START: A Fight Worth Fighting
2017-10-15
Pastor Jonathan Falwell
Memory Verse:
Ephesians 5:15
15 See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, 16 redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
We live in a world that always seems to be fighting. Fighting in the workplace, fighting online, fighting at home and fighting within. Today, I’d like us to spend some time focusing on fights that are actually worth fighting.
1. FIGHT FOR YOUR HEART
Proverbs 4:23 Keep your heart with all diligence, For out of it spring the issues of life.
– Make what you care about what God cares about
– Proverbs 4:24 Avoid all perverse talk; stay away from corrupt speech. (NLT)
2. FIGHT FOR YOUR MIND
Galatians 6:3 For if anyone thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself.
– Don’t let the world define who you are based on the world’s ideas of right and wrong
– The world today bombards us with images and ideas that are intended to take our minds where they should not be. RESIST
– Philippians 4:8 And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise (NLT)
3. FIGHT FOR YOUR FAMILY
Eph 5:25 (NLT) For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her 26 to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word. 27 He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault. 28 In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. 29 No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church. 30 And we are members of his body. 31 As the Scriptures say, “A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.” 32 This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one. 33 So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
– Lead by example, not by status. Being the spiritual head of the household doesn’t make you the dictator. It just makes you the primary servant.
– The world is desperately trying to destroy your family, serve as the protector within the home.
1 Timothy 5:8 But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. (NKJV)
4. FIGHT FOR THE CHURCH
Hebrews 10:24-25 (NLT) Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. 25 And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.
– Don’t let the world define for you what it looks like to be a leader, look to the word of God and the leading of the Holy Spirit.
– Matthew 16:18 tells us the gates of hell can’t prevail against the church, but that requires the church to PUSH! Are you?
1 Corinthians 16:14 Let all that you do be done with love.