Spaghetti Map Thinking - Part 2

Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. Just imagine how you'd look if you were a totally peaceful call, no matter what. Just totally peaceful, only set on the Lord.

How would that work? You see, Peter wrote about it and said this, someone may ask you to give an account for the hope that's in you. Peter said you should be ready for that.

What's he implying? Peter's implying that because you're a Christian and you live a very different life, somebody may ask you why are you this way? And there's the opportunity for the gospel. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt.

Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana. Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now, as once again he shows us how God's Word meets our world. You and I, my thought life and yours should be this, just like a compass, what's a compass always do? Points north. No matter where you take it, points north.

No matter where you take me or you, we should point north. Our thoughts should always be to the Lord, always. He has all the authority, he has all the power of everything that's going on. So my thoughts should be about him, not about what's going on. I can look at what's going on and I can pray to the Lord, how would you want me to react in this? You see, how do you want me to react in this, Lord?

Because that's the only thing that matters. Because I'm really anxious? How many times have we commanded in scripture not to worry or be anxious for nothing over and over again? That's the Lord telling you that.

And here's your reaction of mine to it. He doesn't know what's going on. He does know what's going on. In fact, he even tells us something about what he'll do with what's going on. All things will work together for your good. I don't feel that.

I don't think that. I mean, what if it hit? I mean, what if it hit us? I got it. See how this works. It covers everything. What if I got the worst prognosis possible?

Because people do. What if he told me I have six weeks to live? The Lord says, wait, I got this. You'll be absent in the body. You'll be present with me in my father's house in many dwelling places. I go and I prepare a place for you that where I am, you will be also. And I'm going to receive you to myself.

See, the last day of your life is going to be the best day of your life for you. Is that what you think? I need a second opinion.

I need to find another doctor. You see, we end up thinking this way because the worst thing that could happen to you can't happen to you. That's the point. You see, that's our faith. And if it's not this, I can tell you something, it's going to be that.

And if it's not now, it's going to be then. So please be at peace with this. That and then is going to happen to you. That happens to everybody. And God says, I got it. I've got this. Just think about me.

Just dwell on me, not on what's going around. You remember the apostle Paul in Philippians, he was asked a hypothetical question, but he was asked the question, Paul, if you were given the choice to die today or to live on, what would you choose? And Paul said, I choose to die. What?

Yeah. Why? It's going to be the best day of my life. I'm going to be with the Lord. But notice what he said then, but for your sake, I'll stay. He said, if God wants me to stay for your sake, I'll be happy to serve him.

But if he wants me home, I'm happy to go home. And the funny part is nothing can change that. Remember Psalm 139, the idea we're fearfully and wonderfully made. Remember he said, while I was in the womb, God knew every day of my life before I was born. So he knew how long I'd live, when I'd go and be with him. He knew all this. Now what's going to change that? Am I going to be able to change what God knew?

No. But I should be at peace with what God knew. You see, then I'm not afraid. You see, I'm not afraid. And I'm not going to live my life foolishly. I don't mean that.

Wait, if that's what you're saying, I think what I ought to do is just climb the Mississippi River bridge and jump off. Because if it's not my day, right? Well, let me say this. It would be your day. Okay?

And you would have been officially died of stupidity. Okay? But I don't mean it in that fatalistic way. I mean, I trust God in this.

And that takes away the anxiety and fears that I feel. Because I'm thinking differently about it. That's just the way this whole thing kind of works. It's a really, in a very real sense to me, just an interesting phenomenon.

Notice what he goes on and says then. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things of the earth, for you have died and your life is hidden in Christ and God. Wow. I died. Yeah, I was crucified. And my life is hidden in Jesus Christ. So if I let you know, say this book is Jesus Christ. This is the book. This is Jesus Christ. Now, no one else could see it.

They wouldn't even know it's there. But if you look carefully, there's Bill. My life's hidden in Jesus Christ.

So is yours. You may only see the book, but my life's in here. You see, from God's point of view, I've died when he died.

I'm hidden in Christ. You see, that should be reassuring. That should give me tremendous peace.

But it won't if I'm a spaghetti map thinker. Go with me to John chapter 10 for just a moment. John 10, verse 27. Jesus is speaking to the Jews at the temple and he wants to say something here that's very important for us.

Verse 27, he says, my sheep hear my voice. I know them. They follow me. I give eternal life to them and they will never perish.

And he wants to go one more step. No one will snatch them out of my hand. So who's going to snatch your eternal life? No one.

Not ever. He said, my father who has given them to me is greater than all. And no one was able to snatch them out of my father's hand and I and the father are one.

I'm a child of God. And you know what can change that? Nothing. Nothing.

That's why Paul wrote in Romans 8, you know what can separate me from the love of Christ? Nothing. Nothing in the past, nothing in the present, nothing in the future, nothing in the physical world, nothing in the spiritual world, nothing. I'm in the hand of Jesus Christ and God the father. Who's going to get me out of that hand?

He says, no one. Now what should that give you? Peace. That should give you tremendous peace. I'm in God's hand.

Not because I go to church, not because I try to be a good guy, but because of Jesus Christ and has finished working the cross. I belong to God. He redeemed me. He purchased me. He owns me. You see, I am His.

He is mine. That's the way this thing works. And once you have that, nothing can change that.

Certainly not COVID. That's not changing anything. Let me give you a biblical application. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. You remember what they were going to do? Nebuchadnezzar said you have to worship the big idol I made. And they said, sorry, sir, we don't worship idols. He said, you've got to worship it.

They said, no. He said, I have control over you. I'll put you in a furnace. He said, you can do that if you want.

It won't make any difference. They said, I'll heat the furnace up seven times what its normal temperature is. Go at it. They said, you have to understand something. We're not going to worship you. He said, if you put us in a furnace and God wants us to live, He is able. And if He wants to take us home, He is able. Either way, we're with God.

And either way, we're not worshiping you. Wow. What happened? When the furnace, there's a fourth being in the furnace. They come out unscathed. They didn't even smell like smoke. Wow. He said, but it didn't matter to them.

Either way, I'll be with God, but we're not going to change. What did they have in a pretty frightening time? Remember, the guy standing at the door of the furnace died. There was so much heat, he was outside and he died.

They didn't. How about Elijah when he was leaving this earth with Elisha? He got caught up in the whirlwind.

It would be like a tornado. That must have been, from our point of view, wow, that'd be violent. He's like, no, he wasn't. He wasn't violent at all. He just wanted to be in the presence of the Lord.

You see, Elijah and Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were just as safe in a furnace or a whirlwind as they were in their own bed. And so are you. And so am I.

You see, that doesn't change. So what am I upset about? What am I worried about? Where's my anxiety going? All because I think spaghetti map thinking, not because I'm seeking heaven, not because I set my mind on the truth of God. I don't do that. I think about on the horizontal plane rather than the vertical plane and I reap my thoughts, which is a lot of anxious thoughts and fear. That's what ends up happening to me.

Second question, how can I live with confidence in a chaotic world? Well, back to Colossians for a moment. It's right there without even knowing it's there. He said, keep seeking the things above, set your mind on things above. He said, there it is. He said, that's the way this works.

What does he mean by that? What he means by that is this, what will occupy my thinking? Well, what occupies my thinking will change completely my own testimony. When you read the Bible, it's interesting to me. What makes the gospel more believable to other people who are lost?

The number one thing that I see in the word of God and in experience, a transformed life. You have a transformed life, people believe what you're saying. You don't, they're skeptical. They even have a word for you, hypocrite. You see, no, I told them the words. I mean, some of us think evangelism is just putting tracks down.

Now, I'm saying the person could get saved if the words are true, but almost everybody I know was saved because they believed that what somebody was telling them because of the person that was telling them. A transformed life makes a difference. Now, think about the world we live in, a world of global warming, terrorism, and COVID-19. Is there any anxiety out there?

Everywhere, right? Just imagine how you'd look if you were a totally peaceful calm, no matter what. Just totally peaceful, only set on the Lord.

How would that work? You see, Peter wrote about it and said this, someone may ask you to give an account for the hope that's in you. Peter said you should be ready for that.

What's he implying? Peter's implying that because you're Christian and you live a very different life, somebody may ask you, why are you this way? And there's the opportunity for the gospel. You see, this country we live in, this disintegrating culture that we live in is producing enormous amount of heartache.

You see, God's not mocked. Whatever you sow, you're going to reap. So when you sow the kind of lifestyles, immorality, all those things that our culture does, you're going to reap it. And when you reap it, you're going to have enormous pain. That's a tremendous opportunity for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

But why in the world would they want to come to you if you've given them no reason to? You see, one of the big terrible fallacies that's happened in the church, the evangelical church over the last 25 years, is that the church has decided to reach the lost or fulfill the great commission in a very different way. The church has decided, let's become as worldly as we can and then we'll be able to witness to the world. That's a mistake.

That's an enormous mistake. So one writer wrote it this way when it comes to unbelievers. He said this, we need to sort and remove all the obstacles that would offend them.

We must never talk about sin, righteousness, judgment, wrath, eternal punishment, or anything that convicts things that indict or things that condemn. We need to embrace as many of their ideologies as possible. We need to really be open to feminism, open to homosexuality, same-sex marriage, sex outside of marriage, social justice, victimization, critical theory, social politics, because that's the things that they're caught up in. He said these are the things that they are advocating now. And unless we want to be isolated from them, we need to jump on the advocacy bandwagon.

We need to essentially accept as many worldly norms as we possibly can. And then we might be able to fulfill the Great Commission. That's what's happening. And their churches are growing, but not with saved people. It's amazing. It's amazing what we've done. And we keep hurting it. The amount of megachurch pastors that have now given up their ministries because of their behavior is amazing to me.

I mean one right after another, after another, after another, after another. Just a couple of days ago, I just found out a megachurch pastor, a 33-year-old charismatic handsome guy in Oregon is just giving up his ministry. And he's reluctant to do so because what he found out was, one, he was divorced, a people divorced. He's the senior pastor of the church. And then he started dating women and having sex with women in his church. And they came forward and said this doesn't seem right to us.

And so now he's willing to step down for six months and then he'll go back to being their pastor. There's so much wrong in those things I just said I can't imagine them. But you see it over and over again. Why do you expect that unbeliever to believe what I'm telling you if my life is a fake? Why would you expect them to believe me? I'm lying. If I can't utilize my relationship with Christ in real life, then why would you want that relationship?

Just going on and on and on. In John 8, Jesus said this, you're from below. I'm from above. You're of this world.

I am not of this world. You will never find in the entire ministry of Jesus Christ throughout the Gospels that he ever once compromised with the world, ever. James said, if you're a friend of the world, you're at enmity with God. So why would I use worldly pragmatism in order to try to get more bodies in a building?

You see you can't do that. It has to come down to the idea of a transformed life and what that transformed life means. Last passage, I want to look at Titus chapter 2. Titus chapter 2 and verse 11. Paul says this, he said, for the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men as an opportunity, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires, to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age. There's the transformed life.

Looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Christ Jesus who gave himself up for us to redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for himself a people of his own possession, zealous for good deeds. He said, these things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no one disregard you. He says to us, look, you have to give these things up. We have to look different. We have to be different. And the stuff around us in this world, you've got an immoral culture. Be moral. You have a very fearful culture. Be peaceful. You have a very pessimistic culture. Be hopeful.

You see, now you have an angry culture. Be joyful. See, it stands against everything that's going on out there. That's when the gospel of Jesus Christ could really be something. Jesus said it this way, let your light shine among men that they see your good works and what? Glorify your father who's in heaven. In other words, when they see your life, they're much more likely to come to me.

That's the way this should work. That's why it's such an important thing. Just start thinking who you are from God's perspective. He's called us. He's called us a chosen race. He's called us a royal priesthood, a holy nation. Here, a God, a people for God's own possession. He's called us his children. Man, that's God talking. The creator of everything.

He said, yeah, that's who you are. How do we not embrace this? How do we not think about this?

Why wouldn't we keep seeking heaven? Everything I want is there. My father is there. My Heavenly Father is there. My Savior is there. My inheritance is there. My citizenship is there.

My rewards are there. Why wouldn't I keep wanting to set my mind that way? See, what ends up happening to us is instead of seeking it and setting our mind on it, we got involved in spaghetti map thinking. We keep looking on the horizontal plane around and seeing all the opinions, and it's left us in incredible confusion. You see, and the truth of the matter is, one thing you know about a spaghetti map when they show you an early one, none of them are right.

Now, once they get down to within 24 hours, they all come together, and it's a little bit better. But in the beginning, they're not right. They're just throwing projections out there. And the perspective of our culture when it comes to all the things we're facing, what they're saying out there, not right. And it doesn't even matter if they're right.

It doesn't change us at all. You see, we have to ask ourselves, Christ has all the authority. He's sovereign over everything.

I set my mind on him. Maybe another way to put it would be this. Live your life for an audience of one. That's all that is going to matter. I don't care how successful you are. I don't care how educated you are. I don't care how gifted you are.

I don't care how many good things people say to you. All that's going to matter forever is you and I are going to stand before a judgment seat of Christ. And he'll decide.

He decides. Oh, wait, wait, Lord, Lord, you don't understand. A lot of people like me. They thought I was really, you know, a cool guy.

You don't understand how much success I had. I don't know about you, but all I want to hear him say is well done, good and faithful servant. Because in the end, that's all that's going to matter. So you have a choice. Spaghetti map thinking or just laser focus on your Lord in heaven.

And I'm just telling you, if you do the second, you're going to benefit. Isaiah chapter 26, verse three says this. You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in you. That's God's promise. You want peace? You want peace? He says, keep your mind stayed on him.

You'll have it. Let's pray. Father, you're very much aware of everything that's going on in our culture and the amount of confusion and anxiety and fear and worry and anger that it's all caused. But all those things, Father, reveal that we're not doing one thing. We're not setting our mind on you. We're not focused on heaven. We don't live our lives for an audience of one. We find ourselves caught up in the stream of negativism, of sin, of all the variety of views of our culture.

It has not been a good place for us. Father, I pray that we decide to live a little differently, to set our mind on you, to set our mind on our Lord, to look at every situation in our life and say, Lord, what do you want from me in this situation? Others will benefit. Some may come to him. And Father, we will be filled with peace and joy and hope. That's my prayer for each of us.

In Jesus' name, amen. You've been listening to Pastor Bill Gebhardt on the Radio Ministry of Fellowship in the Word. If you ever miss one of our broadcasts or maybe you would just like to listen to the message one more time, remember that you can go to a great website called oneplace.com. That's oneplace.com, and you can listen to Fellowship in the Word online.

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