Marty Sloan – Living the Dream

The Owners Manual – Intimacy with God requires faithfulness

1/27/10

James 4:7-8 NKJV

James 4:7 NKJV

Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.

James 4:8

Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

Quick Review of Last week:

Statements about intimacy:

1. Intimacy was stolen with sin –

2. Intimacy is about being, not doing

3. Intimacy comes from living from the heart

Keys to keeping the corruption out

1. Tender hearts

2. Fidelity in faith

Fidelity – the quality or state of being faithful

1 Timothy 4:1 NKJV

Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons,

1 Timothy 4:2

speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron,

1 Timothy 4:3

forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.

1 Timothy 4:4

For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving;

1 Timothy 4:5

for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.

1 Timothy 4:6

If you instruct the brethren in these things, you will be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished in the words of faith and of the good doctrine which you have carefully followed.

1 Timothy 4:7

But reject profane and old wives’ fables, and exercise yourself toward godliness.

1 Timothy 4:8

For bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come.

We left off last week just shy of talking about Forging Faithfulness – tonight we pick it up ☺

3. Forging Fidelity (faithfulness)

1. Nourishment

2. Reject

3. Exercise

4. Productivity

Going to emphasize tonight on Nourishment!

1 Peter 2:1 NKJV

Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking,

1 Peter 2:2

as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby,

• The Word of God is our primary present source of nourishment.

• Nourishment is:

1. Daily

2. Progressive

3. Available

4. Required

• Nourishment requires exercise:

Hebrews 5:12 NKJV

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food.

Hebrews 5:13

For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe.

Hebrews 5:14

But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

If you eat and do NOT exercise what happens?

• Nourishment has an outcome

The more you have feasted on the word of God – the deeper you should know God and know what He has in store for you.

1 Corinthians 2:9 NKJV

But as it is written:

“Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,

Nor have entered into the heart of man

The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.”

1 Corinthians 2:10

But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.

1 Corinthians 2:11

For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.

1 Corinthians 2:12

Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.

1 Corinthians 2:13

These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

1 Corinthians 2:14

But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

1 Corinthians 2:15

But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one.

1 Corinthians 2:16

For “who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him?”  But we have the mind of Christ.

• Nourishment is for knowing God

Philippians 3:8 NKJV

Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ

Philippians 3:9

and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith;

Philippians 3:10

that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death,

Closing Questions:

• How are you currently using your nourishment from the Word of God?

• How has the nourishment enabled you to know God better?

Faithfulness requires nourishment; things not nourished will experience unfaithfulness.