Live Ready - Week 2 - Ready Your Hearts

Countdown Video

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Scripture Reading by Lady Pepper

(Show Slide)

Thank you Lady Pepper for the announcements and the reading of God’s Word.

Welcome! to everyone especially those who are joining us for the first time. My name is Pastor Doc, and I will be sharing the Word of God with you today.

Have your Bibles Ready and take notes

Show Video -

The Series: Live Ready

Title of the message this Morning

Ready Your Hearts

Week 2

Big Idea:

We have an amazing responsibility as followers of Jesus to be quick to share the hope that we have with others.

When we have to internalized our love for God, we can respond to others with gentleness and respect, trusting that God will make himself known to them.

We must prepare our hearts and live ready to share the hope we have in Christ.

Prayer:

“Lord, reveal the impurities of our hearts so that we may deal with them and hold you as King in our lives.”

Scripture: 1 Peter 3:15; Proverbs 4:23, Luke 6:45

(All scripture quoted comes from the NIV unless otherwise noted)

Introduction

Welcome back, church, for another wonderful weekend of worship.

I want you to know that God has something to say to each one of us today as we continue in our series, Live Ready.

Last week we talked about how we must be ready for some tough things to come our way in life.

Jesus even promises that we will face “trouble” in John 16:33, so we know it’s coming.

However, we also know that He has overcome all this trouble, pain, and suffering, so we too can overcome by His strength.

We are overcomers through Christ who empowers us for each and every situation life may bring our way!

We also talked a bit about what it looks like to prepare and ready our souls.

Not just for the bad things, but also for Christ’s return.

As we know, Jesus didn’t just come once to this earth, but He promises to return for the eternal establishment of His church.

We don’t know when His return will be, so we’ve all got to get serious about eternity and salvation.

We’ve got to make sure our souls are ready for eternity, but also that our hearts are ready for the day to day struggles and triumphs of life.

And the heart of mankind is not easily tamed or understood, so we’ve got a tall task.

As the prophet Jeremiah says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9)

Let’s get started…

Main Teaching

To help guide our time we’ll be consulting several passages, but this first one gives us a great head-start.

Read 1 Peter 3:15

First and foremost, if we’re to live ready in our hearts, we’ve got to hold Jesus Christ as Lord.

There will always be other things battling for our affections, looking to dethrone Jesus from His rightful place as King.

But we’ve got to hold fast in our faith, and revere Christ as Lord in our hearts.

Story / Illustration

I’m Aware there are believers who are still bound by sinful habits.

They say things like:

I can’t stop gambling.…

I’m in the grips of an alcohol addiction.…

I’m having an affair and I can’t break it off.…

I’m a slave to pornography

“I love Jesus and I have begged God to free me. I have prayed, wept and sought godly counsel, but I can’t break free. What can I do?”

Christ Has Won the Battle for You)

Are you struggling to gain victory by your willpower?

Paul points out, “To him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt. But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness” (Romans 4:4–5).

Your victory must come not through striving, but by faith that Jesus Christ has won the battle for you.

These struggles are very normal for all who believe.

We will go through seasons of mountaintop faith and deep discouragement. (if you lost a love one, then you know what I mean)

It’s all part of the process and in the end, the goal is that we would be mature believers, lacking nothing…

This process is called sanctification and it’s a long one.

Actually, it will take our entire life, through a continual process of renewal and redemption as God works in our hearts.

One of the reasons this process is so important is because from the overflow of our hearts, we speak.

And speaking, using words, is the primary way we share the gospel of Christ with others.

I. Always Be Prepared

Going back to our passage from 1 Peter 3:15, we read this;

Re-read 1 Peter 3:15, with a focus on the latter half.

Peter is saying that first of all, we must revere Jesus as Lord in our hearts.

Then, we can live confidently and ready to share the reason for the hope we have in Christ.

So you can see the correlation here between a righteous heart and a righteous witness.

If your heart “isn’t right” then how could you truly share the goodness of Christ?

The gospel of Luke says it like this;

Read Luke 6:45

This is the full passage that I was briefly quoting earlier when I said that from the overflow of our hearts, we speak.

In order to be prepared and ready to share the gospel, we’ve got to make sure our hearts are right before God.

That begins with the Lordship of Christ, but it includes a day-to-day willingness to filter anything and everything coming into our lives. (TicTic example)

If we allow too much toxicity, negativity, and evil into our lives what do you think will flow out from us?

If a person only ate twinkies for three meals a day, how unhealthy would that person be?

The same principle applies to us, our lives, and our hearts.

We’ve got to filter and be diligent about what we allow into our lives.

II. Guards and Filters

Successes can easily become failures. All it takes is letting our guard down.

Charles Swindoll, The Quest for Character (1982)

King Solomon actually said it best in Proverbs…

Read Proverbs 4:23

The heart is the wellspring of life.

From it flows life, death, encouragement, despair, anger, loving kindness, all of it.

This picture of a wellspring is an important one as we think about filtering and guarding our hearts, our wellsprings.

Think for a moment about the process of filtering water…

You run dirty water through a filter which removes all the impurities from it.

This process allows for clean water to come out the other end.

In a similar way, we’ve got to run things through filters in our lives to make sure that all the impurities are removed.

Here are a few filters I can think of that I use in my life;

- The bible

- Close friends and counselors

- Prayer & meditation

- Time (waiting)

All of these filters help me to make sure that the things coming into my life are pure and righteous.

I know that if I allow toxicity, negativity, and evil into my life then those are the things that will flow out from my life.

It’s really a simple concept, but like many other simple concepts, it has grave consequences.

III. The Garden of Eden

As an example of this, let’s turn all the way back to the beginning, to Genesis and the garden of Eden.

Read Genesis 3:1-5

I won’t belabor the point too much here, because I imagine you’ve all heard this story in full at some point or another.

But in this passage we see that the snake has entered the garden and he’s lying to Eve about what God has said.

He’s distorting the truth and asking Eve, “did God really say…”

Eventually Eve gives in to the serpent’s questions, eats the fruit, and the rest is history.

The issue here, or one of the issues, is that Eve didn’t have the guards and filters running in her life that she needed to protect herself from the lies and impurities of the serpent.

It cost her dearly, just as it does in our lives when we neglect to guard our hearts, which is: the wellsprings of our lives.

Again, this process of guarding and filtering is a normal one.

You won’t always catch everything and you’ll have to recognize when something has crept into your life that shouldn’t be there.

You’ve got to be willing to run those diagnostic tests, to listen to others, and to seek God over the state of your heart.

It’s far too important to ignore.

Think about it this way, wouldn’t you want to know if you had a cancerous growth in your body?

Wouldn’t you want to do something about it before it got too big, out of control, and too difficult to deal with?

Of course you would, and the same is true with our hearts.

It’s the wellspring of life from which the mouth speaks.

It needs constant attention and care as the things of the world are coming at us 100 miles an hour all day long.

Conclusion

Living ready and alert takes a lot of time and energy, it’s just the truth.

But this is literally a matter of eternal life and death.

We are all busy, probably too busy, but carving out time to address these issues will pay huge dividends.

Any time spent with God is time well spent. So here’s the plan;

Take some time this week to evaluate the state of your heart.

Who do you hold as King in your life?

Is it money?

Is it your title at work?

Is it your accomplishments, material possessions, or something else?

What is it, be honest.

Setup the necessary guards and filters in your life. Schedule time to get in the Word.

Schedule time with trusted friends and counselors.

None of us can do this alone, we need each other.

Humble yourself, and reach out to others.

And finally, try sharing the hope you have in Christ with someone this week.

Let the overflow of love and redemption flow from your heart and into the life of someone else.

Trust the Spirit to guide your conversation and trust God to plant the seeds of faith in someone else.

This is faith in action and it’s worth it!

The heart is the wellspring of life.

It’s too important to ignore or kick down the road for a different time.

Ready your hearts this week Love ones, Jesus is coming soon!

Let’s pray together.

Salvation:

The Word of God says in:

John 3:16

16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

Romans 10:13

13 For “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

If you’d would like to receive Jesus today, please pray this prayer with all of us:

Lord I believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and that He died On the cross for my sins and His resurrection from the dead gives me eternal life. I ask forgiveness of my sins, and I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior. Amen.

Pastor [e-mail]

Church Office: 909-922-8090

And I will send you a Bible & a Free Book on how to begin your first 21 steps with Jesus (show the book)

***Leave slide up until Pepper gets in position***

Lady Pepper Please Join Me

Communion

I want to take a few moments to give you the opportunity to ask forgiveness of any sin in your life.

Let us pray over the elements (Cross Exposed) in the name of the father, the son, and the Holy Ghost

Read first Corinthians 11:23- 26 - (Taking the elements together)

23 For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread;

24 and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” (take bread)

25 In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” (Take Cup)

26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes.

Pepper Praise Reports

Please send in your Praise Reports!

Lady Pepper do we have any prayer request

Let us Pray (P/P)

Vadria - Healing

Joyce - Car Accident

Tyeshawn - Healing

People holding on to unforgiveness

Closing Blessing

The New King James Version (Jude)

24 Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling,

And to present you faultless

Before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy,

25 To God our Savior,

Who alone is wise,

Be glory and majesty,

Dominion and power,

Both now and forever.

Amen.

This is Pastor Doc & Lady Pepper with:

Faith Vision Christian Ministries

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Have a Great Week! Goodbye!