The Hope of the Church | Fueling Spiritual Health for a Nation

A New Beginning presents a book from Pastor Greg Laurie, with help for those suffering loss, called Hope for Hurting Hearts. God has used this book over the years to touch many people. If you've lost a loved one, or if you know someone that's recently lost a loved one, it would be an excellent thing to get this book into their hands, because I really wrote it for them. So we're offering you a copy of this book, Hope for Hurting Hearts, for your gift of any size.

Available at Harvest.org. Today, Pastor Greg Laurie points out the church pulpit is for teaching and declaring God's Word, not for dispensing man-made platitudes to brighten your day. My opinion isn't any more valuable than anybody else's opinion out there. I'm not here to be your cheerleader, or to be your life coach or a motivational speaker. I am here for one reason, to teach the Word of God. You show me a church where this isn't happening, and I wonder, what's the point?

I don't want to waste your time. Vibrant churches are absolutely necessary for the health of a nation, and committed believers are absolutely necessary in order to have vibrant churches. How can a believer stay committed?

By plugging into a vibrant church. Today on A New Beginning, Pastor Greg Laurie points out the church is the key to our spiritual health. He'll be wrapping up his series of hopeful studies with a message called, The Hope of the Church, pointing out the church's role in bringing hope for America.

This is the day. The day when life begins. I believe that the hope for America is the church. But why does the church exist?

There are three reasons. Number one, for the glorification of God, for the edification of the saints, and for the evangelization of the world. Glorifying God, edifying saints, evangelizing the world are a simpler way to remember it.

Upward, inward, and outward. Number one, we are here for the glorification of God. The church is here to bring honor to God. And by the way, you are here to bring honor to God. Apart from the church, your purpose for being on planet earth is to bring God glory.

The Bible says that He has created all things for His pleasure. We are told over in Ephesians 1 that we are here on earth to praise our glorious God. And that is why we worship the Lord in Psalm. When the worship band comes out they are not here to perform for you.

They effectively perform for an audience of one. They are here to perform for God, to worship God, and to lead us in worshiping God. Worship is effectively prayer set to Psalm. This is why you should never be late to church. Because you miss out on that time when God is glorified. And when He inhabits the praises of His people. They are not a warm up act. Oh well let's get enough of the worship is over.

No. They are here to help us prepare our hearts as we receive the Word of God. The Bible tells us that He is inhabiting the praises of His people.

And I will tell you what. I think that worship is a powerful witness. I think it is a powerful witness. You say, how so? Well actually I think when a nonbeliever walks into a setting where Christians are honestly encountering God it is a testimony to them. Because you know what?

There is nothing in the world like it. For starters people out in our world today they rarely sing together. There was a time historically when Americans would sing songs together.

You see that very rarely these days. But we come and we sing and some of us sing well and some of us don't sing so well. But that is ok.

It is not about that. And we worship the Lord. And it makes an impression. They are not just watching what is happening here on the platform. They are watching you. They have found a seat out there and they are next to you.

And you are making an impression on them. And if you are engaged in worship encountering God I think that nonbeliever looks over and thinks, wow. I don't have that kind of relationship with God. But if you are texting a friend or you are jabbering away or you are doing something else what kind of testimony is that?

You see. And I think it is a powerful testimony when a Christian can rejoice in the Lord when they are going through horrible suffering. Look at the story of Paul and Silas thrown into jail for preaching the gospel. But yet we read there in the book of Acts that at midnight Paul and Silas began to sing phrases to God. And we read the other prisoners listened. And the phrase used there for listen means to listen with pleasure. It was music to their ears. They had never heard anything like it. And I don't know if you know Paul and Silas were like harmonizing you know.

Probably not. But the fact that they were singing at a time like that was a testimony. And we should be here to worship the Lord. And also when we do this. When we engage in worship it helps us see things in perspective. Asaph was grappling with the age old question.

Why do the wicked prosper? Then it dawned on him in Psalm 73 16. When I tried to understand this it was oppressive to me. Till I entered the sanctuary of God then I understood their final destiny.

Asaph is essentially saying, I didn't understand why things are the way that they are until I came into God's presence to study His Word with His people. Then I saw things in their proper perspective. You can come to church with big problems and then you leave. Your problems are still there.

But now you see them the right way. Big God. Small problems.

Big problems. Small God. After the Lord called our son Christopher home on a Thursday. It was the worst day of our life.

We were devastated. But when Sunday came I knew there was only one place I was going to be. And that was at church. People were amazed. Oh he came to church.

Well why would you be amazed? Church is a place for hurting people. Church is a place for people that need focus and help and a place where we get God's Word. And boy if I ever needed it I needed it then. And I came and I worshiped the Lord and it wasn't some big sacrifice.

I needed perspective. And God helped me on that day. And I can imagine when something bad happens withdrawing from the church that is the time to run to the church and find that encouragement that fellow believers can provide. That is why we are here to glorify God.

You can applaud for that if you want. The second reason the church is here is to edify other believers. So this is inward. The apostle Paul said that his goal was to warn believers and teach them with all the wisdom God had given.

And that is why we give such a prominent place to biblical teaching here at Harvest. Listen. I don't want to waste your time.

My opinion isn't any more valuable than anybody else's opinion out there. I understand what my purpose here is. I am not here to be your cheerleader or to be your life coach or a motivational speaker.

I am not here to be your psychologist or your political pundit. I am here for one reason. To make really bad jokes.

No. I am here to teach the Word of God. That is my job.

And I love my job. You show me a church where this isn't happening and I wonder what is the point? What is the point? And what are these short little sermons you know with a little 15 minute talk? I don't want a 15 minute talk. I want a message from the Word of God. Sermonettes produce Christianettes. We need God's Word. Otherwise why are we here? So we want to open it up and see what it has to say.

Why? Because Hebrews 4 and 12 says, I love the statement of Martin Luther who said, quote, You know when we read about the church of the first century, the church in revival, the church that changed its world, we read in Acts 2 42 that they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and in fellowship and prayer. That phrase continue steadfastly speaks of real passion.

They were living in a first love relationship with Jesus Christ. They applied themselves to what was taught from the Word. You know I think we need anointed preaching and teaching today. But I think we also need anointed listening.

What does that mean? That means that I come to church A. with my Bible. Don't come here without a Bible. You know a trend in some churches is people don't bring Bibles.

They put the verses up on the screen. Or they have a Bible there in the pew you can borrow. Sorry I am not loaning you a Bible. No soup for you. I will give you a free Bible if you want one.

It has a big old white arrow on it. But here it is. I will give it to you.

But you know what? Go buy yourself a Bible. Get a proper Bible. And then bring it to church.

How many of you have your Bible with you today? Grab it. Hold it up.

Yeah. Brad is a cute little pink one. Nice Brad. See the reason I don't want to put verses on a screen or whatever I want you to bring your Bible. I want you to open your Bible. And I want you to read it. Because this is the authority.

I am not the authority. This is our standard that we look at everything in the light of. So we study the Word of God and we listen.

It is attention with intention. I strongly encourage you to write notes. Take notes of what you hear. On the screen we will put phrases, definitions, quotes, and always Scripture passages. And the reason for this is so you can look those things up later. I know you are not going to retain all these things I am saying to you.

But as you jot them down you can go look them up later and dig in even deeper. We should hunger for God's Word like a little baby desires milk. In fact we are told in 1 Peter 2 like newborn babies you should crave and earnestly desire spiritual milk that you may grow thereby. When our son Christopher was a little boy before he could speak. One day he went and stood in front of the refrigerator and he was just staring at it and he kept repeating this word. Yomp. Yomp.

We are like what is he doing? Yomp. Yomp.

So we are looking at him. Yomp. Just staring at the fridge. Yomp.

So he thought there is something in there he wants so we opened it up and we pulled out the eggs. No. No. Yomp. Yomp.

There is bread. No. Yomp. Yomp.

We went through a number of things. Finally I grabbed the milk. He went, Yomp. Yomp. Oh. Yomp is milk in baby speak.

That is how we should hunger for the Word of God. We come here. Yomp. No. Don't say that. Let me say something that might seem controversial.

But I am going to throw it down. Not only should you be a part of the church. You should be a member or a part of a church.

A single church. Now I know it is popular today to visit a lot of churches. I don't have a problem if you are going to visit another church.

That is fine. We are not the only church around and there are a lot of great churches out there. But the problem with circulating among two or three churches at a time and not having a home base I think can almost cause a bit of spiritual schizophrenia. And you would be surprised to find that other pastors would agree with me on this.

Why? Because we are here to help you. And the Bible tells us as pastors that we are to watch over your soul. And we will be held accountable to God. So this gives us an opportunity to influence you starting with giving you a consistent theology. If you are jumping around to all kinds of different churches you will find you don't really know what you believe exactly. 1 Timothy 4 16 says, And that is why I have never understood people raiding a church on what I think are peripheral issues. Well I like that church because they have a really great facility. And I like this other church because it is closer to my home. It is convenient.

Really? Is that your basis of evaluating a church? I mean if I was not a pastor the first thing I would look for is I want to go to a church where the Word of God is taught. That is number one. I don't care if I have to drive for a while. I don't care if it is convenient.

I don't care if it is the greatest facility. I want to go hear the Word of God taught. But here as we gather together we want to be a part of what God is doing. This is not about one church being better than another.

People like to pick churches against each other and pastors against each other. Don't come to our church to talk smack about another church. That is not why we are here.

I don't want to hear it. When people come and they start criticizing this other church. Well OK. But that is not why we are here. We are here to study the Word.

We are here to worship Jesus. So please don't come here and do that. I don't like it.

OK. I find the people that leave one church because they didn't like this go to another church. They didn't like that and they go to another and find something else to dismiss. Maybe the problem isn't with the church.

Maybe the problem is with you. And maybe you need to settle down and be a part of a congregation. This happened in the early church too by the way. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 3. Some of you say I am a follower of Paul.

Another says, well I prefer Apollos. Another preacher. Aren't you acting like those who are not Christians? Paul says, who is Apollos?

Who is Paul? That we should be the cause of such quarrels. We are only servants. Through us God caused you to believe.

Each of us did the work that God gave us. But why should you have a home church? Because you need a pastor who can influence you and you need to be accountable. Quite honestly I find a lot of times when people are church hoppers it is because there is sin in their life. I am not saying everyone who goes to multiple churches is living in sin. But I am saying some are. And I will tell you why I say that. Because I will hear a story of someone coming to harvest to some guy showing up here with his girlfriend. Ok. Yeah but the problem is he is married and his wife goes to this other church he used to go to but they are separated right now so he brought his new girlfriend to church here. See we don't like that. Ok. And we are not going to go with that. People hop around so they won't be accountable.

So someone won't come up to them and say, hey how are you doing? Is everything alright? Can we pray for you?

Can we help you? We need to have a place where we can serve the Lord. And yes we need to have a place where we can invest our finances regularly.

Every believer should give to the work that God is doing. I think we treat churches like we treat restaurants or movie theaters. We get a consumer mentality. I want to go to this theater. Oh we went there two weeks ago. Let's go to this other one. You want to go to the other one. Let's go to this other one.

Yeah. Church is not a restaurant folks. The church is a family. And you need to be a part of the family. And you need to engage. And maybe one of the reasons like you feel like you are not getting enough out of it is you come intermittently and you don't commit yourself. And I say if you would settle in and become a part of what God is doing here it would change for you because you have skin in the game. Stop thinking of the church as them and start thinking of the church as us.

And be a part of the family. And take the gifts that God has given you and develop them and use them for His glory. I suggest to you church could completely change for you if you stopped coming as a spectator and instead join the team. It is fine to come and be served in the church. But there has to come a point where you start growing up and say, you know what I want to start serving now.

And you will find everything changes for you. So we are here to glorify God. We are here to edify and build up one another. And lastly the church is here to evangelize the world outward. That is the natural outgrowth of the first two. I think if we are glorifying God and building up one another we will want to share the hope of salvation with others through our loving actions and words.

Healthy sheep will reproduce themselves. And Jesus has told us to go out into this culture as light. Light in a dark world. How do we shine our light?

Jesus said, Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father. We do many good works in our community. We feed people. We clothe people. We help people get off drugs and alcohol. We counsel all week long helping messed up marriages.

Parents with kids with problems. You name it. We deal with it here. We are a light in our community and a light in our state and a light in our world. But we are also called to be salt. Jesus said in Matthew 5, You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its flavor, what good is it?

Salt in biblical times was used as a preservative. And we as Christians are a preservative in our culture. We stand up for what is right and true.

Yeah. We register and we vote our conscience. That is informed by our biblical worldview.

We make no apology for that. As followers of Jesus we are going to oppose sin. The story is told of President Calvin Coolidge who returned home from church one Sunday. His wife asked him what the minister talked about. Coolidge a man of few words said, Oh he spoke on sin. His wife said, Well yeah. What else did he say?

President Coolidge responded, He was against it. That is right. Or against sin. But we love sinners and want them to come to the Savior. That is why we are here. And God wants to use each one of us to touch our world and to touch our community.

But here is what I am saying to you. Be a part of the church. Stop dissing it.

Stop critiquing it. Don't be a church connoisseur. Be a family member. And you watch how things will change for you as God uses you. Let me say in closing maybe you have joined us here today and it is sort of like you walked into a family meeting. Have you ever done that? You go over to your friend's house and they are having a family meeting.

You are like, I am going to go now. Why? Because you are not part of the family. So you have come in and we are having one of those and we are having the candid talk about what the church is and you are thinking, well I am not a part of the church. Yeah.

That is true. But guess what? You can join this family. You are not born into it. You are born again into it.

Through faith in Jesus Christ. So maybe as you have joined us and you have seen us worship and you have heard this message and you are saying, man I wish I had that relationship with God. I wish I was a part of this family. I feel so all alone out there and I have not found family. But right here you have a family waiting for you.

And you have a Father who loves you. A Father in heaven. Who will change you and forgive you of all of your sin if you will come to Him right now. And I am going to give you an opportunity to become a Christian and to join the church. And I don't mean this church in particular but you become a part of the body of Christ.

The church as a whole. You join God's family. And if you have never done that but you want to why don't you respond to this invitation as we close now in prayer. Let's all pray. Father I thank You for Your Word to us today and we want to apply it. We don't want to just be a hearer of the Word.

We want to be a doer. But we pray for those that have joined us who may not yet know You. Lord would You help them to see their need for Jesus and help them to come to You now.

Amen. Pastor Greg Laurie pointing out the importance of having a personal relationship with Christ. And if you'd like to make that kind of change today in your relationship with the Lord Pastor Greg will help you do that in just a moment before today's edition of A New Beginning wraps up. And then thank you for partnering with us to help these daily studies continue.

Your investments have eternal benefits. Why not make this a part of your personal ministry to partner in an effort that's making a real difference with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Thank you for your prayers and for prayerfully considering how God might lead you to help tangibly. Online you'll find us at harvest.org and there you'll see the way we'd like to thank you for your donation right now.

That's harvest.org. Or write us at A New Beginning, Box 4000, Riverside, CA 92514. Or call us at 1-800-821-3300. We're here around the clock to take your call again at 1-800-821-3300. And then Pastor Greg just before we go would you mind praying with the person listening who wants to make a change today in their relationship with the Lord?

I'd be happy to Dave. You know, as you've been listening to this today maybe you've heard another voice. By that I mean, yeah you heard me say a few things but you heard God's voice speak to you. Deep in the recesses of your heart and it suddenly dawned on you, this is what I need. Or to state it more accurately, this is who I need. I need Jesus and I want Jesus.

But maybe you don't know how to make that connection. Let me help you. God is only a prayer away. He stands at the door of your heart and he knocks and Jesus says if you'll cure his voice and open the door he'll come in. Let me help you open the door so to speak of your heart as you invite Jesus to be your Savior and Lord.

So here's what I would like you to do. I'd like you to stop what you're doing and I want you to pray a prayer after me. I'll lead you in this prayer and as you pray it, God will hear you. Pray this after me right now if you want Jesus Christ to come into your life. Lord Jesus, I know I am a sinner and I am sorry for my sin and I need your forgiveness right now. Would you come into my heart and my life as Savior, as God, as friend?

I choose to follow you from this moment forward. Thank you for calling me and accepting me and forgiving me. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. I know that was a relatively short prayer. Maybe you felt something as you prayed it.

Maybe you felt nothing. That doesn't really matter because God's word says these things we write to you that believe on the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. It doesn't say so you may think you have it or you may hope you have it if God's in a good mood. No, that you can know it and I want you to know if you pray that prayer in a minute, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has come into your life. So congratulations, you're now a Christian. Now continue to follow the Lord. Yeah, and to help you do that, we'd like to send you some resource materials. Foremost among them is Pastor Greg's New Believers Bible in a very easy translation to understand.

It'll answer many of the questions you might have and get you started off right in your new relationship with the Lord. So get in touch and ask for it. We'll send it free of charge. The fastest way to connect is to go to harvest.org and click Know God or call us anytime at 1-800-821-3300.

Again, that's 1-800-821-3300. Hey, everyone, I want you to know about our app called Harvest Plus. Think of it as a Harvest version of Netflix.

We have all of our resources in one place. We have our movies like Steve McQueen, The Salvation of an American Icon, Johnny Cash, The Redemption of an American Icon, A Rush of Hope, and much more. Then we have our television program, daily devotions, and much more.

So go and download the Harvest Plus app. Well, next time, Pastor Greg brings us an eye-opening study of heaven's angels and their dark counterparts. Join us here on A New Beginning with pastor and Bible teacher Greg Laurie. This is the day, the day when life begins