On the beach. Now today will be in Ephesians chapter 4 verses 7 through 16.
Let's get right into it. It reads, and he has generously given each of us supernatural grace
according to the size of the gift of Christ. So it's important to understand
God's favor in our life, God's grace in our life, God's forgiveness in our life. He's given us great
favor, great grace, and great forgiveness because he has something great for us to do. So God will
always give you the peace and the encouragement that you need in your life for the assignment
that he's given to you. Did you know we all have an assignment? Me, you, you're watching this,
you have an assignment that God wants you to do in your life for him. And so he'll always give you
the strength and the encouragement and the grace to accomplish your assignment. Now it's your job
to tune out every voice that you shouldn't listen to. There are eight billion voices on earth
according to the science that they tell us. There's about eight billion people on the planet.
Let me ask you a question. How many of those voices are you supposed to listen to? How many
of those voices are you supposed to learn from? The answer is a very select few group of people.
Just because somebody's talking doesn't mean they have something to say. God will give you wisdom
for you to distinguish between a person who is speaking and a person who's worth listening to.
That's why we need God's wisdom in our life every day. God will help you
distinguish the difference between those two things. He says this is why it says,
he ascends into the heavenly heights taking his many captured ones with him and gifts were given
to men. So God gives all of us gifts so that we can serve the body of Christ. Our gifts aren't just
for us, they're also for others. Everything that God gives to you in your life is to benefit and
serve other people. Now when it says that he ascended, it means that he returned to heaven
after he had first descended from the heights of heaven even to the lower regions, namely the earth.
The same one who descended is also the one who ascended above the heights of heaven in order to
begin the restoration and fulfillment of all things. He has appointed some
to the lower regions. The same one who descended is also the one who ascended above the heights of the
heaven in order to begin the restoration of all things. Verse 11, he has appointed some with grace
to be apostles, with some grace to be prophets, and with some grace to be evangelists, and with
some grace to be pastors, and some with grace to be teachers. So God gives specific gifts to specific
people, but the gift isn't for themselves, it's to encourage the body of Christ. So there's a spiritual
principle that I believe in. It's the greater the influence that you have in your life, the more you
need humility and responsibility. There's literally not a week that goes by now that I don't see
someone whose influence is here and their responsibility is not there. So God gives
responsibility and their character and their integrity is here and that gets you in trouble
every single time. You want to pray for your responsibility and your character and your
integrity to be here and you want to have a lower level of influence than your responsibility and
your humility and your integrity. This is almost totally lost on people today. They want this. No,
God says this. Your integrity, your responsibility, your character should be way more than your
influence. That's a Christ-like perspective. So we're not to pray for influence, we're to pray for
character, responsibility, and integrity, and then God will decide when and where you should have any.
So he gives us apostles. Those are people who preach the gospel, plant churches, and establish
church planting networks. That's what an apostle is. A prophet is somebody who declares the truth
unabashedly from God to a people and to a culture, a prophet. What is an evangelist? This is someone
who has the gift to bring people who are outside the family of God into the family of God. This is
an interesting one because there are people that have the gift of being an evangelist, but we're
all called to evangelism. So don't think that if someone has an extraordinary gift of being an
evangelist that it leaves you off the hook for doing evangelism. Now we all have our different
way that we do evangelism. I just participated in a Jesus rally on Friday night. Not really my
gifting to go and proclaim out in the streets. However, I did proclaim the gospel that night
in a different way that fit within my personality. It doesn't matter your personality.
God wants to use you to bring people into the kingdom of God. You should be asking,
hey Lord, how have you made me? What am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to go out on the streets and
preach? If you are supposed to, by all means my friend, go. We all have different ways that we
share about what God's doing in our lives. You need to find a way that's comfortable with you
and then run with it. But the goal and the intention is to be an example and to be a voice
to see people come into into God's family. It says he said he gave some grace to be pastors.
So what this means is people that have the gift of being a shepherd and caring for people
in the body of Christ. Now if you have a pastor's heart, you'll care about people.
And you won't care about organizations and flow charts and structures and prime time.
You'll just care about people. A pastor's heart is for people, to shepherd people,
to protect them from danger, to encourage them as they grow in their relationship with God.
And then there's some to be teachers. These are people that are able to teach
the Bible. And so God gives these gifts, but not for that specific person,
for the building up of the entire body of Christ. So he says their calling is to nurture. See?
Encourage, nurture, build up their calling and prepare the holy believers to do their own works
of ministry. So the goal of these five gifts is so that people can feel like they have
the nutrition and the encouragement and the environment to go and do ministry,
to go and be the hands and feet of Jesus, to go out into the world and be the church,
the called out ones, the ecclesia. We don't bring people to church. We are the church.
So I want to parse this out here. It's impossible to bring someone to church when you're having a
conversation with someone and you're following Jesus. If you're having a conversation with
someone and you're following Jesus, the person you're having a conversation with,
they're already at church because you're there. You're there. You're the church. People are the
church. So it's impossible to get people to come to church. They're already at the church when
they're talking to you. When you walk into the room, the church just showed up. And if you miss
this point, you can spend the rest of your life trying to bring people to something that they're
already at when they encounter you. That's a very beautiful thing. That's a very important
beautiful thing. That's a very freeing thing. He says, and they do all this so that they will
enlarge and build up the body of Christ. These grace ministries will function until we all
attain oneness in the faith, until we experience the fullness of what it means to know the Son of
God. And finally, we become one into a perfect man with the full dimensions of spiritual maturity
and fully developed into the abundance of Christ. So God is building us up in our faith so that we
can be strong through the body of Christ. Now look at verse 14, and then our immaturity will end. Did
you know we're immature? We're all immature. I'm 48. I got a lot of immaturity, a lot of immaturity,
acknowledging it, saying, God, I don't want to be immature. I want to be mature, a mature follower
of Jesus. And we will not be easily shaken by trouble. When you're mature, you're not shaken
by trouble. I won't be led astray by novel teachings or false doctrines of deceivers with
who teach clever lies. So I'll be strong. I won't be led astray. I'll be led to the word and to pray.
How do you know if you're not being led astray? Because you're always being led to the word
and to pray. So I want to be strong, led to the word and to pray, standing on my own two feet.
But instead, we will remain strong, we'll be sincere in our love as we express the truth. So God
wants us strong and sincere and mature. All our direction and ministries will flow from Christ,
lead us deeper into Him, the anointed head of the church. For His body has been formed in His image
and is closely joined together and constantly connected as one. And every member has been given
divine gifts to contribute to the growth of all. So again, God gives you gifts to benefit and to
build up other people in the family of God. And all these gifts operate effectively through the
whole body. We are built up and made perfect in love. Isn't that a beautiful picture of what
the called out ones who follow Christ, how we're supposed to function, very nurturing,
very encouraging, building each other up so that we can be strong, so that we can be sincere.
That's my hope and prayer for you today. Thanks so much for joining me. Until next time, God bless you.