Mike Bickle emphasizes the critical need for discernment regarding the true nature of God's grace, warning that many teachings in the church today distort this essential doctrine. He highlights that false teachers often promote a version of grace that neglects the necessity of repentance, leading believers to feel comfortable in their sin and spiritual laziness. Bickle urges listeners to be vigilant and diligent in their understanding of grace, which should empower them to deny ungodliness and pursue a life of holiness. He stresses that true grace is not merely about forgiveness but also about the enabling power to live righteously. Ultimately, he calls for a deeper commitment to striving for holiness in the context of God's grace.

Well, I'm going to continue on this subject that I did last week, and I titled it, Discerning Error, Truth and Error About the Grace of God. This is a very, very important subject, and in our nation, in this hour, there is far more error on this subject than truth. The prophets in the New Testament, the apostles who prophesied, spoke about, in the generation the Lord returned, in the end times, how the doctrine of grace would fall into ruin, even in the midst of the body of Christ. Many would pervert it, and that is one of the signs of the times. And I just want you alerted to this, because my assumption is that a number of you in this room are not alerted to this fact, and if you're not alerted to it, then you're far more vulnerable to its deception. For those of you that are alerted to it, that there's significant error in our nation around this subject, then you'll be paying attention, you'll be diligent and vigilant in terms of your searching of the word of this subject. Don't assume that what you heard for years back in children's church growing up, don't just assume it was true. Because I want to say it again, I want to say it kindly, but I'm going to say straightforward, I believe that a significant amount, I'm saying even the majority of what's being taught about the grace of God, is a distortion of the truth, which means if that's true, it means that many of you in this room grew up in settings where grace was presented in a positive light, but not in a true light, not in its full truth. So don't assume as you hear this, you think, oh, I already got that. I grew up on our grace, our church was really into grace. And the question is, what version of grace? Because everybody uses the term grace. Those that speak the truth, those that speak air, and those that speak a lot of truth but part air, they all use the terminology of grace, everybody does. That's part of its difficulty. Roman number one, this is a little review from last week, false teachers in the church distort the grace of God one of the great pressures in the end times will come from false teachers as prophesied. And the two main chapters, although Paul touches on this a number of times, is 2 Peter 2 and the book of Jude. The most common area of false teaching that will happen in the end times is the teaching that perverts the true and biblical understanding of grace. And it's confusing what is works and what is not works. There's a tremendous energy for people to make sure, and some of this is really good, that they're not doing anything that has to do with works. But there's a lot of confusion around the subject of what is works. What constitutes earning salvation or doing works that the Bible forbids or the Bible warns us against? And what constitutes as diligence? And much diligence is being neglected in a fear that it's works, that they're trying to earn something, and the diligence is life-giving because of distortion of understanding on this idea. Now I want to say that false teachers, there are false teachers that lead the cults and the false religions of the world, but there are many false teachers that are born again and when they die they'll go to heaven, but they're still false teachers in the body. So a false teacher, I'm using the term in a soft way, it's somebody who loves God but has fundamental issues of the Bible they're teaching falsely, and they still go to heaven when they die. So don't think that all these false teachers that the apostles were prophesying about, they have horns and they wear red capes, they don't. When you study 2 Peter 2 and Jude, the most troubling thing is how they're unnoticed in the midst of the body of Christ in their teaching ministries. They're unnoticed. The people don't even know that they're false teachers, they're in the body preaching from the pulpits. The most common area false teachers occupy, I mean focus on, is the idea of perverting biblical understanding of grace, to where they confuse what earning God's favor is, and they confuse the biblical definition of what good works and what dead works are, and what earning our position before God. They pervert God's grace, and here in one sentence, by reducing its message to receiving forgiveness without requiring repentance. And most of you can think of off the top of your head many places that proclaim a message of forgiveness without any emphasis on repentance. That is a false teaching, that is a false doctrine. And people can be born again and teach that false teaching. Doesn't mean that their whole ministry is false, but they have a significant strand of error and falseness in what they're teaching. And I'm more concerned that none of you would do it, than you figure out who down the road is doing it. They reduce the message of receiving forgiveness without requiring repentance, and their goal is to seek to make people to feel comfortable with God while they continue in their sin, or while they continue in their spiritual laziness. To feel comfortable about, and to feel good about their life while living in sin, or living in spiritual passivity and laziness before the Lord. Now the first emotion that we all have if we love God is, oh no, am I sinning and am I lazy? Because those are the two big issues that diligence calls us out of. And the answer is, don't let anybody give you a quick fix answer. The answer is, it's not a big deal if you wrestle with that several times, for seasons even, for periods of time over your life. The fact that you would wrestle with that is a sign of your sincerity and godliness. It's not a sign of something negative. The idea that we have this inherent perfect knowledge, that we're walking in perfect obedience and full zeal, is a false idea. We don't always know if we are. We ask the Holy Spirit the question. We search it out. We don't take easy answers from people that are wanting to just pat us on the back, tell us we're doing good. There's many people that will do that. They'll just put the fire out, and they'll just comfort you in your sin and in your spiritual passivity, because in reality they're comforting themselves by dialing you down a little bit. Because if you, you know, if you're all stirred up about this, well you're stirring them up. And sometimes it's just legitimate desire to be a blessing, but it's not a blessing. Anytime we quench the activity of the Spirit in a person's life, and the Spirit is stirring them up to zeal and to righteousness, and we quench that in them, that's bad. That's bad. I remember an example that I have permission from my wife to use. I've used it over the years here and there. It was many years ago that my wife Diane came to me. She said, I just feel like I'm backslidden. I said, you do? Why? She said, well I don't have any life in the word. My heart is stale. It's sterile. I don't feel God's presence. I'm not pressing into him like I know that I should be. And I operated, you know, in just a standard basic husband response, nice husband response. Sweetheart, you're doing great. And as I was putting my hand on her shoulder to say, you're doing great, I changed my words right in midstream. And I said, I mean, it's completely slipped out. I didn't expect to say it, but it was a bit of the Lord helping us. I said, it is true, you are backslidden. I was shocked. I mean, I was shocked. I mean, Balaam's donkey prophesies after all, you know. I just, there it had, there it was right there on the spot. And I said, it is true, you are backslidden, and so am I. It's two for one. And she, but she didn't know. I, it shocked me when I said it. I did not expect to say that. Now, I'm not in the habit of blaming all my kind of last minute phrases on the Lord. I'm not one that does that. But that was a true breaking in of the Lord. And I said, so am I. And I said, you know what, we need to reevaluate our schedules. We need to reevaluate what we're doing with our time. And we did it. It was a real searching time. It was some years back when that happened. But I've had those kinds of seasons with the Lord many times, many times, when the Lord made it clear to me, you are not where you need to be right now. And don't let some well-meaning person encourage you out of this and get you out of this place where I'm challenging you. Because this pain, this anguish to go deep is the gift of the Holy Spirit operating in your spirit. And that's what I told Diane back then. I said, yes, you are backslidden. And the fact that you, and I said, so am I. And the fact that we're understanding it is the gift of God on our hearts right now. And it's called Matthew 5 verse 4, blessed are those who mourn. I said, we, this mourning is not the fruit of the devil. It's not the fruit of, of, of just human zeal. It's real godly mourning in our spirit. This is the gift of God. What by, by no means should you let somebody comfort you when God's afflicting you because God wants to bring you into greater glory in a greater relationship with him. But it's in our culture that everything that is easy is good. And every word that makes it easier for somebody is good for that person. Even if we quench the work of the spirit in a, in a friend that we love. So have it in your, in your thinking, in your paradigm to not instantly encourage somebody when they say they're struggling, say, yeah, you are. That's good that you are. That's good that you're unsure. If you're walking in full obedience and full diligence, that's a good thing because if you're not, the Holy spirit will tell you. And if you are the Holy spirit will tell you, he may not tell you in a week or even a month, but he will tell you over time if you care. And the, our relationship with the Holy spirit is worth having uncertainty and even having a few restless, sleepless hours and our bed, because we're not sure we're doing right. That is called loving God. There's nothing. There's no problem with that, but our culture is against anything that causes us to be troubled. Even though the Holy spirit might be the one striving with us to bring us into greater dimensions of the glory of God. Okay. Jude four, Jude talks about this. He's talking about men in his own generation and set, but it goes on to talk about in second Peter two, these, this, this cause second Peter two and Jude is, is parallel, uh, passages. They, they're very similar. This is certain men and have crept unnoticed. They're in the pulpits. Jude said, they're teaching in your churches. You don't even know it. They're unnoticed. They're ungodly men because you don't even know they're ungodly. I mean, you don't know what's going on in their secret life, their private life. And that's not your business to try to figure out what everyone's doing. That's not the point, but here was the sign. It says they are turning the grace of God into lewdness and they're denying Jesus by doing it. Now we turn the grace of God into lewdness. One translation says licentiousness, which just means sinfulness or lewdness. You can, if you don't know the definition of lewdness, it just sounds like a, Oh, it just doesn't sound very good. It's negative. And what they're doing, they turn the grace of God into lewdness by teaching the grace of God in a way that makes people comfortable, makes them comfortable in their compromise. Well, they go, well, you know, the grace of God, what about grace? The teacher said, and if you resist that, if you make a big deal about that, well, you're just getting into works anyway. There are more, that is the number one. I mean, undoubtedly that has to be the number one lie Satan has used through all of church history. That lie is, is emerged in every place where this, where, where God's people are by all means, don't do anything that's unnecessary. Take it easier and claim the grace of God. And he says that they're actually turning. They're perverting the grace of God by making it enforce lewdness. Okay. Paragraph B, the grace message inspires us to deny lust. The grace message inspires us and gives us power to walk in godliness. The true grace message teaches us to deny ungodliness and it gives us power. Look at this in Titus two, the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared. And for the word salvation, you could add the word that brings deliverance. You could add the word deliverance there. It doesn't just mean deliverance from the penalty of sin. It brings deliverance from the power of sin as well. It brings salvation from the penalty of sin. That's hell. And it brings salvation deliverance from the power of sin, even in our life. Now, how does it do this? Verse 12. Here's how you can tell it's the grace of God. The true grace teaching teaches you to deny ungodliness. The true grace teaching teaches you to deny worldly loss. It teaches you to live godly in this evil age, this present evil age. Most grace teaching that I've heard over the years has been so nearly absent on the issue of godliness. It's almost always on the on the subject of feeling comfort in our compromise. Almost all grace teaching emphasizes being comforted in the way we're living. That is not true grace teaching. Although grace teaching has an element of comfort to it for sure, but grace is the power of God and the revelation of God to inspire us to deny ungodliness, to deny unrighteousness. Okay, let's go to Roman numeral two. The difference between grace and mercy. Mercy extends God's forgiveness and grace imparts God's power. Now, grace is a big enough term where grace actually, grace can be used to encompass everything related to God's favor. Grace is a huge term that is all-encompassing and then grace is used in a very specific way to talk about God's enabling power. So, we find that both uses of grace are found throughout the New Testament, but anytime the general term for grace is used, the general, I mean, it's grace is used in a general way of God's favor, God's goodness, God's forgiveness. Mercy is involved in that general idea. It also means the power to live free from sin, but many times the word grace is specifically the more narrow meaning. It means the power and the inspiration, the enabling to deny sin. It's what it means. There's many passages that have grace and mercy in the same passage because there are distinctions of grace and mercy in that more specific way. Again, there's a sense of which grace is very general and it's everything that has to do with God's kindness, God's goodness, God's power, God's anointing. It's all under the large banner of grace, but many times the word grace is very specific and it has to do with enabling power. Enables us in righteousness and it enables us in ministry. It's an enabling power. That's what grace is. B, we looked at this last week, mercy is not receiving the bad things we deserve. Mercy is not getting what we deserve. That's the bad things. We escape something negative called the wrath of God. Grace is receiving the good things we don't deserve. An impartation of God's power for righteousness, but it's also powerful ministry. It's not just for our own hearts, it's also for the sphere that God has called us to. Now, the verses that I have under here, 2 Corinthians 12, it's the term grace is used related to the subject of strength, power. It's not talking about forgiveness. When Jesus is speaking to Paul and says, my grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness. He wasn't saying my forgiveness is sufficient. He meant my power is sufficient. The word grace there is the idea of power. It goes on, Paul does in Romans 6 and really is specific about this. It's in Romans chapter 6. People were confusing the idea of grace and when they heard grace, all they heard was forgiveness. And Paul says, no, I'm not talking right now about forgiveness. I'm talking about the power to live right. Grace is the power to live right. Don't automatically say grace means forgiveness, because grace many times is very specific in its offer and invitation to give power to the inner man or power to our ministry. But here in Romans 6, he's talking about power in the inner man and Paul gives his logic. He says, for sin shall not have dominion over you. Why? Why shall you be free from sinful addictions? Because you're under grace. He's not saying because you're under the power of forgiveness. That's not what he's saying. It says you sin should not have dominion over you because you're under the power of God. You're under the administration of God's power. The Holy Spirit lives in you and if you live right with the Holy Spirit and you fill your mind with the word and make the right choices and you're not quenching the Holy Spirit, but you're living right with the Holy Spirit, that's all understood as living under grace. Means living right with the Holy Spirit. So Paul says sin should not have dominion over you. He says you don't need to live in those addictions because you're under grace. You're under the, you're in a relationship with God where the Holy Spirit is living in you and if you live in a close relationship with the you're going to experience that grace and the Holy Spirit will help you live close to him. It takes God to love God. The Holy Spirit will help you live right with the Holy Spirit. Then he goes on, verse 15. Very important that you you follow this logic of Romans 6. Paul now addresses the common subject that's been for 2,000 years mistaken in church history. Paul says what then? Do we sin more? Shall we sin because we're under grace? He goes don't tell me that you're misunderstanding how grace operates. He goes I'm not talking about sinning more so you get forgiven more. I'm talking about you're not trying to get more forgiveness right here. You're trying to experience more power. He says shall we sin more to get more grace? No. He goes you've totally misunderstood. He goes rather present your members of your body, the members of your, he's talking present them to God as slaves of righteousness. He goes grace produces a zeal for righteousness and a power for it. Let's go ahead to paragraph D. Let's go to F. We did D last week. Let's go to paragraph F. A foundational revelation of the kingdom is that Jesus is our king. Well I know that's pretty fundamental, but this is a revelation, I mean honestly, that you rarely hear. You rarely hear emphasized the relationship of a king and a slave. A king, his subjects are his servants. And when it's a king, all of his servants, if it's a king, they are his slaves. They don't have democracy and kingdoms. So a servant, though the king has a good relationship with the servant, there is no mistake that the the relationship is one of obedience. Now it is a really radical revelation when this touches you. And maybe there's a number of you in this room, maybe it's never touched. The idea that you are really a slave who really does not have rights because a king is really over you who owns your body, for real. Not figuratively, it's not a neat metaphor, it's a reality. There is a king, he owns you. He owns you and he's given you grace so that you would have the insight and the power and the perseverance and the forgiveness that's necessary to live in that ownership in a faithful way. It says here, 1 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 6, flee immorality. Verse 19, or don't you know your body is a temple of the Spirit? And don't you know, verse 19, at the end, you are not your own. He goes, you do understand that in the way that Caesar owned the people in the Roman Empire and the people of the Roman Empire understood that in Paul's day. He goes, you really are a slave, for real you are. You really don't have the right. You don't have, it's not just you don't have the permission, you do not have the right in your relationship in the kingdom of God to tell King Jesus, I'm going to do what I want and I'll just get forgiven later. That is an intrinsic misunderstanding and violation of the fundamental concept of the kingdom of God. But the reason most believers, that is a an idea that doesn't touch them or they never think about because they were brought into the kingdom on a message of grace that was all about forgiveness without repentance and it wasn't even a kingdom, it was a club, it was it was a fraternity is what they joined, where everybody got to vote and they all determined what the party would be like. It is a real kingdom, it's not a fraternity and we don't get to vote. The Lord loves us and he hears our heart but he is the king and it's not mostly about having a party, though there's elements of joy and festivity in our relationship with the Lord, significant elements and more elements in the age to come, but there's a real kingdom that's really being assaulted by another king, it's real. And the reason that you flee sexual immorality isn't just because you might get caught or you might get a disease or somebody might get mad, that's the reason many people avoid immorality, they don't want to get caught, they don't want to get a disease and they don't want somebody to get mad, they don't want somebody to break up or you know or somebody get the wrong expectation. But the reason, the reason we abstain from immorality is because we are owned, our body is by a king, that's the reason Paul gives. He says, verse 20, you were bought with a price. Glorify God in your body and in your spirit, that means your attitudes, because they belong to God, your body and your spirit belongs to God. And so when somebody is looking at the subject of immorality, it's not just an issue, it's not just pragmatism, which you know being practical, it's not just, well I don't want to do that because I might get caught and that's a big mess and I don't want to get caught, that's just a big hassle. That's pragmatism and pragmatism's got some wisdom in it. It's not just because you don't want somebody to get mad and they get the wrong expectation, then you got to break up with them later because you didn't really mean it anyway. We avoid immortality, I'm on tomorrow nights, immorality, immortality is tomorrow. We avoid it because we are owned by a king who paid for us and he really shed blood to buy us and he really owns us and that's his view of the kingdom is that it is a kingdom. His view of the kingdom is not that it's a fraternity, it's not a club, it is really a kingdom for real and when this strikes our spirit more, we have more of a spirit of truth when we read the word of God but the revelation of a king and a kingdom is very rare in our nation. Now thousands of ministries are preaching it, thousands are, but tens of thousands are not. It is rare, I mean it's still, it's still out there. There's, you know, I got, I was just reading some material today from some of the, just some of the great minds and some of the great hearts in our nation, guys like John Piper and guys, and they were talking, I was reading up what some of them say about grace and it was so strong, it exhilarated me, it made me excited that I'm in a body of Christ with men and women that have zeal for God and I say, oh Lord, we need 10,000 more of them. There are thousands of them out there, so I'm not trying to overstate it in a negative, but there's tens of thousands, many hundreds of thousands. There's 300,000 churches in America right now and I would go as far to say there's some hundreds of thousands of ministries that are not focused on this with the spirit of truth. Therefore, our young people just, they don't even have a, they don't have a grid. They grow up in the kingdom culture that they're owned by somebody else and they really don't have rights. It's like, what, what, what about grace? That's what grace is about. Grace is to give us the insight because it takes supernatural insight to see that, that takes grace to see that. Grace is the spirit of revelation and it takes power to walk out that revelation and it takes forgiveness because when we blow it and we will blow it, instead of blowing it and going to probation for three months, we can blow it and if we understand the mercy dimension of grace, the forgiveness dimension, we can confess our sin and within the hour be standing with boldness and confidence that we are in God's embrace and feeling his pleasure if our repentance is sincere. So understanding the forgiveness dimension is huge because the Lord doesn't want us to spend three months on probation when we sin. He wants us right back in and before him with confidence running to him, not from him, with confidence that we are first class citizens having sinned an hour ago because we repented and the blood of Jesus is sufficient. But the mercy dimension of grace is by no means the only dimension. There's a revelatory dimension, the fact that you have insight in the word, that's grace. The fact that you have a tenderized spirit when you worship, you feel God's presence, that's grace. The fact that you have more victory than you did a year or two ago, that's grace, that's power working in you. And whether we're talking about the forgiveness dimension of grace or the power or revelatory dimension of grace, it is all unmerited favor. All of that is favor we don't deserve. Some people think because we exert energy somehow we deserve it. I mean think about it, we're sitting before God with a sinful heart, with no power. God gives us power because we're sitting there saying words to him. You can't earn power by sitting in a prayer room in a chair. There's no government in existence would give somebody power because they sit in a chair. In no court would that be considered earning anything. Yet when you tell people to be diligent, to bring their inner life before God, they automatically think when they got wrong teaching, that's what about grace and unmerited favor. The power we get when we sit is still undeserved. Reading the Bible and saying words to God in no stretch of the imagination warrants deserving power that's eternal, touching your spirit. And so it's this confusion that we're earning it. So therefore if we're earning it, it can't be grace. So hey, I'd rather be into grace. So they slip into laziness and compromise and their heart goes stale. Their heart shrinks and they confuse this very, very simple doctrine. But it's been confused all the way through church history. There's always been God's servants that have made it blazingly clear in every generation. But the common or the larger numbers have always gone for the false definition of this. See what we do when we're diligent is we're bringing our inner man. We're bringing our attitudes. We're bringing our mind into God's presence. We're We're bringing and we're just saying, Lord, give us power and insight on our cold hearts and our cold minds. Give us what we don't deserve. All we're doing is sitting here and saying no to sin. That doesn't deserve us anything. I mentioned last week that if a, if a, uh, murderer was convicted of, uh, you know, mass murders and stood before the judge and he said, I am sorry. And I'm willing to study. Will you free me from those murders? The judge would say, no, you have to pay for those murders being sorry. And reading the Bible and changing attitudes never cancels out what the crime we committed and the penalty we deserve. It is all unmerited favor, whether it's the Mert, the forgiveness dimension or the revelatory part where God gives us divine ideas. He gives us insight into the word or into life, or the fact that he gives us motivation in our heart. It's all undeserved, but he says, you got to bring yourself and sit in front of my fire. If you want to receive that undeserved power, but it's the bringing of ourself to sit in front of his fire. That's where people trip up. They think I'm earning it somehow that there's no court in heaven or on earth that would constitute that earning the power of a King. Okay. Paragraph G paragraph G. Now the reason I care so much about this, well, I mean, I care about it because it's right. And the Lord is honored. That's good enough, but I care about it because I understand what I wrote here in paragraph G is that the only possible way you are going to feel on a regular basis. And I don't mean every minute of every day. That's not what I mean by regular, but I mean more than once a year, the only way you are going to feel the presence and the power of God in your spirit is if you are pursuing a hundred fold obedience, that's the only place in our relation with God where the power touches our spirit regularly. And so this false teaching of grace, which appears to be sympathetic and kind, it's like a doctor who's looking at a patient with cancer and says, you know what? I'm going to be kind to you. You're doing good. We're not going to give you any treatment because this treatment is going to hurt. So why don't we just, you know what? I just want to make your day. What good you're doing good. Go ahead and go home. And the guy says, really? I'm doing good. That guy's going to go home and that cancer is going to grow that doctor. Oh, well, they, he would get a malpractice suit and be sued for a huge amount of money. He says, no, it stands before the, the doctor judges and says, well, the guy was so discouraged and the treatment was going to hurt and it was gonna make him sick and it's gonna be expensive. I didn't want to put that on him. And the, the judge would say, you're out of your mind. What are you doing? You, you brought that man's going to lose his life. He lost years of his life because of that approach. And the reason I care so much about this is as a shepherd, I know for a fact, if you buy into the truth for decades, many more times than not, you will feel his presence and his power, and it will change your destiny before God in this age and the age to come. I am contending for your greatness and I'm contending for a Christian life that has power in it. And the other way, though, it's man-pleasing and comforting. It leaves the body of Christ bored and addicted, addicted to many things. And it's not just addicted to, you know, the, the, the real, uh, uh, scandalous things, but just addicted to laziness, addicted to selfishness, just addicted to unbrokenness and pride. It's, it doesn't have to be some particular substance that they're addicted, but we will never get free of our addictions, the really heavy duty ones or the, or the ones that are more subtle, but are still very powerful. Our pride and our selfishness is just our way on the inside. We were born with a powerful dimension of sin. And our only possible way out of that bondage is through the teaching of the word of God by experiencing the grace of God while we're going wholehearted. I have written here something I've said this for 25 years, meaning I've, I've, I've judged it and had people like it and not like it. And 25 years later, I feel very strong that it's true because I've had lots of interaction, uh, good and bad on it. This principle that 98%, the bottom of paragraph G, 98% obedience. If you're obedient in every area of your life, but one, and you have one area, I mean, you're trying to be obedient. You might be stumbling in it, but every time you stumble, you'd get right back into the, to the race and you repent of your sin. You're going hard after God. That's what I mean by obedient. I don't mean you're victorious, but you've set your heart to obey. You have one area, one area in your life where you say, no, I'm going to do what I want to do on that. The money's mine. The time is mine. My speech is mine. My attitudes are mine. I'm good. You take one of those areas and say, no, you will live virtually a powerless Christian faith. One issue we'll do it. It's like the story of the little boy that, you know, on Christmas morning, he gets the big train set and he hooks it all up and, you know, daddy, look, the train said, it's great. And, and he plugs it in and, but the train won't work. There's a little one pound train won't work. You know, there's elaborate train set. And if there's one piece of metal on the tracks, touching both of them, it will short circuit the entire power and light company of that city. Can't move that little one pound train. And that's what one area where you say to the Holy spirit, no, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to, I'm going to do what I want to do with my time. I'm going to do what I want to do with my money. I'm going to do it. You just pick one of my attitudes, my sexuality, my food, my serving or lack of serving. I'm just not going to obey you on that. So I'm going to do what I want to do. One issue won't kick you out of the kingdom, but I guarantee you this. You will live for decades of a powerless Christianity. You have a little spurt here and there because God's nice, but by and large, you will have far more deadness on the inside than being alive because the word of God requires the grace of God functions. When we live not in victory, I'm not talking about victory. I'm talking about the decision to obey, not the attainment of it. You can decide to obey the day you were born again. If you brought into the kingdom in a right way, you can say every area is yours and you can begin to feel the power of God literally that day. And you can fill it your entire Christian life. And again, I don't mean 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There are times where you won't feel his presence, but the rule is that you will. The rule is the word of God will be exciting in your spirit. Not always it'll be dead and boring sometimes, but it'll have a spark on it more times than not. A brand new believer can operate in grace that way, not because they're victorious, because they've set their heart to obey on every area. Now, a couple of years go by and that fiery believer starts, you know, hey, I'm the only one around here going all the way. You know, no one else is. The leadership's not. Hey, I'm going to get into grace. And they start getting into deception. And then they end up in the boredom of the people around them, the spiritual boredom. And I tell you, I've watched this for so many years and it pains me that it's so many well-meaning people are like the doctor that doesn't want to bother the patient with the truth about the cancer and the treatments. So they say, you know what? Let's just make this a good day. Let's just make it nice. I know for a fact in my own experience, having done it and not done it, I've done it both ways, lots of times. I'm not proud of the one, but I'm glad for the other. And I've gone back and forth a bunch of times where I've had times where I was just, there was not one issue in my life where I was not working hard to obey, not one issue. And then there'll be an area where I'll just get lazy on. And there is a direct correlation in terms of those months, what's happening in my spirit and what I'm feeling about God. Paragraph, Roman numeral three, Jesus calls us to strive to enter the narrow gate. Now my guess is he used the word strive, that's down in Luke 13, we'll get there in a second, but verse 24, he used the word strive on purpose. That is, strive is the absolute anathema word in the body of Christ. You can say anything and if you say strive, it's canceled out. Because one thing we know as Americans, we're not going to sweat and we're not going to strive. That's absolutely not, we're not even open to the S word. We're not going to strive. If it infringes on me and troubles my schedule or troubles what I want, and it's not a big heavy thing, it's not a sin thing, I am not going to bother with it because that is called striving. And Jesus might answer and say, yes, and you will be rewarded forever if you obey me in this issue. We must understand what striving means and what it doesn't mean. Because the idea that striving is automatically negative means that Jesus was a good teacher, except for a few times where he kind of blew it, like this one time here. And I assure you that Jesus is a perfect teacher. He did not blow it. Our culture is blowing it, not Jesus. I'm talking about the culture of the church in our nation. It says in Matthew chapter 7, enter by the narrow gate. Why? And he tells us, the narrow gate, it is difficult. The way is difficult. That doesn't sound like grace. And there are few who find it. Ah, that totally doesn't sound like grace. Well, where's Jesus coming from? He ought to read the Bible. He said difficult and few. Now Jesus later on says it even more direct. He says, they asked the question, Lord, are there few that are being saved? And he said to them, strive. Now he didn't just say enter by the narrow gate, he's going to say strive to enter by the narrow gate. He's going to bring it up a notch. Exert energy. Go through the uncertainty of maybe I'm trying too hard. The Lord says, don't worry, if you're trying too hard, I'll talk to you. I would much rather be trying too hard and have the Lord correct me midstream than doing the way of the, the normal way of our culture is to be totally out in laziness and selfishness, thinking it's in grace and being deceived. Jesus said strive. He goes, why? Why do I tell you to strive to go through the narrow gate? Because many, circle that, many, many people who say the name of Jesus, who use his name, he's not talking about Muslims right here. He's not talking about other religions. He's talking about the people who are trying to go through the narrow gate of Jesus. Talking about people who profess the name of Jesus. Many will seek to enter, but they won't actually be able to do it because they won't do it my way. They will do it the false way. They won't enter in. Now entering in is talking about the fullness, the way, the narrow way. The way is entering into the fullness of what God has for us in this life. Now I know many of you in this room, if not all of you, we're in this saying for fullness. We're not trying to, you know, do the least possible thing to get fire insurance and hopefully we'll end up in heaven. We're not doing this for that reason. We are trying to go all the way with God and to touch him. The narrow way, the narrow gate, is the way of fullness. Regardless how full fullness is, we don't have to define how full it is. We just, the most that God will give the human spirit in this age, you have to go the narrow way. Now in verse 23, the apostle said, they're being saved. And this is where people have got off on this. They have reduced salvation. Salvation in the Bible is three tenses. Did you know that you are saved, you are being saved, and you will be saved? All three of those are biblical concepts. I could give you Bible verses for all three of them. You are saved. Justification. You are being saved in the present tense. That's called sanctification. You will be saved at the resurrection. That's called glorification. And what happens, people read this and they reduce this only to justification. And Jesus is talking about his saving purposes of why he came to the earth. And we better hope that he's talking about sanctification and glorification because if he's talking about justification, the standard went way up. I've had people look at this verse and say, that striving thing, that's about salvation. I said, that just doubled your trouble if that's true. I said, you're not out of trouble. You got into twice the amount of trouble you were in from what I was telling you. I don't believe that Jesus is talking about justification by faith. I think he's talking about the salvation experience in its three tenses. And of course, the difficult one is the present tense, sanctification. It's our life being freed and full of the spirit in this age. It's easy to walk in the spirit of the age to come. I don't think that was on his mind. And we get salvation. We get forgiven for free. The difficulty is walking in the way. It's the way. It's not the experience of getting born again one day. It's the way. It's the lifestyle. I believe the focus of this passage is on the present tense, not the past tense justification, not the future tense glorification, but the present tense sanctification. But of course, with the Lord, he would say, I came for salvation. I came to deliver you from darkness in the full sense of the word. But beloved, I want to ask you, have you reconciled, not in your teaching ministry, because most people read these verses to figure out how they're going to teach them. You know, I got a little Bible study. Somebody says three or four, I got to figure out how to teach this right. That's good. I like that. I'm a teacher. I understand that. But have you ever struggled with this verse, not so you can teach it right, so you can actually live it right in your private life? Have you actually looked at verse 24 and wrestled with it and said, what meaneth thou this? What is this? What? Not so you can say it right in a Bible study to where you could actually live it right under the gaze of the Holy Spirit. Okay, paragraph C. No, no, let's go to B. Forgot. Paul exerted, because to walk, to strive is to exert effort. That's the idea. It's to give it our best. It's the, it's the analogy of the athlete that Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 9. He uses the marathon runner when he gives this analogy. He's talking about exerting effort to live without any compromise and to live in the presence of God. Now look what Paul says in Acts 24. He goes, I always strive. He goes, I exert effort. I really am careful. I am not casual about this issue. I want my conscience right before God and I want to be living honest before people. I want to be right before people, not just before God. Paragraph C. In what sense must we resist striving? In what sense must we embrace striving? Because beloved, we have to answer this. That, this Bible verse is never going away. Never. We're not going to wake up one day and Luke 13 24 is out of the Bible. It's going to be there forever. So I determined, I got to figure this out and I don't want your opinion, meaning I, I appreciate your insight, but what I mean by that, it sounds, uh, uh, negative. I don't mean it that way. I mean, I got to know. I don't want you to encourage me and say, pat me on the back and say, oh Mike, you're doing great. That's not going to help me if you're wrong. I don't want somebody's encouraging opinion. I want to know by the spirit of truth that I am striving always to have a good conscience before God meant and to enter the narrow way. I want to know by the, by the revelation of the spirit, not that I'm looking for one day where the Lord says you're doing it. That's not what I mean. I'm talking about an audible voice experience. I want to have the assurance for decades that I am always striving to enter the narrow way that few enter into because it's hard to enter into as a Christian in the grace of God. And even though you enter into it, it's still unmerited favor because what you will do, the energy we will exert to enter in that will only be a small fraction of the payment of power and insight that God gives us. We give energy, we give our efforts and God gives us the power of God and the wisdom of God. Beloved, that's not earning it by the, any stretch of the imagination. So I'm asking you the question, in what sense do you resist striving because it's of the legalism and what instance do you embrace striving called dedication? Because if you don't know the answer to that question, then you're playing, you're, you're playing a game with your soul. It's like Russian roulette. Well, I read a book and he said I was doing good. Does it matter what the book said? You've only got one soul and you only got one time on the earth. You better know from God the answer to that question. And if it takes you months to get the answer, that's a great investment of your months to do this. Well, I'm uncomfortable today. I'm not sure. Well, there's nothing wrong with that. Just sweat it out for a while. Go for it. Meaning we're just so quick to want everybody comforted. It's the analogy I've used so often of the little caterpillar in the cocoon struggling to get out. Would somebody please cut this thing off of me? And the Lord knows the way he created that caterpillar. If somebody cuts that cocoon off the struggle, he will, that little worm will never be a beautiful butterfly. We are in a struggle and we don't need quick answers. We need right answers. We need right answers, not quick ones. And if we struggle for a while, that's not so terrible. Although I'm all for using godly wisdom to help people in their struggle. But at the same time, if you don't get the answer just immediately and don't settle quickly for quick answers, because you want answers that God's going to back up. If we answer this wrong, we walk in legalism. If we answer this wrong on the other side, we walk in lewdness or licentiousness or compromise. We've got to avoid both of them. D, obviously, everybody knows this. We don't strive to earn God's love. But do you know that you do strive in terms of bringing your attitudes of your inner man and bringing your mind in terms of prayer and fasting and the word. You do strive to walk in the narrow path to get holiness. You have to exert energy to bring your inner life into the presence of God. The bringing of your inner life, that's what you're doing when you're reading the word of God. You're bringing your inner life into God's presence. You're taking time to put information into your inner man. When you repent of an attitude, repent of a sin, that's an inward attitude you're changing in your inner life. That takes effort. That takes energy. That takes time. That's troublesome. Takes effort to do this. Fasting, prayer, serving, takes effort. But basically the effort you're exerting is to bring your inner man into greater contact with the Holy Spirit. You're not earning it at all. What you're doing is, is that you're positioning yourself to receive. So we all know we don't, grace is unmerited favor. We're not striving to get God to like us. What we're doing is we're exerting our best energies to get a breakthrough at the heart level. That's what we're doing. We're getting a breakthrough at the heart level. Paragraph E, we're just going to end with this. There's much air in the church today about Jesus's command to strive to enter the narrow door. Much, well, that's not that much confusion, that much error, because almost nobody is even bothered with it. But I'm hoping that this is going to be an important subject in our lives, all across the kingdom of God in our nation. We are going to care about what that verse means. And I just talk about it. We exert our greatest efforts to bring our energies, to bring our inner life before God. It's really what we're doing. Now, I'm going to just give you a little point. I don't have, I'm going to end with this principle that's not, not here on the notes. It's that when Adam sinned, Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, Genesis chapter 3, they sinned. What did God do? He put a curse on the ground. He said, here's the deal, Adam, for you in terms of work. He said, here's the deal. Instead of the, the fruit trees growing easy, they're still going to grow, but here's the catch. They're going to grow with sweat, hot sun. He said, I'm going to let the sun bear down on you. And then you're going to grow with weeds, with obstacles. So there's going to be frustration, a hot sun, and there's going to be obstacles, weeds, thorns and thistles. So whereas before there was sin, you, he still cultivated the garden. He's, Adam still cultivated. He still planted seeds, cultivated the garden before there was ever sin. But now that there is sin, there's the frustration of the heat and there's the obstacles of the thorns. And now there's, the animals are mean. The animals are really nice. Now the animals are mean. And the weather's hostile and all these things. Here's my point. We look at that and we think of it only as the curse and it is a curse, but that very curse is redemptive. And what I mean by that is that God in his wisdom knew that because Adam has sin in him, if he doesn't have something that's occupying him and completely getting ahold of his attention, something that's resisting him, he's going to get into far greater sin unless he is in the midst of this battle, in the rigors of this work that God has given him. For instance, we see it all the time in the, you know, in the, kind of the people with a, you know, a famous public life, the rich and the famous. But I'll just give you a scenario. It's a little, you know, it will seem humorous, but it's not. Imagine your life. Imagine your life. Here you're a born again believer. You love God. You're, you're, you're exactly who you are. Somebody comes and says, okay, here's a billion dollars, billion dollars. You never have to work again. You don't have to do anything. And then everything is going to go right that you touch. You're not gonna have any frustrations. You're gonna go build a company. No one's gonna betray you. No one's gonna hassle you. No one's gonna lie to you. And you're gonna have lots of energy. You're never gonna get sick. You have lots of energy. What would happen to you in five or 10 years? If you're normal, you would end up in so many addictions to sin with that kind of free time and energy on your hand. And what I mean, we think, no, I'd be different. I would just read the word and I would serve in humility. I would just take the lower route. I would really do it if I had all that. What I'm saying is the way the human spirit is designed, the very rigors of what frustrates us and hassles us preoccupies us and humbles us and does about five other things that we'll go into right now. That actually is part of God's purpose that keeps us free from far greater bondages than we have right now. If you had tons of free time, tons of money, everybody liked you, no obstacles, no frustrations, you would have a far greater struggle with sin that you don't even know about. You know, I think about just the rigors of IHOP. And sometimes I, I sit back and go, man, you know, I'm, you know, it's the same with, with many of you as well. You know, I go, here we go. We got Friday, Saturday, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Monday, staff, Tuesday. I'm like, I'm tired. I'm in the, you know, I get done with one, get right ready for the next one. And I've heard this over the years, just the Lord's whisper. You have no idea the trouble your soul would be in. If the last 10, 20, 30 years, you were not, you were not wrestling against the rigors of leading and preparing and serving and battling. You have no idea the bondages you would be in right now. I know, I know lots of, of believers and they have got out of the battle and they get everything as, as easy as possible. And of course we'd want things as easy as possible. Of course, you don't want to make things hard. There's plenty of things that make hard by themselves, but they're, they've retired spiritually. They've retired financially. They've retired relationally and they just play. I know scores of them and their soul is more weighed down and they've gotten more things in their spirit coming out that are negative than they had any idea about. Because, because sin is in us, we, there's another dimension of striving. We have to go against the elements like the caterpillar. It's part of the design of our human spirit. Yes, we have tears, but you would have far greater tears if you had no struggle. You, we don't, we only know the tears we have today. We don't know the tears we would have had today if everything would have been different and had nothing that resisted us. You sit in a prayer room. God, the Bible's boring. I love you. You're boring. The people next to me, they're weird. It's, I don't like this. Why did I sign up for this dumb program? I would rather be what? I don't know, on a beach floating, you know, doing something easy. And that works for a little while. But if that happened for years and years, like people would love to do, if they could, they would end up with so many bondages, they have no idea they have the capacity for. I remember the day I met Bob Jones. I mean, talking about a weird conversation. Worship team, go ahead and come on up. He walked in and, you know, I've told you this story before. He goes, hey, you're a youth pastor. I go, no, I'm not. I'm the senior pastor. I beg your pardon. He goes, nah, nah, you're a youth pastor. And he said, uh, you a singer and musician? I go, nope. He goes, well, you're going to have a ton of singers and musicians. They're going to come from everywhere. I said, what are you talking about? And he said, well, I won't go. It won't happen for a while. He goes, because you have to grow up. First time I ever met him. He goes, you're way too immature to be this youth pastor God's called you to be. I said, okay. And he said, you see this thing you're doing in this church? He goes, it's going to even grow. He had my attention now. I go, yeah. Because, you know, he was at least touching my sense of dignity with a little pride here and there floating, you know, salt and pepper shake on it, you know? And I go, yeah. He goes, yeah, it's going to grow. I said, good. He said, the reason it's going to grow is because God's going to keep you busy to keep you out of trouble till you grow up. He really told me that he goes, because you're like David and many people are like David in this sense. He says, you're like David. He goes, you have a warrior spirit. And in second Kings chapter 11, I happen to know the verse. Cause I'd been a student of the life of David. It says in second Kings 11, in the spring time, when Kings go to war, David stayed home and stayed out of the war. And what happened? He fell into sin with Bathsheba. And when Kings go to war, he said, you're like that. If you get out of the war, you will get into sin. He says, don't listen to anybody that tells you you're going to burn out. You're not going to burn out. I promise you. He goes, you get out of the war. You have enough energy in your spirit. You will get into addictions and into sin. I assure you, you get out of the war, you will get into sin. He says, so the Lord's going to let your world get, it's going to grow and it's going to really occupy you. But he says, and the Lord will bless you and bless people and do some things here and there, but know this it's to keep you busy, to keep you out of sin. I was not very impressed with that. My point is this much of our struggles at the end of the day, though we want to get rid of them, much of our striving, it actually has a redemptive value. The very fact we're pushing as the caterpillar gets the cocoon, we are forming wings like a butterfly. There are many things we have no time and energy to do that we don't ever like to admit or even think that we would do them. But many of us would be doing other things if our life was completely easy. Maybe not in a week, maybe not in a year, maybe not in five years. But over decades, history just gives testimony of that for believers and unbelievers alike. And so I look at this thing called striving. It is God's way, but this is the God who saw the curse in the garden. I think he would say something like, striving is as much for you, saving you. You have no idea how essential it is that you war against your boredom in the prayer room, you war against your confusion in the Bible, that you go take classes and you study and you figure it out. That whole thing is completely engaging you in an entirely different mindset than you would be in. Amen. Let's stand. Lord, we ask you even now. God, we ask you for liberty in our spirit. Lord, we want to live lives of striving in the grace of God. We don't want to strive to earn your favor. We want to give ourself in diligence. We want to pursue with all of our heart. Let's go ahead and worship. For more free downloads from Mike Bickle, please visit mikebickle.com.