Awake! Arise & Shine! Part 3: Walking in Spiritual Light

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Greetings friends and new listeners and welcome to The Sound of Faith. I’m Sharon Otz thanking you for joining us today because we know faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Today’s message, Awake, Arise and Shine, is a stirring word to ignite our hearts with new passion to fight against the tide of godlessness and persecution that has left some Christians in a state of carnal apathy and spiritual inactivity. Let us be sober and put on the armor of light. Let us awake, arise, and shine. All right, let’s go back to Ephesians 5 and we were talking about verse 14. So let’s go to verse 15. See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise. I like the word circumspectly. I know it’s archaic and all the new versions probably change it. It’s a curious word. And the Greek word, I’m not going to give you a lot of Greek words because I know a lot of you don’t care, but you do need to hear this one. Akribos. Akribos. Let me spell it for you. A-K-R-I-B-O-S. Now the literal meaning is perfectly or diligently. So when you put it in a verb form of action, it means to exercise extreme caution and care. It means to be exact. To be exact. And in reference to hearing, in this verse, it means to hear and to heed and walk according to the word of God. Most all other places where you find it in the New Testament, instead of being translated circumspectly, they translate it perfectly. The same Greek word, akribos. And Luke is especially fond of this word because he uses it quite a bit in the book of Acts, and wherever he attaches this word akrabos to what he’s talking about in his writings, it’s always in reference to the word of God being perfect, receiving the word of God, acting on the word of God perfectly. I tell you the liberty that many preachers and teachers take today when they expound the scriptures is so dangerously out of balance. And they really should be afraid to do that because this word tells us we have to walk circumspectly. Our English word, circumspectly, I know right here it doesn’t sound like acrobose. So don’t get too confused here. Let me just tell you this. Do you know that the Bible, when it was translated, the New Testament out of Greek, it went into Latin. How many of you know I taught on that not long ago? We didn’t get an English version for quite a long time. It went to Latin. So what they’ve done is instead of borrowing the Greek word, they took the Latin word and brought it right into English. What does that mean, Sharon? It means circum, C-I-R-C-U-M in Latin means around. And it means specto in Latin means to look. How many got the picture? Okay, so you’re looking. You’re looking and you’re looking. You’re walking and you’re looking. How many got that much of it? So while you’re walking, you are looking. And this is the way a Christian is supposed to conduct his life and navigate his way. Through this world, this perverse and wicked and ungodly world. Amen? He’s supposed to navigate his way walking and looking. Some of you may have saw that I posted I took a very bad fall the other day on Thursday. And I’m always careful that I don’t see a rock or a pothole or whatever. But I was walking across this parking lot from my home. And they have pine trees there. And… The wind was really blowing hard that day, and apparently a pine cone just blew right about as I took my step, and down I went. Thank God I’m sore, but I’m okay. Amen? But that shows me that you can never be too careful and you can never be too vigilant. I mean, it could have been worse. I was going forward and I knew I was going forward. I was trying to stop, but I ended up falling sideward. But I fell on this side. I call it my good side because the surgery I had on my back. It affected my right side. So I always have to sort of like, you know, watch out for this side. And I fell on this side. You know what? I don’t even have any bruises and I fell on asphalt. And I hit my elbow pretty hard. My elbow didn’t even get bruised. It didn’t even bother me. I mean, if you’re going to fall, that’s the way to fall. I mean, if you’re going down, you want to go down like that. Nice and easy. So I’m going to give most credit to the angels. Amen. Said they will bear you up in their own hands unless you would dash your foot against a stone. I’m going to give them 98% of the credit and the other 2% I’m going to give to this extra padding right here. I told Benny, I’m not worried about that padding right there. That padding helped me. There’s some other padding that I, but you know, we won’t talk about that. It was like bouncing. I hit it and bounced off. And the lady said, Amen. Now I want to do a little experiment here, and I do need one volunteer. I’m probably going to draft somebody. Let’s see. Who can I get? You know, some of these people, when you draft them, they end up trying to take your sermon and go their way. Amen. I’ll never forget the time I was… Betty will remember this because she used to be my helper. She used to go buy all my props for me. This is when I first started preaching in my 30s. I had to have lots of props. Lots of props back then because, you know, my preaching was still developing. So I was going to prove the scripture in Hebrews where you’ve got to lay aside every weight and every sin and run with patience. So we had people running around the building and then we had one guy, it was your brother, Shane… We tied a whole bunch of balloons on him. I should have never picked him for that part. I should have put him up front when you’re not encumbered because he wanted to show that he could run. He was supposed to illustrate that you can’t run good with things tied to you. But he took off like a bullet. And he ran around this church so fast, I was like, wait a minute. You were supposed to act like you can’t make it. So ever since then, I’m thinking, oh, who am I going to get? Are they going to try to do their own little illustration? Are they going to help me with mine? Amen? Okay. So let me see hands who are willing after I said that, then I’ll pick somebody. I wanted to be a guy. Okay, Kevin, come on up here. I saw your hand right away. So come on up here. Now, Kevin, the first part of this test is very easy, and you can do it. Now, we’re going to show what it means to walk circumspectly and to be vigilant. Now, what I want you to do is I want you to look where you’re going, and I want you to walk down there where Shirley is. Can you do that? All right. He’s a Christian who’s watching where he’s going. Amen? And the Lord is leading him, and he made it. He’s just about there. All right. Give him a clap offering. This time you’re going to walk backwards. Just stop for a minute. I want to show the people. I wouldn’t do the real thing because I don’t want to have to take anybody to the emergency room. This is a boulder. And this is a tree stump. And this is a thorn bush. And this is a sinkhole. All right, now, I want you to start walking backwards, but keep looking forward and walk backwards. No, no looking down. Up, you just tripped. You just stepped on a tree stump. You just tripped, down you go. All right, get back up, brother. All right, now let’s try some more here. Keep walking backwards. Up. You just stepped on a thorn bush. Down you go. Up. He’s hobbling. He’s got thorns in his feet. Amen. How many are getting the idea here? All right, let’s go. Let’s try it again. Keep walking backwards. Pick up your pace a little bit. You’re in a hurry to get where you’re going. Up. Sinkhole, sinkhole, sinkhole. Okay, let’s try it again. Now, you’re really in a hurry. You’ve got things to do, places to go, and people to see. Oh, you hit a big boulder. All right, let’s try it again. Oh, the gates of hell. Oh. Give our brother a clap offering. So what am I showing you here today? I’m showing you that you’ve got to walk circumspectly. In other words, you’ve got to watch where you are going. How many say amen? Because if you are looking one way and walking another way, you are going to fall. You’re going to stumble. God created us all with two eyes right here. And we’re supposed to walk in the direction that we can see. We’re supposed to walk in the direction that we’re looking. Amen. You never walk opposite of the direction that you’re looking. Amen. And so that’s how God created us. We’re supposed to walk in the direction where we can see where we’re going. Amen. And if we go against that principle, things are going to get bad. So let me make this metaphorical for all of us to understand. What are you focusing on and what are you looking to? If you are looking to this world for your answers, If you are looking to the arm of flesh to help you and get you out of your problems, if you are looking to man and think that he’s going to fix you and he’s going to deliver you, you’re going to keep going from one fall to the other fall and sinking deeper and deeper. If you look in this world that we’ve already agreed upon is full of evil and darkness, you’re going to walk in that evil and darkness. It’s going to bring panic and And fear and anguish and doubt and misery to your life. Amen. Even Christians sometimes are always looking at the negative. And they’re always falling in the pit. I don’t mean necessarily the pit of sin. I mean the pit of despair. The pit of hopelessness. Amen. But if you will walk… Looking unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith. Looking unto him. Amen. Then you’re going to have hope. You’re going to have joy. You’re going to have peace. You’re going to have healing and deliverance. Who are you looking at today? Are you looking in yourself? Some people are always looking introspectively. Looking in myself. Don’t get hung up doing that because you’ve got a lot of problems with yourself. You’ve got a lot of lies that you’ve heard over your lifetime. Like I preached last week, you might have rejection and baggage and you’re so focused looking on yourself, you get more despondent. You’ve got to look up and see God. Thank you. He said, I will look under the hills from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord. Hallelujah. I’m going to look to him. I’m looking up and seeing God. Jesus said, the word says in Isaiah, look under me, all ye the ends of the earth and be saved. For there is no other savior. There is no other deliverer. Jesus there is no other name that can save under heaven but the name of Jesus you can look at your problems and look at your problems and try to dissect your problems and analyze your problems and all you’re doing is bringing up all those bad emotions all those hurts and all that stuff you’re just bringing it and rehearsing it and reliving it And you get in that sinkhole. That sinkhole. But Jesus said that he’s able to save to the utmost all those who come to him. Jesus said in Matthew, the 11th chapter, Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Are you weary from your life? Are you burdened down with problems and burdens? Whether you’re a Christian and you have those things or whether you don’t know God, I know you’re burdened down. I know you are if you don’t have Jesus. But sometimes Christians let themselves get burdened down. They let the devil put burdens on them. God didn’t do it. Help me to remember this story, Lord. It’s a true story. This young Christian man, he had a mama who was saved and served God. But she was so pessimistic all the time. She always saw the negative in things. And they used to go round and round and round. He would try to say, Mom, you’ve got to stop being so negative all the time. And he would always be preaching at her about it. But it’s like she just could not get delivered from this sense of negativity. So she was always walking around heavy. And how many know, after a while, it gets uncomfortable to be around someone like that. Because after a while, you think, if I can’t pull you up, I might let you pull me down. But one morning, she came to the breakfast table. She was smiling. Her face was glowing. She was so happy. He couldn’t believe it. It was a visible difference in her countenance and everything, her demeanor. She was happy and lighthearted. And he said, Mom, what got into you? She said, last night I had a dream. And in my dream, we were outside and I was there too. And I saw all of these people walking around on this grassy land. And then there was a road winding through it. And she said, these people had all of these black bundles. on their backs but there was thousands of them all everywhere laying on the grass this evil person was going through and he said i knew it was satan and he kept dropping these black bundles and he said these people were going over and picking them up and putting them with the rest of their bundles and they would go pick up some more and pick them up with the rest of their bundles until they were getting way down and she was doing the same thing She was doing the same thing. But then off in the horizon, she saw someone walking and they were full of light. And she saw that when he would talk to people, that they would drop those bundles and they would start smiling. At some point, she realized it was Jesus. And he came to her. Amen. And he told her, he said, these bundles that you’re carrying, You need to throw those bundles down and look to me. Amen. And immediately, she said in her dream, she fell to her knees, threw off all those bundles, called upon Jesus. He reached out and touched her. And when he did, the light and the joy and the peace and the glory of God just went through her being. And when she woke up the next morning, the heaviness was gone. Oh, the hopelessness was gone. The despair was gone. Amen? So we’ve got to look to Jesus. Watch where you’re walking because wherever you’re walking, wherever you’re looking is where you’re going to walk and that’s what you’re going to end up. In a ditch. In a sinkhole. Amen? And now for Christians, let me get back to the word acrobose because that you can see comes into the English as acrobat. How many recognize that? In 2012… An American stuntman named Nick Wallenda. How many have heard of the Wallenda family? They’re the ones that do all of those exciting, extraordinary, over-the-top tricks up on the high wire and the tightrope. It’s a generational thing. They just keep passing it down to the next generation. So that year, he became the first person to cross the Niagara Falls on a tightrope. one of the most dangerous spots right near the falls. He was watched by an estimated billion, with a B, TV viewers. And 125,000 people came to see it live there. It took him 25 minutes to cross an 1,800-foot gap that separates Canada and the United States. And he did it on a two-inch-thick steel cable. And he was buffeted by swirling clouds of spray. As 200 feet below him, the waves would crash over the precipice at 65 miles per hour. And all he had was a 40-foot pole that was attached to a brace on his neck. Because in tightrope walking, balance is everything. And he had to leverage that pole when he would go too far this way to get him straight again and keep going that way. Because balance is everything if you’re on a tightrope. Amen. And I’m saying to you, child of God, God is a God of balance. He doesn’t want us out of balance in any area of our lives, no matter what it is. We’ve got to remain vigilant and sober. You sure don’t want to be a tightrope walker if you’re not sober. And you sure don’t want to be one if you’re not vigilant. Amen. You need to see where you’re going. And the scriptures tell us many times how we’re to walk. We’re to walk in truth. We’re to walk in honesty. We’re to walk in love. We’re to walk in wisdom. Amen? Many verses, you can do your own search on that. And always, it’s in the present tense, which means you should be walking this way all the time. All the time. Walk circumspectly, redeeming the times, because the days are evil. What does it mean to redeem the times? You know, we can’t go back and relive our past life. Whatever we did in sin is history. Right? It’s under the blood. We can’t go back and redeem that time and get it back. But that means that every moment that we have now as a child of God, we got to redeem every moment. We can’t waste it. We can’t fritter it away on the natural, on the fleshly. Amen. We cannot allow ourselves to waste valuable time. Because God has given us everything that we need to preach the gospel. He’s given us all things that pertain to our life and our godliness is what Peter said. He said that we are his workmanship and that he has bestowed upon us his anointing. He has given us preparation and he’s given us gifts and talents. And we all are different. Much as I would love to, I cannot sing. And there’s some singers, as much as they would love to, they cannot preach. And so on and so on. We are all different, but we all bring something valuable to the body of Christ. In our different ways, he said he gives us diverse gifts and he places us as it pleases him. But one thing we all have the same amount of is time. We’ve all got 24 hours in a day. We’ve all got the same time every day redeemed today. But we don’t know what our lifespan will be. Some will die younger than others. Some will live longer than others. But that’s why you’ve got to seize every day and make it count for Jesus. You’ve got to redeem this day because tomorrow is not promised. Tomorrow is not promised. To anyone. We’re seeing a weekly and almost daily news reports of people still in the prime of their lives. Went to work like they always did. Went to the grocery store. Went to the mall. What they always do. But that day someone, sometimes they don’t even know who or why, shoots them dead. Or they’re in a terrible accident. Tomorrow is not promised to anyone. That’s why you’ve got to redeem the time today. Amen? Today is the day of salvation. And now is the acceptable time. Now, Jesus said, if you can hear my voice today, don’t harden your heart. Amen? Because you don’t know how much time you have. Amen. I always pray, Lord, give me enough time to finish my assignment. I just want to finish my assignment, and I want to finish it with excellence. Not perfection. I can’t do that. None of us are going to reach perfection, but we can reach excellence. We can be excellent because we do whatever our hands find to do with all our heart and all our might and all our strength. Will we make mistakes? Yes. Will we look back and say, I wish I’d done it this way instead? Next time I’m going to do it this way. Oh, and we learn from that and we keep striving for excellence. But I want to be like Paul when he said, I want to finish my course with joy and the ministry which you have given unto me to testify of the grace of Jesus Christ. You know, there was a time in his life when he said, I’m in a straight betwixt two. Part of me wants to come to heaven to my glory, but part of me says, well, I need to stay down here and help the churches that are still growing. So I think I better stay here and help the churches. But there came a time when he said, I’m now ready. I’m now ready to be offered. I’m ready. I fought a good fight. I kept the faith. I finished my course and I’m ready. Amen. You’ve got to be ready because you never know when it’s your time. Amen? So with every head bowed here this morning as the music comes, the Lord is talking to people’s hearts. And he’s saying what he said in the book of Revelation, chapter 3, verse 20. Behold, I stand at the door of your heart and I’m knocking. I’m knocking. If any man will open up and let me come in, I will come in. And my Father will come in. And we will fellowship with you so intimately. We are going to fellowship with you like we would come to your house and sit down and have dinner at your table. That’s what we’re going to do in your heart and in your spirit, in your life. If… you will open up the door. Amen? So let’s pray. Father, I open up the doors of my heart and I receive your invitation that you will come into my heart. Take this burden away from me that the enemy has put on me and deliver me from all bondage. despair and despondency and fear and anguish and panic set me free cleanse me in your blood I know there’s power in your blood to forgive me to set me free and to write my name in the book of life I thank you right now for delivering me from all the powers of the enemy. I receive you as my Lord and my Savior. And by your grace, I will serve you all the days of my life. Now give the Lord a clap offering this morning. Amen. What an exciting exhortation of the Lord. Awake, arise, and shine. Jesus warned in Matthew 24 his discourse on the signs of the end time. Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. Now the Greek term iniquity means without law or lawlessness. It describes a departure from and disregard for God’s laws, the Bible. When there is no restrainer, it allows evil to abound. And instead of the saints standing up against the tide of wickedness, their love and their passion for God and his word waxes cold. This implies a progression into apathy and inactivity. But Paul declared with his pen of passion five things we are to do in this chaotic climate. awake from your sleep and christ will give you light arise arise means to stand up not just on your feet in the physical sense but to stand up for or against something the church must stand against the hostilities of the world we are at war against the kingdom of darkness shine you are the lights of the world jesus said let your light shine before men Walk circumspectly like a tightrope walker with extreme focus and balance and redeeming the times. You can’t change the past, but you can buy back each moment wasted in sin and failures to finish your course strong with joy. Awake, Arise, and Shine can be ordered on CD for a radio love gift of $10 or more. Request SK198. Mail to Sound of Faith, P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203. You can also order online at soundoffaith.org. soundoffaith.org where mp3s are also available but to order by mail send a minimum love gift of ten dollars to p.o box 1744 baltimore maryland 21203 and request sk198 till next time this is sharon not saying maranatha