Touching Lives With Dr. James Merritt

As we wrap up this series, I’m going to share with you a one-on- one encounter that happened two thousand years ago that gives us the perfect example of how to engage people one-on-one with the gospel. God did not allow you to hear about what Jesus did for you, believe what Jesus did for you, and move you to accept what Jesus did for you just so you could just keep it to yourself. Salvation is not to be stored; it is to be shared. Not only is every Christian commanded to do evangelism, to share the Gospel, to tell other people about Christ, but God has also equipped every one of us to do it and given us the tools that we need. Let’s look at three steps we can take to share the gospel with others.

In today’s key passage of Scripture, Jesus is talking to two groups of people – sinners and Pharisees (people who were banned from going to church and people who never missed it.) One group was so bad they didn’t think God would ever accept them. The other group was so good that they thought God had already accepted them, but they were wrong, so He told this parable. Another misnomer is that the story is about either son. It really isn’t. The main character of the story is the father. The father is mentioned twelve times in twenty verses. He is the real hero of the story. The story is not so much about a sinning son or a bitter brother, but a forgiving father. Of course, the father represents God. The whole point of the parable is very simple. The Father’s door is always open and the Father’s message is always “Welcome.” The parable actually falls neatly into three different parts that tell us about the heart of our wonderful God. Let’s look at each of those parts now.

In probably the most famous parable Jesus ever told he shows us why if we have the heart of God, we will have a heart for one - for that one person who doesn’t know God, for that one person who needs to hear the gospel, for that one person who is lost and needs to be found. The problem was that the religious crowd only cared about the people who were in the temple while on the other hand, Jesus cared about the one that was outside the temple. The religious crowd built walls; Jesus built bridges. The religious crowd locked the doors to the church. Jesus took the doors out because Jesus was looking out for number one, except number one was not Himself. Number one was others. I want to challenge you today to begin looking out for number one like Jesus did, and we’ll learn from today’s key passage why we should, how we can, and what happens when we do.

Every day of your life is just like money – you spend it. You can’t save it and you can’t store it. You have to spend it and you either spend it wisely or foolishly and the way we spend the days of our life will determine the legacy that we leave. So how would you like to leave a legacy? You want to be able to look back on your life and say at the end of the day, you have no remorse, no regret, no retreat, right? You want to hear one day from the God that created you, “Well done good and faithful servant.” Well, for those things to happen, we must determine to do three things.

What did Jesus mean by “the abundant life” in today’s key verse? I know what He didn’t mean. It is not a life that is found in stuff, money, possessions, or financial security. When Jesus called the disciples to follow Him, every one of them left everything behind. Even though He promised them an abundant life, He never offered them financial security, physical comfort, a retirement plan, health insurance, and certainly no health and wealth gospel. He didn’t even promise them a long life because many of them died early. Here is what He meant. The abundant life (the only life worth living) is a life lived in, through, and for Jesus. In this message, we are going to learn from these disciples as we think about how to live the only life worth living.

The first question we are going to tackle in this series is, “What Lord am I going to love?” I freely admit that this question carries an assumption that I believe is true. We all worship and love something or someone above everything else. Whoever or wherever that is, is your lord. That lord may be your ego, your money, your family, your job, power, influence, pleasure, happiness, and even your own life. This first question I believe is the fundamental question that determines the answer to the other two questions. So let’s dive in.

Bitterness is harbored hurt hidden in the heart. Of all the emotions I will cover, I believe this one may be the most dangerous. I fear bitterness in my life more than anything else. Do you know why? Because bitterness is an acid that destroys its own container. In a New Testament book called Hebrews 12 there is some strong warning about the danger of bitterness, but also some great wisdom on how to deal with bitterness. If you are bitter now, you will be better later.

As we continue our series on feelings and emotions, today we are going to look at anxiety. I would define anxiety as a lethal combination of worry and fear that dominate your mind, saturate your heart, and devastate your soul. We are abiding in fear. It is that feeling that continues to linger long after the actual threat or fear has dissipated. It is a far greater intensity than just worried. People use worry and anxiety interchangeably. However, they are very different psychological states. According to Psychology Today, “Worry tends to be more focused on thoughts in our heads, while anxiety is more visceral, in that we feel it throughout our bodies.” The good news is a man with flesh and blood, sitting in a Roman prison, facing certain death, knowing he probably wouldn’t get out of that prison alive and not knowing what day he would die understood anxiety. In a book called Philippians, he gives us a four-step process on how to calm your nerves.

God’s word has a lot to say about our feelings and our emotions. One of the things I love about Scripture is that when God paints the portraits of his men and women, they are not photoshopped. You see warts and wrinkles. You see flaws and faults. Today, we are going to look at one of the most famous men in the Bible – a prophet named Elijah. If God had a Hall of Fame, Elijah would easily be elected on the first ballot. He had so much of the power and presence of God in his life. He is the first person in the Bible to raise a person from the dead. But Elijah also had some troubles in life. As we are about to see, he was so depressed that he was suicidal. But in today’s message, we are going to look at how Elijah managed to get out of that valley, and with God’s help so can you. Elijah found in God a bridge over the troubled waters of depression that is still available to us today.

Being thankful is so important to God that He actually commands us to be thankful. A man in the New Testament by the name of Paul went through a tremendous amount of suffering and heartache that would cause anybody to be bitter and ungrateful and maybe even mad at God. He wrote these words, “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (I Thessalonians 5:18) You may not feel very thankful right now because of where you are in your life. Even though you may not feel thankful you can be thankful. This great man tells us how to be thankful and why to be thankful.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of the greatest writers and poets in American history said, “Every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty-seconds of peace of mind.” Not only do I agree with that statement, but I will candidly admit I have given up a lot of time of peace of mind. I can get angry, and I know I am not the only one. Thankfully, God’s Word has a lot to say about anger. In the book of Ephesians, Paul gives a prescription for those of us who are temper challenged to practice divine anger management. For many of us, by the grace of God, it can be done, it should be done, and it will be done if we will take three steps.

Jesus came to give us joy, peace, satisfaction, and contentment. Paul understood that probably better than anyone, even as he was writing from a Roman prison, when he wasn’t going anywhere and was stuck where he was. He wasn’t going to have any more than what he had, and he certainly had no computer and no cellphone. He pens this letter by talking about how he had found the secret of satisfaction. If Paul had died with his last words he would have been totally satisfied. There are three things we can do to live a life of total satisfaction according to Paul, and my prayer is that we all learn to implement these things in our lives so we can be totally satisfied as well.

The question now before us in today’s message is this: How can you bear the fruit of joy that you have to handle, with all the problems that you have to solve, with all the people that you have to deal with? A man who is in prison, under the threat of death every day, not knowing whether he would live or die, from one day to the next, wrote the perfect prescription for how to get stress out when you are stressed out. Paul gives us four steps to follow if we want to experience stress relief, and I can guarantee that your life will be richer, better, and sweeter if you practice these steps on a daily basis.

Life is exactly like a race. From the time you are born until the time you die you are running a race. The one goal in every race is to cross the finish line. No matter what else you do in a race it doesn’t matter how hard you run or how fast you run. If you don’t cross the finish line you won’t win. One sure-fire way to get joy and ultimately win in the life you are living is to set God-given goals and then to give your life every day to reaching those goals. A man by the name of Paul gives us the formula on how to do that. He gives us three simple steps that you can use at the beginning of every year, every month, every week, and every day to make that year, that month, that week, and that day the best year, best month, best week and best day of your life.

I believe that two things will determine what difference you made and to the degree that you made a difference - what you know and who you know. Nobody got a bigger bang for the buck of their life, outside of Jesus, than a man named Paul. Besides him, I don’t believe anyone who has ever lived had a more productive life, got more out of his potential, or had a greater long-term impact than this man who took a seed called the gospel, planted it as far as he could go, and the result has been the explosion of Christianity that we see all over the world two-thousand years later. How did he do it? What was the secret to his unbelievable influence and impact? Well, we have discovered the secret of who we should know and what we should know that will help us to get where we need to go in life and where God wants us to be when it is over. We should be determined to know three things on a daily basis, and they made all the difference.

We only get to take the ride of life once. Shouldn’t it be a joyride? Even with the bumps in the road, the sharp curves, the steep cliffs, and the deep valleys, don’t you want every hour of every day, of every week, of every year, to be filled with joy? In the coming days, would you like to be less stressed out? Would you like to maximize your pleasure and minimize your pain? Would you like to face life every day with a smile on your face, a bounce to your step, and joy in your heart regardless of your circumstances? In the second chapter of Philippians, Paul gives a three-step formula on how to do that. So, if you want to enjoy the ride of life, I guarantee that you will if you take these three steps.

There are two things that every human being has to face from the moment they are born. That is life and death. I don’t believe you are ready to live until you are ready to die. I also don’t believe you are ready to die until you are ready to live. I believe that Jesus is the only one who can truly get you ready for both. When Paul was in prison, he had to go to sleep every night ready to die the next morning. But even in this terrible set of circumstances, he continued to rejoice because he recognized that his life was in Christ, and to die was gain. In this message, I want to walk through the different things we gain when we die so that we can live our lives unafraid of death.

The Apostle Paul wrote thirteen books of the New Testament. All of them were letters. Of the thirteen letters, eleven of them were written to seven different churches. Philippians is the only letter that we have in the New Testament where Paul never one time corrects bad teaching, rebukes bad behavior, or handled a bad situation. We see only a completely positive letter to a church he wrote. This was a church that was full of joy. It was a church that gave joy to the pastor that founded it and gave joy to the people who attended it. Nineteen times you will find in this book the words “rejoice, joy, and gladness.” When you read this book you realize this is what a church should look like on the inside to the people who attend it, but it is also what a church ought to look like from the outside to people who don’t attend it. I want to share with you today the three things that are true about that church that I want to be true about the church today, both to insiders and to outsiders. I want to be a church wante

I hear so many Christians today express concern about the way our culture is increasingly rejecting biblical Christianity. I share the same concern, but honestly, I am a lot more concerned about evangelical Christians rejecting the Bible. I don’t mean that Christians reject the truth of the Bible, but they reject time in the Bible. It’s like when you try to give a baby a bottle, but they refuse to drink it. You know it’s what they need to grow stronger, but for some reason, they don’t want it. We’ve got milk (in the Word of God). We are just not drinking it. And because we are not, we are starving ourselves of direction in how to walk, wisdom in how to think, and guidance in how to live. I want to share with you today three habits we need to develop if our relationship with God is going to be as rich, as powerful, and as meaningful as it should be.

Good Friday was the day Jesus died, but Sunday was the day that death died. Some women came to the tomb that day to anoint Jesus’ dead body with spices, which was a Jewish custom. Little did they know they wouldn’t need spices that day. Even though they found the tomb, they didn’t find the body. Nothing has ever fascinated humanity more deeply than the question of whether there is life after death. If it interests you at all, and you have never done your homework, then the subject is not finished until you read what happened on that Sunday morning. As we go back and study the account of the resurrection of Jesus, we are going to see one way we can respond (in fact the way most people respond), but then we are going to see the two ways we should respond.