A New Beginning presents a book about the greatest evangelist of the 20th century, Billy Graham, written by his friend, Pastor Greg Laurie. I bring insights that maybe other books have not really touched on. I also weave in a lot of my personal experiences, one-on-one with Billy, things he said to me, and things I gleaned by watching him. So if you want to learn more about this man that changed the world, get your copy of Billy Graham, The Man I Knew.
Yours for a gift of any amount at Harvest.org. The way that a doctor can tell if someone is healthy or not is by checking their appetite. And in the same way, a growing Christian will be a hungry Christian, someone who is hungry for the Word of God. Today, Pastor Greg Laurie points out a vital part of the Christian life and what life looks like without it. You might find yourself lethargic and irritable and uptight and you need a good meal and that good meal needs to be the Word of God. God wants us to live a successful Christian life, and He hasn't hidden the secrets to success in some obscure passage in the Bible.
It isn't encoded into the dimensions of the temple in 1 Kings. Today on A New Beginning, Pastor Greg Laurie points out one of the most important ingredients for a healthy walk with the Lord. But it's an ingredient that's often missing in many believers' lives.
Today's insight is from the brand new series called Timeless, Unchanging Truth in a Changing Culture. I think we all want to succeed spiritually. Sadly, we all know someone, maybe more than one, who were walking with the Lord and then crashed and burned in the worst imaginable way. Then we know others who just continue to grow and mature and develop as the years go by. Why do some succeed and others fail?
A short answer, because they choose to. If you are succeeding spiritually, it's because you are applying effort. I'm not suggesting it's self-effort, but there's our part and there's God's part. The Bible says that we should work out our own salvation with fear and trembling for it is God that works in us both to will and do of His good pleasure.
There's a whole picture. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. Another way to translate that is develop and discover all that God has done for you.
Carry it to the goal and complete it. Not work for your salvation. Work it out.
Live it out. Work out your own salvation, for it is God that works in you both to will and do of His good pleasure. Look, there are some things only God can do and some things only I can do. Only I can repent. Only I can confess my sin. Only God can forgive me of that sin.
So I make a choice. And God has given you all the power you need to live this Christian life. 2 Peter 1-3 says through His divine power, God has given us everything we need to live a godly life.
We've received all of this by coming to know Him. Sort of like you're in your car with a powerful engine. You start the car. The car's not going to move until you put the pedal to the metal. Right?
Until you accelerate and release the horsepower of the car. In the same way God's giving you this power but you've got to apply it. So these are things that we need to think about. And here's a word that is not popular in the 21st century. It's the word discipline.
Discipline. No we want things fast and we want things easy. You know we don't want to sit down and write our report. We want A.I.
to write our report for us. We don't want to wait for anything. We want everything immediately. We live in an instant society.
I think our technology alone has changed so dramatically over the years. When I was a kid I had something called a record player. And I remember it was red and white. And I remember my first record. It was a 45 ok. A 45 is like a small version of an album. And you would put it on your little record player.
And my first record was I think I saw her standing there by the Beatles. And I'd listen to my little record player. And then a little time passes and this new technology comes out called 8-track.
8-track. You put them in your car so now you can take your music with you. And then that was followed by something called a cassette. What an amazing thing to go from an 8-track to a cassette. Because now you can record your music. And then of course after that comes the CD. And now we just download our music.
Then there was another development technology. The VHS tape. You put it in a VCR. And you watched it.
It was so incredible. And you would rent them. Kids there used to be a place called Blockbuster. And you would go down and rent a video of the latest movie. And some of you may remember the message from Blockbuster. Be kind. Rewind.
Right? Because you wanted to get it back to the beginning. Well now of course we just download everything.
We don't have to wait for anything at all. Then there is mail. It's a lost art to write anymore. I can't even read my own writing anymore. Because I mainly type everything.
Like most of you. But I used to have very legible handwriting and lettering. And a lot of it from my old days as a cartoonist. Where I would hand letter everything. But now I write something.
I don't even know what these notes say. But so to write a letter. Because you are always going to keep a letter. Or a card.
We don't do that anymore. Now we will just shoot off an email. Not even an email. Maybe a text. And now a text seems to take too long. So we will just send you know an emoji. That's just an emoji.
We don't even want to communicate. So we come to the spiritual life. And we want everything fast and easy. Just like it is in our regular life.
But the Bible talks about slowing down. Taking root. Studying.
Denying. Obeying. And of course discipline. So if you want to grow spiritually. Here is point number one.
If you are taking notes. To spiritually succeed you must love and study the Bible. To spiritually succeed you must study and love scripture. This is essential. You never outgrow this.
You never get beyond this. This is always a working principle in the life of every successful Christian. I have never met a Christian who is failing spiritually. Who is also studying the Bible diligently. Here is what Joshua 1-8 says. This book of the law. And when we talk about the book of the law it is another way of saying the Bible or scripture.
So I will say it that way. The Bible or scripture should not depart from your mouth. You shall meditate in it day and night that you may observe to do all that is written in it.
Listen to this. Then you will make your way prosperous and you will have good success. Jesus said if you continue in my word then are you my disciples. And if you find the Bible boring and if you have no interest in scripture.
You must ask yourself the question am I really growing as a Christian. In fact the way that a doctor can tell if someone is healthy or not is by checking their appetite. And in the same way a growing Christian will be a hungry Christian. Someone who is hungry for the word of God.
1 Peter 2 says like newborn babes crave spiritual milk that you may grow. You know the feeling when you haven't eaten. You become lethargic. You might become irritable.
You might become lightheaded. And you find yourself hangry. Hangry right.
Hangry is when you are angry because you are hungry. Sometimes I will get maybe a little snippy and Kathy will just throw a sandwich at me. A sandwich pretty much fixes everything doesn't it. But then you have a meal and suddenly your mood will change. Your outlook will change.
Everything will change. What a difference a good meal makes. And the same can be true spiritually.
You might find yourself lethargic and irritable and uptight. And you need a good meal and that good meal needs to be the word of God. Psalm 119 says revive me according to your word. So we study God's word. Jeremiah 15 16 says when your words came I ate them.
They were my joy and my heart's delight. And you look at the early church. One of their disciplines was they studied the word of God. One of my favorite stories in the book of Acts is when Paul was preaching. And he was preaching for a long time.
For hours. It was late in the night now and some young man named Eutychus was up by a window and he fell asleep and fell out of the window and died. Someone said Paul someone just fell out of the window and died. Paul stopped preaching. He walked out.
Went up to little Eutychus. Laid hands on him. Prayed for him. Brought him back from death. And then what did Paul do. He did what any self-respecting preacher would do. He preached another hour.
I love that. But there was that hunger in the early church for the word of God. Pastor Greg Laurie will have the second half of his message in just a moment. Pastor Greg we're excited about your new project the Greg Laurie podcast. How is that different than what we do every day here on A New Beginning? Well Dave when you listen to A New Beginning you're listening to my messages that I share from the pulpit. In my podcast I'm not preaching. I'm just talking. I'm talking about life.
I'm talking about culture. There's a lot of interviews with people I've gotten to know over the years like Michael Franzese and Darrell Strawberry and Alice Cooper and J. Warner Wallace and Joel Rosenberg and Levi Lusko and the list just goes on and on. Insightful conversations and just thoughts on life from a biblical perspective. So the best place to see or listen to my new podcast is go to Harvest Plus. Now that is our new app that has all kinds of resources on it.
Our radio broadcast our TV show the movies we produced over the years and much much more. And now we have my new long-form podcast that you can watch on demand. And I hope you'll enjoy it.
And again you'll find the Greg Laurie podcast on the Harvest Plus app. Well today Pastor Greg is talking about the importance of reading and studying the Word of God. It's essential for the successful Christian life.
Let's continue. The Bible is so powerful. I remember the first time I realized how powerful the Word of God was. I was a brand new Christian. I just accepted the Lord. I hadn't really found myself fitting in with the Christians on my high school campus yet. And I really didn't want to hang around with my old friends anymore who I knew would pull me in the wrong direction.
So I was sort of in between. And I'm walking across my high school campus and some guy yells out very loudly, Brother Greg! Brother Greg!
I'm thinking, who is this guy? Brother Greg! He comes up, bro! I'm thinking, you're not my brother.
Unless you're a brother from a different mother. I don't know. He goes, bro! I saw that you accepted Christ the other day. I said, yeah I did. And he said, bro do you have a Bible?
I said, no. I want to give you a Bible. And he pulls out the ugliest Bible I have ever seen. It had two popsicle sticks glued together in the shape of a cross.
Bro! I want to give you my Bible. And he hands this to me. I didn't even want it. Not because I didn't want the Bible. I just didn't want that Bible. I didn't want popsicle sticks in the shape of a cross. Okay.
I just wanted them to go away. Thank you very much. Okay. And he leaves. I said, what am I going to do with this? So I shoved it into the pocket of my coat. And I thought, I'm going to go see my old friends. These are guys I used to get high with every single day. I hadn't seen them since I had become a Christian. So I go over to their house and I've got this big Bible in my pocket. And I think, I can't walk in with a Bible. They'll all know I became a Christian. So I pulled the Bible out.
It hid it in the bushes in the planter in front of my friend's house. I walked in. Lori, where have you been?
I said, nowhere. What have you been doing? Nothing. My heart's starting to beat. Hey, you want to get high?
No. Lori, what's wrong with you? Nothing's wrong with me. I said I sat down. All of a sudden I'm sitting there with these guys. And the door bursts open. And there is Danny, my friend's mother, holding my Bible. And she says, who does this belong to? Like it was a horrible thing.
I'm thinking, what is wrong with this woman? Kids are doing drugs in her house and she's alarmed by a Bible? Every eye in that room went to the Bible and then those eyes went right to me. Somehow they knew there was a connection.
They could tell. I said, it's mine. And someone said, Greg, what is that? It's a Bible.
What? It's a Bible. It's a Bible.
And I grabbed it. And then one of my friends said, oh, praise the Lord, brother Greg. Are we going to be Christians now? I said, no, I'm going to hit you in the mouth now. See, I hadn't read 1 Corinthians 13 yet. I hadn't read anything yet. And the Lord was speaking to my heart and he said, tell them about me. And I said, no way. But here's the thing.
As I discovered immediately the power, even the symbolic power of the word of God. Fast forward many years. We're doing a crusade at Angel Stadium. And we did a design, a poster. So we actually bought banners in malls. And this was on the banner in the mall.
And we were contacted by the mall. People were offended. Why were they offended? Because I'm holding a Bible. Wait. That's just a black book. That could be the latest Harry Potter book. That could be many things in that book. But people were offended by a black book. And they said, we can't have these banners up anymore. It actually became a national news story.
Crazy. People were offended by just holding up a Bible. If you don't believe me, next time you get in an airplane, take a Bible with you. And pull it out and start reading it.
People will recoil like you pulled out a live rattlesnake. So there's not only power in the Word of God. There's power in the very book itself when you hold it up. Hebrews 4-12 says, the Word of God is alive and powerful. Sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword. Cutting through soul and spirit.
Between joint and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires. I love this statement of Martin Luther when he said, quote, the Bible is alive. It speaks to me. It has feet. It runs after me. It has hands. It lays hold of me.
I love that. And that's very true of Scripture. And it is here that we find absolute truth. And in a crazy culture that is changing rapidly before our very eyes, this is the only thing we can depend on. The truth of the Word of God.
This is what everything we do is really based on. Now I would like to look briefly at just Acts 2-16. And let me just set the stage here. This is the day of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit has been poured out. There's like this flame of fire above the heads of the disciples.
They're speaking in languages they've never learned. Declaring the wonderful works of God. And as all of this is happening, we read that Simon Peter gets up and says in Acts 2-16, what you see was spoken of long ago by the prophet Joel. In the last days God said, I will pour my spirit out on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions.
Very important point here. He says this is what was spoken of by the prophet Joel. Whatever we do should have a biblical basis.
If we cannot say this is what is spoken of in Scripture, we should not be doing it. You know, people love things new. I want the newest iPhone. I want the newest Android phone. I want the newest this. I want the newest that. We always want new.
And sometimes we bring that into the spiritual life. I want something new. Listen, if it's new, it's not true.
And if it's true, it's not new. You don't need something new as much as you need to go back to the old paths, the Scripture says, where the truth is and walk in those old paths. Oh, I know culture wants to redefine everything now, but God has given us the template for all that we need to know. Everything you need to know about God is found in the Bible. Everything you need to know about life is also found in the Bible. Now let's see what the Bible says about itself.
I want you to turn over to Psalm 19, and I'm gonna read from verses seven to 11, Psalm 19. The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. And by the way, when we say the law of the Lord, we could just as easily say the Bible or Scripture.
So I'll say it that way. The Bible is perfect, converting the soul, the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise and simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired of thee than gold, yes, than much fine gold.
Sweeter also than honey in the hunting co. Moreover, by them is your servant warned, and in keeping of them, there is great reward. So we already pointed out that if you wanna grow spiritually, you need to study and love the word of God. Number two, to succeed spiritually, we must trust the authority of Scripture. To succeed spiritually, we must trust the authority of the Scripture.
As culture changes, we don't need to change with it. The word of God is trustworthy because things come and go, things come and go that are stylish. What's stylish five years ago suddenly is dated today, but Scripture, in contrast, is perfect or literally whole, complete, and sufficient. You need to know that this is a trustworthy book.
You can base your life on it. You don't need to add to it. You don't need to take away from it. I had a pastor ask me not long ago, how can we make the Bible more relevant? I said, we don't need to make the Bible relevant. The Bible is relevant, see.
My job is just to let the lion out of the cage. See, I come into this pulpit with the confidence this is a powerful message. I'm not a powerful preacher, but my message is powerful, and I know the power will come from it. It comes from the word of God, 2 Timothy 3.16 says, all Scripture is inspired by God, or a better way to translate it, all Scripture is breathed by God. That means that the Bible is God's infallible word.
The original autographs, the first copies were without errors. There's no mistakes, no contradictions. You know, even in a recent discovery, like the Dead Sea Scrolls, where an older version of the writings are discovered, we realize they're still the same. So the word of God is perfect. You can trust the authority of Scripture. And so the Bible tells me some things I need to know. It's a Bible that tells me that I am a sinner, and it tells me that I've broken God's commandments, and I fall short of His glory. The Bible tells me that God saw my situation, and while I was yet a sinner, Christ died for me. The Bible tells me that Christ not only died for me and paid for my sins, but it also tells me He rose again from the dead, and He stands at the door of my life, and He knocks, and if I'll hear His voice and open the door, He will come in.
The Bible tells me I can be forgiven of my sin and of the hope of heaven and the afterlife and find the meaning and purpose of my existence in this life, and the Bible tells me to do this now. Such important counsel found on the pages of God's word. Pastor Greg Laurie with a study called The Secret to Spiritual Success today here on A New Beginning. Pastor Greg, if someone hears what you've been saying about having their sins forgiven and having the hope of heaven, what would be a next step for them?
Well, they just need to hear more. They need to hear what the essential gospel message is, and I've got a great resource for you. We've set up a webpage that's called knowgod.org, K-N-O-W-G-O-D dot O-R-G. You go there, I have a video presentation of how you accept Christ, lead you in a prayer, and then it links to other spiritual resources that will help you grow spiritually. So just go to knowgod.org. Do it right now.
All right, good idea. And Pastor Greg, we're so thankful for the work God is doing through this ministry. We're touching lives for eternity, and we're really thankful for our friends who see the fruit of this ministry and invest so this work can reach even further Isn't that right?
Absolutely. When you invest in Harvest Ministries, you're investing in the souls of men and women, boys and girls, and what is the value of a soul? Well, let me personalize it. What's the value of your soul? What's the value of the soul of your husband, your wife, your son, or your daughter, or your mom or your dad, or your best friend?
Well, I would say you probably couldn't put a price tag on it. It's so valuable. Well, listen, God says all souls are mine.
God loves us and sent his son to die on the cross to pay the price for all of our sins so we could be forgiven and come into a relationship with him. I can't think of a better investment of my resources, of my money, than in the work of the kingdom of God. So we would ask you to prayerfully consider investing in Harvest Ministries as we continue on to fulfill the Great Commission.
Yeah, that's right. And you can make your donation right now at harvest.org or write us at A New Beginning, Box 4000, Riverside, California, 92514. Or call 1-800-821-3300. That's a 24-7 phone number, 1-800-821-3300. Well, next time, more insight on the vital role the Word of God plays in the life of the successful follower of Christ. Join us here on A New Beginning with pastor and Bible teacher, Greg Laurie.
