Contending For The Faith

Lord, grateful to be here this morning. I pray, Father, for your Spirit to speak to us that we would have the authority of the Holy Ghost as we share the Word and break the bread. I pray, Father, that you would nourish us, that you would encourage us and strengthen us by your Spirit. I pray for those not with us this morning, those that are sick and suffering. For Joe, Foreman, and family, have mercy on them. I pray in Jesus' name, Amen. The Scripture says how good and how pleasant it is when brothers can dwell together. And that's where the Lord commands a blessing. And it's important for us that we remain unified in the Spirit. We don't get in carnally minded and these are arguing in the flesh because of our pride. The Satan comes to divide and conquer. And his kingdom isn't divided. Otherwise, his kingdom wouldn't stand. And so it's important that we don't become divided. Otherwise, Satan will win. The Lucifer will come and bring division, bite and devour, and cause one to be against another because of one reason or another. And we have to find those reasons to unite. The shed blood of Jesus Christ, the resurrection from the dead, the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, and good doctrine, good teaching. We're not going to see everything 100% because we all see things a little bit differently based on the light that we have. But we have to endeavor to keep the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace until we all come to the unity of the same faith. There's one faith, there's one baptism, and there's one Lord, Jesus Christ. And we see in part, brothers, sisters, we see in part. We don't have the whole vision. We see what's in front of us. We see what the Lord has allowed us to understand based on the journey. If he'd show us the whole thing, it would be overwhelming. And so we have to be able to respect that maybe I don't see everything clearly. And some of us haven't received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. So we see something, praise God, but more like men like trees walking. And we need another touch from the Holy Ghost so we can see everything clearly. And just because our heads are packed with logos and we have lots of understanding of Scripture and all the bones are correct and the doctrines are good, it doesn't mean that we have the full life that's in Christ. And so we want to continue to press on. We want to continue to strive ahead and looking unto Jesus because he's the one we're to gather around and he's the one we're to follow. We're not to look to men. We're not to seek after the praises of men. We're not to honor men or hold them in high esteem because every single one of us going to let every single one of us down because sometimes we become carnally minded and we speak from carnality. We speak from pride. We speak from human reasoning and all these different things. But the good news is we can confess it, repent, and turn from it when we acknowledge it and see it. And we can humble ourselves in the sight of the Lord so he can lift us up. I want to share something about contending for the faith. We've received the good news. We've received the gospel. That's great but now we don't just move on to more mature things like how to run our business successfully and how to make more money and how to buy more land and how to make sure our kids get the best jobs and how to make sure the bank account's going up and how to make sure we are seen by men in the community as someone and we're revered by those who are most highly esteemed. This is not moving on to maturity. Moving on to maturity is far different than that. We have to contend for the faith which was once delivered to us as the saints. The scripture says in Luke 13, it says, strive to enter through the narrow gate. For many will seek to enter and will not be able. Many will try to enter and will not be able. And they're going to say, Lord, we ate and drank in your presence and we heard you preaching the gospel. We were there among you and he's going to say, I don't know you. I don't know you. So striving and contending for the faith is something that's a daily thing. It's a daily decision to renew your mind, to do self-assessment on your spiritual walk and your spiritual journey and to say, you know what? I have further to go. Not to be discouraged, as Brother Dan shared, that we're not perfected yet, but we want to come into that resurrection life. Jesus said at one point, he said that, go tell that fox Herod, I'm going to go and cast out demons today and I'm going to heal the sick today. On the third day, I'm going to be perfected. Meaning on the third day, he was going to be resurrected. And the whole life would be transformed from being the servant to all to being king of kings and Lord of lords. And we want to move on to perfection, brothers. Not laying again a baptism of repentance from dead works. We want to move on to perfection. We want to enter into the resurrection life that's in Christ. We want to move on from arguing about this kind of baptism sprinkling or immersion. We want to move on from arguing about whether I received the full anointing of the Holy Spirit when I was water baptized or whether there's another baptism. We want to move on from there. We want to come into the fullness of the measure of the stature of Christ. We want to walk into life. But many times we become disillusioned on the journey. We lose sight of Jesus. We get our eyes on the things that we can see. But brothers, sisters, faith don't come by seeing. If you want to contend for the faith, they don't come by seeing it, come by hearing the word of God. And that's why it's important to hide the word of God in your heart so you don't sin against the Lord. It's easy for us to be distracted. I see a horse, they go and I've watched them on the track running. And when they set them to run in a race, they put blinders on them so that they fix their eyes ahead and they're looking at the track and they're looking at those in front of them and they're continuing to press on. That's why it's important for us to gather together in fellowship, maybe not always Sunday morning. But brothers, sisters, we got to meet sometime. So let's find another time when it works with your schedule and not forsake the gathering together as a matter of some. And so much more as we see the day approaching. It says the days are going to grow worse and worse. People will be deceived. They're being deceived. And everybody's caught up in buying and selling, marrying and giving in marriage. This is all our mindset. And then what? We start believing this lie. Ah, the Lord's not coming for a while. I had a brother asked me there last week. He said, do you think Jesus is coming soon? Like, seems as he could come anytime. And I caught myself saying, well, I think it might be it's close, might be three or four years from now. But if you start living like that, it's like, you know what, I got three or four years that I can, you know, enjoy life, see many days, keep my lips from evil and, you know, just enjoy my children and my family and my job and my property and all the blessings of the Lord, which he gives to us richly to enjoy. And we can lose the fear of God. We can lose the urgency of the moment. We can lose the fact that there's many people are perishing around us right now. And that day is coming upon them right now. We go to the creek, we find out somebody overdosed. Another guy's dead. That day came to him like a thief. Suddenly and in an instant, overdose. He's dead. Another one we hear got hit by a car, headed to go back home to see family. That day came for them in an instant. It's not that there were sinners in the rest, but we have to live sober, watchful to contend earnestly for the faith, which was once delivered to us as the saints and not become sluggish. Not to do the work of the Lord with slackness. We might not have a zeal to minister. I've lost that zeal for a few years, but not to do the work of the Lord with slackness. Say, well, if the Lord does something, it's up to him. No, we have to continue to be faithful in what we're doing. Imagine an employee shows up at work and says, you know what? I can't please you anyway, so I'm going to stop trying. You say, well, I need you to do this and this. Well, I'll do my best, but we'll see how it goes. Oh, we have to be diligent. We have to be faithful. We have to be persistent in prayer, looking to see what God will do in anticipation, because we don't know the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming. He's going to come at an hour when people are least expecting. And if we become complacent and we become proud, then we'll start to beat the servants. We'll start to become hard on the servants, because we know that we have been given an authority over them. And you know what? Begin to eat and drink with the drunkards. This, just hanging out with unbelievers. You know, good unbelievers, nice clean ones, don't give such a thing. Like-minded unbelievers. Brothers, sisters, we need to spend time among the brothers and just confessing our shortcomings and our weaknesses, bearing one another's burdens and praying for one another. Just reaching out sometimes, even if we can't get together, we can get together in this modern age through telephone and through texting and say, brother, hey, how's it going? I'm just reaching out to see how you're doing. To have more, to care about the interests of others more than our own interests. This is what the Lord wants for us. We care about me and mine, but we also need to care about one another. This is how the world is going to know we're Christians. We've got pink hairs and we've got pierced ears and we've got all these people working for us. They're going to know we're Christians because the love we have one for another is believers. You want to be a testimony, we need to show it by our love for one another. And that is where the Lord wants to work among us as brothers to bring together a unity of the spirit and the bond of peace till we come to unity in the faith. But that's going to take some contending. You're going to have to fight for it. It's not going to come naturally or by osmosis, brothers, sisters. You're going to have to fight for the faith. The faith was once delivered to us, but we have to contend for it because deceivers have gone out into the world. And it's very easy to hear people just whisper things and next thing you know, the flesh's heart comes in agreement with stuff that's not pure, it's impure. And all of a sudden we become envious of the proud and the boastful and we start saying it's useless to serve God in our hearts. And we grumble and complain and we lose focus on the Lord Jesus Christ. He has given us all things pertaining to life and godliness. He has given us very exceedingly great and precious promises which are to Christ and to us in Christ. And we can become partakers of the divine nature if we add to our faith virtue. In other words, we have to have this great grace to put into practice that great faith that we've received. You want to contend for the faith? Add virtue to your faith. And when you start to do what's right and you start to do those things which you cannot do by crying out to God for his power, that's grace. Doing what is impossible with man, but not with God. When he told the rich man, if you want to be perfect, if you want to enter into the resurrection life, if you want to come into that spirit-filled life, sell all you have, give to the poor and follow me. And this man who was a worshiper, he went and he just bowed down at Jesus' feet because he knew something was lacking. What must I do? What must I do? Jesus asked him to do something he could not do on this side of perfection, this side of resurrection. You want to enter into life? Sell all that you have. Get on your face and say, God, I had such a zeal to follow Jesus, but I can't do it. God, you gotta help me. Unless you change my nature, I have no hope. What is impossible with man is not impossible with God. You have to believe in the resurrection. Jesus said, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. And though he live, he shall never see death. Brothers, sisters, we have to enter into this radical life of the Spirit. We'll become partakers of the divine nature, adding to virtue, what? Knowledge. After you take a step of faith and you just reckless abandonment, you push all in with Jesus, then all of a sudden you go in your reading time and the Holy Spirit leads you to find out it is written. It was written all along. I took this radical decision to go make amends with somebody because the Holy Spirit was leading me and I thought I might get a criminal record out of it because of the way that I dealt with things through extortion in my old life and all that. And I went in to reconcile. I remember a time in my life, I got bitterness and unforgiveness and hatred and murder was in my heart. Way back in 1997, 1998. Because a friend had cheated me with money and it was such an extensive amount of money that I thought I cannot lose this money. I'm going to extort it. I made a plan. I made a way. It was it was very perfectly planned out and it went, it came through. But I boasted in it to someone and they caught me on camera and the lawyer had me on film, boasting in my darkness. And through all of that, the Lord used it to break me. And this man lost his business through what I had done. And the Holy Spirit said to me, I want you to go in and make amends with that man. That man had moved to Alberta and the Lord had led me to Alberta to go work because there was no work in BC at that time. And the Holy Spirit was saying, I want you to go to this church. I want you to head to this church. It was across the street and I was working and I was busy and I said, okay Lord, I don't know why I'm going to this church. I don't even know what kind of church it is. But I went and this man was at that church with the pastor. They were in the parking lot speaking. I hadn't seen this man face to face in many years. And the Holy Spirit said, I want you to go and make restitution to this man. I thought, man, what is this going to look like? And so we sat down in his office and I started weeping and I said, whatever, whatever it's going to be, I know you lost your entire business, whatever it's going to cost me, I want to be willing to make restitution to you for what I had done, even though he was the one who got the money and all that. But it was my evil plan that destroyed the man's life and the Holy Spirit wanted to deal with that in my life. And the man looked across the table from me and he said, I'd heard that you'd become a Christian. I'd heard that you got born again, but I didn't believe it. And I told the Lord, if this man is truly a Christian, then let him come to me and offer to pay me back the money that I lost because of his extortion. And he says, now I know that God has touched your life because you have answered that prayer of mine and I know that it is real what God has done in your life. Brother, sister, you're forgiven. You are forgiven, brother. And I wept because God is in the business of restoring relationships, reconciling wrongs, healing all these things. And then I read in the scripture, if you don't forgive your brother the trespasses that he's committed against you, neither will I forgive you. And my act of revenge needed to be rectified. The checkbook was out, the pen was on the table, and the debt was forgiven. How much more the Lord has done for us? There's no great heroic deeds that take place apart from reckless abandonment in the spirit to be obedient to the voice of the Holy Spirit. Some people say, oh, well, you're just trying to earn your salvation. Has nothing to do with that. Has everything to do with I've decided to follow Jesus, no turning back. If we don't go through with God, then we're not going to see the great miracles. We're not going to become perfected in Christ. We're not going to. How in the world are these people around us to be born again when we've done all sorts of wrong? All the testimony in the world that people hear is going to mean nothing unless they see the power of God. What greater power of God than to reconcile with your brother. The Holy Spirit is greater at proclaiming his word than you are trying to figure out whether I shall or shall not. As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. This is how the Holy Spirit began to lead. And then through knowledge there is self-control. So you know what? I need to continue to be obedient. Love suffers long in its kind. I need to follow through with what God's word says when I get knowledge and the prompting of the Holy Spirit. I remember I was across the street building a home in those days and there was a man who made an absolute mess of the cement on about four or five homes that we built. And I paid the man nothing. I was a contractor. It wasn't even my money, but I paid the man nothing because the job was worth zero. And the Holy Spirit spoke to me and I knew the man and I saw him there and I thought, oh man, I don't want to see him. He might punch me in the face or something. And the Holy Spirit says, you go over there and you go and reconcile with that man. I said, but I started reasoning. But I had a thousand reasons why I didn't need to do that. I was looking out for my boss. I was acting in good faith towards those that I was entrusted to and they made a mess on that job and I didn't pay them for that job. And the Holy Spirit says, you go there and you make amends with that man. The Holy Spirit supersedes our human reason. There might be a thousand reasons why you should not obey the voice of the Holy Spirit, but there's one reason why you should. That's the life that's in Christ. He who has the Son has the life. And I went over there with tears in my eyes and I said, hey, do you know who I am? He said, I know exactly who you are. I said, yeah, I was thinking, I saw you there and I was thinking about those jobs there and I handled that completely wrong. And I want to patch that up with you. How much do I owe you for those jobs? He looked me in the eye. I said, the reason I'm doing this is because I got born again. I'm a Christian now and I want to deal with integrity. Brother Dan talked about dealing with integrity. I want to deal with integrity. I want to do this thing right so that you and I have nothing against each other. He looked at me. He said, what's in your pocket? I pulled my wallet out and I had $70 in my pocket. He says, that'll settle things. I gave him the $70 that was in my wallet, everything I had in my wallet. He shook my hand and he said, thank you. Looking right in the eye, he said, thank you. He said, we're good. And I walked away and I wept because God just wants me to humble myself. Because I have been so very, very proud. Justifying myself in so many, many things. But you know what? You're never going to reach the lost. If all they know about you and your past is that you were just this man who didn't care about him and his family. Maybe he had a bad day. Maybe he didn't sleep all night and he just did a horrible job. You know what? It doesn't matter. We call ourselves Christians. I wasn't living as a Christian at that time. I just called myself a Christian. I said, now I'm a born again. The Lord wants us to deal with integrity. The Holy Spirit may ask you to deal with things in your past, to clean up your past. He's not going to bring you down. I listened to Brother Warnock. He says, he's not going to bring you down a notch or two so that he can use you. He's going to bring you down to zero. It says of Christ that he was made of no reputation, being found in the likeness as a man. He humbled himself to become obedient even to the point of death, the death on the cross. Such a humiliating thing. And that's how it was for Jesus. And that's how it will be for you. You don't have to be humbled just a little bit. You have to be made of no reputation if you want to be used of the Almighty. Jesus has to have given you his authority. We don't need authority from some guy who has a paper on the wall. We don't need authority from some professor in a school who's going to give you a PhD. You don't need some high priest to put a collar on you and tell you that you're a man of God. You need the Almighty God to appoint you for ministry. And when he speaks to you, you obey. If we are not faithful brothers and sisters with unrighteous mammon, which I'm sharing these testimonies about, then he will not entrust you with the true riches that come from God. Because his saints and his souls are way more precious than the 70 bucks in your wallet or the check that you're about to write for restitution. Once he knows that he has your money, then he knows he can trust you with people. We are still fighting for 50 cents an hour and arguing over somebody who owes you 20 bucks. Brother, sister, ain't nobody coming to sit at your feet to hear your gospel. You have to allow the Lord to break you completely and you have to contend for the faith which was once delivered to the saints. We need to add virtue, knowledge, understanding. We need to walk in love. That's the end goal. Perseverance, self-control, godliness. That's what happens when your character begins to change through obedience to the working of the Holy Spirit by faith. Faith comes by hearing. When you hear the prompting of the Holy Spirit and you're obedient to that prompting, it doesn't matter what anybody thinks. All that matters is that you obey what God says. It doesn't matter if nothing happens. Only matters is that you're obedient to what God says. Because that is what we are called to. We're bought with a price, with the shed blood of Jesus Christ. We're to glorify God in our bodies, in our spirits. I remember another time I went in and we were building homes. I had the joy of the Lord on me, boy. And I walked into the Mission Municipal Hall. And I was in there and I was submitting some blueprints in 1999 or maybe it was 2000. I can't recall right now. I was putting in blueprints for some homes I was about to build. And the Holy Spirit spoke to me and he said, I want you to confess to spray painting the Municipal Hall with all kinds of cuss words and re-inspection fees because I had a problem with authority in my life. I'm a very proud person. I don't like to submit. I like to do my own thing. I'm very strong like a bull. And the problem is God wants to bring me down to zero. And I knew it was from the Holy Spirit. He said, I want you to confess what you've done. It was probably four or five years ago I'd done this thing with a group of a group of thugs. The police came to my house. I was never caught for it. But the Holy Spirit says, time to bring it to the light. Everything has to be brought to the light. Son, if you want my favor. So I said, can I speak to the chief building inspector? And I was thinking, I don't want to think too long on this because criminal records coming. This thing's going to get ugly. And you know what? We cannot think about our reputation. You cannot think about the logic of it. You cannot reason it through and say, this is foolishness. It's under the blood. And all of a comes out from the counter. Not the same building inspector that was when I stopped building in Mission years earlier. But the one guy that I liked, that I took to a hockey game in my prior lifetime. And we went to a Canucks game and I enjoyed his company. The only inspector is now the head building inspector. I walk into his office. His name was Dan, Dan McNab. And I didn't know anything much about him, but I liked him. And I went there and I sat there in his office and I started weeping. And I says, I'll tell you something. I says, it was me that was behind this thing. I actually didn't do the spray painting, but I says, I organized it. And it was, it's all my fault. I done this thing to the municipal hall and I'm terribly ashamed and I'm sorry. And I want you to send me the bill for the repairs to paint that building. And he said, thank you. I'll get back to you with what we're going to do. And I left there and I was shaking and I said, Lord, have thine own way. You're the potter and I'm the clay and you want to bring me down not a notch or two. I don't understand what you're doing, but I know you're doing it for a purpose that I might humble myself, that I might humble myself, that I might humble myself. But I thought, you know, God was going to use me to share my testimony, to preach the good news, to share about the wonderful works of God he's done in my life. And all I'm doing is going around telling people what a mess I've made. And the scripture comes to mind that says, now he is able to work all things together for good to them that love God who are called according to his purpose. And it didn't make any sense to me at the time how he's going to work this for good, except maybe I'd have a prison ministry or I'd get a criminal record and I wouldn't be able to go to the States or I wouldn't be able to go to Haiti where I had a desire to go and plant a church or to go and help the poor, which we did. And all of a sudden, weeks later, I get a letter in the mail and it says that, Randy, this is, took this thing to student council and, or to student council, to city council, and they made a decision that if you just pay the deductible for the damage of $500, we will call this, this matter settled. So I sent a check for $500, I praise God. No police showed up. Thank you, Lord. That was cheap. Grateful that you had mercy on me, could have been way worse. But this thing's off my conscience. I can look people in the eye, you'll be able to look people in the eye, because you've made restitution to the best of your ability. There's things that you can't make restitution for. But that's the important thing is, it's not that we go and right every wrong, but that we're obedient and we're led by the spirit of God. As many as are led by the spirit of God, these are the sons of God. And he has his ways to keep us humble. Then all of a sudden, I got another letter back and it said that we wanted to let you know that we didn't feel right taking the $500. So the $500 was donated to a charity. And it went to go do good. I praise God. Now, years later, there was a man who came to our church. And he said, Oh, he said, you know, a man by the name of Dan McNabb. I said, Yes, I do. He says he goes to Seven Oaks Alliance. We were over there, ran into him. This is years later. And he said, he told me about you. I said, Well, what did he say? It wasn't all bad. He says, No, no. He said, when you came into his office to confess to doing this stupidity. He said, he sent out an all email to everybody who works in the district of mission, from the guys in the works yard to the mayor, everybody in between. And he said this, I didn't know he was a Christian. He said, Randy Cron just came into my office and confessed that he was the one that had done this thing on this on the city hall. He was behind it. He said, This is what happens when someone is born again. He says, Randy Cron has just become a Christian. And he just got born again. This is what Christians do when they get born again. And it was a testimony for the Lord Jesus Christ. I could have gone and tried to preach to every single one of them about the gospel. But until they see the power of God, it means zero. His ways, brother sister are not our ways. They're higher, much higher. My thoughts are this high, his thoughts are above the heavens or above the earth. So his ways and his thoughts are way higher than my ways. Brother sisters, you got to sit at Jesus feet to learn his ways. You have to spend time as John did, having your head on Jesus chest to hear his secrets. It's spoken in Malachi of two brothers who spoke to one another, them that feared the Lord. And they were sharing with one another. And it says the Lord hearkened in, he listened in on what those brothers were saying about him. And the Lord made a declaration, he said, they shall be mine. On the day that I make them my Jews, brother sisters, God's going to give us a crown with Jews. I want you to know that those who are born again, who are born of the spirit, who fear the Lord, become his special treasure. And if you get a few jewels in your crown because of the testimony of Jesus Christ, man, throw it at Jesus feet for sure. Because it was all him. It never was you. It never was us. It was always him. It was all grace. Grace that saves brothers, sisters, not a license to sin. Those of us who once been enlightened, who have tasted of the heavenly gift, that glorious grace, who have been partakers of the good word of God and of the divine nature. Let it not be that we don't continue to contend for the faith. If we draw back, this is a dangerous place. There's no opportunity to return if we've crossed all these bridges and become partakers of the divine nature and we've tasted of the good of God and of the power of the age to come. Walking in the resurrection life. If they fall away, it says in Hebrews 6, to renew them again to repentance is impossible. The earth that once drank in the rain. And if it bears thorns and briars, brother sisters, if we just go back to loving the world, deem us having loved this present world has forsaken me, Paul says. Brothers, sisters, let's not just say, well, you know, I tried that and yeah, I have a form of godliness now and I'm a very good person. You just deny the power. The Holy Spirit's not speaking to you. You're not obedient to the convictions of the Holy Spirit. You got another way worked out, a religious way, a way where you can be highly esteemed in the church. To God, it's an abomination. Go through with God. Follow hard after Jesus. Contend earnestly for the faith which was once delivered to us as the saints. We know that those angels which once had a place in heaven, they fell from their abode. Jesus said, I saw Satan fall like lightning to the earth. Brothers, sisters, we don't want to see that kind of fall happen to any of us. Through unbelief, through discouragement, through the love of the world and through pride. That's what happened to the Lucifer. He was lifted up in pride and he shot down from heaven like lightning to the ground. It can happen to us, brother, sister, if we don't continue to look to him and be safe. If you're struggling with sin, the scripture says in 1 John 1 verse 9, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins. And not just forgiveness, to cleanse us from unrighteousness. Brother, sister, we need cleansing. We read also a couple of weeks ago from one Peter speaking about, since you have purified your souls through obeying the truth, through the word of God, which lives and abides forever. Allow this to become a living word, a rhema word that man who does these things shall not just live by them, but we might breathe in the breath of God and we might proclaim the oracles of God by the spirit through faith. Go further than just memorizing scripture. Be obedient to the convictions. Go through with God. Walk worthy of the calling. Now to him who is able to do exceedingly and abundantly more than we have asked or even imagined, that he would keep us from falling and he would present us faultless before him in love. That we would fulfill the purpose and call of God on our lives. That we would continue to lift up and exalt the name of Jesus. That we would walk in the authority of the gospel. That you would be encouraged to continue to press on. Fix your eyes on Jesus. Press on, my friends. No matter how hard or how difficult, how narrow the way, though none go with you, keep going with God. In Jesus' name, amen.