What is Your Character? Pt 4

Happy Father's Day to all the fathers out there. Thank you for what you've done. Thank you for. Yeah. Thank you, guys. So. Make sure that you tell your father that you love him and if your father is with Jesus already, give him a prayer. So we have been talking about the character of God. And I'm believing that everybody that is hearing me online or is in this room, you now know what the character of God is.
And if you haven't, if today is your first day here with this, I want to throw this out there, that God's true nature, that God's true character is the character of loving-kindness. That is who He is. God's character is a character of loving-kindness. And we need to get a revelation of this. And I truly believe that as Christians, when we fail to receive what God has for us, it's because we don't have a clear definition and we don't have a good understanding of God's true nature.

We still feel like we serve a God that is the guy, Chuckie Cheese, playing Whac-A-Mole with us, right? Just looking to get you. If God was looking to get you, he already would have got you. God loves you and God loves me and is. We can grab a hold of this and we can get a hold of this revelation.

We're going to get to know him and what we're talking about today. We're going to get to trust him. And then we're going to be able to receive from him and we're going to see him go to work in our lives. So isn't that good? Isn't that good? So we're going to combine that. We're going to combine God's love with what we've learned with the Holy Spirit.

And we are going to see an Ecounter in church come alive because we have everything we know everything we need. God's love and the Holy Spirit. You work with that Galatians chapter five or six. I want to talk about this again for just a second because I was in a hurry through our last week. I ran a little long. So for Christ and Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcised vision avails anything but faith working through love.

So we need to right there, we need to have that highlighted in our Bible. And what we need to know about that is, is that faith is simply a byproduct of God's love when it comes down to it, faith is simply a byproduct of God's love from knowing God. So how does faith come? Faith comes from hearing and hearing the word of God?

That's important. What you are doing right now, whether you realize it or not, by sitting in this church, and listening to Scripture, we are gaining and growing our faith because we are hearing God's word. We're not hearing man's word. We're looking at Scripture that God gave us. When we hear the word, we gain knowledge in God. We gain a revelation of who He is.

We understand what his true character is. That's why we must be in the world. So many people today think that they have to be in the word because if they're not, God's going to get them or they're not qualified to be a Christian. The reason that we need to be in the word is so that we can have a revelation and a knowledge of who God is.

That's what his word to us is. It is a love letter to us. And when we hear God's word and we get a true revelation of who he is, faith becomes automatic. I hear people all the time. I just don't know if I have faith. My question is, were you in the world? Because it's hard to be in the word and not to have faith in God encounter church.

If this is the only thing that you hear me hear me say this morning, let it be this. Do everything that you can, every single day to gain a revelation of God's character. Do whatever it takes. It's a game-changer. So that leads us to point number one this morning. Point number one is this. I want you to know that we can trust God.

We should trust God. Now, this is a question that we can answer to one another. Silence. You can ask yourself, Do I trust God? Do I trust God with my healing? Do I trust God with my finances? Do I trust God in my relationships? Do I trust God for the increase? And that's a good question. That's an honest question.

And if we struggle in that area, then it is just simply a reminder that we need to do what we need to get back and we need to hear God's word because it's God's word that produces love. And when we love, we can trust Psalm 36 seven. How precious is your loving kindness? Oh, God. Therefore, the children of men put their trust under the shadow of your wings.

When we know God's mercy and we know His goodness and we know His faithfulness, we can trust God. Doesn't that sound like somebody that we can trust? Somebody that is good. Somebody that is faithful, somebody that is forgiving? That's who we want to trust. You think about the people that you don't trust in your life and you think about the people that you don't trust.

And you look at their characteristics and you look at their true nature. Is the people that you don't trust. Are they joyful? Are they kind? Are they good? Are they merciful? Are they quick to forgive? I would think not, but God's not that way. So now that we know the character of God and we know who He is, we have no reason not to trust him more.

And when I mean trust him, trust his word. I don't. Thank you for that. Breakfast is kicking in right now. So I'm 17, seven. Show your marvelous, loving kindness with your right hand. Oh, you who save those who trust in you from those who rise against them. How about that word? Trust. We can trust God. The Scripture is full, full.

The Bible is full of Scriptures that talk about God's love and kindness and trust. They go together. If you believe in God's character loving kindness, then let's trust Him.

When my kids were small earth and they were at daycare, it was half boys and half girls. And every single time that I went to pick up my boys, the girls were watching the show called Frozen. And y'all know the song from Frozen? Let it go. Let it go. That's what God wants us to do. Let it go.

You can trust me with it. Let it go. Whatever it is now, I'm gonna be singing that all day. But I want you to know that when we get to Revelation of God's true character and who He is, we can trust God. And I want that for all of us. I desire that for every single person that calls an encounter church their home.

I pray for that, that each one of us has the revelation of God's loving-kindness. It's like the second point for today. I'm short this morning. Point number two, and this is a big one. This is a big one. I probably deal with this issue. Point number two, as much as anything is a factor as a pastor.

What we need to know this morning this is that we can run to God, not from him. And when we get a revelation of how good he is and we get a revelation of his character, of loving-kindness, that he loves us and that he's quick to forgive and he's quick to restore, we can simply run to him, not away from him.

And we all know what it feels like to run away. Right. You know, I'll never forget as a kid there that we had a neighbor across the house, and our neighbor, they were pretty well off and they had all the coolest toys. And one day they went on a vacation. And I'm one of my other and everybody said, hey, I noticed that they left their back door open.

I was like, Well, how do you know those are back doors open? But he said, Anyways, the back door is open. Why don't we go in and play with all the toys for a couple of days? Okay, well, let's do that. So for a couple of days, we go and we play with my buddy's toys and we would have gotten away with it, except we didn't pick up after we were done.

And I'll never forget, they came home and we had a great relationship with this family. And we came home and I see the daddy standing out in the front yard like this, watching this all around our bikes. And he's asking questions. And he comes up to me and he said, Hey, Joe, I know it wasn't you, but, you know, did somebody go into our house and play with our toys?

And I didn't see anything I wrote. I remember it was 4:00. I rode home and I got in. I got up on my bed and I just lay there laying with Gil. I just ran from in for like three or four days. I stayed away from them because I. I felt so bad about it. We didn't break anything.

We tear anything up. We like these people. We were just playing with their toys. I mean, I was nine years old and I was already breaking. But I remember how I stayed away from that person for almost a week, and they were great friends because I felt so bad about what I'd done. That's not what God wants us to do.

God has forgiven us. God has shown us His mercy. He has shown us how good He is so that when we do mess up, we can run to him. As a matter of fact, that's what he desires. That is his desire. Has anybody in here ever messed up? Now, let me rephrase that.

Anybody in here born again spirit filled but you still messed up and we're going to mess up. We're going to mess up. Now, I want you to know this. I am not saying this from the pulpit. I am not condoning that we mess up. As a matter of fact, God does not condone when we mess up. But I want you to know this about God when we do mess up, even though he may not condone it, he doesn't condemn it.

He doesn't condemn it. Why? Because God is loving kindness. He is quick to forgive. He is quick to restore our relationship with us. Isn't that good? Write this down. If you're taking notes when you see God's loving kindness and the mercy and forgiveness that goes with it, we are automatically drawn to him. It doesn't matter how bad you mess up, and I'm going to show you that in Scripture in just a second.

When you see his mercy and his forgiveness, you are automatically drawn to him encounter church and those that are hearing my voice online. There is a danger to messing up and then running from God. And the danger is this. The danger is is that it is establishes an easy pattern. And what happens is, is that we will mess up and then we will run and then we'll mess up and we will run and we will mess up and we will run and we will continue to run, run, run, run, run, run.

And I don't know about you, but running makes me tired. At some point, we have to get off the treadmill and we've got to turn back to God. I want to show you a scripture in Romans. Romans chapter two, verse four. Now, I'm going to show you this in two different translations, because there's two different these two different translations give us a good understanding of God's goodness and his love and kindness in Romans.

Chapter two, verse four says this Or you despise the riches of his goodness, forbearance and long-suffering, not knowing that the goodness of God lead you to repentance, God's love, in other words, automatically really sends you to repentance. Let's look at it a different way, and I'm going to look at this as the new living translation. ROMANS Chapter two, verse four.

It reads a little easier and it says, Don't you see how wonderfully kind, taller, and patient God is with you? Does this mean nothing to us? To you? Can't you see that His kindness is intended to turn you from your sin? So this is what Paul was saying is, is that God's goodness is so great. His love is so great that there's nothing you can do.

There's no mess up so bad that you can't turn to God and He's going to love you. That's good for us to hear. I was hoping I would get an AME in out of that. Maybe I'm just living with the most righteous group of people I've ever seen in my life. And we don't it and we don't want.

Now, that's not the case. God's telling us right here he is saying that I am so good. Come to me, hear my word. Get to know me. Get a revelation of me. And those mess ups are going to get further and further and further apart. Are we getting something this morning in Encounter Church? Man, there's a word in both of these scriptures or the new living translation says this says God is patient with you, God is patient with you and that good and isn't it good to know that we serve a God and we have a father that is patient with us?

God's loving-kindness is His patience with us. And you'd ask yourself a question Are you a patient person? I'm going to say something bold here. Just a second. And it stepped on my toes. It rolled over like a forklift. Okay. But even as I feel like I have a good understanding of God's love and kindness, who he is, and that patient is wrapped patients is wrapped up in this.

Sometimes I feel like I'm not the most patient person in the world, especially when it comes to my spouse and my kids. And I have to ask myself the question this Do I believe that God is patient with me? Because I believe that if I truly understood and grasped the concept of God's love and kindness to the extent that we can see patients inside of it if I had that the way that God wanted me and intended for me to have and have a revelation of I would be patient with my wife and my children.

I think the reason that we are impatient as a people and as a community is, is that we don't understand that God is patient with us and that patience comes from his loving-kindness. I found myself impatient with my children this weekend and I had to ask myself, Is this the way God would handle the situation with them?

No. Well, I've got the character of God inside of me. I've got His spirit inside of me. God is patient with us. On the back of that translation, it says His lovingkindness is intended to turn us from our sin. Now we need to know that our spirit inside of us is sealed and it's been made perfect. But that doesn't mean that we don't mess up from time to time.

And I think this is an opportunity for us to talk about sin for just a few minutes now. You're never going to hear me preach and harp on sin to the extent that to the extent that it beats us down to the point to where we don't want to come to church or be in the word anymore, but sin is serious.

It is so serious that Jesus went to the cross for it. So I think it deserves a little bit of attention and I am talking about as a people, as a whole today we live in a community, in a state, in a country, in a world where people and Christians included have had their consciousness has been seared with the horror.

It's seared. We live with people every day that continue to live an abomination in sin, and it doesn't bother them one bit. And it should. And it should be. God told us, get a revelation of my love and see how quick I am to forgive and see how quick I am to forget and to love and to restore my relationship with you.

And when you do that, you will automatically turn from sin and you'll start to turn towards me. Now, you'll never be perfect. You'll never be perfect But get to know me Get in my word Let me show you how quick I am to restore Psalm 103, verse one. Psalm one or three, verse one, Bless the Lord, oh, my soul.

And all that is within me, bless his holy name, bless the Lord, oh my soul. And forget all, forget not all his benefits Who forgives all your iniquities and heals all your diseases? There it is. That's what his loving kindness produces. He doesn't condone it, but he doesn't condemn it. He's just saying, Get to know me and move past it.

I want to talk about healing for just a second. Can you flip it right there? Who heals all your diseases? Psalm 103 verse three That's not me saying that I'm not smart enough to come up with this. This is the Holy Spirit. Put this inside. It's almost in the Holy Spirit that produced this. Is it true or is it not?

And I've shown you two different scriptures versions of it. Does it say the same thing Who heals all of our diseases? God loves us so much that He sent his son to hang on the cross for us. His body was broken so that we could be healed. It takes faith to receive healing. It takes faith. What have we said over and over and over this morning about faith?

How does faith come? It comes by hearing. And when you hear no, when you hear God, you get to know God. I talk to people every week that need to be healed and if they need a miracle and I want to say this and maybe you're one of those people that I've talked to this week that faith has a hard time working when we don't understand how much God loves us.

Faith has a hard time working when we don't understand how much God loves us.

I talk to people every week, Pastor Joe, you just don't know what I've done. You just don't know how bad I am. You don't know how horrible I am. You don't know the things that I said to my wife. I'm coming to you because I need healing in my body. I've been doing drugs for 20 years and I need healing in my body.

And they always say this. I know that God is punishing me and I've brought this on myself. God does not punish you. Now, you may need healing in your body because you've done drugs for 20 years. Scripture says that sin has a consequence. Sin pays a wage and you can't get mad at God for doing drugs for 20 years and get upset because you have a heart attack.

That's not him. That's 20 years of doing coke or whatever it may be. It pays a wage and it does have a consequence. But I want you to know this about God's love and kindness that even though you've been doing the hardest drugs for the last 20 years, you can take that to God and you can say, God.

I see in your Scripture where you said that if I hear you and I have faith in you and I see your love in you, that you will heal me and he will hear you. And then all you have to do is receive. But we've got to get over that part that I'm so bad and I'm so horrible.

Now you just messed up. Stop getting to the word. Get to know God, see how much He loves you, see how much he trusts you and then let him go to work. Galatians Chapter Six, verse eight. Are we getting something this morning? You know, I know that's tough and that's a hard situation, but we need to talk about that sometimes.

You know, I know some pastors that absolutely will not even talk about sin anymore because it may offend somebody. Oh, my goodness. We have a pastor that talks about sin. Oh, my goodness. We have a pastor that he directly, even though I've never met him in my entire life, talked about smoking and drinking. And guess what? I smoke and I drink.

I'm high if I'm not going back, that's the truth. Today congregations in many churches, they're so afraid to step on somebody's toes or that they may offend somebody, that they just stay away from sin. Jesus thought sin was important. Galatians Chapter six, verse eight says this For He who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who serves to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life.

This is just backing up what we said. If you sow to the flesh, there will be a harvest. If you want to do methamphetamines for 20 years, there's going to be a harvest. You're going to need a lot of teeth and a new heart. One God doing that. God didn't go. You know that that you look so funny without those teeth.

I'm so glad that I did that to you. That's what people think. Oh, God. Did this to me. God wanted me to be a witness to the people. No, sweetheart, the meth did that to your teeth, right? Smoking can go through the whole list. All the things that God told us not to do, have a consequence. We don't get to escape that seed time in the harvest.

We don't get to break that. As much as God loves us. If you'll notice in the Scripture, it never said that if you sow to the flesh, I won't love you. Did it say that? It said, if you sow to the flesh, there's going to be a consequence. But but he also said that if you so to me there's everlasting life right now I'm going to close with this.

We're talking about running from God now. And there is a saying that I heard the other day. I heard a man that was probably in his early fifties speaking to a gentleman who was in college. And this gentleman that was in college is having a hard time. And I heard this saying and it brought back memories for me.

And this man told this guy he said, you made your bed, now you lie in it. How many of you have heard that before? We need to get that out of our vocabulary. You can read the entire Bible and you're not going to ever see God tell you that. Well, you made your bed. You're lying now, sucker.

Many of you know my testimony when I went to w t my first year, I carried a 3.8 GPA and then decided to get a little bit more socially involved. My next year in my 3.8 GPA went to down to I think it was about .6.4.5. I'm not joking. I have the transcripts to prove it. And I got a call from the dean's office.

Now, I didn't know what was going to be involved in the conversation, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't going to get a medal. He wasn't going to pat me on the back for all the awesome parties I was throwing. But he came down. He said, Mission Dwyer Man, it looks like you got off to a great start.

He said, I've been doing this for 30 years and I've never seen somebody's GPA drop as bad as yours has. And he said, Really, the reason that I'm calling you in, is I wanted to make sure you're okay. He said This is serious. I mean, are you dying? I mean, seriously said, are you dying? You know, are you is there something going on in your family?

He went through this whole gamut of questions and I just looked at him, and said, No, I've been partying. And he took his glasses and he said he said, do what sort of a party? And said, oh, well, I hope you enjoy partying because you're kicked out of school for a year. And I said a year. I said it just like that.

I said, one, you're going to kick me out of school for one year. You know, I never looked at it. I said You made your bed. Now your life. You know, the issue with that, you know, I caused I did it. I was paying for it. I did it. I but when that year came, it was a semester, semester.

But when it came time for me to reenroll, I didn't go back. I ran. Why would I want to be in a place that doesn't want me? God does not say you made your bed. Now lie on it. Do you know what God says? God says, pick up your bed and walk. Isn't that what Scripture says? God says, pick up your bed and walk.

In other words, he's saying, let the past be the past. But looking in the past, let a pass the reminder of how far you've come. And you get up and you go forward and you see my love and kindness and you see how much I love you. And you see how quick I am to forgive. And then I'm here, you, and I'm for you And I'll never leave your forsake you That's the God I serve and you.

So some of us in here this morning, we need to pick up our bed and we need to walk. A good line in it to move back toward you. If you will get to know our God, you will see how awesome He is. He's a good dude. You will like him and you will talk to him and he will talk to you.

And you will find that our God is loyal. You know that our God is loyal, you know, and unfortunately, knowing people that are loyal anymore is for if you do. I mean, I talk and I hear the way people talk about I visited with the guy yesterday, you know, a little bit of counseling, and the way that he talked about his spouse and his family, there was no loyalty.

There's no loyalty there. You mean I remember a time that when you talked about somebody's brother, there's going to be a fight or you talked about somebody's and there's going to be a fight. I mean, that's the way God is still with us today. He's ready to fight for us. And, you know, I had a pastor say one time he said, Do you remember the Hatfields and McCoys?
He goes, Those are some of the dumbest people. But man, they were loyal. That's what we need back. But we need to understand that that's how we got into it.