Today on Bold steps, Mark Jobe shows us how to stay spiritually charged.
Well, God is telling us is examine yourself. You need to make sure that if you're going to be filled with the spirit and walk in the spirit, you don't have anything in your life that's going to sabotage your walk in God. So examine. Make sure you leave behind stuff that shouldn't be there or you will not walk in the spirit.
Welcome to Bold Steps with Mark Jobe. Mark is president of Moody Bible Institute and the senior pastor of New Life Community Church in Chicago. And Mark, here's an out of the blue question for you. Have you ever forgotten to charge your phone overnight?
And there's panic the next day, believe me.
Can I make it on 2%?
Not as panicky as my kids get, but there is panic in my.
We depend on them, don't we? But there's an analogy to being charged with the Holy Spirit, too, isn't there?
There is. And I believe it was D.L. Moody that, um, was approached by a woman who said, well, why do we have to be filled over and over with the spirit? And I think in his iconic, good, gritty, D.L. Moody way, he said, lady, because I leak. And, uh, that's a bit of the idea there, is that it's not a one time filling that lasts the rest of our life. In fact, it's not really a suggestion in this scripture. It's a command. Keep being filled with the spirit over and over and over.
We are in Ephesians chapter five, continuing our series. When you believe Everything Changes. Here's Mark Jobe with today's bold steps.
Have you ever been in a crowded party? Or at a place where you get a cup and you fill it up and you try to make your way across the room. But people are dancing, moving. It's crowded. So you make your way across the room. They're bumping you and hitting you and spilling and knocking you. And you say, watch it and you make your way across. Someone hits
you and spills a little bit. Someone bumps you and spills a little bit more, and you're just trying with all your might to keep from spilling what you have. But by the time you get to the other side of the room, there's been so many people that have bumped you and hit you that you're wearing it on you. You've you spilled it. And and your glass, when you reach the other side of the room is half empty. You started full on that side of the room. But by the time you reach this side of the room,
it's half empty because you've been bumped so many times. Well, that's the way it is. Oftentimes in our spiritual walk with God on Sunday morning, many of you look at this time, you get a real fuel up experience. You get all filled up with the spirit and worship in the word and praise. And so you walk out of this place. Your cup is full. Some of you are practically levitating out of this place, walking in the spirit.
God has touched you. Good things are happening. You go home, there's a smile on your face, you go to sleep and there's a big sense of, hey, God spoke to me. It's great. And then Monday morning comes. And you get up and you're a little late. You have one cup of coffee and you still feel tired. You pour that second cup of coffee, and someone's trying to get in the bathroom at the same time that you're trying to
get in and someone's taking too long. And if you have kids, then they're running around trying to get their things together, and then they forget their notebook from their backpack. And then one of them says, oh, I forgot, I have homework that I forgot to do last night. You
have what? And you're running around trying to get them ready, and it's just harried and fast paced, and then finally you get in your car to go to work and you're running a little bit late, get on the expressway, there's traffic and you're trying to go downtown and people are cutting you off, and it seems like everybody's in
a nasty attitude. And and by the time that you get to your job a little bit late and get into work, then there's a whole bunch of work in front of you and there's bad attitudes and nasty responses. And this was due yesterday. How come it's not done by the time Monday afternoon arrives, you're on empty. On Sunday you were on full. By Monday afternoon, you're already on empty. Wishing that you could recapture that sense of
fullness that you had on Sunday. And then some of you, by the time that the next Sunday rolls around, you're so empty, you're like dragging yourself into your pastor. I've had a real rough week. Let me get filled up again. And what the Apostle Paul is teaching us is that it doesn't have to be that way. We need to learn to stay full of the spirit, even though we're
going to be bumped and knocked by life. So today I'm going to talk to you about how to stay full of God even when you're at your job or stay full of God, so that by Friday you're still full of God. So that's what the Apostle Paul is talking to us about. Let's begin reading in Ephesians chapter five. For those of you that are new with your Bibles, you can always look at the front of your Bibles. There's an index there. Ephesians is in the New Testament,
and it was written by the Apostle Paul. And we're in chapter five beginning with verse 15. He says, be careful, then, how you live. Not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Verse 17 therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of God is. Do not get drunk with wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the spirit. Speak to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Just a few verses, but very powerful verses. If you're taking notes today, I'm going to talk to you about how to stay full with the spirit. Number one, write this down. Staying filled with the spirit means that I examine. First of all, I examine the way I live. He says, be very
careful then, how you live? I think it was the philosopher Plato that said the unexamined life is not worth living. How many of you know that? Sometimes we have to pause and examine how we're living? We need to stop and ask ourselves, now, how am I doing? How am I living? He says, be careful then, how you live. In other words, watch how you live. Take an inventory
of how you're living. Examine your lifestyle. Be careful about the way that you're going, about your relationships and your job and your education and your thinking and your attitude, he says. Be careful, then, how you live. In other words, take a close look at how you're living. And then he tells us exactly what to take a close look at. Why? Because when we're filled with something, if we're not careful, it's going to spill out of us. It's going to fall out of us. So we got to be careful
how we live. If we want to stay full of the spirit, then we have to be careful how we live. And he tells us three areas that we need to watch carefully. He says be careful how you live, not as unwise but as wise. Secondly, making the most of every opportunity because the days are evil. And thirdly, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. The image that comes to my mind as
he says, be careful how you live. It's almost the image of, well, going to an airport, O'Hare airport and traveling. You have to go through the security process, the metal detectors. Unfortunately, I travel quite a bit with speaking engagements and missions opportunities and so forth, and every time I fly out
of O'Hare airport, it's always the same routine, right? Once you wait in a long line to get through the airport security, you arrive to the to the, uh, to the metal detectors, and you have to take off your shoes, take off your belt, take out your wallet, empty all your change. Take off your watch. Take off. Uh, anything else that's in your pocket? Get ready. Get put your cell phone down there and once and take off your jacket. And then you walk through the detector and invariably it
rings and you say, now what? Oh, I forgot a dime in this pocket here. And and while you're going through the detector, of course, you just left your wallet back there. People are pushing you forward, and you're watching the guy behind you, making sure he's not taking your cell phone or your wallet. And so you're walking through
the security scanning. Now, why do they do all of that? Well, they do it for a purpose because they don't want you to take anything you shouldn't be taking on your journey. They want you to. They want to examine you to make sure you're not taking anything extra on the airplane. And I'm grateful they are doing that. And by the way, I would simply say that sometimes you think you're a little more safe than what you really are. I had an experience a little while back where we were in.
We were in Spain, and my son, who was probably 9 or 10 at the time, he really wanted to buy a decorative knife.
Had kind of this.
Spanish logo in. So I said, okay, you can buy it as a decoration piece. You can put like with a little sword or something there it's going to be. But remember, son, you cannot take this on the airplane. And so he lost it.
And he was.
All upset about it, I lost it, I can't find it. So we went through security checkpoint. We got on the airplane in Spain. We're flying from Spain to Heathrow. And he looks at me all excited with a smile on his face, and he says, guess what, dad, I found it. And I'm like, son, put that away fast. But. I'm like, how did that get through a four inch knife blade? So we got to Heathrow Airport and they had just had a terrorist attack in Heathrow Airport. And so they're
on high, high red alert. We get to Heathrow Airport and to go into the airport, we have to go through another security checkpoint. And he says, dad, what should I do? I said, just leave it there. We'll be we'll just tell them the truth. If they find it, we'll tell them accidentally we got there. So we're going through security checkpoint. He takes it on high security alert. He takes his backpack, gets ready to put it through. I'm like, okay, I'm ready for the alarm to go off.
I'm ready for them to pull us aside. Nothing. He gets right through a high security checkpoint into Heathrow Airport, two weeks after a major bomb had exploded in the subway station of Victoria station. I was shocked. So finally there, I said, I'm not going to go through another scanner. I took his knife. I went to the lady and I said, you know my son. Accidentally brought this knife. She was real nice and smiled. Oh, thank you sir.
And then she called security. And within moments I had guys with machine guns on me and they were like, treating us as a terrorist. But, you know, thankfully we made it through that. But the reason you have scanners and the reason that's there is so that you can't take something you shouldn't on the journey that you're on. Well, God is telling us is examine yourself.
This is bold steps. You're listening to Mark Jobe, and we will get back into the second half of today's message in just a moment. Mark, you've been talking today about getting the daily recharge from the Holy Spirit. One of the ways we can do that, maybe not daily, maybe on a weekly basis, is the bold step or weekly that we put out from your office every Monday morning.
Yeah, it's a little bit of a booster at the beginning of the week just to remind us. I don't know about you, Wayne, but I need regular reminders.
Especially on Monday morning.
Especially on Monday morning. And so The Bold Stepper Weekly is that if you haven't signed up, we've just have tons of people that are signing up. And this number is growing week over week. So we would encourage you. It's free, it's weekly and I think it will encourage your heart.
So to sign up for The Bold Stripper weekly. Just visit Bold steps.org. There, you can also check out all of Mark's previous weekly devotionals, and you can even request a copy of this month's special Bold Step gift, which I'll tell you more about later in the program. But right now, let's get back into the second half. Mark titled this message Staying Filled with the spirit.
You need to make sure that if you're going to be filled with the spirit and walk in the spirit, you don't have anything in your life that's going to sabotage your walk in God. So examine. Make sure you leave behind stuff that shouldn't be there or you will not walk in the spirit. Stuff like what? Well, stuff like being unwise. Sometimes we live our lives and we're unwise with how we make bad choices. Do you know the amount of people that I've been a pastor for
a long time? Counseled a lot of people. The amount of people that make dumb choices. over and over. And then when they're in a really bad choice and a bad mess, they look to the heavens and they say, God, why have you done this to me? And I want to say, hey, God had nothing to do with this. You made your own choices, dug your own hole. Don't blame it on God. He's been trying to warn you about it all the time. Now, thank God he's a God of second chances and a God that digs us
out of our own holes. And a God that puts ladders. Once we've made our own messes, and a God that really helps us out. But most of the problems that we face in life are problems of our own making. So he says, be wise, not unwise. Secondly, make the most of every opportunity because the days are evil. Listen, we live in a time. If you're going to be filled with the spirit, you have to make wise choices, make the most of the opportunities God is going to
open doors and those doors are going to close. You need to be ready to walk through the doors that God opened, because you may not have another chance to walk through those doors. Many of us miss the opportunities that God has given to us, because we're not wise enough to see those opportunities. Listen to me, high school students, you have an opportunity to finish high school. Finish it. I don't know. I'm not learning anything important. You know,
I think I'm going to go work at a 7-Eleven. Listen, nothing bad about a 7-Eleven, but listen, if you have an opportunity to finish high school, finish it. Follow through. You got an opportunity to go to college, go to college, follow through. Some of your parents are saying, I wish I would have had the opportunities that you had at this time. There are opportunities that close and open in front of us. There are opportunities to do good that
open and close in front of us. There are opportunities to make choices that open and close in front of us. We live in some days. It says the days are evil. There are windows of opportunity, and so make sure that if you're walking in the spirit, you make the most of the opportunities that are in front of you, and you don't squander your life by missing all the open doors that God's trying to give you. And then lastly, thirdly, he says, therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what
the will of the Lord is. Don't be foolish. Start asking God, what is your will? I want to understand what you have for my life. Don't be unwise. Don't miss the opportunities and don't be foolish. Say, God, how do you want me to live my life? Not what do I want to do? But. Oh, God. What do you want me to do with my life? How many of you know? There's a big difference in that question. Some people are asking, what do I want to do? Other people are asking, God, what do you want me
to do? And when you do what God wants you to do, you will end up doing what is most fulfilling for your life because God knows you best. How do we stay full of the spirit, first of all. We examine the way we live. We're intentional about how we live, so that we can make the most of the opportunities that God has given us. There's nothing worse
than wasted potential. There's nothing worse than someone with great opportunities and great options wasting their potential on frivolous, inconsequential, wasteful things. There is power in this room. Do you know that? There's talent, ability, intellect? There's gifting influence in this room? The sad thing about most of us in any congregation, in any crowd, is that most of us operate at probably about 20% of our God given potential.
They tell us that most of us only use about really 10 to 15% of the capacity of our brain. And most of us think, well, I can't grasp it. No, no, you're only using about 1,015% of your brain. If you really used your brain, you could grasp it. The great majority live way beneath the power of our potential. Most of us are not living to our full capacity. Most of us clearly underestimate what we can do and what God could do through us. Most of us have greater power, intellect, talent, ability,
and when submitted to God, the potential is undeniable. It's unlimited, but most of us never reach it because most of us live way beneath our calling and way beneath our potential. And Paul is simply saying, hey, You are people of God. You need to be different. You need to rise to the God given potential inside of you. You need to rise to your calling, to the gifting. Be full of the Spirit of God, because you could do things that will blow people's minds away if you just begin to
live how God has called you to live. Amen.
Learning to be filled with the spirit each day. That's the takeaway of our message from Mark Jobe today. And you're listening to Bold Steps. You can learn more about Mark and this ministry when you visit Bold Steps org. And when you visit our website, you'll discover our latest Bold Step gift, a thought provoking book by respected pastor Mike Fabares. We've got pastor Mike joining us in the studio today to share more about this hard hitting resource. So Mark, over to you.
Proverbs tells us that envy makes the bones rot. I mean, that's a pretty, pretty direct, vivid image of rotting bones there. But a tranquil heart gives life. Mhm. Uh, you know, I went to school actually with a fellow student that, uh, we both grown up as pastors. He pastors a church in California in Aliso Viejo called Compass Church, a really dynamic church. If you live in that area, please check it out. But he's written a book called envy, a
Big problem you didn't know you had. Mike, tell us what motivated you to write this book?
Well, it was easy for me to look in my own heart. And like you, Doctor Joe, my son is a pastor, and I have no trouble looking at my son and hoping that he does far better than I ever have done. Yeah. Uh, and that's easy to do, because I love my son. Right. Both my sons are pastors, and I love them excelling. I found that it was not as easy for me to rejoice with my peers who do better than I do. And I realized, wow, how can that be? How can pastors look at other
people doing ministry and have feelings that aren't the same? Uh, as I might have toward my own children? Of course I love God. I love the kingdom. But you see, I realize the difference is I don't love my fellow Christian the way I ought to. And if I did, I wouldn't be envious. I wouldn't start to think, well, you know, that was kind of handed to him, or he was in the right place at the right time. Or, you know, people opened doors for that guy. I would
never think that about my own children. And so I've got to recognize this exists in pastors hearts, missionaries hearts, and certainly it exists in the business world. It exists everywhere. And we've got to root it out when we find it and start to realize love and real, true love is the answer. And it brings great tranquility to our hearts.
And pastor Mike, you say that confronting envy allows us to experience the peace and contentment that really God wants for us in the first place.
Yes, if you think about it, in the Kingdom, we're going to have a lot of different people with a lot of different kinds of rewards. A lot of different ranks of of, you know, prominence in the kingdom. And we're always going to rejoice in those things. Right? We realize there'll be no envy, no coveting, no jealousy. None of those things will be active in the eternal state. We will really rejoice as though everyone actually is our brother and sister in Christ. And we've got to realize
that's a different experience. I think we all intuitively know that than we have now. So let's try and enjoy a little bit of that peace and that contentment now. And that's going to I give the answers in this book. The second half of the book is all about how to fix this problem. Uh, the first half is about diagnosing it. And I think a lot of people don't look at this book or they wouldn't pick it up
because they don't think I don't have that problem. That's why I tried to title this in a way that would kind of hook them into looking.
At look a little deeper, huh?
So good, so good, and such a big issue that's not talked about enough. People are silent on this issue. And so thank you, pastor Mike, for writing this book. Uh, we love this topic. And I believe that a lot of people will gain a lot of insight and maybe step into contentment through it. So there you have it, a big problem. You didn't know you had envy by pastor Mike Fabros.
Yes. So let us know where to send you a copy of this bold step gift today. When you give a gift of any amount to support bold steps, call our team today at 800 Moody or give online at Bold Steps. Our address is bold. Steps 820 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 606 ten. And as Marx teachings have made a difference in your spiritual journey, why not join our bold
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favorite social media platform. We're listed as Bold Steps Radio on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok and on March YouTube channel. So log into your account today and connect with us. I'm Wayne Shepherd, thanks for joining us. Be sure to come back tomorrow when Mark continues this discussion on staying filled with the spirit. It's from our series When You Believe Everything Changes. And this coming up Tuesday on Bold
Steps with Mark John. Bold steps is a production of Moody Radio, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute.