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Elevate - Write the Vision Pt 2 - Saved People Seek God
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People have been saved by entering into a relationship with Christ, but that demands a response in their lives. The book of Habakkuk tells us to write down the vision so that people can run with it and have a clear direction. Living an authentic life for Christ means being a biblically authentic disciple by denying ourselves, taking up our cross, and following Jesus. It also means seeking our authentic identity in Christ and pursuing God's will for our lives. Authentic Life Church exists to build a community of fully devoted, authentic followers of Jesus. The first attribute is that saved people seek God. People have stood at altars and said sinners' prayers, and they walked away and there was no response from their life. Let me tell you something, the fact that you have been saved, that you have entered into a relationship with Christ Jesus, whereby His death and resurrection becomes your death and resurrection in Him, when that happens, it demands a response from our life. Something's got to give. Something has to change. Welcome to Elevate, from Authentic Life Church in Mobile, Alabama, with Pastor John DiQuatro. We hope it builds your faith and helps you to live a life of God that you've always wanted to live. We hope it inspires you to be a fully devoted, authentic follower of Jesus Christ. Enjoy the message, and welcome to Elevate. We are continuing our sermon series called Write the Vision. Habakkuk 2.2 tells us this, write the vision, make it plain on tablets, so He may run who reads it. And so, we talked about this last week, why would God have said that to Habakkuk? Why would God have told Habakkuk to write down the vision? Well, if you look back in chapter one of that book, you see that Habakkuk was looking for answers. He was wondering why things are the way they are. Have you been wondering some of that yourself? As you look at our media, as you look at our politics, as you look at what's happening in Israel, what's happening in Russia and the Ukraine, what's happening in China, and you go, what the heck is going on in our world? And Habakkuk is asking that same question. And so he sits down, and he asks, and he waits for an answer from God. And God answers him, but before he does, he speaks these words, write the vision, make it plain, put it on tablets, so that He may run who reads it. So he tells them this, so that the people that have it can run with it. So that when the vision is spoken, it can get into the hearts and the minds of the people, so that it will shape their perspective, right, and give them a track to run on. Because vision makes us laser focused. If you are living your life and you have nothing out front towards which you are striving, if you have nothing that you are trying to achieve, if you don't have any goals in front of you, if you have no plans, no goals, I promise you, you're going to be frustrated with your life as you just kind of wander throughout, and there's nothing guiding your decisions. But when you get a vision, right, then you know exactly what you're looking to accomplish. I used to play with Legos all the time, and I used to love when you pull the Legos out of the box, and there's an instruction manual, and you go, that's what I'm supposed to make. And you start making it, and you get every little brick in the right place, and if you're like me, you go, you know, eight things ahead, and you realize you left one out, and you got to take everything apart and go back and put it back in, right. But you know exactly what you're building, but then when that thing finally gets lost, and you got a whole mess of Legos from four or five different Lego sets, you don't know what you're doing, right. You're just like, oh, I think I can make a block. Maybe I'll make a wall, right. There's nothing of purpose and value at that point, and so we need vision to keep us laser focused. So here we are, a year after this church became named Authentic Life Church, and we established new vision as we made this change, but sharing new vision one time is never enough, right. It's time for us to be reminded of why we are called Authentic Life Church, what that means for us individually, what that means for us as a church, and what that means for the community around us. So we started last week. We're going to take a few weeks here to review the vision of who we are and who God is making us to be, but we are Authentic Life Church, and it's more than just a name. It's more than just a branding idea. It's more than lime green everywhere where you go, right. It's an identity for our church. It's an identity for who we are. It's an intentional focus for what it means to make a disciple of Jesus Christ. It's a very intentional focus. So what does it mean to live an authentic life for Christ? Well, the word authentic means real, genuine, not counterfeit. In other words, the real deal, that we would be authentic. And there's two areas of authenticity that we talked about last week, and I'm just going to review them really quick, but the first one is being a biblically authentic disciple, biblical authenticity. You see, biblically authentic discipleship is found when we follow Jesus the way that He said we are to follow Him. That's one thing to say, I follow Jesus. It's another thing to actually follow Him. Right. Matthew 16, 24 says this. Then Jesus said to His disciples, whoever wants to be my disciple must. Right. And now we got to listen really carefully. And what comes after the must, if you want to be my disciple, if you truly want to be my disciple, then what comes after the must, we really need to open our ears to it, attune ourselves to what Jesus is about to say. But there are many things that could have followed these words. Whoever wants to be my disciple must. Whoever wants to be my disciple must attend church regularly. Whoever wants to be my disciple must wear Christian t-shirts primarily. Whoever wants to be my disciple must listen only to Caleb in their car. Right. We have all these ideas of what it looks like to really be a disciple of Jesus Christ. But that's not what Jesus asks of us. Right. These are things that we value. We value the fish on our car. We value the t-shirt. Right. And it's not that those things have no value, but our appearances and how we look does not mean a whole lot to Jesus. He's worried about what's going on the inside. He said, whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. Right. That's what's after the must deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me. That is biblically authentic discipleship. Deny yourself. Take up your cross. Right. Which means to die to yourself. That means to take on all his goals on his dreams to take on his plans for your life and do things his way. It sounds really simple, but it's a very foreign concept in America that we die to ourselves and we take up our cross and we follow Jesus. We know the verse, but it's a very uncommon thing that we do. And so to do things his way and his way was complete and total surrender and abandonment to the will of his father. You know, Jesus walked this earth for 33 years and he demonstrated to us what it meant to live in complete and total surrender and abandonment, abandonment to the will of his father. And we'll speak more about that in a little bit today. But the other element of of offensive authenticity of living an authentic life is authentic identity. Philippians 312 says, not that I have already obtained all this or I have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. I press on to take that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. So there is you, right? The you that has been shaped by your childhood and your past and your decisions and your goals and your plans and your drive for success and by your selfishness, right? There's the you that we create. And then there's the authentic you, the real you, the one that Jesus took hold of you to become. We all live in a false sense of who we are until we meet Jesus. And then he begins to transform us into our real selves, the one that matches the blueprint that God drew up before he even created the world that would define your life and why he ever put you on this earth. When I was preparing, when I was reviewing my notes this morning, my mind went to the Matrix. Has anyone ever seen the movie The Matrix? And everybody's living in this false world. Sorry, spoiler alert. Everybody's living in this false world they think is real, but it's not real. And the protagonist of the movie, Neo, he's offered the red pill and the blue pill, and he chooses the red pill. And when he does, his eyes are opened and he sees life for what it really is. And I feel like for us, when we come to Christ, we exit out of the Matrix, right? And we begin to see life for what it really is, a life that has lived to honor the Father, a life that has lived in service to the King of Kings, a life that has lived in obedience to what God is telling us to do and becoming that for which he took hold of us. And so there has to be a pursuit of authentic identity, our real selves. Because if money or reputation or sex or power, if those things are your motivators, then you'll never be your authentic selves. But if God's will and His Word and Jesus' teaching and desires for you are what motivates you, then hold on, because it's going to be a crazy, transformative ride in your life. And the only way to walk in biblically authentic discipleship and authentic identity is, it's what we've laid out in our vision statement. Write the vision, make it plain. We're trying to make this not necessarily easy, right? Because some aspects of discipleship are harder than other aspects of discipleship. But we want to package it in a way that it's easy at least to understand. And so we know what it is that God is asking us to do. And so we've said this, authentic life church exists to build a community of fully devoted, authentic followers of Jesus Christ. Fully devoted, that's the key. Somebody say fully devoted. Fully devoted. Are you completely sold out and surrendered to God's will for your life? Because until we are, then we can never be authentic because we'll be seeking the wrong things in life. Which leads us to the first authentic attribute in the vision that God has given for us to become fully devoted, authentic believers. And that's on banner number one there. Saved people seek God. Saved people seek God. And we're going to hit the others in subsequent weeks, right? Saved people serve people. Saved people save people. And we use the term saved people because that's exactly what we are. We're saved. Don't ever get under the notion that your little decision that you made to pray a prayer one day had any saving power in and of itself, as though it was by your strength or your power that you became saved. It wasn't your decision. It was the transaction that took place when you invited Jesus to be the Lord of your life and then His blood now was applied to your life and now all of your sins are forgiven and now you are no longer an object of the wrath of God and you now have been given access to eternity with Jesus Christ. You have been saved and rescued by the blood of Jesus. Saved from the wrath of God. Saved from a life that has lived captive to sin and the world's ways. We're saved and because of that, it demands a response. It demands a response from our life. Listen, for too long people have stood at altars and said sinner's prayers. Right? They've said, I believe in you Jesus. And they walked away and there was no response from their life. But somebody somewhere got to pick a number that said, we had so many conversions today. But let me tell you something, the fact that you have been saved, that you have entered into this relationship with Christ Jesus whereby His death and resurrection becomes your death and resurrection in Him. When that happens, it demands a response from our life. Something's got to give. Something has to change. And so, the first step in authentic discipleship is to seek God. A simple statement. Saves people. Seek God. And it is simple. But it is profoundly important. And it requires an understanding of what it means to seek God. I'm talking to everyone today. The young person. The new believer. The old person. The long, well there's no really old people. The seasoned person. Experienced. The long time Christian. I'm speaking to all of us today. Let the Holy Spirit speak to you. Isaiah 55, 6-7 says this, Seek the Lord while He may be found. Call upon Him when He is near. Let the wicked forsake His way. And the unrighteous man, his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord. That he may have compassion on him. And to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. Father, I pray today that as we continue on with this message. That this idea of seeking God would not just be something on a banner. God, that it would not just be a Christian-ese term that we like to use. Or that we like to sing in our worship songs. But that we would truly see what it is that You are requiring from us. As those that are saved and now seek You. Lord, let Your Holy Spirit do the talking today. Lord, I know that I'm speaking words. But I pray that Your Spirit would speak through me. And that would touch the heart of each person within this room. That we would become true, fully devoted, authentic followers of Christ. That seek God. So before we go any further, let's talk about what seeking God is. And what seeking God is not. So there's a Hebrew word here, translated as seek, and the word is darash. And it carries this connotation. Following and frequenting. Following and frequenting. You see, seeking God is following His ways and frequently coming before Him. Following His ways and frequently coming before Him. Now what seeking God is not, is coming to Him with your agenda and expecting Him to bless it and to conform to your will. Now that seems pretty obvious, pretty elementary. Why do we do this? We seek out our will and then we spiritualize it. Well, God must want this for me. Well, God will work this out according to my will. God will give me the desires of my heart, everything that I want, and we can convince ourselves that what we want and what our will is, is God's will for our life. But then, we find ourselves in a crisis of faith when everything doesn't work out as we expected. Because God's job is not to bless our agenda. I said this last week, right? God's the only one that's allowed to have an agenda. He's the only one. Listen, if you're in Christ, you are not allowed to have an agenda any longer. What does the Bible say? Seek first the kingdom of God. Right? So, God has an agenda and then we all have an assignment to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of us. Authentic identity, fulfilling the assignment, becoming everything and doing everything that God has called us to do and be. Proverbs 19.21 says this. I love this scripture. It says, But it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand. You know, we like to get cute with God. But let me tell you, don't get cute with God. Don't somehow try to bend His will to yours or convince yourself that your will is actually His will if you have not sought Him. Because at the end of the day, it's only God's purposes that will hold steady and be accomplished. So we may as well seek what He wants and not what we want. Right? There's lots of things that we have planned and lots of things that we want to do. But He says the only things that will actually stand are His purposes and His will. So back to Isaiah 55. Verse 6 said this. Seek the Lord while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near. So we said that the word here, translated seek, means to follow and to frequent. Alright? Follow His ways and frequently come before Him. Verse 7. And then it says, let the wicked forsake His way and the unrighteous man his thoughts once we were all wicked. Once we were all the unrighteous man before Christ. Once we were the... Let the wicked forsake His way. We're not wicked any longer. We've got to forsake that way. Let the unrighteous and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Right? We don't think the way we used to when we were in the unrighteous man. We've been washed by the blood of Jesus. We've been saved. We've been brought into His family. Now we align our thoughts with His thoughts. Let Him return to the Lord. Let Him return to the Lord, that He may have compassion on Him and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. You see what is tied to seeking God. We said to follow and to frequent, but you see what He ties to it immediately is forsaking your own way. That means turn off your GPS for your life and follow His plan for you. Did you ever open up your GPS app and look at the route that it maps out for you and you realize at some point, this thing is totally confused. You ever do that? I mean, it's confident. Right? If you go, this ain't right, and start going the other way, I'd be like, ah, really calculating. Vicki, you turn, right? It's very, very confident in the way in which it is leading you, but it tells you every turn to make and leads you right to your destination, except it's the wrong destination. That's what it's like when we follow our own plans for our lives. We so confidently go about our lives following our own GPS, making our plans, chasing after that money, using our worldly wisdom, and we definitely get somewhere. We do. And that someplace that you get to might even look good. It might have big fat bank accounts. It might have a nice big house. Right? It may, I don't know, whatever, it might look good, but it's not where God ever intended for you to go. Because our GPS, ours internally, it's wrong. Jeremiah 17.9 says, the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick. Who can understand it? I think in order for us to be a truly authentic follower of Christ, we have to have a revelation about just how depraved we are. The fact that we cannot follow our own hearts. How poorly we are at plotting the correct path for our lives. I mean, you'll be told all the time in this world, follow your heart, follow your heart, follow your heart. What should I do? Follow your heart. I don't know what to do in this business. Just follow your heart. Let me tell you, the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick. Don't follow your heart. No matter how good your intentions are, or how smart or well-meaning you are, your heart will always deceive you. Don't follow it. That is worldly advice. Follow your heart. Just don't do it. It will get you in trouble every single time. Your heart will lead you towards greed. It will lead you towards revenge. It will lead you towards selfishness. It will not lead you towards God's plan in your life. Your default GPS, broken. It will not lead you towards God's plan for your life, towards your authentic identity. That's why Jesus said, whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves. Which includes everything your heart wants to tell you. You've got to come to a place where your default desires, wants, and goals play second fiddle to God's plan for you. And it may mean discomfort. We don't hear that kind of preaching anymore. Right? Life's easy. Every day is a Friday. I mean, it sounds good. That's not what we teach. That's not what it's going to take to follow God's perfect plan for your life. It may mean that you will be uncomfortable at times. Stepping outside of yourself, pushing your limits and your fears and your insecurities and allowing God to take over your life. It may mean that you'll never be rich. It might mean that you will. I don't know what God's plan for you is, but it might mean that you'll have to face some fears. It may even mean, if you follow God's plan for your life, that you may be persecuted. It might mean that. And the question is, are you okay with that? If God asked you today, like He did to the rich young ruler, sell everything and give it to the poor, would you do it? If that was God's plan for your life. I saw a couple heads go like this. Right? It's easy to nod at the pastor, right? But if God really asked us to do that, most of us just went, don't ask that question. Are you okay with giving more of yourself than you ever imagined as you seek God's perfect will for your life? This is what Jesus modeled, and He showed us truly how to seek God. Remember, seeking God is not coming to Him with our agenda and asking Him to bless it. It's discovering and choosing His will first and foremost in our lives. So let's look at Jesus' example. He showed us what seeking God really is. Matthew 26, verse 39, and going a little further, He fell on His face and prayed, saying, My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me, nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will. Let me paint the picture of why Jesus is praying this. This is after the Last Supper with Jesus' disciples. Judas' betrayal was already in motion. The time was now that Jesus was going to be led to the cross. Now Jesus was human. Fully human. Fully God. But fully human. And His natural inclination coming from Him was to preserve His life. We all have that. The humanity in Jesus wanted to preserve His life. So He comes to God in this anguish-filled, sorrowful moment. And He says, My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me. What He's saying is He's afraid. He's apprehensive. He's terrified about what He's about to endure. And He's saying, God, I don't want to die. I don't want to be tortured. I don't want to be beaten. I don't want to be spit on. I don't want to be forced to carry a cross with a torn up back all the way up a hill. I don't want to be paraded through the streets like a criminal. I don't want to have nine inch spikes driven through my hands and my feet and hoisted up to hang on a cross until I die. I'd rather not have to go through this, Father. He brought His fears and His desires and His apprehensions to God. But what He says next is what reveals the heart of a truly authentic disciple that understands how to seek God. He says, nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will. Isn't that what Jesus taught us to pray when He gave us the Lord's Prayer? Your kingdom come, your will be done. Your kingdom come. He didn't just teach it. He modeled it. He prayed it Himself. Now, I know that the Lord's Prayer is a repetitive prayer that we've learned. And so it's easy sometimes not to get the true weight of what we're saying, but it's a heavy prayer. Lord, Your will be done. For Jesus, that was a tall order. I just enumerated it for you, what He was just about to go through. But nevertheless, Your will be done. Listen, like Jesus did, it's okay to lay your desires down before God. He's your Father. He loves you. He wants to listen. It's okay to say, God, this is what I really would like. And He cares. And He wants you to share that with Him. But His will is infinitely more important than your desires. And so after we say, God, this is what I would like. This is where I hope to go. This is what I'd like to see. We have to follow it up with, but Lord, let Your will be done in my life. Show me what You want. Lead me in Your ways. Teach me to forsake my ways and follow Your ways. That one prayer, God, this is what I want, however, Your will be done in my life, that prayer will absolutely take you from the American consumerist mentality of Christianity and align you with truly biblical, authentic discipleship. Thank you for listening to Elevate. We hope this message encouraged, inspired, and challenged you. Authentic Life Church is located at 3750 Michael Boulevard in Mobile, Alabama. Visit our website, AuthenticLife.tv for more information about Authentic Life Church. To find out what we have going on or to make a donation, you can also find us on Facebook. We'd love for you to join us on Sundays at 10 a.m. for our weekend service. We have excellent children's, nursery, and youth programs, so bring the family. For Pastor John DiQuatro, I'm Scott Chestnut. Thanks again for listening and God bless you.
