Sermon Tone Analysis

Faith – The Key to Commitment

Sunday November 20, 2022

Our lives are shaped by your commitments.

We become whatever we are committed to.

If you don’t commit yourself to anything you become nothing in life.

You’re shaped by your commitments.

Great people are just ordinary people who’ve made a great commitment to a cause greater than themselves.

People become great men or great women of God when they commit themselves to something greater than themselves.

The problem is a lot of people are afraid of making commitments.

And we see that in our society today.

We have a lot of people who don’t want to commit to anything.

There’s no loyalty in our nation and in our communities anymore.

You cannot live a life without making commitments.

You can’t buy a house without making a commitment.

You can’t buy a car without making a commitment.

You can’t have a job without making a commitment.

So you have to make some commitments.

So commitments define our lives.

And the key is to make good ones.

To make fewer bad commitments and to make more good commitments.

The Bible says this about commitments.

Romans 6:13 (LBP)

Do not let any part of your bodies become tools of wickedness, to be used for sinning; but give yourselves completely to God—every part of you—for you are back from death and you want to be tools in the hands of God, to be used for his good purposes.

That’s the highest commitment you can make in life.

To give yourself completely to God to be used for the purposes that he made you, that he created you.

What I want to do this morning is talk to you about how your five deepest needs in your life are met by five great commitments.

The Great Commandment and the Great Commission are the two great statements of Jesus where he says,

“Love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself…

Go make disciples, baptize and teach them to do everything I’ve commanded you.”

From those two passages, the Great Commandment and the Great Commission there are five verbs and five things God wants us to do with our lives.

He Wants us to Know Him

He Wants us to Love Him

He Wants us to Grow In Him

He Wants us to Serve Him

And He Wants us to share Him With Others

You can call this worship, discipleship, fellowship, ministry, and evangelism.

It doesn’t really matter the words you use.

The fact is God has these purposes for your life.

But they’re worthless unless you commit to each of them.

You cannot fulfill God’s purpose for your life by yourself.

I’ll say it again: You cannot possibly – possibly at all, there’s no way you’re going to do this, fulfill God’s purpose for your life by yourself.

We were made for each other.

We were wired for community.

We’re made for relationships.

You need a spiritual family.

The first commitment is the one that causes your faith to be strengthened.

And unless you make this commitment your faith will not be strengthened on a regular basis for the rest of your life.

Here it is.

Number one.

The first commitment:

1. TO STRENGTHEN MY FAITH . . .

I MUST UNITE WITH OTHERS IN WORSHIP.

Worship is for God but it brings benefits to you.

I could give you 50 benefits of worshiping God.

Let me just mention two.

It renews your faith and it restores your joy.

It renews your faith and restores your joy.

When you come to worship like this and you get together with other people to worship, it renews your faith and it restores your joy.

Let me show you two verses.

How many times have you gotten up on a Sunday morning or whatever and said, I am so tired.

I really don’t have any energy to go to church, to go to worship.

And yet you went to worship and afterwards you were more energized.

How many would say that?

Because it renews your strength.

You’re not going to get your strength renewed watching golf on tv.

That’s just going to make you lazier and lazier.

You get renewed, your strength gets recharged when we worship together.

So you come in here Sunday Morning and God kind of takes spiritual jumper cables and He renews your strength.

It’s not me.

It’s the Word of God.

It’s music and it’s worship.

And that’s what renews our strength.

I’ll let you know my bias… I think it ought to be fun to go to church.

That may be shocking to you.

But the Bible says I was glad.

Not I was mad, not I was sad, not I was bored, not I was guilty, not I felt like I had to go out of duty.

David said it this way:

Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with singing.

This kind of commitment gives me spiritual strength.

And that is my commitment to be in worship regularly with other people.

That energizes me, restores my strength, renews my joy.

Number two, the second commitment.

This is the commitment that helps you discover your identity and this is the commitment that helps you discover your purpose in life.

It may shock you but this is how you discover it.

2. TO DISCOVER MY IDENTITY & PURPOSE. . .

I MUST CONNECT WITH OTHERS IN FELLOWSHIP.

I must connect with others for fellowship.

We only learn who we are in relationship.

We only learn our true identity in community.

You’ll never learn who you really are by yourself.

You only learn it in relationships.

For instance, if you had been born and you lived your entire life to adulthood with no human contact, none at all,

You wouldn’t have the slightest idea who or what you were.

You wouldn’t even know you were a human being.

You only know that because you’re in relationship to other human beings.

You learn your identity by being in relationships.

If you had no human contact you wouldn’t know who you are.

The Bible says specifically we need to be connected to God’s family.

We need to be connected in fellowship.

We need to be connected to the body of Christ.