Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
This automated analysis scores the text on the likely presence of emotional, language, and social tones. There are no right or wrong scores; this is just an indication of tones readers or listeners may pick up from the text.
A score of 0.5 or higher indicates the tone is likely present.
Emotion Tone
Anger
0.12UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.07UNLIKELY
Fear
0.11UNLIKELY
Joy
0.67LIKELY
Sadness
0.5UNLIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.76LIKELY
Confident
0.31UNLIKELY
Tentative
0UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.63LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.93LIKELY
Extraversion
0.07UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.94LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.72LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
Just Do It
Pray: Lord help us to hear your voice and respond in faith.
Amen!
Hearing God and understanding what He is saying is essential to the Christian life.
There is another step—a critical step—and that is how we respond to God’s voice.
Mary’s counsel to the servants is the theme and inspiration for the title to today’s message, “Just Do It.”
Who has experienced dry or boring faith since you believed?
Faith should be exciting and full of experiences where we hear God and see Him move as we act in faith.
Illustration: "Go buy bread.”
Faith can devolve into something dry, boring, and monotonous until we learn how to hear God and obediently respond to Him.
The danger is that we can experience a lame faith, lose out on God’s blessing, and fail to walk in our purpose if we do not learn this.
Think about it - the lame man at the pool of Bethesda would never had walked if he didn’t respond to Jesus command to take up his mat and walk (John 5:8).
Think about it - Jesus spoke to His disciples and modeled behavior to them telling them “If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them” (cf.
John 13:17) If they didn’t do them, they would not be blessed.
Think about it - if King Saul would have not have rejected the word of the LORD, he would not have been rejected from being king over Israel.
Instead, God would have established his kingdom over Israel forever (1 Samuel 15:28, 1 Samuel 13:13).
The gospel message was given to us so that we might know the truth for obedience to the faith unto the glory of God (Romans 16:25, see also Romans 1:5, Acts 6:7).
This verse illustrates a common “formula” when it comes to responding to God.
If condition, then result|blessing.
God is a rewarder of our faith (Hebrews 11:6).
The reward of faith is the result of our meeting the conditions of the promise.
The gifts and promises of God are given by grace, meaning that He chooses to bless us out of His goodness.
But our enjoyment of those things are dependent upon our willingness and obedience to respond to the conditions He sets.
If we want to be blessed and see God move, we need to respond to His voice.
And when we do that, our faith will be living and active and exciting and powerful.
When you move in faith and see God move in power you want to move in greater faith.
When you pray for the sick and God heals them you look for more sick people to pray for.
When you have a prophetic word for someone and you share it with them and they break down in awe, you want to prophesy more.
When you go and share the good news with the person God sends you to and they give their life to Christ, you can’t help but want to share your faith.
Hearing God and responding to His voice releases the kingdom of heaven into your life and makes your relationship with God exciting.
Overcoming the Substitutes
One major problem is that being busy but not obedient will produce a lame faith.
Substituting religious activity for obedient faith will not release miracles or bring the kingdom of God.
Just because you go to church or serve in a ministry or give your tithes does not mean that you are going to experience a life of miracles.
You might be doing much for God, but not much of what God wants you to do!
Again, being busy is not a substitute for being obedient.
Only by responding to God’s voice in obedience will your faith be exciting and powerful.
What if we stopped picking and choosing what we are willing to obey God in and just started obeying Him fully?
Think of how exciting your faith would be if you heard God and responded in faith.
Think of the blessings you would walk in.
Think of the encounters you would have with God.
The good news is that we can do this.
We can hear God’s voice, understand what He is saying to us, and then do what He said we can do.
If it seems simple it is because you do this every day.
Every day you listen to someone’s message, interpret their meaning, and respond to it.
This Is How We Do It
If you want to experience this kind of living faith, the following few steps will get you started.
Start With “Yes!”
The first step to a living faith is to decide beforehand that you will obey whatever God says to you.
Illustration: I tend to start with “no” and work my way to “yes.”
One way I am trying to change that is when my wife asks me something, internally I say “yes to whatever it is.”
I’ve noticed that it is much easier to drop what I am doing and help, with a good attitude, when I start with yes.
With God we always want to start with yes.
Even before He speaks.
Speak Your “Yes!”
Isaiah the prophet had a vision where he saw God high and lifted up.
There were brilliant and burning angels with six wings declaring the glory of God.
When Isaiah saw this he was convicted of his sin but an angel came from God and touched him with a coal from the altar of God and purged his sin.
When God speaks, we need to speak.
This is the same advice that Eli the priest gave to the boy Samuel who would become one of the greatest prophets in Israel:
Speaking our “yes” to God is simply affirming to Him that we have heard Him and we are listening for His direction.
We are speaking in faith because we believe what God has said will come to pass (2 Corinthians 4:13).
Show Your “Yes!”
If we only say yes to God but not act in obedient faith, our words are empty and our faith is dead.
Faith is proven by action.
Study Your Yes
If God watches over His word to perform it, then when we act in response to His word we will see whatever He said would happen (cf.
Jeremiah 1:12).
If we don’t see what we expect, we need to evaluate our yes.
Did we do everything God said?
There was an unknown prophet from Judah who God sent to King Jeroboam (1 Kings 13).
The king was sinning and the prophet declared the word of the LORD to him.
He rejected the word and God immediately withered his hand and split the altar just as the prophet said.
The prophet prayed for the king’s healing at his request and God healed him.
When the king offered to feed him and bless him, the prophet said that he was told by God not to eat bread nor drink water or to go home the same way he came.
Later, an older prophet, lied to him and tricked him into eating and drinking and he was killed by a lion when he left.
He obeyed almost everything God told him to do.
It was the rest that cost him dearly.
Study your yes—hold yourself accountable to what God has said—so that you can learn from mistakes or missteps and avoid them in the future.
Conclusion
It has never been more important to hear God’s voice, interpret what He is saying, and to do what He tells us.
If we will take these simple steps and apply them to our lives our faith will be more effective and following God will be more exciting.
Because we choose to do these things we will see God move in our lives, we will walk in our calling, and we will bear much fruit to the glory of God.
Let’s listen to Mary’s advice and take it to heart - whatever God says to you, just do it!
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9