God can always use you

remaining the same person i was reading this story recently about a guy who wanted uh he had come to jesus in jail and then this guy had caught up with him years later and he was a gangster and the guy's like how are you a gangster and he's like no don't worry but i'm a christian gangster and he's like no no no that's not a thing like he's like yeah but there's christian lawyers and christian musicians and he's like yeah no no and then he make this little phrase he said see the problem in all of our lives is we tend to want to become christianized versions of what we already are and what we are determined to remain and that tends to be our life right like we just want to stick the jesus bumper sticker on the back of the car and move on with our life but the reality is when you meet jesus he cuts you and he starts to change your life but that's good because that's surgery and that's what you actually need you need to be changed which means when you face sin in your life you can't just go along like these guys in corinth were doing and just kind of play with it and see how far you can go you got to run from it that's what paul is going to actually tell these people you have to run from sin or it will kill you it's like i'm i was uh i was sitting up in my uh condo one day um a bunch of years ago and i looked down and there were i saw that my car had been broken into and so i ran down and i like oh my goodness and i look over and these two like 20 year old girls are running away from my car and i'm like what the heck so i ran after them and chased me i'm like you have my stuff they're like yeah i have your stuff and they look to me and then all of a sudden they go you smell really good i'm like what and all of a sudden they started coming toward me and they're like hey you know you're interesting you wanna and i'm like what and i it wasn't because i was a good-looking guy it was just because i think there was something wrong with them and so they started coming toward me and then i had to actually run away from them all right so originally i chased them down to get my stuff now i'm running away from the girls who were stealing from this is the picture of what the this is like joseph in the old testament right it's like okay potiphar's wife's coming on each other's ah joseph and he's 20 and full of hormones and she's coming and and she literally he's like i got to get out here and leaves his cloak in her arms while he runs away from her that's the picture of what you're supposed to do with sin but we play with it we flirt with that girl at work we at school or whatever we kind of oh let's get into this and let's get and see how far it can go and paul is going to go that's how you end up like a corinthian christian whacked trying to synchronize what they believe with who they already are and he's going to lay out for 16 chapters that is not the way you live your life and so he says this verse 1. here's what he says paul okay stop right there so so this is why it takes me three and a half years to get through bible books at my own church and uh okay this is a really important work okay paul he starts this letter by introducing himself to these people now if you haven't been to church very much you might think oh yeah the apostle paul he's a big deal he like wrote the bible and he started churches and he did all these great things and it's true he literally wrote 13 letters of the new testament he changed western civilization he planted churches all over the he was one of the big figures that changed history and some of you might think well the reason for that is because he was always a saint he was always a good guy the thing that you miss in that is he was a murderer and a killer he actually killed the first christians that ever existed go to acts chapter eight he martyrs stephen the people who martyred stephen lay their cloak at the feet of a man named sulla he is a murderer and a kill now here's what i find beautiful about that it means that whatever you came in here with how however your life is god can use you not because of you but in spite of you

Channel: Bayside Church

Views: 2,989

Rating: 4.9578948 out of 5

Keywords: Bayside Church, Ray Johnston, Bible, Hope, Compassion, Love, God

Id: pwFfnIQBYRc

Length: 4min 12sec (252 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 16 2021