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00:00:01 good morning fbc welcome to this sunday where we're going to be continuing our journey to this sermon on the mount today we're going to look at matthew chapter 6 verses 1 to 8 looking through the topic of true spirituality let's start with the word of prayer lord we just thank you for being with us this morning we ask our lord that your spirit be with us open up our eyes open up scripture that it may resonate with our heart and show us what it really means to be a person of faith what it really
00:00:35 means to be truly spiritual walking with you for we ask for jesus sake amen right last week our brother arnold went through with us the challenge that we should be unafraid to bring out our doubts so that our faith will be based on a rational faith based on how we really understand the bible to be but doubt is a significant problem in the world if you look there was a study by the pew center some time ago religious switching from 2010 projected up to 2050. next uh uh 40 years and it is said projected that in the next 40 years
00:01:18 the number of people who are going to be switching to unaffiliated religions is the largest we're talking about 61 million and most of them will be actually switching out from christianity the christianity in the next 40 years will be losing out 66 million people most of them becoming unaffiliated the muslims and the non folk religions basically will also be growing as well what's going down is basically the jews and the buddhists and mainly the the christians all right and all this is due to doubt and and when key spiritual figures
00:01:53 fall there's a loss of confidence in the faith and this has consequences for example things in the society like for example the lgbtq area society views christians as very backward fundamentalist they're not moving along with society so christianity loses its credibility uh when it stands for the bible as it were and it doesn't and it fails to explain itself politicization of religion you can look at the attack on the capital lots of christians were there attacking their own capital where jesus
00:02:28 saves signs all these caused confusion and not only that as arnold mentioned last week pastors who refused to recognize medical truths to go against lockdown to go against vaccines again this cast doubt upon the faith if you look at this fake news all over the world two-thirds of tweets were linked to popular where there our link popular websites were from robots facebook itself deleted 2.2 billion fake accounts in the last in in three-month period of time so fake news is everywhere because of the democratization
00:03:02 of social media everybody can be a publisher everybody can be an author as it were this is star news in march 25th this year angela yo writes the anti-vaccine content has been posted over 689 thousand times on facebook in the past two months showed that 73 of it actually originated from disinformation does that mean 12 people only 12 people are the ones spreading anti-vaccination news and this actually has deadly consequences because the people who do not get vaccinated will eventually succumb to covet
00:03:35 especially if they're older they have deadly consequences same situation happened in the time of jesus when we got authentic spirituality versus fake righteousness and jesus is one coming to society and confronting the icons of faith the icons of religiosity and righteousness were the pharisees and jesus was coming and he's confronting them and and they are being shown up as being fake in fact he says to them woe to you scribes and pharisees hypocrites for you are like whitewashed tombs you see outside the graveyard the
00:04:10 tomb looks great outward looks beautiful but inside full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness which means they were fake and this has deadly consequences because he says to them for i tell you unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and pharisees you will never enter the kingdom of heaven that is what's at stake so therefore in chapter 6 he comes down to the difference between authentic spirituality true spirituality and fake spirituality which is so easily be faked and if you look at the pharisees well
00:04:47 the fake righteousness was they they obeyed the ten commandments do not murder do not commit but right deep under the spirit of law hatred and lust these proliferate and jesus points this out and he says righteousness is all encompassing not only outside conformity to the law but inside in their hearts as well these are the negative aspects of righteousness and jesus goes in the last passage before this talking about true righteousness which we must have to enter the kingdom of god and he applies that to integrity
00:05:20 whether we retaliate in revenge divorce and remarriage lust and adultery anger management it goes on all that now today he's going to look at prayer arms giving or charity or fasting what are these related to these are all related to love for god and love for others and jesus these are basically the positive aspects of righteousness now there this morning i'm gonna be pointing out only three features of true spirituality based on this passage true spirituality not fake it's actually responding not performing true spirituality
00:06:00 is relational not transactional true spirituality is desiring not coveting three points true spirituality is responding not performing beware of practicing your righteousness before others in order to be seen by them for you will have no reward from your father who is in heaven the key issue is the expression or the practice of our righteousness and here the external manifestations of our righteousness our godliness is when we are able to give in arms giving we'll be able to pray well be able to fast and deprive
00:06:35 ourselves in order to commit ourselves to a time offer these are the external manifestations of righteousness and in that context you'd have jerusalem uh the temple trumpets will be rigging out they will blow the horn and say there's a particular need covet pandemic fund as it were and everybody would urgently close their shops and everybody would start running to the temple i mean run the temple big piggy bank there and they'll take out their coins and and dump it there and contribute to the cause and everybody can actually see you
00:07:07 close your shop and see you run to the temple and you're running your temple very fast wow this one is very keen to give to god's work and this was ostentatious it's over the top it's public and people love to do that this was the outward show of righteousness uh call to prayer similarly the shofar would ring and straight away wherever you are whether in the bazaar whether your army barracks everybody would turn to the direction of jerusalem temple and they would pray and everybody would be impressed no matter what you
00:07:41 would you'll be eating your chicken rice halfway and you're just turning and this was an outward display of righteousness then you've got fasting as well and you know you can come with a very sad face to show people that you are actually fasting now all these are done if you look at what jesus is saying before others in order to be seen at the verse is repeated three times 1b 5b 16b all three manifestations of righteousness are done in public and the reason why people do this is in order to be seen
00:08:11 by the public right and why so that they may be praised by others and truly i say to you they have received their reward so which means what is their reward three times in each of these three manifestations of righteousness jesus says they're actually doing it to get their reward and their reward is glory from their fellow man everybody said wow he's such a generous man he's giving so much money towards the temple oh he's such a holy guy he's actually praying and fasting and doing and why are they doing it because
00:08:43 they're doing it to receive their reward from their fellow man not from god so therefore here you have prayer arms giving and fasting it's actually what jesus is saying is a love for self instead of love for god this is fake spirituality this is hypocrisy and that's the warning to us today hypocrisy is an acted lie where a person uses the appearance of good deeds to cloak unworthy designs of self-glorification or some fraudulent credit george cradberry was one of the first pioneers in his big company
00:09:21 in england in the 1800s 1700s or 1800s he created the chocolate cadbury chocolate and he was the one who was so socially responsible he actually used the money gained from his cadbury chocolates to actually benefit his staff and start social responsibility and start giving away his money but you know after that the trend took off but if you look in websites today why do people have corporate philanthropy why do corporates give money away for five reasons one it increases brand reputation the more money you give away
00:09:52 and you tell everybody about it you have a big check and you stick this check and you give it to people and the tv ticker comes and takes a picture of you that's brand recognition it results in more sales it results in employees coming to join you are being very happy because they belong to a corporately responsible company you attract more talent and not only that tax benefit you're able to write it off in tax see robert wright in 2005 wrote an article looking at philanthropy in american setup because
00:10:23 americans actually are probably the group that gives the most to philanthropy all right 248 billion uh was given in 2004. and he said that the largest proportion was given to religious groups their facilities operating costs and their clergy salary salaries how much was it actually given to the poor social services less than five percent social welfare groups less than two percent human services nine percent so there's a failure of philanthropy because it only gives to a certain sector and the people who are really poor don't
00:10:56 really get it and not only that tax deductions are beneficial to mega donors and it deprives the government of revenue what about china china's followed suit in this philanthropy and you can find the number of foundations charitable foundation set up in china have quadrupled over the last 10 years last decade but if you look where they're giving more than half of the philanthropists or foundations gave to charities affiliated with the government to curry favor with the government they gave most often to education
00:11:26 and least often to environmental causes the study found if you look here at donations uh given by donor companies donor countries to us colleges hong kong 181 million uk 147 canada 136 but the recipients the biggest recipients for example you think hong kong giving was to princeton berkeley harvard or stanford these aren't exactly poor people you know so therefore donations are given for a vested interest what about locally well court case our famous amino president zahid use foundations money for poor right for
00:12:08 personal expenses the court hears as reported this year in march you know stephen weinberg says good people will do good things bad people will do bad things but for good people to do bad things that takes religion that's the problem you see jesus criticizes the pharisees you are outwardly appear righteous to others but within you full of hypocrisy and lawlessness top five reasons why youth church dropouts say they stop attending church and the top five second top five reason is 20 32 percent of church members are
00:12:44 hypocritical or judgmental right and why are we why is religion particularly the sector that actually breeds most hypocrisy simply because we claim that this is god's standard and this is where we are and there's a gap between where god is and where we are and this gap we're tempted to fill this gap with what a lie or performance and that is the problem we're filling the gap all right so jesus say beware of practicing your righteousness before others in order to be seen by them all right so prayer arms giving and
00:13:22 fasting is something that people in those days did regularly anyway it's he never said if you were to give to the needy he says when you give the needy when you pray and when you fast it assess it basically assumes that these are things that you actually do anyway all right now when we do this as a function of our nature 1 john 3 10 by this is evident who are the children of god and who are the children of the devil whoever does not practice righteousness is not from god of god nor is the one who does not love
00:13:58 his brother so the opposite is true so therefore the children of god are the ones who practice righteousness and the one who love their brother so basically what is righteous is righteousness is justice that which you do right and love is is to care for your brother and this is basically reflecting the image of god was god is righteous and so therefore we as his sons are by nature righteous living according to his holy will and are by nature loving as we care for each other this is what he expects of us
00:14:31 all right and it is actually your father in heaven who will see in secret and will reward you so we're actually looking we're not doing it so the others will be seeing us we're actually doing it so that god will be pleased the authenticity is actually often only verified by god sometimes you can't see a person's um authenticity just like iphones if you look at these two iphones which do you think is the fake iphone and which do you think is the real iphone let me take a bet how many of you think this
00:15:04 one what about this one well in the end this is a china made one and it's a fake few hundred dollars it'll cost you you can't see the difference until you start opening up the iphone and getting it to work all right so filling up the gap between god's standard and where we are we're tempted to do it in two ways we either perform or we respond all right when we're performing is by willpower trying your best in order to earn your way to god when you're responding is is being hit by the grace of god responding
00:15:37 because so he so loved us that we actually respond why do we actually fill the gap with performance or lie well because of few reasons one we fear we fear that if we don't meet up to god's standard we don't fill that gap between where god is and where we are and then we will go to hell and that is actually the simple motive what some people have the other is because we want the praise of man we forget that actually it's god who ascertains our authenticity and thirdly is a this idea of self-esteem
00:16:10 self-righteousness because if you are actually moving towards god's standard that means you are somebody of stature you are truly the son of god all right now and this actually bleeds on to how we teach our children samuel williamson actually wrote a book and actually suggesting that is sunday school destroying our kids because in sunday school what we are teaching them is all moral values about david about goliath and all sorts of things this is where they should be but we actually don't teach them about grace
00:16:42 that many of us fall short of these standards and in the old testament if it shows us anything it shows us that we are sinners and that we need the cross and we're not doing that so he's challenging our ideas you see kevin croft the hope uh church vauxhall says see being a christian isn't about pretending to be good it's actually admitting you're bad being real now imagine if you actually committed murder or test or rape or assault you actually straight away you actually have insight when you've got insight you
00:17:15 admit you're wrong there's confession there's repentance and there's resolution but the problem is when you're involved in deception hatred jealousy unforgiveness laziness those things that are below the surface we actually have no insight that they're actually wrong and we actually mount a psychological defense to protect our self-esteem and this psychological defense is actually called hypocrisy it's a method of dealing with sin that actually in the end prevents a solution we cannot admit it because
00:17:49 we're defending ourselves as it were in fact the brain arnold goldberg is a professor of psychiatry at rush medical center wrote lying is as much part of normal growth and development as telling the truth the ability to lie is a human achievement one of those abilities that tend to set us apart from all other species so so all the species don't lie it's only we who lie it's like a human achievement in order to gain an advantage which tells us so much about the sinful nature of man isn't it it's a survival school imagine
00:18:22 your wife comes up into you hey that girl across the road pretty or not and you know you're tempted to what if you say not pretty when she's actually pretty or actually she's pretty and you say she's pretty either way i think you die all right so is it a survival skill in 1993 there was actually a diplomat who worked in the european commission at that time and working as a diplomat he negotiated deals he represented his country and the problem is whenever he told a lie he would shake go into a fit convulse
00:18:57 and go into a coma now if you are a diplomat that's not a very good thing because every time he told a half truth or a lie he actually had convulsions and fell down the ground they actually found out that he had a tumor in his brain and it took a tumor in the brain to break down our natural psychological defense to actually lie to be a hypocrite and they actually took the tumor out and he be he continued his job as a hypocrite and this syndrome is called the pinocchio syndrome because pinocchio grew a long
00:19:28 nose when he actually lied what is the secret to true spirituality to really be authentic well one timothy chapter 3 verse 16 says great indeed we confess is the mystery of godliness which means being like god being consistent being authentically spiritual is actually a mystery which is we don't know about it it's only been revealed recently and paul writes what is this mystery what is that that we need to know well this is the mystery he was manifest in the flesh which is the incarnation of jesus
00:20:05 he was vindicated by the spirit which means he was resurrected and vindicated all the things that he taught was correct why because when they killed him unjustly he rose he was seen by the angels he was exalted into heaven he was proclaimed among the nations he was believed in the world and finally he was taken up in glory you know so what is the mystery of what leaders the mystery of godliness is actually christ the gospel where the space between where god standard is and where you are is to be filled by not your
00:20:40 performance but how you respond to grace because jesus has already become your righteousness so our job is what is to be real admitting i hope you've said the right thing in in the poll where we ran before the sermon that i am a recovering hypocrite all of us are because all of us don't go to that standard and we actually replace that gap with our performance you can too authentic spirituality is not performing it's actually responding to god if you look at matthew 25 we talk about the judgment of the sheep and the goats
00:21:19 and jesus asked them you know when i was in prison and when i was sick did you come to visit me when i was in covet what did you come did you bring me the soup and and the sheep will say yes we did and the goats will say you know when did we actually do that we didn't see you and jesus said and when you and when did we see you sick or in person and visit you and the king will answer them truly i say to you as you did it to one of the least of my brothers you did it to me see what he's saying is that your
00:21:52 actions to your brother whether in love or in charity is actually responding to god when you look at your brother and you see god in terms of the image of god and when you give arms and will help let the helping hand you're actually responding to what god has done for you and you're responding to god because you don't see god but you see his image in your fellow brothers this is the church and you're extending that you are actually responding to god so so true spirituality is not performing it's actually responding the
00:22:25 grim tale of ananias in saphira in acts chapter 5 you know that they both were sold a piece of land and in that time people sell their pieces of land and will bring the entire mount and lay the feet of the apostles jesus so our apostle pizza and say this is what i'm going to contribute for the poor people so although all the people the early church of acts had not no need at all right so what they did was they whatever they brought it was automatically assumed because everybody did it that this was all there
00:22:56 was and what they did was they sold their piece of land and they brought only a portion maybe by about 10 or 50 percent they brought portion and lady defeat apostle as if that was the whole amount right and they were actually struck dead husband and wife because you know what they lied to the holy spirit the best thing for them would have been to come before peter at that time perhaps if they were real if they sold it for a hundred thousand dollars and you brought fifty thousand dollars say look
00:23:26 we could only give fifty we're gonna keep 50 for ourselves that would have been okay and they would not have died they should have been real that's why in the new testament uh paul says the point is this whoever so sparingly will also reap sparingly whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully each one must give as he has decided in his heart not reluctantly or under compulsion for god loves a cheerful giver so there's no compulsion you're not doing for show so the other people will see you
00:23:58 you're doing it your bt 76 as you have decided to be honest and not hypocritical bana research in 2007 looked at why people rejected christianity and number two reason was judgmentalism high hypocrisy and judgmentalism actually are two phases of the same coin because when you're judgmental about other people you're actually avoiding some truth about yourself when you compare yourself to other people and it makes you feel good because you're choosing something which in which you are better than others
00:24:33 right and using that you when you judge them it makes you feel better about yourself but the problem is romans 2 verse 1. therefore paul says you have no excuse oh man every one of you who judges for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself because you the judge practice the very same thing you see when we actually say the other person is a gossip it implies that you have no gossiping maybe you gossip less but it doesn't mean that you're not a gossiper when you condemn other people you're
00:25:01 actually passing judgment on yourself all right imagine it's like going to the covet ward you've got covet 19 and you're not breathing as bad as the other you're pointing and judging them when you're in the same ward that's actually ridiculous uh some people will be bringing up this idea this uh issue of carl lens one who brought justin bieber to christ and ravi zacharias you know and why do christians bring them up to criticize we're not actually criticizing them the reason why we bring up moral
00:25:30 failure among christian leaders is the purpose is warning it is not judgmentalism because they were we have probably done the same sins as they were but we do it in private we do it privately under the surface tell me which person doesn't have lust in his eyes in committed lust in his heart we all have the purpose why we bring these things up is for warning not for judgment one timothy chapter one fight the good warfare timothy is told by paul holding faith and good conscience by rejecting this
00:26:08 some have made shipwreck of their faith among whom are highmoneyers alexander these are leaders paul brings them up so that the people are warned because the failing of others actually the purpose of which brings up so they encourage us so that we will not fall as well that is the purpose for which we bring that up judgment belongs to god only god judges right so in the end we've got true spirituality it's either performance performance like a well you throw your bucket in and you're bringing it up and after a while you're
00:26:42 going to run out of water because it's the wealth is yourself you either perform or you respond the deeper you look into the beauty of christ's death for us and his resurrection you respond to who he is and when we're responding it's going to be like a river of flowing water which is just told to the samaritan woman that is got no end continue to respond out of that endless supply of love right so the true spiritual the features of true spirituality is responding to grace and not performing the second point the true spirituality
00:27:16 is relational not transactional all right when you pray do not heap up empty phrases as the gentiles do for they think that they will be heard for their many words don't be like them for your father knows what you need before you even ask him what are they doing here here you have got two kinds of prayer one is relational father-son or the other one is transactional there are two kinds true spirituality is relational all right if you're transactional public prayer is more important the private prayers so you
00:27:48 tend to be in public and you've got a prayer meeting you're praying most but at home you hardly pray that is a transactional relationship because you want public adulation and glory to be known as a holy person petition praying for something is more important and more elaborate because you're performing for others as well as uh as well as for god relational private prayer is more important because you don't stand in front of the whole world and talk to your father you you go to the room yourself and private prayer
00:28:18 is because it's intimate prayer is in a relationship is a response to grace because of what god has done for you the purpose is what why do you pray we pray the purpose is relationship to strengthen that relationship to deep to dig in to dip into that relationship so that we grow closer in love with him and to fellowship that is why we pray not because we have to pray to perform for others even the transactional relationship self-esteem or how we feel how good we feel ourselves especially based on our own merit and
00:28:51 our goodness and the fact that if we're given a lot of money to church or we prayed a lot i went to every single prayer meeting you feel good isn't it i've been really spiritual i've been really righteous well self-esteem is based on that but if it's a relational issue intimacy with god is based on god's unconditional love of you not because of your performance we need to understand that all right so true spirituality is responding not performing true spirituality is relational not transactional and lastly true
00:29:25 spirituality is desiring not coveting if you look at the spiritual disciplines all right you have money and you give that away you've got food but you deprive yourself and you've got time and you use it to pray actually spiritual disciplines present a conflict how many of you feel praying is easy i don't think praying is easy i mean you're sitting aside quietly and i'm a type a personality i don't like to be quiet and i'm while i can be doing something else i have to quiet myself and to just pray to a god whom i cannot
00:29:57 see it goes again it's counterintuitive and a lot of people fall asleep how many of you like to fast which means you love to eat a guy like me loves to eat and then you're depriving yourself and what about your hard earned money you you work so hard and you got to take it give it away so basically on one hand we have our desires to keep our money to keep our food to keep our time and on the other hand we're asked to give it away so there is a conflict of desires and and this is interpreted by the greek philosophers
00:30:26 at that time we actually split the person into soul and spirit these are the holy aspects like god and then what of the body so the body is bad and sinful all the desires of for of for sex desire for food desire for comfort all that is really bad and so therefore true spirituality is to focus on spiritual aspects of life and when they fast when they deprive themselves food and when they pray what they're doing is actually they're suppressing this part of their lives so that this is basically going to be the good part
00:31:00 and you look in the buddhist faith and a lot of the faiths that focus on meditation they're actually essentially doing that they're denying that that part of your life is actually good you need to understand how desires are given by god basic instinct look look at genesis chapter two god created man adam and eve and gave them an entire garden eden with every imaginable beautiful food there why did he do that desires are actually given to god for our blessing but desire more than that has an indicative function
00:31:36 it's just like going down to the mall and then the sales girl will come and give you a little piece of a turkey or a croissant or a macaroon and you're supposed to taste it and it actually stimulates your saliva your appetite your imagination and then you okay i'll go to your shop and i'll have the whole turkey desire given to god has an indicative function it points us towards something but it is not an end to itself because if you think desire is an end to itself you're going to be like the rats go in the rat
00:32:10 race looking for happiness but this happiness is always sold out there was a famous new york uh columnist called david brooks who uh actually described his feelings after he had the first best-selling uh a book called i think bobo's uh paradise and he was driving around he felt elated the first and after that he felt kind of empty i was talking to his editor and she realized that career success has actually saved me from the shame that i might have felt if i had failed and that's a very interesting way to
00:32:45 describe career success because everybody wants career success but when you actually get there it's not a big deal you feel kind of empty and all it does is that it saves you from the shame that i may have felt if i actually didn't get that best selling authorship book right sirius lewis writes creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for these desires exist a baby feels hunger while there's such a thing as food a duckling wants to swim well there's such a thing as water men feel sexual desire well there's such
00:33:17 a thing as sex so there's a correlation between desire and the satisfaction for that desire but i find in myself a desire if i find myself in desire which no experience in this world can satisfy then the most probable explanation is that i was made for another world or something else beyond that and that's the indicative function of desire it cannot be an end to itself it whatever food you have in fine dining or a beautiful peacock time with family it is not designed to give you full satisfaction
00:33:48 there's always something missing because all desires have an indicative function it's designed to drive us towards god himself it's not designed for you to just indulge that desire as an end to itself so you begin instead of eating to live you actually live to eat as it were even evil has an indicative function how do you respond you hear news today of so much covet going on various young people in malaysia actually getting into icu there are variants and all by sure a variance will be coming and
00:34:24 and malaysia is estimated to have reached 8 000 cases uh at the end of this month if things continue to move towards this direction this is suffering and there was a theologian in 1950s called paul tillich who describes what suffering is he says what suffering does is that it carves through what you thought was the basement of your soul and it reveals a cavity underneath that and when you carve below that you discover another cavity below that you get to the depths of yourself and you discover that only spiritual
00:35:03 emotional food will feed those dark places only that will happen you know this week we had quite a number of our fbc people who have been struck by covet and this is a picture of vincent yi whom i know uh he was in a desperate situation with his illness and couldn't even get a bed we tried to get them by the zuban and all that affiliated hospitals they're awful and last minute he called 999 and he actually got to uh tsunami which and he actually is doing better this is what he writes in the midst of his suffering life is so
00:35:37 fragile so uncertain hold tight to god's hand and do not let go remember even if you walk down the darkest moment of your life passing through the gates of hell god is always standing beside you he won't forsake you wonderful words from a person who's actually suffering reminds me of ecclesiastes chapter 3. there's a time and season for every matter under heaven time to be born time to die time to plant time to pick up time to uh to kill time to heal time to break down time to build up time to weep time to
00:36:09 laugh time to mourn and time to dance and i like verse 14 i perceive that whatever god does whether in covet variants or not nothing can be added to it or anything taken for god has done it so that people will fear before him there is a purpose to what's happening and each message which vincent wrote in whatsapp is ended by three prayer hands which means the suffering that vincent actually has undergone is exactly as paul tillich describes you go down to the bottom of your soul the basement of your soul you dig you find a
00:36:43 cavity and you find a cavity and that darkness can only be filled with god the practice of righteousness is therefore an expression of our deepest desire whether in in beauty that we see and anticipate something more beautiful or in darkness of our soul that has to be filled we're actually forced to desire something greater we've seen to desire something greater so we give we pray we fast on the opposite hand our temptation is to manipulate god empty phrases so that every that they'll be heard for their many words as if to
00:37:24 manipulate god genesis chapter 3 the woman instead of desire she actually covered and the reason why she took the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil was because god knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be open and you'll be like god knowing good and evil here is a woman who has been given desire and given an entire garden of eden every imaginable food and taste and beauty for her to take in and that desire points her to god and instead she wants more and that more is want to be like god
00:38:06 which means you actually usurp the place of god and decide for herself like god what is good and what is evil so she's instead of desiring god she covets the position of god and it's the same for us is god your god or santa claus we strive to be on the nice list not the naughty list so that god will give us what we want there's an interesting book by christian smith and melinda lindquist stanton looking at the young people in australia in america and i don't think they're very far off from us in this country looking at their
00:38:43 religious spiritual lives he says there is a fake religion in american christianity called moralistic therapeutic theism where they believe in a creator god people are created to be good and nice and fair and the goal of life is to be happy to feel good about yourself and what is god needed god is needed to resolve a problem good people go to heaven when they die that's the kind of religion that on general that plagues the church all over the world here's how vincent ends this whatsapp now i really know
00:39:18 the actual meaning i am not my own anymore i have no control over myself i belong to him totally i got to do what he instructs me to do in complete obedience you see in the depths of suffering it creates a pull of darkness which only god can fill and vincent has found that even through the depths of covet suffering and so therefore in chapter 6 verse 9 jesus tells us then pray our father in heaven hallowed be your name your kingdom come your will be done that is an expression of desire when you come
00:40:04 to god he's not your santa claus so that you get covered and you manipulate god to give you what you want you actually come and the prayer that you have is an earnest desire for for god and all that he's about you've surrendered your desire to him so true spirituality is not coveting deciding that you are god and deciding what you want for yourself true spirituality is a desire for god and all he is in all this wonder and beauty and authority and majesty so the challenge for us this morning is your faith real
00:40:43 well if you're responding to grace and not performing if we're relating to him and not transacting before if prayer charity giving and fasting is an expression desire and not an expression of coveting then our spirituality is real
