This recording is from Christ Kingdom Church in Avalon Park, Orlando. Visit us online at ChristKingdom.org for our calendar, driving directions, and more audio recordings. Morning. You heard me make reference earlier to my computer dying and it did at Panera Bread this morning. Along with it, my entire sermon and PowerPoint. Fortunately though, Jerry Hurtzler got woken up by me this morning. I mean, this morning I thank him though he said he wasn't and has pulled out my hard drive, placed it somehow into his computer. So I'll be reading my notes off of here. So thank you, Jerry, for making that happen here this morning. We have been working through the book of Psalms this summer and we are kind of breaking out of our study on Psalms. We're looking at Ephesians. So if you have your Bibles with you, turn from Ephesians 4 verses 21 to 32 as we look at God's Word here this morning. You know, although none of us would want to admit to being overly driven in life, we probably all respect and we value the quality of having drive when we see it in other people. As you're looking that up, let me remind you, Webster actually defines to drive this way to strive vigorously toward a goal or an objective to work, play, or try wholeheartedly and with determination. Now I want to just see you to think about a few different people that might come, at least came to my mind. When I thought about the story of Christopher Gardner, I remember there was a movie made about him that pursued of happiness. Here is a scholar that works himself up, literally, with nothing. He and his son living on the streets and works himself as a stock roker. And it becomes his own company, his own owner of a company but truly works his way up. Nobody would question the fact that he is a businessman had drive. Or think about art in the world of art, think about Michael Angelo, somebody that we've seen his work and his amazing ability and talent. But it didn't come if you know anything about his life. It didn't come at without cost. It came with tremendous drive and focus and determination. Or even recently, even though the movie's been out, I saw the movie Rudy, the story of a young guy who dreamed growing up of getting out of working in a factory to play for the University of Notre Dame. Why that school, I have no idea. But that's the movie anyway. Anyway, he works his way up and he had tremendous drive to come, to work at the junior college, to work his grades, have to work in. Not having a place to live and finding places to live and sneaking around and how to make it happen, to finally get into Notre Dame, to walk on to the football team, to earn such respect among the team over the years that he finally gets a chance to play in his senior year in one game. He gets his one chance to get on the field and he does. An amazing story. But you couldn't say that it happened without drive. He had tremendous drive. Or think about an Abraham Lincoln who lost elections five different times in his route at this career in politics that he finally made it to be elected as President of the United States. Or think about the whole arena of family and things. And I've referred to this family and other illustrations over the past weeks, the Dick and Rick Hoyt. Remember Rick Hoyt was the one that was born with extreme cerebral palsy. And this is the one the father who actually runs and does triathlon with his son, pushing him on a bike with him pulling him behind a raft as he swims that part. And just an amazing story between this father and son combination, but tremendous drive. Or think about the arena of music. Who could doubt or say that I got like Mozart has not had had tremendous drive with a countless number of songs that he's worked on. And even working up to his very death as a composer. All of these are just pictures of some people, but who all shed at least one characteristic. And that was tremendous drive. Now if you're looking at your bulletin insert, I apologize, it has the title from last week's sermon. The title for this week's sermon, all the other thing else is right in there is actually what drives you. You can fill that in there. The title is what drives you. The reality is that we are all moving vigorously towards some goal or objective in life. Every single one of us. Now it could be moving vigorously and passionately in apathy. You know, or the things that don't really matter much in life, but every single person has been created with a type of drive that points you in a direction. The question is simply which. The question might be, is it a worthy place you're pointed, but we are driven as people, as part of our nature, who we are. And if we are Christians that begs this question this morning, what drives you in living for God? If you're not a Christian, that question doesn't really come to mind. It's really not that relevant to you. But in talking to you who are specifically Christians this morning, how does it relate? What is your drive? How? And what drives you in living for God this morning? This past summer, many of you know that have been leading up, men's Bible study, men's group. We've been studying a book actually brought with me to show you called True Face. And one of the themes that this book picks up on very heavily is one that we're going to talk about this morning. So if you're really interested in pursuing further, you might want to pick this book up. It's called True Face that's out there, but it is stressing this whole idea of what motivates you. What is your drive in life? And what is that? And is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? And so on. So as we look at this text this morning, I want you to think about in light of that. What is motivating us? What is the drive in our life? When we read from Ephesians 4, the new living translation, that's printed in your in your bulletin, if you don't have that translation in your Bible, but here God's word now. Since you have heard all about him and have learned the truth that is in Jesus, throw off your old evil nature and your former way of life, which is rotten through and through, full of lust and deception. Instead, there must be a spiritual renewal of your thoughts and attitudes. You must display a new nature because you are a new person created in God's likeness, righteous, holy and true. So put away all falsehood and tell your neighbor the truth because we belong to each other and don't sin by letting anger gain control over you. Don't let the sun go down while you are still angry for anger gives a mighty foothold to the devil. If you are a thief, stop stealing. Begin using your hands for honest work and then give generously to those in need. Don't use foul or abusive language. Let everything you say be good and helpful so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them. And do not bring sorrow to God's Holy Spirit by the way you live. Remember, he is the one who has identified you as his own guaranteeing that you will be saved on the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words and slander, as well as all types of malicious behavior. Instead, be kind to each other, tender-hearted for giving one another just as God through Christ has forgiven you. This is God's word. Let me pray once more for us. Father, as we come and we hear your word, will you allow it to move beyond type and black ink on a page to be impressed upon our very hearts by your Holy Spirit? If your Holy Spirit doesn't teach, we are wasting our time so we ask that you would speak, that you would teach and speak our heart to our hearts this morning. You're truth. And you would convict of sin and you would remind of righteousness that Christ would be exalted and lifted up and that we would come to worship you in a more fuller way this morning. So God, we invite you to come. We ask that you would move. We're desperate for truth and to have an encounter with you this morning. Will you come and move and be in our presence? We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Well, there in your outline there, point number one, who you are determines what drives you. Who you are determines what drives you. If you're motivated by pleasing God or are you motivated by trusting God? Are you motivated by pleasing God? What can I do to show God my gratitude and to show God how worthy I think He is and to show Him that I really, really believe? Or are you motivated by trust? I can't please God but Jesus has pleasing my place. I don't have the power to live for Him today but Jesus already has lived the perfect life and has given me His Spirit. There is a world of difference between which one of those motivates you, pleasing God or trusting God? And that's what we want to look at this morning. You see, striving to change into something we are not yet is part of a goal of wanting to please God. Striving to change into something we are not yet and that's Godly. I mean, doesn't it sound a little peculiar at first to make a distinction between pleasing God and trusting God? But it's there in the Scriptures. Striving if we want to please God because we're not Godly yet is very different. That is very different than trusting God and trusting in what is already true about us that we are Godly already in Jesus Christ. There is a world of difference between those two motivations. Trusting Him because I'm already Godly in Jesus pleasing Him because I want to be Godly and I'm not yet. So I want you to think about that. I want you to unpack it a little bit here this morning and I want you to think about it in terms with another analogy that was given actually in this book, True Face which I thought was great. The analogy of a butterfly. All of us here have seen butterflies at one time or another and you probably are more likely to have seen a butterfly than you are the caterpillar. Butterflies beautiful, floats around, it flies around. If you see you're drawn to it. Well obviously caterpillar, especially some of you boys, you might just be inclined to say one less caterpillar. They're just on the ground, they're floating around and then at some point you don't even notice someone they're up in a little branch or tree in a cocoon. But do you realize that the DNA of a caterpillar and the DNA of a butterfly are one and the same? If you took and looked at the DNA of a caterpillar, you would say, you know, I know this doesn't look like a butterfly. I know this doesn't have qualities of a butterfly but everything about this caterpillar is a butterfly even though the outward signs of it have not yet formed. And we know that there's a process of that. We know that there must be stages that go through but that caterpillar is very much a butterfly. And unless that caterpillar encounters a middle school boy that caterpillar is going to manifest more and more the qualities of a butterfly until one day it really displays that for all to see. God is not interested in changing you. Here's a quote from the book. God is not interested in changing you. He already has the new DNA is set. God wants you to believe that he has already changed you so that he can get on with the process of maturing you into who you already are. Let me repeat that last part. God wants you to believe that he has already changed you so that he can get on with the process of maturing you into who? You already are. The question is this morning, who are you? Verse 23, in this passage, sorry, I got to get that up to the computer, says this. Instead, there must be a spiritual renewal of your thoughts and attitudes. There has to be something that's made new in your thoughts of attitudes. In the eyes of God, the DNA has already been changed when you place your faith in trust in Jesus Christ. What happens to us here on earth as we live in space and time and in history is that our thoughts and attitudes have to be renewed. We have to be reminded. We have to realize that the identity has changed. Saint Corinthians 5, 17, supports this. It says, therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is gone. The new has come. Galatians 2, 20, part A, the first part says, I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The question is this morning, are you living as a caterpillar, but the hope that you might one day be a butterfly? Or are you living as a butterfly who is leaving behind his or her caterpillar-ness more and more each day? This is huge, folks. If I can think of a problem that is facing that I've struggled with, more than almost anything else and I think the church struggles with, it's understanding this. What is motivating you in life? And you identify with yourself in a spiritual way as more being the butterfly that Jesus says you are, that he's created you to be, that's in him, that's perfectly satisfying the Father by faith. Are you cupped up and thinking that all I can see is the caterpillar-ness? And the more I try to act like a butterfly, it's just not there and I feel powerless and I don't feel the joy and the fruits of the spirit the Bible says I'm supposed to have. But I want it, I want to please God, I can't just ever seem to do it. There is a world of difference between these two viewpoints and it will set you free to understand the difference. Just as who you are determines what drives you, point number two, what drives you determines how you live, what drives you determines how you live. If you're motivated by trying to please God, it will lead to a life of things like this, wearing masks, having to put on the face that you need. I can't tell you many times I've talked to people that I've kind of said, hey we've missed seeing you at church for a while, what's been going on, how you've been doing. And after about 30 minutes of the conversation we finally get to the fact that life is just really going bad right now. I know it really wasn't because we stayed up late Saturday night and it really wasn't because it was a busy weekend. It was just that you know I feel convicted when I come and I feel like nobody else I can identify with and I feel like you know not good enough to be there and I just don't want to be around people who are smiling all the time. You find out but people are like man, I want up for putting on the mask that morning. People feel like this is a place of mask, church so often, it shouldn't be. If you're trying to please God, your life will look like pretension, trying to always give the image of what you think other people want from you, what you think other people are expecting of you, that will give you pressure. You'll feel fatigue, you'll feel frustration all the time, not just because you work in the yard that day but because part of who you are is working so hard to maintain this pleasing attitude, this pleasing motivation. You'll be disillusioned over time for sure. You'll start actively giving up in ways. You'll start looking at things very very tangibly. You'll just say you know I'm not going to try to do that. You know I know this is something that I probably ought to be a part of ought to be doing but I'm just not going to try it. Or what's even worse, you'll passively give up because you want to admit that you're actively giving up trying to live for God but you'll passively give up. You'll say well I'm not going to be like one of those followers of God who seems to really be on fire for God and live for Him daily. I just can't lay a tank of that so I'm just going to kind of forget I'm even trying. I'm just going to kind of go through the motions. That's what I've been after many years looking back. I look at ways where I've just passively given up. It's been a lot of beginning stages of confession to my wife and my kids and things about kind of disengaging kind of giving up in the process. Doing what I need to do but it's just life is just too hard rather than being engaged, loving them, serving them in the new life that I have in Christ who are really in in Him. Did any of these characteristics mark true of you? See if you're motivated by trusting God, your character is just a little different. We're not saying life will be any different. We're not saying your circumstances in life will change one bit but who you are will look different and will therefore act different. You'll be more honest. You'll have a sense of humility. You won't need the mass anymore. You'll just be more honest as they look. God's working on me in a lot of areas and I'm just not ready. You'll want to come to church when things aren't going well in your life because you'll be like, look, there's hope here. God's word has life to offer. There is forgiveness. There is power to live the Christian life. There's others who are going through it with me or else what I want to be on Sunday morning. Yeah, humbly come. I'm a butterfly in Christ. In any opportunity I get to shed more and more my catapillarness and people will help me with that. Please help. You'll have a sense of freedom that you didn't have before. Transparency instead of mask will become part of who you are. Because what's safer place would have been than being with other Christians, the body of Christ, if you're all saying look, we all know how much we need Jesus. We all know how much we need the Word of God in our lives. We all know that Jesus is the only one worthy of being worshiped not us. We can come honestly and be transparent with one another with our struggles with our areas of sin and say, hey, how are you dealing with that area? Are there things that God's words taught you about it rather than have to hide them? So I don't want to share any of that stuff so I bet nobody else here has that problem or I bet they do have that problem. We just are going to pretend that we don't have that problem. Transparency can become part of who we are as the church. You'll have joy, which is so rare to find in Christians these days in a church. You'll find you'll have joy. You'll have a hunger for God. I can't tell you how many times I'm 39. My years of living as a Christian have been a Christians since a child. How many times I have opened up my Bible that particular day to think, well, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. Christians do this sort of thing. Being ordained as a pastor now only makes it worse. I get paid to do this. I'm supposed to do this. I've got a sermon coming up on Sunday. Okay, here we go. That's a very different motivation, isn't it? Then saying, whoa, this is life. This has power. This is the very word of God. This can change me who I am. This can give me hope. Hunger can draw you to God's word. Rather than being drawn to by guilt saying, oh, this is, you know, I need to be disciplined. I need to spend time with God's word because the people say I should and the Bible says I should meditate on it. Hunger can meditate you to come to God's word. You can come thirsty. The community living like this will become a powerful one in the hands of God. Think about it. Think about this happen just in our church, Christ being in church. This will become a powerful tool in the hand of God. I remember the movie Miracle, which was a story about the 1980 US Olympic team. How many of you see that movie? It's worth the rental on that. But the story is great. I'm not sure how much the movie definitely went along with the story, but I think it was relatively close. But early on in the stages of this, you know, the task was to get all these, you know, college hockey players from all over the country to find the very best to get the very best team because the Russians were undefeated. And they were killing the National Hockey League All-Star team. I mean, they were the best around the world and nobody questioned it. So the challenge was how do you put together a team to do that? And of course, they had the, you know, tryouts and they went through all the different players and they had players that came up. And of course, dealing with all-star players, you get all-star attitudes, don't you? Every player, you know, they've been used to competing against each other. And it was always, you know, yeah, I play for the team. And he plays for that team. And as they started working together, this became an ongoing barrier. They were fighting. They were not playing together as a team. They were each trying to get the glory. Some of them are mad at each other for things they happened the season before when they were playing against each other in college. And it was just, it was marked in this movie very well. By every time the players came out and reminded the coach who they were. They would say, I'm Scott Puckett, you know, I play hockey for Auburn University. Whatever their name was as they came out. But that changed. If you remember in the movie and in the story, there was one point where they had played a game. They were pretty much an embarrassment on the, on the ice. And they were leading up to the Olympics and everything else. And the coach calls them out there after everybody's left. And he hasn't running windsprints on the ice. And he does this at what seemed like in the movie for like a half an hour. It's fast they can't down one end down the other. And then when they were totally at the point of exhaustion, the point of giving a point of leaving ready to quit the team. He asked one of the players to come up. He said, who are you? He says, I'm Scott Puckett. And I play for the United States Olympic hockey team. And the whole climax and the whole tempo, the movie and the tempo of that team changed. Because rather than it be who they were individually, and who they were from their own individual college alma mater. So now their identity had changed. They were the 1980 U.S Olympic hockey team that was going to go and face the Russians undefeated in the Olympics. And they began playing as a team. If our identity in the body of Christ were to change from being this caterpillar like mentality to say, you know, we are butterflies. Because of Jesus Christ. That identity change would transform us as a church. Completely. We would be a community that would live together as a team. And as that fueled a team that went on to win the 1980 Olympics in the biggest Cinderella sports story of history, we would see God work amazing things in the life of our church as well. You know, the scriptures here tell us and remind us this. To throw off your old evil nature and your former way of life. And then again, it says down in verse 24, you must display a new nature because you are a new person. That word there to display can also be translated. You must put on or you must slow yourself. It's this idea of getting off old stuff, old clothes, and putting on the new. I remember when I was probably middle school high school age. Yeah, I wasn't driving it. Middle school probably aged kid. One of our youth directors took me and a buddy down to the beach. We went down to Panama City Beach. He's like, hey, you want to go down and spend night on my parents' house down there. We'll go out there at the Panama City Beach and do that. And of course, me and my friend Danny were like thinking, yeah, beach, girls, you know, away from home. We're there. So we went down there on the beach that day and we got out there. And we decided that in order to be really cool guys, we're going to master creating ourselves a savage tan in one day. And you don't have to look at me too long to realize that a savage tan is something that has eluded me most of my life. But we decided to go out there and without a drop. I mean, not even oil, not even the number two sunscreen oil. Without a drop of anything on us. We went out and decided that we would prepare ourselves for the ladies. So we just, our baby sits down. We laid out on the beach. We tried to roll at proper times, make sure we got an even tan on the front and the back. And after being out there all day long. And parents, this is why you don't, where's Jason? He's not here to give us. Why you don't send your kids on a Heath group trip and tell the youth director, make sure he puts on a sunscreen. Because youth directors don't do that sort of thing. You know, you didn't, you didn't, but say you think that's about sunscreen all day long. But that night we came back. You know, because you don't know the beach, the wind's blowing the whole time. You know, you kind of, it kind of cools your body. But as soon as you got in the car, you know, I felt that tightness in my skin. Everywhere. Okay? And that night as I got in bed, I thought, this is not good. Because there was tightness everywhere. My feet, I mean, just my entire body. By the next morning, I was almost sick. Literally sick. My feet had never been burned so bad. The tops of my feet. By the time I got home, my feet had started to swell. Where I could no longer wear shoes. This is true. This is on a Saturday. Sunday, I end up going to church with no shoes on. Because my shoes won't fit over my swollen feet from that much sunburn. Not to mention that you're walking around. Don't touch my back and everything else. And I peeled like a banana. I'm telling you, my feet peeled multiple times. Is that any nurses here? Is that even possible? I did, okay? And I collected every piece of that skin that I pulled off and I put it into a jar. I wish I still had it. Because I thought, I mean, because it was coming off my body in layers. And it was so bad, it truly, you know, wasn't flaking off. I was getting strips. So I stuck it in a jar and I saved it the Christmas time. And I waited for the first white elephant gift party that I got invited to. And I had my jar, and it was the talk of the night. It was the perfect gift. What I tell you that story? Yeah. We're wondering that. You get an idea when you peel when you get a bad sunburn because the skin has what on the surface, Aaron? What's happened to the skin that makes it come off? It's dead, right? Dead has no longer use. It must come off. The Bible gives us really clear descriptions here of this idea of taking off and letting the new, the new skin that's already underneath, come out and live out of you. It's taken off the old. And this whole rest of this passage, because you can read the rest of this passage, you know, beginning in verse 25, it's like this list of things to do. And it's not. These last verses are a description of what it means if you throw off the old nature, you start living as who you are in Christ. It's not this list of how more you got to do to please God. It's an illustration of the trust in God and trust in Christ of what will become true of you. Read it differently this time. If you trust in Christ, if you take off this old nature, if you peel it off, you get rid of it because it's dead already. If you let the new skin, the new reality of who you are in Christ come through, use, look, use as a terminology, verse 25, you're putting away falsehood when you trust in Christ because we belong to each other and you don't send by letting anger gain control over you. You don't let the sun go down while you're angry. For anger gives mighty foothold to the devil. If you are a thief, you stop stealing because you're not a thief anymore. You're a child of God. Begin using your hands for honest work and then give generously to others in need. Don't use foul or abusive language. Why? Because it's bad to do. Because the new person you are in Christ doesn't use foul or abusive language. Let everything you say be good and helpful so that all your words will be an encouragement of those who hear them. That is who you are. Not something you must strive towards. That's the reality to let come out as you faith and trust in Christ. And even hits us with an exclamation point. And do not bring sorrow or grieve. God's Holy Spirit by the way you live. Remember, he is the one who has identified you as his own. Guaranteeing you that you will be saved on the day of redemption. The Holy Spirit is your card carrying badge that says you are a child of God. So when you start acting like somebody that is not the card carrying one who trusts in Christ, you're grieving the Holy Spirit. Don't read this as saying, oh, the Holy Spirit is like, oh my gosh. How many times have I told you not to use foul language? How many times have I told you not to be angry like that? I don't know what grieves the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is going, hello under down payment of you are already pure in Christ. Your sins are already forgiven. You are a new creation. And what grieves me is that you are living like you what you used to be. That's what grieves the Holy Spirit. God's not ticked off at you. He got ticked off at Jesus instead of you when you gave your life to Christ. He's saying, look, be grieved like I'm grieved because you're not living who you are. That's not because God's mad that you didn't please him that day. His heart aches and that's heart hurts to say, look what I did for you to give you a new life and you're living to choose to live in your old life. It's like me taking that skin out of the jar and putting it back on myself. I think this looks a little better. No, who would want to do that? So the scriptures remind us of what God has called us to do. What call us to be reminded of. Number one, who you are determines what drives you. And number two, what drives you determines how you live. Let me close with this verse. Hebrews 116 says this. Because it's going to talk about pleasing God and it's going to talk about trusting God all the same verse. And without faith or trust, it is impossible to what to please God. Do you get that? The very thing you're hoping to do when you're living as the old nature, please God. It's impossible to do without faith. Without faith, it's impossible to please God. Because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. Who trust in him. Who are trusting in Christ. See the very thing you're trying to do and pleasing God is the very thing that you eliminate yourself of the chance of doing. Because it only happens through trusting in God and his power. Let me make sure you don't misunderstand me. God is pleasing God is extremely important. Don't hear me saying it doesn't matter you please God. But there's only one way to please God. That's the point. That's trusting him. Trusting that Jesus Christ has already perfectly kept the law in your place. He's perfectly pleased the Father. This is the good news. This is what it means to trust in Christ. Let me encourage you today. Believe in Jesus today. Be free from striving to please and experience the joy of living out of trust this morning. What drives you? Let's pray. God asks that you would come and you would be gracious to not only let us be exposed to the truth of your word and hear it, but God you would be gracious to apply it to our lives. God you know the specific situations. You know what people are facing right now in their life and circumstances? You know the struggles and Father right here where we seek to try to please you. God would you give us new hearts that would be transformed by the renewing of our minds? To come and understand that God we're trusting you. We can't live the life that you called us to live because we don't have the power to. But as we trust in you, the new creation that we are is allowed to live. And that's a creation and a race of people that trust you, that look to your power, that look to you daily. God not because it would please you to spend time in your word and to pray, but because we hunger and we thirst for what always can elude us without you. And that's the power to live and to be who we are. So God we do that work. We do that transformation of power in our hearts and our lives. We come, God, as we come to your table here in just a minute, and we remind us that your table clearly makes it clear that the penalty for sin has been paid for once and all through Jesus Christ. That the power to live the Christian life has been fully established by your resurrection. So God, as we prepare ourselves to come to your table, God, prepare us and our hearts, God, embrace truth. To come and to repent of being motivated by pleasing and to be instead motivated, God, by simply trusting. So you would be lifted up, you would be glorified so that you will receive all the glory and intention, so that we will be quick to praise you when we see evidence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. We'll say, God, praise God because it is your work, Father. It's the work of your spirit, your Son, my life, and not my arm. God, come and change us. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.