ANNOUNCER: The following program is sponsored by
generous friends and partners of Real Life.
ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Real Life with Jack Hibbs.
JACK: You want to be possessed by the Holy Spirit. You want Him
to animate you. You want Him to control you.
You want Him to be the governor of your life.
ANNOUNCER: The Christian walk is a pathway of ongoing growth.
This journey brings us ever closer to God until His work
in us is perfect and complete. Stay tuned for
Jack Hibbs's message, God at work in you.
ANNOUNCER: Have you ever wondered what it would be like
to travel the world and swim with wild dolphins along the
coast of Ireland? Or walk the war-torn beaches of Normandy
where so many lost their lives fighting for freedom? Or sail
the ancient prophecy-filled seas of Israel in Egypt? In Now I
Sea, Jenny L. Cote takes you on an ocean voyage around the world
to discover life lessons that point to God's goodness and
grace. From smooth sailing to turbulent tides, her Spiritual
insights will have you thinking about the sea in new and
inspiring ways. Learn to approach faith from a new
perspective and apply Jenny's biblical teachings to your life
when you order Now I Sea. Jack Hibbs loves this book and
recommends you get a copy as well. One will be sent to you
with our thanks when you make a gift of any
amount to Real Life. Visit JackHibbs.com or call
877-777-2346 to claim your copy. Order now.
(Music)
JACK: I want to declare this to you right now. I know that's
quite a declaration. I want to declare something to you right
now, but here's the truth of the matter, that is that I
personally hope that Jesus Christ comes back today. In
fact, it is the historical view of Christianity that even began
with Jesus Himself who said, "Let not your heart be troubled.
You believe in God, believe also in me, for in my father's house
are many mansions, dwelling places. And if it were not so, I
would've told you, but I go now to prepare a place for you that
where I am, there you may be also." And then the Apostle Paul
comes along and writes in numerous volumes of his epistles
saying that the Lord could come back. You need to be ready. We
are waiting. And he included himself in the we statements. We
are ready. The question is, are you ready to meet Jesus? And I
know that there's a big debate about that. Well, I think He's
coming back later. Well, I believe that He could come back
at any moment and my argument is based in the Bible. Whatever
your belief is, the fact is that you could actually, I could
actually die today and then our message becomes irrelevant
because you didn't have to wait for Christ to return. He came
and picked you up, if you know what I mean. He came and got you
at that moment of death if you're trusting Christ as Lord
and Savior. If you were to die today, are you excited about
meeting Him, or if He were to come today with a great trumpet
blast and call the church upward, 1 Thessalonians 4, would
you be ready? So listen, this message, I hope, causes you to
want to be ready. We need to live out our lives in such a way
that if Christ could return at any moment, we would be ready to
meet him. Over and over again, this challenge comes to the
believer when we read the Bible, be ready, be ready, you don't
know when. So, friends, listen, let's open up our Bibles. Let's
dive into this message titled God at Work in You. And that's
the key, is God at work in you? Let's find out.
JACK: Philippians chapter 2 verses 12-13 says this, "Work
out your own salvation with fear and trembling." Work out your
own salvation. Apply yourself to the fact that you're saved, do
it with fear and trembling. The word means with awe in
reverence, knowing that we will give an account. It doesn't mean
work out your own salvation because that's how you get
saved. It means now that you're saved, move in the awe, in
reverence of God, for it is God who works in you, both to will
and to do for His good pleasure. I love verse 13, just when verse
12 scares you to death, verse 13 says, "But don't worry about it.
I'm the one working in you." And so for that, you know it's
blatantly right there before your face, but it seems to be a
secret and it shouldn't be, and that is Lord God. Then if that's
the way you do things, then you do all of this by your Spirit's
work in my life. You do whatever you want to do, God, but I'm
yielding to you. I'm going to submit to you and every single
one of us as believers, the Holy Spirit will see to it in your
life that we are in hot pursuit of the nearness of God in our
lives. And the work of the Holy Spirit is such a great comfort.
Remember I told you that's one of His names in the Bible, the
Parakletos, the comforter, the one who comes alongside you and
we know from Jesus as we'll see in a moment again that He's the
one that dwells within us. But it's a wonderful thing to be...
Listen, to be possessed by the Holy Spirit in life. You say
possess, that's kind of scary. Yeah, that's if you just watch
scary programs. No, you want to be possessed by the Holy Spirit.
You want Him to animate you. You want Him to control you. You
want Him to be the governor of your life. And so the beautiful
thing is that God at work in you is the Spirit of God and you
experience Him by this nearness, by this interaction. In Genesis
chapter 3 verse 8, the Bible says, and they... That is Adam
and Eve, heard the sound... Listen to this. "They heard the
sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the
day." The best we can do is imagine the nearness of God.
Imagine what they experienced, Adam and Eve before they fell,
before they went into sin that they heard the sound of God.
What does that sound like? Pretend for a moment, I'm
teaching the five-year olds in class. When you're teaching
children's ministry, it's amazing. You cannot get away
with quoting that verse and moving on because a little hand
will pop up and say, "What did he sound like? What did that
look like?" If God's walking through the garden, is it like
this or did His feet touch the ground? You think about that for
a moment. We have no idea what that was like, but Adam and Eve
knew God so close and so well and so perfectly that when they
heard the sound of Him, that was a common thing. Unfortunately,
the Bible tells us when they had sinned, all of a sudden the
sound of Him walking in the garden and the cool of the day
was not a happy sound. It's a sad day when things are blessed
and precious in our lives. Listen, I'm going somewhere with
this. When things are innocent as they ought to be, and then
evil comes in and pollutes it from the outside. When somebody
introduces something that taints and makes ugly the things that
God has made beautiful. You know God's greatly offended at that.
You're not the only one offended at it, God is offended at that.
And all of that comes from Adam and Eve's rebellion against God
and God in His great redemptive work introduces to us in His
salvation and sanctification of the believer, the indwelling of
the Holy Spirit. Church, remember just quickly last time,
way back in verse 23, regarding we're on our way, is that we saw
the heartbeat of heaven, heartbeat of heaven. Number two,
in verses 24 and 25, we saw that there's a hope of heaven and
then we left off with this argument last time, and that is
the help of heaven and the help of heaven is none other than the
Holy Spirit. It says in verse 26, likewise, the Spirit that is
the Holy Spirit also helps. Remember what that word means?
He comes alongside and He picks up one end of the plank.
Remember how we were hoping and wishing that He picked up the
entire plank? No, He picks up... The word means He picks up one
part of the plank and you and I as disciples pick up the other
part of the plank. Of course, He takes the heavy end, I'm sure.
But He comes alongside us to help us. He doesn't snap His
finger and you do Christianity. His Spirit fills you with the
power of the Spirit to live out Christianity. Big difference. He
helps us in our weaknesses, for we do not know what we should
pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes
intercession for us with groanings. Sounds that have no
earthly application, which cannot be uttered or understood,
inarticulate technically. Now, He who searches the hearts knows
what the mind of the Spirit is. Because he makes intercession
for the saints according to the will of God. And we looked at
this fact that verse 26 tells us that Heaven is listening. Do you
remember that? Heaven's listening, heaven is listening.
Heaven wants to hear from you, and I pointed out to you the
dichotomy between the believer and the unbeliever. If you're a
believer, Heaven is listening to hear your prayer, to hear your
cry, to hear your joy, to hear your worship. I said something
last week, it made some people upset. And so I'll say it again.
That when we worship, worship, proskuneo is the word, which is
the root word to pray, that prayer and worship is the same
thing to God. He's blessed by it and so there are people who
don't go to prayer meetings, they scarcely ever pray and
there's people that take worship as something that just gives us
more time to park the car. And worship should be top of the
list. It should be the preeminent thing because worship
for us is the encompassment of all things. When we witness,
when we pray, when we study, when we love our husbands and
our wives, when we love our community for what is good and
what is right is all an act of worship. Do you guys remember
when Pixar did that cartoon? One of the very first ones where the
guy was in the little European courtyard, he had his gestures
hat on. He had a big drum in the front. He had all these musical
instruments and he had tambourines and everything. He
was a one man music machine and he just began to move and all of
these sounds and all of these incredible things came from him.
And when I first saw that Pixar, I immediately thought, and I
still do, of the life of the believer. When you and I move,
we should be moving in an act of worship. Are you going to go to
work tomorrow? It should be an act of worship. What are you
doing this afternoon? It should be an act of worship. I believe
it is, by the way, if we realize it or not. And so we understood
this, that heaven is listening. We saw also that heaven is
speaking. That's where we left off, that the Holy Spirit
Himself makes intercession for us. And that word intercession
is this in the Greek language it means to obviously intercede,
but to make petition for or on the behalf of another. This is
very encouraging people, listen. For the believer when we pray,
God is listening. For the non-believer, God is not
listening except but for one prayer. Listen up, so I'm not a
Christian, but I've been praying for years. Into deep space, you
have been praying. According to Isaiah chapter 59, the Bible
tells us that God's hand is not short that He can't save you.
Neither is His ear deaf that He cannot hear you, but your sins
have separated you from God so that He will not save you nor
will He hear you. That's a very terrifying verse. But when the
believer comes along, the Bible tells us that when Christ
forgives us of our sins, you and I are in worshipful prayer and
that's how we maintain fellowship. And that part of
that great fellowship is... Please mark this down. Part of
this great fellowship that you and I enjoy is based upon the
intercession of the Holy Spirit. That the Holy Spirit according
to the Bible is speaking to the Father constantly, all about
you, all about me constantly, without ending. The word means
without ending. The Spirit of God never stops talking to the
Father about your life, my life. That brings me great comfort,
does that comfort you? I hope it comforts you. If you believe the
Bible, that's going to comfort you. Because do you have
problems? Anybody have any problems? Four of us. We're
going home with the rest of you people today. In all of our
problems, He comforts us. We had part of our Christian family
this week... Several of our Christian family meet Jesus this
week and family weeps, family cries, of course they do.
They're going to miss them. But we have to remember that their
lives... Listen, they may have been sick in this world or that
accident may have happened, but the fact of the matter is they
had just passed through the valley of the shadow of death.
The moment they passed, they were in the presence of Almighty
God and every day the Holy Spirit is interceding on behalf
of we, the believers. Man, if you're not a Christian today,
you need to change that now. Because all you have is luck,
right? Luck and the grace of God. Luck's a joke. Even as a
non-believer, you're existing by the grace of God, He could snap
your fingers. The Bible tells us that those who are without God,
that in due time their foot will slip. The Bible says in the book
of Isaiah, that hell opens up its mouth wide to receive those
that are coming into it. That's terrifying. You see, that's
scary. Well, is it scary enough to get you to run to the arms of
Jesus? Because He loves you but His love will not override your
will. I find that fascinating and sometimes at the same time
frustrating. I love God but only this much. Be honest. I'm saying
this for you too, so don't even look at me like that. You love
God about this much. The moment you say, God, I love you so
much. Listen, if we loved God so much, things would be different.
We must confess that the love we have for Him is genuine and
honest, but it's like a candlelight compared to a raging
fire. I think one of the great pleasures of heaven is being
able to love God perfectly without distraction. What an
amazing thing, but He prays for us. And we need prayer.
Apparently we need it constantly. Listen to what F. F.
Bruce has to say. It's a long quote, but it's beautiful.
"Through our inarticulate groanings..." Now listen
carefully because there's various theologies on this and I
don't want to sound like some sort of compromiser, but I
actually embrace the two prominent arguments even though
they're diametrically opposed. F. F Bruce, the pastor of
Yesteryear said, "Through our inarticulate groanings, either
in sighs or utterances, we speak to God." That is a fact. No
matter what your theology is. If you are of reformed theology or
if you are Pentecostal in your theology, whatever your
persuasion is, that first statement is a fact. Because you
can groan on the inside of yourself, you can just look at
the world around you and be grieved. And without saying a
word, you can be just or can visit the children's hospital of
Orange County and you see those babies that are there in the
condition that they're in and you just... There's no words for
that. Grieved. It also indicates that there is a prayer or Spirit
language that is unbound by earthly words. It may be
included in this teaching that expressions, longings, pain,
sufferings, aspirations coming from the Spirit of our new man,
that's the born again us that has been created within us, that
which wells up from inside the depths of our Spirit as our
prayer is offered, having now been born again by the Spirit of
God, we can no longer be imprisoned by human limitations.
I find that powerful, such prayer prompted by the
indwelling Holy Spirit who communicates our true need. This
God ordained intercession which comes forth from us is
immediately... Listen, immediately heard and understood
by God the Father to whom the prayer is addressed and in the
name of Jesus Christ, through whom the prayer is offered. God,
the Father is listening to the Holy Spirit who is speaking from
within us. He being transcendent of our frail human nature praise
on our behalf, and all God's people said, have you ever been
to that place in prayer, pain, suffering, sorrow, and you don't
even know what to pray? You know you should, you know you have
to, but you don't know what to say. Well, whatever your
theology is, if you are a Pentecostal or not, we can agree
on this. We're grieved and we groan. We're also clearly taught
that the Spirit Himself groans. That is the Holy Spirit. To
think that He who dwells within you, grieves over sin, grieves
over the horrible things that we witness we see in this life. Can
you imagine? Can you imagine the control of God? I was talking to
a police officer recently and he was telling me about an
investigation that he was involved in with a child
molestation ring. And he was telling me about it and I'm
listening and I asked him, I said, "When you came in upon
this, did you have a gun?" And he said, "Of course I had a
gun." I said, "Okay." He goes, "Why'd you ask me that for?" I
said, "Well, to me, I'm beyond impressed listening to you tell
me this story, this event, this accounts. It's clear why I'm not
a police officer." I mean, I'd start shooting people and then
turn myself in and I'd be smiling about it. When you catch
these people in the act, seemingly God does nothing. Oh,
no, no, He's doing something. Remember, He doesn't move
according to our time. God will bring justice and Jesus said, in
any way, shape, or form, it'd be better for a person to have
never been born for that person in the day of judgment, when
Christ gets a hold of them, if you offend a child. Well, what
about God's children? Are we not offended over the sin and the
grief of this? Well, of course we are, but we're reminded.
We're not home yet. We're on our way, but that word groanings,
that word means grieving, sighing to mourn, to bemoan or
to lament. We all know what that's like. Maybe it's a
relationship, maybe it's a child's illness. And the word
uttered, inexpressible words, words that cannot be understood
by human means. There are no words, is what it means. It
means that it's too deep to express. The Spirit of God does
that. It's amazing. I don't understand it, but this all I
know is what I feel, what you feel, what we go through, what
you're going through right now as a believer, the Holy Spirit
inside is grieved that you are going through this. The Spirit
of God turns to the Father and speaks to the Father with words
that cannot be articulated. That's the Holy Spirit. I'm not
talking about you jumping up and speaking in tongues. That's not
what we're talking about. That's not even the same thing. We're
talking about prayer. The context is prayer and to think
that when the Spirit of God speaks to the Father
of God, it's considered prayer. Never think about
that, huh? You never think about God in a
sense praying to God, but He does for you, for me.
JACK: Well listen, God at work within you, that's the goal of
our lives as believers, that God would be at work within us.
There's no greater thing than to actually have true real biblical
Christianity and that is God at work within you. Religion is man
at work trying to reach God, but the fact of the matter is the
Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit talks to the Father of the Bible
tells us on our behalf. Isn't it amazing? The Bible says the
Spirit of God makes the intercession for us. He talks to
the Father about you and about me. And did you know that
salvation, when you accept Christ... Please listen. When
you accept Christ, that's one and done. When you open your
heart up to Christ, when you repent of your sin, when He's
your Lord and Savior, that is a one time event and the Bible
says you're sealed in that moment by the indwelling of the
Holy Spirit. He's come to take up residence in your life. He'll
never leave you. He'll never forsake you. You may have heard
on the radio or TV some sort of message somewhere, maybe on the
internet that church is what saves you or a crusade is what
saves you, you raised your hand, or you wrote a check. No, none
of that, none of that. Once you come to Christ, God goes to work
in your life and once you confess your sins to Him
acknowledging that He's the Lord and Savior of your life, then
that's complete. You say, "Well, Jack, what are you saying?"
Well, I'm saying this, one step begins an entire lifetime of
journey. You may waver, you may stray. You might even call what
the Bible says backslides, but listen, you don't lose your
salvation if you've got it. You're sealed with the Holy
Spirit. From that moment on, moment by moment, day by day,
Christ walks with you and what is known as sanctification. This
is why we study the Bible. I have to be honest with you. This
is why we're doing this program. There's no other aspiration in
our lives than to do this program to build disciples.
Jesus said, "Go into all the world and preach this gospel and
make disciples of all nations." That's why we're with you on
this program. That's our desire. Listen, for those of you who are
not saved, give your heart to Christ today. Ask Him to forgive
you of your sins. For those of us who are, this is called
discipleship. So listen, I want to encourage you, go to go to
JackHibbs.com and you can stay in touch with us there, connect
with us there and find out so much more Facebook, Instagram,
social media, but more than anything, we want to connect
with you, JackHibbs.com. So until next time, God bless you.
ANNOUNCER: You are watching Real Life with Jack Hibbs.
ANNOUNCER: Have you ever wondered what it would be like
to travel the world and swim with wild dolphins along the
coast of Ireland? Or walk the war-torn beaches of Normandy
where so many lost their lives, fighting for freedom? Or sail,
the ancient prophecy-filled seas of Israel and Egypt? In Now I
Sea, Jenny L. Cote takes you on an ocean voyage around the world
to discover life lessons that point to God's goodness and
grace. From smooth sailing to turbulent tides, her Spiritual
insights will have you thinking about the sea in new and
inspiring ways. Learn to approach faith from a new
perspective and apply Jenny's biblical teachings to your life
when you order Now I Sea. Jack Hibbs loves this book and
recommends you get a copy as well. One will be sent to you
with our thanks when you make a gift of any
amount to Real Life. Visit JackHibbs.com or call
877-777-2346 to claim your copy. Order now.
ANNOUNCER: Life is full of fear, doubt, and worry. The more you
listen to and see the world today, the easier it is to feel
hopeless and helpless. Amidst the confusion, a voice of hope
has emerged, the Real Life Network founded by Jack Hibbs.
The Real Life Network is a free digital media platform, void of
the noise of secular media that attack people of faith.
Click on the QR code or sign up for free
at reallifenetwork.com. Fast-forward your faith.
ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Real Life Radio with Jack Hibbs.
JACK: God's Word never will return void. God's Word is
Spirit, it's power, and it has its effects. God did not give us
Bible prophecy to scare us, but to prepare us. You are
the light of the world, Jesus said, You are the
salt of the earth. How does that happen?
ANNOUNCER: Jack Hibbs truly believes we are living in some
of the most exciting days in history, which brings some great
opportunities to share with the world a powerful, no-nonsense
presentation to the Gospel to this generation who are
searching for answers and truth. Will you stand with us in
sharing this message in real and practical ways? We ask that you
commit to support real life and the teachings of Jack Hibbs with
a gift of your choosing. Simply go to JackHibbs.com and there
you can simply follow the instructions of how to give a
one-time gift or a recurring gift. If you would prefer to
call, our toll-free number is 877-777-2346. Again, that's
877-777-2346 and of course you can write us. Our address is
Real Life with Jack Hibbs, Box 1273 Chino
Hills, California 91709. Your gift will be faithfully
put to work because it's our desire that
through Jesus Christ, you will know real life.
ANNOUNCER: The preceding program was sponsored by
generous friends and partners of Real Life.