9 Habits of Highly Effective Christians (3)

Good morning, CHURCH!

(Opening joke)

A preacher out in the country decided to skip service one Sunday to spend the day hiking in the wilderness. As he rounded a sharp bend in the trail, he collided with a wild bear and was sent tumbling down a steep hill. He landed on a rock and broke both his legs.

With the ferocious bear charging at him from a distance, the preacher prayed, “O Lord, I’m so sorry for skipping services today. Please forgive me and grant me just one wish. Please make a Christian out of this bear that is coming at me!”

At that very instant, the bear skidded to a halt. “Yes, the Lord answered my prayer.

The bear fell to his knees, clasped his paws together, and began to pray aloud at the preacher’s feet: “Dear God, please bless this food I am about to receive.”

Are you ready to be equipped today?

Let me see your Bibles.

Let’s go to the book of Proverbs 31:25-30 for this week’s wisdom Vaccination.

This Week’s Wisdom Vaccination

Proverbs 31:25-30 ESV

Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come. 26 She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. 27 She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. 28 Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: 29 “Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.” 30 Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.

This goes out to all the mothers present today and watching online.

Most mothers are a special breed.

And most mothers have done or are doing the best they knew how.

Today’s message title is:

9 Habits of Highly Effective Christians

Wk. 3

Mother’s Day is a wonderful day to complete our series on 9 habits of highly effective Christians because I believe that most mothers who are believers want to be highly effective Christians and they want there children to become highly effective Christians.

In this series we’ve been talking about habits.

Rituals, things we do regularly, quite often without even knowing it.

Habits are the patterns that have shaped our lives and will shape our lives in the future.

It’s pretty jacked up that our world hijacked some of our habits and initiated others that turned many people in to fearful individuals with the recent pandemic.

For many Christians they broke the good habit of going to church and started a bad habit of just watching from the comfort of home.

I’ll even go so far as to say that with the amount of preaching and teaching that is available online for public consumption, many people have substituted Bible reading and studying for message watching.

I pray that this series is challenging you to think about the habits you have formed in your life and to consider weather or not those habits are leading you to being a highly effective Christian who is an asset to the Kingdom of God or not.

Here is one way to kind of know.

Just ask yourself this question. “Who is going to Heaven because I allowed God to use me?”

Some habits that we’ve already covered that will position you to be used by God are regular church attendance, keeping good company, reading and studying the Bible, fasting, forgiving and faithfully serving.

Habit #7

Habit of praying

Matthew 6:5-6 ESV

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.

6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

What we do in prayer when were not seen effects what goes on in our lives that people can see.

Prayer is a great opportunity to hold God to the promises he has made to mankind and to remind him of who he has revealed himself to be to us.

Jesus prayed to his father and instructed us to do the same.

Matthew 6:9 ESV

Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

We who have accepted Christ as Lord and Savior are now adopted into the family of God and can now pray in the same relationship to God as His beloved son Jesus did.

Romans 8:15 ESV

For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”

It’s just as if Dr A and I had only one biological child and we chose to adopt others. The adopted children would live the life of the biological child.

But many Christians act like a child in our society today that was adopted at an older age.

But we should be acting like a child that was adopted at birth.

There is a difference.

Mark 1:35 ESV

And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.

Did you ever ask yourself why did Jesus get off away from the others to go pray and why did he get out early in the morning?

Those towns and cities were very crowded and there was no electricity in place back then, so all work was done from sun up to sun down.

With that knowledge in mind, Jesus wanted to get alone with God before the business of the day began because once the day began it was all about doing work.

And we see this as the passage in Mark 1 continues.

Mark 1:36-39 ESV

36 And Simon and those who were with him searched for him, 37 and they found him and said to him, “Everyone is looking for you.” 38 And he said to them, “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.” 39 And he went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons.

Now, what does this great habit of prayer look like in our lives and more specifically in your life.

Set that alarm clock in time to do more than get dressed and get breakfast.

Add some time alone with your father. It will do you some good.

We can’t really think that we can be like Christ knowing that he always prayed to the father, but we sparingly get alone with God.

In your quiet time alone with God, here are some things you can do to add to your experience.

Prayer journal

Pray for direction.

Pray for and with your spouse.

Pray for and with your children.

Pray on behalf of others.

Pray for our leaders.

Giving thanks.

Bask in his love for you.

#7 was the habit of prayer.

Habit #8

Habit of being thankful

This is another one kind of like forgiveness that we don’t usually think of in terms of being a habit.

But you either have a habit of being thankful or you have a habit of ungrateful.

Luke 17: 14 -18 ESV

When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed. 15 Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; 16 and he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. 17 Then Jesus answered, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? 18 Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?”

Now, we could maybe say that with the nine in their excitement they ran off and just forgot to show thanks.

But research in our society today concludes that a habit of ungratefulness is closely related to the traits of narcissism.

Narcissism as defined by the Mayo clinic includes personality qualities of thinking very highly of oneself, needing admiration, believing others are inferior, and lacking empathy for others.

Sometimes its hard for us to think of ourselves as possessing qualities like these but what do others think of you.

What have those closest to you at a time of blunt honesty blurted out about you?

It’s an entitlement or preoccupation with yourself that can cause you to forget all that you need to be thankful for and to whom you should be thankful to.

If you feel like you are owed things or you deserve it, you won’t be thankful for it.

1 Thessalonians 5:18 ESV

Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

Psalm 100:4 ESV

Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name!

Ephesians 5:20 ESV

Giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,

Colossians 3:17 ESV

And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Over and over we are told to be thankful.

This is a good habit to pick up if you want to be highly effective as a Christian because without this habit you’ll find yourself constantly complaining about what’s not right, what’s not working, what hasn’t happened yet, what others have that you don’t and on and on.

#8 was the habit of being thankful

Habit #9

Habit of sharing the good news

Let me start by saying that if you develop a habit of doing the first 8 that we’ve talked about, the habit of sharing the good news will come rather easy for you.

As a matter of fact it will become something you can’t go without doing.

Jeremiah 20:9 ESV

When I say, “I won’t remember the Lord, nor will I speak in his name anymore, then there is this burning fire in my heart. It is bound up in my bones, I grow weary of trying to hold it in, and I cannot do it!

Often when we hear this quoted it’s with such excitement.

But actually the prophet Jeremiah was being persecuted by Pashhur who was a priest and one of the chief officers at that time.

In spite of the persecution he faced, he said I can’t do it.

I can’t hold this truth inside of me.

I’ve got to let it out.

When we don’t develop the habit of sharing the good news there are sinners who may never repent and turn towards God.

We could be used to start a party in Heaven.

There is a party in heaven every time one sinner repents and turns toward God.

Luke 15: 8-10 ESV

“Or what woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and seek diligently until she finds it? 9 And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’

10 Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

Often it is as easy as being excited about what the LORD has done for you.

John 4:28-30 ESV

So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” 30 They went out of the town and were coming to him.

For them to leave town on her word of all people there must have been a level of excitement and passion in her witness.

John 4:39-42 ESV

Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of his word. 42 They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”

Your habit of sharing the good news is only the spark that gets someone else’s fire started. Soon they will believe on their own.

(Closing illustration)

I remember a time when God wasn’t on my mind.

I was living my life in a way that I thought was good.

I was living in the ATL. The dirty south as they call it.

When suddenly things got flipped upside down and I found myself in a situation that could have led to serious trouble.

Within a few days I found myself back in Kansas City.

And with God not even on my radar, two couples shared the good news with me.

They put God on my radar. And the very next day I found myself in church and giving my life to the Lord.

What might my life look like today if those individuals decided to withhold the sharing of the good news.

If you’re watching online or here in the room, I have a very important question to ask you.

What is Holy Spirit saying to you right now?