Voice of the Nazarene 12-1-24

Voice of the Nazarene 12-1-24

Transcript

Pastor Ray LaSalle: 0:00

Coming to you from North Central Ohio. We share with you the voice of the Nazarene, a week by week. Venture into the Word of God sponsored by the Bucyrus, Ohio Church of the Nazarene. We join our Pastor Reverend Ray LaSalle, and the voice of the Nazarene. Not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to his mercy, He saved us. And how did he do it? Twofold, by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost. That little phrase He saved us in the Old English translations, it simply says that he's made us whole. Man created the image of God. Created sinless before the fall, before man had made poor choices, man was healthy, man was whole. But now fallen, now sinful. Every aspect of man was affected by the fall. I feel as though I just should touch on one more area before I close this series about God's restoration. God making us whole again. God making us healthy. And while I believe it's of utmost importance that we be healthy and whole when it comes relationally and financially and physically and spiritually, and I haven't even begin to touch on many, many things maritally and parentally and just on and on. But one that I find to be the most difficult to stay healthy in is the one that I want to deal with this morning, and that has to do with attitude, keeping our attitude right. Psalmist in the 51st Psalm, verse 10, David said, renew a right spirit. And that word spirit is interchangeable with this thing of attitude. I want to get my attitude right. And he's expressing the need that it wasn't enough just to have forgiveness for sin and cleansing, but he needed to have His Spirit to be rebuilt and repaired and revived and restored and regenerated. Can you ever remember a day in your life, somewhere along the day, if you didn't sleep all day long, that somewhere you needed an attitude adjustment? Do you ever have your wife? Yeah, thank you. I will. David needed some help with his attitude. He struggled with it, and I want you to think of yourself as a tripartite being, that we have a body and a mind and a spirit. That's the some essence of anybody and everybody those three areas makes up who we are. Now if your body gets sick, I hope that you'll get it to an excellent medical clinic and some highly trained doctor will help you with your physical element, ailment, element, element, and if your brain gets sick, I hope they'll take you to a good mental health clinic and some psychiatrist can help you, either in counseling or by medication bring back balance. But my question is, where do you go when your spirit is wrong and your attitude is out of adjustment? Who do you take it to? The wise man Solomon said, in Proverbs, 18, verse 14, he said, the spirit of a man will sustain him, and it doesn't make any difference what happens in life. If you've got a good spirit and a right spirit, you can't be defeated. You see, if sickness comes your way, your spirit is going to sustain you. If death comes into your family instead of throwing in the towel and walking off if you're healthy in spirit, it'll sustain you during those times. If you lose your job and you have financial reverses, instead of just throwing away your life. If your spirit is right, and you're healthy inside. With your attitude, you can handle life, the emergencies of life. The spirit of a man will sustain him in infirm. Now, I like the definition of holiness as being a healthy spirit. A healthy spirit, a holy heart, literally means you have a healthy spirit. Have you ever witnessed any bad spirit, somebody that had a bad attitude? How about you wall, this crowd's not responding? Have you ever been around people that you just weren't comfortable being around? Could I just mention a few you can thank you. What about a wounded spirit? Proverbs 18:14, Solomon said, but a wounded spirit, who can bear when you're around somebody and their spirit is wounded and injured and hurt, and they're carrying all of this injuries around. Who wants to be around somebody like that? Very, very long it just siphons everything out of you. If you have a sick spirit, there is literally nothing that can stain you at times of immersion emergency. It's like calling the doctor and saying, I've got 102 degree fever. And he said, Well, come on down. I've got 104 I mean, when the doctor's more sick than the patient, we're in deep trouble. And when your spirit within you is a defeated spirit, sick, discouraged, you're in a desperate situation. I'll just stop here for a moment. I bet a lot of preachers that had a sick spirit things that happened. Maybe they got into a pastorate and they had poured out their brain cells and give away their blood and risk their family and their kids and even their marriage, and put it all on the line. And come annual election time. They got a U haul trailer sitting out in their front yard, and they can't scratch their head and figure it out. They they leave feeling like they weren't appreciated, and probably, probably they weren't. And they go and they get defeated time after time, and I've met him who become cynics, hard boiled and insulated. What's wrong that gotten an injured, bad hurt in life, maybe an associate had betrayed them and they felt injured. Let's just move along. I've met a few board members. He didn't have to be a board member. They wound up getting a bad spirit. They sit in on some board meetings, and they they made a suggestion, and nobody paid much attention. They brought up ideas that didn't seem to appeal to anybody else, and and they left wounded and bothered. And the first thing you know, they had their lips stuck out so far that you could have taken a mop and written the Lord's Prayer on their lower lip. What happened didn't take a brilliant rocket scientist to figure it out. They got hurt, and I've had them say to me across the years, nobody seems to like my suggestions. I come with my ideas and I bring my tithe and I put my money in, and nobody seems to pay any attention. What happened? They got a sick spirit over time. And Brother, it's not too hard to spot it. I mean, one week they're sitting on the front seat, and the next week they're sitting on the back seat, the third week they're out the door. What happened? Well, either sour stomach or bad religion? No, they simply got a sick spirit. And you knew that something had happened on the inside. Why was it a wounded spirit? They were the same physically, they were the same mentally, but their spirit had become injured and sick. Now you may be here this morning with a bad spirit. I can't imagine anybody like that. I don't know. Maybe you've got a melancholy spirit. You'd be better off to have a head that looked like a melon and a face like a collie than to have a melancholy spirit. I've seen him with a warring spirit. I mean, a phariseeical spirit. They act like they just came down from Mount Sinai with the law tucked under their arm, and they're looking around, judging, and they've got all the Christian morals and ethics about them, and they're judging this one inside and outside, looking you up and down, and in five seconds, they know they'll never Like you again for the rest of your life. You I've met him with a spirit that's so mad that you didn't want to be around him. I've given him plenty of space. I've always careful. I realize I'm walking on eggshells, and let me tell you something, if their tongue gets sharpened, but they can do a lot of damage to a church. But what about a whipped spirit? A whipped spirit, we're talking about having a healthy spirit. We're not talking about the physical right now the mental. We're talking about our spirit or attitude. And you may be here this morning with a defeated spirit, I don't know. Do you realize that God. Something inside of you that's like a doctor, so that you can get well when you're sick. And it's called a spirit. Your Spirit. God give you a spirit to keep you healthy, and that's the thing that'll keep you going. That's the thing that'll keep you going when it just seemed like life has fallen apart, when everything goes south, God has put a doctor inside of you, called a spirit that can keep you on a level, kill an attitude of survival. And when you get sick inside, you're desperately ill. Did you know that if I cut my finger and an infection sets in? Did you know that God has put a doctor inside of my body? It's white corpuscles. They're in there by the 1000s, and those white corpuscles will run to that cut that infection, and immediately begin to fight it, and literally 1000s of those soldiers will die so that I can stay alive. It's the doctor that God has put inside of us. Now, can you imagine what a marvelous thing it would be that if inside the church, that God would help us to do this very same thing, that when our brothers and sisters are getting sick, that we run to that infection in the church, and instead of feeding it gasoline, we put water on it, we put it out, and we help people to get back on their feet and get well Madeline Murray O'Hara, the atheist at one time, was a Presbyterian before she defected, and somebody asked her, Why did you leave? She said to you Christians, you shoot, you kill, you're wounded. And we really almost have no rescue system for anybody who does get into trouble. We like people as long as they're all right, and we don't have much toleration for people that misses the mark, or anybody that happens to fall. I've often thought of the apostle Peter after he had sworn and he had tried to kill a guy with a knife, and a few weeks later, Jesus forgave him and reinstated him, and actually commissioned him to preach the greatest cat meeting in history there on that day of Pentecost, boy was a good thing. Was back then, instead of now, I bet if he'd been a member of the church now, he could've got his credentials back in time to preach to Pentecost, they'd have suspected him and inspected him and disrespected him, and they'd have set up all night and burned a lot of Midnight Oil saying whether or not we'll restore him. No rescue system now, if you get an infection you're in your body, those white corpuscles will run down to that infection, and they'll fight to save your lives, and 1000s of them will die that you might live. Now, when a doctor goes in and begins to examine the chemistry of your blood, and if he finds the white corpuscles is high. He knows that you've got an infection because they're fighting to save you. But if he begins to investigate the white corpuscles and he finds the count is low, you're in trouble, because the thing that God puts in you to fight infection gets sick. When that gets sick, you're a sick person, and you may be here this morning, and maybe, maybe you've got a sick brain, that's no big deal. Maybe it's just a little skirmish going on in your mind. But if you're here and you've got a sick spirit, a melancholy spirit, a defeated spirit, and antagonistic spirit, or a bitter spirit or spirit of ill will or hostility, you're in desperate trouble, because the thing that God put in you to keep you whole is sick, and there's no way to defeat a good spirit. There's nothing that can come into your life at any level or any degree that can defeat you as long as your spirit is healthy and your attitude is right. I thought about a weary spirit. I meet people with a weary spirit. Job was a tremendous example of that. Here's a man that was perfect and he was upright, and into his life came a whole series of of tragedies and and nearly wiped him out. He lost his herds, he lost his house, he lost his children, all 10 of them. He really lost his marriage. And I, I can't imagine losing your children. To be to lose a child is about the worst thing that could ever happen. And he's so sick right now he wished he could die. The Bible portrays him setting out on an A sheep, and he's got some broken pottery, and he's scratching his body, and his wife sitting over there looking at him and wondering how long he's going to live. It's kind of reminds you of the man and woman that went to the. Divorce Court, and the judge asked him, said, Why do you want to divorce this woman? He said, Well, every morning when I get up, she asked me, Are you still living? You still around? That'd be pretty defeating one. Well, Job's wife said, why don't you just curse God and die? I don't know. Maybe she had some young bunk on the line, or maybe she wanted to collect on the insurance policy, I don't know, but let me tell you something, God took care of that woman. If you don't believe in the judgment of God, after he got well, they got back together. She had 10 more kids. He didn't. She did. She was pregnant for 90 months. She became the dill pickle eating champion of of the East. But you can't defeat a man with a right spirit. Might as well give up trying to do it. I thought about the whiny spirit. There's, there's Elijah, uh, he's on a mountain. He's got a spirit of conquest. He's got a spirit of of victory. He he defeats all of those false prophets of Baal. He prays down far from heaven. He gets to running, and he outruns the chariots. He goes 18 miles up to Jezreel, and he developed a whiny spirit. He sat down the Bible said, under a juniper tree, and he said, I must be the only one left alive. God said, You need to shut up. I've got 7000 a half and bowed my knee to Baal, and I've got them hid out. And I know what I'm doing. I'm running the kingdom. And I'll tell you what. When you begin to think you're the only one, God will always remove you. Don't think you're the only one. Now, what's the difference between an Elijah up on the mountain and Elijah down there under the juniper tree. I'll tell you what the difference was. It was his spirit. It was his spirit. So there was between victory and and defeat, between a healthy spirit and a defeated Spirit, and God couldn't hardly do anything. God sent an angel even down to feed him and to help him sleep and to get him restored. I was reading the other day about a fellow that had an infected foot, I guess he waited too long, and by the time he got to the doctor, the doctor said, we're going to have to take your leg off. And he looked up and said, which one you going to take? Doctor said, I'm not giving you a choice. I'm taking the bed. Well, following surgery, they brought him back to the recovery room, and when he finally woke up and the nurse walked in, he looked down to where there was a missing leg, and he said, I guess I've just discovered the cure for ingrown toenails. You say, Pastor, that's not funny. I didn't say it was, but it's a lot better than a whiny spirit, and that's the kind of a spirit that Elijah developed. The Bible says our spirit can sustain us. I thought about a wrong spirit Moses. He lost out with God. When he got a bad spirit. God told him to do one thing, and the Bible said he did another, and he lost his temper, and God said, you just forfeited your ticket to the promised land. You get a bad spirit. You'll be a defeated person. It was a bad spirit that was the downfall of King Saul and Moses and and Samson and on and on. But what about a winning spirit? A winning spirit, a good spirit, it'll sustain you have a healthy, winning, good spirit. It was a 54 year old woman who's been in the yester years. Her husband had abandoned her and left her for another woman. They went through a divorce. It was awful. It was vicious. He took everything that he could take, left or broken, and a little later after that, she had a mastectomy, and you women would understand the devastation of that. A little while after that, the cancer return, and the doctor told her, You only got about four to six weeks to live, and she didn't make that but during that little brief time of week, she never once complained, never once why, never collapsed, never threw in the towel, never questioned God, never told the pastor, I don't like the church in him, none of that fact the matter. Finally, the pastor said to her, said, I've never met anybody like you. I think you're probably the greatest Christian I've ever met. He said, Not one time if you whine or fuss and I've got people that are got everything going for them and they're not happy. He said, Is there anything that I could do for you? I'd like to do something special for you. She said, Well, let me think about it. Couple days later, she called him, and he went over, and she said, I'll tell you what you can do for me. She said, I want you to preach at a funeral, and I don't want you to give a bunch of negative stuff. I want you to bury me in a sunny mortuary, and I want you to. Say a few decent things about me, but when you get through I want you to take my boys to one side, talk to em about eternity and about their soul and about meeting mama on the other side. And then he said to her, he said, I don't understand you. Have you ever woke up at night frightened to death, facing death. She said, No. He said, why not? She said, Because, Pastor, if all the stuff you preach to me is true, then heaven must be a glorious place, and I can't hardly wait to have the transition take place. It'll be without pain, it'll be without tears, and be without divorce and be without death. Pastor, why would I be discouraged? Now, you take a woman just sitting in a rocking chair whining every day, nobody calls, nobody cares, and can't do this and can't do that, and put her against a woman that's had cancer is facing death and is walking through the very doorway of death, I want to tell you something, the Spirit of Him that makes the difference. We can set and whine and the world will walk past us and leave a setting. Or you can do your best to make an impression on somebody and encourage somebody along the trail. A good spirit, the kind of a spirit that can make a man look down that his leg is missing and said, I've just discovered the cure for ingrown toenails of the same spirit that allowed a woman to walk through the very doorway of death. It's a healthy spirit, and it's the kind of spirit that caused job to look his wife in the eye and said, The Lord gives and the Lord takes, blessed be the name of the Lord. You know something? I'm convinced that holiness is more than hems and hair and and high heels and television and all of that. I'm convinced that it has to do with a healthy spirit, a good spirit, you can't defeat a man with a good spirit. You can't help a person with a bad attitude. Do you know if you put two half wits together. You don't get a whole wit. You get a quarter with that's the way it works. And somebody can walk into a church and in three weeks tear it up, but all they've gotta do is walk in and look around and act like they're smelling Limburg cheese, act like they're not happy, and begin to look around. Said, you know, there's something here, not right. And I feel something, something's wrong, something's out of place. I can't just put my finger on it, but I sense it. I I could smell it. It's not long, everybody's running around sniffing and snooping and and trying to figure and pretty soon there's little clubs, and we're gathering here and gathering there. And you can tear a church up in a matter of weeks. Or somebody can walk into a church and said, You know, I haven't been to a church like this before. What's going on here? This is the best music I think I've ever heard that sermon is not even too bad. I he must have got it off Internet somewhere. It's pretty good. And I like the rest of the staff and the spirit. Everybody's everybody's friendly. And next thing you know, everybody's on the preacher's not as bad as we thought he was. And we, we kind of like the music guy's wife questioned about him a little bit, but and next thing you know, we've got everybody happy again. You can make a difference, and it all has to do with our attitude. We can get a grasshopper complex. And next thing you know, we surround ourselves with a bunch of other grasshopper minded people, and soon we're saying we can't do this, and we can't do that. And again, I mentioned two half widths doesn't make a whole width, but it makes a quarter width. But by the same token, you can put somebody with an unhealthy spirit, and if they'll get around, somebody with a healthy spirit, and if they'll listen, it can soon change their spirit. We don't have to run around and say the glass is half full or half empty? Rather, we can start seeing it as half full. Instead of seeing the church as half empty, we can start seeing it as half full. There's a difference. We can think negative, spread discouragement and absolutely destroy a church. It's a 92 year old lady. She was sitting in a rocking chair, she got her got a pain in her right eye, and she told her kids, and they took her to an eye doctor. He said, Mama, how you doing? She said, I'm not doing very good. He said, what's wrong? Said, Well, I can't seem to see out of my right eye. He checked her out a little bit, and he said, Sit down here. I I'm sorry to tell you this, but you'll never see again out of that eye. I'll tell you that little old lady left that place so defeated, so broken. Life was over. It was ended, and she was having trouble with her one foot, and she told her daughter. So the daughter made an appointment, about a week later, took her to a foot doctor. Yes. And the foot doctor said, How you doing, Mama? He she said, not very good. Said, I just found out. The eye doctor told me that my left eye is blind and I'll never see out of it again. He said, Put it there. He said, I've got a blinded left eye too. I haven't seen this out of it since I was a teenager. I've been blind in that eye ever since I went through high school, went through college, studied in the medical world, and have been in practice. And you know what? I don't have to have two eyes, God or one bad eye. I've got a good eye, and God, give us two eyes. And so I've got a good eye, and you're going to make it. And because of a foot doctor that was blind in one eye. He got her so encouraged, she felt like she could face life again, that she could make it, uh, one eyed. Foot doctor inspired her spirit. What about a willing spirit? Her name was Mary, and it was Christmas season that we practice now. She was not only a worthy virgin, but she had a willing spirit. When God came to her, Would you be willing to bear the Christ child? And the Bible said in Luke 138 be it unto me, according to thy word, a willing spirit. I want to close. I'm not sure really how to close at a preacher that I knew he had had it. He'd been around enough people that if he hadn't known there was a God, he'd have been an infidel. He was at the lowest realm of the ladder. In his whole life, nearly everything had fallen apart, and they got on the phone, and they called one of his laymen. He said, I need to talk to you now. I said, I've listened to you for years. I need you to listen to me. He said, is something wrong? He said, is something wrong? I'm telling you. I need an audience with you. You're one of my laymen. Would you meet me at church? He said, Is there a church service tonight? He said, No, I just need to talk to somebody. I'm upset, I'm down, I'm discouraged. Would you meet with me? He said, What time? He said, Well, what about seven? Said, that's fine. Well, when they hung up, that layman got on the phone, he called four more layman. He said our pastors discouraged. He's defeated. He's upset. I've never heard him like this, and he's asked to meet with me tonight at seven. I want you guys there too. When they got on the phone, they begin to make phone calls about 2030, minutes before seven, Pastor drug his old, sick, worn out, spirit out of bed and got in his car and headed out of town to the church. And when he came over the hill and started down in the valley, couldn't believe it. There were so many cars. He couldn't even hardly find a place to park cars everywhere. He hadn't had that many cars for a long time. Got out and went inside. There were more than 200 guys in there. They were waiting for him. They said, come on down the altar, Pastor. You can pour your heart out. You can say anything you want to. It doesn't matter. We'll understand you've listened to us. We'll listen to you. And they gathered around and begin to pound him on the back and begin to hug him, and a couple of them kissed him, and they put money in his pocket. Try that sometime, see how that feels. I don't know anybody mad because they have an extra dollar in their pocket, and they begin to encourage him. And it wasn't long he felt like he could pastor again. He came out of there that night like a new man. Now you can kill a preacher or a staff member or church folk by simply criticizing and by picking them to death. They'll be the same man. They'll weigh the same, they'll look the same, they'll pray the same, but they'll not be the same. Did you know that you can save a church and you can save a spouse, or you can kill em. Now I close by saying this, when your spirit gets sick, you better find a doctor to get it to. And I can't tell you just which one, but I did get a card the other day from a doctor, and I found it over in Matthew chapter 11, verse 28 and that card read, coming to me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. And there's people even here this morning, that need to work on their spirit. Life is hitting you like a boxing match you can't meet, you can't beat Matt Dillon to the draw every time in life, life's not a bowl of cherries, it's a bowl of raisins, raising kids and raising money and raising Cain, I guess life gets tough. You. You can't go through life without getting your spirit damaged and hurt and injured, and sometimes it gets so sick that you need to get it to a doctor. And I just wanted to tell you in passing, as a pastor, it's pastor you for almost 32 years. This month will make 32 years, I beg you to keep your attitude right? David just simply said, renew a right spirit. I know he said, I I need forgiveness, and I know I need some cleansing, but God, my attitudes are wrong. It's been out of shape and it's broken and it's sick. Would you renew a right spirit within me. How many of our marriages just need a renewal of a right spirit between partners? How many of us work jobs and things are not right between us and somebody else, and we're the Christian and we're not making the move to initiate forgiveness and to ease the tension and to oil the situation, some of us need to get healthy. We need to get well. Thanks for being a part of the voice of the Nazarene. Visit us every Sunday at 9am with B and C's pastor, Ray LaSalle. For more information regarding B and C, visit bucyrusnazarene.org. You.