Trapdoors of Grace

Right, well good morning. Greetings in the name of Jesus. I appreciated that song we sang, Take Time to Be Holy.

I think it's a good foundation for what I have to share here. That phrase again stood out to me, just like Jeremy mentioned, take, let's see, take time to be holy, spend much time in secret. I have a question for you about that little phrase.

How good is it to spend time in secret? Is that a good thing or not? Is it a bad thing? Is it ever a bad thing? Think of this little illustration. I guess I'll call this a pre-sermon talk. Suppose you have a young man who grows up, he's a young boy, he's carefree, everything is going good, he plays with children, he has a good time, and he's just this happy little young boy, all right? Everybody looks at him, he's always got a smile on his face, and he's outside doing things with other people, with other children mostly.

Then as he grows older, something starts to happen. He starts to get quiet and sullen and spending time all alone in his bedroom, maybe with a computer or a phone. We're not sure what he's doing in there, and all of a sudden, we're not sure.

He's not the same young man that he used to be. Sure enough, we find out after he says, I've been doing some things in secret that aren't good. He turns away from that and he repents.

Now he's free again, and now he's back to just being with other people, and this is a good thing. The time in secret, we look back at that and say, that wasn't good. Now, time goes on and he gets born again.

He gives his heart to the Lord Jesus in a very real way, and suddenly he's once again gravitated to spending time in secret. He's always looking for a chance to go off by himself with his Bible. He's praying.

He comes out of that secret time, and his face is glowing. He's spent time with the Lord, and he loves his time in secret. As time goes on, he eventually gets married, has a family.

He's still spending time in secret. His wife values that time that she sees him spending time in secret. She says that's where he gets his strength from, his power, and she's glad that he does that.

It gives her security knowing that he spends time in secret. Eventually the church is looking for leaders, so they ordain this man and say, you come and you'll be a pastor for us. Okay, he does, and he is now in full-time ministry.

Life goes well for a while, but things eventually start to get shaky, kind of like we read about this morning. Church life isn't as peaceful as he thought it was going to be. He starts to get discouraged.

His life is consumed with putting out fires and dealing with problems, and he isn't able to spend any time in secret anymore. Eventually he starts getting discouraged. There's no power there in his life.

He's just constantly putting out these fires. Eventually the church kind of goes to...it doesn't do very well. He loses his place as a pastor.

He gets discouraged, and his wife sees he's a different person. He's no longer that vibrant Christian that used to spend time in secret with Jesus. But then as he gets more and more discouraged, and he's questioning even whether God is real, he starts spending time in secret again.

And this time it's in his office with the door closed, and they're even more concerned now than before about their husband and daddy and what's going on. And sure enough, those times in secret aren't good. They're bad.

They're giving him a...he's finding fulfillment in things he shouldn't be finding fulfillment in. And so as you look at that journey, my question is, is time in secret good or not? And the answer is that next phrase, with Jesus alone. You know, if it's with Jesus, time in secret is very, very good.

If it's not with Jesus, time in secret can be very, very bad, as that little journey of that man and his life illustrates. So I'd like to talk about something here that's mentioned over and over again in the Bible. The very last verse of the Bible, I wonder how many could quote it.

Revelation 20 verse 21, what does it say? Anybody know? Very good. Thank you for memorizing that. Could you do the second to the last verse too? I can't, so...okay. But that was great.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. And then there's an amen, I think, in most Bibles. Acts 4.33 says great grace was upon them all.

He's talking about the early believers there as they witnessed of the Lord Jesus. They had great grace upon their lives. John 1.17 talks about Jesus.

It says grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. In almost all of the epistles written by Paul, and I think other epistle writers as well, they open it up by saying grace and truth be multiplied to you. And so this idea of grace keeps coming up.

What is this grace? I guess I need an eraser here. And so the question is, what is this grace that the Bible keeps mentioning over and over again? What are we talking about? What does this word mean? We're going to talk about that some today. Grace.

And some of this is, I preached about a month ago, and this was a, at least part of this was a sermon that I preached back in Ohio and gave you kind of a sneak preview of it a month ago. So this is a little bit of a sequel to what we shared. You'll recognize maybe some of what some of the illustrations perhaps, but, but let's talk about it.

First of all, the definition. Now here's when we try to define that word grace, I have a question for the rest of you. When you hear a sermon and I wonder how many of you would say the favorite part of your sermon is when we start giving word definitions.

Is that the best part when a word definition comes out or do your eyes start to glaze over maybe like mine do a little bit and all of a sudden I can't really concentrate. I'm getting back to the, you know, get back to the main sermon because the definition kind of goes over my head. I can't really grasp it.

Well, that could be how this is going to happen here, but I want you to listen for this, this definition of grace. And here's the question I'd like you to ask. How could you boil that thing down to something more understandable than the long, I'm going to give you the long definition, but if you could boil it down to just four words, which four words would you pick? So I'll read the definition.

Grace, the spontaneous unmerited gift of the divine favor in the salvation of sinners and the divine influence operating in the individuals for their regeneration and sanctification. There's a lot of big words there. I'll read it again.

The spontaneous unmerited gift of the divine favor in the salvation of sinners and the divine influence operating in individuals for their regeneration and sanctification. If you were to pick four words out of that, what would they be? Anybody have a thought? Yeah, very good. That's what I'll put up here.

Did you cheat? Did you look at my, maybe I said this too weak. Grace equals divine influence and also divine. Did I get that right? Divine favor and divine.

Let's put the favor first. That's usually the one people think of primarily. So divine favor and divine influence.

And so a lot of times people think, okay, a divine favor. I like that one. That's, you know, mercy.

God's shown love to us. He's given us a grace. He's, he's, he's, he's forgiving us our sins.

That's certainly part of it. His divine favor upon us. But it's more than that.

It's divine influence. Divine influence is power. It's, it's the ability, it's God giving us the ability to do the things he wants us to do.

So there you have four words that if you ever think of the word grace again, think of those four words, God's divine favor and his divine influence. So it's not just his mercy, although that's included, but it's also the power to do the will of God. Grace teaches us wisdom.

It says in Titus, Titus 2 12 teaching us that the grace of God has appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and Godly in this present world. So grace brings wisdom. It teaches us what else is grace.

It brings power over sin. First Corinthians 10, 13. What does it say? It says, there's no temptation taking you such as is common demand.

God's faithful. And he's going to do what he's going to make with every temptation, a way to escape. Well, what is that way to escape? If you go up to Hebrews four, it talks about Jesus being tempted in all points.

Like as we are yet without sin, let us therefore do what come boldly to the throne of grace. So grace is the power is what you need to have power over sin grace to help in the time of need. And this grace is mentioned both the old and the new Testament talks about Noah finding grace in the side of the Lord.

Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah, Samuel. These are all men that had the grace of God upon them, even though it was like the new Testament says grace and truth came by Jesus Christ in a new and fuller way. Grace came by Jesus, but we still see men in the old Testament, even experiencing the grace of God.

Psalm 84, 11, the Lord will give grace and glory. No good thing will be. He withhold from them that walk up rightly.

Maybe you've seen families. You've seen people that you look at them and say, I think they have the grace of God in their life. You look at the fruit of their life and you say, wow, that's great.

Maybe their families are doing excellent. All their children are are faithful, serving the Lord, their marriages, the husband, wife. They're getting along so wonderful.

You say that's that's the grace of God. Maybe it's even a more carnal things, even like their finances or their health, or maybe the way things are going for them. You say that's the grace of God.

Maybe it's in ministry. John Wesley was a man who had as you as you look at some of the statistics from his life, there's no way to explain it except the grace of God was upon that man during his ministry. He he rode over 250,000 miles on a horseback.

It was like that's 10 times around the world. However, you can imagine that he's preached over 40,000 sermons in his life. I think one sermon is hard, you know, but 40,000 of them have to wonder how much time he spent preparing those 40,000.

So surely he preached the same one over and over again. I don't know. But 40,000 of them is still a lot, no matter how much you do it.

And often that was three times every day he'd be preaching three times a day, 40,000 total. He wrote over in between sermons, I guess, over 400 books and tracks. And because these books and tracks, he made quite a bit of money.

So he gave away hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is John Wesley. And you look at those statistics back when he didn't have a computer, he didn't have Internet, he didn't have an airplane to fly on.

And how in the world did he do what he did? All I can say is he had the grace of God, the divine favor and the divine influence on his life. But it's not just success. We know people who have the grace of God upon their life that are suffering their life.

You look at their life and you say it's not going well for them. And yet you sense the grace of God. There's a story I think I've told here before, a lady named Mara down in Honduras.

Gary Miller talks about her in one of his books. She was she was a lady that was so encouraging that they would bring people to come visit her to get to help them get encouraged as well. So Mara, she's there in this she's there in her house, but she can't get out of bed.

She's diabetic. And so she doesn't have that. She's blind.

She can't see and she can't walk. And there she sits in this bed. But people will come in and talk to her and she's overflowing with the grace of God.

And then they hear her story. Her story is she was once very rich, wealthy. Everything was going for her by the world standpoint, but she was very angry.

She was bitter. She was hateful toward everybody in spite of the fact that she and her family had all this money, this wealth, these businesses. And that was her life.

No grace back then, but everything was going well on the external. Now, externally, things are just she can't even have a bite to eat unless somebody shows mercy on her and brings her a bite to eat. That's how helpless she is.

But she's overflowing with the grace of God. We know a man comes here and preaches for us sometimes. He's we wouldn't look at his marriage and say it's very healthy.

But the grace of God comes out of that man over and over again. He's always overflowing in praise, never complaining about his marriage or his outward circumstances. I was just to a funeral earlier this week, family that lost their 18 year old son to drowning.

And you say, well, that's a devastating circumstance. It was. But the grace of God was on them, on their family, on father, mother, brother, sisters, on the whole congregation.

The grace of God was very evident as they trusted him, looked to him. And it wasn't the things were going so well, but as they knew where to turn for this grace. So we see fat, we see people, we see individuals, see families, see whole churches sometimes that you could say great grace was upon them all.

And the reason for this sermon is that I want us to be a group of people that has great grace. I want you young people to grow up with great grace, children to see great grace, parents to have great grace upon you. And that's why I wanted to preach is there is I should warn about the counterfeit grace.

Sometimes a person may have grace upon them for a while and then they fall. You know, we heard hear these bad stories. King Solomon had grace upon him for a while, but he turned away from that grace, turned away from he fell into sin, you know, hundreds of wives and then false gods and so forth.

In more modern times, we see here about these evangelists who do mighty things for God and God apparently is at work through them. And I would even venture to say that it was genuine grace at one point and then they fell into sin. And maybe it's before they die.

Maybe it's after they die. This sin gets revealed and you realize that whatever grace was there was tainted. It was perhaps gone and they were still coasting through on yesterday's grace.

And it leaves a very bad taste in the mouth of people who look on. There's some sort of a rot in the core of it. There's an appearance of power, but it's it's tainted.

So my desire is for us as a group of people that we have real grace, genuine grace, lasting grace that takes us all the way through to the very end. And so I wanted to talk about this grace, this lasting grace, this divine favor and divine influence. What do what what can we do to to to have it? And that brings us to the question, is there anything we can do? Because grace is what it's freely given, it's a gift of God, isn't it? If it's a gift of God, does that mean that I just have to simply wait and see if I'm perhaps given the gift, if I'm not given grace? I guess the other guy gets it because I'm just out of luck.

But if I get grace, that would be that would be great. Or maybe I can just choose to have grace. I just say, you know what, I'm going to be a person of grace and so I'm just going to make this happen and I'm going to just choose to to have grace.

Well, neither one of those is true, but there is a third option, and that is I can choose to do the things that open up the door to grace in my life. And so what are those doors? And you might remember this little illustration here, but just imagine God's reservoir of grace. And let's say this is a box with grace, full of grace.

God has abundant grace. You know, all of this is full of God's grace. And down here you have this little person that artist here, but that's a person, OK? He's got a head, arms, legs, that's what those are.

And he wants the grace of God in his life. So how is he going to get it? It's up there. God has an abundance of grace.

But how can it come down and come to where he is? And the answer is. Here you have these little I'll just call them trapdoors, these little trapdoors of grace that God has said, I want you to open those things up and maybe there's a little string attached to him and there's a funnel and this comes down here. And if he could grab a hold of that string and pull on it, it would open this up and the grace would pour out and pour onto him.

But he's got to know what those strings are. He's got to know what those trapdoors are, those trapdoors of grace that are here. And so I've got some of these I'd like to talk about.

This is a couple more than what I had when I shared this back in Ohio. But let's just see how well we know scripture and find out what some of these these are. First one, it's probably the most well-known one.

Say it after me. You fill in the blank. For by grace are you saved through what? Faith.

So faith is the first one we're going to put up here. Without faith, it is what? Impossible to please God because you must believe that He is. And Abraham, what did he do? He believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.

And so often this is the one that is a very valid one. It's a very real one. But there is lots of teaching out there that says faith is the only one.

Only faith. Faith alone. That's a lot of times what we hear.

People will say, hey, do you believe in faith alone? It's kind of a litmus test for whether you're teaching real true doctrine or not. Faith alone. Does faith come by grace? Yes, it does.

But does it come only by this grace come by faith? Get these two straight here. Is there anything else we can do? Is faith the only one? And the answer is, I think the answer is no. God has given us other things that he has told us to do that are more of these trap doors, if you please.

Strings attached. I want you to pull on these things and access more of God's grace. Second one I want to talk about.

And I added this one just as of last night, this morning, because of a conversation we had last night talking about harvest time. And feeding our minds and our children and and what they feed on. I'm going to put up here scripture.

All right. Just what are we what do we feed on? And we live in a world with a growing, growing mountain of ways to feed our minds. And it's just absolutely endless.

If you have any kind of technology, how you fill your mind, there's of course, we know there's lots of bad stuff to fill our mind with. And then we have scripture and lots of good stuff. And then in between, we have a lot of just fluff, neutral stuff that some of it's very interesting, actually.

But how are we going to fill our mind? Here's what the Bible says. All scriptures given by inspiration of God is profitable. It says from a child, Timothy, you have known the holy scriptures which are able to make you wise unto salvation.

That sounds like grace. It sounds like a doorway of grace into Timothy's life. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light into my path.

Oh, how I love how love I live law is my meditation day and night in Deuteronomy talks about binding his law, the written word back then, the New Testament wasn't here, but binding it on your your your your foreheads and your hands and just keeping it with you, meditating it on all the time. Let's say together some one first couple of verses. Blessed is the man.

Do we all know that by heart? Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord and in his law that he meditate day and night. And then, you know what the rest of that goes on to say? It says he shall be what like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit.

Is that what we want? Fruit and his leaves are not wither and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. You want to be one of those people that prospers in everything that you do? Well, it says in your law, meditate day and night. Now, with the choices that we have, our conversation last night was, well, what do we do? How do we encourage us that have time? Maybe we're driving down the freeway.

When we went to this funeral, we had lots of time to sit and listen and had two little girls in the backseat. And so we chose some things to listen to while we were driving down the road. We have lots of choices these days.

Something I had something recommended by another brother, and it was it was very beneficial. And that opened the door to another one. And on down the line we went and it was good.

And then the girls, they wanted to pick out a song from your phone. Here, let me choose a song, you know. So they did that for a little while.

And there's lots of time, you know, when you drive eight hours and I think we drove 12 hours the first day, six hours. So 18 hours we were on the road, just driving down the road, lots of time to fill our minds with something. So we have choices.

So how what's the right avenue to get us to fill our minds with scripture? You know, one way would be to just put a line and a limit and maybe that's appropriate. But if there's there's something else that I would love to do, and that is just simply inspire all of us. If we can realize the power of filling our mind with scripture, you know, that little phrase whatsoever you do will prosper.

If you knew that what I'm doing, filling my mind with the word of God, I am opening up the door to everything I do prospering. Would that be enough motivation to pass up on something a little bit more interesting for something that's going to make me prosper? If we could just get ahold of that. So if I could and you know, if we can, if we could have that motivation, you know, wow, what imagine what it would do.

Imagine what we could, you know, what our lives would be like if we would enter into that Psalm one promise that everything we're going to do is going to prosper if we fill our minds with with scripture. OK, so I kind of threw that one in. Looks like we have half an hour left.

There were five of these that we got from the sermon. So if you have your Bibles and you want to open up to Matthew five, six and seven, I have five more of these trapdoors we want to talk about here before we close. These all come from the Sermon on the Mount.

I think if you would take this sermon and really analyze it, you could almost say that the whole sermon is a manual on how to access the grace of God. That would be one very good definition of the Sermon on the Mount, a manual, a maybe not a. Complete manual, because we also have the rest of the New Testament, but a very, very well-rounded manual of how to access God's grace. And so I have five different five different things we're going to write up here on the board that that we're going to talk about that God has promised these things will result in grace being poured into your life.

Doesn't always use the word grace. The first three that we're going to talk about, he says, I will reward you openly if you do these things with the right attitude. So the first one we're going to talk about is also the subject of a month ago when we were here, and that is this one of giving all this giving Matthew chapter six.

And there are so many promises here. And again, he says there's conditions. Your giving has to be in secret.

You can't do it for the purpose of winning approval of other people and expect to have grace poured into your life. But if you do it in secret, number one, if you do it with charity, number two, first Corinthians chapter 13, then my father who sees in secret reward will reward you openly. That's grace.

Second Corinthians nine, a chapter about giving says in verse six, he would sow with sparingly talking about giving shall reap also sparingly. He would show us. So it's bountifully shall reap also bountifully every man according as he purposes in his heart.

So let him give not grudgingly or of necessity for God loves everyone. Is that what it says? No, it doesn't say God loves everyone. We could say maybe, well, does God love everyone? I get asked that all the time on the billboard calls.

But here it says, God loves the cheerful giver. So whatever God loves about everyone out there here, he picks out a special group of people and says, I love that group of people, especially. Now, how does that all fall in to our theology? I don't know.

In John 14, it also says God loves those who obey his commands. If we abide in him and keep his commands, then something about God's love will be poured out on him. So there is a suggest a, there are conditions to at least some aspects of God's love.

And here is one of the God's conditions. He says, I love a cheerful giver. And then guess what? Verse eight, you're probably not, you don't have your Bibles open to that.

You're still open to the Sermon on the Mount. So I'll just read it to you. God is able to make all grace.

I'll bound to you that ye having all sufficiency in all things may abound to every good work. You know, this is, this is a powerful truth and it has been perverted. Obviously you've got this, these people out here, they have the health and wealth gospel.

They perverted this into an idea. You can live selfishly. If you just send us money to our ministry on the TV screen, you send us money and, and, and God's going to pour out blessing on your life.

And eventually you'll have a jet airplane. Um, that's kind of the message. At least that's what happened to the preacher who's telling you this.

And, uh, so they have it perverted. That doesn't mean there's not truth to it. Okay.

What does God say? Philippians four 19, my God shall do what supply all your need. He doesn't say I'm going to supply all your wants, but he says I'll supply all your need. Now there's conditions there.

He's talking about a giving group of people in first in Philippians chapter four, they were, they were busy meeting the needs of the poor, meeting the needs of Paul, the evangelist, meeting the needs of gospel people, taking the gospel to the far ends of the world. And then he says, my God shall supply all your need. So there's, it's conditional promise.

Malachi three 10, bring all the ties into the storehouse. This is old Testament. I know, but I think it has a very powerful, maybe even more powerful new Testament application.

Bring all the ties into the storehouse that there may be food in my house and try me now says the Lord of hosts. And if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you such a blessing that there will not be room enough to receive it. Jesus said Luke six, given it shall be given you good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over.

So men given to your bosom for, with the same measure you meet with all should be measured to you. Again, Luke 16, 10, he that is faithful, not which is least is faithful. Also in much.

And he, that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much. John Wesley was a man who was convicted about Jesus worth. He was convicted about Jesus words about laying up treasures and don't lay up treasures on earth, but do lay up treasures in heaven.

And so he was very passionate about, you know, giving what extra he had to the needy. He even said this, he said, you know, when I die, he says, if you find more than a hundred dollars in my purse, uh, you can consider me to be a robber. Cause I, you know, his, his goal was to give people to use what God had given him to meet the needs of others.

Now that was John Wesley's conviction. How much of his giving would we tie to that grace that we talked about earlier, where he was spending so much time preaching the gospel, staying strong. His voice didn't give out his, his, uh, his writing ability didn't wane.

He, he was able to ride on horseback horseback without getting all those sores that people get. Um, how much of that was tied to Jesus promise? They said, my father will reward you openly. If you give in secret and, uh, and do what I said to do, how much of that was tied together? Jesus made the promise.

John Wesley did what he said. He pulled the string, the trap door opened, and it sure looks like grace poured out upon him by the fruit that we can look at right now. All right, let's talk about another one.

We'll go on here in Matthew chapter six. And so Jesus talked about giving number one, second one he mentioned here is prayer. And again, this is something that Jesus, he's not saying sit back and wait and maybe I'll pour grace out upon you.

He says, go pull the string. Then I'll pour grace out upon you. Pray.

How do you pray in secret again? Um, he even says, you know, a tool that you should have is, is a, is a closet door. Very powerful tool. If you want an effective prayer life, a closet door, some kind of way that you can get in secret.

So, so what, so you can, when you pray, there's going to be fruit behind it. And another thing I would say is a prayer list. How do you, what do you, what do you know, if you have a lot of time in secret, spend much time in secret, what do you even pray about? Pray about, well, maybe you think about things during the day that you want to pray about that night or the next morning or whenever your prayer time is, um, write it down, keep a list, pray about it.

There was a, um, I get these, uh, this, these emails from this website called the, uh, the eternal prayer flame and different people write in and they'll, they'll say different things. One of these came back on June 11th. This is Elisha Beiler.

I think some of us might know him. He's from down in Mexico and he wrote a little article. In fact, I just saw somebody had done like a little documentary of a trip they took down there to visit him.

He's in Mexico there, where just the most barren ground you can possibly imagine there, where the Tarahumara Indians are with just with these, these deep canyons gets really, really hot, dry, um, some of the most barren soil in the world, probably, but somehow they're eking out a living there. And Elisha and his family are there ministering to these people and they've been there for years. And the question came to him, how do you have strength to do this? He says, early on in my Christian life, I made a decision, spend time reading the word of God, spend time in prayer, spend time in fasting.

Those three things he said are the key to my, whatever I'm able to do. He says, without those, I would have no energy, no, I don't know if you use the word grace, but we know what it is. It's the grace of God.

And anyway, they asked him to write this little devotional and he says, he said, here's a couple of things that he mentioned. First of all, Romans 8, 26, we know not how, what we should pray for as we ought. He says, the secret to effective praying is allowing the Holy spirit to intercede for us.

And then he gives a few tips, seek first the kingdom of God, asking you where we see, but this is the one that stood out to me. He says, set aside a place and a time to pray. What's that mean exactly? First of all, is it good just to pray as you're driving down the road? Absolutely.

Pray as you're doing your work, pray, have a prayer in your lips all the time. That kind of prayer is wonderful. And the people who can learn to do that, it's, it's, it's a great, I would like to learn more about that, that constant attitude of prayer.

But he says, of course we should be in communication with God as we work, drive, et cetera. Yet there's something about the prayer closet, which helps us fasten ourselves to effective intercession. As important as the constant communion with God is, there's something powerful about the time and place to pray.

The prayer closet that helps us fasten ourselves. We go here for the specific purpose of praying the next week, got another email. This was another, another man they asked to share about prayer June 18.

And this was a Brent, uh, fray or fry. I think that's how you say it. Brent fry.

And he says this, this is just one little part of his devotional. He says, when we establish a place, a room, a chair or closet set aside for prayer, it can be helpful in preparing us to pray. This place should be away from distraction, a place we associate with spending time with God, not executing our other daily tasks.

So again, they seem to be saying kind of the same thing, a special time for prayer. All right, let's go on to number five here. Another trap door that God mentions again, right here in the same chapter.

This is one called fasting. I don't know if you're like me, but every time I hear a sermon about fasting, it makes me hungry. I don't know why exactly, but, um, it's still, the Bible mentions it.

So we're going to talk about it here. The, again, it has some conditions. It says when you fast, not if you fast, but when you fast, don't do it for show, do it in secret.

And if you do it in secret, God will reward you. This again, Elisha, he also, he mentioned that same thing that, you know, fasting as part of it. Andrew Murray said this about fasting.

He says, he says about prayer that, um, he says there's two lessons about prayer, about prayer. First of all, faith. We talked about faith is the very first one.

Faith needs what? To grow. It needs prayer. What does prayer need to grow? It needs fasting.

He said fasting to, um, prayer needs fasting for its full and perfect development. And he goes on talking about the reasons, you know, the health, the flesh, the battle between the, the, the, the two, the, the, the spirit and the flesh and so forth. But that was his comment.

Prayer needs fasting for its full growth. It's only in the life of moderation, temperance, and self-denial. There will be the heart of the strength to pray much.

So once again, one more trap door of grace, a way to open up one of these doors along here and allow the grace of God to pour out on this person. And so that it can be truly said, whatever he does, whatsoever he does will prosper. Okay.

Let's talk about number five. This is also, sorry, number six. This is also found in the Sermon on the Mount.

Uh, but it's earlier. It's up in chapter five, the very first part of the Sermon on the Mount. To illustrate this one, I'd just like to ask you to think about, I don't know if you ever met an individual who says I'm just a failure.

Everything I do fails. I can't do anything right. It just goes wrong.

My relationships are going bad. My finances are going bad. My health is going bad.

My, my job is going bad. My church relationships are going bad. Everything's going wrong, whatever they're trying to do.

So, so imagine one of these people, I don't know if it's a young man, put yourself in their shoes, but young man, young lady, young man, let's say he's a young man. He's, he says, everything's a failure. And, uh, so he wants to go talk to a wise man.

Well, you know how it is in these stories. The wise man's always up at the top of the hill with a long beard. So that's, that's same, same here.

He goes up to the top of the hill and talk to this wise man about what do I do? My life is a failure. Everything is going wrong. The wise man listens to him a while and okay.

Well, he tells the young man, I'll tell you what I'll do. He says, I'm going to give you a little tool that you can use to, to help. And I just pulled this out.

He says, what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you this little laser light. This isn't a laser light. This is a flashlight.

This is the closest thing I could find. So he says, what I want you to do is take this with you, keep it with you all the time. And whenever you have something that you want to succeed, just aim this at it.

Just point that at it and it'll immediately make it succeed. So, you know, your wallet, you want that to grow pointed up there, your, your health, your relationships, your job, whatever it is, you got this little laser light. I want you to point it at it.

He's a young man says, wow, that's pretty amazing. So he takes it and he goes, he tries it and it works. And he's, the first thing he tries, it becomes a success.

And second day, things are going well. Third day, back, back up the mountain to talk to the man. Hey, things aren't going so well anymore.

I'm back to failure. Well, did you remember to lose, use the light? Oh, no. He says, I forgot.

Okay, back down the hill. He's going to go do it again. And he keeps doing that until it becomes a habit to pull this out with everything that he has.

Now, the question is, what is this little thing? And that's number five. It's Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving, or thankfulness. He, it's found there.

In fact, Jesus talks about it. And it's maybe some of the toughest circumstances you can possibly imagine. You know, we could look at everything that we're going through right now.

We could even look at somebody who gets thrown into prison because they do something bad. But what about getting thrown in prison? Because you did something good. I mean, of all the discouraging things, wouldn't that be about the top of the list? But Jesus says, you can pull out your laser light and shine it at that thing and make it into a success.

Here's what he says. Matthew chapter five, verses 11 and 12. He says, blessed are you when men shall revile you and persecute you and say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake.

What are you supposed to do? Pull out the laser light. He said, rejoice and be exceeding glad for great is your reward in heaven for so persecuted they, the prophets, which were before you. He didn't say you're going to get out of jail immediately, but you can immediately turn that circumstance into a success rather than a failure.

And the same thing is true with so many other, with so many other aspects of our life. When we look at all the different issues that we face, we try to have relationships in our home. We try to have relationships in our church.

We try to have relationships at our job. We try to have relationships in, you know, in marriage. And you know people that are thankful and you know people who are not thankful.

And over and over again, it's the thankful ones who are succeeding and the unthankful ones who are not. And it would be easy to turn that thing around and say, well, the reason they're thankful is because they've got good. Everything's going good for them.

But is it possible? It's actually the opposite. The reason things seem to be going good is because they're thankful. Because when you really start drilling down and find out some of these things, it wouldn't necessarily, you know, at the surface, things a lot of times aren't going that well.

If you just look at it, whatever, mathematically, look at it in the flesh, look at it just on the surface. But you meet this person and he's always bubbling over with thanksgiving about what God is doing. And he has turned that thing into a blessing, turned it into a success that most people would call it a failure.

And so, you know, if we can leap for joy, like it says in Luke 6, if we can rejoice in times of persecution, is there anything that we couldn't rejoice in? Well, it says, Paul says, in everything, give thanks, giving thanks for all things, in all things and for all things. I think it says at some point, you know, if that thanks can become a way of life, thanksgiving, thankfulness, it can become a little tool that we can point at just about any circumstance. Maybe it's any circumstance, maybe I shouldn't say just about, point it at any circumstance and give thanks for that or in that circumstance and change it from a failure to a success.

And so think about that. And the next time you feel like a failure, ask yourself, did I forget to pull out my little light and aim it at that situation? Because often that's exactly the problem. We forget to do that.

And for that reason, it becomes a failure. All right. One more.

I'm not sure if I can write this well or not. Well, we'll try it here. Let me read some verses here.

James 4, verse 10. Actually, I'm going to read that here in a little bit. But let's first of all, stay there in Matthew chapter 5, right where your Bible is open to.

And first, very first one. And this one, I think probably is the most important because it's really the umbrella over which all the rest of these are. Jesus starts out the Sermon on the Mount, very first one, blessed are the poor in spirit.

Verse 3, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. And blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

And those three things make up what we could call humility. Humbling ourselves. Again, it's really, really hard, but I'll just shorten it there.

Humble yourselves. James 4, 10 says, but he giveth more grace. Wherefore, he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth what to the humble? Grace.

He gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.

Draw nigh to God and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners, and purify your hearts, ye double minded. Be afflicted and mourn and weep.

Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to heaviness. And that was all a description of this next verse. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord and he shall lift you up.

What's that lifting up? It's this word up here, grace. He is lifting up those who choose to humble themselves. That doesn't mean that immediately people will call you a humble person or you can even call yourself a humble person or God will call you a humble person.

You may not yet have humility just because you humbled yourself one time. But to humble yourself one time is doable. It's pretty hard to humble yourself for the rest of your life today, but you can humble yourself today, today.

And that's what God calls us to do. Choose today to humble yourself. Eventually, it will result in a person with humility and God giving you his grace rather than resisting you.

First Peter 5, 6, Be clothed with humility for God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, into the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you in due time. I've set it up here in this pulpit already.

The most important thing a person can do is this, this verb right here, humble yourself. And, um, we as humans are, we got to fall in nature. That's really the only, the only fix for our fallen human nature is this word right here, the grace of God.

Without grace, we are absolutely hopeless, but God doesn't give grace to everyone. He gives grace to the humble and resists those who are not humble. And so humble yourself and do it.

And if you look at, if you think about this, think about this, humbling yourself as being an umbrella that all the rest of these are under. If you do the opposite of this, instead of humbling myself and look myself up in pride, can I have faith if I have pride? No. Can I give thanks if I have pride? No.

Because a proud person thinks I deserve better than what I'm getting. So he doesn't give thanks for the little things he does have. Can a humble person, uh, well, can you fast? Well, not really, at least not in the right spirit, because think about this.

I mean, you had the Pharisee there and Luke 18, he fasted with the wrong motives and God gave him no grace, but the real motives is saying, I want something, but I choose to say no to whatever that thing is. That is an act of humbling myself. I'm choosing to, in fact, that's what humbling yourself is.

Often it simply means doing the opposite of what comes naturally. So what comes naturally eating? So the opposite is fasting. What comes naturally? Not praying.

That doesn't come naturally usually, unless you've had many, many years of, of practice, because, Hey, let's go out there and do something that actually produces something. Uh, that's more, more our nature. So when I take time away from that, away from sleep, away from work, away from eating, away from whatever else I'm doing and praying, I'm admitting, God, I can't do this.

I'm helpless. I'm humbling myself. What about giving? Natural thing is for me to keep for myself, spending to myself, but I'm going to humble myself.

What about scripture again? You know, if I come to scripture in pride, it's not going to benefit me, but if I come in humility, it's going to open up that door. So my challenge for each one of you here is to, if you want to be this guy down here that has the grace of God poured out upon you, go start pulling these strings. God has given us these things for a reason.

He doesn't want us just to sit back and wish I had his grace. He says, go receive his grace and keep on receiving his grace. And as you do that, it'll be said individually about you.

Great grace was upon him and her. And eventually great grace was upon them all. That's my dream here is that God would look at everyone in this building and say about us, great grace was upon them all.

Why? Because they just got lucky. No, because they learn to pull the strings and to keep on pulling them, to remind yourself to pull the strings when you don't feel like pulling the strings and receiving that grace. Let's bow for prayer.

Let's actually stand for prayer. Father, we come to you in the name of Jesus. We are needy individuals, Lord.

We desperately need your grace. We sense our own sinfulness, our selfishness, our pride. And Lord, we ask you right now to pour out your grace upon us.

We ask you, Lord, to teach us to access your grace in the way that you have told us to access your grace. And so I pray that your grace will be poured out on each person in this building as they learn, as we learn to do what you've said. Lord, these things are not easy.

Our pride dies hard. But teach us, Lord. Be patient with us and fill us with your grace and your power, Lord, not for our own pleasure or glory, but for your power, for your glory, your kingdom.

I pray that you would be glorified. In Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated.