallelujah.

And we do all these things.

And it's just like, just have the relationship.

Just be free from the burden of having to do it right.

You know, when I said that God is not afraid

for you to pour out your complaint,

he's not afraid for you to be real with him.

He's not afraid for your prayer life

to look something like,

wow, yesterday was rough.

I'm believing you for some things

and it seems like everything that I'm believing you for,

the opposite is happening in my life.

But I think that you are good and faithful

because I woke up again, thanks for that.

I wish that some of your prayer lives

would look more realistic

because you would begin to see good fruit.

Because, ooh, thank you Lord.

I told this to my daughter one time.

I said, you know, we already got the A.

When you understand that you already got the A,

you won't strive to perform.

My kids have an understanding.

They can't do anything for me.

No, I know some of you are like,

Mr. Thibar, I felt like, what is this?

How dare he say that about those wonderful children?

I've seen them, I know them.

No, they can't do nothing for me.

They can't cook for me, I cook better than them.

They can't buy me nothing, they ain't got no money.

All the things that I want cost money, they ain't got none.

So, what can they do?

They can't do nothing for me.

Oh, but, but Pastor Moore, you know, love affection.

I got a wife.

I don't need them kids.

But, man, do I love them?

And I would give anything for them,

even though they can't do nothing for me.

They can't iron my clothes when I'm lazy.

They can't go shopping for me.

Hey, yes.

Oh, glory be to God.

Chor, oh, I prophesied, chores are coming.

Hey, Katala.

Right now, my kids got chores.

The nine-year-old is her chore.

You have to wash your own dish.

You don't got to wash the whole house.

You got to wash yours.

I know, right?

She said the same thing.

But they can't do anything for me of substance.

But that doesn't mean that I wouldn't pour out

everything to meet their need.

Why do I bring it up?

It's an imperfect father like me has that mind and heart.

How much more the father of lights

in whom there is no shadow of turning?

That's the way your father looks at you.

He has already approved you, washed you in his blood,

cleansed you, and said that you belong to him

and promised you the world.

But the question is, why don't you believe it?

Now, before you engross yourself

with guilt, shame, and condemnation

for not being the type of Christian that I have described,

we find examples of this type of believer in the Bible.

And I just want to point it out to you

so that you can feel better about your situation

because you're not the first person there.

Amen?

So let's look in the scriptures.

When God promises you something again,

you have to take him at His word.

Because if you don't take him at His word,

you're going to be like people like Abraham.

Abraham acts the Lord in Genesis 15 and he was like,

Lord God, how shall I know that I will inherit it

that the very things that you promise to me?

Now, I love it because God didn't reprimand Abraham

for failing to take him at His word.

That's how gracious God is to His people.

He even came down to Abraham's level of faith

and did something to a short Abraham

that he would always keep his promises.

He made a covenant with Abraham.

That's like a modern day contract, if you will.

And God didn't do this for His own benefit.

God is a God of His word.

He does not break His word.

He binds Himself to the covenant

because He knew that Abraham needed to know in His heart

that God would do whatever He had promised Him.

So man finds it hard to just believe.

For example, there was a situation my wife and I,

we were going to buy a home in Long Island.

And for some silly reason,

they didn't take me at my word when I said,

I'll give you thousands of dollars.

And I didn't take them at their word

when they said that they would leave the house

and leave the keys on the table.

We did this thing where we got a paper,

I signed it, they signed it,

and we got lawyers to verify that everybody's signature

was correct. Amen.

And we found out later down the line,

there was some things that weren't lining up

with the contract.

Like, hey, what do you mean?

This is an underground oil burning.

Like, the tank is underneath the ground.

Well, that can't be.

That's not what you promised.

It's going to have to be above ground.

So either you pay for it because we're not paying for it

or we're leaving.

So people put in contracts because they don't trust words.

Amen.

And God understands that about people.

Even though He knows that He is faithful.

Have you ever read this in the scriptures

when it says that God cannot lie?

That is actually one of the most awesome things

that I've ever read in scripture.

Because people don't fully get what it's saying.

Sometimes you read that and you think,

well, man, God is just, He's so holy.

Look at His moral upstanding.

I choose not to lie.

I am so faithful and morally high.

That's not actually what the scripture is saying.

What the scripture is actually saying is,

I can't lie.

Like, if I tried it, it wouldn't work.

Like, if I said the microphone was white,

everything in creation has to manifest.

Reality has to change to conform to the truth.

When there was nothing but darkness and God said,

let there be light.

Like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like,

like, like, like, like, like, had to come out.

So it's not that He chooses not to lie.

He can't.

So when He promises that He's going to be with you,

when He says that I am Emmanuel,

doesn't matter where your circumstances lead you,

I will be with you.

He's saying it knowing I can't lie.

I'm going to be there.

Yes, you might end up in a well.

Yes, you might end up in a burnery of fiery furnace.

But His promise is, what up?

I'm in there too. It was good.

You know, they had a down friend there,

regardless of what it was.

Like, hey, we're going to go commit a felony today.

I'm down.

Oh, yeah, I didn't get that.

They don't got those type of friends.

Jesus, praise God.

I used to be a friend like that.

Hey, I need you.

Felt it.

All right.

New life.

Baptism.

Old man.

New man.

But Abram,

and he's a believer.

He's an actual believer.

And he starts playing hopscotch.

What do you call that thing when you jump rope?

Double dutch.

Hopscotch is double.

No, so he was,

he starts playing double dutch with God.

Let me show you from the scriptures because again,

I want you to find comfort in this because

you keep thinking to yourself that you're the only one

and you're imperfect.

You're just saying, just chill.

The real,

the key to your success as a Christian is that you would

rest in all of what he did for you.

That you would believe that you are what he said you are.

The true fight of faith is not against the devil.

The true fight of faith is you every day appropriating

the promise of God and saying,

I don't care what the bank account says.

I don't care what the symptoms in my body say.

I know what you said and you don't fail and you will be with me.

I can't tell you how many pits the Lord has lifted me up out of

because I trusted that what he said was and then I find myself

on the other side of it.

Ta-da.

I wish the process was easier.

But the God on his truth is you have to deal with the

mundane part of life that continues to go and not look like

what he promised.

But we do have the promise and the faithfulness of God.

We've got his resume.

God never really asks people to move in blind faith.

He's always giving the track record of all the things

that he's done.

He's the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of Jesus.

He gives you these things.

I've done all these things for all these people.

All the testimonies that you hear in church of God showing up

and moving on behalf of the people.

He's trying to let you know that's my track record.

He has my business call it.

I am the great salvation maker.

Way maker as we call it.

Anything you need, I'm there.

Or you think God talked like that sometimes he does.

Romans 4.20 says this about Abraham.

He says he did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief.

But was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God and being

fully convinced that what he had promised he was able to perform

and therefore it was accounted to him for righteousness.

Now that sounds awesome.

That's encouraging.

That's a very aerial view of this situation.

Can we get granular for a minute?

So how about this?

Let's take a review of the gospel.

We all could use a review of the gospel, amen?

The gospel is the good news that Jesus came to save us,

that he died in our place for us and as us to bring us liberty

and freedom from sin.

So let's look at that through the scriptures.

We can take a granular look at Abraham.

Amen?

No, I know some of you are wondering already,

like you said you were going to show me the gospel.

Why are we going to Genesis 15?

Because we're going to look at the gospel.

After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram

in a vision saying, do not be afraid Abram.

He is not Abraham as yet.

He is Abram.

I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward.

But Abram said, Lord God, what will you give me seeing?

I go childless.

And the heir of my house is Eleazar of Damascus.

Then Abram said, look, you have given me no offspring.

Indeed, one born in my house is my heir.

And behold, the word of the Lord came to him saying,

this one shall not be your heir,

but one who will come from your own body shall be your heir.

Then he brought him outside and said, look now toward heaven

and count the stars if you are able to number them.

And he said to him, so shall your descendants be.

And Abram believed in the Lord,

and he accounted it to him for righteousness.

When you believe God, it puts you in a different class.

It puts you in a different status altogether.

Verse 7, then he said to him, I am the Lord

who brought you out of the earth, the caldians,

to give you this land and to inherit it.

And this is the part that I love.

And he said, Lord God, how shall I know that I will inherit it?

This is the believer.

Am I the...

You guys are with me.

Didn't it just say that he believed God and God said,

because you believe me, I've now put you in a different status.

You are now officially righteous.

So we know Abram is a believer.

He stepped into it.

I believe.

But how do?

Because again, I want you to feel okay.

Christianity is not about you being perfect.

It's about you having real relationship with God.

It's about you being willing to go to him and go,

I do trust it.

I just don't understand how.

You want me to get to here, and I feel very much down here,

but I know you can make up the difference,

so if you could just give me a little bit of revelation.

I wish we didn't act like that wasn't us.

I hope you don't believe that in my household,

I'm just walking around going, I am Captain Fitch!

Wife, get the Bible.

We shall read today of our coming victory for this week.

No, sometimes it's like, you see in that bill,

I see in the bill too, man.

I've got to do something.

Jesus, you see the bill?

It's that type of realness, but it's so gratifying

when God comes through beyond your understanding

and beyond your resources that go, I did see it.

Here's the provision to cover it,

because I know you weren't planning it.

Oh, great leader of the home, I'm like,

God had done no Jesus, God had done.

Listen, for all the husbands in the room

that God has come through in an 11th hour

because you did it, you better give him praise.

Wow, I got a lot of wives,

eight men's right now.

Lord help us.

But this is the believer, amen?

Verse 8, and he said,

Lord God, how shall I know that I will inherit it?

So he said to him, bring me a three-year-old heifer,

a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram,

a turtle dove, and a young pigeon.

Then he brought all these to him and cut them in two

down the middle and placed each piece opposite the other.

But he did not cut the birds in two.

And when the vultures came down on the carcasses,

Abram drove them away.

Now you're probably reading that.

And again, sometimes we dismiss things

and we read too quickly in the scriptures admittedly.

But I want you to take more care when you read

because there's so much happening in the scriptures

for your benefit.

We don't understand this today,

but what God was doing was he was cutting a contract with him.

Because he sees that Abram is having

the spirit of double dutch on him.

I believe you, but, but, but, but, but.

And he's like, okay, so I see what you need is you need a contract.

You need a covenant.

Now understand a covenant is different from a contract

than that.

It was a lot more severe back then.

When one king addressed another king and said

that I want to make covenant with you,

there were some ramifications that happened.

It was basically saying,

I'm promising that if anything happens to you

and your kingdom, me and my kingdom

will go to bat for you.

We will be as one man and vice versa.

And if anything happens that I don't fulfill my end

of the commitment,

may I be like these two animals?

Because the Bible says that he took the animals

that God requested.

Abram knew what to do immediately.

Notice it doesn't say that Abram said animals.

Why would you have me get a three-year-old heifer?

No.

And me.

Not a sheep, give me a heifer.

Give me the heifer.

Okay.

He gets all the things.

And the Bible says he knew exactly what to do.

He cut them down the middle.

Because what happened when you made this ritual

of covenant back in the days?

You cut these animals in half

and you grab hold of the hand of the person

you were making the covenant with.

And you walk through.

It was like a waterfall of blood.

It was a bloody situation.

You walk through the waterfall of blood.

And basically you were making the promise

that if I don't fulfill my end of the covenant,

make me like these animals that have been cut in half

and blood open.

It was a serious thing back then to make a covenant.

It was not light work.

And God goes,

you need a covenant?

Let's get a covenant.

But the part that I need all of us to get

about our Christianity is what role we play in this covenant.

Because God makes a covenant on our behalf.

Verse 12.

Now when the sun was going down,

a deep sleep fell upon Abram.

And behold, horror and great darkness fell upon him.

Then he said to Abram,

this is God saying to Abram,

no certainly that your descendants will be strangers

in a land that is not theirs.

And will serve them and they will afflict them for 400 years

and also the nation whom they serve,

I will judge.

Afterward, they shall come out with great possessions.

Now ask for a you shall go to your father's in peace

and you shall be buried at a good old age.

But in the fourth generation,

they shall return here for the iniquity

of the Amorites is not yet complete.

So we have this covenant being cut

and Abram's part to play.

Because the scripture tells us that he fell asleep.

Keep that of note, amen?

What was Abraham's part?

He was resting.

That'll make sense when I read you this next verse.

Verse 17,

and it came to pass when the sun went down

and it was dark,

that behold,

there appeared a smoking oven

and a burning torch that passed between those pieces

on the same day the Lord made a covenant

with Abraham saying,

to your descendants,

I have given this land

from the river of Egypt to the great river,

the river Euphrates,

the keynites,

the Kennesites,

the Cadmenites,

the Hittites,

the Parasites,

the Rathame,

the Amorites,

the Canaanites,

the Gurgishites,

and the Jebiusites.

So the smoking oven

and the burning torch

passed between the pieces

while Abraham slept.

And you might think to yourself,

what does that have to do with the price of tea in China?

That is the Gospel, ladies and gentlemen.

You're trying to figure out,

okay, Exodus 13,

21 says this,

and the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of...

We're going to get this together.

Reading is fundamental.

And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud

to lead the way.

And by night in a pillar of

to give them light

to us to go by day and night.

Now we go back to verse 17 from Genesis 15.

And it came to pass when the sun went down

and it was dark that behold.

They're appeared a smoking oven.

Ain't that a cloud?

And a burning torch.

Ain't that some fire?

So here we have God the Father

and God the Son

cutting a covenant on Abraham's behalf,

but Abraham is where.

If God is going to make a covenant on your behalf,

aren't you supposed to be in the covenant?

If God is going to write up a contract that says,

you need to do all that you do,

and then I'm going to do all that I do,

and I promise I'll do all that I do.

Shouldn't you be somewhere?

But we're learning,

this is what Christianity ought to be,

where you're not resting on your performance,

but your trusting and God's ability to keep you.

He removes you from the equation

and with good reason,

because if you're like me,

then you know that you would mess it up!

He removed me from the equation.

The fate of my household and my life

is not on me and my stellar leadership skills,

although my wife would say otherwise.

Amen.

My salvation is not held up with duct tape

as I'm like trying to hold it together.

God understands,

if we leave Muhammad in charge of this,

he's going to mess it up!

Jesus, I need you to do me a solid.

I need you to go down there

and I need you to take Muhammad's place,

because Muhammad is going to mess it up.

We don't want him to mess it up.

I'm going to do my part because I'm God.

I don't fail.

Muhammad not so much.

So we're going to invite Jesus.

You play the part of Muhammad.

Oh, I could be good looking around.

Only some of y'all get that.

Praise God.

He says, you play the part of Muhammad.

I'll play the part of God.

And we're going to cut this covenant together.

I'm going to uphold my end.

You uphold his end,

and it'll be perfect.

And the entire time.

You know what I love about it?

It doesn't say that Abram fell asleep.

This is that he fell deep asleep.

Drug!

You know that deep sleep.

I don't care about life right now.

I'm conscious to the world.

The Bible says he was dreaming about his future.

Dreaming about the promises of God that God gave him.

Because remember, the promise for him was about his seed

that was to come.

And God was showing him generation upon generation upon generation.

I dare some of you to go to sleep and trust God

so that he would start giving you visions about tomorrow.

Right now you've been aborting your future because you refused

to acknowledge the fact that hope is coming.

Everything is about the right here and the right now

and how much it sucks.

Can't believe I got this job.

Can't believe I'm still single.

Can't believe my arm still hurts like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We walk around like the mean with the guy kicking rocks.

All I want is for God to bless me and he doesn't seem to be doing it.

Well, I won't he bless me today.

It's not like I didn't pray again.

So what if my prayer was only two minutes?

Whatever, I prayed.

I even went to church.

I was a little late and missed the three songs,

but so what I heard to sermon.

God is not here for your performance.

Thank God.

He's here for you to receive the things that he has prepared for you.

Man, your Christianity is going to jump 12 notches

when you understand that it's not up to you.

When you stop resting on your performance,

you're going to start receiving the pure,

unadulterated grace of God.

His mercy, the Bible says, it makes you great.

Do you know what mercy is?

Mercy is when God holds back the consequences of your foolishness.

The Bible says that his mercies will make you great.

He's going to bless you with things that you could never hope to deserve

if you would just get out of the way and stop acting like you got it all together.

Am I preaching to anybody today?

Let go of the fallacy that you're in control of being this great Christian.

Because I know some pastors and some Christians,

they believe like, how can you tell people that?

If you tell people that they don't have to do all of these things,

they're just going to go wild and go loose and go crazy.

Well, Jesus didn't go wild and go loose and go crazy.

The Bible says that he didn't know what he was going to do.

Well, Jesus didn't go wild and go loose and go crazy.

The Bible says that he didn't sin and thought were it or deed.

And he perfectly exemplified receiving grace and mercy.

The Bible says that he didn't do anything unless he saw the Father doing it first.

The way that I want you to live your life is to go check in with Dad.

Hey, Pop, what's the day looking like?

What's this week looking like?

Okay, okay, got some direction.

This is good.

I don't know exactly what's going to happen,

but you're promising that you're going to be with me?

Cool, I could take it.

I can now conquer the world.

Because I know that God is with me.

Because if God is with you, you can go into any situation

in circumstance and have victory.

Because you're not resting on your own ability,

you're resting on the one who's with you.

Amen.

The road to fun and freedom from religious toil is rest.

And worship team, you can come on up.

Bolt loads of resting and his ability and not your performance.

Notice, I did not say laziness.

You cannot conflate the two.

You have a practical human part to play.

How about this?

We get young people all the time.

And, you know, not everybody's in a relationship.

So you get young people that are single and they want to be with somebody.

It's like, hey, you know, how come God hasn't, you know?

Hanson Meprear yet.

It's like, well, are you marriageable yet?

You're asking for a husband, but you're not a wife.

You're asking for a wife, but you're not a husband.

The Bible says that the man that finds a wife finds a good thing

and has obtained favor of the Lord.

Notice, it doesn't say that he found a booty call.

It doesn't say that he found a baddie.

It doesn't say that he found a girlfriend.

It says that he found a wife.

Meaning that when he rolled up on her, she was a wife already.

It's not because she was married to somebody,

she had the caliber, the character, and the integrity of a wife.

Are you a husband?

Are you a man or a boy?

You still living with my mom?

Listen, I'm not saying like this.

I went from renting my mom's basement to then move into my marriage,

but I wasn't just down there for free eating bread and cheetos.

My mom was ruthless.

Yo, bro.

It's $12.59.

You ready?

What?

It's the first.

You ain't got to be like that, mom.

Wow.

No, she was serious because she knew you need to be ready to be a man.

You would think on my wedding day that my mom would be the most happy.

My mom pulled me to the side and was like, you see this gorgeous creature?

I said, are you ice grilling me at the wedding?

She said, you be a blessing.

She said, don't let her have to clean up after you.

She's not your mother.

She's your wife.

You stand there right here, ain't you?

The idea is to find yourself ready for the things that you're praying for.

So there is a natural part for you to play, but it's not one of performance and acceptance.

There is not one thing that you can honestly do to make God love you more.

He has already given you the zenith level of his love and affection.

Do not fight for the affection of God.

It belongs to you already.

If anybody tells you to do anything, I want you to give so that God would love you.

It's a lie.

God already loves me.

I don't need to give anything based on that fact.

When I do give, I give not because I have to, it's because I get to.

I do it from a privileged position.

It's like I've changed my mind about the whole thing.

All the religious things that say you need to do these things.

I don't need to do them.

I've got an A already.

God said that I'm accepted in the beloved.

I'm forgiven.

The Bible even says that I'm made perfect.

I am holy and blameless and above reproach in his sight.

That's not my thoughts about me.

That's what the Bible says about me.

So if that's what the Word says about me, why wouldn't I believe that?

Because we've been convinced that in order to receive these gracious gifts we have to earn them,

it's a trap.

You cannot earn your place in heaven.

Heaven is for perfect people.

You are not one of them.

Shocker, neither am I.

But I'm going.

Because of what Jesus did, I'm going.

You can hand out the elements.

I just want us to get on the same page and stop fighting for what belongs to us already.

Do not fight to be recognized by the God who already sees you.

You are the apple of his eye.

You are the pearl of great price that he sold everything in order to get.

He loves you so dearly.

So let go of all the fallacies that say, I need to do this and I need to do that in order to receive.

Just receive.

Do your part.

Listen, in any practical thing, do your part.

You need to make sure that you give the people this.

You want to be more attractive to women?

Work on your career.

Read a book.

Stop doom scrolling.

All of a sudden I'm not popular.

You feel like you're overweight, go to a gym.

Work on yourself.

Spend some deep work actually doing the things that help you to benefit yourself.

Because you get back to the spiritual stuff, that is spiritual stuff.

You do your part in the natural and God will do his part in the super and give you supernatural results.

I'm not saying that you have no part to play as a human.

You still need to wake up.

You still need to go through life.

The Bible says if you don't work, you don't eat.

So if you want to be hungry, you keep at it.

Not waking up in the morning, doing your part.

You know, the Bible says that God blesses the work of your hands.

And sometimes we rob him of opportunities because we don't put anything in our hand.

But I do believe, and I feel this deep in my spirit, there's too many of us striving to look apart

and you don't have to play.

Stop trying to appear to be something and be something.

Get off the hamster wheel.

I need to do, I need to do.

No, no, no, all that do-do is turning your brain in a do-do.

How about you try being for a change?

Be his son.

Be forgiven.

Be set free.

Be in the process of receiving his love.

See what that does for you.

Because the rest of it is starting to smell like do-do.

I want us to spend some time worshiping God through song with a different level of freedom.

Because sometimes you can really tell the Christians who've received this truth and those that can't when it comes to worship.

Because there's this weird element of performance that comes in and a lack of freedom.

Because it's like, ah, there's so many people here and I don't want to worship ugly, I don't want to cry.

No, no, no, you need to let go and give God control.

Amen?

Because this is not about how you look or how you sound, it's about who you get to worship.

So we're going to take communion now and we're going to do as the Bible says, we're going to proclaim the Lord's death till he comes.

I love that we get to take communion on this of all days for this message because here we have a reminder of what he's done.

Not what you did, what he did.

And the Bible says that we proclaim his death until he comes.

So that means every time you partake in this, you are declaring that when you died, Jesus, you forgave my sin.

When you died, it is by your stripes that I was healed, so I walk in supernatural health.

When you were on the cross, you were robbed of everything.

You became broke so that I could become rich.

That divine exchange takes place and you proclaim that and then you receive it by faith.

That has nothing to do with you.

Your only part is to now receive and he will rise you up to get you what you need.

So partake with me and then let's join together and worship the Lord through song but do it in freedom.

This is the City Light Church podcast.

If you've missed any part of today's message or if you would like to find out more about Pastor Boyan Jansik in City Light Church,

visit us at citylightnyc.com that's citylightnyc.com.

Feel free to visit us online or in person anytime. We would love to connect with you.

We pray that you have been encouraged today, that you have been reminded how much God loves you and that you are surrounded by grace.

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