Live Free with Josh Howerton - Saying 'Yes' to the Holy Spirit | Ep. 316 | Monday, April 22, 2024

Episode Date: April 22, 2024

It’s God’s job to transform us. Our job is to remain in Him. Our faith grows a little stronger each time we say “yes” to the Holy Spirit. God also prunes us when necessary to facilitate further growth. He uses pivotal moments that are not always fun to change us so that we’ll never be the same and to help us grow closer to Him. For more information, visit lakepointe.church/dailydrive

Thanks for tuning in to today's Daily Drive with Lake Point Church, a daily dose of God's Word for your morning drive. When the word, not the world, becomes the majority of your week, your life will start to change. For that reason, our prayer is that God will speak to you through today's devotional. For more digital content to feed your faith, visit lakepoint.comit. And now let's dive in to today's devotional. Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome to the Daily Drive. So glad to be back with you this week. I'm grateful for all the guests that sit in from time to time. I learned so much from them, and I know you do as well. So let me just start the day by saying, hi, I'm Mike, and I'm addicted to mowing. I love to mow, man. I got one of those zero-turn mowers. Unbelievable. Anybody else love to mow like me? Any gardeners out there, any farmers, any landscapers, you just love growing things. Debbie's mom loves growing things as much as anybody I know. And she knows all the plant names.

You know, I'll look and say that. That's a yellow bush. She'll go, oh, no, that's a lemon princess spirea. She knows so much about gardening and landscaping, and she can't sit down. As soon as it starts getting warmer, she will head out to the yard to talk to her flowers, to do some watering, hoe, and weeding. It's like therapy for her. She loves it.

And it seems to me that people who just love growing things are kind of obsessed with it. Am I right? Well, if that's you, you are in. good company because God loves growing things too, especially us. In fact, he's obsessed with it. So I thought with spring and full swing, we'd spend some time talking about miracle grow. Oh, not the fertilizer supplement. I want to take a look at some of the ways that God miraculously grows you and me from the inside out and helps us become fruitful people. You know, I've said it 100 times on this podcast. It's God's job to transform us. He alone has that power. He causes the

growth, anything else is just mere behavior modification. And why settle for that when we could know true transformation? And only God can pull that off. Our job, as Jesus taught us, is to remain in him, to stay connected like branches do to a vine. If we will keep the remain thing, the main thing, we will produce a whole lot of fruit in our lives. But there are some ways that you and I can cooperate with God's spirit in the transformation and growth process. There are certain practices that we can do, and there are different ways that God uses to grow us up. We're going to hit on some things like practical teaching, where we hear the Word of God and we apply it to our lives and we start growing. Then there are some private disciplines, some practices that you and I can

incorporate into our lives on a regular basis that help feed our faith and nourish our soul. There is public obedience, where every time you say yes to the Holy Spirit as he leads you throughout the day, your faith journey gets exciting and it grows a little stronger. God also, grows us through what I would call passionate ministry, those times where you feel fully alive where you're getting your hands dirty and serving somebody and using your gifts for the glory of God. I've also seen how God uses providential relationships, the way God will unexpectedly, criss-crawled your path with someone else's is amazing, and your life and theirs becomes richer for it. So you've got practical teaching, private disciplines, public obedience, passionate ministry,

providential relationships, there are just a few ways that God grows us up. And today I'd like to talk about how God uses pivotal circumstances to take us to a whole new level of faith. Now I'm sure that we're going to use a few metaphors along the way like planting, cultivating, weeding, watering, and fertilizing, and God uses all those gardening methods to grow our faith. But did you know that God also is into pruning? Yep. God prunes. In John 15, that whole remain in me passes where Jesus tells us that he's the vine and we're the branches, he tells us that if we don't stay connected to him will never produce any real and lasting

fruit, well, every gardener, every vineyard keeper knows that unless the branches get cut back every now and then, they will never reach their full potential. And since God's goal for us is to grow a radical, life-giving faith, and produce fruit in our lives,

sometimes, sometimes he prunes. Now, he doesn't reach for a pair of hedge clippers, of course, but he will use those, unpredictable life moments and turn them into faith-defining moments. He will take those really challenging times that come along and turn them into pivotal circumstances. I'm talking about those times in your life that aren't a whole lot of fun, but when you look back at that at what you've learned and who you've become because of it,

you say, you know what I'm not sure I'd want to go through that again, but I wouldn't trade what God has done inside of me for anything. So what have been those moments in your life that have proven to me, be pivotal moments for you. What can you point to? It was a defining moment in my life. My life has never been the same since I went through that. For some of you, you might look back to one of those mountaintop moments in your life and say, man, that's when I first began to grow. But I'm guessing that most of us would point to some valley experience and say, man, it was one of the hardest seasons of my life. But that's when I really grew the most. You see, valleys are much more fertile than

mountaintops. And maybe you would say, for me, man, it was when they told me, You know, due to strategic reorganization, your services are no longer needed at this company. Or you might say, man, it's easy. It was the day my 23-year marriage ended in divorce. Or it was when I was diagnosed with diabetes. Or when I heard them say the words, quadruple bypass. It was when my girlfriend broke up with me. Or it was when my daughter survived a car crash you shouldn't have.

Oh, that's easy. It's when our baby came into the world with special needs and things have never been the same. It was when we lost our son. It was when I lost my grandma. Oh, man, it was my time in Vietnam. It was my time in Afghanistan. It was the night my addiction took me all the way to rock bottom and I reached out for God.

I have had a few of those life-changing moments, but honestly, one of the most pivotal moments for me was getting cut from the basketball team my sophomore year in college. Now, I know that sounds got us silly, but I'm not sure I would be in ministry today if that didn't happen. Now, God didn't cut me, but he did cut me back. He pruned me in very deep and significant ways. He went to work on my pride, my cockiness, and other character flaws.

It was a pivotal moment in my life. And there have been a bunch of hard things, hurtful things, painful things, tragic things that I would have hoped to avoid. But they grew me in ways that I would never have grown. When we were planning a church in Las Vegas, I met a 25-year-old guy named Scott while we were playing pickup basketball. He was a great player, big, huge, strong guy who had played, professionally overseas. Well, we really hit it off and became super close friends. After playing

ball on Saturday morning, he goes home and discovers a lump on his neck. And he thought he might have taken like an inadvertent elbow, but it wouldn't go away. Well, he was diagnosed with lymphoma, and Scott would tell you today that those six months of chemo brought him closer to God than ever before. He has said to me, cancer sure wasn't in the master plan I drew up for my life. But, man, God used it to grow me in ways I never could have grown. My faith and my life will never be the same. I'm so grateful for lymphoma in my life, because it brought me so much closer to God.

Jesus, Brother James, writes this in James, Chapter 1. Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don't try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you can become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way. One thing that plants have over us, they know that unless it rains, they will never grow.

So storm clouds gather, and it rains, and it rains on everyone. And even though extremely uncomfortable, many of us know that during those rainy seasons is when we grow the most and feel the closest to God. It's those times that draw us into deeper dependence on our father. I can remember watching a video one time of a dad taking a hike with his little two-year-old son. He had his son scrapped on his back and one of those kid carrying backpacks. Well, about 20 minutes into the hike, it starts to rain. At first, just a few drops that his kid's okay, but then it turns into this torrential downpour.

I mean, it's soaked it to the bone kind of rain. There's thunder, there's lightning, there's wind. They're in the middle of nowhere, and his son begins to scream. Well, he turns around and takes him out of the backpack, and he wraps him in his arms and holds him close to his chest and begins whispering to him. I love you, buddy. We're going to make it. Trust me. I got you.

I know the way home. And when it rains, that's when you can feel your father pull you close and help you weather whatever storm has blown into your life. You will sense the very presence of his peace and know that he's with you. You know, I love the lyrics to an old worship song that says, every blessing you pour out. I'll turn back to praise. And when the darkness closes in, Lord, still, I will say, blessed be your name. So I know that a bunch of you are going through some hard things right now. I pray for you every day. I literally do. Just know that this could be one of the most pivotal times in your life, that your character could grow in ways you never, ever dreamed.

Your father is good, and he's strong, and he's caring, and he's loving. And if you will cry out to him, you'll hold you close. Not just until the storm is over, he will carry you all the way home. See you back tomorrow. Have a great day. Thanks for tuning in today. For more biblical teaching and worship, join us for our church online live weekend services on Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 9.30 and 11 a.m. Central Standard Time. For more information, visit Lake Point, dot church slash daily drive.