Faith That Follows

We are back with YTH Nights! Pastor Josh kicked off our series, "Following Jesus For -- Real!" by preaching a word about being obedient to Jesus and not just saying we know Jesus. 

Grab you Bible, take some notes and lean in to what God wants to speak to you!

Join us on Wednesday from 6-8pm at Dream Center Peoria if you are in 6th-12th grade

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:05

We're gonna jump in. We are starting a new series. Uh kicking off for the next four weeks or five weeks, I can't remember, but we're gonna be talking just about uh following Jesus for real. Okay. Uh the reason why I wanted to kick this off is because I believe we follow Jesus, yes, but are we really, really, really following Jesus? Like in our day-to-day life, are we actually following Jesus for real? And so I'm gonna give you a title of my message tonight. It is Faith That Follows. So if you're taking notes, write that down. Faith that follows. And so tonight, like I said, I want to talk to you about this idea. The idea because we have many people uh that come to church. Y'all come to church, whether it be on a Wednesday night, whether it be on a Sunday morning, we have many people that come to church and we say we follow Jesus. We say we love Jesus, but then when it comes to our Monday through Saturday life or our Monday through Tuesday life or our Thursday through Saturday life, depending on when you come on a Wednesday or Sunday, we're not really following Jesus. We're not living out what we are worshiping on a Wednesday night here in this space. We're not living out what is being preached in this message, in this place. And see, can I just tell you, Jesus didn't say to follow the church. Jesus didn't say to follow a building. Jesus didn't say come to a church building and follow that. Jesus said in his word, follow me. If you don't believe me, look at Luke 9, 23 through 25. This is what it says. It says, and he said to all, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me. Notice how it said daily. It didn't just say on Sundays, didn't just say on Wednesdays, it said daily, pick up your cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? See, God in this scripture verse is telling us we need to pick up our cross daily. Pick up everything, pick up the things that God wants us to do daily and follow him. God tells us to deny ourselves. Tells us to deny ourselves, pick up our cross and follow him. But then he warns us. I don't know if you've noticed, he warns us what happens if we don't deny ourselves. He warns us about what happens if we don't pick up our cross. If you didn't catch it, it's the last verse. It says, For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses and forfeits himself? See, if you are not denying yourself and following Jesus, you're gonna follow something else. And if it's not Jesus, it's gonna be something that's in the world. It's gonna be something of the world, it's gonna be something that is not good for you, it's gonna be something that does not lead to good choices, it's gonna be something that does not lead to a good and prosperous life that God wants to give you. So he tells us, deny yourself. The life that you live is not about you, it is not about Pastor Josh. The life that I want to live is not my choice. It's what God tells me. How do I want to raise my kids? Don't matter. How does God want me to raise my kids? It doesn't matter how I want to treat my wife, how does God want me to treat my wife? It is the life that God wants us to live. So we deny ourselves, not my way, not my plan, but God, what do you want to do? See, if you look at that last verse, it says, We will lose ourselves if we follow the world. See this, what do you profit a man? What profits a man if he gains the whole world? You can gain everything in the world. Let me just give you some examples. You may get a lot of friends, you may be popular in school, but you lose yourself along the way. You'll get to the point, and maybe you're there right now, you're saying to yourself, I don't even know who I am. But when you're in school, you're the top dog. You're the dude that everybody likes. You crack the jokes in class, people love you. But when you go home, you can't sit in silence because you're afraid of your thoughts. You're afraid of what you're gonna think about yourself, you're gonna be afraid of what you're gonna do, you're afraid of those things because you don't know who you are. See, let me give you another one. You may be the most popular kid in school, play the most best sports, everybody knows your name, all the things, but you are dying on the inside. You are dying on the inside. Well, let me put it this way: people will think that you are cool, but you just created an addiction you didn't even want. All because you just wanted to fit in with the crowd. You didn't want to be addicted to that, but somebody gave it to you, somebody told you to come join us, somebody said, Okay, come to this party, somebody showed you something on their phone, and now because of it, you want to be cool and like, so now you are in an you have an addiction that you didn't want or asked for. And all of these things are how we are we gain the world. We think, man, we are so cool, we're so popular. People love us, people love me. I was that way in high school, people loved me, I was popular. I could be friends with anybody, anybody could be friends with me. I thought I had everything, but when it came down to it, I was depressed. When it came down to it, I was sad. I was the dude I used to ride this jank, stupid penny board and listen to sad music. I didn't think I was depressed, but looking back on my life, I look and I go, I was depressed. But I thought I was the coolest guy in school and everybody loved me. But so we gain the world, but we lose ourselves along the way. See, so that verse that tells us at the end, what does it profit a man if you gain the whole world, but you lose who you are? This is why God tells us deny ourselves because you can't chase the world and follow Jesus. You can't chase the world and follow Jesus. A worldly life does not fall in line with God's word. See, following Jesus means changing your life. If you have given your life to Jesus at any point, you saying, you're saying I'm gonna do a 180 from my life that I'm living right now and I'm gonna do it differently. You're not saying, yes, Jesus, follow me in my plan and my life. No, you're saying I'm gonna do what you want me to do, God. See, let me ask you this: are you following Jesus or are you asking Jesus to follow you? I really want you to think about this question. If you've given your life to Jesus, if you come to church often enough, are you asking God to follow you or are you following what God wants to do in your life? Because I think a lot of us we would say, oh, I'm following God, but are you? Are you being obedient to his word? Are you living out what he's asking you to live out? Are you doing what he's asking you to do? What are you participating in school? Because many of you, you are choosing, I believe, to live the life that you want to live. And you're trying to along the way plug Jesus in. You went to school today, you went to school on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and I'm sure a lot of us you made some mistakes. I made some mistakes. I've sinned this past week, man. I I raised my voice and my wife. We we we got into some arguments, we we've had a stressful week. I I've I've fallen short. I always have, right? That's what God tells us. We are gonna fall short of the glory of God. We're all gonna sin. So I'm sure a lot of us on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, we've made some mistakes. But are these mistakes that we're making and then we're asking God for forgiveness and then turning away from these things, or are these active things that you are engaging in every single week, every single day? And then you come to church on Wednesday and you plug God in and then you go to church at school on Thursday and you're like, yeah, I was at church last night, but then you go right back to the very things that God might be asking you to get rid of. So are you following Jesus or is Jesus following you? See, because a lot of you, you maybe come to church when it's convenient for you. I'm really struggling, so I'm gonna go to church. Or I got nothing else going on right now, so I'm gonna go to church. But if I had plans, I would go do the plans instead of go to church. Or maybe some of you, you pray when you need something from God. Man, my life is really hard. God, I need your help. Amen. Maybe some of you, when it comes to reading your Bible, you you only read it or open it up when you're desperate enough. But you're not reading it daily. God says in his word, this is our daily bread. What is bread? Food. What do you need every single day? Food. If you did not eat food every single day, you would starve to death. Guess what? If you don't have this every single day, you're gonna emotionally starve to death. And so this is our daily bread. And God is looking for us to chase in. Let me challenge you with this. Believing in Jesus isn't the same thing as following Jesus. Think about that for a second. I guarantee you, if we walked out on the street right now and found a couple people and go, hey, do you believe in Jesus, they'll price it? Yes. Does that mean they're following Jesus? No. Believing in something does not mean you follow it. Think about anything in the world that you believe in. Maybe some of you believe in some certain things in the world, but you don't follow those things. Right? And so you can believe in Jesus, but it doesn't mean you follow Jesus. Just because I ask you right now, hey, do you follow or do you believe in Jesus, it does not mean you are obedient to Jesus every single day. See, you can believe but not follow. And many people, I believe, many Christians, we believe but we don't follow. We believe, but we're not obedient. And see, let me challenge you with this. We don't have a belief problem, we have an obedience problem. Because I guarantee, if I already go around this room and ask every single one of us, hey, do you believe in Jesus? You would all say yes. But then I would ask you, have you been obedient to God this week and gotten rid of the things that you need to get rid of in your life? Have you repented of the sins that you've committed this week and turning to Jesus in the mistakes that you made? Have you kept your mouth clean from cussing? Have you kept your mouth clean from putting drugs in it or alcohol? Have you kept your uh mind emotionally clean from thinking negatively about yourself or other people? Have you kept your mouth clean of hatred? God's word tells us, have you loved your neighbor? Have you loved your enemy? All these things are what God is asking us to do. Have we been obedient and following those things? Because we don't have a belief problem, we have an obedience problem. See, many of us, we like the idea of Jesus. I've noticed this we like coming to church and feeling good about ourselves. We like coming into a worship space and we like crying the tears because our life might not be easy and we and we worship and we we we like how it makes us feel. We like looking like a good person. We like telling our friends, yeah, I go to church, yeah, I'm a Christian. We like the look of it. But when it comes down to it, we don't like being obedient because then God is telling us to do something that we don't want to do. But when God tells us to do something, can I tell you it's the best thing that you can do is be obedient to what he's asking you to do. Us being obedient to his word is the best life that you could live. See, there's a story in Luke that I want to talk about. There's a story where Luke, uh in the book of Luke, uh Jesus is giving many parables to the Pharisees and tax collectors. If you don't know who the Pharisees and tax collectors are back in the day when you read God's word, basically these people were the ones that were considered sinners, evil people, right? The tax collectors were ones that stole money from you, took more than what they should have. The Pharisees are where the religious leaders that thought they were perfect and did everything right according to what God wanted them to do, but they were missing out on the heart posture of actually following God and being obedient to Him. And so there's a story that I want to talk about in Luke chapter 15. So if you got your Bible, go to Luke chapter 15. But I want to give you the first section of this in verses 1 and 2, and then we're gonna skip ahead. But 15, 1 through 2 says this. Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to him. They were drawing close to Jesus. They wanted to hear what he had to say, right? And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, This man receives sinners and he eats with them.

unknown 10:51

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SPEAKER_00 10:51

So I wanted to give you the context of where Jesus is about to give many parables, right? And if you don't know what a parable is, a parable is a short story, uh, a simple story used to explain deep spiritual ideas. Jesus talks a lot in parables. The rest of chapter 15 is pretty much Jesus giving like two or three different parables on how he's going to explain to the tax collectors and the Pharisees why he receives sinners and sits with them. So we look at chapter 15, verses 11 through 24, and this is what it says. I want to read it for us, and then we're gonna talk about it. Verses starting in verse 11, it says this. So Jesus said to them, There was a man who had two sons, and the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me. And he divided his property between them. Not many days later, the younger son gathered all that he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine rose across the country, and he began to be in need of stuff. Verse 15 So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country who sent him into his field to feed the pigs. And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything. I want you to notice this part. But when he came to himself, he said, How many of my father's hired servants have more than enough bread? But I perish here with hunger. I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants. And he arose and he came to his father, but while he was still a long way off, his father saw him, felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. But the father said to him, sorry, but the father said to his servants, Bring quickly the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet, and bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found, and they began to celebrate. See, I want you to remember, Jesus is talking to the Pharisees here, and he's giving them this story because they were questioning why is Jesus hanging out with sinners? Anytime you read in the New Testament about Jesus, the Pharisees and the tax collectors, they're always asking that question, why is he sitting with sinners? Why is he sitting with people who sin and don't follow God? Why is he sitting with those people? He should be hanging out with us, the righteous, the ones that are good. And so they're questioning Jesus in this moment. And so he gives them this story and he tells them about the prodigal son who comes home. And he's telling him this story based on this idea. If you don't know the prodigal son, he basically told his father, give me everything that I am owed from you. So that'd be like you guys knowing that you have an inheritance coming to you from your parents. You go to your parents and you basically just say, Hey, give me everything right here, right now. I want it. You take it, and then a couple days later you're like, Alright, guys, I'm out. And you leave and you go to Las Vegas. I don't care where you, California, wherever you want to go, you go to Europe, wherever you want to bougie it out at, you go and you waste everything that you got. They give you thousands of dollars and you just wasted it all. And now you got nothing. You don't know what to do. And so it even says, I wanted you to notice this part because he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate out of. Anybody ever been on a farm and looked at a pig pen? It's pretty gross, right? It's disgusting. Okay. He was longing to want to eat with pigs. That's how poor he was, that's how desperate he was, that's how lost and poor he was, and what he had gotten himself into. But I wanted you to notice this in verse 17. It said, but when he came to himself, he realized, what am I doing right now with my life? I want some of you to ask yourself that question tonight. What am I doing with my life right now? Is my life right now the best that it can be? Am I truly being obedient to Jesus? Am I truly following Jesus? And if you're not, this story should encourage you because it shows us that Jesus cares for those who have left him. Jesus cares for those who aren't with him. Jesus cares for those who are not coming home right now. Those are far from him. Jesus longs for you to come home. He longs for you to keep having a relationship with him every day. He longs for you to recognize that I am missing out on the life that I could be living. He even says that. And so he realizes what he's doing. He's like, you know what? I'm out of here. Jesus waits for us to stop living the reckless life that we're living. Can I say this too? Jesus is waiting for you to admit that you have sinned, and he's waiting for you to come home. Because until we can recognize that we have sinned, we can't receive Jesus. Because then we don't think we're in the wrong. We think the life that we're living is fine. He said this. And the son said to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. It's interesting how the son spoke to his father when he first saw him. It's interesting that this is what he said. Father, I've sinned. What did he do? He recognized his sin. He didn't blame anybody else. He didn't go to his father and go, This is your fault. You shouldn't have given me all my money. This is your fault, Dad. This is your responsible for me losing everything. He didn't say that. He said, Father, I've sinned against you. I've sinned against God and I've sinned against you. I have made a mistake. And he literally says, I am no longer worthy to be called your son. That's a sign of surrender. And this is what God is looking for us to come to Him. He's looking for us to come and say, Father, I've sinned against you. I've sinned, Lord, I've made a mistake. And then He's looking for you to say, I'm not even worthy to be called your son. And I just want to submit to your servant. I want to be a servant for you. So can I challenge you with this? A truly repentive heart doesn't throw blame, it takes responsibility. Think about this for a second. A truly repentive heart. If you are truly saying, if you don't know what repentant repenting means, repenting is saying, I made a mistake, Lord, I have sinned, I have fallen short, Lord, I need you. It is recognizing your sin. So a truly repentive heart doesn't throw blame, it takes responsibility. The son knew that he messed up. He didn't blame anybody, he took responsibility for his actions. See, can I ask you a really hard question? Are you taking responsibility for your actions? Or are you just blaming everybody around you? I hear so many Christians and so many people, time after time after time after time, when I mentor people and I ask them, why is this a situation? Why are you struggling with this? Why is this going on? Well, it's my phone. My friends. They're the ones that got me into it. It's my school, it's just a terrible place. And all we do is throw blame at everything else instead of taking responsibility and just going, no what? Yeah, you're right. I made a mistake. I allowed myself to take part in that. I allowed myself to do that. I've allowed myself to put people in my life that have tempted me to do things. I've allowed my phone to become something that it shouldn't be. And we are allowing ourselves, and we're not taking responsibility for this. See, can I challenge you with this? Blaming will keep you stuck, but repenting will free you. If you truly want to be free, if you truly want to say, God, I want you to use me. God, I want you to do something in my life, then stop blaming others, take responsibility and repent of your sins and saying, God, I need you to help me. God, I need you because I can't do this on my own. The choices that I'm making, I don't want to make these choices anymore. The things that I'm looking at on my phone, I don't want to look at those things anymore. The things that I'm speaking, Lord, I don't want to speak that way anymore, Lord. I need you to help me. I need you to free me. See, so tonight I'll we're gonna do something that's a little cool, and I I I love this podium, and I'm gonna explain it to you in a second. We're gonna do something with it. But tonight I believe I want you to respond because there's some of you in here that you need to do a 180. Remember how I said that calling God's a 180? It's not participating in the same things anymore, it's doing a 180 and going in a different direction. You're not going in the same direction as those of your friends, you're not going in the same direction as everybody at school, you're not going in the same direction as whatever it is you're struggling with, you're doing a 180, you're turning away from those decisions and those things. Many of you in here, you need to stop blaming other people and just take responsibility. It's not your parents' fault, it's not your teacher's fault, it's not your phone's fault, it's not your friend's fault, it's nobody else's fault but yours. So let's take responsibility tonight. We need to own up to it. Take responsibility. And in the processes, we do a 180. In the processes, we take responsibility for our sin and our actions. You give yourself to God and you say, Lord, strengthen me. Strengthen me, Lord, because I need you. I need your help, Lord. And God will strengthen you every single day. I want to give you the scripture verse in Psalms 145, 18 through 20. It says this the Lord is near to all who call on him. If you call on him, he is dear to you, he is right next to you, listening to you, waiting. What do you what do you need from me? What are you gonna say to me? To all who call on him in truth. Does it follow God's word? Because if you come to him and you say, Lord, and you ask for something that does not align with his word, he's not gonna give it to you because it's not according to his word. We call on him in truth, and it says he fulfills the desires of those who fear him. And fear, I want to give you this fear is not like ah, I'm scared. Fear. Fear, I'm in all of you, God. I respect you, God. I recognize that you are above and I am below. I recognize that you are in charge and I am not. That is what fear is. He fulfills the desires of those who fear him. He also hears their cry and he saves them. The Lord preserves all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy. See, this should scare us because the Lord preserves all who love him. If we chase him every single day, not just at Wednesday nights, not just at youth nights, not just on a Sunday morning, if we chase him, we call on him, we fear him and have an all of God. He will preserve you, he will love you. But if we choose to do the wicked things, it literally says in his word, he will destroy the wicked. I don't want to be destroyed. So tonight I want to do something a little different. I think Robin's got a bucket of pens, and I love this podium, right? I just think it's cool, it's different. We put the cross at the center because Jesus is at the center of everything, he should be at the center of your life. And if he's not, tonight you're gonna make the choice to put him at the center of your life. And what we're gonna do is this podium is beautifully white, and my friends, my leaders, they're gonna give some pens. And what I want you to do, because all of you, you're gonna come every single week. Because we're putting Jesus at the center, so we're gonna come every single week. What I want you to do is in a one-sentence, two-sentence thing, I want you to come up here. You can take turns, the team's gonna lead us in a song. You can worship, and it's gonna be a little crowded because this is not a lot of room, okay? You can come up on the stage if you want to, but I want you to, in a one-sentence, two-sentence phrase, I want you to write on this thing your prayer for this year. What do you want to see God do in your life? What do you want to see Him change? What is the thing that when the school year ends, or even before the school year? God has answered that prayer. I want you to think, what is the thing that man, God changed this? God help me with this, God, I'm struggling with this. It can be a one-word statement, it can be a two-word paragraph, I don't care. I want you to keep it short though, because it's not a lot of room. But the team's gonna lead us to the song. I want you to worship. I'm just gonna have everybody stand so you're at least standing. The only thing I ask is don't write on the top because no one will see it, right? But I'm gonna pray for us and then throughout the service, throughout this song, just come up here. And even if it gets crowded and we're done with the service or whatever, and they're done singing, you can come before you leave and write something. But I want you to write on here, man. What is it that you want to see God do this year? We're gonna believe, and every week when you see it, you're gonna be reminded and you're gonna pray for that thing. You're gonna pray for that prayer request. And we're all gonna be able to pray for you because we're all gonna see it. There's no shame in it, there's no hiding it. We want God to do something different. So let's pray, Lord. We just thank you for this time. We get to come into this space and we just get to read your word and hear from you, Lord. So, Father, I pray right now that we would just be vulnerable in this moment, that whatever it is we want to see you do, Lord, that we would write it on here. And we're believing that this year, these prayer requests, they're gonna be changed. That we're gonna look back at the end of this school year and we're gonna go, man, God answered that, God answered that, God changed that, God did something different in my life, and you are going to move in every single student's life. And so, Lord, I pray you have your way in this space. Help us to be vulnerable, help us to submit ourselves to you, deny ourselves, pick up our cross, and follow you daily. Lord, we love you. We give you this these next few moments to you, and in Jesus' name. And everybody said. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Riverside Youth Podcast. Make sure you're following us on Instagram at Riverside underscore youth to stay up to date with everything youth related. We can't wait to see you next time.