ALL IN
ALL IN
Week 2 : Refreshing Waters – Deny Yourself
Last week we started a new series for the New Year. Usually New Year’s sermons all about starting over and to be honest it is based upon what makes us better or whatever. Something we change about ourselves to make us feel better about ourselves.
But maybe this year can be different. Maybe, just maybe we make this New Year to be that we are ALL IN with Jesus. We can choose that as far as me and my house, we are ALL IN with God!!!
ALL IN means “completely committed to or very much in favor of something”.
In American churches, sermons have become more about how you have to discover yourself. It's all about me, myself, and I. They teach where you do whatever you want. You don't have to give your life for Jesus. You don't have to sacrifice. You don't have to deny yourself.
Can I be kinda’ silly?
I want you to imagine a hot summer day. I’m talking, record setting South GA hot!!! I mean, it’s hotter than blue blazes. It’s hotter than a blister bug in a pepper patch. It’s so hot that you just saw a hound dog chasing a rabbit—and they were both walking. It’s hotter than Georgia asphalt!! Hot enough to fry an egg on the hood of your car. You get the picture…it’s hot!!
You desire to cool off like never before but guess what, you have a pool in your back yard for such an occasion.
What do you do to find relief?
*Do you go and sit by it and marvel how cool and refreshing it looks as You have what feels like the beginning of a swamp in your britches!!
*Do you sit pool side and be thankful that you decided to put a pool in your yard as sweat drips into your eyes causing them to burn?
*Do you call a friend and tell them about how smart you are that you have a pool as the iphone screen starts to dissolve in your hands.
Do you stick a toe in it and say that was enough…even though the soles of your feet are now on fire?
Do you wait for someone else to go in the pool to give you a report, “Come on in fellas, the water’s fine.”
Or the last but not least, you look at the pool in fear because you have heard this story or that story of people who misused it and suffered…
WHAT DO YOU?
You dive in!! ALL IN!!!
We could take a bottle of water and drink it…we could even pour it over our head, but isn’t it better when we DIVE ALL IN??
As silly as that may seem to us, don’t we treat our Lord and Savior the same way? He is the answer!!!
When you are in the middle…..
See,
A believer comes to the cross -ALL IN (disciple) gets on the cross!
A believer retreats to safety- ALL IN (disciple) embraces suffering.
A believer cheers from the sidelines – ALL IN is in the game.
A believer is comfort-driven – ALL IN is purpose-driven.
A believer comes to church – ALL IN is the church.
A believer is all about believing in Jesus – ALL IN is all about being like Jesus.
A believer reads the Word – ALL IN lives the Word.
That’s what this series is about. It’s about us Being ALL IN for Jesus! But why do we hesitate?
Let’s go to our scripture:
Mark 8: 34 New King James Version
24 When He had called the people to Himself, with his disciples also, He said to them, “Whoever desires to come after Me (1), let him deny himself (2), and take up his cross (3), and follow Me (4).
So today I want to talk about the “let him deny himself”
DENY YOURSELF
Let’s be honest, when we hear Jesus’s blunt command we hear another voice alongside our Lord’s that’s saying,
“In other words, be miserable!”. “You will lose everything you love. Take your little portion of happiness and trample on it. Become a martyr.”
Has anyone heard this voice before? I know that I have.
Notice the RST in parenthesis? It stands for Revised Serpent Translation.
The devil is, after all, the world’s first Bible translator and interpreter.
Genesis 3:1-5 New Living Translation
1 The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the Lord God had made. One day he asked the woman, “Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?”
(REVISED SERPENT TRANSLATION)
2 “Of course we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,” the woman replied. 3 “It’s only the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden that we are not allowed to eat. God said, ‘You must not eat it or even touch it; if you do, you will die.’” So we Eve telling him what God had said. Look at what he says:
4 “You won’t die!” the serpent replied to the woman. 5 “God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.”
REVISED SERPENT TRANSLATION!!
He still uses this strategy today on us! We don’t realize that we have fallen under the serpent’s spell when we walk away from being ALL IN with Jesus because we have the subtle sense that his commands are burdensome.
But what Satan leaves out is that Jesus came “to destroy the works of the devil”
1 John 3:8 New Living Translation
8 But when people keep on sinning, it shows that they belong to the devil, who has been sinning since the beginning. But the Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil.
Including the blasphemous lie that “deny yourself” means “be miserable.”
As a people we love feeling safe and being in control. The world will tell us to trust in ourselves; to be confident in ourselves; to follow our own hearts and to believe in ourselves. The world will teach us that our own personal dreams and passions are more important than anything else.
And perhaps one the biggest fears that sets in on us when we “deny yourself” is the fear that we will lose ourselves. That we will be deprived of everything that makes me, me. Our dreams will be trashed, our desires dampened, our personality erased. We will lose control. We will not know what we will become of us. What will we lose? What will have to give up?
The fear is understandable. “Deny yourself” requires, after all, self-denial.
BUT Jesus silences the serpent’s voice by telling us where self-denial really leads. When WE DENY OURSELVES, Jesus tells us, WE FIND OURSELVES.
Mark 8: 34 New King James Version
24,… “Whoever desires to come after Me (1), let him deny himself (2), and take up his cross (3), and follow Me (4).
“See,” the serpent says, “lose yourself.” NST
To which Jesus responds, “No, find yourself — your true self.”
Jesus continues by saying this,
Mark 8:35-37 NKJV
35 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. 36 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? 37 Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?
The kingdom of God confuses the enemy. He knows nothing. Where Jesus reigns, the first are last, to lead you must serve, and here we see that the only way to save your life is to lose it for His sake.
The life we find on the other side of self-denial may look far different from the life we’ve always known. But your life will not — it cannot — be worse.
Look at this:
Mark 10:28-30 New Living Translation
28 Then Peter began to speak up. “We’ve given up everything to follow you,” he said.
So we see the disciples going through this as well…
29 “Yes,” Jesus replied, “and I assure you that everyone who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or property, for my sake and for the Good News, 30 will receive now in return a hundred times as many houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and property—along with persecution. And in the world to come that person will have eternal life.
A promise of a hundred-fold return on your investment. All that matters is if you trust Jesus with the investment of being ALL IN with your life? Push all the chips to the middle of the table. No Plan B.
Can you trust….JESUS…think about this:
Jesus: the maker of ALL beauty, redeemer of ALL brokenness, the fountain of ALL joy.
When you deny yourself, you will not lose yourself — not ultimately. You will find yourself.
Well, that sounds crazy…maybe even impossible!
Jesus covered in the verse preceding these:
27 Jesus looked at them intently and said, “Humanly speaking, it is impossible. But not with God. Everything is possible with God.”
The enemy doesn’t want you to find yourself!!
John 10:10 New International Version
10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
(NKJV) The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.
We all want life, especially more abundantly!!!
But how do we deny ourselves? Where do we even start?
Denying ourselves begins with a long look inside of ourselves.
We must stop and take inventory. However, I believe that there are two types of inward reflection that we tend to think of:
1. Some look within themselves all the time. They call themselves thinkers. I tend to be in this group.
However, people that tend to do this if they are not careful it leads them into depression, feeling of loneliness, discouragement, despair.
2. The second group, which I will call doers. They tend to stay busy so they don’t have to stop and think. It seems to me that they avoid looking within themselves because they are fearful of what they may find. They cannot justify their actions. And their danger area can be that they lose their sleep, lose their joy, run their bodies down, wear people out, not be content with anything, etc.
But there is a third way, that leaves to LIFE and LIFE ABUNDANTLY..
Let’s look at King David:
Psalm 139:23-24 New Living Translation
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts. (fear)
24 Point out anything in me that offends you, we generally don’t have a problem finding our faults, our mistakes, our failures…in fact, we are labeled by them, live in them, BUT look at the rest of the scripture…
and lead me along the path of everlasting life.
This is considered a prayer from David. He is doing something that I believe God is calling all of us to do if we hope to truly deny ourselves is to look inwardly, but like you’ve always done…God wants to be involved in the process.
You see, it would have been pointless for David to merely look within himself to try and figure out. That usually leads to condemnation but when God points things it, it leads to restoration.
Romans 8:1 New King James Version
8 There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are (ALL) in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.
We as believers have the Holy Spirit to help us in this process of learning what’s in our lives but needs to exit our lives. And here’s what the Bible says about the Holy Spirit…
Romans 8:26-31 New Living Translation
26 And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness.
This is why the Christian can proclaim that “Let the weak say that I am strong.” It’s because in our weakness we find help from the Helper, the Holy Spirit…
For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. 27 And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will. 28 And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. 29 For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son ,
That’s good news for you and me, He chose us KNOWING that we were not perfect. But look closer at what He is saying, God chose you to become like His SON. You begin to talk like Jesus, you begin to walk like Jesus, minister like Jesus, etc….
so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And having chosen them, he called them to come to him. And having called them, he gave them right standing with himself. And having given them right standing, he gave them his glory.
31 What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us?
See what this is saying, that if you let the Holy Spirit take part, you don’t have to be afraid because He will lead you into abundant life. You don’t have to try and be like Jesus,
God has chosen you! He will cause you to be like HIS SON if you go ALL IN!!!
When we pray the prayer of David and then ask the Holy Spirit to help us in our weakness…. He has abundant life waiting for you, for me, for all of us.
Matthew 11:28-29 New King James Version
28 Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
What’s holding you back today? What part of your past are you holding onto with clenched fists? What are you afraid to let go of?
SONG
<<<<<<<DO NOT FORGET>>>>
CALL TO FASTING
Jan 11th – Jan 28th
Will you prayerfully consider fasting 21 Days with me?
Basically, fasting up to and through the Revival.