Turning On the Lights! Friday, July 12, 2024. Let’s talk about living a holy life.
Good Morning, Good Morning my brothers and sisters and welcome to Turning On the Lights for Friday July 12, 2024.
We have a wonderful, upbeat conversation about what it means to live a holy life and how we could possibly describe that to someone who does not know God?
I pray that it is an informative and challenging talk, and I pray that this word goes our and hearts are changed.
May God bless you and keep you and remember, I will not talk to you again until NEXT Friday the 19th.
Keep looking up!
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This is a transcript from the audio of this episode of Turning on the Lights! – Friday, July 12, 2024
Good morning, good morning, my brothers and my sisters. You are looking live at the beautiful sanctuary of the church town church of God you’re sitting in the back pew back left of the sanctuary looking up at the altar, the pulpit. This is where I work. And being up in that pulpit is what I do for a vocation. I’m Pastor Brian Warner. This is as I mentioned the church town church of God we are turning on the lights here this morning Friday the 12th I am officially actually a guest on vacation. Although it hasn’t felt like it much this week, preparing to take some time off is harder work than a regular week so you earn your time off as you prepare for the weekend but we have I will not be in the pulpit this Sunday Barbara will be in the pulpit this Sunday kids for our king will be meeting this Sunday. The brass ensemble that plays here at church town will be leading the music on Sunday, so it’s a big big day without me. Good morning, Sandy. Wonderful. It should be a fun day. It should be a good day. I’m going to get everything set before I leave and get those the air conditioners set for you so you’re comfy cozy. Get the bulletins done so you know what’s going on. All of those things had a big big shin dig last night with the men. Twenty couple men were here. We had all kinds of stuff, lots of meat, 10 pounds of brisket, two pans of mac and cheese. We had slaws and beans and burgers and little flank steaks and all kinds of I mean it was good food. It was good time. I actually feel like a little food hangover this morning like oh that was good. We had a good time. Still a little bit to clean up but I think I’ll leave that for people on Sunday. You made the mess. You clean it up guys. So how y’all doing? You can tell I’m a little mellow I’m preparing for the big ride that’s coming up. Kickstands up at 8 o’clock tomorrow morning. Be back sometime Wednesday afternoon good lord willing and that should be fun but there’s a lot to prepare for. I’ve been very busy this week taking care of a lot of different things and preparing for this weekend of being away. So today I’ve got to dedicate myself. Well I still haven’t done the bulletins but I’ve got to dedicate myself to getting ready for this ride because I don’t like to ride with a suitcase. We’re going to go four nights. I’m going to have a backpack, a small backpack at that. So learn how to do that. Learn how to be very efficient with that and we’ll prepare everything today. Take off tomorrow morning. Can’t wait. Heading down to Front Royal down through Shenandoah National Park out the other side and that is where we will spend the first evening. Popping out the other side of Shenandoah National Park. The back is I want to say 50%. If the back was 10% on Sunday it’s 50 or 40% good today. So it’s not there’s something wrong but I bought a back brace for the ride. I hope that it helps. We’ll see we’ll figure it out. Payne and I are certainly not strangers after everything. So you can tell I’m not a little chill. We’ve been doing the parables. I was going to ask what would you like to talk about today? Anybody have anything they would like to talk about? Social, economic, political, theological, anything of that nature. We can talk about it. Check out our views on it. I’m looking here. We talked about the greatest commandment. Yes it is true very much true Renee. Age equals pain and like I said I can’t figure out what happened. That’s when you know right. I don’t remember a traumatic event. I remember tearing my calf muscle right. You remember that. You see white you hit the floor you wake up 30 seconds later and you’re like oh what happened. And then something like this you’re just cruising through life and then boom. Anyway you don’t even you didn’t tune in here to hear me complain. I’m not complaining really. It is what it is. I’m good. It’s all good. That was hard Barb and I don’t think that I accomplished the task of being able to. There are two there are two constraints. The Church Down Weekly can’t turn into a book. I don’t want to turn it into a book. It’s a relatively short devotional type of a writing. And two it was so challenging to understand holiness. Maybe we can talk about that today. To understand holiness intrinsically. And I think that part of being indwell maybe that’s it. Maybe there is something if you’re talking to a non-believer maybe there is something to the fact because when you’re speaking to a non-believer about what it what it feels like to be a follower of Christ there is a threshold of faith. You can only describe so much until an individual would come to faith and submit their life to Christ. They really aren’t going to experience that or understand that. You know that head knowledge is one thing and actually we’re talking about that in First Corinthians yesterday as well. I sent out to the men’s devotionally First Corinthians as well. You know what we understand and what we feel is absolute foolishness to the world. Where God has taken you know and turned upside down the wisdom of the wise and the intelligence of the intelligent. And I said man are we living in that now or what? We look outside of what’s going on and everything’s are quite literally socially everything upside down. Like right was wrong. Wrong is right. And people that are supposed to be experts and all of that. I remember the expert, the constitutional expert. You remember this? I don’t, not doing a political thing but this constitutional expert, this constitutional talking head, this expert who had this degree from some fancy college stood up there and said, “These people actually believe that in the Constitution are enshrined rights that are given to them by God.” I’m like constitutional expert, huh? The intelligence of the intelligent has been turned upside down because of course that is exactly what is enshrined in the Constitution. So anyway, anyway, we’re, Barb you got me on a rabbit trail already. So we’re talking about holiness and I think that equates to faith. There’s so much head knowledge that you can understand as we share the word with people and what life is like with Christ, with people and all of those different things. And when you talk about holiness, what does that mean? You really gain a full deep rich understanding of what it means to be called, right? To be called out, if you will, when you are a follower of Christ. The complete definition of that won’t occur. Good morning. It won’t occur until you are indwelled by God’s Holy Spirit and you’re called out. And then now you are looking at scripture and when, you know, John is talking about a call to holy living and Paul is talking about holy living and these different types of things and behaviors are delineated. And now that makes a lot of sense because before you might be saying, Oh God just, it’s a bunch of rules and you got to follow a bunch of rules and you got to do this is all boring. No. When you are called out, you are regenerated. You are representing Yahweh himself by the power of his Holy Spirit within you there. You should do that well, don’t you think? And when you look at all of the behaviors and all of the rules that are in scripture, they talk about what you shouldn’t do. They’re all things that are very, very detrimental to your emotional, physical and spiritual wellbeing. God says to not be sexually promiscuous. Oh, that’s a horrible thing. Now if you listen to culture, society, it’s the exact opposite, right? But when we listen to scripture, we are preventing emotionally, emotion, because when people are physically intimate, there’s an emotional attachment. You can’t deny that we’re built differently than animals who just reproduce in a field. So you’re preventing the emotional downfall of a human being as there is this body trail behind you. You’re preventing physical disease. You’re preventing unwanted pregnancies. Oh, this God is just terrible, isn’t he? He wants you to live a healthy and sexually healthy life and he would love for you to understand what it means to be committed to an individual and really becomes physically, spiritually and emotionally attached to them combined with them. I should say it’s probably even a better word. That’s terrible. When we look at when we are indwelled by God’s Holy Spirit and we look at these things, we go, oh, you want to take away all of the things that hurt me or bring me down or tempt me. You want to, you really have in mind what is best for me and you’re saying that by your power I can actually do this. Yes, yes you can. And then when the list of things that you should do, love God with all your heart and soul strength and mind and love your neighbor as yourself. Go and share this good word with all of the world. Oh, that’s terrible too. Gee, I should love God and love my neighbor. Wow. I should share this good news with the world. Yeah. So when you listen to the lies of the enemy, all of that is flipped upside down and we’re told that there are all of these like Christians, man, you just dogmatic, all of these different things. Not really. The exact opposite is true. It’s freedom. It’s freedom from the oppression of your own chains that you create through your sin and addiction and all of those things. Your addiction to sin. So it’s freedom. And so how do you describe, you can share, I just did. And maybe somebody will listen to this, watch this. Maybe somebody will listen to the podcast and they’ll, and that’s not a follower, and they’ll say, that’s, I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t feel that in my life. Well, you won’t feel that in your life unless and until you are empowered by God’s Holy Spirit. So when we’re called to holy living, that’s what I’m talking about. It’s big. It’s big, but it’s simple. Like I said, it’s a foot wide and five miles deep. It’s okay, now I get it. I know what it means to be a human being now. I know what it means to be a healthy human being now. Not that we won’t work through temptation. We won’t work through struggles. We won’t work through grief. Not that we will not get sick. Not that we, all of those things, but there is this power of God that supersedes all of that. I’ve gotten away from saying this supernatural power because I think that that is a gateway word, if you will. It’s a gateway word to the supernatural, which is a big umbrella term for a lot of ungodly things. So we really need to be specific about the power of God who indwells us and teaches us and empowers us to live a life of the disciple of Christ. And it’s absolutely empowering. It’s absolutely liberating. It’s absolutely exciting. And you just never know what’s happening next, where God is taking you, what he wants, where you know, all of the, it’s just fantastic. Now how do you, again, I’m sitting with an individual trying to lead them to Christ, or maybe I’m not trying, maybe we’re just having a conversation like, why are you a Christian? What does it mean to be a Christian? I can say all of these things and they’ll go, Oh, okay. But they’re not experiencing those things. And until an individual, God’s Holy Spirit works and they are called to repentance and they repent and they turn and they submit and they give their life to Christ, submit their will to his and are empowered by the very power that raised Christ from the dead. They won’t really get it. So that was a tough assignment. How would you describe holiness? And I think the definition that I came up with serves a believer, a follower much more than it does a non-believer. But again, we can talk a good morning. We can talk about this all we want until you experience regeneration. You’re not going to fully understand it. And that is what Paul is talking about in first Corinthians, because you know, Paul is saying, I didn’t come to you with fancy speeches. I’m not trying to, I’m not trying to logically convert you to Christianity. I’m not trying to make these incredible oratorical rhetoricals, the arguments and all of these different things like politicians do today. It would be like politicians and scientists and all these. No, he says, I come to you with simple words that are empowered by God’s Holy Spirit in the effort that you would hear and experience the authority of these words, not my authority, but the authority of God’s Holy Spirit in these words. And you would repent and you would turn. And you might look at this repentance and turning compared to all of the intellect and economics and all of the science and all of the things of the world and say, well, this is awfully base. This is very simple. What will this get me? And that is when Paul says, let me show what we, let me tell you what we believe and what we know to be true because we experience it seems foolish to the outside world. And you hear that all the time today. Oh, you, you need to lean on your sky daddy for some sort of purpose in life. Oh, okay. Like that’s not been going on for 2000 years. You’re the first snarky individual who ever said sky daddy, whoever said, you know, some mystery spirit, great spirit in the sky. Okay. You’re smarter than I, I don’t know. You know what I mean? We just had to sort of endure that because we know and we’re taught in scripture that that will happen. And it, it, people who believe themselves, especially to be one step, two steps, three steps ahead of religion. I don’t need religion. It is the opiate of the masses. It is a crutch for the week. All of those different things. I’m above it. You’re there believing in some sky daddy. We there it is. And so if we’re talking to that individual, you can say all of the things that I’ve just talked about right here for the past 10 minutes. And that individual will hear them. It will go into their head, but that individual who will never experience the power of those words until God empowers them. We talk, we have, yeah, that’s exactly. And again, if you go to especially the epistles, right, which is not a female apostle, it’s a letter. The epistle is a letter. Had that question one time is an epistle, a female apostle? No, it’s a letter. But one of the, one Paul says that all the time that the purpose of getting together is not necessarily, these are byproducts, but not fundamentally to attract other people. The purpose of getting together is not fundamentally for nonbelievers. The purpose of getting it together fundamentally is for believers to gather so that we can just as Barb said, we share the word every weekend. We fellow ship hopefully throughout the week as well, but we’re talking about Sunday morning here in particular church, formal church gathering, if you will. So we gathered together to share the word. We gathered together to break bread. We’d gathered together to fellowship. We gathered together to celebrate and worship in song. We gathered together to worship and prayer and submit ourselves to the Lord. We gathered together to talk with one another, share the gospel again with one another and to encourage and edify one another. Now, a byproduct of that very well may be nonbelievers coming in off of the street, being invited by people in the church and hearing and experiencing all of that. But if you’re putting nonbelievers before believers in a formal church setting, you’ve got the cart before the horse because you don’t, you, you really need disciples of Christ who know who they are in Christ, know about Christ, are able to share the truth of the word of God instead of something they heard on the internet or read on a meme. And so we gathered together, we learn, we grow, we become, and then we go. Now why are you a Christian? We have a deep, rich answer for that. Not because, well, I was raised in a church. I don’t know. Okay. That’s not really encouraging to somebody who’s not a follower of Christ. So that, that is the point and the purpose of the, of the gathering of the gathering in the Kirk, in the church, right? The ecclesia, the people of God, so byproducts of that individual gathering very well, maybe the attraction and God will bring whomever he chooses to bring you invite individuals. They come and they hear the experience and they’re like, Oh wow. Or no, but there it is. We’re not catering to that particular demographic, theologic demographic, whatever the case may be. We’re doing church, man. We’re together. We’re sharing the word. We’re strengthening one another. You know, there’s just nothing that I enjoy more than I think the church service is long and I try to be a respecter of time and comfort level and you sitting for a while, all of those different things. And so, but we, you know, I thought the church service, but people stay for another half an hour and they’re talking and they’re fellowshipping and they’re praying together in little groups all over the place. People have brought in eggs or produce or whatever. And so they drift over to the fellowship hall and conversations drift over there. I’ll go in and you know, after everything is wrapped up and all of the lights are off and I’ll go in and change and Kelly and I are getting ready to go out for lunch and there’s people in the parking lot talking. I mean, that’s what it’s all about. That’s what it, you know, and you don’t know how many times I’ve heard the comment, you know, about church town. You guys like each other. Like you talk to each other in church. I’m like, yeah. Or you, you laugh. Is it okay to laugh in church like that? To have fun? I’m like, yeah. You know what I mean? And every once in a while I’ll stop and just remind everybody we, we enjoy ourselves together in church and we make mistakes and we try to make fun of ourselves because we don’t, we can’t take our broken selves that seriously as we seek to worship. We will never be irreverent with the word of God. We will never be irreverent in prayer or that sort of thing. We’re grownups. We can do this. But you know, when you, when you make us, when you have a situation where I have one arrangement of one song here, Miss Stephanie has another arrangement of the same song on the piano and they’ve never heard the fact that the tech people never didn’t even know we were playing this song and everybody starts and there’s nothing happening. What else are you going to do? You’re going to break down and cry. Say, Oh my goodness, we really messed that up. I apologize. It was a couple of Sundays ago. A few Sundays ago. It wasn’t I’ll fly away. Was it? Yeah, maybe it’s I’ll fly away. We’re trying to play this hymn. And I had a, we had the mandolin fiddle, two guitars, all of it. We had actually practiced the arrangement that I had. I never gave the arrangement to the tech people. They took it right out of the hymnal. And so the lyric and the arrangement, you know, we’re out of order. And my daughter helps with the tech and we started arguing with each other. She’s like, no, it’s right here, dad here. Chorus verse, chorus verse. I’m like, but I have a different arrangement. I’m sure I laid it over there. Don’t you have that? And people were like, what the, so, and we had a lot of fun with that. It certainly wasn’t an actual argument. Anything else you’d like to talk about? Barb brought up holiness. We talked about the fact that it’s an awful lot. Like you’re, you know, when you talk about crossing that threshold of faith, then you will have a true grasp of what holy living is being called out and being empowered to live a holy life. You can describe it all you want, right? Jimmy Buffett has a great line. Don’t try to describe the ocean if you’ve never seen it. How you know that. How do you describe the color red, that sort of thing without you, you know, you have to experience it. So let’s talk about this. One that we’ll go into scripture for just a couple of seconds here. I always like to touch upon scripture, you know, like I said, I am on vacation, but technically once Jesus was in a certain place, praying as he finished, one of his disciples came to him and said, Lord, teach us to pray. Just as John taught his disciples, Jesus said, this is how you should pray. Now you will hear different versions of what we call the Lord’s prayer here. This is Luke chapter 11 father, may your name be kept holy. And that’s where I started with my understanding of holiness is that the only only God is truly holy. He calls us to holy living, but he is truly other. When we look at all of creation, he is something different. He is the creator of all of this. And that pure holiness is what I said. Anything that is unholy cannot come into the presence of. And so we must be cleansed by God. There’s nothing that we can do to make ourselves holy. And you say, well, what about all those old Testament laws, all that ritualistic cleansing, the key to that, as we see time and again in the old Testament, and I wrote that in the weekly, a heartfelt commitment to following God’s law. You understand why you’re doing this because you want, you desire to be in the presence of a holy God. You understand that without this, you are nothing. And that at his will, if you draw, you know, draw close, it’s like to drawing too close to the sun, you’re done. So you can go through, and this is what happened. This is a lot of what Jesus spoke against. He’s going through the motions of all of that, but without a heartfelt commitment as to what you’re doing and why there is no point or purpose to it. When, you know, that is why they tied the rope around the ankle and had the bells on the high priest when he went into the Holy of Holies. Because if his heart was not in the right, he may have done all of the things, but if he was, his heart was not in the right place, submitted to the Lord God Almighty, he’s done. So the more it changes, the more it stays the same. And we see that final sacrifice, the willing sacrifice of Christ and faith in him as the savior, repentance of our old self and faith in him as our savior will cover us with his righteousness. It must be done by God, the Holy One, imparts that to us. Now there will be a day those who persevere to the end will be saved. There will be a day when once again, those who died in Christ will receive their glorified bodies will be holy in their own right, meaning that they will be able to dwell physically and spiritually in the presence of God again. That is the age to come. That is heaven. So may your name be kept holy has an awful lot of significance because when we say his name, we are talking about the Holy One and only by his power can we lead a holy life and he will allow us then to be in relationship with him. I hope that all makes sense. I don’t know again, Barbara, if you’re going to take that and say, Oh, that’s easy. Let me share that with a nonbeliever. But once again, that’s a difficult proposition. I thought, well, I know all about holiness. No, I don’t. Well, maybe I do, but it’s only by the power of God and his wisdom and knowledge and his empowerment that I do know about holiness. So how do I share that with somebody who is not experiencing, not indwelled, not regenerated? And then I started playing ping pong with myself. And so I just did a little piece on what it means to be holy. And I don’t know if I solved anything, but like Barb said, it’s in the conversation. It’s in the process that the individual, if you don’t do things like that, if you don’t do devotions, if you don’t do writing, if you don’t do thought exercises, if you don’t have conversations with individuals, then you know, I encourage you to challenge yourself in that direction so that you may learn. One of the best ways to learn is to teach, is to engage. Well, you know, whenever I had, for example, when I was a football coach, he’s on football coach references, there we go. But my starting offensive line, I would have them run certain parts of our practice. They would take my place so that they could objectively look at what was happening and what was expected of everybody and they could understand the things that I say to try to correct them. And it was powerful. Not a single individual walked away from doing things like that saying that did not help that. Yeah. Not a single individual said that did not help me. That’s correct. They were like, okay, I get you now and I get your job now and I see what you see now because I watched that individual make the mistakes that I’m making and I see the result and I just, I didn’t get it before. So one of the best ways to learn and grow is to engage. And one of the best ways to engage is to teach. So there you go. There’s a Friday. It’s a free flowing Friday, July 12, 2024. We will head out of here with a prayer, a monk and a nun. Well, that’s a big question because there are many different, I just saw it, Rosie, and I’ll quickly address it as we sort of run out of time. I’m sorry. But there are actually different types and categories of monks and nuns. In general, in general, there’s not too much of a difference between there’s biological sex. Monks and nuns will both be withdrawn to varying degrees from the norm of society to varying degrees, right? And they will focus on that inner spiritual relationship with God. And you can have extremes in both examples of where there is no noise that is no talking, no communication to anybody that is of the physical realm. Right? And that’s what you think about sometimes, monks walking around. To the point, also, the other extreme would be a very open convent. Here are our nuns. Here are the monks who live here. Come and learn. And so they are withdrawn from the cultural norm, withdrawn, called to perhaps what we’re talking about today, holy living. But that’s where the differences really begin other than theologies and denomination and Catholic product, all those different things. Maybe that was helpful. Maybe it wasn’t. I’ve been in a mood like some of what I’ve done has been helpful. Some I don’t think so. But no matter what, I shined up my white walls yesterday and I’m ready to rock. So I got to go pack. I got to get those bulletins done for Barb. So everything can be ready for Sunday. I got to turn the air conditioners on in here so everybody’s comfy cozy. And I hope that you guys have fantastic weeks. I will not be talking to you on Tuesday. But Jeff, I’ve worked ahead, so that’s why I talk about as a pastor, do you get a week off or do you get a Sunday off? If you get the Sunday off, do you have to do anything leading up to that Sunday or are you gone? Other people just do everything. If you’re trying to take a week or 10 days, like from a Wednesday to a Wednesday, oh my goodness, preparation. I mean, you get a lot of preparation so that you can be away. And so I’m the 21st. That service is already very 80% completed. And then so my point is when I come back Wednesday afternoon evening, depends how much work I’ve got to do to get ready for Sunday as to whether or not I’ll talk to you on Friday, but I think I will. So good Lord willing and the river don’t rise. Good Lord willing and our ride is a complete success, which we have no doubt it will be. We will talk to you next Friday on turning on the lights. Father, thank you for the gathering today. Thank you for your word. May your power, your authority be in these words, Lord. And may they change hearts and minds. And may they turn people toward you in Jesus name. Amen. Yeah, we will. There’s a lot going on in the nation, including extreme weather. So we will keep you in your prayers and the floods and the heat and all these different things. So God bless you all. And we’ll talk to you again next week. Thank you.
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