What It Really Means to Be a Christian

So I have a question for you. What's a Christian? I mean, you ask 10 people today what a Christian is, you're going to get 10 different answers. I mean, it's crazy. I was talking to some young folk a little while back and this subject came up and they didn't really know what the definition was. I said, well, there's only one way. And they looked at me like, what does that mean? I've had that all my life. I mean, it used to be just synonymous with, hey, see you later. One way. It's one way. There is only one way. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. And no man comes to the Father except through him. And that's the beginning of wisdom. That's how it starts, okay? Fear of the Lord's beginning of wisdom. By understanding his greatness and our nothingness, how he loves us. Such an incredible thing. But somehow today it's gotten blurred now. And I think we need to ask ourselves, what is a Christian? Are you a Christian? Seriously, are you a Christian? How do you know you're a Christian? Romans 10, 9 spells out pretty quickly. He says, if you believe, the writer says, if you believe in your heart, that's salvation, and you confess it. When you have an outward confession, when you tell people about Jesus, then you're saved. Are you telling people about Jesus? That's the heart of our ministry tonight, telling people about Jesus, right? And that's really the confirmation. I love the scripture. I think it's one of the most powerful scriptures in the Bible. It's the parable of the tree. It was the last parable that Jesus gave us. And you remember as he said, they're talking to his disciples. He talked about the dead branches. And we have a lot of those in the church. He said, they'll be cast into the fire. It's tragic, folks. There are two ways to go, okay? But he says, but if you're bearing fruit, ah, Hear what the words say therein. My joy remain with you, and your joy remain full. That's being a Christian. Karen, I caught that vision in 1976. We're 50 years of having joy, okay? Never lose your joy, and you never will when you're proclaiming his name. When you're telling people about him, he fills you with joy in spite of the fact that you lost your daughter when she was 49 years old. In spite of all the hardships that have been, we've never lost our joy. We don't have to. Because our perspective is here. This world is not our home. We're just passing through. We're going to be in heaven. And I look at the picture of Nicole on my phone every day. And I say, you're happier now than you were then. And if you're happy, why should I not be happy? Do I grieve? Yes. Do I cry even to this day? It never stops. That's grieving. The more you love, the more you grieve. But I'm talking about joy. I tell them what it means to be a Christian. There's life to it. And it's your life. How are you living your life? Are you living for him? Are you telling people about Jesus? What's happening in our churches today? You know, we think that, one study for a Pew, a huge research study on sermons, said that only 10% of the sermons even mentioned salvation. Well, if you're not mentioning salvation, telling people how they can get to heaven, what's the purpose of the church? 90% of our churches are just woke. They're telling you three-point service and making you laugh. If you're a church like that, run. Don't walk, run. I don't care how much you love your pastor. I don't care how much you love the people there. Run. It'll damn your soul. The church is beating you up. It's convicting you. The Holy Spirit comes in and stops me from doing things. It cracks me every Sunday. Don't forsake the assembly of the saints. If you think you don't need church, you're wrong. You might make it. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's not likely. So many of you are hurt by the church, by people in the church. Yeah, I get that. I have two. I switched church three different times. One, I was on a soldier for a year before I found the right church. But let me tell you, there are great churches around. If you search for them, you'll find one in your area. They're all over the place. But they're only about 10%. Do you care enough to find one? I was telling somebody the other day, it's like you don't like the boat, so you jump off the boat. I didn't like that boat. I wasn't comfortable. They treated me badly. I'm out swimming and I'm getting tired of swimming. It's starting to drown. And all these boats come by. Hey, come on board. Come on board. Oh, happy. No, no, no. I've tried the boat. I don't like boats. And you drown. Folks, if you're not in church, you're going to drown most likely. Don't do that. Be a Christian. And he says, don't forsake the assemblies of the saints. The assembly is a united, it's not gathering. Did you get that? It's not a gathering of the saints. It's assembly. When you come together as one and you sing as one and you worship as one, we see the Holy Spirit missing. There's nothing like that. You can't get that just on the street. Thank God we have internet pastors. There's a lot of you that can't get out. You're constrained from doing that. Thank God for the, for the, the Jack Hibbs, the David Jeremiah's, the Jack Graham's, the First Baptist Dallas. We have great pastors that will feed you, but they can't over the airways through the phone or video experience the fellowship, the assembly of the saints. It's critical. This is what being a Christian is all about. And then when you go to church, what's going on? Why do we have mixed messages from the church? The statistics, I'm a church lover. I'm a pastor lover, okay? I have two great churches. I live in two states. And I have Jack Hibbs, who is just a rock star. One of my best friends. Calvary Chapel, Chino Hills, Google Wave. He's amazing. They have Luke Barnett, Dream City Church. They have the Dream Centers all over. There's like 200 of them. One in LA started there. An amazing ministry. Altar calls, every service. Conviction, every service. I'm weeping. That's church. That's being a Christian. I get that every Sunday. Going to church is not a decision you make 52 times a year, folks. It's not. You make it one time for a lifetime. It's Sunday I go to church. No matter what. That's what being a Christian is all about. You respond. But then you go to the wrong church. You know that... Biblical worldview we're calling to have a biblical order if you're a Christian of a biblical worldview and and that means It's not complicated Jesus, Son of God, He's born of a virgin, lived a perfect life, died on the cross, shed His blood for your salvation to give you eternal life, and was resurrected and sent to heaven. I mean, that's what a biblical worldview is. It's not complicated. You know that only about 50%, some statistics say less than 50% of our senior pastors hold a biblical worldview. What's a Christian? Even our pastors don't have a biblical worldview. And when you get to assistant pastors, it's down in the 40 percentile. When you get to our youth pastors and our ministering, it's down in the 30 percentile. They have a biblical worldview. How are you going to have a biblical worldview if you go to church that doesn't preach a biblical worldview? We're losing 80 percent of our young people from church. They grew up in church. They go to Christian college. You know 80 percent of them we lose? I thought they were Christian, and now they're not. What happened? Teach your children the ways of the Lord when they're young, when the girls will not depart from it. You know what's wrong? We're not teaching the ways of the Lord. We're teaching gibberish. We're teaching jumping around and worshiping just for worshiping, praising to praise and having experiences and never stopping to get them saved. to get them on their knees and praying them through them so they have a real salvation, so they're actually Christians, so when they get into the colleges and the world starts pressing on them, they'll stand strong because they know the Word of God. That's what being a Christian is. Yeah. It's not hard. There's so many great scriptures that describe it, and they give you joy. They give you joy. You would expect me to talk about Romans 8, 28 because that's like one of my most favorite scriptures. And it talks about how, when you love him, first off, let's go back. Let me regress for a moment. Well, when they said, how do we love you? First off, he says, they'll know you by your love. Did you get that? I'm gonna go back real basic for a second. How they know you're a Christian? How do other people know that you're a Christian? They'll know you by your love. Get that. Not by your being a good person. Not by you being a quote all kinds of scripture. Not by your extrovertness or your ability to speak and overwhelm people. Your sales has nothing to do with it. They'll know you by your love. I've met precious people that are not overwhelming in personality, but they're so close to God. I just want to hug them. I just want to listen to everything they have. I want to be closer to Jesus. I want to be closer to them. You need to be living a life where people want what you have. That's love. It's all about love. Allow God to love you, but not just love you, but to flow through you. Go back to that parable for a moment of the fig tree, okay? He didn't say, when I flow to you and minister to you, you have joy. He didn't say that. Read it. It's that last parable in the garden, right at the end of Christ's life. It's in all the Gospels. And he says... And wherein you bear fruit, when the health of God, when the Holy Spirit not only flows to you and saves you and convicts you and lifts you up, but flows through you and affects everybody around you, that's when His joy remained with you and your joy remained full. That's being a Christian. It's so simple. It's not hard. It doesn't take books. You don't have to read textbooks. You don't have to get your points down. It's not hard to love on people. The world is not lovable. Most of them are abominable, you know, in our eyes. They're evil. The politicians, the kids on the street, they're not evil. They're lost. Do you understand what lostness is? They're lost. Satan's the god of this world. And he puts plates over their rights. They can't even see. The scripture actually says they see evil is good. That's why they're promoting all these mindless things. How can they possibly believe that? And they're shouting it with blood vessels pumping out their necks. They're shouting it. They're believing it. Shouting such insane things. Right? Because Satan's the God of this world, and he has them in his grasp. And he has them, and he convinces them that evil is good. How do we change that? When they asked him, how do we show you that we love you, Jesus? He said, keep my commandments. Okay, I'm not sure I can even quote all Ten Commandments. I don't even know if I can at this moment. That's a big task. But then he says, which one's the most important? He says, actually, it's just two. You can forget the rest. What? Who said that? Jesus. Jesus said that. He said, if you love me, and when Jesus, whatever he talks about love, he's not talking about, I love you, man. I love you, God. No, no. Every time love is mentioned in the Bible, it's wholehearted, all in love. Love, your first love. He speaks to the church of Ephesus in Revelation 2, and he says, I know you, he's talking to us, I know you go to church. I know you're no good from bad. You know good teaching from bad. I know you give sacrificially. I know you're doing all this stuff, but I have this against you. I'm no longer your first love. I have a testimony that I went for years. He wasn't my first love, and he wasn't answering my prayers. I couldn't figure out what's going on. I feel like my business was my love. I was living and dying for my business. God, help me with my business. It became my God. I couldn't believe when I woke up for that, I just wept. How could I do that? I know better than that. What's your first love? What gets you excited? What do you talk about? What do you pray about? What fills your prayers? If it's not so, something's wrong. Like this world, this world's going away. I don't care what you do on this earth. I don't care how great it is, how bad it is. I don't care. We're about to be in heaven momentarily. It could happen tomorrow. And then this world means nothing. It doesn't matter if you're American or Russian or Chinese or Ukrainian. It won't matter. The only thing that matters will be if you believe that Jesus Christ died for you on the cross and you confess with your mouth, you told other people about them, about him. Do you understand the people are lost and they're going to stay lost and tell somebody, tell you, tell them God loves them. That's our job. Do you know how he speaks to the people through us? And when we go quiet, they won't hear. Do you know for the last 60 years we've gone quiet? You want to know why the world, our world, America is out of control? You want to know why the corruption is there? You want to know why all the deviant behavior is happening? Because they're lost. And it's our fault, the church, us Christians, because we haven't been telling them God loves you. And they're ready for it. I can tell you every single person is hungering for God's love. They're hungering for it. They're desperate for what you have if you're a Christian. What I have, the message talks about how we carry this precious gift around in the clay pots of our ordinary lives. I just peddle car wax. How many times have I led somebody to the Lord or moved a closer to God and walked around and said, what am I, I just peddled car wags. How is it you could possibly use me in those moments? But he does, and he does it every day. And he gives you this most luxurious reward, award, whatever, honor possible. I don't know another scripture like it after John 3.16 and Romans 10.9 when he says, Okay, Christian, now that you're a Christian, now that you're serving me, I promise you, look at this. This is his promise. You know the scripture and you pass right by it. He promises, I promise you, everyone listen to me right now. He promises you, he'll make everything in your life, even the bad stuff, happen. Even the smallest stuff. Work for good when you do two things. You got to read that whole scripture, folks. When you love me, get that love. That's a whole heart of love. When you just love him. I love you, God. Thank you for saving a wretch like me. You know he knew your name. He knew who you are now before he created the earth. This is all scripture. You can back up. I don't have time to give you all the individual scripture. He placed you in your brother's womb. He's never left you. Nothing can separate you from the love of God. He knows your every thought. He knows the words you're going to say before you say them. And he loves you anyway. Go figure. Is that love? That's a dimension of love. We love people who love us. He loves us in spite of us. He loves you in spite of you. And he's never loved anybody more than you. And his goal is to love you and allow his love to flow through you to everybody around you. So they want what you have. It's not going to happen any other way. They're going to stay lost until God loves them through you. There's nothing in your life that's secular. Nothing. Nothing in your life is secular, folks. If you're a Christian, everything you do and say is moving everybody watch you closer or further away from God. You're a full-time minister. You didn't know that, did you? Oops. Oops. Yeah, on those moments when you get upset and the language spouts out of your mouth from the depths of your heart. Yeah, I'm talking about those times. When you're celebrating and words come out and just, you know, I think I'll have another round. Give me another drink. Foul mouth. How many Christians are doing that? Do you realize that people are watching you? And you're a Christian. You're a Christian. And they're watching you in your behavior, in your meanness, your dismissiveness, your laxness in your life. Do you know that most Christians, most non-Christians are non-Christians because of Christians? That's our responsibility. And we're letting them down. And unfortunately, the church is honoring the big givers today. So many of the big givers are talking about how they're such a blessing to the church and to God and giving their money, and they're doing it over drinking their booze and cussing and everything. I see it. I see it happens. They live their lives, and they go to church on Sunday. Oh, yes, praise God. And then there's Brother So-and-so, and he's the one that's supporting this, and the pastor just loves him and gives him all kinds of favors. And you go to a parachurch ministry, they give you the the best suite on the boat, or the best table, or the best room. You get rewarded for being a secular Christian today. You're not even Christian. And you're acting like it's Christian. And everybody else will watch and say, I need to be like them. And we're sending people to hell by how we live our lives. I beg you. This is what being a Christian is all about. It's serious. It's deadly serious. He came to seek and save the lost. That's his purpose. And that scripture, Romans 8, 28 says, when you live for my purpose, seek and save the lost. Then I'll make everything in your life work together for good. That's the end of fear. How did I get rid of fear? Karen and I haven't had fear for decades. It's the end of fear. That's what being a Christian is all about. And the joy that comes from moving people closer to him every day is overwhelming. That's why Isaiah 43 says it truly. Why does he want you to share your faith? It's for you. It's secondarily for the lost. Thus saith the Lord. Listen to Isaiah 43. Thus saith the Lord. I appoint you as my witness. That's our one job. Spurgeon said you've got one job to do. That's it. Let's get as many people into heaven as we possibly can while there's still time left. Isaiah 43, 10 says, I point to witness, and I would say, so they'll believe. He says, so you'll believe. Because when you do this, when you share your faith, when you allow God to speak through you, and he will, the Holy Spirit gives you the word saying, no preparation. You just love on people, folks. If you're a Christian, this is what you do. You just love on people. They'll know you're my disciple by your love. You love on people. They know it's Christian. They understand that you're a Christian. And they will ask you. They'll pursue you. And then you don't have to prepare. God gives you the words to say when you need them. And the life is being changed in front of you. Most importantly, that impacts you. It's intimacy with God. You can have any other way. This is what being a Christian is all about. It's time you get started. Join us. Would you? You know, if we all start doing that collectively as Christians, we get a United American Revival in 30 days. Would you help us do that? Help us. Get on board. Resolve this moment. I'm going to move everybody. If you're a Christian, I pray that you resolve this moment. I'm going to be a Christian. by living for your purpose, by moving everybody from this day forward to move everybody. I promise you, God, I'm going to work to move everybody every day closer to you for your glory and their salvation. Amen.